Yes, the inevitable has crept up on me and school is upon us.  It scares me…having to be up at 7:30 every morning.  I know I’ll be okay, but it still makes me balk at the idea that someone else is now controlling my schedule.  Not that it would worry me enough to homeschool.  Uh, uh.  I admire all you moms who do homeschool, but this mommy is looking forward to those precious few hours of time to myself.  Call me selfish, I don’t care.  I think as a mom we earn that time!

(**See this is what I’m talking about, I get up to get a fly swatter to beat the tar out of the little bugger circling my head and I get into the kitchen and “OH, my pills, I forgot to take them with my breakfast speaking of which, why is that counter not wiped yet, I should do that.  Right, I was going to put those dishes in the dishwasher, too” and so on and so on.  No wonder I get nothing accomplished.**)

Secondly, I’m in a flurry because it’s September and September means getting ready to start our next house.  We made the nerve wracking trip to the bank yesterday to see if they would be able to (Oh, be right back…forgot a wet shirt in a lump in my bathroom sink that I was handwashing and it needs to be hung up…) advance us enough money to start building BEFORE we put our house up for sale so that we can get it close enough to completion and avoid another move in with mom and dad.  Not that I don’t appreciate all the generosity on my parents part in letting me and my brood bunk with them for 5 1/2 months the first time and 3 1/2 months the second time, but we’d love to avoid it again.  As I’m sure they would, too.

Happily the bank agreed to advance us enough to start, so as soon as our lot is ready (maybe in a month) we will be digging our basement and starting over.  This means that the next month will be filled with lining up trades, picking selections (oh, goody), organizing and getting this house ready to sell.  To make matters a little more hectic, Jer’s boss, who is also a real estate agent and will be selling our house, said that we should keep our house in showable condition because even though it’s not on the market yet, he’s going to keep it in the back of his head if he comes across someone who wants a December/January possession.  Translation?  I have to keep my house clean.  Always.  He said to expect short notice drop ins.  Yay!  (thick with sarcasm)

AND on top of all that, said boss approached me yesterday to decorate their display home across the street.  This means I get to go shop for appliances, furniture, and accessories on someone else’s dime : )  That makes me inordinately happy.  The catch?  Oh, he won’t be ready for me until next week sometime.  NEXT WEEK?!?  Oh, no problem, that’s plenty of time to come up with a complete plan and shop for everything and put it in there!  Again, heavy with the sarcasm.  These things take time!  Time!  Of which I suddenly seem to have a shortage of to get everything done.

So why exactly am I sitting here writing when I could be organizing, cleaning, shopping, planning, decorating or rocking and humming?  Good question.  Perhaps just to give you all the heads up that I may be missing for a while.  If you are looking for me, that’s where I’ll be.

So I’m out there jogging, pushing myself.  It’s been months, well pretty much since last year that I really jogged for serious.  Last year I was so dedicated, I pushed, I learned, I succeeded.  This year?  Meh, kind of slack.  Everything’s been kind of slack, really.  I can’t say 2008 has been my best and yet there are moments and hours and days that WERE the best.

I hit my wall very early in my run, like 2 songs in (that’s how I measure my distance…actually I measure a lot of things in my life by music) and I was tempted like every other time that I’ve gone for a jog this year to just stop at the same place and walk the rest of the way.  But I didn’t.  I made up my mind to keep going.  I was burning, I was sweating and suddenly I was past the hard part and I was flying again.  Inevitably I knew I would hit another wall in a few minutes, but I enjoyed those few minutes of what seems like the most free feeling in the world and I didn’t think about what was coming.

Eventually I got to the point that I knew my body would collapse if I kept going so I slowed down.  But I DIDN’T stop.  I walked until I felt reprieve and then I started running again.  This time I ran into the newest part of our development and it was just me and the road and the sky and the air.

Finally I came to a stop on our newest lot (yes we are building a new house again soon) and looked out over the water.  I started thinking about my run in relation to my life…especially lately.  I haven’t been running.  Mostly I’ve been walking…s.l.o.w.l.y. or coming to a complete standstill.  Instead of pushing myself, I keep just making excuses and giving up.  It’s pathetic really.  It’s very, very easy to keep up a lack of momentum.  No strain there!

But that’s not what life is about.  It’s about pushing past the cramps and the walls and achy parts.  It’s pushing until you are flying again and you feel like you could go forever.  It’s about enjoying the present moment instead of the fact that there will be hard times.  Let’s face it, there will always be hard times.

