Day 8: 174 days to L.A.

Lots happened today. Not my doing, I was at work. But Lori scheduled carpet cleaners, tried to engage a tile guy, found a great tile project when the tile guy declined, priced more stuff, ordered a few things, and did a lot of cleaning and decluttering. I did a little bit of decluttering, but not much. I need to do some patching of corners - our son has literally chewed on the wall. We think it's in anger. We haven't seen it in awhile. Not since the last time patched the walls. Life with autism, yup. We had a long talk with our daughter tonight, too. She's starting to get anxious about missing friends and things she knows here.

I'm really tired. The phone call with KMart this evening just cast a pall over the whole evening and I'm really bummed by it. I exercised a lot today while working so that's also made me tired. But I'm way under my calories. I've started watching The 4400 (no one told me it takes place in Seattle, British Columbia. I like Seattle, B.C. almost as much as Seattle, Washington). I would have watched it much sooner had I known about the Seattle connection. We're also watching another Seattle, B.C. show - iZombie which I'm also enjoying. Also fun - I recently saw "RoboShark" which took place in Seattle, Bulgaria. I liked how the first half the movie they had signs with the City of Seattle's logo and the cars had Washington State license plates on them but by the second half they were mispronouncing Bill Gates (Glates) and you could easily see those round European-style speed limit signs and all the names of the shops in the mall were stores you'd never heard of.  (To save you the trouble - a UFO crashes in the Pacific, a shark bites it, becomes a robo-shark, snatches a Kenmore Plane out of Lake Union, then is back in Elliot Bay (geography was all wrong) and works his way inland through the sewers, eating people.  The Navy sets up tents in a field and catches the attention of a reporter (apparently the Bulgarians and Canadians who made the film didn't realize Seattle is full of real permanent Naval bases) until finally Roboshark ends up in a swimming pool (the kids are all saved because they send a Tweet to the High School's Twitter account and all the students follow the HS Twitter account) where Roboshark starts Tweeting and they start Tweeting back and his eyes change from red to blue (he's no longer a murderous Roboshark) but then the government blows up the pool and I can't remember what happens next but his eyes turn back to red and then  the Space Needle gets damaged and they try to aim the top part at Roboshark who's in a grassy field next to the Space Needle and I think they miss but something else kills Roboshark but then someone's Chihuahua now has the red eyes as the credits close or something like that.  (And yes, the Roboshark ate Bill Glates.)

Our daughter's been leaving for school in the mornings in the dark. Seattle's weather changes so much that some parts of the year it's still dark at 8 am and dark again by 4:30 pm and other parts it starts to get light in 5 o'clock hour and says light until  10 pm. It's disorienting and confusing. I am looking forward to the move back to where sunrise and sunset are more consistent. I have fond memories of going out at 7:20 and turning the water on to water the roses and then popping back in to help make sure our daughter was ready. Then we'd all come out, I turned the water off, we'd get in the car and get on the road, dropping her off at daycare, then me at my job and my wife would head on to hers. It's better now to be in a position where she doesn't need to earn a paycheck and can stay home and run the house and be available for doctor's appointments and therapy and all the other stuff we need, but I really did enjoy those mornings. But, like Don Henley says, "Everything is different now." He was talking about a change I had already made, I know. But, it is. So I don't know what I think I'll reclaim by moving back, but I'm definitely looking forward to the weather.