Out of My Mind

It has arrived. No, not some lovely, unexpected christmas present. My annual holiday cold is here and I feel like poop. It seems like I get sick every year at this time and it generally lasts well past the holidays. I’ll get better for a little while, then my spring allergies will kick in. It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to stop whatever it is I am doing, cross my legs tightly and pray to God that I don’t wet myself every time I cough or sneeze. Ugh, I just feel like crap.

Can I just say that I am loving Christmas this year?  First of all, it’s not even December yet, and I’m already more than halfway done with my holiday shopping.  It’s really nice not to have to wait until the weekend before Christmas to do the shopping because there is no money to spare until then.  My sister-in-law Sharon is completely done, as is my MommiesRock secret santa pal.  My nephew Ryan is partially done, Sebastian about 3/4 done.  I’ve only picked up one thing for the hubby so far.

We put our tree up the day after Thanksgiving.  Honestly, I was so excited about Christmas that I was ready to put it up the second week of November.  But I have this weird personal rule that will not allow the tree to go up until after turkey day.  So I held off, but just barely.

Even the hubby has remarked on how much calmer (read: saner) I am this year.  It’s nice not to have to stress on how we are going to buy presents for people, put gas in the vehicles and food on the table. He and I are even going to be able to buy stuff for each other this year!  Normally, we forgo that so that Seb can have a nice Christmas, but not this year!  So far, I’ve only gotten the hubby a nice, leather business card holder.  Gracias to my older brother Joe for pointing me in the direction of Office Max since I was having no luck finding what I wanted anywhere else.

The kids at school are all still little maniacs, but I’m having fun planning all our holiday crafts and activities.  I just dropped $110 at Jo-Anne’s on craft supplies.  Gotta love that big latchkey budget!

I’m even looking forward to the holiday baking.  Oh, I’m sure once I’m elbow deep in pretzels, chocolate, sprinkles, etc.,  I’ll be moaning and groaning, but right now I’m all full of ideas and can’t wait to get started.

Feliz Navidad, y’all!

I just cancelled our hotel reservations for our trip to Chicago.  We are postponing it until sometime in late January or early February because that’s when we’ll have some extra money again.  There’s just no way we can put off getting new tires for the truck until then.

Surprisingly, Sebastian was pretty cool about the whole thing.  We explained to him that we are still going to go, just not in December.  I thought he might pitch a huge fit, but he was totally fine.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that there is so much other crap going on next month.  On the 8th, we (meaning my parents, all my siblings and all our kids) are going to Frankenmuth.  The next weekend, we were supposed to go to Chicago.  The next weekend, on the 22nd, we are going to the Lion King.  On the 23rd, we are going to the hubby’s brother’s house for Christmas with his family.  And then, of course, Christmas on the 25, where we are going to my parents house in the afternoon after the big hullaballoo here on that morning. 

And my mom wants to work out some sort of a slumber party thing for the grandkids where they make Christmas cookies and do crafts and watch holiday themed movies.  We did this last year, her and I and the four grandkids.  I told her I put my time in last year.  This year, my brother and sister, who both live with her, can pull chaperone duty.  I’ll stay home and have a nice evening with the hubby.

Ooooookay.  It is now obvious to me that we cannot put off buying new tires for the truck for very much longer.  Seb and I did some errands today on our day off.  When we left, it was a light rain/snow mixture.  By the time we were heading home, the temp had dropped and those big, beautiful, fluffy white flakes were coming down.  There is probably half to three quarters of an inch on the ground.  Normally, that would be no problem.  But it appears I have pretty much zero traction.  Trying to accelerate from a dead stop was…interesting.  I was slipping and sliding and it took forever to just be able to go.  And of course, Sebastian was in the back seat, shouting out that he thought we ought to call a tow truck.

It’s going to probably cost between $500-600 for new tires for the truck.  I’m going to have to talk to the hubby tonight.  If we have to do the tires right now, our trip to Chicago is going to have to be cancelled.  Which sucks.  Majorly.  Aaaaarrggh.

Becaue today was actually a good day!  I know I still have to get through this afternoon, but this morning really did go pretty well.  And mornings are usually the worst.  We did a craft that I was worried might be a little too hard, but the kids did a really nice job.  They were turkeys, for turkey day tomorrow, of course.  I modeled them off of these from the Oriental Trading Company.  I just went to Michael’s and bought the materials myself.  One of the best ones came from a kindergartener, which was surprising.  I would post a picture of the finished product, but my camera and computer seem to hate each other lately, and I’m having a really hard time downloading any pics.

