Howdie Family and Friends - here are the going ons in the life of me. Stew shows up frequently. My family and friends visit a lot. My nieces and nephews are represented throughout. It's all about me and how I'm traveling along in this thing I call my life.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

POTD: November 6, 2012

Stew and I voted when he got home from work.  Much busier than we remember it being for the last Presidential election.  I sure hope that Maryland doesn't let me down with their vote on Question 6.

Journal: November 5, 2012

I hate when I don't journal before I go to bed.  I mean it was only yesterday and I sure as hell don't remember what happened.  Let me see...

So, I know I woke up.  That's a given.  And I headed downstairs for my date with the treadmill.  Started week 3 of Couch 2 5K over again because I haven't run in awhile and I wanted to start again with a routine I knew I was comfortable with.  The numbers weren't bad.  I still hate running - when will this nirvana people talk about kick in - I'm still waiting.  Maybe it'll kick in when my ass isn't as fat as it is now - yeah, that's what I'm thinking.



 After working out went and got ready for the appointment with my head doctor.  Worried about the winter months as always as my depression seems to really kick in then.  I will say that working out has helped in this area a lot and I think if I stick with it as much as I can (maybe lose some damn weight!) it will help with this.  The doctor agreed.  She doesn't want to make any medication changes but wants me to continue working out and start seeing a counselor again.  Sigh.  Before I found my previous counselor, I had seen so many people and none of them fit and then I found Paula and we fit.  She didn't coddle me.  She didn't let me get away with stuff.  She called me on my "bullshit" as she called it.  I loved her.  When she left, I was devastated.  I just don't want to go through the seeing 40 people again to find one.  It's harder than dating, I swear.  So I discussed this with the doctor - she thinks that she knows someone that will work.  I made an appointment with her on December 8th.  We'll see.

Saw a sign on my way home that reminded me of just how close we are to the devastation that Sandy caused.  Still so sad about this.



Work was work today - there was actually some genuine things I needed to get done and those were accomplished.  Awesome.

I attended a seminar for Crafting your Business.  Found out a lot of interesting information that I'll see about implementing as time allows.

Got mail delivered for the first time in over a week and had to go to the post office because they held one of my packages as "undeliverable".  Just one more reason Stew can't stand our mail person.  Most of it was junk mail, I did receive 3 boxes of craft goodies!  And this ad for Joann's.  I posted this on Facebook, but I think it bears repeating - this is the epitome of false advertising.  There's no way a Steelers fan and a Browns fan sit together on the couch so amicably.  Just no way - wait until Shawn comes home and we're watching the Steelers and Ravens - I'll post some pictures and then we'll see what it looks like when divisions play against one another.



Stew came home from work and worked out on the recumbent bike.  Numbers were good:  8.22 miles, 243 calories, 45 minutes.  He's watching From Earth to the Moon while he works out and he's enjoying that.

While he worked out I made this recipe that he found on food.com

Spanish Chicken Rice Bake

It took way longer than 45 minutes to cook.  So long in fact that we gave up and had cereal for dinner, but once it was done, I served both of us a small portion.  We like it, which is good because it's Wednesday night's dinner.  Tomorrow I'm making pot roast in the crock pot.

We ended the night watching CSI, but not for long.  I was exhausted.  In bed at 9, asleep by 9:30.  Soooo tired.

POTD: November 5, 2012

Sorry yesterday's posts are so late - been trying to get to them all day!

Stew installed the new shower head in our master bathroom - the shower head wasn't the issue with the water pressure - the house just has low water pressure - we must figure out a way to fix this!  We must!  It takes way too long to rinse out my hair.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Journal: November 4, 2012

Lazy pajama day around the house.

Started the day in the scrap room. Did the video for the winner of my October contest and alerted my you tube subscribers to the November contest.

Found a web hosting site as part of my day 4 assignment for Craft your Business. Can't wait for the teleconference tomorrow. I have some questions.

Finally finished that layout of Will and Grace picking apples. Glad that's done and now I can move on to something else. Really should work on getting Project Life caught up.

Stew got up and headed out to the grocery store and Home Depot. He installed the new shower head in our shower but doesn't think it helps the water pressure at all and that sucks.

We had BLTs for lunch or in Stew's case BLCs. Add cheese, subtract tomato.

We watched some more of season 4 of CSI. Only 90 seasons to go. LOL

Watched the NASCAR race. My poor Kasey. Scraped the wall in the final laps, chase chances, slim though they were at the start of the day, are now completely wiped out. Damn Jimmie Johnson won again. Sigh. Only good thing about that is that I love Chad. I mean you have to love a crew chief that tells his driver that he should go back to saving fuel because he was going faster when he was doing that than when he was driving hard.

