T-storms and barking dogs kept wakening me most of the night so I am hoping to sneak in a wee nap after the wedding this afternoon. The pew bows and flower arrangements are ready to go to the Church but I'm waiting for a break in the drizzle. The service is at three but the reception is not until 6:30! I hate that as I feel it's very inconsiderate of guests from out of town who need to hang out for a couple of hours. It's our minister's son's wedding but Bridezilla is definitely in charge!

The Darling Doggage are restless this morning which means there are still t-storms around. Lucy goes back to Ottawa on Wednesday for her big diagnostic appointment - rhinoscopy and CT scans plus an overnight as there will be bleeding if they remove polyps. I can't imagine a 90 minute drive with a drugged and bleeding dog so she will stay overnight.

Enjoy the last real summer weekend!

I hope the wedding goes well, despite the rainy day, Ruth.

We don't have any big plans for the weekend. Jake wants me to help him with some yard work, and there's the usual grocery shopping, but that's about it. I know my son's family will probably be over for swimming this afternoon, but I haven't heard yet from DD, whether they're coming out this weekend or not. I think we'll probably do something on the grill for supper. Salmon is sounding pretty good.

Ahhh the weekend! Drizzly here this morning, hope it clears off a bit as DD is headed to a water/amusment park today. Have to make a trip to Sam's today to get stuff for DS to take back to school monday (gotta have that easy mac!)

My boss threw an absolute fit yesterday because I am not going to be in monday (like I picked move in day!) and he has had plenty of notice! On one hand it feels good knowing he knows he can't do my job but on the other it is a bit scary! Such is life, he is going to be in trouble should I decide one day it is all to much and I am tired of the barking orders!

Ruth have a great day, hope the rain doesn't dampen the day too much!

Cottage Salmon sounds wonderful! Wish my family would eat it.

I am off to surf, only time I get the computer at home is when everyone is still in bed! Have a great weekend chicks and may we all stay OP!

Ruth: Hope the wedding goes well...we want pictures of those flowers! Isn't rain on a wedding supposed to be good luck?
BTW, my puppy ate my glasses last night. My daughter's dog started eating them about a year ago...chewed on the ear thing. Then Bijoux completely finished them off last night..nothing but a couple of lenses and chewed up chunks of frame left.

Cottage: My weekend sounds like yours. I want to get outside soon before it gets too hot. We had a tad of rain last night that cooled it off a touch, but it's supposed to be in the high 90's later. My rose garden is a weedy mess right now and I need to finish cutting back all my roses for their august "haircut" Salmon DOES sound good! We went out to eat yesterday and I was VERY dissapointed in the grilled tuna salad I got. The restaurant was supposed to be fantastic. How can you mess up a salad? It was "boring" without much flavor. Plain unmarinated artichoke hearts? No seasoning on the tuna? hummpph.

Pacer: Have fun surfing!!!

Ruth - Show us a picture of the flowers if you get a chance. You are so talented!

cottage - I like salmon on the grill. There is a good recipe in the South Beach book that uses Chinese Five Spice powder that I really like but DH doesn't like salmon so we don't have it much.

pacer - We have water park passes that we need to use but I'm thinking of waiting until next weekend. We COULD go tomorrow but I'm primary on call and I wouldn't be able to hear a pager or do anything about it. I just hope the weather is nice next weekend.

Me - Brian and I take our cat, Diesel, to the vet for her shots at 8 this morning. Then we need to glaze the bundt cake we made last night. Some of it stuck to the pan and we tried it and it really is Chocolate Decadence. Wonderfully rich but horribly fattening. The glaze should cover where the cake stuck, I hoped. The strawberry pie is ready for the party. I need to have all the willpower I can to eat right and this potluck/swim party.

Morning chicks!

Ruth Have fun at the wedding- I sure hope you are able to sneak in that nap.

Cottage I like those days when there isn't really a plan- enjoy!!

Barb I saw your post from yesterday and am not impressed with your principal's decision. I think it makes the first day of school so much smoother when the kids have already met their teacher. There are a lot of kids with real anxiety issues and even those that don't have them get nervous about school!! We had our meet the teacher last night- about 2/3rds of my kids came, so I thought that was a good turnout.

Femme Your dog ate your glasses?? Maybe you and Ruth can share an emergency eye care plan!

Me- I have been MIA the last few days- I have never worked this hard to get ready for a new year. I am absolutely EXHAUSTED!! The good news is that everything is set, the team is ready, and the kids are excited. I also don't need to go anywhere near there this weekend, which is what my goal was.

