lildahls's Blog

I'm going insane

2008-10-24T19:11:00Z

My mother is absolutely driving me up the wall insane. Andy's on a business trip this whole week and (hopefully) will still be coming home tomorrow evening. To keep me company, my mom came on Tuesday and will be going home tomorrow. For the most part, it's been okay. We've been knitting and chatting and watched "Across the Universe" on Wednesday night. My mom doesn't cook and apparently she doesn't clean either. So, not only have I been cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner, but I'm in charge of picking up all the dishes, doing the dishes, putting the dishes away, cleaning up her hair mess in the bathroom and whatnot. Part of me wonders if this is payback for my teenage self. What bothers me the most is that she hasn't even offered to help, she just wanders away to do her own thing. Whenever I visit home, I ALWAYS offer to help clean up.

My big problem now is that she's been indecisive about what she's going to crochet and is being a huge pain. I've offered suggestions and places for her to look at, but she just doesn't grasp that she can do this on her own. Not only that, but while I'm trying to do my own thing (my own knitting, baking, cooking) and listening to music, she insists on talking to me. So when I ask her what a few times, she exclaims 'you don't have to get so mad!' Well I can freaking hear you and you apparently can't hear me, so I have to talk louder.

The other thing that gets my goat is that at dinner time, Andy & I don't let Jax play. I mean, the occasional silliness ensues, but not full out playing. My mom PLAYS with him at dinner and encourages him. I've told her repeatedly to knock it off so he can eat, and she still does it! WTH

Lastly, my mom is one of those people who sleeps in late every single day without a single care that other people have things to do. I wake up at 7:30-8 AM every day (okay, there are the occasional days where 8:30 or 9 is customary). Jax and I get ready for the day and are usually up and running errands or playing by 9 when breakfast is done. I told her that we were going to the library yesterday at 10:30. She didn't want to get up and go so we left without her. I told her that I wanted to do my grocery shopping today at 10 so I could be home in time to make lunch and asked if she could be ready to watch Jax while I went. She said that it wouldn't be a problem. At 10:30 she wasn't even awake yet and I had to wait 'til after 11 to leave. Hello! You are a guest in my house, if you say you are going to do something, than do it. But if you can't even respect your promises, don't make them. I would have taken Jax with me if you had said no.

I've bit my lip throughout the entire week so as not to snap at her. Last night I was going to go play games downstairs and let off some steam when she starts talking about my dead sister. So I felt obligated to sit upstairs with her and talk and knit. I am so ready for her to leave and ready for Andy to be home.

Alright, /end rant my brownies are almost done!

If it weren't for finance charges

2008-10-17T15:35:00Z

I'd have my Victoria's Secret card paid off today. :( Well, it didn't help that I thought my due date was this week when in reality it was last Monday. :( So there was $20 for late fees. Then on top of that, since it's a new billing cycle, they tacked on that lovely $25 finance charge. So instead of having $30 left to pay on that card, there's now $80. Grrr. I hate how you can be so close to paying something off, and then they just screw you over with these stupid little charges.

I need a lifetime supply of Kleenex

2008-10-13T14:26:00Z

I didn't realize just how important it is to be stocked up on tissues until this weekend. It isn't like Jax hasn't had colds before, but this one is especially snotty and gross. How gross? Yesterday while Jax was eating his cereal, his nose dripped a nice lump sum into the middle of his cereal.....which he was still eating. Oh gag! I've already used up the stash of Kleenex in my purse, we've used up almost all of our fabric napkins, and have resorted to tearing off bits of tp to wipe his nose.

When we go and run errands, you'll hardly ever find me ready to go with diapers & wipes. Jax usually never needs me to bring back ups because he usually poops in the afternoon (after snack and juice) and gets changed before we leave, so he's good 'til we come home. When we leave the house, he's usually armed with a juice or milk cup and if he happened to be eating a snack, that comes along too. So I've become accustomed to being pretty lax on the mommy materials in my huge purse (and it isn't like I don't have room; last year I bought this ginormous leather bag from American Eagle that I barely fill with stuff). But this weekend I realized what a mistake it is to never have tissues on hand. Friday morning I had to resort to wiping his nose with his sleeve because it was just oozing.

