Tuesday, August 14, 2007

#29 Go through my school stuff and pack for my new job

Since I will be starting my teaching career shortly, I decided that I needed to go through my teaching stuff and pull out what needed to be taken to my new school and what should be ditched and what should be set aside for another time. Since I have elementary and middle school experience and I will now be teaching high school, I had to cull through my supplies to take out all of the really elementary stuff that I would definitely NOT use in a high school setting. Some of the stuff was iffy so I left it on a book shelf at home. The rest, I packed in two large plastic containers and they are ready to go to my new school on Friday!!!! Aaack! That means I will be teaching my own classes soon!

Monday, August 13, 2007

Back to #5, 25, 26, 27, 28

Well, we had a busy weekend here at Chez Scarborough.

Back to #5: In this task I was boxing up out grown baby clothes to keep in case our next child is a girl and putting it in the attic. I had gotten some of it packed up but I still needed to get stuff out of Katie's room and closet and separate it by size (not easy since it's printed size doesn't necessarily have any bearing on how big it is). Once I'd done that, I realized that I needed to try some of last winter's clothes on Katie to see if anything would fit again this year. Since she has such a large waist but short legs, I had to buy large clothing that I rolled up the legs on last winter. Because of that, some of the stretchy pants still fit this year, I just don't have to roll up the legs! This took awhile since you can't try a lot of clothes on a baby at once. I could do 2 outfits a day at most before she was fed up. When I finally got through all of that and boxed it up, I decided to also box up the bottles and nipples but COULDN'T find them!!! After an hour of searching, I located them in some random place and, unfortunately, came across...2 more boxes of baby clothing I had missed in my initial boxing. I didn't start over but I did have to repack some things. Finally, all of the clothing I could put away is boxed and in the attic up through last winter as well as some of the infant toys like the bouncy seat, infant car seat, etc. There are still a few things to go up but this is definitely done.

#25 Put hooks up on Katie's bathroom door: We have three nice hooks for robes and towels on our bathroom door but the guest bath has nothing on it's door. We bought two hooks (ordered a third) and installed two removeable hooks at child height so that Katie could hang her own robe. Even better, I sweet-talked Jim into doing this for me. :)

#26 Clean out and organize the linen closet: We have a nice linen closet. We keep towels, some sheets, extra pillows, medicines and first aid supplies in the closet. BUT...the boxes for the medicines and first aid stuff were too small and the supplies were disorganized. Plus, we had too many pillows and random towels. We don't have a bunch of nice towels yet (that will be for another list) but we didn't need all of the random towels that we had. So, we purged and got some nice containers for the meds and supplies from Space Savers (I heart that store...) and wala! A nice, useful, organized linen closet with room to spare!

#27 Clean out and organize the coat closet: This was a miserable thorn in my side. We finally purged enough coats awhile back so that we could actually put guests' coats in the closet (novel concept I know) but the floor was a disaster with years of stuff that we had just left there and the overhead shelf had two bins full of hats, gloves, and scarves. I purged like 10 pairs of gloves and probably 20 hats. I'm not kidding. Lots of the floor stuff will be thrown away in our Dining Room clean out tomorrow. (I cheated a little and just moved some of it.) Now there is room for the new small shoe rack I bought and a place to put the diaper bag so that Katie doesn't steal stuff from it all day.

#28 Scan pictures of Erik: Erik was my older brother. He died this past April. When I was in Denver for his funeral, I found a bunch of pictures from my wedding, from his friends, snapshots that folks had taken, and even a few of the two of us. I wanted to scan these pictures so that I could print them, preserve them, and blow them up as desired. I finally found a neighbor with a hi-res scanner and we did it in one night.

Whew! That was a lot! Thanks for hanging with me through this. I am coming down to near the end of my time but I still have a lot I want and need to do before school starts. Stick with me as I come down the home stretch! Let's see how many over my thirty I can accomplish!

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Start the Transformation #22 Clean the car, #23 Get a haircut, #24 buy a work wardrobe

Okay, I'm way behind and running out of time...

Since I have recently completed a Master's degree and finally gotten a job that is truly a career, not just a job, I decided that I needed to make some personal changes in my life. Hence, the transformation begins...

Step 1: Clean out my disgusting car.
I have lived in my car for years. This stems from commuting 45 minutes to work or school for the last 7 years and then spending the last year trying to entertain a baby (now toddler) while driving. The inside of my car was really nasty and needed an overhaul. Since money was tight, I sweet-talked my husband into doing the bulk of the work after we returned from our recent road trip. He cleaned out all of the trash and vacuumed. I then took Clorox wipes to all of the inside surfaces (think drooling baby...) and windexed the windows inside and out. It's not a $100 detailing job but it's a darn sight better than it was.

Step 2: Get a haircut.
The last time I cut my hair short I was in fifth grade. I'm serious. It was all layered and on top of my head and above my ears. Then I saw a girl in the line to get our school pictures made who had waist-length hair and I was hooked. I refused to get my haircut again. A year later I had to get 6 inches of split ends cut off but after that I trimmed it a little bit every 6-8 weeks and it grew like a weed. I even had it waist length for awhile. I've been shortening it for several years to get used to it but I have had the same boring straight all around cut from Great Clips or Fantastic Sam's for like 15 years. I don't know how to do anything with my hair so I french braided it, put it in a ponytail or a barrette and that was pretty much it. It was time for a change. It didn't end up getting all that much shorter. Since I wasn't entirely sure of the cut I wanted, we wanted to leave enough room to cut it off again and I would still have hair left. But, I now have layers that are light and fluffy. I definitely like the feel although the jury is still out on the look. I haven't quite figured out what to do with it, again, I'm rather incompetent with such stuff. However, I also now own two curling irons thanks to my friend Mindy (although I haven't yet braved plugging them in...).

Step 3: Buy a work wardrobe
This was very important since I will now be working at a school where I need to where work clothes 5 days a week. First of all, I never had a lot since I never worked a job that required me to wear business attire that often (my last school allowed me to wear jeans a lot). Secondly, the stuff I owned was extremely old and well worn, in need of replacing. Third, I changed sizes since the birth of my daughter and haven't quite made it back to my pre-pregnancy size yet so some of it doesn't fit. Fourth, there was a lot of old, dusty, clothing in my closet that I would never wear and should never wear that needed to be gotten rid of. Finally, I am completely fashion challenged so I have to take someone with me to make sure I don't end up looking like a frumpy 50ish Kindergarten teacher. So, this weekend (a tax-free shopping weekend in NC) I convinced my dear friend Amanda (thank you!) to go shopping with me. 8 hours and $600 later, I think I have a workable wardrobe. And I won't look 50 or like a Kindergarten teacher. BTW, I hate, as in abhor, shopping and I am very indecisive so this was a major thing for me. It's a good thing I've been saving part of our tax refund for this...