I have a lot of little errands to do today and then we are going to the in-laws for dinner. Sadly, that is never a visit we look forward to, but they only live 20 minutes away and we don't see them enough.

Okay, need to get my day organized and figure out exactly what needs to get done.

Love ya chickies! I never am able to post as much once I am back at school, but think about you girls all the time!

Happy Saturday Ladies,

I'm finally back after the move into the new house. I even managed to lose a pound despite eating distinctly nonbeachy for 2 weeks. I guess it's all that manual labor! I'm back on track now though. Just need to get the exercise equipment set up in the basement.

Ruth, have a great time at the wedding. I hope you get that nap.

Cottage, I saw a great salmon recipe on Food Channel. You put fresh herbs on top, then white wine (although I now use sherry), then olive oil. Cook it, plate it, reduce the juice and pour over. Wow. Don't know how it would work on the grill unless you used a container instead of a basket or a plank, but it's worth trying sometime.

Pacer, I know the energy-draining disgust of a boss from ****. Mine called me 2 days after I moved (still during my vacation days) to see if I could drop everything and come to work. I told her I can't even find my shoes. I'm in flip flops. She SIGHED, like it was an imposition. Don't you just want to hit them with something sometimes?

Femme, sorry the dog ate the glasses! Those frames are tempting though!

Barb, those pastries sound absolutely wonderful! DH and I are going out for wine and cheese today. Your chocolate cake would make the best dessert afterward. Want to send me some?

Kiko, best of luck on the school year. We have been absolutely bombarded by school physicals at the clinic the past few weeks. Knowing all those little cherubs (hah!) are now in your charge does not make me envy you!

Well, ladies, have a great day. I'll be around the Beach more now that moving mania is calming down.

Did Nessa ever come back?

L

Kiko, you will appreciate this. I don't start computer classes till the day after labor day. I teach 5 classes a day and there are 15 kindergarten classes, so they come every 3 days. A lot of planning, organizing and dealing with 25 onery computers. Even though I haven't had kids yet, I have to go every day. This is when I am supposed to be doing my "getting ready" stuff...typing up class lists, assigning computers, making seating tags etc..for 300 kids and also dealing with teacher's computers. ie "My computer won't even turn on"..uh, let's plug it in...you get the picture. I also have to load software into every computer, put all the kids names in the computer for each program etc..takes about an hour or so a computer and there are 25 of them, so we are talking 25 hours just on that and I only work 20 hours a week.

For some reason people seem to think that I have nothing to do and am just sitting in my room twiddling my thumbs, so I am constantly being pulled out of the room to do stuff no one else can or has time to do.

Yesterday was the kicker. A new teacher stopped me on the sidewalk and asked me if I could watch her class a couple of times a day so she could go pump her breasts. Uh, Ok. but I tell her that I am only there a 1/2 day. So, I saw her class out on the benches getting ready to have a snack around 10, so I went out and asked her if she wanted me to watch them for a few mintues. So, I stay with them during snack time..then the bell rings for recess. Every teacher has to stay out on recess duty for now till the kids know what they are doing, so I go out for recess...15 minutes in 100 degree weather.. Most teachers on duty bring hats and are full of sun screen on duty days. I had neither and I could feel the wrinkles forming around my eyes again. (I've spent a fortune getting rid of them) then recess is over and I have to round them all up. She did not have name tags on them (all kids are supposed to be tagged with their name and the teacher's symbol so they are easy to be "found" if they can't remember the teacher's name and put back in the right line".) I had no idea who was or was not in her class...finally got them all. Then I have to take them back to the classroom and wait a few more minutes till she shows up.

I was not a happy girl. I think the old "it's not my job, man!" comes to mind. I had to deal with breastfeeding and working years ago, but never made anyone else suffer for it.

Oh, back to snack time...there was a gorgeous little girl eating her snack. Big beautiful blue eyes..an amazing color blue..she had a cute haircut and very blond hair. She had a ziplock bag of at least 10 cookies for her snack. And she had to weigh at least 100 lbs at 5 years old. Her beautiful eyes could barely be seen and were almost slits for all the fat around them. I felt so bad for her and can only imagine what she will face when she gets older. Why didn't she have an apple for a snack, or some grapes?

Happy Saturday Chickies!

I'm just doing a quick fly-by wait for DH to get dressed so I can get my day started. Yes, we start our weekends at 1pm... the joys of being childfee most weekends. I was wiped out yesterday and slept 13 hours last night.

