Category: Holidays

What’s going on

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Right now I’ve got chili in the crockpot and I still haven’t showered for the day because I’ve been pretty busy. In addition to throwing that together this morning, I also worked out on the elliptical machine, descaled the coffee maker, did two loads of laundry, put away the St. Patrick’s Day decorations and replaced them with Easter decor, re-organized my glass beads, went through the mail, dusted and decluttered the house a bit, and created a cute Easter basket for my stepson.

I stopped making baskets for the kids on a consistent basis because they never seemed to care, and perhaps they still don’t, but I really like doing it so I made one anyway. Nothing big, but I like how it came out.

E's Easter Basket

I noticed that I really don’t spend a lot of time watching tv during the day, yet it still flies by. Sure, I’m on the internet a lot, although last week I watched a few movies thanks to the local library. I’ve been getting through my list of movies I’d like to see with all this time on my hands. I like that I can rent 5 movies at a time for “free” (I put that in quotes since my property taxes pay for the library’s services). My local library has even started getting new releases in on Bluray. You can only rent them for one night but I still think it’s great. The library is less than five minutes away and not much further than the local Redbox. I just have to be flexible in what I want to watch.

Yesterday my brother came over since he didn’t have to work. We hit the library to borrow a few video games and went to lunch at Buona Beef since I’m restricting myself to eating at places where I have a gift card. The card I have for them is so old I was surprised it worked! I also forgot how good their cheeseburgers are and not a bad price at $5 either. I still have almost $10 left on my gift card too.

I’ve been put in charge of updating Adopt-A-Pet and Petfinder with the rescue organization at which I’m volunteering but that doesn’t take up much of my time – probably a few hours a week, give or take. A lot of that time is due to waiting for the Petfinder site to respond; it has to be the slowest website I’ve ever dealt with! I can post five cats on Adopt-A-Pet in the time it takes to post one on Petfinder. In any case, it’s been busier lately because of all the cat shows in the area which causes the adoption rates to rise. I don’t mind, though, because I like keeping busy.

My brother asked me the other day why when he’s not working he is lazier than when he is, and I’m not sure why, but I’m the same way. The more I have to do in a given day the more motivated I feel. The less I have to do the more depressed I feel and the lazier I become. This is why I’ve been doing what I can to keep busy, including entering sweepstakes. I know it sounds a bit silly but whatever. It’s free, keeps me occupied, and I won $15 from VISA so far.

Catching Up & A Big Announcement

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I know, I know – I totally failed to keep this blog updated every day in November and then I dropped off the face of the Earth for most of December. I have a good excuse though – I’ve been working long hours on a big project. Normally I would completely resent spending 11 hours in the office on a daily basis but I haven’t minded because I could use the extra moolah (I’m hourly) since I submitted my resignation at the beginning of December and my last day with the company, January 4th, is quickly approaching.

I wanted to give my boss a month’s notice because I really respect her and wouldn’t mind working together again some day in a less hectic environment. I’m just burnt out and need a break. I’ve been having trouble sleeping and have been taking too much Xanax to starve off middle of the night panic attacks. After ten years with the organization it was time for a change. Ideally I’d like to work somewhere that involved helping the community in some manner.

In any case, I have no time to really look for a job while employed so after much deliberation and agonizing I decided to make the leap. I’m very lucky that Joe is so supportive because we are going to be short on funds on a monthly basis without my income. Luckily we’ve got money saved up thanks to our frugal lifestyle. My manager has been amazingly supportive – she even encouraged me to use her as a reference. I already had one interview recently, but I don’t want to get into the specifics right now as I want the job so so bad and don’t want to jinx it. Once I find out one way or the other whether I got the job I plan to write about it since it ties into what I see myself doing with my future.

Anyway… Christmas was good. We spent Christmas Eve at my parents’ and then Christmas Day at home with E and my SIL. Joe and I didn’t really exchange gifts other than some stocking stuffers. I attended a fun Christmas party thrown by my employer at Bahama Breeze and they had a photo booth up; I got a nice memento of some of the members of my team (which I can’t post for privacy reasons, sorry). I’m going to miss many of my coworkers so this decision is definitely bittersweet. I’ll probably be posting a bit more often after the 4th since I’ll have so much time on my hands (although I hope not too much – I’d like to find a job sooner rather than later).

Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving day went something like this:

Joe went to pick up E at 11 am while I worked on cooking some side dishes to take to my parents’ house (sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, corn muffins, and pizza dip). When they got home we had White Castle for lunch, then headed to my parents’ house a few hours later, arriving around 4:30. Everyone had their fill and then we played an hour long game of Aggravation. By that time it was 7 pm and E’s mom arrived to pick him up. After E left we played a bunch of rounds of UNO Attack (I won the first few games because I was on fire that night) and just sat around talking until about 10:30 when we finally left and my brother went out to Best Buy to buy a TV.

Halloween

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Yes, I’ve turned into THAT kind of person.

Get this thing offa me!

Bella in her pumpkin costume

Bella in her pumpkin costume

Who could resist at 75% off at Petsmart?

We only got about 10 kids this year but we were much smarter than in past years – we only purchased two bags of candy instead of spending over $30 on several bags. And yet we still have candy left.

Independence Day

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Hope everyone had a nice 4th of July! Ours was low-key since it was smack dab in the middle of the week. Brother #2 came over around noon and we went swimming for a couple of hours, then came back and grilled some hot dogs. We also had corn on the cob, chips, potato salad and pasta salad. We played a bunch of games off Uno Attack before he left around 6 pm.

We opted not to seek out any firework displays because a) I was in pain from being sunburned (I’m usually so good about the sunscreen but I wanted to get a little tan and went overboard), b) our city will be doing two firework displays later this month during their annual and c) we get up far too early (5 am) to justify going to bed late. As fate would have it I didn’t sleep very well last night anyway, probably because I slept until 10 am yesterday morning. Oh well. I would love it if we got a day off in the middle of the week every week, though, because it’s making this week fly by.