Once again, back in the saddle

The last several weeks have been insane.  Between Teddy's birthday weekend and an unexpected trip to Philly/NJ for a funeral, I have barely had a chance to breath let alone get anything done.  While there is still a lot of chaos around me, I'm trying to feel revitalized enough to get everything done.  I'm still trying to come up with a plan of attack... I have some ideas, but I really need to sit down and write them out.  I need to come up with something to keep everything in as well.  I'm getting ready to head out for several errands, including running to Wal-Mart, so I may be able to find something that will help me out.  And tonight, Rich is taking the boys out to go shopping for my birthday (am I seriously going to be 37 on Friday?  Gah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), so I might be able to get some of my organization done then.

I'm still staying about the same in the weight department.  I think I need to revamp my goals again, but that shouldn't be too difficult.  I'm still determined that I'm going to make the changes that I need to to be healthy.  The weather has been nicer, so I might be able to get out and walk more.  I bought another new pedometer - the one that I got with the DS program had the hook break off so it won't stay on my hip/shoe/whatever, and it doesn't do well in my pocket.  But the new one doesn't seem to be working right either.  I'll figure something out.  When I'm out at the store today, I'm going to pick up some more fruit so I have some healthier options for snacking.

I'm pretty behind in Swap-Bot again, in large part because of the trip to the NE.  I think tomorrow is going to be a Focus on Swap-Bot day.  Kids should be in PDO, so that should give me some time for taking care of things without the boys driving me insane.  I'm hoping to have everything back to normal on that end by the weekend.  We'll see how it goes, though.

I still have a lot of backlog with writing book reviews as well.  I'm going to write that up on a list as well, for the various things that I need to do.  That crosses over into Swap-Bot, since one of the swaps I'm in is a book log for the first quarter of 2011.  It shouldn't be too difficult, though, since most of the books I've read are graphic novels.  I did, however, listen to a couple of audio books on the trip, so those will count as well.

I have a grand plan for cleaning.  Rather than focus on a room at a time, I'm going to focus on a section of a room at a time.  The rest of the house might be a mess, but that isn't to worry about right now.  Instead, I'm going to start at one corner of the apartment - specifically, the far left corner in the kitchen.  I'm going to clean and organize from that point forward until I feel finished for the day, then I'm going to quit.  The next day, I can pick up from that point.  While I go, I'm also going to decorate - pictures on walls, things like that.  I won't have to be stressed because I don't have a specific amount that needs to be done daily, but I'll still be able to see progress.

There's fun worked in here as well.  Yesterday, before we got home, we stopped by GameStop to pick up our reserved copies of Pokemon: Black and Pokemon: White.  It's pretty cool because everything is brand new - new area, completely new pokemon, and I've been avoiding spoiling myself so I don't know what will be coming up.  Along with Pokemon, I'm finally downloading WoW to the new computer (which came in right before the trip to the NE).  So I'm going to make some time for that as well.  After all, I'm paying for it, I might as well use it.

I'm getting back into a few other things as well.  I finally got the 1st disc of Season 4 of Dexter, so I'm catching up on that.  I'm hoping that disc 2 will be in soon.  I'm also getting ready to start season 5 of Teen Titans.  I just have to send the latest disc back to Netflix.  We listened to Book 5 of The 39 Clues on the trip back and have decided that we really want to get back into those, so I have the first several of those on hold at the library.  Rather than spending a lot of TV time, we're planning on spending a lot of Audio Book time in the evenings.  It'll be nice, I think.  Plus, I need to make a trip back to Rick's Comic City to pick up a few new comics.  I haven't gotten a box yet, but I'm still thinking about it.  I could use more Green Arrow.

Speaking of which, Barnes & Noble is doing an online promotion of buy 3 get the 4th free on their graphic novels.  I'm debating picking up some.  I have a $20 gift card for B&N anyway, so it would be a good thing to buy.  I just have to decide what I want to get.

Re: the trip to Philly... for all that we saw family for a sad reason (my husband's grandmother's funeral), it was actually a pretty good visit.  We got to spend time with family and got to have fun with the boys.  I got quite a few cute pics of the boys and various members of the family, and I'm hoping to get those up on Picasa and/or Facebook next week.  I've got a few things that I'm hoping to put into the scrapbook as well.  That's another thing that needs to go onto my To Do list.

We'll be making another trip north this summer.  My in-laws have rented a house on the Jersey shore and we'll be there for a week.  We're hoping to go up to NY to spend time with my family as well.  I'm also hoping that we might be able to include a few days of visiting in Philly with friends and maybe making an extra stop or two at places in VA that we've been wanting to check out (including a super huge book sale that goes on 6 or 7 times a year).

It definitely looks like things are going to be keeping busy.  And that's good.  I need to keep busy.  Especially because Teddy will be starting Kindergarten in the fall.  And if I'm busy, I won't have to think about my little boy becoming a big one! :D

Now I'd better get going and run some errands.  Just too much going on and we all have to start somewhere!  :)

Have a great Fat Tuesday, all!