You know how you feel after Christmas and New Year’s is over?  Kind of sad, depressed, let down and empty?  (Or is that just me?)  Coming home from a vacation like the one we were on is just like that.  BUT WORSE.

I keep joking that Kile and I are ruined for other vacations now.  That our expectations of just how awesome a trip can be has made our usual vacations to visit family in San Jose and Elko that much more… well… lame.  It’s not that visiting family is lame.  But we now know what a vacation can feel like.  And visiting family, as nice as it is, is not a vacation.  It’s not activities piled on food piled on adventure.  Good, yes.  Absolutely fabulous?  Not so much.

The bad news is: that’s the sort of vacation we take.  We’re not the sort of family that can just take these fabulous family vacations once a year (or even once every five years).  It just doesn’t HAPPEN. So I just worry that we’re going to feel depressed when it comes to vacation time now.  Because, you know, driving over Donner isn’t the Disney Cruise.  Shopping at Walmart in Elko isn’t the Magic Kingdom.

SIGH.

Our longing has been so bad that Kile has been madly researching future vacations that we might (theoretically) take.  Right now leading the pack is an Alaskan cruise.  It’s fun to play “what if” but I don’t know how realistic going on one of those would be.  But, oh boy, would it be awesome.

So life here in Reno has been rather disappointing since we returned.  In large part because August sucks.

Remember the venom I used to spew forth in regards to March?  Oh, how March was loathed here.  But then Evie was born in March.  And now it’s a “good” month (I’m still keeping my eye on it though).   With the focus off of March, August has stepped into the limelight.

My dislike for August isn’t exactly new.  Just like my dislike for March wasn’t a new thing when Jackson died.  It just is.  And why?

The big reason is Kile’s work schedule.  August is a mondo month at the University.  And a mondo month for the housing department.  It means long hours, working weekends, stress and no days off.  It was a REALLY big deal that Kile was able to go on our Disney Extravaganza considering such time off in August is not usual.  It makes him crabby.  And when Kile gets crabby, I get crabby.  And when I get crabby, the kids hide.

Seriously though, it does have an impact on the household.  And I count the days until September and things can return to quasi-normal.

Also: August is the month that I had the D&E back in 2005.  I had found out that my pregnancy was kaput and was sent on a hellish roller coaster that resulted in our nightly alcohol drinking for the duration of the month, just to get through. (Though come to think of it, I think every August should have nightly alcohol drinking because that wasn’t half bad.)   It was bad, that August.

Then there was that August a couple years ago that I was on an emotional roller coaster, unsure of where the ground was.  I eventually discovered I was pregnant and that was GOOD, but the emotional fallout from that month continues to haunt me to this day.  It was bad.  Bad enough that it has changed me in some not so good ways and I’m not sure I can ever be the same person I was before.

Finally, there’s the obvious: the heat.  Not a big fan of heat in general, by the time August rolls around I HAVE HAD IT.   The days and days and days of hot, hot weather have taken their toll and I’m just plain SICK of it.  It makes me crabby to have yet another day of mid to high 90 degree temperatures.  On top of everything else, the heat causes extra stress, extra pain and extra orneriness.   For instance, right now I’m so ready for fall and fall temperatures that when we had a downright COOL day on Sunday, I almost cried with relief.

We were married in August, which is GOOD.  In my opinion, a month like this NEEDS some good stuff.  But the anniversary is in the beginning of the month and August doesn’t really start to really suck the big one until the middle to the end of the month.

So yes, our Disney trip was AWESOME this month.  And you would think that would be enough to redeem the entire month, at least for this year.  But as I see it, the Disney trip was a respite from a shitty month.  And even the trip would have been that much more awesome had it taken place in almost any other month.  And the coming home from the Disney trip has only served to ADD to the suck that is August.

Basically, I’m a rather disgruntled person and if August knew what was good for it, it’d just hurry up the next seven days and get me the heck to September already.

I don’t like hot.  I make no mystery of this on this here blog.  Summer is my nemesis.  Heat is my foe.

There are very few things that I like hot.  Most food is one of them.  Everything else?  Better be bordering on frigid.

The weather around these parts has gotten… toasty lately.  I don’t care for toasty.  Even with our window unit air conditioners, I have issues with the heat.  Because there are times I have to go to parts of the house that don’t have air conditioning.  And some times, (gasp) I actually leave the house.  And that’s when it’s real bad because I feel the rays of the sun just boring into my skin and the heat heat heat just bearing down on me.   Just thinking of how it feels makes me wince.  If there is a breeze, it is more like a blast furnace than cool refreshment.

