Yackety yack

Oh my stars. I didn’t realize it had been so long since I blogged. LOL. I’m usually aware, even if I don’t feel like doing something about it.

Summer semester started today. One online class (Soc. of the Family), but it doesn’t start until June 4th, so I have another couple of weeks. Already have my book though, so I’m ready to go. And yes, last semester was 4.0 GPA. Go, self!

This is the kids last week of school. Can’t wait to sleep in until…uh…seven. LOL. Summer is already shaping up to be a busy one! Between photo sessions, swim team, church activities, vacations….whew.

I love summer!

On the topic of photo sessions though….

I LOVE this shot of my aunt and uncle that I caught at the end of Saturday’s session with my uncle’s band. My aunt is so pretty! I wanna be just like her when I grow up. ;-)

Also talking photography, I’m sticking with the Photo A Day for May. I get a couple shots behind every weekend because the weekends are so nuts, but I keep right on catching back up and sticking with it. Yay! I haven’t gotten today’s shot yet, but here’s yesterday’s: (Reflection of yourself – this one is in the window on my back deck).

Gotta run. (literally) later!

Don’t Wanna

I have a really bad case of those today. Don’t wanna clean. Don’t wanna do laundry. Don’t wanna blog.

Semester is over. I’m pretty close to 100% sure that my GPA is 4.0. I don’t know if I mentioned it, but my final paper (the research essay) got a 100 from the professor who said he doesn’t give out 100’s. And I didn’t have to take the final in that class because it was only worth 3 points and I was already over the top for possible points to get. He also published two of my essays in that class. *great big googly eyes* Art is finished, too. My sketchbook got a 100 (but not because of creativity…he scored based on completeness and organization and I didn’t miss any of that). I don’t know what grade I got on the final, but I’m pretty sure I probably could have almost failed it and still been okay. 

I don’t wanna sign up for a summer class, but I’m gonna anyway. I have an appointment for Monday to get signed up for Social Problems online. (joy) lol I can’t wait till Fall when I can take FUN-damentals of Photography. *GRIN*

Speaking of photography…business has picked up. I’ve had sessions and a lot of inquiries on sessions, along with a few booked sessions. Sooo, I decided to update my photography page to try to eliminate having to repeat myself over and over.

Also on photography, I’m doing this:

They’re on my facebook, but I’ll probably make a post of all of them here at the end. =) Here’s today’s (#9):

Yes. I ate them all after I took the picture.

While we’re on the subject of eating. I don’t wanna go fix supper.

Time Flies

Went along as chaperone for the Kids Day Out trip with the church kids this afternoon. It was sort of a consequence for Miss Munchkin’s behavior issues of late, but it ended up being a good thing since there were a few more kids than usual on the outing. My consequence was that I didn’t get a nap this afternoon though…so I’m kinda beat. And I have a crick in my neck that’s driving me bonkers. But I will stop complaining now.

Munchkin is nine now…that is just insane to think about…so I’m not going to think about it.

Also insane was last week, trying to make cupcakes and cakes and homework and cleaning house and all that jazz…glad last week is done. =)

Wrapped up editing tonight on a 10 year anniversary picture session that I also squeezed into last week. They turned out AWESOME. I’m going to post them on my photo blog when I finish here. Here’s a sneak peek though…ACK, I love photos of horses.  These guys were somewhat uncooperative because there was so much tempting grass around them, but the pictures turned out okay anyway…lol.

Also wrapped up my final essay to turn in tomorrow. it’s not perfect, I’m not real crazy about it, but it’s done and I think it will pass. Up to this point, I’ve gotten every possible point you can get in the class, which means that this essay can get a 73 and I’ll still get an A in this class, so I’m not sweating it. LOL

Yeah…it was a busy week last week. And I’m tired and feeling the effects of not having my Sunday afternoon nap, so I’m going away to post those other pics and then get to bed. =)

Night.

Mmm Hmmm.

I’m thankful for all the clothing that we are blessed with…even if seems like half of it is in the laundry pile and the other half is on the ironing pile.

I’m thankful for a washing machine…even if it does leak at random and inopportune times.

I’m thankful for the opportunity to go to school and to learn new things…even if I have homework due that doesn’t seem to be getting done the way it should be.

I’m thankful that EGR’s skipped class today…even if they haven’t dropped out completely or left me alone like I wish they would.

I’m thankful for my kids…even though they’re driving me insane….or MORE insane, to be precise.

I’m thankful they’re outside halfway getting along at the moment…even though that seems like a strange occurrence these days. LOL

I’m thankful my legs can run…even though running is awfully tough.

I’m thankful for being so blessed…even when miniscule frustrations are boiling under the surface.

