The Christmas lights are staying up!

You have no idea what an accomplishment it is for me to get the lights to stay up on our front porch. It is alway a monumental task, but this year it looks like it won't be. Thank you 3M.

Now I need to find the time to put up our tree. Yes, it's true, I still haven't put it up. My kids are not happy with me. Putting up the tree requires time I have not had. I tried to take a couple of days off last week to prep for Christmas and it didn't happen. You see the week before they decided to drug test everyone in my department and wound up firing some people. We've also had people quit for various reasons and we are now incredibly short staffed. They were not happy when I had to leave work yesterday to take care of a sick child, but they knew not to argue with me too.

That position I have been trying to get still hasn't happened mainly because we're to short staffed to move someone into it. Doing so would leave us short another person. Figures.

weight loss

Well I did it!!!! I have now lost 25 pounds. Yeeha! I'm not done yet, but I'm half way there.

Now I need to go put up Christmas lights. I always have trouble with this because they NEVER stay up. This year I bought 3M command hooks for lights so we'll see if we have better luck this time. I also have to watch the load on the outdoor socket because if I plug in to many lights it blows the circuit breaker and shuts down the freezer in our garage. Not a good thing to discover several hours later. Thank heavens for extension cords so I can also hook lights up to the garage plugs.

okay, now I stole one from Sam

I like being a mermaid.

You Are a Mermaid

You are a total daydreamer, and people tend to think you're flakier than you actually are. While your head is often in the clouds, you'll always come back to earth to help someone in need. Beyond being a caring person, you are also very intelligent and rational. You understand the connections of the universe better than almost anyone else.

What Mythological Creature Are You?

Random thoughts

Actually this should just be random things going on.

First off my cat Kali went in for a teeth cleaning and came home with a diagnoses of having an autoimmune disease. It effects the mouth. It's treatable though. Maintaining her overall health shouldn't be a problem with regular care, but chances are good her two daughters have it also. We're going to be taking lots of meds again. I thought we were done with that when we lost Keekee, but I guess not. Have you ever chased three cats around your house trying to give them antibiotics. It is so much fun.

The biggie though is changing the cat food they eat. Of course, it is way more expensive than the expensive brand I was already buying. figures. The cats like it so I guess that's a good thing.

Next on the list is that "Noodle" started Aderall this week. It took her a couple of days to get used to it, but I think she's adjusting.

We went to my son's school for "family literacy day" yesterday (yes, they really did this on a Saturday). My husband kept complaining about who in there right mind would schedule this during football. UMMMM, people who don't watch football. We had fun and got to watch the son read poems he had written and be in a skit with his classmates. He did great.

MY HIP HURTS. DAMMIT. I have been in pain for the past few days and I'm not sure why. I must have done something to it, but I don't know what I did. I took some hydrocodone last night and it didn't do a darned thing. It worked great when I broke my foot. If you hear me cussing under my breath that's what is driving me nuts.

Noodle and I went and checked out the fancy new shopping center they just built here. All high end stores with a movie theater geared for adults. I promised myself I wouldn't buy anything, but I did anyway. Not all the stores were open yet and I'm in trouble when they open the rest. There is a beautiful carousel to ride on so Noodle and went for a spin. You can also rent paddle boats to ride in or take a gondola ride.

Noodle was wondering why I didn't use the valet parking area, but it's hard to explain to a five year old that I didn't want to spend the money for someone else to park my car, especially when it was a heck of lot closer to the buildings than regular parking. When the goddesses are here though we should go see a movie at the new theater. It is the first for the company that formed to build them and it has a real restaurant (no nachos). Then you watch the movie in large leather chairs and drink wine while you enjoy the movie. I'm itching to try this place out. Any takers?

I stole this from Biscuit

I saw this on Biscuit's blog and thought I'd try it. I had feeling I was pretty cluttered.

Your Mind is 75% Cluttered

Your mind is quite cluttered. And like most clutter, it's a bunch of crap you don't need. Try writing down your worst problems and fears. And then put them out of your mind for a while.

How Cluttered is Your Mind?

