Memories

I stumbled across the pictures of my car wreck while doing this "All About Me" powerpoint assignment tonight. I found my x-rays a couple weeks ago too. (Found similar ones on this site, but mine didn't take near as long to heal as this guy's.)

Is it horrible that I remember so very little between then and now? Is it weird that at times I sometimes wonder when the hell I'm going to wake up and be back 5-10 years in the past? Going by in this dis-associative state really fucks with one's head.

It's been a while...

Last week was rough. Missed like every appointment I had scheduled and if I didn't miss it, I was late. We were eating out or otherwise not eating real dinner most of the week too. I started out well, logging my food in the Lose It! app and eating carrots and shit, but it went downhill from there. I've been hella tired too. Luckily, it was spring break, so I didn't get behind in any classes. Troy made this boxed Alfredo thing that was not too great last night.
Tonight, we made chili as a family. Lilah helped me cut up the celery and onions, hub cooked the ground turkey, I spiced it up and Lilah dumped in all the canned items. Delish!

Haiku

Cat purr resonates,
A cold wind whistles outside.
My heart beats loudly.

To Homeschool or Not To Homeschool...

Since Lilah's birthday falls funny on the calendar, she will be almost 6 before she is able to go to kindergarten. Considering how smart she is, I fell like she should not have to wait this long. The hub and I talked about homeschooling her for preschool so she can test in and get into kindergarten with other kids her age. This was a while back and we had just got her back in daycare so it was, in my mind, something far off. She's doing awesome at the CDC and I love her teachers and the interaction she gets with the other kids in the class. Sure, theres the down side of some kids being bullies or the occasional bit of exclusionary play for whatever reason, but overall I am happy and think its doing her more good than bad.

Fast forward to now. Troy sent me a text today asking if I was still planning on homeschooling Lilah. He then said that if I was, he thinks her last month at the CDC should be May. I was sort of taken aback at this. She hasn't even been there a year, why would I take her out now? Then I realized why he said May. We are planning on going back home for a long vacation in June and if I'm not mistaken, we will probably have to pay while we are gone to hold her spot. That tacks on another $300 to the vaca budget, which is lame. Not that we wouldn't be spending it if we weren't on vacation, but... You get the idea. If I homeschool her in order to get her into kindergarten a year early, when she is almost five, I will have to start this fall, when she is almost four. Yikes, my kid is almost four! I guess I just didn't realize it was that imminent. 

So I found a website I like and printed out a bunch of information. The website Time4Learning was suggested on that website for curriculum and also recommended by my friend Jenni, who is homeschooling her daughter as well, but for other reasons. I need to talk to the school district here and see what the rules are and what kind of testing she would need in order to be able to attend kindergarten when I want her to as well. If I can just keep her at the CDC and work with her here and there on our time and have her test anyway, I would like that the most. 

I've even contemplated applying at the CDC, which I believe would get me even cheaper rates if not free, or maybe volunteering. I have the sub job already, and it's nice and everything, but if I homeschool, I won't be able to do it anyway. At the CDC, I'd be around younger kids, which I am fond of. Little kids like me too, always have. 

If I don't keep her in the CDC, I could search for a part time preschool program somewhere to balance out the mommy time. Now that she is mostly potty trained, it's a lot easier to find something. There is one at the gymnastics place downtown that is $200 per month, three days a week, from either 8:30-11:30am or 12-3pm. (They should trade me preschool for website work...) I also know a few gals on base here doing the in home daycare thing and could probably work out a part time or as needed schedule with them given they have the openings. One elementary school has a Pre-K program as far as I can tell from the district website, despite a directory site saying all the elementary schools offer it. There are a bunch of "private" schools, all of which, of course, are church-y. There are a few others that are the local drop in places, and a few that are just "private" preschools with no religious affiliation I can tell; Falls Junior Academy, Discoveryland and the Montessori school. 

Part of this is also that recurring back and forth desire to spend more or less time with her. It was all the time with her when she was born, then I started working again, then hub left and it was just us. I took her out of daycare before we moved here and it carried on in the first few months we were here. When there was an opening at the CDC, I had just gotten the sub position so it seemed logical to put her back in daycare otherwise I wouldn't be able to work. I'm not working as much as I originally planned and, as I mentioned before, sucking at school. Now there's the nagging feeling in the back of my head that I should spend more time with her again, especially with all this homeschool talk.

I love that little bug so much and I just want good things for her. I want her to be smart, successful and have the opportunities to do whatever she wants. I want to be there for her, but not be all up in her business. I want to be a good momma, but how to go about that best right now is somewhat unclear.

Fat Tuesday!

The original plan was to go out for dinner this evening, but there was only this one expensive place doing a buffet and this Cajun place that's not very good but would surely be packed. So I did some recipe hunting and did my own Mardi Gras dinner! I made a king cake, chicken étouffée, corn fritters and we are mixing up cheap hurricanes with Hawaiian punch and rum. Happy Mardi Gras!

Tuition Assistance...

