So, like everyone else, the question of "What's for dinner?" comes up a lot. Between homeschooling, domestic nonsense and my general inability to stay organized, I'm often down to the wire and calling up our favorite pizza place. Did I mention we got a Christmas card from them with a personal message inside? Yeah, that's how you know when you order too much pizza.
Part of my ADHD is finding an organizational method that works. I have a million unused Daytimers, Dayrunners, mom planners and calendars. I have all the best intentions in the world, and will spend hours (days!) setting up systems that I ultimately will never use because they don't fit my style.
Until I got my Droid. The fact that I can integrate everything Google into it works for me. I have a widget with my Google calendar on the front screen, reminders to email me or SMS me, everyone's schedule on there, it's fantastic. Even if you don't have a smart phone, you can set it up to just send you a text reminder. No cell phone at all? Have it email you. No internet? Well, uhh, how are you reading this then?
But I just realized I could also be using it to keep my meal planning (or lack thereof) under control.
What I did was pull out my recipe box/binder full of standby things our family likes. Then I went into my Google account and set up a new calendar called "meals" (you can call yours anything you like - I won't peek!) Then, I went in and set up a rotation of things we normally like to eat. For example, we always have spaghetti on Monday. I don't know why, but I think it goes back to when I was working full time when we first got married. Dealing with a Monday after a nice weekend left me totally pooped by 5pm, so it was always easy to throw spaghetti on. Anyway, I digress. So, I set up the next coming Monday with the event titled "spaghetti" and then set it to repeat every week on Monday. We eat dinner at 6pm every night (one of my OCD habits) so I have it send me a text 9 hours before the event (which is 9am) to remind me of what we're having.
Then I went through some normal standby stuff like hot dogs, roast, tacos, etc. and set them up to repeat every 3 weeks. For me, that seems like a reasonable amount of time between them. I threw in some other family recipes, and left 1 day every week as a "freebie" day where I can try new recipes and we can decide if they're going into the rotation. It will always be a work in progress as far as adding new things, but we will never again be wondering what we're going to be having.
The other great thing about integrating this with your normal Google family calendar (which I recommend you use anyway -- you can share it with your hubby or kids so everyone knows the schedule at any given time) is that you can see both calendars overlapping at the same time. When you have an event that might result in not eating at home that night you don't shop for that dinner's ingredients that week. You can also put your recipes right in the notes area on each day!
Hope this helps someone!
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Birthday time!
Well, for me anyway. Yesterday.
I'm now officially 32, and it didn't stop me from really wanting confetti, noisemakers and a bounce house on my birthday. I don't feel old, dammit. Do you ever actually start feeling like your age? Other than some cranky knees and my inability to do cartwheels, I could still close my eyes and swear I'm an angsty teenager.
I'm now officially 32, and it didn't stop me from really wanting confetti, noisemakers and a bounce house on my birthday. I don't feel old, dammit. Do you ever actually start feeling like your age? Other than some cranky knees and my inability to do cartwheels, I could still close my eyes and swear I'm an angsty teenager.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Tiresome Thursday
I have a million things this week I haven't gotten done, but wandering out to the garden gives me a little bit of peace in the insanity of the week.
It occurred to me last night that I made a mistake when I was planting. Maybe I had my diagram upside down, maybe I should have made sure I marked the squares and didn't rely on my memory to mark them later. After my initial planting, I went back and added cukes and melons to some squares. However, now I have a plant growing in the square labeled "peppers" on my diagram. It's definitely not a pepper, because my peppers are in pots right now. I have no idea how I messed up, but this is the result:
 |
| Sugar snap peas chuggin' along |
 | ||
| Tomato seedlings (the do-over batch) |
 |
| Mystery veggie |
Obviously, it has to be a cuke or a melon, but I have no idea why I put it where I did, because it's not on the trellis path. I guess I'll find out soon..haha.
Also realized I have all those tomato plants and noplace to put them in the 4x4. Whoops. I have a wee bit of time to figure it out before they need to be transplanted, but ugh! I don't want to do separate buckets for them all, so it looks like another 4x4 is in our future. Woot.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Wanting less...
I can only imagine how a lot of this will sound to those people who actually know me. I mean, really know me.
