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Saturday, June 30, 2012

Pulling up carpet and D&B

  Yesterday was a successful day on all fronts.  Hubs was in a relatively upbeat mood so I suggested that we tackle the carpeting in our daughter's bedroom.  When we moved into our house a year ago, all the bedrooms had carpeting.  However, the closets in those bedrooms were hard wood.  After pulling up a little bit we realized that there were hardwood floors in all the bedrooms.  I love hard wood, but I've never had the "real deal".  We have Pergo in our kitchen and dining room and I like it, but it's not real wood.

Anywho, we talked about someday lifting up the carpets.  That fell to the wayside until a few days ago when our dog, yet AGAIN, decided that our daughter's room is her own personal toilet.  She doesn't have accident's much in the house, but one place she consistently does is in her bedroom.  And, it's almost always squishy poo when she does decide to go.  Fun fun, let me tell ya!  The last straw came earlier this week when I found another surprise from the dog in her room.  I tried to clean it up as best I could, but the carpet was stained and nothing I did was getting it up.   If I looked close enough, I could see stains from previous accidents.  It grossed me out, and I decided enough was enough!

Yesterday was the day.  It didn't really take that long, it was just tedious pulling up all the tack strips and the stupid staples all over the floor.  The wood floors were in decent shape, minus one dark spot where the dog's #2 must have leaked through the pad before I found it.  (EW!)  However, I think with a little hydrogen peroxide it'll come up.  I was proud of Hubs.  We didn't get in too bad of an argument about pulling up the carpet.  We disagreed on our method (he wanted to take all the carpet out at once, i wanted to do one side, get the tacks and staples up, sweep and vacuum and THEN go to the other side), but we got it done.  I really want to pull up the carpet in our bedroom and Junior's next, but that will wait a few weekends I think.

Anyway, after all that was done, Hubs was talking to my baby bro about what to do.  By the way, my little brother is home from Germany for another week where he is stationed in the military.  It's been great having him home!  Well, we decided to go to Dave and Buster's.  I had actually never been and neither had the Hubs, but both my little bro and little sis have gone before and liked it.  Since it was so last minute, we didn't have a babysitter so the munchkins came along.


  Dave and Buster's is AWESOME.  Why have I not been there before?  Dinner was great, the chicken club sandwich is GINORMOUS and the fries are yummy.  Our daughter ate so good she got to share a big piece of chocolate cake with Uncle B and since she's such a picky eater, that is a BIG DEAL!  

The only slightly crappy bit was that I was stuck with the stroller.  It was about 9pm by this time, and both my kids were up past their bedtimes.  Our daughter was in heaven playing the games, but our son was fussing and I could tell he was really tired, but it was so loud in there and there was so much going on that I knew he would never get to sleep.  I did get to play a few games while my sister pushed the stroller, but next time I'm leaving the kids behind!  Why didn't I have Hubs push the stroller?  Because he NEVER wants to go anywhere and I could tell he was actually having a good time, having fun, and enjoying himself with our family.  Since that so rarely happens, I didn't want to spoil it and have him push the stroller and not play.  I did tell him that next time we're leaving the kids behind and he's taking me there on a date night.  

I ended up taking the kids home at 10pm, which is when they kick the kids out and it becomes an adult only place, and my sister said she'd drop off the Hubs.  Imagine my surprise when he didn't come strolling in until almost 3am.  WHAT??  Lol, glad he had such a good time with MY brother and sister.  I told him I should have made him go home with the kids, but he'd had a few at D&B's and I hadn't so logical choice was that I drove home.  Oh well, great times yesterday.

Course, today Hubs is in depression mode.  Not sure why, but he's been downstairs awake just avoiding everything and it's almost 4pm.  Sigh......I guess just goes to show that I need to cherish and enjoy the good times because they often are fast and fleeting......


Monday, June 25, 2012

Homemade baby food

Lots of people make their own baby food.  I've never bothered because I assumed it would be too difficult, too time-consuming, and too expensive.  With Munchkin, all she ate was store-bought baby food.  Hey, I survived on Gerber, why not her?  This time around, with Junior, quite a few more of my friends are into the babyfood making.  It got me wondering....is it really that easy?

Today I decided to give it a whirl.  I had a huge bag of frozen green beans that I decided to experiment with.  I didn't steam them, like some websites advised me to do.  Instead, I boiled them (also a popular method).  I don't have a steamer and boiling seemed just dandy to me.  I used not even half the bag of green beans (it was a large bag from Cosco).

I ended up blending them in my hand held chopper because Junior has some teeth and pureed doesn't seem to cut it with him.  It's definitely a little chunkier than I thought, but still smooth enough for him to get down without a problem.  In fact, I think he'll really like it.

I had forgotten to run out and get the storage cups they sell at Babies R US and we didn't have any ice cube trays either.  However, I had kept quite a few of the plastic gerber containers and I used those to store the green beans.  They worked great!!  I ended up filling up 5 of those containers.  At almost 2.00 a container in the store, I just made $10.00 worth of baby food out of not even half a bag of green beans.  Hey, I think this stuff does save money!


