I just spent the last hour and a half not exercising and going to bed on time. Instead, I was grading math tests for Rachel's teacher. "Why?" you ask. (Just humor me and pretend you were asking.) Because I checked off a box on a form at the beginning of the school year to say that I was available to grade papers and do projects at home to help out.
Normally, there's a longer turnaround time on grading things and I'm able to spread it out a bit. I think the snow days last week must have made for a time crunch, because she sent the papers home today and they needed to be returned tomorrow. I wasn't sure if she needed them to come back with Rachel in the morning or if I could bring them back at the end of the school day when picking her up, but I figured I'd better just get them done and sent back in case she needed them earlier in the day.
So now I'm again having a night where I won't get as much sleep as I really need, which is a bummer considering how much I was dragging today. I tried to nap when Ben went down early, but I just couldn't fall asleep for some reason. I think the time I spent resting helped because I felt better later in the day than I did for the first few hours. But I'm low on energy right now and bummed about going to bed late.
("And why are you blogging instead of getting yourself to bed?" you're now thinking. Because it's the last day of NaBloPoMo and, although I've missed a couple of days, I've made up the posts, and I wanted to finish well.)
Today was also another rough day with Rachel. She got in trouble with her teacher, too, which is unusual. Normally her behavior is school is pretty good even when she's misbehaving at home, but today involved eye-rolling and not wanting to do what she was asked. And it just got worse when she was at home. I think she's being negatively influenced by some of the kids she likes to play with during recess time. Thankfully they're not in her class, but she keeps gravitating to them during play time, and I truly believe she's picking up their disrespectful attitudes and actions. I'm praying that she'll start choosing to spend her time with kids who are more positive influences, and that she will be a positive influence herself, rather than getting dragged down. We're also talking with her often and just working on reinforcing what we expect of her and what disobedience and nastiness will bring in terms of consequences, and praying with her and not just for her.
I didn't worry about the plumbing today. There's just too much going on to let that weigh heavily on me on an ongoing basis. I can't take that kind of stress, so I'm choosing not to worry and stress over it.
On the bright side, I downloaded a bunch of new Christmas music to iTunes, ranging in price from $5.99 for a CD down to free! Yay, free! We got over 200 new songs in the past few days for about $23 plus tax, and I'm ordering another CD for $6.99 that will give us another 14 or so songs. Good stuff. Check out Amazon's MP3 store - their MP3 albums are frequently cheaper than their CDs, and often cheaper than the same album on iTunes.
And I bought a candy thermometer today. I've wanted one whenever I use a recipe that calls for cooking something to a particular temperature since that's a much more precise way to make candy and other confections than doing the water test. Plus it's got guidelines for temperatures for deep-frying, which means that I can start finding that perfect fried chicken recipe (which I'll be using when I reach maintenance mode on Lose It, no doubt). My plan is to make pralines for the first time this week so that I can take them to a family Christmas party. I'm also making kalua pig, so at least I'll have to bring if my pralines don't turn out, but I think they'll be fine if I just follow the instructions and tips given by reviewers. If you want to make them yourself, the recipe is here. I'd suggest you read the first couple of reviewers' comments before embarking on making them as they have some helpful tips to make sure the pralines turn out as desired.
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