Thank you, Susie!!

This is a week or so late, but I'd like to send a public thank you to my mother-in-law Susie, who came to visit last weekend just after Jason returned from Jamaica. Not only did she babysit for us so Jason and I could go out together sans baby for the first time since November (oh, how I wish I was exaggerating), but she uncomplainingly came to my family reunion that Sunday. This whole experience probably sucked for her for a number of reasons, including but not limited to:

• I baked two pies to take with us, and the whole house smelled like pies on Saturday, but I wouldn't let anyone have a piece until we got to the reunion. That alone is a hanging offense in some countries.
• The reunion was at a location four hours away from our house, so Susie got to spend 8 hours in the backseat of our car. Susie is the same height as me, so backseats and her are not a good fit.
• The reunion was in an unairconditioned building, on a day when it got to be 98F outside. There were some fans to move the air around, but all of us were picking out our outfits based on how badly they would show sweat stains.
• Our family reunions are so big (66 people this time) that we all have to wear nametags, which we make so that people can tell who we're related to. So mine has my name on it, and my mother's, and my grandmother's. Susie had to somehow put on there that she was my mother-in-law, and not actually related to anyone. I told her she should just put her name and "I came for the food," but she wouldn't play along.

So Susie gets MAJOR points for going along, pretending not to mind, and not complaining about it even once. I totally owe her some more painting at her house next time we're visiting.

Oh, and did I mention she's an awesome photographer, and having her there allowed us to get all of my grandmother's descendants in one shot? Well, except for my cousin Jeff, his wife, and three of their kids (one made it; the rest were being carted to tennis camp that day). You can just imagine them in the sorta blank area at the right side of the shot. Here's the Bohl family, or at least my grandmother's branch of it:

Please oh please oh please ...

... let them be ripe in time for the family reunion in two weeks.

The backstory: My mother's mother is the youngest of 11 (10? who can remember?) children. Years ago she and her siblings started getting together once a year for a reunion, the centerpiece of which is a shared meal that is part family gathering, part cook-off. For as long as I can remember, my grandmother and grandfather brought a platter of peeled, sliced tomatoes from their garden in Indiana. My grandparents were proud of their (huge) garden, and rightfully so - if you've never had a tomato that's never been touched by the icy hands of a refrigerator, one that is only hours off the vine, you don't know what you're missing. Between the tomatoes and corn that literally wasn't picked until the water to cook it was starting to heat up on the stove, we had some memorable meals when my parents and I used to go out to visit The Muggiest Place On Earth In August.

My grandmother has been in a nursing home for the past few years, so my aunt and uncle stepped up to the plate (so to speak) and have been taking care of the tomato situation. But things may be a little hectic for them this year, thanks to some medical issues in the family, so while I'm sure they'll attend, I don't know that Aunt Lois is going to have two hours to peel and slice tomatoes. I'm hoping to have enough of my own tomatoes to carry on the tradition for the third generation. If I throw in some from the local farmer's market, I could probably add some cucumbers and cilantro from my garden and bring a fatoush salad, too, which no one but me and Jason would eat but would make me feel like I tried.

The tomatoes shown above are just starting to barely turn color at the tops, so I guess there's hope.

It's that time again

Yep, family reunion weekend. Only this time, no mother-in-law to help with kid-wrangling. And still no tomatoes. But at least this year everyone will know who my kid is ...

Yes, I did make my daughter a (condensed) family tree t-shirt to wear to the reunion. It's not quite as cool as I had hoped, but I like that you can see the matrilinial line straight from my great-grandmother down to Liza. Wish I could have included all of her (second?) cousins in there, but it would have been a mess ... especially since one of my cousins has 7 kids! And forget about putting the whole family in there ... the whole family tree is on a sheet of kraft paper that's like 3' tall and maybe 20' long. That's not going on a 6x shirt, no matter how small you make the font.

In case you want to make one of these before your next family gathering, remember to print the names out on the iron-on transfer paper as mirror-images of how they need to be on the shirt. And try to start drawing the glitter puffy paint lines before, say, 11pm the day before you leave.

I may add on to the shirt before Liza goes back to Jason's mom's house the next time, putting Jason's family tree on the back and connecting it around to his box on the front. Because I'm all chock full of spare time and stuff ...

