So, it's been a year and a half.

Hi.

I'm afraid if I start writing I'll never stop, so I'm just going to update with stuff that happened today.

Ashley moved to Kansas City in February. She has a new job, which she really loves. Unfortunately, she has a boyfriend (that's not the unfortunate part) who lives in Baltimore. He's in KC right now, and she texted me a picture of him getting a tattoo today, telling me how jealous she is and to please wire her money so she can get one, too. (I didn't.)

Erin, Nic, and the three hooligans took the train to NYC today, to spend the weekend. Nic has their visit planned down to the minute, but as usual, rushed them so much this morning that they got on the train without having breakfast, and with less snacks than Erin wanted to bring. He also refused to take the stroller, so they're schlepping around New York with a four-year old and two two-year olds, on foot. I got a million enraged texts from her today, but as I tried to tell her, without pissing her off even more, why do you let him do that stuff? None of this is new. Anyway, nothing has changed. The boys are beyond adorable, wild as can be, Nic is an ass, Erin is unhappy but finally back on antidepressants, and I'm going to see them next month, because Sebastian saw a plane fly over their house the other day and FaceTimed me to ask why I wasn't on it.

Adam is working on opening a bonsai garden about 45 minutes out of Tokyo. We were there last month and his place is beautiful. They found a property with three acres and a great house, which is pretty unusual in Japan, apparently. He called today to ask my opinion on what he plans on charging visitors for bonsai garden tours, day-long workshops at his garden, quarantine and import fees, etc. I'm also supposed to be writing the copy for his website. Like, right now, I need to get it done tonight. Which is why I'm doing this instead.

Neville is getting old. He'll be 12 soon. His right kneecap keeps slipping out of place, like every third step, so he needs to be carried around a lot. He has a very preemptory bark when he needs something. I'm getting some sticky stuff for the bottom of his feet give him some traction, which I hope works. Poor baby.

We acquired another dog last December. A five-year old - well, he's six now - Frenchie. The story is murky, lots of secrets, no one was prosecuted, I don't even think there was an investigation, but someone held him over, then lowered him into an open fire. His chest, face, and all four feet were badly burned. His foster mother had a friend who happened to work in the burn program with Larry and asked his advice about his feet, and we said, here's what dressing to use and we'll take him. He's a white Frenchie and had to wear socks while his feet healed, so we had no choice but to name him Dobby. His right front foot didn't heal well - the pads fused and what's left is very thin, and his two middle toes kept poking through - so Wednesday he had surgery to amputate those toes. He's quite drugged up at the moment, because it hurts, but he's the nicest, friendliest, most loving dog I've ever met. His favorite thing to do is meet new people, because they might tell him how cute he is. I try not to be filled with rage when we deal with his problems, but that's a pretty chronic state for me these days, anyway, so it's not easy.

Lar retired from the burn program at the end of June, but started the beginning of this month as the director of the outpatient wound program. There's no call, no weekends, and it's only three days a week, so he's somewhat more cheerful and less exhausted. Forty years of being on call has kind of beaten him down, so I let him be cranky. He's now a reformed - and appalled - ex-Republican and spends all day watching MSNBC, shaking his head and asking me how we got here. I tell him every time that's what happens when you vote for Republicans. I'm grateful for that conversion, at least, even if there's only so much MSNBC one can take. All. Day. Long.

I'm fine. (she says in the same tone Emma Thompson says it to Alan Rickman at the end of "Love, Actually) I'm heading to Orlando Sunday to spend a day and a half at Disney World with silveryscrape. Luckily I have a wound doctor around to handle Dobby's dressing changes while I'm gone.

I am still in Vermont. Still in this house. Still with these people. I feel as if I've always been here. I'm starting to forget my real life.

This must be what Stockholm Syndrome is like.

( And this is what I woke up to this morning )

Okay, this is it. Erin is scheduled for a C-section at 7 o'clock tomorrow morning. She'll be at 38 weeks and 1 day. The ultrasound from last week estimated Baby A as weighing 7lbs 4oz and Baby B at 7lbs 8oz. Give or take, but that was the estimate. (As she's only gained 18 pounds, it looks like her ass has completely disappeared.)

( where the laws of physics have no meaning )

So Lucas James and Isaac Lennon will be here soon. I myself have been here since March 28th, and Nic is lucky he's still alive. He's the most annoying person I've ever met, I swear to god. Not a bad person, really, just goddamn annoying. I usually just call Lois or Ashley to vent, otherwise I'd blow up at him and no one needs for that to happen. He'd just accuse me of not treating him with the proper respect, and Erin would have to listen to him whine, so I just concentrate on Erin and Sebastian. Which is much more fun, and way easier.

