Summer time

I've got a hundred contingencies for the summer, all centered around whether or not I'll be employed. It looks unlikely that I'll get a job for the summer since I'm not a teenager, so I've started making unemployed plans.

One of the plans is to exercise. I've walked two days in a row now. I know many of you have heard me before and are rolling your eyes, but should I remain unemployed, I have no excuse but to continue on my walking plan. So far I've walked 45 minutes each day, but my plan is to move it up to an hour. Shouldn't be too hard. I'm not pushing it, just trying to enjoy it so that I keep doing it. I have got to get into better shape because currently I'm walking around like I'm 83, not 43.

A second set of plans involves finally cleaning up my bedroom and painting the living room walls. I'm a little frightened by this because the jobs look impossibly hard to me at this moment. It's a matter of Just. Do. It.

The third set of plans revolve around travel. We'll try to make our yearly summer California trip to visit family and friends. And I also want to make a trip to visit the Kings in Florida. Thank God for Delta flight privileges! And maybe, just maybe, Keith and I can get away for a bit for our 21st anniversary in July.

However, I didn't expect for the summer to start out as it has. Our dryer decided to stop actually drying. It spins and cools forever, but that doesn't do us a lot of good. Keith brought home a very nice set of lines to dry clothes out on the deck, except it's been literally raining ever since he installed them! Ack! At least the repairman is coming on Tuesday. I got parts for the dryer just today in a weird case of Service Preparedness. I keep looking around for the hidden cameras. I think I'm starring in some Candid Camera episode.

The vacuum is not working properly either. The dog hair has pretty much overtaken the entire house. That and the smell of those turtles. But I don't think I have to worry too much more about the turtles. Keva is trying to kill them off. She got a hold of Krush and hurled him onto the floor where Kade found him, like a bad episode of Starsky and Hutch (my age is showing). He came running over to me where I was working hard at Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook, "Mommy! Mommy! Krush is DEAD! Look, he's bleeding!" It was very sad. I took a good look at him and he was in fact bleeding and his bottom shell was cracked nearly across, but there were signs of movement where his head had gone into hiding, so I told Kade to go ahead and put him back into the tank, where Krush has been ever since acting as if his body is not nearly cracked in two. I also had to look up turtles to find out if they actually do bleed. For some reason, I didn't think they did. I thought maybe the blood had to do with the turtle snapping at Keva or the dog, but turtles do in fact bleed. There you go.

Oh, and the dishwasher decided to leak. It took us a while to figure out why the floor in the family room was getting wet. We thought maybe some pipes had burst from upstairs, but upon further discovery, that of actually USING the dishwasher, found that more water gathered in that spot, on the opposite side of the wall where the dishwasher was. (We should write our own mystery novels. Truly.) Anyway, we immediately stopped using the dishwasher, or at least thought we did, but the dishwasher duty was Kade's earlier this week, and he did not figure out that the reason that the carpet was completely pulled away from that part of the floor had anything to do with the dishwasher. So he ran it again. Who knows how much mildew and mold we have now! We do not have a warranty on a dishwasher, so we're going to have to wash dishes the old fashioned way for a while. I forgot what a pain that was! But I'm remembering now!

On the bright side, the weather has been really nice. It's been rainy but not too hot. The kids have been making the rounds of sleepovers and mooching the poor neighbors. Some days, I don't see them all day long. They come back a little tanner and dirtier. Here's hoping that the service repairman actually fixes the dryer on the first visit!