All afternoon the thunder has been booming. I am pretty much a hermit, so I didn't realize it was thunder at all. I only put two and two together when I opened the front door to toss out a diaper and noticed a big black cloud looming off in the distance.

Then I came back inside, sat a while and thought and then heard another boom (till then I'd thought they were somebody driving by with a loud stereo... But really how many loud stereos drive down residential streets on Tuesday afternoons?) and realized it might be thunder. So I opened the door again and looked at the black cloud and sure enough I saw some lightening.

I gathered up my video camera and went outside after it got dark and took some footage of the lightening. One thing I will actually really miss about Texas is the freaky weird storms here. I've never seen anything like them. Except in Switzerland. The weather there was bizarre. Here it is actually quite similar. It can be hot and dry and disgusting and then all of the sudden there's lightening and thunder all night long.

Anyways a few minutes ago, it started pouring down rain. The landlady will be thrilled to know that the grass is being watered.

I love the unpredictability of Texas weather and the slow, movie-like way that storms creep in. The thunder really does roll (whereas in California it booms) and the lightening is like a continual strobe light through the trees and the clouds. When it comes in through the window at night, it feels like I'm getting my very own light show.

This morning California had a pretty noteworthy earthquake. Everybody's getting a little dose of something.

I'm so tired of these weird mind games.

The following is a list of things I miss from California. I'm sure some of these things exist in Texas, but Texas is, in general, a shithole. And finding any of these things in this Godforsaken state would take probably a week of driving through ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. That just doesn't sound fun to me. If it's not in San Angelo, for me, it's not in Texas. Or at least it might as well not exist here.

• Grandma
• Tri-Tip
• Sushi
• Red Robin
• Krispy Kreme
• Big shopping malls
• Outlet malls
• Beaches
• Seafood
• Fast-food Japanese
• Noodle restaurants
• Del Taco
• El Pollo Loco
• Grocery stores all having California Rolls
• Trader Joe's
• Roadside produce stands
• Predictable weather
• Base housing
• JCPenney portrait studios
• Toys R Us
• Unmetered water
• Time Warner cable
• P.F. Changs
• Cheesecake Factory
• Mexican food
• Apple Store
• Disneyland
  
• No crazy landlady!

Here are some things I enjoy about Texas (San Angelo):

• Brick houses
• Lake Nasworthy
• Whataburger
• No potato bugs (that I am aware of)
• Fredericksburg

This place sucks.

This is easily the coolest song on Noggin these days. It makes me happy. Goofy old Dirty Socks Funtime Band and their hit, "Dinosauring".

We had an uneventful weekend. Mark ran in a triathlon (he was on a team, which I think is actually cheating as far as triathlons go... but whatever) on Saturday and then we came home and slept. And then we went to the crappy sushi place here in town and had some barely edible sushi. I heard somewhere that it takes 3 years to learn to properly make sushi. The chefs at Nakamura didn't bother to figure it out. Everything there tastes dry and dissatisfying, even when doused in various sauces.

Anyways, then yesterday we had breakfast at Denny's, took Amaris to the playground, ran a couple of unnecessary errands, and then cleaned house for movie night. Very eventful, see. We watched Dodgeball. To my disappointment. I wanted to watch The Goonies.

I'm getting increasingly more excited about going to Okinawa. The brainstorming about Disney parks led to a lot of researching and it turns out that MCCS in Okinawa has a really awesome, extensive website. And they offer a ton of really cool annual tours, both on and off the island. It's my intention to do AS MUCH traveling as we humanly can while we're there. And since Mark will inevitably be deployed at some point, I figure I'll have plenty of opportunities to save up money to fund these excursions.

MCCS also has a lot of job opportunities. I'd LOVE to score one. But I'm not real sure I'll feel comfortable putting the little bean in daycare. I'd really like to have Amaris in daycare even just for one day a week, but I am not sure I'll feel comfortable putting my newborn in someone else's care. So I'm not quite certain if and how that'll work out for us. Time will tell, I suppose. I may potentially just apply myself to school while we're there since they offer STAP to spouses of service members stationed in Okinawa, and Mark's GI Bill will finally be coming available to me as well. We'll see what happens.

At any rate we'll have plenty to do to fill our 3 years there. And of course, I'm looking forward to the food. Genuine sushi and yakisoba and...

Yes, we'll make the most of it. We'll have a good time. Mark my words.