Not exactly the trials of Job, but annoying all the same

Last week of July: My father doesn't feel so well for a few days and finally goes to the doctor, only to discover that he has pneumonia (again). Doctor puts him on a double shot of antibiotics, and he seems to be recovering well.

Friday, July 31: While searching for change to pay the toll on our way to the family reunion, I discover that my American Express card is not in its slot in my wallet. Frantic searching of my wallet and purse do not turn up the card, but I'm reasonably sure I just left it in the pocket of my pants when I got gas on Thursday.

Saturday, Aug. 1: My father passes out while taking a shower, gashing open his forehead and wrenching his shoulder. He's only marginally coherent when my mother finds him bleeding on the floor in the bathroom*, so he gets an ambulance ride to the hospital, where he gets eight stitches and gets held over for a couple of nights to try to figure out why he passed out. My mother doesn't call me with the news, since they don't know how severe the problem is, and it's not like I'm going to be able to do anything from Indiana, anyway.

Sunday, Aug. 2: I get to sit next to my grandmother at the family reunion. She does not say one coherent sentence the entire time she's there, but she does look pleased as punch to get a shiny package to unwrap for being the oldest attendee. When we get home from Indiana, I get my mother's message about my father being in the hospital. And my American Express card is not in my pants pocket. But nobody has charged anything on it since I bought gas last week, so I doubt it's been stolen.

Monday, Aug. 3: I go to the doctor to renew my prescriptions; he tells me I need to lose weight and that I shouldn't tell anyone how good my blood pressure is because I'd be a bad influence on them. And the nurse who draws my blood for routine testing strikes oil on the first try, yet still manages to leave a bruise the size of a 50-cent piece. My father is discharged from the hospital, and I talk to him while I hold the puke bucket for my daughter for the sixth or seventh time in less than two hours. And did I mention the puke in my bra? And my hair? And my hallway carpeting, all across the bathroom floor, and all over the bathtub?

Tuesday, Aug. 4: We stay home all day so Liza can recover her strength. Liza discovers that dry erase markers write really well on the family room carpeting. Liza's older friends from the neighborhood come over to do crafts with us, and I hear the saddest thing I've ever heard in my whole life: "You mean, it's okay for me to make stuff with the clay? My mother doesn't let me do crafts at home. She says it's too messy. ... Can I bring these back in a few days so I can paint them? I'm not allowed to paint at home." The girl is 10 years old. Meanwhile, Tuesday evening someone steals my iPod** out of my (unlocked) car. We got it for free, and I've been thinking of upgrading it anyway, but still ... I hate it when people violate my space. And they didn't even steal the $12 pack of batteries that were sitting right next to it, so they're obviously not very smart (or have never used those batteries before).

Wednesday, Aug. 5: I stay up late to finish the bodice of a dress I've been knitting for weeks for Liza, but when I get it off the needles and hold it up, it looks suspiciously wide. I try it on, and the chest area is too large for my waist, and the waist area of the dress is only slightly too tight for my hips. Whoops.

Thursday, Aug. 6: I wake up at 4:30, puking my guts out, only there's nothing in my stomach, so I get to dry heave about 400 bajillion times over the course of the day. Liza and I watch television continuously from 7am to 2:30pm; I'm so sick I don't even object to watching three hours of Barney videos back-to-back. I'm so sick, I don't blog. Or knit. Or sleep. I do, however, get lots of practice moaning and clutching my stomach. I'm so achy at bedtime that I have to take Tylenol just to get to sleep.

Friday, Aug. 7: Liza wakes me up at 2am and wants to cuddle. I'm too tired to go to her room, and Jason is sleeping downstairs to avoid The Plague, so I let her sleep with me. Liza wakes me up at 4am, having just peed all over herself (and my bed) for the first time in months. I send her back to her bed, pull back the covers over the wet spot, and go back to sleep. During the day, I recover enough to eat some soup and applesauce, and to clean up the squalor in my house. Liza is in rare form, refusing to do anything I ask and trying to find new and unusual ways to get in trouble. At one point she decided that the best way to get a piece of pink fuzz off of the cat was to cut off the cat's fur with a pair of scissors. And the cat let her. And she did it where I had already vacuumed. And the only reason the pink fuzz was there in the first place was because she had taken the scissors to her feather boa.

Saturday, Aug. 8: I'm feeling queasy again and it's raining, which means no visit to the Corn Festival for me today. Jason has taken Liza to the science center, and I'm trying to finish up some Lazy Mama business while not heaving on the poor lady's mermaid tail.

