Well, it's back to the grind of work again. I got a lot of cleaning done at home this weekend. The weekends Scott has to work I always clean a bunch. This past week I found out that 2 different people I know are pregnant. one was planned, and one was not. One of the girls from my community group just had a baby on July 31 and she just found out she is 8 weeks along. She already has 2 and she said she was done after that. She thought she had the flu. Mom said the unexpected ones are always the best. I'm feeling very jealous at this point! None of it sways Scott's opinion of when we will start trying though. He's very set about it. That's okay though. Nelly has really been on making our lives interesting. Last night I did my hand paraffin and she decided to jump up on the cabinet and rub all over my hand. So, my little black kitten has white wax all over the side of her face. I got some of it off, but imagine holding a cat that never wants to be held anyways and yanking wax off of it's face. It's a good thing she is declawed. We still have 10 babies and the sunset platty is pregnant. If anyone wants a platty let me know!!!!

Gravy

I've been doing very well with cooking Scott and I dinner during the week. This is something I've been trying to work on because we eat out too much. Last night I tried a new recipe from my 5 ingredient cook book. It was crispy chicken tenders. They were so easy. All you had to do was dip your chicken breasts in an egg and the breading was 1/2 a cup of seasoned bread crumbs and 1/2 a cup of mashed potato flakes. They were so good. I even made us mashed potatoes and white gravy. I've never made gravy before, so I was pretty pleased with myself. Scott said it was one of his favorite dinners I've made him so far. Although, my 400 watt Kitchen Aid Accolade mixer decided to stop working when I was making the mashed potatoes. I've only had it for 2 years. It is a purple kind of cranberry color. It always made a funny loud sound when I used it, but I called the people at Kitchen Aid after the first time I used it. They said it was fine. I'm very irritated about it. I will be calling and harassing them later. I've been wanting the 600 watt one, because it will be easier for making my cakes. Why does nothing work like it is supposed to?
Nelly has been intent on destroying everything in our house. She has a vendetta against my ficus tree. I put it in the garage so I would have room for my Christmas tree, but I moved it back in about 2 weeks ago. It is in our bedroom right now until we get tired of looking at out Christmas tree. I've taken down all of my other decorations a while ago, and I took the ornaments off, but with the twinkling lights it looks like a winter wonderland in our living room. I put our spring pictures up and they have this pretty pastel blue in them and I got some throw pillows to match. I think we'll take it down next weekend when Scott has off. Back to Nelly. She has been jumping up and attacking the leaves, sitting in the pot and pulling leaves off, and everything else you can imagine. I found chewed up leave pieces on my bed. I have these pretty candle pedestal things that I got to match our bedroom set that we got in August. They match the cherry wood color perfectly. She knocked one of them off while attacking the tree. It skinned up the paint on the wall on its demise down to the floor and proceeded to break into 3 pieces. The good news is that I think it can be super glued. Needless to say, she is being kicked out of our room for during the day when we're not there and going to Jerry's room. I can't imagine the destruction they will be capable of together. They are like two peas in a pod. good news is that it's Friday. There are 5 more school days until we get a break again. I get to go on our day off and get fitted for a night guard at the dentist. It's that or pay to have my jaw broken and rewired shut. I'll take the night guard!

Boo to speeders

I was having a pleasant morning today. I was driving to work, which is all of 1 mile and 99% of the way is through the neighborhood. I was going 25, which is good, because most of the time i only go 20 in the neighborhood. You never know what is going to run out in front if you in the neighborhood, and I absolutely don't speed. Then, this ugly blue truck comes flying up behind me tailgating me. Normally I give a tap a roo on the brakes for people who decide to tail gait me. They didn't even give me the chance. They passed me! Can you believe that. In the neighborhood. So I laid on the horn, then they had the nerve to flip me off. In my bright pink gloves I gladly returned the favor. Bad Beth. I had decided if it had been a parent dropping their kid off at school that I was going to get out and say something to them, but they turned the other way and proceeded to flip me off again. I gladly returned the favor. What a way to start off the morning. I didn't cuss though. I now need to work on my road rage. It has gotten much better now that I only commute 1 mile to work. My cussing on the other hand needs some work. it's a very hard habit to break. For those of you who don't know, I went to school for 6 years at the school I teach at now. I remember this drawing book of dogs that I used to draw in art. I can still draw this certain dog because of looking at that book. One of my kids went and checked out a how to draw dogs book at the end of art yesterday. turns out, it is the same book I used to draw from. How cute is that? I'm going to go check it out sometime and draw from it again. We still don't know about our duty or when our new schedule starts. I made cappuccino this morning for us again. Scott is pretty spoiled!! Every morning this week I have made us a coddled egg and just recently our cappuccinos. We are getting harassed from the place that handles Scott's car payment. Turns out they lost our December payment, even though they cashed it already. Convenient huh? I can look on my online banking and see copies of them. They say they have no record of it, and on the 27th I was on the phone for an hour speaking to 3 different people who can barely speak English. After repeatedly asking for a supervisor I finally got someone who told me we had to fax in a copy of the check. Scott did all that and they said they would open an inquiry about it. Guess the idiot we faxed it to didn't do that b/c we got a call last night. Scott answered the phone and was not being assertive enough, so I took the phone and harassed them and then I got to speak to a manager. I know it was a manager because he actually spoke English. Turns out we have to fax all the stuff all over again. Why can't people do their jobs? Turns out I won't get my elliptical on Friday. They might deliver it on Monday if they can get it there between 4:00-5:00. If not, I won't get it until Wednesday, which is Scott's day off. turns out they won't just leave it on the porch. The gym is supposed to be working on my yoga. I harassed them in person yesterday about it. I NEED MY YOGA!!!

