how to organize on a budget

i organized my linen closet this week. yes. it did take me an entire week. i was unpacking a few moving boxes the other day. yes. we moved 8 months ago and i still have unpacked boxes. inside, i found lots (and lots) of toiletries and bath stuff and towels and lotion. oh my the lotion. i try to put on lotion every day, but it turns out more often to be every week. at this rate, i have enough to last until i'm perimenopausal.

anyways, i did it. it's finished. after wanting to go to walmart (the poor man's container store), i decided that i was sure that i had enough bins and baskets laying around the house desperately desiring to be used. oh, they were used. all the lotion sits on the bottom of the linen closet in the open so i am fully aware that i am nearly drowning in it. the next shelf up has a bin and a basket containing the insane amount of extra toiletries (toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap bars, face wash, kleenex, q-tips, shavers, shampoo, conditioner, etc). i have my own freaking cvs pharmacy in my hallway. oh, it also contains my retainer which no longer fits my teeth since i refused to wear it in high school. believe me. my child will wear a retainer if i spend $4000 to get his teeth fancy. sorry mom.

and my crown and glory. under the sink in our bathroom. after fixing up the linen closet, this was my encore. apparently, if you grow up with a longaberger consultant for a mother, "on a budget" means using hundreds of dollars of baskets in a place no one will see them to contain your tampons and nair bikini cream. thanks mom.

i spent $28 on cookies and i don't care.

i know that eating too many cookies will increase the number of pounds i carry in my mid-section, but since we're trying to get pregnant, i figure i will end up fat in the next few months regardless. i'm just starting the process early.

sick? eat cheese.

this is not the diary of a good mother. this is me and all the choices i make and the fact that i don't really care whether they are right or wrong. finn had a fever and diarrhea for a couple days, so i decided to take him to the doctor to just make sure things were okay. i had also had a fever and was feeling like absolute crud, so i may or may not have been projecting my feelings onto finn as additional symptoms. i kept thinking 'how can this child be acting so fine when he feels like crud?' well, katie, it's because maybe he didn't feel like crud and your selfish mindset couldn't see past the abdominal cramps and head cramps and body aches and utter exhaustion that you were feeling. SELFISH.
anyways, the doctor said, well his diarrhea and fever could be because he caught a common bug that is going around or maybe it's because he's getting a tooth. i seriously need to stop going to the doctor whenever finn is getting a tooth. i'm not joking, this is the third time i've rushed him in to the md expecting they say 'take him to the hospital immediately' yet they tell me to give him a shot of tylenol. same diagnosis again. give him tylenol and maybe keep him away from dairy products for a couple days to stop the diarrhea.

next stop after the doctor was none other than moe's southwest grill for cheese quesadillas and a big glass of kid's milk. my selfish mindset could only think 'i need moes to boost my spirits' but the old-man-farts coming from finn afterwards may have pointed toward bad choice. ah, he seems fine today.

a valentine's day surprise

josh was busy all last week trying to get purdue work done before he left town for a week, so he was a little frazzled. in spite of this, he told me he wanted to plan our date night and surprise me since i had planned the childcare (finn's first night away from both parents---he stayed with my mom). i was so excited on friday getting finn packed and ready, drove him to meet my mom, started heading back home and called josh. i asked what he had planned for the night, and he said 'nothing'. i smiled and said 'okay' because i thought he was covering up a big master plan of romance and everything special. i got home and found out that when he said 'nothing' he meant nothing. the surprise was there was no surprise? it's true. to his credit, he tried to hide the 'no surprise' with flowers. after whining and maybe a little louder than normal talking, we ended up going to get indian food at bombay, reading magazines at borders, then going to see valentine's day at the theatre. not exactly romantic or out of our norm. and regardless of my incessant complaints of him not planning anything, it ended up being a pretty okay night. maybe even a 7 out of 10 night. i think josh would be pleased with a C.