I consider this a lesson learned. Never leave home without tissues no matter what time of year. :)

Jax, my look-alike

2008-10-12T13:52:00Z

Jax is so cute, he wants to do everything just like us. He wants to carry his own purse complete with a wallet, chapstick and keys. Not only that, he wants to put on his own chapstick and wear my other pair of sunglasses. A couple weeks ago we went out to run errands and he was adamant about wearing my sunglasses *everywhere*.

Bye Bye Y

2008-10-01T14:18:00Z

About a year ago this month I was signing up for the Y and was swimming about 1000 meters 3 days a week. My girlfriend and I were toning ourselves up and getting back into shape. After it started to snow, I gave up on swimming and started to use the elliptical machine and lift weights and got more toned. It was working out pretty sweet with my work schedule at the time and things were going great.

But then I quit work. I tried to keep going to the gym, but over the summer the Y changes its hours to where I could never find the time to go. Luckily I did the swimming thing with Jax for the first two months of summer and then we kept walking everywhere (like when we went disc golfing with Andy) and every once in awile I still managed to make myself run a mile.

Now it's October and I realize that I have not been to the Y once since I quit working. I always think I'm going to go because now they're back into their regular hours. But honestly, where do I even have time to devote an hour to working out? I am NOT a morning person and only did the 5 AM trip to the Y a handful of times. Well, I should amend that. I could be a morning person if I would stop staying up past 1 AM reading. But I'm not enough of a morning person to ever willingly wake up before 8 (preferably 8:30). And since our financial situation is sticky, I can't even do the daycare at the Y because it's $1.50/hr. Doesn't sound like much, but I have to pinch pennies to pay the babysitter at Bible Study. Then the day goes by and while Andy and Jax go disc golfing (I've been reluctant to go since I got stung in the eye by a wasp), I make dinner. And who wants to go running and work out after they eat? So my entire day flies by and I haven't done a darn thing.

Yesterday I went and cancelled my Y membership. I know that someday (most likely when all babies are at school) I will join the Y again, but I'm not seeing it in the near future. I really wish I had not given away our treadmill to a (now ex) friend of mine. But it wasn't worth so much that I really miss it (it's old and kind of crappy). Plus Andy has a stationary bike that's pretty decent and will probably be moved back into the basement before it gets too much colder. Of course I've got all those Carmen Electra DVD's that really helped me get into shape after I had Jax. But I'm looking for something different.

I want to do yoga. Not because it's celebrity fluff and 'in'. I want to do it because there are some good strength training moves and it's relaxing. From what I did this morning, I do the pose, hold it for a minute, and basically close my eyes and breathe in and breathe out. The whole list exercise took me 20 minutes and I felt ready to begin a new day.

.....now that I've written my post, I feel like I've babbled on more than anything, so sorry about the lack of deepness :D This morning I used the exercises from Fitness Magazine online and I'll be going to the library later today to check out what books they have. If anyone has any good suggestions on what I should look for/get I'd much appreciate it!

Homestyle Cleaning

2008-09-30T14:39:00Z

As much as I absolutely adore and love my kitties, I have to admit that they smell. Cat smells are one of those things that no matter how you try to hide it with air fresheners and Oxyclean, it still lingers. And maybe it's just me being overly sensitive to it being smelly because when I lived with a girlfriend of mine, we had 3 cats together and their litter room was nasty.

