Still Alive

Well, I am still alive . . . mostly. The last two months have been pretty crazy. First was my wonderful trip to St. Thomas with my mom. I hope to do a post about that, with pictures, later this week. Unfortunately, I haven't really felt well since coming home from that trip. Travel always tires me out and the travel day coming home was horrendous. Completely exhausting. I felt like a zombie for the next week. Then, let's see . . . Mr. M. C. went out of town for a week; the day after he got home, I went to Missouri to see Kevin for the weekend. He was there for 2 weeks of training. I got home late Monday night and Wednesday afternoon my mom flew in for my graduation. So we had house cleaning and party prep to do. It was fun to see my mom again so soon, though.

The graduation and party were lovely. Lots of people came to share my special day and I got lots of nice gifts, too. Mr. M. C. smoked 4 briskets, my mom made her delicious potato salad, Laura made her famous chopped salad, and we had way too much yummy food. It was all topped off with an almond cake with buttercream frosting. Yum yum yum! We played a mad game of Apples to Apples that night and my mom took us all to the cleaners.

Then Mr. M. C. went out of town again, I think. It's all kind of a blur now. I tried to recover from the party and started making rounds of doctor visits to try and find out why I'm having so much trouble breathing. As usual, all the doctor visits have just made me sicker. Sigh. I've also been seeing the podiatrist because I've had a lot of foot pain, so now I have a cast on my right foot and I start physical therapy for it on Tuesday.

So there's the long, sordid tale of why I feel crappy and have no energy. And it's fall here, so beautiful every day, and I can't even get enthused about decorating. That is just sad. I'm hoping to do some this week.

In other news, we have started our box-a-day packing routine that we did when moving from Tucson to here. Our house is on the market and we have no idea when it will sell. It could take a year or more, but we have to be prepared. We are packing up things we can live without for several months and will just keep going until we are down to the necessities. We are also concentrating on decluttering as much as possible, getting rid of things we don't use or don't love. If we're lucky, the house won't sell for long enough that we will be ready to buy a house when it's time to move. But we'll see what happens.

And I've been sending out resumes, but no interviews yet. If I don't find something soon, I will probably start doing temp work just to bring in some money and get back into the working lifestyle. That will also bring job opportunities my way.

Last, but not least, I am test driving cars. So far I've driven a Hyundai Elantra, a Mazda3, a Scion xB, and a Toyota Yaris and Corolla. The Scion xB was my favorite, the Mazda3 and Corolla were about even seconds. I still have 4 cars I want to try, then we will sit down with the short list and make some decisions. I'm not even sure how we will do it, but I don't see how I can get to a job without a second car. Trying to do it with just the truck will be crazy. Plus, driving the truck really hurts my foot and ankle, so I need to quit doing it.

So there's my news for now. No fun pictures in this post, unfortunately, although I did get a couple of goodies at Wizard of Odds when my mom was here. I also got some fun Halloween things at Cracker Barrel and TJ Maxx a few weeks ago. Maybe I'll get a chance to post those later this week, too, as I'm digging out all my decorations.