Underwhelmed

I can't sleep.

Bummer.

Now that I don't drink caffeine very often, the tea I had with dinner is seeming like a huge mistake. Because hey hey hey - I'm still awake at 2:30 am. Woooooooooooo!

And as I do when I can't sleep, I'm watching trashy tv.

Tonight? I'm watching Oprah's OWN network. What's on, you might be wondering? Some reality show about Shania Twain.

Ooooh, I loved me some Shania in the 90's!

The Shania I'm watching at the moment? I'm sad to say that I am underwhelmed and quite a bit disappointed. I feel badly for her with all the tragedy life has handed her, but I don't know. She's not coming across well to me. (Yes, I'm very aware that my opinion matters not at all in the scheme of things and also that I haven't changed the channel.) Her sister Carrie seems pretty awesome, as does her current husband. But I find myself wondering if she married him just to have a husband or if there's an actual relationship there. Then again, I've only been watching for about two hours.

But seriously, Oprah honey, what are you doing with this program line up and advertising plan? So far the commercials have been for a Trojan (as in the condom makers) personal massager, some yappy makeup lady trumpeting about "having a fierce face" in five minutes IF you use her make up kit. Make up lady's voice is really, really, really, really, really, really annoying. Also, I think make up lady has been watching too much America's Next Top Model and So You Think You Can Dance with all the screeching and throwing around of the word fierce. The commercials for the Ryan and Tatum O'Neal show look equally horrible.

Wow. Maybe it's just me or maybe I'm just really tired, but this Shania show makes me never want to hear another thing from or about her again.

Bummer.

Has anyone else seen this? What did you think?

Well, that took me down a peg or twenty...

All hopped up on indignation and irritated by the fact that I'm going to have to use umpteen (that counts as a word, right?) bottles of water in the next two days since we are under another boil order (any idea how many times I wash my hands in a day? No? At least 20), I headed to the gym to try a kettle bell class as a way to work out my frustration.

And that tiny little iron bell and that itsy bitsy instructor? Kicked my hiney from here to eternity and back. Having never seen a full kettle bell workout, I had no idea what to expect. I thought it would be a great workout for arms, shoulders and back. I had no idea going in that 4,000 bonus squats would be included. Yay! Squats! Not.

The heart rate meds I'm on sometimes cause me to get lightheaded or dizzy when I get too ambitious with the cardio. I've adapted in normal life - I pause for just a second, take a couple of deep breaths, and then go on my merry way. In kettle bell class, there were a lot of reps that require you to squat down and then swing up the kettle bell to around shoulder level. After about 25 minutes of that, my body decided that it needed to get serious about showing me how hard it was working and I'd squat, swing, stand, extend and BOOM! Dizzy. Only problem with that? We were doing endless sets of reps, so I had started to sincerely wonder whether or not I was going to pass out. Or lose control of the kettle bell. Or both. How embarrassing would THAT be?!?

The last series of exercises we did were called snatches (squat down, upright row to bring the kettle bell to chest level, arm extension all the way up into a shoulder press, but you have to do it so the kettle bell kind of flips over and ends up resting on the back of your hand/wrist/forearm. Then you bring it back down to the floor and repeat.) We did thirty seconds of snatches with each arm, followed by 30 seconds of figure eights (where you pass the kettle bell in a figure 8 motion through your legs) in each direction, then 24 more two handed regular swings.

Believe you me, it's way harder to do it than type it. I was at close to muscle fatigue with my shoulders before we started the last round. I'm guessing it wasn't the smartest idea to do the P90x chest/back (push up/pull up) workout that morning followed by kettle bells that evening. My shoulders were on fire and the edges of my vision were starting to fade to black. So when I got to the last part of the last set, the 24 two arm swings, I had to stop. Bent over with my hands on my knees, I focused solely on not passing out. Or throwing up.

From what seemed like a million miles away, I heard the instructor tell me, "Ma'am? The air is up here." True, but if I'd stood up, I have no doubt that I'd have passed out, no matter where the air was. So I stayed put and counted the drops of sweat that hit the floor as I took slow, deep breaths. There were a lot of them. By the time the rest of the class finished that last set, I was okay to stand up and do the cool down.  Then I staggered out and went to take a shower in the Y's non-compromised water. I kid. I didn't stagger, I just walked slowly and with purpose. On the up side? I was no longer even the least bit upset about the boil order...or anything else for that matter.