I have found purpose. I am finally elated to be heading out on this new adventure to Okinawa. You want to know why?? Well of course, I'd be delighted to tell you why. (Since you asked so politely and all.)

Somewhere I read that Okinawa was approximately the same distance by air from Tokyo, Japan; Hong Kong, China; and I think someplace in Taiwan. When I learned this, initially, it did not register in my head. In fact, it meant almost nothing to me. I was too bitter with the very fresh, very new knowledge that we would soon be moving against our better wishes to a foreign country I knew very little about (except what I'd heard from other military families, which was not by any means famously good news).

Today, while chatting with my friend Melinda, somehow the topic of Disney resorts came up.

Now, I grew up with a fanatical Disney mom. My mom has always said that if she were ever to get a tattoo, she'd get a Mickey silhouette on the back of her hand, right where she could see it. Often. She took my brother and me to Disneyland on a yearly basis for as long as I can remember, even when it meant running up a credit card (and often, I suspect, it did). She was never happier than when she was walking through the main gate and onto Main Street, U.S.A. She rubbed off on me, I'll admit. I got quite obsessed myself. And it got to the point where if it wasn't Disneyland it didn't feel like a real vacation.

One year, my brother wanted to go to a week-long Anime convention in Anaheim, CA. I think ordinarily my mom probably would have laughed at him and said to take a hike. But this was different. This was Anaheim. Home of Disneyland. Mom quickly agreed to take him. She bought 5-day passes for the two of us, and we spent the entire week overstuffing ourselves with as much Disney as we could manage while Robert indulged himself in the anime craziness going on just across the street at the convention center. We set out to do everything we could do at Disneyland in those 5 days, even the things we'd never wanted to do before. All the way down to the canoe ride - which was exhausting.

Shortly afterwards, she bought us Annual Passports. Not the dinky ones with half of the calendar blacked out as no-use dates, but the BIG Premium passports that were good 365.25 days a year and got us free parking and 10% discounts at almost every vendor in the park. I can remember MANY weekends where she'd look at me on a Friday evening and say, "Want to go to Disneyland?" And I of course agreed and off we went early on Saturday morning, to spend the day there and drive home Saturday night.

Fond memories, I tell you.

Which is why it shocks me that it took this conversation with Melinda this evening for everything to click in my head.

Boys and girls, I'm on a mission.



The airfare is potentially going to suck. And we're going to have to save lots of money to be able to pull off these vacations, but damnit I am DETERMINED! I went to Switzerland last June to visit one of my best friends, and we toyed with the idea of going to Euro Disney in France for a few minutes, before we realized we were holding the price sheet and there was just no way in Hell. But the thought was there. The thought has always been there to visit the foreign Disney parks.

The more I think about it, the more I really hope we can find a nice, similar-to-ours family to be our travel buddies (so that we can alternate who sits out with 'the kids' for the rides they won't be able to partake in). But, like I said, DETERMINED! This is my one big opportunity to visit these two parks, and I have 3 years in which to do it. I think it's do-able with a little discipline and a lot of will.

I am seriously so excited that I feel like I just might burst. When I logged into the Hong Kong Disneyland website and the music started to play, I almost cried. (Yes, hormones.) And of course, Tokyo Disney looks absolutely lovely too. If we're going to do this, we'd better be doing it all the way, too. I want to stay at Disney owned hotels. And I want to stay for more than one or two days. I'd like to ideally make each trip at least a week long so that we can do the parks and then we can see the rest of the cities in question. I've always wanted to see Tokyo, and grandma used to always tell me how much she'd like to visit Hong Kong one day, and like I said, this is pretty much my one big chance for all of those things.

Yippee let the planning begin! I think that I might pee my pants before Mark is available to discuss this with.

Our newest addition is due February 10, 2009 - grandma's birthday! I found out I was pregnant back in June but had been waiting to "go public" with the news till we heard a heartbeat. Today we went for a sonogram and heard little bean's heartbeat at 166 beats per minute.

Mark says it's a boy. Amaris says, "Wow! Look, it's a baby!"

I saw on Noggin that the Backyardigans Live show was coming to San Antonio. So I got online and checked dates. August 2-3, a perfect weekend for us! I looked up tickets on Ticketmaster.

