Claire's Life

Yes, I know it's Wednesday now, but oh well!  The weekend isn't that far gone.  On Saturday we had Megan and her fam over - always fun!  They haven't been over here for quite some time.  Usually we go over there since their place is so much bigger, but I thought it was time for a switch.  We had sloppy joes, baked veggie chips (pain in the neck but pretty tasty), coleslaw and for dessert, strawberry shortcake!  Mmm.  Lots of time in the kitchen to get ready, but it was fun and totally worth it.

Sunday we went for a really long bike ride.  OK, it wasn't really that long, but pulling the kids makes it feel longer, and going up lots of hills really kills me.  It was fun though, and very good exercise.  Annoying to get so sweaty that I had to take another shower, but oh well. I should have expected it anyway; I finally started wearing a bike helmet, and that's a guaranteed hair-wrecker.  I always avoided it in the past because I didn't want the hair issues, but I decided that wasn't very safe and not a very good example to set for the kids, so I sucked it up and started wearing one.  Probably the right decision, even though it's annoying...

Sunday night we went to Wolf Trap for their free summer kick-off concert by the President's Own Marine Corps Band and fireworks!  That was actually a lot of fun - we went with a friend and some of her family and they knew all the tricks since they had been there so many times.  It was a long evening (lots of waiting in line) but it was fun.  We'll definitely go next year, but bring some earplugs for the fireworks - man they were loud.

Monday we went over to John's parent's house and just hung out.  Emily was going to make crab cakes for dinner (and order some Chinese for those of us who don't want to/can't eat them) but then we all just ended up eating Chinese.  Nice and relaxing.  John's brother, David, is graduating from high school in about a week.  I'm really hoping that I'll get to go.  The problem is that it's at 10am on a Friday morning...Anna has school then, obviously.  Am I horrible parent if I have her skip that day?  I don't know what to do.  I really don't want to miss it.  We already missed his sister's college graduation because of Anna's school; John went, but not the rest of us.  We'll see, I guess.

I spent most of today cleaning - things had gotten pretty sloppy around here!  Now it's looking pretty good.  Whenever I spend hours cleaning and appreciate how it looks afterward, I always say, I have to maintain this because I love it!  But then I never do. 

More to write about, but I'm off for now.  Happy Wednesday!

Wow, what a weekend.  We took off about 9ish on Thursday morning and headed over to Berkeley Springs, WV.  We went there two years ago and knew what to expect, so we thought it would be a safe choice.  It was fun, but I think the consensus was that we should go back to the beach next year (just like we did last year).  People wanted more things to do.  Personally, I'm happy to just sit around and chat all weekend, but the beach was fun too.

Anyway, we had a great time.  On the first day we went out to lunch and on the way home we missed our turn.  When we turned back around, Daniella, who was driving, said, "Ooo, a snake!"  Two seconds later you hear, ba-dum-bump! as the snake gets run over by the two wheels.  She said, "Sorry!"  We laughed and laughed and laughed.  Oh my gosh, it was hysterical.  No slowing down, no attempt to miss the snake, just "Sorry!" Haha.  Probably had to be there, but that was the start of the most frequently heard word this weekend: sorry!  Except that it had to be said the way it's said by Gilly on SNL.  Oh my gosh was that the cause of endless laughter.  "Gilly, did you put on sucky dance music?"  "Sahh-ray!"  We just might have to get t-shirts made with some of our favorite sayings from the weekend. 

We had three very late nights.  Thursday we went to bed about 2AM and unfortunately we were all still in our routines and a lot of us were up by about 6:30 or 7 and unable to go back to sleep.  Yuck!  Friday we were in bed about 2:30 but were better able to sleep late.  Saturday night - oy! - in bed about 4:15, but couldn't sleep too late because we had to get up and get the house in order to leave.  I took a brief nap when I got home, but I'm definitely looking forward to bed tonight.  It's going to take a few days to recover from this.  And also to purge all the alcohol out of my system.  *lol* 

My girls surprised me with an early 30th birthday bash.  They got me a pedicure at a local spa (my first ever!), and when I got back from that they had put up balloons and streamers, had a cake and champagne, and let me wear a crown all night.  What fun!!!  I love my toes and I'm thinking that when this pedicure wear wears out, I might just have to get another one.  It made me feet feel so good!!! 