But tonight I'm excited, so I'm feeling charitable. I also have some chocolate hidden in my purse - can't have it in plain sight or Nic will eat it and then blame Erin for buying it. She should know he has no will power! Hasn't she met his mother?? Would she buy alcohol if she lived with an alcoholic? We can't possibly know what it's like to crave sweet things and then not be able to stop ourselves from eating ALL OF IT. We didn't grow up with brothers and sisters who ate all the food before Nic could get any!

And he still thinks I wasn't happy because he ate all the M&Ms she bought for me, instead of not liking that he gave her such a hard time for buying them and putting them someplace where he could see them.

Charitable, right. I'll stop.

Anyway, Erin is somewhat terrified and still not altogether thrilled that her cozy little family of three is about to become a horde of five. The logistics are worrying her. :)

Ha, so we had a wonderful time in Chicago last weekend. All three of us had 3:30 flights out of O'Hare on Sunday. It started to snow around noon. hammerhead22 and kiffle left pretty much on time. My flight was, of course, cancelled. There was a plane at the gate. We were one minute from boarding, according to the monitor. As we were standing in line to be rebooked, someone asked why it had been cancelled. Without looking up, the ticket agent jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the window and shrugged, "It's snowing."

So I got rebooked on the 6:45 flight, which left at 8:30 for a variety of reasons, and my suitcase ended up on the 8 o'clock flight, which, by the time I got to Columbus at 10:30, hadn't yet left Chicago. But they delivered it in the middle of the night and when I woke up Monday morning, there it was by the front door.

The best part was that the 6:45 flight was oversold by two, so they wanted volunteers to give up their seats and travel to Columbus the next day. By way of either New York or Charlotte. Seriously, they were offering $300, dinner and breakfast, and a hotel room, to fly to either New York or Charlotte at 7am the next morning, and then fly to C'bus, arriving at 2pm. Like they thought someone would actually do that for less that $1000. (One person actually did, bless their heart.) While at the same time, they were adding people to the standby list, until they were up to 17. We ended up with three standby passengers and two flight crew deadheading.

Whatever. It's a 56 minute flight. How is it so HARD??

But again, we had a fabulous time, because we always do.

Even though I'm not training for a race at present, I've still been running a lot lately. Between 20 and 25 miles a week, mostly because I'm really enjoying it. There's been actual sunshine around here lately. But there's something about going over the 20 mile mark that makes me really hungry. Like, all the time. The amount of almonds, hummus, cottage cheese, peanut butter toast, fish, carrots, and bananas I've been eating is ridiculous. I sit around and think about protein all the time.

(Meanwhile, Ashley tells me Cadbury white chocolate Easter eggs are everything she thought they'd be and more. There's protein in chocolate, right?)

Larry is away in DC at a meeting this week. Neville hates that, because he likes to go to bed at 7:30, as does Lar, and now he has to stay up and sleep on the couch until midnight instead. Poor baby.

Seba has the croup, so now Nic has a cold. Erin told him she does, too, but he said his is different, it's so much WORSE than hers. He's very mansick!

He did finally get Sebastian's baby stuff out of the attic so Erin can start getting things ready for the imminent arrival of, you know, TWINS. She's been asking and asking, and he alway says he'll do it, and then he never does. He's been off work, or at least not teaching classes, since before Christmas. His classes just started up again last Monday, and he still hadn't gotten stuff down at that point. The amount of texts I've received on that subject is pretty amazing, let me tell you.

Fannishly, I'm so boring these days. I'm way behind on SPN this season, and I've only watched the first X-FIles episode. I've recorded them all and Lar and I are planning on watching them together. Sometime. It's weird, I find it hard to revisit old fandoms that I felt strongly about. I remember how I felt, but I can't dredge up the feelings again. Thinking about old fandoms makes me smile, but not much more than that.

The Blue Jackets are doing their usual end-of-season surge, making sure they put themselves well out of contention for the number one draft pick. As usual. They are 0 for 12 when it comes to the draft lottery the years they've been eligible, which is damned impressive.

I did start writing a story the other day, but I have no idea if I'll be able to sustain it. I know what I want to write, but I'm not sure how much difference that'll make in my ability to write it.

( Sebastian )

So Erin found out Friday that she has gestational diabetes, and she's so incredibly indignant. It's just such a pain, and so confusing, and she's so hungry, and the worst part is, the nurse told her she fits the profile, being slender, all belly, twins, so why didn't they say that earlier, so she could have been proactive and prevented this!??

I keep telling her it doesn't work that way, it was either going to happen or it wasn't, it's only for a couple more months, and while diet will probably be enough to deal with this, diet didn't cause it, and for GOD'S SAKE GOOGLE IT.

