January is cooking along

Lots of stuff going on. I’m pleased to say we now have a staircase at the cabin - the new contractor I found in a desert group has (I think?) worked out great. I’ll withhold judgment until I see it in person, but we left keys out there and he worked on it the last couple of days, finishing up yesterday. He’s the first contractor who didn’t ask for a deposit and said we could pay half until we inspected it for ourselves. 

No more climbing a metal ladder up to the bedrooms. I’m going to see if he can start an overhang for us next week. It would be great to have a place to be outside in the shade. Last weekend I was enjoying a hammock until it started raining - it would be nice to be able to enjoy the outdoors even in a light rain. It’s kind of hilarious that we’re doing all these non-essential projects and we don’t even have a shower or sink yet. I guess that just shows where our priorities are. 

I’m hustling to get my website updated before the “hard opening” on Thursday. The frustrating part is I have the information, I just don’t have the technical savvy now that Wordpress changed their whole system and doing simple things like embedding photos has become stupidly complicated. I plan on spending this afternoon wrestling with it. I’m determined to finish today.

I also have been tirelessly trying to track down contact info for all the kids’ friends to invite them to their joint trampoline park party on March 17. I have to find this info for kids from both the old and new schools. Apparently no contact sheet was put together for Theo’s 4th grade class - so we may be relegated to completely unreliable paper invites handed out at school again. Honestly, it’s not the end of the world this time - the party is already way too big with Bobby’s friends that I know will all show, so if Theo just has a few kids from his old school, he’ll be happy with that. With Bobby turning 13 next year and starting junior high, I figure this may be the last kiddie party he’ll be interested in having, so I’m trying to embrace the chaos and enjoy the end of this era. 

Speaking of new schools, we find out in March if Bobby got into the gifted program at the jr/sr high. With all his points, I can’t imagine he won’t, but I need to be prepared that it might randomly be a year with tons of kids applying and he just won’t make the cut. It’s going to be such a big change for us this summer. Not just a whole new school but a whole new way of being at school - having to move to different classrooms each period, kids in different schools for the first time since 2018…it’s going to be wild. 

For me, I’m counting down to my band’s Germany trip a week from Wednesday. I’m worried about several things on this trip, not the least of which is leaving Bobby’s 6th grade class trip in the hands of the H while I’m on another continent. There’s so much I need to have in place before I go, between the kids, my event, taxes, and my podcast. Just crossing fingers I can keep it all together.