September and Everything After

I still miss Chopper, there’s a kitty sized hole in the world. I liked coming home to “kitties” (Angie cat is only 1 kitty) and I liked the way he was always in the middle of everything and the way he’d answer if you asked him a question. And to top it all off, I hate seeing how much LYC misses Chopper.

Yesterday was Kelly’s 9th birthday. We went out to dinner Sunday night and then celebrated with ice cream cake at home yesterday. Her gift was a Nintendo DSI that she got it in a weird roundabout way. I bought Zach’s and gave it to her. He’s been bugging me to sell it on eBay for months and since I hate “feeBay”, I kept putting it off. It’s what she wanted and I didn’t have to go to the store and pay full price so it was perfect! He even tossed in all his old games.

I’m staring down a monster To Do List now. Over the weekend, I went through every single item of clothing the kids own, gathered both from my house and G’s. It’s not as bad as it sounds because I do this twice a year to keep things manageable. After that, we went shopping and the children now have long sleeve shirts that fit, jeans without holes, and winter outerwear (except for Zach because they were out of his size in the coat he wanted). And my bank account is $500 poorer. Ouch.

So part of the To Do List includes dropping off a few bags of clothes donations to Goodwill and attempting to sell some of the decent name brand stuff at Once Upon a Child. Also on the List: bank (need cash for Zach, need to close business account), post office (getting rid of business PO box), Staples (broke my 3 ring hole puncher and I’m out of mechanical pencils), JoAnn’s for fabric (working on some Christmas stuff early), and a BUNCH of Girl Scout stuff which includes registering a few girls (dropping off paperwork and depositing registration money), getting their collected holiday gift donations dropped off, mailing some letters they wrote, putting together the Troop Financial Report (or we can’t sell cookies, ack!), and planning Thursday’s meeting. For college, I have some statistics homework to finish and then I need to write a Psalms paper (I get to make up 3 of my own and compare and contrast to some in the Bible), both for Thursday.

First stop in the morning after the kids are on the bus? Starbucks for as much caffeine at they can legally put in one cup.

4 more weeks of college until winter break!

I wish I had better news about LYC’s cat but we had to put him down Saturday morning. Friday afternoon I went to visit him and the vet gave me his ultrasound results: a large mass on his liver with lymph node tumors. I think I cried from that moment through most of Saturday. I called LYC the second he got off the plane from Philly and told him I was bringing Chop home (we were cutting times close as his plane landed at 4:30 and they lock the doors at the hospital at 5pm). LYC didn’t want Chop to suffer any longer so I scheduled another appointment to bring him back the next morning.

I know I’ve been extremely lucky that all my close family members are alive and healthy because this was hard. I remember when my mom’s mom passed and I was a zombie for weeks. Chop wasn’t just a cat, he was LYC’s family for last 17 some years and it was so sad to let Chopper go.

The kids took the news hard, they had been at G’s for the week and didn’t know Chop was so sick. They knew he had been throwing up on Friday before they left but they didn’t get to say good-bye. We’ve all petted and snuggled with Angie cat a little more than usual all weekend.

Rest In Peace, Chopper, we miss you.

So to follow up on the yard thing, I think one of my neighbors is just being pissy with me (he doesn’t like my cat). The thistles are mostly gone anyways and I don’t care about the lawn weeds as everything will be dying soon. So that leaves the mold on the north side of the house. Technically in my lease contract, I’m suppose to do all outside maintenance. Hmph. Except I don’t have a power washer. So whatever, I’ve got bigger fish to fry and this is not going to even make the To Do List. My lease is up Feb 1st and I either move or stay put and ask the landlord nicely to come clean the side of the house. I’ll deal with it then.

Back to my weekend… One of my Girl Scout mom friends celebrated her 40th birthday and so 6 of us all spent the weekend at a local Bed and Breakfast (this one for auntit502: Ivy House ) It was absolutely wonderful! It was like a big sleepover except we were all in our 30′s and 40′s. It was very nice to get away and hang out with the girls for awhile.

That said, Chopper cat got very sick over the weekend and had to go to the emergency pet hospital. He was doing so awesome last weekend and most of the week, getting fat and purring and all that good kitty stuff. (History: he’s 17.5 years old and on thyroid meds for a hyperthyroid. If he doesn’t take the meds, he gets super skinny.) Then Friday he fought like the dickens not to take his morning pill and didn’t eat breakfast. He puked most of the day and started having runny stools. By Saturday when I left for the B&B (Chop was back at LYC’s house), he looked so pitiful. LYC took him into the hospital Sunday morning and he’s still there. The vet thinks it was a stomach bug and since Chop couldn’t keep his thyroid meds down, he got sicker. We’re hopefully going to visit him this afternoon and he may come home tomorrow.

For my dad, I’m ignoring the time change. I haven’t changed my clocks at my house (grrr) and I’m all messed up sleep/meal wise now. Which isn’t too big of a deal really because I’m going into one of my work/school/sleep weeks (no kids) so it was going to happen anyways.

5 more weeks!

Could I catch a break, please?

So after spending nearly $80 on fabric for the twin’s costumes, they didn’t get made. I just ran out of time. And to top it off, the pattern either was missing a piece or I accidentally threw it away. Who knows? The girls made up other costumes and brought home tons of candy so it was alright in the end. Minus the money I spent on fabric that may or may not eventually get used.

