Finally. I Have Returned

Two months. I know; it's a long time without an update. I'd tell you I'm sorry and beg your forgiveness, but honestly, I'm not sure my eight or so readers felt a significant vacuum in their lives for my absence. Just another blogger who didn't stick with it.

The thing is, I actually will stick with it. You just have to put up with the occasional dry spell. I really am sorry. Mostly just because that's not how I want to blog, not because I think my absence did a powerful harm to the Internetz.

So April 23, I posted about depression. Several things have happened since then. Perhaps most significantly, I've carried a pregnancy past the first trimester (officially today). I'm as shocked as the rest of the world, and I'm slowly getting excited.

The difficulties in our marriage have been getting better. Both of us work hard, and while I think we're also both kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, we're also enjoying this anomalous experience of actually liking our spouse.

So much and yet so little has happened in the past two months. Burgundy finished 9th grade with straight As for the second semester. She went to Chicago with our church's youth choir, and they sang in churches, cathedrals, and nursing homes as they toured their way up and back. She saw Blue Man Group on the trip, and I think she's decided to become Catholic just so she can marry in a St. Louis cathedral with which she fell deeply in love. She began a summer school enrichment program at Rice University last week.

That's a post in and of itself. It's a testament to the power of great teachers that young people in their teens, an age glorified for recalcitrance and rebellion, flock to this school in the summer. Burgundy's boyfriend begged his parents to let him go (I'm sure Burgundy's attendance had nothing to do with that), and Burgundy, who is 14 and starting her Sophomore year in August, a musician and an English nerd, comes home chattering gaily about Calculus and Chemistry. I mean, really. Maybe standardized testing isn't so effective after all? Maybe giving teachers the freedom to teach to their students is effective? Pshaw, you don't say.

It turns out that Burgundy's Calculus teacher (who has her gobbling up the limits and derivatives regardless of her lack of pre-Cal and tutoring her classmates) teaches at the Awty International School. I wanted so badly to send her to Awty when she was little. I could go on and on about them. I'm tempted to pull him aside toward the end of the summer school program and ask him about scholarships. The tuition is tens of thousands per year, but if we could put her in an environment where the teachers are free to teach (and she could earn her International Baccalaureate), I know she would thrive.

Oh, once I start writing, it's so easy. I missed, you, little blog!

Mark has been working on his book business, and I've been laying on the couch whining about morning sickness that lasts all day and all night. His business is going pretty well now, and I would guess he's selling an average of two to three books per day. He still needs to take one more class before he can sit for his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, but NASA keeps cancelling or completely overselling its occasional class for PMs. I think we're going to just pay the tuition for him to take this class. It will hurt financially given our impending unemployment, but given the value of a current PMP cert, I think it's completely worth the effort. It could double his salary.

I've continued to work part-time right up until now. I received word last week though that beginning next week, I will begin working full time. This is a blessing in disguise for me. I have been so tired and sick for the last three months that if I had needed to go full time even a week earlier, I don't know if I could have done it. Luckily, the sickness is getting less and less prohibitive, and my energy is coming back now. By next week, I should be ready to go. The real blessing in all this is that we'll be able to almost double our emergency fund if we're very careful. If we can (God willing) find a way to fully fund it and pay for the midwife before my employment ends, I'll be so very grateful.

I think that has to be all for now. I could go on and on, but I think I need to save some words for tomorrow.