Days 10-13 - um, not so much

I'll admit it. I've been playing pretty much all week. Well, not *always* playing. I have fixed meals (except for tonight), I've done dishes, a couple loads of laundry, I hauled trash yesterday, but real cleaning? Yeah, not so much. And ack, this coming week? More errands than I can shake a stick at. It's really going to suck, honestly, and I'm not looking forward to it. Such is life with one car - and one that is barely running at that.

I am shopping Sunday but may be able to do some work in the afternoon if I'm not totally wiped. There will be next to no cleaning done Monday. Tuesday has potential. Wednesday is unlikely to see any work done. Thursday, hahahahaha. Ye-ah, no. Friday's looking pretty good, unless I'm recovering from Thursday still. It will take a very concerted effort on my part to get anything done toward PCCX before the end of the third (!) week. Think I'll make it?

Last Weeks Results

Ok, I'm a horrible blogger. But I swear, I'm going to get better! Now that Dad has finished his radiation treatment, I have more time in my day and can better organize my schedule.

Last week I decided I had to get my Christmas list together. Just making a list of who to buy for and what to buy would be too simple. You see, I have this tendency to buy gifts throughout the year with no idea who the gift will be for until this time of year. For example, I found two quilt stands, new in the box, on sale at a thrift store for $10 each over the summer. So, anyways....I had the majority of gifts inside 1 tote and stacked on top of it in my attic space. When I opened the attic door, I discovered Jordan had stacked Kris' belongings right inside the door. Add the garage sale stuff, assorted Christmas decorations and other crap, and I had a job in front of me.

I began by pulling out everything:



Okay, I didn't pull out everything. I did leave Kris' bed, luggage, a kitchen chair, cat carriers and the Christmas tree. But I did organize all of that stuff. Then, I began condensing the other stuff. First and foremost was Kris' belongings, followed by Christmas decorations. Once I had that crap put away, I just had to make a list of the gifts I had already purchased. Here's a lovely picture of Jordan's room after everything was put back in:



Jordan had made mention that he wanted his desk (in the back right of his room) moved out so it was usable.





Now that the attic space was clean and organized and Jordan's room was all set, I decided to attack Jordan's closet too! I wish I had this much energy every day! You'll be shocked at the difference of before/after...and it only took me about 30 minutes to do!!! Trust me, it was bad! It looks fabulous now!!!





The rest of the week SUCKED! Dad's radiation was supposed to end Wednesday, but they extended it for yet another day, just in case. That just depressed the hell out of me! Then Friday came with no trips to radiation but a boat load of homework to do. All weekend I played catch up.

It's now a new week. The plan is a little cleaning and a lot of homework every day.

Today: I ran errands shopping for deals at Walmart and Walgreens, you can find those on my personal blog. I busted my butt trying to clean as soon as I got home, and then started homework. Let's hope the rest of the week goes as well!

Monday Mania

Yesterday went off pretty well. I got the majority of the house in order enough that if someone came over, I wouldn't be totally embarrassed. I didn't get around to vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, etc but I could live with that for a day. I'm hoping to accomplish all of that this afternoon after Dad's radiation appointment. I did get through a LOT of paperwork and sold my college books back to Barnes and Noble and got them packaged for shipment to the post office.

It's 9:45 a.m. and I've already dropped them off at the post office - not bad for only getting 4 hours of sleep LOL I don't know why, but I just was not tired last night. Maybe it had something to do with the chocolate that I ate around 8 p.m. (I'm referring to an entire bag of Hostess chocolate doughnuts, yes I ate the entire bag). I'm giving up on my weight loss efforts until after Dad's radiation is complete and I have time to get back on the treadmill. So shush....

I didn't get to clip newspaper coupons yesterday, which really bummed me out. While the lack of the job saved me a lot of time, I really like clipping my weekly coupons! From now on, I'll make sure I get to the store much earlier than 2 p.m.

Today's plans:

Post office - Done
Dad radiation
Maple syrup farm
IGA for Totinos pizza rolls sale
WHB (Weekly Home Blessing)
At least 30 minutes of pccx - room to be determined later. I'll post before/after pics of whatever job I choose.