It’s taking friends running with you so that you have someone to talk to, someone to push you past your limits.  It’s having people there for you when you finally do run out of steam and collapse to the ground.  The people who cheer you on to finish your race, to reach your potential or just plain drag you across the finish line so you can start a new race.

And you know, even though I was running alone today in the physical, I was thinking about all the people who are on the sidelines cheering me on in my life.  The people who want me to be my best and who are holding my hands when I don’t want to keep running.  The people who are running beside me even when I’m choosing the path less traveled or the steep upward climb rather than the nice level road.  The friends who have been down my particular route before and can help me traverse it rather than leaving me to blindly fumble on my own.  I was thinking about the friends who I’m running beside while they run over their own rocky terrain and knowing that I’m their cheering squad.

None of us can run this alone.  But we HAVE to keep running.  Because if you are sitting still…you’re not going anywhere and nothing changes.

Now I want them in real life : )  I hope you can read them, because this board really gives you a glimpse as to who I am.  Jer was shocked at how much of me was reflected by this.  I LOVE it!

***ETA: After publishing this post I realize you CAN’T read them, so here are some of them:

Sigh…they just make me happy!  There are more, but they don’t really say anything and are just pretty pictures.  Which are your favorite ones?

Here I’m raising my hand to actually make room to breathe.  Sure wish I could remember what I was saying cause apparently I was rockin’ the house with my hilarity!

And classic Erin, not paying any attention to the person trying to take our picture while I shoot off my mouth about some inane subject or other.  Brilliant.

From left to right: Candace (girl who has had twins and is now too small for bridesmaid dress a.k.a. “lucky bum”), Becky (wearing a lovely cream satin number from her brother’s wedding), Moi (a.k.a. loudmouth party hostess with the mostess and yes, I do in fact clean my house and do general daily activities in that little number!), Svea (who might not like me saying this but isn’t she stunning in that red dress…pregnant!  Yeeee!!!), Shelley (looking all sexy in her strapless chocolate goodness), Rachel (kudos go out to her because I got her in a dress, neener, neener, neener!  She just had a baby 2 months ago and she DOES NOT WEAR DRESSES!  EVER!!!  I got her to wear her bridesmaid dress from a friends wedding where they all wore a different color of wrap with white tank top.  It totally counts as a bridesmaid dress!  So yay her).

About 30 seconds after these pictures were taken we ran, leaped and bounded to the bedroom where yoga pants, sweatpants and stretchy pants of all manner awaited us.  Because really, who can eat taquitos, spring rolls, popcorn chicken, cream puffs, pumpkin bar and popcorn when your body is stuffed into a dress that isn’t really comfortable to begin with?  But let’s face it people, the dresses could totally be cut off and worn again!  So true.

I’m so happy everyone played along with my little party idea and please, feel free to steal this idea and blog about it so that I can see all YOUR dresses : )

I just had the loveliest evening with an incredible (and yes, amazing) woman.  Nicole was gracious enough to agree to meet me for coffee after only having met me via our blogs.  I’m really enjoying this meeting amazing (there it is again) blogging friends.  I mean, they are so great on their blogs and smart and intelligent and fun, but in person…wow!  And what’s really great is that Nicole lives only 25 minutes from me.  : )  Yay!  And I thought we got along splendidly (phew, found a different adjective…hard to do when you are really excited about something and all your brain repeats is “amazing, amazing…”), which hopefully means many more such fun filled evenings.

In Nicole, I found a person who like me a) can talk a lot (I’m learning this is a good thing), b) can wander off into other subjects completely unrelated to the one that was currently being discussed and meander back to the original topic all without missing a beat (at least she is good enough to state that she will be veering onto a new path, I tend to just tear ahead without warning…I will take lessons from her on that), c) loves to laugh (and she definitely made me laugh).  She is so cute!  Adorable, really.

What more can I say?  I look forward to getting to know her better.

The other day my mom and I are looking at a clothing catalog and she points out a pair of shoes that she thinks are hideous.  I thought they were quite cute!  And I said so.  She thought I was just saying that to be silly.  Then Jer and I are shopping the other day and I said “Oh, I need a new pair of shoes because I only have a few weeks before my deadline to have my 12 new pairs of shoes by the end of summer.”  We walk into my favorite shoe store and I zone in on a gorgeous pair of black leather shoes.  EXACTLY like the ones my mom hated.  Which just for the record, made them even more desirable.  Rebellion reared it’s ugly head and these beauties found a loving home in my closet.  They already feel like part of the family!  And all I can say to my mom is “neener, neener, neener!”  : )  She did grudgingly tell me that they were really cute on me, which made the purchase even better.

