Each and every item, from backpacks to lunchboxes to shoes has been labelled. School supplies have been packed in brand new pencil boxes. Lunches have been made, snacks have been wrapped, and water bottles have been packed. Today is the first day of school for my big first graders. Oh, they’ve ridden the bus, and they’ve had a teacher, but this is the real thing. For me, this means I will be able to make more than one stop on the errands list before coming home. Kindergarten was three hours long, but first grade is all day. ALL DAY.

My school district is not very good about letting the parent’s know things one might consider important. For example, the bus schedule appeared in one newspaper. Don’t get the paper? You don’t have the schedule. Another example would be the major construction that’s going on in nearly all the schools in this district. Teachers have been mailing welcome letters from their homes because they can’t get in the buildings. The construction is that massive.

Example number three happened this morning while we were waiting for the bus. A neighbor came out at 7:30 and asked, “Did you know that school has been postponed until Wednesday?” Well, if I knew that, it would be a little silly to be standing outside at 7:30 waiting for the bus, wouldn’t it? Apparently the decision was made last Thursday or Friday. The first day of school has been postponed until Wednesday due to the construction. I must be the world’s worst parent to not have known to check the local pizza place for this announcement. Yes that’s right. The pizza place had an announcement posted. I understand that the local daycares made the announcement too, which of course means nothing to the parents whose children DON’T GO TO DAYCARE.

The boys go back to school on Monday. I didn’t think I would be so happy about it, but a few weeks ago it hit me, and I am. School supplies? Check. New shoes? Check. Lunch boxes? Check. Backpacks? Check. Bus schedule? Uh, I’m working on that one.

On Wednesday, I go back to school. I previously mentioned that I had decided to finish up my Anthropology degree. I’ve been toying with the idea of returning to my old school 50+ miles away from where I live to complete my Fine Arts degree. But, well, it’s 50+ miles away. Which means 200+ miles a week just to get back and forth from school. Add to that that I drive a gas guzzling truck, which, by the way is a lease vehicle, and you can understand my dilemma. But as is my way, selfishness won out, and I am returning to EMU on Wednesday for two art classes.

On Thursday, I board a plane bound for Atlanta for my annual trip to GeekAndDork Fest, aka Dragon*Con. You really can’t appreciate the magnitude of dorkiness that is D*Con until you’ve seen it for yourself. My favorite part of the convention itself is seeing all the people in all the very authentic looking costumes, and some very, uh, creative costumes. There was a girl there last year wearing yellow caution tape. And nothing else. I’ll leave that one to your imagination. I always miss the parade in the street, but I have managed a glimpse of what I call the Star Wars Cavalcade. Imagine hundreds of Star Wars characters marching through the hotel lobby, and you’ve got the cavalcade.

I haven’t had time to get all my paperwork in order to go back to subbing yet, but once the boys are in school, finding time should be easy. That is, if I don’t get too caught up in being alone in a peaceful quiet house for the better part of the day.

I just checked the data on my camera and realized I had some very good Michigan sunset pictures that I never posted. For your viewing pleasure. These are from the last week of July.

After several weeks of unusually cool weather, it has turned hot again in SE Michigan. I was starting to feel a little bad that I wouldn’t be able to take the boys to the lake one last time before school started. But good old Michigan didn’t let me down, and turned hot again just six days before the first day of school. So naturally, we took advantage of it. That was yesterday.

Today, we spent the afternoon shopping for school supplies. It took six hours. Yes, six hours. What did we accomplish in that six hours? We bought shoes, lunch boxes, supplies (like crayons and scissors) and watches. That’s it. That was six hours worth of shopping. The reason? Well, part of it was that I had to drive to two different places for the shoes. Let me tell you, buying shoes for twin boys is excruciatingly difficult. I admit, though, I am picky about their shoes.

First, I hate cartoon characters on their shoes. And for boys, that leaves very few choices. There are so few choices for boys anyway. Next, I look for shoes that don’t have lights or other stupid gadgety things. Then I eliminate all the shoes that are just plain ugly or too grown up looking. My last requirement for today was shoes without laces. I should mention that the boys have shoes I bought for them only a few months ago. Those shoes have laces. The new shoes are the “extra” pair that the school has requested every child have. My thought was that they will be able to change their shoes easily during school, without getting frustrated over the laces. They do know how to tie their shoes, so get those “what kind of six year old can’t tie his own laces yet?” ideas out of your head.

