Where the heck is February going? Really? When last I left you, there was some white stuff on the ground that closed schools and my hubby's work - for 4 days. Well, Scott worked one day and already had a vacation day scheduled in there, but SERIOUSLY!!!! Everyone was home. Stuck in the house. Going nowhere. Not even the pets. The temperature lingered in the 10-20 degree range and we all just hibernated. And what really happened was: nothing. I mean, NOTHING. My brain stopped functioning at full capacity and therefore my body could do nothing but lay on a couch and become the proverbial potato. Ick.
The temperature eventually found it's way above 40 for a couple of days. Ice and snow melted and then BAM! it happened again. Ice and snow in morning commute hours which is enough to shut down our fair city in the blink of an eye. No school again. This time for just one day. This time Scott was only blessed with a delay. No one handled the isolation well though. The charm was gone. The shiny newness feeling you get as a kid when you look out on a yard blanketed by fresh snow completely avoided our house all together the second time around. When your ten year old says something like 'okay, I am starting to get bored with not going to school' you know it's bad. By the time my husband walked through the door that night I was practically crying with my need for a glass of wine.
The whole thing was a disaster. An entire week's worth of appointments and responsibilities got pushed a week or more and our schedules still haven't caught up. My house is still recovering from the constant wet and muddy footprints that trekked through for days on end. Since everything I cleaned was immediately muddy again, at some point I just stopped except for the necessary picking up of the kitchen to maintain my sanity. I am now slowly catching up again, but evidently not fast enough for my 3 yr old who started pointing out how dirty certain things are in here. I'm almost caught up on the laundry despite the frozen drain which caused a minor flood in the kitchen on day 2 of the madness. All is well now, but it seems that I can never quite get all of the laundry done at one time yet. Even my sweet niece's birthday card got out late because I couldn't get to the post office for a stamp or to the store for her gift card.
The original ice storm began around 3 a.m. on an early Tuesday morning. It had been in the high 70's that weekend. It's in the 70's again now. This is Texas for you. It's insane. However, there is a good chance that we are done with super cold for the year, which is awesome. No guarantee. We've been known to get a late burst of cold and even the white stuff. Last year we got several inches of snow dumped on us the last weekend of spring break in mid-March which was VERY strange. It melted almost immediately though and we were soon back in the 80's for the spring. But really, there is no reason to expect that it will be that cold again. At least, that's what I am forcing myself to focus on. We are now officially in the 2nd half of February, it's practically Spring here already. It's almost time to start planting stuff around here (at least I think so, but since I don't have a green thumb I couldn't swear by it).
I feel like February has been a blur so far with all the cold, white stuff ruining my schedule and mood, but it has been busy too.
During the crazy, Scott & Tyler got on the DART rail one afternoon and went down to the NFL Experience to do fun Super Bowl stuff which was even more special for my Packer-Fan son! They left here with Tyler decked out in Green & Gold and Scott wearing his Cowboy jacket. They did fun, football type stuff, took pictures, saw famous people, got interviewed by one tv station that wanted to know what Scott thought the economic impact of the ice storm would be on the super bowl (he didn't think there would be one), saw the Lombardi trophy up close and personal, etc. Someone from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel took about 2 dozen pictures of Tyler at the 'pretend you are in the draft' thingy, but we never found them on-line. My son came home with a very cool Super Bowl baseball cap. He wore it for a few days, but on the day of the actual game he wouldn't put it on until his Packers won, which they did!
Okay - little side note here about Tyler and football. He's always loved the Packers, but never really watched too much of any games. At the beginning of the season he was still saying to me that he didn't like to watch because he didn't really get it all, etc. Over the last season, he's watched more and more, gotten more into it and understood the game much better. Which culminated in him not missing one little second of the big game and running around here moaning 'Why? Why?' after not-so-great plays. And now he wants to play! We have spent the last 2 years trying to convince him to try another team sport with no luck, but when the Rangers went to the World Series he finally started talking about and then agreed to Baseball this spring. Packers go to the Super Bowl and he is ready for some Football. Cool.
Last week turned out to be 'Sterilization Week' in our house. Not intentionally. Brewer was already supposed to be done, but again - ice. The reschedule put 2 surgeries in 2 days because the cat place only did surgeries one day per month. So Monday morning the boys and I loaded Brewer in the van and drove to Denton and dropped off our hyperactive boy. When we picked him up and they said he couldn't run or jump for 7 days I wondered how exactly I was going to accomplish that feat. The pain meds helped. He was so drugged up that when he would walk into a couch or something with his big e-collar, he would just stand there and look at you without trying to un-stick himself. He looked like a moron, but I know he was just very high. Tuesday morning it was Kit Kat's turn. She was not happy to be in her carrier for the ride to Addison, but we managed. She was getting all her shots and screenings too. I was pretty happy to have everything done, until I got her home that evening and discovered one drawback to a high-volume, low-cost cat spay clinic. For the 2 inch incision on her side, they literally shaved the fur off of almost half of that side of her body. She looks ridiculous and it will take months to grow all the way back.