Another freakin' boil order? Are you effin' kidding me?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!!?

Hello, my name is daily dose of dahl and I have an anger management problem when it comes to the water running through the apparently poisoned, corroded pipes that are attached to our housing unit. Apparently.

I went to pick up the kids from Y camp and saw, as I drove back into our complex, that there is ANOTHER *$#$#@$!&%&$& boil order in effect for our housing neighborhood.

The base Facebook page had this to say:
There is a boil order now through Tuesday at 11 p.m. for residents of *Crappy Housing*  Landing.


There was no breach of the water system. Water pressure was low
enough earlier today to initiate a precautionary boil order. Water samples will be analyzed prior to lifting the boil order. 

Bottled water should be used for drinking, cooking, washing fresh fruit and vegetables, hand washing and brushing teeth.

Affected tap water should be used for these purposed ONLY after it has been brought to a rolling boil for 5 minutes. Do not boil the water for a longer period of time.

Affected tap water may be used for washing dishes IF the dishwasher is used AND the dishes are then immersed for at least one minute in a sink of water to which one tablespoon of household bleach per gallon of water has been added. If dishes are hand washed, boiled or bottled water should be used.

Affected tap water may be used for bathing, showering and household
cleaning. Please check www.*crappy*familyhousing.com for updates as they become available.




*I have subbed my nickname for this housing area from the real one to (apparently) protect the dumba$$es*

This ticks me off for so many reasons. Please, allow me to articulate translate the perceived meaning in an effort to rid myself of harmful and pointless rage. This may be a repeat of the last time it happened, but since I still need to vent, I'm not even going to go and check cause that's how I roll in a snit.

So, here we go:

There is a boil order now through Tuesday at 11 p.m. for residents of *Crappy Housing*  Landing. Because you are stuck in base housing and we can try and kill you if we want to. I mean, after all, we are already over charging you for rent. Muahhahahaaaa!

There was no breach of the water system. Water pressure was low
enough earlier today to initiate a precautionary boil order. Water samples will be analyzed prior to lifting the boil order. Maybe. We think. Whatever. We don't live there and frankly don't give a crap.

Bottled water should be used for drinking, cooking, washing fresh fruit and vegetables, hand washing and brushing teeth. DUH! Have you seen the swamp land around here? Seriously, people! Use your brains!

Affected tap water should be used for these purposed ONLY after it has been brought to a rolling boil for 5 minutes. Do not boil the water for a longer period of time. Boiling for longer will reactivate the (air quotes) possible (end air quotes) harmful bacteria/swamp water parasites.

Affected tap water may be used for washing dishes IF the dishwasher is used AND the dishes are then immersed for at least one minute in a sink of water to which one tablespoon of household bleach per gallon of water has been added. If dishes are hand washed, boiled or bottled water should be used. What we are trying to tell is you is DO NOT USE THE WATER. God, you people are hard headed.

Affected tap water may be used for bathing, showering and household
cleaning. Please check www.*crappy*familyhousing.com for updates as they become available. Ha ha, the website is down. If you call us, we will only refer you to the website and refuse to answer your questions (true story). 

And again, could someone PLEASE explain to me why you can't wash your hands or wash your teeth with the water but you can bathe, shower, and clean with it? Seriously? SERIOUSLY!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

That concludes today's rant. Thank you very much for reading. If you need me, I'll be trying to talk my husband into a hotel or into sleeping at the Y. They still do that, right?!?!

Biting the bullet

Last week, my cell phone had a horrible accident. The charging port got messed up when both R and I thought part of the car charger had broken off in the port. Turns out it hadn't, and our trying to play Operation resulted in the phone not being able to charge.

Oops.

So I had to get a new phone. It was more difficult than I thought to decide. I didn't want to spend a ton of money, but we have unlimited web and texting, so I wanted to get a phone that would allow me to take better advantage of those two things. I ended up with a middle of the road phone, but I gotta say, I really love it. It doesn't take me five minutes to compose a simple text and when I want to look up something online, by golly, the new phone does not time out.

