Naturally Optimistic

I have to get up in 4 hours so this'll be quick. We're off to Sweden! Yay! Vacation. I'll be thinking of you all as I am hiking north of the arctic circle on Wednesday - whohooo! Not sure if I'll be able to post from the road but if I can I will. Ta Ta!

I either usually pack my lunch and bring it to work or go home for lunch - when I pack it and bring it - I use my reusable lunch sack. This has gotten me through almost 10 years of work lunches! Think of all the paper bags that would be. Wow.

We "freecycled" our old couch yesterday! Whohoooooo!

THAT'S RIGHT - ME!!!!!!! My passport came today! My passport came today!! I didn't want to write about it much because I was sure I would jinx it. I talked to the passport call center on Sunday and they were able to tell me that my passport was in "the beginning stages" of being processed (WTH?) When I called back on Tuesday morning they were able to tell me that it was in the middle of being processed (!) and that things were "looking good" for me to get it by the weekend. Thanks to anonymous's suggestion, my MIL's suggestion and Sarah's second of said suggestion, I called my congressman. Jim Oberstar is head of the transportation committee and I am a constituent and I thought at the very least I would let them know what is going on and that people like me, are very frustrated. The woman I spoke to yesterday was SUPER nice and understanding and helpful and told me she would call the processing center (not the call center! whooot!) and see what s...

At our house we compost all of our food waste. This has saved us so much space in our garbage and it goes into making some really great gardening supplies. Currently we have to take our food waste to our "sanitary district" where they compost HUGE mounds of steaming black...well, compost...that you can purchase for a pittance. We're on a waiting list for an "Earth Machine" so we can skip hauling in buckets of food scraps and combine them with our yard waste in our own back yard.

We recycle everything at our house - everything that we can anyway. Junk mail, cardboard, plastic milk jugs, tin cans, aluminum (which we actually take in and sell), newspapers, etc. Today was garbage & recycling pick up day (good timing!). Even Beavis has been helping out. Since he spends a lot of his summer days out doors, he uses the litter box less and we go through WAY less kitty litter. Thanks, Beavis!

Steve bought me a new water bottle yesterday (early b-day present) as he doesn't want me drinking out of plastic so much while I'm pregnant (usually I use a Nalgene). This SIGG water bottle was so cute, I couldn't resist! And a perfect start to Kelli's "Green Week" . Have any Green habits you'd like to share?

I guess I could leave this entry blank as there is no update. One week from now we *should* be just getting on a plane in Detroit for our 7 1/2 hour trip to Amsterdam. However, I am not optimistic. I talked to the passport place yesterday morning (at 6am! whohoo!) and they said that it is still being "processed" and basically they don't have any other info for me. The guy suggested that I go to Chicago (!) for an appointment at the regional passport center there - That's only a $650 plane ticket (from Duluth), prayers that planes will be on time and that there even IS an appointment available on say, Thursday, oh and the government already has my old passport & my marriage certificate so how can I even prove who I am? Yes, I am depressed. Thoroughly. :(

Yesterday I drove the sick computer (steve's Dell) to Apple Valley (160 or so miles south) to have my cousin's boyfriend take a look at it and see if he could save me $300+ and fix it. We sat from about 6:15pm til it finished up at 12:45am!!! Paul tried several things initially that just didn't work due to all the viruses & spyware that had infected that machine. Ultimately he had to remove the harddrive, install it as a slave on his computer, remove all of our files to his computer, put the harddrive back into our computer and reinstall the operating system. Now it works like a charm! We *hopefully* didn't lose any files or photos and now our system is really running a lot better & faster...and the desktop is so clean! Whohooo! Paul also installed a virus program that is *top notch* and will continually run in the background as well as some adware software to catch nasty buggers before the get us to the point of no return...again. I also got to visit my adorabl...

there's joy. On Monday morning Steve & I went to our second OB appointment. After all the usual checks (peeing in a cup, blood pressure, weight, etc) we got to hear the Chick Pea's heartbeat on the doppler. At first it took her a while to find it and was making such faces of consternation while looking for it that it started to freak both Steve & I out but then she found and and it was very cool. I must admit, it's a little freaky though to think that there is a being that is growing inside of me and has it's own heartbeat!!! Everything is on track and before you know it, Chick Pea will be here!

Our beautiful & sweet furry friend Iko passed away at 12:50am on Tuesday, July 10th. It was very very heartbreaking. Both Steve & I knew that his passing was imminent on Monday night. Iko's breathing had become labored, he was more lethargic than he had been and he just didn't look "right." We sat with him for hours in the kitchen - us on the floor, he on his little blanket which had become his "spot" as of late. We told him how sweet of a kitty he is and how much we loved him and we petted him and tried to make him comfortable when it seemed he was not. I went to bed shortly after midnight and Steve remained in the kitchen with Iko. At 12:50 Steve yelled up to me that Iko had died. I hurried downstairs to be with them both...Iko was still moving (reflexes?) when I got there. We covered him up and after crying and hugging and talking about him for a while we made him a bed in a box and put him inside. Yesterday we drove to Restlawn Pet Cemetary where...

There was a nice article about us today in the Duluth News Tribune. You can check it out here .

Relatively speaking, today is going better than the past few days have gone. We again didn't get up as early as we were going to to go for a hike, but we did go for a hike w/Steve's Mom & her SO Roger. We hiked from Beck's Road in Duluth (waaaaaaay west) to the Magney-Snively Ski Area parking lot. 4.3 miles according to the map, 4.8 according to my pedometer. It was HOT and steep but we made it. I think I lost all the water weight I could've possibly had. It took WAY longer than anticipated, however, and I was late in picking up Miss M to go see a play this afternoon. I called her Mom from the trail (yay! when technology works!) and she agreed to bring her up to UMD for me since I was running behind. I got there AFTER the show started (timewise) but Miss M wasn't there yet to I guess that worked out okay. We hurriedly bought tickets and were ushered into the heavenly cold a/c theater. The show was A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF FROG AND TOAD (or w/Frog & Toad...somet...

Well, my relaxing destressing get-things-done-around-the-house weekend is for shit. Got up "early" this morning (not as early as we would've liked) as it was supposed to be HOT today (and it is). Our plan to take an "early" morning hike to get that out of the way and feel good about ourselves off the bat. Then come home - Steve would mow before the major heat hit and I would run my pukey errands. Well, one thing led to another - inviting Steve's Mom & SO, his aunt, etc no one could decide what to do, what time, people were running errands, maybe later? which sucked up a whole bunch of time. We decided to take a bike ride in the Superior Municipal Forest (Superior, WI) instead. On our way there we stopped by Northwest Outlet as Steve would like me to get a SIGG water bottle instead of the Nalgene that I use now - due to the chick pea. They had some but they were spendy and not cute enough (ha!). Then we started chatting with a worker there - very nice, su...

I'm sitting in the middle of a stressball. Not only am I trying to run a company (something I've never even thought of attempting before), I'm trying to get through production on a micro-budget film acting as the Produer, Editor, Cook, Extras Wrangler, and person-that-tries-to-keep-everyone-else-from-going-insane, I also am pregnant which doesn't add a whole lot of physical stress yet (although in a perfect world I would spend more time relaxing and NOT being stressed out than I currently am) (and the physical stress is to come) but emotionally it knocks me over the edge more often than I'd like to admit. So there's that. There's also the fact that I haven't had a weekend at home since......oh I don't know...May? I mean, I've been home but not really - more like running around and doing the cooking, lugging, hauling, driving, loading, unloading, grocery shopping for 50, setting up, taking down and trying to keep everyone calm stuff. So there...