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Wednesday, March 27, 2019

My thoughts on feet, TV shows and guess what I STILL haven't finished?

Guess what I STILL haven't done. 

Yep.  My taxes.

Guess what I AM GOING TO DO TODAY WHETHER IT KILLS ME OR NOT.

Procrastinate and still not do my taxes?

Probably, but hopefully not.  I have until 2:45 and it's only 9:00 so I should be able to get them done.  SHOULD being the key word because even though I will have the time today, I still don't necessarily have the motivation.  Although the fact that it is only 3 weeks until they are due should really be all the motivation I need.

Hmmmm....what can I tell you about now so that I can procrastinate a little longer??

Last night we all watched an episode of Hoarders. I've seen quite a few episodes of this show.  I usually turn on the TV  when I'm making dinner or doing something in the kitchen and a lot of times, old episodes of this show are on.  And just like watching My 600-Pound Life, watching Hoarders makes me feel pretty good about the state of my life.

Last night, Peter sat down and watched it with us and Sarah watched some of it with us too. It was a two hour episode which I think was about an hour too long but we thoroughly enjoyed it.  This particular hoarder owned THREE houses in which she kept all of her hoard.  (I'm just left wondering how this 75 year old woman was able to afford THREE houses.)

Her hoarding problem began when she realized she could sell things online that she had picked up on the side of the road for profit. Although it really sounds like she like to go to yard sales and buy junk all of her life and then she divorced her husband and things really took a turn.  (Based on my experience watching this show, there's always some major life event like a divorce or a death that brings out the extreme hoarding.) But things got away from her and now she owed the county $250 a day until she cleaned up the outside of one of these houses.

I always feel bad for these people because clearly they are mentally ill.  This lady had a live-in boyfriend and he would randomly go around with a hammer and start banging on any of her things that seemed to irritate him until they were broken.  And he always did so with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and he was also usually holding a can of something in a koozie.  Beer?  Not sure but we had a lot of fun watching this character.

The next show up was The Toe Bro.

First of all, what a ridiculous show name.  I get that TLC is trying to come up with something catchy in the same vein as Dr. Pimple Popper but The Toe Bro? So dorky sounding.

I enjoy watching Dr. Pimple Popper and was interested to see what The Toe Bro was all about.,  But after only watching about 15 minutes, I had to leave.

First of all, I hate feet.  I don't care how nice you think your feet are - they are not nice.  You've just looked at them your whole life so you don't realize how jacked up they are.  Everyone has homely  feet but when you add fungus toenails, ingrown toenails, callouses, and just the gross heel skin,  it is not anything that I want to see on an extra large TV screen.

He started digging into a giant blood blister and blood started going everywhere and I began to gag.  I tried to sit there for a bit to watch with the rest of the family who really seemed to be enjoying it but then he started to remove a toe nail and I could literally feel it in my chest. (Is that weird?  It was as if he was pulling off my toe nail.)  Combine the weird feeling in my chest with all the gagging I was doing, I knew I had to go to bed.

I'm not sure how late the rest of the family stayed up watching that disgusting show but The Toe Bro is not for me.  And I find this odd considering that I can watch Dr. Pimple Popper squeeze all manner of disgusting pus and what not out of all manner of large growths on random peoples bodies.  I guess it's just my aversion to feet.

Ok.  I guess I've done all the procrastinating I can do for one morning.  I really should get to those taxes...

And just because I can't leave a post without a picture and I certainly don't want to post any feet pictures, here are some lovely Walmart tulips I purchased on Monday.




Thursday, March 21, 2019

Some pictures, a day and half off of school and some rain after a few sunny days.

Peter had a track meet last night and Dan snapped a few good pictures of him:




I had to take Sarah to swim so I missed seeing Peter run.

The kids have a half day today and no school tomorrow.  It's a teacher workday for the end of the quarter.  Sarah's got a doctor's appointment, Peter has a hair cut, Sarah's scheming to skip swim practice and go to a sleepover, Peter's got a track meet tomorrow night and apparently I need to buy him some running pants and a compression shirt. (Also apparently I should have done that before now but if the coach or my son doesn't tell me things like this, then I have no clue.)  So even though we won't be in school, we will be on the go.

And this cold and windy and wet weather can be gone now for good.  We had a couple of days of sunshine for which I am extremely grateful but I am ready for it to be WARM!

And apparently Google photos is trying to kill me because it sent me this little "Then and Now" it put together:


The picture of little Peter is from the summer of 2014.  Even though he looks like the giant person on the right now, I'll always think of him as the little kid on the left. 💙

Monday, March 18, 2019

We won!!!!

Our little school won the North Carolina State 1A Boy's Basketball Championship !!!!!!

Y'all what an exciting day we had!

The game was at 2:30 at the University of Chapel Hill at the Dean Smith Center.  We left early so we could grab some lunch on Franklin Street and look around the campus. 

As we pulled on to Franklin Street we could see other Bishop McGuinness students and families and that's when we started to get really excited!

