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Thank you all so much for your emails and comments and prayers for my brother. A room finally opened up for him at the hospital and he was admitted about half an hour ago.

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Today was Ruby and Nick's first swimming lesson. Nick is a YMCA Fish. He practiced kicking with a kickboard and got some help with his freestyle technique. Nick has pretty severe learning disabilities, and sensory integration dysfunction. I'm really hoping getting involved with swimming will be good for him physically and otherwise.

Ruby's class was a blast. We sang little songs to help the kids get used to going under the water, and started teaching them how to climb out of the pool. Ruby was so brave! She didn't cry at all, even when a bunch of other babies were.

I've been in a pretty 'blah' mood today. I didn't workout. Maybe I should have. Maybe working out would have given me an endorphin boost or something, and brightened me up some.

It all started this morning when I logged on to realtor.com to take a look at what houses are for sale in Las Vegas. The more I looked, the more I just wanted to scream. We have a decent income. Above the city's median of $48,000. Not way way above, but enough that you'd think we'd be able to easily afford a median house, right?

Oh so very wrong.

The median house in Las Vegas is something ridiculous like $310,000. That's a house that just two or three years ago would have sold for maybe $120,000. Talk about sticker shock. They even call it that in the newspaper. The people flooding our town from Southern California, having just sold thier ridiculously overpriced houses, can afford them, and think they're a bargain. But those of us who are from here? We've been priced out of the damn market.

It's so incredibly frustrating. I have this deep anger at the investors who drove the market up so much that all the joy has been sucked out of buying your first house. We no longer have affordable homes in Las Vegas.

So we wait. And wait. For the bubble to resolve itself. I did talk to a realtor today, who was the first one EVER to not try to sell me on the idea that Las Vegas still has a strong market. The big line is always "We have a strong economy, lots of jobs." Who gives a shit? We don't have lots of $100,000 a year jobs. Kevin is a damn craps dealer. If casino employees can't afford to buy a house in Las Vegas something is seriously fucked up.

So I started the day by biting off Kevin's head about wanting to move away from Las Vegas. I'd love to move back to Southern California where I grew up. And damn, if we're going to pay California prices, we might as well live in the real place, right?

Then I stepped on the scale. I've gained 2.5 pounds since last Saturday. I'm not sure why. I havne't binged. I've been exercising nearly everyday. It's possible, I guess, that my period (due in a week or so) is the culperate. Or that I ate something too salty the night before. Or that my scale isn't properly balanced. Who knows? We'll see what the doctor's scale at TOPS says on Tuesday. In the meantime, I'm trying not to have a full-blown freakout.

I think that starting next Tuesday, I'm going to make an effort to stop logging my food. That practice is making it hard for me to stop the dieting mentality. It's so hard to trust that if I don't maintain strict accounts of bites in and energy out, I'll stop losing weight.

I think I need a nap.