… little bit of this, little bit of that, a whole lotta about the kids

Category Archives: Brain Dump

Love Hate Computer Keys Showing Emotion Anger And ConflictLet me just say first that I love my husband. He is an amazing person and I am very lucky to be his wife. Having said that, right now I think I could easily hate him. I’ve lost 12 pounds in 7 weeks. With 150+ pounds to lose, you would think I would lose a lot faster, but never mind that. And it’s a terrible struggle. I fight cravings and fight to meet my macros, and avoid sugar and such. My husband, who only had 60-80 pounds to lose has lost 40 pounds in 11 weeks. I won’t say it’s “easy” for him, but he doesn’t seem to have cravings. He just decides to stop drinking soda, and he is done with it. He eats what he plans to eat during the day, trusting me to prep a dinner in the 500-600 calorie range, and never ends up staring into the open fridge looking for something else to eat. I think he is one of those naturally “thin” people. It’s just that he was eating so far over his calorie limit before (an entire bag of Doritos for a snack for instance), that now that he is eating “normal” portions, the weight is just falling off him like Bill from Thinner. And as much as I love him, it makes me want to strangle him in his sleep 😉


What happens when I don’t plan ahead?  Well, its the tired cliché I remember spouted out at every weight watcher meeting I ever attended — if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. Always when I plan an event i ask for help to https://epiceventsnj.com/cinematic-video/.  For me, that mostly means meal planning.  Not just for health and weight loss purposes, but if I don’t meal plan, I often end up floundering at dinner time.

I forgot to take out something to thaw!

Yikes!  What am I going to make for dinner with XYZ?  What do I have that goes with it? I need a store run.

Oops, I took out a roast to thaw, I should have gotten that in the oven an hour ago for dinner in an hour.

Ugh, I am just too tired to deal with it.

Especially the last one; high sugars had made me so lethargic (I didn’t know this was the issue at the time), I would literally be falling over tired; so exhausted that I could not keep my eyes open, no matter what I did.  Even when not quite that tired, the other excuses would weigh more heavily on me, and we either end up with the same boring old dinner again and again, or more likely, hopping in the car to go out to eat or bring home take out.

I never used to notice this, or realize why I was cooking at home so little, but after resuming the habit of meal planning and doing it faithfully for a good 6 weeks or so (even before I started watching my calories), I noticed today that I was floundering at dinner time, and had been for a couple days, and suddenly it knew exactly why.  Ohhhh, my last planned menu was that pulled pork on Saturday. I sat down several times with my meal planning binder to do my meal plan, but something kept getting in the way.  I had the general idea of the week in my mind, and I’d taken out some meats to thaw, but I never got it down on paper with sides and such.

If you find yourself struggling at meal time, whether it’s breakfast, lunch, dinner or all three, I recommend trying meal planning for a few weeks and see how it really reduces the meal time stress.  I personally like the planner from The Project Girl, but even just jotting down my weeks worth of meals on a scrap paper works.


Mrs. Snodgrass, my sons third grade teacher, is amazing. She’s a wonderful person, as well as an inspiring teacher. Although my son is now in 4th grade, I still volunteer in her classroom every week. I am devastated that she retires this year and Laurel will never have the chance to experience Mrs. Snodgrass’ classroom.  I could go on for paragraphs about her, but ATM I am posting from my phone and will refrain as typing is a pain 😉

This is a St. Patricks day activity she does with her 3rd graders.

You’ll need:

A leprechaun template, ours is about 8-9″ tall and 4-5″ wide

Thin cardboard

Hole Punch

Glue stick

Scissors

Long piece of yarn, ours is about 4-5′ long

3″ piece masking tape

A penny

Crayons, Markers or colored pencils to decorate your leprechaun

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Have your child color the leprechaun as desired. Glue to a thin piece if cardboard or stuff paper such as a file folder or heavy card stock. Cut away excess cardboard. (You could print the leprechaun directly onto the heavy cardstock if desired).

Punch a hole on each side of the leprechaun, about midway, making sure the holes are directly across from each other. Punch a third hole at the bottom of the leprechaun, in the center.

Now fold your string in half; one side is the “looped” end, the other is the “strings” end.

Push the looped end through one side hole from the decorated side to the back side.

Pass it across the back of the leprechaun and push it up through the other side hole.

Thread the strings side through the looped end.

Pass the strings end through the bottom hole.

Tape the penny to the strings end, securing both ends to the penny so the string is now basically a complete loop with the penny attached.

The challenge to your child — can you find the leprechauns trick and remove the string from the leprechaun, keeping both string and leprechaun intact? No scissors, tearing, or removing the penny!


Hmm, I’ve just noticed that this new theme posts dates in European format, day, month, year instead of month, day, year.  And the only settings I can find are set the other way around.  I also would like to change my header graphic so the sun is smiling.  I edited it on another blog I do with this theme, and yet can not for the life of me figure out how to do that again either. 😉


From the number of “hair” boards that I have to unfollow on Pinterest, its apparently a great area of concern for a lot of folks. Fine, i get that – not everyone is as unconcerned with it as I am. But what I don’t understand are the styles pinned. Am I the only person in the world that thinks fishtail braids are hideous?  The only on that thinks creating a heart shape with hair is weird?  The sole person that thinks asymmetrical hair styles makes people look lopsided and like they will fall to one side?  Apparently so 😉


Our PTA lego night last night was a success!  We had 230-250 attendees, which is the biggest turnout ever for our small school of about 320 students in 250 families.  Besides a boatload of Legos for free play, Little Engineers came with a few stations with robots, etc. We offered substantial refreshments for working families that might not have time to have dinner first, and drawings for lego sets.

