Anna Maria - definitely a great place to live a quiet, slow-paced life.

Although Chinchillas  tend to disagree and use a brief family vacation for running around by ocean-side, scream (especially when refusing to go too close to the ocean) and enjoying the pool. The latter though, seems to have been their favourite pastime: splashing in the pool completely naked and running around the pool with one toy or another, also... aerating their bottoms. Ocean, beach buckets and towels, sea shells - we're just like a real family on a beach vacation now.
And 3 hour flight feels like a piece of cake now after almost 24 total hours spent in International traveling each way this summer!

As for Von Zobel and I, we finally tried bicycles with child chariots - and they did turn out to be a fun and convenient way to get around the island with kids. Apart from all the loading and unloading the kids, and buckling them up, of course - Chinchillas did not enjoy this either. Should we buy a couple in Colorado though, we would stick to riding mountain bikes with hand-brakes (yes, our bicycles in FL were old-fashioned!), but the little "honking" parrots on the wheel were a good idea and made Chinchillas laugh.

A Full-bodied polar fox.

Lyolik telegrammed it to me the other day, with a brief annotation Полный Песец , which was such a great laconic description of my life right now I could not help setting it as my laptop desktop.

*****

Sometimes it becomes hard to just pull myself up off the floor and go and do anything useful at all.

In the midst of job search.

Funny enough, the most interesting, promising and juicy positions are in the middle of nowhere. Near Broadway and the 17th, that is. Recruiters are aggressive and email almost daily. Companies in search of personnel email daily in and out of sequence, offers being from staff accountant to manager of logistics.
Employers inquire about Excel skills - Pivot table & V-lookup.
Recruiters  sound exited about Customer Relations and Project Management experience.
I am being aggressive in my inquiries about salary, benefits, location and flexibility. That must have come with experience. And because I have no other choice but to make it work my way, probably.
Employers want a plain AP/AR person, to be compensated accordingly.
Recruiters encourage to come to them for applications to any worthy position, since they have vast network of growing and high net-worth clients, and to never submit application to the same position more than once (wasn't it how I got my first official job? Three times was a charm...)
I keep thinking of how to integrate a full-time demanding position into my life schedule, or rather - how to construct a new schedule where there would be time for meetings, business trips, toddler swimming lessons, parents' nights at kindergarten and ways to take care of my boys when they are sick without compromising my professional attitude at work.
Employers say "Hey, we have a Sales Managers position at our Insurance Company you might be interested in!"
Recruiters say "Hey, we are going to send your resume to an Oil&Gas company"
I say "No, thank you". "Yes, thank you!". Can't waste any more time. Can't waste any more time on something that I won't be able to leverage in the next 5 years.

I hardly ever have repeating dreams.

If I ever had, I can't remember them now.
Now, twice this week with slight variations, I've seen myself coming to an interview in some 20+ floor office building; second time - a hotel, but still being somewhere on 20+ floor. The interview goes as normal, but for some reason I bring in my teal laptop bag full of my lehrstoff, the bag is heavy as usual, but I keep carrying it on my shoulder as the interviewer shows me around after the interview. And once we say goodbye and I walk outside I find myself walking on a glass floor, above the offices, next to the building's wall but with no wall outside.
I walk till I see there is no exit on this side, neither a way to get back inside the building and turn around to go back.
But by this time the width of glass ledge is only about a third of what it used to be.
I keep walking, and this time there is no way to get back into the building at all, as the ledge is getting more and more narrow as I walk until finally my laptop bag starts to gets hit by the wind gusts and pull me down and make me start losing my balance.
In the second dream though, a woman, another interviewee appears behind a window to ask how my interview was and say good bye. I can't help thinking what a moron she is - seeing that I can neither move on the thin ledge anymore - in my high heals and a heavy bag, but not offering any help. So I smile and ask her ironically:
- Could I please trouble you with opening this window?
She shrugs, face is blank. Clearly, she can't understand why I would ask her that.
- If that's so crucial for you...
"Of course it's crucial for me!" - I think, annoyed. Try not to fall down while she opens the window out - right above my head, barely manage to lift up my heavy laptop bag and start to climb in.