14 posts tagged “tired”

My poor blog, it's become so neglected. I promise one of these days I'll actually have something worthwhile to say. In the meantime, I'll try to scrape together a TonT.

Loathe:

• Being tired all the time.
• Watching my poor boy and his friends get crushed in three baseball games over the weekend. This was his second (and last) tournament of the season. We got to the point where we were just hoping for them to make some plays because there was no hope for them winning.
• Having to hear my little boy say, "I stink at baseball!" and try hard to fight back tears even though he was around his friends. :(  (For the record, he doesn't stink. He has some things he needs to work on, but I maintain that he's got potential to be a solid player, even if he never becomes a star.)
• Knowing that Joey's team that's been practicing for 5 weeks on a team we paid $60 for him to be on got crushed by a team of kids mostly a year older than them, that's been together since March, whose parents paid $500 for them to be on. Seriously! In third grade!
• Not losing weight like I've wanted to since we restarted South Beach a couple of weeks ago. I've lost 2 lbs. I started closer to my ideal weight this time so knew the weight loss would be less dramatic, but still I was hoping to see some better results. Oh well. Plug away, I guess.

Love:

• Watching my kids when they don't know I'm watching.
• Watching a project at work that I've been leading for almost a year finally come to fruition. We're working on getting everyone trained and will implement on July 21. The new process isn't perfect, but what process ever is? It's WAAY better than what we currently have. I feel such a sense of accomplishment, and I daresay I'm looking pretty good to the higher-ups! I had a great team, though...which goes a LONG way. I'm proud of them.
• Cuddle Time: a ritual in our house where all 4 of us pile onto Brian's & my bed and just watch something on TV. And cuddle. :) The kids are always asking, "Can we have Cuddle Time?" I love that they want to do it, even when we have to say no.
• The unpredictability and variety of midwestern weather. Last week it was pushing 100; today it's not even 70. As they say, if you don't like the weather in Minnesota, just wait a few minutes. Gorgeous weather is always nice, but I need it to change now & then. I could do without snow, though.
• Even though the games were not so great, at Joey's tournament last weekend I got to meet all of the parents. It was so much fun. In particular I spent a lot of time talking to the mom of a boy that Joey has gotten to be good friends with over the last half of the school year. Now they're on the same team for both tournament and house league baseball. I like her a lot. And the really cool thing is that they're thinking of switching their son to Schaeffer Academy after he finishes elementary school, just like we plan to do with Joey! Crazy. She said she's been praying for a good friend for her son, and to think that my guy might be the answer to her prayers just about makes me want to cry. In a good way.
• Holidays! Because they equal days off work!
• That Brian checked out the X-Files movie from the Bookmobile today. I'm finally going to see it, Kelly!

Are you bored yet? LOL

As aforementioned, I fully plan to give this blog some attention once I actually start having coherent thoughts again. :)

Someone tell me why I decided to have both of my kids in the same month? Oh yeah, I didn't plan that.

The good part about having their birthdays ten days apart is that you get the parties done with in a couple weeks' time and then you're done for the year. The bad part, in our case anyway, is that February comes shortly after Christmas so while we're just getting the tree put away, it's time to start thinking about planning parties.

This year they both wanted slumber parties. And the only way it would work out is that we would have them two Fridays in a row. Eight eleven-year-old girls singing karaoke ala American Idol, followed by nine nne-year-old boys wrestling and roughousing ala Indiana Jones.

Just because I thought it turned out so cool, I'm putting up a picture of the dessert I made for Joey's party. Given the theme, I decided to forego regular old cake and do that dirt dessert that was so popular a few years back.

Dirt for the little archaeologists to dig in

The good thing about them getting older is that they can entertain themselves for the most part, and in my experience don't seem to want as much structured activity. The part that doesn't get any easier is that you still have to make sure that no one's being mean and no one's getting left out. So even though we're not on constant duty like we used to have to be, it's still exhausting to have a slumber party, let alone having them two weeks in a row. So I'm glad that birthday season is over for another year. We do have one quasi-birthday left, I guess. My parents try to come up in February every year for a weekend, and while we'll probably have some sort of birthday cake, it won't be a party per se, and I won't have to plan anything because my parents don't expect much (God bless 'em). They don't even expect that my house will be clean, which is good because it probably won't be. And my mom never makes snide comments about the state of my house or offers to "help" me clean it up. She's awesome that way. (And in other ways too.)

