We were visiting my sister-in-law the other day and playing with our 3 yr old nephew Moose.* He had a friend over for a playdate that ended just as we showed up, so we were able to catch him saying goodbye to his friend Asher. Moose can’t quite say his R’s or S’s, so spelled phonetically it sounded like this, “Bye! Bye Ath-ol! Thankth fol playing Ath-ol!”

Bear leaned over to me and in a voice a pearl clutching church lady would use, he asked, “WHAT did he just call him?!”

We got the church giggles for hours. Think about it. It’s hilarious.

*not his real name. Although these days you never can tell.

Introducing…

Polly the PT Cruiser!

She’s my new baby and I love her.

See how proud I am?

She’s actually quite roomy inside.

I’m just so overjoyed it brings a tear to my eye.

Have you ever had a bad bought of the flu? One where you were so run down that you couldn’t get out of bed? Where lifting your arms to knit or crosstitch was just more effort than you could expend? Where you found yourself trailing off as you were speaking because you didn’t have the energy to finish your sentences?

Yeah. That’s me. Except I’ll pretty much have this flu for 9 months.

I have done nothing this week except cook dinner, lay on the couch, and watch movies. My Super OCD self hasn’t even bothered to unpack yet.

Boy, kids really do change you.

At church I work with the teenage girls, which means I also spend a lot of time with the teenage boys, because where one goes, the other follows. This Sunday we’re giving a big lecture about the dangers of the internet, specifically myspace. So as the only person who even knows how to use their email, I’ve been elected the person to handle it.

I never really saw the point of myspace once you were out of high school. Why bother with all the associated nonsense of lists and bad html when you can have a blog. And then I remembered that most blogs consist of nothing more than nonsense lists and bad html. So I guess the virute of myspace is having a blog where all your friends can find it.

In preparation for this big lecture, I’ve been spending a lot of time there, checking out the kids I know, seeing if there are any scary or naughty things that should be addressed, trying to track everybody down. And I’ve gotten totally addicted. It reminded me of when I first got my blog. I wanted to play with all the bells and whistles and decorate it all pretty and not really think about the content. It kept me up nights with plans of everything I wanted to do to it if only I had any clue how. And sure enough, here I am again. Staring at 4 in the morning as I try to find a cute skin for my dang my space page.

I know that all sorts of people use myspace for all sorts of reasons, but I just feel kind of slimy about it. The only people I know personally who use myspace are all high school kids, so I feel like the sad inappropriately dressed mom with the fake boobs and leathery skin shopping at Forever 21.

But I’m doing it for the kids, people. It’s for the children.

Well, a few things really.

#1 This!

#2 THIS!

#3 THIS!!!

and a totally unfruitful and unproductive job search, but I’ll save that to complain about another day.

So, what you see there in picture number 1 is the new love of my life. My Dyson vacuum. I’ve heard people say it was great, but that does not describe the truly life changing force that is the root cyclone technology. Truly, the suction is so strong that it’s like vacuuming with a fire hose. I live in an 800 sq ft apartment, and by the time I was done vacuuming the life out of this place, I had filled and emptied that canister 6 times. 6 TIMES PEOPLE! That is disgustingly awesome.

#2 is my brand new baby. I love her so. Her name is Ethel and I rock her to sleep every night. She is an Olympus E-Volt 500, 8 megapixel, lightweight camera with an enormous lcd screen. I’ve been pining away for a digi SLR for years now, literally saving any pennies I could find. I thought that I wanted a Nikon D70 because I have a Nikon film SLR and I wanted to be able to scrimp on the lenses. So we went down to our local independent camera store to talk to a salesperson who actually knew what they were talking about and found Stephen, a beautiful Nigerian man who knows everything about these cameras and is all too happy to teach us. He talked us down to the D50 because price was a major concern for us, so he was convinced that we’d get all we wanted out of the D50 and pay less for it. He won us over for life.

While I was off at youth conference, Bear went into the store to pick up the D50 as a surprise, but they were all out! His romantic surprise dreams were crushed! But the beautiful Nigerian saved the day. Stephen negotiated a price on the Olympus so we paid the same amount thanks to rebates and got a way better camera.

When I came home Bear had a couple of presents all wrapped up for me on the couch and the house all cleaned spic and span. I opened the first little present, and it was a 2 Gig memory card, so I immediately knew what had to be in the big box. But when I opened it up and it wasn’t a D50, I was immediately disappointed. Little did I know what I had in my hands. What a fool I was!

Now, #3. That is the Robin. That is our future home. See, here in Modesto, the real estate market has gone ca-razy. It is California after all and a lot of Bay Area commuters live here, so the prices were insanely high. Like, this 2000 sq ft 3 bedroom home was selling for 480K. All this talk about the real estate bubble bursting, however, is finally starting to make sense because the market here is going soft like melted jello. Every street we walk down has three or four homes for sale on it. There are three different home builders just down the street putting up colossal neighborhoods, and they’re starting to run into problems. All the big big houses are still selling OK, but the 3 bedroom ones will not move. Basically, no one wants to pay 500K for a house that is about to be worth half that.

So the prices are slowly dropping, and we’re reaping all the benefits. Bwah ha ha ha.

Bear has already passed big scary awful test #1 to get his license and now he just has to take sort of frightening, unpleasant test #2 and he should get a mondo raise, we will no longer be “starving students” and we will get a house and my long awaited PT Cruiser (I know they’re goofy looking, that’s why I like them!).

Crazy times. After nearly 7 years of marriage and all of our downs and slight rises and downs some more, things are finally, FINALLY, FINALLY turning around for us.