Oh, geez, it’s been a week since I wrote anything. Well, on the personal front, last week kind of sucked, and there’s not much to say about it besides that. Things just caught up with me and I let myself get really sucked down into all the crap. (Now there’s a lovely visual image!) I think I’m starting to pull myself out of it, however. And it’s going to be a busy week this week, so hopefully there won’t be much time to dwell on the crap.

I distracted myself somewhat by messing around with design on this page, and I think I’m going to stick with this one for now. I liked the other template I had up but the comments got screwed up when I upgraded Wordpress and I didn’t have the patience to figure out the problem. As far as this site goes, I have some other ideas brewing but it remains to be seen if they will come to fruition.

I distracted myself when not in front of a computer with the Art Fair, which was difficult to avoid since it was taking place all over my daily routine. I took a ton of pictures, for the first time in the 20+ years I’ve been going to Art Fair, but I don’t have any uploaded yet. It was the first year I’ve worked on campus during Art Fair, so it was a neat experience, actually, watching the town gear up for it, deal with it, and then shake it off. And then there was the ability to go out at lunch time, buy overpriced fresh-squeezed lemonade and giant plates of funnel cake, and wander around sweating and people-watching. (Don’t get me started on WHAT THE HELL people wear to this thing. Oy.) Far more appealing then sitting in the basement breakroom eating warmed-up leftovers. Plus, all the downtown stores have sidewalk sales to take advantage of all the foot traffic, and those are fun to browse. I did pick up some new sunglasses, as well, so that’s something.

Yesterday we decided we needed a break from the house, which is no where near unpacked and settled, and the stress, and the general crankiness, and so we packed up the kids and went to the Toledo Zoo. It’s less than an hour away and provided a few hours of relatively cheap entertainment. Mimi was a bit out-of-sorts and kept complaining that she wanted to go home, but Boo was a hoot, waving bye-bye to all the animals and, typically, being more entranced with the mundane ducks than the elephants, giraffes, and penguins. Took a zillion pictures there as well, again which will be forthcoming since I haven’t had a chance to download anything off the camera. (Hey, I finally got the pictures from Kev’s birthday at the, uh, end of June uploaded, so give me a break.)

Like I said, it’s going to be a busy week, and I leave on Saturday morning for a work thing and will be gone for another week. Which I am sort of in denial about because a) I have yet to review the lengthy and rather dry materials for the class I’m taking and b) I have done nothing to prepare the girls for my absence, which will be the longest I’ve ever been gone from either of them. Ack.

So I may be here a bit in the next week and then again I may not. We’ll see.

You know how sometimes, you’re walking down the street minding your own business, and you suddenly start to get the feeling that people are staring at you? And you check to make sure your shoes match, your bra isn’t exposed, and your skirt isn’t tucked into your underwear, and you can’t figure out if you’re just paranoid or there really is some reason that people are staring at you?

It might be because you’re wearing sunglasses that look like this. And you haven’t noticed any oddness, except that some people are looking at you funny, but that might just be your imagination, and so you continue to walk blithely down the sidewalk until you run into someone you know also on their way back to work after lunch, who says to you “new fashion statement?” and you have no idea what they are talking about until they actually gesture and point at your sunglasses, at which point you take them off your face and look at them blankly, until it sinks in. And then you realize that over lunch you have been to the post office, the library, and stopped in for ice cream, and you can’t remember if you removed your sunglasses for any of those stops, and you have no idea how long they’ve been like that, and you start to feel like the biggest dork who ever dorked.

Not that I would know from personal experience, or anything.

I used to get a copy of all my comments in my email, but since the upgrade I haven’t been getting them, and I can’t figure out why. Not a huge deal, but it does make it harder to respond individually. Therefore I’m copping out on getting back to everyone and doing a general response here.

As an aside — I do have a nifty plug-in that allows me to respond in the comment thread, rather like on livejournal, but I haven’t been using it because I wasn’t sure if anyone would see the responses. I like the idea of keeping responses with the relevant post, however I’m not sure if you guys would like it or not.

Anyway. On to the comments.

