...and off to the walk-in clinic we go!

So. After a series of insanely crazy days during which we barely had time to breathe, our schedule settled down enough to actually cook at home tonight. At least until roughly 5:55pm (edt) when A. sliced the area between the tip of his finger and the pad of his finger nearly off with a bread knife. He wrapped his finger in a paper towel and I took over cooking dinner (he was supposed to be helping K. cook it, she was... in her room, I think, and he was cooking). After roughly 45 minutes of constant pressure to stop the bleeding, A. reluctantly agreed to go to the walk-in clinic because he was "tired of holding pressure on it". I tossed the pasta in the colander, turned off the sauce, turned off the garlic cheese bread, and out the door we went.

The result of the walk-in clinic visit was amusing. Mostly to A., but K. and I got some giggles, too. K. and I hung out in the waiting area while A. went wherever the chick in mint green scrubs took him. When he (finally) came back out he reported a silly conversation where the doctor tried to include A. in the diagnosis and the decision for the course of action that should be taken (something along the lines of the doctor asking A. if he thought they should do stitches or not and A. thinking "YOU'RE the doctor!"), a tetnus shot, his finger super-glued back together, and a 10-day prescription for antibiotics.

We also ended up getting Chick-fil-A on the way home because, woah, pushing 9pm already.

So. I have a kitchen to clean up without having had the benefit of the simple but yummy meal scheduled for tonight. And I'm too tired to even eat all of my nuggets or fries.

And, yeah, A. is fine. More or less. He's planning on getting his prescription filled tomorrow, and he'll have to pick up some bandages to take with him when he leaves town this weekend (he'll be gone from early Sunday morning to late Friday night). And he's now forbidden to use any of the sharp objects in the kitchen. Right now he's sleeping through a disk of House.

And since A. will live and the kitchen still needs to be cleaned up and I'm exhausted, I'll end this.

Sweet dreams, world.
<3<3

Morning!!

Yes, I'm painfully obnoxious when I've slept well and wake rested.

It did take some effort to get up this morning, though. I didn't get to bed until nearly quarter past midnight. It was the only way to ensure K. stayed in bed and, eventually, went to sleep (by accident, surely, while she was pretending to be asleep). I didn't hear the alarm at 5am, but had no urge to kill when A. woke me and asked if I was getting up. I did roll over to try and pull a twinge out of my right shoulder blade (the result of not moving all night) and ended up going back to sleep until twenty minutes later when A. poked me in the back and asked if I was getting up or not. So! Up at 5:20am, I was coherent enough to take a shower immediately. While getting dressed, I prodded K. awake and out the door we went.

It was a slowish 0.4 of a mile. Took about 12 minutes. A little faster than a stroll, not quite fast enough to work up a sweat. It was fast enough to perk up my grumbling child some (maybe it was the discussion about bats?) but not so fast that it twisted out my knee. I call that a win.

So here we are, just about 6:45am, and we're running a little later than either A. or I would like (he's got the goal of going to work earlier during the summer to put in a few extra hours as well as maybe leave a little a earlier from time to time for some summer fun) but we're more or less on track. Everyone is up, more or less dressed, breakfast has been consumed, and the day is getting underway. Today is the first day K. and I are following our summer schedule. It'll take a few weeks to become routine, but I think it will work. Or, rather, will work once I get my 11-year-old accustomed to getting up and walking at 530am every morning. Maybe I'll make her a trade; for every minute she spends walking with me, I'll spend with her playing on the x-box (not something I do well or even enjoy).

A. is gearing up to leave so K. and I need to tackle a few chores. Hopefully she'll actually DO her chores rather than slipping back into bed. She's swiped the kitchen timer so I have high hopes that she's actually working on her room. Guess that means it's time for me to get to work. I want enough stuff done that I can sit down to write without feeling guilty this afternoon. I like guilt-free writing.

Blue skies, world.

Menu - June 8 - 14

Crazy, crazy weeks. Mercy. What can I say? It's been crazy around here.

Highlights from the past few weeks (and tomorrow), both good and bad, and in no particular order:

• someone stole my baby red bell pepper plant off my front porch, in the middle of the day (between noon30 and 6pm this past Friday)


• K. got out of school for the summer


• A. made it home in one piece


• the computer armoire is in place and just needs me to finish putting things onto it


• the entertainment center has been moved. We decided to keep it in once piece (rather than cut 1/3 of it off) for now.


• we're in the process of running around town measuring chairs in various stores to see which will fit the best in the space we have made for a chair


• the majority of the stuff from the old desk is still scattered around on the dining room table, waiting for me to do something with it (find it a new home or trash it)


• the Webkinz site deemed the name of my Lil cow (Hortense) as "inappropriate" and renamed her to "Moo Moo"


• we got the math books (student and teacher's editions) that K. used this past year in math. Tomorrow we start our summer refresher course.


• I started writing again


• we got notification from the apartment complex that the rent will NOT go up if we renew the lease for another year, and we get $100 off the first month


• tomorrow K. starts getting up to walk with me at 530am

So. Menu. Because I'm really tired and if I don't get it done now, it won't be posted again this week.