It turns out that for Mark, Amaris and me to go and see the Backyardigans, we'd have to shell out nearly $115! What the heck?? Tickets are $28 each, and then there is a "convenience fee" of over $9 per ticket. (Which I don't quite understand - paying $115 is hardly convenient for me.) Who pays that much to see a children's show?? I mean, seriously? And that's just for three of us. Imagine if we had two or even three children! The only way I could imagine being able to go at all would be if we somehow managed to win the tickets through a contest or a radio giveaway. Which I doubt is real likely, since I don't hear of radio stations giving away tickets to cartoonish musicals all that often. And anyways even if they did, I doubt I'd be the winner. I very seldom win anything.

For me, the thrill of seeing a life-sized Pablo dancing around on stage may be worth 1,000 words, but it's certainly not worth over $100. No way. Nick, Jr. is insane. Seriously.

We watched Premonition last night. I was disappointed. I should have rented License to Wed or something instead. But I did see a preview for Across the Universe, which I'd never heard of before, and that looked fantastic. So now I'm on a mission to find out more about that movie.

By the end of the weekend, every weekend, my house always ALWAYS looks like it was hit with an unyielding typhoon. Mostly the kitchen and the living room, but I've noticed this phenomenon is slowly seeping into other spaces as well - the office, the bathrooms, and the bedrooms. I don't know what exactly it is that causes this. Laziness, Amaris, Mark, heck - maybe even me. Most likely suspect is a mix of all of the above - I know that I am feeling less than energetic, Amaris is being about as destructive as she can be, and Mark has been attached to his computer and the couch all weekend attempting to learn to play his guitar and playing Mob Wars on Facebook. Whatever the cause, I'm exhausted just looking around.

Mark rented I Am Legend last night for us to watch, and we sat and watched it while Amaris took a really long nap after we came home from the lake. That was a rough movie. I mean it. I sobbed so hard and uncontrollably that I started to feel really self-conscious and uncomfortable. Mark kept looking over at me. That didn't help matters - I just felt more on the spot. I didn't realize a movie starring Will Smith could ever be so heartbreakingly sad. It was good. Very good. Not at all what I expected - don't quite know what I expected, though. But I can say fairly certainly that I never want to watch it again. Once was more than enough for me.

I have a hankering for a bierock. Seems that just because I am in Texas means that I am pretty much doomed to want every single food that I haven't found here. Miserable old Texas. I can't wait to get the heck out of here. Of course then we'll be in Okinawa where all of my faves and craves are even further out of reach. I just can't win, I tell you.

As far as I am concerned, these shows should never have been created. When these shows come on, I can feel brain cells dying. Each of them a slow and painful death.

5. The Wonder Pets!
The Wonder Pets could very easily have been a really cute show. It is similar to Disney's Little Einsteins, except instead of cartoon children, there are pre-k class pets as the main characters. Linny, Tuck (and Ming-Ming, too!) are the three "heroes". Every episode, they encounter a "pwobwem", where a baby animal is in "twouble" and needs to be "wescued".
When we start watching the Wonder Pets, I think to myself, "I can handle this show." And then that fucking duck opens it's mouth and says "This is SEE-WEE-US!" and I want to bang my head into the nearest hard surface. Thank you SO much for instilling a speech impediment in my child. How very educational of you.

4. Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends
Never have you encountered a cartoon quite as gimmicky and nonsensical as Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends. This show makes me want to straight up vomit. Miss Spider is the "mother" and has something like 8 kids. However, only five of her children are spiders. Nobody tell her pantywaist husband, but I think she may have cheated on him to also have mothered a bed bug, a dragonfly, and a beetle. Her husband is like half her size and wears this ridiculous little hat.
They do stupid things in this show, like instead of saying "everybody" or "somebody", they'll say "everybuggy" or "somebuggy". Or your birth day is called your "hatch day". It gets EXTREMELY irritating.

3. Max and Ruby
This show will just piss you off. This show is all about how Ruby, who is supposed to be 7, parents (and micromanages) her mischievous little brother Max. She is constantly making little Max feel stupid, or trumping his fun. It makes you wonder, just where are their mother and father?? Ruby is a total snot. Occasionally you see their grandmother in the show, but not every time. It's generally just Ruby telling Max what he can and cannot do. Max does not enjoy being bossed around. I can't blame him. Ruby sucks. In one episode, she actually tells him "We have to clean you up - you look disgusting."

