1/10/09

No money today either…wasn’t really expecting it, but hoping!  We’ll have to find out why on Monday, if there’s still no money then.  Heck, I’m just glad it’s coming… no more losing the internet!  I was thinking, even with Jerry wanting to get a job, there’s NO guarantee he WILL get a job.  More and more people are being laid off, fired, or simply having their jobs eliminated.  The DHA (dept of human assistance… nice title, huh?) office was overbooked, seriously overbooked.  It’s a good thing that we got there early, or we would have been turned away yet again.  The economy is seriously impacting people, and I am glad we finally have SOMETHING coming in, even if it’s only enough to cover the basics.  It’s better than nothing, it’s MUCH better than just scraping by, hoping for a miracle.  Miracles seem to be kind of scarce these days.

Anyway, I took the girls, -Becca, +Kristin, to McDonald’s today, for about 2 and a half hours.  I wasn’t too sure about Alex.  She threw up on me TWICE this morning, and has had dirrhea, and she threw up on me yesterday morning as well.  Plus, she just doesn’t seem too hungry after breast feeding, which is odd… I am definitely making less milk than I did.  At least, as far as I can tell.  After the fever, I’m a little worried about her, but she isn’t listless, is her little happy go lucky self, unless tired.  As she was after 2 and a half hours at McDonald’s, with no rest or sleep.  She was essentially fussy from the time we got there, until we got in the van and got going when she fell asleep.  2 and a half hours is a SHORT visit for us, we normally stay about 4 hours!  We didn’t have any formula, so I was kind of stuck breast feeding her, and I DID feed her, but she still didn’t fall asleep.  I finally told the girls we just had to pack it in and go home.  I can’t estimate how long she slept once we got home, I sat in the van talking to my mom on the phone while she slept, and I guess I woke her up when I got out.  I went inside and asked Jerry to bring her in, as he’s less likely to wake her up, but she was already awake, pretty happy when he went out there.  So I took her upstairs with my book, and read for quite awhile while she laid there and sucked contentedly away.  I thought I heard Jerry yell my name, so I unlatched her to find out what he wanted, but he’d been yelling at Becca (loudly, I must say… he’s not much of a yeller, one of the things I love about him.  I don’t do well with yellers, even though I AM one.)  When I went back, she was asleep, so I left.  One of the things I mean to do one of these days, is curl up in bed with a book pretty much all day, and let her nurse and nurse and nurse.  I just haven’t had the chance.  I’ll probably do it while Kristin is here, because she likes having Sammi around, and will watch the two younger ones happily for hours, if allowed.  Kristin is going to be a GOOD mommy some day, lol.  She just loves little ones, it’s so sweet to watch. 

Anyway, Alex has seemed fine the rest of the day, and when she’s thrown up, it seems like maybe her tummy got overfull, or she ate too quickly… not sure completely, Jerry thinks she isn’t sick because she seems fine.  I don’t know.  Call it mommy’s intuition.  But then… I’m not going to rush to the doctor either, because whatever it is, seems mild and will probably run its course over time.  She was happy enough to be held the ENTIRE time we were at McDonald’s, and honestly, I didn’t mind holding her.  She was happy to eat french fries, and kept them down… so another point in the direction of her NOT being sick.  I only gave her one or two of them anyway… french fries are barely healthy for us big kids…

