Monday, September 07, 2009

Sigh of relief

My second job wrapped up today, so I am back down to just the one full time teaching job. Oh, and graduate school. My dissertation proposal is due in December. So I just trade one problem in for another.

We've adjusted son's medication, so he is less crazy. Which makes my life less crazy.

We bought a new kitchen stove today, paid for by my second job. We bought a dishwasher earlier this summer with that money, too. It is so nice not to have to borrow money for absolutely everything we do. My mother keeps pointing out that everything I borrow just has to be paid back, and of course, she's right. Maybe next year, if I do this again, I can pay something off.

Someday, our student loans will be due, and at that point, we're in trouble. :) I should totally buy a car before that happens. Never worry today about what I can worry about tomorrow.

In the meantime, I try to muddle through my PhD and keep my kids fed. As part of my quest to keep my kids fed, I bought Once-A-Month Cooking: Family Favorites. I don't know why I keep buying these cookbooks. I like the way it is laid out, and the way they break down the shopping lists. But a lot of the dishes sound really horrid, like Mahi Mahi steaks. The worst part of that recipe is actually that it isn't really a make-ahead recipe. The recipe is for a grilling sauce that gets repackaged with the fish steaks that don't even thaw as this recipe is "made ahead."

And, of course, modifying one recipe changes the whole shopping list, the advantage of buying the book. Aaarg!

Friday, September 04, 2009

Where has the time gone?

I can hardly believe how little I've posted lately! Well, maybe I can. I've been uber-busy, finishing up my summer job as my real job started up. My summer job is grading papers for a class for talented high school students, and all I have left are final reviews. Those are due Monday, but I'm procrastinating.

On top of all this, my son has been especially unstable. That is always fun. He disrupts the whole household, and then does not understand why we're still upset once he's calmed down.

All I have been doing for weeks is working one job or the other, punctuated by insane rampaging teenage boy.

I haven't even seen one of Project Runway's new season yet. (Although I do have them on the DVR.) As soon as I finish these final papers, I am going to go all hedonist and catch up on Project Runway. And watch those Being Human episodes that I've queued up in anticipation for a moment's free time.

Unfortunately, almost as soon as I finish up with my talented high school students, I have to start to work on bibliographies for my Comprehensive Exam. To make matters worse, I am only really friends with two of the other ten people in my class, and neither of them (I think) are in my "track," Professional Writing and New Media. Either way, I will have to do group work with people that I don't know/like. So I am fretting about that.

I tell my students that they should narrow their ideas down so that they only are saying one thing, but I completely failed on that point here. Perhaps if I had loaded my ideas in a shotgun and shot them at my blog they could have been more scattered. But perhaps not.

It is possible that I could be better next time. :)