Miscellany

The outage has completed, but Brian is still working excessively. Hopely that will draw to a close as well. Sunday, Brian didn't go to work at all and it seemed almost decadent to have him home all day. We have received the check that had 85 hours of overtime on it. That was nice. Almost makes it worth while.

Relations with my family seem to be thawing. I spoke with my brother at length on Sunday and assume he harbors no ill will toward me for interfering in his life. At least he doesn't have the courage of his convictions to not take money and gifts from me. I sent a package to my and Brian's parents with pictures of and by the girls. (A trick I learned on FlyLady to direct kid clutter somewhere other than my house.) I received an email from my dad thanking me and telling me that he heard (from my brother) that we were planning on coming that way. They want to know our plans because they don't want to miss seeing us while they might be out of town. He said "everyone" so I guess that includes me. He said "we" so I guess that includes my mother.

Brian has set his vacation and will be taking the last 2 weeks in December. This time was not my preference. I wanted to leave on Thanksgiving and stay until about the 3rd of December so that we could have Christmas in our own home and not have to do anything anyone else wanted us to do. It seems like every Christmas since we have been married has been half-baked. I wanted us to start our own traditions. One that didn't involve us traveling anywhere or feeling obligated to anyone else. That's the biggest part...that feeling of obligation, more commonly known as The Guilt Trip.

Brian got jerked around so much this year because of the transfer and all the OJT and the schools that he didn't get to take his vacation when he intended and now he's stuck taking it at the end of the year. If he doesn't take it now, it won't roll over and it seems a shame to waste 3 weeks of days. I, for one, don't want to stay here day in and day out for 2 weeks with him not working so "home" we will go for about 10 days. Brian is afraid he's going to be bored out of his mind. Surely there are some people who will still want to see us, even after the "Homeschooling" discussion. I know several people I would like to get together with...if only to pick their brains.

My training is going well. I continue to improve and Amy has assigned me 10 miles of cardio per week. It's not really as difficult as I thought it was going to be. My body will allow me to stay on the elliptical for 30 minutes thus giving me over 2 miles in one sitting. When I first started working out, I thought there was no way in the world that I would be able to go 10 minutes, but look at me now. I haven't been motivated to do much of anything the last couple of weeks, but I think my motivation is coming back. I'm definitely getting stronger and my muscles are becoming visible. I train with Amy on Friday and she'll take my measurements again to see how I'm really doing.