Part 1 of my dungeon

Before & After Photos of the Coupons - Part of my dungeon

The first photo is of all the MONTHS, yes months of inserts that I had accumulated as well as coupons I picked up along the way or received in trains or from other group members. There was NOT semblance of organization, they were scattered everywhere and I had no idea where in the heck the ones were that I actually needed to use. My daughter went to her dad's this weekend and I spent a total of 13 hours on organizing the heaps of the mess. (4 hours on Thursday night, 6 hours on Friday and 3 hours on Sunday)

First, I had to go thru all the uncut inserts and determine which were expired (sadly, that was alot). This was approximately 9 1/2 " of inserts to go thru and does not include the enormous stack that was already clipped. Then I clipped all the good dated coupons. After getting them all clipped, I sorted them into stacks of coupons I need/use and ones that I will send to friends and members of my coupon groups that can use them. I tackled the "other" coupons for the groups first and grouped all like coupons together. I keep these in a bin with cards labeled by month. I chose to do this by month because when we send out coupon trains in the group, we must make sure that the coupons aren't short dated to go around to 4 people. I keep the current month first and then in month order work back. The coupons photo'd in the very back of the bin are either NON expiring or expire 12/2010 or LATER. Yes, I grabbed an entire stack of organic coupons. I don't see them often, use them when I can and I experience NO SHAME in helping myself and my friends :D

Once that was accomplished, I did the happy dance, not only for completing 1/2 of that task, but also because I got to take fling points for all those wasted coupons :) I "auctioned" off several stacks of the unwanted coupons to the girls (the collaborators of this blog) and I think we all thoroughly enjoyed it...we kinda felt like we were at an auction, lol. Next began the task of organizing all my personal coupons. I do the organizing for those a little differently. I organize my personal coupons by "type" of coupon. For example....beverages, breakfast items, bread, ice cream, frozen, frozen veggies, medicine, deoderant, paper products...you get the idea I hope. I shop the sales and I stockpile, so I often times have multiples of coupons and actually welcome them from friends, neighbors, family and fellow couponers. :) If I can get items for free or close to free that we won't personally use, I donate them to women's shelters, pet shelters, churches and even victims of wild fires, tornadoes and hurricanes. I paperclip all like coupons together, with the earliest expiration date first. I also like to have each variety of coupon clipped together, meaning.....I have a section for soups, but I have all the chunky campbell's coupons together, all healthy choice campbell's coupons together, all cream soup campbell's coupons together, etc. That's probably a bit anal, but if I see a sale, I can grab the coupons quickly and take them with me.

The final step in completing the coupon organizing is to organize my bin by ailes in the store. I have not done that yet and am waiting when I can leave my daughter at home to walk the aisle at kroger. I do shop at other stores, but mainly kroger, and I could actually probably just do this at home since I am smart enough to figure out that all cheeses, milk, yogurt, butter, cookie dough, etc are all in the same section, same with all the frozens, canned goods, etc. :)

I think I mentioned I have several BIG issues with my dungeons in trying to get unpacked, but I am happy that I was able to get this large task completed although it was only a VERY VERY small, minute dent in the big picture. I went shopping Saturday afternoon and it was so nice to look at the ads, make my list and pull my coupons....took me 30 minutes tops for this weeks shopping at 5 stores. YAY me!

I LOVE Fall!

I never realized that I loved fall until I spent time in Tennessee the past two years. I lived in Florida the past 14 years and our fall's consisted of 80 degree days instead of 95. ;) I always did my "major" clean every January. I had renewed energy after the holidays and hope to continue that, but I really want to be prepared and organized for the holidays this year. The air is dryer and cooler and days of windows open are just around the corner. With the start of PCCX each time, I am optimistic I'll get EVERYTHING done, and it never happens. I will take what I can however; because I do get MORE done when PCCX is in the midst. I make my daily points and stay active, but just can't get quite to PCCX, lol. For now, I am ok with that. Maybe if I can get all this other "stuff" done, I will be successful at PCCX the next time.

