Menu Plan Monday

Mon - Tacos

Tues - (Beggar's night) Chicken and Rice Casserole. - I will prepare tonight and have the 11 YO put it in the oven for a 5:30 dinner time

Wed - (Wrestling Practice night) - Freezer night - We have these frozen Italian-stuffed chicken breasts from Market Day. While I try to avoid this type of food because of the unpronounceable ingredients, the family loves them. So I get them for just this sort of night. They can pop them in the Microwave and eat before I get home.

Thurs - Pork Chops and Baked beans.

Fri - Hubby and the 7 YO are off to Chicago. Hubby's Dad took Hubby and his siblings to Downtown Chicago on the L for their 7th Birthday. Since we don't live there, Hubby took the older and will take the younger for the weekend and ride on the L , go to the Sears Tower and eat downtown. I think Grandpa is going to join them. So the 11 Yo and I will come up with something.

For more Menu ideas, visit Laura at Org Junkie

100TH Post

So I've made it to 100. I started the tradition 100 things about me list, but I was not happy with it. I only made it to 57. There are things I write about and things I don't. I don't feel too compelled to mark this as a special occasion...

So anyways, Yesterday I sent an email to Hubby and the 11 YO about what I planned for supper. It is amazing how many question I get about what's for supper. Maybe I should send them to my blog so they can read my menu plan monday posts. But then again, I really have not talked much to them about my blog.

Anyways, back to the email. The 11 your replied quite nicely that leftovers worked for him and he's see me when I got home. I just struck me as very mature. He tend to mumble at home and he's always in motion. One of the reasons I consented to setting him up an account is that it would be one more way to learn to compose his thoughts and communicate with Grandparents and such. So I guess it's working.

Menu Plan Monday

Ok, Here goes:

Monday- Cheeseburger Sloppy joes

Tuesday – Chicken and rice – made ahead so DS11 can put it in the oven

Wednesday – Pizza made with purchased crusts, spaghetti sauce, and what ever is in the fridge

Thursday – Crockpot – Pork loin roast

Friday – leftovers

For more ideas, go to Org Junkie’s site:

Confession

Wednesday evening, about 9 PM the 11 YO informed me he volunteered to bring is cookies for a milk and cookies event in school on Friday. Ok, I can do it tomorrow. I always have ingredients for Chocolate Chip cookies on hand. So last night, I get home and shortly afterwards we go to the local pizza polar for his soccer party. It’s about 7:15 when I remember the cookies. I have time. But I have a tendency to eat a lot of cookie dough. On top of pizza. No wonder I am overweight.

 

I drove to the store and bought a package of Oreos.

 

 

Drama king strikes again..

Last night at bed time, the 7 yo comes out to Dad in tears saying he does not know what bus to ride. He is quite distraught. I'm so confused and ask the 11 yo for the bus number so i could write it down. It turns out that is not an easy question to answer.

Since they attend a private school, the school district bus system picks them up and takes them to the Middle school where they transfer to another bus to go to their school. Apparently there are two buses at the shuttle site the transport the kids to St. C's. They divided the kids up by age. This meant the 11 YO and the 7 yo were assigned different buses. But at the beginning of the year, Hubby called the bus department and asked that both boys ride the same bus. So they were assigned the bus for the younger kids. Turns out our stubborn 7 YO does not like riding the bus with the younger children and had been getting on the other bus. The 11 Yo has been on safety patrol this week and Dad has been dropping him off at achool. The 7 YO has been riding the bus so he does not arrive at school 45 minutes early. Yesterday the bus driver looked at his roster, saw the A. was not assigned to his bus and made him get on the other bus. A. got lippy and belligerent and was reprimanded for being disagreeable. So he made a big scene last night.

Hubby was able to piece the story together this morning after he called the transportation office and go the entire story. He asked the department to feel free to let us know when they have problems with our boys.

