Have you ever????

Had one of those days that is okay? When you have to go to work when you'd rather be home playing with the kids, but you at least try to make the best out of it? That's how my day started. I still work with people who can't follow simple procedures, come on folks, it isn't that hard. And no, every single procedure isn't followed so saying you are going to do it when so and so does it is redicilus. Why not start the chain? Why not set the good example? Why not do what you are suppose to do? Anyhow, I didn't let any of that bother me today, I just consider the mentality of those who refuse.

Then I come home, Duck isn't ready to go to the meeting and the baby is asleep, I decide to take Sunshine and I have to FIGHT with him to get him into the building. This is something that is very important that he starts making part of his routine. Then we sit down and BK says, "Welcome friends!" And then of course Sunshine says something. Instead of his usual, hi or cute saying (being a retorical statement there is never a need to comment) he, boos. And just incase no one heard it the first time, he did it again. I was mortified, humiliated beyond all belief. I got up, grabbed his arm and we went to correct his attitude. I could not believe that he did that. I was sitting there trying to figure out where that came from, where he picked it up as he had never done it before. I later took him back to the bathroom and we sat in a rest area part and discussed why it wasn't okay to do that. That he really had to say he was sorry, it is really mean to do that and he hurt BK's feelings and mommys too. After the meeting was over I made him go up to BK and say he was sorry he was almost in tears and I was already in tears. It is hard to admit when you are wrong and say your sorry, worse yet when you child is wrong it not only makes you feel guilty but makes you feel helpless since you know or may not know that this is something you child has picked up from you. All in all it was rough! So then I went to the local store and picked up a few things like diapers and such and we ran into a sister who didn't hear him, I'm praying that is the case with most but that horrible dead silence moment would lead one to believe that the whole 50 or so of us heard it. And then we ran into a guy that I recently worked with.

This has been a really taxing day, I'm spent!

Night,
Me.

An interesting day at work...yesterday

Since I've been back from class and we've had the inspection that we passed, I've been really trying to keep everyone in the same mind set that following the rules and doing their job is important. It's really sad when I can't get a employee who has worked there for quite some time who is a adult to do what I ask them to do. Heck, I got a teenager to do it, why can't they? I can only ask people to do the right thing when I'm there, I can't control how others do things when they are there. Is it my fault that they don't look at the job the same way. It really makes me wonder with some of these people, the short cuts they take at work where they are paid to do the things that they are "suppose" to be doing and aren't, how do the treat the rest of the world, their family and their home??? I'm not asking them to do more then they should already be doing, it's their job. It's fast food, not rocket science. I did have the pleasure last night to let two of the employees who actually did a really good job know it, and everyone else. If someone doesn't want to do the job they are paid to do, then perhaps it is time to find a new job, if your that unhappy, why would you stay? I hope that I can apply some of the things that I learned at school to boost moral and get people wanting to do their job right. Why do we feel the need to always have to do it only when we get shopped? We are suppose to be having another insp in less than 60 days.

We had a good bible study today, we visited with a lady who's been a Witness for years who has an autistic son and a daughter with ASP. She was able to give me a bunch of ideas to try with Sunshine. I look forward to getting him into service next Spring.

I need to get up and fold some laundry, I've been doing my best to keep up on it while I'm gone.

Toodles...

Today's treat

Today I treated myself to a Mocha! Yup, eight shots of chocolate instead of 4 in a 22 oz glass full of ice....yummy! So much better than reg coffee it is unreal! It gave me the boost that I needed at 2 pm today and I'm just now coming down. I also made some tea today which was really good. I even made chili with too much meat, it was a bit too much, usually I put 1-2 pound in and this time I cooked 3 pounds at once and forgot to pull some out. So, I made it all into the chili. Tomorrow I will make potato soup as well. Soup is so easy to serve especially the ability to serve a fast meal with a quick sandwich if necessary. I also used my own tomatoes in this one. Smiley took a 3 hour nap...wow! I was able to get a ton of laundry out on the line, infact, I washed all the bedsheets, and blankets and got all on the line, now if I can just get up before it rains and pull them off, I'm going to check the weather tonight and if it is going to rain overnight, we'll pull them off before we go to bed. Tomorrow I'm going to finish the kitchen and clothes hopefully. I need to get the clothes purged, we have too many and we know to many people who need them.