I’m thankful for my blog to vent miniscule frustrations…even though I don’t get here as often as I’d like these days.

And now…the kids are yelling for me again, and the iron is heated up and ready to go again, and the washer needs to be checked, and the…..

Could’a Should’a

Things I should be doing right now instead of blogging:

• Homework – That 5-10 page research paper isn’t gonna write itself and the art sketchbook isn’t going to glue all the examples of art into the appropriate pages, either. For that matter, it’s not going to glue all the examples of art in ANY pages, appropriate or not. LOL. And I’m going to do what I did for the entire spring break last week: “Aw…I’ll get to it tomorrow.”
• Filling the planters on the front steps with the baskets of giant, beautiful, red flowers that I bought at the greenhouse today for “curb appeal.” (Not that we really NEED it, since we’ve had so much interest in the house that I’m forced to clean it—really clean it—nearly every day). LOL.
• Dragging out the patio furniture and “staging” the backyard.
• Cleaning out the planters on the back porch so they can be refilled.
• Removing the leaf and brush pile that is currently uglifying the back end of the lot.
• Lugging up the yard-sale boxes from the basement to the garage because that’s happening on Saturday and I need to start getting ready.
• Organizing and doing another (more in-depth) purge of the closets and removing the purged items to the giant yard-sale pile that (should be) in the garage. (Note that the photo of my ingenious little yard sale meter sign is taken at my eye level and the pile actually goes all the way to the ceiling in that closet. lol. Oh, and that sign is there because I know why that closet looks horrible and un-organized, like I threw random things in and closed the door—which is what I did, but I wanted to make sure that potential buyers know there is a purpose in that junk closet…hahaha. I might be anal.)

Things that I HAVE been doing instead of blogging:

• Worrying about a topic for that 5-10 page research paper.
• Painting the rest of the kitchen/living room ceiling that never got completely finished when we redid the kitchen (over a year ago…lol…oops). For the record, ceilings are wonderful, and I’m really thankful we have one. But I DON’T like painting them. My hand and neck STILL hurt.
• Removing half of that leaf and brush pile previously mentioned.
• Trying an oven cleaner recipe from Pinterest….that I must have done wrong because it just made the dirty spots sparkle, when I wanted them GONE.
• Cleaning the house.
• Cleaning the house again.
• And again. (Did I mention the house has shown 4 times in the 6 days since it went live on MLS?)

And now….I’m going to go work on those planters for curb appeal, since as I’m typing this, I’m looking out the window at the cars slowing down to look at the house. =) Plus, it’s time for the kids to come home, so I can watch for them at the same time.

Multi-tasking….yeah!

And ta-da……curb appeal!

Sapped

I know. I keep starting every post with apologies for my absences. LOL. 

It has been SO busy, and the to-do list is still not all completed. I’m not sure if Spring Break has helped or hurt my crazy schedule. LOL.

The house has shown twice now. Once yesterday, once today. Guess we’ll see what happens. The house is sparkling though, and everything but the yard sale closet looks reasonably organized and neat. I’m loving that! We got the yard mulched last weekend, so even the yard looks great. I ordered the official signage today, but I’m wondering if they will even be necessary with the amount of interest in the house so far. LOL. We’ll see. I sort of have mixed feelings because I like our house—it’s just excessive. *sigh*

I really need to do some homework and take advantage of spring break by getting caught up, but wow, I’ve just not had time to really think about it.

My concentration is totally sapped…even for something as simple as blogging. So goodnight. =)

Holy Macaroni–Part 2

Well, I’m back. Took me longer than I expected, but here I am. =) I feel like I need to wash my ears out…those “extra grace required” individuals didn’t drop out of class like I thought they did a few weeks ago. Last class, I made the mistake of being too transparent and letting a “look” cross my face for just a second, and when I was asked about it, I just asked if they knew any other words. Bad idea sometimes, to say what you’re thinking. So today, they came in with an agenda. I went in with my poker face and ignored all of their rudeness, but ew... I have a pretty high tolerance for a lot of things that I don’t agree with, but when every sentence for an entire hour contains more vulgar words than the point words of the sentence, it’s way over the top. UGH. I could say so much more, but I don’t want to sound like I’m being all judgmental, because I’m not. Anyway.

Back to where I left off the other day.

Okay, so I forgot to mention that the brackets DID go back up on the wall with no problems and seem to be as sturdy as ever. (Thank the Lord for the little things, right?!)  And then when I got back from painting at my friends house, I took a 20 minute siesta before jumping back into the pile of closet junk. Late nights and early mornings just caught up with me. LOL.

