Update

Thanks to all of you who prayed and worried with me. I have secured a new position for the coming school year, teaching 7th and 8th grade math. A new adventure!

More: I just finished reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Interesting, for sure. At times, the details were so intense, so real, that I had to check on whether it was fiction or non-fiction. No one could be this messed up, right? Right?! Right. It's fiction.

This Saturday is my family's annual Cousin Picnic. Yowzers. While I was in college, I spent a summer in Pennsylvania, far away, but I just HAD to come home for The Picnic. Mom suggested I bring a friend so that I wouldn't have to drive alone. So Brenda came along. As we parked the car and approached the picnic grove, she picked her jaw up off the grassy plain and said, "All of these people are related to you?? This is bigger than my church picnic!" Yes, there are that many of us. I can't wait to initiate The Boy this weekend. He thinks he is prepared. He is not. No one could be.

I joined a gym yesterday. I am very excited. I haven't been a member of a gym since I quit the corporate job in 2003. Teaching doesn't pay too well, especially at the beginning. My (free) personal training session is tomorrow, 10 am. I already attended a class for abdominal work and ran on the treadmill today. Yipee! With dangerously hot weather in Chicago, the outdoor running was mighty taxing on the body. Now I can run in the air conditioning, or as the months pass, in a heated gym. Although I would prefer to be outside, this option will likely get me more toned, due to the availability of weights, and make me work out for longer periods of time, because classes tend to be 45 to 60 minutes. Hooray!