Claire's Life

So I'm busy planning and preparing for Thanksgiving.  Luckily, I'm not in charge of the meal, but I am bringing mashed potatoes, cranberry relish, and pecan pie (all vegan, of course).  Have to make my list so I can get over to Wegmans tomorrow - don't want to wait too long, or I'm sure it will just be crazy!

We had fun this weekend.  John had to be at school Saturday morning, so I decided to take the girls to the zoo.  I was talking to Megan about it and she and Jay decided to come with their kiddos.  We had fun, and we saw more of the zoo than we normally do.  The crocodiles were freaking me out!  Wow, those are some nasty teeth.  And I loved the armadillo - who would think a little armored rodent could be so cute?!  (Are they really rodents? I don't know, but that's the kind of creature I picture under that armor.)  Oh yeah, one thing that we got to see that I've never seen - orangutans swinging on their overhead wires!  For those of you who have never been to this zoo, they have a couple different areas they can be in, and they're connected by a couple of very thick wires (metal ropes, really) high up above pedestrian walkways.  The orangutans have to walk across these wires (one to walk on, one to hold on to) to get between their play areas.  I've been there half a dozen times and never actually seen them up there until yesterday.  That was neat. Then we came home briefly, got some necessary things, and headed back to Megan's to have my mom's birthday dinner with them. That was fun, though I was really worn out. We had to stop at Trader Joe's on the way there, and I picked up some wine. I was feeling beat by the time we got there, but after a couple glasses of wine, I was great! 

Today was good too - church in the morning, then over to the ILs.  We just got home a little bit ago and now I'm almost ready for bed!  I like it when the weekends have more activity than not.  Otherwise I just get bored sitting around the house, wishing we could go do something fun.  Stupid, I know, considering there are so many great museums near us, but it still happens. Anyway, not this weekend!  Every time I go into DC I say, that wasn't that hard! and it was fun! we should do it more often!  And then we never do...we should stop that.

I am so done with John's stupid school thing.  No, it's not the fact that he's attending school, as that's only one night a week.  I'm done with his stupid TAing.  I can't wait for it to be done.  We were both considering having him do it again next semester, as the extra money is nice to put into our house fund, but we're over that now.  The problem is that the real money comes from him getting a new job, and with his current schedule, he doesn't have time for job-hunting (his recent interview happened kind of by luck).  So we'll pay for one semester (by TAing they let him attend class for free and paid him) and if he hasn't found a new job that can by his tuition by then, we'll have to see.  I'm tired of having hardly any time together.

Today is the Thanksgiving luncheon at Anna's school.  I volunteered to help out so I'll be there for a while - first being a hostess, then eating with Anna.  It should be fun, though I'm sure the food will leave a little something to be desired.  It's been awhile since I had cafeteria food like that and I'm sure it will be kind of gross.

Anna's homework started this week.  I guess they wait until the second quarter to kind of let the kids settle into the routine of first grade.  Anna was so excited on Monday. She was running down the stairs yelling, "I get homework today!"  I had to chuckle to myself, knowing how quickly that attitude would change.  She still likes it now, but she's only had to do it for three days, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time.  Although she truly does enjoy reading (she has to do that for 15 minutes every night) so I'm hoping she hangs on to that.

We have playgroup this afternoon.  The group originally had four moms and their kids, but the other three moms have younger kids too (around 2yo), and due to their naps, we're down to just me and one other mom.  *sigh*  And it's not even like Molly and this other little girl are even playing together that much.  I'm like, really? this is not what I intended.  I mean, I guess it's always good to have more friends, but still...

OK, time to put on some makeup so I don't scare everyone at the bus stop.  Later!

Wow, the weeks are just flying by!  I can't believe Thanksgiving is next week already.

Mondays are usually errand day for us, and we went grocery shopping this morning.  Wegmans has so much great stuff on sale that I ended up spending more money than I expected, but it wasn't too bad.  If things go according to plan, I shouldn't have to buy any of those things until next year, when baking stuff goes on sale again.

