Yesterday Andy, from the sales side, and I climbed the steeple at First United Methodist Church, Covington. A steeplejack is in town making some repairs to the century-old steeple and I’m doing a story on it. I have a mild fear of heights, so they worried that I wouldn’t actually climb the rickety ladders all the way up to the bell tower, but I did with no problem. It was fun! And Andy took pictures. (Some of which are on Flickr.)

In the evening we had another meet-and-greet kind of a deal – a going-away for our former publisher whose last day was July 6 combined with a welcome for our new publisher whose first official day was July 9. This is probably the third time we’ve done this? Anyway. So that was fun as well. We all brought food and I made a corn-black bean-salsa dip that our office manager asked me to make. I don’t eat corn and I don’t eat black beans, but the recipe was easy; I bought the ingredients during my lunch break and put it all together in two minutes in our break room. lol. I tried it – it was actually pretty good.

And last night I got some pretty awful news – my boy, Michael Vick, has been indicted. *SOB* Mikey Mike, I’m disappointed in you, brotha. But way to go with putting Bad Newz on the map. (See, okay, people of the younger generations call Newport News – our hometown – Bad Newz, so that is where that comes from (that is apparently the name of the dog fighting company or something).) Really, I am kind of devastated over this. lol.

Today I didn’t do anything exceptionally exciting for work. The editor and I had lunch with a police chief at the country club, which is just about it. I had to leave work early today because the girls had appointments for their vaccines.

Which, yes, sucks. Two kids getting multiple vaccines? Yikes.

We didn’t have to wait forever at the health department, which was great. Fantabulous, even. My low income status made us qualify to receive the shots at no cost, otherwise they would have been $13.70 for the first one (times two – the first shot for each girl) and then $11 thereafter. I found this really kind of ironic because just before I left work I had a conversation with my student loan company and they say I am too far above the poverty line to qualify for an economic hardship deferment. I make $500 too much per month to qualify, but come on, I pay $1200/mo. in childcare among other things. And I just found out today that health insurance for the four of us will cost $688/mo. Ha. I definitely can’t afford that.

So anyway, the nurse was very no-nonsense. We got in there and got to work, no questions asked, no one measured for weight or height, none of that. Jaiden received her MMR and second Varicella (chicken pox) and Jenna received her 12 month shots (four months late), which were DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis), Hib, Prevnar, MMR and Varicella, I believe. Jaiden teared up a little bit on her varicella, but didn’t really cry. She went first. Jenna came second and both girls cried their little eyes out. Jenna screamed. Jaiden cried because she didn’t want her baby sister to get hurt like she did. Aww!

Jaiden is now caught up until she is a teenager, the nurse said. And Jaylen and Jenna are both caught up until they go to school, unless we move out of Tennessee and the rules change.

As a reward, we came home and made snow cones. They really enjoyed that! We were home by about 4:15 p.m., which is incredibly early for us, so we just kind of tried to lay low and relax. Or I did, I should say. Jenna was understandably whiny and ended up going to bed by 5:30 p.m. The older two and I had dinner outside on the patio and just hung around. Our editor sent me home with a book to read – The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook – and so I read that while my kids got into trouble, I mean played.

And I just wrote one of my favorite columns ever. It’s all about how we, as a society, do not hold people accountable for their wrong-doings and why criminals become criminals and maybe they actually are geniuses since they get taxpayers to foot the bill for housing and feeding them.

Tomorrow is already Thursday again – oy! Paper day. Which means I need to get going so I can take a nap before getting up extra early to finish up my stuff. Goodnight!

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