Rainy Tuesday Morning

• I was crossing the street this AM, at the crosswalk, with the walk sign. It's dark and rainy. Some lady still has to make her left turn. Right in front of me. If I had not stopped, she'd have hit me. Yuck.
• DS11 is doing a project for All Saint's Day - He has to create a Movie poster on the theoretical movie of the Saint's life. He still needs a picture. He's procrastinating on it.
• Hubby's birthday is comming up soon. I gave my best idea to my Mother In Law. Now I have to come up with something else. He likes the bold colors of a button down chirt he saw by Tommy Hilfiger. The problem is he needs a Large-Tall because his arms are so long. They don't make all that many cool clothes in Tall. It frustrates him (and therefore me too!)
• In Email from Hubby: A. (7 YO) decided he was going to go to the bathroom by sonar this morning and forgot what water on water sounded like. I made him clean it up...it might be good for him to wash the floor around the toilet as further punishment. Because when I asked him why he pee'd on the floor he said ... "It's too hard" in the morning to make it go in. Ok, I'll make it a point to help him determine what's harder, making the toilet or cleaning the bathroom later.
• The 11 YO recently asked if he could have his own email account. I decided to create him one under our High Speed internet provider (Beep,Beep). But since I created it, I also created the password. So I can keep an eye on it. But maybe if Grandparents write to him it will be experience writing back...

Have a great day!

Menu Plan Monday

Happy Monday everyone: Here's my list

Monday - (Ground Beef night) - Meatloaf

Tuesday - Chicken breasts - Have not decided on a prep method

Wednesday - Pork - Crockpot

Thursday - Pizza at DS11's end og the season soccer party at a local Pizza Joint

Friday - Tuna Noodle Casserole befoe the football game.

Check over at Laura's site for more menus.

Weekend is here!

So the 7 yo has a soccer game tonight and tomorrow morning.
Hubby is going into work tomorrow before he coaches the noon game.

My coworker told me not to bother to come in during the wee hours of Sunday morning for the data center outage. As the manager I would be more trouble than help. Ok. The 11 YO has his last golf match and banquet early Sunday. So maybe I will go and be a Eucharistic minister at 9:00 Mass. The 7 yo can handle sitting in his pew during this time.

I am worried about how things are at home. the 11 yo has been home all day. But Hubby will arrive before me so I will not have to deal with the trash pit the child can create.

Typical ADHD behavior

My 11 YO ADHDer

He tells his teacher Tuesday that he did not complete his homework because we would not let him. He was home all afternoon and evening. But we were not.

So Tuesday night, deprived of TV, Computer and Video games, he completes all his homework and a model he has to build due Thursday.

I just called home to have him pull meat out of the freezer. He forgot the model, he did not complete his current event assignment and he got an MA because he did not bring back his signed MA from Tuesday!

Forgetting the model and not turning in the signed MA (Missing Assignment form) is typical. The Current event assignment bothers me.

Works For me Wednesday

I'm a computer geek according to my brother. I do work in the IT field. Thus I have a lot of passwords that have to be changed often. These passwrods also have to meet certain security requirments like being more than 8 characters with at least one capital andone lowercase letter, one number and one special character (@#$%&*). Oh, and to be secure, you are not supposed to write them down.

My trick is to come up with a 2 word phrase that seems to fit the current situation. Like Snow Day. I replace the o with a zero, the a with @ and capitalize the S and the D: Sn0wD@y After I had my Lasik procedure, I set my password to N3wSi&ht (New Sight). This helps me remember it the first couple of day.

Don't tell anyone, but I do try to keep a list of past passwords. It stays burined on my purse in my portable address book. I don't label or title it. I also keep a speradsheet with the usernames and current passwords of the various webistes I have created an account. I keep that on my little USA thumb drive. Works for Me.

Check out Shannon's blog for more great ideas.

Resource: Women in Technology

I am a member of an email discussion group, Women In Technology or World WIT . They have a bunch of different groups based on Geographical area, however one person can join different email lists. The groups are moderated to keep out the snarky and the spammers. But people post everything from "Hey, I'm looking for a vehicle and what do you think of this one...?" Or "I need advice on xxx".

Anyways, my point, in addition to publicizing this cool organization is to describe a post I answered a couple of weeks ago. An wuthor posted that she was looking for Mom's or cooking blogs that would be willing to read her book and write a review. So I responded that I was a Mom and I had a blog. My book arrived in the mail today. So I will read it tonight. The title is: _The Frantic Woman's Guide to Feeding Family and Friends_ by Mary Jo Rulnick.

So I'm off to start reading, after I work with the 6th grader on finishing his homework.

Busted!

The 6th grader's teacher just sent me an email. The Child told his teacher that he did not complete his homework because we would not let him. He came home from school and was supposed to be working on his homework. Then we had a wrestling meeting and he stayed home to complete his homework. So once again he is not utilizing his time well.

