OMG it’s been a while!

We’ve been having quite a busy time lately. We dug our home out of foreclosure with the help of my parents. A huge “thank you” to them for that! Now we just have to stay on track. Staying on track can be rather difficult.

2 weekends ago we spent in Des Moines for tournament baseball games. That resulted in several restaurant purchases and a hotel room. Ugh. Bank account beware… This past weekend I worked all weekend but my husband was once again traveling for tournament ballgames. Once again restaurants, restaurants, gas, gas, gas!!! Double ugh.

On another note, I started running to try and get some of those endorphins I am always hearing about (figured I could use some of that!) It was working beautifully until I ended up with an overuse injury to my knee. Now I am doing an exercise program written up by my physical therapist. strengthening is great, but doesn’t quite bring on the endorphins.

After a week or so I was feeling rather burnt out, so I thought I would get outside and work in my yard. The weather was beautiful, green was popping up everywhere. How relaxing. Now my face and half of my body is covered in poison ivy. So here I sit, popping Benadryl and prednisone, covered in a rash doing my home exercise program and feeling like a blob without any endorphins!

Can’t wait to be healthy again!!!

Homemade Granola…too Yum!

I can’t remember where I got this recipe, so if I have lifted this off of another blog or website I am sorry, but this is super yum and I have to share.  Granola can get expensive bought in a box at the store, but making it at home is super cheap and easy.  And I LOVE cheap and easy.  Here is all you have to do:

Combine the following ingredients in a mixing bowl:

2 c oats
1/2 c wheat germ
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt

Then in a saucepan,  simmer the following over low heat
1/4 c maple syrup
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp water
1 tsp vanilla

Then drizzle the wet mixture all over the dry ingredients.

Pour it all into a 9 x 13 greased pan and bake at 275 degrees for 30 minutes. Stir it up, add nuts or dried fruit or whatever you feel like and then continue to bake for another 15 minutes. Let it cool. Then devour. Yummy!

Zumba

So last nights Zumba class did make me feel a little better last night. It sure feels good to move around! Now this morning I am right back where I started. Oh well, keep moving forward right?

Still feeling crappy

Sitting here waiting for Zumba to start I am realizing the only reason I am here is because I still feel like crap! 🙂

TGIF

Ugh. I am so glad it is Friday because I have had just about all I can take of this week. FYI: I am a home care nurse (if anyone ever reads this blog don’t ask me medical shit cause I am not YOUR nurse) and work is killing me this week. I will say I absolutely love my job but I am seriously ready for the weekend and not being on-call. Right now I have too many patients on my schedule and not enough time to do the paperwork. I WILL NOT be doing paperwork this weekend. I WILL NOT! Typically in this situation my boss would lighten my load so I could get caught up but lately all of the nurses have a full plate. Business is boomin’. Job security I suppose.
In other news my 8 y/o daughter is having a friend spend the night tonight. My husband is working concessions at the high school football game. The baby slept all night last night for the first time! WooHoo!!! 8 months finally! And my 12 y/o son is finally getting caught up with his assignments at school. Maybe we won’t have any F’s on our report card. My grandparents are coming to town tomorrow for the fall festival and we plan to have dinner with them before we head to a party for one of my husbands co-workers. And my precious baby will be having his first overnight at his grandparents and his first night away from me…can I handle that? I don’t know. I am kinda freaking out but it has to be done at some point. Or so they say.
So…8 hours to go until the weekend starts. I can do it!!!

TGIF

Ugh. I am so glad it is Friday because I have had just about all I can take of this week. FYI: I am a homecare nurse (if anyone ever reads this blog don’t ask me medical shit cause I am not YOUR nurse) and work is killing me this week. I will say I absolutely love my job but I am seriously ready for the weekend and not being on-call. Right now I have too many patients on my schedule and not enough time to do the paperwork. I WILL NOT be doing paperwork this weekend. I WILL NOT! Typically in this situation my boss would lighten my load so I could get caught up but lately all of the nurses have a full plate. Business is boomin’. Job security I suppose.
In other news my 8 y/o daughter is having a friend spend the night tonight. My husband is working concessions at the highschool football game. The baby slept all night last night for the first time! WooHoo!!! 8 months finally! And my 12 y/o son is finally getting caught up with his assignments at school. Maybe we won’t have any Fs on our report card. My grandparents are coming to town tomorrow for the fall festival and we plan to have dinner with them before we head to a party for one of my husbands co-workers. And my precious baby will be having his first overnight at his grandparents and his firdt night away from me…can I handle that? I don’t know. I am kinda freaking out but it has to be done at some point. Or so they say.
So…8 hours to go until the weekend starts. I can do it!!!