R, after playing with my phone off and on all week, decided he'd really like a new phone too. So Saturday we  went to Best Buy to look at the one he liked. Well, okay, he looked at it and I went to the music section. I was looking for a mix cd of Zumba type music, but I didn't find one. Guess what I did find! Zumba for Wii. And, Best Buy was having a special for buy two games, get one free. Can you say Christmas gifts for the kids? Cause I sure could

This morning R played with his phone, I fired up the Wii and Zumba'd for a while. The kids were all into it and excited at first, but S petered out after about three minutes and T made it for about 10. I made it through the learn the steps and the first workout. I can tell you this, I'm glad I set my level to easy because after 20 minutes, I had a serious sweat going on. Which is a very, very good thing. If I'd been able to do the hardest level from the beginning with no sweat (literally), I'd feel like I'd wasted my money.  But now I can Zumba at home to my heart's content.  So anyone that would like to join the Zumba party with me, come on over!

A clean start

Yesterday I spent about 45 minutes in an online chat with our cable provider, trying to figure out a way to wrangle some premium channels without increasing the cost of our bill.

I'll spare you the details and just spill it - the rep and I finally had a meeting of services=budget.

And now I can watch both True Blood and The Big C! So I was up late last night catching up on the episodes I'd missed.

Which brings me to the actual point of this post.

It was kinda hard to get up this morning.

A-hem.

But get up I did, with a minimum of grumbling about T waking me up by sneezing in my face, which would not have been my first choice of how to be roused. I got in the shower and as I was rinsing the conditioner out of my hair, I thought I heard S screaming. Not simply yelling for me, but an ear piercing, glass shattering, 'something is really, really wrong' scream.

I got out of the shower. Silence. I asked T if S was screaming.

Yes, yes, she was.

Did he go and check on her?

No, no he didn't.

Now in his defense, S is prone to screaming fits since birth lately. But if she was screaming like I think she was screaming, I'm surprised that he didn't check on her.

Moving on.

S was in the bathroom. I walked in and asked her if she was okay since she was sitting there with her hands up in the air like she was participating in a Survivor challenge.

She immediately starts to cry. "Mommmmmmmy, I can't rub it in."

I don't even have my glasses on, and I gotta be honest, I'm afraid to look at what isn't rubbing in. With S, you never know.

"Honey, I don't have my glasses on, what can't you rub in?"

"Dis." and she thrusts her hands in my general direction.

Um. I cannot even begin to tell you how completely certain I was that my nose and eyes were going to get nowhere near her hands -- especially without glasses on.

"What is it? I can't see...hang on. I'll be right back." I fetch my glasses and head back in to the battlefield bathroom.

Now that I can see, I realize she's grabbed a bottle of shower gel thinking it was lotion and has smeared it on every available skin surface.

Me: (mentally) Thank God! Also: Bwaaaaahahahahahahahaaahaahaaahaaahaa!

Me: (out loud to S) Honey, that's soap, not lotion. Finish going potty and we'll put you in the tub and rinse you off.

S: (mournfully) I am done going potty. I can't get off! ::fresh tears::

Me: Not a problem!

I help her off the potty and into the tub where we get all the soap rinsed off after about 10 minutes of trying.

On the bright side, she smelled lovely today.

Say what?

I've been fighting the blues lately. No big deal, probably hormone related. I had to force myself to go to Zumba last night and as usual, I'm so glad I did. My favorite instructor was there, and I'm always amazed how fast her classes go by. By the time I headed home, I felt normal again (whatever normal is and means, right?).

Today I was at the Y, and a fellow Y-goer that I haven't seen in a really long time looks at me funny and says (after we exchanged cheerful hellos, mind you) "Who has made you so sad?"

Wait, what? Sad? I look sad? Huh.... I glance at my reflection in the mirror. I don't think I look sad in the least.

"Sad? I'm not...." I begin and he interrupts.

"Who's been mean to you? I'll set 'em straight."

I give him my most (I think) dazzling grin and say, "You're confusing me with someone else, I think."

