Blah, blah, blah.

That's what I feel like today after listening to the same (very bad) physical therapist dictating all day long.  He pronounces words so badly that I have trouble differentiating things like core and quarter.  It is extremely frustrating.  Also, he has not dictated in about 6 weeks and is catching up, so there are a ton of them.   I am downloading right now and if there is another one of his, I will scream.  So brace yourselves.  I've had about all of this guy I can take.  Yes, for the most part I like my job.  I like the hours and the location, but sometimes it just frustrates me to no end.  Sigh.

I wish I could just be a stay at home mom instead of a work at home mom.

I need a break.

Monday March 5.

Sometimes thinking of a title for a blog post is difficult.  Today I wimped out and went with the date.   We basically did nothing yesterday.  My husband had another attempt at fixing his car last night, which took my car away from me because he still hasn't gotten his car home.  It's about 15 miles away, parked at a hospital.  So we had to spend the entire day at home.  I did a bit of this and a bit of that, but mostly just goofed all all day.  I cooked dinner and made a loaf of gluten free Japanese Milk Bread which was pretty yummy and then kids and I worked a while on cleaning out my closet and took down a wire shelf in there, in anticipation of putting in a tall shelving unit that I will pick up if I ever get to leave the house again.  Just kidding.  Today, we've got 4H and I am going to ask my mom if I can borrow her car. 

This morning my youngest son is up and at it early for him.  He's sitting beside me now, watching the math lecture for his algebra lesson on Teaching Textbooks and yawning.  I said a few minutes ago that we might work on a project for the house this afternoon and he said "No, the kids need to concentrate on getting their schoolwork done" so maybe he learned a lesson last week from his procrastination?  I hope so.  That Friday night/early Saturday morning thing is no fun for anybody.

In weather today (since I've been blogging about weather all week) we were supposed to get snow today but we didn't.  It's sunny and cold.  I brought my tiny herb garden in last night.  

So today ...

we have snow flurries.  As the old saying goes "So you don't like the weather here?  Wait a minute, it will change".  Or a day, anyway.   Today, the kids and I are grounded at home because my husband's backup vehicle is broken down.  Not his regular car, which has been broken down for months now, but the backup, which was supposed to be helpful now that we have 3 drivers, but now with 2 of them out, we have 3 drivers and 1 car.  Maybe it will be for only one more day.  I hate for my husband to have to work on cars AGAIN on his days off and I'm sure he does too.  It's getting very old.

So since I'm stranded at home for the next few hours and don't have to work, I think I will attempt some kind of home improvement project.  I haven't decided which one.  There are so many waiting for me to do.  :-P  I don't feel very ambitious but a day off when I don't have to work and can't drive anyone anywhere is such a rarity that I should take advantage of it.

This week.

It's been a wild one weather-wise, hasn't it?  One day sunny, one day horrible storms, the next day sunny and beautiful, the next day storms.  Today is one of those sunny beautiful days, but it kind of makes me dread tomorrow, if you know what I mean.  I hope the storms are over for this spring, but I kind of doubt it.   I'm kind of ready for spring, otherwise.  Warmth.  Sunshine.  That kind of thing..  I planted a tiny herb garden of chives and cilantro in a hanging basket the other day, a spring-ish activity I couldn't resist going ahead with.  I'll carry it inside if it gets too cold.

We had the crazy Friday night/Saturday morning rush on school work with the youngest.  He got it done though.  This drives me kind of nuts, but he does his work, he just doesn't do it when I would like him to do it, so I'm holding off on forcing him into my expected schedule for now.  Today, in contrast to yesterday, has been a pretty relaxing day.  I worked, we went for a walk and got the mail and now I'm blogging and making spaghetti (both gluten-full and gluten-free).  Yesterday, we had horrible storms and my husband's car broke down on the way home from work.  I really prefer days like today.

Bad weather again today.

I really hope that it's over at this point.  Our electricity has been off and is now back on.  I had to stop working, which I really didn't mind at all and the kids couldn't do their math for a while because it's on the computer as well.  I hear it's been really bad in other parts of the country.  :-(

March Fools!

Our 4H projects from last week are done already, they're fake spills for April fools.  The instructions said that they would take 2 weeks to dry, but we just checked them today anyway and they were done.  Do you think they look real?

Unexpected math lesson.

My son wanted to do another experiment from the Big Book of Boy Stuff yesterday.  He wanted to make homemade root beer.  So while I was at the store, I picked him up some root beer flavoring (who knew this even existed?) and some soda water and when we finally got home last night from all our after school activities (9:30 p.m.) the younger 2 kids made root beer.  I didn't expect it but I kept hearing them doing math calculations.  It seems that their syrup was supposed to make 3 cups, but it only made 2 1/2 cups and they were supposed to add 5 ounces of soda water to every 1/2 cup of syrup.  Youngest son wanted to just pour it all in, the whole 32 ounce bottle but the girl wanted to be precise.  I heard them arguing him saying "It's not an exact science!" and her insisting that it was.  Finally I went in and helped them, but we used the girl's math, because she was so determined.  It ended up being a little strong and needing a little bit more club soda added to it, so the boy was right.  For some reason, it smelled like root beer, but tasted kind of like wintergreen life savers.  It was fun anyway.  Today, they are going to do a more old fashioned recipe with that does not have club soda, but instead uses yeast to make the bubbles?  I can't say that sounds appetizing to me.

We were.

We were right in the middle of a bunch of tornadic activity yesterday.  My mom had a doctor's appointment so we started to go to it (I didn't know about the tornados at that time, just the storm) and we got about halfway there and my cell phone rang.  It was my son telling me that my aunt had called and that the appointment was cancelled, but then after we got back home, my aunt called and asked why we weren't at the appointment?  Apparently there was some kind of mix up in the bunch of phone calls, but at the end there was me uncharacteristically telling off the receptionist, who was denying to me that they had cancelled the appointment and said that they just wanted to see if we were coming.  I said, not nicely, that if I had been going to cancel I would have called.  I really think it was one of those things where a bunch of workers in an office like that get a bunch of cancellations and they think "oh wow, if just one more person cancels, we can all go home!" and then someone called my aunt (who was going to accompany mom at the appointment while I went back home and finished work) and tried to talk her into cancelling and then my aunt or one of my sons, the one who took the call or the one who phoned me, got a message mixed up.  I don't know.  It was crazy.  While I was gone the work in the typing pool dried up and I ended up not getting enough work yesterday.  Very frustrating.

In other news, we did have a bunch of tornados around us but no damage here.  One of my Facebook friends had to spend half an hour in a bank vault and the school kids had to spend quite a bit of time sitting in the halls.  My school kids went about their work, timing things like showers and puddle jumping between storms.