We parked and headed to Sup Dogs for lunch.  The menu was hotdogs and hamburgers and everything we had was really good and it was affordable.  I like to keep lunch out cheap and tasty and this fit the bill.

After we ate we walked up and down Franklin Street for a while and of course, we had to stop into a souvenir shop.  The kids both wanted Carolina tee shirts and there was definitely no shortage of UNC merchandise on Franklin Street.

We then hopped back in our car and drove around the campus.  Not sure if you know this or not but UNC is the oldest public university in the country.  The campus is beautiful and we enjoyed driving around looking at everything.

We then made our way to the Dean Dome, parked, and headed in to our seats.  The kids quickly located The Pit (that's what the Bishop students call the student section) and found all of their friends.  Our school showed up in force to support the team:


The Pit is divided by grade levels.  The Seniors are in charge of the Pit and they sit on the rows closest to the court. (A couple of the seniors are the Pit leaders.)  Then the 11th graders are next, followed by the 10th graders, and then the lowly freshman are in the highest rows furthest away from the action. 

Students kept coming so they leaders had to keep having the freshman move up and then everyone else but after three moves they just decided to forget about the order because people were still coming and it was just too much trouble.

ANYWAY!!!!

WE WON!!!  It was such a great game.  We were down most of the first half but by the end of the first half we were making our comeback.  We definitely went into overtime with momentum.

The second half was neck and neck but we tied it up with A DUNK with just a second left AND the shooter was fouled.  He made the first shot which put us up and then purposefully missed the second shot so that the other team would have only a second to get the rebound and try a Hail Mary.  They missed, we won and  much excitement ensued!!!!

It was such a great game and such a great win.  (I did feel bad for the other team though.  I always do.  I could tell they were heartbroken and I know our team and fans would have felt the same way.  I know there can only be one winner and I was glad it was us but it still stinks for the other team.)

Everyone was cheering and hugging and jumping up and down and I can honestly say I've never been that excited about any sporting event in my life.  And my kid wasn't even playing!  I can only imagine how the parents of the boys on this team feel. 

One other note:  A professional was videoing the game and captured that last dunk and shared it on Instagram.  Right after the dunk he panned to Nassir Little and Leaky Black, two UNC players that were there watching the game, and they were just as excited as any Bishop fan about that dunk.  We watched that video over and over again.   :)

It was a great day and I'm glad we won and and the sun is shining and NO, I still haven't finished my taxes but I'm not letting that get me down.  I'm going to ride this wave of excitement for as long as I can.

Happy Monday!






Tuesday, March 12, 2019

My swimmer girl!

Yesterday, Dan and my mom and I attended the Winter Sports Assembly at Bishop McGuinness.  We were invited because Sarah was going to get an award for swimming!

We had no idea what award it would even be but we didn't care because she was getting something!  :)

She ended up receiving the Coaches Award for the Women's Varsity Swim Team!  Each coach is able to give out three awards:  Most Improved, MVP, and Coaches Award.  We were thrilled that she received the Coaches Award and that it was the entire women's team.  I thought perhaps maybe the award she would be getting would be for freshman.

Sarah was just as shocked and excited as we were. She didn't see us in the audience so she had no clue she was even up for something because we kept it a secret.  




Sarah had a great swim season with her high school team and this award was icing on the cake!  She worked really hard this season, rarely missed a practice, and swam as hard as she could at every meet. 

She just said the other day that she missed swimming with her team every day and is looking forward to next season.  But we've got prep practice now and summer league coming up so there's plenty of swimming ahead for my girl!

Monday, March 11, 2019

A quick update...

Hello blog friends!

I know I was missing in action last week but that doesn't mean there wasn't some action.  My sweet mama spent a couple of nights in the hospital, but thankfully, is as good as new now. 

Hey Mom - let's have a boring week this week, okay??  😊💕

Saturday before last was Peter's first track meet.  Here's the one picture I got:

 Before the meet, Dan and I had a romantic brunch date:

Okay, so it was omelettes at the Waffle House but doesn't romantic brunch date sound so much better?

And then on Sunday, after we dropped Sarah off at a birthday dinner downtown, Dan and I had another mini-date and grabbed a couple of drinks and some fries while waiting on her:

In the midst of all the craziness last week, I decided that helping the lacrosse team was just too much in addition to swimming so I pulled Sarah from it.  She was okay with it EXCEPT for the quitting part.  I emailed the coach and he said that perhaps she could just help out at the home games.

She and I talked and decided that might be a good compromise and she could try that.  HOWEVER, the next FIVE games are homes games. 

....sigh....

But, by being home games, she will get home a little earlier in the evenings.  The kid's schedule this week is full but manageable:

Monday - Track Practice, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts
Tuesday  - Track Practice, Swimming
Wednesday - Track MEET, Lacrosse MATCH  (I keep wanting to say lacrosse meet)
Thursday - Track Practice, Swimming
Friday - Track Practice, Lacrosse Match
Saturday - BASKETBALL GAME!

Basketball game?

