Assembly of Blog

I arrived in Indiana on July 2, after a 20-hour drive that included sleeping in my car. To be fair, the drive from Louisiana to Indiana is prettier and cheaper and slightly shorter than the drive from Texas to Indiana. However, it's not as populated - so you must stop where you can! Little Rock is like the biggest deal you pass through. I was 1.5 miles from Bill Clinton's childhood home (eating a Wendy's), but it didn't seem worth visiting.

My mom was in the hospital for a week with a kidney infection brought on by a kidney stone. Lots of pain. She was finally released and has regained some strength ... just to go into surgery tomorrow. Fun, right? Who wants to get old? She'll be off work for nearly a month when it's all said and done. Miserable, but necessary.

I have been away from the boys for a week and a half. It's nice to catch up on sleep and sit quietly and enjoy a book, but I miss them like crazy. Life's too easy (though, my mom is sometimes a demanding patient).

I am working on turning my online life over to a new email address. It's a slow-going process, but I appreciate that Gmail imports emails for 30 days from my old account. I am getting all the blogs switched over and hope to assemble them into one or two coherent blogs in the near future.

I picked up Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life by Jenna Woginrich and can hardly put it down. I'm almost halfway through, and I've only had it a couple hours. I am currently OBSESSED with getting a chicken coop (and have selected Red Star chickens as my preferred breed - and my city does allow chicken coops in-town ... not sure my neighborhood does, but better to ask for forgiveness than permission). I also can't wait for a garden next year (I'm looking at you raised vegetable garden beds) and am starting to toy with the idea of beekeeping. I don't think we have the land to keep enough distance between our boys and the bees, though, SO I started looking at houses further out in the country. My poor husband.

So, that's that.

I am set to return to my boys this Thursday - it'll be very late or very early Friday. It's been great to be able to take care of my mom (thanks mostly to my husband taking time off work to watch the kiddos), but I am ready to get back. I've seen three of my oldest and dearest friends during my time up here - that's been great too (oh, and I got to meet two of their new babies - yeah!). I grilled for the first time - shrimp on kabobs and corn on the cob. AMAZING. Also eating lots of Jimmy Johns and Qdoba ... just because I can :)