It would appear, poor thing, that Evie has inherited my intolerance to heat.  Her room, like the boys room, is one of the ones that doesn’t have any air conditioning.  We may have to fix this.  Because last night she slept horribly.  She’s been having problems for the last week, waking up and crying.  Last night, she didn’t wake up and cry, thank goodness.  But I could hear her tossing and turning and moaning all night long.  And then she was up as soon as it started to warm up this morning (8, when she might normally sleep till 9) (yes, the room darkening shades are making me spoiled).  It’s fairly obvious that she doesn’t care to be too warm when she’s trying to sleep.

Just like her mama.

She’s a hot sleeper anyhow, and I’ve known this about her for a while.  I’m the same way, which is probably no big surprise.  She often wakes up from her naps, drenched in sweat even if it’s not very warm.  Her hair turns into a riot of curls from the dampness.  So you take a hot sleeper and add in a hot bedroom and you’ve got a recipe for misery.  Poor thing.

Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do right now.   We can’t exactly afford to run out and buy another window air conditioner at the moment.   I’m not above setting up a pack n’ play in our room (where there is a window unit, thank god) and letting her set up camp there until we start getting some cooler nights going on.

My big question right now… is how she and I both are going to survive Orlando in AUGUST.  Also wondering: why the heck do I live in NEVADA?

So summer weather finally found us.  I guess that’s the best excuse I can find for not updating since WEDNESDAY.  I should have my WordPress taken away from me.  Truly shameful.

But seriously.  I hate this hot weather.  HATE. IT.  It just magnifies my intense dislike for Reno right now.  As if I didn’t have enough other reasons to completely loathe living here, now Mother Nature turns on the heat.

We went to explore the Legends shopping complex over at the Sparks Marina yesterday.  It’s sort of an outdoor mall (but in my opinion, kicks the doors off the Summit Sierra which I pretty much detest just on principle) with lots of great shops, most of them factory outlet stores.  Like the Carters store.  I will be going back there this weekend.  And it will be amazing.  The jammies alone had me turning cartwheels in the aisles.

The only drawback? It was so freaking HOT.  And for some reason, where we’re located, when the sun really gets going it just burns through and sears your skin.  The elevation?  The dryness?  WHO KNOWS.  But it sucks.  I hate it…. hate hate hate hate hate it.  And everytime I see the weather man on TV gleefully forecast yet more scorching days ahead I want to drive over to the television studio and kick him in the head.

I don’t like living here.  I feel it amplifies everything that is frustrating in my life right now.  I am so isolated and so hot and so tired and pretty much everyone who lives here sucks ass.  I’m sorry if you live here and feel you don’t suck ass but this is my honest assessment.  There’s just enough people crammed into this valley that everyone starts going all “Lord of the Flies” when they are out and about.  People drive like lunatic assholes.  Crowds of people embrace the mob mentality and everything becomes “every man for himself.”   Rudeness prevails.  Doors aren’t held open, people cut in lines, inconsideration is the order of the day.  Put miserable hot weather on top of that and I HAVE HAD IT.

I used to kind of like living here.  Yeah, that whole feeling is GONE.

There.  Is that enough whining for a Monday?  I sure hope so.  I pulled out all the stops.  I even feel a little ill about it, to be honest.  But everyone knows you can’t start off a Monday properly until you’ve bitched and moaned about something.  Up to and including Monday itself.  I feel I covered my bases.   But just for good measure:

Monday AND Reno can BITE ME.

I feel better now.

Remember when I used to usher in the new week by spewing forth vitrol regarding everything in the world that was pissing me off?  Yeah, I’m doing that again this week.  Cuz I realized yesterday that I have a lot of Hate.  And it’s gotta be shared with the internet.

