Good News On All Fronts

Today has been a day of good news!!!

First of all, I was able to trade in my MIL's fancypants embroidery machine for $400, which bought me a brand-new machine that does about eighteen different stitches!!!! Yahoo!!! The machine I've been using for the past five years is ANCIENT, and I got it for $25 from an ad in the Pennysaver magazine. It's been adequate for learning on, but I've been ready for a long time now to do more advanced things, and now I can!!! (I got the embroidery machine from MIL about two years ago, and have only used it for one thing - to put kids' names on scarves we made for Josie and Patrick to hand out as Xmas gifts to friends. It was a really, really expensive machine when she bought it, and then she went and upgraded to a SERIOUSLY expensive one, like five-months'-mortgage-payments expensive.) I'm happy. It's another Singer, which is what I had before. I still have my old one, plus a serger the MIL gave me as well, which I haven't had the balls to use yet.

Second, DH's contract looks secure. Apparently, part of the fighting was over who was going to get to control the group he's in, because the higher-ups have identified what they're doing as The Wave Of The Future (Future...future....future..echo). This is good news. Also, the guy who currently is their contracting officer on the client side may be staying after all, depending on whether a sweet deal he was offered goes through. All in all, PHEW.

Third, both kids are in advanced placement, enrichment, whatever you want to call it. Josie has been pulled out for more challenging math and reading work in the past, at her previous school, but we hadn't heard anything about this school yet, so I was wondering what was going to happen. Today, she said that she was, in fact, pulled out this afternoon for advanced reading. She's the only one in her class, and then there are seven other children from the other fourth grade class. I told her that maybe she's in the wrong class at school! Patrick's teacher spoke with me yesterday about having him maybe go into a first grade class for reading, since he is completely fluent, and probably reads words at about a second-grade level, although his attention span/maturity isn't enough for him to go into that kind of an environment. Today she told me that he and one other child in his grade will be pulled out by the enrichment teacher as well for extra instruction. So, both of them will be receiving more challenging work twice a week. His teacher also told me, under the rug, that the enrichment teacher doesn't always follow through on what she's supposed to, so to be prepared to need to go into the school and complain if it doesn't happen with Patrick pretty quickly. I was glad that she thought enough of me to tell me, since of course she's not supposed to say things like that, but it's always good to know things like that. So, my babies are smart! I mean, I knew they were smart, but it's always nice to hear it from other people.

In still other good kid news, I'm going to be able to do things with both kids' classes next week. My volunteer date with Patrick's class is on Monday morning, and I'm excited to go in there and see the K class. On Wednesday, I'm going on a field trip with Josie's class to a local river museum and trail. I haven't been able to work in the elementary schools because I always had Patrick at home, so I'm glad that now he's in school and I can do things with both of them (although I'm apprehensive about going on a river trail with a group of fourth graders, at least I'll get to drive myself there).

Fifth, the chiropractor FIXED MY HIP!!!!!!! It's not totally back, since it's still a little sore from being messed up so badly, but I can get up and move around without having my first thought be, 'Oh, my hip!' like some kind of geriatric!!!! He did this funky thing where I laid on my back, and he put my leg up over his shoulder and then twisted it while also pulling a little. Tada! I felt it immediately that something had changed, and then I stood up and was almost normal!!!! You guys, you have no idea how much better I feel. Oh, well. I go back on Monday for more work, but hopefully what I'm feeling now will last through the weekend. This new guy is Awesome.

Finally, I got up the nerve to cancel my gym membership today. I haven't been going at all since we moved, because I've been able to walk the dogs every day, and sometimes twice. Plus, the kids like to walk home from school, so I've been walking over there with Baci to pick them up; it's about fifteen to twenty minutes each way, depending if I'm walking alone or with the kids. Also, we have a treadmill downstairs, which is finally in a good location for me to use it (before this it was in the living room or in the crowded office downstairs - the other day I moved it into a little alcove in the hallway, and it fits fine). I have a couple of weights, and can always get more with the money I'm going to save on the gym. I used to really like going to the gym a LOT before we moved to this part of the state, because I knew a lot of the people that went there, including my SIL, but since we moved here I don't know many people that go, and the facility here isn't as nice. Over the winter I may try a few yoga classes, since there's a studio here that allows you to drop in and pay by the class. We'll see. I used to do power yoga every week at my old gym, and I have a ton of dvds of it, although doing yoga at home is Boring. At least if I'm with other people, I'm shamed into continuing through the entire thing, since I refuse to let anyone else me more Yogic than me (AndreAnna, I'm looking at you, gym-competition girl! I'm still trying to think of a good name for you guys, BTW, 'cuz I Want that gc).

