I hate cleaning

I just spent 3 hours and 15 minutes in my classroom today cleaning.

UGH!!

I brought Piper along - I'm not sure if she had fun (she spent most of the time wandering around the room) but everyone who saw her thought she was well-behaved and beautiful :)

She didn't want to leave the principal's office (it was air-conditioned) she lay on the floor and was perfectly content to stay there.

I got a lot done, however, I am going to need to go back tomorrow to finish up. UGH!!!

I have to start packing today for the TX road trip - I haven't started yet and I leave Thurs. morning.

Tomorrow is a busy day - I am going to have to go back into school and clean. I want to make an appearance at the calling hours for a coworker's father. I also have a concert in downtown Ayer.

Mother Nature hates us...

I am SO SICK of snow! This was the kind of snow that hurts to shovel. It was thick, heavy, wet, and sloppy. It was NOT an easy clean-up!!

Then there was the whole ice dam situation. I come downstairs this afternoon (I spent most of the day upstairs playing on my computer and grading) and I hear a strange noise. Turns out, it is a practical DELUGE of dripping water in the bowed window in the living room. I move everything out of the way and get towels. LOTS of towels-the dripping went right through most of them. I call husband-no answer. I call mom-no answer. I call stepdad-no answer. I call in-laws-no answer. I call aunt-she tells me to call uncle. I call uncle, and FINALLY get ahold of someone!! He says it's most likely an ice dam, and to wait till the boy gets home because he doesn't want me on a ladder or on the roof when no one else is home (he doesn't want me there even when someone IS home). I look out onto the porch roof from the second story window, and I thought I saw the problem - there's an overhang from the main roof over the porch roof.

The boy finally gets home and gets stuck in the driveway. I hadn't had the chance to shovel since I found out about the leak. I had been trying to find ways to stop the flood. No luck.
I go out to help the boy, he heads to Home Depot to find a roof rake. Again, no luck.

I shovel the driveway, he shovels the roof. It doesn't seem to stop the waterfall in our living room, because all of a sudden the fire alarms are going off. Turns out the water started flowing through the living room smoke detector and caused it to go off. I unplug it from the ceiling, only to be soaked when the water pours out on my head. Luckily, most of the water came out on my head, and it was just dripping after that.

I finally get ahold of my stepdad, and he thought to have me check the crawlspace to see if there was water up there. BOY was there water up there! The rug in the crawlspace was soaked - we left handprints in the rug as the water seeped up. We cut the rug in half and rolled it up. The boy ran his section through the house because it was so completely soaked that it was dripping. We mopped up the crawlspace to see where the water was coming in from. We pulled a piece of insulation out of the way to discover the ice dam was actually on the main roof.

Back out onto the porch roof again....

The boy tries shoveling off the main roof on the side of the front dormer. Success! The water slows down and eventually stops.

We go back to shoveling the driveway, which was interrupted when the fire alarms started going off.

We have a quick dinner of mac n' cheese - organic, no less! (ann would be proud)

Then we start getting ready for bed. I went into the basement to get the towels out of the dryer to lay out by the window just in case, and I step in a puddle.

ARGH!

There's water on the basement floor. We don't know WHERE it came from. It was in the middle of the floor - not near a door or window. There wasn't any dripping through the ceiling or down the walls we could see. We mopped that up, and will have to check on it tomorrow morning. It's kind of strange that with all of the rain we got this summer, we didn't get ANY water inside of our house.

I replaced the towels in the living room, and noticed that we'll probably have to repair part of the ceiling around the fire alarm. There is a significant bubble in the ceiling plaster. It's empty - there's nothing in it, but it's only going to dry, crack and crumble off. I did manage to pop the bubble on the wall - I removed the water and it seems to have shrunk back up to the wall again. We'll see if it holds.

Oh - and did I mention that a stupid plow nailed our mailbox??

first post in May

Wow...I can't believe it took me almost two weeks into the month to post!

I've been a very busy girl!

I'm buying a house, I'm planning a wedding, I'm cleaning my house, I'm crocheting, I'm grading papers, I'm planning a field trip, I'm planning a concert, I'm FINALLY hearing from my photographer for the first time!!, I'm conducting band rehearsals, I'm playing in band rehearsals, I'm playing in concerts, I'm attending bridal showers, I'm painting ceramics, I'm getting into fender-benders (don't even ask me about that one! stupid screw scratches in my bumper!), I'm getting my hair cut, I'm attending meeting after meeting after meeting, I'm babysitting (adults no less...grrr....), I'm figuring out how to arrange furniture at the reception, I'm rewiring the auditorium lights and mapping them, I'm making phone calls trying to organize all these things, I'm volunteering time to help at the snack shack at track meets, I'm attending first communion celebrations, I'm logging RSVP's for the wedding, I'm...