Ugh, the house is such a disaster.  I suppose it's more the kitchen than the house.  The problem is that when the weekend comes, it's either: a) I would like a break from all the stuff I do all week long, or b) we're so busy that I don't have time to keep up with the messiness.  Of course I end up paying the price for that come Monday when I have to play catch-up with everything.  The worst is when it's the kitchen.  I tried to wash some dishes this weekend, but I didn't put them away, so I have to deal with that.  Then I cleaned out the fridge of leftovers this morning and I have to deal with those dishes.  *sigh*  It never ends, basically. 

The reason I ended up getting rid of some leftovers (which pretty much never happens) was because John, our main leftover-eater, was out of town last week for three days at his job interview!  He thinks it went OK.  He wasn't enthusiastic after his two technical phone interviews either, but ended up making it through the process, so I don't think I should trust his judgment on how things went.  He's really behind on his school work and TA work now though, which is going to make this week suck big time. I think he's going to have to go to school on Saturday to grade exams with the other TAs and the prof.  What fun.

I started my Christmas shopping yesterday!  I only have a little bit more actual shopping to do, and a couple of online orders to place, and then I'm done!  Thank goodness. We took some tags off the Advent trees at church (you know, to donate stuff to needy kids/families) and I even got that stuff purchased yesterday!  And all the stocking stuffers for the girls!  I was feeling quite accomplished.  I'm still aiming for Thanksgiving, and I'm even wondering if I should just go ahead and wrap everything too.  December is one of my most favorite times of the year, and I don't like it to be spoiled by the stress of gift preparation.  You know, I think I will go ahead and wrap everything.  That way, once the Christmas decorations go up a day or two after Thanksgiving, I can just sit back and enjoy.  And make cookies.  Mmm.  I think I won't be as crazy about it this year as in previous years, but there will definitely be cookie baking happening.

I was at a cooking club for one of my mom's group last night, and there was so much good stuff!  It was Thanksgiving-themed, and I think I found a couple of recipes that I want to try.  There was a mashed potato recipe that used truffle oil, and a very simple but yummy carrot dish.  Then I found another recipe for garlicky mashed sweet potatoes that we're going to try this week to see if could be used for Thanksgiving.  We're going to be at my ILs, but I'll end up bringing some stuff, if MIL lets me. 

I think I'm going to take the girls to this new play museum that opened in Bethesda.  They have free admission until Wednesday and I've heard good things about it.  I have to ask the girls if they would mind driving that far, since they just did it yesterday (it's right near my ILs and they were there with John yesterday).  I'm sure they'll jump at the chance. It's almost too bad though, because it's a gorgeous day out.  But this is Anna's only half-day of the week, and it's pretty much a guarantee that I won't be paying for admission anytime soon.  So if we're going to do it, it has to be today!

Speaking of which, it's almost time to get her off the bus. Maybe I'll see if I can make a dent in the dish pile before then.

Somehow I realized that I had forgotten completely about Spaces and haven't read people's blogs in over a week! Sheesh. I'm back now.

I'm so irritated - I'm tired of having a cold! Two weeks ago was when the girls had their extended fever thing, and I ended up getting a touch of congestion in my chest. I'm pretty sure that was H1N1, but there's no way to know.  After I was on the mend from that for a day or two, I came down with a cold. A gross one too - I was so juicy, and my decongestants weren't doing much for me for the first few days.  Yuck.  When we went to church, I had to say a million times, "Don't shake my hand, I have a cold." Everyone was very grateful for that though.  That lasted most of last week. By Friday I was feeling pretty much normal, and I was looking forward to getting back to the gym today.  Except that, you guessed it, Saturday evening I started to feel weird, and Sunday I woke up with a sore throat.  Ugh!  So irritating.  The good thing is that even though I'm congested, it's just staying put (sorry for the gross details) so no sneezing, blowing my nose, etc.  I sound congested and my throat is really sore in the morning, but for most of the day I'm feeling fine. I will be back at the gym tomorrow.  Since it's more minor than last week, I'm feeling like I can probably exercise and not suffer too many ill effects from that.  But still, can I catch a break here?!  I'm tired of this sick thing.