Anyway, I'm going to sign off so you can all read this and be super-jealous. :)

Doing The Ostrich

I just talked to DH, and it seems that there is yet another shake-up where he works. It shouldn't affect him, as he's a contractor, and his contract is fully funded through January, but still it's always scary when anything like this happens. Word is, their manager on the client side put in his resignation in disgust after whatever meeting was held this morning. Before this, there had been money promised to them for the new year, etc etc etc, but now, who knows. Luckily, there are other contracts he can be moved to if need be, but still.

I would say that there's a good 5% of me that is devoted solely to worrying about just this issue on a 24hr basis. Since I stay at home, we all depend on his salary and benefits, plus we took out a loan against his 401k last year to pay off a lot of our credit card debt; if he lost his job, not only would we lose income, but we would also be required to pay off the entire loan within a month. Like THAT could happen. Hello, you take out a loan because you don't have money in the FIRST PLACE. Sigh.

I know of several people who are in much more nerve-wracking situations than I am, too. One of our friends works for Verizon, which just announced that they're cutting 30% of their workforce across the board in the next three weeks. I'm torn as to how to feel about the company announcing that. I mean, on the one hand, it would be good to have time to look for another job, but on the other, that's three weeks of worry for the 70% of people that it will not affect. When I worked, our company did things like that, and on fact the round of layoffs that I eventually volunteered to be a part of took months longer than it was supposed to, meaning that we were told initially that we'd be out of work by June 1, but really it wasn't until mid-August that we were finally let go. Even then, they pretended to keep it all hush-hush, like some kind of game; you're gonna be laid off, but who knows when? Spin the wheel! It was horrible, waiting for the other shoe to drop, even though I knew I wasn't going to be working after The End.

I have to admit to not generally letting myself worry too much about the economy. We don't have stocks, except in DH's 401k, and we're not planning on moving anytime soon, so we don't really care what the house is worth. I understand that these things can be far-reaching, but I don't see how my worrying about them will help. I'll vote, and hopefully that will do some good. Other than that, 90% of the population is pretty helpless. However, the last few days have been somewhat unsettling, and I'm beginning to be concerned that the good folks over at NPR are going to blow a gasket if they have to report any more upheaval.

For now, I'm going to go back to doing my favorite new move - The Ostrich. It's basically comprised of sticking my head under my blanket with a book light and reading mindless crap until things blow over.

Bring on the Liver Spots

I will be 35 next month, and the warranty has officially started to run out. First the gb thing, and now... My HIP is KILLING me.

Yes, I appear to have Thrown Out my hip. I do not know how I could possibly have done this, but I think it's true. The only thing I can think of is that I was was sitting in our Air Chair (one of those sling chairs that hangs from a hook on the ceiling) that we inherited from the previous owner, and something to do with the posturing in it did this to me. Maybe that's why he left it, kind of a karmic gotcha because he was so pissed to have to sell this house, and at such a stellar price (for us, not for him). He KNEW it would exact revenge upon me. Hell, maybe it threw out his hip, too.

Anyway, this just goes right nicely with my back, which is a pretzel at the moment. I have scoliosis, and my right leg is longer than my left, so my hips and lower back take a beating anyway, but during the summer it's a lot worse because my little lift I wear in my left shoe doesn't work in sandals or when I'm barefoot (unless I stapled it to me like Max's antlers in Grinch, I suppose). Typically by fall I'm a mess, and end up at the chiropractor for a good three months getting straightened out.

Hence, there I was at a new chiro's office yesterday. I didn't like my old one that much; I think he was too young and inexperienced, or something, because he didn't do as much for me as others I have been to in the past. I like this new guy a lot more already, but unfortunately we had to do the 'new patient' thing, where you have to do all kinds of movements to see how much pain they will put you in. My favorite one is laying on my stomach and then having him lift my leg a little to the back. The electric jolt I got from that bad boy was probably enough to power our house for a week. OW. When all was said and done, he pronounced me pretzeled, and we moved on to the fun stuff - the roller bed.

I haven't had a chiro with a roller bed in awhile, and lemme tell you, usually it's a GREAT experience. The bed has rollers inside that go up and down your back, stretching muscles and gently pushing things into place, all while you just lay there. It's very relaxing and feels wonderful... after the first few times. The first time, it hurts, because you're a freakin' pretzel. It hurt even more this time because apparently I'm gonna need a !#$%ing hip replacement or something.

