Flip Flop

I'm rubbing my temples and sinus area as one does when they are exasperated. It's all about how little I've done lately. Worse than before. Not sure what has gotten into me. Maybe I'm procrastinating with cleaning and packing because travel makes me nervous. Wouldn't be the first time.

Photo-a-day project has been a total flop already. The specific assignments have started to shove in my face how stagnant my life has become. On the other hand, I am taking more photos again and with how much scrapbooking I've done this year, I am being more mindful of the purpose and composition. The plan now is to get all of the ideas taken by the end of the month.

Thursday: FMIL and I went to visit a co-worker and her adorable kids. We ended up spending the whole day there. I worked a bit on a scrapbook about the little ones, we picked up and started assembling a grill that she had gotten for her husband as a surprise Father's Day gift, and played video games with her god son. Way too much fun!

Friday: Watering the garden every other day with these high temps now and discovered this little gem:

I think we have the beginnings of melons! The first batch of flowers did not have that bulbous growth, lol. Talking to my baby brother a lot lately and we started planning out a visiting-activity schedule for when I arrive. The weekends are intense but I cannot wait to see him.

Saturday: Finally starting to put stuff away and set aside things that I know I want to bring with me. It doesn't help that I've started playing way too many games again on FB and have started up a new online game with the SO called Scrolls. It's a deck-building game from the same people who made Minecraft. We wanted a fun way to stay connected while I'm away.

We also had out first monsoon storm of the season that even started today! Unexpected but relieving.

Sunday: Got more cleaning, clearing, and planning done today. Kitty has been a silly mood lately, the heat and my irregular activities has set him off. I have to keep him occupied so I don't accidentally step on him as I'm whirling around while he's bolting in and out of the room.

Cue the catnip-scented giraffe mouse and some tissue wrapping paper. At least he spazzes out on the bed where I can see him before zonking out.

 

"Mine. All mine."

Early To Bed

I've cut back on my caffeine or when I have it so while I have been enthusiastic about staying up late, the reality has been falling asleep watching shows in an office chair. It's been a few times that I've laid down and joked around about just resting and instead waking up five hours later still in my regular clothes. Yup. Getting older, lol.

That's why this post is a day late. Kitty has taken to waking me up so I can turn on the cooler. That clever little boy. :P

Monday: This day was a blur. I've been working diligently on Project Life 2011, staying up to date with all of the vlogs I watch, and working on a fox scoodie. I'm working on doing a Photo a Day challenge from Fat Mum Slim for June 2013.

It was kind of hard for me to find a list even though I see a bunch of people participating it in the scrapbooking blogs that I follow. Kind of bizarre. Maybe it's because it's seems to mostly be a Flickr group activity-community.

I'm being very lenient on myself on when the photos are taken. I try to do my best to take at least one photo a day and it has already been helping my motivation to keep documenting everyday life again since it has become suffocatingly stagnant. It helps me remember that, "It'll be okay. There's still time to fix everything and make life better."

Here are some that I've taken so far. I won't be sharing the challenge here because Picasa's been a jerk with Google integrating it into its network completely and it would go against my personal policy of not having people's faces on my blog.

 "1. B is for Bandit". I laid out an outfit to go out, left the room to eat breakfast, and came back to this little boy refusing to let me have my clothes back. He had even made a little nest out of it which is all stuff he has not done before. Silly boy.

I was debating using this for "2. A moment" because the SO and I had banded together to make this ramen. We rinsed off the original waxy water, tweaked the broth to our own taste, I tried a new way to make hard boiled eggs (I never liked them growing up so was super rusty), and we used up some leftover shredded pork. It was just a nice experience in a couple-home sorta way.

Ended up using a sweet picture of the SO and his kitty instead.

Tuesday: I was up pretty darn early for a babysitting job that was canceled 30 minutes later. It was way too hot for me to go back to bed (It reached somewhere between 103-107 degrees. Bluck!) Again, I worked hard on Project Life and I'm almost halfway through 2011.

