there really hasn't been much to write about of late. we're falling into our routines. during the week, jewel leaves the house first, followed pretty quickly by saxy. an hour later, froggy is off and taz is up, eating breakfast and getting ready to go. nearly an hour later, he's on his bus and i'm left to do whatever i need to do for the day. in general, i work on writing related stuff - especially with the car out of commission. around 2:30, jewel comes in, does her chores and homework. froggy comes in at 4, and taz around 4:30. saxy makes it home anywhere from 3 to 8 pm, depending on what they're doing that day. friday evenings the kids start their chores and we all watch stargate sg-1 and stargate atlantis together. saturday, the kids do chores, sunday we all just sorta laze about. i try to write saturdays and take the day off sundays, every now and a again saxy works saturday, but he too tries to take the day off sunday.

we're working on gypsy's morning behavior - trying to get some of her training back - with limited success. i'd like to get her to behave with taz, which she does as long as i'm out there to keep an eye on things. but we need her to listen to him, and that's proving to be the harder task. she also barks like crazy if we leave her outside for an extended length of time, which is both annoying and bad behavior. but the minute you go outside, she shuts up. so, other than the collar that gives a mild shock, i'm not sure what to do about her. there's only so much of the barking i can take during the day and telling her to stop doesn't work. going out to her, even to squirt her with water and tell her don't, seems to reward the behavior. i'm trying to tolerate it, but i also worry about it disturbing the neighbors. course, we have one neighbor with a dog they let run loose all the time, and none of them have so much as said hi, but still, i'd rather not annoy anybody because our dog is an idiot.

i have discovered that it's the mosquito bites that are giving me so much trouble out here, which is just plain odd to me. i've never reacted to a bug bite like i do to these things. not all of them send me to the e.r., but they do all welt up pretty quickly, looking like some overgrown hive or like i have half a golf ball under my skin. it's just weird. i hope i get used to the stupid things and stop looking like i need major cortisone therapy or something.

i'm also guessing that it's only a matter of time before my mother decides to come out. she's starting to sound particularly down on the phone when she calls. my guess is she'll drop off her medication first, if she already hasn't, and eventually just pick herself up and come out without warning. she'd be better of staying where she's at - she's in relatively stable living conditions that i'm not sure we could duplicate here. but when the illness takes over, common sense flies out the window and the clock's answers to her questions make more sense to her. most paranoid schizophrenics seem to fixate on a person, at least from what i've seen with what little contact i've and what i've heard from contact others have had, and she's chosen me. it could be worse. she could be violent and angry. and at least the illness seems to have settled into something less disturbing than what it was when she first exhibited symptoms. but, still, i really hope she stays in cali. she's got a support system out there that i'm not sure we can duplicate here.

i've also got to convince her to stop sending us money. we have some issues we're going to have to deal with, but we're doing about as well as we were in cali, hubby's just employed this time around and i have the hope of getting a fairly decent paying, part time, somewhat flexible job myself. working twice a week will help ease the strain considerably, working three days a week will help us to start paying off old creditors. course, we'll need a car for that work, but that's being worked on as well.

mcat faxed some stuff to the insurance company and now we sit and wait to see if they'll increase the offer to something we can actually use to replace the car. granted, this car didn't cost that much, but it was a lucky find. we can't be sure that every car we find will be under bluebook value, much less over 50% under bluebook value. in fact, going to a dealer, we're about guaranteed it won't be. even without the concern about me working, we need the car. i haven't transferred my driver's license, and i still need to fill out paperwork to transfer things like the kids' medical records and so on. things are fairly local, but as i mentioned before, they aren't local enough to get to without a vehicle, and that includes important stuff like grocery shopping.

house wise, things are shaping up. we have a washer and dryer now, which is making the clothing thing easier to deal with; our oven was fixed last week, and this morning the landlord is replacing the dishwasher. apparently it's gotten to the point that fixing it would cost more than replacement. more than likely, fixing repeatedly would cost more than replacement, but either way, we're getting a new used machine. with as little shelf space as our kitchen has, a dishwasher is almost a necessity - there really isn't any place to put a dish strainer or anything. with the money my mother is sending, i need to replace our vacuum and get some minor, but important things like a broom. after that, i have a bill or two to pay that we can't cover this week because of the rent.

all that and maybe that dog collar too. sigh.