Your kids do find ways of embarrassing you, have you ever noticed that? This morning during breakfast the boys were talking about how drinking even one drop of alcohol when you're a kid will kill you.  Joey went and said that his parents drink wine and that sometimes they ask him & Bailey if they want a sip. Of course all the boys were just dying and I'm thinking, do NOT go home and tell your parents that Joey's mom & dad give them wine to drink!! Imagine how that could be misconstrued. Very rarely, we give them a taste of our wine. I wouldn't even qualify what they get as a sip. (BTW, I wrote a post a while back on why I allow my kids to have an occasional taste of wine - and a great discussion ensued...and thinking back on it now I wonder if their idea that alcohol will kill you hinges off of what Amy Sue said in her comment to that post.)

Anyway, so now everyone's gone home and we're cleaning up (thank goodness for paper plates & cups, and a dishwasher for things we can't throw away! And a good vacuum cleaner) and I'm thinking about getting some homework done. Joey's playing with all his new toys (he got 4 Nerf guns!!). Today is Joey's actual birthday so he gets to choose what we have for supper. He chose Pizza Hut - works for me!!

We now return me to my regularly scheduled life.

Loathe:

• Politics.  A month ago I loved them, now I just have a sick feeling about it.
• Ditto the sick feeling on this whole bailout thing.  Let me tell you, I'm going to be pretty ticked off if I have to pay for someone else's irresponsibility.  Especially on this grand of a scale.
• That I'm still up & wide awake when I should be in bed.  I'm going to feel this tomorrow!

Love:

• The good kind of visibility at work.
• Buying 5 dozen eggs at Sam's.  And we will eat them all!  We love eggs, and they're perfect for our diet.
• That yesterday we went back to Phase I of SBD (because our eating had gotten slightly out of control) and I feel GREAT!  I haven't had carbs in 2 days and I feel great?  It's true.  I guess my body likes me eating like this.
• Not being crabby now that my eating is under control.  Seriously - look at the size of my love list vs. my loathe list.  It's a physiological (not psychological) thing - less wavering of my blood sugar, I guess.  I feel more like my real self (except the sarcasm; that will probably never go away).  And I had a good run this morning.  I just really feel good about myself today - who I am, what I look like, and what I can accomplish.
• The big bag of red peppers I just bought.  I plan to eat at least some of them with cottage cheese (the best thing ever in the world - try them together if you never have), and will also dip some of them into the spicy hummus I made the other night.
• My heated mattress pad.  Way better than an electric blanket.  And perfect now that the 40-degree overnights are settling in.
• Eclipse mints and Orbit gum.  I'm infatuated with all of the Orbit flavors (many of which aren't featured on their website, strangely).
• This wine we had on Sunday night.  Only ours was from 2002.  This was from one of the places we visited when we were in Sonoma last year.  I never keep track of price, but I'd have guessed it was way more than a $15 bottle as the website suggests.
• Discovery Health Channel.

Because seriously, it multiplies in my house.

I have done as much cleaning as I'm going to do.  (And I broke a nail in the process, darn it.  Oh well, they needed to be cut.  But 3 days of cleaning and 9 of 10 survived...that's pretty good!)  The cat woke me up at 5:30 this morning.  I tried to ignore her but she was being naughty and I finally decided that I'd get up so that she didn't wake Brian up.  So I made coffee, tuned into my favorite morning news show, and I broke out my new Norwex mop.  I cleaned my entire house using almost exclusively Norwex products, and I must say it looks pretty good.  My house hasn't had a good thorough cleaning in literally I-don't-know-how-many months and it feels so nice.  I thought about taking some pictures to post, but quite frankly, after cleaning for eleven hours straight, stopping to make supper, and mopping my floors, I'm just too tired.  (I was going gangbusters all day when I looked at the clock and realized it was 4 pm and I hadn't eaten a bite all day.  Normally that would be unheard of but I can be pretty focused on rare occasions.) 

Aside: Wow, I just looked over at my floors now that they've dried and they've never looked so good!  I've really struggled to find something that cleans wood-looking-laminate well, and I think I finally have it.  I think I love Norwex.

I'm sure that as soon as everyone gets here I'm going to start seeing all kinds of dust, dirt, & cobwebs that I somehow missed,* but oh well.  I'm not worried about it at this point.  When I have company, I want my house to start out clean, but then I want my house to feel comfortable enough to people that they don't have to feel like they have to worry about getting anything dirty.

