Brain Dump...

The last two days have been more than a little frenetic. It sort of came out of nowhere, and I wasn't ready for it. Yesterday, I think I made it to 9:30pm. I'm not expecting much better today. Thankfully, my exams are made for tomorrow. All I have to do is print them out.

Part of it is the weather. It hasn't been cold, but the gray and dark really reaches into the deepest part of my soul. Cold I can handle. I'll snivel about it, but it's bearable. Dark and dismal just withers me.

I'm glad I'm doing training again, though. It's tempering my desire to curl up under blankets and hibernate. Today, I went outside and played soccer with my class, and it felt good. I managed a nice hike in the woods yesterday, and that helped, too. I know that exercise does a good job of alleviating SAD. I'm working really hard to keep on top of it, not just so I'm in a good place for triathlon season and Nova Scotia (have I told y'all about that yet?), but also because I have a feeling it's how I'm going to best survive this time of year.

Wifeness, Karla and I have agreed to take time out of the evenings a couple of days per week to keep in touch with each other. Wifeness and I rely strongly on that kind of time to debrief on the day, pass information back and forth, plan, strategize and generally bond and be intimate. We call it Teapot Time. It's hard to have Teapot Time during soccer season because my world is so screwy, but now that we're back on a more or less normal schedule, we're finding we really need to reestablish the habit. We want to include Karla in that time because so much of what we're doing now involves her, either directly or indirectly, and it's good for her to have input. It's also good for her to see how we work together to talk things out and solve problems. She hasn't seen a lot of that among the adults in her world.

We're also letting SiSi and NiNi stay up a little bit later now. We still put them in bed between 8 and 8:30, but we'll let them leave the light on for a few minutes to read or draw. SiSi has been good about turning the light off when the time is up. I love that she's so responsible!

Kiara and Mia are back together again. They seem much happier now. Ben and Leah are not together anymore. They seem happier, too. Teenage romance is weird like that.

Karla has beaten me at Scrabble. I don't mean covered the 70 point spread she normally gets. I mean, she beat me outright. Wheeler is close to beating me, as well. I think my Scrabble mojo has left me.
: (

While I may come back to Grace Park when I start watching Battlestar Galactica again, I think I've decided my new crush is Brea Grant. She's on TV now (and I actually watch Heroes, so I see her every week), she's got a blog--thanks Kizz, for finding that out, and she doesn't live near enough to worry that I might run into her (sorry, Lauren). The voting is open again, though, if Lauren moves outside New England. It's the hair. Redheads are hot. Especially educated redheads.