update! update! read all about it!

Ok, yes, I know it's been a while. Gentle prodding noted.

So, since my last post:

-Paul and I had two glorious weeks of holidays. It rained a lot of the time, but I'll take a rainy day at my cabin over a sunny day at work any day. We spent all of the holiday on the Sunshine Coast (not so sunny this time around), with three nights spent camping at glorious Saltery Bay, and the remainder at my family property. The camping was awesome - we've been keeping our eyes peeled for bigger tents on sale, and on the way to our camping trip we stopped at Canadian Tire and found an awesome and HUGE Coleman tent on sale. And when Canadian Tire puts things on sale they don't fuck around, this thing was a steal. I was resisting getting a new tent since we have a perfectly good and only used 4 times little tent, but Paul insisted and man oh man am I glad he did. It was so awesome having a tent big enough to stand up and walk around in, particularly when the weather went bad. On the second night of our camping trip we were joined by another couple, Lindsay and Renelle, and good times were had. Once back at my family property we settled into a routine of sleeping in, going for runs (even all out 400's on the track), eating apple fritters, watching DVD's, and taking our incontinent geriatric dog on as many walks as he'd tolerate (and as such only had 2 in the house pooping incidents).

-I said to myself (and a few others) that we'd have some wedding decisions made by the end of the camping trip, or we were putting it off a year. Decisions were made, troubles talked out, issues resolved. The wheels are in motion for a wedding on our family property August 8th, 2009. I have put a deposit down on the photographer, met with a caterer who is on board for my dream of everything local, sourced out a bartender, ordered our tents, tables, chairs . . . everything we have to rent, and visited a local flower farm to see what kind of blooms will be in season for August next year. Paul and I are in total disagreement about what kind of flowers to have, so 4 weeks away from the wedding when the things that would be available are starting to be ready we are each going to produce a center piece and have people vote on which one they like best. I am not stressed out about this at all - first of all, we're talking about flowers, which will be beautiful no matter what. They're flowers. Secondly, I am going to win. I've done wedding flowers before, I'm crafty, and I'm a girl. Nuff said.

-We came back to town a few days before school started so I could do a bunch of CPR recerts for nursing and med students - a business I run on the side. Business exploded this year and I had trouble keeping up with demand. It's starting to slow down a bit now, but did well for paying tuition and squirrling a little wedding money away. This bodes well for my next point . . .

-I have given my unofficial 10 months notice at work. Yep, thats right. As of June 30th (ish) I'll be an unemployed bum. I wasn't going to say anything for a while, but my boss asked me straight up and I wasn't about to lie to him, so there you have it. I'm hoping to support myself and pay the bills with contract work and the CPR biz on the side, and I'm contemplating maybe snagging a part time job somewhere where I'm not in charge and problems aren't my problem. Necessity is the motherhood of invention, so time to cut the chord and make shit happen. Plus Paul and I will be married shortly thereafter, and I'll be his problem if it doesn't work out. He he he.

-Work stared, school started, and I haven't had a day off yet. September is madly busy as we screen and hire new staff and kick off our programs. I think I worked nearly 80 hours last week AND went to school. I have workshops all this weekend so still another week before I get proper days off, but I'm taking a half day tomorrow to catch up on reading. Reminding myself how this time next year I won't have to deal with this chaos is helping to get me through. As is good dark chocolate (I am now addicted to coco camino's organic 71% spiced chocolate . . . ginger and chili. Yum!) and 'mommy's special medicine' as Paul likes to call it. You know what I mean. And I don't mean those little blue pills all mom's like to pop. You know yours does too. For shaky legs. Pfft.

-Saturday is the five year anniversary of our first date. FIVE YEARS!!! We were going to use our airmiles for a romantic getaway weekend to Napa Valley, but we're still recovering from Europe and the wedding ain't gonna be cheap, so we decided to stay in town and go out for a super fancy dinner and splurge on a great bottle of wine to have at home beforehand. I think it's working out way better this way - I'm so behind on my reading already I think my head might explode if I had to go away for the weekend. Napa will be there another time.

Ok, chemistry calls. And I just threw up in my mouth a little as I typed that.