Monday Five Countdown
Monday, October 18, 2010 at 2:01PM Five Things I'm Grateful For
1. Nate. I know it's ridiculously cheesy and if I was reading someone else's blog, I would totally roll my eyes and think, "Oh gawd" if I read that the first thing they were grateful for was their son... but I really haven't yet been able to find the words for how deeply his existence touches my heart. There is nothing I love more than his smiling face.
2. Getting our entire security deposit back from our old apartment. We NEED that money this month, more than we have needed money in two years.
3. My car is running beautifully. Okay, it cost $640, but I'm grateful that I have a fantastic mechanic who I know is honest and trustworthy (and who is letting us pay in a couple of installments).
4. The open space in our new home. Sure, there are boxes everywhere and they'll officially be driving me completely and utterly crazy in about two days, but even with those boxes, I can just feel the space around me every minute that I'm home and nothing right now is making me happier.
5. The hubby. (Yes, I know, first my son and now my husband. We can all groan together about how gross and cheesy it all is.) He's been wonderful these past few weeks. Moving makes me very bitchy and I've never moved with a child before, so it was particularly challenging. (Who knew babies don't sit around and let you pack for four hours with no interruptions?) But he has been upbeat and positive and has told me specifically when to cut the bitching when necessary. In other words, he's been perfect (which is more than I could say for myself).
Four Things I Can't Stop Thinking About
1. My Pioneer Woman cookbook. I cannot wait to finish unpacking and setting up my kitchen so that I can COOK SOMETHING. (So far I've heated up some Chef Boyardee and made PW's Egg-in-a-Hole (which the hubby does call "nom in a hole"). Tonight: frozen PF Chang's and some soba noodles. Really looking forward to peeling and dicing and cooking soon.
2. My pantry. It needs shelves. Right now it's just an empty closet and I really want to put all my dry goods in there and then start stocking it, little by little. I had an amazing pantry at my apartment in grad school and I really miss having certain ingredients on hand at all times.
3. Unpacking. My mind is constantly running through visuals of what's in all the boxes and trying to figure out where it's all going to go.
4. The floors. Our new place has really nice floors and I am fearful of screwing them up.
Three Things I Want To Accomplish This Week
1. Unpacking. I want to have the majority of the unpacking done by this Sunday. There are always those few remaining boxes that are hard to place, but I want to get everything reasonable unpacked THIS WEEK.
2. Put up the pantry shelves. I know this is probably asking way too much because it involves measuring and then buying the shelves and then installing them, all of which I need the hubby's help with (Nate isn't too good with the power drill yet). But it would be supremely helpful if they went up because then I could use the current pantry cabinets for our glasses and other dinnerware.
3. Go food shopping. The milk expires today. I have no yogurt. (I don't want the milk to become yogurt, ewww.) We need granola bars (super useful to eat when you have a squirmy baby). Just the essentials, you see.
Two Things I Am Working To Be Positive About
1. The money situation. It's better but it's still scarily tight, especially since I still have two more partial paychecks before I return to full pay and the holidays are right around the corner. But we should be able to pull through. If we can get to Thanksgiving and keep up, we'll be in the clear.
2. Some of the students at work are seriously trying my patience this quarter. They're not being rude or anything like that; they simply need a lot of help and attention with things that are very basic. (I don't want to get too specific.) I have to keep to myself about how unbelievable I think some of their questions are and remember that I don't know everything and that there are plenty of times I need help with something that someone else finds very basic. (Recently, for example, I had to admit to my father-in-law that I had no idea what my fuel pump should sound like. To him, this was as incredible as it is to me when a student doesn't know how to print from Word.) I just remind myself we all have our strengths and can all always help each other out.
One Random Thing
1. I recently discovered that a good number of people I know don't use alarm clocks. They all use the alarm clock feature on their cell phones to wake up. This seemed really odd to me but then I began to wonder if stand-alone alarm clocks are another thing that will disappear eventually, like wristwatches apparently are (again, because people use their cell phones to tell time). Will we eventually have an entire generation that can't read an analog clock? (I already know people who don't understand what it means to say "a quarter to four" or "ten minutes to three".) Things like this always make me feel old.
I'm going to be 85, wearing my wristwatch, listening to a record on a turntable - when I'm not watching a movie on VHS or playing with my Atari. (Um, all of which I will probably have to buy online since I don't own any of that stuff anymore, aside from the watch. Oops.)
Like this countdown? Feel free to copy it and link me to yours in a comment! I'd love to see how everyone else is doing this Monday. :)
Monday Five, car, life, things tht make me happy, work in Work, life 
Reader Comments (9)
I mis my atari! River Raid was the coolest game!
I have an alarm clock, but I use the alarm function on my phone to wake up. The alarm clock is just so we know at a glance what time it is in the middle of the night, without having to turn the phone on and be blinded by the backlit screen.
Loved this idea. I know what you mean about being broke. We stay that way!
I got my Eucerin package in the mail a couple of weeks ago...thanks again! It is wonderful!
Because of you I bought Ree's book over the weekend. Amazon will deliver it tomorrow and I'll start experimenting. :)
I love this! Money stress always seems to make everything else worse, but it will get better!
I don't use my alarm clock but we do have one on the occasion I need to use an alarm clock I do set my phone in the other room so I must get up to get it. You'll quickly learn children make alarm clocks unnecessary.
You have the Atari Flashback 2. John packed it in the box with all the other TV stuff. :)
Love this feature! I might need to "borrow" it and give you credit!
I still use an alarm clock. And I still hit snooze several times more than I would like to admit.
Moving is hard. I hate it. I hate packing. I hate unpacking. I hate feeling unsettled. And even after 2.5 months here, i still feel unsettled. I applaud all of your moving efforts because I know it is hard--and with a baby? Even harder!
I did it too! http://wp.me/pkn1P-r6
Love it! I played too. And I have switched from alarm clock to cell phone (though now that I'm on semi-permanent maternity leave I don't need an alarm clock - Indie wakes me up early enough anyway) even though we have an alarm clock in the room (for white noise).
Lol - speaking of alarm clocks on cell phones, my iPhone crashed this week and I had to send it in for repair. Then it occurred to me... "Oh crap! I don't have an alarm clock now!" Lol. So off to the store I went, where they (luckily) still sell alarm clocks. Then I had to figure out how to program it. ;) It's probably been 10 years since I've used a "real" alarm clock! How very analog it is.
Oh, and I've also realized just how dependent on my phone I've been to know the time during the day, as well. I've half considered buying myself a wristwatch to use while my phone is in the shop. Then I realized how ridiculous that was, since I already have clocks in every room of the house, in my car, and in my office. Still, it's a little disconcerting to not be able to randomly pull the time out of your pocket! Lol.