oh, the adventures don't stop there.

I've been in Florida for about three months now. My birthday has passed, which it's fair to say was a horrible depressing mess. My first birthday away from friends or family, excluding my sister, niece, brother in law, and nephew. They make a fine group, and I love them, but occasionally I feel as though I am intruding. As far as gifts, it wasn't super exciting, except for my best present: one of my BFFs (referred to as Coxy) decided that he is coming down from Kansas to spend Christmas with me. WE've not ironed out the details, but I am not sure that Tampa is ready for two like us.

Am I rambling? I think I am rambling.

My new home is coming together, though not as quickly or as easily as I had hoped. It's difficult to feel okay about spending money when you owe money to people and have bills to pay. It was hella expensive to move down here, and I have paid back approximately 10% of my debt to my parents.

And the decorating. Oh, the decorating.

I keep believing that I want one thing, but then I change my style completely, and try to go with another thing. This is frustrating, as you ca imagine. At this point, I believe I have some things figured out, but if I had to define my design style I would call it modern elegant eclectic. Does that even make a modicum of sense?

Well, as far as the adventures, I've been out line dancing, which I enjoyed quite a bit, though my toes appreciated it a lot less in my new burlap TOMS. Ouch. I've started hula hooping for exercise, which has been less than successful so far, as I can only get the hoop to stay up for about 3 seconds. I made a new friend who turned out to be a bit crazy, and I am trying to make friends in my office. Barring the hurricane landing on us, which seems unlikely, I plan an IKEA excursion, and I would love to go line dancing again, but I am not sure I am brave enough to go all alone.

Honestly, I am so tired, I don't think this entry is very exciting. I'll leave you with a funny conversation with my sister (hereby referred to as The Lovely Sister) and my niece (referred to as FireCracker). Some background: FireCracker is a smarty pants kindergartener, who loves anything with sparkles, pink, and color, as long as it's pretty. She started kindergarten today, to great success as I understand. She also looked adorable, in her pink glittery skirt, ruffled shirt, and leggings.

THE LOVELY SISTER: FireCracker got some Jitter Glitter from her teacher to sprinkle on herself the night before school starts in case she has first day jitters.
ME: That sounds so cute!
TLS: Except you should hear what she calls her Jitter Glitter.
ME: And what would that be?
TLS: She calls it her Shitter Glitter. I told her you never want that kind of glitter!

In terms of phonology, FireCracker's misuse of the /dz/ phoneme into /ts/ is quite unremarkable. But even the unremarkable create hilarious results. Imagine a child trying to say "truck" who replaces his /tr/ with /f/. Cracks me the truck up.