This past Saturday our team was in the FINAL FOUR of the STATE 1A championships.  We piled into the car and drove to Hickory to support our team.  It was a very close game but WE WON!!!!!!  We were the underdog team but we managed to pull it out.

Here's a picture of all the kids in "The Pit" that made the drive to Hickory to support our team:


I honestly believe their support really helped out the team.

And now the team plays this Saturday at THE DEAN DOME on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill and we are making the drive to support the team again.  We are definitely the underdogs in this game but it will be an experience just to watch the team play at the Dean Dome!

 And now you are up to date!  Happy Monday friends.  May it be calm and manageable.

Friday, March 1, 2019

All she does is complain....

Would you like to hear why exactly it is that I allot 6 weeks to do my taxes?

If not, please proceed to another blog.  If so, pull up a chair and let me give you just one example.

The night before last, Sarah was trying to print something and she needed to replace the cartridge.  She asked me to help her so I did.  What can I say?  I'm in the running for World's Greatest Mother.

The black ink cartridge was still half full so I changed the tri-color cartridge.  The screen immediately flashed an error message and said that it wasn't an HP cartridge.

WRONG!

It was totally an HP cartridge and it was in fact purchased at a store.  It wasn't one of these no name refillable ink cartridges that you can purchase online.  I was  irked to say the least because as I told Sarah - that's just one more thing to deal with.

The package that I had purchased contained two cartridges so I tried the other one.  It printed fine.  (In hindsight it only printed because Sarah switched images while I was fumbling around with all the cartridges and printed something that was all black.)

So imagine my great annoyance when I sat down yesterday to print off everything I needed to print of for my taxes and was able to print one and only one of the documents before I got a message that the printer wouldn't print because it was out of ink.


insert lots of unpleasant words 


I took out the printer cartridges and shook them because I knew they were NOT out of ink. I hit print again and got this:

A bunch of weird symbols where all the numbers and letters are supposed to be.

So I did what I always do when I'm having a printer malfunction. I googled and tried several different things.  I downloaded updated firmware (but alas, my firmware was already up to date). I found a tutorial from a very hard to understand Indian man and did the things he recommended. (Turns out what he was instructing me to change had already been done and that clearly wasn't the problem)

I ran the HP trouble shoot program and when that didn't yield any results I tried what they suggested as their last ditch effort.  I was going to attempt to clean the contacts.

The first step to cleaning out the contacts was  to remove the ink cartridges.  As soon as I did this, I realized my problem.

I failed to remove the little piece of tape over the contacts before I inserted the tri-color ink cartridge the night before. Which is why black only files would print but any file that would need any other color than black would not print.

What an idiot!  I brought all this unnecessary angst and wasted time on myself.  (Sorry HP for all the bad things I was thinking about you in my head!0 So I excitedly removed the little piece of tape and hit print and got this:

Same exact piece of  crap!.   Printing off the documents is supposed to be the easy part and this was taking forever!

But then out of desperation I attempted to print a different document and it worked just fine.  I think printed everything else I needed  so perhaps the other document was corrupt.  I just left that one and made a note to try to print it on another day.

After I finally got everything printed off I needed a break. It was 11:30 so I made myself a salad and then watched an episode of This Is Us.
I also did a load of laundry, balanced the checkbook and paid bills, discovered that my car registration needed to be renewed so I frantically hopped in my car to go get it inspected but realized I had until the end of March not the end of February (crisis averted as it was February 28) so I put that off until next week.  (If there's one thing I'm good at, it's putting things off.)

And then and only then did I sort through the paperwork I had printed to get everything ready to actually sit down and do the taxes. 

So basically this is why I allow 6 weeks to do my taxes because it took me all day just to get to the point where I can actually download TurboTax and get started. 

Enough tax talk. I'm sure you are totally bored with all that.  (It's going to be a long six weeks my blog reading friends!) Let me take a minute to chat about the weekend.

Tonight the boys lacrosse team has an away match.  (Assuming it's not rained out and based on the current forecast, it most likely will be.) If you will recall, Sarah is the water girl  manager. Which means we have to pick her up after the team (or who ever didn't get picked up from the game) returns on the bus.  Not sure what time that will be but it will most likely be after 9:00 PM as the match doesn't start until 6:45 and the school they are playing is over an hour away from her school. This means I will not be in my favorite Friday night party spot (the couch) wearing my favorite Friday night party clothes (my pajamas) until bedtime.  And by then, I might as well go to bed because...

Peter has a track meet on Saturday morning so we will be up at 0-dark-thirty to get him there in time.  The only nice thing about this is that he has to be dropped off  at least an hour before the meet even starts so that will give Dan and I time to get breakfast before we go back to sit all day to watch Peter run for approximately 64 seconds.

I want to see him on Saturday because between Sarah's swim and lacrosse and Peter's track schedule, I'm not going to be able to make it to every one of his meets like I did last year.

And now I'm off.  Not to work on my taxes but to do a little shopping with my mom.

Happy Friday everyone!