We've also decided how to paint the boys room, we are going to use three colors, a teal, soft blue and a yellow. The yellow will be in their cubby holes, blue and green will be on opposite walls with a double yellow stripe around the top. We'll put a double or thick single blue stripe around the top of one yellow cubby and the same the other except the teal. Then we are going to buy the peal and stick stickers in their favorite characters and put them up on separate walls.

I'm really trying to remember the name of that movie we watched that was so sad and then happy in the end. The Deep End of the Ocean....if you've never seen it...grab a box of clean next and shut the ringer off on the phone. It will make you cry your eyes out if your a parent and remind us how scary it is to turn your head for a few moments.

I want to learn how to make skirts, I have a couple ppl at work who want some and I need to make some warm ones for this winter. I also need to remember to request Dec the 6th off at work so I can go to the the special assembly in Indy. We also need to get down to Evv to see AS and GG.

Okay I need to look a couple of things up before bed and I want to fold some laundry and put it away up stairs.

Night!
Katy

I'm exhausted.

I have NO idea what is going on. I've been sleeping for nearly 2 days. I can't seem to stay awake. Now I feel sickly. This isn't cool! I think it could be in part becuase of the lack of caffine. I stopped drinking pop again, in efforts to reduce the water retention. So I finally made me some tea, but it may be a bit too late for today. I also want to start excersing regularly again. I felt better and had more energy. We are going to start a strict schedule with the kids, this should help on so many levels.

Tonight we are having potatoes and beans for dinner, yup starchy here I come! I need to make some chili again, we are out, this time I'm going to cook it before I can it.

Last night Sunshine went all night without wetting and he woke up and went straight down and went potty! Score one for him! Smiley successfully spilled 3 drinks in less than 5 minutes. It was not fun. Today we did lay more bricks on the drive way. I also got to take out some compost stuff. We are going to pull all the garden tomorrow and pull all the ac units out so we can put up the solar heaters and window plastic.

Gotta go mash potatoes.

Me.

What is leadership?

What does it mean to you?

I'm not totally sure what it means to me.

After attending class I have to figure out how to be a positive leader and still have fun but provide quality service. This will take some evaluation.

The garden plot

I now have my garden plot idea set.

I will start off with 14 tomatoes and one cherry 3 rows of 5
(six in a row will not work, it sufficated.)

Then I will do rows of peppers: 2 x 6, 2-red, 2-orange, 2-yellow, 1-green, 2-merlot, 1-chili jalepeno, 2-pepper chinnies

The next three rows will be mostly green bean. 2 rows of 6 and the third will have
3, on the last three we will put kidney beans, and a full row of 6 of kidney behind that.

Next will be 1 row of lettuce, 3-romaine and 3-head

One row of 6 spinach

One row of 5 cucumbers

The next 3 rows will be broccoli and cauliflower, first will be 4-cauliflower, then two broccoli. The next two rows will be broccoli at 6 per rows.

Cabbage will be the final row of 5 since they have to be put further apart.

Corn will be put on the other side of the garage 120 seeds
Pumpkins will be put ONLY ONE PLANT THIS TIME, off to the side.
Two bags of potatoes
4 loofah plants
1 grape
15 sunflowers.

That should do it. I will replace the spring crops with more beans and tomoatoes as they die off. Shucks, I forgot zuchinni and squash, I need to root them in somewhere. For now I think I should pull two lettuce and two zuchinni. I'm also going try some melons outside the garden.

No carrots or peas this time, they are a waste of time for the space that I have available.

My strawberry plants look like they may do something more than one next year.

Going to class.

While I really never thought that this would happen I'm anxious to go and get it over with. We have many friends who will be driving by the house and a neighbor who will be looking after things. I'm more worried about Manders being in the house alone for that long, but she might like the peace and kick back and relax on the couch without being hasseled by two children. I'm looking for a meeting so we won't miss one. Today we got up really late, I think that it has something to do with the rain, it was so peaceful to listen to it.

