My friend Jaime (yo Omaha!) recently reminded me of her advice to write out my stressors and divide them up like the Solemnity Prayer: things I cannot do anything about, and those which I can.

I discovered there were very few things I had absolutely no control over, such as my cousin’s liver or Great White’s transmission. Most things could be wrapped up into a larger category (homemaking), and I am at the point of making peace with my own capacity for now. It’s a process not completed, but at least I am in the vicinity of the parking lot…

I just found out I’m losing another friend to the rural parts of Arizona. Good thing I like to drive, right? That’s what I keep telling myself. Not that I’ve visited the other two who have moved in the last couple of years…

We made a trip to LegoLand this past weekend to get a second use of our expires-next-week-three-month pass, and I was stopped at Border Patrol checkpoints 4 times, pulled over by a BP agent, and had to declare my fruits/live plants at the California border. Good thing bananas are an acceptable produce item. Also, you can’t say that they aren’t trying to work on our illegal immigration problem!

We had two wonderful visitors who came for different parts of the month, and put up with the madness that is the RA.
I’ve already turned on our A/C one day when I got really hot.
Fighting for Ephraim to get special services and an IEP.

March is going out like a lambion.

Heard on December 25, 2011 “Merry Christmas, you’re going somewhere in a month!”

We went to the They Might Be Giants Special Family Show at UCLA on the 28th, and visited both Legoland and the Carlsbad State Beach twice. It was great fun, with some learning experiences to be mindful of next time.

(Duncan & I are still recovering from our physical/mental ordeal in the ocean. Suffice it to say we know more about how powerful riptides and how sharp mussel covered jetties are first hand. This is painful to type as my fingertips shredded trying to get any sort of hold as the waves pounded me into the rocks. Thankfully there was a former lifeguard nearby who came to our rescue, and that the children still playing on shore had no idea what was going on…)

As I post pictures I can go into more detail about our vacation. I would like to go back again before our three month passes expire, probably the weekend after standardized tests. Give the oldest children something to look forward to after hell week =)

November 13th–I bought milk this morning stamped with that use-by date. Where did my year go?

I ordered School T-shirts for our entire family, in what I thought would be a size too large so they could wear them for two years. Curse you, irregular size fashion industry! What they use only Small, Medium, Large and so on for these shirts, I tried to match them to numbers we’ve used as sizes. Turns out all the children’s shirts are about 2 sizes above what they wear, so nobody should be growing out of these shirts for a while. Oh well. It’s still fun for us as a group.

Duncan’s class field trip to the YMCA camp earlier this month was filled with high flying fun. He thought it was the best two days of school he never had. Lots of outdoor activities, team building exercises and so on.

We had the piano tuned this month, and it looks like it may have been the first time since 1972, according to the card stapled under the piano lid. The tuner loved it, said you really can’t beat an old upright like this in good condition. When he comes back next time he will fix the broken hammers–those keys have been out as long as I can remember playing around in my grandparents’ basement.

Emma is back safe and sound from her 3 day trip to the Marine Institute on Santa Catalina Island. More details and pics to follow.

Tonight marks the 4th Halloween activity our family has participated in, and that’s only because we missed two others we were invited to, and does not count the adults-only party Richard and I went to the previous weekend. Duncan was the lone one in choosing to wear his costume to school today, and I think the girls were starting to regret it as they saw other classmates in costume during drop-off. We’ll see if they change their minds next year. By the way, no treats at school today. Just report cards  =)

Yep, that’s Ephraim’s baby tooth you don’t see there (not that he was able to give us a good shot without a little assistance.) When it’s one of the top, I won’t have to get my hands in there. Of course, by then, it will be old news.

