Fresh start

Easter is finally over, spring is really and truly here, and it feels like time for a fresh start. Nothing too radical, mind you, but I have decided to rejoin Weight Watchers. I quit back in February, in the depths of misery over my awful job. I couldn't make it to meetings and my paycheck was too small to cover even our basic expenses, so I decided to eliminate the monthly WW fee. A few weeks later I quit my job, so then I had time to go to meetings but even less money. But now I have both time and (temporarily) money. Plus, Easter is over, so no more jelly beans and chocolate eggs in the stores. I've got about 5 months until the Halloween candy starts singing to me. Let's see what we can accomplish before then.

We had an OK Easter, though things fell apart a bit at the end. Boos got up before us, of course -- because they go to bed almost every night at their regular bedtime, while Rocket Boy and I -- don't, especially on weekends. But their voices woke me up and I lay in bed listening to them hunt and exclaim over their findings. It was really more fun to listen than to watch. RB and I had divided one bag of Lifesavers jelly beans among 54 plastic eggs and 8 baskets, all separately hidden, so they had to work hard for their treats.

I finally got up and "helped" them find the last of the baskets, plus more plastic eggs -- though I'm not totally convinced we've found them all even now. Later, in the afternoon, we took turns hiding the 19 hardboiled eggs we'd dyed on Friday, and it was surprising how hard they were to find. First Rocket Boy hid them, and the boos found 18 of them. Then the boos hid them (cracking 2 in the process), and RB and I found them. Then I hid the remaining 16, and RB and the boos found 15 of them. Today RB found one more egg, but I think it's the 19th egg that was lost originally. I think one of the ones I hid is still gone and I cannot for the life of me remember where I hid it! Oh well, eventually we'll smell it...

Today, Monday, is a day off from school, but I signed the boos up for a half-day Lego "camp," and that's where they are now. A little pricey, but oh the joy of having them gone for a few hours on a day that would otherwise have the potential for extreme crankiness and lots of bad behavior.

Going back to the "fresh start" idea... in less than 2 weeks it will have been a year since we moved back to Boulder, and of course that thought brings up questions of what have we accomplished during that time, was it the right move, etc. Yowzers, it's been a hard year! The four-month summer with the boos home all day, the flood, the financial difficulties, my dreadful job experience...

And nothing is solved, unfortunately. We have no jobs, except for my part-time editing. I realized a while back that my yucky job left me so traumatized that I don't want to apply for anything else. (That realization doesn't get me off the hook, of course, I still have to apply for jobs, but I desperately don't want to.) Rocket Boy is having no luck finding work either. He gets lots of calls from headhunters with jobs that he'd be perfect for... but the companies never want to interview him.

So here we are: no jobs... but a windfall from the sale of the house... but it'll be gone far too soon... we're pretty healthy... but I'm fat... but I'm rejoining Weight Watchers today... the twins are doing great... but they drive us crazy... and I feel like a terrible parent most days... but doesn't everyone feel that way?... we're back in Boulder... but we miss all our family and friends in California... but I'm really glad we don't live in Ridgecrest anymore.

There's a woman I know slightly -- well, knew briefly, when we were still in Ridgecrest -- who has a Ridgecrest blog something like my old one. I follow it, if only to see photos of the lands we learned to love. It's a much more positive blog than mine was, though, and I puzzle over this sometimes. She's in a happier place in her life, but I don't think she likes Ridgecrest any more than I did. She's just a more positive person and likes to focus on the good and leave the bad out entirely.

That's not me. (Have you noticed?) I'm sure I include far too much of the bad in this blog, but you always hear about how everyone's so positive on their blogs and Facebook that it makes everyone else depressed, sure that their lives don't measure up. When I write about some awful experience we have with the twins, I  tell myself: at least people reading this can feel better about their own lives.

For school, the boos had to make "timelines" about their lives from babyhood to their dreams of the future. They're due tomorrow, so I FORCED the boys to finish them this morning before Lego class. I like how they turned out:

From bottles to bicycles -- we've really come a long way. Will I someday be the mother of a teacher and a police officer? It's fun to dream about. And on we go.