After the roller bed, we moved into the other room for my actual adjustment, which generally involves me laying on my side, positioning my hips just so, and having him put a lot of pressure on my top hip and lower back simultaneously to put things where they should be, or at least move them that way. Again, it's not usually bad, but the first time, OW. Seriously, I thought I was gonna rise right off the bed, between my back being so stiff and tight and my geriatric hip.

I go back on Friday. Yay? Also, I'm wondering if my hip might possibly have osteoperosis, in which case I should treat it with Moose Tracks? It goes straight to my hips, anyway...

I Think I Just Threw Up In My Mouth, A Little

We are having a serious problem with bugs that look like this in the basement. It's a finished basement, so we have carpet and everything. I don't know where they're coming from, because we see them on the floor just wherever, so it's not obvious how the little f*ckers are breaking in. Every time I go downstairs I find at least one, though, and I go down multiple times a day. The only saving grace is that they're not fast, so it's easy to take a wad (ie, half the roll) of toilet paper and scoop them up for the Grand Flush. Yuck.

We also seem to have a Giant Cricket Chorus going down there. These aren't just any crickets, either; they seem to be large enough that if if too many more show up, they might just be able to stage a coup and gain control of the main level. Seriously, they're about two inches long, brown, and can jump HIGH. The only up side to this is that Baci thinks they're WONDERFUL. It hops, he hops and pounces. It hops, he hops. It's pretty funny, right up until he actually LANDS on said cricket, smooshing it into the carpet, and then refuses to have any more to do with it. I mean, he could at least EAT it at that point, right? Seriously, get with the program! I do like to watch him do it, though; when he looks down at them, all the loose skin on his forehead falls forward over his eyes and his ears flop forward, so he looks like a big pouncing wrinkle. It's pretty cute, and is his only saving grace when I try to get the *#@$%ing thing out of the rug later.

Lastly, we may also have a mouse. I am in denial about this, and am hoping that the poop I found is cricket poop. I did find it near where I had seen one of them a few times and pretended that I didn't so I could avoid Dealing With It. I remember in the Little House books that the grashopper infestation resulted in them having grasshopper poop everywhere, and these crickets are about the size of grasshoppers, so it could happen, right? RIGHT?!?! Sigh. I bought a have-a-heart trap just in case.

I don't really know what to do about any of this. I can't have poison in the house because of the kids/animals, and they don't really make traps for crickets and gross whatever-the-hell those crawly things are, anyway. Frankly, I'd rather have a mouse than creepy-crawlies any day. As it is, I'm afraid to go down there without shoes on and lights blazing. A few years back I stepped on a slug in my backyard one night, and that feeling has freaked me out enough that I will NEVER forget it. If I stepped on one of those grub things... it makes me throw up in my mouth a little just thinking about it. At least mice have the common decency to stay wherever they hide until you're gone!

Misery Loves Company

Guys, I am miserable today.

First of all, remember that strange woman who told us that she wants us to keep the dogs inside until 11am? Well, guess who called animal control on us on Friday when I didn't do it? Yep. Mike the Animal Guy was here on Saturday, and talked to DH. He said that he was sorry to have to come back, and that he didn't know why the woman was complaining about us in particular, since even as he stood there there were dogs barking all over the neighborhood, but since she called he had to come out. He told DH that if she continues to complain, we'll have to go to mediation. DH told me he actually hopes she will call again, so we can see her face to face and deal with it in a more legal way, since she's being totally ridiculous, but frankly I want to crawl into a hole. I HATE living in this neighborhood. We have had nothing but problems since we moved here. Actually, we've had nothing but problems since we moved to this entire TOWN. Sigh. We're stuck here, too, because I refuse to move the kids again, and they're really happy at their school, which is a very nice place. Still, I hate feeling like there's someone out there in their house hating us and waiting with her finger on the phone. DH says it's because we're on the corner, so it's easy for people to see our house to know where this particular barking is coming from, versus someone who's backyard isn't nearer to the road, and also that this house was empty for a year, so it was literally silent here (although the people here before us had a lab, and it was out all the time roaming the neighborhood, from what I hear from two other neighbors that are actually nice to us) until now. Still, I feel like a cloud is hanging over us, and it makes me really, really sad. Growing up, living with my grandmother, was very much the same; she sat in her chair in front of the window with her binoculars watching the neighbors, waiting for a reason to complain to either the police or to holler out the window at them, or call them directly, to bitch about one thing or another. I hoped to never, ever have to deal with someone like that again. Guess what? Now I apparently live right on the same block as one. And I'm stuck here. Forever.