Sunday, June 24, 2012

I blog because I can

The other night my husband asked to borrow my laptop.  A few minutes later I saw him stretched out on the bed with a frown on his face.  Later he asked me, "why do you bash me in your blog all the time?"

I was kind of taken back.


 I don't bash.  I vent.


He told me I do it a lot.  Maybe I do.  I tried to explain to him that this blog is my sounding board.  I don't see a therapist to help me cope with the stress of being the wife of someone with PTSD.  Thanks to years of focusing solely on my family and surviving, I don't have many close friends to confide to anymore.  I don't like to talk about any stress to my family.  What's left?  The world wide web.

I could just write in a journal and tuck it away for no one to see.  I write on a blog because I hope that maybe someone out there, who is going through the same thing as me, might stumble upon my blog and get a sense that she.he is not alone.  That someone else is going through the same thing as them.  To feel all alone, that no one out there understands what you're feeling.....that is an awful feeling.  Such a feeling of loneliness.

Because of this, and the fact that I don't have a lot of people to talk to about my situation, I tend to blog about stressful times.  I can understand my husband's point of view.  How it must have sucked really badly to read all about the stress he's caused me, the unhappiness.    Well, I'm here to say it isn't all unhappiness.  God, if it was, I sure wouldn't have stuck around.

So, in the future, I'm going to try and blog about happy times as well.  At least occasionally.  Because, after all, this is my blog and my space to cry, rage, vent, give up....and then pick up the pieces and keep on going.



Thursday, June 21, 2012

It's Ok Thursday

Its Ok Thursdays


It's OK


~ to splurge on cheese puffs even though you're on a diet.....it's dairy, right?

~  that my husband bought me a new laptop.  Yay!!

~  to just put the baby down in the crib and go swim in the pool.  He was safe and I needed a break.

~  to be a crab-ass after being stuck in the car for 30+ hours.  We went the whole vaca without arguing but being stuck in the car that long together brings out the cranky in me.

~ To really love my meal replacement shake most of the time, but still secretly crave the uber expensive coffee drinks (Starbucks)

~ that I am not my mother in terms of cleaning.  My house is full of clutter, get over it.

~ that most of the time I love that my family is so close.  I love them and they help so much, but sometimes I just WANT SPACE.

~ that I don't know what I want to be when I grow up.  

~ to be grossed out that the dog is now eating her own poop.  Really??  When the heck did she start that?

~ that I am still in my pi's at noon.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

"physically and financially fit"

Sometimes I really miss working outside the home.  I hated it when I was doing it.  I was always so sad when I had to miss my daughter's field trips, and I cried when I couldn't be there to take her to her first day of 4K because I was a teacher, and it was my first day too.   I used to complain about the amount of work I did (whatever you may think, teachers really do a LOT after hours), and to top it off, it was a stressful school in a stressful city with a very nice, but not very helpful principal.

After I found out I was pregnant with #2, we made plans.  I went on medical leave in September and had my angel in October.  My family medical leave got me through November and I had already told the district that I was taking the entire first semester off.  Well, shortly after I had him, I realized I could not and would not go back.  It was much too soon.  Hubs was, of course, freaking out about the money and he advised me to "stick it out the rest of the year" but he also told me he didn't want me to be miserable.  In the end, I turned in my resignation letter at the beginning of December.

It worked out really well because I was able to substitute teach a little bit here and there and in March I got the caregiver stipend which allowed me to not really need to work outside the home at all.  Life was great.....as great as it can be living with a dude who has severe post traumatic stress disorder.  I should have been really, really happy.

I missed it.

Damn, I missed going to work.  I'm not sure what it was:  the adult conversations, the students, the work?  I did like teaching.  Plus, I felt kind of....weird not working.  It's what you're supposed to do, right?  And since Hubs doesn't work now due to his disability, neither one of our kids have parents who work for a living.  I take that back....I work my ass off daily.  I make sure this house functions and I keep my husband sane, most of the time.  Plus I'm a damn good mom.

But I still missed it.

I was getting lost in the needs of everyone else.  I took care of my husband, the munchkin and now the baby.  It was all me, 99% of the time.  But I needed to do something for myself.

Facebook is a wonderful thing.  It helps you reconnect to people you havent seen in years.  I reconnected recently with a high school friend.  I kept noticing she was posting monthly invites to join a challenge group to get fit.  I put it off for a few months until she posted an invitation to view a webinar on her business.  it was a way to get "physically and financially fit".   I was intrigued and so I watched it.  I realized that this could be it.  I didn't have any grand ideas of becoming rich doing it, but I figured if i got a challenge pack AND became a rep, that would motivate me to stay with it.  So that's what I did.

I lost 3 pounds that first month and I also lost 2 inches off my middle.  More than that, I started focusing on what I was eating, and trying to make healthier choices.  I'm not saying I'm a health nut now, far from it.  But I'm making small changes and after the 30 days, I kept going.  I now have my own challenge group on FB and I have made some money doing it too.  The part I love the best is that I'm doing it for me and to help others too.

