Where have you been? What have you done?
What have you done last summer? Or more precisely this summer. No? Too bad, because I'll tell you.
So, hello! It feels so nice to be here again. I have taken a long pause. I'm becoming the queen of comebacks so I am very happy and grateful I always have a place on this platform to return too. Money wise that's a bad thing to do, pause. It's much more profitable to be present and consistent but life happens and shit as well. So here we go. Again.
Battling CSF
This was a summer of big decisions regarding my health and my illness. I was quite fed up in the spring: fed up with doctors, fed up with pain, fed up with half-solutions. So I thought I'd just give up on everything so I've stopped going to my follow-ups and just focused on my work. But I couldn't: the symptoms were becoming pretty bad and I decided to revisit my decision on doctors and help. I went to my neurologist and my otorhinolaryngologist and they recommended I undergo surgery to patch my leak up so I made an appointment with a skull base surgeon ( I'm still waiting for it to happen ) plus an MR scan in the fall. Until then, painkillers are a girl's best friend.
The war on megabytes
My husband engaged in a war with our internet provider this summer. We had a contract and paid for a certain speed (10 MB) and it would never be that speed. He called them a thousand times this summer, we changed the rooter. We even changed the phone cable (but that was due to the rabbit chewing the cord). We were out of PC internet for almost the old summer. The last time he called their customer service was the other day at midnight and they finally found a solution so we gave them the last chance before switching operators.
Summer break
My eldest daughter decided to take a summer break between kindergarten and first grade. We took out the other two for a couple of weeks so we could enjoy summer to the fullest. My niece also came for a week so the summer was pretty hectic with all the running around to the beach with the kids. We also had bike riding lessons (almost got it), swimming lessons (done, she's got it) and tying the shoe lessons (all done by us of course) and were pretty successful at that.
Swiming and shoe tying under our belt. Just the bike riding to go
Jobs gain, jobs lost
Oh, this was the summer of jobs. As you know I do gardening for a living. It has become harder to do because of my illness. My spinal fluid leaks tend to get worse and my headaches worsen as well when I do physical work. For example, I'm part time gardening this whole week and my head is killing me. I take the maximum dose of my painkillers and can still barely get through the day. I also cleaned holiday homes and did translations and paperwork.
The biggest turn was when I went for an interview in hope of getting my dream job: a student assistant in a primary school. I didn't get the job but I got a free education and a certificate that would help me have an advantage over other candidates in another job opening. You win some you lose some I guess.
School and preschool
And after the crazy summer of all of the above my eldest started school. First grade. We were so proud. We had some starter stumbles with the school staff. They totally disregarded our request to place our girl in the same grade as her friends. She was very bummed out but she pulled it trough. Two main takeaways from the first few school weeks are: our kid is great and the other one was we can not at all rely on the school administration at all. I guess it was better we found that right away.
The other big news was our middle child started preschool, which is a year before school, on the recommendation of the kindergarten administration, which is totally different than the school one, and we actually trust their assessments. She should have actually started preschool next year and school in two years but, as it seems, she will be starting school a year earlier, at the age of 6. I was never one for getting kids to the school earlier but it seems it's the best thing we could do for her. But we have not made up our minds yet. It all depends on her emotional development this year.
New projects
I may have been off Steemit but that does not mean I haven't been working on new stuff. I started to contribute to a great new project by 
The first day of school was a bitter experience thanx to a very poor job done by the school administration
What's next?
I have so much planned! Finishing my projects regarding Mental health and doing an update on my magic sunshine potion I made in June. I want to keep working on Steem News, a very exciting project. I have a post on turbo folk music, a uniquely Balkan phenomenon. Lot's and lot's of stuff planned.
I want to revisit folks I loved following before and finally get a grip on discord. I hope my husband comes back to posting too.