Last week was extremely busy at school. But that should all be over now. The medieval unit is over. The spinning teaching stuff is over. I’m so done. Except I’m hosting a cooking party this Saturday for moms to come over and cook stew for 40 people, 2 meals worth for an overnighter field trip next week. I was going to go on the field trip, but they didn’t need me, so I backed out.

I’m so done.

My house, and most every other aspect of my life has been completely neglected for a month or so while I’ve been doing school stuff. I’m going crazy. I want to set my house and everything we own on fire so I don’t have to deal with it.

That’s not true.

What I’d REALLY like is for the Garbage company to deliver one of those huge dumpsters in front of my house so I can throw away almost everything we own without having to sort through it. That way, I’d still have a house to live in, and I do like my house, but it’d be clean and empty. That sounds so nice.

So very, very nice.

But, it’s not going to happen. I can’t escape the fact that I have a phenomenal amount of work in front of me, and it’s all on me.

I managed to exercise 2 days last week. An hour on Monday and 40 minutes on Friday. Now that I’ve dropped out of school :-), that sounds so nice, I should be able to do at least 4 days a week again.

While carding tons of batts for young children to spin last week, I squeezed in two Tweedy Batts for myself.

I haven’t spun them yet. On Friday night and Saturday, in an attempt to decompress and relax a little bit, I spun an ounce + of a hand dyed Tussah silk/Baby camel top that was given to me a couple years ago.

I’m working on the second ounce now, then I’ll ply them together. I think it’d be pretty to knit into another of those little neck scarves with all-over beading.

It’s going to be really hard to focus on my house when I could be spinning that second ounce. But if I do that, it’ll just prolong my clutter-stress. And I don’t want that.

If you feel so inclined, leave me a comment to say hello. Seeing some friendliness in my inbox today will help lighten what looks to be a pretty joyless day.

It’s not sticking to the roads, but it’s cold and obnoxious. I wonder if this will be yet another year of freezing spring, when I can’t start feeding my pond fish ’til July again.

Unreal.

I’m going to be at school every day this week but it should be my last week of heavy school involvement for awhile. This week is the wrap up of that medieval unit I told you about. I’m teaching 30 more kids how to spin. Today is my only day at home to do laundry and chores ’til Friday. And boy, is it a huge list of chores.

Plus, I’m wanting to make more soft pretzels. We made pretzel dogs last night for dinner, and had some dough left over for a few pretzels, but we had family over for dinner there’s none left.

I use Martha Stewart’s soft pretzel recipe in her Holiday Cookbook. It’s really good.

So nothing particularly interesting or blog worthy is happening at the moment. If that changes, I’ll let you know.

I haven’t weighed and measured, and I got sick this week so I only exercised a half hour on Monday and an hour on Thursday.

I ate ok.

My pants are feeling a teeny-tiny bit looser. I don’t know if it’s legit or not.

How was your week?

I am sick. I am so sick. Acute abdominal pain, and some other things I’ll spare you. I was very uncomfortable last night at the guild meeting, but didn’t realize I was sick ’til I got home.

We’re only allowed to share one song at the guild in the interest of time. So I picked one. It went really well. They had some suggestions that I’ve been working on as I’ve been laying here on the couch wanting to die (’cause I’m sick). I won’t know if I like the changes ’til I get it recorded and can listen back.

I was extremely intimidated at first, and didn’t think I’d have anything to contribute, but it’s a laid back group of guys. They’re very supportive and despite the fact that they know a great deal more about music than I do (and that’s a gross understatement), I seem to have a knack for writing and they were very positive.

Yay.

Now, to make it through this stomach nightmare. I’m getting really hungry and can’t possibly eat.

I really want to get something new on the needles, something I’m excited about, something I like… but aside from being really busy with kids stuff and exercise, I’ve been doing a lot of songwriting. And my guitar teacher has started me on something completely new. Inverted chords, triads, funky picking stuff with the triads, and it looks like he’s moving me into improv/soloing. He ran me through the paces on my scales a couple weeks ago and apparently liked what he saw.

Not that he said as much. But I assume that by the direction we’re going, I passed. :-).

I joined a local songwriter’s guild and plan to attend my first meeting tonight. They meet once a month, where I’m told they teach about trying to sell your music, and then listen to each other’s songs and critique them.

I’m bringing two songs tonight (I’m not committing to actually sharing them). My first ever, and my most recent. There are about 7 or 8 in between that are in various stages of completion. I’m very happy that we don’t have to perform them live, we bring them on CD along with several copies of printed lyrics and chords for people to write on while they’re listening. It’s still quite terrifying.

