Middle of the Week

It's Wednesday.  Only Wednesday.  Why does it feel like Thursday?  Why is this week taking so long?!

I woke up at 6:00 but it was so dark out I just rolled over and went back to sleep till 7:30.  I didn't know why it was still kind of dark, then I checked the weather on my phone.  Dense fog for our area, it said.  I looked out the window; it wasn't what I would call dense, but it was foggy.  I had wait for my son to get out of the bathroom, so I spent some time in prayer.  Once he got out I went in, then I heard him leave shortly afterwards.  Turns out he did go to see the eye doctor that saw him at the store yesterday.  Pink eye, both eyes.  Who would have known?  Oh yeah, an eye doctor :P.  He still had to work, though, because there was no one to cover for him.  I don't think he even told the store manager that he had pink eye.  R is very responsible at his job and he always gets good reviews because of it.  I'm really hoping he'll get hired full-time.  It would make a world of difference for him.

I let my youngest son E sleep till 10:00.  I thought he had to report to his science class, but it was a collaboration class and he's already done the two he needs for the semester.  He started school at 11:00 with his algebra lesson.  While he did that I cleaned the master bathroom and put away laundry.  Lunchtime came and I hadn't taken anything out.  Honestly, I had nothing on the menu for today.  I guess I messed up when I did the menu planning for the two weeks, because I have nothing planned for tomorrow either.  There's stuff I can make but I'm running out of staples quick.  Friday will be a grocery day for sure.  I just have to plan out what I'm gonna need.  Anyway, I made E a frozen pizza (no problem for him, he loves them) and I had some Tyson popcorn chicken with fries.  My daughter took the leftovers from yesterday so it wasn't an issue that mom took a day off from the kitchen.

After lunch I had E watch an algebra review from last week, then he did part one of his final.  He scored a 72 so far, with a couple of questions still needing to be graded.  Two of the questions he got wrong were silly errors; not reading the question through or copying the equation wrong.  I feel bad for him because I know how hard he's trying, and because he has an 89% in that class.  He wants to get an A so badly.  I'm praying he scores higher on the next two parts of the exam.  Part 2 looks like it's gonna be the hardest part, but we'll have to see.

Oh yeah, that burn on my hand?  It blistered.  Like, ugly.  There's this big old blister on my hand that I'm afraid of popping because I know the minute it pops it's gonna hurt like crazy.

Tonight was Awana.  I love my third grade girls.  They are a bit competitive but in a good way; they want to excel, but they're willing to help each other too.  They are so sweet!  I showered but didn't blow dry my hair because according to the weather forecast it was supposed to rain and be muggy tonight.  I figured, why straighten my hair just to get the frizzies the minute I walk out the door?  So I left my hair in its natural form, curly like a rat's nest.  I stepped out the door and wouldn't you know it - it was cool and dry out :P.  As a matter of fact, it seems the temps are going down tonight.  I was so upset, because I absolutely hate wearing my hair curly.  Of course I got 100 compliments on how great my hair looked.  Go figure.

I got home and went to the bathroom to change into my jammies and wash the makeup off my face.  The minute I turned on the bathroom light I saw it.  In the sink.  A palmetto bug.  Any Floridian would immediately know what I'm talking about: they are giant cockroaches that fly.  Now, I usually take care of these myself, so long as I have a can of Raid handy.  This time, however, the odds were stacked against me.  The can of Raid was in the cabinet under the very sink where the palmetto bug was, and I was not about to take a chance at that thing flying on me.  I'm not "afraid" of them, but I am ridiculously disgusted by them, like sick to my stomach disgusted, and I was not about to have it get on me.  Ugh!!   So I called out for the boys to get the other cans of Raid from the garage and come take care of this ginormous bug.  My son R came and I told him to look in the sink while I stood outside the bathroom (where I was safe).  He didn't see anything; then I saw it on the wall inside the bathtub area.  When he saw it, even he said it was huge.  He had to stand on the bathtub rim to reach it because I have a garden tub, so the bathtub area is deep.  The moment he sprayed it, it flew towards him.  He almost fell off the tub, poor kid!  Once it landed on the floor he was able to spray it directly and it died almost instantly.  This thing was about 2 inches long, I am not even joking.  It was totally gross, and I couldn't even be in the bathroom until I knew for sure it was dead and I could sweep it out of there.  I guess I could say that was today's adventure.  I can also say I'd be happy to live the rest of my life without another similar adventure, though I'm sure that's not likely in Florida.