Yes, I know none of it is tragic. Jason has coworkers whose kids have been in surgery for various things this week, and other people have a lot more immediate and serious health issues than a stomach bug.

But still, daaaaaamn. This week has sucked donkey balls. And I can't even wallow in brownie-flavored self-pity, thanks to the queasiness (and my doctor ... asshole).

*So, did you get those stains out of the grout yet, Mom?

** It's a Shuffle, which uses a completely different docking/charging setup than any other MP3 player I've seen, so unless the thief already has one, he's going to have to buy one if he wants to change the songs on his "free" iPod. I hope he really enjoys the They Might Be Giants kids' tunes and Pinky Dinky Doo audiobooks. Rat bastard.

Getting back to our roots

When you return to Indiana for a family reunion, there's a cop at the state line who won't let you leave the state until you take a picture of your kid in a cornfield.

We made it there, saw most of the folks we had hoped to see, ate most of the food we had hoped to eat, and made it back again, all in one weekend. We even had an extra day to play in the hotel pool and visit the zoo in Fort Wayne ... more on that when I've got the energy to download the pictures and edit the video.

Right now, I'm more interested in keeping up with Little Miss Pukes-A-Lot, who suddenly started throwing up all over me in the hallway at bedtime. Any day when I have to use the phrase, "Hold still while I pour the vomit out of my bra," is just destined to be memorable. On the positive side of things, at least she's getting lots (and lots ... and lots) of practice with the puke bucket!

Finally, the Fort Wayne Zoo post

I hate it when real life interferes with my plans for blogging.

Okay, so two weekends ago we went to the Fort Wayne, Indiana area for a family reunion. While there, I had planned to visit a couple of kid-friendly attractions on Saturday (and *cough* a yarn store), starting with the Fort Wayne Zoo. It is ranked one of the best zoos in the country for children, and we're all about the animals around here, so it seemed like a safe bet.

We lucked into incredibly nice weather - when was the last time it was 78 and sunny in August in Indiana? Never, that's when. Well, except for two weekends ago, of course. Anyway, we started off in the newest part of the zoo, which just opened this summer and has an African theme. It's got the coolest entryway of any zoo I've seen ... to get to the African section, you go through a tunnel under a roadway, and where you come out the other side there are all kinds of mist sprayers in the landscaping. They make these filmy clouds of fog over the plants, which was cool enough, but when we went through, the wind shifted so that all the fog blew down into the exit to the tunnel, and it looked like you were going back in time or something.

The African exhibits were well done, with many animals and habitats that I hadn't seen before. In place of the usual meercat colony, this zoo had a mongoose exhibit, and I'm pretty sure I've never even seen one of those suckers in real life, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi aside. They are cute little stripey buggers, and Liza was totally enthralled, and we had to pick her up and carry her away after like 15 minutes of her trying to get one mongoose or another to follow her finger along the glass.

The zoo also had a nice lion exhibit, which featured two of the most alert and crowd-aware lions I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure they believe the zoo visitors were brought in solely for their amusement and/or snacking pleasure.

By far the coolest part of the Africa exhibit for me was the fact that the group of ostriches was having a disagreement over who got to eat first. Most zoos have lazy ostriches that just sort of wander around slowly cropping grass, but these suckers apparently were on speed. And steroids. Also got to hear them for the first time - if you listen closely to the first part of the clip, you can hear the ostriches calling a few seconds after Jason makes the coyote joke.

Another first for this zoo: Peacock chick. Awwwww ....

And one of Liza's favorite parts of the zoo: the carousel. She only rode it four times, but I think we'd still be there now if we hadn't run out of ride tokens.

So that's about it. You can tell we were having a good time because we stayed so long that the yarn stores were closed by the time we got out to the car (curses! Foiled again!).

Actual conversation

As I'm trying to get Liza to go to sleep at the bed and breakfast where we stayed this weekend, I try to get her to relax by talking about what we did that day, which mainly involved eating outrageous amounts of food and having about 1,400 of her second-cousins fighting over the chance to be the next one to help her down the big slide at the reunion site.

