Although this has been a rough week, it has ended well. The news from a mid-week appointment was positive. The other issue is working itself out slowly. I am considering a few options at the moment. At work, the authors never did send the manuscript suggestions, but I was busy checking copyright information for trade books suggested in the Teacher Guides. I never realized how difficult it could be to find out if a book is out of print. I also didn't realize the extent of cool kid's books there are out there even after 8 years of teaching in grades 1-3. My favorite titles were Socrates and the Three Little Pigs (which is out of print) and Sir Cumference and the Knights of the Round Table (actually there is a series featuring Sir Cumference).

Another frustrating thing is that I have been using 2 keyboards for awhile because my Mac iBook had some water spilled on it thanks to my wonderful kittens. About 1/4 of the keys didn't work so I hooked up the desktop keyboard to fill-in...

This week has been quite long.

I've been dealing with a fall-out from something that happened earlier this week. I may be losing a person that means a great deal to me because I put too much faith in something that didn't work the way it was supposed to. A violation of trust causes many repercussions.

There are also some things that are long over due for a check getting looked at. Waiting is always hard especially when your brain goes to the worst.

Work is quite slow because the authors aren't returning things on time. I should be enjoying the lull, but it makes the days go by so slowly.

The chips will fall where they will and life will carry on.

I feel really good about empowering my step-daughter with options for her future. From talking to her over the past several months, she is confused and unsure what she wants from her future. This is understandable since she is 18. Her mom is insisting that she stay in school, but JJ and I don't agree. Why continue to throw away money on classes that she isn't going to use because she continues to change majors? Also, if you ask her what she wants to do, she wants to teach yoga and is very interested in piercing and tattooing. If that is what she wants to do, she isn't going to learn that in college. Sure, they aren't conservative choices, but people do those things. So, who are we to stop her from making her life choices?

I came up with 2 ideas and she was very excited and appreciative about them. She's going to consider them carefully over the next month or so.

One is to come live in Chicago. We'd support her for a few months while she got situated. There...

This morning I enjoyed a lovely late morning sleep and awoke refreshed and ready to face the day. I consumed a handful of California raisins to curb my appetite until breakfast. I had planned a trip to ye local Belgian waffle shoppe. It was quite nippy this morning so I pulled on a warm sweater, skinny jeans, and brown boots before venturing out.

After a slight hiccup in the trip to make a drop-off at the local dry cleaners, we arrived at the Belgian cafe. After excogitating the menu, I opted for the Baladoché Zücker de Abrikoos Vulde waffle. The menu said it was accompanied with one scoop of Gellato. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out it was served with two scoops. I enjoyed my Americano made with Italian espresso while I conversed with JJ and waited for my breakfast to be served. I was quite pleased with the combination of apricots with the pisatchio and hazelnut gellato.

A scrumptious breakfast to commence a delightful Saturday.

...

I'm 31. I don't feel any older. Over the collective years, I've become more stable and have learned a lot of lessons. Since I'm still breathing, I'm still learning. Life is good...damn good.

This year I did things differently. I haven't had a birthday wish list since age 16. This year, I made one and I got mostly everything on it! I got a piano. An electric keyboard, but it's close enough to real minus the weight and the tuning. I love it! I got a Wii and the Wii Fit plus Super Paper Mario since Paper Mario is the only game I've actually finished since I graduated from the NES. I also got Pikmin which seems really cool. I got a couple CDs and books. They were all wrapped in mish-mash princess paper because I think JJ and Spec hit the rum when they were getting everything ready.

Then I had my birthday party which rocked. I made a ton of food of good taste and asked the guests to come in bad taste. Not many of them did, but that's ok, it was still a blast. We...