Heather and Le-Ann are both in Minneapolis tonight - they met for supper.  We thought about going up there to meet them, but it's a 70-mile trip and we just didn't want to make the drive twice and didn't want to get a hotel room.  (We're house-poor right now; more specifically, we're bathroom-poor.)  It's 9:30 and they're probably still hanging out.  Tomorrow we all meet at the Mall of America and will probably spend the majority of the day at Nickelodeon Universe.  Of course we'll do some shopping too.  It should be a great day, and of course, there will be pictures.

*I didn't even have to wait until tomorrow...Brian came upstairs and said, "Are you going to get those cobwebs on the ceiling.  Crap.  I thought I was done cleaning.

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I'm watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics as I type this and as the team from Khazakstan (sp?) walked through, the commentators mentioned a gymnast whose father won medals with the USSR in the 1988 games in Seoul.  Her father?  Holy crap.  I remember those games.  I am old.  **sigh**

I wasn't going to do this today (because if I do it every week I'll become predictable), but what the hey.  Here goes:

Today I loathe:

• Spending all day at work reading about FDA inspections.  I'm writing a mock inspection for our students to do as a learning tool.  Important stuff, but reading about the FDA all day sure makes me tired.
• That I slept horribly last night and as a result am quite tired today.
• That it's only Tuesday (see above bullet item).
• Being unmotivated to study for my coag final.
• Bad hair days.

Today I love:

• Red wine.
• The killer lasagna I have in the oven.  I can't wait to eat it!!
• That I fixed a door at work today.
• Long, painted fingernails, makeup, great shoes, jewelry, and other things that make me feel like a girl.
• The color scheme we've decided on for our bathroom.
• My kids.
• Spring - finally!  I'm even ok with those fabled April showers, as long as they're not snow showers.

That'll do it.  :)  Gotta go get my lasagna out of the oven.

I don't have much to say - which is why I haven't posted anything in a while.  Sometimes stuff just doesn't happen that's worth writing about, know what I mean?  I haven't been feeling well lately.  I sure have been getting sick a lot lately.  I usually never get sick.  I wonder if all this to-ing and fro-ing has finally caught up with me and I'm just worn down.  If that's the case, I'd better find a way to deal with it because nothing that wears on me is going away anytime soon!  Suggestions?

One thing that's worth writing about is that Bailey had a birthday party yesterday.  Her actual birthday isn't until tomorrow (10 - double digits!).  We figured out about a week ago that if she was going to have a party it was going to have to be on the 9th since she's going to Snow Camp next weekend.  So the party was kind of quick thrown together.  She wanted to go sledding, but when we realized that the day was going to have -20 wind chills and sandpaper-like blowing snow, we figured we'd better come up with Plan B.  We came up with a couple of ideas for things to do inside and it seemed like everyone had fun.  She got, among other things, two Webkinz.  Webkinz are new to our house, and those two were added to the ones that she and Joey got from their grandma on Thursday.  Those presents came early since G&G left for Africa on Saturday.  The Webkinz quickly felt at home:  

Funnykinz

These next couple of weeks will be pretty crazy.  It's birthday season in the G household - Bailey's is tomorrow (the 11th) and Joey's is on the 21st.  Joey's party will be on Saturday - one of THREE birthday parties he's going to that weekend.  And he has a science fair on Saturday too.  Poor kid - I hope he gets some rest.  I hope I get some rest.  :)

On a completely unrelated note.....how 'bout my man AP - Pro Bowl MVP???  I wonder how long the Vikings will be able to keep him.

Who is ringing in the New Year with you?  Who do you wish could be with you, but isn't there?

This year is going to be a quiet evening at home.  In the past we've gotten together with friends, but the friend that always hosted got tired of having parties when several people said they'd come and then don't.  Last year it had a lot to do with weather, but I'd be fed up too.  I thought about having a party, but now that it's NYE I'm glad I didn't.  I'm tired.  I've had this cold for about a month and I think it's moving into my lungs.  They're really starting to hurt.

So Brian and Bailey went to the grocery store to stock us up on processed junk food, and when they get back and the food's ready (because that will be our supper - hey, it's a special night!), we're going to hunker down by the fire and watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  We also have a puzzle going downstairs, but we've done all except the really hard stuff, so I don't know if we'll work on that or not.  Maybe tomorrow.  Gosh, we're so old & boring.  Oh, well.  This is who we are.