There was not a whole lot of documentation or pictures but I'm making myself okay with that.  Heard a quote in one of my scrapbooking videos that I've been using for motivation: "What you get done is more than you had before."

While I love gathering the photos and kind of making the notes (maybe that's from my love of lists), I really love having a finished project. "It doesn't have to be perfect." Which is great to remember because I am never satisfied with my creative work so its going to get there anyways.

In other news, since I was up so early and had a few "extra" hours to burn, I was checking on the greenery and found this:

It's hot. We're all wilting.

 You can barely see it, but in the bottom third of the picture towards the middle are the tiniest of green sprouts. These are the seeds that I planted last Thursday.

Wednesday: I had plenty of chats with so many people today. I had conversations with my mother, my brother, and three of my dearest friends. All unplanned and I think that's what made them that much more appreciated and special. Miss them all.

There was a lot of rearranging in my Project Life June 2011 pages and it just reaffirms my choice of going purely digital with my scrapbooking. I so desperately love the embellishments of washi tape, enamel dots, wood veneer, and flair buttons that are so big right now, but that's just way out of price point for me.

I'm not giving up on traditional scrapbooking but it's going to be put way back on the burner for now.

Yes, I could always get digitized versions of these bits and bobs, but I miss the feeling of playing with the actual goodies. Plus, my biggest weakness is embellishing to make my pages feel complete. Bah! Silly realistic expectations.

I'll just save that dampered obsession for the next time I make a mini-album. Project Life with its photos, texts, templates, and cards are working very well for me to get these stories done.

Oh yeah! Look at what I found a day after:

 

Those squash seedlings in the upper right are reaching the top of the box lid. Oof.

Urgh

I'm slightly miffed for two reasons tonight.

1) I've had a head cold going on two weeks now and it keeps my body perpetually tired-sore.

2) My camera has been misplaced yet again in this haze of being groggy all of the time. As we well know, this aggravates me to no end. What is going on?!

I didn't even realize that I posted the same cover music video twice last week, but I don't think I'm going to change it. It's been a while since I've posted pictures, don't even know where to begin. Let's just get the mid-week review out of the way.

Monday: Despite having an elevated body temperature, I finally used my new yoga mat and dug out my hour-long Power Yoga DVD and heaved my way through the entire routine. Oof. I loved the feel of my new yoga mat and will definitely take a picture of it once I find that danged camera.

I tried to do some work on my PL 2011 and managed to mull my way through creating the title and last pages of the 2009. 2010. and 2011 albums. I was just using the prescribed cards in the exact matter recommended, so it should not have been as hard as it ended up being. Blame it on realizing that last year had the least number of photos out of the past 4 years.

Why did I ever think it was going to be possible to combine 2010 and 2011 into one book? Something must have possessed me that day. I also realized that I had only scrapped the first two months of 2009 in my first full-length scrapbook (our first year of dating). Meaning that the year I moved across the country would have no more documentation. Derp.

Had to re-evaluate which Project Life kits I was going to use for which year for simple cohesion. That and giving myself less options and more encouragement to just get it done. This is going to take a long while.

Tuesday: I managed to slap pictures on the first two pages of PL 2011 January. Picked my common "theme" for the album and stuck on a few journaling cards. My cousins in Germany got their physical copy of the infamous Florida scrapbook plus a Perry the Platypus messenger bag for my youngest cousin there.

I was so wiped in the evening that I just crawled into bed sometime around 9 o'clock. That's a solid three hours earlier than usual. It was so good but I still need to catch up a little more.

Wednesday: Stampin' Up! released their latest retiring products list, so I went through my catalog and marked everything that was being discontinued. Made myself a sandwich that I usually only have when I visit my family, briefly chatted with my mom after a week of phone tag (her phone still died 15 minutes into the car-ride conversation), and caught up on some YouTube subscriptions. 