Songwriting doesn’t make for much in the way of pictures, though. Sorry.

I need to get on my drum carder. I still have all that lovely purple stuff to card into batts. I’m not sure why I’m procrastinating.

So, I have oodles of pictures from our trip to the cabin. I chose some of the more scenic shots, and a few that show what we did.

We arrived Tuesday evening, when we ate dinner and watched Looney Tunes.

Wednesday, the kids jumped on the ancient and hole riddled trampoline (I believe it’s being replaced soon).

I think this is a really neat picture

I seamed Clark’s sweater

and we played Dinosaur Bingo

At some point, I don’t remember quite when, I started another gnome.

Grandma Adams came Wednesday evening and stayed ’til dinner on Thursday. She and the girls played a lot of Clue.

We went to the State Park

and got tuckered out.

Friday was very relaxing. We just hung around.

Friday night we made a twilight trek down to the community beach before dinner,

where I managed to catch a shot of Liv looking like a super-model.

Abby got pretty good at rock skipping, which annoyed Liv to death because she couldn’t do it.

Saturday we cleaned up, ate lunch,

and left. I have never, ever, not once ever made it back from the cabin without encountering something major on I-5 Northbound.

This year was way better than last year though, when we sat without moving for over an hour, and cars were driving up (as in, the wrong direction) the on-ramps to get off the freeway. I sat there, watching it while listening to the traffic lady on the radio say,”PLEASE STOP DOING THAT! IT’S DANGEROUS!!!”

That was craziness.

Good morning. I’m not weighing or measuring right now because I feel enormous and don’t want the discouragement.

I did an hour on the elliptical Monday and Wednesday. I did a half hour Thursday and Friday. It was an incredibly busy week. I was at the school about 8 hours, and preparing stuff for school for many more. I’m very pleased I was able to exercise Thursday and Friday.

Tuesdays are just tough. I have one window of opportunity, and it’s squished in between two other things so that’s hit and miss each week.

I haven’t done well at recording calories or foods consumed this week. So I really don’t know how that went.

How are you all doing? We’re approaching March, which is when a lot of New Year’s resolutions die, if they haven’t already.

I seamed it up at the cabin last week.

It’s not going to fit him for about 2 years. I am completely UN-talented when it comes to picking a size based on body measurements. I just took a class that I’m hoping will help, though.

I know some of you are waiting for a post. Here I am. Tired. Busy. Not feeling very creative at the keyboard. And my internet has been evil and temperamental limiting my opportunities to post.

We had a wonderful time on Hood Canal. Aside from bringing ants home with us (eww), I can’t think of a negative. Well, Nate couldn’t come and we missed him.

I took over 300 pictures.

This week is crazy. I am going to be at the girls’ school a LOT this week, and I’m basically looking to fit my elliptical in somehow every day, and survive. Those are my two goals.

I hope to be more interesting next week. And I hope to post some of the trip this week. Like the way cool gnome I’m working on.

So, Health Group…

On Monday of last week, I did an hour on the elliptical. I think. It might have been 45 minutes. I don’t remember.

I walked up the HUGE hill (truthfully, it’s a combination of huge hills, all right on top of each other) at the cabin once, Friday night. The cool part of that was not getting winded, or even raising my heart rate much. I was happy. And confused as to why the stairs at Madrona kicked my butt repeatedly when the hills didn’t. I most definitely ascended to a higher elevation with the hills than the stairs.

I’m on my vitamins again, and am loving it.

Oh, this is interesting. I looked in my account settings in Calorie King today and they’ve updated their site a few times since I signed up nearly 3 years ago. When I signed up, they had 3 activity level options for you to choose from that they take into consideration when calculating your daily calorie target.

Now they have 5 or 6, and they had me down as “minimal activity- ie bedridden”.

Pah-lease! I am so not bedridden. So I upped it one level to “office job”. I get at LEAST that much activity in a day. That alone bumped my minimum calorie target to 1750 from 1550.

I guess I was really under-eating the month and a half that I was exercising like mad and not losing anything since I couldn’t even get close to the 1550.

It’s really hard, making sure I eat enough. Now, if there’s donuts, cookies, ice cream, etc around, I can totally go over, no problem. But if I’m eating healthy, or even just normal food without the junk, I’m not hungry enough to eat that much. So that’s going to take some effort.

And that sounds totally stupid.