This Post is Just For Mare-Bear (But All Can Read)

My pal Mare-Bear emailed me a couple days ago to complain about the dust settling here the past few weeks. She hates Facebook, and uses this as the main way to keep up with the doings on the Cootiehog household. I promised her I would post something just for her.

Hey, Mare-Bear!

Ebony Whirlpool is working out great – she’s a wonderful fridge. I used to drink bottled water, but the filter in the fridge is so great that I’m now using the fridge to get water to drink. You’d never know it was from the tap. Cootiegirl loves getting ice from the ice maker (she never did it much with the old fridge, but for some reason she loves getting ice from Ebony). Next up on the home projects: kitchen countertops. I’m hoping I can talk Denis into doing that before this year’s White Elephant party. We’ll see.

School started up last week. Cootiegirl got a 3rd grade teacher who is new to the system. However, she seems really nice and CG likes her a lot already. Cootieboy got CG’s first grade teacher. This teacher is now teaching 2nd grade this year, and CB was thrilled to get a teacher who was already a known quantity in our household. Last night they each got their first dose of homework. CB had reading (easy for him) and CG had reading and math. I’m ashamed to admit that we didn’t keep up with CG’s reading over the summer, so she has lapsed a bit in her reading skillz. But with any luck she’ll be back up to her pre-summer reading level soon, and not fall behind.

This past weekend CB turned 7 years old. SEVEN! It’s amazing how time flies. We hosted a birthday party at the house for 7 of his friends, and it worked out really well. The theme CB requested was “Mario Bros” and so we planned a few fun things related to Mario Bros. I bought three pounds of chocolate coins and put most of them in a pinata as the big finale. I held back about 50 coins to pass out for participation prizes for the rest of the party. We did a beanbag toss game, a balloon stomp game, and I even let them take turns playing Mario Bros on the Wii . We served pizza (of course) and cupcakes that were frosted to look like the mushrooms from the video game. The feedback I got was that all the kids had a lot of fun, so I’d say it was a success.

CB opened the family gifts on his actual birthday, and one of those gifts was a new Wii game. When we popped it into the console, it wouldn’t run at all. Harrumph. I ran out to Wal-Mart to pick up another copy and sure enough – that copy wouldn’t play either. My friend Dana took the game to her house on Friday and wouldn’t you know – it ran fine on her machine. So that night I went to Target, who was having a sale on Wiis, and bought a new one. Once set up, the new game played perfectly. Now, before you say, “Uh, a bit extreme don’t you think?” that I bought a new Wii, I should let you know that we’ve been having a couple issues with our Wii over the past few months. It would occasionally shut down a game in the middle of play, or get stuck and let out a really loud emergency tone from the console (you could hear it from upstairs it was so loud). Sometimes when playing a Lego game the character would random get itself stuck in a corner and no amount of messing with the remote control would get that character unstuck. So it’s not like running this one game was the only problem.

Target had new consoles on sale for $134. A bargain! So we are moving the old Wii to our bedroom. The good thing about this is that we’ll have access to Netflix streaming in both places now. Winning! And if the kids begin fighting over who plays what games, we can send them to separate rooms to play without having to hear the bickering. Still winning!

A couple weeks ago I played Bunco with some neighborhood ladies. They’ve had a crew for a long time, and I’ve been on the sub list available to play when others can’t. But I’ve NEVER been called. On this particular night I was available, so I went. It was a lot of fun, and when the call for subs went out last week, I volunteered to play in September as well.

Work continues to go really, really well. Not to toot my own horn but I was Department Staff Member of the month in July as chosen by my peers. I also got a small monetary (re: when I say small I mean that it was a $25 grocery store gift card) award for working on a project a few months ago. I’m still loving what I do, where I work and who I work for. Couldn’t ask for better. I’ve been phasing out my freelance work. I’m just done. The kids have too many things going on, and I just don’t have the energy to work all day and come home and do MORE work. So I’m now in the process of passing the torch to another transcriber who is looking for additional business. With any luck I’ll have no more clients by the end of August.

Other than that, nothing else is going on. My dad retired a few weeks ago and is enjoying retired life (and why wouldn’t he?) Denis and I continue to work because we haven’t won the lottery (yet). Cub scouts starts up for the boy in a couple weeks and the girl wants to try Brownies this year.

TV wise, the new season doesn’t seem to have much new stuff worth checking out. However, I will be tuning in to “Terra Nova,” “The New Girl,” and “Suburgatory.” I’ll be sticking to my old faves like “Chuck,” “Community,” and (begrudgingly) “The Office.” I’ve been watching a lot of British tv on Netflix streaming, but have also been catching up on things like “The Vampire Diaries,” which I had to stop watching in its first season because it was up against something else that aired at the same time that I liked more.

Book wise, I’m cranking through the audiobooks – in fact, I need to update my left sidebar to reflect the past couple books that I finished. I’m currently listening to Tina Fey read her book “Bossypants,” and it is just as hilarious as I hoped it would be. Driving in my car to work yesterday I laughed the whole way in! My Kindle has about 250 books on it – all but one downloaded for free from Amazon. A funny thing about the free books on Amazon. A lot of them are crap. But when they are free, they are not worth complaining about. But had I paid for a few of the ones I’ve read since getting my Kindle – well, I’d be one super-ticked off person! *lol*

My main online obsession continues to be Pinterest.com, a site which rocks. I spend about 30 minutes every night sifting through the many entries on there, repinning stuff I like to my own boards for future reference and to share with my Pinterest pals. It makes me wish I was more creative. It was spawned another obsession of mine: nail art.

Every week I redo my nails, usually in a french manicure, but using non-typical color combinations. Last week it as deep red with silver tips. I really liked that one. I still haven’t perfected water marbling, but believe me – when I do, I shall be posting pictures!

Okay, Mare-Bear – I hope that gave you enough of an update to make up for the lack of content around here. I’m sure when I finish “Bossypants” I’ll be posting a review.

And GET ON FACEBOOK like the rest of the world.

Love ya!