Race finished and Stew switched back to regular tv to find the Steelera game on. There were 2 minutes left, Giants were out of timeouts. I seriously could not believe what I was seeing. Maybe I shouldn't watch at all anymore. They do better when I don't, those bums.

Went back to the scrap room to import another video to narrate tomorrow.

Ended the night looking at message boards.

Now, going to read a few pages of my book and head to bed. Back on the treadmill in the morning.

(This post was written on my iPhone so any typing errors or misspellings, I'm blaming on Apple.

Good night, ya'll.

POTD: November 4, 2012

All this time and Stew finally gives me a key to the house. Actually, my original house key has not been working so great so Stew got me a new one made when he went to Home Depot today. He even tested it for me before he gave it to me. How awesome is he?

POTD: November 3, 2012

Stew's war wounds from our marathon cleaning session today.

Journal: November 3, 2012

Got up this morning around 7:30.  Headed down to the craft room to get some time in down there before Stewbert woke up.  I did the first three assignments for a class I'm taking this month with Lain Ehman - it's called Crafting Your Business.  How great would that be to be able to make money from sitting in my scrap room - lovely!  I don't know what will come of it, but I thought I could take this class and see what it may take to build a business from this.  The first two assignments focused on why you'd want to do this and what resources you have to dedicate to it.  The assignment for today was to look to see if a domain name that you may want for your business is available.  I checked.  Mine was!  So I bought it.  ginabeth.com - belongs to me.  I guess I'll find out as we work through the assignment what I should be doing with that.

I purchased the prize for my October contest winner.  I really need to put up the information on youtube about November's prize.  Hopefully, I'll get to that tomorrow.

Stew woke up in major task master mode and I'm happy to say we got a lot done.  We got all of our DVDs put away.  We own 13 DVD storage containers that hold 100 DVDs....except for leaving some room in DVD Thing 1 for Wii games, we only have 70 slots left in DVD Thing 13.  Pretty incredible to think of the number of DVDs we own.

Besides that we went through all of our books.  From 7 full bookshelves to this....


That's all we have left.  We love books, but storing them just takes up so much room and now that we both have Kindles - paper books just

So now we need to find homes for all of these books.



We got the exercise equipment where I want it.



And we cleaned up the kids' room.




Following that, I got all of our clothes put away.  Changed the way I organize them, too - so that was a mountain to tackle.

We have a few more things to finish up tomorrow, mostly general cleaning and laundry - but I'm thinking tomorrow is definitely a pajama day.  I'm going to play in the craft room.  Stew's going to watch football (I may watch too if they broadcast the Steelers game around here).  I'm going to put something warm and fall like in the crockpot for dinner and we're just going to relax a little.

We ended today by ordering Pat's and watching tv.  I had spaghetti.  It was good, as usual.  Stew tried something new.  He ordered a roast beef melt to go along with his potato skins - he said it was surprisingly good.

We watched Elementary, Vampire Diaries, Blue Bloods, Project Runway All Stars.  (We watched Person of Interest while we were eating breakfast this morning.)  Vampire Diaries just keeps getting weirder and weirder.  I don't particularly like anyone on Project Runway All Stars - but Person of Interest, Blue Bloods and Elementary - loving those shows.

We turn our clocks back tonight - an extra hour tomorrow.  I can sure use it.

Ohhhh, another thing I need today before Stew got up - I started our Christmas shopping.  I have 4 of the kids done and if I had ideas for the other ones, I could have finished those up today, too.  I'll have to call parents tomorrow.

And I end the night with a picture Clint Bowyer posted to Twitter - it's the fly over from today's Nationwide race.  HA!  It's JETS!!!  He loves me.  LOL.


Good night, ya'll.  I'm going to read for awhile and then get some much needed sleep.

Started Christmas shopping. 4 of 11 kids done.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Journal: October 9, 2012

Well, getting to bed late and then napping during the day really not doing much to help my sleeping habits.  Today is nothing to write about.  Nothing much happened.  I did get notified that there may be a patient going on my one study in Georgia, so hopefully that will take up two of my weeks in November and I got word to move forward with a PSV in New York so I'll get that scheduled hopefully for sometime soon.  Otherwise, work is moving at a snail's pace.  I'm going to remember complaining about this when I'm so busy I can't see straight.

Stew started his first day with his new team today and from the sounds of it, it went well.  He has a week of meetings though - so that's pretty crazy, but otherwise, he's meeting with his team and learning the ins and outs of how this section operates.  He's still pretty excited about it.

