Monday Five Countdown

Last June 2011 Monday Five Countdown! Let's get this thing rollin'...

Five Things I'm Grateful For

1. My weekends with Nate. The hubby works every Saturday and Sunday (roughly 9-5) so I have two full days with Nate by myself. I thought it might be hard having my only two days off every week spent being the sole parent at home, but I am LOVING it every weekend.

2. Buster did not get sick this weekend. See my "1 random thing" below for details, but for here, just SO grateful he was not sick this weekend.

3. It's break week at work (the week between quarters) so there are no students here, only some co-workers and so it's quiet and I can put my iPod on speakers and listen to whatever I want.

4. My parents went down the shore for the day yesterday and the weather was absolute perfection. I'm glad they had such a great day.

5. This Friday starts "Summer Fridays" at work - meaning I get out at 1pm every Friday until the end of August. Hooray!

Four Things I Can't Stop Thinking About

1. The water park that's one town over from us. There's a park with a playground that also has a little sprinkler park that kids can play in and I'm thinking about taking Nate there this upcoming weekend. I took him there yesterday to try out the baby swing again. Surprisingly, he didn't immediately freak out in it like he always did before so I think we're making some headway. Mostly, though, he just wanted to walk through the park, following the path and chasing his own shadow.

2. Money/budget/bills. Ugh. Don't even want to talk about it.

3. My major project at work. This is a do-or-die week for it and I just want to go lie down and stop thinking about it.

4. The Jay-Z book I borrowed from a student months ago. I really should read it this week and finally give it back to him.

Three Things I Want To Accomplish This Week

1. Read that Jay-Z book!

2. Take Nate to the water park and take pictures.

3. Relax.

Two Things I Am Working To Be Positive About

1. Money. I am worried, hard-core, about paying all our bills - the type of worried where you'd rather just not think about all of it and let it all just happen. (Anyone else do that?) It's like the bill paying version of not studying for a test you're worried about. But in the past day or two, I've made myself feel more positive about it all. We WILL be okay. We WILL get through.

2. Summer. So far the weather has been great. I'm dreading the 90+ degree days but so far we've had beautiful summer weather.

One Random Thing

1. So, yeah, Buster. Friday night we were going to have hot dogs for dinner. I had the water on the stove almost boiling and the hot dogs were lined up, ready to go. I decided to run to the bathroom for a minute and then come back. I come back and I hear plastic crinkling and don't see Buster, so I know he's behind the counter with something. I look at the counter... and the hot dogs are gone. I run around the kitchen island and find Buster with the empty hot dog wrapper.

HE ATE ALL SIX HOT DOGS. In, like, literally a minute. Now, mind you, he's a massive pain in my ass but he's never taken food off the counter before.

I just stood there going, "Oh my god. OH MY GOD.  Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!"

Then I began to worry about the weekend. As mentioned above, the hubby would be working so it'd just be me and Nate . . . and . . . a lot of mess in the kitchen??? Oh god, I hoped not!

And, thankfully - very, very, VERY thankfully - Buster did not get sick in any way over the weekend. No puking, no anything else. He was perfectly fine.

Stupid dog.

So that's my Monday Five! If you do the Monday Five, let me know. Link up! :)

7 Quick Tuesday Takes

Thanks for all the support on my Monday Five post and my Living Out Loud post.  It really means a lot.

Update: the hubby had a good meeting with a temp agency yesterday and might find out about a potential position today.  This agency has been good to our family, employing the hubby before, as well as my mom and my brother.  Fingers crossed!  And there's another good lead that I'm hoping for, so I'm feeling more positive today about our situation overall.  I have this gut feeling that things are going to work out not just okay, but really well... eventually, at least.

And now, 7 for Tuesday:

1. I do not understand why students, upon entering a computer room, will leave if the one computer they wanted isn't free even if there are several other available computers.  I just don't get it.

2. This morning I had on my coat and my hat and was putting my gloves on when Buster peed on the floor.  Really?  Really, dog?  You couldn't wait TEN MORE SECONDS?  I wanted to punt him across town.

3.  Nate's wake-up time for the past week has been 6:45.  Why, Nate, why?  It used to be 7:15, which seriously feels so much more reasonable than 6:45.  (And he has a cold now, aw.  He is a big booger bomb.)

4.  I mixed in some hot chocolate mix with my coffee at work this morning (all free).  It made for a really nice treat and a welcoming way to start my day at work.

5.  I have several Pioneer Woman recipe attempts that I have to post about.  I am totally dedicated to posting something about that tomorrow (possibly even with pictures!).

6.  I want to make a vision board.  The visual space around me really affects me (clutter makes me crazy - I literally have trouble thinking straight in a cluttered space) so I think looking at a vision board every day (even passively) would have a positive affect on my personal journey, hopes, ambitions, and achievements.

7.  There's a student at work who was sick and lost all her hair, but now it's growing back in and she has this really adorable super short hair style.  Possibly to compensate, she's accessorizing with really great earrings and scarves lately and looks so incredibly adorable that it makes me want to cut my hair short and wear big chandelier earrings.  I find it really beautiful that in the midst of something difficult, one can find something new for or about themselves.  I think she looks more beautiful now than she did last year (and I'm happy that, while I don't know details, I did overhear that she's fine now).

7 Quick Tuesday Takes - Buster Back Home edition

Having Buster back hasn't been as bad as I had anticipated (so far, anyway).  Here is a further attempt to stay positive about him.