His reply? He looks right through me (don't you just hate that) and says, "I know better. I can SEE you, you know."

I'm all off balance and wondering what facial expression it could be that I'm now apparently in the habit of making that makes me look sad to others. I shrug and say, "I don't feel sad."

He gives me this knowing look and says, "Okay..."

I ask my workout partner, "Do I look sad to you?"

She says I do not.

But you know, it's been bugging me all day why he thinks so and why he said that.

It's official. I'm going to have to start walking around and grinning like an idiot for no good reason again. ::Snort::

As Buster Poindexter would say, it's Hot Hot Hot!

I left the house this morning to take the kids to camp, and the only phrase that came to mind to accurately describe how it felt outside was hot soup. At 8:45 am, it was 88 degrees. This, as you can possibly imagine, does not bode well for my heat intolerance.

I dropped off the kids, did a quick workout, walked to my car, and double checked to make sure I wasn't actually melting.

So now it's 7 pm here and I'm very on the fence about Zumba tonight. It's so doggone miserable outside that I don't even want to face it for the very short walk from the parking lot into the Y. But I slacked off today on my a.m. workout because I had planned to go to Zumba. I've got a doctor's appointment next week and at my weigh in Sunday was up 2 1/2 pounds. I really need to get that back off because it can feel it dragging me down more than I can see it.

Okay. So, now it's 7:07. I'm going to be really disappointed in myself if I spend the night on the couch not burning calories.

Fine.

I'm going.

Yes, right now.

Sigh.

Completed!

Last weekend, I pretty much rearranged the entire house. There's no way I could have done it without R, so thank you very much, honey!!

The only thing left undone by the time Wednesday rolled around were some cabinets that sorely needed reorganization and the catch all closet of doom.

I'm proud to say that I got it all done this week.  I'm also enough of a dork to admit that more than once, I opened the cabinet/closet doors to admire the finished product. I mean, at best I've got a month or two before it's all muddled up again. While I love things organized and neat, living in this house I realize that nothing lasts forever. And it's not worth getting upset if a piece of Tupperware isn't in the place I think it should be. After all, who made me the queen of cabinet neatness?

No one, that's who.

Would it be too much if I took a picture to prove that everything, at least once this year, was nice, organized and de-cluttered?

Yeah, I kind of thought so too. (But I'm probably going to do it anyway.)

Love at first crush

A couple of weeks ago I bought this: a Rival ice shaver/snow cone maker.


I've been in ice bliss every since. It's even better than the pellet ice you can get at some of the convenience stores around here. I crush a cup full of ice, add water, squirt in a bit of MIO water enhancer, and voila! A calorie free yummy slushie for me! (And for anyone else who may want one)

Sometimes it's the little things...

Well, THIS should be interesting!

A while ago, I noticed that it looked like we had water damage in the corner of our kitchen. It appeared as a brownish discoloration on the baseboards. The wall looked fine, nothing was damp to the touch, so I just attributed it to a fluke from the recent torrential downpours we'd been having and the fact that the concrete thingy that goes under the downspout to route water away from the house had been moved out from under the downspout.  I dumped some fill dirt in the massive erosion hole that had been created, placed the cement thingy under the downspout and watched the corner for any further signs of leakage or damage. Nothing showed up.

Woohoo!!

In one of the dozens of furniture shuffling episodes, a bookcase got moved in front of the damage and I pretty much forgot about it.

Until a couple weeks ago when I was cleaning the kitchen floor and I noticed that corner looked a bit dark. What the heck? I moved the bookcase out and discovered that my little fix-it out back apparently failed. The water damage was worse and now there was mold.

Fabulous.

I scrubbed it down and kept my eye on it. On Tuesday, we finally called housing maintenance. I really thought that the fix would involve replacing at least baseboards and possibly pulling the siding off the outside, which is why I'd put it off.

The housing guy showed up and said they'd clean it, treat it with disinfectant, prime it, and repaint it.

Ummm.....okay?

So I had to ask - what about fixing the problem that caused the damage in the first place?

The answer? We could try getting a hose to fit on the downspout to route the water away from the foundation.

Ummm....okay.