Noodles updat

I didn't realize so much time had passed. Well, here is an update for you. Noodle is ADHD. Okay, not a surprise here. We got the final analysis today. My husband figures we spent $1000 to find out what we already knew. Not a surprise there either. I learned some new techniques for behaviour and reviewed one we used to use with our son.
The Dr. feels we should try a 30 day trial of meds, but my husband doesn't want to. He wants to wait until she's older before giving them to her. (He did agree to think about it though) I want to go ahead and give it a try. I feel like she is unfairly treated for not being able to sit still, and I don't think another Day Care is going to make a difference there. Her teachers aren't the best. The teachers she currently has cannot handle a child who challenges them in any way. One of the teachers wrote a note in her daily bahaviour book about Noodle spilling her milk. Not a big deal right. Nope, she treated her as if she had done somthing wrong. I about blew my stack.
How do I know what to do next? I'm really not sure.

The Noodle

I picked up the kids today only to discover Noodle's teacher looking like she was at her wits end. Apparently, my daughter was in rare form today. I also found out there is a behavior book they keep daily to let us know how our children are doing that my husband didn't share with me and I had no idea existed. Let's just say it has alot of "comments" in it. When I told her that I was ADHD, my son is ADHD, and I suspected noodle is ADHD she got this look of relief on her face. You would have thought I had lifted a weight off of her shoulders. I think she thought she was going to have to argue with me about it.

I was hoping to go another year, at least, before approaching this subject with her Dr and my husband but I guess it's time. I thought my Husband was going to scream when I brought it up with him. I just kind of grazed the subject I'll go into more depth with him later. Though the fact she is harder to handle than her brother should have been a tip off for him. I also don't think her teachers have the first clue how to handle her type of personality they just want to see meds take care of everything. I will make them no promises there. I'm not against the meds obviously, but I think they should be saved for older kids.

broken windows

In my previous post I mentioned other things going on so I thought I'd share that too.

On Tuesday morning a little before 6am I was about to eat breakfast when my doorbell rang followed by very loud banging on my door. I about jumped through the roof. I went to the door to discover a police officer standing on my front porch. When I opened it he asked if my car window was supposed to be broken. Of course, I said no. I went out to look at it and learned that several cars had been broken into in my neighborhood the weird part was that they didn't steal anything. From looking at the car the officers think they were looking for wallets and such.

I think they may have gotten scared off in front of my house because they never opened the doors (they were stilled locked) and the other cars all had their doors open and had been searched.

The local Toyota dealer ordered a new window for my car and today my husband took it in to be repaired only to be called and told that they ordered the wrong window and the right one will be in Monday. Apparently, my car was made in Japan and they ordered the window for the version made in America. Go figure.

Okay, I'm pissed off

EDIT: I got my package last night. I called the company who after talking to them didn't strike as if they would look at all. However, I emailed both UPS and Kohl's who apparently got right on the issue Tuesday morning. UPS contacted the company too with no luck because the package was sealed up in an industrial wrap for shipment and they hadn't opened it yet and didn't volunteer to look in it for the driver either. The UPS rep called me back and I could tell she was ready to go a few rounds with these people.

About and hour later the receiving company called and said they had found my package and, oops, they had accidently opened it. I was welcome to come pick it up. Because of some other things that were going on I didn't have anyone to send over to get it and I couldn't leave work either. Guess what I called UPS and they went and got and delivered it to my house. Yeah, all finished with this one. I'm going to contact UPS and tell them that even this was caused by them I appreciate that their employees went above and beyond to fix the problem.








I placed an order with Kohl's for some clothes for my upcoming trip with the Goddesses and even had it shipped express air since I wanted to make sure it got here before I leave. I never do this.

My package arrived in my hometown and was delivered at 10:26 am this morning, but not to my house. It was signed for at a business a couple of miles away from here. Who knows what will happen to my package now. If I'm lucky someone will figure out that I don't work there and give it back to UPS, but more likely I will call and get the run around trying to see if they have it still. I've also emailed UPS and asked them to retrieve it and, oh yeah, please refund my shipping fee since you royally screwed up. I guess I should notify Kohls that this happened too.

Kelly has given me an award

Kelly has awarded me a Rockin' girl blogger award. Thank you Kel. http://kellykline.blogspot.com/

Cheryl of Underfoot All The Time - Cheryl is another personal friend that I have known since my teenage years. She's the calm, cool, collected one of the bunch, usually snapping pictures of our incessant insanity. But you have to watch out for her, 'cuz every now and then she'll surprise you with somethin' that you would totally not expect from her!

They alway tell me they have to watch out for the quiet ones.

I would like to nominate someone for this award, but everyone I know has gotten this award. I guess I'll just sit here and enjoy this one. Especially since it's probably the only one I'll ever get. LOL.