"So, honey, what did we do today?"
"Fishies swim under water."
"That's right, we watched the fish swim in the pond at the hotel. What else did we do today?"
"Turtles swim under water."
"Oh, did you see a turtle when you were looking in the pond? If you say so. What else did we do?"
(incoherent rambling for about a minute and a half, followed by) "Arms WAYYY up in the sky. Fly to the moon! Touch the moon!"
"Okay, you want to touch the moon. What do you think the moon feels like?"
"Moon feels sad."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. But if you could touch the moon with your finger, would it be rough or smooth?"
"Rough."
"Would it feel like cheese, or like a rock?"
"Like rock. Not cheese. Mama silly."
"And do you think you could stand on the moon? Is the moon big or little?"
"Little."
"How small? Can you show me with your fingers?"
(moving fingers slowly together as she talks, stopping them about 1/4" apart)"Tiny moon. Very tiny moon. Very very."
"Wow, that IS small. What about the stars? Do you think they feel rough or smooth?"
(incoherent rambling for about a minute and a half, in which the words "moon," "fish," and "turtle" are featured prominently) "Okay?"
"Sure, whatever you say. I think it's time for you to close your eyes and go to sleep now."

Farmers' markets

Saturday we visited the Lexington farmers' market, a lovely outside affair complete with Yuppies walking their tiny dogs and children. It is set up on a wide sidewalk on one of the downtown streets, and it's several blocks long. Like the West Side Market in Cleveland, it featured some sellers who obviously buy wholesale produce ... good quality produce, but it obviously wasn't from Kentucky. There were also plenty of local farms represented, too, included five or six places that specialized in flowers. One stall was nothing but huge oriental lilies ... you could smell it from half a block away. And a bunch of places had inexpensive bouquets made up out of garden flowers ... zinnias and glads and snapdragons, that sort of thing. They really reminded me of some of the arrangements my grandmother used to make when her garden was in full swing. Unfortunately, we had other errands to run after the farmers' market, and I didn't think the flowers would hold up well in the cooler we had for the veggies, so I left them behind. I didn't leave behind the Silver Queen corn one of the local farms was selling (heavenly!) or the heirloom tomatoes, or the golf-ball-sized blackberries from another stall, or the local freestone peaches. I've eaten more veggies and fruit in the past few days than I did in the two weeks before we went to the farmers' market, and I can't seem to wipe the tomato-and-corn-induced grin off my face.

Our town also has a farmers' market, which is held Tuesday and Saturday mornings at the parking lot at Lowe's. For the last two summers I have consistently forgotten to go there, resulting in me actually making it to the market maybe twice, and one of those times was when my neighbor pretty much dragged me out of bed to go buy tomatoes. Since I had such good luck at the one in Lexington, however, I have decided to make it a priority to go to the local one, and I reorganized my schedule so that I will be doing my grocery shopping on Tuesday mornings, just after I hit the farmers' market.

This morning we made our first pilgrimmage there, Liza and I, and boy, is it different from the one in Lexington. Lexington has mostly larger farms and orchards (like the place where I got the peaches for the reunion pies) and a smattering of ladies wearing cruelty-free shoes selling herbal soaps and honey. Some of the stalls were from farms from surrounding counties, places far enough away that I'm not entirely sure where they are in relation to us. Our local farmers' market, on the other hand, was staffed entirely by good old boys in pickup trucks who obviously just drove out of the holler to come sell corn and taters to the city folk. Teeth were optional, as were home-rolled cigarettes and big leather wallets attached to their pants with a long chain. All of them declared Liza the cutest child on the planet ("Look at that hair!"), and I doubt it was just because they wanted to make a sale.

The one thing I hate about farmers' markets is that most of the time, a lot of the stalls have the same produce. At the one here in town and the one in Lexington, all of the prices were similar for similar items, so you couldn't even make your purchasing decisions based on cost. So I have to decide - do I buy my corn from the guy with the fewest teeth, the most teeth, or the biggest pile of corn? Do I buy my heirloom tomatoes from the guy with the good selection, even though he keeps trying to sell me $8/lb homegrown woodear mushrooms to go along with them? Do I buy something from the people there with the weeks-old baby, just because I feel sorry for them? In the end, I picked out the shrewdest-looking old lady customers and followed them around, buying from the stalls they picked.

And, as always, I came home with waaaaay too much stuff. Today's haul included more Silver Queen corn (the kind my grandfather used to grow ... nothing else tastes right to me), four kinds of heirloom tomatoes, green peppers (4 for $1), tiny yellow crookneck squash (6 for $1), and a basketball-sized watermelon.