So I got NO scrapping done today, and won’t tonight either, because my desk has swap stuff I’ve been sorting ALL over it.  Slow going, sorting out the Disney swaps.  I need to begin getting pictures for all these wonderful kits I have.  And since I’ve already got pictures printed out, what I need to do really is get them matched up with the swaps.  I’m getting to the "bottom of the barrel" literally in terms of the bucket itself, and the quality… sigh.  I wish I’d only joined the swaps in my one Disney swap group from the get-go… they’re the only ones that are REALLY good.  But then, I was swappping WAY before that group even existed.  And, honestly, I’m looking at some of my own work from then, and I’m ashamed!  I was cheap or lazy, or both.  Sigh.  That’s a tough one to admit to oneself.  But I look at MY quality, and I look at other’s quality, and I realize… I could have put a lot more into some of these things.  On the other hand, I KNOW I did some particularly good work on things like titles.  My shaker boxes got to be over-done…same thing over and over… but I still did good work on shakers, and I was practically the only one who would ever take them on, it got me into some swaps that otherwise would have been closed…except for that one shaker box or paper piecing spot (LOL) that no one else wanted, because of the complexity.  And… they were cheap to make.  Without LOOKING cheap.  I liked that, because swaps were expensive, from buying 10 of something, to mailing it and having to include money to mail it back.  Though I was looking at a swap group tonight, and they’re only doing 6 person swaps (there are NO photomats in any of the swaps… which is probably a good thing.  It’s all stuff to embellish the page.)  6 people in a swap would greatly reduce all costs involved, and still give you a good page when all was said and done.  Still, I estimate it would cost me at least 10 dollars to participate in any swap, and when I’ve only got 30 a month for scrapping, 10 is a lot… to me anyway.  I’ve got plenty of swaps to scrap though, so I think I’ll let the ones I have "do" for now.  Maybe once I get my inks, and some of my "wants" taken care of, I can start using the money for swapping.  It’s going to be at least 4 months though, if not closer to 6.  I got a Paper Wishes catalog in the mail yesterday, and Oh!  They have TONS of stuff I want, and free shipping for orders over 75 dollars.. so if I can’t find it locally, I’ll save my money and order it from them.  Though, they have these "scratch and dent" brad buddies for 7.99 for 11 of them, and that is a FANTASTIC price.  I love the brad buddies, and they’re not going to have this deal in 4 months.  They’re not dented, btw… though they ARE scratched, some of them.  I don’t distress things, which seems to be their recommendation, but then, I don’t CARE if they have a couple of scratches on them… happens to me all the time anyway!  I want some of the punches, though I’m PRETTY sure I CAN find those locally…and if not, then they can be ordered, so *I* won’t have to pay the shipping.  Hm… wonder if my LSS could get them for me, the scratch and dent ones?  Somehow, I doubt it… nah.  I mean, they COULD get them for me, but not for 7.99.  They’d have to pay 7.99, and I’d have to pay 15.  Not worth it.

I’d better get to sorting s

ome more.  And perhaps putting together page kits.  I’m a little frustrated…. I found a bunch of punches that were missing, they’re Punchkin punches, which are for putting together paper dolls.  Only I can’t find the doll body punch.  Grrrr…. I paid a LOT of money for those punches, glad I found some, but I kind of need the doll body for the rest of them to be any good to me.  I can buy doll bodies on Ebay for 1.00, but then I’d have to pay shipping.  Kind of sucks.  And I don’t know if I’ve EVER used the punches, what a WASTE of money!  It’d be nice to find the doll body, and be able to get some use from the punches.  And I’ll bet the kids would have a LOT of fun punching dolls and dressing them.  I have every punch ever made in this series.  Gees, the things I used to waste, er, spend my money on… and the idea that it never even touched me in a negative way.  Sigh.  I think the only reason I have put up with Jerry’s "job" is because I was hoping it would lead back to that kind of not ever worrying about what I was spending.  Well… that’s not ENTIRELY the case.  It wasn’t like I could go buy the 3000 dollar cutter I wanted for my scrapbooking… I had to "settle" for the 400 dollar one.  But I was well aware that there were women who were scraping and saving even to afford that.  It just wasn’t unusual for me to go spend 500 dollars in a month on my hobby.  I’d go to the LSS, and walk out having spent 100.  I’d go to Michael’s, and spend 100, Joann’s, another 100, and at the end of the month, I’d have spent 500.  When I was pregnant with Sammi, I ordered around 300 dollars worth of stuff from various places so I’d have PLENTY of stuff to scrap her with.  I don’t even know how much of it I’ve used… or haven’t used.  I’ve certainly done at least 20 pages of her babyhood, but it’s funny, because I used my 400 dollar cutter for many of them, and then "embellished" with 3-D stickers from Wal mart for a lot of them.  I’ve barely used the 20 dollar scrapbooking "kit" I bought from K&Co, even though it’s cute, I have a hard time seeing how to use it.  I am the type of scrapper who should just buy ribbon, brads, paper and a FEW stickers.  That’s about all I use on more than half my pages, and they look NICE.  Oh, and Bazzill… let me NOT forget the Bazzill cardstock.  I love Bazzill.  It’s textured, and oh so pretty.

Okay… I’m rambling on, and talking about products and things that if you don’t scrapbook, you have NO idea about, and that is the MOST BORING thing to read… are your eyes glazed over yet? 

Here’s Becca with a VERY unhappy Alex, so must go.