I finally did get ready for bed, so I bid everyone a good night, pleasant dreams, and blessings to all.

Monday Musings

A new day, a new week.  A year ending and a new one beginning within days.  Change is in the air.  Some good, some not so pleasant...

I was so tired last night, I don't even remember what all I posted.  I'll probably go back and re-read it to see if there's any grammatical errors.  I'm somewhat of a grammar Nazi; I hate it when the English language gets butchered.  I want my blog to be as error free as possible.  I know that doesn't always happen - I've gone back and seen things misspelled and kicked myself for it.  But at least I try to do justice to my blog by writing properly.

One thing I didn't mention last night was my children's great-grandmother.  Great-grandma Maria is my children's great grandmother on their father's mother's side.  They have known her all their lives, and she babysat my two older kids when they were little tykes.  Despite health issues in the past, including colon cancer, she has rallied and come off her sickbed multiple times.  She is made of some sturdy material!  About a year and a half ago, her eldest daughter experienced complications during open heart surgery, and unexpectedly passed away.  She was in her mid 70's, not a young woman but to a mother she was still her child.  Grandma Maria's health began to steadily decline after that.  I think the heartache of losing her daughter was more devastating than any illness, including cancer.  Since April we have watched her deteriorate from an active, alert woman to a bed-ridden shadow of who she was.  I cannot express how sad it is to see her in this condition after knowing her for over 27 years as a strong, independent, caring human being.  She has always put the needs of others before her own, and she's been a loving wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and even great-great-grandmother.  Grandma Maria lives with her daughter and granddaughter, the cousin who came over to visit last night.  I asked how she was doing, and we were told that the priest had been called.  Grandma Maria has been a devout Catholic all her life, but it wasn't about religion with her.  She cares about people, and about serving.  What an awesome example of Christ she has been to her entire family!  At 94 years of age she is the family matriarch, having lost her husband 25 years ago.  We know the Lord will be taking her home soon, and it will be a bittersweet time for us.  She is so frail, so sick, that it pains everyone to see her suffer, but saying goodbye is a hard pill to swallow.  My prayer is simply that the Lord would take her in her sleep so she and her loved ones caring for her don't have to suffer further.  She has always tried to honor God with her life, and I know He will honor her integrity as well.

On to my day...I spent the morning cleaning the family room and dining room.  Our dog Molly spends a lot of time in the family room on the rug, or at the back door waiting to be let out, so that area gets filled with dog hair and drool.  I tried to get my Dyson vacuum cleaner fixed but I can't figure out what is wrong with it.  I'm gonna end up having to take it to get repaired.  I used our smaller vacuum but it takes longer because it isn't as powerful.  After cleaning up I started cooking for today:  baked ziti, french bread and a salad.  I have plenty of lettuce in the yard, so once the baked ziti was out of the oven I went out and cut off some lettuce leaves.  I brought them into the kitchen and threw them in the sink to wash.  As I was pulling the leaves apart, what should hop out of the sink (almost on my hand) but a little frog.  It was obviously hiding in the lettuce leaves looking for bugs.  I let out a scream, not because I'm afraid of frogs but because it caught me by surprise!  My boys jumped up to see what had caused the ruckus.  They just laughed, then R got a glass and picked it up off the kitchen back splash and took it outside.  I'm glad, because I didn't want it to stay inside the house.  Poor little critter would have died.

After lunch I took my son E to the bank to cash out his coin bank that he got from his dad for his birthday.  According to his dad there was about $180 that he had collected.  My son had a few coins that he added to it, and I gave him a few as well.  As we put them in the machine and watched the total go up, my son was getting more and more excited, hoping it would get up to $200.  Actually, the total came up to $223.45.  He said his face hurt from smiling so much.  This will be the money he uses to get the longboard he's been wanting.

