Plan B.

One of the cars is fixed now, but the other one isn't and my son needs to go to Mississippi tomorrow, so we're going with plan B.  He's going to take his Dad's car.  Then, when the trimester is over, he'll come home and get his car.  That will give his Dad 5 weeks or so to figure out what's going on with it.  It's actually kind of a good thing, at least from one point of view ... he'll have to cope with driving a long way by himself, but he won't have to deal with driving with a clutch, which he's still very new at. (Yes, I am ending a sentence with a preposition, but that's the way I would say it, so that's how I'm writing it.)   :-P   Also, it means he will come home for spring break, which he wasn't originally planning to, so we get to see him. 

Anyway, technology helps with trips like this.  He's going to have a GPS and he will have his cell phone with him.  That will make it easier on me.  :-)  

Then, we will be starting back to school around here on Monday, I guess.  Better print out the lists and prepare for the whining.    

Rewrite.

I started a whiny, crabby blog post this morning.  You can almost guess how it would go ... blah, blah, blah, cars not running, blah, blah, blah PMS, blah, blah, blah think kids are getting sick, blah, blah, blah, mom not feeling good, have to work blah, blah etc. ad nauseum, but then while I was in the shower, I decided that I was just going to have a good attitude to the best of my abliity today. (I almost typed beast of my ability, LoL. ).  It kind of has been one of those laugh or cry weeks but my body is feeling better today (Thank God, if I'd felt worse, I wouldn't have been able to get out of bed today at all.)  and I'm going to be happy about that.  I'm going to put a smile on my face and be happy that my son is still home, we are all together, everybody's really okay, etc.   I read my mission statement about this blog in the right side column and I realized that if we weren't homeschooling, my youngest 2 kids wouldn't have been able to help us this week and wouldn't have gotten to spend any time with their big brother this week because they'd be at school all day.  So let's find things to celebrate -- Homeschooling!  Scholarship!  New Car! (even if it is not currently running and we don't know why!) , Insurance Money!  (from car wreck that was NOT MY FAULT THIS TIME!), Food in the pantry!  ( Especially, Cheetos!). 

See, it's not so bad really.

I find it amusing.

We are taking a break from school for an extra week because the big boy is home and I want everyone to get as much of a chance to visit with him as possible.  So what does my youngest do?  He makes his own morning list, which includes exercise, taking a shower and several other things that he must get done with by noon.  :-)

Still celebrating.

We have a Christmas celebration today.  I've got to admit that I'm getting a wee bit tired of celebrating at this point.  I temporarily forgot about it yesterday and started treasuring in my heart the idea of a day OFF.  A day to do whatever I wanted, perhaps sit down and read a book or take a nap.  A day to finally get a little caught up on some of the housework around here.  A day not to be rushing anywhere.  But then I remembered.  Driving, rushing, cooking, celebrating.  While it's not a bad thing to do and usually I enjoy it very much, this means that my next opportunity for some really good down time is NEXT Sunday.  :-(

Because I've had so much running during the week this week to do, I've been working late every night and by the time I do have some downtime, around 9:30 or so, I'm just too tired to enjoy it.  My eyes are too worn out from working and my arms are too tired to hold my book up.  That's the kind of week I've had. 

Library books.

Yesterday we stopped by the library and my youngest, as usual, grabbed a whole bunch of books, mostly audio books.  He was afraid that with these and the ones he checked out last week and hadn't brought back, he might be getting close to the limit of books you can check out.  Our library recently raised that number to 40.  That's a huge amount in my opinion.  My son said he might need to get a library card under an alias to support his book habit.  Just out of curiosity, I checked his account a minute ago to see how many he currently has out.  36. 

Might be time to figure out an alias. 

January 4.

Four days into this new year and I haven't had time to stop and breathe, it seems like.   Wednesday involved long, long hours at the pain clinic, where my mom got 2 lumbar epidural steroid injections, but I don't think they helped much.  Yesterday, when I was at her house and she was still in quite a bit of pain.  :-(   I gave her pain medications and she was sitting with a heating pad.   I surely  hope today is better in that regard.  Today, I'm working, going to the funeral of my friend's mom  (and I just found out another friend's mom is possibly days away from death), working, going to a meeting with the homeschool group, then working, then possibly going to a friend's surprise birthday party.  

In other news, my son bought his first car yesterday.  It is a Ford Focus and it is cute as it can be.  :-)  I volunteered at the hospital which helps me for some reason, more than therapy would.  I hold the babies and sooth the babies and it soothes me as well and I come home feeling peaceful, no matter what kind of day I had had up to that point.  Also, my friend's husband moved out of the intensive care unit, into the critical care unit and now onto a regular medical floor, the ventilator is out and they are talking about going home.  That's wonderful.   

I have commented before, this middle aged thing, it's like a crazy roller coaster ride sometimes and I feel like asking,  "Could I at least have a safety belt?"  "Air bag?"  "Any chance I could switch to the kiddy rides?" 

:-P 

Happy Second Day Of January.

I wasn't ready for the new year yesterday, but today maybe I am.  My friend's husband is off of the ventilator and doing quite a bit better, I took my mom to the pain clinic today and hopefully she will feel better.  My car is still not running, but maybe the part will be here for it tomorrow.   My Christmas gifts from my gift cards are starting to trickle in.  I'm feeling just a little bit better today. 

We're still not doing any school around here.  The oldest is home for Christmas break until next week sometime and is car shopping with my husband.  I'm doing my things and working and the 2 younger kids who really aren't all that young anymore are just hanging out, doing their own thing.  My daughter just finished knitting a beautiful scarf and now she's not sure what project to start next.    I went to the grocery store and bought a holiday mad libs book for half price and we had some fun coming up with nouns, adverbs and adjectives to write in those.  They are so funny.  They have a lot of things from Christmas carols in them, and we made up songs like "Adrian Monk is Coming to Town" and "We wish you a mean Christmas and a bouncy new year, happy tidings we bring to you and your feet" 

As you can tell, they're quite catchy.  :-)

Happy New Year.

Did you notice that I, who put exclamation points on just about every sentence, did not put one in the title above.  So far, the new year is not that great.  I have to work again today.  Yep, no holidays for me but Thanksgiving and Christmas and no extra pay when I do work them.  I might have the workflow clerk's undying gratitude, but I doubt it.  Anyway, here I've been, trying to work, but feeling like I'm going uphill through deep snow or something, making very little progress and feeling like I'll never get done and then I got sucked into a phone melodrama involving my mom and her sisters and a crazy little condition called Alzheimer's dementia, which I fear is one day going to put us all in the hospital.  My mom is the one who has it, but me and mom's sisters and my brother are all going crazy from it.  Caregiving, it's rough.

My car is still broken down.  I'm out of coffee and I'm getting just a wee bit crabby.

And also my friend's husband wasn't able to come off the ventilator today and it's their wedding anniversary and that's just sad and kind of puts all my crap into perspective.