Snow Day in Hotlanta

It might snow. I think there's, like, a 40% chance of it. So what's happening? The usual freak-out-ness of it all. Schools are letting out early (but after the half day mark so that we don't have to make it up) so essentially kids are coming to school for breakfast and lunch. Of course, the high school and middle schools will be released when the "storm" is supposed to be here. We'll see. However, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I got the message that we can leave when staff leaves...so I'm outta here. Fingers are crossed that tonight's staff meeting will be rescheduled, too.

So my last post was uber-whiney-riffic, if I do say so myself. And I do. I'm still tired but actually have gotten about 5 hours of sleep the last couple of nights. On Friday I hauled my cookies to the doctor and got the pain thingy looked at. Miss Graceful, here, somehow managed to tear the fibers that connect your ribs. I didn't even know you could do that. So I'm on prescription pain meds...one for day and one for night. The day stuff isn't my fav as I have to take Nexium before I take it so it doesn't tear my stomach a new one. So I get up and take my thyroid medicine, wait an hour, take the Nexium, wait an hour and THEN I can eat breakfast and take the pain med...which take about an hour + to kick in. It's 10 am and I've been up since 5:30 and they are just now kicking in, if that gives you an idea.

Anyhow, the exercise is on hold because of this fiber tearing thing (6 wks to heal...I'll give walking a try next week) and eating smartly is not happening. I guess since we've decided to do this Daniel Plan thing when the Bible study comes in (shipping on 2/3), we're kinda doing an eating free-for-all for the things we won't eat the 40 days we are on the plan.

Wow...two hours and I'll be heading home. There's dishes to do, chili to start (of course we are having chili to celebrate the chilly! But I gotta remember to stop and buy Fritos!), and classwork to try to do. Plus getting ready for TeamKID tomorrow. It's a packed week, I tell ya! Gotta get while the getting's good.

Rainy Saturday

This day had such possibilities! Even though it's rainy and gray and kinda dismal. Hubby took the dogs on out their early morning walk so I got to stay snuggly and toasty warm in the bed. Then there was some morning cuddles with the fur-babies. Barring the doggy breath and doggy stink, it's a sweet time. I tried to roll over and go back to sleep but all I could do was think of all the things I needed to do. So ya know what I did? I actually got up, took a shower and got ready for the day! I put some cinnamon rolls in the oven, did some laundry and started working on some of the multitude I needed to get done today. I was getting nice and organized when it was time to get Jo and Claire and head out for their All-State Band Auditions. Claire had an 11:04 audition and Jo an 11:10 so I had suggested that Claire spend the night last night and I take them both. I'm known for being tardy so I really wanted to get there on time. We were actually way early so we stopped at Subway for breakfast (highly recommend their breakfast wraps, by the way) and then we were off. Unfortunately, this ran just like every other musical venture I've had to deal with (with the exception of the school's Prism concert which runs like clockwork every year) and everything was running late. Jo didn't get into the audition room until 12:50! By the time we got out of there we were exhausted and not really up to taking care of all the things that needed to be done. I'm not in my "zone" any longer and am taking up way too much time whining about people who have no time management skills always in charge of my time.

But I've made myself revise and edit the schedule and get my mind back in the game. I'm back on track and ready to rumble. At least I was until I realized that it was after 6 p.m. and I hadn't even thought about dinner. Dang it.

Hello, Mr. Sun!

I saw the sun today! I know that doesn’t seem like a big deal but it has been so very dreary, gray, and rainy the last week. Oh, and cold. Cold and wet. Today started out that way but by the time I got out of school the sun was shining. It was still cold. But, joy, the sun was shining. I think they are calling for rain this weekend again so I am hoping to enjoy the couple days of sunshine coming.

Tomorrow is Kenny’s work’s Christmas luncheon so I’ll go in early to put in my half day and then have the rest of the day free. I believe I’ll spend it getting dog food and getting the oil changed in the car. Woo-hoo, do I know how to have fun or what? Thursday and Friday are going to be devoted to getting ready for my one and only final (OT Survey).

I can’t believe that not only am I actually taking college courses (finally) but that I’ve just finished my first semester. I took 2 courses this semester and will take 3 next semester. Fingers crossed!

The kids and Kenny have been so encouraging. I imagine the novelty will wear off…for all of us. But now that I have Physical Science out of the way, I think all the rest of the courses are either Bible or related to my major (Biblical counseling).

But for right now? I’m enjoying being spoiled a bit as Megs makes dinner (dessert is turtle brownies a la mode!) and I sit on the couch feeling slightly queasy. I’m hoping it’s the Son of Baconator combo that I ate for lunch and not the stomach virus that seems to be going around. Jo stayed home today because of chucking first thing this morning. She’s still feeling a bit off but no other stomach (either end) issues so it may have just been snot-on-stomach that caused the problem.

Lights out!

