Adding up the cost of these dreams

So it's a whole new year and this is when most of us promise to write more in our journals, right? I think I did better last year than the year before, but that's not a high bar.

I spent most of the holiday time in a meh sort of funk, and I go back to work tomorrow, so that was kind of a waste of the break, but it is what it is. Having a real routine will probably help my brain, but it sucks that it has to involve work. Why can't I be independently wealthy?

Spent today moving the Booster Club storage unit to a bigger storage unit and organizing everything and I can honestly say, I would love to just organize for life. Not my life, mind you, but someone else's. I'm really good at someone else's.

I'm trying to come up with 26 goals for 2026, and I'm not quite there.

1 - Finish all current physical books (I currently have 52 of those)
2 - Read 100 kindle books (This was made before I realized that I have 52 physical books, so that probably won't be happening)
3 - Send 52 cards
4 - Road trip somewhere
5 - Try six new restaurants
6 - Try six new recipes
7 - $500 in savings a month/total of $6000
8 - Exercise at least once a week
9 - Use 2 journals
10 - Finish the boys' "school days" scrapbooks
11 - Update "adventures" scrapbook
12 - Do four jigsaw puzzles
13 - Burn three candles
14 - Use three fancy soaps

Still need 12 more, so feel free to offer ideas if you've got them. They're not really "goals" like resolution type goals, but more fun things I'd like to accomplish.

For now though, I have made my to-do list for the next couple of days so I'm going to go to bed so I can get up and be a human and deal with middle schoolers. Yay?

I have failed to keep up as much as I like/planned, but to be fair, I've been a little busy. I ended up working two days this week (beyond the meeting I had) because they needed help, so I stuffed envelopes like crazy. Fortunately, I am a very good envelope stuffer and stuff-putter-together-er. The past four days have been hockey!hockey!hockey! sort of. I mean, there have been hockey games, but since none of the other volunteers felt like doing the work, it kind of fell to me. I've done my fill of eating out lately though, because groups tend to want to do that.

Still the weekend went well, and by bb!hockeys are adorable, and the training came was filled with baby bb!hockeys. These people were born in 2010. TWO THOUSAND TEN. That makes absolutely no sense at all. They are INFANTS.

School is finished-finished. I turned in the very last assignment just now, and so I'm done. Should get my degree in a little less than a month, and yes please. Will I go on for more schooling? Probably not, but never say never. (I'm saying never). Possibly I will take random classes on line just for fun. Not for a while though. I have a lot of things I need to work on just in life-life without taking that on right now.

Tomorrow is going to see Jordan Klepper, Tuesday is school with the sixth graders and meeting the kids I'm going to spend most of my time working with, and then Wednesday is all the kids, and I'm already tired. I'm going to have to get back on some sort of schedule. Blech.

I'm trying a new exercise program this week. We'll see how it goes. I need to tone/firm up my arms because they are batwings, and I would like them not to be. Anyway. Life continues to be life, which I guess means it's doing its job.

I was going to post yesterday, and I know you were all worried that I'd broken my streak, but I had a date of sorts yesterday with two of the kidlets. We went to the Lavender Festival and had quite a bit of fun. We picked berries, we picked lavender, we picked flowers. We didn't wait for the ferry for 3 hours. Instead we drove around which was an adventure all itself. The day was lovely, the drive home was ridiculous. This outing has become a tradition. I gave the kids some money, since things are stretched tight for them, and they happily spent it. Which is good, because that was what it was for.

I don't know if it's my skill or Alex's, but every time I give them money or gift cards it's the perfect amount. They spent exactly how much I gave them, to the penny, and when I got them a gift card for groceries, they spent all but 72 cents of it.

Anyway, here are pictures. https://www.flickr.com/photos/27659024@N08/albums/72177720327679330/. Today I'm going to Funko because apparently the Ranma 1/2 figures are in, I'll have to see what they have, as I have an order that has all the chase ones coming in, but if I can get them at the store, they're a little bit cheaper. And hopefully it will be in time to cancel the other order. Who knows. I would think the store would get them first, but stranger things and all that.