Sunshine has been asking about school since Duck is going, we are casually working with him, but we are setting up a strict regiment. For the next 28 weeks starting on the 19th, we are going to 6 day a week school. I'm going to sit down with Duck later and we are going to taking about the way we are going to work this out.

Gotta get running, I have some things to get done.

Me.

Not as productive today.

It was kinda a blah day, I'm really tired and I don't really know why. I didn't get as much done today as I would have liked, but I did get some. I canned 13 quarts of veggie soup In one I tried to put rice in it just to see how it would taste. I put three teaspoons in with one cup of mix and the rest juice, maybe next time I should only put in one teaspoon. Then I made a huge pot of potatoe soup, we have been enjoying the new receipe, tweeking it a bit. This time it is very spice hot. It was really good! I also cleaned out the deep freezer, I don't think I was very happy doing it. There were so many times where, just for a short bit of time, the boys had opened the freezer door and it had partially defrosted. Apparently the popsickles had defrosted and it all fell to the bottom. I had spent at least 30 minutes in the bottom with a hair dryer. It wasn't pretty!. I threw away a bunch of food. And I found that I probably have enough meat to last us until the end of the year. This is very good news for us, this means that I can focus on the veggies that we need, I'm going to start stocking up on frozen vegtables. I will be working on uniforms tonight as well as garden plot and schedules.

Night!
Katy

productive two days...

after work yesterday I didn't do the right thing. I feel asleep for about 30 min on the couch and woke up too late to drive to the afternoon meeting. So we started cleaning, I scoured one side of the kitchen and we ran into town to buy a new part for the dishwasher. It didn't work...surprise surprise. We put in this new expensive faucet, that was given to us, which don't get me wrong, we are very greatful, it is awsome, but you can't use a portable dishwasher with it. So the solution....we hook it up to the bathroom sink. Okay, so it's kooky, but hey it is working! This winter as we do every winter we will seal the back door up and keep the dishwasher back there. I'm going to be caulking all the window seals and trying to learn how to using my sewing machine. I've gotten quite a few of my 45 to do list things done, I still have quite a few, but I will work on them. Duck had to go back to school to see about getting into a lab tonight. This has been a touch semester, I thought it was going to be better, but it infact has been so much worse. I'm going to go get some soup started so that I can can it tomorrow after service. I'm also going to make some potatoe soup and take some to Sister Mil.

We used our broken new chainsaw that isn't broken, the owner just never put chain oil in it apparently. It works so good, I'm SOOOOOO happy. We cut up so much wood so far we have about 2 ricks, I figure we will go through a rick every week or every week and a half. Using that info, I think that we should have about 20-25 ricks of wood ready for this winter. We will also cut extra to sell next year. This should help supliment any income that we don't have. I bet we have another 4 or 5 ricks here to cut, and another 3-5 down the street to pick up. This is going to be a wonderful start! This means that we will only have to cut about 10 ricks which is about 4 or 5 trips to our friends. Then it will be back out early spring.

I'm also really starting to work on plans for my garden next year. I found out that the cups from work that have the dome lid will make perfect for incubators, I will start bringing them home when I use one. I felt terrible, I told B to call me if she needed me and never heard the phone ring, I feel like jerk. I'm so sorry, I feel bad, it has been rough all week, and I was hoping to make it easier for her and I failed her.

Today we hooked up a solar panel, it will be interesting, it should really starting helping our battery back up really well, and hopefully we can run the tv and dvd player off of it 3 or 4 days week, if not more. This will help us reduce the amount of power we use, which would be cool, we are really trying to get our electricity bill down below 100 a month. In fact I'm looking at how to tips on how to reduce the energy you use and I ran across this tip, which doesn't make sense...

Consider setting your water heater temperature at 120 degrees. Take short showers instead of baths. You can use 15 to 25 gallons of hot water for a bath. Showers use 3 to 5 gallons per minute.

