Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Happenings

Lots of bullets since its been a while...
  • Snow day today! It really did snow overnight, but now its raining, and the whole thing is the consistency of a slushy. No sledding or snow-men making in our future. 
  • OMG our dog has some GI illness and its terrible. She thinks rugs=grass=good place to "go". We threw away some bath mats and will need to replace our living room rug. She doesn't bark so we have to be looking at her all day/night to notice her subtle clues, which is obviously not possible. 
  • I tried Trunk Club. I was initially disappointed because the one item I LOVED was way way too $$$ to justify ($250 for a pair of designer jeans, they were magical, really, but not worth the price of a plane ticket!), but I tried things on again and showed them to G and stuff grew on me. I ended up keeping:  a cute date-night top that is crisp striped cotton with bell sleeves and the "cold shoulder" look (way way cuter than it sounds), white jean jacket, one-button black blazer (I can never find blazers that fit so I don't own any), and a striped tank. It is NOT budget-friendly, but I definitely got interesting and well-made things I'd never pick on my own. Way better than StitchFix, which is somewhat cheaper but has crappy quality generic clothing.
  • We are still seeing the family therapist and getting a lot of good insight into B's diagnosis and what we need to accept about him vs. work on. That is huge. HUGE. Its so awesome to hear "well, kids with ASD are very rigid about food, B's actually doing way better than most. that's probably not the battle you want to fight", etc...  I promise I'll do a whole post about what we've learned someday soon.
  • I got elected Secretary of our HSA (home school association, like PTA). I did run unopposed... Our main goal for the remainder of the year is to streamline the process for getting clearance for volunteering at the school and circulating volunteer opportunities to parents. I think a lot of people want to help, but don't know how. I know I was in that boat, but not everyone is going to jump into the deep end and join the HSA board to figure it out!
  • I read Trevor Noah's autobiography "Born a Crime" which was really really interesting, for book club. Highly recommend. I learned so much about South Africa that I shamefully  never knew. I borrowed the book from someone, but I probably should've listened to the audiobook,  I was reading it aloud in my head in his adorable accent the whole time.
  • DST threw us for a loop, especially B and me, the two of us that have trouble falling asleep at the best of times. 
  • I went to one of those "paint with wine" places for a local doctor-mom meet up and it was surprisingly fun! My painting turned out really cute (my children were super impressed) and it was better to have an activity instead of awkward mingling with me standing near the food/drink table and eating/drinking too much out of nervousness. I really liked some of the women I met, too. I think we were a self-selected bunch of city-living, laid-back types. I'd love to do it again.
  • I am not succeeding in losing the p@xil-weight, even with the major changes I made: no snacks during the day, no eating after dinner, no alcohol Sun-Thurs. It did prevent FURTHER weight gain, but its not coming off. Ten pounds directly on my abdomen is super annoying because even my freaking pajama pants feel tight, not to mention anything else! I may seriously have to restart low carb because I'm not ready to stop the p@xil yet. I don't want to lose another summer.  Anyways the psychiatrist is on maternity leave.
  • We had a $200 gift certificate to a restaurant group (from a school fundraiser silent auction) that expired Saturday night that we'd forgotten about so we had a super-indulgent Saturday evening dinner with the kids. We tried multiple small plates & drinks, sitting in this dark lounge area in the back so that the kids could do their own thing. 
  • I registered L for KG last week. OMG! How is this possible? And yet, I'm also super excited for having both kids at the same place again. It'll really streamline our morning and evening routines and give both of us a break (right now, I do drop-off/pick-up of B, and G takes & brings home L)
  • I got sucked back into FB and its no good. Too much scrolling. I can't leave completely because there really are a lot of things I'm a part of that really enhance my life (my workout class updates, book club, a political activism group my friend founded, the local doctor-mom group that hosted the event, buy nothing, school friend-of group that does events/fundraisers) that are unfortunately ONLY on FB. But I need to figure out a system whereby I can keep track of events & news re: those groups without getting sucked into scrolling mindlessly and getting sucked into the rabbit-hole of clicking links.

10 comments:

  1. Well.... I would totally spend $250 on a pair of jeans that made me look hot. Actually, I have done it a bunch of times over the years and not regretted it one single time. Just saying, you don't have to feel guilty if you do decide to spend the $$$. :-)

    I recently read The Orphan Master's son, which takes place in N. Korea. Also really interesting, and I too felt a sense of shame for not knowing more about it. I learned a bunch about South Africa from AP#1, but would love to learn more, so thanks for the tip!

    And also -- WTF weather! I was so excited to go sledding with my kid since I'm off today anyway. But no. We get a gross slushy mess and I feel trapped in the house. Boo.

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    1. I happen to think I look pretty hot in my $75 jeans, so... Also I think they may go on sale, I'm keeping an eye out. It was my first time trying on designer jeans in my life so I think I was just surprised at the difference? I didn't want to spend my entire clothing budget on one item. I was willing to spend $100-$150.
      I never took AP History and we never learned about SA in any history class I ever took unfortunately.
      I'll put that book on my list!

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    2. I'm sure you do look hot in your $75 jeans. The price inflation on jeans is insane. Designer jeans used to cost $150. Sadly not anymore. :-(

      Oh, I meant I learned (a little) about South Africa from our first au pair. I never took AP history either! I did take a great history class in college on American Post-WW2 Foreign policy that was outstanding, but never learned about South Africa, unfortunately. Or North Korea.

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    3. (the $75 dollar jeans I got for $35 of course, I'm frugal as hell usually). Ahhh! Au Pair! Got it :) I took US History 1 (pre WWII) in college and learned a TON but got bad grades because I can't memorize dates/places and that was part of our test so I never took more history classes.

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  2. I bet they will go on sale for 160-180 or so when they are pushing springier items :) .

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  3. I have a similar problem with Facebook (not wanting to get sucked in, but wanting to keep up to date with activities). A few months ago, I went through my news feed and hid all but about 10 people, and it has significantly reduced the amount of stuff I see and the amount of time I spend on Facebook. And I can still read messages about events!

    I can't imagine spending $250 on a pair of jeans. I've never gone over $100, and even that seems painful to me.

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  4. The jeans might go on sale...but if they are truly wonderful it might be worth spending the whole spring budget on them. Sometimes it's more frugal to buy one really awesome thing than a couple of more meh things...

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    1. totally agree...I did end up loving everything I kept though. It was more the principle of it, assuming they would go on sale (Nordstroms has sales, and I wishlisted them so I could keep an eye on them). If they don't, though, I'll keep in mind for my birthday!

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  5. In terms of Facebook- I use the Groups app on my phone to keep track of the school/running/family groups I'm in without having to look at FB proper. You can set it to provide notifications on selected groups (e.g I want to know asap about school posts because I'm an admin but don't need notifications from the run club). I've been toying with the idea of changing my password on the computer using apple key chain & then setting the app password because I'll then forget the computer one and won't be able to mindlessly scroll on the main FB page.

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    Replies
    1. I did not know this existed! thanks for the tip!

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