SO MANY BLOGS, SO LITTLE TIME

Lest you think I have forgotten my first love, or blog, if you will, let me assure you I am not abandoning this ship. But you must understand that I’m still in the honeymoon stage with the OC blog...so I might possibly be dedicating a bit more time and energy over there at the moment.

This business of maintaining two blogs may look glamorous, but let me assure you, it has its dark side. It’s not just the physical demands of writing post after post after post, but there’s a good deal of mental and emotional strain to bear as well. If I write in one, I feel guilty for ignoring the other. I want to be devoted and loyal to both, but there’s only so much of me to go around. This is how I know I could never be a bigamist, or even one of those two-timing wives. The truth is, I can barely keep up with more than one Bingo card at our New Year’s Eve parties, so you can imagine how juggling two blogs is getting to me.

Nevertheless, I am pressing on. I have a rough outline of the Betsy/Thomas wedding posts nearly finished. I even have a working title. How does "NIECE BETSY TAKES A HUSBAND" sound to you? Maybe it’s a bit one-sided, but if Thomas wants more press, he might have to recruit a blogger from his side of the family. Unfortunately, I didn’t even MEET half of his groomsmen, so "that one guy" might be an oft-used phrase in the wedding posts.

But today, I just have a few family notes for you on everyone but Emily, who will of course be dealt with in that "other" blog.

So we’ll start here with Rachel, and I have BIG NEWS about her. She has finally found...and SECURED...her Prince Charming. If you recall, she is dancing the part of Cinderella in the ballet in December, and we were feeling somewhat desperate about her chances of finding a high school boy who was (a) prince-like, (b) willing to dance in a ballet, AND (c) able to bench-press quite a few pounds. But just when we were thinking such a boy did not exist, along came Christian. After the first practice, it was apparent he was our guy because as one of Rachel’s friends put it, "When he picked Rachel up, his face didn’t even turn red!"

In other Rachel news, she continues to act as my personal trainer on a somewhat sporadic basis...basically whenever the mood strikes her. She told me one day that I could burn 100 calories just by drinking a glass of ice water. I told her that couldn’t be true because I drink lots of ice water and don’t lose weight. She just gave me a contemptuous smile. And I use that word only because I recently read this book in which everyone and everything was contemptuous at one time or another. Even a lady’s SHOES are described as contemptuous in one passage. So I thought I’d try it out in my writing.

On to David. Earlier this week, he got his phone taken away by a teacher at school. He was outside the school building walking to his next class, but apparently he still wasn’t supposed to be texting. And I guess it’s no big deal, because when I went to the office to retrieve the phone, they didn’t set me down and tell me I was a bad parent or he was a bad kid or anything. What bothers me is that now there’s a "behavior incident" on his school record, and it’s coded as a CONTRABAND infraction. Last year when Emily forgot her ID badge at school, her behavior incident was recorded as a DRESS CODE infraction. So now the entire school system probably thinks my son is a druggie and my daughter is a skank. And I don’t know how to fight this kind of thing.

Dave is busy training for a triathlon...and stressing over the details. His biggest struggle was in deciding if he needed a wet suit and he kept going to the website and reading posts to me about water temperatures. I didn’t beg him to stop, but I wanted to. He finally ordered a new Speedo swimsuit and we are all hoping it won’t be too revealing.

As for me, I had an interesting dream several weeks ago, where someone (I don’t remember who) was showing me a live, white owl they kept in their freezer. I wanted to tell you about this dream when it happened, but I was in the middle of my wedding series, and didn’t know how to fit it in.

Even my mother would be sick of hearing this by now, because yes, I had tuna and Wheat Thins for lunch again today. Does it help that for dessert, I had some chocolate zucchini bread made by a lady in my office? I hope so.