Still Kickin’

Weeelllll, we (as in Jeremiah, Pace, Mary Aplin, and me) are still alive and kickin’ around here. Unfortunately, our computer is not. It’s been doing some unexplainable things over the past couple of months…enough that I started the tedious task of trying to upload all my pictures to a website so that I could get some hard copies before I lost them all…. The computer died before I finished. This isn’t our first rodeo with a dying computer, and I had some confidence that even if it died, my pictures and documents could still be salvaged. Wrong. The prognosis is bad. It looks like a hard drive problem–and the nice (although heavily accented and difficult to understand) man at the Computer Doctor over here in Crestwood, seemed to think that was the worst kind of sickness out there for an unsuspecting computer. I know you’re all rolling your eyes about why I don’t have things like “external hard drives” or “back-up disks” or “a little less laziness that maybe got pictures developed every once in a while,” but I had none of that. Don’t chide me now. I’ve consoled myself that if worst comes to absolute worst, Mary Aplin will have the pictures from the blog to show her that she was once a baby 🙂

It has also been a whirlwind around here. I’m not sure I would have blogged much even if the computer hadn’t crashed. I have continued writing a lot of blogs in my head though. Hopefully, I’ll get to share them over the next few weeks.

We moved out of our house, for the most part, last weekend. There are some people that I will never be able to thank enough. One of them is my sister Caroline, who came and packed china, and bathed babies so that I could pack china, for days in advance. She took the behind-the-scenes-but-absolutely-necessary job of taking my children and entertaining them on the day of the actual move-out. Since that was the only time I snapped pictures, she got left out. Here is everybody else–from left to right:

Dr. Maddox (Jeremiah’s Dad), Grandma (my Mom’s Mom), Aunt Alice (my Mom’s sister), Ashley (Jeremiah’s sister…and if you’ve been here longer than a week, you know she is so much more), me, Tommy (one of Jeremiah’s life-long best friends), and Justin (one of Jeremiah’s other life-long best friends, who most of you probably know from here).
You might notice that my husband is not in this shot. That’s because he didn’t get away from work until the moment pictured–just AFTER!!!! this ginormous U-Haul was fully loaded,

with ALL the CRAP we’ve managed to accumulate over the last seven years…It was horrifying how much there was, and it made me feel a little…disgusting. What could we possibly need with all that?
And what do you say about family willing to devote, not just hours, but days to helping me organize, wrap, throw away, and pack all that mess?

And what do you say about these (adorable, sweet, hilarious :)) friends who used every last ounce of their strength and energy, abandoned jobs that really needed them,
And families that really missed them–in order to move their friend out of his house–without him.
I felt guilty all day long, trying to just accept all that love they were offering to us. Thank y’all–Caroline, Aunt Alice, Grandma, Ashley, Dr. Maddox, Tommy, and Justin. I am AMAZED by how much we got done, how hard you worked, how much weight you lifted while your bodies were contorted at odd angles in the back of the U-Haul truck, and how sweet y’all were during all the tedium.

And now, this is us:
Eating peanut butter and (Honey Bee Farms–thanks Sticklers!) honey sandwiches at the one small table we kept. Not a picture on the wall, one lil’ couch, and a couple of beds.

We’ve been trying to stay out of the (depressing) house as much as possible. And since we’re already at 95 degrees down here, that has meant a lot of time at the pool…That sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Would it still sound lovely if I told you that Mary Aplin has developed a symbiotic relationship between water and poop? No matter how long I try to get her to go to the potty before she gets in the water. No matter how many times I ask her if she needs to go poo-poo once she gets in the pool. NO MATTER WHAT!!! the child poops in her swim diaper EVERY TIME…usually twice. I know any mother who has ever changed water-logged poop out of a NON-disposable swim diaper (that slides and sloshes down their legs) that our pool requires children to wear, can feel my pain. I’m thinking about carrying a big metal wash tub with me to the pool and making Mary Aplin sit in that (naked) until IT happens, and then putting on her swimsuit and allowing her in the real pool…You think I’m kidding.

We’ve also been trying to figure out how to say goodbye to our friends we love.

And trying not to have a bona fide nervous break-down as they say goodbye to us…

I’ve decided that I am not going to even speak to anyone in Seattle. My heart will not survive any more goodbyes. I figure, if I don’t make friends, then I won’t have to say goodbye to them either.
Don’t I sound like a merry ‘ol soul 🙂