I have made goal each day this week; however I haven't completed all I wanted on my list. Things come up like middle of the night upset stomach's and laying wide awake when I am supposed to be sleeping...not condusive to a 5:30 alarm sounding off. This morning I got to add two extra loads of laundry to my list as my daughter didn't quite make it to the bathroom early this morning....fun, fun. I have had emergency client deadlines come up and dishwashers go out....but I am plugging along.Today, we managed to get two days of math done and I reorganized the stockpile of food in our stairwell closet. We have more we are gathering to put in there, but for now it's organized should we need it. :) The photos are above....

The remainder of the day will be spent whittling away my 48 item list, errands and client work....another day with no PCCX items completed, but I'm ok with that. :)

A New Month Begins

Yesterday was just a horrible day for me, I couldn't concentrate. Maybe I'm not getting enough sleep...

New goal: Get to bed by midnight. HA! That's gonna be a hard one!!! But, I'll at least try taking a sleeping pill for about a week and see if I can change my circadian rhythm and go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Like everyone else in the world, I'm wondering how its October already. The good news is that October means that we're getting closer to the finish line of Dad's radiation. At least, that's what the doctors are saying for now. Yesterday the oncologist increased the number of sessions from 35 to 38 and says a couple of additional may be needed on top of that, but we won't know until we're near that point. Yesterday was session #20. Originally we were told 30, so we'll see. October also means I'm nearing the end of the 2 classes I'm currently taking and 2 new ones will start. Which is excellent, because I'm already tired of these classes LOL It'll be nice to have classes and not lose 3-4 hours a day because of Dad's radiation/drive.

Looking forward to the season premiere of Private Practice tonight and encourage all women to watch the new show "The Middle" with Patricia Heaton on ABC. Check their Web site at http://www.abc.com to view the show online - its hilarious!

Off to the daily grind...

Tackling My Tuesday

Do you know how when you don't manage to get done the things you wanted to get done during a day that the day feels like a complete bust? Yeah, I had one of those days...

Initially, my plan for the day was to take Dad to radiation and get some Psych reading done; Take husband to hospital for surgery and get some more reading done; Come home and clean for 3 hours.

I took Dad but had another patient arrive in a chatty mood so I only got 4 pages read.

I took my husband to the hospital (for an outpatient surgery) but 2 chatty women in the waiting room and were tired of their discussion with each other and then had to ask "what's your husband here for? ohhh my husband had that done and this is what happened and this is why we're here now." One benefit of living in an urban area is that nobody talks to each other. Move to a rural area - everybody knows everybody and if they don't know you, they will talk long enough until they do.....So I wasn't able to get any reading done until those women left, which means a whopping 2 additional pages.

Sigh.

I was hoping to get the entire chapter read. 6 lousy pages. Unbelievable.

So I came home and had every intention to start cleaning. But at that point, I was wiped out. 3 hours of driving and 3 hours of sitting in hospitals just took everything out of me. I sucked down a pot of coffee and did manage to get dinner done and cleaned the entertainment center in the living room.

PCCX Work
I didn't require my son to do anything pccx wise, only because he managed to get out of the house before I got home from hospital #2. Previously, the entertainment center looked like this:


I took out all of the DVD's, books, and VHS tapes. Dusted/polished the shelf and then sorted through the items determining what to keep, what to toss, what to put in Jordan's room and then put it all back in alphabetical order. That was the hard part. The rest was pretty easy as I dusted/polished the rest of the center and cleaned all of the electronics. In the end, this is what it looks like:



So I got something done for pccx, just not enough reading to make the day feel like I accomplished enough. Oh well, such is life.

What happened to Day 1?

I thought I was going to go into town for a short couple hours--a meeting at the bank and a chiropractor appointment. It turns out we had both of those plus lunch, a meeting with one of the boys' teacher and a meeting with the realtor. By that time it was supper, so we splurged and went to Cold Stone Creamery and had an ice cream supper. B, LJ and I left home at 1:30 and we didn't get home until 7:00. By that time, I was done. No house cleaning was going to be done today. Oh well. I'm home all day Tuesday so surely I can make up for it then. So we'll see what happens then. And it's off to the races!

Chou for now!