Yesterday was an interesting day at school. It always turns out that when I really start liking my job and thinking I could do it for several more years something makes me seriously question that. We got our new schedule. We still don't know when it takes effect though. Our five minutes between each class has been taken away, so now every class is back to back, which will be very interesting when it comes to cleaning up and that sort of thing. Also, it now appears that we will have duty before school and after school. It equals up to 30 min. or more of duty a day. no other teachers have duty 2 times a day. Most of them have it two times a week and we have it every day. I haven't gotten a straight answer back from the person in charge yet, so hopefully this is not the case. If it is there will be some serious trouble a brewing. Speaking of brewing, Scott and I bought an espresso machine at Sam's yesterday. After I saw Deborah's I decided I needed one. Mine was even on sale. Scott said we weren't going to pay what Deborah paid for hers!! Probably because he just bought me an elliptical machine, which is supposed to arrive on Friday!!!!! So, this morning I made Scott and I a shot of espresso, but we're sissy coffee drinkers, so I frothed some milk and turned them into cappuccinos. Sam's also has the flavored coffee syrups, and they were sugar free, which makes it even better. I bought a caramel one and a vanilla one. Let me just say that the cappuccinos were awesome, but that since I'm only used to having about 3/4 a cup of coffee in the morning that right now my hands are shaking!! Caffeine highs are great! I can only imagine how Scott feels right now because he never drinks coffee in the morning. He did something really sweet for me. I had extra time this morning so I went out and got the paper and decided to read it before school. He had scraped all the frost off of the windows of my car for me. Isn't that so sweet? I did make him a coddled egg and cappuccino for breakfast though. I'm trying to do better about cooking for us more. Anyways, if you want a cappuccino machine with a milk frother you can get it at Sam's on sale for $89. It is by Krups. They only had 3 or 4 left though. I'm really wishing I was a stay at home Mom today. I guess I need a kid first.

My week is definately off to full swing. This is my fourth year to teach and so far I have been lucky enough not to have anyone throw up in my classroom. my luck changed yesterday. 6 minutes before lunch one of my fourth graders threw up all over the table, the crayon box and the pencil box. Normally I'm the person that freaks out about stuff like that because it's just gross, but I didn't get the luck of doing that this time. This time I had to be thr grown up. What a way to start off the first day back!! Mom came over after school and we walked the dogs since it looked like it was going to be the last nice day for a while. I'm very mad at At the Beach. That's the gym/tanning place we work out at. Mom and I have been members for the past 3 years and I just signed up for another 3 year contract. For the past year and a half we have always gone to yoga at least once a week. This summer we went like 3 times. It was great. The year before we started yoga we did pilates. There has always been some kind of class like that at 4:30 on Wednesday for the past 3 years. They posted a new schedule last week, and guess what wasn't on it. YOGA!#$%!^!#. That is going to have to change. I called last night to talk to the manager about it and she said she was busy and would call me back. Well guess what? she didn't call me back. I think I will call and harass her about it this morning. Although, Scott let me order an elliptical machine from Nordic Track. I'm very excited about getting it in. It can be my new obsession. Although for what we paid for it, I could have just not renewed my membership for the next three years and we could call it even. They better give me my yoga back or it definitely won't be worth it. By the way, I counted 10 baby fish last night. We're supposed to get a new schedule at work and I got to see the draft of it yesterday :( They took away our 5 minutes in between classes. I'm not sure how it is going to work having classes back to back, but what the hell ever. That's school for you. I can tell you that if I get duty before and after school, that 1.) I will be making a big stink about it with UCTA or 2.) Beth will not be teaching much longer. We'll see how it goes.

Back to school

Well it's been a while since I posted. Apparently I'm to used to going to the favorites on my computer at school and i couldn't remember the address at home. I actually did try to go and post during the break, but couldn't remember it so I gave up. I had a great Christmas and break. It was hard getting up to go to work this morning, but it is nice to get back into my routine. Over the break I decided much to Scott's chagrin to get some new fish to take to school to replace my angel fish that died. He wanted me to wait until school had started, but we all know me, and I couldn't wait. I got 2 red wag tail platties and one sunset platy. This was on a Saturday afternoon. By Monday ( Christmas Eve) There were a bunch of babies swimming around! Now this was also after I made another trip to petsmart to change my gravel from blue to black and red to match my fish. Scott wasn't too thrilled when I called him at work to tell him about it, but I think he had solice in thinking they would all get eaten, which is what he told me would happen. So, I went around the house and got every aquarium plant that wasn't being used, and some that were and put them in there for the babies to hide in. Let's just say that checking on my babies became an obsession over the break. I'm happy to report that today they are 2 weeks old and swimming with the big fish. The problem is that you are supposed to have 1 gallon of water per inch of fish. I have them in a 10 gallon, and I have about 8 or 9 babies (they're hard to count) and my huge pleco that is almost a foot long. Scott said there will absolutely not be another fish tank added to our house. We'll see.

LAST DAY!!!!!

Today is the last day of school for 2 weeks!!! I can't believe that half of a year has already gone by. It started out stressful, but now it is very rewarding. I was walking through the hall yesterday when they were having their holiday parties and it was all so cute. It made me want a kid so bad so I could come to holiday parties with them!! Last night I made 2 bundt cakes and sugar cookie dough. I made the Christmas wreath bundt pan and the Hansel and Gretel pan which looks like a gingerbread house. I'm going to decorate them this weekend. I also have the vintage sant bundt pan that I need to make too. I have a thing for cake pans. I have almost every wedding cake pan set that Wilton makes and almost every type of bundt pan or decorative cake thing from Williams-sonoma. I have a problem!! Scott said he would decorate sugar cookies with me, so I'm going to bake them tonight since he has to work until 10:00 and we can decorate them tomorrow. Happy Friday!!