sunday

i went back to austin this weekend for a couple of parties and a day at the park with the boy. it was a lot of fun, but exhausting. i don't know why my legs are so tired after a three hour drive. i guess just lack of movement?

friday i went to karaoke with friends. i've never had so much fun at karaoke. i don't like to sing up at the front, but i do like to sing seated with everyone else. saturday was a house party. the people who own the house are two of my most austin-y friends. they used to live in a bus. they have chickens and ducks. they have a foreign exchange student house mate. they have a garden. one's a physicist and one's a journalist. at the party, people brought honeydew wrapped in prosciutto and all sorts of interesting potluck fare. you could hear groups of people speaking spanish-from-spain and there were lots of boys in tight pants and glasses.

and today the gentleman friend and i spent five hours lounging at the park, chatting and eating early dinner.  it's really odd to talk to someone who's so much like myself. i don't have any friends who i have sooo much in common with when it comes to how we think about things and what we want for the future. so that's been fun. also kind of an interesting mirror into what it looks like when you overthink things, as i tend to do, as you might have noticed. ;)

one more week of babies!

stop to hold their hand

i used to be a really good girlfriend. i often ignored the rules of waiting to call such and so amount of time or the appropriate time to bring up certain topics.. but i always felt like i had a good sense of how things were supposed to go, and i'm good at dinners with parents and dinners and a movie.

but it has been so long since i've done any of that properly that i've completely forgotten how to do it. i say that keith was my boyfriend in taiwan, but we were only there together for like 2 months, and we really weren't in a relationship. and 'bf' is part of 'twbf', but we never even kissed. so. not counting them, it's been almost four years since i've been in a relationship. !. (jim just got engaged a few weeks ago, incidentally).

also before i go too much further, i should mention that this guy is definitely not my boyfriend. it's been two dates since we even met, but my point is that i feel like i've never done this before. suddenly i'm thinking too hard about how often i text or email or call.. and all of the protocol for the time period before you're officially dating someone. now that we've kissed once, do we always kiss goodnight now? do i invite him to group stuff as my date? when do we chat about exclusivity?

..i guess the only thing you can do is let it happen naturally and all of that just works out. it's definitely fun to have butterflies and someone always running through your mind though. it's just a little bit hard waiting to define it when i really want it to stick. keep crossing your fingers.

barefoot

we made it through half the week! it's downhill from here.. until monday when a new week begins. jill and zach are very interesting parents. you could have guessed it if you knew her in college, but jill is one of those moms that eats the food of of cate's face. the most disgusting thing that happens is the snot sucker.

(photo from amazon.com)
it sounds gross, it looks gross, it is gross. but jillian and cate both love it.

other than that though.. everything is good. cate kind of has a cold and a cough, but she was really happy today, and i think i've mastered nap time. she starts face planting on the carpet when she's tired, so we just get a bottle, lay her down in her crib and she's usually out within 5 minutes of me closing the door. it's baby magic. today we walked around in the grass outside because it was so nice out. windy and in the 70s. she can stand holding onto one hand now.

she may or may not have eaten a few pieces of grass.

in the middle of a rock show

well, so far so good with baby cate. she can crawl now, which is very exciting. her favorite thing is holding your fingers and walking around. i wish i was like 6 inches shorter so i could do it without slumping so much. it's fun though and it tires her out. she took 2 long naps today.

met a friend from college for tea tonight. mark and i always talk about the problems of the world/nation. he just began his masters in counseling, and i'm an over-analyzer, so i guess that comes naturally to us. i told him about how majjy raised us telling us to find what we love to do and then find a way to make money at it, and that we could accomplish anything. he said those are very well-adjusted psychological techniques to use.

driving in houston is no fun. it's confusing, there are lots of lanes, the roads aren't that good. fajjy kept harping on this GPS app he bought for his phone and i kept declining.. but i think i might download it. the problem is that i don't seem to get service everywhere in this city.. so i guess that might not be that great. for tonight's trip, i used the old paper + pen method. it worked surprisingly well. it really feels like my life has hit some kind of magic green light with the way things have been working out. about time!

