Frenzied Daddy

The child went with her grandparents last weekend (after the beach houses). She’s been gone just about a week, and it’s been very quiet. I’m not sure, yet, what I think of that. On one hand, it’s been nice and quiet, no battles over bedtime, no arguments over the television. But on the other hand, she’s a great kid, and I miss her. She brings an energy into the house that’s completely different from mine or her mother’s.

We got a letter from her teacher-to-be, and it looks like fun; he’s been teaching for eighteen years, and he’s gotten used to first graders. She’s in a combined first-second grade class at school. I don’t know what that says about her “now” (like if she’s advanced or smart-of course I think she is ) but it’ll be interesting to see her reaction to it. And her reaction to daily homework. !

Updated to WordPress. Couple of nuts to tighten but it’s looking good.

update!: In the spirit of FlyLady, I seem to have cleaned out some clutter. By which I mean that I seem to have lost all my blog-pics (the ones that go in the contents). Hopefully it’s recoverable. If not; consider them some clutter that’s gone now.

update update!:clutter’s back I had fubarr’ed the directory and my server admin has fixed it. Yay Matt!

So, Brookes is registered for some scrapbooking expo in Bellevue in November. And we thought it’d be fun to take the kid and she and I can go play in Seattle while Brookes does her scrapbooking thing.

But November in Seattle is usually wet and chilly. If it were summer, I’d have no worries about what we’d do; I have some great memories of summer in Seattle; GasWorks Park, canoing on Lake Washington, any number of things. But November? We’ll have two days; I think one day, I’d like to spend at the Seattle Aquarium, and perhaps at Pike Place Market(they’re fairly close). I’ve learned that it’s important not to plan -too much- to do, we both wind up happier.

Any suggestions for the other day (either friday or saturday)? And maybe Sunday as well; but we’ll be heading home then.

So Saturday, I was navel-deep in the Pacific Ocean. I love that. I love being in the ocean. Struggling against the ebb and flow of the water wore me out some, but it was a happy, quiet sort of worn out. The ocean really helps my mood- and considering I live a bare 90 minutes from the ocean, I should be going there a lot more. But as with most things, life gets in the way of life.

This quiet, happy, introspective mood ended rather abruptly last night. I had a dream that was almost fun; I knew it was going to be fun. I don’t like manipulating my dreams the way some people do, I figure there’s a story behind all of them, more or less. So last night, when I was watching as a cop-sort of lady (maybe like the agents on X-files or Men in Black) chased down a bad guy, and the bad guy was laying in a field with these weird symbols around him (and drawn on him), chanting and smiling, summoning something—

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I shocked Brookes by announcing that there was a scrapbook store in Garibadi, Oregon (about 4 miles from the beach houses we rented). I had driven past it a couple of times, looking for Cheetoes and Red Bull. Of course, we had to visit.

On the front door is a sign; Notice: this is no longer a bait shop. I thought this was an aggressive stance.

The inside was, small, and cute- and they even had a few things we “needed”. (But they wouldn’t take debit cards- and that’s the only currency we carried this weekend.) Vivat Garibaldi!

The beach was great. Our families rented two beach houses north just a little ways south of Manzanita. We were about four blocks from the sand and surf. In back of the house we stayed at was a great, swampy little pond; it had some spectacular scenery and a shy heron who kept hanging out eating heron food.

Megan ran two legs in the Hood to Coast race. They were both uphill- and she still managed seven minute miles for five miles or so. I find that unfathomable- running that sort of distance makes me break out in hives But it’s easy to think of swimming across the Columbia River or a couple of miles in a pool.

I had a great time with my camera- I took a lot of pictures. And I took the laptop too, and did a little digital work with em. I’ll be mailing out some productions later.

Just for the record, the Pacific Ocean is still cold; I was up to my navel in the water and my feet were all tingly. It’s times like that when I consider how quickly you could hypotherm out there. And the riptide was dragging us right up to the jetty- pretty scary.

We went to the pediatrician yesterday- the Punkin needed a hepatitis shot for school. She was very worried, but she took it like a champ. And I managed to get some great “getting ready for first grade” pictures as well. She was very patient with me- and the nurse laughed at me when I asked for a photo of the needle.

We’re off, this weekend, to go to the coast and hang with the grandparents (Nan and Rich, in this case). I’ll be taking the laptop and a wireless ethernet card; maybe I’ll get a blogging fix. But don’t hold your breath. The punkin is off to Nan and Rich’s house for the next week Where she’ll be spoileder, I’m sure.

My sister in law Megan is running in the Hood to Coast relay- I’m proud for her. She’s an awesome woman.

Carina has really sucked us in.

Not only did she introduce me (via her weblog) to fitday.com, but she put the FlyLady meme back into my brain. I discussed some of the ideas from FlyLady with my darling lovely wife and we’ve gone ahead and signed up for it. And we’re making space in our day to work together on things like “shining our sink” and “cleaning up the house.” Next week, we start work in the LivingRoom zone– and I’m going to hit the 15 minutes of decluttering pretty hard. It just occurred to me this morning that we weren’t doing em. We have, however, been doing morning and evening routines.

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I’ve opened up a new channel of discussion on the *insert gnashing of teeth and wailing of children* evils of US Bank. Check it out for more information and co-miseration!

I really, really despise US Bank‘s new policy, regarding deposited checks.

This policy cost us about three hundred dollars in the past week. That’s way more than we can afford. Here’s a summation; if you deposit a check into your US Bank account, the first hundred dollars of it is available that evening (after 6pm). Any other monies is held until the next business day. And if you deposit it after the bank closes, it is two days.

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