I'm a spoiled brat. I know this. It's always been a running joke that I'm "high maintenance" and it's absolutely true. I like stuff. I like comfort. I like convenience. I love technology. Both Saarin and myself have been on the forefront of just about every technological boom since we were old enough to type. Way back when, you didn't have a desktop link to your favorite program - you had a black screen with glaring white text (DOS, for all you kiddies) Of course, even then I was spoiled and had a batch menu where I only had to press 1 to load Print Shop or 3 to load Word Perfect (don't get me started on the eye damage I probably sustained from THAT blue-screened beauty!) We embraced cell phones at their clunkiest, dial up modems at their slowest, and dot-matrix printers at their dottiest. We hung out on BBS', and loved our cool art scene friends like the guys in iCE and ACiD - not to mention those wacky MIDI composers. It was a big happy family.. extending across states and territories. I was deeply involved in the lit scene at the time... straddling both Oklahoma based Soulz at Zero, and then later, local Candelabra. Hell, I'm even mentioned (and pictured.. 10 points to anyone who can tell me where that pic was taken!) in a published book about that time period. But.. I'm seriously digressing here.
I feel like I've come to a point in my life where I'm just over it. I don't mean life, duh, I just mean... the constant crackle of technology around me. Sure, of course, I'm guilty of owning a smart phone and freak when the internet goes out for more than 3 minutes. The kids CYBER school, so it's hard to detach from that. But, I'm really yearning for simpler things. I used to love going to the city for the day, but now even the semi-suburbs seem loud and crowded. I look at our wee backyard and the limits of my garden size, and wish I could have chickens! The problem with all of this though, is that this is not who I've been for the past 31..(bleh, almost 32) years. Why am I changing? Why is it different now?
I'm striving to make slow changes in our household, to be more eco-friendly and self-sustaining. It's hard, it's a slow process. I'm met with resistance on a lot of it. I haven't even pushed bigger issues like getting rid of television service and video games. I just worry about the kids, who are so dependent on all this technology from the moment they're born. They never learn to entertain themselves with simple things. Of course, it's obviously my fault as the parent... but at what point do we stop getting sucked into this black hole of convenient consumerism and instant gratification? I just don't know.
I'm a spoiled brat. I know this. It's always been a running joke that I'm "high maintenance" and it's absolutely true. I like stuff. I like comfort. I like convenience. I love technology. Both Saarin and myself have been on the forefront of just about every technological boom since we were old enough to type. Way back when, you didn't have a desktop link to your favorite program - you had a black screen with glaring white text (DOS, for all you kiddies) Of course, even then I was spoiled and had a batch menu where I only had to press 1 to load Print Shop or 3 to load Word Perfect (don't get me started on the eye damage I probably sustained from THAT blue-screened beauty!) We embraced cell phones at their clunkiest, dial up modems at their slowest, and dot-matrix printers at their dottiest. We hung out on BBS', and loved our cool art scene friends like the guys in iCE and ACiD - not to mention those wacky MIDI composers. It was a big happy family.. extending across states and territories. I was deeply involved in the lit scene at the time... straddling both Oklahoma based Soulz at Zero, and then later, local Candelabra. Hell, I'm even mentioned (and pictured.. 10 points to anyone who can tell me where that pic was taken!) in a published book about that time period. But.. I'm seriously digressing here.
I feel like I've come to a point in my life where I'm just over it. I don't mean life, duh, I just mean... the constant crackle of technology around me. Sure, of course, I'm guilty of owning a smart phone and freak when the internet goes out for more than 3 minutes. The kids CYBER school, so it's hard to detach from that. But, I'm really yearning for simpler things. I used to love going to the city for the day, but now even the semi-suburbs seem loud and crowded. I look at our wee backyard and the limits of my garden size, and wish I could have chickens! The problem with all of this though, is that this is not who I've been for the past 31..(bleh, almost 32) years. Why am I changing? Why is it different now?
I'm striving to make slow changes in our household, to be more eco-friendly and self-sustaining. It's hard, it's a slow process. I'm met with resistance on a lot of it. I haven't even pushed bigger issues like getting rid of television service and video games. I just worry about the kids, who are so dependent on all this technology from the moment they're born. They never learn to entertain themselves with simple things. Of course, it's obviously my fault as the parent... but at what point do we stop getting sucked into this black hole of convenient consumerism and instant gratification? I just don't know.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Eww.