Riley's 3 year check up was also scheduled during the ice storm and got rescheduled for last Tuesday. After we dropped off the cat we all piled back in the van and headed out to Rockwall. The kids asked where we were going. Scooter asked if he could just NOT go and be dropped off at his grandparents. I was running ahead of schedule so I agreed. The boys didn't really get what we were doing with the pets. I would just say they were going to sleep and getting some shots they needed. But that morning while we were trekking across the metroplex my 3 yr old piped up from the back in this very scared little voice 'Mommy, Are you gonna drop me off at the doctor too?'. Ohhhh - poor thing. No way - you aren't a pet!
Somehow we managed to survive both the surgeries and the healing periods. Everyone is running around happy again and as a benefit to my sanity - sterile! No more kitty yowling like a baby in the middle of the night while in heat. Hopefully Brewer's dominance issues will begin to fade. And in the mean time, I even got to therapy and to work one day.
Since my heater couldn't keep up during the bitter cold, we started to do some serious research into exactly where our home was leaking air and keeping it from being anywhere near energy efficient. Even though you know those things are out there lingering, the central air and ceiling fans in the summer keep you from a pressing need to correct them when it's over 100 degrees outside. However, when you have spent almost 2 weeks walking around your home like an eskimo, you are ready to get to work. Scotty started scraping the dried, cracked and pathetic caulk from around our windows and replacing with very nice, new silicone. With the help of my dad, we pulled out the very unattractive door leading to garage with ugly and unnecessary window that was not only uninsulated and uneven, but it turns out not even attached to the house directly, just the mouldings. There is now a very beautiful and very energy efficient steel door in it's place (that opens out to my garage instead of in to be in the way of my pantry!! :) !!!) that is fully secure and fully insulated. And since I can't afford pretty (and double or triple paned) windows at the moment, I am going to try one of these films that you put on your windows to up the R-Value and supposedly reflect some of the suns rays. This will be a slower process and I won't see any results for a few months, but I am hoping that our efforts will lower my summer electric bill by a couple dozen dollars.
Oh! And I did make one small effort towards my next phase of remodeling - I painted the fireplace door. It was that old-school, ugly, almost brass looking stuff, but I didn't want to spend $300 to replace it. Instead, I taped everything off and spray-painted it a flat black. It was a good enough job that when Tyler came home on Sunday he thought that I got a new door. Really, it just looks less obtrusive since all the dark just blends together.
I am also really getting good at this coupon thing. I've had some great deals and my kids are getting quickly trained in the process. When Tyler sees the bags he asks 'How much did you save today?' and when Scooter thinks we need some new snacks he comes up to me to ask 'What do you have a coupon for?'. They have been very good for shopping on 'deal days' which means they can't ask me for anything at the stores because we are only there to get the deals. On 'grocery days' they can ask. We still use coupons on those days, but it's not as strict. On 'deal days' we are not buying anything that I am not getting for free or almost free. Actually my stock pile is starting to take shape and I almost feel weird about some of my purchases, but not enough to change course. For example, Scott & I both have several deodorants here for when we need them that I got for either free or less than 75 cents each. And yet, today I will be getting 2 more for Scott for 22 cents each and a free one for me and I just can't pass that up. We have plenty of body wash, toothpaste and deodorant for a while - guess we will smell good if nothing else! The whole process is pretty addictive, but so worth it. I am keeping a spreadsheet of what I am saving and for groceries and toiletries in the last month I have saved about $500 so far. Some of that savings is for the stockpile of things we don't need yet, but will. I will be grateful in a few months that I have tons of toothpaste on hand that I got for free so that I don't have to spend $4 later.
Valentines Day is over (insert sigh of relief) and we are well on our way to finishing out this short month. I have a couple more appointments to fit in this next week and then I will be doing one of my rare, but fun 'work weeks' for a sales convention of a locally based corporation (they are big, but I just signed a non-disclosure agreement this week so I can't say the name) to finish out February and begin March. It's a chance for me to make some extra money and get out of the house and away from the kids a little bit. Just enough to make me grateful again that I am home with my kids all the time!
So now you are caught up, I'm caught up - or at least I'm trying to be caught up. Back to real life. Back to stressing about things like why my husband and preteen cannot seem to close the bread bag after they remove a slice and whether or not Scooter is going to let the dentist check out his tooth to see if there is a cavity there or not. You know, the normal stuff. And really I'm just a breath away from planning 2 birthdays and figuring out Spring Break, Easter and Summer Vacation. Shew! Was there a break in there somewhere? I think I missed it!
Love ya! God Bless.
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