I think I've mentioned many times before that John's been looking for a new job for quite some time.  Well, through a friend of a friend, he got an interview with a great company.  (I'm not really sure if I should mention their name; sometimes companies are weird about that.  And I certainly don't want to cause any problems.  Let's just say that to work for this company would be a HUGE step up for his career.)  So he had the initial screening interview. Passed that.  Had a technical interview, and even though he didn't think he did well, he passed that one. Had a second technical interview, and passed that, so now they want him to come on site and do real face-to-face interviews.  This company has lots of different offices, and John was uncertain if they were doing just a general interview, or an interview for a specific location. (They wanted him to fly to CA for the face-to-face interviews, so we were concerned.  NOT looking to move to CA!)  Well he found out today that they'll consider him for all open positions, so he booked his tickets and flies out Wednesday night and comes home Friday morning.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that A) the interviews go well, and b) they offer him a position in Reston.  That was the original goal - live and work in the same town.  The thing is that I'd be totally shocked if they didn't offer him a position.  I know that we all probably think the best of our loved ones, but I feel like I can objectively say that John is truly one of the brightest people I know, with a great business sense, and such a strong work ethic.  They'd really be missing out if they passed him by.  He hasn't had much luck in the job hunt thus far, I think because he just doesn't have a lot of contacts.  (You know, they say 95% of jobs are gotten through networking.)  He hasn't been working very long, and the company he works for now is mostly old, retired government employees, so that's not going to get you far.  He's had three offers thus far but turned them all down due to the pathetic salaries.  So I think he's going to get an offer, unless he totally bombs on Thursday (unlikely), but I don't want him to get an offer for another city.  Because I don't want to tell him no, I'm not moving, and you can't work for this phenomenal company that will change your work life and our financial life so much to the better...but I don't want to move.  So I'm not going to think about it for now, and just hope for the best.

OK, I think that was long-winded enough for now. Later!

We were able to get our H1N1 vaccinations last Friday.  After hearing first-hand that it was definitely at Anna's school, that made me feel more urgent about getting it done. Unfortunately, I later learned that for kids, the first dose just primes their immune system, and two weeks after the second dose, they actually have immunity.  And the second dose has to be 28 days after the first.  So the kiddos won't be protected until December, assuming we can get a second dose at that point.  Oh well.

Saturday, Anna came down with a fever.  I read that it is a side effect of the H1N1 mist, but since it lasted for two days, I think that it probably was just a coincidence. She went to soccer practice in the morning and on the way home she was complaining about not feeling well.  Fever it was.  It wasn't too bad on Saturday - about a two hour period where it was pretty high - so she mostly just played with Molly.  Sunday was worse though.  It was higher for longer and she was definitely feeling pretty bad.  She took a nap around 4:30 and when she woke up it had broken.  Then she woke up yesterday with no fever, but we kept her home (trying to adhere to that "fever-free for 24 hours" thing before sending her to school).  She and Molly played all day.  Then last night after dinner John and the girls went out to play, and when they came home they finished their dinner, ate candy apples, and then Molly just broke down.  I asked her what was wrong and she sobbed, "I'm just so tired!"  Poor baby.  She feel asleep on the couch (before the teeth-brushing - darn it! can't be good to go to bed with candy apple in your teeth) and I was thinking, uh oh, this can't be good.  Sure enough, this morning she's got a fever.  She's currently sleeping, and I'm thinking there will be lots of TV in store today.

