How are you doing?

I'm hanging in there. Trying to do better.

{{{vw}}} Because.

Damn. I was going to, pathetically enough, download last night's 7th Heaven. But, the website is down. I'm all sad, which is just stupid.

Shhhh...don't tell anyone! I'm gonna get new shower curtains and wash the rugs in the bathroom. It'll be like a whole new clean room!

Fun. A new shower curtain really does make it a whole new room.

I'm coming back home to clean after I take the kid to school. Work will have to wait a bit. I'm too tired at night to do housework, but I can do office work anytime.

I LOVE washing our bathroom rugs. They come out of the dryer so clean and fluffy! It makes me unreasonably happy. (it's the little things)

Go vw! It's a gorgeous day today... so hopefully your errands today will be a little nicer with the sun on your face.

{{vw}} good luck with turning the bad vibes around. I know it's hard. But sometimes it helps a lot. To quote the Simpsons, "In with the love... out with the jive."

I have shown my paper twice already to people, not including Tom last night. And I made him look at it twice. The prof gave some good comments about organizing the paper, which is helpful, in case I ever want to re-purpose it or anything.

It's so nice outside!

Nora, I'm so psyched about your A! Go you, with your paper writing fu!

vw, it probably sounds stupid, but I have such a sense of accomplishment when I clean the whole bathroom. Dusting ticks me off. This is the dustiest house known to mankind, and so it mostly makes me feel like that Greek [memfault] who was always pushing the stone up the hill, only to have it roll right back down.

t whinge t MeMeMe

Last week, Scott's job moved out of state.

Last week, our old car died.

Last week, the mechanic called and said, "It doesn't look good, but I'll take it apart next week, and let you know what I think."

Yesterday, the mechanic called and said, "You know how I thought it was going to be 500 bucks? Well, I'm changing that to a thousand. Minimum. And honestly, I don't think it's worth your money. (It's a '91, so he's being good to us, telling us this.)

Last week, it wasn't a big deal. It was April vacation, and we didn't have to be anywhere.

This week? Not so much. We're back to the grind, going to school, and all three kids in Little League means practices and games, and Girl Scouts for Julia (my mother already takes her to her dance lessons).

Plus, you know, I actually do need a car, sometimes. The thing is, we can't afford a car, because we just bought a new car we already couldn't afford, back in December. Whatever we buy has to be reliable enough for Scott's 80 mile roundtrip to work, or big enough, for me to cart the kids around (leaving him with the new car, which darn well ought to be reliable enough for his 80 mile, roundtrip.

None of this is the end of the world. Problems that can be solved by money and/or that are caused by lack thereof sure aren't the worst kind of problems.

I just don't like it. I want a car. I should go do that spoiled meme on LJ. I'm not closing the whinge tag, just because. So there.

...

The upside? Chris had a great time at his birthday party. Ben's team won their first game (which only Scott attended, because it was cold and drizzling, and we'd just gotten home from the party). The final score was 11 to 3. Ben successfully stole four bases. Last year, the team he was on made the Bad News Bears look like champions. We live within walking distance from the school, and it's warming up, so as long as we don't have thunder storms, walking them to and from school is a good thing (even though I'm lazy). Scott can work from home a couple of days a week, and his bosses are understanding (so far) of our situation, and feel badly that the move (which was not their decision) was on such short notice.

So it's okay. Really.

ugh, Cindy. Car troubles are the rassenfrassen worst. I always feel so helpless on so many levels. It's more than the money. Though it always seems to take a hell of a lot of it to make those problems go away.

Another chore I love doing once it's over is changing the sheets. We changed our sheets to our "summer" sheets (which are white cotton soft sheets) and also swapped out our flannel duvet cover for the warm weather crisp white cotton cover with the pretty blue flowers on it. I love my bed and fresh clean sheets make me insanely happy.

I also love it when I can clean the kitchen down to wiping down all the countertops and it smells like TJ's TraderZen multipurpose cleaner. If I can wipe down the stove and wash the floors, that's epic. But getting all the direty dishes in the dishwasher/washed by hand, and everything put away, and the counters wiped down... so satisfying.

It's entirely possible for us to get by with one car, but it's difficult, because of the kids' sports, and things like weather. Plus, in this town, middle school starts in fifth grade, which means come September Ben won't be within walking distance of school (well, the distance is probably fine, but the route isn't something I'd let him walk without an adult, yet--too many crazy traffic patterns and other stuff), so we will need another car, or have to rely on the kindness of other parents, which touches on some of my issues (to which I have subscriptions).

For some reason, I find wiping off the counters to be the most annoying of all tasks, but I can't say that I find anything that could be remotely be described as housework satisfying. Yardwork, on the other hand, is great.