Believe in the Flowers.

Carol of the Zombie Jesus!

No, really, I am.


Some time has passed since the last time I had a chance to actually use my computer and do anything online. When we first moved into this house, we didn't have a usable phone line and thus had no internet access. We survived without this valuable asset for some time, and only within the last two weeks have we been lucky enough to not only fix the phone line (although if it weren't for internet access, that wouldn't matter much) and have our services turned back on. Unfortunately, my dearly beloved had the internet turned back on over the phone and paid some $80 for the return of services that I hadn't anticipated or budgeted, so we're more than a little behind at the moment. He considered it part of a birthday gift to himself - I considered it a smack in the forehead.

Meanwhile, we're still in the same house, still doing all right. The place is an absolute disaster area all the same, a lingering result of the changing weather (I swear it has been cold and cloudy/raining for a week now) and a week-long visit by several of my in-laws for a wedding. Now that they're gone, this place is still a lingering mess, and I'm God-only-knows-how-behind on dishes and laundry. Never mind the fact that we need trash stickers to put our trash out for the city to take, and those stickers happen to cost money, so we've a mountain of trash that can only be put out a few bags at a time. To say that I'm somewhat grossed out by this would be an understatement: it's absolutely disgusting, but there's very little I can do about it.

On the plus side, we've done some work (okay, mostly Colin did the work) and Gabe's room is actually livable, instead of just being a mess of a storage room for toys. It's a big change, and it looks really nice. There are shelves in there, a CD player/radio, and his chest of drawers, although there isn't anything in them yet. Oops. His clothes are still in the midst of being sorted, and since I have nothing to sort the too-small clothes into at the moment, it's a disaster. Everything here seems to be a disaster.

As for the kids: Alex is desperate to move. He smiles and coos but hasn't laughed yet. He's a grouchy, grumpy, gassy baby at the moment, and the "gassy" portion of this tends to cause the other two issues, in my opinion. He has nearly rolled himself over once. Our sleeping arrangements still consist of me on the loveseat in the living room with Alex either sleeping on his stomach on my chest, or laying on his back on pillows beside me, with me sitting up, when I nurse him at night. Gabe sleeps in the bed with Colin still. The number of things Gabe can say are amazing, and every day he adds another few words to his vocabulary. He has formed relatively complete sentences, is obsessed with the alphabet and counting, and is currently capable of using a computer better than most adults I know. He can turn on and shut off both of the computers, can play several games, and is a fan of Spore, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Hellgate: London. He can turn on music, and do things he probably ought not to do - including finding porn on Colin's computer and referring to it as "the Mommy game" (I assume this is because he sees women and, unless they have a name he's aware of, they are "Mommy"). Ahh, that's my boy.

So yeah, there's work to be done. Are we doing great? Eh, I wouldn't say "great". But nobody's dead yet, and that's good, right?