Absolutely NOTHING of adoption interest! Believe me when I say this is good news! I'm exhausted and war-torn from trying to decipher questionable and bad news for way too long to keep track of. No news truly is good news, today.

So what DID go on in Nicki's life on this fine Thursday in June?

- I bought and used grass killer because I am just THAT lazy that I didn't want to bend over and pull grass out of my landscaping. We also spent a small period of time contemplating buying some mulch and having landscapers lay it down to top off our mulch from last year. Then we got some prices and suddenly Tony thought maybe that is something he might like to do, himself, after all. Which would you prefer if you had to chose - sand to top off the beach or mulch to top off the landscaping. Both have their appeal, neither is truly important in the grand scheme of life!

- I got news about our home equity line of credit we are working on that will pay for the deck we badly need. No more 20 foot drops to get out the back door, what ever will we do when the kids are misbehaving?!

- We had the entire first foot or two of our driveway and frontage sliced off with a jackhammer and a heavy saw. I'm a lot more grumpy about the jackhammer pounding for 5 hours straight than I am about the driveway. But it means we can't park in our driveway OR in front of our house OR across from our house for the next THREE days. Where will we park? I dunno. Maybe now's a good time to have our vehicles serviced!

- I delivered every single negative I own to the photo center to be scanned onto cd. Ready in the morning. I'm excited!!

- while at the photo center, I zipped over to the grocery area and discovered yogurt with chocolate pieces in it. This, I have decided, will be my ice cream substitute! After reading the label I guessed it probably has the same fat, calories and sugar as ice cream but justified the purchase because ice cream doesn't have those live cultures and probiotics. It's a health food!

- I took a trip to the pet store because we needed very important things like destinker for our turtle tank. Yes, this qualifies as very important and there is a reason it was listed before even the dog food that we were running low on!

- I lost my kid when he decided to bike away from home during an angry fit of rage. Ok I didn't lose him because that would mean I actually went out looking for him and I didn't. Until my neighbor knocked on the door wondering where "the boys" went. The boys? Would that be my boy and his boy? Just one of my boys or more than one, I wonder while quickly scanning the room to count heads. I gave him one of two ideas (both of which, I later found out, were dead on) right as the boys were returning together. Whew! Neglect-by-proxy averted again!

- I sat on my porch and contemplated being social with our neighbors long enough to switch gears and contemplate why it is that every person who hangs out in front of their home in the evening on our street has a beer in their hand! Is it from the long day at work? Or do they want to seem all white-trashy cool to each other? If they always have beer in their hands outside, how often do they have beer in their hands inside? Do I want to know? And then I remembered why I'm not social with my neighbors.

- While sitting on the porch I also contemplated how it is that the local 5 and 6 year old boys - who will not say hi to us even when we say hi first but often WILL grunt at my kids while riding past on their bikes - learned to ride their bikes? I never saw their parents out running along side them, I never saw them practicing. The weather turned 65 and suddenly they both knew how to ride bikes. I also contemplated why it is insulting to get snubbed not only by the neighbors but also by the neighbor's 5 year old kid.

- And in big news, I unwillingly-and-full-guilt gave up my Super Mario Bros for DS game to the kids. I already won it but it is still my friend. The kids are trying to teach me to share nicely with others. I'm still learning. I also checked about 10 pages of math homeschooling work and started pounding out our summer schedule that will begin next week. Now I'm going to go write a profile of a local mall and call it a day.


And this, my friends, concludes another thrill-a-minute day in Nicki's world :-)