The horizon isn't as far as you think

I haven't written in a long time. There are a couple of reasons. I've been busy in body and mind.

It seems like as soon as Aislin develops a recognizable pattern, she breaks it. Lately, she's been sleeping through the night (mostly), she takes a short morning nap, a short afternoon nap, normally eats around 9:00 AM, about half an hour after Kate goes back to work after lunch, and then again around 3:00. Around 5:30 she gets hungry again, but Kate's almost home so I just try to distract her.

Aislin rolls with relative ease now. She'll be lying on her back and roll onto her side, then she'll be on her belly. The way she moves, it's as if she knows how to crawl already -- she's just not strong enough yet to do it. She lifts her head as high as she can, kicks a little -- trying to find purchase, and sometimes she moves a little. So far, she's kept at it for a few minutes and then screamed in frustration. She's also chewing her toes a lot. She's been doing that for a while. She doesn't laugh reliably. She's giggled, and now both Kate and I have made her make a laugh-like sound, but most of the time she just coos with a big smile on her face when she should be laughing.

Over the weekend, Kate and I looked at our finances. Always a depressing activity. Still, I paid off a loan completely that I'd been working on for a few years. That was nice. Also, over the weekend it was Talk Like a Pirate day, so the Monkey Island games were super cheap. The classic ones are normally $10, but they were on sale for $5. The newer ones are normally $35, but they were also on sale for $5. This is a big deal because Kate loves adventure games that test your wit and puzzle-solving capabilities over your reflexes, like King's Quest, and these games are totally in that ilk. So I bought 'em. She's been enjoying them.

I've been trying to find a new place for us to live, but as the last person I called said to me, "this is the absolute worst time to try to find a place." I'm pretty furious with our owner. I'm not angry with our property management group at all; they've been super friendly and sympathetic. The person who owns our building, though... He has our building painted and raises our monthly rent $150. That's expensive paint. Comparatively speaking, I'm sure we still have it pretty cheap compared to what some are paying, but it's far out of our budget for us. Whatever. We'll just move and it'll be fine. Still, it would have been nice to have our rent raised at some time when there are actually apartments available in Corvallis. A lot of things would have been nice.

I think it says a lot when the highlight of my week was doing laundry with Ted.