Susan’s Journal

Yes, I am in a tent. Yes, I am in my backyard. Yes, it is over 80 degrees. Yes, I am on my laptop. Yes, I am working.

Rainlin was begging earlier today to camp out, so here we are. I hope tomorrow morning when she wakes up lathered in sweat she realizes that it needs to be later in the year before we do this again.

As soon as I laid down between my two kids on this air matress in this tent, I realized I hadn’t checked my pages from this script that runs at work on Saturday. Sure enough, it broke. I had to log in to fix it, and I am watching it run now.

Earlier today we went roller skating. For thirteen bucks and change, my two kids and I went skating. Scott was off at a friend’s house. We had a blast. Even Dylan got brave enough to skate out in the middle, not holding any walls. I was so, so proud of him.

I saw a keyboard at Fry’s I want. It’s USB, and it gets enough power to backlight the keys. The keys are also tiny keys, meaning not “tall,” they’re tiny (flat) like laptop keys. Downfall is that this wonder keyboard is fifty bucks. Oh well. I don’t believe I’ll be able to talk Scott into that one.

He’s off to Starbucks to get a coffee while I swelter here in this tent, watching my script run in a putty window and waiting for it to finish before I can fall asleep myself, lathered in sweat. Life is great.

Rainlin was in a little talent show with her school, and they put on a production of “Singing in the Rain.” Why no, I don’t have pictures; I was too busy taking videos! You can dream about it, though: a group of kids on a little stage in a basketball court/auditorium… a hundred kids sitting Indian-style on the floor, watching… my beautiful daughter alongside twenty other boys and girls, all wearing rain ponchos painted with colorful construction paper handprints, carrying multicolored umbrellas. It was adorable, and they won best overall performance.

Then, I got home and read on DallasNews.com that there had been a school bus accident in Plano. Then I opened up the news article, and my heart sank; the white van/bus looked EXACTLY like Rain’s bus… but the accident happened while the kids were in the show, and it was from a different school. Talk about making your heart skip a beat, though…

And on this day,
2004… no post.
2003… My battery died in D.C.
2002… no post.
2001… no post.

I’ve attempted scrapbooking before. I didn’t get that far into it. I’m just not good at coming up with my own ideas. I have a friend, though, that is starting up a “stampin’ up” group, and I joined it. Tonight, I went over her house with the kidlets, and she showed me a couple things. I made this cute mousie with colored pencils and watercolors. It was very, very cool.

Rainlin had gone upstairs to watch TV, and she was very quiet. Dylan sat downstairs with us and cut little flowers out with a flower stamp thingy. I went upstairs to get Rain when it was time to go, and she was asleep on a bed in front of a tv. I had given her some decongestant cough medecine before we left the house, and apparently it konked her out. Good–she needed it–she has been coughing, sleeping with her mouth half open (and keeping me awake) for a couple days now. I really hope this helps her sleep good.

Now I’m sitting here, and I just finished a round of Zuma. It’s so good to not have homework. Sometimes I just need to… vedge. It’s great.

And on this day,
2004… the four candle.
2003, 2002, 2001… no post. boooring day.

I worked from home today, and for one reason or another it just seemed to be like an incredibly long day. Blah.

At around 3:30pm I raced to daycare, hoping Rain had come back from her field trip early so that we would make it to her 4pm tumbling class on time. No such luck. Instead, I got to sit in Dylan’s class while he ate his snack, and I watched him drink apple juice and eat goldfish two… at… a… time. Finally Rain’s buses pulled up, and I basically dragged her off her bus and onto the van so that we could dash to the last half of her tumbling class.

After tumbling class, with the rushing done and suddenly nothing to do, we went to Denny’s. It was kids eat free night after all. After that, we headed to the movie theater. It was fifty cent movie night, after all. I picked Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, hoping there might be a tiny inkling of enjoyment for them. I guess the utter mayhem and nuttiness of the movie appealed to them; they absolutely loved it.

Now it’s after 10pm and I’m struggling to stay awake while they both snore away beside me on our bed. I guess they’ll both have to take their showers in the morning–at least they brushed their teeth.

And on this day,
2004… I don’t know how the hell I rode my bike while holding that camera.
2003… no post.
2002… Dylan was still screaming at bedtime.
2001… no post.

I’m at work today, and will be “working” tomorrow, but from home. This is my first official week sharing a cube with someone. We’re supposed to prove a point–that we can work from home without somebody worrying about babysitting us like Lumberg. We’ll see how long it lasts.

I’ve started scanning in my dad’s train pictures. There are thousands of them, and he has most of them cataloged. It’s wild, and to me it’s really interesting. You can’t tell unless you see the original, but I actually took the shadow on the bottom of the screen on this picture and lightened up the area so that it wasn’t so dark. I’m learning more photo editing techniques, which is something I avoided for a long time. Coolness.

Yesterday we went to Scott’s uncle’s church. He preaches there from time to time, and he did this Sunday. The kids aren’t used to being in “big people’s church” though, and they were whiny and squirmy; we are used to going to a church where the kids do kids things while the adults do adults things. It was wonderful to see family, and I took a few pictures, which I’ll have to upload tonight or some other time when I actually have… time.

Saturday night we spent over a friend’s house; their daughter was in Rain’s kindergarten class. It was lots of fun; they have great friends. I hope we can do that again soon. (Oh–and the little girl’s dad brews his own beer…)

Back to the grind I go.

