Welcome to scenic Palatine, IL

So my 2nd cousin Iza is here for the week, which brings up the perpetual question of...what exactly IS there to do in the suburbs? Well, there's getting the new Harry Potter (a sin and a crime that I haven't already, I know). And eating sesame jack chicken strips. And "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (SOOO excited. I could care less about the nostalgia of the first one, this one, purely in previews, already stays truer to Roald Dahl's child-hatin' morbidness. IluvitIluvitIluvit.) We've already hit up Navy Pier somethin' fierce (including a speedboat Lake tour which involved me winning the tour guides respect and a fictional date) and my 8th graders have been...(gulp)...NOT SO BAD. All they needed was a lil' discipline. Overall things are pretty much alright.

Must resolve double credit card payment, which hopefully only makes me look like a ridiculously over-eager credit card payer and not idiot. Eh, what can you do. Am slowly using more and more zen/assertive/kill more bees with honey than lemonade (is that even a phrase?) approach and it has brought me much less stress and luck. Who knew? No really, people should REALLY get the word out that stressing over bureacracy is as idiotic as bureacracy itself. And bureacracy has that covered, so NO WORRIES.

Due to sinus infection (owee) have been on CRAYZAY drugs which make me really dizzy, as well as making me think that I'm talking out loud when really I'm not. This medication also lead to the following incident:

Isabelle (looking at pens at the check-out counter of Office Max):
"OHH! That's what I forgot! I needed to get pens!"
Isabelle's mom: "For your kids?" (refering to kids I am tutoring)
Isabelle (in all seriousness): "No, for writing."
(Three people in Office Max line collapse in heaps of laughter, and clerk asks what drugs I am on. Even my own mother mocks me).

Luckily I am officially finished with the first dose, so hopefully am close to being healed because it sucks having no frontal lobe function for days on end.

P.s. Nelle, you were in TOWN and you didn't even CALL DREW OR MYSELF, as neither of us have reliable internet access and couldn't have possibly seen your entry in time. The Roxette cover band is miffed and thinking about suspending your "Fading Like a Flower" priviledges.

P.P.S. Am officially going to visit Amee (and hopefully Charlotte) for more than two weeks in August. (takes a deep breath) WOOT!

P.P.P.S. Actually feel like writing fiction again. This is a big step for me as I haven't in four years. FOUR YEARS, people. Don't know what this means.