Where, oh where, did the summer go......

it's official...





both of my kiddos are now in school.....all day each & every day.....





last week was uber hard for me...you know, sending my baby off to school....





I cried like a baby...over my baby becoming a big boy and all ......I was oh-so-sad.....





but he is lovin' it...... & his big sister is turning out to be a fabulous 4th grader

they both make me incredibly proud.....


and how cute is this.....my baby talking to his best friend, Da-doo the teddy bear, in the car on the way to kindergarten..... he was telling him to be good for mommy & that he would be home soon....
he had as hard of time leaving Da-doo as I had leaving him.......


in case you are wondering, for this mom the first day of kindergarten sucked..... you know in that weird over-protective mama bear kind of way..... *sniff*

I seriously need to learn to shut my brain OFF...

last night I came home from my last class of the semester & life was good. I was sooooooo glad to finally be finished with my Art History class. Like I said before my instructor was a complete quack. Anyway, I get home early (a first for this class), have a Dairy Queen Buster bar (did I mention we FINALLY have a Dairy Queen....) & hit the hay early with the kids. A full night of restfull sleep was mine & I intended to take full advantage of it. Or so I thought.....

I seriously dreamt some of the craziest shit last night & when I woke up and thought about it, all of my dreams had something to do with that class last night.

First I dreamt about attending the wedding of a high school friend of which the enitre theme was clocks. There were clocks everywhere. Do you think this might have anything to do with the girl in my glass who did her powerpoint presentation on an artist who used clocks in his pieces to represent how time stopped when he met his wife.....hmmm...

Then I seemed to flash forward to another friends wedding at which a bunch of us (all friends from back in the day) were standing on a balcony overlooking a ballroom singing some incredibly bizarre songs. If that wasn't odd enough, one of my friends kept messing the songs up & was insisting it was because the songs were "too Catholic". Again, might this have anything to do with the dispute between our instructor & a classmate last evening over the 'heavily Catholic infulences" in a piece......

Then just before I woke up to my phone ringing, I was standing in a hallway talking with one of my lifelong friends about the fact that we are both in our thirties & unmarried. Huh.....she hasn't married yet but I've been married for almost 11 years. In fact I was the first of my friends to get married....it was incredibly bizarre..... Again, there was a huge discussion last night in class about Van Gogh, as well as a few other artists, who never marrried. Our instructor was insistent that a passionate artist has no room in their life for a mate because they are 'married to their work'.....yada, yada, yada...........

I guess instead of the Buster Bar I should have opted for something containing a dash of Grey Goose & I might have slept a bit better....................

Bad, Bad blogger.....

yeah I know I have been away for entirely too long & yes I know this isn't the first time. I guess whenever life gets crazy, it's my poor sweet blog that suffers. But I guess that is better than forgetting to pay the bills or neglecting my children. Seems to me both of those could have serious, if not criminal, consequences....so until I invent the 48 hour day, the blog will have to take the hit.

Anyway....I've been uber busy here. In case you are remotely interested here is the Alaskan Summer recap (thus far....there is still 2 1/2 weeks until school starts):

· As illuded to in my previous post...I am back in school...full time none-the-less. And today is the very last day of the semester, thank the Good Man up above! I scored A's in 4 out of my 5 classes so far. I am still waiting to see how poorly I did on my Philosophy of Eastern Religion final that I took last night. Honestly I don't think it went well at all........seriously I don't get any of it. If any of you undertsand the 'flow' of Shintoism, please enlighten me. And later I'll have to devote an entire post to the quack of an Art History instructor I have. Believe me, this woman is nuts.......

· D. had her very first experience at summer camp in July & loved it! She is already begging to go back. Girl must have some thick skin.....it rained the entire time she was there with a high temp of 65˚. Although I love the outdoors, I HATE to be cold. But she had a blast & now her brother is already begging to go. Sadly he has 3 years to wait.......

·Like the majority of the civilized world I anxiously anticipated the release of the newest Harry Potter book & once I had it in hand, there was no putting it down. I loved it.....but I cried. I cried when Harry saw Dumbledore. And I cried when it was over........I can't stand goodbyes & this one was huge! I feel like I'll never see a friend again......... why can't the series go on until Harry is like 80 or something?? Seriously?? **okay, yeah...I am a total sap**

·And while this really isn't very exciting, I am the proud owner (insert major sarcasm here) of a new range & dishwasher. Yes both of my old ones bit the dust. Really.....it was ridiculous. And when I called the appliance repair guy he told me that it would honestly cost more to repair them than to buy new. What? And when I went to Lowes in search of new appliances the sales clerk told me the average lifespan of appliances these day is 5-7years. Mine were both 6. No wonder our environment is in such a state.... the answer to everything anymore is buy new & put the old in the dump. Ridiculous if you ask me! Luckily a friend of a friend was interested in taking the old range off of my hands to 'tinker with' for a house he is in the early stages of building. "Have at it" I said...atleast it wasn't ending up in the landfill like my dishwasher & TV.