2. Oobi
Seriously, this show is some creepy shit. I don't even know who thought this was a good idea. But I'd like to meet them and punch them in the face. Another show that promotes improper grammar and pronunciation, ("grandpa" is "grampoo", for example, and none of their sentences are complete - "Oobi help?"), but unlike The Wonder Pets, this show doesn't look cute doing it. A bunch of hands with bug-eyes wandering around your TV, talking to each other does not equal good times as far as I'm concerned. Actually I think it probably equals some pretty freaky nightmares.

1. Yo Gabba Gabba!
Yes, I have indeed saved the most creepy, hands-down, for last. I don't even allow this show to play in our house. When I hear the creepy intro music, I change the channel at speeds that would make a pit-crew proud. Yo Gabba Gabba makes entirely NO sense, whatsoever. There's this guy in an orange jump suit with a bunch of little toys, from what I gather, and when you "say the magic words" (which are, incidentally, "Yo Gabba Gabba") the little toys come to life and jump around spastically and sing songs which generally don't have to make sense. And the guy in the orange jump suit is always smiling this really creepy "I'm going to eat you as soon as you turn your back" smile.

Uh, no thanks.


I wouldn't be sad if I never had to watch these shows ever again. Honest.

I'm going to start observing "Wordless Wednesday". Next week. I swear.

Today I have to share this hysterical article. Otherwise I might have forgotten to do so. That would have been tragic.

I'm fairly certain that I don't enjoy the night shift schedule. Moreso I don't enjoy Mark's obsession with going to the gym. I mean, I'm all for him wanting to improve himself and such, but goodness by the time he comes home he's been gone for 12 long hours. (At best!!) And okay, before, on the day shift, he was probably gone about the same amount of time. But when he got home I was alert enough to enjoy his company. On this schedule by the time he comes home I am in zombie mode and am ready to go to bed without passing "Go" and collecting my $200. And us hanging out in the morning is just not the same. Particularly since he has discovered "Mob Wars" on Facebook - decidedly one of the most obnoxious games/time-wasters EVER.

And I don't have the motivation to cook. I should be making dinner so that we can have a meal together, even if it's not dinner. But I have no drive to do it in the afternoon. We get up in the morning between 9:30 and 10 or so, and then we eat around 11-11:30. And then he leaves by 1.

I sat here staring blankly at a grocery list earlier today. But I really don't know how to cook "lunch". We've always just improvised for lunch, and then had our big meal at dinnertime. It doesn't feel right to plan out dinners for lunch. And it feels really strange to think that I might cook dinner so soon after waking up. But I don't have the motivation to cook "dinner", either. With just Amaris and I here at home, I find myself avoiding the kitchen like the plague. Last night I heated her up a Kid Cuisine. Remember Kid Cuisine? I used to think it was Christmas when my mom caved and bought me one of those for dinner. Seriously. It was like the best thing ever. This was Amaris' first KC, and she really liked it. Particularly she enjoyed the chocolate pudding, which she refused to use her spoon for - instead she scooped it up with her finger. It was magical. But that certainly shouldn't be my plan for EVERY night. Take tonight for example. It's almost 9PM now and I haven't gotten inspired with any great ideas for dinner at all. I'm just sitting here waiting for Amaris to let me know that it's dinner time and that I'm a worthless loser for not just feeding her at a reasonable hour like a normal mother would. Instead she just keeps requesting refills on her Crystal Lite and more trail mix. We're really living healthy here, let me tell you. I am such a loser mom. In my defense, I really need groceries. But honestly, it's a vicious cycle. I think, "I need groceries." And then I look at that list again for half an hour and nothing ever occurs to me to add to it.

Today was certainly not a "Wordless Wednesday". My mistake.

That's right: Moose A. Moose strikes again. This month the theme is taking a trip. This song is decidedly less annoying than "Beside the Seaside," but obnoxious just the same.

Today Mark switched to the night shift. So rather than getting up really early for school and coming home sometime around 6PM, he slept in this morning and then stayed at home until around noon, when he left to go swim laps and work out at the gym before class starts at 3:30. I'm undecided on how I feel about this new schedule. He should be heading home tonight sometime between 12midnight and 1:30 or so. Depending on how the "day" goes and how nice his instructor is feeling.

Amaris is related to Miss Cleo, I think, because she adjusted to his new schedule over the weekend, it seems. Before we were even on the new schedule. She started taking naps again, but the naps start around 5-6PM, and go until 7-9PM. And then she's up till like midnight. I guess I can't really complain about that, since I'd be awfully lonely if I were up all alone until Mark came home and she went to bed at "normal" time around 9PM.