After that, I'm going to start on my two final projects. Yay - literally because they're my FINAL final projects, but also not so yay because I have to do them.

Anyway, happy Monday!

Boring stuff: My week this past week involved doing homework, sleeping, and being lumpy. Though I did exercise four times, so I wasn't that lumpy. A walking lump maybe.

Adventures: Today M and I did an art trail on one of the islands, and it was great. Cool art, a glass blower who does Venetian glass making techniques with all these amazing patterns in the glass let us watch her make glasses and explained everything while she did it and it was really cool.

We hit up one of our favorite bookstores (The Book Rack in Oak Harbor) and drove and looked at water and looked at sculptures and walked a few trails and it was a wonderful day. Now I am very tired. Photos here: https://flickr.com/photos/27659024@N08/albums/72177720327356511.

Tonight I'm taking one of the kidlets to a paranormal/horror cirque de soleil type thing, so we'll see how that goes. People bending in ways they're not supposed to and doing things I could never do in a million years. Can't be all bad.

I went to bed at 6pm one night and 7pm the next because this week was exhausting on the work front. There was a lot of escalation from the kiddos including slapping and charging and punching. It was a lot. Then bb!hockey started which was great, but we lost, which wasn't.

I've asked to be part of some things and then not been part of them, which I don't think has been on purpose, but maybe. I'm not going to push because there's been So. Much. Drama. I'm doing my best to stay out of it.

School starts Wednesday, so it will be even crazier soon. I'm kind of looking forward to it (though not the tuition bill), because I'm better when I don't have too much time on my hands.

Anyway, tomorrow is Monday, which means a new week begins. Time to make the to-do list.

Friends, I had a shitty week.

1 - Two of the kids I work with were kind of assholes
2 - We had one day where four kids were escalated at the same time and there was a lot of yelling and crying and throwing things
3 - I went to save my research paper and the program shut down and 6 pages were lost
3a - a bunch of tabs of sources decided to expire, and wouldn't show me what the sources were.
3b - I emailed my professor and she was cool about it and just told me to get it in when I could, which was
nice, but I'm going to be up all night working on it because I am me.
3c - After we go to my MIL's for a BBQ.
4 - There were other things that I can't remember because I've probably repressed them
5 - Just when things were getting better and I had a nice day, I twisted my ankle on a rock and fell, scraped up my hand, had my glasses get just a little bit off when they hit the ground and decided I didn't like that skin on my knee, so it all came off and I bled on my pants.
6 - I got home and, after having spent the day looking for something nice for my mother in law, found out my husband went out and bought her something.

Because of all of this, I've decided that when school is over, I'm going to Banff National Park. If M can go with me, I'll do a long weekend. If she can't I'll probably do longer. I want to not be present in my life, but be present all the same, so I think a good time of just being will be good.

Things:

- Playoff hockey: lost the first game and won the second. Can't go to the next one because it's in Canada on a school night, but I'll be heading north on Friday.
- Winter term: Ended the term well - two As and a B. Surprisingly the B was not in chemistry.
- I had to rewash a load of clothes because our dryer, which is relatively new, stopped working because it says there's too much lint, but we just cleaned it out and so I'm annoyed. Husband thinks it might be a critter nesting in the vent, which is just not ok on so many levels. Of course, took him a week to fix it, so the clothes were musty and bleh, so rewashing them now. I just want pants to wear. I don't think that's a big ask.
- There has been booster club drama and (work)school drama, and fortunately I have been on the fringes of it. It is very nice to only be tangentially involved because I am not a fan of it. Too many emotions! All at once! Yuck.
- Despite mentioning it in my last post I have yet to a) take the stuff to donate, b) moved the walking pad, and c) begun to use said pad. Sigh. I did wash dishes, so I can sort through pots and pans and figure out which ones are donate-able.