Went through all the closet stuff and reorganized it all…got rid of some junk…had to re-iron all of KC’s shirts that had gotten wrinkled in the bathtub (oops), hung everything back up…wowza….it was a job.

And yes, I was anal and color coded the hangers. Some of the clothes may have also been hung back in shades from light to dark. lololol

 

As much as I tried to have it all finished Tuesday night, I didn’t get it all done until right before KC got home on Wednesday. I had to stop working on the closet about 8pm Tuesday night because I had to get my neglected homework finished before Wednesday morning’s class, but by the time I finished my homework, it was nearly midnight again. Then I had to get up early so I could go into the school early to finish working on my paper before class. It’s not due for another week, but I knew I was going to be missing class today because Munchkin was getting a good citizen award at school, and my instructor is out on Monday, and then the next class my essay will be due, so I wanted to have it close enough to done that I could run it past the instructor and make sure I had enough time to make any major changes if necessary before it was due.

Thankfully, it’s pretty close to good enough, so I just have to make a few minor changes and collect/print all the source pages and drafts to turn in. *whew*

I’m probably a nerd, but I actually like school and learning, even if some of it is stuff I already knew a little about…lol. I could totally do without the EGR people but I guess that comes with the territory anytime you’re dealing with the public. Ah well.

Now…I have an hour before the kiddos get off the bus, so I’m gonna take another little siesta. I worked my tail off at the beginning of the week, so I’m rewarding myself now. =) =) lol

Holy Macaroni!

So I said I’d come back and tell you why I was so stinking exhausted the other day. 

KC went out of town for work on Monday evening, and right after he left, I got this wild hair to empty the master bedroom closet back down to this awful yellowed and beat up bare room. 

I piled the garden tub full and then realized…holy macaroni, we have a LOT of stuff in this closet and can I really get all this done by myself?  I wonder if it’s too late to put it back. Then I kicked myself in the rear and piled the rest of it on KC’s side of the bed since he wasn’t home to need to use any of his floor space, and then it was on.

I had huge hesitation when it came to unscrewing the brackets and shelves because I kept thinking, “what if these aren’t in studs and unscrewing them and screwing them back up makes them unstable?'” I even pondered trying to paint around them, but then I decided that would be way too much effort and gritted my teeth, crossed my fingers, and carefully removed them.

I painted the walls with leftover bedroom paint, and all the white trim with paint we already had, so total cost for this project was….ZERO.  YAY.

SOOO much better. But then, it was midnight. So I called it a night and pretended the pile of closet junk was non-existent.

Tuesday morning, I got up and took the kids to school, came back and painted the flip side of the two top shelves to go over the racks, and then headed off to my friend’s house to help her finish painting her boys’ room.

TO BE CONTINUED. =)

Alive

I haven’t blogged, but I am definitely still here. I am exhausted and I have a splitting headache. It is WAY past my bedtime and I’ve spent the last 2.5 hours rewriting my essay for English. The third sentence explains the reasons behind the second sentence.

And now, I’m going to bed. If I can ever get around to it, I’ll come back and tell ya what I’ve been up to these days.

So Productive….NOT.

I DID get some things done, but right now that was the thing that came to mind because my first draft of the argumentative essay is due tomorrow morning and revival at church is tonight, so this is really my only time to get to it and what am I doing?

Yeah. Anyway.

Google Reader is being shot down in July. I got a notification last night when I went to check in on the blogs I read. SO. What reader should I switch to? Somebody say somethin quick, cuz I wanna go ahead and get the blogs that actually update copied over to a new reader. =)

Oh, and my replacement phone arrived and I have it all set up and everything. My exact phone was out of stock, so they replaced it with the next model up, and it is a sweet phone. The Lord is good, His mercy endureth forever and ever….seriously. It doesn’t take away the fact that I lost all my pictures but it sure is nice! =)

And now it’s time for the kids to get off the bus and I’ll have a million and one things to do after this before church tonight, so I should hop to it. 

Alrighty Then

So far I’ve unsuccessfully tried to use my old passwords to get into all the things I changed to new passwords after my phone was stolen at least 10 times already. 

Open a webpage, whiz out the numbers and letters on the keyboard, hit enter----username or password is incorrect, please try again.

Oh yeah.

SOOOO anyway.

I went to class today and was talking to another girl in class and we were comparing our woes and that same morning my phone was stolen, she was wrecking her car, which is definitely more disastrous than a stolen phone, so that put things a little more in perspective for me. LOL. Even though, WITH insurance, I still had to pay $90 to get a replacement phone, which really stinks but beats having to pay off the balance on the old phone and buying another one…and I’m still sad about losing all the pictures and stuff on my old phone, but all that is better than wrecking the car or having the car stolen. (And the husband says “Amen” lol)

Yeah. So there’s that. And the waitress at Olive Garden refused to let me taste the wine because I was “under 21” and fell all over herself apologizing when I told her that, “no, actually I’m thirty TODAY, but really, it’s okay…I LOVE that you thought I was under 21.” 

