Little rays of sunshine

After last week's little diatribe, I received a lot of love via email and Facebook, and to that I can only say "thank you". It means a lot to me to know that I'm not the only one whose life is far from perfect, whose kids do things that leave you stare in wonder and flabbergasted silence, and whose house would never ever be featured on any HGTV show. Thank you for making me aware that what's "normal" is really only relative.

My normal, this past week, seems to have settled down. I'm not holding my breath just yet, but we've gotten some good grades (Hallelujah, amen, and Praise Jesus), haven't had any drama, and things seem to be OK. I only had to bake one batch of cupcakes this past weekend, and that was because Ozzie's birthday is next week, and I wanted to make sure I knew what I was going.
Well, that, and because the thought of not having picked out a major race for this season is freaking me out. But I may need to do some more baking before I figure that one out. I mean, do I want to do the half ironman close by, but that's known for being held in 100F weather? Or do I want to travel our of state for one? And am I ok with swimming 1.2 miles in the ocean (waves! salt! tides!)? Or do I want to train for a marathon? Or should I just give up on all this halfsies stuff and start training for the real deal (a.k.a a full ironman) instead?

Yeah, I'm thinking it will take more than a batch of cupcakes to figure that out.

In the meantime, work has been, well, pretty glorious. I'm sure bringing in left-over pear cake, pear pie, and cupcakes has helped ingratiate me with various co-workers, administrators, and secretaries, but on the whole, things have just been good. Only teaching two classes has just been freaking awesome. Don't get me wrong, I love my students, I do. But dealing with them for only two days a week makes the whole process so much more enjoyable. I can handle their shenanigans, their silly excuses, their blank stares when I ask a question so much better when I know I only have to deal with that four times a week. And working on the research community has meant I get to work with academics. People who like research. People who love research. People who could talk research all day long. People who agree to meet over lunch so we can talk about new research ideas. Oh, and because I'm not teaching, I get to wear jeans. To work. Ha! It's been fabulous. Best semester so far, hands down.

In the meantime, husband-dear and I are planning a variety of projects for our house. Some of these projects I have never had to tackle before because I've never lived anywhere this  long before, but they sound vaguely interesting, like "paint the door frames", and "re-paint the kids' rooms". Others are things we've been wanting to do for years, "paint the living room", and "put tile down in the kitchen", and I think we're finally coming to terms with the idea that we just need to bite down and get them over and done with. And then there are those projects which we've been dreaming about for years, such as a shed (that would be husband-dear's dream, not mine), and a pool (yep! me!) which we may be able to realize as well. Now, when I say pool, I mean above-ground pool with an impressively layered deck so we don't look like hillbillies, but still, a pool. We'll see.

So our normal, even though it will most likely be fraught with step-child/ex-wife craziness issues for some time to come, is definitely looking up. And especially if that normal include a pool.