Major storms came through last night. The Kennys game at 8 got canceled. We hunkered down to watch a movie and enjoy the light show out the windows. What we didn't count on was the electricity going out. Plus we were right in the middle of the place where the storm WASN'T. We got some thunder and some lightening, but not much. So it was hot, humid and boring. Kenny put Star Trek on his phone and we watched that until the battery died. Everyone went their separate ways by 10. I got woken up around midnight by the lights coming back on and the TIVO powering up. Boy that's a noisy program! I got the house settled and then headed back to bed. Wish I could figure out why I feel like a Mack truck mowed me down today!

Cold night in Georgia

Last night was cold here in Georgia. Slushy stuff (can't call it "snow"...more like snowy dandruff?) fell from the sky all day, so not only was it cold, but it was wet. That's calls for Beef Stew or Chili in my book. Since I was especially hankering for some veggies, beef stew it was! Since all school events were canceled (ice is a concern on Georgia roads since both Georgia drivers and the DOT aren't set up to handle it), I got the stew going on the stove and then we all huddled in my bedroom with the door shut and the mini-heater going. Nights like these mean that our ban on kids watching television during the week is lifted so the tube on and we watched the news. But eventually American Idol came on with the top 10 guys. I can't say that any performance really caught my ear, but I can say that the neck tattoos caught my eye! Seriously, this year's crop of men have some serious tattage going on! Doesn't that hurt?! I mean more than getting a tattoo in a "normal" spot. And one of the dudes neck tat was in color! Oooooooooo.

Course then my mind had to continue on the normal progession and it occurred to me that neck skin also tends to show age pretty quickly and that really neat name scripted in ink will slowly, but surely, stretch. But then I thought, hmmm...just makes it big print for all his aging buds! But the picture tatoos? Some things just don't need to be stretched is all I'm saying.

Fall, fall, fall

It must be fall...the weather is turning cooler, if not downright cold, and Halloween is right around the corner. Right now I've got a definite case of the blahs. It's hard to get excited about anything and I seem to be able to find fault with EVERYTHING! If I dressed up as a Whiney-Butt for Halloween, I'm afraid I'd just have to dress as myself. What's even worse is that I can't stand to be around people who act like I am! Guess I need to figure out how to get my act together...get those ducks in a row...and all those other cliches that mean "for crying out loud, put your big girl panties on and deal with already!"

High and dry

So the last few days have been cuh-razy! Rainfall that hasn't been seen for over 100 years and rivers flooding all over the place! Our county closed schools yesterday because there were so many roads that were flooded or bridges that had water OVER them and engineers couldn't get close enough to check for any structural damage. The news shows were absolutely horrifying. So far there are 10 deaths directly caused by the flooding. One shot they showed over and over was a school in Austell had water up to their eaves. In fact, the school had to be evacuated because the water was coming into the school while students were still there!

We have families in our school that have been evacuated and have no idea what's going on with their homes. I think it's a wakeup call that our lovely "emergency" plans aren't quite what they should be. Now, noone thought the rivers would ever rise to 20+ feet, but they did. And they may do it again. But if they do...will we be ready? Or will we bury our heads in the sand, forget about the lessons we should be learning from this, and say that everything is fine?

My heart goes out to those who are now at the mercy of others. Everyone WANTS to help, but who actually does put action to words? I also wonder just how much finger pointing and blame will be shoved around while those whose lives have been put on indefinite hold end up being poster children for whoever screams the loudest!

Updated pictures: snow

Above: These are pictures I just took. In the picture in the post below, the girls are standing right in front of the tree and to the side of the bushes, just to give you some perspective.

Below: I'm attempting to post my snow video again. We'll see if it'll show up.

Snow in Loganville

So yesterday the news was all over this 70% chance of snow, which means that the stores were beyond crowded....bad time to be out of bread and toilet paper!!

This morning it was just raining but the temp was in the low 40s and dropping so I thought I better let the car warm up before I headed out to church. In the 15 minutes my car was warming it went from a light drizzly type rain, to freezing rain/sleet! I don't like driving in that kind of stuff! Anyhow 2 hours later we left church to snow covering everything and coming down in big ole snowflakes. The winds were blowing pretty hard so it was sheets of snow blowing straight at you. The girls were so excited during the drive home...I was petrified. Both of my driving skills on icy roads but also because Kenny is driving a group of 30, including kids and sponsors, home from the youth convention on Hilton Head Island. I wanted to call and see where he was but didn't want him talking while he was driving. I did call one of the sponsors and she said that they were about an hour outside of Macon so they'll hopefully be home in 2-3 hours.

In the meantime I'm sopping up water from snow that blew in through the cracks around the doors and the girls are out making a snowman (I had to stop them from coming inside to blowdry their shoes and mittens because of the stink, however. Not going to win Mom of the Year!).

