Welcome to Fright Night!

Blogging and journaling tend to take a back seat to life, which is rather silly since journaling should flow out of life...



Here is an overview of my life this week, which is very much like every other week since mid-September. Keep in mind that my work schedule fluctuates from week to week.



Monday, September 28 (I just realized that was only yesterday! Just goes to show how overloaded I am...)
-drop Casey off at school at 8:20
-work 9:00 until 2:00
-home to shower & change and wait for Abby to get home from school
-several minutes of surprise, anger, dismay, frustration, and resignation when a friend came home with Abby, even though I had told the mother that this particular day would not work!
-2:50 leave the house for Abby's dental appointment with friend in tow; frantic cell phone calls en route for mother to pick her daughter up at the dentist's office
-meanwhile, Casey is finished school and beginning volleyball practice from 3:00 until roughly 4:30
-also meanwhile, Sam is finishing school and catching a ride with a teacher to the Rec. Centre for school tennis games from 4:00 until 5:00
-3:45ish Abby is finished having her teeth cleaned, but it takes ten minutes to sort through the paperwork before we can leave.
-4:00ish hit the Subway next door to the dental office for a sandwich for Sam and realize that I forgot to bring Sam's water jug with me
-change of plans...drop Abby off at home around 4:25 and pick up Sam's water jug
-arrive at the Rec. Centre to watch the last half hour of Sam's school tennis
-Sam has tennis lessons at the Rec. Centre (thank the Lord the lessons are at the same courts!) from 5:00 until 6:30, hence the Subway sandwich I brought along for Sam to quickly eat between his tennis sessions
-arrive home around 6:30 and scrounge in the fridge for some supper
-relax, because that was only one day!



Tuesday
-start a load of laundry, the dishwasher, and do some light tidying between 8:00 and 9:00am
-at 9:00 go to my work place to meet a co-worker. She had some plants to give me.
-9:30ish pick up a few grocery essentials
-10:00 arrive at library to return and pick-up books
-10:45 arrive back home to change loads of laundry, put away groceries, and unload plants
-11:00 have lunch
-put plants into the ground, etc.
-1:00 change loads of laundry
-enjoy some down-time for a little while
-most Tuesdays (but not today) Sam has an after school class from 3:30 until 5:00, so he would need to be picked up from school
-6:00 parent meeting at Sam's school


Wednesday, September 30
-no work today but probably a bit of running around scoping out camping equipment for Sam's Outdoor Ed. class trip mid-October
-maybe do some baking?! It will depend on how insane I am in the morning.
-Casey has volleyball practice again after school, same duration
-Sam has both school tennis and tennis lessons, same times as Monday
-Abby has a church pre-teen club from 6:30 until 8:00
-Kane has a men's church group from 7:00 until 9:00, which means I need to go pick Abby up at 8:00


Thursday, October 1
-I work 10:00 until 2:00
-Casey has a volleyball game from 4:45 to 6:45 at a school in a neighbouring city
-Abby has a church drama/music group from 3:30 until 4:45
-Sam has a dental appointment at 4:00, which means I will need to pick him up from school before I drop Abby off at church (hopefully! Abby's friend will likely complicate things.)
-after Sam's appointment (if it doesn't take too long), pick Abby up from church and head to Casey's volleyball


Friday, October 2
-no work today
-will likely need to catch up on laundry and housework and errands
-Casey is supposed to have a volleyball tournament today and on Saturday
-Abby has a babysitter's course tonight
-I'll be in bed by 9:00


Saturday, October 3
-I work 6:00am to 2:00pm
-Abby has a babysitter's course from 9:00 to 2:30
-Casey has a volleyball tournament


Sunday, October 4 is currently a free day! Hopefully, we'll make it to church and continue our new tradition of 'family night'. Other than that, it will be a day of relaxing and catching up.

