My life has a messy side.

That is, to say, there is a lot of mess in my life. I quite like my part of life… I’m married to a man I love, I have the cutest little loving puppy, a loving kitty (when puppy isn’t around) a good job, I’m taking classes I really enjoy, I’m involved in a small group that is encouraging and challenging and trusting, and I have at least one stepchild that loves me.

It’s just that things all around me seem to be in perpetual chaos.

Currently I’m housebreaking the puppy, taking classes with challenging homework, refinancing the house, dealing with one child bent on apparent self-destruction, and another that I am afraid is putting her heart before her head and going backwards in life in order to be with the person she loves, and a husband that is depressed about his kids (understandably) and about his marriage, which isn’t as happy as he thinks it should be, or as intimate, or something. I don’t know. “If I knew what to tell you, I would, but I don’t.” So, I’m in the dark to a pretty good extent. He just stuffs everything inside.

Phone rang: The youngest has just been dropped off at her mom’s house “to live” because she won’t do what she’s supposed to do, lies about it, isn’t going to school, isn’t doing her homework, and when you ask her why: “I don’t know”. “I don’t care.” then, stonewall. So, her dad can’t deal with this attitude and she’s off to Mom’s for now. Whether he will actually pull her out of school here and make her stay there is hard to say.  Her mom sent the older one to live with us 3 years ago because she couldn’t handle her. Now we’re sending a different one back there because we can’t handle her? What a mess.

Well, it’s time for my small group. I have to go. Please pray for my husband John and for my kids, and for me. I think we all could use it.

Puppy has been a handful. He’s so great but yeah, housetraining sucks. Work has been busy, so I’ve made time tonight to catch up on every Xanga subscription I have. That took about an hour and a half.

Today at school we found that the vast majority of my seminary classmates are also sci-fi / fantasy fans of some sort. Everyone had their favorite flavor of Star Trek and definite views on a variety of sci-fi or fantasy movies and tv shows. I wonder what commonality brings seminary students to science fiction, or science fiction fans to seminary. The Great Unknown? Also there was a significant number of World of Warcraft players there which was interesting too. None of us played on the same server except the husband/wife team in one of my classes. I was kind of surprised by the WoW players.

Also, is it strange that I am pretty consistently drawn to hanging out with people in their late 20s and early 30s? I guess I think of myself as being that age still, even though I’m 41… I feel about ohhhh 28? 30? Something around there. Except that whole “my body is rebelling against me” thing. That feels like I’m about 50. or more.

My first paper is due next week. It’s a reflective paper, so it doesn’t require research, but it does require introspection. I’m a veteran at introspection and keeping a blog certainly helps me keep up on that, but I’m a little unsure about this paper. In any case, i should be writing that this week instead of blogging, so we’ll see if i have time to do both.

That’s all the time I’ve got for now. There’s lots more to say, but I need to get on to doing other things…  like laundry, and cleaning the kitchen, and eating a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich, and snuggling with the pup!

Meet Dylan! (or, Bob Dylan – my husband’s FAVORITE artist) He’s a 4 mos. old purebred Lhasa Apso that came home with us yesterday afternoon. He’s settling in nicely. We originally called him Indiana (Indy) Jones, but it just didn’t seem to suit him. So, we thought and thought and tossed around plenty of names, and eventually settled on Dylan, because he seems to be a very chill kind of guy. He was so mellow the first day I began to wonder if he was sedated! We took him to the vet yesterday evening and she said he’s a beautiful looking dog and very healthy! (yay!)