I actually haven't seen the second Frozen movie (I didn't care much for the first one), my sincere apologies to you parents who HAVE seen it, too many times as a matter of fact, thank you very much, and now have a song stuck in their head.
1.) Our first ever day of school is behind us! Sort of.
Little Boy's school started doing their online kindergarten class yesterday. They'll be online for at least the next few weeks, so this'll be our morning routine for awhile.
I hope it gets easier. We had a bit of a learning curve using the technology. I had Little Boy on a tablet listening to his teacher and Little Girl on a laptop playing a phonics game. The laptop unfortunately doesn't have a mouse, just one of those scroll pad thingies.
As a result, I spent most of the morning running between the two of them putting out minor technological fires on one end, and scrolling over the answer Little Girl wanted in her game on the other. At one point she got bored and started hitting keys at random, and a tiny corner of the screen magnified to the whole screen, the only way I could fix it was by restarting the computer...and I decided that was enough of that.
Enter in moderately explosive temper tantrum from Little Girl, and Little Boy's headphones falling off, "MOM!!"
Like I said, hopefully this gets slightly less hectic.
2.) DIABEETUS.
We now officially, like most households in our part of the country, are a type 2 diabetic household.
Sigh...why do tortillas have to taste so stinkin' good?
Chris had a fasting blood test for an unrelated reason that, lo and behold, came back with a positive result for diabetes. So I am all of a sudden faced with learning how to cook low carb, no sugar dishes and how to count carbs.
Did you know you can make savory waffle like things with canned chicken and shredded cheese?
I know that now.
One thing that no one seems to talk about is that the meds for type 2 diabetes give you horrible explosive diarrhea for the first two weeks you're on them. Chris has already lost a ton of weight but we're not sure it's completely due to his new diet.
Ew.
3.) Tiny trailer house living rooms make for very cramped home gyms.
In light of new diagnosis, we're trying to work at least some exercise into our day. We were going to start walking every evening, but it is HOT outside(August in South Texas routinely gets up into 109-115 degree (F) range), so we're turning to workout DVDs.
For whatever reason, Chris's family was evidentally very into Beach Body workouts at one point. Chris brought a set of P90X workout DVDs into the marriage with him, and my Mother-in-law gave us a set of "Country Heat" workout DVDs and a ton of Shakeology stuff.
Last night, we decided to break a couple out and try them. We both felt like idiots trying to learn the dance moves from the Country Heat one (honestly, when I was in high school I would have been worried about eternal damnation doing that with my hips), so we slipped a P90X one in and did the stretch warm up before an actual workout, ran out of breath, and called it a night.
We moved all the furniture out of the way, but it was still cramped. No one got hit in the face or anything, but there was definetely some coordination that had to happen.
Thankfully, the digestive, ahem, issues had mostly resolved by that point. That could have gotten bad pretty fast.
We'll probably do the stretch/warmup again (I doubt we're gonna get much further...apparently that particular workout is for experienced gym rats who want to prove their overabundance of tough guy machismo), but, man, I hope it cools down soon.
And, holy cow, early 2000s workout videos look dated. You could definetely tell when it was made and that it was heavily influenced by that period's dark angsty superhero trope.
4.) My other little brother got married!
And Little Girl got to be the flower girl (and refused to keep her shoes on).
It was a wedding right out of a Hallmark movie. Pretty little white country church, beautiful bride, and a Bible Church preacher to officiate (my brother is the Evangelical Protestant member of the family).
It seems to be a more or less unwritten law that something has to go wrong in some way or other at a wedding though, and this time the lucky one was Chris.
Chris sometimes carries a buck knife with him that he wears in a holster on his belt and it sometimes comes up under his untucked shirt. While we were out of town, he decided to borrow my parents' little running around car (they brought that and their van) and go with my other brothers (the ones who are of age) to a local brewery with a tap room that he really likes. He decided it would probably be bad form to wear a big honkin' knife into what's basically a bar, so he took it off and slipped it under the floor mat. Then he put back on when he came out and drove off.
He felt the holster digging into his side a bit while he was driving, but didn't think anything of it until he stopped, got back to the hotel room, and started changing for the wedding.
His entire left hip was a mass of fire ant bites. Turns out my parents' car has a major infestation under the carpet. They had climbed into and on the holster while he had it under the mat, and then decided to climb out and have a party when he put it back on.
Only in Texas.
5.) Apparently Dentists are Still a Thing
I haven't taken my kids to a dental appointment in a long time. I was, but the Covid happened, and I figured that it was more or less at the bottom of the priority list.
Then, this afternoon, I get a call out of the blue.
"Hi, this is Shiny Tooth dental, we're just calling to confirm Little Boy's appointment tomorrow?"
Crickets. Deer in headlights.
"Uh..."
So, apparently I made an appointment six months ago, Covid happened, and now the dentist is back open again.
So I get to navigate my first "absent from school" notice! Should be fun.
6.) Little Boy Decided to Read
I lucked into this complete Hooked on Phonic curriculum for $20 at the thrift store a couple months ago. It's the one from 2001, so we had to buy a cheap cassette tape player off Amazon (did you know they still make those?!) to use the audio component, but it was worth it.
Little Boy LOVES it. He blazed through the first few levels in a matter of weeks, and he's actually learning too...I've been getting unrelated "early reader" books and sitting down with him to make sure. I guess he was ready.
I'm not sure how that gels with his kindergarten work, but I guess we'll see.
7.) I am OFF social media
I just can't do it anymore, y'all. I really can't.
At least until after the election, I am off of Facebook (except for posting these blog posts, which I am going to do, then immediately log off), and I was never active on Instagram or Twitter to begin with...not gonna start now.
I was going to write a paragraph explaining why, but I think everyone reading this probably already knows.
I'm honestly hoping I have the will power not to go back to it at all; I'm on day three since I got off, and my life has gotten much better. I'm less stressed, more patient with the kids, and I'm getting a LOT more done. I feel like I'm less in crisis mode (and I'm writing again!).
So...yeah. Might have to start watching local news to find out if there's a hurricane coming or something, and it's going to be slightly more difficult to stay in touch with any adult I'm not married or blood related to, but I consider it a fair trade-off.
8.) Bonus! We found a complete white tux with tails at the thrift store the other day.
You better believe we brought this bad boy home. There's so much stinkin' potential for both classroom awesomeness and date night.
Machine washable too, which is a MAJOR bonus.
Check out the rest of this week's Quick Takes here.
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