Today is the first day of the rest of my first days...

Or something like that.

I'm going to use this post to quickly touch on a bunch of events that have happened in the last four weeks. Details will be sparse in order to keep the post short, not because I'm being evasive, any and all questions are welcome and might be answered.

First a brief discussion of weird weather in the Pacific Northwest. A month ago it was snowing and I was complaining about it.

Gracie didn't seem to mind it at all. She's good at just shaking things off.

Today, less than a month later I'm complaining about the weather again. We are supposed to see record high temperatures today. One prediction says it will be over 90 degrees. Since people in Seattle start melting when the temp edges above 70, I expect there will be a lot of grumpy, drippy people around. I spent thirty minutes this morning looking for warm weather clothes that actually fit my cold weather body.

In other news... as previously reported, we have had a furry house guest. After a few days we started calling him George. We made quite an effort to find his owners because I was convinced that no one would just let a dog like this go.

After ten days someone finally recognized him and put us in contact with his owners. Who were happy that we had been taking such good care of their "George". Yep, we somehow knew his name.. there's just something about him that screams "I'm George!" However, after taking him home for an evening, his owner called and asked if we would like to have him back. She said that he had run away repeatedly and she would have to put up a fence to keep him but she lives on the golf course and a fence just isn't an option. She had "spent too much money" on him the last time he ran away and was hit by a car, and she didn't want that to happen again. She did seem sad to let him go but she wasn't willing to change anything to keep him. So now we have two dogs.

And they are very happy together.

Zane is happy too. He spent ten days trying to convince me that we really did need another dog. He turned 15 last week and the day after his birthday we decided that George could stay. Happy Birthday Zane.

His favorite gift was a Magic Bullet blender/food processor.
He makes awesome smoothies!

His favorite thing about being 15 seems to be that he can now practice driving. I am pleased to say that he's taking learning to drive very seriously. He's calm and focused and takes direction well. I think he's going to be an excellent driver.

As you can see it's been a busy month and we haven't even talked about the changes caused by Bob's new job. The most dramatic change (besides a calmer, happier husband) has been to our den... previously the video game room... it is now Bob's office. And what an office it is!

We haven't yet figured out what to do with the video games... or the furniture that used to be in there.. but we will. Now that I have finished working I am relearning how to spend all day in the same house with my husband. Actually, this is a lot easier than you imagine. The biggest problem is figuring out who is supposed to answer the telephone.

Taylor has been home with us too. The poor girl has been sick for almost two weeks and her doctor isn't quite sure what is ailing her. After many tests they have decided to call it a mono-like virus combined with an allergic reaction, probably to the virus itself, that caused hives. She's starting to feel better now but is still tired, a little too pale, and she's lost a lot of weight. Today she's feeling well enough to work on missed schoolwork so, while I'm trying to write this, she has been asking questions about negative integers. Oh how I hate math. I can't do math and write at the same time. It's just asking too much of my poor aged brain. A positive minus a negative is actually a positive plus a positive? How can that be right?

What is really frightening is the fact that when I was homeschooling this stuff made sense to me and now it's just a big number fog again. Why can't I retain it? Is that math part of my brain engaged in some other activity?

Well, I think I've covered most of the major events of the last month and can now resume my more or less regular schedule of blogging. As for today, I'm off to conquer Mt. Laundry and plan the rest of my life.

Tomorrow's subject matter - New friends, old friends, virtual friends, imaginary friends, and the Internet. Or, How to lose 70lbs in time for your sister's June wedding.