We spent a lot of time dancing.  A bunch of people had brought their ipods with dance music and Daniella brought her Bose player with an ipod dock, so we were able to rotate through all the music.  I'm not normally a dancer (a sense of rhythm does not run in the family), but get me loosened up and ply me with some liquor, and I'll do it.  I really enjoyed myself this time.  I think I've gotten over the initial, 'oh my gosh I don't want them to see how ridiculous I look!'  They all know and now I can just do it and they don't make fun of me (not like the kids did in middle school).  True friends are priceless!

I'm still waiting to see my family; they're over at John's parent's house for the day, as is usual for a Sunday, and they're not back yet.  I expect I'll get a quick hug from the kiddos as they head for bed, since they'll probably get back late.  I'll have plenty of time to hang out with the girls in the coming days - John's traveling for work starting tomorrow and won't be back until Wednesday evening.  That's a hard transition - four days with no responsibilities to three days with all the responsibilities!!  Oh well, I'll survive.  As long as I catch up on my sleep.

All right, I'm off to do some more stuff!  Later!

Here's something I don't think I've written about on my blog.  For those of you whom I talk to regularly, you already know this.  There are a few readers for whom that is not the case, however, so here is a basic run-down. 

We're walking away from our condo.

Yes, you've read about it in the news media, but did you know someone who's actually done it?  Well, now you do.  You know we tried to sell it by putting it on the market in August, but that was completely unsuccessful.  So towards December, we decided it was time to just give it up.  Our thinking is this:  a) the value of our place has dropped 42% since we bought it; b) we don't expect the value to recover for at least ten to 15 years; and c) we can't really stay here that long, as we're already outgrowing the space (we only planned to stay until maybe 2012 at the latest).  We decided that if we joined the flood of people with housing issues right now, we would be more assured of fewer problems in the process. 

So we haven't paid our mortgage since December and we're basically just waiting to be kicked out.  If our lender is on top of things it should be any day now.  If they're really backed up though, it might be longer.  We're keeping an eye on rentals around the area we want to move to, but we're not going crazy about it.  Worst case scenario, we can put our stuff in storage and just move into a long-term hotel for a few weeks while we find a place.  Not ideal, for sure, but not the end of the world either.  Best case scenario, they tell us to get out and we're able to find a place pretty easily that we like and with a landlord who's willing to rent to us.  We shall see.

As you might imagine, our credit rating is going to take a significant hit on this, but we're prepared to deal with that.  We've pretty much turned against all debt at this point, with the exception of a mortgage.  I've read reports that say that all the talk about needing a good credit rating to get a job are gross exaggerations for the vast majority of professions.  We're hoping to save up a significant down payment in the next five years or so, and find a place that will put some faith in us and give us a mortgage.  It's a bit of a gamble, but I'm feeling quite certain that all will turn out well in the end.

So that's that.  I'm looking forward to moving on and getting out of here.  On the other hand, I like living for free, so I guess I'm not too anxious.

OK, time to resume packing for my trip tomorrow!  So excited!!!  Unfortunately, John goes out of town for work on Monday for three days, so that's not exactly a smooth transition back, but oh well.  I'll live, I'm sure. 

OK, so it's been awhile since I did this, obviously, so I'm not even going to attempt to recap everything that's happened in the past two months.  I'll just start from today, I guess.

I seem to have these periods where I'm extremely motivated to do things and I just go crazy.  This morning I got a bug to get things done, and boy did I ever!  The house is always a wreck after the weekend (partly because there's a fourth person here, and partly because I generally loosen up my standards so as to give myself a break) so I cleaned everything up.  I made a new bread recipe; it's called "Hearty Brown Bread" and has regular whole wheat flour, rye flour, millet flour, and sunflower seeds in it (along with other things, of course).  It looks pretty tasty, but I learned a lesson.  I've been making bread for over a year now, so I should have a pretty good feel for how it works and what things should look/feel like.  The problem is that I'm such a rules-follower that I want to do exactly what the recipe tells me to do and don't trust my instincts.  It told me a specific amount of flour to add, but the dough was so sticky that I kept adding more.  Finally I thought, "I've already added WAY more than they said, so I have to stop!"  So after the first rise it was very difficult to work with and get into the loaf pans.  Definitely needed more flour.  I mean, I guess I could chalk it up to it being a new recipe and all, but I should feel some more confidence in my skills by this point, and not be so tied to the recipe. 

Anyway, I also did two loads of laundry and made granola, so now I am quite tired.  This is the issue: I take on too much (all this was after working out pretty hard this morning) and then am tired and cranky the rest of the day.  I should learn to space things out more evenly, I suppose.  But how do I overcome those days when all I want to do is sit in front of my computer or the newspaper and do no work?  Ugh.

