School, Sailing and Dogs

Things have been hard since Captain died. Parenting my girls, in addition to dealing with my own depression, has been all-consuming.

I'm ready to come back and write again.

School starts in Wednesday. My sweetie will be starting Kindergarten. I'm not worried about her adjusting because she was in Young 5's last year, so the hours are essentially the same. She will be in a new school for the first time, have a new teacher and new classmates. No one from Young 5's will be at our school and our Kindergarten-age neighbors are going in the morning. But, I know my girl, and if there's one thing she's really good at, it's making friends. She's amazing. Plus, she'll be one of the older kids and she's very smart.



Labor Day weekend was wonderful. We went to my parents' house. The girls enjoyed the beach while Joe, my dad and I took a drive to check out a new crop of windmills. It was amazing to see and so inspiring. The Thumb of Michigan is filled with farmland. I'm glad to see so many farmers making great use of some of their land and making themselves some really good money, from what I understand.

Later that day, we had a perfect sail. We got speeds over 6 knots and everyone had a good time, even often-crotchety C. Here's proof:



Yes, there's even photographic evidence that I was there.

And, now that we're home, it's back to getting ready for school and the dog search. We have a 3-year-old Boxer to meet this weekend as well as 4-month-old Black Lab puppies we've just been notified of. We're going through rescues this time around. It's certainly more difficult than going to a breeder, which is more like walking into a store and picking what you like. With rescues, it takes more time and effort to find the right dog. Plus, it's so much more important since these dogs need to settle in and learn to feel comfortable after they've been rejected by at least one owner already. Wish us luck!