Another gift my son got for his birthday was a new Nerf gun.  This one is a Zombie type, I guess for hunting them.  My son has a collection of Nerf guns, which he forgets he has until he gets a new one.  Then he and his brother start sneaking up on each other and everyone else, shooting them with Nerf guns.  Which is proof that men are just boys in big bodies.

I got some more floor cleaning done before it was time for dinner.  After I ate I proceeded to give myself a manicure with the new nail polishes my cousin gave me for my birthday.  The package says they're nail lacquers so they should last longer than regular polish.  We'll have to wait and see.  They are a set, one mauve/taupe kind of color called May Flowers, one vibrant baby pink called Gorgeous Gerbera and one rose gold top coat with glitter.  I used the mauve/taupe color on all but my ring fingers; on those I used the baby pink and put the glittery top coat on top.  It looks really cute and girly, maybe a bit too youthful but who cares?  They say you're as young as you feel, and I feel like I'm still in my 30's.  Most days.  Some of the time.  Okay maybe closer to my 40's but still, that's younger than I am now.

Other than that it's been a slow kinda day.  I watched a few videos on youtube, and I'm gonna take a shower now.  Maybe I'll watch a movie afterwards, now that my son has let the television alone for a while.  That poor TV is getting some usage now that there's a Wii U attached to it ;-).  God bless and good night.

Tackling Tuesday

Did you ever get the feeling you were the last person to find out about something?  Like everyone is in on the secret but you?  That was me this morning.  The world is progressing forward and I'm stuck in neutral.

Last night my computer (which is pretty old, by the way) started acting up as it sometimes does.  I shut it down multiple times but for whatever reason I could not get internet access.  At all.  It wouldn't recognize our wireless network or any other wireless network in the area.  I was concerned because this is the computer my son uses for his schoolwork.  He can't get Java to work on his computer so he watches all his live lessons on mine, and today he had two. I prayed this morning that my son would be able to figure out what was wrong with the computer before 10 am when E's first lesson started.  As soon as R woke up I told him what had happened last night.  He walked over to the computer, pressed a button on the top of the keyboard, and all the wireless connections came up.  I sat there in amazement and asked what he'd done?  His matter-of-fact answer:  "I turned on the wireless."  I couldn't do anything but laugh my head off at what an idiot I was.  I must have turned the wireless off without realizing it.  Even funnier, I pointed to another button and told the boys I'd thought that was the button for the wireless.  My 14 year old said, "No Mom, that turns off the mousepad."  I shook my head and wondered when I'd left the prehistoric era and landed here in the 21st century.

Breakfast today was pretty basic:  one fried egg, 2 strips of bacon, honey wheat toast with homemade apple butter, and coffee.  Lunch will be tacos, with lettuce from my backyard.  I'd started a garden months ago but had given up on it when the caterpillars waged war and were winning.  Still, without even trying, my lettuce seeds sprang up and I have large gorgeous lettuce leaves ready for the picking.  Not only that, but I was watching our dog Molly and happened to look at my tomato plant.  There's a tomato growing!  The first one on this plant!  I stopped watering this plant because I was sure it was a dud.  It grew and grew but never gave me a single tomato.  Now it has a small tomato and 2 more little tomato buds.  Proof again that I plant, I even water, but it's God who makes things grow.

I watched Alexandrea Garza's new video this morning and had to tell my daughter about it.  She goes over her evening skin care routine, and there were some really good pointers.  For instance, why hadn't I thought of using Johnson's Baby Shampoo to remove eye makeup?!  Oh my goodness, that is genius!  It's gentle on the eyes and cleans really well, plus it's way cheaper than any makeup remover on the market!  She also had some advise for people with extra dry skin which my daughter suffers from.  Especially now that the humidity has gone down, our skin gets drier than usual, and her skin gets downright flaky.  Her regular moisturizer isn't doing a good enough job; hopefully she can find something that will work for her.  My daughter has started using Michael Todd products which are totally organic, since she has sensitive skin.  Hopefully a good moisturizer regiment will also help improve her complexion.