Today I received a letter in the mail from the neighborhood home owners association saying I need to clean the “mold” off the north side of the house, get rid of the thistles in the back yard, and apply weed control to the lawn. Yeah I’ll get right on that because I have all the time and money in the world to take care of all this.

I miss sleep.

School is okay. I seem to have middle of the road B’s in everything. Which is fine but I’ve always been the “anything besides an A is failing” type of person so it’s hard to accept. It’s just time consuming. I’ve registered for classes for next semester already. I’m only taking three but it involves two days in the hospital a week instead of one like I have been doing.

Alright, somehow I need to go grocery shopping, make dinner, swing by the hospital for my patient assignment for tomorrow, start that patient’s care plan, and do laundry. I also have to pay the bills (although my child support hasn’t deposited in my account from last week yet), finish a psych paper due Thursday and plan a Girl Scout meeting (also Thursday). My head hurts and there are candy wrappers everywhere.

6 more weeks…

Non-kid week starting today. Which means my insane “work-school-sleep” repeat, repeat, repeat schedule. I thought about easing up on the work part but Christmas is coming up soon and the kids still need some fall/winter clothes. Although Em left her jacket at a park (while at a friend’s house) over the weekend and I have no way of getting it back now. This just bugs the hell out of me. I can’t really afford to run out and buy her a new jacket every time she (and Ally) does this. But then I look like the rotten parent because the twins don’t have jackets. Again. This whole “consequences” thing is taking way longer for them to learn than I’d like. Also? They think taking Zach’s or my jacket is an acceptable solution. Grrrr…. This is probably like their “dramatic” attitudes. I kept waiting for them to outgrow that and finally I just had to accept that they are dramatic people. The twins will likely be those adults who lose their cell phones and keys and whatever all the time and I’ll still be thinking “how the hell did you lose that again?!?!?”

I’m kinda patting myself on the back for planning ahead a bit for this “work-school-sleep” thing. Next Monday is Halloween and since weeks like these are pretty much worthless for anything beyond “work-school-sleep”, I have all the kids’ costume stuff purchased already and Kelly’s is actually finished! The girls decided they wanted costumes after all by the way. Kelly is a Charlie Brown ghost (with the shiny white fabric I bought for her “evil bride” costume, whatever), the twins are medeval princesses, Kyle will be Pac Man, and Zach a scarecrow with a fabric potato sack on his head. Zach seems to think he’s going to sit in a chair with the bowl of candy and not move and then scare the trick or treating kids when they reach into the bowl for candy. I don’t think he’ll be able to sit still that long but we’ll see.

Along the same lines, this morning I finished up all my homework due this week. I just have 2 tests on Thursday to study for. I went grocery shopping and plan to make some sandwiches and salads for the week. I’ve slipped in this department lately and have been spending too much money on the exact same sandwiches and salads at school and work. I have a lot of regrets when it comes to my post-divorce spending habits but at least this is little one I can fix without too much hassle.

Anyway I should be napping right now since I work at 11 tonight. It’s so hard to sleep during the day before the first night shift.

7 more weeks of school…

It’s been a rough month. I was kinda struggling with school, balancing any studying with kids and work (and LYC. Cause really? Reading 50 pages of cardiology or hanging with a cool dude doing fun stuff?). I actually have a post from Oct 6th in draft form that kinda rants about all this (minus the LYC part) but it’ll probably stay there. Long story short, it’s been a rough month. And as my mid-term grads trickle in, it kinda proves it. So far B- in nursing, B+ in statistics and I probably have a B in both psychology and theology. I’m coming to grips that I likely won’t make the Dean’s List this semester.

Oh and the electricity was turned off again. I swear I suck at life sometimes. So after a mad dash with several phone calls, a notary, a fax, and then scratching together the money (cause I had just sent out like $3K in bills and the bank account balance was hovering around zero), I think this won’t happen again. The problem is they haven’t been sending me the electric bill and then if I don’t have a bill, I kinda forget to call and pay over the phone. Cause you know, I’m just sitting on the sofa and eating bon bons all day…

Anyway this is my last day of fall break and I’m hoping to catch up on some stuff. I worked 2 twelve hour shifts (Sunday and Monday nights) and they were hard, busy nights (“go, go, go”) so nothing got done during the day Monday or Tuesday except sleep. I hope to finish up 2 homework assignments, buy groceries, do the laundry, and clean the house today.

A few random thoughts: the kids are being wishy washy on Halloween costumes and I’ve already bought fabric and patterns… The girls think they just want to go in PJ’s now and it’s kinda breaking my heart that they don’t want “real” costumes (plus I spent $40 already, *grumble*). And then I think I’m switching back to tea in the morning instead of coffee. For some reason coffee just hasn’t tasted so good lately. Like I said, random.

8 more weeks, I can make it…

It’s going to be a busy month.

We didn’t go camping over the weekend. And a good thing since there was frost on the ground Friday night here! Brrr! But the real reasons were schedule changes: I ended up switching Saturday shifts with a girl from work (so I’m off next Saturday instead) and LYC had to fly back to NJ early (Sunday instead of Monday).

I’m still working on today’s To Do List but it’s going to be jammed packed: groceries, GS meeting planning, errands, bill paying, Halloween costume planning, soccer practice, boy scout meeting, studying for a big nursing test tomorrow, stats homework. There’s another theology paper due later this week (I think it’s on King David), that’ll probably get done Wednesday at 11pm again.

Alrighty back to the grindstone.