And on this day,
2004… no post.
2003… Scott was at his granddaddy’s funeral. Well, he was at IHOP…
2002… Dylan cried half the night.
2001… no post.

Rainlin has decided aftter tonight’s practice that she no longer wants to do cheerleading. The coach pushes her too hard and it’s not fun anymore, she says. The stretches really hurt, and they push you down to the floor further, and one night they pushed her down so far it made her cry, she says. Scott and I told her she doesn’t have to do it anymore if she doesn’t want to. I just don’t want to feel like she’s quitting because she’s being too lazy; know what I mean?

When she plays soccer, though, things are completely different. She’s all over it. She’s into it. It’s a whole different ball game, no pun intended.

I guess she’s just not meant to be a cheerleader. After the crap from the old cheerleading place–that’s another reason I wanted her to stick it out–but it just comes down to it’s not worth it if it’s not fun.

Today’s Song: adam ezra – on the crawl

We drove four hours total, two from Maine and two from Massachusetts, to see Adam play at a bar. I had called earlier in the week, and they said that another band was opening for him, and he’d start around 11pm. So we left my sister’s house about 8 and showed up there about 10:30, half an hour before he was supposed to start. Trouble was that when we got in there, he was already playing, and he only had three songs left. When he saw us walk in, coming to see him all the way from Texas, his face lit up like a Christmas tree. It was priceless. It was like missing just one number on the lottery, though–we came so close to seeing a totally awesome show, and instead we only got to see three songs. This song was one of the ones we got to hear. The next day on the beach, as the kids ran through the tide, I kept watching them and thinking to myself, “that’s how the day begins… that’s how the day begins…” listen to the song and you’ll understand.

And on this day,
2004… Zuma and DDR! Those were the days.
2003… Dylan peed in church.
2002… no entry.
2001… no entry.

Coke was the last thing Franny had to drink. It was a special treat for being a good girl–she wasn’t usually allowed to have soda. Today, however, she had been allowed her favorite, a cheeseburger with just bacon, a small order of french fries, and that wonderful small Coke. She sucked it down so quickly that she had to finish the last quarter of her cheeseburger and her last dozen fries without a drink. At the time, she hadn’t really minded.

After lunch, Francine, along with her mother and Mami’s friend, drove down and parked at a ten-dollar-a-day lot two blocks from the beach. Each of them carried a portion of the beach loot–Mami carried two big rolled-up towels, Mami’s friend carried a beach bag and a small black radio, and Franny lugged along her bucket of sand tools. It wasn’t much to carry; but to the two year old, the bucket was half as big as she was. Her little feet had carried her just a meter away from Mami’s car before she felt a hand on her head–stop, that meant. Franny stopped as silently instructed, her little legs bouncing with the anticipation of the upcoming beach.

The threesome crossed the parking lot, crossed the two-lane street, then wove their way between a parked car and a narrow sandy trail that led between two beachfront homes and through the beach grass. The beach looked terribly enormous to Franny–it was low tide, as the adults called it. Mami and her friend billowed out the two two towels and laid them on the ground. They both laid face-down on their towels, with their butts towards the ocean, Franny thought. She stood there for a moment longer before her mother chittered quietly at her, telling her she could play in the sand now.

Franny turned away from the two of them and faced the water. Her feet were planted in the soft, warm sand, the beach sand, she thought. She knew she was at the beach, but she didn’t know the name of the beach, and even if she had known she was on Old Orchard Beach, she wouldn’t have understood the English words. She wouldn’t even learn in her native French what an orchard was for years to come. To her, this was just a sandy paradise, a wonderful place to play. She took one more look down at the backs of the two women’s legs as they laid on the towels before she took off running towards the water. The sand bucket she was carrying didn’t seem too big anymore.

Her first order of business was to build a castle. All good princesses need a castle, she thought. The little red shovel went down into the wet sand (it looks like mud, she thought) and dug up the first scoop of her new princess castle. Franny added scoop after scoop, and she soon realized that she had built a wonderful swimming pool in front of her castle. Marvelous!

The spot she had chosen was far enough away from the water that the castle wouldn’t be washed away from the low tide; but after half an hour, she realized she would need to pick a new castle spot. The water had begun licking at her castle, and though she enjoyed the water’s company, it was just a tad too cold for her. She stood up, stuffed her tools in the bucket, and looked way off into the distance to see her Mami and her friend. There were a few others on the beach, but it was not overly crowded, and after a moment she picked out the white beach bag and two pair of feet. They looked tiny from this far away, but they were there. Franny and her bucket travelled away from her original sandy castle and to a new location a few meters away.

Vacation was wonderful. Don’t get me wrong. But I don’t know if I will ever fly US Airways again. What a bunch of assholes. Let’s put it this way–to top things off, we didn’t get our bags until we had been home three days.

Then we get home, and our websites are down. All of them. Seems that our hosting company decided to up and move the site to another server, changing its IP address and everything, without thinking to notify us. On top of that, I appear to have lost about two weeks of posts, including Dylan’s birthday, and it appears that when they moved the site they restored it from an old backup. Yet more assholes.

I’m back at work, where all is fine and right with the world (well, except for the fun my backup had trying to reboot servers). As of this week, I’m sharing a cube with this lady I work with. She’s in class this week, so it’s given me a week to get everything set up. I’ll be working from home 2 or 3 days a week. Fun fun fun.

This post is all about incomplete sentences, isn’t it? Oh well; more later.