What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Wow!  Finally, after three months, I am back to writing.  What can I say?  It has been a busy, busy time for us.  Let’s recap for now and we can get into details later.

The boy turned four recently.  He is enjoying being back at school with his friends and especially enjoying not being at the cold, antiseptic daycare he was stuck at over the summer.  He is getting the hang of swimming, riding a two-wheeler, reading and writing, and using swear words in context.  He is on a soccer team and he has his first game this week.  

He ditched me in favor of hanging out at a girl’s house for the first time yesterday. As I held the football and watched him dash off across the lawn and through the trees with her, I have to admit I had never been so happy/sad/proud before in my life...

We traded a house of sticks for a house of bricks.  The new place needed a lot of things done to it - nothing too major - but we hired a contractor for a lot of the larger jobs, like tree removal and repairing load-bearing masonry.  The smaller things occupy my somehow-always-thirty-item-long to-do list.  I can’t decide if I should track down the guy who lived here before and a) buy the guy a freaking hammer and an extensive instruction manual for it or b) thank him for being such a neglectful, lazy bonehead that it makes my day-to-day actions appear absolutely heroic by comparison.  Definitely more on that later.  Remind me to tell you about the chainsaw and the Pyrex dishes sometime...

I built three workbenches, modified a birdhouse, built some bookends, completed over 100 to-do list items so far from “hang paintings” to “replace broken deck board” to “re-stain desk for son”. I built a chalkboard, built a towel rack, and engraved our name on the mailbox in compliance with HOA regulation 425b-12, Section vii Paragraph 4 entitled “Resistance is Futile”.

I grilled out about 10 times, went to Busch Gardens twice, went to the pool a couple of times,  and went to the beach once.  I bought a sweeeet new guitar (yes, I am Level 9, now), too.

Oh, and once a saw a blimp...

More later.