In general, it seems I have to cave on the capitalization thing. Which I am actually pretty happy about, because if you haven’t noticed I’m rather ADDICTED to capitalization. But I felt vaguely guilty about being a grammar bitch and then going around CAPITALIZING THINGS like I DON’T KNOW ANY BETTER. But if y’all do it too, I’m not going to feel bad. And I’m not judging you, either.

Jill was wondering which foot I broke and if it would impede learning to drive a manual. It was my right, so no, but I still don’t particularly *want* to. I mean, I will learn, just in case someday I am riding in the car with Mark and he has a heart attack or flying monkeys come down and carry him away, and I have to take over to prevent a multi-car pile-up, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy about. It is, however, one more thing which I can use as a bargaining chip, should the need ever arise: “Well, I learned to drive a stick so you could buy that car …. ”

It’s actually not a bad little car, and not nearly as bad as I made it sound. I do find it odd that the front seats have shoulder belts — the kind that pull up from the bottom and click in at the top of the door — but no lap belts. I don’t think this is safe, but Mark has promised to look into getting this fixed. Otherwise, it is in good shape — the interior is very clean, the radio and AC work just fine, all the pertinent engine-type things seem to run well. There are a few rust spots that do indeed look as if they have been painted over with white-out, but in all it’s not a bad little car. I wouldn’t want to go on a cross-country trip in it or anything, but I do think it is fairly safe for the girls to ride around town in.

Amy asked “OK, what happened to husband giving you more leeway with the choice of car since he got to pick exactly what he wanted? The van makes so much sense.”

It does. And I’m still working on it with him. When I said he was sneering at it, I didn’t mean to imply that he was putting his foot down and saying no in no uncertain terms, just that he wasn’t enthusiastic. He’d prefer another crossover with a third row, like the Ford Freestyle we have now. However, despite the fact that we’ve been driving the Freestyle for two years and haven’t had any problems, I’m a little leery of another third-row crossover. I’ve seen some safety reports that make me nervous, particularly as pertains to the passenger in that third row amd rear-end collisions, because there is not much of a cushion between that back seat and the rear of the car. In the Kia Rondo we test drove, Kev’s head would almost be touching the back window. I don’t think that would be good. The thing is, we DO need to tote around five people comfortably, and squeezing Kev in between two car seats in the back of a station wagon really wouldn’t be terribly fair to ANY of the kids. And I definitely do not want a big ol’ honkin’ SUV. So a minivan really does seem like the best bet. I’ll wear him down. Especially if I let him teach me to drive the manual. Heh.

The consensus from you guys on the princess thing seems to back up my first instinct, which is to suck it up and deal until it’s outgrown. I try not to overly encourage the princess thing, but I’m not going to ban them from my house and thereby make them more attractive. I don’t think a princess obsession in and of itself is inherently evil; it’s the marketing machine behind them that I object to. Does a little girl really need princess sheets, underwear, cereal, fruit roll-ups, camp chairs, light-up sneakers, and a bike helmet? Of course not. But at one time or another we have purchased or been given all of the above for Mimi. And as I mentioned, I am so not above using the princesses as a bribe. I know that in the long run our influence is far more important than Cinderella’s. I hope.

There may be more, but for now I am wrapping up my work (heh) day and going home a bit early. Happy Friday!

I know! Two posts in a day!

So Mark picked me up at lunch time and we drove around and looked at cars some more, to no avail. Then he took me back to work and went off on his own, and then called to tell me he’d found the PERFECT CAR (for him) and that we would get a decent chunk of cash back on the PT and um there’s just a couple of tiny things … 1) it’s a 15-year-old VW and 2) it’s a manual.

Ok fine. We talk, I suggest a couple other options, he really really wants this car and it’s in great shape and VWs are very reliable, blah blah blah. I have never learned to drive a manual and have no desire to, but suddenly, aha! It occurs to me I can use this to bargain for what *I* really want when it comes to turning the Ford in and buying something else.

