Wordless Wednesday

Woo hoo!!!

 

 

In case you can’t read that, (his handwriting can be a bit hard to read!) that would be 590 out of 600 points on my paper, followed by a “Well Done”!!!! 

Hallelujah!!

And I recited my 30 lines of poetry in front of the class last week and didn’t bomb it.

Excuse me for a minute while I do the happy dance.

Whew!!…  I have one week of this class left.  I’m trying really hard not to go on cruise control, even though I really want to!  I’m going to try and get my reading and notes for this week finished up before Thanksgiving so I can be done! done! done! done!!!!!  (until next semester, that is!) 

Random Friday

We have a very special ring tone/message indicator/really any type beep announcer in our house.

She goes by the name Squanner.

Okay, let me just interrupt this particular train of thought for a minute.  My mom thinks that I just switched from calling her the Princess to Squanner without warning or an explanation.  I will grant the without warning bit, but I did explain in one post that I was changing what I was going to call her in my blog.  It was a bit buried in a post, so some of you may have missed it.  I changed her name in my blog to Squanner because that is what I call her at home.  I’m not really sure where that nickname came from, but she answers to it, so we go with it.

Okay, back to the regularly scheduled post:

Any time a phone rings, any beeper goes off, or my instant messenger on my computer dings, Squanner has to announce it to us.  Every time Hubby’s phone rings, she pipes up, “Dad!  Your phone is ringing!”

My oven beeps when it is up to temperature.  When it beeps, she announces, “Mom!  Something beeped!”

The best is when I am in the front room messaging Hubby on my laptop, she is in the office at the back of the house playing on the computer, and she hears the ding indicating that I just got a message, and she has to yell to me, “Mom!  You have a message!”

I really don’t know what we would do without our own special message indicator.  I don’t know if I would know what all that beeping and ringing was in my house without her!

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As some of you may or may not know, I am a closet British Royal family junkie.  I can tell you who just about every member of the royal family is and how they fit and are related.

The best part of the royals are royal weddings!!  Yes, my mom woke me up at 5 in the morning (as best she could!) when I was 6 to watch Charles & Diana’s wedding.  I remember watching Andrew & Sarah’s wedding 5 years later.  I still have all the magazines and books of pictures from those weddings.

Well, guess what!  There’s going to be another one!!

Yes, I am eating up all the details that are emerging about this one!  I will also watch it, but thankfully DVR is around now so I don’t have to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to watch it live.  I’ll record it and watch it at a more sane hour of the day.  I will probably sit and watch it with Squanner, so she can be properly indoctrinated into the royal family mania!

Wordless Wednesday

 

It must be that time of year again!

You know the holidays are just around the corner when you start getting the deal of the day emails.  I may be odd, but I love those emails!  I love to see what I might get a good deal on!  I don’t usually take advantage of those deals but it’s fun to see what it is for the day.

I’m excited for the holidays this year.  It’s going to be much less stressful for me because we are staying home!  Well, technically on Thanksgiving day we are driving about an hour to Hubby’s brother’s house, but I get to sleep in my own bed, and cook in my own kitchen, so that is staying home for me!  I’m excited because I don’t have to stress over a seven hour drive and worry if I have enough snacks and entertainment to keep the kids occupied for the duration, or how I’m going to keep myself busy for that long.

I think there’s also something to be said for cooking in your own kitchen.  I know where things are and I know what size of bowls to use when I am home.  I don’t know what it is, but when I don’t have the utensils I’m used to, it throws me off.  I know how much fits and what I can make in my bowls, but if you give me another set, it just makes me all discombobulated!

I’m also much less stressed this year because I’m trying to stay on top of the things I need to do.  I am trying to stay organized and am starting the things I have to sew and craft early.  I love it when life is organized and I can check things off my list.  I love checking things off of lists!!!  It makes me so happy!

I guess the true test will be to check back in a month and see if I am still organized and not a ball of tense nerves ready to explode.  You just never know!