I had planned to write more, about how when picking heirloom tomatoes you want to find the most gnarly, deformed looking ones you can because they inevitably end up being the best tasting, and how our daughter keeps trying to eat corn on the cob without using her hands, but those blackberries aren't getting any younger, and I still have to figure out what to do with them. Peach/blackberry pie, anyone?

Grubby

Yesterday Liza and I made the trip to Cincinnati for my great-aunt Clara's funeral. I didn't know Clara that well - I didn't know her at all until two years ago when my mother suggested I interview her for a project I was doing for my historical documentary class. Her stories of living through a hurricane that hit Rhode Island in the 1930's can be found on my web site here.

Clara was a strong and independent woman who loved to tell stories and play cards ... just like her sister, my grandmother. She had a full and happy life, and wasn't bothered by much mental or physical deterioration until this last year. We could all do a lot worse than to live (and die) like Clara Bohl Anness.

On a lighter note, I have never returned from a funeral more comprehensively grubby than I did yesterday. My stains, in order of appearance:

• Large blobs of ricecakes smeared all over both lapels of my wool winter coat
• Smears of mud from the cemetery scuffed on my black suede shoes
• "Chicken and Apples" baby food splattered on the front of my black wool sweater and on the crotch of my black dress pants
• Lemonade soaked into Liza's socks, overalls and sweater (from where she attempted to drink from her grandmother's cup)

Luckily I remembered to bring an extra outfit for Liza, so she was comfortable for the trip home. I, on the other hand, got to wander around for the rest of the day with food and mud all over myself. Note to self: Budget more money for the drycleaning budget next time I have to attend a funeral.

Liza was the life of the post-funeral luncheon, showing off her new waving skills and smiling at anyone who looked in her general direction. Her great-grandmother kept trying to ply her with food ("No, Grandma, she's not allowed to have chocolate yet. We'll come visit you this summer and you can give her as many brownies as you want then. Here, feed her the pineapple upside-down cake instead."), a sure sign that Grandma was feeling like her old self and has accepted Liza into the family. Most of the people at the funeral had attended the family reunion in Indiana this past summer, so there were plenty of comments about how much Liza has grown and how pretty she is. It was a strange throwback to when my cousins and I used to go to the reunions when we were kids and my cousin Karen told me that she hated going because so many people would come up and say, "Do you remember me? I was at your baptism!" I have this mental picture of Liza voicing the same complaint in a few years.

Recently

Liza and I went to the Cleveland Botanical Garden's flower show. It was hot. The flowers were pretty.

Liza enjoyed the children's garden ...... but not getting shot in the crotch by a fountain.

Jason went to China for a week, and all he brought back was this lousy dress for our daughter (you can tell she hates it).

Jason and I finally will have something about with my relatives at the family reunion - zucchini, Early Girl tomatoes, Better Boy tomatoes, sweet corn, cucumbers, brussels sprouts, broccoli, red peppers, jalapenos, cilantro, rosemary, yellow onions, nasturtiums, and marigolds. And two pales of peat moss, three bags of garden soil, a bag of vermiculite, two bags of sand, a bag of manure, and $30 worth of Trex decking. All in four square feet, plus one big honking pot for the zucchini.

My plan to get Liza to stop spitting water/food/milk/spit all over the place at every meal is finally working - she gets a temporary tattoo if she makes it through the whole day without spitting. Today she got her first tatt. Awww ....

Up, then down, then unexpectedly up again

Nope, not talking about my daughter's stomach contents (thank goodness).

As many of you already know, Jason and I haven't always lived in the Seventh Largest City In Kentucky. We lived in various suburbs of Cleveland, and a big city in Japan, and several other places before we landed here. Our lives as adults have been one almost solid stream of moving boxes and change-of-address cards ... we lived in Avon for about 4 years, and you wouldn't believe how excited I got when I had the opportunity to actual reorder checks without having to change the address or anything. So rare for us!

Jason's been working down here in Kentucky for three years. I can't say we've LIVED here that long because I stayed in Cleveland to finish out the last semester, so he's lived here three years, I've lived here two and a half, and poor Liza hasn't even made it past the two-year mark yet. We never really figured we'd stay here forever - the town is nice and we made some good friends, but we knew that Jason's job was likely to take us someplace else eventually. Despite the snow, and the fact that our family doesn't live there, and the snow, and the fact that we keep moving away every few years (and the snow), Cleveland is the closest to home we've had since high school.