Poor thing, she's incredibly ginormous, and it's all babies. She's due April 27, but they're talking about inducing her April 11. I'll be surprised if she lasts that long. She's been having Braxton Hicks contractions since December, really, and she's miserable. But, hey, she wouldn't be Erin if she wasn't miserable, so she's actually fine.

Tentative plans are for me to head up to VT April 3 and stay until May 8. That's a long time to live in a house where I have to wait for Nic to grind the beans and weigh the water in order to make me a pour-over cup of coffee every morning instead of just making it in a pot like a normal person. Seba's daycare was going to be closed that first week of April, which is why she wanted me there then, but now it's not, but she still wants me then. I know she wishes I was there all the time. She's really feeling the distance.

Nic teaches until the end of May, and Erin thought I could stay and help her until then, but that's a really long time to be away from home. Larry is going to take vacation the week of May 8th and I think I'll bring Sebastian home with me so he can help Larry plant flowers and stuff. That'll give everybody a break from each other. Then we'll take him back in a week or two.

That's my thinking right now, anyway. We'll see. They're going to name the boys Lucas and Isaac, which I like. Erin says since Nic insisted Sebastian's middle name be Byrne, after David, Isaac's middle name will be Lennon, after John, because they're playing some sort of weird competitive game via naming their children.

How do we feel about Lucas Chasez Poppe?

( Here we were last month in Jamaica. Erin's belly is amazing for someone who has 3 months to go. )

Erin, Nic and Sebastian are coming for Christmas. They left Vermont this morning and are spending the night in Buffalo. It's about six hours from there to here, so I expect them early afternoon. Poor Erin is so tired, and she says she's huge. I told her all she has to do is get here and she can sit on the couch for five days. She's not a big fan of being pregnant, she's lonely, Nic doesn't clean the bathroom the instant she asks him too...my goal is to make her smile and let her rest.

Ashley's coming tomorrow, too. Her boyfriend is joining the Army and left this afternoon. (There were job issues and so he took some kind of test to see where in the military he fits. Apparently a score of 35 qualifies you for the Army, and I don't know about the other branches, because he's 35 and aged out of the Air Force and the Marines. Anyway, he scored a 97, so he's off to join Army Intelligence and they're never going to see each other again.) My goal is to make her smile and distract her.

And then, we're all meeting Adam and Kae, and my brother and his family, in Jamaica on January 3rd for a week. I'm so excited to spend an extra week with Sebastian, and even more than that, to see Adam. Japan is very, very far away from Ohio.

So I've been making cookies and planning menus and decorating like a madwoman. Larry got hearing aids the other day, so he can even participate in actual conversations. Unless, of course, Nic's presence makes him turn them right off. Ashley's bringing her cat, which, Neville will be so thrilled.

I feel like this post is clunky and stiff, or something. Like, I'm out of practice writing here, which I completely am. So I'm just going to wish all y'all a wonderful holiday, and leave you with this picture. Seba was alone in his room the other day and Nic went in to see what he was doing, camera at the ready. I died. Boy loves him some books.

( My heart )

I do understand that any issues I have post-race/with running in general are self-inflicted so I try not to complain, but Ashley, her boyfriend John, and I did a half marathon last Sunday and I'm still tired. I trained very well for it, and ran most of it, until I got a little wheezy at mile 9ish, and now I'm pooped. The rule of thumb is the same number of recovery days as miles run, so I can actually be lazy for 6 more days, but recovery doesn't mean sitting on the couch all day, it just means no training. I've actually been doing a reverse taper, which is working well, I'm just tired.

( cut for weight talk )

I guess I can let myself relax for a few more days. When we get back from Vermont, there are things to do. I love this house and I'm still glad we bought it, but it needed/needs all the things. We spent the summer replacing the roof, the siding, the window, the gutters. Since we moved in we've replaced the kitchen appliances, the garage doors, the back doors, the furnace, the AC, the grill, the gas logs in the fireplace, you name it, we've had to replace it. We just spent over $2k on plumbing the other day, because the pipe going into the basement was also going through the wiring into the electric box, and was old and leaking. Good times. It's a great house, but clearly never taken care of.

We also redid the patio in the back this summer, and took out all the dead trees and bushes. We're waiting for new ones to be planted, but it hasn't rained in ages, so it's too dry right now. Replacing the broken fence is also on the horizon.

The kitchen sink and countertops are a mess, as are the bathrooms, but we've pretty much spent all the money we made when we sold the house in Pgh. The original plan was to put in a pool, but that went by the wayside by May.