sunday

right now i'm in houston so i can help out jill for the 2 weeks between when she starts her new job and when her childcare is available. cate and i are going to spend the days together. she's 9 months now so she can crawl and she's babbling a lot. it should be fun. we're going to split our time between jill's parents house and her grandma's house. they live about three blocks away from each other.

other than thatt.. it's been beautiful in austin lately. we're in the mid 90s or high 80s and it's just beautiful out and you can open the windows in the morning which is nice. the last couple of weeks have just been going exactly according to plan.

pay dirt

yesterday i was all happy about how accurately my monthly horoscope mirrored my life right now.. i even gloated about the fact that it told me i was going to have to spend my entire paycheck. even after spending $350 on my car, i was happy it wasn't actually my entire paycheck. 

but this morning when i went to pick up my car after its oil change, new wiring harness and new inspection sticker.. the check engine light turned back on before i even pulled out of my parking spot. $80 diagnosis later.. i owe another $350 for replacing the glow plugs themselves. 

universe - 1, megan - 0. 

so what does a virgo do when the world pushes her down? cleans her room. restores some kind of order. 

in the process of cleaning my room, i came across an envelope full of dirt that my [ex-boy]friend, [if we're being honest], keith, had sent me from canada. we met while were were both teaching in taiwan. 

i wish i had done this a long time ago, but he included nice notes about not only the city and province location.. but also kind of a description of where it was from. 

(i added the more detailed captions to the back of the tag so i would remember later on). 

after filling three little container store containers, i added the leftover dirt to our garden in the back. now it's an international garden. 

saturn in your money house

today i read my monthly horoscope for november. you have to see some of it.

It's not your fault that you aren't making what you feel you deserve, dear Virgo. Saturn, the taskmaster teacher planet, has been touring your second house of earned income since October 2009 (the month the internship in DC began when I was living on savings alone), and while Saturn had a brief absence from that area for your chart from April 7 to July 21, 2010 (while I worked at camp for the summer), it was too short a period to notice much difference. You have been coping with tight funds for so long now, it must seem forever.


Joint resources - funding and infusions of cash from outside sources - will take your total attention the full moon, October 11. Saturn will oppose the full moon directly, so if you do get money, the sum you get seems to be already spoken for, and so the money will go out of your checking account as fast as it goes in. 
that's today. and today, i dropped my car off at the shop to get an oil change, and then i decided to have them replace my glow plug wiring harness so i can get the inspection i need for november, so today i spent a few hundred dollars on that.. which is almost the same amount as i deposited this morning from my latest check. 


this is my favorite paragraph: 
This has been a lesson you've been dealing with since Saturn entered Libra from October 2009 to April 2010 and then again from July 2010 until the present day. You may be saying, "I've learned! I'm reformed! I am done!" Yet Saturn has his own schedule for you and will continue your cosmic course in money management until October 2012. Agreed, you HAVE become remarkably good at finding ways to find - and buy - quality goods, at bargain prices, and often below retail. Indeed, in time you will be pleased with the way you negotiate savvy bargains. You've also become good at finding ways to bring in more money too, and you are more careful about avoiding identity theft and losses through not keeping track of your belongings when you travel.


and this:
Starting next month, Mars will enter Virgo and stay not the typical seven weeks but an astounding EIGHT MONTHS. During part of that phase, Mars will be in perfect angle to Jupiter and Pluto, forming a grand triangle in the night sky. This will happen in time for the holidays. You are about to assume your rightful place at the head of the parade, as the one sign given some of the most outstanding romantic aspects. All this will start in mid-November, so be patient, dear Virgo. Your time for love is coming, and when it arrives, it will be a big trend!


..we'll talk about that in mid-november.