it's amazing how friends can make you feel better when you feel like crying or topping yourself off....k, i didn't feel like topping myself off today, but i felt like shit most of the day.

i just got off the phone with katie, and feel so much better. it's just nice to hear a familiar voice, even if we're talking to our respective kids simultaneously, and then going: "were you talking to me?" it just makes me feel like i'm not alone. which i'm not anyway....who can be alone when they're well outnumbered by those under the age of a year?

i really am wondering about my roller-coaster mental existence. i really would rather just be riding a bus on a country road, you know.

on to the questions of religion....i know, i know. but i feel as though even that, which had up until the past years been such a mainstay in my world, has gone through an earthquake. and now i don't really know what is real and what is just trash. i've been around parents who lost children or who would never be right...i have friends who have cancer......it just doesn't make sense to me anymore. if there is a god up there, how can he go around picking and choosing like that? then again, i don't like the idea of there being no life after death. a friend of mine seems to avidly think this the case. this scares the absolute shit out of me. but then my mind wanders to what if heaven were just a ploy, thought up by people long ago, to make people more comfortable about death?

i don't know.....i'm just really confused right now. letting it out seems to be good therapy, too.... :)

on a much lighter note, i am happy to report two things of great interest and excitement to me. one is that i am the mother of an orange belt now! collin has really taken a keen interest to karate. he went through the first two belts with me. as life got busier, i decided to back out and let him go it alone. he has now gone through two belts by himself! i am very proud of him!

and, to my great happiness, i am proud to announce my retirement in the indianapolis german school. i just received an email from my boss saying that the enrollment does not warrant having two teachers, and that i can sit out the rest of the year. this is absolute music to my ears!!!! :) i feel as though perhaps now i will be able to concentrate more on my Leaving Prints business. WOOHOO!!! Katie! i'm coming down to play soon!! ;)