Updatey Stuff

Well, we were going to a filk tonight but chose not to because I could­n’t han­dle the amount of ‘ose I expect­ed after the shut­tle dis­as­ter. I don’t have a prob­lem with peo­ple rec­og­niz­ing the event, I just could­n’t han­dle the addi­tion­al depression.

Though I feel like I’ve had a pret­ty lazy day, I did accom­plish some things. Sam and I sort­ed through a bunch of papers and made some progress on the fil­ing. I sub­mit­ted my FAFSA. I got all the way through fil­ing my tax­es on the Tur­b­o­Tax site, hav­ing been told that the fil­ing would be free. My brows­er crashed and I had to log back in. The site said that the fil­ing would be free—and then they want­ed to charge me for the prepa­ra­tion because I had to restart the process. Huh? So I’m not going to use them but will instead use one of the oth­er ser­vices. Now that I have all the infor­ma­tion togeth­er, it should­n’t take too very long to re-do the forms.

The “eat­ing change” is going well. I’ve stayed with­in my points and been a good girl. I have, how­ev­er, decid­ed not to try doing the low-carb thing until I have a chance to read the Atkins book or some­thing sim­i­lar. For now, I’ll just stick with Weight Watch­ers and try to be mind­ful of the carbs. I can always mod­i­fy it lat­er, but this is a step in the right direction.

Hmmm, what else…the kids spent last night with god­dessin­ga and fam­i­ly and went to anoth­er gym­nas­tics meet. real_pochacco ate them out of house and home, so it’s a good thing GiG brought them home today! I can’t say enough good things about our fam­i­ly mem­bers in Athens.

Speak­ing of which—well, last Sun­day night I made the choice to pull back from the quad for now. There are things going on that have to be dealt with for me per­son­al­ly, for sam­bear, in our rela­tion­ship and in our fam­i­ly here. So we aren’t dat­ing god­dessin­ga and greyknight right now, although we con­tin­ue to love them dear­ly. sam­bear and I were able to use the kid-free time they grant­ed us to work on some things and get a much-need­ed “just us” break.

We still wish to move to Athens some­day. It’s been sam­bear’s dream ever since he left there, long before I met him. But that’s being pushed back a bit. Since I’m going to be attend­ing school in Mari­et­ta come May, we’ve decid­ed to look for hous­ing on that side of town. Our lease here is up in May, and we have to either stay in this school area until real_pochacco fin­ish­es high school or move then. The high school here uses a tru­ly weird cred­it sys­tem that is not the same as any oth­er in Gwin­nett coun­ty, and accord­ing to peo­ple I know who work in Gwin­nett high school records offices, trans­fer­ring in or out of that high school to anoth­er in Gwin­nett coun­ty almost always results in loss of cred­its and delays in grad­u­a­tion. UGH!

I have deep roots here in Gwin­nett, hav­ing lived here for the most part since 1977. My par­ents are here, my sis­ter and her hus­band are here, I went to mid­dle and high school here, our trust­ed auto mechan­ic is here, our doc­tors are here, etc. If we need any­thing in this coun­ty, we can prob­a­bly find it through some­body who knows some­body. When Katie trans­ferred to school here, no less than four peo­ple work­ing inside the school sys­tem con­tact­ed the school prin­ci­pal to request that she be assigned to a par­tic­u­lar teacher (and she was). We know which teach­ers are good and which are bad news and which schools to avoid. Since Katie is home­schooled, that isn’t as impor­tant for her—but it mat­ters for G and real_pochacco. We would­n’t have known about the high school cred­it weird­ness with­out that network.

Cobb and Chero­kee coun­ties may not seem that far away—in fact, Katie’s father and I lived in Smyr­na when we were first mar­ried, and I lived there again for a bit in the mid-90s. But I don’t know as many peo­ple there, and it isn’t “home” the way Gwin­nett is. I know most of the back roads here. I know their his­to­ry, and which roads USED to be back roads that are now sig­nif­i­cant thoroughfares.

I know, this seems tru­ly sil­ly to those who have moved around repeat­ed­ly, espe­cial­ly those who move off across the coun­try or even to anoth­er coun­try. But I’m a home­body in a big way. Mov­ing down to Dublin with Wayne in 1990 was a much big­ger deal than I’d expected.

On the plus side, the west side of town seems to be pagan cen­tral any­more! Most of the CHE play­dates and co-ops are there, so we’ll be able to get to them more eas­i­ly. We’ll be fur­ther away from some of our friends, but clos­er to oth­ers. There’s anoth­er UU con­gre­ga­tion there (or two), and we’d be much clos­er to it than we are to UUCA.

shad­owkatt and I went to the library this week and I have an even big­ger stack of books to read now, with more request­ed. I took care of some stuff I’d neglect­ed bad­ly —like my tags and dri­ver’s license renew­al that I’d been putting off since Novem­ber. Yes, I’ve been a bad girl, but I’m get­ting better.

Tomor­row we need to go to my par­ents’ house to pick up some firewood—apparently, Dad­dy had to take down a tree in their yard. It’ll be green, but it’s hard­wood and we can let it dry. I’m hop­ing to get sam­bear to bring up the exer­cise rid­er thing so I can use it again. shad­owkatt has choir prac­tice, then we have Try­bal­a­ka prac­tice. I’m look­ing for­ward to our practice.