I may or may not have unburied one of my garlic plants because I could not figure out if they were ready to be harvested. Long story short- no. I have small bulbs of garlic growing though! I snapped a picture with my cellphone and put it back into the dirt. I'm so excited.
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That took longer than I was expecting. So here are some photos from this past month. There's not a lot, let alone much that I'm good with sharing on the blog.

 So there's a few Walmart markets being built and opened up in town and that's the Pharmacy drive-thru. Something's not quite right...

This little mister has been so lounge-y with the increasingly warmer weather.

This was at the park where FMIL and I went to an astronomy-teacher party. That's the little river that probably ate all of the papers the dust devil stole from us.

This was the pile of tree-bush branches I went crazy and hacked away from a wall in the back yard. It'll make nice smelling kindling for the next bonfire. 

 I think this is the first time that this Amaryllis has bloomed. I shopping-enabled FMIL to get the bulb from our favorite local nursery last spring. It was at least twice the price we would normally pay but it's definitely different from all of the other ones she has!

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.

Oh Yeah!

I opened up my blog because I was finally settling down to finish my Project Life layouts for April of 2012 and then I remembered it was Wednesday. Hooray! I had remembered all day long and let my brain go to mush the moment I got home. Wonderful.

But, I'm here!

Monday: Uh, I think I was just getting into the swing of things and happy that I made it through the first day back after a long weekend.

 Little Mister has loved his new trick of asking for help to get under the covers. I uncovered him from this warm pile of fuzzy pink robe.

Tuesday: We ran a few errands today and I wasn't in the greatest of moods (while forgetting my bits and pieces all over the place), but I took that bug that the SO somewhat planted and wanted to cook something new.

After being distracted by the internet, I decided on a pan-seared steak because I really wanted a steak. We've been discussing my strong desire to get a little grill. I miss grilled food so much from my mom and the SO is great at it but we haven't had access to a grill in over a year. I'm a meat-lover, need I explain more?

 

 I bought two steaks, but I ended up having enough to chop it into three bits and shared some with FMIL too.

 This was supposed to be a shallot and parsley butter sauce and it ended up being red onion and chives because that's what we had. Plus butter and a hint of lemon juice. I tried it on its own and was super skeptical, but drizzling a bit on each piece of steak was quite pleasant!

Now, I feel like I can passably cook steak. Whoa. There's still a whole 'nother one waiting in the fridge. I'm hoping to save it for Friday or the weekend as a reward for making it through the week. :D

Wednesday:

My baby brother is turning 21 years old tomorrow and I'm having a mild freak out. It's not that I feel as if he's not going to be responsible, he's much more level-headed and calmer than I am and we both don't enjoy partying, I just can barely process that he's pretty much a grown-up. I stopped counting how old I was after 19 and he's perpetually between the ages of 9-12 for me.

Talk to my mom for a bit tonight and we're still hashing out the details of what's happening for the rest of the year in terms of travel. 

I will be working on Project Life this week! Rawr! Been catching up on YouTube, still weaning myself off of the social networking marketing I was working on, and have been reading my friend's book.

Also, I've been obsessed with this concept and being brave enough to dance a happy fool in public. This playlist has made be laugh hysterically despite being so cranky lately.

I'm Here!

I made it and on the right day. BAM!

The Oscars are going on tonight but I'm getting all the news I need from it via the book of faces. I spent the night helping moderate a chat and working on social media networking for a friend instead. However, I bowed out earlier tonight than the past few because of heading back to work tomorrow. It'll be super hard to wake up in the morning after this great long weekend.

Well, that and I'm naturally a night owl. Gonna miss spending time cuddling up to kitty and with the SO. Sigh.

Planning on seriously getting back to Project Life soon, sorting out my piles of paper work, and planning out ideas for things to do when the in-laws get here next month!

Saturday: I found my camera! It was under somewhat shady circumstances (the reappearance, not my methods of looking) but I'll ignore that right now because I am so happy to have it back! That was motivation enough for me to get out and do some gardening.

