In A Blink.

Yesterday at about 4:30PM we had a bad thunderstorm. It was bad enough that the down drafts took down trees, power lines, & a few roofs. We lost power for 12 hours thanks to a neighbor's tree pulling down all the powerlines. I was put out. With two kids that have a condition that requires refrigerated medications, long power outages can threaten our stockpiles of medication with spoilage. I had also started to amass our summer hurricane season stockpile so I had to worry about that going bad as well. It was hot, humid, and boring. We sat around for a while either reading or playing board games, then we went to the store to cool off & get some emergency ice, then we came back and packed everything in the fridge in the chest freezer & piled the ice bags on top of it to keep it cool. Updates from the power company kept pushing the estimates for when the power company would have us back up and running back two hours at a time. Finally we gave up and opened the windows and tried to get to sleep. I texted in to work saying I'd have to take the next day off to remediate the power/medicine situation. Luckily they understood. As we tried to sleep in the dense humidity, I kept listening for the rumble of the power company trucks, hoping they would beat the latest estimated time given on their automated update site. Sometime in the early early morning the power finally blinked back on. We got back up out of bed and started removing all the refrigerated goods from the chest freezer back to the fridge. I knew I was going to have to clean out both the freezer and the fridge later that morning. I was tired, groggy, and was NOT happy, but living in Florida, I should have been used to it by now, right?
Then I saw this...

Oklahoma was ravaged. Schools and hospitals were leveled. Children, adults, the elderly... all killed. Whole neighborhoods were wiped clean. Gone. In a blink. The same blink that saw my power go out & make me uncomfortable took away loved ones from families. I felt like an ass. A BIG ass. I was bitching about being bored while first responders were pulling children from the rubble of the school pictured above. Our family still had a roof, food, windows, and a running vehicle while folks in Oklahoma lost everything they had, including their children! Sigh.... 

• So what can we do? We can donate to the recovery & rescue efforts. Got a cell phone? Good! Text STORM to 80888 to donate $10 to the Salvation Army. 
• Also you can text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 to them as well. 
•  Feeding America is preparing to bring truckloads of food and water to the area to help care for the victims & rescue crews and you can donate to them here to help that way too. 
• Text FOOD to 32333 to send $10 to the OK Foodbank so they can bring in food for victims.
• OPERATION USA is going to Oklahoma to help aid health care centers & schools get back up and running & if you want to help them text 50555 to donate $10 to them.
• Don't forget the furry victims!! Go to the Oklahoma Humane Society website here, and make a donation to okhumane.org! 

There will be a need for help for many months to come, so keep all those numbers handy. $10 goes a long way. It's our support of each other that makes this nation great! Let's help OKlahoma be OK again!

Have A Seat!

My daughters playing around and being funny at IKEA's "As-Is" department! 

My family is a riot!

Thrifty

I'm cheap.

No, not like that, (although I am a cheap date), but more to the point, I do NOT like paying lots of money for the things I want. Rather than hire a clown or a balloon entertainer, I learned how to make balloon animals myself for my children's birthdays when they were younger. (I was a big hit at Chucky Cheeses that year!) Rather than pay tons of money for themed cakes for birthdays and anniversaries, I learned how to do it myself for pennies on the dollar. If I want my rooms painted, I get the stuff and d it myself. If we want the floors updated, we buy the stuff and do it ourselves as well. You get the picture.

Today it was our bathroom's turn.

We needed space, namely shelf space. With 5 of us sharing a single bathroom, counter space is at a premium! Shelves aren't cheap though. Folks out there want $10 to $30 for a shelf depending on how fancy it is. I usually don't want to pay that kind of scratch, so I went to my go to spot... IKEA! I am a pro at the "As-Is" section of IKEA. That's the scratch and dent section near the registers. Several months ago we bought some doors to a cabinet in the as-is and several brackets, and made some shelves out of them! Worked so well we thought we'd try again. Off to IKEA we went.

