so after a pretty decent day of subbing, i came home and the stench of dog crap hit my nose.  i'm hoping for the best:  perhaps i'm imagining it, or at worse the dog crap is just a small mound at the back of tozer's kennel.  nope!  it's a mess of shards mixed with piss all over the kennel and all over tozer. 

dog shampoo:  $10

1 roll of paper towel:  $2

1 bottle of carpet cleaner:  $7

A clean house and a clean Tozer sleeping at my feet:  priceless

after cleaning the shower, cleaning the dog kennel, washing the dirty rags, washing the dirty dog, exhausting work and becoming sick of smelling poo, hearing tozer bark his head off because he's confined in the kitchen, and wishing that tozer would never poop again; i finally have a chance to put my feet up and relax.   being a parent is crazy, busy work.  how do you mothers do it all day long?!  guess it's the pay off--my baby is now sleeping so sweetly!

scrapbooking has consumed my days lately.  i've been soaking up the past few weeks with monotonous activities, but surprisingly, i've felt very accomplished completing the last few years worth of events that are now pasted on colorful paper pages.

in other news i am in the process of becoming a substitute teacher here in the pittsburgh public schools.  to me, this upcoming experience will open the door for learning classroom management, deciding if younger kids are a better audience to spend time teaching, and figuring out if teaching is really what i want to do long term.

it's another warm autumn day here in pgh and this coming weekend will mark our second wedding anniversary.  we're going to a bed and breakfast in niagara falls, ny and having dinner in canada!  i'm looking forward to time away with ben and reconnecting.  i thoroughly enjoy being married, and i have loved every moment of learning about this amazing man i'm married to.  even though i've confessed it to ben, it still worries me that someday he'll get too smart for me and that i'll never understand online communities, etc. and we'll regress to conversations about weather patterns.  i think this fear is one of many fears that are so minute but have become amplified by the unknown and unfamiliar of life right now.

i had an amazing time over coffee (no, i still don't drink coffee--i prefer chai) with a friend last week.  i expressed my discomfort with not being able to slow down and absorb all of the changes that have occurred even from the beginning of this year until now.  it's become hard to wrap my mind around who i am--no longer defined as a student, married to an intelligent man who is a full time student, living far from "home", seeking friendships that are meaningful and won't be short-term (while not wanting reveal much about who i am--you see the difficulty right?), a believer wanting to draw nearer to God--this is no small task.  her words about the possibility that maybe not knowing these things in their entirety or having it all figured could really be okay.  i was stunned.  but i'm learning to let it sink-in.

seeing my brother-in-law's weblog and the pictures of the family being together and hanging out at a concert made me sad--i must admit.  even though at the same time i was laughing and loved his blog, it made me realize that four years are still four years.  yes, i'm definitely a "glass half empy" kind of gal.  it's not just the blog, but it's everything that the blog sort of symbolizes.  they're over there, and (you guessed it) we're over here.  my sister-in-law is about to have a baby and i think part of the reason it's so exciting is that someday i'll have a baby too.  the reality is far more closer than it was my niece and nephew were born and i was still in high school.  the other more bleak reality is:  they're over there and...we're over here.  and it's not that this is a new concept.  many people have babies and live their lives far from the family and friends they left behind, but this happens to be a new concept for me and i'm trying to digest it--slowly.

this hasn't been easy, and yes, there are still days when i feel like completely shutting down and shutting off every nerve in my body.  we saw the stars come out over this new place we call home the other night.  ben and i wrapped ourselves in soft blankets, held each other's hand, and stretched our 25-year-old bodies over the cut grass.  the air became cooler and stuck to our skin faster.  we counted:  1...2...3...4...5 stars.  he held me tighter and then we went back...back home.

it happens to be my half birthday today.

did i mention how much i enjoy libraries?  i am especially happy about the carnegie library that i'm sitting in right now as i take a break from completing my last (online course) exam.  oh, this is a nice, "ancient" library with gold painted trim and huge murals on the wall with latin writing.  i think i'm going to like pittsburgh.

back to the exam.