Can you imagine waking up to this child jumping in your direction?

Some of you know that my A/C went out a few weeks ago and we thought we were about have to replace the whole thing with a new unit. Fortunately, they found a leak and were able to repair it. This just delays the need to replace the unit though. My husband is so afraid the whole thing will give out again he will only run it on about 80 degrees. I'm not thrilled with this.

He decided me and the kids should sleep in our room since it is the coolest in the house. So every night the kids trade out who sleeps in the middle (they're sweet because they both want to cuddle with Mommy) and cuddles up to me. I have to sleep on one side of the bed because I get up at night a lot. One night my son was sleeping in the middle with his sister on the other side. She was not thrilled about this. Apparently, in the middle of the night she decided that she wasn't going to sleep away from me. I woke up to see her leaping over her brother and caught her just in time to keep all 40 lbs of her from landing on me. She snuggled to me and went back to sleep. She is so cute.

two more

I should say I'm thrilled because I have lost two more pounds. I am thrilled, by the way. I'm officially down seven pounds now.

I've been having a harder time staying on my diet this week, but knowing that it would be a bad idea to cheat has kept me honest to my diet. Some experts out there think Alli is bad, and you should just diet and you would do great. This is true, except some of us need a little extra incentive to stay with it. Not all of us have the strength of will power to hang in there without help. I 'm one of those.

Spatulas

What shall we use those for? We shall see. Maybe.

Fun weekend with the Godesses

Hmmmn! What's in the package?!

NO REALLY we were practicing yoga.

losing weight the "fun" way

I have now lost three more pounds. Down a total of five.

I decided to add a little help to my diet by purchasing the new over the counter version of orlistat, otherwise known as Alli. This seems to be helping me alot. It prevents approximately 25% of the fat you eat from being absorbed by your body. Since I've been trying to loose weight unsuccessfully for quite some time I'm thrilled with the first week's results.

There is one problem though if you eat too much fat in one sitting you will get what they call "treatment effects" this is a fancy way of saying "run for the bathroom."
I've done well and had no effects until last night when I screwed up and ate too much fettucine alfredo, waaayyy to much. I wound up with severe stomach cramps so bad that I also started throwing up. I know TMI, but I felt it was relevant. I will NOT do that again. I felt terrible all day today too. Can you say lesson learned? I knew you could.

HMMM! I like being a Brigitte Bardot

You are Brigitte Bardot

Naurally sensual and beautiful You're an exotic beauty who turns heads everywhere You've got a look that's one of a kind

What Famous Pinup Are You?

Pondering

Yeeha! I'm down another pound. That's two and a half off of me.

I have been pondering something, it's not to profound or anything but....

Why is at the end of the day my eight year old son always has dirt or food smeared across the lower right side of his face. No where else. My sister says it's because he is right handed and is constantly wiping his hand there. This is probably true but why. He washes his hands and I try to get him to use a napkin so why does he keep doing this? I'll probably never really figure out.

Weight loss update sort of

Last week I had lost two pounds, but then we went to my MIL's over the weekend and I ate like a piglet and gained it back.

I am now banging my head against a wall.

I'm back to eating better though. I'm thinking about trying something different this time though. I'm debating between buying the volumetrics book or the rice diet. I'm not a fad diet kind of person, but I really want to get this weight off sometime soon, and the old way ain't workin.

Must lose weight, must lose weight....

Well, I recently decided I need to buckle down and work on losing weight. That probably has something to do with the scale moving upwards. Yeegads!!!!

Hopefully, sometime soon I'll be posting svelte pics of me and not my feet on a scale.

My little one

On Mother's day we decided to take the kids to Sci-Quest, our local children's science museum, and they had a blast. They have a giant playhouse that the kids can run around in so my daughter decided she would be the "Mommy" and I would be the "daughter." She didn't tell me this so it took me a few minutes to figure out why she kept calling my sweetie. She would decide to go somewhere and tell me to "follow me sweetie." After awhile though I had to convince her that it was time for me to be the mommy again. I wanted to go see what my son was doing and she didn't. It took a little convincing but she finally gave in.

We played with the giant bubbles and then she learned about making water flow through channels. She wasn't much interested in other areas though. However, when it was time to leave she was not interested I had to tell her that her Dad and brother were waiting by the exit and whether she liked it or not we were leaving. To be little again.

