Dog Days

I’ve been in a rather…I don’t know what kind of mood lately. somber. stressed. depressed. disheartened. irritated. regrettable. I guess it’s just a mixture of emotions. I don’t like it. I’m trying to climb out of it. I started by going to church last night and facing the giant black asphalt jungle. That has been the thorn in my side for a week now.

I am so disappointed that the green spaces for landscaping and shrubbery are almost nil. During the committee meetings I fought as hard as possible for greenery. The majority of the men didn’t want any. More maintenance they said. I thought we had settled on a good balance. I thought like Lit I guess (hopefully, all of you know ‘bout Lit). The other eyesore; the walkway up to the front entry is off-centered. I am ocd and things like this drive me crazy. CRAZY. I’m hoping this part will be fixed. We’ll see. My opinion may not mean too much. I am only a WOMAN after all. It may be something I’ll just have to live with. Last night was my first step in dealing with it all. The aesthetics. The men on the committee I’m aggravated with. I felt better than I thought I would. I’m praying for guidance and control of my tongue.

I’ve also spent a lot of time on the phone trying to get my daughter’s class schedule to fit her needs better. We just didn’t think it through very well before registration. We pretty much let the counselor do her classes. But with her commuting, it ended up with her having tons of spare time between all of her classes. That meant hanging out in the library, finding a friend with a dorm room that would be willing to let her hang out there, or riding around wasting gas. Then she has to be there for colorguard at 3:15. After thinking, calling, rearranging, calling, going online, calling, I think we finally made it. She’ll be taking two online classes. She’ll have her other two classes at 1st and 3rd period. Even though it’s a good little drive, she can come home and then go back for band. Or hopefully, she can work a lot of those days. The restaurant is open from 11:00 until 2:00 so that will give her time to change and get to band practice. We’ll know all this stuff next semester.

Thankfully we don’t have to worry about tuition. Full band scholarship, partial ACT scholarship, a nice pell grant and hopefully M-TAG (got to check the status on that one).

On Tuesday, my half pit bull came up missing. She was confined because as she’s got older, she has become more aggressive. She would go to the neighbor’s houses and jump on their pets. One of them she mangled severely. So I had to wait and hope I didn’t get a phone call from an angry neighbor. She came back home yesterday. Thankfully. No calls yet so maybe she didn’t attack any other animals. And for those of you wondering, I didn’t seek out a pit bull. She found us. Some uncaring person dumped her out several years ago (about eight). She came to our house and I couldn’t turn her away.

Next, finances. Since my daughter graduated we have lost $600 monthly income. We are having to adjust. Considerably. Even though we knew this day was coming, it was hard to plan for it. We have gone into “pinch a penny” mode. Not fun. But we’ll survive.

I’m going to blame all this chaos on dog days. What else could it be?