Stayin' Alive

I am alive even though you couldn't tell it from my blog!!
Sorry my friends.
So. I have a post about mediation half way written. I have new furniture to post pictures of (having gotten home from Nashvegas only to turn around the next day and drive to IKEA in VIRGINIA to pick up, drive back, and put together 600 pounds of flat packed shelving.) I have ten pounds less of me than I did six weeks ago. I have bits and pieces of a new manuscript that I'm working on since I am having trouble making headway writing about Marcia. I have two middle schoolers who hope, hope, hope to be off of restriction this afternoon when report cards come out. And? I have a straight A high school student for the first time! Chaos got perfect A's on his report card. (Well A's in his five core classes and high B's in his two electives - PE and Computers.) Woo hoo!! The way we work grades is that we pay $7 an A, they pay us $7 per C, and we call it even with B's. For straight A's (in the five core classes)- they get the $35 plus a $15 bonus but we told them all that we'd double that $50 the first time for each of them. Chaos has come close - oh, so close many times but this is it. He finally got his $100! Bug will likely be the next one to earn his $100. He's got solid A's in his first two classes and only three weeks to go. (Since he takes his classes two at a time every eight weeks - his offer is a bonus when he gets five A's in a row.) That's the round up of what's been going on. (I wanted to blog but I couldn't figure out how to do it without spewing tapioca everywhere. Now that I've got a bit of buffer in terms of time and having the kids back home, I'll try to post about mediation sometime soon.)

I'm sad that my buddies Richard and Aimee had to cancel their plans to come visit us this week. Please send them some good mojo. Baby is fine, but Aimee is in quite a lot of pain and is having trouble with normal activities like walking and riding in cars! Our other Richard (aka Uncle Richard) is here this weekend. I'll have to post a picture of him with the kids. They were jumping like fleas all around him yesterday. Today when I came back from my swim I caught Tallulah curled up on top of him for her nap. I think there are going to be some serious objections to letting him leave the Dwelling crew.

This is the first official week of training. The others were "fixing to get ready to get started" pre-training weeks. This is the real deal. 23 and 1/2 weeks until the race! It helps to have a healthy outlet for crazy excess energy churned up by negative stuff. I can't tell you how much better of a mom, friend, and partner I am than I would otherwise be.

I know this is a pretty disjointed, list-like post but er, some post is better than no post?? Peace!