A Saturday All Alone. . . a wonderful thing.

Again, Super-K is staying with a friend this weekend, and I know it probably seems like she's always gone, we pretty much alternate weekends with her and her best friend.  Our house one weekend, their house the next.  And I know it might seem like I would get lonely after having a houseful all my adult life--after all, I did raise FOUR kids!-- I adore having the house and my time to myself sometimes.  I can cook whatever I want, which usually means not cooking.  I like to eat raw vegetables, fruit and cheese when I'm alone.  And read.  And on occasion, drink a glass of wine.  It's not that I can't do these things with K. here, I just don't. 

Last night Hurricane Sandy visited us and all night the trees outside were banging on my house.  No damage or anything, just some branches that look a little beat up.  I want to see if any large ones are around in my yard or the neighbors' yard so I can build a big weaving loom for our playground.  I think it can lean against a tree.  The kids can then weave anything they find on the playground in there, and I might donate some pretty colorful yarn to add in too.  Once it's finished, I want to display it in my classroom.  I saw it during one of my "research" modes on Pinterest.  Yea me!

Actually I'm not alone all day, I'm going over to stay with my mom today so Joe can go and take care of some stuff at their other house in Leesburg, I will be there at least a few hours, I don't know how long exactly so I need to pack a bag of stuff to do.  It's hard to be around my mom because she's so confused and gets mad at me when I "don't believe her".  For example, she thinks Joe did something to the house while she's been sick, making it a two-story house.  She is very  upset by this, and INSISTS that there are two bedrooms upstairs with beds in them.  She even invited me to come and stay with her.  When I remind her that she's lived in this house for 22 years and there is no upstairs, she gets mad and tries to get up and prove it to me.  And every time she gets up she falls and hurts herself.  I'll just do my best.  Maybe we can watch a movie or something.

Not much else to report.  Everyone is doing fine, and I talked to my Brett last night for a long time. I'm so glad that all my kids are so funny!  They just crack me up. 

I have come to a stunning conclusion.  Although I'm not somebody who cares about having a lot of money, I have decided that doing whatever I can so that I can keep MORE of my money for fun stuff is a good idea.  It's not that I haven't had this idea before, but I just didn't think about it enough to make any changes to help it happen.  Kaleigh and I have been cooking almost everything from scratch lately, which is nice to spend that time together, and we do save a lot of money on food.  This also means buying more raw ingredients, so I am feeling better too.  I looked up my electric company's peak usage hours, and I have deemed that we will no longer be washing clothes or using the dishwasher during those times, which doesn't turn out to be too hard after all--the peak times are 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.  Weekends are fine anytime, but I could stick to that anyway.  I will also make a point to push my thermostat up when the dryer or dishwasher is running.  This means that my electric bill WILL GO DOWN.   Yea me, again!  I also set up my drying racks in a corner of my living room and will start to use those again--probably not for everything, but for my clothes at least.  And my sheets.  Every little bit helps. 

This week has been a lot better for me in terms of my classroom.  I think I'm just going to have to be more structured in the way we teach things this year because of the mix of children we have.  For example, Friday I set up specific stations and granted, we had a LOT of help, but I think that can work on a smaller scale daily.  My goal is now to figure out some good attention-getters, change the cleanup song to something people can't dance to, and work our way into more formal groupings by the Christmas break.  I can do it, I have superpowers!  Yea for me THRICE!  (Do you like the way I worked thrice into my post?)