Crazy Neighborhood Living

Spring has sprung SO HARD: For the third day in a row, the whole neighborhood has been parked out on a neighbor's yard with kids running around and adults shooting the breeze with a beer or two. It's especially fun now with Isaac, who is capable of holding his own with most of the bigger kids, and is in the middle of the action.

He actually does so well, that Colin, one of the neighbor kids who is TEN asked for a playdate with Isaac yesterday. They spent an hour in their backyard (with Colin's mom) playing happily.

Today we rolled out the Mobile Relaxation Unit - the couch that Jenny's parents donated to the cause which Pamela and Papa extensively redecorated with brightly colored remnants. We carried it out the front door, set it down, and rolled it across the street and down the block on its casters. The neighborhood kids were all screaming with excitement to see this grey, pink, silver, and zebra striped couch rolling down the middle of the street. We were going to bring it home tonight, but the fact is tomorrow will be another party (and we'll be grilling!), so we left it over there.

Bella and Isaac are hitting growth spurts now, and have both outgrown their shoes. Bella has these big paddlefeet (when Kaitie handed her to us in the hospital 6 1/2 years ago, she actually apologized "I can see she got my feet!") so we can't just do the neighborhood shoe hand-down. We went to Schuler Shoes, a local institution and got her properly fitted with a couple of pairs of New Balances which have the room she needs. One of the pairs has robots and blinking lights on it, the other is silver with bright yellow details (Yellow is coming up in the rankings of favorite colors these days). Isaac also busted out of his latest pair, and so we got him a couple of fresh shoes on sale.

Of course, nothing is FAST in a small shoe store, so Isaac and Bella were running around like MANIACS which exhausted us. Isaac walked behind a rack of sportswear, and pushed his way through, pausing to declare "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!!" as though he had just emerged from the curtain on stage. I almost fell out of my chair. What a ham.

As to work: I have one solid offer to start in July, one potential to start in 2 weeks, one fell through already, and one just arose today from a new source which I should find out more about tomorrow. So parachute or not, I think things are looking pretty good. On the parachute front, there's resistance at the management level, as noted elsewhere... but then our April forecasts aren't looking so good and we have an "emergency circle the wagons" meeting tomorrow. We'll just see.