Shnub went to the doctor today, and was diagnosed with andenovirus. It's basically this totally awesome giant ball of respiratory virus, stomach bug and pink eye all rolled into one. Dude, when do it, we do it right. Hopefully it will run it's course by the weekend, because he's going to be one sad little man if he doesn't get to go out and play. So, for now we treat it like any other yuck: push fluids and practice crazy amounts of hand washing. So for the moment, we have dodged the scary sequel to PFAPA.
It was a beautiful day otherwise, we managed to hit Wegmans after the doctor and I scored a buttpile* of free toothbrushes and body wash. I also tried Chicken Helper for the first time in my life, and uhmm.. no. Just.. no. It was bad. I actually felt bad requesting the children eat what was on their plates. Ugh. Bad bad mommy. In my quest to find something "really quick because I'm just so freaking tired" I ended up serving them gelatinous chemical goo. (*the actual measurement of a buttpile still pending with the Department of Weights and Measures)
It's becoming "that time of year" around here, in regards to school. It's the exact opposite of the OTHER "that time of year" where I'm all excited to unpack boxes of books, and am snorting the smell of new pencils. This is the time where I'm tired of seeing learning crap all over the house, tired of grading worksheets and tired of finding stubby broken pencils everywhere. Spring is in the air, and I have senioritis worse than anyone else in the house. The big problem with this though, is that the kids have used their allotment of screwing off time and actually have to DOUBLE up their work this month to get done by June. This presents a vexing situation for all of us.
On the topic of school, and I can't remember if I've mentioned this because I really do have a noggin full of noodles when it comes to remembering anything anymore -- we're switching to PA Cyber next year, and I couldn't be more excited. I really feel between their asynchronous and/or synchronous classes, their amazing gifted program, and their larger network of local families we're going to be SO much happier there than Agora. Don't get me wrong, I really like the K12 curriculum - it's awesome - but Agora as a school has just been kind of a mediocre experience for us. They don't seem to really care about the students unless they have an IEP saying they HAVE to. I know that probably sounds harsh, but I'm just done with them. The enrollment meeting with PA Cyber alone was enough to show me they're truly a caring team of administration and teachers. Oh, and of course, the kids are excited too.. haha.
Other than that, it's business as usual around here. I'm looking down the barrel of my 32nd birthday on Saturday and not liking it one bit. I don't feel 32. I feel like I'm still a teenager who was issued a husband, kids and house. I love them, I do, but some days I just don't know how the hell I got here. It's like falling asleep in the car and waking up without seeing any of the trip. It's good to be there, but the process is just a little bit hazy.
Ahhh.. growing up.
It was a beautiful day otherwise, we managed to hit Wegmans after the doctor and I scored a buttpile* of free toothbrushes and body wash. I also tried Chicken Helper for the first time in my life, and uhmm.. no. Just.. no. It was bad. I actually felt bad requesting the children eat what was on their plates. Ugh. Bad bad mommy. In my quest to find something "really quick because I'm just so freaking tired" I ended up serving them gelatinous chemical goo. (*the actual measurement of a buttpile still pending with the Department of Weights and Measures)
It's becoming "that time of year" around here, in regards to school. It's the exact opposite of the OTHER "that time of year" where I'm all excited to unpack boxes of books, and am snorting the smell of new pencils. This is the time where I'm tired of seeing learning crap all over the house, tired of grading worksheets and tired of finding stubby broken pencils everywhere. Spring is in the air, and I have senioritis worse than anyone else in the house. The big problem with this though, is that the kids have used their allotment of screwing off time and actually have to DOUBLE up their work this month to get done by June. This presents a vexing situation for all of us.
On the topic of school, and I can't remember if I've mentioned this because I really do have a noggin full of noodles when it comes to remembering anything anymore -- we're switching to PA Cyber next year, and I couldn't be more excited. I really feel between their asynchronous and/or synchronous classes, their amazing gifted program, and their larger network of local families we're going to be SO much happier there than Agora. Don't get me wrong, I really like the K12 curriculum - it's awesome - but Agora as a school has just been kind of a mediocre experience for us. They don't seem to really care about the students unless they have an IEP saying they HAVE to. I know that probably sounds harsh, but I'm just done with them. The enrollment meeting with PA Cyber alone was enough to show me they're truly a caring team of administration and teachers. Oh, and of course, the kids are excited too.. haha.