Here are some pictures that I've missed posting while my camera was MIA.

 

The SO and I helped a friend move around some furniture and I also refilled their cleaned guinea pig cage. Look who came to supervise!

 

The snails in the front office at work got a bouquet of spring flowers. So cute!

 I call them all "Gary", like Spongebob's pet snail because it's easy for me, the kids, and everyone else to remember. Lol.

Then, I lost a bit of mojo after discovering one of my gloves and my favorite hand shovel has been misplaced. Losing things drives me nuts, especially when I have been working so hard to stop that "habit" that's been plaguing me all my life. Grr rabble rabble. I did manage to do some planting.

 Remember when I said I didn't want to do anything but keep Hogwarts alive, as in not try anything new? Yeah, plans changed. :P I planted some seeds from my first harvest of Bird's Eye Chillies and there is garlic, cantouloupe, and peanuts planted on the left side.

 Found two bulbs of garlic that were starting to sprout in the fridge, so I planted those!

  Finally found some raw peanuts, so I planted some of those after my mom's recommendation.

 This is the right side.

This is the surviving pea plant from the seedlings I started a few weeks ago indoors. I planted new pea seeds around it and this was gobbled up by birds early this morning. :(

 

I found what I'm pretty sure are cherry tomato seedlings in the pea pot, so I transplanted each into its own pot with some seeds. I also have coriander with the first, lettuce with the second, and parsley with the last.

I found these from old fruit I had harvested from the Jalapenos (I cut the frozen dead ones and Serranos down too).

 I transplanted them into a pot too but kept them in bunches. They are just too cute and I'll thin them out later on.

 This strawberry plant is hanging in there still and I read that they do well playing with peas, so there are some seeds around it now.

I hope these new little experiments go well. Can't wait to update you on their progress! Guess it's time to add a new "Gardening 2013" tab now. Just when I thought I was going to get away with refraining this year... Lol.

Minor Recovery

Oh yeah! I have some pictures from the garden before I left it on Wednesday. I'm thinking it's all kaput.

 Oy.

 At least the thinned out seedlings are doing okay. I'm not convinced I'm going to use any of them this year. They're not sturdy enough with the lack of light.

I was able to go back to work on Thursday.

Guess I should have felt a bit better about having an involuntary two-day work week but I was just filled with guilt and exhaustion with an undercurrent of anger. It happened to be the 100th day of school! That means just 80 more to go. Wow.

After my usual day of scrambling to figure out where to pick up with my usual students (the school doesn't get substitutes for consensus aides like me >_<), I went to help out with the kinders. I made a 100th day crown and had some delicious "Gorp".

It's a mixture of 100 pieces of this and that, pretty much the most unhealthy trail mix ever thanks to some nut allergies in the classroom, from each of the students and their families. Many of the families sent the rest of the snack after counting out the designated pieces, so there was plenty of Gorp to go around all week.

Mom sent another care package for me on Friday. The amount of them has tripled in the past two months. I guess the holidays were more difficult than I realized. Well, looking back on how I felt at the time, I felt every bit of that angst, but that superficial frustration had died down to reveal the deeper stuff.

The package included two super fluffy and long robes. Just what I could use/ wanted in the time of this prolonged freeze. I wear them over my pajamas and over my regular clothes whenever I'm at home. Brings me comfort on multiple levels. I'm grateful for the mother-daughter bond we have.

My dad's back at home now and they are starting to receive visitors who were late to the bandwagon-party. At least my mom got the week off to rest at home too.

I've spent the rest of the weekend trying to relax and take care of my boys while recovering myself. Not my idea of a good time over a long weekend, but we're trying to make the best of it. I've been helping out with cleaning around SIL's house, spending time with my kitty-nieces, playing Pokemon Black again, watching various Star Trek episodes, and going to bed early. Slowly but surely, we're getting accustomed to a somewhat quiet life again.

Our kitty (on the bed) seeing his sister (outside on the window). The reunion has been bittersweet. :P