A blur

Summer is pretty much over at our house, and my brain feels every bit as out-of-focus as this photo. It still will FEEL like summer, temperature-wise, until Halloween or so, but starting two days ago and continuing until winter break in December, someone at my house needs to be dropped off at 8:00 a.m. or earlier every single weekday. And guess who's the designated dropper? Yep. Me.

So we're back to bedtime routines and early-morning wakeup routines and it's all okay, really. I kind of thrive on routine and tend to get a little weird if I don't have one. But holy cow, this getting up while it's still dark outside is for the birds. Yeah. LITERALLY.

Other stuff that's going on...

You remember how I told you that I'm in love with adorable Dublin-born singer Imelda May? Her latest album, Mayhem, was (finally!) released in the U.S. yesterday and I can't stop listening to it. It's making me so happy right now.

I've started running again! I hadn't run since the kids got out of school at the end of May. And it shows. Ooof. Since it's eleventy billion degrees out, even early in the morning, I'm just hitting the treadmill for now. But I'm very much looking forward to cooler weather and to running with the dog, who will be a year old next week and thus officially cleared for takeoff.

Husband P's sister and her husband are coming for a visit next week! Very much looking forward to that also, though I wish the kids and I weren't going to be so freaking busy while they're here. (Seriously, so crazy busy. From now until football season is over. Oy.)

I'm still loving the heck out of my Kindle. And no one is more surprised by this than me. I have found -- shhh, don't tell anybody! it'll blow my rep! -- that I actually prefer reading e-books to reading real-live books. I know! I can't explain it. It's kind of weirding me out, to tell the truth. I read faster on the Kindle, somehow. Like, I never realized how fatiguing it was to turn pages all the time! And look for my reading glasses! And carry books! And hold them open! Maybe it's a fibromyalgia thing? Or an old person (of which I am one) thing? I don't know, but I am finishing books more quickly reading them on the Kindle than I ever did reading them the old-fashioned way. Weird!

I love it so much, in fact, that I'm knitting it a sweater (pictured above, if you can look at that blurry photo without going cross-eyed). Sock yarn, U.S. size 3 needles, just a garter-stitch rectangle that I'm going to seam across the bottom and up one side. And maybe add a button and i-cord (or crochet) loop closure at the top. I do like the hard cover I bought for protecting my Kindle in transit, but I don't like reading with it on, and it's kind of a pain to take off and put back on all the time. So I thought I'd make a nice knitted sleeve instead.

You know, in my copious free time. HAHAHA.