Match the following terms with their correct equivalents:

1–The current number of posts on The Bloggeriffic Kazoo.                                                                   A. 30×31

2–The current number of approved comments on The Bloggeriffic Kazoo.                                                B. 123²+ 33×2

3–The current number of spam comments blocked by Akismet.                                                             C. 5³x2

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Through this miracle life is smooth enough that we decided to sail into unknown waters this year and the Robinson Academy is outsourcing for the first time. We found a local charter school which emphasizes the adventure of learning coupled with  personal responsibility for the scholar and parents. If things continue to go well, everyone will be out of the house for the 2012-2013 school year. I will be alone during the day for the first time in 15 years. What a strange new world this is…

Just a few notables from the past 30 days:
~My surgery on the 2nd. It was successful and I am feeling much much better! I am not used to feeling this well, and I almost thought I was going into hypomania. How wonderful to know that I can set a new baseline for how I fare physically.

~Cheanna turned 12, graduated from Primary, and started into the Young Women program.

~Elena turned 9, and we celebrated our Solstice baby. Unfortunately the ice cream machine at McD’s was broken, so she didn’t get the cones like she wanted but we did get 5oz samples of their new Mango Pineapple smoothie. We tried to spin the missing ice cream into coming back another time. It was somewhat pacifying.

~Richard and Duncan went to Boy Scout Camp. Richard still has some nasty looking bruises on the back of his legs from some lake incidents. Duncan came back taller than I am.

~Duncan spoke in Sacrament Meeting on the assigned topic of ‘honoring womanhood’. (I’ll try to get a copy off of his computer and post what he wrote)

~Cheanna is on her way to Girls Camp, as a first year camper. We had to turn around to grab her book and her pillow. It looked like she did a great job of packing–time will tell, I guess.

~Ephraim success percentage at putting his urine in the toilet  is 100% . The other half hasn’t clicked just yet. But we are done with diapers!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <– that’s one exclamation point for every year I’ve bought diapers, with no breaks. Bring on the Diego Pants!

~Emma and Elena worked on their Swimming badge for Brownies this week.

~We rearranged our front room, replacing the desk with a loveseat our friends were going to sell at a yard sale. (We bought a desk from them also, so for now Richard and I each have a desk in our room) I really like the way it looks as I come down the stairs in the morning. More cozy, less crazy. At least until I look at the not-yet-labeled bookshelves… July project?

~We missed seeing the extended editions of the Lord of The Rings movies appearing in theatres this month, due to the one night, one showing per movie run. Tuesdays just aren’t open for us that way.

~Anya’s hair is growing back after her scissorcapade a few weeks ago. We tried to get it into a sort of pixie cut and it almost looks intentional. Almost.

~Having a Circle K so close is slowly creating a slushee addiction, especially when it’s in the 110s. Mmmmm, icy.

…and lived to tell you, my dear reader, something about it. We planned to leave the house at 5:30am, but got out the door closer to 6. Even with some road construction we made it to the surgery center in Scottsdale just after 7am, my designated check-in time. Yes, my dear reader, I had finally decided to take my wonderful OB/GYN’s advice to undergo diagnostic laproscopy. My most recent bout of pain in May was so severe (ie not responding to pain meds) that I called her office and asked for her first available surgery slot.

I’m at home now, with three bandaids on my belly, one where my IV was, and as my husband puts it, only slightly bridled enthusiasm for what this will do for my future quality of life. He got to see the pics that I will see at my post-op exam later this month, in particular the one of a not-very-healthy-looking left fallopian tube. That, and some fluid were removed and with them will go my recurring pain, is the hope.

I’m still a little groggy from the anesthesia and definitely sore, so please excuse some disjointedness. It was weird to be back in a hospital setting again after four years. I’m very grateful that Richard can take a couple of sick days for me and then spend the weekend at home taking care of us all. Despite the fact that, wearing an oversized button-up denim dress and simple slip-on sandals, glasses instead of contacts with no lipstick, jewelry, deodorant, hair accessories, etc, he said I looked like I was audtioning for a fundamentalist melodrama…

Time to shuffle on back to a resting position.

School’s out for summer.