... finally hit the bank account!
The plan is to pay off debts, purchase glasses and obtain something to work out on. There was an elliptical on sale at sears for a friggin' steal, so pending pickup, that part is done. (The theory behind this is that if it is staring me in the face, it will be easy to get on it every day.) Glasses are more complex, as I am very picky about how they look on me and I want to shop around since the damn insurance doesn't cover any of it. Debts are hub's repo, my credit card and an extremely past due daycare balance back home I keep forgetting about.
There are also some family members we sort of owe money to also, but two of the three parties have repeatedly said to not "worry about it" and in my book that means consider it a gift. The third party was going to get repaid, but due to recent events, that indirectly became classified as a "don't worry about it" also.
How ironic that on the night I actually got the money to pay my uncle back, his battle with cancer ended up taking a turn for the worse. Sadly to say, he is no longer with us, but I am confident that, when compared to how he was living his last days, his soul must have gone someplace better. Rest in peace, A-Bill, and thank you dearly for helping Troy and I out when we needed it.
Sent from my iPhone

Fudgey Cappuccino Crinkles

I was in a mood to bake. Well, not so much bake as use my stand mixer. The result is both delicious and low fat! (BHG cookbook, 12th edition, page 217) Also, I need to name my stand mixer. I love him so much!

Lunch Report

The Healthy Choice General Tso's Chicken Steamer is way delicious. The right amount of spicy for me to drink a whole glass of milk and an adequate chicken to veggie ratio, despite my dislike of peas. I ate them anyway.

And on the other side of the table, hub and bug are enjoying some green eggs and ham!

Why the hell can't I do this?

This is my wall next to my computer. I see it every day and I know why I put these papers here. On these papers is my entire course schedule of the four classes I'm taking online thru Fort Hays State University. Intro to computer information systems, elements of statistics, ethical issues in the professions and business and intro to sociology, each their own column, left to right. These are calendars I personally set up inside google with every assignment, test, discussion board and reading I am supposed to do. I set them up to not only print out this master schedule of everything in the proper order, but also to email myself reminders when things are coming up due, typically in increments of 3 days before and 10 hours before. So the combination of this being in my direct line of sight on a daily basis and the slew of emails bombarding my inbox should be enough for me to actually be able to do the work on time. Yet I suck and cannot seem to keep my dates straight or my time zones and am beginning to think I should just scrap this semester and plead insanity.

I am going to bring all of this up at my crazy doctor appointment on Thursday and see if we are ready to move forward with my neuropsych evaluation. The new meds are good so far and I have noticed I'm not as moody and am freaking out over small things less, but I still can't seem to wrap my head around the simple self organization of doing ALL of my homework ON time and getting a damn degree already. I've changed majors to something I'm really getting interested in, sociology, yet somehow my kid has been sick every other week and indirectly overthrown my mental focus causing me to miss like everything that's been substantial grade wise in the FIRST class of my new major. My instructor is also my advisor and I have asked for some advising. I don't want to screw up my financial aid for next semester, but it's looking like I might just have to withdraw from a class or two.

Ideally, the neuropsych evaluation will say I am nuts and there's actually something wrong with the wiring that is making what used to be easy so daunting and I'll be able to hook up on some ADA compliance shit with the FHSU DSS office. If the advisor advice and/or discovering my own mental deficiencies don't set things in the right direction, I'm ready to be completely done with college.

About damn time...

I googled the croup crap Lilah is supposed to have and it said that if the fever comes back after it's been gone for 24 hours, another call to the doc is in order. We went to the walk in clinic over by the hospital and the lady listened to her and said that it sounded like she'd been coughing her head off and that it sounded kinda gross in one of her lungs. Gross in the lung is doctor speak for bronchitis. They put in a prescription for Zithromax, which is apparently the uber antibiotic. It's cherry flavored, so I gotta give them props for that. She will probably have to stay home again tomorrow, but by Monday she should be fine. She just coughed up some snotty lemonade grossness. *cringe* Words cannot describe how much I love my husband for being the cleaner of gross things. I can handle blood, but anything else is like ewie.

Lunch Report

The Healthy Choice Mediterranean lemon garlic chicken and shrimp was significantly more bland than I would have liked. Not very lemony or garlicy either. I finally made some tea and I've been using my Splenda with fiber in it instead of sugar. Now I'm sending hub to the store for Indian food fixins, Italian soup stuff and beer. No, we aren't partying, I just need to make some bread!

Also, Lilah is sick still. She didn't have a fever yesterday, but was rockin' 103 this morning again. My poor bug! 

I'm going to try and commit to this blogging thing...

I used to update my livejournal quite a bit, but someone hacked it and deleted all my cool user pics and changed the display one to a rather crude, graphic depiction of fornication. I'll probably still bitch occasionally on there about more personal things, but this is going to be out for everyone to see.

It's good for me to get my thoughts out of my head sometimes. I set up both the mobile feature where I can text to post AND the email feature where I can email a secret email address to post, so I have no excuse to not do this. I hopefully can remember to journal my dreams this way, take pictures of fabulous dinners I cook or capture Lilah being adorable and share it with the universe. We will see how it goes.

The first thing I am going to share is the recipe for naan I found. It's delicious. I made it for the first time topped with minced garlic on Saturday night to consume with Chicken Tikka Masala. I made it again tonight, topped with squeeze basil and fresh cracked black pepper to accompany the spaghetti and homemade meatballs.

And yes, I said squeeze basil... If you have never experienced the majesty of squeeze herbs, go check it out now! Click on the image or here to visit the Gourmet Garden website. They have 11 herbs (Basil, Chili Pepper, Cilantro, Dill, Garlic & Chunky Garlic, Ginger, Italian Herbs, Lemon Grass, Oregano and Parsley) and 6 blended varieties (Thai, Mediterranean, Moroccan, Mexican, Steak and Poultry) although I've never seen the blends anywhere and also have yet to see Chunky Garlic, Oregano or Parsley.