Fortunately my day got much better! I got a lot of things finished too. I had a great workout, which improved my mood tremendously, hot tubbed, showered, had lunch and then went outside and putzed around. It was amazingly nice outside! Yay! However I will not get too used to it, as rumor has it, more snow is on the way.

Tomorrow I have GOT to go shopping. It is Sarahs 20th birthday on Wednesday, and I do not have a gift for her yet. I also need to get a few Spring things for myself, as most of mine are TOO BIG! YAY for too big!!! It is great to start seeing all my hard work pay off. I have lost over 30 pounds, and now the inches are starting to come off too because of the weight training I have been doing for a couple of years now, along with cardio and pilates.

I was in a very good mood until:

A.) I read a bunch of whiney blogs (which is fine I know…I do it too! Just not in a sympathetic frame of mind today, and had to slap my hand to stop myself from telling a few people what I really think!!! LOL)

B.) Til my snotty-assed (you heard me right) son got up! Grrrr! Ben is hitting puberty VERY late, as did Sarah and I, and hubby is unknown, but I think he’s STILL there. Ben is just now getting some of that smart ass teenager attitude that a lot of kids go through at 12-14 yrs of age. He has no idea what kind of grief he’s going to bring on himself if he thinks he’s going to get away with that. hehehehe

I’ve had a very productive morning already. I gathered up all our perscription/dental receipts to send in to our insurance company, I did a bunch of filing, I did Ben’s income taxes, and now I’m thinking about working out.

The sun is shining a wee bit today, off and on, so it slightly resembles spring at moments.

Okay! I am off work for the next week. I am itching to get outside and do some walking and enjoy some fresh air and sunshine, maybe clean up the yard a bit (once the snow melts…..IF it melts) Our backyard is still pretty much covered in snow. The front yard will soon be clear of snow. I may just end up doing some spring cleaning too, but we will see about that.

Friday night after work, hubby and I went out for dinner, and then to the Oiler game. They won 4-0. It was fan appreciation night, so it was lots of fun. Saturday I didnt do much at all it would seem. I spent most of the day reformatting Sarahs laptop which quit working suddenly on Friday night. Piss me off…….all that had happened was she had accidentally flicked a switch on it so that it was acting as a CD player only. Grrrrrrrr what a waste of time! After all that putzing around, I finally got my workout done, and worked off some of my frustrations! We didnt do anything last night.

Today I did most of the cleaning on the main floor, and got the laundry finished. I worked out for an hour, and cooked a pork roast for dinner. Now I am going to vegetate. Ben is over, jamming at his friends house (better his parents than us!), and Sarah is out with Jamie (her private…..hmmmm… I am sensing a reconcilliation here, and they have been broken up for a year now!) for dinner, and then she goes back to Moms for the school week. She is doing her last practicum for this year, and it is in Community Healthy, so she gets to play with babies, so she is happy about that!

1. What was your most memorable moment from the last week? How well all our kids did at parent-teacher interviews. When Andrews Mom sat at my table with tears in her eyes while Andrew was doing his work.

2. What one person touched your life this week? Tony when he sailed through interviews without missing a beat.

3. How have you helped someone this week? Yes. I help kids every day.

4. What one thing do you need to get done by this time next week? Some Spring cleaning I guess since I’m on Spring Break.

5. What one thing will you do over the next seven days to make your world a better place? That’s just way too big a job for me to tackle.

A good friend emailed me this today:

Inspection Teams….

Have you noticed anything fishy about the inspection teams who have arrived in Iraq? They’re all men!

How in the name of the United Nations does anyone expect men to find Saddam’s stash? We all know that men have a blind spot when it comes to finding things. For crying’ out loud! Men can’t find the dirty clothes hamper. Men can’t find the jar of jelly until it falls out of the cupboard and splatters on the floor…. and these are the people we have sent into Iraq to search for hidden weapons of mass destruction?

I keep wondering why groups of mothers weren’t sent in. Mothers can sniff out secrets quicker than a drug dog can find a gram of dope. Mothers can find gin bottles that dads have stashed in the attic beneath the rafters. They can sniff out a diary two rooms and one floor away. They can tell when the lid of a cookie jar has been disturbed and notice when a quarter inch slice has been shaved off a chocolate cake. A mother can smell alcohol on your breath before you get your key in the front door and can smell cigarette smoke from a block
away. By examining laundry, a mother knows more about their kids than Sherlock Holmes. And if a mother wants an answer to question, she can read an offender’s eyes quicker than a homicide detective.

So… considering the value a mother could bring to an inspection team, why are we sending a bunch of old men who will rely on electronic equipment to scout out hidden threats?

My mother would walk in with a wooden soup spoon in one hand, grab Saddam by the ear, give it a good twist and snap, “Young man, do you have any weapons of mass destruction?” And God help him if he tried to lie to her. She’d march him down the street to some secret bunker and shove his nose into a nuclear bomb and say, “Uh, huh, and what do you call this, mister?” Whap! Thump! Whap! Whap! Whap! And she’d lay some stripes across his bare bottom with that soup spoon, then march him home in front of the whole of Baghdad. He’d not only come clean and apologize for lying about it, he’d cut every lawn in Baghdad for free for the whole damn summer.

Inspectors my ass… You want the job done? Call my mother.

This is such a precious picture! I love it! hehehe

Can you believe that I get paid to find things like this to do with my time at school??? Anyone care to guess what this is? Well this is an Easter Chick/Duck/Fowl of some type. I took Tony, Andrew and Katelyn and painted their feet yellow and this was the result. Tony had the best foot, so this is his. It turned out the best. Katelyn has fallen arches so hers looks like road kill ducky!

They were all so ticklish, that I barely escaped getting kicked in the chops with a yellow foot!

Yes indeed. I get paid to paint feet.

I’m SO tired!! Yesterday was a long day, and then Ben was up sick off and on all night, so I kept hearing him and waking up.

The parent teacher conferences went really well. The parents were really impressed and pleased with what we do in our classroom. This time they got to sit in on actual lessons like we do with the kids every day. I was so pleased that Tony fully cooperated last night! I didn’t think there was any way. He’s autistic and does NOT like change of any sort. He has come SO far over the years, but he still always hates it when his parents come to school at night. He keeps saying “goodbye”, and telling them to “move please”. So, yesterday I made a whole “story” for him, and read it to him many times throughout the day, and sent it home with him for Mom to read to him before they came back. It was just things like Tony will go home on the bus. Tony will get in the truck with Mom. They will come to school. Tony will count with Bev and Mom will watch……..etc. That little guy came in with Mom and Dad, happy and excited, sat down at each table and did exactly as he was supposed to, some things he’d never done before, took his Mom & Dad to our room next door and made them some cinnamon toast. How cool!
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There was a tradesman, a painter called Wayne, who was very interested in making a penny where he could, so he often would thin down paint to make it go a wee bit further. As it happened, he got away with this for some time, but eventually the Baptist Church decided to do a big restoration job on the painting of one of their biggest buildings. Wayne put in a bid, and because his price was so low, he got the job.

And so he set to erecting the trestles and setting up the planks, and buying the paint and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with turpentine.

Well, Wayne was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly completed when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, and the sky opened, the rain poured down, washing the thinned paint from all over the church and knocking Wayne clear off the scaffold to land on the lawn among the gravestones, surrounded by telltale puddles of the thinned and useless paint.

Wayne was no fool. He knew this was a judgment from the Almighty, so he got on his knees and cried: “Oh, God! Forgive me! What should I do?” And from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke…
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