*****

Yesterday I hosted a jewellry and accessories party at my house.  The perfect evening…shopping coming to you!  Doesn’t get better than that.  Especially with all the gawgeous stuff that my cousin’s company Pink Fusion carries.  Look at this sweet bag I got.

*****

This is how I found Aidan after her nap the other day.  She wasn’t even quite awake yet, but she’d had the forethought to put on a nice warm hat.  Good thing because it was like 36 degrees Celsius (96.8 degrees Fahrenheit).  She wasn’t fond of the whole picture taking, flash in her face right after waking up.  But if you want to do things like this, it’s inevtible, really.

*****

Can I admit something?  I am a marker snob.  I keep buying my girls new packs of markers because they always want me to color with them and I CANNOT STAND coloring with markers that are drying out or ruined by little girls who press too hard.  So I buy new packs every couple weeks so that I can color happily with nice markers : )  We have a lot of markers!  (Can anyone guess what I spent the afternoon doing?)

*****

Tonight I’m having a few girlfriends from church over for a “27 Dresses” party.  What’s that, you ask?  Or maybe you don’t care, but I’m gonna tell you anyway.  We are going to watch “27 Dresses” and eat food and in honor of the movie I’ve asked them to wear a bridesmaid dress for the party.  We will be taking pictures fo sho!  We’re not yet too old for some goofy fun and I hope we never are!!

 *****

Tomorrow I’m going to a baseball game.  One of my friends asked me to go to a game with her.  Then 2 days later a different friend asked me to go to a game with HER.  What are the chances?  They don’t know each other, but both decided that this was the week to submit me to a long slow form of torture…9 innings long!!  So I told them if they wanted to go see a game then they could both go with me to the same game because like heck I’m going to TWO baseball games.  I don’t even like baseball!  I was telling a friend today about how I wasn’t going to actually watch baseball, I’m just going to the game to be with my friends and have fun.  I was told that I HAVE to watch the game.  WT*?!?  I don’t HAVE to do anything!!  Well apparently I have to watch the game because it’s important to keep your eyes on the ball in the event that it should end up flying into the stands and come hurtling at your head at high speeds (which apparently it does on a fairly regular basis), you can prevent being injured.  I snickered and said something to the effect of “that will be an interesting girls night out with balls flying at our heads” which resulted in a long bout of hilarity and guffawing.  So mature, I know.  Sigh.

*****

I decided on a whim that I wanted to take my girls to the States for a girlie night.  So Monday the three of us (along with my mom and my brother’s girlfriend Steph and her daughter Monika…who all thought that was a splendid idea) are going for a night.  We booked a suite so we can all bunk together and we’ll do some shopping and some swimming in the neat little kiddie play area and just have some good old fashion girl fun.  No boys allowed!  I’m not sure that my 2 little “Daddy’s girls” are quite sold on the idea of Daddy not being there yet, but they’ll get over it : )

*****

And that’s all for me.  Happy weekend! : )

See?  Disturbing, isn’t it?

Apparently I had the frame of mind during my mental absence (can you have a “frame” of mind if you are mentally absent?  Things that make you go “hmmm”) to cut my hair, but not find my bum, because shorter hair will get me far in life.  I’m actually truly surprised that I’ve been physically able to sit and do nothing for all these months because sitting can be a real challenge with no hiney.  Extremely difficult.

And now I will be getting off my area “formerly-known-as-bum” and I will hie myself away at once for a jog to relocate missing nether regions in hopes of at least making contact and reestablishing good relations, all this with high hopes of retaining it in a more permanent position of employment.

_{**edited to add: I actually cropped my bum out of that picture…I do have a little more than is depicted.  But not much.  Must defend what there is.}

Then I got a happy pill.  It’s an all natural happy pill called STR-J (the STR stands for stress).  And Lawd, I love it!  It’s like I woke up yesterday with a renewed sense of…um…something.  Not words, apparently.  But something.  Vigor (did you know when you enter “vigor” into Thesaurus.com it comes up with “oomph”…I didn’t know oomph was actually a word in the dictionary.  Interesting.).  Where was I?  Oh yeah, I’ve regained some energy.  It kicked in sometime yesterday afternoon and I was off on a rampage.