Kenny just called to let me know that they made it to the church parking lot safe and sound. He said that the last two hours of driving have been "interesting". I'm sure! As I've flipped channels on teh Tube, any time I've been on a local station, there's been a scrolling thing listing all the traffic accidents. I'm glad they've made it this far, but I'll feel better when they walk in the front door!

Storms ahead

The last few days there have been storms in Atlanta. I have to admit, I slept through the ones on Friday night, but I hear they were pretty intense. Weather people were debating on whether there was a tornado or just intense winds that ravaged downtown. I think the National Weather Service weighed in that it really was a tornado. That was all the news on Saturday. Amazingly no fatalities...but a bunch of idiots were walking around downtown in all that glass and debris to check it out for themselves. Um, the TV crews are down there. You don't need to be adding to the chaos just so you can check it out for yourself. The storms Saturday touched a little closer. We have a friend who has had weird seizures for about a year. The doctors can't figure out what's going on, but they've gotten so intense and caused his body so much trauma that he was put in ICU at our local hospital on Thursday. A church member had her baby on Friday, so now that Kenny got back from Meg's field trip, we needed to go and do our hospital visits. So we leave the kids home with Ken and Sandra and drive off in what was just sprinkles. As we're heading down the road, the rain intensifies. At that point we realize that we'd both heard that he might be leaving ICU and with the rain, we didn't want to have to be roaming the hospital. So Kenny calls one of his friends, who is also a family member of the hospitalized guy. As he's talking to him the rain is really drumming down. He asks this guy where he's driving at because the background noise is the different than the noise the rains making and we are maybe a 1/2 mile from his house. The guys says he's at home but there's hail the size of golfballs coming down! Okay, so that's weird. We make it to the hospital, Kenny pulls up and drops me off at the overhang and goes to park the car. THAT's when the hail hits! Kenny dodges the hail coming down and we head up to ICU. Inside the ICU waiting area are the wife and mom of the hospitalized guy. There is a tornado WARNING that has just been posted. All ICU patients were taken out of their rooms and placed in interior halls of the ICU and all family members were booted to the waiting room! We get told this and then suddenly the door to the waiting room from ICU get thrown open and a nurse bustles in with sheets and blankets and instructions that if she yells, that we are all to go into a nearby ladies room and hunker down! Apparently the tornado is coming right for us!

Such excitement. It ended up going around the hospital and causing a whole bunch of damage in Covington. But all in all, I guess the safest place to be in an emergency is outside the ICU! I was actually glad we ended up there because the wife was fit to be tied. She ended up crying when she saw me (I thought they'd heard really bad news and were in the waiting room because her husband was having tests or something) and I braced for the news. Turned out she was just so stressed about her husband, that the tornado was the final blow. Kenny and I were someone new and she was so grateful she just let go. Awww. That was a good moment. We also were able to reassure her that her kids were in a basement with their cousins and several adults (the friend Kenny had called earlier) so that was icing.

4th day of the rest of this blog

So the whole icy road thing turned out to be a bunch of hooey. Four people did actually call asking if schools were open. I was a bit snotty and said that the TV and radio stations had not announced that schools were closed, so we were open for business. My co-worker just told them that schools were open. It just irritates me that in the time it took them to call the school and sit through the opening schpiel, they could have turned on the tube and found out for themselves without bothering me!

My co-worker had to take off halfway through the day and it was like all heck broke loose. It wasn't obnoxious people, but just one after another with questions and weird stuff. I was glad to turn my computer off and go. Course, there was no "home" to add to the "go" because Meg got her braces off and then had clogging. I did luck out because the way time fell I swung by the older kids music lesson place so Meg could show off for Big Kenny and Johanna opted to stay with him. That meant that instead of running errands with Jo (whining) in tow while Meg had her 1.5 hr.lesson, I got to do it all by myself. Nothing like trying on pants with a 7 year old providing commentary! It was nice to have time to myself.

3rd day of the rest of this blog

Okay, so the title's not as smart as I thought it was, but I can't come up with anything better. So...

Tonight the freezing rain has started up. I had a call at the school around 1 asking if we were having school tomorrow. I gotta tell you, I need to be earning brownie points for NOT saying some of the smarmy things I want to say when people ask doofus questions like that. Our bad weather policy is very clear. Plus, at the time of the call it was sunny and 46 degrees outside. Why would anyone call off school on a 30 % chance of icy roads. People are stupid.

I've quite decided that the honeymoon is over with my job. The every day tasks are starting to irritate me and the meaningless things people ask me to do to save them a couple steps are just grating. One of my bosses walks out of her office all the way to my desk to ask me to pull a file. She could have saved a bunch of walking and a lot of time by just going one door down from her office and pulling it herself. But, that's why she gets paid the big bucks and I...don't.

Wow, Gripe-city in this post. I need to go and get a better attitude. And on that, this post ends.