Here We Go!

I have SO MUCH to say!  School is finally over for me.  I'm walking in the commencement ceremony in six days!  Ok, so first.  There will be topics!  I have THAT much to say.

THINGS THAT ARE NOT WORDS:
Supposibly.  Supposably is also not a word.  That red line under it doesn't mean that you spelled it wrong.  You can't spell it correctly.  Supposed.  Now THAT'S a word.

Irregardless.  HAAAAAAAAAAATE! STABBY STABBY!  Regardless = word.  Irregardless = making you look like a moron.  Actually, this may be one that is used SO egregiously that it has become a word now.  Either way, it's redundant.

Conversate.  Converse will do.  Oh! Unless!  Maybe we are starting to conjugate verbs with super special endings.  Like romance languages.  English.  Ah.  So romantic.  *flutter eyelashes*

Condensate.  Much like above, not a word.  Condense.  Water...it condenses on things.

CIRCLE OF MOMS:

Y'all did it!  I made it onto the Top 25 Moms of Blended Families blogs on Circle of Moms.  You can click HERE to get to the COM Round-Up.  WHY would you want to do that, you ask?  Because as number 22 in the Top 25, I have been invited to guest blog on the Round-Up.  This means LOTS more readers!  But not here, because I can't just write a post here and then copy it to send to the Round-Up.  I have to send it to the Round-Up first, and then, if they like it and publish it, I can copy it to here.  If they hate it and don't want to publish it, then I could copy it to here, too, but, then again, I'd have already been told it sucked, so why would you awesome dudes wanna read it?  Never stopped me before, I guess.

Anyway, the point is to say THANK YOU!  Your votes have really, REALLY helped me out.  More readers means more exposure.  More exposure means a better chance of success for...

LULUNACY:

I'm getting art supplies today!  That means that LuLunacy begins now.  I'm going to draw LuLu so that I can have a picture of her in my head as I develop her.  I'm going to draw her blog design, so I can show it to Eric and say, "Hey, babity babity babe, can you make this picture a reality on the internets?  I'll make you an English muffin."  I'm going to start drawing story boards.  I need to start at the end, I think.  Where do I want LuLu to end up?  I'm not sure, yet, but I think I need the end before I write the beginning.

SCHOOL:

There's not much to say about it.  I'm finished.  I have the highest GPA of the Political Science Department.  Maybe.  Two of my grades haven't come in, yet.  I think I got a B in Geography.  That sucks.  I've never gotten a B as a final course grade before, and it happened on my last class ever and because of a GROUP project that I got a D on.  A D!!  Relying on others for my grades is lame.  I may have still gotten an A.  If I was able to pull 41 out of 50 points on my final exam, I can still get one.  I'm not too confident about it, but maybe I got it.  Grades are due this evening, and then they update them in the morning, so I'll find out then.  Pregnancy has wrought havoc on my studying the semester.  I was just so tired and unable to concentrate.  I'm shocked that my Terrorism and African Politics grades turned out the way they did.  I really thought my AP paper was crap.  Apparently my professor thought otherwise.  I do speculate, though, that I didn't really EARN that A on that paper.  I think there was some bias.  That particular professor knows a lot about my history.  He's my advisor.  He knows about my high GPA and what I do to maintain it.  He knows I had an unfair grade from another professor due to negative bias on a GOOD paper I wrote.  He knows about my autism.  His son has it, too.  I think he may have done me a solid here and maybe added a few additional points.  Not a lot.  I mean, it wasn't a FAILING paper by any means.  I did work hard on it.  I just didn't focus well.

FEELINGS.  NOTHING MORE THAN...FEELINGS:

School ending has been really tough for me.  I loved it, and more than that, I was exceptional at it.  I'm now a full-time wife, mom and homemaker.  These are things that I do not feel that I'm exceptional at.  Add pregnancy hormones to that, and it's been a rough transition.  I can't go back to work at this time.  I'll have the dudes home with me all summer and then the bot in the fall.  It's a hard pill to swallow working so hard for so many years, spending over $50K on an education, and then...making peanut butter sandwiches, doing dishes and playing Candyland all day.  Mentally stimulating it is not.  That's why I have LuLu.  Adult interaction, though, I think is going to be the rough spot for me.  I need to talk and hang out with humans often that are over the age of 8.