Also, and this is a larger problem, I'm having a real problem with Josie. It's not her; it's me. Well, maybe it's a little her, but mostly it's my own feelings towards her that I'm having trouble with. I'm just not enjoying having her around AT ALL. I feel crabby towards her, and annoyed by her, most of the time. She's all over me, and asks ridiculous questions (ie, when I was reading to her the other night, 'then Rex said...' she interrupted me to ask, 'What's Rexsaid?' like it was one word - argh, seriously, kid, that doesn't even make sense), and just generally is being a thorn in my side. However, she's a kid, and as such SHOULD be asking questions that make you want to tear your hair out, she should have the freedom to do that. Really, what scares me, is that maybe this is how my mother felt towards me, and so maybe I'm turning into her, or maybe I'm just like her. Since I think she's a terrible person, and was a horrible, abusive parent, this scares the daylights out of me and makes me want to jump off a bridge. If I hate her, and then feel like I may have internalized part of her, then by transitive property I also have to hate myself. Also, if I understand how she felt, even a little bit, a little voice in my head says, well, maybe she was justified in treating you the way she did, maybe you DID deserve it. Every time I hear myself being not as kind to Josie as I would like myself to be, I feel like I'm sinking further and further into the abyss.

Obviously, I would never lay a hand on her, there's no question about that. I know, too, that since I know (and worry) that she will absorb my parenting skills and views on her as they come out through my parenting, that of course I couldn't help but do the same with my own mother, and that those demons will always be with me just by the sheer fact that I lived with her. This is the reasonable side of me. However, since my feelings of worry, and annoyance at Josie, are *un*reasonable, the reasonable side of my brain isn't exactly doing a lot to assuage my fears. My biggest problem, really, is that I'm being all-around unreasonable; I can't expect her to be as adult as I was at her age, because I had to grow up way too young out of a sense of self-preservation. I wasn't allowed to ask a lot of questions, and had to keep to myself all the time. I wasn't allowed to watch children's TV, so I was pretty worldly-minded as a young child because all I saw was news, 60 Minutes, and soaps. I had to figure things out on my own, all the time. This is not her experience, and while I know this, it's hard for me to deal with her childishness at an age where I thought she would be more thinking for herself. I also need to say that I don't seem to have this problem with Patrick, although he's younger than she is, and behaves differently both because he's younger and because he's just got a different temperament. I have a sneaky feeling it's also because she's a girl, and somewhere I've got it programmed into my head that as a girl, I was worthless.

People, I thought I had gotten past this. Evidently, I have not, and maybe will always be fighting these concerns. That's really, really depressing, both that I may always have these unwanted feelings and that I may always have to be fighting myself. How tiring. I haven't had this kind of freak-out in a long time, and this one has hit me out of the blue. Existentially, I wonder if maybe this neighbor woman, plus my concern about my feelings towards Josie, aren't a cosmic force trying to make me deal with my childhood.

Finally, all the windows of our new house are painted shut. We borrowed a 12ft ladder from a friend over the weekend, but it won't reach the second story, and I don't think the 18ft one we got from HIS friend will, either. This means I'm going to have to call someone to get up there and do the easy job of slicing through the paint at the window edges and pay them a small fortune. Argh. This morning, though, I was able to climb up and get the windows on our back porch open (the back porch is enclosed, and is actually the second story in the back yard, since we have a walk-out basement below). It's nice, except I broke the glass in one of the windows when I took the hammer to smack the wood on the top of the sash to get the whole thing moving (these windows are original to the house, so there's no metal flashing - the entire window is painted, on all sides, so the whole thing was stuck and needed a little, um, encouragement). ARGH. I suppose one out of six isn't bad.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll get out of this funk soon, but while I'm being miserable, come on over and keep me company.

Coupon Madness Strikes Again!

For this entry, I need these two pictures:

This is my register receipt from today's trip:
... and these are the register coupons that printed out once I was done:


So, this week, our grocery store was having one of those sales where you buy a certain number of products from a certain brand and get a coupon at checkout for a set dollar amount. There were four deals, one with Purina, one with Clorox, one with Kraft and one with General Mills. There were two levels of savings for each, a $5 coupon that would print if you bought a lesser number of things, or a $10 if you bought 10 or eleven things from that brand. I managed to get ten things from General Mills and Clorox, but only a lesser number each from Kraft and Purina, so I got $5 each back from those. (Unfortunately, it wasn't everything from each brand that would qualify, only certain items, like certain cereals and certain sizes, so it was harder to collect the deals than it first seemed). I actually had to keep the circular with me at the store, which I never do, so I could have the list of products from each category that would count towards earning my register coupon. Fortunately, all the items that DID qualify were also on sale, AND I had coupons for many things as well, so that grew the savings even more. Also, some of the things generated their own register coupons. Plus, there was a brown-bag sale on meat, where you got to take a brown paper bag and fill it with whatever meat you wanted, and all of it was 20% off.

