Seanna (n. shaw-nuh)

Had a couple days off, so

....we went to New York. We were back almost 48 hours after leaving.  We drove.  All of us went.  We left in one car and came back in two:

So, that was fun.  My favorite parts, besides actually getting a "new" car, were the scary Russian with the missing thumb and having Chinese food at some random restaurant in The Bronx.   I even liked the NYC traffic, although I liked it more in the above car than in the one we arrived in. 

That's what we have been up to this week.  It was fun but I'm glad it's done and we are back home.   Driving 1700+ miles round trip in 48 hours is kinda tough.  Now I have to work 12 hours today to make up for it.  Not recommended but hopefully worth it.  And thus ends our new-to-us car acquisition odyssey for this round.

I slept in until 4:30 this morning

Because I fell asleep at about 7:00 last night!!  Who does that?? (I can just see the comments I'm going to get from certain children of mine now.) Now it's 6:45 and I've been awake for hours.  HA!  Tonight should be fun.  I worked at the office all day yesterday and I guess I was just worn out.  Not that I worked hard, mind you.  It was actually a little on the dreadfully dull side.  A conference call, shuffling from computer to computer testing them out for the training session we are having next week, and collating instruction manuals.  Sounds taxing, I know.

So thanks for all of your kind sweet comments about Baby and other things as well.  All bloggers love comments, I think.  I don't say thanks often enough but I love comments!  Thank you!  And a special hello to my friends from New Jersey, Liz and Ken.  Been thinking about you guys.  Hope all is well with you and your family. I miss you guys.  There's also a certain someone from Minnesota I've been thinking about lately. 

I am so turned around.  It feels like Saturday but I think it's only Friday.  This lovely holiday weekend has been set in stone for months as a major overtime weekend for the people in my department.  Bleh. I guess I will get an early start on it.  Usually Friday is one of my days off, but since I'm up so early I suppose I can knock some work out and be ahead of things.  I will be on site most of the week next week.  I've actually been on site kind of a lot lately, mostly going to meetings to get ready to implement this new system we are finally getting next week.  I predict drama and limited chaos, but since I'm not in charge of things, this is not a source of stress but rather fascination for me.  I find my not-Southern ways sometimes cause me to cock my head in confusion when dealing with these sorts of things, and even as recently as yesterday I actually said out loud, "you know, I'm not from around here..."  I think it was because I misunderstood a word someone said and loudly mused that they were clearly  not right in the head.  Not speaking Middle Tennessee is sometimes a bit of a handicap.  But I do have to say that the people around here are generally much nicer than pretty much anywhere else I've ever spent time.  And they are genuinely nice.  It's like it's contagious.  Uh oh. We can't be having that...I'm not from around here, you know.

Yesterday was such a sad day

First, Farrah lost her ferocious fight to survive her illness.  I was so sad to hear that, even though we all knew it was coming.

Then Michael Jackson up and died on us.  The juxtaposition of one who fought so hard to live and one who really seems to have kind of thrown it all away is a tough one.  When you look up "Sometimes life is not fair," yesterday should probably be right up there in the examples.  I'm sad about MJ too, though.  I was a huge fan and introduced him to the children, who also became fans.  It'd be nice to see a star shine as bright again in our lifetimes but I just don't know. Maybe it's not a good idea for them to shine so bright; it seems to not usually end well.

On a much more upbeat note, in the Life Goes On category, we mailed off a package today.  I hope she gets it in time for it to be useful!  I don't think she really looks at my blog so here's a photo:

Isn't that so cute?  There are two luggage tags (we filled them out with her name and our address), a key chain with a key to the house that has a little pouch with a tote bag all zipped into it, a book about being an exchange student, a little moleskine sketchbook since she is apparently an artist, and a little book I made with photos of the house and her room and the high school, etc.  The girls put a card in there, too.  Now we are officially all set!  July 22nd is the date; we got the final confirmation today.  Weird!  But good!

Working in the studio this morning

Printing out photos for a little album we are making for our newest family member.  She will be joining us in about 4 weeks.  We are all very excited, like children at Christmas or something.  I guess it's time to finally strip our Austrian daughter's bed.  It looks just exactly like she left it....three weeks ago....rumpled with the blankets in a little lump in the middle of the bed.  The cats like to sleep there when we leave the door open.  We had been keeping all the doors to carpeted rooms closed because Baby was getting sick a lot but I guess now we can go back to normal. Anyway, I noticed C left behind a small supply of closest thing to European feminine hygiene products, which will help keep the new girlie from freaking out. Thanks, C!  Apparently the ones we use in this country are like "giving yourself a shot."  Hahahahaha.  That is so funny.  And really, so true.  I told her it is because we Americans are not comfortable with our bodies, which is also probably true, at least to some extent. 

We have to take 3 more photos for the little album and then everything is ready to mail.  I hope I didn't wait too long!  I am such a procrastinator.   It was a bit of a challenge finding small things to send but I think we are all set now. 

The children (well the youngest two) have discovered that "we get more accomplished on days we don't sleep in until we wake up."  So now they are setting their alarms and getting up to greet the day instead of letting the day wash over them.  I think that is so funny.   In a cute way.  One of them went to the eye doctor yesterday and should be getting new spectacles soon.  And it's not the one who usually has medical stuff happen to her, yay!.