Next week is more of the same, less the dental appointments (though there are at least a couple more scheduled in the near future), tournament, and babysitter's course. I don't know my work schedule for next week yet, and Sam wraps up both tennis sessions on October 7th. Abby's friend will be coming to our house after school until her mom is finished work. I am not sure if it will be an every day kind of thing or just a few times a week. The family is Korean, and I often struggle to understand the mother and vice-versa. She usually picks her daughter up around 3:30, which isn't normally a problem, but it is this week with the dental appointments!

From Blah to Yeah!

(Blogger apparently loads the photos in the opposite order that I do, so these are seen in reverse order.)

The front yard is looking good, but we still have work to do before I can say that it is a project completed.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike2.5 Canada License.

Bobcats and Back to School

Today is the first full day back to school!


The weather is grey, cool and rainy, but I love it. I feel optimistic and excited for the year, like I've just woken from a long, deep sleep.


The haircut helped, so did colouring my hair. I knew that I was frustrated and tired of my 'old' hair, but I am still surprised by how much I feel like a new person since the haircut!


The cooler weather helped. I like summer. I like the sunshine. But I love autumn more! As much as I prefer to be sockless and shoeless, I'd take cool, crisp fall weather any day.


The end of summer helped. I worked a lot over the summer, which is typical for my summers, but crazy. Returning to "regular" routines always feels like a breath of fresh air. Life won't be any less crazy, but at least there is routine to the madness and I don't need to get up at an obscene hour every day!


The bobcat in the front yard is helping! Kane and I have finally come to agreement on the basic plans for the front yard. As I type, the front yard has been leveled, and the first load of topsoil has been dropped off. By the end of the day, we will have the shaping of a yard with berms around the edges. There is still lots of work to do, but it is exciting to see progress and change.

After!

I like it! A lot! But it will probably never look exactly like this again. The hair-dresser straightened my hair (knowing that I am not likely to do it myself), so normally there would be a bit of wave and curl.

My head feels so much lighter, my hair feels healthier already, and this style should work with my extremely low-maintenance system. It is rather nice to have hair that feels weightless!





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Before

This is the 'before' picture, taken only minutes ago. It certainly isn't anything special, and I don't exactly like looking at photos of myself, but it is a reminder of what I look like at this moment in time. In four hours I will be sitting myself down in a hair-dresser's chair and placing my trust into a stranger's hands.

I cannot remember when I last had my haircut, except to say that it has been a very long time! I've been fretting over split ends since the spring, so I know that a haircut was overdue even months ago. The thing is that I can never fully decide what I want to do with my hair, and so I put it off and put it off until my hair drives me crazy and I can't stand it any longer. Probably not the best way to do things, but it is how I operate, at least with my hair.

I am looking forward to the haircut, although I still don't know what I want! When I booked my appointment, I said that I didn't know what I wanted, except for someone to take a look at my hair, my face shape, and create a new me. The voice on the other end of the phone seemed to understand my request and seemed eager to take on the challenge. Now I just hope that she is as good as her enthusiasm.

I don't think I am an overly vain person. I am not the type of person to primp and preen in front of the mirror. I do want to look nice, but I am not willing to spend loads of time and money on the effort. I am too cheap to make regular six week trips to the hair-dresser. While I do have some styling products in my bathroom cupboard, I can't be bothered to use them, except for special occasions. My hands are all thumbs when it comes to using curling irons and blow dryers, so I seldom use them. Okay, so I haven't used a curling iron in at least a decade and only own one because I bought one for my pre-teen daughter, but I have used my 20 year old blow dryer at least once in the past year. (Twice if you include using it to defrost my upright freezer!)

So, I am placing my hair into a stranger's hands. It is a little scary but exciting. There is a box of hair colour in my bathroom cupboard waiting to be applied to my new head of hair in a couple of days. Unfortunately, grey hairs are starting to show, but I wanted to wait until the split ends were gone before colouring.

'After' photos to come...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike2.5 Canada License.