whatever

I am going to start writing again. I swear. If anything it sure would be nice to have a place to keep track of all of my thoughts and then be able to look back and laugh at myself. :). Right.
Like for instance, I am now starting to loose weight!!! Yea me! I want to go shopping so bad but not with this extra 20 pounds on my ass. Things just fit better when the body is less lumpy. Right? So I started watching what I eat this week. No calorie counts or starvation. And I have lost 4 pounds already! Go me!!! Super excited about that.
I was also thinking that I should learn how to sew. Only because I LOVE Project Runway and totally envy the fact that those people can make there own clothes! I want my daughter to become a designer. That would be so cool!

That’s all for now. Smooch.

Bored…the story of my life.

I am so friggin bored with myself that I might just explode! I think the Lexapro is helping, I don’t feel like driving into the ditch anymore and I only have anxiety attacks once a week or so, but I have realized that I may be a little dull. Maybe I’m just down on myself still but I need to make myself more interesting to me. All I do is work and take care of the family lately. How boring (for me anyway, the kids don’t think so). I know I need to find a hobby. I know this. Getting up and getting started with something is part of the problem. There is always a reason NOT to do something. Such as…my house is a mess! Where am I going to DO this new hobby? The disaster that is my home is so out of control that it is difficult to even want to start to work on it. Especially when the kids do such a good job undoing all of my hard work. But school starts on Aug 18th here so maybe I’ll get to it then. And there you go maybe in September I will start a new hobby. I’ll just be bored with myself until then!

Postpartum Depression Sucks

I am starting medication for postpartum depression tomorrow!  I don’t know why but that feels kind of embarrassing to say, and a little depressing. But I am going to say it anyway.  I was tempted to not say anything to my doctor today because the last 2 days haven’t been too bad, but now that I have done it I am glad I did.  It is kind of a relief.

I realized a few days ago that maybe I was having a problem after feeling like I was having a 5 day panic attack.  Then there was the moment when I thought, “I can understand why people hurt themselves.” Not that I was or am planning on hurting myself, it’s just that after feeling like crap for so long and really not being able to say “this is why I feel like crap,” a person might want to have a physical reason to attach the pain to. And it was so painful for those few days that I didn’t know how much longer I could fake a smile and participate with social interaction. And that is just ridiculous! And definitely not conducive to my paycheck, because I deal with people all day long.

I wasn’t going to say anything to my husband either.  I didn’t want him thinking he had a “crazy” wife.  He does so much to help out with the kids and the house and I didn’t want to feel burdened by my issues.  I did tell him though, and he of course wanted to know if it was because of him, and of course it’s not.  I think I felt a little bit better just saying something to him.

So now we will see if a little Lexapro will turn things around.  Maybe in a couple of weeks I won’t have to force myself out of bed and then lie to everyone I see that “everything is great.”  Right now that facade makes me want to puke.  Wish me luck, Universe, wish me luck.

Money

I would like to take a moment and let you all in on a secret. I am broke. And it ain’t no joke! Seriously, we were financially unprepared for my maternity leave, mostly due to the fact that I was so exhausted during my pregnancy that I didn’t care that I was working less. Therefore we were not saving like we should have been and now 3 months after having the most beautiful child ever (not counting our other beautiful children) we are broke.
I spend every other day hashing out our bank account in order to avoid overdraft fees and updating my husband on our status. Currently our goal is to go an entire month without the threat of (or actual) shut off utilities. That is no fun at all. Last month I started a budget on mint.com and I must say, it is AWESOME. Loving the graphs. They have been great in explaining to my husband why we have no money.
So now, after only one month of penny pinching and not allowing any extra purchases I am anticipating that this Friday I will be able to pay all “life sustaining” bills (electric, groceries etc.) and have money left over for other debts. (this could also be considered reason #4 of why I am not to excited about “Girls Night Out.”)

After this week, since we are catching up a bit, it will be much more difficult to keep my husband on the bandwagon. He hates my restrictions and feels like he should be able to spend on little purchases through the week as he sees fit. (however this is what sinks our boat over time.) Anyway wish me luck. Things are going better in this department, but we are not out of the woods yet!