I didn’t have to break up any fights, nobody got hurt, Ellen took the a bunch of the kids into the gym for a good long time.  The kids shared at the craft table, nobody fought over the game cube and I didn’t have to yell at anybody.  Very rarely, do we have such a nice morning.  Usually, I’re ready to run screaming from the building by 9 am.

I’ve got a craft and bingo with cool prizes planned for the afternoon, so hopefully, all will go smoothly.  It would be nice to start my five day vacation on a positive note.

If I make it to tomorrow night at 6pm, it will be a flipping miracle.  Today at latchkey, it was get hurt/feel sick/hurt somebody else/try and get somebody else in trouble/drive Ms. Erin out of her ever lovin mind day.  I had to hand out 4 ice packs, write up one accident note, call one mom to pick up her kid who I’m pretty sure was faking but would hate to be wrong about, and break up numerous altercations between students.  And guess what?  I get to do it all again this afternoon and twice again tomorrow!  Woo-freakin-hoo!

This obviously is not the job for me.  The pay and the hours are wonderful, but the kids are just…ugh.  Make me wanna scream.  And, apparently, I have an admirer.  I noticed a while ago that one of the dad’s stares at me a lot and the intensity of it made me a tad uncomfortable.  He’s even managed to put his hand on my shoulder during a conversation, which should have been no big deal, but ended up being really awkward.  And then on Friday, he asked me how I was doing and I told him I was good and glad that it was Friday.  He kept trying to get me to say that I was pretty good, which was a bit weird.  Then he told me if I had said I was pretty good, then he could have said "It’s easy for you to be pretty good, because you’re so pretty."  Oh my.  I just said thank you and then giggled over that cheesy line for the rest of the afternoon.  I told the hubby about it and we got a good laugh over it.

So, I am very much looking forward to my 5 day weekend that starts 6:01 tomorrow night.  Maybe even a few minutes earlier if all the little munchkins get picked up early.  Please, God, let them get picked up early.

I finally mailed out my grad school application.  The worst part was the "personal statement."  It had to be 250 words or less and map out why you want to get into the program, what makes you think you might be a good candidate for the program, and what are your goals for the program and beyond.  I knew all the points I wanted to make, but had a hard time putting them all together without sounding like an idiot.  Hopefully, I did well enough that they’ll take me.  I’m not sure how long until I find out.  Not too long, I hope.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see a Friday in my entire life.  This week…rough does not even begin to describe it.  It’s getting close to the holidays, so the kids at work have all started to go insane.  I feel like all’s I’ve done this week at work is break up arguments, yell at kids and put people in time out.  And about half the time, Sebastian has been determined to be the world’s larges pain in the ass, either by not listening or just outright defiance. 

We had a meeting for work last night, too, and it was at a school at the complete opposite end of the district from me.  I got lost.  In the dark.  I ended up being nearly 20 minutes late for the meeting, which sucked.  And the meeting ran long, so I didn’t get home until 9:15.  Bleh.

All week, I’ve been torn between wanting to just bang my head against the wall or pull my hair out.  Not surprisingly, I’ve had a mother of a headache running for the last few days.  Tomorrow, I just plan on vegging out at home.  No plans, just relaxing on the couch and catching up on my reading.  Sounds like heaven after this hellish week.

We somehow decided that it would be a wonderful idea to go to Chicago next month.  Unfortunately, all the planning of this mini-vaca fall on me.  Budgeting for the trip, booking a hotel, schedules that will allow us to fit everything we want to do into the very limited amount of time we will have there.  I hate being responsible for all this crap.  This little trip will probably cost us at least $600.  And we are doing it right before Christmas.  What in God’s name were we thinking?

The other day at the grocery store, I grabbed a magazine because it said it had tons of great holiday craft ideas inside.  I figured I could use some of the stuff for latchkey.  Turns out, there wasn’t a lot there that I think would work well at school, but there are some things I might try here at home.  One of the things was a tree skirt.  I have been looking everywhere to find one that is cream and gold and has stars on it.  I haven’t been able to find anything I like.  The one in the book was red felt with cream stars and cream fringe around the edge. 

Now, I’m fairly certain I could do one in the colors I want and probably improve on their design a bit, but do I want to?  Already, I’m finding myself pretty crafted-out because I’m trying to come up with two crafts every week that are suitable for kids from kindergarten through fifth grade.  And I know my mom is going to want me to do pretzels for her and I’d like to do some for myself as well.  Plus the cookies and all the other holiday hullabaloo.  Christmas is more than a month away and I’m already stressing about it.  Maybe I’ll just take a trip to Jo-Ann Fabrics and price out how much it would cost me to do what I want.  That may help me with my decision right there.