Then KC threw a small party for me on Saturday with a few friends and even one Ohio friend brought her hubby and kids down and surprised me. It was great. The pizza dough we made the previous Saturday turned out beautifully on the grill. Sheesh, I was SICK of pizza dough by the time we finished making it, and I wasn’t even sure if it would taste good, because every batch seemed to act differently between the time it took to mix it, let it rise, punch it down, stretch it out, and then bake it. WHEW.

I didn’t take any pictures because I was so busy trying to be a good hostess, but one of my buds brought her camera and passed on a few of her pics (love you, J) so I can show you a few shots. =)

Before I forget, credit where credit is due:
All photos by Jules Photography. Thanks again, girl! =). 
The awesome cake and cupcakes (the ones with icing) were made by one of KC’s coworkers.
The other awesome cake: Dr Pepper/Reeses cake was made by Jules of Jules Photography. 
And the grilled personal pizzas idea came from another amazing friend, Leah. 

 

I look good for 90, huh? =)

I’m sure you couldn’t tell, but I pink puffy heart Dr. Pepper. LOL. Anyway, it was a lot of fun…

I’d say I don’t feel any older, but then the time change happened on the weekend of my birthday, something that I don’t remember happening before, and it is REALLY throwing me for a loop. 

Plus we’re in revival at church this week (which has been awesome so far) so between that and the time change….well, I’m sort of feeling older than thirty. LOL

Right now, I have more I could talk about but I am extremely tired and feel like I have sand under my eyes, so it’s off to bed I go.

Hi ho, hi ho, hi ho, hi hooooo. =)

Bummed

This:

Is the last photo taken with my lovely little phone. 

And unless whoever stole it gets an attack of conscience, and turns it in to lost and found…it will remain the last photo taken with my lovely little phone. 

I am SOO bummed. Nothing like a little theft to make you feel violated. The nice manager at T-mobile locked the stolen phone so that even I can’t use it (IF I were to find it) without taking it in to the store and having the lock removed. They also said that the top places for phones to be stolen are school and bars and that most of the time, they’re stolen for the phone, not for the information in it, so chances are, everything I care about is safe, but it’s just the thought.

I’m really not even sure when it disappeared because I had it while I was waiting for my second class, and when it was time to go into the second class, I’m almost sure that I double-checked the bench behind me when I got up, before I went into class, and that nothing was left laying there. I realized it was gone about halfway through the class, so I must have left it on the bench right outside the class no longer than 30 minutes…but if I didn’t leave it on the bench, then someone snitched it right under my nose in class, which is an equally awful theory. Whatever the case, I had it before class, and in less than an hour I was minus a phone. 

In my favor, it was the class day that was just working on sketchbooks, not lecture, so I was able to get up and look for it immediately, and then when I couldn’t find it, the instructor said it was fine to leave early. I even borrowed a phone to call it, and it went straight to voicemail, so it was obviously turned off after it was picked up, which supports the theory that it was stolen simply for a phone to resell, not for anything on the phone.

Or else (conspiracy theory here), someone in my class hates my guts for some reason and stole it and then turned it off so when I tried to call it, it wouldn’t alert me to the fact that it was buzzing in their pocket…hopefully THAT isn’t the case (although I won’t lie, it did cross my mind—obviously, or I wouldn’t have mentioned it, right?! LOL)

So the missing phone is hopefully locked tight and I have a loaner phone with my same number until I decide what to do about another phone. I figure I’ll give it the weekend to see if it gets turned into lost and found when they realize it can’t be used, and if it doesn’t, I’ll just turn it in on my insurance (which is the other bright thing – I didn’t remember getting the insurance on the phone, but I guess it’s a good thing I did!) and get a replacement.

I’ve changed all my passwords and kicked my mobile phone off of all the apps connected to it, so hopefully if there was a chance that it was stolen for info, they won’t get any. I’m just bummed because all the pics I had on there are gone and I lost all my contact numbers…I think everything else was replaceable. 

GRRRR. Just needed to vent. Anyway, I have no phone numbers now, so if no one hears from me for a long time….that could be why. I’m on a loaner phone at the moment, and it’s got my number in it, so I can get texts, but I’m not going to know who you are if you do text me (unless you tell me…lol), and I won’t be able to keep the info. *sigh* 

Kind of a stinky day. I’m hoping it gets better. =/  If not, I may have to hit the bottle AGAIN. =)