You know that whole "hurry up and wait" thing people always joke about? It's completely true. I am sitting here anxiously waiting on everything to do with this upcoming PCS. I think to myself, "I'm going to get this under control. I'm going to plan it all and figure everything out." And then I sit down to do it and I run into a thousand road blocks. I can't do anything about our airline plans. I can't estimate our move-out date from this house. I can't get in touch with the Okinawa housing office until we have orders. I can't organize a yard sale all alone and Mark isn't really very interested in helping...

It's so frustrating. Really. I like to try and have things planned out. I like feeling like I have a handle on the situation. I like it when I can write down details and have my ducks in a row.

Currently, I have a bunch of sheets of blank paper and a facial expression to match. And while I can find several informative websites on Okinawa (my favorite so far being time2pcs), the information really doesn't do me a whole lot of good until I am actually DOING it.

I have a headache.

I just want to know how to play this stupid thing. I'd like to skip all of the learning process and go straight into knowing how to read (and play) tabs and having fun with it. Instead I sit here with the stupid foolio sitting on my lap, and I am miserable and puzzled and completely irritated. I am good at making noise with it, but none of my noise means anything. Which is really frustrating when you know what it's supposed to sound like. Stupid guitar. Stupid lack of patience.

And stupid me!! I just wish it were easy! And I wish I had somebody to properly teach me without humiliating me entirely. This is why I give up on things so easily.

I am no good without proper instruction.

My biggest Texas fear (which must be pretty big as "everything is bigger in Texas") is that we'll get all the way through our time here and I'll never get to go to San Antonio. As we approach the potential week that we'll be hearing definitively about our orders, this fear is closing in on me even more than before. Our time is running out. I don't think I'll ever opt to visit Texas again. I haven't been thoroughly impressed with the state. I mean, there are some cool things here and there, but really I am disappointed and irritated with the obnoxious "pro-Texas" attitude that is... well, everywhere, and with the lack of anything in between point A and point B, too. I mean, I never realized that a drive could be quite so boring till I attempted to go from San Angelo to ANYWHERE. All the time I spent planning our sightseeing here in Texas centered around San Antonio. We'd HAVE to do the Riverwalk, the River Cruise, the Alamo, the Schlitterbahn, Sea World... We'd stay at the Hyatt where the river runs through the lobby. We'd eat puffy tacos...

So far I've done none of the above. We've had other Texas opportunities throughout our time here - El Paso, Abilene, Houston, Austin, Fredericksburg, and a few other little cities nobody would recognize the names to - but nothing yet that takes us to San Antonio. I'd been holding out for a "long" weekend to do our San Antonio touristing... But at this point I'd settle for anything. I just can't bear the thought of leaving Texas without having my San Antonio experience. I'm frustrated and sad about it.

Stupid Texas.

crunk: (as defined by urbandictionary.com - definition #6) A cliched and overused hiphop term that has been beat to death more than "Bling-Bling" and "Shizzle". It means to get crazy and drunk. The term lost it's "cool" factor like two years ago, but that doesn't stop wiggers and wanna be gangstas from using the the term as much as possible.

For the 4th of July, we drove to Houston to see Tori and Jim. Let me tell you, that was a long, boring 6 hour drive. But once we got to The Woodlands (the suburb where Tori and Jim live) all was good. Amaris loved Tinker (their Pomeranian) and Johnalynn (Oh goodness I am sure I'm spelling it wrong... But that's Tori's little sister). We saw fireworks by the lake on the 4th, and then went into Houston on Saturday to have real Chinese food - the selection in San Angelo is extremely depressing and consists solely of filthy buffets - and to visit the Aquarium. It was a good trip. We hadn't seen them in almost two years, so it was really nice to get together with them before we head off to Japan for three years.

I didn't take a ton of pictures because I realized my stupid self forgot the SD card at home. So I had limited space on my camera's internal memory. These pictures are from the aquarium, and are proof enough that we were in Houston at all. :-P






Mark has duty today, so Amaris and I are alone till tomorrow. We talked on the way to and from Houston about our plans - we're probably just going to keep the car and have the military store it for us. After being financially raped (thank you so much, DCH Honda of Oxnard), we owe $12,000 on it and it's currently worth $8,000 at best. So we either keep it and continue to make our monthly payments while we're in Japan, or we take out a loan and sell it and pay monthly for a fat load of nothing the whole time we're in Japan. At least this way we'll come home to a car and will have a trade in when we go to buy new cars. I'm not thrilled with the plan, but like all of our plans regarding this move to Okinawa, most of the options aren't perfect. We're having to do a lot of compromise and taking the lesser evils. This has led to a lot of stress and head-butting between Mark and I but I just keep reminding myself that things are going to get better as soon as we have a better handle on things. Sometime around the middle of the month, we're expecting our orders.

