It has been a long day. I worked from 10 to 5:30 today. Then on my way home my grandma called to let me know that we were going out for dinner. I also realized that it might do me good to invest in a Bluetooth headset because I’m just really not that coordinated - especially when it comes to driving and trying to do other things at once. Not that anyone should really be trying to do that anyway.

My cousin, Cassie, was here, and she went out for dinner with us. Then after we ate we went by mom’s for a little while. My brother and cousin have been out here for the last couple of days helping my grandpa clean out the garage. Right now our driveway is a mess. We have a pile of junk and a huge trash dumpster sitting there. Today they ripped out the wall at the back of the garage where there used to be a room. In the process my brother stepped on a nail and wound up having to go get a tetnis shot. Lovely.

They’ll be out here again tomorrow. I don’t know how close they are to finishing. Grandma and I are planning to go get groceries at some point tomorrow as well. I just hope it’s not while those boys are still here because they’ll eat us out of house and home, and I don’t like the idea of starving for the next month until we get groceries again.

Oh, and I, obviously, didn’t get around to making that new layout I was talking about. Perhaps tomorrow. Sleep now.

My Labor Day weekend was pretty uneventful. We just had a cookout yesterday. Pretty standard - Hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, baked beans, cole slaw, brownies, and a few other miscellaneous items. It was all delicious, of course. We stuffed ourselves silly. Then my mom suggested we go shopping. It is without a doubt her favorite past time. Allyson managed to find quite a few good buys. Then I got three of the $5 graphic tees from Old Navy, and two pairs of their pajama shorts, which were also $5. I wish I could have found some pants. I always have the hardest time with them.

I can’t believe it’s already September. It’s nearly time to start boxing up my summer clothes and bringing out the fall clothing. I cringe at the thought of going out into the garage and moving boxes around. It’s pretty scary in there. Every year my grandpa claims he’s waiting for that perfect day to get my brother and cousins out here to help him clean it out. If he’s waiting for the perfect day, I can pretty much guess that it’s just never going to happen.

Tori had her first day of preschool today. I can’t believe she’s old enough to go. It seems impossible that she’s already four. Time flies entirely too quickly. I have a birthday coming up this month, which I’m adamantly trying to pretend isn’t happening, and at the end of the year my brother will be fifteen. That’s just too bizarre to try to fathom. I still think of him as a little kid. Maybe because I just don’t want him to grow up. It makes me feel old, but I guess he’ll always be my baby brother regardless of how old either of us are.

Well, I’ve had a busy weekend so far. Friday I went shopping with my mom, Blaine and Cody. The boys wanted to buy some new clothes for school. They managed to blow all of their money pretty quickly. I didn’t see too much, but I did buy Tori’s gift.

My brother is a hoot. He loves to do impressions of people. He was doing them of Bart and my uncle. Crazy kid. Along the way he and Cody spotted some used Harleys for sale along the road and babbled about that. Then my brother was trying to convince my mom to buy him an Eclipse from some guy that was selling them somewhere. I really didn’t get the details. I usually just sort of shut off after a while. I think I’m getting the hang of this selective hearing thing. We dropped Blaine and Cody off to meet their girlfriends at the park, and I hung out at my mom’s house most of the day.

Tori was with Mitch, and Allyson was supposed to pick her up at his house while she was in town. She had to go straightened out some stuff with the financial aid office at school, and she was going to get her afterwards, but Mitch decided to change plans and said he’d bring her into town later. He was supposed to drop her off between four and five, and Allyson called when she didn’t hear from him, and he’d made some more plans and said it wouldn’t be until later, so, naturally, she was upset. Then he called back a couple of hours later to say he was on his way into town. It should have taken him thirty minutes to go to the house. He didn’t show up for another hour and a half. So Bart had a few words with him. I won’t get into the details, but I think Allyson and Mitch had talked through things enough to be civil and have a tentative schedule for seeing Tori.

Then today we had Tori’s birthday party out at the park. She had a strawberry cake with chocolate chips in it that my mom made for her. She seemed to enjoy opening her presents and she played in the park with Dennis’ (Allyson’s new boyfriend) niece.

Tomorrow I have the last of the family reunions to attend. I’m anticipating a lot of food and a lot of people, as there is every year.

I went to a family reunion on Sunday, and the highlight of the event was watching Allyson and Trey basically beat the crap out of each other. It was ridiculous and childish, yet hilarious none the less. My sister managed to knee herself in the eye while Trey had her in a headlock and wound up giving herself a black eye. Definitely laugh worthy if you ask me. I kept telling Allyson to be careful. Trey is about as accident prone as Bella Swan. Of course, his mom rushes him to the ER for the smallest of things. It’s beyond me how they can afford to make a weekly visit to the emergency room and still manage to sail off into the sunset on Caribbean cruises just about every year. What do I know, though?

My brother cut his hair, which is just bizarre now. I didn’t even recognize him at first on Sunday because so used to his long ‘do. It looks better though. You can at least tell he has eyes now, which is always nice.

I’ve been busy this week working on a label. I’m just about finished with it. I have a few things left to do, but I needed to take a break from looking at it to regather my thoughts. I really had when that happens. It’s like I have all of the pieces there, but when it comes down the last part, I can’t seem to fit them together. Usually taking a break helps, so, hopefully, I’ll finish it either tonight before I go to bed or tomorrow after I wake up. Oddly enough, I woke up this morning with the logo design in my head. I wound up deviating from what I have in mind, but I think this worked out better. I guess I won’t actually know until I send it off.

Tori’s birthday is in a couple of days, and I’ve yet to buy her anything. The kid has just about everything, so I’m not really sure what to get her. I mean, she’s going to be four, so she’s pretty much pleased with anything, but even so, it’s still hard to choose. I guess I’ll have to hit the store before Saturday. Allyson’s having a party for her that day at the park, so I still have a few days to think on it.

Another day closer to Breaking Dawn. I should start singing “I Will Survive” to convince myself I’m going to make it to August 2nd. I doubt it would help and would probably only result in embarrassment, but whatever.

I went to the mall with my mom yesterday. She wanted to see if she could get some waterproof pants - like a pancho - for my brother since his jeans were getting soaked during detassling. Then I came home and listened to the live MuggleCast. I think I’ll have to download it and listen again because it cut out a few times on me and Firefox also froze once or twice. Very annoying.

So my grandpa got in trouble with my grandma last week. She looked out the window and saw that he decided to attach some of his ham radio antenna’s to Tori’s swing set. It’s one of those wooden swing sets, so it’s pretty sturdy, but even so, it looks ridiculous. I think he might had taken one of them down. He’s such a clutter bug sometimes.