We're going to let the kids stay up until midnight, or until they konk out, whichever comes first.  We have a bottle of sparkling grape juice that we promised them we could have.  We'd gotten it at a winery in Illinois that we stopped at last summer.  The kids love it when we're tasting and they get offered some grape juice and/or crackers.  We usually indulge them and get them a bottle so they don't feel completely slighted for all the time they spend having to follow us to those kinds of places.  This bottle is particularly cool because it has a cat on the label.

So yeah, that's our excitement.  Go us!

Happy New Year to you all.

I just finished my Micro final.  Today was the last day I could take it, and I stayed up too late last night studying.  Studying varied in its productiveness, but I eventually got to the point where the test was just going to have to be whatever it would be.  All of the tests thus far have been short answer (not only having to remember words like Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, but having to spell them correctly and remembering to italicize/underline them like proper microbiologists).....so imagine my surprise when I sat down to take my test and realized that of 126 questions, all but about 10 were either multiple choice or matching!  THANK.GOD. 

Right now I'm so tired, I'm shivering, my hands are shaking, and I feel like collapsing into a heap; however, doing that would be a bit undiginified at work.  Plus it's only 1:00 so there are a few hours of the workday to fill - and thankfully I have some things to do that will keep me busy, and therefore awake.  My body will have to wait until later to shut down.

The major feeling of relief I thought I'd have once I finished this test hasn't set in yet.  I think it's probably because for the last few weeks I've been too tired to have much emotion about anything at all.  I hate when that happens.  But maybe I don't feel done because I still have a few things to do for the separate-yet-related micro lab I've been taking for the last 3 weeks.  I have a written practical that I'll do over the weekend, and then about 20 unknowns that I'll have to figure out in the lab over the course of next week.  But that'll be fun because that instructor is letting us use procedures, notes, whatever we need. 

The lab part has been super-fun, finding all these little critters that grow on different media, and how you can figure out what they are based on what they look like on the plate and the results of different tests that you can run on them.  Yesterday we got to sit with the instructor at the bench helping to interpret cultures on stool samples of real patients.  I know, it sounds gross, but it was fun.  We saw a possible Salmonella and possible Yersinia (both pathogens that can give a person quite a bit of problems), neither of which are particularly rare but are uncommon enough to be interesting.

Brian and I were going to start watching a Bourne marathon tonight (we got the 3-DVD set) but I might not make it past suppertime.  I'm definitely going for 12 hours of sleep tonight, and then tomorrow I get to start feeling like it's Christmas!

Ew.  I feel very yucky today.  I got up early today to study for a test (it went ok; I know I didn't nail it but at least it's over) and shortly after getting up I started having some, well, let's say I had some gastrointestinal problems.  I'm also quite nauseous but have no fever and am feeling very drained and tired.  Like I got hit by a Mack truck, as they say.  This has gone on intermittently since I got up.  I did get ready and come to work - mainly so that I could take my test - but I'm not lasting too well and I think I'm going to go home (it's around 11 am as I write this - at least I can say I've been here 4 hours so I'll only have to take a half day).

I'm actually wondering if this is related to some buffalo chicken strips we had last night.  They were the frozen kind you heat up in the oven.  While we were eating them, Brian and I both observed that they seemed like they could've been in the oven longer, but we thought they were probably fully cooked before being frozen.  Now I'm wondering.  Onset of symptoms was 7-8 hours after eating them, so the timing is about right.  Or maybe I just have food poisoning on the brain from all that studying microbiology.  Brian said he's nauseous too but thinks it's probably related to the cold he already has.  Either way, I'm heading home to try to get some sleep.

I had a new group of students start this week.  I'm really fortunate that all four of them are pretty intelligent and seem to have gotten a good base in blood banking from their schools.  Sometimes that's not so much the case.  I like teaching but it's so draining because you're basically "on" all day long.  I have another micro test today so although I did get some sleep last night (I had to - I couldn't keep my eyes open), I got up way too early.  I'm Voxing to wake up a little.

I'm so glad tomorrow is Saturday.

I'm working toward a record for coffee consumption by a single person.  I'm a contender now that my parents have cut back.

OK, back to work.  These tests don't take themselves.  :)