It seems that every year around the end of the summer, my cat Teo likes to spray things. He shouldn't be doing this as he is fixed, but it still happens. Andy and I have discussed that there are myriad of reasons why he still does it. When we adopted him, he was already 3-4 years old, so we don't know when he was fixed or anything about his previous owner. I always suspected that his previous owner wasn't a nice person because Teo was kind of jittery when I brought him home and shy about all the love I wanted to give him. But now he's used to being pampered and cuddled and things are great. Andy's suggested that maybe he has a UTI, but I don't think that's it either. It doesn't happen all the time, and it's in very specific places that he does it.

We've been using this Scotchguard Oxy Pet Cleaner for when the cats barf/spray/pee. And for the most part it's okay. But for me, I always feel as if there's this lingering smell. Andy says it mostly smells like too much cleaner. Finally I looked up mixing vinegar/water for cleaning treatment and used it on the living room yesterday. It's amazing. The vinegar/water solution absolutely neutralized everything. I sprayed it on the doors, the carpet, everywhere that I could and cleaned/vacuumed. Today there's not an icky smell to be smelt and better yet, Teo hasn't reclaimed his territory.

Another cool thing about the vinegar/water solution is that I used it to clean the inside of our dishwasher and everything just seemed to melt away with a couple squirts and rubdown with a towel. So from now on, I think I'm going to use this for all of my cleaning needs!

Standstill

2008-09-28T01:41:00Z

I think I need to find some other hobbies or something. This weekend I've just been feeling so apathetic about everything. My PC is still crashing at the most inopportune times, so playing any kind of games on it is pretty scarce. But I usually knit quite a bit throughout the week, so I curb back on the weekends. I did pick up a new book today at the library since I finished up my audiobook, but I'm not in the mood to read. To be honest, I have no idea what I'm in the mood for, but I know that I want to do something.

I think another thing is that I'm slowly disentagling myself from the bar scene. Ever since I thought I was pregnant, I've enjoyed not waking up with a hangover, falling asleep cuddling in Andy's arms (usually after some nookie ;) ) and not spending $$ at the bar. Although if you ask any of my guy friends, I rarely spend more than $5 of my own money at the bar. But still. :D I'm done. It's only fun when you can go out and dance with your girlfriends and be silly. Going out with 3 other guys who are....not huge talkers is a drag. Especially since I don't have any girlfriends in town who go to the bars.

It's hard saying goodbye to the part of my life, but I'm not regretting it.

There's Something About Payday

2008-09-26T14:43:00Z

I always have to do so many things on payday. Balance the checkbook, write out the bills, get groceries, get any extra things, and do most of it before noon. Almost always I plan just a few minutes late and we end up being at the grocery store 'til 12:15 and Andy gets antsy and goes and picks something up to eat. This is usually okay except for the days when I ask him to wait and he just goes and gets food. *sigh*

But, this isn't a money angsty post. It's more about how much I plan to do today. As soon as Jax & I brush our teeth it's off to Wal-Mart, K-Mart, the mall, and then hopefully to the grocery store. I'm buying a paper shredder today and am going to get to work shredding all those useless pieces of bills that have invaded my entire desk in the guest room. Not any of the recent bills, but I read in a winter issue of Martha Stewart Living that the only bills you really need to hang on to are the last 6 months. But for us, I'm going to keep at least the past year's just in case. Nonetheless, I have a buttload of bills that need shredding. After the paper shredding fun, I'm going to clean up the guest room and organize it into some sort of guest haven instead of the clutter space it's become.

The other thing I need to do today is plan my Halloween costume. I'm not going to do anything extravagant. Mostly buy a pair of wings, some face paint and maybe some fabric to sew together a fluffy skirt. My idea is to go as a forest imp/fairy. :D I'm all about the basics because there's no way I'm going to spend lots of $$ on a costume I won't ever wear again. A few years ago I spent about $40 on an Alice in Wonderland costume and I can't even tell you where any of it is anymoe. If there was more longevity in costumes I'd be willing, but honestly, there isn't. Plus Jax will need something, but we may wait because Andy's mom loves buying him a cute costume.

Well, I better get going!