So, after searching and searching, I finally found the shoes. BUT, the hunt was not over yet. I have twins, remember? They have the same shoe size. No, not even a half size different. The same. Also, this is the week before school starts around here. Yes, it’s my own fault for waiting until now to look for shoes, so maybe I have no place to complain. Regardless, I am complaining! We found one pair of shoes in a size 13 1/2. One. Luckily, another store nearby had the shoes in the right size, so the story has a happy ending. And a happy ending is a nice thing when the story is six hours long.

When I think about some of the crazy things we do as human beings, I often wonder if some highly intelligent race is looking down on Earth and studying our behaviors. If they were, what assumptions would they make from their observations of us?

We pass each other on the streets everyday and rarely acknowledge each other. Do other animals do that? My dogs always acknowledge other dogs. Birds and fish are often found in groups, and change their individual flying or swimming patterns to adjust to the group. I can think of lots of examples of mammals who work in groups for survival too.

We allow ourselves to be herded by flashing lights, painted symbols and orange cones. The light turns green, we go. The light turns red, we stop. We’ll even stop at that red light at 2:00 a.m. when there is no other traffic around us for miles. Sheep and cattle are herded by growling dogs nipping at their feet.

We feed, clothe and shelter our murders and other criminals, yet we allow our elderly and poverty stricken to suffer. We spend money to see that these same criminals are given things to improve their education, while our public school system is in serious need of reform.

We are greedy. Animals fight over territory to survive. Survival isn’t enough for us. We must always take more, even at the expense of others.

We kill each other. Not for food, as animals do, but for things that are truly meaningless.

We poison the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, all in the name of bettering our lives. And then we destroy all the things the Earth provides us to remedy these things.

Yes, there are highly intelligent races observing us. They are the animals.

Before we moved out to this quiet little town, we lived in Livonia, a rather large city about an hour southeast of here. I grew up in this area, so living in Livonia offered me many conveniences to which I was not accustomed. One such convenience was the availability of many different types of restaurants all very close to my home. It’s quickly becoming the thing I miss most about living in Livonia. If I wanted pizza, I had dozens of choices. If I wanted soup, salad, or sandwiches, it was no problem. Mexican, Italian, Chinese… all abundantly available. But here, the pickings are slim. We have Chinese restaurants nearby, but of the three we’ve found, not even one could make decent chicken fried rice. Yes, they were able to mess up even the rice.

Needless to say, every time I return to Livonia, I make it a point to go to my favorite Chinese restaurant and order a pint of chicken fried rice, and if I’m hungry, Kung Pao Chicken. I happened to be in the area a few nights ago on my way to take Shaey to my sister’s house, so of course, I picked up my usual order. I was running very late that night, and so I told my sis and her friends to head to dinner without me. I would drop off the dog and meet her some other time. And that’s exactly what I did.

I got to her house and put the dogs out in the yard. But I had to have my chicken fried rice before I went out to supervise them. So I fixed a plate of rice and Kung Pao Chicken and thought to just take a bite or two before I went back outside. That turned out to be more difficult than I thought. I wasn’t starving, but it had been so long since I’d had good Chinese food. I stood over the table just sort of shoveling food as fast as I could. And I do mean shoveling. Had anyone seen how fast I was eating, I would have been embarrassed. At some point, I did eventually sit down at the table to continue my binge.

I finished the last of the food yesterday, but I find myself wishing I had ordered a larger size of chicken fried rice. Or better yet, maybe I need to learn how to make really good chicken fried rice for myself. If anyone can recommend a good recipe, please send it my way!

The jewelry business is taking off, and I’m still a little surprised by it. I’m surprised mostly because I’ve done so little to help it along. Basically, my business is coming in the form of advertising done through word of mouth. People like my creations! I have no website, no business cards… heck, I’m still iffy on the business name. And yet I’m getting business. I’ve decided to test my ability at photographing my work and making it available here. This is a picture of a pair of earrings for which I’ve had several orders. Several! Eep! If this test goes well, I may have to get to work on that gallery page, since my last excuse will have run out.

I have two dogs. Kairo is a nine year old Italian Greyhound and Shaey is a five month old yellow Labrador Retriever. The IG doesn’t exactly love the Labby. She’s a little too rough for my old girl.

The other day when it was time to take Shaey out, she barreled down the stairs and right into Kairo. Kairo flipped on her back and sorta bounced all the way down the stairs until she crashed at the bottom. I thought she was paralyzed by the way she just froze up. Thankfully she’s fine, though very shaken still. The incident has forced me reconsider this living arrangement however. To me, my dogs are a part of my family. I have given up one dog, but it was to my in-laws who became very very attached to him while they watched him after the twins were born. I had my hand so full with the babies, that I was glad for the help. But I am having a hard time accepting the idea of sending Shaey away when she’s been with us for less than 6 months.

