After spending the last year in a state of severe "income challenge" it is nice to finally have a few things come together.

I worked today. It was a long day and I nearly threw up. Cool, huh? Yeah, it was my  introduction to what I'll be doing at the post office before long. There are lots of little details to keep track of, and I'm thankful that it's only going to be one day a week to start! Although it's a boring, mindless, menial job, what I will like about it is that there's always going to be something to do! And I can leave as soon as I"m done! Yay! I hate having to try and look busy at jobs, and that won't be necessary here! So that's my no-brainer job. Oh yeah, I almost threw up because I had to go out in the mail truck with the guy who usually does the route and check out what I'll be subbing for, and it was very hot and stuffy back there and there was way too much stop and go with serious brake slamming action for my weak stomach to take. (I just checked, and I'm sorry to see there's no emoticon for hurling. )

I am also going to start doing a small editing job for the local newspaper once a week, and that is something I really enjoy doing, so I'm glad it worked out. I can do it from home, and it's just editing and putting togetheer "school pages" that each school in this district sends in to the paper to be published once a week. Good deal there.

I'm also going to keep tutoring and I still have one student for private Japanese lessons once a week. I just hope I can keep track of it all! And luckily, the hours are actually not going to be huge, so I won't have to put Thiago in day care or anything like that right now. I've thought about looking into a part-time pre-school if I could find one, but I'm probly too late, and most seem to be full-time and combined with daycare. Sigh. I'll just keep taking care of him myself, I spose. He does play with the boy next store sometimes, so I figure that's good for his social development or some such thing. Except that the boy next door doesn't talk very well (he says otay for okay, and suck for truck, and he's 5!) Maybe he can learn a few things from Thiago...

It's time to put him and his sister to bed! How did it get so late so fast?!

じゃまたね！バイバイ〜！

Fay is gone! Finally! She certainly took her time getting past us. Sheesh. That had to have been about the slowest moving storm EVER! It's been pretty quiet here since yesterday, actually, but a lot of streets are still flooded and school is closed until Monday. THAT really chaps my hide. Ah well. It could be MUCH worse. Our neighborhood is very un-flooded and the water never got anywhere near the house. Thank goodness! We don't have flood insurance included in our homeowners insurance yet, so I better get on that! The busiest part of hurricane season has just begun!

The kids have been playing on the computer a lot with all this unexpected time off. Does anyone else know Club Penguin? It's great! I play too! Thiago doesn't quite have the coordination for some of the games on there yet so he goes back to NickJr to feel competent. I had meant to do "school" with both of them today, but went and got my hair cut and colored and stuff and ran out of time. I got Thiago a book of coloring and really simple maze practice that he actually was excited about doing, so that's a relief. I thought I would start doing something like that with him, but up to now if I ask him if he wants to do school when Emily does his answer is an emphatic NO. He's got plenty of time to become interested in these things though, I suppose.

Emily, on the other hand, is always willing to do school, and I'm pleased with how well she's doing on her Portuguese reading. Now I just need to get her vocabulary up there so she knows what all these words she's sounding out mean! Portuguese is so much easier to read than English! Once we finish her current workbook she should be able to sound out any word thrown at her and then I can have her start reading her Portuguese books to me!

As for me, I'm supposed to be proofreading a manuscript and I keep avoiding it! It's actually a pretty interesting read for once, but I just can't get focused! Maybe it's all this Club Penguin noise and the call of Minti or something... I'll give it another go here and try and get focused!

Ciao gente!

The kids went back to school today! Yay! Well, two of them did anyway, and having just one at home is sooooo easy! I don't even know what to do with myself with all this "free time"! I already  mopped and got the boring stuff out of the way. Guess I'll goof off on Minti for awhile now! I don't know how long this is gonna last since I may be going to work soon...

We're getting some rain this morning which is a bit unusual. Afternoon thunderstorms are an almost daily occurrence this time of year, but not so much in the morning. Tropical Storm Fay is supposed to be hitting the Keys sometime around now, though, so I wonder if this is her doing... I don't mind it. It's actually cooled things off a bit which is nice! Since I don't have to go anywhere today I can just sit here at home and enjoy the sound of it on the roof.

For our last day of summer we went to the pool yesterday afternoon. I didn't think we'd stay very long and didn't bother with sunscreen, and we all came home a bit red-faced. Especially us poor paleys, me and Thiago. I look awful. I hope it fades soon. Thiago just got red cheeks and they've faded to normal already.

