Back online

Hello everyone (if there is anyone still out there, of course),

It was a long and painful time without internet access, but this morning the people from Sasktel managed to take the time out of their busy schedules to push the button that they needed to push to enable us to get back on the web. I still cannot fathom why it took them a month to find the time to push that button, but oh well.

We are settling in well here in Milestone. It's a little harder for me, I think, as I am at home every day with the girls and I'm getting pretty lonely. Hopefully being online again will help combat that feeling of absolute isolation that comes with living in a small town and not knowing anyone at all.

Small town living is really quite nice, though it's not as easy to meet people as one might think. The people my age who live here have known each other all their lives, and it's hard to break in to a community like that. Last night I went to a pre-school meeting and met several other mothers of young children. While they were all really nice, I still felt a little lost and lonely, and left without really having made any friends. I think that I am going to try Mary in the preschool next week and see how she does though, so I'm glad I went to the meeting. Anyways, the town is nice, people are friendly enough, and I love being able to walk from one end of the town to the other without a whole lot of effort. Oh, and yesterday, someone left two pumpkins just sitting on my front step.

Frances and Mary are doing well enough. Frances is much more civil these days, and she seems to spend more time smiling than screaming now, thank God. Mary's skin is a mess once again, and we took her to a natropath and a dermatologist in the last month. The natropath gave us a bunch of suppliments (fish oils, magnesium) as well as a recipe for home made moisturizer (grape seed oil, vitamin E and oregano oil), which I have been using religiously. The dermatologist doesn't think that it is allergies, and prescribed a cream that is unfortunately not covered by the provincial drug plan because it is relatively new. It's going to cost us $85 every 2 weeks, but we are applying for Exception Drug Status, so hopefully the province will refund some of that. I gave her the first treatment of it today and already her skin feels softer. Mary is still resisting potty training, sigh, but I have hope. Today she ripped off her diaper after pooping copiously in it, sat on the potty (doing nothing, but commenting to me when I wandered by and spotted her sitting there pantless "I made water in it!") and then asked me to get her a new diaper. It was a bit of a panicky search through the house for the poopy diaper, but she had already put it in the garbage. Sometimes she's such a good girl...

We are all making the trek up to Edmonton next weekend, and I couldn't be more excited. We are staying at the Howard Johnson hotel, which has a swimming pool, and we are going to see people! I hope. Anyways, it's going to be so fun, I can't wait. My only concern is that I'm going to bawl like a baby when it's time to leave. I miss Edmonton so much, not just the people, although of course that's a big part, but the city itself. I can't watch the Edmonton TV stations (we get them all with sattelite, but funnily enough we only get one Regina station) without getting weepy. I sometimes wonder if we didn't make a huge mistake moving away...but then I remember we are debt free and I feel a bit better.