Other than that, it's business as usual around here. I'm looking down the barrel of my 32nd birthday on Saturday and not liking it one bit. I don't feel 32. I feel like I'm still a teenager who was issued a husband, kids and house. I love them, I do, but some days I just don't know how the hell I got here. It's like falling asleep in the car and waking up without seeing any of the trip. It's good to be there, but the process is just a little bit hazy.
Ahhh.. growing up.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Very Interesting.
Shar-Pei Dogs Shed Light on Human Fever Syndromes
The finding, published in the March 17 online edition of the journal PLoS Genetics, could help improve understanding of human inflammatory diseases, the researchers said. They noted that the genetic cause of periodic fever syndromes in humans is unknown in about 60 percent of cases.
Oh please, not again.
Shnub has been running a fever since Friday morning. He woke up before me, and by the time I was pouring my first cup of coffee he was saying he didn't feel that great. He promptly threw up about 3 Capri Sun's on my feet and then proceeded to cry because he had also gotten it all over himself. Is it bad that I took a big gulp of coffee and assessed the situation before springing into action? I mean, come on. Caffeine.
I took away all his food for the day, and he basically noodled on the couch. It never once crossed my mind to check him for a fever, because as of this month he's been fever-free for an ENTIRE YEAR. I thought we were done with this crap. Maybe we are, but now I'm getting panicky. I rejoined our support group to inquire about anyone who had dealt with relapses, and unfortunately I heard they happen. Often. Saarin seems to think I'm making a bigger deal out of this than necessary, but it fits all the patterns of Shnub's previous PFAPA episodes. His fever goes up, he's on the couch asleep. His fever comes down, he's running around like a nutball. His legs are "busy" and his throat hurts. UGH UGH UGH. At least as of today (day 4) we're "only" topping off at around 103.4.
Not much else going on around here, to speak of. Big news for me was finally being diagnosed ADD myself after 31 years! Not ADHD, as I am decidedly un-hyper.. but for sure ADD. I began this quest of diagnosis after reading every book on the subject when dealing with Tarso. I would sit there going "hey, that's totally me!" through the majority of the lists. I'm impulsive, I rarely finish projects, and I have that great ability to hyperfocus on something if I'm really into it. The idea of being diagnosed was to shoot for heading back to school, and the possibility of medication helping me. Well, school seems to have gone out the window at this point - but, during the process I have managed to be banned from at least one entire medical practice in the Lehigh Valley. YES! GO ME! I don't have the energy to explain it, but when you get a letter from your doctor saying that she can't treat you anymore because of your "inappropriate behavior" towards her.. well, you know you've been a bad kid.
I took away all his food for the day, and he basically noodled on the couch. It never once crossed my mind to check him for a fever, because as of this month he's been fever-free for an ENTIRE YEAR. I thought we were done with this crap. Maybe we are, but now I'm getting panicky. I rejoined our support group to inquire about anyone who had dealt with relapses, and unfortunately I heard they happen. Often. Saarin seems to think I'm making a bigger deal out of this than necessary, but it fits all the patterns of Shnub's previous PFAPA episodes. His fever goes up, he's on the couch asleep. His fever comes down, he's running around like a nutball. His legs are "busy" and his throat hurts. UGH UGH UGH. At least as of today (day 4) we're "only" topping off at around 103.4.
Not much else going on around here, to speak of. Big news for me was finally being diagnosed ADD myself after 31 years! Not ADHD, as I am decidedly un-hyper.. but for sure ADD. I began this quest of diagnosis after reading every book on the subject when dealing with Tarso. I would sit there going "hey, that's totally me!" through the majority of the lists. I'm impulsive, I rarely finish projects, and I have that great ability to hyperfocus on something if I'm really into it. The idea of being diagnosed was to shoot for heading back to school, and the possibility of medication helping me. Well, school seems to have gone out the window at this point - but, during the process I have managed to be banned from at least one entire medical practice in the Lehigh Valley. YES! GO ME! I don't have the energy to explain it, but when you get a letter from your doctor saying that she can't treat you anymore because of your "inappropriate behavior" towards her.. well, you know you've been a bad kid.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)