Catchin' Up

Hi there! Remember me??? I can't believe it's been a week without blogging for me!!! Ugh, so now there's tons of stuff to catch up on....

Sleep issues: Yep, still having 'em! My Hero sent me my blue light machine and miracle of miracles, it got here in four days!! My mail - in four days!!! It got here last Friday and needed to be fully charged before using it, so I got to use it on Saturday and have used it every day since then. I wasn't expecting instantaneous results, but still hoping for them anyway, lol! I do feel better having used it but my sleep isn't what it should be yet. Instead of waking up at 1am-4am and that being it, I wake up numerous times in the night, toss a bit and drift back off. Repeat. I'm still getting up around 5am, which is still too early, but an improvement. I am also taking a teeny, tiny Melatonin pill at 8pm. Not sure if that is helping or not either. No vivid dreams as one follower mentioned I might have, but I'm the one that almost never remembers dreams anyway. I might have 2 or 3 a year I actually remember. So the jury is still out on the light. I do however feel much better after a 30 minute session (I have two a day - in the late afternoon and after dinner). I feel refreshed and more "upbeat", so that part does work!

The Bella: After updating her chore chart (more of a behavior chart at this point) and being consistent with it, we have seen drastic improvement. I don't fuss and fuss at her anymore. She gets a warning, and then if the behavior doesn't improve she gets a "sad face" instead of a star. All star days gets her play time with Thomas on the Wii (they are both Mario freaks!!). A weekly accumulation of stars earns her a special treat (trip to the post library, going to the playground, etc). She is doing much better at school, with no more behavioral issues and an improvement of doing her work independently. The biggest thing with her is not engaging in her fussing and tantrums. You say what you need to say, and then go into what I call Ignore Mode. She's a performer, and if she doesn't have an audience, she'll usually just stop. This is harder for Thomas as he'll go on and on and then she'll go on and on, etc etc etc! A final warning, then follow through. When you do have to follow through, the tears and fussing is enough to almost make you lose your mind though!!!! UGH!! But, seeing you hold your ground is making an impression. We are fully stocked in Excedrin. Just sayin.

The weather: I'm hating it. We finally got a break in the constant rain, rain, rain, but it was replaced by continuing dark, cloudy skies, cold temps and the most unbelievable thick fog that lasted all day and night!! As of last night, we were back to rain. Every. Stinking. Day. Winters here just suck and there's no way to "look on the bright side" because there is no bright anything!! I don't think I'm ever going to take blue skies and sunshine for granted again.

Thomas: He was gone again last week for yet another school in Germany. While it was nice to have the truck at my disposal every day, it would have been nice to have him around. I did take out the trash this time though!! Last trip he had, I had it all piled up by the front door for him to deal with when he got home, lol! Yes, a week's worth. Yes, the dumpsters are right across the street. Yes, I'm lazy. Yes, I hate taking trash out that much! So what if I had yet again waited a whole week to deal with it....at least I DID deal with it, right??? I also had to give the Bella Beast a bath every day, which has become his dealio. I was seriously considering shaving her head because the absolute trauma of washing it every night was more than my very frayed nerves could cope with. There is a deployment opening in Kosovo, leaving next month for six months, which he is being considered for. As far as deployments go, six months is nothing for us....but six months of baths?? Yep, she might be bald. I'll let you know if this actually happens, and with the way things come up and then get cancelled at the last minute, I'll believe it when it happens!

The house: Last Friday, even though I was an overtired Zombie-Couch-Potato, I had to just suck it up and clean the house. Anyone who knows me, knows I'm a neat freak. I have to have things immaculate, uncluttered and organized. My house was none of the above. Seriously. Bad, bad, bad, gross, gross, gross!! And I had Stamp Club girls coming the next morning!!! This was no time for a full-on, no messin' around clean, but I had no choice. I made my list of things to do, gave a whimper at it's length, and got to it. I even hung up all the pictures!!! And it was worse than I thought it would be, as we have plaster covered cement block walls and even cement nails are a b!itch to use!! I still have some things to hang upstairs, but I ran out of nails and picture hangers. We now have both so sometime SOON, I'll finish the upstairs and take some pictures. I have to say the house looked and smelled fantastic!!!! And I'm finding it so much easier and less overwhelming to maintain the house, than it was to clean everything all at once!!

My computer: We have had issues with my computer since we moved here. We thought it was the tower and were planning on replacing it (not that I wanted to!!). It would keep crashing and crashing and we couldn't figure out what the heck was going on! I paid for a registry cleaner and that seemed to work - but didn't. We loaded all kinds of protection and anti-virus software and that seemed to work - but didn't. I took off all kinds of files and programs I didn't need and that seemed to work - but didn't. Then it would work flawlessly for a couple of weeks and just when I thought we'd licked it, it would crash again!!!! UGH!!!! I've cleaned the disks and compacted them (or whatever it's called) and as a last resort, un-installed my Magic Jack. I did that last night and so far.....lol....it hasn't crashed again, and it was getting to be continual the past week or so. Another reason I haven't been blogging!! It's crazy but your computer has to actually stay up more than two minutes to blog. I really need and want to have my stateside phone capabilities, so I don't know what the answer is. Alex was calling me almost every day and I so miss hearing from her!! I'm going to give it a bit and see if indeed that was the culprit, and if it is, then I'll figure something else out. If it's not, then I have no idea what else to do that I haven't already tried. Kicking it and cussing it out hasn't worked!

I think that's just about everything. It's so hard to remember my name these days, much less what has happened over the past week! Other than Stamp Club, I haven't done any stamping. I miss it!! I have so many new goodies to play with too (another post coming) and I'm dying to ink up my new Magnolias and use my new Copic colors!!! So like the housework, I may have to force myself to just get up there and do it. I'll keep you posted....