This is not the time of our lives to be doing all this, but it's not like we can go back in time and not buy this house. Or not move to Columbus. But it's certainly going to delay Larry's ability to retire. At this point, he's just focused on the resale value. It's weird to feel young and be doing all these things, but in the back of your mind you know very well that your mortgage is going to outlive you. I don't like it.

Anyway, summer was full of workmen, which Sebastian loved a lot. He had a good time watching them all, and it was too bad that they moved right as the guys started redoing the patio. He loves a good backhoe.

Apparently, after not posting in so long, now I can't shut up.

Seba in Vermont

So it's been since June that I posted. The idea of playing catch-up is daunting, so I think a series of small posts is in order. I have lots of stories and pictures from the Summer of Sebastian (and Nic), which I'll get to in time. I just need to get started here, right?

We're heading out to Indiana today for Larry's 45th (OMG we're old) high school reunion. Not something I'm really excited about, but we'll take Neville and spend a couple of nights with Lar's sister. Tonight is a carry-in dinner, for which Marcia is making us something to take, then Saturday night is another dinner. I have no idea how many people will actually be there. Small high school, small town in Indiana, who knows.

Whenever I think of Lar's high school reunions, I think of the first one we went to. (They used to have them every five years, far too frequently, imo.) It was 1980. The girls were born in July, nine weeks early, and by mid-August, were still in the hospital. I had rented the most ginormous electric breast pump from the Le Leche League. (When Sebastian was born and Erin was struggling with nursing him, I saw this tiny little handheld thing and was like, what the heck, how is that an electric breast pump??)

Anyway, this thing was the size of a TV and we schlepped it all the way to Gas City and I spent all weekend pumping and freezing breast milk, wishing I was at home, where I could spend my days at the hospital. In truth, it was probably a good break for me to get away for a couple of days.

But, yeah, that's my biggest memory of any of the Missisinewa High School class of 1970's reunions.

(My own high school either never had a reunion or were never able to find me to tell me about one, back in the pre-internet days. Or they forgot I existed, that's quite possible.)

So now that the Curious George movie on PBS is over, it's time to get dressed and head out. It's only a three hour drive, and compared to my 9 hour each way drive to and from Madison last weekend for Lois's son's wedding, it should be a piece of cake. Even though, Indiana. :(

(I became a real George aficionado this summer when Seba was here. I still watch it everyday.)

Aw, someone left kudos on five popslash stories last night, which just absolutely made my day. Also one of my hockey stories, which once again made me wish I could write.

Things with the kids living here are going well. Nic and I are getting along fine and are being very cooperative with our Sebastian time. He takes mornings and I take afternoons, but so far we're both being very flexible. I have a hair appointment this morning - I finally found a place after over a year of going back to Pittsburgh, and I'm hoping I won't be the youngest person there. Those are the perils of going to the same person's tiny little shop for over 20 years, I guess. Then I have to take my car in for some stuff, and even if I won't be back by noon, it won't be a big deal, because we're *cooperating.* Except that the carseat was in Erin's car when she went to work this morning, so whoever has Seba is stuck at home. Carseat coordination has been a bit iffy so far, actually.

And of course, so far in the weeks they've lived here, Nic has had an earwax impaction (and thought he'd gone deaf overnight), a tweaked muscle in his neck (where he walked around with his head bent forward staring at the ground for three days), and pink eye (which he caught from Sebastian, the daycare germs' last gasp.) He now thinks of me as his medical consultant, because no one else will give him any sympathy. His degree of mansickness is extraordinary, making Larry look absolutely stoic. I just keep sending him to urgent care.

Erin is stressed and exhausted. She leaves for work at 7:30 and gets home around 6:30. She's trying to decide when to quit work, and I think she's aiming for the middle of July. She's flying to Middlebury next month for a job interview, managing the college bookstore. They want her to start August 1, but if they get the faculty housing they want, which they should find out about this week, they can't move in until August 15. So, stress. It making her a little cranky.

Anyway, we're muddling through. I'm enjoying Seba, I like having people around, like having people to make dinner for, like having a reason to get off the couch after a very long winter. I've even lost some weight chasing Seba around. He never stops, really. I just need to do some ab work to save my back, what with him wanting to be picked up and put down every ten seconds.

I'm finally catching up on Supernatural, and am enjoying watching it at a leisurely pace.

The Blackhawks, on the other hand, are killing me. They never quit, but I have a bad feeling about how this series is going to end. Jonathan Toews, however, is a god.

This post is for kaelie <3

My goodness, it's been months. That's a function of both winter brain fog and a touch of depression, I think.

But let's see, ( here's a quick rundown on my life )