BUSY!!

'nuff said.

I'm also reading the blogs of people who actually take the time to blog...and I found this. I think I have students who would like to hire this guy to help them play the flute!!

Tomorrow is meetings with the Reverend and the organist. I think I am supposed to have a NVCB band rehearsal and the HS coffee house somewhere in there as well...

BUSY!!

wow...

Ok...so I haven't written in a while.

I've been very busy.

We've been doing wedding stuff...house stuff...life stuff.

Lotsa stuff.

We signed our purchase and sales agreement today. Lots of signing and initialing.

This is vacation week. It's half over. :-( ::sniff sniff::

I promise I will write more.

I swear.

Well, I'll try...

I think I will...

Maybe...

Thursday blues

I despise Thursdays that feel like Fridays.

It's been a long week.

Monday: School, Elementary Band, High School Jazz Band, Moonlighters (home at 10)
Tuesday: School, Afterschool Lessons, Middle School Jazz Band (home at 7)
Wednesday: School, Afterschool extra help, Union Meeting, NVCB, JPs (home at 11)
Thursday: School, Staff Meeting, home for dinner, back to school for 5th grade orientation (home at 8:30)

and tomorrow there's a concert with the NVCB

LOOONG week

Saturday is more house hunting

LOOONG week

and I better do some laundry on Sunday, or I'm showing up to work on Monday naked.

My hands are covered in marker

I hate when grades close on a Friday...because that is going to pretty much be my whole weekend. Grading papers. Argh.

urrrgh

My head hurts.

owie

Way too long

Working from 7 am until 6:30 pm every Monday might start to get to me after a while. Thank goodness for Monday holidays!!

I have a pretty busy week ahead of me:
Monday: HA! At least I am done with that!!
Tuesday: School all day, meeting at Peppercorn's for the Central District Music Educators. (at least there's food!!)
Wednesday: School all day, NVCB 7-9 pm
Thursday: School all day, MEETING WITH THE CATERER-WOOT!
Friday: 1/2 day of school, 1/2 day of meetings, then off to NYC
Saturday: shopping, Mary Poppins
Sunday: more shopping??, Spamalot
Monday: heading back to MA
Tuesday: and we're back to the grind!!

field trips

Field trips = ARGH!!!!!

grrrr...

feeling Eeyore-ish...

Good day to you, how nice of you to notice me

Looks like rain, wait and see

Likely rain all over me

Guess that's just the way that it has to be

Here in my gloomy place

stress

I think I might be dead from a stress-induced heart attack by the end of this week....

Think happy thoughts....

Anyone have any pixie dust?

...seriously...


.....help......

ooowie....

Dull headache all day turned into sharp pounding pain this afternoon after school. I could barely drive home, every bump hurt my head. I walked through the door, and the Glade Plug In scent that I usually find so comforting, I found completely nauseating. I lay down in my bed, wishing that my heart wasn't beating so darn loud, and I slept from 5:30 - 7:30. Now I am up eating a bowl of my favorite cereal, Quaker Oat Squares, drinking some juice, and downing some Excedrin, while I watch America's Funniest Videos.

Owie

:-(

Caffeine..............

Yesterday morning, I pulled up to the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru speaker to place my order.

I went to open my window, and it was frozen shut! I can hear the lady repeatedly asking if she can help me, and I have a line of cars behind me.

I had to pull my car forward to give me clearance to open my door, which I still couldn't open all the way because of the speaker, and I had to yell my order over my window several times.

That was the easy part, then I had to pull up to the window, where I had to open the door, and get out of the car to give my money and get my coffee from the hysterically laughing woman inside Dunkin' Donuts...

The lengths I go through to get coffee...

PS-I am glad to see I am NOT the only one to have these difficulties...

what a busy week

I have got something going on every night this week!

Mon: Music Boosters meeting

Tues: Parent/Teacher conferences

Wed: Jazz Band, HTB

Thurs: 1/2 day with students, 1/2 day of Parent/Teacher Conferences, Calling Hours for Ron's Funeral

Fri: Ron's Funeral

ugh

so busy....

Let's see...catch up time....

Way to much work, way too little time....that about sums it up!!!