'what's up' weekly.

Well, this week turned out to be a real doozy.  On the one hand, I expected it to be.  I knew I'd be spending the week planning and organizing the upcoming school year, which is always a major undertaking.  (Though, the advantage of doing it this way is that I do literally zero planning the rest of the year.  I prefer to power my way through once and buy back all that time on the back end.)

The few items that have arrived so far.  Did you know Amazon limits the number of items you can order at a single time?  It turns out, you can't put more than fifty items in your cart to check out.  Now I know.

This part of the week was actually successful.  I got all of my lesson plans organized for the whole year, all of my books and curricula ordered, my student and teacher planners designed and printed.  I'm just waiting for things to arrive by mail, and that should be the end of most of the year's planning!  All I really have left on my plate is to reorganize our chore system.  The way we've been doing things has been working fine, but we'll be adding more kids to the 'regular chore' mix next year, and there are a few things I'd like to streamline anyway, so I'll go more into detail on that once I nail down a few things.

BUT.  In addition to all of the school craziness, we had a couple of mechanical failures this week.  First, our air conditioner broke.  It's been hot around these parts lately, and Tuesday was especially hot. (105 degrees at lunchtime.)  I've been having some hormonal swings lately, so at first when I was starting to feel clammy and hot, I just figured it was related to that.  But then when I never actually cooled down, I checked the thermostat, which said it was 80 inside.  So I called the HVAC company, who said they were really backed up but could be out the next day.  So we sauna'd it up the rest of the day and through the night.  The thermostat was at 89 by the time we went to bed.

All I can say is that I was not in a good mood.  Apparently, I don't like being overheated.  I never knew this about myself since I typically run cold, but it's now official.  Turn up the heat on Paige Van Voorst and you won't like the consequences.  I was reduced to a gelatinous puddle of mutinous thoughts directed at others: "Don't block my access to the box fan.  Don't touch me; it's too hot.  Don't talk to me or look at me; your very gaze makes me hot."  I was mad at the couch for being upholstered in too-thick material, I was mad at the windows for being too small, I was mad at my shorts for being too necessary.  In short, I was just a real gem.

Luckily, it was an easy fix.  There was a blockage in the system that was easily cleaned out, and it didn't take anything more than a service call to get the air back up and running again, and my usual angelic demeanor to return.

The Brothers have taken an interest in cuddling Callista lately, which is adorable, but she seems to realize it puts her in a precarious position.

Unluckily, in the meantime, Todd's car decided to die.  We've kind of known it was coming for a while now, but it's been gimping its way back and forth to work alright.  But on Tuesday, about halfway into the drive over to a thing with our Connection Group, Todd said the temperature gauge reached "Boiling: Plus," and the hood started billowing smoke.  He turned around and tried to get all the way home, but a few blocks away, The Egg (my affectionate nickname for it) puttered to a halt and gave up the ghost.  So Todd pushed it into the Dairy Queen parking lot.  He was later able to start it again to get it home, but it's been sitting in our driveway ever since.

I have a feeling this won't be the easy fix that the air conditioner was.  A knowledgeable friend came over to troubleshoot, and there is oil everywhere under the hood.  He's not sure exactly what's wrong, and suggested we take it in to have it looked at.  But that may require towing to get it to a shop, plus any repair costs, and to be honest, Todd's car is worth almost nothing, so we're not sure we want to dump a bunch of money into it.  So we're still uncertain about what we'll end up doing with it.

In better news, today we'll be heading over to swim at my friend Megan's pool - a privilege I don't take lightly knowing first-hand how hot this week has been!

TODDLER BELLY!!

We stayed cool by looking through old family yearbooks.  One of these days I'm going to get current on these; until then, we console ourselves with rehashing 2011 all the time.

And that was our week.  I'm hoping next week is full of a whole lotta nothing.  And also a new free car, if I'm wishing for stuff.