Once there, we wove our way to the as-is portion of the store. No small feat considering the giant habitrail that is IKEA, but we made it and instantly started picking over the doors and shelves. First, we found this gem for $15...

It is a glass shelf that was 50% off because it has 3 small scratches on it. Can you see them in the photo? Yeah, I can't either. Their loss, my gain. Then we found a small white shelf that looked nice....

It didn't have any hardware with it, (which is why it was $.50!) so we backtracked to the shelving dept. to look at some brackets for it. The metal ones we picked out worked well and can double as washcloth holders. I banished Eldest's stuff to this new shelf. Now she will be able to find everything she needs and I'll have more space on the counter top.

Last, (and this one was really a whim), I saw this medium sized pot rack on the shelves in the as-is section...

It was also missing some hardware and was only $4. We picked it up, and repurposed it into a towel rack! It looks delightfully whimsical. The craptastical ones that came with the apartment and now in the dumpster!

So yeah, I am a cheap ass woman when it comes to buying stuff, but I am a recycling goddess when I need to be! So, for around $30 I got to make my bathroom look much more organized.

Next project: Organizing the bedroom!

What Ever Happened To...

....School banquets?

Eldest had her Track Banquet tonight. It was at Golden Corral. We had to pay for her to eat & drink. There were no awards given out with the exception of letters & pins. I was shocked. Apparently, this is now the norm for school banquets. If the parents don't pay for it, it doesn't happen.

When I was in school, we had our banquets at the school with either catered food, or food specifically purchased from the school, but better quality than regular lunch food. We had awards, presentations and a big cake to celebrate a year well accomplished. Apparently, that isn't how things are done anymore. Now the banquet has been reduced to a meet up at a buffet, and "Here's your letter." with absolutely no presentation what so ever. And the kicker for me is, Eldest and her track team sold t-shirts and hoodies to supposedly "Raise money" for this banquet, yet we still had to pay?!? WTF is that all about!?! Where did the $135 from all the stuff Eldest sold go? Why wasn't it applied to the kid's banquet bill? 

I can't believe that the state of schools today means the kids have to give up something that HHH & I got as a right of passage in High School. It makes me sad. 

Also, I am calling that track coach Monday and asking where the fundraising money went! 

LOL!

The babies are still in the tree. Mama cat dutifully goes off during the day & searches the dumpsters for easy eats for the little guys. We figured we'd give her a break & went to buy some gushy foods at the store. HHH opened a can, put Jr on his shoulders, & they put it in the tree. Hope the kitties like chicken in gravy! 

PS- The whit one up there has a spot on it's side that is the exact shape of a mickey mouse head!! Sooooo cute!

Stuff & Nonsense!

• There are still kittehs in the tree outside. Now they play king of the tree. I keep waiting for it to rain kittens down upon us. Momma cat saw us watching them the other day and gave us the EVIL EYE.
• End of school is upon us and the parties are starting to roll in. Today Jr. came home with an invitation for me from the school to a special breakfast to honor all the parents who volunteered over the year.(Technically I was a volunteer, but really I was given the choice of "Volunteer to go on the field trip or your diabetic kid gets left out." so I didn't really count it since it was really blackmail.) It's at 8am TOMORROW. I have no way to tell my work I need to come in late because the schedule has already been made. Gee, thanks school system. I feel so honored.
• Still cleaning out people's toilets for a living. I actually like it. There's something satisfying about taking a pigsty of a house and making it showroom clean that just speaks to me. Now if I could just get my co workers to be less bitchy....
• IMAX 3D rocks out loud. No, really.... IT WAS REALLY LOUD! I guess they want you to be totally immersed in the movie and by God, you are going to FEEL the movie through the overly loud sound system. I do recommend seeing a movie in IMAX however. It was excellent! Ironman 3 kicked ass! 

And that's all I have for now.... but the week is young yet!

Mama Said Knock You OUT!

Ok, well not really. Just admiring the reason I get to celebrate Mother's Day.