• The Children’s Place. We’ve spent a lot of money at this store.  Shoot, most of Harry’s wardrobe is made up of clothes from Children’s Place.  Cute clothes at reasonable prices.  Their sales were discount GOLD, people.  We loved it so much we got a store charge card.  We don’t do that, like, ANYWHERE.  We don’t do credit cards.  So to get one for Children’s Place was a testament to how much we liked shopping there.  I was looking forward to getting to get some of their utterly adorable girly clothes that had taunted me for years.  This brings me to last week when for whatever stupid reason, they canceled our credit account.  Why?  We made our payments on time.  We hadn’t paid much debt down but there wasn’t that much on there to begin with so big deal, right?  We paid every month.  We pumped a lot of money in.  And they cancelled our account.  The only reason given?  They checked our credit score and didn’t like it.  I don’t like it either, don’t get me wrong.  But shouldn’t our account history with the company take precedence?  Should it matter WHAT our credit score is as long as we’re paying our bills?  WTF, yo??  Let it be known this card was handled by Shittybank er Citibank. It’s truly a shame because I enjoyed shopping there.  But apparently in this trying economy OUR MONEY isn’t good enough.  They want AAA+ credit score customers only.  Whatever.  I’ll get my kids clothes elsewhere.
• Old Navy.  SERIOUSLY.  What is WITH these stores??  Do they not want to keep customers?  Is the pressure of ending up like Circuit City too much for them and they freakin’ fall apart?   We stopped in there yesterday for shits and giggles and browsed their sales.  They had a lot of cute stuff that was awesomely discounted.  I saw some toddler pajamas that were marked down from $14.50 to $4.50.  SCORE!  I showed Kile a pair (that had a discount sticker on them) and offered to use my PayPal funds to buy them.  He didn’t seem enthused so I put them back.  I did some more shopping and Kile apparently went back to look at the pajamas again.  He picked a pair that had monkeys on them (because Liam IS a monkey) but (gasp) it didn’t have a sticker on it.  Shouldn’t matter.  EVERY other pair had a sticker.  Shoot, Kile even saw another package of monkey jammies that had a sticker on them.  He figured the sticker fell off this one and tossed it in the cart.  Meanwhile, I found some totally cute long sleeved shirts that were originally $15 and were marked down to $4.  I need long sleeved shirts like you wouldn’t believe so I grabed two.  On was a purple stripe and another was a turquoise.  Pretty! We went to check out and the jammies rung up as being $10.  There was much hubub as we tried to explain ourselves and the cashier called back to a manager who said, “Nope, monkey jammies aren’t clearanced.  They’re $10.”  Well forget it!  Cripes!  We paid for the shirts and left.  I get home and I realize that one shirt was $9 instead of $4.  Turns out?  It was marked on it’s sticker as $9 but in the hubub over the stupid pajamas I missed it.  Now I’m cheesed off and am tempted to just return both the shirts and give Old Navy the bird.  How hard is it to SEPARATE clearance items?  HOW?  Can someone tell me?  Is it harder than moving the clearance stuff to ONE table and the regular or just plain sale stuff to another?  Surely it must be because otherwise they would have done that, right? RIGHT?
• People who run over Girl Scounts.
• That I was unable to get the yarn I really really really wanted this morning cuz I’m ze broke.
• That it took me FIVE tries to cast on the waistband of the pair of shorties I started last night.  I swear to GOD, I lost the ability to count somewhere there for a minute and I was about ready to toss the whole thing out the window.
• When dear friends lose their pregnancies.  That just sucks all around.
• When dear friends are losing their parents.  That sucks all around too.
• Rush Limbaugh.

That is all.  For now.

I don’t generally condone of the word “hate” because it has such strong connotations, but in this case, I think Monday deserves it.  How dare it force us out of the lull that is the weekend and make us be productive and stuff!  So here’s what I’m hating today:

1. That we’re about out of groceries here in the house, but yet the budget gave out last week sometime.  Hmm.
2. Little dogs that desperately try to curl themselves up on my legs in an effort to stay warm and give me leg cramps.
3. iCarly, the Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana, the Naked Brothers Band, Drake and Josh and any of those retarded Disney/Nick shows that my son seems to really, really love right now.
4. Maggie and the Ferocious Beast, Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends and pretty much the entire Noggin morning lineup these days.
5. I pretty much hate money in general right now, but mostly the lack of it.
6. That my parents’ gift STILL hasn’t been mailed off and now I’m worried that it’ll even get there before Christmas and that gives me STRESS.  STRESS STRESS STRESS!
7. Not that I have a van to drive it to the post office anyhow.  (still not registered but whatever)
8. Which means I need to rely on Kile to do it.
9. Which means I’m not holding my breath.
10. Stupid, nagging, caffeine-withdrawal headache.  I need a Rockstar.

So now that I got that out of the way, here are some pictures I cleaned off the camera this morning.

The rarely-captured feral blue-eyed boy.

The cup is a staple in virtually all photos of this child.

A nifty snowflake pin given to me by a good friend for my birthday.  It is officially Evie’s Most Favorite Thing EVER.

My first knitting project, my “practice blob” that I decided to turn into a bag this weekend.  GO ME.

Does this look cold?  Cuz it is.

Little tree.  Snow.  Nuff said.

Sure looks like a Monday morning to me, how about you?  I’m SO glad Harry takes the school bus now.

Kile’s van (aka: our only legal mode of transportation these days).  And snow.  Have fun driving to work, Kile!