brody has been left alone a little too much this week. our stuff has suffered from this. josh and i just started bragging about what a good dog he is. it only took us about 4 and a 1/2 years, but we finally thought we had bragging rights. then, josh left town and all of my attention was solely on our other child, so brody has been having a bit of a meltdown. thankfully, it's mostly been josh's belongings.

mini stud/baby mr rogers

um. how adorable is this little man? i had been eyeing this sweater from the gap for the longest time, but i am not going to spend $39.50 on a old man sweater for my 14-month old child. luckily, i follow sales and it went to an oh-my-gosh-can-you-believe-i'm-so-cheap-yet-still-so-adorable price. and i have to say, he looks cuter than ever.

dancing dave

my dad (aka twinkle toes) can get down. he participated in the marshall county neighborhood center's dancing with the stars last night. um. wow. that's all i can say. i cannot even begin to express how proud i am of him. and the only thing to top the performance of the year by any man over the age of 50 was the amount of money that was raised by the evening, somewhere in the neighborhood of $58,000.

love you papa. seriously, amazing job.

how to get on skis and not die

1. buy snowpants that make your look like an awkwardly lanky man

2. squeeze feet into slightly too small and painfully tight ski boots

3. snap on some slippery skis to said painful boots

4. hire a cute ski instructor to tell you that you are doing an amazing job and try to believe him

my family took a weekend trip to crystal mountain for the second time. last year, finn was about 3 weeks old and it was a very different experience. i hadn't been cleared for physical activity, so i thankfully couldn't get talked into trying skiing again. thing is, 12 years ago, i took a little skiing adventure with a church group. i got the skis on, made it to the bunny hill, grabbed hold of the rope to get to the top, fell over, and was then promptly ran over by the largest man to ever stand on two skinny sticks. now this is where the story has become a little of a you-won't-believe-it-but-i-caught-a-fish-this-big story. i'm pretty sure i just sprained my wrist or had a hairline fracture, but the closer i get to the mountain, the more terrifying this story becomes. all weekend, i remembered (and retold) that my arm snapped in half across both the radius and ulna (i'm smart- i know bones). as i now get further away and my blood pressure drops to a normal level, i'm more and more confident that i'm just a big fat liar, but deal with it. falling down a mountain at ridiculous rates of speed gives me the right to be a big fat liar.

i made it though. and without major injury. although on the first night, i started getting a little too confident. okay, i'll admit it. i was stupid and cocky. i hadn't fallen on my rump (yet) so we ventured out for night skiing. i got to the top, saw how shiny and icy the slope was and how closed the easiest run was. seriously, how can you close the easiest run without telling me that it is going to be closed? four letter words quickly filled my mind. i went down the easiest open run and managed to fall seconds after gaining the confidence to go for it. i screamed one of those four letter words. jumped up. well, more like flailed around like a fish out of water until my feet were somehow below me. fell seconds after going for it the second time. i screamed another one of those four letter words, this time perhaps at josh. the whole way down, i panicked and yelled and realized that i couldn't just stop. as most of you know but i hadn't realized until that moment, if you ride to the top of a mountain, you have to go down. i made it down, then promptly jumped out of my skis and went to sit by the fire. no more night skiing for me. just easy runs with the little kids groups during very lit sunny days.

lady gaga: take 2 & number twenty six

after she canceled the last concert and the additional two weeks of waiting, lady gaga took the stage. she was amazing. i cannot express it enough. she was one of the best concerts that i have ever been to. it was complete performance the entire time. some of it, i didn't quite understand, like the woman puking blue goo all over lady gaga in a white dress. all i could guess was that it was a statement about vanity, but seriously, she's a little wild. at one point, i dancing with the music and turned to josh to see him standing completely upright, arms crossed, with a slightly confused look on his face. he felt a little out of place, though more in place than the 55 year old man ten rows behind us with two 14 year old girls. oh dad!

one thing that made me feel incredibly old was that i kept complaining that it was too loud (which it was). the next day at work, i had to tell everyone to speak up because i couldn't hear a word they were saying. apparently, my ears ring at the same frequency that most people talk.