He got home from work after dealing with some really horrendous traffic.  There was an accident on the Tydings Bridge and that backed up traffic all the way to Joppatowne - so he got off of 95 at White Marsh and took 40 home - just like everyone else.  So he missed therapy tonight because of traffic.  So now he has therapy the next three nights.

He got home and we had dinner - he had pulled pork and I had chili and we watched Castle while we ate.  Love that show.  Nathan Fillion is a lunatic.  Then there was nothing left on the DVR that I wanted to see so I went to the craft room and he watched some other things on tv before going upstairs to read.  I ended my night with a glass of wine and youtube videos - unfortunately, the wine isn't helping put me to sleep tonight.  I don't know what will - maybe a mallet.

I'm going to play in the scrap room now until I get tired, which will hopefully happen soon, so that I can get to sleep.

Tomorrow - definitely have to work out (missed two days already this week, don't want to fall off that wagon) and no naps during the day so hopefully I'll go to bed on time.  We'll see.

POTD: October 9, 2012


Stew sent me this picture of his lunch and then this conversation happened.  I seriously thought that the cheese on his chili looked like fries.  Oops.


Journal: October 8, 2012

Woke up around 5:30 this morning, even before the alarm went off and I caught up on all my web stuff.  I love that I can do that while still lying in bed.  I found a new app on my phone to keep track of a to do list.  I'm hoping to get all my tasks loaded into it and then be a little more on top of when things need to get done and prioritizing those things.  Laid in bed and debated working out - it was soo cold in the house and soo warm under my blankets. 


I went back to sleep.

Got up when Stew woke me up around 8.  Freezing in our house.  About 60 degrees.  Stew said that maybe we should turn on the heat - HUH?  Though he didn't go as far as turning it on himself, I actually pushed the button, but the heat is now on with his approval.


We took a drive to LBI today.  Matt and Stew were off work and Dad, the jet setting retiree that he is, never says no to fishing, so Stew and I headed up that way.  Fishing wasn't that great.  They only caught one fish, Stew said about a 1 to 1.5 pound Blue fish that they threw back.  But as they say, a bad day fishing is better than a good day working - I suppose.







WTK had fun building sandcastles and then knocking them down.


I had a good time.  I got to hang out with Laura and got to go to the Arcade with WTK.  He spent a lot of time playing The Wizard of Oz game - he likes to rapid fire shoot the coins down and sometimes, I must say, it works.  But, damn it.  I told Laura I wasn't playing that game this year and what happens - she drags me over there and handcuffs me to the damn thing - well, it didn't take much in the way of pursuading and I did win like 4 of the needed 7 cards - but still.  I said I wasn't wasting money on that cash suck thing and what did I end up spending the most money on - sigh!!!  I did play some skee ball and tried some games I'd never played before.  Other than skee ball, I'm not very good at any of them, but it's still fun.



(above photo stolen from Laura)

WTK has like a million points and he redeemed some of them - he got two angry birds, the little red girl bird and the big Yellow one, he also got a red motorcycle and then he still has a million points left.


After the arcade there was a lot of back and forth about going to lunch or to play mini golf or lunch or what.  It's always funny to me when we're in a big group trying to figure out what we're doing next.  There's a lot of back and forth going on.  Mini golf was postponed because the guys were finished fishing and we wanted to grab lunch with dad before he had to head back for his radio club meeting. 

(above photo stolen from Laura)


We went to this restaurant called The Chicken or the Egg - it's apparently a favorite, but I'd never been there before.  I got a salad which was good and a fruit place which was huge.  Laura got cinnamon roll french toast which looked delicious (but I'm trying to lose my fat ass, so none of that yummy stuff for me).  Stew got an egg sandwich I think, Matt got fried chicken, dad got a burger.  Stew said his food was okay, they didn't cook his potatoes enough.  Laura didn't like the seasoning they put on her home fries, but they fixed that.  I would go back again - I think Stew would, too; he'd just order something different.




WTK didn't do much in the way of eating, but he did build a pretty impressive skyscraper out of creamer containers.

(above photo stolen from Laura)

We then left and it was a good thing we didn't stay to play mini golf, as it started raining on our ride home.  The ride home was delayed by an unexpected rest stop.  We never need to stop when we're driving somewhere to use the rest room, I typically am a very good girl and go before I leave, but two of those Arnold Palmers (sugar free too!  sooo good) at lunch and we had to stop.  Stew found a Friendly's and because I always feel weird just using the bathroom and not buying anything, Stew got a milkshake which was horrible and I got a cone with Chocolate Chip cookie dough ice cream - never again.  I will never cheat on Brewster's again.




We got home around 6:30, I went in the scrap room to load pictures and do things in there.  Then we watched some TV.  NCIS, LA from last week.  How I Met Your Mother from tonight, Revenge from last week.  Revenge is starting to get on my nerves some, HIMYM is no longer funny, and NCIS,LA - I'm just not sure.  I guess we'll see as the season progresses.