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This is the gallery of mini-fig designs submitted by some of our students. 🙂


I usuallt try to avoid cliches, but sometimes it’s an idea that’s just engrained and there are no better words for it.

pinterest just went to a “new look” and for me, it probably heralds the end of my using it (pretty much what happened with polyvore).  I can handle learning the new layout.  It looks fine to me (not that there was anything wrong with it before IMO) but I no longer have the ability to right click and “open in new tab” from any board (including my “home” which is basically the “board” of all the new pins from those whom I follow).   I’ve always gone through my new pins daily (or more than daily ;)), opening likely looking pins in new tabs.  I absolutely WILL NOT re-pin something until I verify that the pin is actually linked to an appropriate source.  Sometimes what I thought looked interesting is less so once I look more closely.  Either way, I’ll browse through my new pins, opening tabs as I go to look at once I have scanned through all my new pins.  Not anymore.  This loss of functionality is crippling to me.

I also can’t right click and open up the board that a pin came from (linked at the bottom of the pin).  When I am doing a search and get a screenful of pins, I frequently want to open the whole board (in a new tab!), not just the pin.  Can’t do it.  I have to click into the board in my main browsing screen.  Then if I want more details on a pin, I have to click into that as well.  Now I am 3 deep from my initial search result.  When I finally get to hit back, back, back, about half the time the search has reset to the top of the screen and I have to scroll back through to find my place.

I generally dislike the whiny complainers who post on game / company forums and think so much of themselves that they think thier “This sux and I will no longer be a customer” comments carry any weight with said company, so I have refrained from whining to pinterest, other than filling out a polite feedback form.  So that’s why you got to listen to me now 😉

R.I.P Pinterest?

Update:  They did fix the issues I was having, FYI =)


Is it really *that* hard to click on the individual blog entry when linking from a blog to pinterest?  It’s quite annoying to click a pinterest link that looks so very interesting to discover you are at the blog home page, or on an archive page, in either case, no idea where the original post is located.  (or to a tumblr feed, or a google search page, etc).  Almost as useful — linking to an embedded picture, so the pinterest link pulls up some bp1.blogspot.com address, instead of the actual blog where you might find information about the picture.

You really gotta wonder if people are actually trying to access the links they are re-pinning.

Only pin / re-pin to an original source!


What’s new?

Kidlet officially has Asperger’s with major sensory processing issues (not that we didn’t already know that for months).  I will leave it at that un-emotionally changred sentence for now.  I assure you, reality is far from un-emotional.

Kidlet informed me some time ago that cute bento lunches were not appropriate for his age (whatever!).  I still pack his meals in laptop lunchboxes or bento boxes, but they aren’t worth photographing.

Baby L is no baby!  Not quite 3, but way “too” bright.  I have struggled with tot school because her knowledge exceeds her age. Far exceeds it.  She has known her alphabet (and not just singing it, but being able to identify letters at random, upper and lower) for a year and knows the sounds of most letters, counts to 30 on her own (and rocognizes, in random order written numbers to 20, plus the 10’s to 100), can tell you how many objects are in a group without actually counting them, up to 5 easily, knows all her colors, all the basic shapes, can expand on patterns, sorts by at least 2 different criteria (round & blue for instance), and on and on.

Her motor skills are age 2, so much writing isn’t possible (although we have been doing various pre-writing activities and fine motor activities with tweezers and eyedroppers, etc to prepare her), and she certainly isn’t holding writing utensils correctly, or able to use scissors.  And emotionally she is 2.  She isn’t ready for more advanced “work”, and it’s been VERY challenging for mom to find activities that will interest the 2 year old who has the”academic” knowledge of a 4 year old and are actually doable by said 2 year old.

Emotionally, I am a wreck, and physically, there hasn’t been a lot of change.  I’ve lost maybe 15 pounds since Baby L was born.



We’re alive and kicking. 

Mostly been packing regular laptop lunches or having hot lunch.  I’m quite sad about that, because I’m missing opportunities for Halloween bento, which are by far my favorite to do!

Tot school goes on, but Baby L and I have been sick for 4 out of the last 5 weeks.  We’re really sick for a few days, then just a little sick, then it lingers on a few more — and then we get sick all over again.  L is getting tot school time, but I’m not planning ahead very well, and I’ve not been documenting what we do, so no posts there.

I’m spending ridiculous hours a week on my volunteer jobs at Kidlet’s school (this is the last week of intense work for one of them thankfully).   I’ll still be spending about 4-6 hours a week volunteering in the classroom, and the Art Lit coordinator job I’m doing does take quite a bit of time in prepping the lessons, teaching the parent class and then presenting it to my son’s class, but we only do a new artist/culture every month or so, so it shouldn’t be as time consuming as the volunteer coordinator job has been in finding people to chair events, and filling holes for classroom helpers, etc.