Otherwise Engaged

Here's just a few of the things I've been doing besides blogging this week. I'll lay them out in a numbered list so it makes me feel like I've done something of substance this week.

1. Shuttled A1 to and from about a billion school functions ranging from Academic Team meets to Math Team practice. He's finally taken an interest in school functions so what can I say.

2. Went shopping with Friend 1 on what was apparently A2's Worst!Day!Ever!. What was so surprising about it was that he woke up in a chipper enough mood but that all changed once he didn't get the 500 cars he wanted in Kohl's. He screamed and cried and kicked. Yep, it was one of THOSE tantrums in which you walk past the mother and give her one of those stares down your nose and think to yourself, "she needs to beat that child, I'm such a better mother than her and my child eats off the floor."

Sadly that wasn't the worst of it just the first of it, keep reading. We proceeded to go other places in which he was perfectly fine. We even stopped for lunch and he ate a couple of french fries. (That's a major accomplishment in and of itself since he eats NOTHING! Man, am I SuperMom or what!)

After lunch we went to the mall. It was here that the freaking bottom dropped out of the universe and I seriously contemplated leaving A2 in the Santa sled they had sitting in the middle of the mall with a note pinned on him that said, "Free Reindeer Food or Elfin Labor, You Pick!." I'm not sure what triggered it but he threw another fit in the mall that spanned from one end to the other.

By the time we got out to the car I was holding this child by one leg and one arm and he was squirming and screaming, he was red faced and about a gallon of snot was pouring from his nose. It was horrible. I kept my cool though. Funny thing is that it didn't even phase Friend 1, she's got three kids and has been there gone through that. We just kept on talking as we walked out to the car. By the time I put him in his car seat he had naturally calmed down. It wasn't 10 minutes later and he was asleep.

My score of the day though: I bought an Elmo costume from Toys "R" Us that was originally $34.99 that is fleece and has a giggle box inside it for A2 to either wear next year because it's a 3T-4T or to just roll around in right now for only $3.50. That's all I bought all day. Hubby was pretty proud.

3. Spent four hours and 44 minutes solving all of the mysteries in my new Mystery Case Files game that I am totally addicted to right now. I got it over the weekend and it is awesome. It's a scavenger hunt game in which you have only so long to find all of the clues in these different rooms that have about a trillion little things sitting around in them. Once you find all of the clues you then have to rearrange a puzzle to see who the culprit is.

Here's a picture of one of the rooms. Go ahead, try to find the stuff on the list. Beware, you could become addicted just by looking at it. If so it's at Wal-Mart in the computer game section and it's only $9. Plus all your friends can load it on their computer since you don't have to have the disk to play the game once it's loaded.



Another reason I played it so long (no, not all at once) is that Hubby played it too and it took him a lot longer to finish it and I just HAD to beat his time. I smoked his butt by about three hours. Go me!

4. I did a little knitting. And by little I mean I knitted one row one night and about a third of a row last night. It's going to be a LONG time before this blanket keeps anybody nice and cozy. I'm getting better though. I managed to turn the light out last night since Hubby was trying to go to sleep and just knit by the light of the television because A2 wanted to watch one episode of Spongebob before he fell asleep.

5. Fought off one of the nastiest headache and cramp attacks I've had in a few months. I'm pretty sure the lining of my stomach is a lot thinner now after swallowing as many Tylenol as I've had to take this week just to function at the minimal level possible (read: breathing and changing channels on the television). I finally shook it yesterday afternoon. This cycle has kicked my butt! I was so wiped out Tuesday night that I fell asleep curled up on just one cushion of our couch at about 8 and didn't move from that spot until about 6 the next morning. I slept in my jeans and hoodie and socks and it didn't phase me one bit. Normally I can't stand to sleep in my socks and let's face it, sleeping in jeans doesn't do wonders for the girly parts.

6. Signed up to participate in a Meal Ministry on November 29th. It's based on the Super Suppers concept but ran by a couple of people out of the local church here. Since my husband is forever giving me grief for making our usual pizza, chili and spaghetti staples I decided to give this a try. They do it on a little bit smaller scale than Super Suppers but the portions are still pretty large from what I hear. You can choose from seven meals and it's $65 for five or $85 for all seven. The menu for this session is:

Burgundy Beef Tips

Italian Mozzarella Meatloaf

Cranberry Pork Roast

Sunday Roast Pork Chops

Slow Cooker Kansas City Chicken

Italian Chicken

Garlic Lemon Chicken

In other words, it's stuff I would have NEVER cooked in my life but now we get a chance to try it to see if we like it. I hope it works out and there aren't that many extras cooked with them since my guys and I aren't very big on the vegetables. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. I'm really looking forward to it.

