Scattered and consumed

There's a new post up over at BlogHers Act Canada; it talks about the September Challenge, the personal action readers are encouraged to take this month. I was going to write about it yesterday, but my mind has been pulled in too many directions to do it justice right now. So, go read it now and I promise a post next week that truly rises to the challenge issued by Sandra--she probably doesn't even realize the extra challenge I found in her post.

In the meantime, any number of topics have been rattling around in my head:

• We had our home inspection and now have to negotiate a few fixes, though I suspect we'll be able to work that out. The big one is the furnace, which is 40+ years old. And leaking enough carbon monoxide when turned on to worry our otherwise staid inspector. "Are all the windows open?" he asked. Funny how these homeowners, who put a lot of work into many other aspects of the house, thought nothing about the fact that the furnace and water heater both are original to this 1960s house.
• Outside of the issues the inspection found (and they always find more than one expects), spending three hours in the house has made me love it more. The updates were obviously done by people who put a lot of thought into how the space would be used. The master bathroom has an extra-long, double towel bar just outside the shower and a robe hook on the other side. There is a drawer right next to the oven that holds cookie sheets and other baking equipment. The play-set outside is almost exactly what Trillian had picked out online; it needs a little work--new canopy and rope ladder, some resealing--but has a great variety of activities for Scooter.
• We head off to a wedding this weekend, leaving Scooter in the care of his grandparents. This will be the first time neither one of us is with him for more than a few hours, so I'm experiencing a mix of worry and elation. This is a bit of practice too for when we move here and have the grandparents close enough to play overnight babysitter regularly.
• We spent an afternoon this weekend with a lesbian couple who live in Springfield. It was a friend-of-a-friend introduction and we had conversed online. They have 3 kids and have lived there for many years. Our conversation went a long ways to quelling the concerns we have about moving to a small town.
• Scooter made a friend at the park last week. He and another boy spent the longest time running around together, playing hide-and-go-seek, following each other's lead--all of it unprompted. We had a planned play date at the beginning of this week (which went OK until the end when Scooter got upset that his friend was playing with other kids too) and got to talking with the boy's father. Turns out he and Scooter have a number of similar issues, something we'd guessed at during their first meeting, but we were surprised by just how much they have in common.
• Scooter has been much more social in general. I can see how a number of the actions and phrases are learned--from us, from playgroups, from observation. Nonetheless, it gives me a little thrill to see him confidently go up to people, introduce himself, shake hands, and proclaim, "It's so nice a meet you."
• I'm almost done with my application to the place I want to teach in Capital City. I have a few more paragraphs to put into my statement, but have proofed and printed off everything else. I find such statements so difficult when I am truly invested in an application because I worry about the tiniest of details. I've been pushing through that the last day or so in order to finish before we head out of town tomorrow.
• Every once in a while, the thought crosses my mind: This whole moving thing is getting pretty real. We've almost got a house, I may be able to line up a job for next year, the details are working themselves out.