Hey Park City, you’re so pretty

I went all over the place in June.  Monterey to snorkel, Houston to visit with my dad and stepmom, Park City, Utah for the excellent EVO Conference.

And now half of July is over with and my blog turned 8 and I’m getting ready to go out of town again.  My boys are covered with gnarly paintball bruises that they will happily show you, my girls were singing this song in the bath last night with sweet and funny wrong words, and I bought a pair of $250 prescription sunglasses for my seven-year-old and I find I don’t really want to let her wear them unless I am carrying her around in my arms.  SG cleaned out my garage, and since it’s clean now I can admit that my garage would have easily qualified me for that Oprah episode about hoarding.  So, I owe him, big time, again.  And my mom got me a Kindle (!) which, turns out, I do love.  Quite a whole hell of a lot, really. 

I haven’t been back from Houston very long, but I am already just as lonesome for my family there as ever.  We stayed up late (and I mean, like, 3 a.m. late; not my usual Oh no!  It’s almost eleven, I’d better get to bed! late) talking at the dining room table every night and woke up in time for lunch every day.  I wish I could have brought the kiddos, but at the same time, it was wonderful to have so much uninterrupted time to just talk.  And drink beer.

SG got little goldfish for the girls.  I love them.  I talk to them.  My kids call me the Crazy Fish Lady and I totally do not care.  I check and adjust the pH balance of their water, which is filtered and conditioned and about 1/3 changed weekly. I bought a live plant and put a blue medicine Buddha blessed by the Dali Lama in their tank.  It’s been a couple of weeks now, and Sophie was surprised that they are still alive.  Goldfish usually only last a few days, she said.  These ones are, like, OLDFISH.  But, what she doesn’t realize is that I’m on a mission to do well by Bobby Jack and Bite Me (guess which fish is Soph’s) and someday people will believe me when I say that the fish totally wiggle when I come talk to them.  THEY DO.  According to Wikipedia, they can do all sorts of stuff:

Goldfish can learn tricks, such as the limbo, slalom,
fetch and soccer, using positive reinforcement training
techniques.

I’m not sure they would be any good at any of those, um, sports.  But I know my fish, my daughters’ fish, (fishes?) and I know they’ll give it 110%.