Remarkably....

From the frustrat-o-gram on Tuesday, by Thursday there was a lightness in my gait - Somehow out of the troubles came some peace of a sort? At least part of it was a decision by our sponsors that we really really need to be done with the high-level stuff and get to work on the real project, so we wrapped things up. By Thursday we had transferred ownership of the documents we'd been creating and endlessly revising to new people who will care for them going forward, and we have a new set of challenges laid out.

Not that the new challenges aren't hard, but at least they're new.

Also as of Monday, I have ONE CLIENT. I haven't had that since July of last year... up to a peak of 4 in October. So I actually worked something resembling a 40 hour week last week, and fought all temptations to "fill in" with other work. I spent a lot of time with Isaac these past two days, in part because of...

The St Paul Stars Synchro Invitational! Bella's synchronized swimming team hosted an invitational and it was 2 days of competition. Pamela as a host parent was running around like mad getting things ready, so I saw her only as I either loaded or unloaded her car... Bella got the "synchro hairdo" - a helmet-like bun held in place with gelatin and glitter, hardened the night before.

It was wonderful to watch my little Esther Williams in the pool, where her group (ranging in age from 5-8) did their semi-synchromized routine - the mob of girls moved from one end of the pool to the other, and then back, pausing to form rows or rings (or both-ish), with arms and legs and flips in there. They were dressed in hot pink suits with little mouse ears, swimming to a hard techno version of the Mickey Mouse Club theme. It was 4 minutes of amazing.

Before and after, the pink mouses were here there and everywhere together, giggling and just BEING in the day. Pamela likened their movement to a school of fish, where they all would go one direction then another, then another, with no seeming destination or leader, just following the flow of pure whim.

As I said, I spent a lot of time with Isaac, since the girls were off doing this. We did spend a couple of hours at the meet, so we watched Bella's routine. But the rest of the time was a whole lot of playing, with some errand running in there too. Friday night, we went to Edinborough Park for climbing and jumping. Isaac went for over 25 minutes of straight moon-walk jump time, and showed no signs of tiredness. Where the energy comes from... I do not know.

Isaac's brain is growing and he's been talking non-stop and asking questions. Where do cars come from? Who makes them? What kind of store sells them? Where does the sun go at night time? What is the name of this street? What time is it? One of my favorites is when someone tries to tell him something in for form of "You know, some people might say that..." His response is always "Who said that? What were their NAMES?" He's very into finding out the real story.

Or the story he can understand at least. Driving through a neighborhood we've never been in, he shouts out - "this is near my school" - I try to tell him it's not, but what it IS near, and he insists "NO. IT IS NEAR MY SCHOOL." And on a cosmic scale, I can't argue with that. Also in his discoveries: We drove past a guy snowblowing, shooting snow high into the air. "OH - THAT'S where all that snow came from" was his conclusion.

It's 8:45 and all is quiet in the house - everyone's asleep but me. Pamela finally collapsed after being a supermom for the synchro girls. Zinsser is asleep after pestering ME to play fetch all afternoon. Isaac is asleep with his dreams of how everything in the world works. Bella is asleep after a long two days, and one silver medal for her team's hard work.

And what makes me happy is that I'm 2 days into my 3 day re-charge: I have all day tomorrow with the family before headed back to Cleveland on Monday, and I'm NOT dreading being there now. Things are a-ok.