September.

I’ve been wanting to sit down and write. Not that you’d know it or anything. I saw the front page of my blog the other day and said to myself, “Oh, I last updated in the middle of August – that was just a couple of weeks ago!” Uh, no, Laura. This is the end of September, not the end of August. Where did the month go? Holy crap.

Lately I’ve just sort of been floating. Not engaged in anything much beyond spending time with my husband and children, and trying to keep the line running smoothly in this crazy house. My oldest and I are going through some growing pains. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the typical stuff you go through as mothers and daughters, when the time is nearing for baby birds to leave the nest. My kids are a good six weeks into school, with two in 3rd grade and two in 5th grade. We’re sticking pretty well to our new routine of doing homework directly after school.

My husband still has our whole damned yard torn up, redoing our landscaping and the f’d up sprinkler system the previous owner installed. It’s slow going, particularly because he lost several weeks due to some other drama in our lives, which I’ve been meaning to share.

So my husband and his friends headed off on a motorcycle ride one glorious morning, which happened to be the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. After meeting up at a casino buffet in Central City and pigging out on crab legs, they headed toward the Thunder on the Rockies concert/mini-rally in Loveland via the Peak-to-Peak Highway. On one of the switchbacks, the unthinkable happened: another motorcyclist coming the opposite direction couldn’t make the curve, went into a skid, and crossed the double yellow into Paul’s lane. Thankfully, he wasn’t badly hurt. His chopper, though… ::moment of silence::

Yes. Pauly totaled his bike. He got a little beat up when he was thrown from it, and it’s scary as hell to think about him coming to and realizing he was lying in the center of the highway. So thankful he was on a chopper instead of any other type of bike, too. As you can see, the forks took the brunt of the impact. Pretty shitty way to wrap up the summer, but I guess it’s better to be bikeless at the end of the summer than at the beginning.

I decided the best way for me to deal with the what-ifs and the could’ve-beens was to lock myself away in the kids’ bathroom for a good two weeks, listening to 311 and painting. Here’s a glimpse of how that turned out.

And of course, I’ve been walking almost every day with my chiweenie love, Cali, trying desperately to rehab my jacked up leg. It’s been 10 months since I fell; 9 months since my surgery, and I still have major pain every single day. It is a downer and a half, you guys. If I’ve been up and moving for awhile, I do pretty okay, but most of the time I walk with a noticeable limp. I went to a new orthopedic doctor yesterday (new insurance) and had a bunch of x-rays done. Want to see my bones?

After hearing my whole story and looking at all my x-rays, the doctor didn’t have anything very positive to tell me. He said most of my pain is probably arthritis, and if I want to have another surgery to take out the screws, I could do that, but he wasn’t sure if it would ease the pain very much. So, yeah. I’m trying to deal with all of that, and trying to figure out how to feel like I’m 40 instead of 80. Stupid knee.

Other than that, Pauly is extra busy with all the emergency repairs our poor, battered state is needing after the devastating flooding we had a couple of weeks ago. And as for me, Halloween is coming right up, and the children are getting really excited about costumes. Sounds like we’re going to have at least a couple of Adventure Time characters out trick-or-treating! My sewing machine will be on fire!

What have YOU been up to in September? Watching football? Drinking pumpkin spice lattes? Digging the UGG boots out of the closet? Lay it on me, friends. Tell me something good.