Can the Next Crisis Please Take a Number?!

1. This summer, no, this year has felt like one crisis after another and reminded me this morning of the lines from Hamlet when Gertrude says "One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, / So fast they follow" (IV.vii.159-60); she then proceeds to tell Laertes that his sister, Ophelia, has in her madness, drowned. No, there have been no untimely deaths here; the only dead things have been bed bugs and their deaths are never untimely, just over due. But I am having a very difficult time keeping my chin up and my grateful attitude abounding. (And the bed bugs did not magically starve to death while we were in California, so the spraying of toxic chemicals will continue until morale improves.)

2. Yes, we returned home safely and without incident, although the flights were a little bumpy. If you don't already, fly Southwest. They made traveling with special needs children as painless as possible in this nervous climate and we are very thankful to have been so well cared for by 4 different cabin crews. Even the TSA people were courteous so I didn't mind their extra caution with all my juice boxes and medicines. I still hate flying, but we made it without serious injury or seriously annoying the people sitting around us, the latter of which has to be a miracle unto itself. And Alex and Miranda now know how to do the whole airplane travel process.

3. Yes, it was a lovely vacation in San Diego and the best part was being with family who graciously and enthusiastically helped keep Alex and Miranda fed and entertained. If you haven't seen the pictures, here's another chance.

Oh, alright, I'll post some here.

Having fun at the zoo.

Post-swimming sunning with Daddy.

Best bud Ballou.

Basketball with Mason, cousin Aaron's best friend.

Snuggling and playing with Uncle Brandon.

Snuggling and playing with Uncle Jonathan.

Swimming with Grandma.

Swimming with Grandpa.

You know, I have really adorable children. :) I'm so glad there are only 2 of them.

4. So, on Wednesday, after getting all my thank you's into the mail, I heard through the grapevine that Miranda had been moved from the school she's been attending for the past 2 years back to our sending school. Naturally, this provoked a great deal of upset. Our mail was never delivered upon our return, for no apparent reason; I did go pick it up yesterday morning and all I got in answer to my queries from the Post Office was a dumb look. So the formal notice of the change, which was postmarked Aug. 18, was not formally received until yesterday. I was able to talk to her case manager and Marshall and I quickly wrote a polite but detailed appeal to have her moved back to the classroom where she's been so happily ensconced for the previous 2 years. And since the school administrative offices are closed today and Monday and school starts Tuesday, it was a bit of a rush job and we'll have to wait until next week to discover the result. The programs at either school are equivalent so the CST was well within its right to move her, and if we'd discovered this on Aug. 20th instead of the 31st, I think I could have approached it with more equanimity. But as it is now, it is the source of a great deal of stress. This was so not the way I wanted to return to NJ.

5. I don't quite know what to do with my evenings now that I'm not cross stitching like mad. Well, I could read a book!

Summer Vacation Reading List:

• Moon Called by Patricia Briggs - 336 pages
• Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs - 352 pages
• Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs - 304 pages
• Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs - 304 pages 
• Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs - 304 pages (I am now waiting for book 6 to come in the mail)
• Dead Beat by Jim Butcher - 528 pages
• Fool Moon by Jim Butcher - 352 pages (yes, I realize I started in the wrong order; I plan to start the complete Dresden Files from the beginning, next week)

I'm also part-way through several other books:

• Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War by Michael J. Neufeld - 88 pages (Marshall and I are especially space-mad so this is right up our alley)
• Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books by Lynne Sharon Schwartz - 61 pages
• Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq War as seen by NPR's Correspondent Anne Garrels - 48 pages (I've wanted to read this since listening to her reports in 2002. Now if we can just persuade Sylvia Poggioli to write a book about her time in Kosovo in the late 90's....)
• Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War & Peace by Dominic Lieven - 173 pages (I've never read War & Peace, which is a travesty, I know, but since I spent my California vacation last summer reading about the war from the French perspective, I thought it would be interesting to read it from the Russian perspective. And it is!)
• The Armada by Garrett Mattingly - 251 pages (I know I'm cheating a little here because I started it in the spring, but I picked it up again on the trip)
• Much Ado About Nothing & The Tempest by William Shakespeare - call them 100 pages each (I re-read the plays before seeing the performances at The Old Globe Theatre)

Grand Total: 3,301 pages

Quite satisfactory. Now if I can only finish what I've started....

What I really wanted to find in all those books stores was a copy of Pride & Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith. Can anyone loan me a copy?

6. Our house seemed to weather Hurricane Irene without much trouble. Marshall's mother came by to make sure all the hatches were battened down (or, at least, put the garbage cans in the garage so they couldn't blow away) so all that we noticed when we got home were a few branches down in the back yard. Our neighbors were looking out for us, so if anything had gone terribly wrong, I'm sure they would have called. 

7. Okay, people, if you haven't yet purchased a copy of my mother's book, Bathsheba's Lament, what is the matter with you? Get with the program! Amazon delivers overnight and so do I. Call me. Email me. Click your way through on Amazon's helpful website. I want to hear those pages turning all over the country! Today, people, Today! :)

And here's Jen.