Think of a Title for this Blog Entry

At least I am not the only person in the world capable of embarrassing myself in print, right? I keep thinking I am going to be struck by inspiration and write something brilliant, but instead I am spinning this week. My losing streak has continued; as I was getting on the airplane Sunday I realized my grandmother’s wedding ring was not on my finger. That was devastating. And we now have a missing lunchbox, misplaced homework, and it’s a long and tedious story, but the loss of all of the stuff that was on my iPod, which was mostly backed up but not completely.

I’ve been widowed a bit, by the Halo 3 release, only it isn’t as annoying as other video game releases that have left me feeling abandoned. I want to say maybe we are getting the knack of this married thing and communicating a bit more openly, and so more than ever things just are what they are, not potent symbols of unspoken looming things, and it probably helps that he did 99% of the parenting work while we were in New Mexico and I am getting ready to go Friday on a Bahá’í women’s retreat and so there really is no need to try to figure out the accounting of who owes whom what. Maybe it helps that we agreed on a couch at last and this is the only image I could find of it on the web but we’re actually getting two armless loveseats because our living room is very small and with a fireplace, built in bookcase and piano, that is what (I hope) will fit, and also it’s purple, no, aubergine (and I have a whole rant stored away on why we don’t actually use color names when describing catalogue items, as if ‘seaside’ were more descriptive than ‘teal’ and maybe I’ve done that already?). Also, the order takes up to eight weeks, and I have my fingers crossed about the loveseats being here before my parents and sister arrive, eight weeks from today, for Thanksgiving.

A funny story that might have gotten a blog entry of its own, only it’s late and I am tired: we no longer proofread our oldest son’s homework, because, frankly, he’s smarter than either of us. We’ll read things he has written and nod and smile. But he had a project he was trying to finish quickly before school on Tuesday morning, where are all of the kids in his class are doing presentations on a presidential candidate, and he and a partner had been making a poster of John Edwards, with pictures and so on, and he decided to google “John Edwards quotes” to put onto his poster and apparently, stuff like:

I think that the majority of messages are validating messages to confirm the survival of conscious. And many times that validation message is negative or sad.
John Edward

In my experience victims are more concerned with helping their families understand that they are still connected to them. In some rare experiences information comes through that helps understand what happened.
John Edward

Information comes through to me in 3 basic ways seen, hearing, and feeling the energy of the person that’s crossed over. In which it is a symbolic type of language.
John Edward

didn’t strike him as strange things for a politician to be saying. Until he was presenting it in class. Apparently it made the substitute that day smile, however, and he got a chance to go to the computer lab and look for some different quotes. And now he knows the difference between John Edwards and John Edward, and thinks it’s a pretty funny story.

I really cannot believe I am signed up for this retreat Friday. It’s about five hours away, and I don’t know anyone else going, have no idea what to expect, and it’s pushing my introvert’s comfort level a little bit. Plus when I get home, I’ll have about twenty-four hours to catch my breath and do laundry before heading to the airport to pick up my best friend and my eighteen month old goddaughter from Texas, with whom I’ll have two days to play before we start Art and Soul on Thursday. Which is also a little terrifying. This seems like a crazy ambitious number of things for me to try and wrap my mind around, so I am really focussed on just what needs to be done each day.