Cleanse

I actually haven't done much cleaning but have been tidying up like mad for the past few days.

The SO's relatives are coming in this Thursday afternoon and I'm going to still be at work. FMIL is taking a few days off and I was going to do the same until I lost a few days pay due to my recent illnesses.

At least this week also contains a Payday Friday. I'm hoping to get out early that day since it's grading day and there will be no kids to directly care for. Gonna work my butt off to get as much prepared as possible in my classroom.

I don't have too much to do left. Tackling the bathroom, doing some dusting, tidying up the storage area in the garage that we're using, and doing some laundry is pretty much it for me. We'll be mopping but the vacuuming has been done and FMIL has been tackling a lot of the clutter in the living room.

Thursday: Spent much of this day waiting around for Friday. I felt extra guilty for this because I want to adapt the attitude of tackling every day like a challenge, not wasting a moment. Stayed a little late after school to help a few other teachers, Skyped with a friend, and attempted to make a Brownie in a Cup after reading this article: 50 Life Hacks to Simplify your World; #34's fault.

The results were... well, I was sitting there with a cupful of disappointment. The advice I got was to not use olive oil. Plus, I think I nuked it for too long when I thought there was too much moisture in the cup. It ended up caramelizing the sugar halfway through me trying to eat it.

All of my ingredients.

 Sadness.

Friday: Finally have some energy back this weekend and thank goodness because it was a crazy day at school. With state testing this week, we lost a lot of time for our usual academics and didn't think it fair to test them today. Plus, we had a fire drill and bus evacuation drill along with the monthly school assembly. Yeah, it's hard to compete for attention during that kind of day. Plus, it was really windy out as a cold front was coming in and everyone's allergies and sinuses were unhappy.

Right after work, the SO whisked me away to kitty's vet appointment. It was a wellness visit and he was so scared. :( While we were waiting for the doctor to come in, he was trying to melt into his daddy's sweater. Thankfully, he was so good with the vet and assistant when they gave him a rabies and upper respiratory vaccine because he was due.

Afterwards, we dropped him off, spent some time with him, and ran some errands including getting some fish oil to help with his dry skin and some pet grass. He seems to have a bit of cat acne lately for the first time, so we'll ease in the fish oil with his food. 

There was Ladies' Happy Hour at a location we've been to before but had been replaced by a different restaurant. There was a nice turn out and the sweetest waiters. Handsome too, lol. The food was good too.

Got a care package from my best friend today too! We chatted on Skype as I opened it and subsequently freaked out. The three sodas I had at dinner may have had something to do with that. It was just too perfect and so "us".

Look at the cuteness!

There was a gift card to Target and it's one of our favorite stores, a Dove chocolate bunny for Easter (my mom used to get me one every year), a handmade card with the supplies I've been sending her, the funniest squishy blue seal that lights up when you bop it (I cried I was laughing so hard- the SO calls it a "Police Seal" because the lights are red and blue), Pez dispensers of Phineas and Ferb because she knows I love that show, a squishy Valentine's lion-bear-dog and she has the coordinating giraffe, and a glow stick wand. I don't know when I'm going to get a good reason to use it, but I'll make an occasion if I have to! 

Saturday: I spent a lot of my day organizing the majority of my paperwork and files, drawers and cabinets, and art supplies. Doing this helped me clean up a bit of the clutter around the house in preparation for the relatives coming this week. Not too much purging going on, which is something I desperately need to do (as discussed with my resolutions and goals for this year). 

 I've mentioned that I really like office supplies, right?

Tapes, sticky notes, paper clips, and miscellaneous supplies in towards the back, normal pens and pencils are in a mug next to the bajillion staples I have in that silver-pink tube, highlighters and specialty markers are in one half of a checkbook box I turned into a container, colorful pens are in the container next to it, and scissors are next to that because we grab them the most.

This does not include my color pencils, coloring markers, or colorful permanent markers. Those are with my craft supplies. I stored a lot of my paper crafting supplies in the art bin beneath my bed since I've begun to stray away from card-making and paper-crafting towards the digital goodness. Still just as easily accessed so it's all good.

 

Our kitty (and his sister) turned 7 years old today! So big! Even saying that now, I just want to get up and go squish hug him. Love that little boy so much and we are ever grateful that he's pretty healthy. They are now older than their mom was when she passed away from kidney failure. It's probably what's going to do them all in one day, so we're sensitive to that sort of thing.

 Had to deal with this nonsense again. Right when I wanted to relax after organizing so much of my stuff, too. Grr.

Sunday: It's pretty been playing the new SimCity and hanging out with the SO since he was feeling under the weather again.

 This was a beautiful sunset. I don't remember seeing the mountains get this red and bright before.

I also got to playing with some of my older crafting supplies too. I made these metallic and holographic lucky stars after dragging out my origami collection to show the students (we didn't get a chance to on Friday but I'll try again this week). They have been really wanting to see it after having a brief unit on Asian cultures.

I'll show more of my crafting supplies soon since they're even easier to get at now.