Is that my voice?

Have you ever heard a recording of your voice, and thought that it sounded silly, or weird? Every stinking time I hear my stupid laugh on camera I get so annoyed. I really sound like that? All the time? *sigh* I'd give anything to sound like that now.

yeah, I've lost it. My voice that is. Not only is this a bad thing because I can't talk on the phone, I also can't yell at my kids. Maybe not so much a bad thing. No really, I am trying to talk to chilly, and he just ignores me, as usual, but I figure he just can't hear me either. So I'm spending my day dancing here and there, trying to stop battles between the boys in nare but a whisper.
(Whispering is of course more damaging to the vocal chords, so not really, but the lowest register I've got equals about the decimal of a whisper. Does that make sense big d? I don't really know sound, I'm a performer not a backstage...Person.)

other than that, well, lets see, I was going to post my top ten reasons I had a sucky vacation. But in all honesty, it was nice. It was good to see nauvoo, what little we did see of it, and it was good to come home.

I'm not a road trip warrior anymore, in fact, I've been feeling very home bodied the last couple of months. So that is the hard part for me, spending 10 hours in a minivan. Only to get up and do it again.

Ah the mice. Yes, that was truly disgusting. We arrived at our "refuge" in a little town outside of nauvoo. 9 short miles outside. We walked in the door, and found scattered across the counter tops in the kitchen, mice traps. A whole lot of them. AND mouse poop, a whole bunch of it. The whole house was infested with mice. I have to say, I think there was close to 200 hundred of them, but I could be miscounting. Since I only actually saw 2. But where there is one, there is bound to be 100 right? So that was, er....Gross. Grosser than gross. So instead of saving money by making our own meals, we really felt it was okay to "eat out" I know that is what the mice were thinking. I just hope none of the buggers stowed away in our suitcases. I know the tick did, but I got rid of that one in Iowa.

And that takes me to the last point I'd like to touch on. Gas. Prices. Suck. I know you all know this, but the reality set in when I payed 3.15 for a gallon of gas. I had to fill the mini van with 20 gallons of gas. You do the math. Sucks.

Oh and the final last thing I'd like to complain about is road construction. My dad was on the Utah department of transportation payroll for 35 years. I know what road construction is. I understand it's place and the season of such is during the summer months. What I don't understand is why 1 city, which will heretofore be named "city of Satan", can close down a whole road that goes to the freeway. The whole road was closed. Okay, a section of the road. But a vital section that led to the desired destination called I-80 west. Yes my friends it took over an hour to find out way out of the City of Satan. And with tempers flaring, it was a long hour. The sad part, the reason we got lost, and the reason we couldn't find our way out, didn't even make a difference in the scheme of things.

and that is the final, final last thing. When you buy a DVD player for your kids, to watch movies on in the van, during very long car rides. And it is one of those portable ones that you can hook up to your car cigarette lighter, and you pay a little bit more than you did on your first car payment. You expect the thing to work. Well, when it doesn't, and the kids are upset because they can't watch Jurassic park for the 437th time, everyone in the van gets a little...Testy. So you drive around a medium size city in the middle of Nebraska, looking for a fuse, no bigger than the recently witnessed mouse poop, and in the process get yourself undeniable and confusably lost, we are encouraged to remember the reason we take vacations and it is to spend good quality time with family. Just not these particular family members. The good news is Target took back the faulty DVD player and gave us our money back. The bad news is, that we had to take it back to the one we got it from I.E. HOME TURF.

So that is it. My list of complaining will hopefully be over soon, as will our summer vacation as Harry starts school in a week! A first grader at last. I'm thinking it will be a good year if we can make it to the start of the school year without another trip to the Dr. And hopefully sometime between now and next week, I'll have a voice again.

Wish me luck!