So today housing maintenance showed up to 'fix' the corner.  And by 'fix' I mean slapped some Kilz on it.

I asked him what I should do when the water damage shows up again. I was thinking that maybe it was a three strikes thing - three non-successful fixes to the exact same problem and then they actually fix it.  I mean, it is military housing, privatized or not. He misunderstood what I meant and told me he was putting a pretty heavy coat of primer on it, so it shouldn't bleed through. I guess he forgot that the problem hasn't actually been fixed. Or something. Whatever.

Military life is always interesting. Always.

That costs HOW much?!

R and I have HAD it. HAD IT, I say!

For the last few months, we both wake up, groan, stretch, and then hobble around until we work the kinks out of our backs. Enough of that!

We went mattress shopping yesterday.

Um, has anyone else priced mattresses lately? Outrageous!

In the past, we've gone the best of the cheap route when purchasing a mattress and it hasn't worked out very well. R and I have the back pain and grouchy dispositions to prove it.

After much looking, we found one we both really liked and the store offered no interest if you pay in off in six months. Sold!

And....they could deliver it today and take away our old mattress and box springs. Sign. Us. Up.

So nighty night, I'm skipping upstairs to hop into what I hope will be the best night's sleep in this house since we moved here.

That's one way to get the Tooth Fairy here

I dropped the kids off at Y camp this morning. I was heading out to catch the early showing of Larry Crowne (if you go before noon, you get in for $5), go by a furniture store that's supposedly closing to check out prices on nightstands and mattresses, hit the post office, the library, the commissary, and the ever necessary Walmart before picking the kids up by 4.

Twenty minutes into the movie I get a phone call that S and her two front teeth have had a tete-a-tete with a piece of playground equipment and that I should probably come get her and take her to the dentist.

Fifteen minutes and one only slightly panicky phone call to the dentist later, I'm at the Y. To her credit, S was sitting there calmly holding a wet paper towel to her mouth. To my credit, I managed to look at the damage without upsetting her or showing my dismay. This did not look good. Her gums were already bruising and they had obviously been bleeding pretty seriously. And her two front teeth, while still attached, had been shifted in her mouth.

I signed her out, got her in the car, and we were at the dentist a short time later. After an x-ray and an oral examination, Dr. M told us that S's permanent teeth looked to be undamaged and that her baby teeth might or might not stay in. As far as scenarios go, that was a pretty good one, I thought. I was worried they were going to pull the teeth or that she was going to need some oral surgery. S is not exactly the best patient.

To my surprise, S wanted to go back to camp after we left the dentist, so I took her back. She ate a little lunch and she ate dinner pretty well. Her teeth seem more secure than they were earlier today and she's handling everything like a champ. Poor kid! What a lousy thing to have to go through! The dentist gave her a tooth box for the tooth fairy, so she's all excited that her her front tooth/teeth may come out. Me? A little less so, but I'm willing to roll with it. The most important thing is that she's okay. And I'm pretty sure she is since she told the dental assistant "you stink" out of the blue.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Now if I can get version 3.8 of the Diva Self Edit program installed in S's brain, we should be good to go.

Confession time

So! The kids are at day camp this week. I had such grand plans. Most of which are still plans waiting on me to get my buns in gear. Trips to Goodwill, listing all our yard sale stuff that didn't sell (which is pretty much all of it) online to try and get it outta here, really, really cleaning the house from top to bottom, reorganizing the closets that have not felt my wrath yet (in my defense, there's only one left).

What have I done?

I've worked out every day this week so far - much better than last week! I've managed to get the kids to camp every day this week on time without yelling or threatening. I've napped. I've consumed a lot of water. I've watched some movies. I've blogged. I've cooked. I reorganized the spice/baking cabinet. I've gone to the library, met R for lunch, and finished a bunch of errands I've been meaning to do for a while.

In short, I've taken it easy. It's been pretty glorious. And, while my house is not spotless, but it's not nasty either. The furniture hasn't been rearranged yet (mostly because I keep changing my mind), and I've got a bunch of stuff I'm dropping off at Goodwill tomorrow.

And I think I'm calling it a successful week.The kids are happy...R and I are happy...I can live with dusty baseboards and munchkin printed window panes.