breaking momentarily from the chaos...

I don't even know where to start, so I'll just start rambling. I'm so sleepy I can hardly keep my eyes open and I really want to go to bed, but I'm determined to write something while it's still the weekend (for some reason) and then you probably won't hear from me for a while. Life has been full of changes lately - nothing too big or anything, just jobs and housing and things like that. I recently started a new job doing full time child care for a family who recently relocated to Baton Rouge. They have 2 kids and they're almost 4 and almost 2. So far, it's been great. Of course some days have been rather challenging, but I love the freedom I have with this job to go fun places and do thing with the kids. We usually go somewhere every morning and come home and then it gets nice and quite for awhile while they sleep. Their mom works from home so I see a lot of her and we enjoy chatting. Well, I do anyway, I guess I haven't asked her if she enjoys chatting with me. They also have a nice big pool that we use nearly every afternoon. After my last job experience here, Dave and I (especially Dave - = ) both thought it was time I did something different. The last year has been filled with so many stresses and new things and a stressful job on top of all that just wasn't the best thing for us at this point. So now I come home totally exhausted, but in a much better mood. = ) The worst thing about the job for me is the insanely early mornings. Insanely early for me anyway. I have to be there by 7:30 and I don't usually go in my pajamas. So I'm gettin up way earlier than I believe God intended humans to awake. The really annoying thing is that my body just will not cooperate with this type of schedule. Last week I kept trying to get to bed early, only to make it after 11 some time. Then one evening I just crashed and slept forever and woke up at 10, and of course, couldn't sleep that night. So the next evening I was determined to not sleep at all in the evening and then go to bed early. I actually made it to bed around 10:00 which hasn't happened since I was 10 I think. SO, then I wake up at 4:30 in the morning and can't sleep! I was SO SO SO annoyed! If anyone has any brilliant suggestions, I'm open to them.

We are also moving in 2 weeks. We were hoping to move August 1st, but our new place is making us pay rent form the 25th on, so we figure we might as well move then. All of a sudden, it's upon us and there's SO much to do and I'm so fried in the evenings. So hopefully it will all get done somehow. I'm trying to be much more organized about this move, so packing is more work than unpacking should be, hopefully. Anyway, our new apartment has washer/dryer hookups which is fabulous. It's also a bit further from campus which has it's pros and cons. The pro being that drunk college students won't be knocking on our door at 2 in the morning asking if Andrew lives here. (this happened Friday night and suddenly, moving seemed like a great idea again) I'm be farther away from my bosom friend which is the con. = ( But I think our friendship will survive the additional 10 - 15 minute drive. Speaking of moving and packing, I think I mentioned awhile ago wanting to get rid of all the stuff I don't really use, need, or like, etc. Well, the time has come. My bosom friend Jan came over last night to try to help me and encourage me to throw out all my junk. You should have heard us cackling like a couple hens at all my ju... I mean priceless treasures. Here's some of her words of wisdom. I told her wait till you see my rock collection and she said, "It's not a COLLECTION unless it's DISPLAYED." Hmmmmm, she might have just made that up. Anyway... upon seeing my beautiful purple bead necklace (looks like a toy sorta) she exclaimed, "WHY are you 31 years old and own something like this??? Get rid of it QUICK before anyone sees it!" Of course I don't care if anyone sees it because I'm telling you all about it. Then there's all the things that people have given me over the years, esp sister in laws for some reason, and especially little counted cross stitch things that were really cute. I told her that as I go to get rid of something, I'm haunted by the weeping face of the person who gave it to me. It's true. And then there's children's artwork. Weeping children are even worse than weeping adults. AHHHHHHHH. She tired to tell me that I needed to throw out ALL my cards and letters. I got them all in a pile in the living room currently, and I'm determined to get it all down to one small box or so of ones that I keep. Oh the weeping faces. Jan asked me what Dave thinks of me keeping all this stuff. I said, "What does Dave thing? He's worse than me! He still has a smurf collection (only it's not a collection cause it's not displayed) and the razor he used for his first shave!!" Among many other things. Anyways, I think you be proud of us, because the razor is gone, the beads are gone, and so are the real braids of my sister and I. And much more. ANYWAY, on to something other than packing and purging.

In other random news, It was our 11 month anniversary on Thursday. We celebrated by eating supper at Coldstone Creamery and then going to the levy and walking around and remembering how nice it is there. I have to tell you about Coldstone though. I got the coffee lovers (which I am not, not it's not bitter when it's in the form of ice cream) - it was coffee flavored ice cream with heath bar, roasted almonds, and carmel. Oh my. It was one of the best things I've had in a long long time.

Speaking of food, I made the terribly discovery, actually, I think I read it on allrecepies.com, that you can make any cake mix into cookies by simply adding 2 eggs and half cup oil. I'm here to tell ya, it's true and they are GOOD! I used up some cake mixes that we had laying around and wanted to get rid of. And then Jan and I made cookies with the kids the other day because a guy from our church is doing this prison ministry and one of the things they do is take cookies in. Anyway, let me just tell you that you really really should get a lemon cake mix and add 2 eggs and half cup oil. You don't even need to get out your mixer, just stir and drop. They were fabulous. Butter pecan and orange were also superb. You can also add things like white choc. chips to the butter pecan and cream cheese icing to any of them... oh boy. The end.

Rivedance is coming to Baton Rouge in November. I want to go so bad I can taste it, but after looking at ticket prices, I'm not sure it's worth it. A good seat clearly wouldn't be an option and even sitting in the nosebleed section is pretty expensive. I had just been talking to someone about how far we'd have to go to see Riverdance and how much we want to go, and then in the next few days, when Dave and I were walking we saw the sign for them coming right to our doorstep. It makes me ill to think about it.

Last night I went to a math function with Dave. It was odd - if it would have been other grad students, that would have been one thing, but this was all undergrads from schools all over the country who were doing a summer program at LSU. Dave's advisor was having a party for all of them and told Dave that he and his wife should come. So we did. hmmmm... it was interesting. Oh the nerdiess in that room. I was bored out of my mind until I went to talk to the professor's wife. She has a magnet on her fridge that says, "I'm too pretty to do math." I liked her instantly. Anyway, chatting with her was nice. Oh, to back up, what drew me to her and the kitchen was in the living room everyone was sitting around and all of a sudden they were saying things like two is three, six is three, ten is three, five is four, eleven is six, four is cosmic... I thought first of all that they had all lost their nerdy little minds. Then I figured they were all talking about some high level math thing that I couldn't hope or want to grasp. It was odd. Anyway, on the way home, Dave told me no, it had nothing to do with high level math. It was just a silly riddle. So I ask you, do you get it? One is also three, forty two is eight. bla bla bla.

Well, congrats if any of you are still reading this. Hope I haven't bored you to tears. The next 2 weeks will be spent packing ferociously. I hope you all had a fabulous weekend.