Taking Charge ~ September!

...and I survived it in pretty good shape! The house is a bit worse-for-neglect...but our underdrawers are clean and the sink is empty...so it could be worse! Tonight is the big (HA!) home opener football game...including fireworks (here in our 'burb...not at my school) I'm "band parenting," so I have to hang for the whole game. DD11.5 is spending the night at a friend's and DH will stop in Cleveland to visit MIL and depending on how that goes: may-or-may-not make it to the ball game. It's all about half-time anyway! I think my parents are coming up for the game (the band) too.

We're taking a quick 2.5 day trip to an old-fashioned amusement park in Pennsylvania this week-end. We'll visit MIL in the morning...the drive over from there. We'll be home on Monday evening.

Lesson plans, activities, and copys are all ready for next week and I'm working on the week after that! In nutrition class I'll be giving a safety quiz and their first "big" test that week. After that...we're in the kitchens! Yeeee Haw!

I've just registered DD16 (and DH and I) for the College of Engineering Open House at the University of Akron. That's the end of the month.

... I bought my 2007 monthly calendar for my planner the other day, too.

I must hop up and change out of MY school colors and into "OUR" school colors. I guess I'll have to hide my bright orange toenails! (Our (local) school is blue-and-gold while MY school is orange-and-black!)...because one more thing to complicate life is always fun!

Love to all!

Blessings,
Lenora
" The teacher is just a boat to take the student over the river."
Gautama Buddha

Things sure sound busy around there, Lenora! You seem like you're having fun though

I am in the middle of bathroom renovations which are taking For Ever, and I am sick of the towels and bathroom products piled up in the living room in the meantime I am in the middle of painting (walls pale blue, trim white, and bright pink accents). I was planning to do some today, but slipped on the stairs and hit my leg just below the knee on a stair and currently have a huge lump on my leg so I figured I should keep off it for today. It doesn't hurt at all, but the lump is a bit alarming. I hope it goes down tomorrow, or I might have to go the doctor on Monday

I am very proud of DS15 right now. He passed his Maths GCSE exam a year earlier than he would have done it were he in school. He got the highest mark out of about forty students, all of whom were adults except DS and one other boy

I have enrolled on a course in sign language. It's a course I have already taken and passed several years ago, but I want to refresh my signing skills before getting a job. I am also hoping I may have some voluntary work in that area soon.

Oh! Forgot something else - Zillah and I got together last week! DS and I spent a lovely afternoon with Zillah, her Mum and the gorgeous DD2, who is bright as a button and an absolute dear. I forgot to take photos though

Off now to read on the sofa - well, I've got a bad leg. I could milk this for weeks, y'know....

DD and I are back from our short break in Norfolk, taken whilst DH was at a conference. Lovely to see Honey and her DS, who was extremely tolerant of the fact that Honey and I just yakked away all morning

This is going to be very short, because I'm absolutely exhausted, but I wanted to say HI to all!

Zillah

Honey wasn't paying much attention to the fact that I was in Singapore last week. I've found her DS to be very tolerant of that too, and in my case it's even better since he also babysits both kids for several hours so I can hear myself think for a change. I wish you guys lived closer - I'd employ him a lot at the moment!

my house is the pits - it needs a serious vacuuming, and a good tidy up, but with the various bits of chaos continuing here I've noticed that nobody really cares much. We've got our first employee who started yesterday (Tuesday); we had the plumber in briefly because the pilot light on the boiler refused to relight for me (he got it going, but suspects a wearing down problem with the gas valve - couldn't agree with your last sentence more Lenora!); one small hamster managed to turn the whole house into a zoo when a half dozen kids traipsed in and out to have a look. Some commented that the front door was open, but I had given up by then! The hamster arrived about half hour before the kids finished their first day back at school. I've decided I love school starting and September, and cooler weather... I actually snuggled under my duvet in Singapore thinking about that when the air-con was a bit cool! Sad case.

We're moving office tomorrow officially, but since the first batch of furniture doesn't arrive till next Monday, and we haven't ordered computers I'm not exactly sure what we're moving in - stationery I suppose since I brought tons back with me from Singapore. Need to check whether the phone lines are getting fixed up tomorrow since they were due to be done this week.

I can only expect a rocky road ahead with some of this work stuff, at least through Christmas, though hopefully with an office and one extra employee things should be improving, but we still have mess clearing with customers from the previous franchisee, creation of new systems which have all just had to be ignored for the time being because there hasn't been time, then the shops will be set up, a new design webshop will be starting, and then we have the retail nightmare of Christmas. Still, it's not bad stuff, just chaotic really, periods of adjustment for all of us. And LOTS of work. Isn't it funny how this has been such a year of change for all of us almost.

it's after 10:30pm and there are a number of other new threads I want to look at, so I'd better keep it shorter or I'll never sleep tonight!

Kerri.

The last of my houseguests leave tomorrow (BIL and his wife from Ireland) Hopefully we'll be getting back to some new level of "normal" soon.