I thought today was gonna be another busy school day; after all, E had a couple of assignments to do, and 2 live lessons.  He went in for his first live lesson, English class.  Except it wasn't a class per se, it was review and question time for their end of semester assignment.  The class is writing a thesis on Dr. Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail (which is an inspirational read).  They've done the thesis statement, introduction, body paragraphs, and today they were writing the conclusion.  It took all of half an hour.  So he read his book till his next live lesson, leadership.  Turns out the teacher had cancelled the class because they are just about finished with the semester.  So he did his reading for leadership, wrote his conclusion paragraph, and was done in 3 hours.  Great.  He needs 5 hours of work per day.  We went ahead and started working on his music history lab, but I don't want him getting to far ahead of himself; the rest of the week is really light, and if he does all the work today and tomorrow he'll have nothing to do the rest of the week.  I'm looking forward to Christmas break so I don't have to figure out what schoolwork to do.

While my son was listening to his English teacher review for his assignment, I took our dog Molly out for her bath.  Molly is an American bulldog mix.  She acts very much like an American bulldog, except that lately she had gotten to digging in the backyard.  She comes to the door with filthy paws.  She also has taken to rolling in the dirt, causing her to stink to high heaven.  I was dying to get her cleaned up good but it had been too chilly out - we have to bathe her outside because she absolutely HATES getting a bath and she would not stay still for a moment to get bathed inside the house.  Besides, she sheds enough to build a second dog, and I can't imagine the damage her hair would do to our plumbing.  The weather has gotten nicer the last couple of days; 50's in the morning, 70's in the afternoon, 60's in the evening.  I had to wait till the sun came out so I could give her a bath without her freezing.  Now, normally I tie Molly up to the patio furniture to get her bathed because if I don't she'll run off.  The patio furniture is light, but she wouldn't move it because the sound it made against the patio floor would scare her (she's part dog, part chicken).  Today, however, she decided she wasn't having anything to do with cleaning or water or shampoo or anything.  I brought the hose out and started getting her wet.  All of a sudden, she bolted.  And I mean she was taking everything that was in her path!  She knocked down one of the patio chairs, a large planter, the glass from the patio table she was tied to went flying and only by God's grace landed on the grass and didn't shatter, and she ended up on the other side of the house, patio table still dragging behind her, where she turned and gave me that look said, "I'm in trouble, aren't I?"  Yeah, you better believe it!  I not only had to give her a bath, I also had to put the patio back together again.  She was in the doghouse, so to speak, after that little incident.

I got the email from Ulta today:  my order has shipped :-).  I'm glad; it's one less thing I have to worry about.  The Bare Escentuals orders are also supposed to ship this week, in time to receive them for Christmas, though none of the items we ordered are actually Christmas gifts.  Of course, there might be a birthday gift for my little girl, whose birthday is two days later ;-).

Tonight was our weekly group run, and I met up with my friend DS at the corner of our block.  We live about a mile away from the meeting spot for our running group, so DS and I sometimes go there on foot.  We took my son E since he'd been cooped up at home all day.  The night was brisk - 61 degrees felt nice for our walk/jog around the neighborhood.  DS and I don't usually run like the others in the group; we either walk or jog, so we lag behind and chit-chat the whole time.  Tonight we were walking along a path that is directly behind a bunch of houses, and there is a concrete wall separating the houses from the sidewalk.  My son E was a few feet ahead of us, running.  As we walked something along the top of the wall caught my eye.  It was a possum.  Possums are nothing more than giant rats as far as I'm concerned, and anyone who knows me knows I hate rats.  I let out a scream, grabbed my friend DS, pulled her away from the wall and yelled, "Run!!"  I hit my turbo button and took off like a mad woman, DS was trying to run but didn't know what was going on, and my son turned around and wondered, "What in the world are they doing?!"  He heard laughter and thought maybe we were laughing at a joke.  Then he saw us running and thought we were racing!  It wasn't until I'd gotten far enough that I told them what I'd seen.  It was so hilarious, we couldn't stop talking about it and laughing!  Even our exercise time is an adventure!

Oh, and I did change the background on my blog today.  The background I had was pretty but it was more appropriate for spring; this background is more of a winter theme, but not too wintery - it's not like we get snow or anything.  Hope it looks appealing!  Have a good night y'all.