While they played yesterday, I spent the day in the kitchen.  Literally.  I played games with the girls for about half an hour, and I did eat lunch and get on the computer a few times, but other than that, it was a kitchen day for me.  I made: spinach-cannellini bean dip, granola, two loaves of bread, candy apples, and baked and pureed 4 sugar pumpkins.  And made dinner of course.  Seems like it shouldn't have taken so long, but it did.  I was wiped out by the time the last dish was washed and put away.  Then John gave me a back rub.  Ahhh, that was nice.

(Had to take a short break.  Molly is now under a blanket on the couch, eating cinnamon-sugar toast, our "sick food" of choice, and watching Arthur.)

Unfortunately, this wreaks havoc with our plans for today. Molly's last art class is today, so she'll have to miss that.  I was supposed to provide snack and help out at Anna's first Daisy Scout meeting after school today.  Not only that, but I hadn't even bought the snack yet.  So I scrounged around and found something that would suffice and sent it in with Anna and will try to find someone else to help. I also volunteered to provide a pumpkin for Anna's class' Thursday party; I was going to buy that today and bring it in, as long as I was already at the school.  Guess not.  *sigh*  The best-laid plans...

All right, that's the happenings in my world right now.  Stuck home for day #4. We'll see how long this goes on...

I have to admit, it's kind of nice to have Anna home early on Monday.  In the beginning of the year I thought it was just weird and kind of annoying to have a different schedule one day of the week.  But now that the busy-ness has set in, it's nice to just have her home and be able to hang out and do stuff.  It was nothing special today - we just went to a playground and they played for awhile - but I truly don't get to spend those long blocks of time with her.  On a normal day, she'll come home and we'll chat for a few minutes, and then she's off to catch up on her playing and I have to work on dinner.  A few evenings a week are busy, but even if she's home, she plays with John while I do dishes, and then she goes to bed.  On the weekends, it seems like things have just been busy lately; I guess we're usually together (like going to events or to family members' houses) but it's not the same thing as just having a down afternoon to relax in.  We'll be getting together with my mom every other week on Monday afternoons so that Anna can see her, but I'm going to try to not schedule anything for the other Mondays so that we can have a relaxing day.

Mondays are nice for me also in that there's nothing on my cleaning schedule!  I know that means I should probably do one of those oft-neglected chores, like cleaning baseboards, but it's kind of nice to have a day off from it.  I also didn't do any baking today either (except for a quick batch of whole wheat blueberry muffins for dessert, but that was seriously about 5 minutes), so it was calm.  What we did do is errands this morning.  By the end, Molly was basically begging to go home.  Ha!

First we had to go get John's car from the shop; the stupid water pump was leaking so we had to have that replaced.  $650 later we have the car back.  I hate that!  I shouldn't complain too much - that car has been very good to us, and with 140K miles on it still runs really well.  Anyway, then we went to Target to look for some tights for the girls...yeah, I can tell I waited too long to do that.  They had barely any selection at all.  Oops.  Guess we'll have to keep looking.  Then CVS to pick up my pictures that I had printed, except they hadn't arrived yet (I did it online and I guess that location can't print them or something, so they had to be printed elsewhere and then shipped).  Then Whole Foods to get red lentils (and chestnuts, but when it turned out that they were going to cost me about $16 to get the proper amount, I dropped that idea and decided I would just substitute walnuts in the recipe).  Then Michael's to get some stuff for Anna's Halloween costume (a fairy) and picture frames (for the pix that CVS didn't have).  We were supposed to go to Home Depot to get a replacement part for our ceiling fan (the stupid light chain was pulled completely off and there's no way to turn on the light now) but, like I said, Molly really wanted to go home and I was getting kind of hungry anyway.  Yeah, another thing I waited too long for? Seasonal flu shots. Oops.  Walgreens, Target, and CVS were all out.  I tried calling our doctor, but I swear I was getting a busy signal every time I called.  That has me a little concerned - are there a whole bunch of sick people calling for appointments and then going, because I don't want to go there just so that we can get sick.  I'm going to keep calling around.

