Dynamism

Everything's always changing and it's GOOD here.

Our apartment, though small, is GREAT. The location is so sweet - easily walkable to shops and movies and grocery stores (plural grocery stores!); it's closer to work; there are trails and trees all over the place ... Our quality of life has improved so dramatically that it's shocking. Yes, our 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment is dramatically smaller than our 3 bedroom, 3.5 bath house was - but even that's easy. It's cozy for real - everything is close - it's just good. Our books are all in storage ('cept for some cookbooks) - and I miss them. If we were going to stay small forever, we'd have to at least get room for the books.

We've given up on the quest to get pregnant and that is such a huge relief. We are in the middle of a home study for adoption. And although we don't know how long it will take till we get a baby, we at least know that this process will end with a baby in our arms. It's also a relief to not worry about "am I or amn't I?" I can run as much as I want to, I can drink as much wine as I want to, and I don't have to give up coffee. Somebody else is doing the hard work of carrying my baby - I'll pick up after that.

We went to New York last weekend. We were in the city for 25 hours and we got to connect with three different groups of people who are important to us. We stayed with red balloon and her family - it always makes me so happy to see those two brilliant people who love each other and the brilliant little boy they are raising. There aren't many other people in the world who make me feel so at home. We went out with my friend from Lamar, Jim Sims, whom I haven't seen in ten years. I was very happy to get him and Harris together - they have a lot in common and I think they hit it off well. And we met my sister who lives in upstate NY with her family - she is an incredible mom and her two little boys are so funny and so good. It was a hectic, busy, whirlwind trip, but it was so rewarding. I'd do it all over again.

House Love

Our House = Sold.

The house we wanted to buy this summer (when the losers had the contract on our house) now has a renter in it with a lease that lasts until August. We've been trying to contact the owner to see what we can do to help her decide to get out of that lease and let us buy the house, but we haven't heard from her yet. We love these houses. The are mid-century modern beauties - and we've decided that if we can't move into one by the time we have to move out, we're going to move into an apartment and wait.

On Saturday, we made an adventure with our realtor: We took a letter that she wrote introducing me and Sparklestone, explaining that we have just sold a house and are ready to buy, and inviting anyone who's interested in selling to call us. We knocked on the doors of the houses with floor plans we liked, left letters for people who weren't home, and talked to some people who were there. The second house we stopped at could be good; we are not going to buy the crazy cat lady's house; we may be one step closer to getting in touch with the owner of the house we wanted earlier. One owner laughed when we told him what we were doing - he said that they had bought their house in 1966 (when it was brand new) and they love their home and they are NOT moving. That's what I'm talkin' about.

In any case, we're having some fun, doing some strange stuff. We don't want to buy a house now just because it's available and drive by these houses for the next 20 years, wishing we lived there.

See? I can learn. I'm starting to really get the hang of this patience thing.

High Time

So much good news going on around here:

Saturday was my birthday and it was a significant one. It was the first one that I ever had trouble with, because in general, I love me some birthday. Thanks to some good friends who are excellent listeners, I got OK with it and am enjoying the celebration. Sparkelstone's amazing gift of some sparkly stones certainly take a lot of credit for the happy vibes too.

We spent last weekend in Florida for a big family to-do. I really had a great time hanging with the entire extended family - even before the honoree of the party said that SparkleFlash and I are the coolest of the cousins. When a 13-year-old says that aboutcha, you can't help but feel like you got it goin' on.

My sister just found out that her divorce is final! She's been separated from her ex- for years now and we just weren't sure that he was ever going to make a move. She made a call on Friday and they told her that it's a done deal, effective July 14, 2006. Now she can get on with her life. Way to go, Sisto!

We got a contract on our house last nite. Mind you, we had a contract on our house back in June, but that cratered for real. This contract looks really good and the buyers were actually anxious to hear from us (their realtor called our realtor to just get a feeling for which way we were leaning b/c they loved our house!). And the contract actually provides us with a decent amount of time for house prices to drop a bit in the town where we want to move.

The person in this world who has been my voluntary friend (that is, not my sister) for longer than anyone else on the planet called me yesterday after a long silence. He called to tell me happy birthday. I've missed him so badly and am so glad he called.

What's goin on wichoo? What kinda good news is happenin' in your sweet world? Do tell!

26.2

I've recently started running again and it's going very well. Three years ago, when we moved to this area, I had decided to train for a marathon. I was really enjoying running long distances - and I was well on my way. I had a running partner who lived just down the street from me - she and I would meet at 5:30 a.m. to go for 4-5 miles -- it was often dark at that time of morning, so it was great to have a partner for safety and company. Also during that time, I had a really crappy job where my bosses had no work for me to do, so it was no problem for me to take 2-hour lunches to go run for 6 miles and then lift weights, shower, etc, and get back to work. I was running a LOT.

I was running too much - so much so that I hurt myself really badly. Thousands of dollars of physical therapy badly. Badly enough that my longest run ever was 16 miles and my only race was a half-marathon. It was a real disappointment that I wasn't able to run that marathon. It has taken a very long time for me to heal and to learn how to take care of myself when running - I think I'm there.

It feels really good to run, both when I'm at it and the other 23 hours of my day. I'm slowly working on adding distance - I'm much more interested in distance than speed - and I'm now up to about 16 miles / week. Without pain.

