Things are getting interesting

Photo by: buggs

Things are getting interesting around here. Our neighborhood is two weeks into the construction of the recreation area (for lack of a better term), which means that in another few months we'll have a pool, playground, tennis court, basketball court and a soccer field about 100 yards from the house. An elementary school will also be opening up another quarter mile down the road...but that will be for the 2008-9 school year, I think. We don't have any kids (of our own) to speak of, and it would take 7 or so years if we started trying to produce one now before they'd be able to attend, but it's great nonetheless to know that our neighborhood is coming along nicely.

I, of course, have an alterior motive for being excited about the school. Katie is as stressed out as I've ever seen her with her new job. She runs around chasing psychologically disturbed children all over town, most of whom are not at school when they're supposed to be and whose parents aren't reliable in meeting scheduled appointments. The job requires a certain amount of billable client hours per week, but when your clients are on drugs or have psychological disorders themselves, you can't rely on them to meet appointments. You also can't bill time spent to go meet with someone where they don't show up. In addition, you have mountains of paperwork. Katie runs around for 8 hours a day to get ~5 hours of billable time, then comes home to face another 2 hours of paperwork every night. Ridiculous. So, back to my motive. It would be great if she could become the school counselor at the new school. She would make the same amount of money, work 9 months (7-3:30)... and have some of the sane kids mixed in with the crazy ones. It's gold, Jerry! Gold!

In other news, I'm planning to take a weekend relatively soon to finish the backyard. Katie and I already went all new-homeowner on the front yard, planting thirty or so little flowers of three varieties. The backyard, however, has no fence and no grass, just a knee high collection of weeds that I'm responsible for mowing each week. Expressions like "growing like a weed" never really hits home until you have to mow them every week. I'm beginning to understand gardener's obsessions with the little boogers.

For the future work weekend, I think I'm going to try to rent a tiller, if that's even possible. I'll grind all the weeds up in the back and turn the soil/dirt a bit and add a little topsoil. We should be able to drain our bank account fairly easily on sod, then lay it ourselves. The order of operations should then be fence, dog, flower bed, bird house, rose vines on back fence. Done!

Another change that's coming up will be the exit of Katie's little sister, "Little Sneak", from our humble abode. Her school year's ending in a week and a half and she's going to go back and stay with her mother. So, things will return to normal. No high water will, no endless busy signals on our phone line, no internet fiend, no more scooby snack wrappers beside my chair... She's heading back to no cable, no internet, no loud music... I'm heading back to FREEEEDOM! Boxers time immediately after work! Computer time! We'll see whether it's as grand as I'm thinking...

I have more that could be written, but I have church in an hour, followed by two mother's day dinners. We're heading to Taylor's tonight for my Mom's. Grilled fish for dinner and a movie.