Fairfax County is running clinics this weekend to vaccinate children for H1N1 and we're going to do that.  I was a little nervous about it at first, but I've come to terms with it and we're just going to do it.  Even though the girls don't have underlying health concerns, the potential for serious complications just frightens me too much to ignore it and hope they don't get it.  I want to get it too, but it sounds like it will be available for the general population.

I also found out that due to tremendous budget difficulties, Fairfax County is considering chopping all sorts of services at the schools next year, including full-day kindergarten!  Seriously?!  I would be so disappointed.  I mean, I know, it wouldn't kill me to have Molly home for half the day, but I was thinking of all the great things I could get done in the 7 hours both girls would be gone.  I guess we'll just have to wait and see.  I bet it will be cut though - it's a serious budget shortfall they're facing.

I found this great recipe (courtesy of moneysavingmom.com) for pumpkin pie oatmeal - I think I'm going to make it tomorrow morning, subbing walnuts in for pecans since we don't have any at the moment.  Sounds delish, doesn't it?

I was thinking that I didn't have much to say, but I was going to try to write something, but then, as I was opening Writer, I remembered I DO have something to say.  Let me just say, argh!

OK, so remember when I bought my car, oh...a year and a half ago?  Well, because we bought it in MD, the dealership didn't get VA plates for us and put them on.  OK, fine.  We let let our temporary plates go basically all the way until they expired, and then got the new plates at the end of July.  I put the back one on, but then when I went to put on the front one, I realized that there weren't holes in the license plate holder and thought that we would have to drill through it.  To confound things, the holder didn't come off the car.  I told John there was no way I was going to do that, given that I am so prone to making mistakes in projects like that.  I didn't want to accidentally drill into my car's bumper.  So the project was put into his lap. After a couple of months (say maybe in September) we finally got the screws so that he could at least do it if he was so inclined.  Spring 2009 arrives and I hear how a friend's husband got a ticket for not having a front license plate on his car.  I tell John this and emphasize that we really need to get the plate on the car.  Talk about it a few more times over the next few months.  Nothing.  Early summer 2009 I drive by a cop and he pulls out behind me, and I'm pretty convinced that he's going to pull me over.  Turns out to be a false alarm, but that night I tell John that we have GOT to put the plate on the car.  Nothing.  In his (small) defense, in all this time John does attempt to start the project a few times. Once he got the drill out, fully intending to go out to the car and put the plate on...but nothing happened.  We brought the drill over to his mom's one Sunday, thinking that he would have more free time there to be able to go out and do it.  Except he didn't.  Fast forward to this past Monday, almost 15 months since we had gotten the license plates.  I'm driving over to Megan's to see my mom, and guess what happens?  A freaking state trooper pulls me over and gives me a ticket.  Wow, what a surprise. Didn't see that one coming. $25 ticket plus court costs brings it to $90.  Oh joy.  I was, and still am, furious over this incident.  I'm taking deep breaths to calm myself down right now.  Whoooo.  When we got home after our visit with my mom, I went out to the car, bound and determined to just put the damn thing on myself, and if I screwed it up, oh well.  I get out there, look at it again, and this time I think to myself, 'You know, I think I might just be able to push the screw through the plastic and not really have to drill.'  I get the necessary supplies, and lo and behold, don't have to drill.  It takes me a grand total of about 4 minutes, including my trip back into the house to get the screwdriver.  Seriously.  Seriously.  If John had just bothered to look at the damn thing, it would have been done at least a year ago.  But noooo, that's just too much work.  Ugh, he makes me so angry sometimes!  I'm to blame in that I was wrong in how the thing had to be installed, which made the project sound harder than it was.  He's to blame because he did nothing for 15 months.  Which is worse? 

Time to go make bread.  I think the kneading will be good anger management...