I was really surprised at how well Emily was swimming yesterday! I didn't see the last of her swim lessons a couple of weeks ago, but my mom was there and said she did really well. I guess!! She was jumping in the deep end and swimming around and everything. I was impressed! Thiago took awhile to get comfortable, but he finally let us put a life vest on him so he could float around on his own. He still doesn't like getting his face wet, so he has to try really hard to keep his face out of the water and it's not always easy!

Here are today's traditional first day of school photos:

Here it is, two o'clock in the morning and I can't sleep. So what do I do? Get on Minti and see what's going on of course!

I have no idea why I'm not tired. Maybe I'm just excited I don't have to work tomorrow or something. If I'm not feeling drowsy in another half an hour or so I may have to run a few laps around the house (inside of course) to try and knock me out. If I could move Emily back to her own bed that might help things, too. Something freaked her out tonight and as a result she joined me and Daddy-o in our room. It's a bit crowded for my liking.

It's sure nice and quiet around here now!! I keep peeping out my front window because apparently there has been a rash of vehicle break-ins in the neighborhood recently. That would be kinda cool if I could catch the person, although I don't really see that kind of thing happening. They'd probly see me looking out before I saw them even if they were out there.

I just remembered that hubby and I had talked about going to the gym tomorrow (this!) morning so maybe I better go try a little harder to sleep! Well, okay, I'll check out a few other things here first! Then off to bed so that I'm nice a and spry (read: barely ambulatory) in the morning!

Emily and Thiago's beds got bunked today! They were so excited! They've been waiting for a couple of weeks, because I thought they could finally handle it, but Emily has been in the horrible habit of getting up at night and coming to our bed for awhile now, so I told her she'd have to stop doing that to get bunk beds. I didn't want to have to worry about her climbing down the ladder in the dark in the middle of the night! Well, she's made it for about two weeks, so I thought it was time to try it!

So, after everything was all bunked, getting them to the beds was no problem, however, convincing Thiago that he had to sleep on the bottom and that the ladder is specifically for getting to the top and nothing else made it a bit of a challenge to actually get them to sleeping positions! It's really nice how much more space they have in there now. Maybe they will actually play in there for once instead of all over the rest of the house. Wishful thinking, I know.

That was definitely our excitement for the day! They behaved themselves most of the day and didn't beat each other up, which is always a bonus! Juan was even on his best behavior for once. I told him he'd be ungrounded next week if he can show me the better side of his personality this weekend, so I think he's actually taking that seriously for once! He even cleaned the bathroom like I asked him to! It was amazing!

The little ones are in bed, I'm starting dinner, and I'm at a total breaking point with my teenager. Aaahhh... life is good.

I had a new group of Italians today. The last one for the summer. They are GOOD! I am so glad this group appears to be a good one. They are polite, participate and seem to want to get some English out of this trip and not just some time at Seaworld and the beach. Phew! It makes it a lot easier to plan lessons too, because I should just be able to throw discussion topics out and we can just talk. They probly got enough grammar back in Italy to kill an elephant, so I don't plan to focus on that too much. Two days back and the house already looks like two tornadoes hit it instead of just the usual one, though.

I keep carrying around the notebook that contains my novel in progress in hopes that I will finally have a minute or two somewhere to work on it, but so far no go. If I can manage it, I think I'm going to try and get to the book store where I meet my Japanese student once a week about a half hour before my lesson with her and then maybe I could get a little bit done. It's been so long since I've written anything, though, that I need at least a day or two to get back to where I was going with it. I have totally slacked off with the writing this summer, but with all three kids home and a job for a change, I spose that's not that unusual.

Gosh my life is boring! I have nothing to tell! Even so, I feel like things are picking up. This summer has been really nice, because the other teachers I've met through this program have been great. It's so different than the one-horse town I was living in before moving here. People just weren't friendly there. Everyone had their friends they'd had since birth and weren't interested in making new ones. It was really hard to break into that. Here I've already found someone I can get together with to go out for Indian food on occasion. It's great!

Thiago's finally came through!

Both Emily and Thiago are signed up for swim lessons now. They finished their first week yesterday, and have one more week next week. I'm pleased with Emily's class, because she's done lessons twice before, and I finally feel like she's getting some real instruction on how to swim! She really had to concentrate to try and get her arms to go the right way on that backstroke though! Thiago... well, he's just a space case. Here's how it looked:

I guess I will have to post Thiago tomorrow! YouTube tells me his video is still processing! Arrgh!