Using the median of this theory, lets say the shower uses 4 gallons of water a minute...how long does it take for you to take a shower? Now, I know that most would consider me a freak, but I can literally take a shower from water on to water off in about 3 minutes if I hurry, longer if I'm taking my time and the kids aren't beating the door down. Now, I know for fact that my shower head only uses 2.5 gallons since we have a special one that is energy efficient. Okay..but back to the point, if I took a 3 minute shower at 4 gallons, that would be 12 gallons, good job, but let's face the fact, most people take at least a 5 minute shower if not 10. So at 5 minutes you will be using 20 gallons of water, at 10 you will be using 40. WOW, that's a lot more than 15-25, even if they only used 3 gallons, that's 30 gallons of water. Okay, enough with this pshychotic rant.

We are going to be setting up a new water system in the basement for the gray water system. Thanks to the rain barrels that we found for 5 dollars each, we will need to go get a few more before winter hits, I want two for rain, Duck wants one in the garage, one for the gray water system, one for Sister H and one for Sister W. This will be interesting, this winter we will put a water system in for the dogs that will hopefully allow them to have fresh nonfrozen drinking water. We'll see how this works out. In the mean time while building all the solar heaters, we need one for Sister M and 4 for us including the one for the dogs. At night we will just use the heavy drapes that I make., this way we can use the light during the day to light the house for free and let the natural solar heat in.

We also need to start the insulating project in the basement, never enough hours in the day or days in the week. We need to block off he crawl space after we insulate the floors above the crawl space, this will hopefully keep the bathroom, hallway and laundry room floors warmer. Since we don't heat those areas because the crawl space will be blocked off and it seems to waste more heat then receive we think it will help to wrap the heat pips and insulate not only the floor but to seal it off with insulation board. We are also going to put up plastic over the escape in the basement and plastic the window down there. I'm going to go ahead and plastic the boys bedroom windows upstairs and hang the new curtains and then hallway. I also want to make a door draft buster thingy, I need to find patter on them. I did find a pattern on sungglies or how every you spell it, I'm going to try to make one for each of us, and we are going to look into buying sleeping bags for our beds during the really warm night since we kick the heat down at night real low.

Duke energy which is where I also rec'd the info above on the water says:
Lower your thermostat temperature to the lowest temperature that is comfortable to your family. You may save as much as 3 percent on your energy bill for each degree you lower your thermostat. Reduce your thermostat setting at night and/or when you are away. A 10-degree setback for eight hours each day could save up to 9 percent.

We cut our from 70 to 64 at night, and to 54, which is the lowest setting it will allow us to use. Now, I'm sure your thinking that's cruel to make the kids sleep in a really cold house, keep in mind that we have a child save heater in their bedroom, have the upstairs rooms blocked off so the heaters will only heat the upstairs to 70 at night, we also make the boys wear warm pjs and give them twice as many blankets as we use and in most cases wake up in the middle of the night with all of us in the same bed.

Okay, I'm going to go for now, I feel like I'm rambling and I'm really really really tired.

Toodles....

Sick...death

I'd been sick for the last 2.5 days, it was the oddest thing. And for the record, no I'm not pregnant. I had a stomach thing, I felt like I was going to get sick for the whole time, slept a lot, had no energy and ached. It was horrible. I'm finally starting to feel better, but I'm not 100%.
I've not been able to keep track of our food costs. Basically when we eat at home we are using between 10-15 dollars a day, that is a bit higher than I'd like, but much lower than most.

Yesterday I was due into work at 11 am, I was off to run an errand at 9:30 when I made a gruesome discovery. The dogs hadn't been seen all day so I thought I'd drive back there on my way out. Max and Buddy were cuddled up next to eachother or so it appeared. I then saw Max try to lift his head and saw the chair wrapped around his throat. I then looked at buddy and saw the blood everywhere. I was horrified. I drove quickly back up to the house and ran in to have Duck run out and help me. I could see that Buddy was seriously injured and thought he was dead. Duck and I ran outside to discover that somehow from the time that he fed them last night and we went to be, Max and Buddy somehow got tangled up in Buddy's chain. Since Buddy had not yet been nuetered, we felt it was responsible to chain him up. I had just called about getting him into the vet and got the pricing on it to take him this month. Anyhow, it showed that there was a struggle between he and Max, apparently them trying to get apart and it obviously ended up that Buddy strangled somehow by the chain and Max was just nearly saved. Our hearts are broke at this freak accident, that poor puppy, he was such a good dog, this was truly a sad day.