Saturday. Not a bad day. Aaron is still cleaning up the dining room and living room and doing such a good job of it... I won't say a word to discourage him. I cleaned the kitchen and made dinner. My daughter wants me to work on her website and I'm trying to get her to download the programs to learn to work on it herself. Mairi (our dog) just came in from barking at raccoons. Very annoying. I wish she'd leave the cute little critters alone. I spent a lot of time today working on my Klamath Design business plan and updating Happy Camp News and the Chamber of Commerce's River Run page.

Murder trial halted as 'victim' is found alive

Teenagers! The girl in this article let her parents believe she was dead for five years, but finally confessed to being alive during the trial of her accused murderer. I don't know if her re-appearance was voluntary. If so it would appear she cared more about the accused man (who confessed to her murder and three others) than she did about her parents (who were grief-stricken for years and already had a memorial service for her).

As a parent, I know very well how it is to have my daughters turn their backs on me and appear not to care about me. It really hurts. I wonder how they'll deal with having their teenage daughters turn against them, should they ever be lucky enough to have any. My older son didn't turn away from me like my daughters did. I don't expect my younger son will either. I wonder if that's a common difference between girls and boys. I don't know - I've only got five examples (my own kids).

Friday - First thing in the morning I went to my daughter's school for an award ceremony. She got an award for making Honor Roll. We were happy; this was the first time for her this school year and for the past five years she was homeschooled.

Later in the day we drove to Yreka for a doctor's appointment (for my daughter). Everything went well. The doctor looked a little more frazzled .. more than last time we saw him. I guess they're keeping him busy there.

We didn't do much - just a few errands and a short tour of Walmart. This is typically what we do in that town. Though Yreka is two hours from where we live, its the closest Walmart (or any other kind of discount store) so we take advantage of the low prices while there. Also the fast food... gotta have it. We have no fast food here in the forest other than what we can warm up at the liquor store.

Today I concentrated on buying what I needed for the accounting aspect of my new business. I wish me luck in setting up these books. I took a bookkeeping class about 30 years ago but I'm no expert when it comes to money matters.

I've decided to keep office hours at Klamath Design - Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 1pm to 8pm. I'm also using a calendar now to plan my time better and it seems to help a lot. At least now I know where my time went rather than wondering what I did with all my time. It also helps me keep on track with the jobs I'm doing. I need Monday and Wednesday off. On Mondays I've got the Happy Camp News staff meeting. On Wednesdays I've got Chamber of Commerce meetings... and both those meetings take place in mid-afternoon.

Next week is Spring break... I'll have my daughter home all week. Now, that's something to look forward to! I'd like to take the kids someplace but now I've got to stay and work.

Tuesday - what a nice quiet day. The kids had one brief argument over the TV but it blew over soon. Keith made dinner. Aaron is taking responsibility for cleaning the livingroom and building the fire tonight. He did a good job with the firebuilding last night too. I spent the day doing housework... mainly the kitchen, laundry and cleaning off my computer desk.

I'd better go start work - I have some webdesign to do, a news site to update, and then some writing to revise.

Not much happening here on Monday. I mainly did housework and laundry. I worked on Parent News for a while... realized I hadn't touched it since the day before the war began. I guess I've been distracted!

I washed my new purple sheets today and put them back on the bed. I left for a while and when I walked back into the bedroom my dog was lying there on my bed. I might not have been so irate except that I don't have a dryer and it was sunset by the time this happened. No, I don't like to sleep with my dog. In fact, he's Keith's dog. He was supposed to be my daughter's dog but he follows Keith everywhere. He sleeps on the floor right beside my side of the bed, under the sewing machine table that used to be my mom's.

Keith was out in the woods getting firewood all morning with friends. We decided to cut corners by not buying fuel oil this month, then it suddenly got cold again. Now we're back to using the wood stove for heating. I kind of like it but its a lot more work for Keith.

Speaking of Sunday, April 6: Today was a wonderful day. I stayed home with the kids all day and everyone was happy. The kids played video games together and I wrote another 5000 words on my new story and reached my goal of 10K words for the monthly writing marathon. Aaron's feeling better already. Not much else happening! I could use more quiet, peaceful days like this one!

This has been a good day so far. I joined a writing marathon for the weekend, and so far wrote 4200+ words. My goal is 10,000 words. I'm writing a new children's story... so far seven chapters.

Last night I got to talk to my sister. She was going to visit us this week but unfortunately can't due to medical proceedures. We had a nice phone conversation anyway. At least she hasn't encountered SARS yet. We discussed that and she's got plenty of plans on how to handle it. I'm glad she's planning ahead. For those reading this it might help to know she's a nurse-practitioner... that's why I'm concerned about her. Many of the SARS victims are health care workers.

Aaron is sick. Maybe he caught something in Yreka while we were there this week. The kids are getting along good tonight, watching a movie together.