Snore

So. Tired.

Everyone here has the sniffles (but they're only sniffles!). Eli had a high fever last night, but B"H it went back down by the morning. Cleaning for pesach is going a little more slowly than hoped. I was wanting to have the kitchen ready by Wednesday, but it looks like I'll turn it over Saturday night/Sunday. Should be good enough. I can get the last of the shopping done this week, I hope. Not too much to get really. We keep it pretty simple and pretty much stay within our normal food budget. We do eat a little more meat than we normally would. After pesach last year, I bought a few things at 80% off (but not as much as usual since I hoped we'd be moving!). Tucked those away into the pesach boxes, and it's nice to pull it out for this year.

Dean's job has been very, very stressful with very long hours, and he was just told his workload will increase by 50% one month from now (!?!?!?!?!). We certainly find ourselves missing the OHSU days when he got off at 4:00, could bus home, and was able to work Sundays in lieu of Jewish holidays. It's turning into a six-days-per-week job, and you get no "credit" for the extra hours. Anyway... we're not sure how this will resolve. We're facing a very stressful job in a very wonderful community and location. On the other hand, no imminent layoffs! Lots of tradeoffs I guess, especially these days. For now we'll just buckle down and do what we can.

There are a few other things I miss about Portland (in addition to people!) - grocery shopping, Bob's Red Mill, our wonderful library and children's librarian, Multnomah Arts Center and Southwest Community Center... But in time we'll find our niche here too. At least we love living here in general, our learning is going GREAT, Amirah has made several nice new friends, and life here is relatively inexpensive.

Our other adventures today - trip #2 to try to register our car. Turns out the bill of sale is in Dean's name only, so we need his driver's license, etc. Oh. Back again tomorrow with that (#3), then to another office to pay the sales tax (#4), then back to office #1 (#5). Wowie. 5 trips to get a license plate. Wow. Then, the car alarm (which we didn't even know existed) started randomly going off as we were driving. Fun. It does shut off after 20 beeps or so. We had all the kids crying every time it went off (very LOUD!). We think we figured out the chain of events that causes it to happen, and we might have even figured out a way to turn it off (just open the driver's side door with a key). Crazy. Need to get a little electrical work done on that car. Our sliding doors stopped working, as did the switch that opens the rear windows. Maybe it's all connected?

Random things. Tired mama. But looking forward to my Ima's visit, to the seders, to having Dean around (even if it means the dam will be full to bursting when he goes back to work, if not worse!). Really looking forward to chol hamoed adventures with ima!!