I'm gonna run a marathon at some point, dammit. I want a bumper sticker that says 26.2.

Crisis in the Office

I am out of chocolate.

I keep a bar of dark chocolate in my desk drawer so I can have a little bit every afternoon. I finished it last Friday. I was not in the office yesterday because my hormone levels are out of control and I was feeling really sick.

High hormone levels + no chocolate in the office = it could get real ugly around here.

Catching up

Last week I got an email from someone who knew me in high school. One of my high school pals (one of the few who knows how to find me) keeps an email directory of some of our classmates online and he keeps all the women's maiden names there. Occasionally, some blast from my past will find me there and we get to catch up. However, last week, I got an email from someone and I could not remember who this person was.

I vaguely remembered his name, but couldn't see his face. That led me to want to look in my senior year book. However, when my birth parents divorced and sold the house that I grew up in, the box with all those books and photos in it got lost - I didn't live there any longer and didn't think to rescue it. So before I wrote back to this fellow, I decided that I needed to get my hands on that year book. I finally had the brilliant idea to go to the source - I tracked down the current year book sponsor at my high school and asked if there happened to be any extras of my year lying around. You know what?! One's on its way to me now!

But since this email was growing old in my in-box, I decided to just reply and hope that I could get some more clues about this once-friend. I wrote back, said it was good to hear from him, sent him some brief details of my current life, and a photo of me and Sparkelstone at our wedding (slyly thinking that it would encourage him to also send a photo, while also very clearly setting the boundaries of this correspondence. Sparkle says this guy is doing a Hi Fidelity thing here.). Well, he didn't take the hint about sending a photo, but he did write back and included some details that made me remember him. He was in 11th grade when I was in 9th grade and he actually took me to his prom! I had completely forgotten about that episode!

It was fun to catch up a little and to learn about the path his life has taken. His eldest daughter is now 15 - one year older than I was when I went to prom with him. Most days I don't feel how much time has passed - but damn, that brought it home.

This whole email and the subsequent search for my year book has inspired in me a desire to reconnect with some old friends. I had a group of girls who really meant the world to me for a LONG time in my life and I would love to know how they are. I wonder what they're doing, where they're living, what adventures they've had. The danged thing about looking up old girlfriends, tho, is that most of us don't have the same last name that we were born with. And me, I don't even use the same first name that all those girls would know me by.

The "P" Word

I am a do-er. I'm a planner and director - I'm very good at setting goals and then making things happen so that I can get where I want to be. That is, I've been very good at those things until this year.

This year, I've learned the hardest lesson - that just because I've made up my mind and I like the timing, things don't just happen. And really, I think I get it. Really. I'm not just saying that I get it so the Universe will ease up. I'm cool.

Sparky and I moved into our house just over 2 years ago. When we did that, we immediately started trying to make a baby. Well, it's been 28 months now and there's still no baby on the way. That's had some hard moments. I even had a couple of months when I was trying to talk Sparky into saying that we just wouldn't have kids - that we'd be DINKs for the rest of our lives. I'm so glad that Sparklestone already had a great command of the P-word because he just wouldn't go for it. We're still trying and we've made a deal that if I'm not preggers after 2 more assisted tries, we're gonna adopt a baby. Or four. And then I'm sure I'll get pregnant.

We've also been trying to sell our house in this seriously cooling-off market. Only we didn't have any idea how cool the market was getting when we listed our house - so we had a bit of anxiety over the fact that it took 2 months to get an offer. Then after getting the offer - get this - the buyers didn't settle. That's right, they backed out of the deal after 2 stinkin' weeks of being in default of contract. So our house is back on the market. We had a week of serious bile - serious bile - but what are you gonna do?

July was a tough month, but we're just plowing ahead. I can't control everything. You hear that, Universe? Now you might as well start cooperating b/c I'm not fighting anymore anyway.

And speaking of patience, I'm a little astounded that blogspot still has my blog active. Dang.

More changes

So, I started working for Nils waaaaaaaaay back in August and I've obviously been fairly occupied there. Life is good: the work is good, the family's good, the new PDA is good. There's only one stinky thing going on now and that's our commute.

Sparklestone and I enjoy the fantastic advantage that we commute together. We listen to all kindsa new music and some funny comedians on XM radio, we make plans, and when one of us is feeling generous, we let the non-driver nap. We have time for all these activities: every week day morning, Sparklebaby drives us the 22.59 miles from our door to my office and then drives the remaining 6.75 miles to his office. After work in the office is over, he drives 6.75 miles back to my office and then I drive 22.59 miles home. On a good day, those two trips take us at least a total of 2 hours.

That's right: at least one hour to drive less than 30 miles on a good day. On a bad day, we're in the car for a total of 2h, 20m. It's wrong.

SO, we have decided that we have to move closer to our jobs. It was a hard and sucky decision at first because we've only been in our house for 2 years and we put SO MUCH sweat and bread into the place already to make it ours. And now SOME OTHER PERSON is going to get to cook in my kitchen. However, we've been looking at townhomes in the area we've decided we're going to live (we'll only spend 20 minutes each way commuting to work... we're going to gain at least 8 hours a week) and we've found some very cool mid-century modern designs... very Brady bunch. We're putting our house in the market in 2 weeks.

Now I gotta pack.