It's amazing how fast August has come and gone

It's amazing how fast August has come and gone. I thought it would last forever as I waited to go to Colorado. Now there's only one more day left in the month, and the baby shower is this Saturday.

And I have a busy week planned. Mostly full of cleaning, boxing and organizing. I want to put away a lot of our "stuff," the random things we don't want to get rid of, but really don't need in the house anymore. It's intimidating, putting all the "stuff" away, rather, just going through it, piece by piece and wondering if it's even worth keeping. And if it's not, I need to get it to the high school's junior garage sale. There's so much to do.

Random thoughts of the morning: The Republican National Convention. I think I'll watch even less of this than the Democratic one, although generally the Republicans tend to do political theater better. It'll be harder to ignore the soundbites, but since I rarely watch TV news they'll at least come to me in printed form and I can use my own imagination to change the inflections and tones as I see fit. I can pretend Zell Miller's voice is just like Elmo's.

The Olympics: Last night's closing ceremony was confusing to watch. It seemed like just a bunch of Greeks dancing around in costumes. I think it was one of those events that was probably more interesting and fun if you were actually there, and surprisingly they managed to finally fill the seats of the stadium. On TV it just looked like a mish mash of staged dances taking up small parts of the stadium floor for short periods of time. And the war dance? If I was the enemy of the Greeks about to commence war against them, and I saw them doing this dance the night before, with it's many shoulder shimmies and hip swivels, I believe I would be inspired to kick their ass.
I did watch a fair amount of the games, and as always, really enjoyed the emotion displayed in the competition. I even watched the entire women's soccer final, hoping that Zoey would be inspired by all the strong women athletes. But at her age, the only way she would have noticed them is if they all wore Elmo costumes and sang a song about tap dancing and fair play.

I've been pretty useless lately, unable to really make any progress in terms of orgainizing my house or getting rid of stuff. Technically, we're going to be moving at some point in the future, but where that point is, we don't know. There are too many unanswered questions and too much to do to the house to make it saleable. It's just too much. I'm overwhelmed. The idea of this big of a change produces a lot of anxiety. At the same time, I feel that it's really time to embrace this change. Things are really stagnant here in Houston for us.

On a completely unrelated note, Phil Collins is coming to Houston to play a concert. I hate Phil Collins' music. How on earth did he get to be so popular? And why does the 80s station constantly play his songs? There were so many good songs from the 80s and all I ever hear is "In the Air Tonight."

But perhaps most offensive is the image used in his concert ads. He's standing at the side of a highway hitchhiking. Hitchhiking? What are they trying to say here? That he's poor and experiencing hard times so he has to go on the road to earn money to feed his family?

Now I got a month of waiting to do

Now that I've accepted the idea of getting out of Houston, I find I'm really looking forward to it. I hadn't noticed how stale things had become her.

Okay that's not quite true. It's been rather obvious that there was nothing left for me here, especially after my job ended in May. Walking by pictures in my house, of me and my friends, it was hard not to notice that they had all already left town. On Saturday, at B and P's going away party, the roof caved in and I could no longer notice I was standing alone. I actually left the party crying after saying goodbye. Part of the sadness was seeing Zoey chase after a man who kind of looked like Trey. He walked past us toward the food, and she got real excited and started yelling "dada! dada!" and pointing and started running after him. I felt embarrassed and tried to keep him from noticing this little girl who had come to stand right next to him with her arms up, wanting to be held. I wanted to burst out into tears right there. It's not good for us to be so far apart. It's really not good for her.

And so now I can't wait to go to Colorado. But I have a month to wait, at least a month, and I have to remember to be patient. Besides, I'm putting on a baby shower for my friend Susan, and she deserves a really good shower. But aside from that distraction, I must just wait.