In the end, with the 25 coupons I brought with me and the sale stuff, it came to this:

Coupon savings: $19.80
Bonus (doubled) Coupons: $7.25
Club savings: $84.50
Total savings: $111.50 (23%)

PLUS Earnings:

$1.80 in gas savings (where I will save that much off of each gallon I pump, and I can accumulate them, at .$40 per hundred I spend, until Oct 1st - thanks to these bonuses I haven't spend more than $18 at a time to fill my gas tank in months, since I only fill up every second or third week - one time it only took $8 to fill my minivan!) That adds up to $32 off my next tank of gas.

a 20%-off my entire shopping trip coupon (they're running a deal where you accumulate points based on how much you spend, and when you earn over 800 points, you get this coupon), which will probably give me about $80 in savings, since I'll make it a big trip when I go to take advantage of it.

and a gift card for $33.75 that I earned doing my brand-name blitz.

That all adds up to $145.75 that I'm going to save in the future. When you add that to what I actually saved today, you get $257 I earned in two hours at the store (yes, it takes me that long, unfortunately). Not too shabby!

Not to mention, I'm now totally stocked up on everything from cereal to frozen foods to meats, since I made sure to buy larger portions of meat so I can divide it in half and make it into two meals. Each steak gets us two meals, as does every 2lb pack of ground meat. That's eight meals right there, since I bought two of each today, and taco . So, really, even though I paid a generally-typical amount for my groceries ($364 for a bi-weekly trip, which means $180 per week), I'm actually stocked up for probably closer to three weeks, and won't need meat for a month, when I will cash in my 20% off coupon and do it all over again. That gives me another month to stock up on coupons, too.

Ms. Sassy McHormone

Josie is going through some kind of growth thing, both physically and emotionally. She is so different than she was last school year! While the changes may have started over the summer, I didn't really notice them until now.

First of all, we have returned to Drama Kingdom. Previously, we visited this terrible place about five years ago, and were stuck there for two years. Its rides included Spiral Coaster of Tears, Dizzying Teacups of Anti-Reason, and Bumper Car Bitchiness. We have returned to these, plus added a few more; Screechy-Go-Round, Hormonacoaster, It's a Sassy World, and for the show we have the It's Not Fair Follies.

Also, there is the added level of worry for me in that she has completely done a reverse in her Friends policy. She doesn't want to have anyone over. I have asked her about this repeatedly, and from what I can gather, she does have friends at school. She finally said that she didn't know what they would do if she had someone over. ?!?! Um, what?! Then she said that she would rather just play with the kids in the neighborhood, both of whom are younger than she is, at least the two girls she regularly sees. I worried about this, too, because when I was young and being mercilessly picked on by Everyone, I played a lot with younger kids who idolized me instead. I have no reason to believe that she's being picked on, and she says that everyone at her school is nice, but after what I went through, I'm nervous. She's pudgy, too, and a lot like I was, but minus the 'I Have A Crappy Homelife' aura, which probably makes a big difference, I guess. Anyway, today I learned from my friend Megan, who is the mom of one of the girls she plays with in the neighborhood, that when Josie has gone over there, a few times she's just played on her own over there, too. I wasn't sure what to make of this, but it actually made me feel a little better, since maybe this means that she'd rather just be on her own - not at home bored, but not having to be with other kids, either. I don't know.

Megan said that she thinks Josie's just at the beginning of a difficult age where she's in between being little and big. Since I didn't really have any friends until middle school, I guess I might have missed out on this kind of thing. She seems content, and is happy to see the kids at church when we go to choir, etc. It just seems strange to me that this girl who constantly has pestered me her entire life to have friends over suddenly wants to be Alone.

I could write a note to her teacher, just asking if things seem normal there, but I don't want to come off as a control freak parent. I've volunteered to go along on a field trip that is scheduled for the 24th, but don't know yet if I can go (usually if a lot of parents volunteer, names get picked out of a hat, but since this is a new school, I'll have to see what happens). If I can, that would let me see what's going on firsthand (as in: here we have The Girl in her natural environment - observe!). I know that things change with age, and I do think she's growing and having hormone surges (or at least she'd BETTER be, based on her current sassiness and crying-over-nothingness, because if this is The New Normal ALREADY I may be coming to live with one of you at some point soon!), but I don't know if this is normal. Do any of you remember going through something similar, or remember seeing your kids do it? I'm kind of weirded out.