THE DUDES!

Birthdays are coming up!  Little Man will be 6, and Big Man will be 8 in just a few short weeks.  They are getting the birthday bash of the century this year.  We wanted to do something big for them since the Bot is coming.  We're taking the dudes on a babymoon.  In 3-1/2 weeks, we'll be setting off for Manhattan to hop on board the Disney Magic for an 8-day cruise to the Bahamas, PLUS a day at Disney World!  The dudes are SO excited.  They wake up once a week and ask, "OMGosh, is it Boat Day?!? IS IT BOAT DAY!?!?" haha

Then, they get to come home, and the next weekend have a huge family party down in Kentucky at one of their favorite places where there is a pool and a trampoline and horses.  Making out like bandits this year.  Which is good.  Since they have no toys left.  Explanation to follow:

BEFORE:

This seriously happened.  Two dudes + one playroom = THIS.  And this is only half of it that would fit in the picture.  The mess extended another 200 square feet to the right.  This is a HUGE "L-shaped" room.

There were warnings.  Two weeks of warnings.  "I'm going to come down here with trash bags."  "Seriously, dudes.  You do NOT want me to clean this up.  There WILL be trash bags involved."  The dudes.  They did not listen.  Instead, they dumped out yet ANOTHER tub of toys onto the floor.  Then, one day, Little Man came upstairs sans glasses.  "Where are your glasses?"  "I dunno.  Downstairs somewhere."  *Head asplode*

So.  The next day.  I cleaned it.  For 8 hours.

Happy dudes this did NOT make.  There was much crying and gnashing of teeth and sorting through the trash to see if they could sneak some salvage back into their lives.  They couldn't.  There were WARNINGS!  Still always a shock when we follow through with discipline.  Always.  It's been 5 years of always following through.  No idle threats.  WTF?

Anyway, I did NOT throw away all of it.  I threw away about 1/3 of it.  All broken, missing parts or unused for years.  Dried Play-Doh and markers that haven't seen the light of day (or a lid) in 6 months, full coloring books, plus thousands of little bits of paper.  The dudes are obsessed with cutting paper into teeny tiny bits.  With all of the broken stuff, I still managed to fill two lawn trash bags to be sent to the curb.  The toddler toys went into two large tubs to be sorted for garage sale.  About 1/3 of it went into a separate room for them to keep.  It's the stuff they actually try to play with but, shockingly, had no space.  Seriously, who could set up a train track or a race road in that mess?

So we've gotta new system, and it seems to be working out well.  The kids check toys out of the storage room.  They've even made it fun for themselves by making a little library card to pretend to swipe when they check out toys.  When they are done with those, they clean them up and exchange them.  The best part is that they have all of this SPACE to play!  They can put on skates or build a huge train or just run in circles in here now because it's empty.  Good stuff.  Of course, after birthdays, we're gonna have to find a little more room in the storage area for the new toys.

Unfortunately, I did NOT find the glasses.  They weren't in there.  Two days later, Eric found them in his office, on top of a box of tools.  They were blending right in with the hammer.  He owes me 8 hours of back and foot rubs.  Finally...

THE BOT!

The Bot will be 18 weeks in the tummy in two days, and we find out if it's a male or female bot in about 2-1/2 weeks :)  She's tumbling around in there like CRAZY and measuring a full week bigger than she's supposed to.  I'm hitting lots of pregnancy milestones early, like feeling movement, feet swelling, etc.  I wonder if that means I'll give birth early.  I'm enjoying the pregnancy and everything that comes with it quite a lot, though the heartburn so far is the worst.  I feel like I can't breathe, and it stops me from sleeping for a while most nights.  I have to talk to my doctor about a better solution than Tums.

Ok, I HAVE to stop writing now and get to my to-do list.  I wanna attempt my first batch of cupcakes from scratch today.  Try to make my homemaker skills a little higher than mediocre.