sometimes life is just sad

The last 2 weeks have been odd. Last week, was just plain wacky. We had a furlough day (yay, less money!) last week; only I spent much of the day reading about the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I still am glued to the stories coming out the there. So, so sad. Japan is nation who is technologically advanced, more so that the US I imagine, however has brought to its knees by the earthquake.
Lance and I have friend who resides with Japan. He is safe, although I imagine not particularly comfortable. I wonder how close he lives to the nuclear power plant that is melting down. I hope he will be okay.
It is hard to see the pictures of people, particulary children and elderly, being scanned by geiger counters. I had the thought today of: put them all on a plane and bring them here! Such a bleeding heart, eh? However, my next thought was that we complain about taking care of our citizens here, so likely the plane would not get off the ground. Am I getting cynical in my old age? Or am I a realist?
I have been feeling restless, easily frustrated in recent weeks. Finding myself with little patience for people; particularly when i don't like their behavior. Am trying to not let myself become a total a-hole. Hence the blogging...

so much on my mind aka an update

Well, blogging regularly has not happened as planned, but I have read some good books, spent great time with my family and worked hard at work.
I have noticed over the past few weeks a improvement to my overall mood and energy level, which I am attributing to better weather and longer daylight hours. We have also elected to wait a year before selling and buying a place, mostly due to our decision to wait until fall 2012 to send Jude to kindergarten, which will free up some spendable income. I hadn't realized how stressed I was feeling about all of that.
Things on the home front are good. The kids are growing like weeds and are at the same time amazing/wonderful/challenging and exhausting. Definitely the hardest thing I do is parent, but parenting should not be something we just phone in, you know?
Our old cat started drooling like a faucet over the weekend. Turned out to have sever gingivitis and was missing 14 (!!!!) teeth. So, we suck as pet owners. She really needs to learn how to talk or something.
Work is wildly busy, and while I love what I do, I have found myself feeling overwhelmed by the numbers of people needing mental health assistance, which definitely outweighs our available personnel, time, and resources. Apparently, there have been suicides in the first month of this year than all of last year combined. So sad. We are living in a hard time.
People in the US are so pissed. Some with reason, some just seem to be whining. Everyone, including myself, is finger pointing. We are still economically depressed and things are not going as well as people would like them to. Improvements take time, but people feel impatient. I am getting tired of the insanity around it all.