It has been brought to my attention that, at times, my blog can be quite depressing. I was a little surprised to hear this. I don’t want to come across like our life here in California is one big major drag. Quite the contrary. We have a wonderful life. Our children adore each other and show a great deal of love and compassion toward their family and friends. And Julie and I seem to being closer than ever.

Last week was a tough week. A lot of crap fell in one week. I believe it was the alignment of the stars. How else can you explain how the Indians were one game of first at the beginning of the week and then promptly dropped seven in a row? For those of you who aren’t into baseball, I apologize.

However, I will make an attempt to find something positive to say in most of my entries. I believe that the only way to find your way out of the dark places is to generate some kind of positive thinking.

And here is how the week ended on a good note:

Friday night Budd and I took in the Van Halen concert. Despite my disappointment in some parts of the concert (I mean, we paid $100 a ticket!! I should have been blown out of my seat. I was not), we all had a great time. It was great to just let go for even a couple of hours.

Amazingly enough, I was able to get up the next morning and go run 10 miles in Pasadena. This despite the constant throbbing pain that keeps waking me up every night… gotta love tooth problems. Let this be a lesson to all of you kids who don’t think flossing does anything. By the time you reach 35 and you have to get a couple root canals, a little bit of string between your teeth that takes, like, five minutes to use, isn’t so bad.

The ten miles was pretty easy. I was tired, but I didn’t ache. Glad I went.

That night, Sophie and Jules went to a movie and a tea. Soph came back with the biggest smile on her face. She had so much fun. And Jake and I had a good time hanging out with Vill and Ben. Guys’ night… in. Still very cool.

The rest of the weekend was typical. Yard work. Cleaning. Laundry. But I like this routine. I love our house and I take great pride in it. I don’t whether we’ll ever be able to afford something bigger than this nice home, so I want it to look great all of the time. That said; it’s nearly impossible to keep the house clean more than a day when you have two kids running around. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Today I was uninspired to run and barely put in 20 minutes. I know that some of the stresses from last week were hanging on me. But we’ve written California Children’s Services (Julie did a great job with the letter) and once the envelope is in the mailbox, it’s out of our hands. We can only hope and pray.

Aloha