I got a new camera

For my Birthday this week my family gave me a digital camera. I have been playing with it for a few days now. I just got around to downloading the pics today. This one is of my cat Sandi. She is the most easy going of our cats.

Strattera update

I have, in typical ADHD procrastination, forgotten to update my blog. Big surprise. I have been on Strattera for three weeks now and we upped the dose last week. I have really started to notice the difference. The big plus is that my hands don't shake on it. YES!!

I'm still zoning out, but I think that is more a side effect of lack of sleep and will only get better as my sleep apnea goes away, which I hope happens soon. I'm working on losing weight right now.

The strattera works around the clock which is nice because I don't have the ups and downs I had with a medication that wears off at the end of the day. Sometimes, though, I do miss how I feel off of it too. I have to make a choice and having my mind calm and focusing on stuff is preferable to the agitation I experience when I go into overload.

Now if it could force me to get up off my butt and do the boring housework that I hate to do that would be a plus. I guess I'll just have to keep making myself do that. sigh!

copying biscuit with a widget

I stole this from biscuit because I think it is really cool. It certainly picked up on my traits which is a little scarey.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Changing ADHD medications

I haven't written about my ADHD in quite awhile mainly because I've been too busy to write anything at all. I've been off work for the last three days and it has been great. Unfortunately, I go back to work tomorrow. Crud.

Back to the subject, I quit taking my Ritalin for a while but discovered my symptoms came back with a vengence. I think I noticed them so strongly because I've had them under control for over a year now. I'm sure your wondering why I quit taking the Ritalin and it happens to be a reason no one would guess. I have familial essential tremors and the medicine makes them worse. What that means is my hands shake sometimes. Only when they are in use. This condition has NO connections to Parkinson's so nobody freak out. It runs in my family and several members of my immediate and extended family have them.

When I discovered the connection between my meds and the tremors I decided it was time to look for alternatives to my current medication. Tomorrow I will start taking Strattera. I'll let you know how it goes. Ritalin is the only ADHD medication that is believed to worsen tremors so that makes switching easier.

She did it again. Sort of.

Well noodle has been testing her teachers to no end this week. The other day they called me to tell me she had busted the lip of one of classmates. She hit him with part of a toy. I will say this is the same kid who constantly pushes her and I'm not surprised she did it. However, I feel like they are treating her like she is the sole problem. I mentioned to the director that the other child antognizes her and she said that noodle seems to be learning from him. I was thinking to myself "NO, she's pissed off and getting him back." They are getting ready to move her up to the next class and he won't be in it so I think things are going to improve soon. I hope anyway.

Mom shall relax now and try not to scream. Heehee. When they called me at work to tell me about it I got off the phone and told my co-worker what happened. Everyone in the room wanted to know who made her mad. Two of them were people I don't know so I guess they looked at me and figured my kids were the type who had to be pushed into behaving like that. They would be right. The kid she hit tried to choke her about a month ago. He also picks on her regularly. I told her to play with some of the others, but for some reason she likes this kid. I hope this is not a pattern that she sticks with or I may never let her date.

daughter sent home from daycare

Well today was fun. I got up and sent the kids to school today. My noodle (for those who don't know my daughter) didn't act like she really wanted to go. Then I got myself off to work. I didn't want to go either, but that's life. A couple of hours into work my cell phone rings, and I can't answer it because I'm busy. I figured it was just my hubby and it was no big deal. A moment later the office phone rings and it's the daycare. It turns out that noodle decided to be very difficult today and threw herself down on the floor in a flaming fit. They wanted me to come get her. Now my ADHD son has never had this happen and my daughter has never thown herself on the floor like that. I called my boss and she let me go home.

When I pick her up I could tell the daycare people thought I was going to get angry at them and were being very careful explaining things to me. I'm guessing other parents have lost it before. I asked questions about her behavior for the week and found out she had been like this for a few days. (Thanks for letting me know before you toss her out for the day.) I took her to the Dr to make sure she wasn't sick and all appears well except tonight she gagged and almost threw up. Then went right back to normal. Go figure.

I personally thing this has to do with her regular teacher being out following surgery.

I did notice that when I went back later to get my son the daycare people were looking at noodle like she was a terrible child. It was making me angry. She is going tomorrow and apologizing to her teacher again and we're going to work on it. There is a boy in her class that antagonizes her too. Time to deal with it and I think that will fix the problem. (crossing fingers)