You Met Me At a Very Strange Time in My Life

That's a quote from Fight Club, Mom.

1. I'm not real keen on the new look. I have a suspicion that this is one ugly color scheme, but I was getting tired of the last one.

2. Happy Kissiversary, Aerie!

3. Things have been pretty strange around here, stressful and aggravating and also fun and amazing and tiring.

(a) There are serious disruptions taking place in Aerie's family, and we're hurting for them and worrying with them about what the future will hold and also hoping it all doesn't spill over too much into our little world.

(b) I also spent three straight weeks spending most of my free time working on a large copywriting project, and it couldn't be clearer to me that it's not a lot of fun and puts more stress on my family life. It does pay well, and it would be easier if I were better at managing my time.

(c) I'm struggling to stay motivated with Weight Watchers. As I've noted before, success gives me an inexplicable tendency to sabotage myself. I've kept up the exercise, though I think I've got a rotator cuff injury that's making weight lifting a bad idea. I'm still hitting the treadmill, though. In fact, I had a new personal best yesterday, burning 1070 calories in 60 minutes. I've got to say, The Crystal Method's Drive is my all-time favorite workout album. I think it was released as part of a promotion of Nike's integration with iPod, or something like that, which makes it about as corporate as you can get, but man, it's effective. I only wish it was long enough to get me all through a full hour instead of quitting at about 45 minutes. Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel... Bad, right? Wait a minute, what was I talking about again? Oh, right. Stalling on the weight loss. Yeah.

(d) Thumper's been testing a lot of limits lately, and has developed a strong tendency to contradict everything that's said to him. We have whining, and screaming fits, and "I won't..." and "I can't...", and conversations that tend to follow these lines:

Me: "It's raining."
He: "No, it's not raining."
Me: "It's not?"
He: "No, it's raining."

So the stress and frustration from (a), (b), and (c) tend to make (d) less bearable, but every day I'm reminded by the people around me how wonderful he is. Wherever we go, people tell me how cute and big and smart he is. We had one of our best playdates ever this week, with 4 other kids on the playground all about the same age as he. The kids played together and shared toys with minimal friction, the 2 moms, a babysitter, another dad and I were all friendly and talked Halloween and potty training and developmental milestones and mothers-in-law. And they all expressed amazement at Thumper's age. The dad even said, "He can't do that yet!" when Thumper pedaled a borrowed tricycle on a circuit round and round the playground. So I'm daily reminded how lucky we are with him, but still, I'm doing a lot of yelling lately.

So, uh, yeah, all of that just to say I haven't updated much lately, and I don't like my new layout here, but I really don't have the time or motivation to change it. We're doing a National Downs Syndrome Society Buddy Walk today, which will be fun. And my beloved database project that was suspended indefinitely has been revived, so there's more work such that I may actually someday be able to signup for ushering shifts online, glory hallelujah. Facebook's responsible for my light posting, too. Curse you, you evil Bejeweled Blitz!