Long time no blog post on Monday, eh? With the schedule that I have now I just can’t sit down on a Monday and do work. Typically I wake up around 6:00 and help my oldest son get off to the bus okay and then I have about 45 minutes where I could certainly sit on my laptop but I usually just watch YouTube and check up on my tablet games. Yes, I have become that person. Then the other kids wake up, get ready for school, and once my youngest goes to the bus, I take a shower and get ready and before you know it I’m driving to work. My classes end around 11:00 but I usually end up going to lunch with my husband because he still works at home on Mondays and Fridays. Today though, the kids are off school.

But time to backtrack; haven’t done a weekend recap in a good long while. Starting Thursday, the internet was on and off, good and bad. We switched to fiber and have been happy with the speed but unhappy with its inconsistency, which no one else seems to have. I went to work that day and when I got home I had a huge keto salad because I had been fasting since Tuesday around 3:00 p.m. On Tuesday I’d made myself a very large keto salad and ate a few other things such as hard boiled eggs, macadamia nuts, and cheese so that I would be ready for a 48-hour fast. Wednesday wasn’t bad but sleeping that night was disrupted, which is pretty normal when you are fasting. Thursday was not bad; I even ran without too much trouble but I was definitely ready to eat that afternoon and I ate all keto foods then. Later that evening, my husband went out with his guy friends and brought me back a slice of pizza and I felt like that was a pretty good reward for me. The next day, Friday the 15th, was our 16th wedding anniversary. Oh! I forgot to mention that when I left work on Thursday I drove all over town looking for something very specific: a beer six pack made out of wood, possibly with a bottle opener attached to the side. I’ve seen these forever but for some reason no places carried it. I ended up with a small wooden crate looking thing from Michaels and it did the trick for a variety of beers that Ash and I had looked at at the store but didn’t buy because the individuals were just too expensive. But they made for a good anniversary gift.

On Friday however, I was not in a very good mood because our internet was not working very well at all. I had planned to wake up and utilize that 45 minutes I mentioned in the morning to get a lot of work done but everything was really really slow. The longer I sat there just waiting the more angry I got. When Ash got up I gave him my anniversary gift and went to work. Though I had been annoyed with the internet and all that stuff the day picked up significantly when I got back. He and I had planned to go to Cabo’s, a local favorite for many years, because it is finally closing. Like some other places it just can’t keep up with the inflation.

After lunch we went into Lowe’s to pick up a couple of supplies and we drove them out to our friend James’s because he and his neighborhood friends make this ridiculous haunted house out of his garage and this year, Ash was going to help. Sadly James had to move the group work day to Sunday, which was not a day we could do. But we still took him some stuff that he needed like a projector screen. On the 30th we will be going to his Halloween party. The last time we went his haunted house was crazy! I don’t usually like those very much but I’m going to try to be brave. (And/or drunk!)

We had a couple hours to rest before taking my daughter out to do a 3K. That’s the same distance my boys always ran in middle school cross country. The city hosted an invitational this weekend – a huge cross country event with teams from all over Florida – and they had an elementary event. Since she is training right now for the Thanksgiving race we thought this would be good for her to do. And she did amazing! Her time was 17:47 for 1.8 mi. My boys run somewhere between a 13 and 15 minute time for that length so, not too bad. I know this is irrelevant but I have, what I would consider an old friend, though I think she considers me a non-friend these days, whose daughter is in 6th grade so we watched her do cross country this past season and on this route in her first race, she finished in 20 minutes. And my 8-year-old beat that!

We got home, gave the kids food and then Ash and I had dinner reservations at 8:00. We wanted to eat earlier but the place we picked, another long time favorite in Tallahassee, Z Bardhi’s, didn’t have have early reservations. So we decided to taste test a few of the beers that I had gotten Ash then head up there and I was not disappointed in the restaurant. It’s Italian but more authentic Italian, with seafood options. I had a shrimp and angel hair pasta dish and Ash had an amazing fillet. I was really happy with our meal and it wasn’t even as expensive as I thought it might be.