If someone is not sitting with him, he is not doing what he needs to do. We are trying to figure out an appropriate punishment.

Menu Plan Monday

I got taken out twice for my birthday. We went to Tunbleweed Friday and Red Lobster Saturday. The boys got Cheese sticks and french fries.

Mon- Cheeseburger sloppy joes

Tues - Chicken and rice casserole

Wed - Pork loin in the crockpot. Maybe I'll do a Coca Cola version

Thurs - Kielbasa

Fri - Homemade pizza

- Wow, very few activities this week. DS11's soccer team won their tournament yesterday. DS7 plays Friday nights and Saturday mornings and Practice Thursday nights.

For more great ideas - Go to Org Junkie's site

Lordy, Lord, Maggie's 40

Yes, today is my birthday. My fortieth. Wow, that has connotations of being middle aged, like I should slow down. I certainly don't feel that way. I guess it helps that my kids are young. I feel like I am max, 32. A lot has to do with where I am in my life at this point.

I am very satisfied. I has 2 good kids. They are not perfect, but they are both smart, funny and independent. They are capable ofdoing great things with their lives. It does take an effort to keep the ADHD 11 YO doing his homework everynight, but so far so good for 6th grade.

I have a husband who adores me and supports me no matter what. He takes on child care duty and lot of household task with gusto (bathroom cleaning not withstanding). This is critical in a dual-career marriage. It is because of him that I can be a decent Mom as well as a good employee\supervisior.

Lastly, I have a job I'm very happy with. I could not say that last year. Well, at this time I had left that consulting engagement and was looking forward to a new project with my company. But I had been with the same client for 6 years. I was facing classic burnout. I had responsibility without authority. I thank the Lord that He got me out of there and into my "dream job". I'm now at the level I want to be and doing the kind of work I love. I get to bridge the gap between techies and management. While the politics can be ridiculous, I am able to deal with it. Since I am working at the same place I went to college, I can relive some of those years which I look back on quite fondly. I can go for a walk on my lunch hour and remember back 20 years ago and that certainly contributes to my feeling young.

Thank You Lord for the wonder life I am enjoying. May it give me the fortitude to face the next challege that comes along with grace, dignity and patience.

Still in work mode

I manage Systems administrators. Our email system had a hardware failure. While the hardware was replaced within 24 hours, we had email backing up. Our system could not deliver them fast enough. It took until 4 PM to receive emails sent at 8 AM. It looked better and we all went home. Then I get an email from one of the technicians that things are out of control again. So it was a night of speaking to my bosses on the phone and sleeping with my blackberry. This morning I am creating a timeline document of the series of events.

Hiring manager Rant

Yes, I know I tend to blog more about home issues and this is a work issue. But I will be hiring a new team member. I have gotten 2 resumes so far. Neither addresses the technical skill sets the job posting says are requirements. I have a new college grad talking about his leadership skills in his cover letter. What do you know about Microsoft Windows operating systems, what do you know about managing an email server? There is no effort to even pretend they have the skills we stated as required. No wonder they are still searching for a job.

Taking walking for granted

I woke up this morning and climbed out of bed to go do my morning workout. I went into the bathroom and all of a sudden I had this pain in my leg, just below my knee that my leg buckled. I hate the idea of not being able to walk far. I enjoy walking, I enjoy moving about. I’m not very good about sitting still. I have had major problems with my feet where walking was painful. Plantar Fasciitis, bone spurs, etc.  It makes me miserable. It scares me.

 

But nope, about 3 hours later, It is feeling better. Maybe I won’t have to go to Urgent care. You’d think that working on a campus with a hospital with a medical school and a few hospitals that there would be some sort of Urgent care or walk-in clinic nearby, but nope. Hopefully it was just some sort of fluke and it will keep going away.  

Menu Plan Monday

Go to Organizing Junkie’s site to play along.

 

Mon – Meatloaf and Mac and Cheese, Mac and cheese is n the fridge and oven ready. The ground beef is thawed.

Tues – Spaghetti and Meatballs

Wed – Chicken breasts

Thurs- Pork Chops

Fri – My Birthday – hopefully Hubby will take me out before we go to watch DS11 play in the feeder school band at the HS football game.