FOUR Years

Can you believe I have been documenting little things of my life on this blog for the past 4 years? It's crazy. And it will be three years in a few months that I have had the baby blog. It's hard to believe that my baby girl is already 2 years old. My how things have changed (and how they haven't - 4 years ago I was blogging about how much rain we had and it seems to be the same story this year, just in a different location.)

Skeeter Beaters!

Ok - well, I got everything I need at the grocery store today to try this homemade mosquito trap. So, we'll see how it turns out. I don't really have to invest much in this.....just an empty 2L bottle (which I get to enjoy the contents of) a package of yeast (which our grocery store sells them singly if you so choose) and some sugar.

The other thing I might try is the Listerine "Spray", which you are supposed to spray Listerine around the area you plan to hang out 15-30 minutes beforehand. This link has lots of other ideas as well. We don't use listerine (or even the Target version), so I may wait to see if anyone I know tries this and it works for them before I spend the money on buying some. I very curious about the claim of using pure vanilla as a repellent....Interesting....

There is also a claim that a fabric softener sheet in your pocket repels them.....interestingly I have read the same thing ( & tried it!) about mice. I used it one winter when we had several mice in the house and the cats just were not getting them fast enough. I put fabric softener sheets in areas where they had been and lots of other places.....I didn't see them again that winter, although I am sure my cats were disappointed in that. They liked the challenge of catching them.

Safe & Secure

Well, it happened again....my daughter was locked inside somewhere with me not being able to get in. This time it was the house we are house-sitting at now. Isabel just happened to be sleeping in late (which was a good thing in this case) because she had a rough night in a new bed/house. Anyways, I went out the door to put the garbage out for collection and unbeknown to me, it was a self-locking door. From the inside it turns like it is unlocked, but once you go through it, it is locked from the outside.

So, I ran next door to my friend's old lady neighbor and she said to go across the street because they hang out with them sometimes. So, I ran over there (hoping he had a spare key or knew where they kept on, or at the very least to call 911.) He only had their home numbers and no cells (which I found out later it would not have mattered because they don't have a spare key outside). The neighbor used to have a spare, but they had house guests lock themselves out a while back and they came to retrieve the key and never returned it. So, 911 it is.

So, after a while I heard some sirens & hoped they were coming for me. There I was, with my bed head and jammies standing in the front yard waving down the firetruck. They came and "pushed" open the locked door. When I tried it I just turned the handle and apparently their door jam isn't lined up properly and if you use a little bit of force you can push the door open while it is locked. Isabel had just woke up, so thankfully she wasn't sitting there scared wondering why mommy wasn't coming to her. Turns out my friends forgot to tell me about the door needing to be slammed shut or it won't secure (which is why they always lock the garage as well.)

Isabel got to see a fire engine closer than ever before, so she thought that was pretty neat. we just put together a couple puzzles last night that had fire engines in them, so she was all excited to see the fire truck up close. They really do exist!

So, after that exciting morning, things were way off schedule and we never made it tot he Y for my class. Not sure that I will make it on Wednesday either, as we have Isabel's 2-year doctor appointment before that and I don't know how quick they will be. It should be fairly quick if she is on time because she doesn't need any shots this time around.

Mama's Going Back to Work....

One Questioned Answered

Well, we now know that Andy has a job and his position was not eliminated due to the layoffs. I guess most people found out either way today. I guess there was about 30 people within the overall marketing department that were laid off, but none of them were in his direct sub-department.

He felt like throwing up all day as they waited for their meeting.

So, now we know Andy still has a job here. But that still does not sell our house and we still cannot afford a mortgage and rent and I don't know that we want to try renting out our house......we might not even find anyone for that either.

Not sure how much that answer really gave us answers, but at least we know there is some income coming in to pay for the house we don't live in.

Fuzzy Brain

There is only so much information and stress that a brain can handle before it gets all fuzzy. I feel lucky that I have always been one to write down stuff, although I rarely needed to reference my calendar unless it was a far out date because I would always remember every playgroup and playdate and plan we had made for several weeks out. That's not so anymore. Right now I have all I can do with remembering where we are living that day or week, let alone what we are doing from day to day. I need to remember everything we had unpacked and where the kid might have stashed it. It's exhausting to have to remember so much extra stuff. At least we have reliable vehicles now. That was just downright trying with having to worry about that.

So, today we begin our first house/cat sitting stint for 11 nights, then we go to another place for house sitting for 7 days, then finally one more place for 10 nights of house/dog sitting. After that we are up in the air. I am pretty stressed out about that.

We had a private showing yesterday, but they said it wasn't the house for them. To be honest, I don't have any hope at all that our house will sell. I think what it will come to is that we will have to move back and Andy will have to find a job there or he will take another job some where else and that company will buy our house. We won't relocate again to be still sitting here trying to sell our house.

It doesn't help that we keep sleeping in different beds and my back and neck is all screwed up.

Sometimes I do all I can to keep from crying. My child is stressed and having nightmares, although I guess those start happening anyways around 2 years old, but they coincidentally started when we moved to a new place. I don't think she had any (or many) when we stayed at familiar places (the MN house or my parents house.)

Well, I need to go workout now. It at least makes me focus on something else.

It sucks not knowing when I will be living in a month, or even what state we'll be living in. And so my brain must stay fuzzy.