I've started shopping for cars already. I know I'm a little over 3 years away from being able to buy new cars, but I'm excited. What can I say. I've settled on the Mazda5 for myself, and I think Mark is pretty much sold on the Tahoe Hybrid. The Mazda is economical and fits in our budget and has enough space for us without being too big for me to drive comfortably. The Tahoe satisfies Mark's need to have a truck, and by the time we get back to the states, we ought to be able to buy a used Hybrid for less than their current sticker price of upwards of $50k. I hope, at least. Geesh. It also has a crapload of space for us (I'm smelling roadtrips) and a lot of cool features. I'm excited. I've spent a decent amount of time at the Mazda and Chevy websites today, ogling the galleries. Yes, it's 3 years out, but a girl can plan and daydream, right? I'm really just so excited to have my own car again.

Speaking of cars and such, it also came to my attention this weekend that the DMV's notice of renewal never showed up for the Honda. We left California in February and all of our mail has had an easy time forwarding to us, so we thought. But I haven't gotten anything regarding my car's registration, and I think it was up in mid June. Which means my tags are probably expired - I'd know if I had looked at the license plate but I didn't remember to when we got home last night. This does not make me happy. Mark is going to call the DMV and see what's up today or tomorrow, depending on when he has an opportunity.

One other thing we did to consume time during our 6-hour drive was to compile a list of the things we plan to get rid of before leaving the states. We're going to have a really healthy yard sale, let me tell you.

Anyways, I need to buy groceries, but I can't do that when I don't have a car, so Amaris and I are going to scavenge for dinner tonight. A part of me says we should order in pizza, but a bigger part of me says, "Nah, you're crazy. Save your money."

McDonald's chocolate chip cookies rock my world.

I have decided that I need this necklace. Not "want". Need. Somebody please tell Mark.

Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'd like to point out that I've been doing a lot of.. Well, nothing. Nothing at all. I've mostly been a big bump on a log. It's been raining here and cloudy here since Saturday night. I am welcoming this change in the weather. Anything is better than the incessant heat of Texas. So we've been holed up in the house for the most part. Late last night, after we'd put Amaris to bed, Mark and I stayed up and made Rice Krispy treats. Which may seem silly and trivial to most, but for me it was fun and time spent together without the TV on. And let's face it - I'll take what I can get.

I still have no idea what is going on. I don't know when I'll know, either. Just a hurry up and wait game. I'm not enjoying it. It's stressing me out. We are upside-down on our car loan, so the fact that we'll have to sell the car soon leaves me in a panic-state. I don't know how we'll manage to sell the car. We're going to have to take out a loan to do it. That's pathetic. I wish I could just call the bank and say, "Listen, I wouldn't be ditching the car - even though you completely ripped us off on it when we bought it - but we're moving to Japan on military orders. I need to unload it and nobody will buy a 2003 Honda with 100k miles on it for the amount that is left on our loan. You know, the one that you overcharged me on from the get-go. I need to get rid of it soon. How about I make payments on it through October and then I just give it back to you and we call it even?" I don't think that American Honda Finance would find that a reasonable offer, though, and I don't want to damage my credit. So poop. I know that eventually, this will all somehow work itself out. But for now I am in a hard place. And I just keep thinking to myself that I should have never traded in the Scion. Things would be so much easier now if I was still driving that around. It'd be almost paid off, and we'd be on top. As it stands with the CR-V, I've got a good, oh, 4 years or so to go until it's paid off. Nice, huh?

Anyways. I should stop stressing about things I can't fix. At least I can't fix them immediately. I need to just get a grip.

I'm all over the place today. My house is a mess, I really want a toridon bowl from Mika's in Fresno, and diamond honey roasted almonds are delicious. Oh, and Amaris would really like to try out those skates. I'm waiting for the rain to pass. She keeps putting them on and walking around the house in them. Picture her in a t-shirt and diaper with the skates. It's ridiculous.