I'm off to complain to the portrait studio I had my stepson's pictures taken at, they chopped off the top of his head in the 8x10s.

IT'S FINALLY OVER!!!!!

We weren't as successful today as we were yesterday, surprisingly, but the garbage sales are done! We did a grand total of $270, and $155 of that is from MY garbage. Whew. It's all back in the garage and we're going to run it to a charity tomorrow and be done with all the crap! WOO HOO!

Hot and icky today. Got my hair dyed yesterday..... it's RED. I know, I was red before, but that was a natural red. This is a "Oh my gosh, Lisa really does dye her hair" red. It's pretty dark. Once I'm showered and styled, I may try to take a picture of it for everyone. It's not scary.... hard to describe. I told my hair stylist that I didn't want it koolaid red, or orange, or purple, but I wanted a dramatic change. She said "oooooookay...." and now I have a dramatic change. More mid-life crisis type changes to come, I'm sure!

Hope you're all doing well this weekend. I need to eat and take a nap. I'm pooped. 3 hrs sleep again last night. I was so tired that I apparently sleepwalked. I went to sleep on the couch because I fall asleep faster out there than I do in the bedroom and I won't disturb DH by tossing and turning and watching TV. I woke up in bed though. Don't remember switching. I think maybe I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and just stumbled back to bed like I normally do.

So I'm going to get a nap in. So much to do still, and my "vacation" is over after tomorrow. Meeting friends at the club tonight. Tomorrow I have to go to the store and get food, dump off the crap at the charity, and MIL is having an end-of-summer potluck/swim party thing that we'll be at all day. Sheesh. It'll be a relief to get back to work! (OK not really but that's alright too....)

Talk to you girls soon.

Lisa

I did pretty good at the party tonight. I had grilled chicken and a taco salad that was mostly on plan. I had some of my sugarfree strawberry pie and a little cake. All the pie was eaten and almost all of the cake. I also swam for several hours and had a wonderful time.

I got home just in time to get paged. Apparently some system administrator decided to patch 10 of our servers outside of their normal maintenance window without notifying us. Three connections didn't come back. There are still 3 servers that haven't been patched leaving me to worry that they will still get patched overnight. But I can't wait much longer so I'm heading to bed soon.

Hey! Today was supposed to be sunny and it's raining! I'm supposed to go to a post-wedding brunch at ten so it had better clear up by then or suffer the Wrath of Ruth!

This afternoon's project is to make salsa from the tomatoes, peppers, onions and cilantro that somehow marched from the garden into my kitchen. I also plan to work in a dog visit to Harry so the day will be full.

My wedding pictures are terrible! I guess I need to read the manual for a change.

Happy Sunday!

Happy Sunday back to you, Ruth, and I hope it stays that way! Jake has 3 cigarettes left, and then he's quitting! He's doing it cold turkey, though, he doesn't want the patch or the gum. So it'll be like walking on eggshells around here for a while. Please everyone say a prayer for him that he'll be able to quit for good.

We had a full house yesterday, everyone showed up to cool off in the pool. There were even some people here that I didn't know. The heat and humidity were just awful, so the pool did feel good and everyone had fun.

We're off to breakfast for now, I'll try to check in a little later. Stay cool!

Morning gals...

Got my marathon of running around done yesterday- today will consist of church and getting things done around the house.

I am still in shock that my little girl starts kindergarten tomorrow. We are so excited, it is just the strangest feeling!!

Cottage I will certainly pray for you and Jake.

Ruth How is Harry?

Need to get a move on here, the girls need baths before church....

Cottage, if I can do it, Jake can do it! Good luck with the cold turkey! If he can do it cold turkey then he's a tougher person than I. I'll pray that he does it, but reassure him that if he can't get it cold turkey, let him know that all it took was 2 weeks of the patch for me to break the habit part, and then I ditched the nicotine after that. Cold turkey is hard because you're dealing with breaking the habit (rolling down the window in the car, thinking "Oh it's time for a....." etc) and going through nicotine withdrawal at the same time. Tell him I said YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I'm kind of tired but I'll perk up here in a bit. Going to the grocery store and then over to MIL's for the party. DH has to work at 4 so we have to go earlier than we thought. Hopefully my parents can give me a lift so I don't have to leave at like 3 when DH does.

Well, I suppose I should start getting ready to go. Hope you girls have a great day.

Lisa