Since 3:00 yesterday afternoon I have washed my bedding, done 4 loads of laundry and folded them AND put it all away (seriously, people, that’s a landmark event right there…that’s as much as I’ve done in a whole week lately!), washed dishes…TWICE (oh, yeah), cleaned my oven (okay well technically my self cleaning oven cleaned itself, but whatevs).  I swept my floor, dusted, washed the insides of all our windows and the outsides of 4 (the rest are like a thousand feet off the ground, so it’s going to take a largeish ladder and a person other than moi to do that since I don’t do anything over 36″ off the ground).  What else…I know there’s more.  I can feel it.  I wiped down about 6 1/2 baseboards before my attention wandered, cleaned out and reorganized my desk (archeology at it’s best), cleaned out the old/unused/too small clothing from the girls’ drawers, organized my books and took out all the ones I’ve read and restacked the ones I haven’t yet read.

(just a few more and I’ll hit the ceiling!  The ones in the large stack are the “to read” books, the ones under them are some of my decorating and design books and then there are the beloved “Twilight” books in their place of honor.  Did I mention the other day I read “New Moon” in 7 hours?  Straight up!  Not lying.)

While cleaning out my desk I found the supplies for a project I’ve been intending to do so I whipped up 2 shadow box art displays for Ella’s room with Barbie clothes (’cause I had some extra time on my hands).  At some point when I get to a scrapbooking store I’ll buy pretty paper to put in the background of them, but for now white paper will do.

If you look closely at this next one you could imagine it being used in a C.S.I. episode…

“If we enlarge the reflection and enhance it we could probably get a clear match for the nailpolish color on the person taking the picture.  If we cross reference it with all the samples we have in the A.N.I.S. Database (*snickers* she said…oh never mind) aka “Automated Nailpolish Identification System” we should get a hit.”

Catherine interjects with “Wait!!  Isn’t that O.P.I’s ‘I’d Like to Thank’”? 

Startled looks from the rest of the team.  “What?!?  I love O.P.I.” (and they always just have that sort of random information at hand cause they are smart like that and that’s why that show is frickin’ awesome)

Not to mention what they could have done with the crumbs that I apparently forgot to wipe up before taking the picture (shaking head in disgust!)  

Anyhoo, I also read blogs intermittantly, possibly had a shower somewhere in there, went through 3 new cook books and made a list of healthy choice recipes (which will be another post) and all the pantry items that I need to buy to make them, and cooked a very nice dinner both days (my family thanks me because I think spring rolls and tacquitos are not really considered “dinner”…what!?  Don’t be hatin’ on me, at least I remembered to feed them…most days).

I think that about sums it up.  And if for some reason anyone thinks I’m bragging about my Martha Stewart like awesomeness in the housecleaning/crafting/organizational arena, can that thought.  By the time I do any of that again, y’all will probably have cleaned your houses like half a dozen times.  I mean, if I have to blog about it…really.  Why do you think we move every 6 months to a year?  Just kidding.  Kind of.

Now I’m tired, but happier.  My house feels liveable again.  My conscience is clear.  I think I pretty much cleared up the rest of August to waste my time doing whatever the heck I want.  Now I think a glass of wine, a bubble bath and “Eclipse” are singing their siren song.

Two hours is just NOT long enough with someone as wonderful as Kimberly.  She’s eloquent, beautiful, gracious, sweet, fun…everything I knew she would be!  When she walked in the door of the restaurant, I jumped up to throw my arms around her (natural reaction to greet someone you’ve never met, isn’t it?) and knew that I was greeting a lifelong friend who has already come to mean the world to me.  She was with her husband, Neil who was a real sport to sit there while we talked and talked and talked.  Trying to fill all 120 minutes with as much as we could.

I’m still a little overwhelmed so I’m not sure what else to say.  It’s such a crazy experience meeting someone for the first time even though you feel like you know them so well already.  I hope she can echo my thoughts in saying that it was perfect and the only thing that could have made it better was to not have had to say goodbye so soon.

The first shot of us was quite funny.  Neil started laughing and said we should take another one.  Deer in headlight eyes and fake smile.

I think the second one turned out nice, although my smile still fell a little while waiting for the camera to flash.

_{And isn’t her hair just lovely?  She just cut it and I think it’s so sweet on her.  Just thought I’d say.}

By the third one I was laughing, and I have to say Kim kept her composure beautifully!

Another lovely memory was created and I had to blink back tears as I walked back to my car.