I am pushing it right now.  I don't know if I'll ever have the success my friend has with it, but it is something that motivates me, and it's something to do for me.  In a way, it's like therapy for me.  So, I'm getting not only physically and financially, but also mentally fit as well.


Monday, June 18, 2012

Vacation to paradise.

We're back!  

So if you've been following you may have noticed that things have been a little....tense lately.  My husband thought it would be a great idea if the two of us got away from it all.  I admit, I was not for it at first.  There were so many things to take care of before going on vaca, and I felt guilty leaving the kids, even though I knew they'd be in great hands with the grandparents.  But, things had been stressful and I figured it might be good to get away from it all.  And so, off we went.

We spent the week in Key West.  Now, we did not fly, we drove.  I thought it was a little crazy, but Hubs assured me it would be easy-peasy.  The drive down was not horribly awful.  We left at 6:30am and I slept for most of it.  In fact, he drove until we hit Florida.  Yes, that is a hell of a long way to drive, but he did it.  I drove for 3 hours in Florida but then he took back over once we hit Miami area.  The drive back, not so easy but I'll get to that in a few.

The trip overall was very nice.  We went to a lot of bars, a lot of favorites Hubby had frequented in the past.  But there's only so much time (and money!) you can spend in a bar.  We also did spend lots of time at the beach, but I really wanted to see more of the island and hear it's history.  We took a little train tour of it and that was kind of neat and spent a freaky moment in the grave yard.  Yes, we went down to the cemetery because it's supposed to be haunted.  We got there and it was chained up and we couldn't get in, HOWEVER, when Hubs went to take a picture of the plaque outside on the gate, his phone froze up and then turned itself off.  No joke!  And, maybe even more freaky, was that once he got it back on and we plugged in the directions back to the hotel, the stupid thing kept messing up and giving us directions back to the cemetery.  It was a little creepy.

My favorite part of the trip was our last full day.  We took a charter out to the reef and snorkeled.  I loved it, although I was a bit nervous.  I'm not a good swimmer and even with my flotation device I was worried at first.  But, it ended up being great.  I didn't see anything crazy out there, although Hubs saw two barracudas.  Then we got back in the boat and took it over to a sandbar.  We kayaked over to the sandbar and sunned on it while enjoying alcoholic beverages (or Pepsi for the kids that were there). It was a lot of fun, and I could have spent all day out there on the sandbar and out snorkeling.  I got horrendously burned though from it.  It was hurting before the night was over and I had Hubs put Aloe on my back and it hurt so bad I was almost crying.  I googled (where would we be without the world wide web???) and since I didn't have vinegar, I laid down on the bed with a wet washcloth draped on me.  It really did help.  The next morning it was still tender but not too bad.  I know when it peels it's going to be nasty though.

The drive home was horrendous.  We drove down coming through Atlanta and central FL.  However, the GPS on the way home had us going up the Atlantic seaboard.  OMG, what a long freaking drive.  Before we left, I had told the Hubs that we needed to pull over at a hotel and get a few hours sleep.  Well, at about 1am he pulls over into a rest stop.  Not exactly what I had in mind!  I curled up on the front seat and he was in the back.  It was awful.  I was cold, then hot, then cold and boy oh boy, uncomfortable!  I somehow managed to fall asleep and woke up at 4am central time.  I started driving because I wanted to get home to my babies.

I drove through the rest of SC, all of North Carolina (BEAUTIFUL!!), and most of Tennessee.  We only stopped for a half hour to eat at a Cracker Barrel and that 4 hours of sleep at the rest stop.  Oh, and to get gas, of course.  The good thing is we didn't kill each other, but when I took over driving at Indianapolis, I was tired of sitting and just wanted to get home to my kids, my shower, and my bed.  I did okay until I got stuck in Chicago traffic and eventually I started feeling claustrophobic.  I admit that last hour home I was really, really grumpy in that car.  Never again will I drive that far, ever.

So, did the trip help things?  It did....although I saw some symptoms of depression pop out even down there from him.  Just proves my point that you can change the scenery but your worries still go with you, because they're in your head.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

End of the year craziness

It's that time of year again....the end of the school year. When I taught, this year was chaotic and busy as I hurried to get report cards done, my office cleaned out, all my paperwork done and turned in, all while trying to carral the energy of students who were bursting at the seams to be done for the summer. Random thought....it's opposite seasons in southern hemisphere, right? So do schools down there get winter off? Or is their school district on a different schedule? Like I said....random. Anyway, I'm not teaching right now, as you know, and instead I'm a SAHM for now. I actually thought the end of the year madness would miss me. Yeah right! This week has been CRAZY busy. My kindergartner had a field trip Monday, yesterday the dog had her stitches out and it was voting day here in WI and so there was running around to do that, today is her Field Day at school, tomorrow she has Daisy Scouts after school, and Friday we have her Kindergarten graduation (*tear) and then early dismissal and out for summer. Yikes, no wonder I have a headache. But I'm so happy Im able to go to all of it. I'm enjoying bring at home, although its more stressful some days than my job was!!