First Day of the New Year

My poor neglected blog. I've got lots of material for fodder from the past month, only I never had the internet access, computer, pen and paper, or time to do anything with it.

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The kids went back to school this morning and it was rough. ROUGH. There was attitude, tears and temper tantrums. All within the span of 45 minutes.

Bubaloo doesn't like change and copes with it poorly.

Yesterday, we dismantled the old step from the side of the house. It had been sitting at the end of our driveway for over a month begging the garbage collectors to take pity on it and stash it in the back of their truck. Only they never did. Which led to us having to break it into much smaller pieces.

Bubaloo stood at the end of the driveway for five minutes this morning mourning the lost of his "step-ey."

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Summer camp has come, and gone. It was the roughest year we've had thus far.

We had to send five kids home for lice, had three disclosures, fired one staff and have to seriously re-consider whether or not a handful of them should be invited back next year.

We faced an assertions from two camp staff members that parents shouldn't be directors of this camp program. Mostly because we interfere with their camp counselloring. Well, if you think that when a camper doesn't get their meds three nights in a row that we're interfering because we're the parents of the kid not receiving his meds, you're dead wrong.

Wifey and I aren't sure we can invest another year of our lives into running this program. Camp is supposed to be fun. The fun was lacking this year.

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On the job front, I applied for two and received offers from two jobs. Both wildly different and presenting different challenges.

When I found out in April that I would be laid off upon my return to work next week, I think I handled it with relatively little panic. I decided not to overly stress out over various"what if" scenarios, and waited to see what would pop up.

Today is decision day. I'm not exactly second guessing my choice. I'm just feeling mildly guilty by it because the job I'm not going to take would be working with a community I love. The organization itself is not in a good place and I'm still reeling from the last toxic work environment.

In 1-2 weeks from now, I'll be back at work. In a new job.

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The contractors totally messed up my fence project. The erected it the week I was at camp. Poor craftsmanship. Design not to my specs. It's an absolute disaster. And, I'm pissed. I anticipate that the fence will fall over just after the warranty expires. They also tried to rip me off on material quality (pine substituted for cedar, and I don't even believe it's pressure treated pine at that).

I'm writing the email, with photos enclosed, this morning.

The worst part of this is that I researched the company. Saw their work. Talked with clients. How on earth have I again ended up with a shoddy contractor???