All the rain we've gotten has made the grass go crazy!  Everywhere I go it's sooo long!  I'm looking forward to our service getting on top of it in our community, because it's pretty yucky-looking!

This weekend is our annual girls' getaway and I'm so excited!  We're leaving Thursday morning and coming back Sunday afternoon.  Ahhh, four days with no responsibilities other than to keep myself fed and have fun.  'Twill be wonderful, as always.  And full of debauchery.  Haha!!

Less than a month until my 30th birthday!!  Agh!!  Here's the thing I realized yesterday.  I don't feel old at all.  I don't think I act old either.  It's just that any age starting in at least a 3 has always represented a certain...settled-down-ness, a boring, no excitement kind of life, a beginning of middle-age, letting yourself go, etc etc.  The funny thing is this: would I describe my 30-something friends this way?  No chance!!!  They are not at all like this; in fact, I would say most of them act like what I would expect from 20-somethings, it's just that they have kids and houses, etc.  So I think that I just have to recognize that just because I've held this stereotype all my life (unknowingly, at least until the past few years) doesn't mean that it's true.  I am me, and once I cross that line, I'm still me.  If my life turns into something like what I described before, it has nothing to do with my age, just my behavior, which can be changed!  I'm trying to feel better about it all, and I keep giving myself pep talks.  I may still end up completely drunk on the night of my birthday, trying to forget about the big 3-0. 

One of the most disturbing and informative videos I've seen in a long time.  It's only 20 minutes and well worth watching.

storyofstuff.com

Yeah, that's what we woke up to this morning, and it's still falling.  6 inches is just an estimate on my part; I'm not sure what it is officially.  And, of course, the phone call to tell us that school was canceled came at 6:20, 5 minutes after the girls' alarm clock rose them out of bed, asking for breakfast.  Why couldn't it have come just a little bit earlier?  Then all 4 of us could have slept in, instead of just 1 (the male member of the household).  Oh well.  At least he's saying he'll get up soon and then they can all go play in the snow.

For those of you wondering about Kate - she's doing fine now.  They went back to the orthopedist last Monday since she still wasn't really able to bear much weight on it (though she had started taking a few steps the night before).  Turns out that she did, indeed, fracture her leg.  The doc was able to see it on the xray this time because her bone had started to heal.  Because she had tentatively put weight on it the night before, no cast or splint was necessary.  Megan had talked to the people at Kate's daycare, and they said they could make it work, even if she couldn't walk at all/very much.  So Megan brought her to daycare, and what does Kate do?  Walk across the room!  What a little slug.    So everything's fine now.

OK, I'm being called on to tie a crown onto Kitty's head, so I'm off.

I woke up this morning about 5AM and thought to myself, "Wow, it's really bright in our room."  Didn't really think much about, just put on my eye mask (in preparation to sleep in and ignore the children when they came in requesting breakfast).  When I finally took it off my face many hours later, I was just kind of laying there and then all of a sudden - is that snow outside?  *sigh*  I have to admit, the snow does make the cold weather more bearable.  I like snow, though I think it can be a bit of a hassle if you have to go outside in it. 

We normally go over to the ILs on Sunday, but there's supposed to be another storm coming through and dropping about 6 inches on us, so it's a wiser choice to just stay home. Unfortunately, that means another day with the kiddos!  Normally when we go over there, they find stuff to do - play with old toys, hang out with Katie (the 15-year-old), play David's Nintendo DS, etc.  (Actually, Anna's new favorite over there is playing Super Smash Brothers on Nintendo 64.  It's actually kind of fun.)  But now today...what do we do all day?  John's going to get his hair cut now so that he can play in the snow with the girls later.  I've got some bread going...not much else to do!  I probably should do some cleaning, but who ever wants to do that?  Yuck.

So I've really been into getting documentaries from the library lately.  If I could get just the Discover and History channels in our cable package (in addition to the basic channels), I would.  Alas, I can't, and I just don't pay enough attention to the PBS lineup to know when interesting stuff is on.  So documentaries from the library suit me just fine.  I've watched one on the Dust Bowl of the 30s, warrior women on the southern plains of what is now Russia, the pandemic flu outbreak of 1918, etc.  Well, yesterday we watched one about the Donner Party from the mid-1800s.  Now, the name was vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn't have told you the first thing about it.  Wow, what a story.  I'll let you read about it on Wikipedia, if you want, but suffice it to say, it's pretty gross.  I pass no judgment on them though; I don't think any of us really know what we would do in that kind of situation.

OK, I'm off.  Happy snow!