1. Every morning I walk him one mile, first thing when I get up.  (Today is Tuesday, so this is the third day of this new routine.)  As much as I don't like getting up early for this purpose at all, once I get going I don't mind it so much.  It wakes me up, gets my blood flowing, and lets me start thinking about my day.  Also, I've learned that my walking pace has slowed considerably.  I need to switch from boots to sneakers and up my pace.

2. Walking Buster lets me take a leisurely look at the houses in our neighborhood, which I love because they're all different from one another.

3. I took Buster for a two mile walk Saturday night and really enjoyed the opportunity to be alone (okay, semi-alone) with my thoughts.  When, these days, do I ever get to just think for more than 10 seconds without being interrupted by a baby or a student or something?  That two mile walk reminded me of the life I used to lead a few years ago.

4. Buster has peed in the kitchen four times so far, but three of those four were our fault for not taking him out when we needed to.  He also needs to learn how to hold it, but he first needs to be sure that we will take him out when he needs to go if he just waits a little bit longer.

5. Because Buster has never really been given table scraps, he doesn't care when we eat dinner.  He just wanders off and lies down somewhere.  As someone who is used to getting a pupper stare-down during dinner, this is amazing to me (and real incentive to make sure he doesn't start getting table food regularly).

6. Nate absolutely loves Buster.  He smiles when he sees him and laughs hysterically when Buster licks him (ew).  I don't love it when Buster licks him, but I'm glad Nate is building a positive impression of/association with dogs because that's something I think is very important.  (He cries when Buster barks, especially if it wakes him up, but Buster hasn't barked much and I know Nate will adjust with time, as well.)

7. The in-laws, after threatening to drop Buster on our doorstep multiple times over the past few months, now say they miss him.  So for all his Busto Destructo-ness, there has to be something loveable about him.

Extra points for me?  I told the in-laws that if they want to see Buster, all they have to do is come over and visit.

I'll be over here, waiting for sainthood, thanks.

Recipe for flunking NaBloPoMo

Ingredients:

One heaping cup of PMS
One large six month old learning to stand
Six (or more) bumps to the six month old's noggin
Six heaping cups of prodigal puppy

Instructions: mix with wild abandon

I spent a good portion of Friday afternoon in tears over unpaid bills.  I spent most of Saturday prepping for the return of the prodigal pup and then the rest of Saturday dealing with the prodigal pup.  Imagine, if you will, a dog who takes a three mile walk and still shows no signs of being tired.  I spent most of Saturday trying not to bust into tears (I blame the PMS more than anything - stupid hormonal BC makes it so much worse).

So add all that together and you have a very exhausted me on Sunday, still dealing with the dog, trying to wrangle a baby that overnight (literally) learned to pull himself into a standing position and is now pulling up on everything and, naturally, falling over half the time.  He took a random long nap Sunday afternoon, so grocery shopping got delayed so dinner got delayed.  After dinner (which I think I finished eating around 9:45pm?), I was ready for bed.  My laptop was on my bed, but I just shut it and put it on my dresser, completely forgetting to post (and not having had any time to post during the day).

My first NaBloPoMo failure - and, oddly, it's been so easy this year.  I've had no trouble having things to write about - and I had a zillion things on my mind to write about yesterday, I just ran out of time and steam to actually compose the post.  Alas.

I have a bunch of good posts coming up, though, if I do get around to writing them.  I've tried a bunch of Pioneer Woman recipes in the past week and can't wait to write about them.  And now that I'm walking the dog daily and chasing after my son (more like leaping across the room regularly to stop him from cracking his skull open), I will probably be burning more calories and can afford to eat more PW cooking!

The day before B-Day

I did not participate in any Black Friday sales.  I hate those kind of frantic crowds and I can't fathom getting up early just to go shopping in the dark and cold.  I think it's crazy.  But, more so, we also don't have a dime to spend, so I'm certainly not about to get up in the dark and cold and head into the crazy crowds to window shop.

Instead, I've spent today with my son, trying to finish as much unpacking and organizing as possible since tomorrow is B-Day.  Buster Day.  Busto Destructo comes home tomorrow and so we need to clear out boxes (he might eat through them, pee on them, who knows what else) and move the table and chairs from the kitchen into the dining room (finally - haven't had a table in there yet) so we can put his crate in the kitchen.  Took Nate to the pet shop to buy a couple of new collars and a new leash for Buster (as I said, Busto Destructo), a new bed for Oreo (she sleeps in our room), and some stuff to clean off his crate before we bring it in the house.

I've been dreading this day since Nate was born.  I am eternally grateful to my in-laws for dogsitting Buster for us for the past six months so we could let Nate get a little bigger and, as it turns out, let us move into a bigger, better place.

This whole household is in for a rude awakening tomorrow.  Oreo will not be pleased to see Buster.  The hubby will not enjoy having to get up early every day (no more taking turns sleeping in) because one of us will have to get up with Nate and one of us will have to take Buster for a walk.  Buster will be in for the rudest awakening because he doesn't realize tomorrow starts Buster Boot Camp.  There will be no excessive barking, no peeing in his crate, no destroying of personal property, no jumping on furniture, no jumping, period.  He will learn to walk nicely on a leash.  He will not have free reign of any area in the house and he will certainly NOT be allowed to freely roam the floor near Nate.  Buster has a ways to go before he will have proven himself to me.

Sigh.

I'm exhausted just thinking about this. Buster's only a year old, so I know he has growing up to do, but hopefully we can at least manage some behavior modification. I hope beyond hope that six months from now I'm re-reading this and thinking, "Wow, I was so worried.  But all that Buster Boot Camp work we did was great and now he's a much better dog."And I hope I'm not laughing about having that hope.