So I Was Just Thinking

The other day I went food shopping. When I came home, I had to clean out the fridge to make room for the new food. (Cait and I had been on a cooking hiatus while James was visiting his dad.) Many of you have heard about my recent adventures in single mommydom and have sent your regards and best wishes. I am very thankful for your kind words of support. I came down from Missouri with  what I thought were virtually no resources, just a truck full of belongings that I didn't want to part with because they defined who I was - a person who was formerly successful. They were my trophies I could gaze upon when the going was rough, and I could tell myself, "See, you were able to accumulate all this "wealth" before. You will be able to do it again." It was a very self-centered way of viewing things, but it helped me survive the past two months of joblessness/underemployment. However, as Caitlin completed the real life game of refrigerator "Tetris," I real...

Hehehe...bad grammar for an editor and teacher, but I had to do it! Today marks my 20,000th visitor! Can you believe it? When I started my blog in March of 2008, I had no idea what doors it would open for me. Four and half years and 20,000+ visitors later I have met so many people both virtually and in real life because of this blog. Since starting this writing adventure, this blog has transformed from a rambling of a bored mom and teacher, to the gallery of a curious artist and amateur photographer, to the rantings of an angry unemployed soon to be divorcée, finally to the celebration station of an employed teacher. When I came up with the title, "So I Was Just Thinking," it came from a quirky way that I would call my mom and brother. I would call one of them and just jump full force into the conversation as if we had been talking all along: "So I was at the store the other day...." I am sure many people found it odd, but I found that if I started with the n...

I can finally breathe a sigh of relief. I think I had been holding my breath for so long, I didn't even realize it. However, yesterday, I had two interviews at two different schools. They both went well, and I walked away saying I would be happy working at either school. In order to attend these interviews, I had to take a couple of hours off of my job at a call center. If you have never worked at a call center, consider your self fortunate. If you have...my condolences. Just let it be said that call center work is like working under the constant watch of prison guards...checking to see how long you have been off the phone without marking yourself available, monitoring if you have your cell phone out where people can see it, telling you that you cannot write, draw, do a puzzle or read a personal book when the calls are coming slowly. Instead they want you to be reading something called the KB (a complete database of every issue a caller could be calling about and how to handle it...

I didn't take before photos because  I never thought this place could better, but it has. When I moved in, there were so many boxes. My friends teased me about how many boxes I had labeled "glassware." Come to find out, the movers don't distinguish between glassware, pyrex, LeCruset, ceramics, or china so I had to open each box and decide if it would be unloaded or put in the laundry room. Unfortunately, by the time I had reached certain boxes, my strong arms had left and I couldn't push them into the laundry room because the washer was now in the way. Sooooo, they sat in the middle of my kitchen...until yesterday when the strong arms returned to help. My kitchen is finally wide open and it is very big. We also managed to get the remaining mini blinds hung, and found a way to hook up the ancient tv to the wii, dvd/vcr and cable box all at one time. (My cable guy was no help. Thanks Time Warner Cable.) Having an open kitchen makes me want to use it more so here...

I am a Food Network junkie. Seriously. When I am channel surfing there are certain shows I love to watch, but when they are nowhere to be found, Food Network here I come! One of the most important things I have learned from FN is mise en place or having everything in its place. Mise en place is all about prepping food and having ready so when you are cooking you aren't running around the kitchen looking for everything. "Where's the salt? Have you seen the baking powder?" And so on. Well, today as I was preparing the mise en place for dinner, I was thinking about how my life is slowly becoming like my mise en place . Sausage & Rice mise en place As many of you know, my life before moving back to Texas was chaos. We never knew when dinner was. What WAS for dinner? Where are my keys? Where are your shoes? I could go on, but you get the picture. Since moving back to Texas, things are different. My kids make their beds, get dressed and eat breakfast every m...

...as promised. Or as Paul Harvey would say, "And now, the REST of the story." The rest of the trip home was pretty uneventful except for having to stop every two hours to make Little Man use the restroom. (Mind you he would say "I don't have to go, MOM!" I finally listened to him, only for him to have an accident. Thank goodness for vinyl seats. It was a very long drive, but I am used to driving it in one shot. However, I never drive a 20 foot truck and trailer so I misjudged how exhausting it was going to be. (I am very thankful to gummy bears, skittles, and coke.) We, of course, hit Dallas at rush hour. This is the point where I started calculating how long it will take to make it home if I drive x-miles per hour once we get out of the city. I visualized how far it was from one city to the next since I was finally nearing my stomping grounds. Hmmmm, I think it is about an hour to the outlet mall. from there, I believe it is 30 minutes to Waco. My mo...

Yes, I drove this while pulling the attached trailer with my car from Missouri to Texas. The moment I picked up the 20 foot truck and trailer from the dealer, I was so nervous. The lanes on the Interstate seemed so narrow. I found myself drifting to the right line, so I stayed in the right lane the entire way to the apartment which made for a fun time because there are exits all along the way. The engine also didn't have a lot of pick up for such a big load so I am sure there were a lot of fingers flying my way. Hopefully, they felt badly when they saw me white knuckling it down the highway. When I got home, I just pulled into the driveway, praying that I could pull the truck off of the trailer to go pick up my paycheck to pay for the trip back to Texas. Unfortunately, the man at the dealer put the straps on wrong and I couldn't release the straps. I called a friend and sent photos of everything and went online and tried to find away to release them. Just when I was a...