Random Friday

I’m sorry!  I know I’ve been a blog slacker lately!  My life has been hectic and I keep waiting for it to die down.  I realized that it’s probably not going to, especially since I just doubled my class load next semester. (Yes, that would be a whole 2 classes that I’ll be taking!)  So I guess I’d just better get used to it.

I got a bit irritated this week with my great, prestigious university that I am attending.  Registration for classes next semester opened up this week.  So I sat down and looked at what I needed to take and when such classes were offered, (I’m still a bit limited as to what I can take since Squanner in only in school in the afternoon) and tried to plan out my schedule. 

I decided that I should take an intermediate college writing class because it was a prerequisite for several of the other classes that I need to take, that and I figured a refresher on how I was actually supposed to write would probably be a good thing.  Well the problem with the intermediate class is that it has its own prerequisite which is introduction to college writing.  I called the English department and asked if I could take a placement test and test into the class that I wanted.  They told me to go take an accuplacer test.  (Let me just add here, if they had told me to go take a placement test for math after a 14 year break from school, I would have been terrified.  A test for English after 14 years, I’m okay with.) 

So I dropped Squanner off at school and went to take the test.  The lady at the testing center told me I did really well, but you can’t test into the 2010 (intermediate writing) class, no matter how well you do.  I went home and called the English department again to see if I could count the English classes that I had taken for my associate degree as my English 101 that I need to get into the 2010.  Long story short, after talking with the the department head I realized that whatever classes I had taken the first time I went to school won’t count toward my degree now because they are over 10 years old.  My degree itself counts in that it still wipes out all my generals, but anything toward my major I will have to do again.  Luckily, they were only counting one class that I had taken toward fulfilling a requirement for my new degree. 

So I am signed up for introduction to college writing next semester.  Yep, I am going back to the basics!  I hope it’s easy.  Watch, I’ll have more problems with that class than the senior level British Lit class I am taking this semester!  I’m taking the 101 class online, so at least I won’t have to sit there in class with a bunch of 18 year olds! -- Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Mostly wordless Wednesday

I realized that I didn’t put a picture up so you could see their whole costumes.

there

 

I also had to put a picture of the trunk or treat.

This was before the rain started!

Halloween frights, spooks and stress!

When you think of stressful holidays, Halloween probably doesn’t usually come to mind.  Well, it does for me!  I didn’t stress out too bad about making the costumes this year like I usually do.  I didn’t really have time; I was finishing up my paper the whole week leading up to it, so costumes were much lower on my priority list than usual.  The kids helped me out a bit with their costume choices as well.  G-man wanted to be a clone again, so he wore the same costumes as last year (at least I know he grew a bit from last year, it didn’t fit quite as well, but it worked) TRMinator wanted to be a zombie knight, which was actually pretty easy, and Squanner wanted to be a princess, which thankfully I had started earlier and my mom helped me by gathering the never ending skirt onto the bodice.

The reason that Halloween is always so stressful for me is that I never seem to plan my time just right on that night.  Something you may not know, is I always plan out a schedule in my head of when I need to do what so that everything gets done on time.  And if that schedule in my head doesn’t go according to plan, I most likely lose it. 

I usually need to do Squanner’s hair, and help everyone find all the pieces to their costume and get ready.  I’ve tried starting early, but them I am just trying to keep everyone from getting mussed up until it’s time. 

Our neighborhood always does a trunk or treat in the cul-de-sac behind us.  This year a few families were getting together to do a potluck before it started.  I guess I didn’t allot myself quite enough time to get my hot dog mummies (the dish I was contributing) wrapped and in the oven, Squanner’s hair done, and get there by the time I wanted to be there.  Needless to say, by the time I got her hair done, found the shirt for TRMinator to wear under his costume, put all of G-man’s pieces on right, and got to the potluck, I was about ready to burst.  But then, I calmed down and could enjoy myself.

But then, by the time the trunk or treat actually started, it was looking like this:

It had started to rain, and it was just wet and cold.  I was so glad that I took the time to make Squanner her princess hat and do her hair when we took the hat off because it didn’t fit very well under her umbrella, and then her hair was just wet and ruined.  Oh well.  They still had fun.  And that’s all the matters, right?