7. Weighing myself every single day wishing for a different number to pop up on the scale even though I haven't worked out since last Thursday but have really been trying to watch what I eat and not drink anything other than Diet drinks but not getting the results I want but still happy it says 140.8 because I know I'm carrying around a lot of extra bloat this week!! *whew*

8. Searching the entire contents of my house for this one car for A2 since he only has 28! others to play with but we can't find his favorite! one out of the bunch. We created a monster from the moment we introduced him to Cars the movie. I thought it would be nice for him to have a couple of the character cars to play with since he loves to watch the movie and at 2 can name every character in the movie but not say his own name. Boy did that get out of hand.

He seriously has 29 of them now and the sad thing is, that's not all of them they make. But of course when we went in to see the folks this weekend we had to haul them all down there. I stuck Lightning McQueen and Chick in my purse to tide him over when we went to eat but we never got them out to play with them at the restaurant. Plus, we never took those two back out of my purse even after we went back to their house. By the time we got back to our house, McQueen was missing. Devastation!! It took me three days but I finally backtracked every body's steps and figured out that it somehow had to be either A1 or Hubby's fault. A1 was quickly ruled out after intense questioning so it had to be Hubby.

He wasn't convinced but after questioning him and making him think back it was determined that he spilled the contents of my purse in the driveway of my parents house while putting the car seat back into our vehicle and that is where McQueen had to be. I called my folks, told them my story and sure enough after being sent outside by my mom, my dad walked inside with McQueen in tow. w00t!!

Not being able to find that one car bothered me from Sunday night all the way to Wednesday night until we found it. Yep, I realize there are more important things to spend my time doing but my baby LOVES that car and it's next to freaking impossible to find another one sold just by itself. Life can carry on now.

9. Spent not near enough time looking online for a school I can go to online for a Master's degree. We've decided that since I'm staying home with A2 until he at least goes to kindergarten I may as well make good use of my time and go back to school. I've searched in the past for a degree program that is offered exclusively online but since it was so new at the time the most you could find were Bachelor's degrees.

I actually finished my Bachelor's degree online. We were living in Washington DC when I went back to school the first time and by the time we got ready to move back closer to home I was lacking about a semester and a half before finishing. Strings were pulled and I got to complete my BS in Psychology online without having to transfer or lose any credits and essentially without having to interrupt anything.

Since I really enjoyed the freedom of taking my classes online and posting my work at either 3 in the afternoon or 3 in the morning I've decided that online is the way to go for me. I don't have to have someone standing right in front of me to grasp a concept and sitting in my bed taking notes in my PJ's is a lot better than driving to class and sitting in an auditorium or stuffy classroom.

There are still way more Bachelor's degree programs out there than there are Master's but I've got a couple of places in mind. The worst of my struggles right now is that my husband isn't sold on me continuing in the psychology field. He thinks it's a "go nowhere" field. He could be right depending on what you want to do or where you live but it's what I like and if I'm going to spend hours working on a degree then I want it to be something that keeps my interest.

Just be warned that if I do go back then my posting may be slower than it already is because I will have had to sacrifice an arm and probably both of my legs to even be able to afford to go back to school. Have you seen the price of tuition these days??!! Holy hell! I need to get a Master's so I can get a job to help put A1 and A2 through college. I'm just praying that A1 gets a scholarship and by the time he gets out of college he can kick in a little from his super awesome architect job to help me and the hubby put A2 through too!!

I'm going to go off subject a second and be a little braggadocios here on A1. At the end of the school year every school in the nation makes their students take these state mandated tests. It usually takes about two weeks for them to get through them all and the schools threaten you with your life if your child misses school on any of the testing days. The results usually aren't given back until sometime the next year. Well A1 brought home his test scores from last year about a month ago and that child scored PERFECT on the whole entire thing. I know! Pretty amazing, huh. He even scored above average in the writing section. They had his scores ranked among the rest of the state and he ranked distinguished in every single category. I just hope he keeps it up. He gets his smarts from his momma!

10. I'd like to say cleaning my house has been one of the things keeping me busy this week but it hasn't. My living room has a Cars tent pitched in the middle of it and the counter in my utility room looks like one of those yard sale tables where everybody just picks through everything and tosses the clothes all over the place. I'm pretty sure everything on the counter is clean but at this point who knows. I managed to put the suitcase we took home this weekend up just yesterday and the bathrooms haven't been cleaned at all since last Friday and today is Thursday (excuse me while I shudder with disgust!). If I don't clean them today I'll be at the point to where I have to hover over the toilet in my own bathroom. How sad is that?!

I could go on but my brain is starting to hurt and now that I've actually reminded myself how funky my house is I MUST GET UP TO CLEAN IT!! No more riding the "I've got cramps and a headache and I feel fat from bloat horse." I don't think the hubby would let me get away with it again today.

Besides, I've got to get up anyway to go turn the heat up since it's actually going to dip into the November weather tonight and hit 28 degrees. That's a major shock to the system since it was just yesterday when I picked A2 up from preschool in a t-shirt because it was almost 70 at midday.

Til next time, ciao buddies and here's wishing you a productive Thursday!

P.S. There's no way I'm going back to edit or spellcheck all of this so once again point and laff at all mistaks in grammer and speling!