See you then,

Blessings,
Lenora
" The teacher is just a boat to take the student over the river."
Gautama Buddha

Well, the holidays are really over now, and it's back to trying to achieve order, calm and joy in our lives

Lenora, so sorry to to hear about your mother-in-law. I liked your piece on her. It is a wonderful thing to have a great MIL

How's everyone else?

I have three projects - one nice, one nasty and one rather involved.

Nasty first - THE DESK. Why is it always such a disaster area/dumping ground/horrible place to work? It needs some fundamental rearrangement as well as a darn good sorting out. (Yes, we have dead computer equipment sitting on it!)

The nice - a sewing box. My mum has passed on to me my great-aunt's lovely sewing box. When I have sorted out the desk PROPERLY, then I get to arrange my stuff in the sewing box.

The involved - the utility room. I haven't really put my mark on it since we moved in a year ago, and DMIL has given me the green light to sort, sort, sort. That's a job for next week. I know my limits

Anyone else got some tasks, nice or nasty?

Zillah

Nice, nasty AND involved - my BEDROOM!!

It'll be nice when it's done.

It'll be nasty doing it.

There is nowhere to put the stuff that's piled up all over it, so sorting it out will be involved.

However, it's not on this week's list as I have a project report to write up. In my usual fashion, I should have been writing it for the past fortnight, I have a tutorial about my progress later this week and I haven't started.

Honey :

Nice--Dining room set is being delivered Wednesday, much earlier than anticipated! Yay!
Of course, this does mean I have to muck out the dining room, which I've been ignoring for a while.

Nasty--Mopping. Not just Swiffering, but mopping. My kitchen floor is that bad.

Involved--Um, everything else? I'm trying really hard to declutter and clear out the future nursery for painting. The mudroom and garage also need attention.

Your desk sounds like my desk, Zillah! I did get an organizer thingy a while ago that helped some--at least now some of my piles are vertical instead of horizontal! It gives me a fighting chance of finding what I want, but it hasn't helped motivate me to sort things out any more quickly.

Well, nothing got done on the desk today. Because . . .

DD2.5 started playgroup. I was in inner turmoil. She was utterly unconcerned by the whole experience! I've never left her with people she doesn't know before and, even though she's an independent little thing, I was worried that she might not cope. However, no problems so far. She even cried because she didn't want to go home.

Also our car got broken into. I HATE that. There's nothing in there to steal, but they broke a window, did the locks and tried to jimmy the stearing column. AAAGGGGHHHHH. Now there's a whole lot of stuff to deal with and I'm not sure how drivable the car is.

So, a bit of a rollercoaster of a day.

Honey, do you have a plan for how you're going to tackle your bedroom? Or are you just going to run at it?

Sparrow, how lovely to have new furniture coming! I think I might have to look into some desk organiser type thing. Just not sure what it ought to be at the moment.

Zillah

mostly in the new (outside) office, and since large chunks of it were two desktops and a server it's a pretty unpleasant heap of job. I've never had to deal with a server before so I'm fumbling my way through setting it up, along with all sorts of phone line and cabling issues.

haven't really done anything at all at home, except move things out to the new office, which is pretty good. To be fair though, I went through a bit of a cleaning phase last week and some serious junk got tossed. With the remains of the office stuff moving over by the end of next week I expect a few more things will get tossed. Then maybe I will have room on my desk for school papers and personal stuff, like I used to have. My office desk has two monitors, two keyboards and two mice on it, with a desktop and server underneath, an all-in-one printer and a fancy new phone off to one side plus an 8 port switch and a broadband hub. Between all that I have cables just about everywhere because until we know the order it's all just temporary, and we're not entirely sure where the server will end up yet!

DD is off to a farm for a week as of tomorrow morning. That means DS had a little crying session on my lap earlier, but he wasn't really crying over his horrible big sister so much as the fact that he wouldn't have anyone to play with next week, particularly since two of his best friends are also her best friends and will be off to the farm too! We have a local food festival this weekend and a judo competition - DS' first since starting it, and ironic that DD won't be around since she was the one who started it. If he does well he might get graded too, but there's another grading in November anyway, so plenty more chances to win some tabs for me to sew onto his belt!

I got my tax forms done - YAY! They were due in by Saturday and they went in the post on Monday so that's a huge weight off my mind. Unfortunately I now need to settle to sorting out the VAT for the last quarter which I haven't done before, so that promises to be thoroughly terrifying. This is the time it's good to have a best friend who's an accountant - I'm arranging for her to come up to generally look over our accounts, advise a bit on VAT and have a good meal. If she brings the rest of her family I get to pay with some babysitting!

we also started taking a quick look at houses again last weekend, new ones for now. Found some nice layouts in bad locations and one lovely location with a less than great layout (but it was overlooking a conservation area with great crested newts!). We need to know which of the two nearby towns has good housing for us because we need to pick a school for DD by the end of October!!! ARGH! I think I still know which school, but as always I'm bothered by what happens if the preference isn't met, since we're a long way out of the catchment area.

Honey - get a flamethrower and take the easy route on that bedroom of yours. OR get realistic and learn to decorate round the clutter. OR find something you love for that room, start saving for it, and promise yourself you'll only buy it once you have a gorgeously tidy room to put it in.

Kerri.