Other things:

- my ex-bb!hockey captain's team (The Newfoundland Growlers) is one of two Canadian ECHL teams who are both in danger of being unable to finish the season because the company that owns them is bankrupt and owes lots and lots of money to people. There's a strong chance they won't get to finish the season, which SUCKS because they're in serious playoff contention. Gotta love the psychological stuff in play.
- Speaking of which, our head coach for the bb!hockeys (who is very polarizing and mostly hated) just took a new job. He's currently the HC and GM which is horrible, because it means the team has nowhere to go with a problem. Team management says they plan on hiring a separate GM and HC, which is good.
- Spring quarter starts tomorrow. Yay?
- Spring break from (work) school starts a week from tomorrow. Yay!

You know that whole "I'm going to post more" thing? Yeah, well. Though, to be fair, I am actually posting more, so I'll take the teeny-tiny win.

Work is fine - last week just involved one kid screaming they hate me instead of three the previous week. I am terribly cruel and make them do schoolwork. School is going well - Two As and a B at this point and just two weeks until the quarter ends. I'm signed up for spring quarter, but I think I'm going to take the summer off unless I can find a 4 week class that meets a requirement. I do have one more week of chemistry assignments then I have to write a paper/do a visual for one class, and do exams for the other two. Paper is partially done, so I'm just getting everything together to study for the exams. And figure out how I want to do the infographic because that is not my thing. Please, just let me have text.

I am kind of frustrated because I currently feel like I have no time to do anything. This is, of course, not true, but still. We finished parent weekend for the hockey team parents, so that's a huge chunk off our plates and we're almost done with the regular season. We've made a plan for the post-season which involves actually watching the games, which is a thing I have not done all season.

I've been working an extra 4 hours a week helping with a tutoring program at school. It's fine for the rest of the year, but I'm not sure I'll want to do it full time. I was sharing the job with one of the other paras, but she got let go since her one-on-one student left the school. Even if I do do it next year, I won't be able to do Wednesdays, because those are hockey game nights.

Things I need to get done:
* Clean the kitchen
* Clean the dining room
* Clean the living room
* Take stuff to donate
* Take car in for service
* Make a dump run
* Scream into the void
* Clean my office
* Figure out a tiny adventure to do
* Make lemon squares
* Go to hockey storage and drop off things we're done with for the season
* Clean out my car
* Become suddenly wealthy

Things I am annoyed with:
* Car dealerships not having late or Saturday hours
* The eggs I was hard boiling that did not hard boil enough so when I cracked it, it oozed and grossed me out (there's a long story about an egg mcmuffin many years ago.)
* Being betrayed by Bewitched because it made me think I could just wiggle my nose and my house would be clean. (see also I Dream of Jeannie)

Things I need to start doing:
* Using the mini-treadmill I bought
* Decide what I will watch while using said mini-treadmill
* Drink more water

When I was at my last job I was socking away a bunch of money in my 401(k) because husband's job was plenty to live on, but then we both got new cars and all of the summer stuff happened and now I can't do that and I feel like I'm not making enough money, so I keep thinking I need to get a part-time job, but I'm pretty sure that would be a bad idea. I don't know - since he was unemployed 15 or so years ago, I've been hyper paranoid about money and things just feel like I should be paranoid-er. Ugh. Brains are dumb.

Of course that leads me to "I should stop going to school because it's expensive, and I'm really just getting my degree for me and not for any life-furthering purpose and so it's dumb and unnecessary". I nearly choked on my tongue when I got my latest credit card bill, even though I knew I had charged tuition. I don't know. Why must money be a thing?

We also have a trip planned to DisneyWorld this summer. We were supposed to go last year when everything happened, so we've postponed to this year, only last year happened, so we'll be paying that off too.

Okay, I started this the other day, so you can see how that's going. Finished up all my homework tonight, so it's just studying for finals and writing a paper left. I've got a week and a half for those, so I should have time to do a decent job studying and writing. Also I started to finish this yesterday and didn't, so I'm just going to post because otherwise it'll be another month before I manage to do it.