Got to bed way too late.  Really need to work on getting enough sleep at night.

Kids stories of the day:

  1. CEH is suffering through an ear infection and is teething, so this doesn't make for a very happy little girl.
  2. GDH is free of ear infections, think all of the her not feeling well is due to the change in the weather.
  3. GDH was walking around the house this morning singing God Bless America - which no one knew she even knew the words to.
  4. WTK told me about going to see The Avengers with his dad.  He told me how when The Hulk got a hold of Loki and swung him side to side by his head that that was the funniest part.  I worry for this child.

Monday, October 8, 2012

POTD: October 8, 2012

The only fish caught today.  A small blue fish - who is now happily swimming back in the ocean - the guys let him go.

Journal: October 7, 2012

Got up this morning and redid day 2 of week 3 of the couch to 5K since I didn't feel like I completed it while I was in San Diego.  Did today.  The 1.5 minute runs are nothing now, but the 3 minute ones are still kicking my ass pretty good, so I'm going to redo week 3 this week so that I'm more comfortable with that.  Day 1 of week 4 makes you run 5 minutes and there's no way my fat ass is ready for that - so I'll redo week 3 and hopefully by the end of this week, I'll feel up to moving on to week 4.

While we were getting ready, I was telling Stew how Laura told me last night that I scared her friend last week at the pumpkin patch.  He said, "I'm not scared of you."  I said, "any more."  He said, "or any less."  Sigh....He makes me laugh no matter what - one of the reasons I love him.

We got ready and headed up to Matt's for the dreaded (at least for me) Steelers vs. Eagles game.  I'm happy to say that the Steelers won, but as dad said, I think they should really be sending Vick a thank you card.  He was horrible in this game.  We lost Troy again.  That's not going to be good in coming weeks, especially since we play on Thursday this week.  It was an ugly, ugly game.  Both teams deserved to lose, but I'm glad the Steelers won.

The food was delicious.  My chili was a hit, which was good cause I'm always unsure of things when I bring them to events like this, but everyone seemed to like it.  Matt made pulled pork which I didn't eat at all...YET.  We brought some home, so I will definitely be having some of that.

There was also so many desserts, brownies, apple crisp, apple tart, cupcakes

And the kids made pizzas.




I spent a lot of time with my little CEH.  She wasn't feeling so good since she has teeth cutting, but for the most part she was her happy go lucky self.  I'm going to turn her into a Steelers fan if it's the last thing I do.


This is funny, after Stew took the above picture of her, she turned around to look at him - she knows what the click of the camera means - I love this look she gave him.


We also celebrated mom's birthday today.  Stew and I already told her what we got her.  There's a rapture photo shoot going on during the Cape May birding festival that we're attending so we bought mom a ticket to that and to the bird watching by boat tour - we had to tell her so that she didn't buy her own tickets - so no surprise there, but it was good to spend time with her and celebrate her day with her.  Loved the kids helping her to blow out the candle on the cake.

We bought Mom a shirt when we went to the aquarium earlier this year.  It's otters dressed up like Star War characters and it says, "Otters Strike Back."  WTK told Mom that it was the cutest shirt ever.

 
At one point CEH was trying to figure out how the Jack in the Box worked - she was hitting it.  Someone said, "That's the family way - beat it until it works."


When WTK was leaving, he and GDH were so cute - WTK wanted her to walk him out to the car to say good bye.  Awwwww. 

GDH was hilarious today as always.  First she was going around saying how Will makes her so frustrated.  The word frustrated coming out of a four year old's mouth just cracks me up.  Unfortunately, I need all of the mothers in my life to write me lists of what they consider bad words are.  For GDH, "stupid" is a bad word.  GDH informed me that, "bad words are dangerous."  Then later she was playing on the iPad and she was drawing a picture.  I told her that it was a very pretty picture and she said, "I know, it's me." 

The two techno geeks:

Laura and CEH having a good time


WTK loves CEH

 Such a pretty girl

Looks like someone needs to have a little girl!


After we got home, we went down to watch some TV.  We watched the last episodes of Flipping Out.  This show makes me laugh like crazy.  On one of tonight's episodes, Jenny and Jeff find these ski masks while they're out looking for gag gifts for Zoila, they decide to wear these masks home and stop to ask people where the nearest 7-11 or bank is.  This one guy tells them, "I don't know where they are, but there's a liquor store right down the street that you can rob."  Are you for real?  Too funny.  I sometimes wish I had the chutzpah to pull off some of the things that they do.  Funny as hell.