As always, much gratitude for Laura at I'm an Organizing Junkie for hosting Menu Plan Monday.

things marked with * are items we got in one of the boxes from Angel Food Ministries

Sunday
breakfast: oops
lunch: sandwiches, chips
dinner: take-out

Monday
breakfast: scrambled eggs, grits, hash browns, toast
lunch: leftover spaghetti
dinner: pot roast (edited to add link to recipe), mashed potatoes, lima beans, salad

Tuesday
breakfast: cereal, OJ
lunch: flat bread pizza* (frozen)
dinner: pork chops, rice, broccoli, cauliflower & carrot blend*, salad

Wednesday
breakfast: pancakes (made from mix)*
lunch: sandwiches, pear halves*
dinner: salisbury steak dinner* (frozen), mac & cheese, peas, salad

Thursday
breakfast: eggs, bacon, fruit
lunch: ravioli, fruit
dinner: chicken*, rice, black eye peas, salad

Friday
breakfast: cereal, OJ
lunch: sandwiches, fruit
dinner: beef fajita strips*, flat bread, corn niblets*, salad

Saturday
breakfast: pancakes (waffles?), bacon
lunch: foraging
dinner: ??

Sweet dreams, world.

Redecorating. Sort of.

So. The menu isn't ready for this week. I have vague ideas about what K. and I will be eating (A. leaves town Tuesday afternoon and returns Friday night) but they're still in my head. I'll shake them loose after I'm closer to being done with stage one of the "Fix the Living Room" project.

Today has been spent listening to a Rambo festival (I now have all the Rambo movies!! *squee*) while I figured out what to do with all the stuff that was on the old desk and has been (and is still currently) piled atop the dining room table (and, um, under it) since last night.

We went from a 60 inch wide computer desk with a hutch (over 15 years old so it wasn't designed for a tower set up) to a computer armoire that's just about 35 inches wide and 54 inches tall. It gives us more room in the living room (step two is the six foot tall, 72-inch wide entertainment center which will give us even more room) and I love the armoire idea. I love having the computer and printer out of sight when it's not in use (which, admittedly, isn't that often *laughs* but it DOES happen from time to time). I love having more room in the living room for furniture to sit on (that's step three). The problem comes from the fact that I use roughly 90 to 95% of the stuff on the former desk on a semi-regular to regular basis.

But! But!! I have ideas!!

I don't actually sit at the desk to write, though I do have to sit there to print. (My printer and laptop don't play nice together so I have to print off the backup files on my flash drive.) The desk is where I sometimes pay bills and where K. has monitored access to the internet (one of the big reasons we keep that computer; I won't allow my 11- almost 12-year-old to have internet access in her room). As I said, it's were I sit to print and, really, a lot of my household files are still on the computer on the desk because A. bought me my laptop for me to write on and I really do keep resisting the urge to transfer AAAALL my household files to it (though I did transfer over the most important ones). Seeing as how I don't sit at the desk to write, there's no point in all my writing-related office supplies (reference books, note cards, sticky notes, blahblahblah) hogging up space at the desk. All that stuff needs to find a new home closer to where I'm prone to doing actual research: at the dining room table where I can spread things out. There are two book cases (each at least twenty years old so they're the BIG cases that are so hard to find today) by the dining room table. Surely I can give up at least ONE shelf worth of books to make room for my writing-related office supplies, right? If I'm really lucky, I can clear two shelves and make room for some of my "writer's block/brain freeze toys", too, but since not all the books on the shelves belong to me, I can't make that call. Well, actually I sort of can since A.'s already gone through the partial shelf of his books and that leaves, um, mine. (I'm a book hog... )

The papers that were in the file drawers... eesh. I don't know yet. The old desk had two deep file drawers that held a lot of random research material and general paperwork (not to mention my stationary, my writer's block toys, and other stuff). The new desk has one small drawer under the printer shelf that's both wide and tall enough to hold some hanging files, but it's only deep enough to hold maybe a dozen. I think it's deep enough to hold all the household financial files. Maybe. The rest of the stuff...? I don't know. I'll be spending this week while A. is out of town sorting through and re-evaluating a lot of my stuff. I do have a free-standing two-drawer file cabinet (that's old and needs to be replaced, too) that holds files now. If I do this right, I may be able to dedicate one drawer of that to my research and the other drawer to general household files that don't go in the desk (bills in desk, manuals and such in filing cabinet). Right now it's all speculation, though. I've got a lot of stuff to sort out. Before I start sorting though, I need to work on clearing some space on the bookcases... something I hadn't anticipated doing until much further down the line.

And in the middle of all this "life renovation" chaos, life goes on. K. gets out of school for the summer on Wednesday. A. leaves town Tuesday afternoon and doesn't come home until Friday night. My tomatoes are growing. The pepper plants are dying. And so on and so forth.

And eventually, I'll get the menu made and posted. Eventually. Maybe. Right now, I just want to curl up in a blanket and listen to the night.