...and the race is on...

and I'm not talking about anything in London.  Last night I attended our Cub Scout pack committee meeting to set the dates for the next school year.  Oy, makes my head spin.  Next week is going to be close to nightmarish with swim lessons, doctor appointments, school registrations, Hubby traveling and football practice starting.  I feel like I'm the director of a really crappy cruise ship seeing that everyone gets everything they need.  Yuck, sorry, just a little overwhelmed tonight when I started plugging in all the calendar stuff into my phone and the master calendar on the wall and trying to coordinate with Hubby.

Today I took Mom to visit a disability attorney and we'll get the ball rolling on filing for her disability.  The longer she lives with me the more I see she will not be able to hold down any kind of job where learning something new is a factor, and either her depression or shear laziness, or possibly some heart problem prevent her from doing anything mundane.  The attorney seemed to think she had a good shot at getting the disability and it's one of those deals where you don't have to pay him until he wins it for you.  Sure he gets a cut of any back pay, but that's more money than she would have gotten in the first place and I think it will take some of the load off of me not to have to try to deal with the Social Security Administration personally, because I really just don't have patience to try to deal with government BS along with everything else in life.  Hopefully she'll be approved quickly, and that will be at least 3-5 months, and we can get a ball moving to move her into her own place.  We've been getting along fine, but we'd all like some space.  I will say having a built in baby-sitter has been a boon.  I can go run errands during the day without it becoming a spectacle and go to the dentist and the like. 

This week and next the boys are in swim lessons daily.  Today they did pool-side instruction and never entered the water because when the pool staff arrived this morning they discovered that some pranksters threw a whole bunch of poo (hopefully animal) into the pool.  Nice huh?  Probably a good day for that because we had a cold front move through and I'm not sure it ever actually reached 70 degrees, amazing as it was in the 90's on Monday.  How's that for temp swing.  Nothing like the midwest to keep you guessing just which clothes to put on.  This will likely be Sonny Boy's last swimming lesson session.  He can really already swim, however his form lacks any grace or stamina and I'm hoping he learns some of that.  Igor is doing what I call a "tadpole" swim.  He'll put his face down in the water, arms to his side and kick.  He goes pretty well like this, but he'd certainly do a little better with some arm action in there.

The last weekend in July we had our big family reunion.  I set the date almost a year ago thinking we'd do a smaller get together, just something with Hubby's uncles, aunt and all of their offspring from Father-In-Law's side.  FIL invited every outlying cousin, in-law, out-law and even a few biker buddies and it became quite a large event.  Long ago I gave up planning control and fretted what kind of a mess would happen, however I will say it went pretty smoothly with only a few glitches, mostly from people just not listening.  Many expressed shock at seeing FIL condition as he's skinny as post, and weak, it was no secret he is ill, however I think many expected to find a robust full of energy FIL that they typically knew, not the frail, tired man in his shoes.  What many don't know is that in June we were all questioning if FIL would live long enough to even have the reunion, but I think he's been pushing for it for many months now and was determined to see it through.  I wonder how things will go with him now that that milestone has passed?  I do worry how Sonny Boy is going to take FIL's passing as he sees his grandpa as super cool, crazy dude and can't believe that after surviving Vietnam, several car accidents, several motorcycle accidents that something will kill him.  Sonny Boy tells me he believes FIL will survive the cancer.  I pray he's right, but I'm also realistic and try to prepare him that most people don't beat pancreatic cancer.

Chimney tear down has stalled the last couple of days due to schedules and exhaustion.  Even Igor who is one heck of a worker, has given up on picking bricks up out the flower bed and moving them to the dumpster.  We'll have to get back into the swing this weekend I know, but for now we watch the Olympics and ponder how the divers do that.