·Oh yeah...I forgot to mention the TV. The poor thing is diserving of a eulogy or something. Our 32" RCA TV finally took a dive. It happened the first day that K. was home from work. His first few days home he is up at 0'dark-thirty & he leaves me to sleep in while he vegs out in front of the Outdoor Channel. Well on the morning in question he anxiously woke me up before dawn & told me "it's a sad, dark day". At first I was confused, but then I thought back to the last few morning when I attempted to turn cartoons on for the kids & how the TV didn't seem to want to 'switch on'. We knew this day was coming for a long, long time. The question was when...... you see K. bought this TV when he was just an Airman in 1987. You read that right.....it was 20 years old. And in recent years as our friends upgraded to HDTV & plasma, we remained in the dark ages. Our old friend weighs over 150lbs & the original remotes haven't worked in almost a decade (Thank goodness for Universal Remotes!). After the appropriate moment of silence, K headed straight to wake the kids for our trip to Best Buy. He was joining his friends in the 21st century.......a HDflat screen was in his very near future. Within a few hours it was out with the old & in with the new..........thank goodness Santa had brought him an Xbox 360 last Christmas so now we can all enjoy Halo 2 in all it's HD glory....otherwise I simply son't know how we would manage.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the whole dishwasher thing went way in my favor......see I purchased a clearance model Whirpool. It was a good model, but it was being replaced & so they had dropped the price. Hey, girl is all about saving a buck or 2. Anyway....I was happy with my purchase especially since I love save money. And since the clerk had said the new models are only 'supposed' to last about 7 years why would I spend a bazillion dollars anyway. Fast forward to the Lowes delivery guys bringing in my dishwasher....except it wasn't my dishwasher. After a bit of back & forth on the matter the guy realizes the wrong one has been loaded on the truck. But no worries, they will *try* to bring the other one out today. And if not, then sometime next week. Huh? Didn't I pay for next day delivery??? Finally the guy tells me "You shoulda just kept your mouth shut lady & kept this here expensive model" *you gotta love the proper speech & all* So I call the store & the clerk who sold me my appliances tells me that if coming back out to my house is going to be too inconvienent then I could just keep the one they delivered me. What's the big deal you ask......well I 'lucked into' an $850 Bosch Dishwasher. Yeah baby! This thing is beautiful!

Well....I guess that sums up my summer. It doesn't sound busy when you read it like that but believe me the school part kicked my butt! Thankfully I have 3 whole weeks before Fall semester begins!

Ohm................

yes, ohmmmmmmmmm, like in yoga. Although I have heard 'ohm' in yoga classes or thrown it around jokingly when pretending to meditate instead of doing something serious, I never knew there was actually a symbol for ohm. That was until 2 weeks ago when my Philosophy of Eastern Reigion class kicked off. Okay....I am a Christian girl through & through and some of this mysticism stuff is way more than my brain can handle. Let's just say it's not my bag....

Although I have done a bit of yoga, it has been entirely for the benefit of my gluteus maximus, not for any form of spiritual enlightenment. And while I highly believe in the power of prayer, meditation is completely beyond my comprehension. You know what I am saying....the whole "clear your mind" crap....."make it void of all thought".....have you ever tried to do this?? For me it is impossible. I always have good intentions then I end up thinking about the most bizarre things like "do I need to pick up new razor blades at walmart?"or "when is swimming lesson sign ups", or "I wonder whatever happened to Patty, the front desk clerk from the CDC in England". I mean , seriously, when my mind wanders ...look out. There's no telling where it'll end up. So needless to say clearing my mind is impossible......

That was until yesterday (you knew this was coming didn't ya)..........I was in the middle of a paper on Greek mythology for one of my other classes when the phone rang. It was my youngest sister calling to say she is coming to visit in June. We got to chatting & the paper fell by the wayside. When I finally returned to it about a half hour later, I relaized I had left a sentence half finished~the thought was incomplete. I sat there wracking my brain, trying desperately to recall what I had been referencing................ Nothing. For five full minutes I sat staring at my computer screen & not a single thought passed through my mind. Not even random ones. Then I realized "this is that ohm stuff!"...so this is what it feels like. But talk about a hell of a time for it to finally happen.......... If I was a believer in all that eastern stuff, I'd say my karma isn't so good.....