The upshot is, Mark now owns (I’m guessing, I haven’t heard back from him since he skipped drove off to complete this transaction) a 1993 Volkswagen Jetta and I have near complete control over the choice and price of the second car. AND he agreed that we don’t have to purchase a new car, if we can get a decent deal and a decent interest rate, if I really don’t want to. Which I don’t, because hi, car payments suck, and I’d really like to cut our car payments in half when we go off this lease.

AND, as a bonus, I will never ever have to drive his car since it’s a manual and I don’t do sticks. Which means he won’t get to drive MY car very often because he can’t leave me at home with the kids with a car I can’t drive. Hah! I haven’t much discussed this point of contention here but trust me, it’s really annoying when one fills up one’s car with gas and leaves one’s overdue library books in the front seat to be returned and one’s sunglasses on the dash, and then one’s spouse decided to drive said car rather than HIS car, and doesn’t return the library books OR fill up the tank AND leaves Taco Bell detritus in the front seat and nasty music in the CD player. Yuck.

This concludes the automotive portion of our broadcast day.

It is pouring rain. Again. And I have to take the bus home. Which would be fine, except that I don’t have an umbrella. Blah.

I seriously appreciate all the foot/shoe/orthotics advice. Definitely going to look into good orthotics and whether or not I might get my insurance company to pay for them. And when I get paid again in August I’ll be checking into Naot shoes, I think; for what I need and what I’m willing to live with those look like my best, albeit quite pricey (for me, anyway), bet. If I do pick up the New Balance sneakers, which isn’t out of the question either, I definitely won’t be getting them from Z@ppos, since they seem to be marked up quite a bit there.

I’m think if I can swing one pair of good sneakers and one pair of Naot clogs or something similar, I’ll be in good shape for the fall. (Confidential to Mrs. Figby and Mortimer’s Mom: did you know Crocs makes orthotic shoes? I can be tacky AND healthy! And neither of you would ever talk to me again!)

In the meantime, I am following up quite a crappy Fourth of July weekend with what I am determined will be a better week, with a better outlook. The girls and I were at my parents’ for the Fourth, and then Saturday we drove around looking at used cars and got ice cream and went to the park, so there were some good moments, but for the most part I have been cranky and snappish and impatient with the girls and with Mark (Kev is gone for most of July, so he has been spared my wrath) and I need to do better. There are things I’ve promised to do in both my personal and professional lives which I have not yet done, or am still in the process of doing, and am now so late as to be extremely rude and unprofessional all around. To sum up, I have slacked off enormously this summer — and yes, we’ve been busy with the move and I had a broken foot, but trust me, I have been slacking — and I have to shape up if I want to live up to my friends’ and family’s trust in me.

I spent most of yesterday in the basement sorting and organizing and do feel much better in general, like we’re starting to get a grip on things. Mark spent a lot of the day in the yard with the weed-whacker and the shears, and things look better out there too.

In other news, we are trying to work out car issues: the lease on the Ford is up in September, and while we own the PT outright we’d like to, ideally, sell that, buy a used Saturn wagon or something of the sort, and have some cash left over from that sale to put down on whatever other vehicle we decide to buy when we turn the Ford in. I am never leasing a car again; we only did two years ago because we were in dire straits, needed something that would hold two car seats and a teenagers, and we owed more on our trade-in than it was worth. The question is whether to buy new or used for the main family car; I am fine with used and it makes the most sense to me, but Mark, being a car guy, wants something new. I was hoping with the move we could turn the Ford in and not get anything else for a while, that we could manage with one car since we are much closer to town and on the bus line, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

So we test drove a Kia Rondo on Saturday, since they were one of the only dealerships that was open, and I actually rather liked it. Mark wants to look at the Chevy HHR and the Saturn Astra too, although neither of those have third row seats and we’d be pretty squished when we all need to go somewhere together. I’d be happy with a used Windstar or something like that but I don’t see that happening somehow; Mark has a typical guy prejudice against minivans. And of course gas mileage is a huge issue even though we are driving far fewer miles these days. I don’t know, it gives me a headache to think about this so soon after moving and then dealing with the whole shoe crisis and blah. Just blah.