What can I do though? I’m really afraid for Kairo at this point. This is the second time something like this has happened. The first time left her with a sprained shoulder and it took her a week to recover. My sister has been wanting to take Shaey for a weekend for some time now. She’s funny like that. She thinks of her as a niece. I called her yesterday and made arrangements for her to take Shaey early. She’s there now, and won’t be returning until next week at the earliest. I’m hoping my sister’s big dog can take my bratty dog down a peg or two. But if I don’t see an improvement in Shaey’s energy level, I may have to send her back to the breeder, as hard as it is for me to think about.

Last summer, this “soccer mom” turned in her mini van for a 1500 SL Dodge Ram Quad Cab. A month later, we moved up north near the place I grew up. It’s not quite “the country” but close. My sister gives me a hard time about it though. She keeps offering to by me a gun rack for my truck, since she says I am now a hick. Unfortunately, my experience a couple of days ago doesn’t work well to disprove my sister’s claim.

My dad called me out of the blue on Monday to find out if I had any plans for the day. He wanted to take me to the shooting range. Yes, I said the shooting range. Generally, my dad and I are pretty much opposite when it comes to guns. He’s a collector and was once an avid hunter. Whereas I can’t even fish anymore because I feel so bad for the little things struggling for their lives, and I support many gun control ideas. (I’m not a vegetarian, by the way. I can still eat animals, I just have a hard time killing an animal myself.) But like my dad, I’ve always enjoyed shooting. He taught me how to shoot a gun when I was very young, and I turned out to be rather good at it. I always like to show off to my husband when we pass one of those shooting ranges at amusement parks, and I love those shooting games at the arcades. Until this week though, it had been many years since I’ve shot a real gun, and I was very excited to try again.

We spent several hours at his house looking through his collection and deciding which guns would be the best ones for me to try that day. We decided on a 12 gauge shotgun, a 20 gauge shotgun, a 9 mm handgun, and a 38 special. Ultimately, we chose to only take the handguns since we were short on time, and since I had never used a handgun before.

We stopped by the sporting goods supply store for targets, and I very quickly became interested in the bows. I forgot to mention that my dad offered me his compound bow last year, but I’ve not had a chance to do anything with it. We will be returning to the store to check out the bows again in the near future. But Monday was dedicated to the guns.

So we gathered up our gear and headed over to the range. Unfortunately, we had spent too much time looking at my dad’s guns and learning about bows. By the time we got to the range, there was only 30 minutes left before they closed for the night. I did get to practice with the guns, just a bit. I have to say, I can see myself getting very interested in shooting as a sport, though I’m not quite ready for that gun rack. Yet.

So, what’s been happening? Let’s see.

Driving to my parents’ house on two separate occasions allowed me to glimpse a pair of spotted whitetail fawns standing on the roadside. It’s the kind of thing that makes you smile and really appreciate living in such a beautiful place.

The weather here turned very cool this past week. Last weekend was gorgeous, but we had one night where we built a fire in our fireplace and were very comfortable. There were even several days when I had to wear a light jacket or sweatshirt outside. Several of my trees have already started changing to their fall colors, and I’ve heard the geese moving southish already. The weather has been beautiful again this weekend.

Hurricane Charley tore through Florida this week and I’m happy to say that everyone I know there made it through safely.
Dragon*Con is less than three weeks away. Yay! I’ve been practicing staying up very very late so I will be ready for the late nights there. Well, actually, I’ve just been staying up very very late having fun chatting with a friend. But I don’t mind using D*Con as an excuse for that.

School starts two weeks from tomorrow. I have mixed feelings about that. I’m usually itching to get back by now, but I lack my usual enthusiasm this year. But, the boys go back to school on the same day, and though I never thought I’d hear myself say it, I’m definitely ready for that. It’s been a crazy summer.

I will be returning to work soon. I’ve decided to go back to subbing part time, which is the perfect job for me. In this area, we are allowed to choose the jobs we want, and reject those we don’t. And, we’re not penalized for not working. So if my kids get sick, or if I have too much homework, I simply choose not to work. Also, the pay is very good for such a flexible schedule.

I am neither pregnant nor depressed, despite some people (Mathias!) claiming that my days of sleeping so long were a sign of such. In truth, it was only sleep deprivation that caused me to need so much sleep those days. My last pregnancy energized me like I never thought possible. Hopefully, I’ll have the same kind of energy when we do decide to add to the litter this fall. But with my luck, I’ll be exhausted and puking, and find it even more difficult to manage the twins!