So Jason's been keeping his eyes open for job opportunitites up north at his company's headquarters, which is conveniently located in - you guessed it - Cleveland. There have been a couple of interesting openings, but none of them seemed just right ... until last month. Challenging job that would make the most of Jason's skills, in a desirable division of the company, in Cleveland. He sent off his application, and thought it would take forever to hear back about it (he was one of two dozen applicants for the position).

When he got a call from the hiring manager before the application period had even ended, we took it as a good sign. When they wanted him to fly up to Cleveland to interview for the job in person, we took it as a better sign. When he found out that he was one of only three people they interviewed, we figured he had at least a 1 in 3 shot of getting the job, probably better, because he's just that awesome.

That was the week before we left on vacation, and the hiring manager wanted to make a decision by that Friday or early the week of our vacation. Jason and I sat around for a couple of days, jumping every time the phone rang, cursing the delay in the decision. I decided that my part in the process involved not mentioning the job possibility to anyone, which was like walking on eggshells every time I ran into someone I knew in town. I was afraid if I talked about it, I would jinx it.

When Jason found out the day before our vacation that he didn't get the job, we were upset, but also a little relieved. Moving jobs and households is, after all, a stressful process, especially with a toddler in tow and a wife who is sort of trying to start a business. We grumped about the guy who got the job, I joked about invoking voodoo curses necessary to get the guy hit by a bus so Jason could have the job, and we all went on vacation. In a way, the timing was great - no time to sit and mourn the missed opportunity, as we were too busy looking at ducks and buses and gravel in California. And we didn't have to waste our vacation worrying about what needed to be done at home to start the move.

Then yesterday Jason calls me on my cell phone, which he never does and can only mean he's in an ambulance or something similarly bad. He'd gotten a call from the hiring manager - does he still want the job? Because they decided the guy they hired would be a better fit in another, more recently available, position, so the one Jason interviewed for was open again. Sloppy seconds, as Jason so eloquently described it, but cool all the same.

The official offer came through Wednesday, and once he nails down a few details with the hiring manager, it looks like we're headed north. I'm simultaneously thrilled to be moving "home," and petrified to be moving at all. I haven't started to make The List yet, the one that includes all the stuff I need to get ready for the move (patch the hole in the ceiling in Liza's room, take boatloads of stuff to Goodwill, cancel our swim lessons and preschool classes, clean the house so it doesn't look like a toddler lives here, etc.) and all the stuff I need to do to get settled up north (decide which suburb we want to live in, find a preschool program for next year, find the libraries with the good toddler storytimes, change the address on all of my business stuff, etc.). There are tons of decisions to be made during any move, and adding the kid to the mix just means I have one more level of worrying to do. It's going to be complicated, it's going to be depressing, and it's all going to need to get done in the next couple of weeks. And my kid is on a nap strike. I see lots of Baby Einstein in her future ...

But I can't wait to get up there and get settled. There's a zoo (which probably has ducks, and I think there's at least a little electric tram thing), and the city is big enough that there's a public transportation system so Liza will get to see buses more than once a month, and the library system is huge. There are tons of quilt stores (aka potential Lazy Mama customers) and other opportunities for an itinerant journalist. Our best friends live there. I can find my way through the city without a map (it may take me a few tries to get where I'm going, but I usually only end up in the slums during ONE of those tries). It will be good to be home.

But I'm going to miss it down here. I've got a network of other moms of toddlers to hang out with, Liza's got a preschool I'm happy with, and our street is much more of a neighborhood than any subdivision will ever be. The library and two parks are within walking distance of our house, as are several restaurants, a grocery store, the post office, and a couple banks. The guy at the Thai restaurant knows Jason by name, and the librarians all know Liza. I've finally gotten the ivy beaten into submission, and this was the year I was going to put in a vegetable garden so I'd have something to talk to my relatives about at next year's reunion. I know where to go when I need to buy shoes, or get the carpet cleaned, or have some plumbing work done ... and if I don't know, I know someone who DOES.

It's going to be hard to leave, on many levels, but I'm convinced this is the right thing to do. My blog posts may be a little less coherent and more sporadic for the next few months as I juggle the work, the move, finding Internet access, and typing with a toddler in tow at the library. Bear with me, and I'll keep you all in the loop. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a sheet of paper the size of a twin mattress that says "The List" at the top ... time to start planning.