Since this weekend was a soccer bye week I was very excited to have more time to work on other things such as the pool. But when we woke up Saturday, my middle child had overheard us possibly talking about going to garage sales and was already ready to go so we decided to hit some sales. There was one neighborhood doing a community yard sale, which was where I found a couple things: a charcuterie board and a couple of those plate display triangles. My son found this really cool American flag type photo, and my daughter found an unopened pottery making toy.

After all that, Ash and Dakota got in a 2-mile run, I cleaned around the house, and we watched a little bit of soccer until 3 when we had an invite to one of Dakota’s friends Halloween parties. Let me tell you, this was an all-out blowout. I guess this family has been doing this thing they call a ‘basement jam’ for 12 years. This girl’s father is in a band so their annual get together to play music turned into the Halloween party and they just mixed it all together. These people had their pool open, a huge swing that all the kids were on, a gigantic inflatable obstacle course, the most ridiculous Halloween decorations I have ever seen, a taco bar and the band in the basement. It was a pretty crazy party! We stayed until about 6:00 when Ash and I took the kids home because we had been invited to go across the street and hang out with those people. My middle boy had been invited to a haunted house with the kid around the corner so he did that and my daughter came with us because our friends across the street’s daughter is her friend too. My oldest though, was suffering over here because by then, the internet was basically out. He kept yelling at me on text that it was something I could do but it really wasn’t. Even in my semi-drunken state we walked across the street and tried to reset things but the internet never really came back. He ended up just going to sleep. We got back around 10:00/10:30 and I was pretty done. I didn’t think I had imbibed all that much but it suddenly felt like a lot. A lot of beer and a lot of food throughout the day and my body was tired.

Luckily I didn’t feel bad when I woke up on Sunday. It was almost kind of a miracle if we’re being honest. I started the day kind of slowly with laundry and whatnot. Oh Isaac had spent the night at his friend’s house and the kid was having a birthday in the afternoon so I had to go to the store and grab a card and a gift. My only other plan had been to add this stabilizer to the pool, which are these tiny granules you dissolve in water, though they don’t dissolve quickly. So I was pouring water from the bucket into the skimmer and it slipped and the granules got down into the filter area and started to clog it. So of course I panicked. Ash was running with Dakota and there was really nothing I could do other than text our pool dude who had fixed other parts of our pool. Just after I hit send, I was wondering if it was a job for a shop vac; he confirmed as much. We picked one up at Goodwill not that long ago for about 10 bucks and hadn’t ever used it. Turns out it did the trick! Crisis averted! I just kept sitting there thinking, my husband is going to murder me if I ruin the pool! But I got it all fixed and cleaned up and walked away from that mess.

The rest of the day was fairly restful. We had burgers and fries, we watched football, I napped and finished up laundry. My son came home briefly around 4:00 to pick up his bicycle and then around 7:00 my other two kids went back to play on their inflatable slide for the party and they all got home around 8:00. All in all, my kids got to do a lot of really fun stuff this weekend and I can’t really say that I didn’t either. I definitely did too much in excess that is not in alignment with my normal eating habits but sometimes you got to do it.

Today, we have been told that the technician will come out to fix the internet between 9:00 and 10:00. When I called yesterday the guy on the phone did a diagnostic and said he could see that we had a problem along the line somewhere. Coincidentally that problem started right around the time the crew came out to bury the cable in the yard so maybe that is where it got messed up. Here’s hoping they get it fixed. I will obviously be at work at that time but I hope the guy can come in, fix it, and by the time I get home Ash and I can go out and get some food. Because we don’t eat out a lot anymore ( in my recap it sounds like we ate out a lot but that was really not our normal ) I really rely on those Monday and Friday outings.

Next semester is going to be interesting because I decided to take one fewer class at this community college because it means they would give me a Tuesday/Thursday schedule instead. This 5 days a week thing is really difficult because I just can’t find time to do other stuff. It’s all about balance!

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Looks like it’s a freebie week so I’m going to pick some random songs and be done with it. One is Halloween-y and one is the song I can’t get out of my head.