On the work front, we are getting a new system and things are very busy.  Lots of extra work.  I'm definitely not complaining, though.  My fabulous husband has also been very busy, working two part-time jobs over his summer break.  One of those is ending tomorrow and then he will just have the one, I think.  He had a quiet Father's Day, not the extravaganza he puts on for the moms.  I am inadequate.  But I did find him lots of great clothes for bargain prices, so he should be getting fun stuff soon. 

Did I mention I think we are going away for a week in October?  It's not set in stone yet, but we might see this:

Or this:

Probably this:

And maybe even this again:

And this for the first time:

And probably this:

Now that is what I call a thoroughly American tour.  Of course, it's all subject to change and almost certainly will between now and then. 

Bye, Baby

Oh man.  That was so sad.  I have never had to have an animal euthanized before.  You know it's bad when you feel bad for the vet.  Our vet is a house call vet and he comes to the house to treat the animals. He told me I needed to pay him and sign the paperwork first because after it was done he would be leaving immediately, that he can't take it.  But he ended up staying and was very sweet.  It was so much better for Baby that we didn't have to haul her in to a vet's office for this.  She would have hated that.  It was all over pretty quick, and it was definitely time, but not quick enough.  Man oh man. 

Here she was in healthier days:

I hope wherever she is, there are a lot of plastic surfaces and she can lick them all she wants.

This is for my friend C...

Hi!  I probably won't leave this one up for long but I just couldn't resist.  My fabulous husband spotted this at dinner last night and told me to take a photo and send it to you.  But it turned out he had the better angle, so both the photo and the idea are his (don't mind the burger-thought-bubble, it was Red Robin):

Guess what we have that I bet you don't have?

Two 17-year-old BIRTHDAY GIRLS!!!   Happy Birthday, P&E!  Their dad left them the tiniest cutest little cakes on the kitchen counter, and they have to let us know where they want to go for dinner.

We are so proud of you both!!!  We love you!

Our pretty pretty princess

Poor Sam. The indignity.  The shame.  The need to vacuum.

Gosh, I can't tell here.  What do you think this photo says? Thrilled?  Ecstatic?  Wanting to be festooned with more jewels, perhaps?

Sometimes it takes a man's tools to do a man's job.

And sometimes we need to stop and take a break.  Check out the little pink tongue.  He was panting from the exertion and the indignity of it all?  (I really have no idea--I didn't take these or subject him to this.  Maybe that is why he is sleeping at my feet as I write this, and not cuddled up with the responsible family member...)

I knew it would be sad.

It was really sad.  The boys didn't know what to do so at one point they did this:

There's a lot of body language to be studied in that photo.   Just beyond them, blocked by them, was an older British man who was standing his post in case travelers had questions on their way to queue up for the security process.  He told us to knock it off or he would start crying.  I think this is officially the last photo I took of our Little Austrian.  I'm sorry it's such a sad one, yikes!

But there was some laughter that day and apparently even a little goosing:

Happy-Sad:

Sad-Happy:

Happy-Happy:

Cat goodbye:

The Great Baggage Hokey Pokey, formerly known as Redistribution of Weight.

We were, none of us, particularly good at this game, and there were no clear winners save the airport check-in people, who were most likely secretly amused at our fumbling inadequacy, and possibly the parents, who stood to pay an extra $150 in baggage fees if we lost the game.

And even after all of that, we still had to do it again because we hadn't done it right.  But it finally worked out in the end.

And I will leave you with this last image:

I hope things are going well back home, Cordelia. We miss you!  Come back and visit anytime.

I cleaned my desk off a few weeks ago

It already doesn't look like that anymore but it is much less cluttered than it was.  Much easier to work with.  I made this a few weeks ago too, and have one more to go out this week to another fave graduate:

It even had a magnetic closure.  I had to handcut the circle with the G because none of my punches was the right size, but I think I went and remedied that the other day.  It's good to have lots of sizes of circle and square punches. They are always coming in handy for one thing or another. I used the cuttlebug and a nestabilities shape for the "grad" label.

So, it's a big week around here.  C is going back to Austria early tomorrow afternoon.  E is at camp this week, and B is taking her Grammy gambling at Tunica.  Everything is pretty much SOP for me (except I have a bit more part-time work than I usually have), but my fab husband is teaching summer school and doing something else (not clear on the details) for the summer so we can have enough cash to fund the senior year of two active little 17-year-old girls.  P had to take an online class over the summer and we just went to the orientation tonight.  She had to take it because she literally cannot fit in al the classes she needs to graduate in the regular school year.  That's crazy.  At least it's only Econ and not Calculus or something.  Anyway, $300 just for that, yikes!  Hopefully it's an appropriate public education at least, because it's not my experience that it's been free.  The pool, which is usually open by now, is still not open.  No idea what that's about, and I even paid my pool fee early this year.  Oh well.  They do have options, at least.  Boyfriends with pools, friends with pools, the Y (although that's indoor and what fun is that this time of year?).

I have some photos of poor Sam after some of the girls decided to dress him up.  Poor little guy.  He has mostly been spared that sort of thing because the girls were already about 10 and 13 when he was born, but every once in a while...I will try to remember to post them tomorrow but it's going to be busy, that's for sure.