Tranquil Mint & Migraines

I knew I liked that Tranquil Mint scrub from Bath and Body Works for some good reason....

Yesterday I had a really nasty migraine, which continued on into today of course. I think it started when I was using some rubber cement at work, because I felt the pain pretty suddenly afterward. Funny, the smell of it has never bothered me before. (and the kids were all being insane, so that tension might have contributed.)

Nothing was helping... Midrin didn't help, and by the time I got home and called in a refill for Maxalt, I was getting nauseated too. I took a dose of it at 8:30, and by 9:30, I was cleaning and disinfecting the toilet because I knew I was going to have to get really friendly with it soon.

In fact, I was slightly playing Warcraft and chatting with my friend, telling him I'd be back later because I was going to go throw up now. For several minutes I thought I was going to do it - muscles trying to work and everything... But I think the tiny dose of Pepto Bismol I'd taken a few minutes earlier stopped me from being able to vomit. (And I really think that my stomach would have felt a lot better if I'd been able to manage it, but I couldn't, and I wasn't going to chance spraining my tongue again by sticking my finger down my throat to force it.)

I went back to the couch and kept trying to use the ice pack until it got wet. Then I just wrapped my arms around my head and neck and squeezed until everything went away. I woke up a few hours later feeling a little bit better, and noticing that I had one of my arms pressed up pretty hard into my head and neck. I guess I was directly constricting the blood flow to the offending vessel in my head.

Anyway, today it's been threatening to come back, and since I remembered that peppermint essential oil is supposed to be good for easing migraines, I decided to scrub my legs, feet, and elbows with the Tranquil Mint scrub before I showered. (Nothing else needed moisturizing.)

Just standing there inhaling the scent made my head feel so much better. :) Buy the time I got out I was feeling almost normal, though tired. I'd slept 14 hours, almost nonstop, since I lay down on the couch last night. At some point I headed to bed with all the lights and the TV on. At the time, it seemed like a sensible idea, but now I can't remember why I did it. I can still smell it on my skin.

A little bit of researched shows that peppermint and rosemary (the essential oils in the scrub) are both good for migraines.

I guess now all I need is a bottle of rosemary oil and I can blend it with the peppermint whenever I need it.

New Projects

I just finished doing something I haven't done in years. I made some stuff. :)

I had found some yummy scrapbook papers to inspire me back into designing (and it worked), and I found this one paper that I really LOVE. I decided to decoupage the paper onto some wooden letters that spell out my name. :)

Then I thought, why not make a matching desk set? So I decoupaged a pencil (with plans for more) with the scraps from the page that I partially used. I've got plenty of plain or ugly pencils lying around - they might as well match the other stuff I'm planning on creating. You'd be surprised just how far one 12x12 sheet of paper can go.

Anyway, the pencil looks really nice. It's just too bad that I don't have any young neices around to appreciate a set of them. Maybe my nephews would like some camouflage pencils.

(Before anybody starts thinking they can "steal" the idea and claim it as their own, it was presented at the HIA conference many, many years ago, and Beacon has records because I used their product for it. Not that it would make them a ton of money, because it uses copywrighted scrapbook papers anyway. LOL But it does make a cute little project.)

I was thinking that it would be nice to make a desk set for work, if I can come up with some useful ideas. If there was a way to cover my desk with a hard, clear surface like Plexiglass, I wouldn't mind laying sheets of this paper down under it so that I'd have a purrrrrty desk.

The pencils really are nice looking - I'm still using the one I have covered with handprint paper. Granted, I'd covered it as a test because it was one of those cheesy, plastic, nontoxic pencils with a crummy eraser, but it sure is an easy way to see if someone has MY pencil in my classroom. I can literally say that it is a one-of-a-kind pencil. Sharpens fine too. Sometimes I think that the paper cover I put on it might have added some firmness for sharpening it, so that the "wood" doesn't crumble away in the sharpener and render it useless.

Maybe I could make the other teachers on my team some sets of matching pencils as gifts. :) I could always cover a matching box with the paper, too.

Want a good laugh? I've already had about 8 hours of sleep tonight. I fell asleep on the couch about 6:30, and woke up at about 2:30. So I crafted for a little over an hour and now I'm headed to bed, as soon as I finish this post.

Yesterday was fine at work... Today's the day the kids started back with their "too big for their britches" BS. I gave one permission to go to a teacher whose classroom is right behind mine, to check on his detention, and another teacher found him outside the building, banging on the door wanting to be let back inside. Another kid in that same class just left without asking.

8 1/2 more weeks. 45 more days.

I mentioned to one teacher that I thought it would be a good thing if those of us in our grade got together and shared our Advisory Class ideas, for stuff that actually worked in class. She thought it was a great idea. :) We believe that each teacher HAS to have 2 or 3 ideas that were just wonderful, and if we shared them, we could have a binder of ideas that's practically guaranteed to work.

I brought up the idea at lunch, and of course, the snotty ones down the hall pooh-poohed the idea because they absolutely refuse to even try to teach, and they act like their crap doesn't stink.

Well, that's fine. I know who I can work with, and I'm pretty sure that they won't mind chatting for an hour or two to combine ideas sometime. The rest can just float away on their own little boats for all I care.

The girls in my class bitched all year that I actually made them have lessons in class (as required) and whined that they wanted to just sit there and gossip amongst themselves. So today, I told them to just sit there and talk to each other, and you know what?

They bitched about not having a lesson to do. They didn't want to just sit and talk.

Naturally. They just want to do the opposite of what I ask. They also whined that they wanted to go outside. Fat chance I'll take them outside when I can't get them to behave INSIDE.

Last year I gave each of the girls in my class a scrapbook as an end-of-year gift from me. Not a chance in Hell that I'll do that for this group. But I think that I will maintain a small gift box for that purpose for future years. This year I wouldn't have enough of those scrapbooks (from the Dollar Tree - but very nice) to go around anyway, so I'd either have to buy something more expensive for them, or make something. I think if I went to that trouble with this group, they'd be disrespectful enough to tear up the books and trail them in the floor on their way out of the room.

More on sleeping

My sister called me last night (on my cell, and a good thing, because I was here and nobody knows it) to ask if I wanted to go to Jackson with them Friday at 5.

She said that she called yesterday morning, and couldn't get me to answer either phone when she called. Well, I have to admit, it was another one of those sleep-till-2 days, and I had a hard time waking up even then. She said I must have really been asleep to not hear either phone ringing. Yikes.

And I didn't. If I can't hear my cell ringing while I'm asleep (I might have had the ringer off) then I'm in trouble indeed. I'm pretty sure that my bedroom phone was actually in the living room at the time, so that is probably why I didn't hear either one.

Whatever the case may be, it's pretty embarrassing to be sleeping that soundly. I have to get a handle on that before I go back to work on Monday morning.

The tacky way to play Warcraft battlegrounds. LOL

Yes, I'm being tacky. Tacky, tacky, tacky.

I'm farming honor marks for all the battlegrounds so that I can get that Night Elf War Tiger mount. Hey, I've got an epic mount (horse), and a Stormpike battle charger (ram), but I've always wanted a cat to ride. :D

So here's my definition of tacky battleground play. I'm going in, seeing if the battle is going well, and letting that decide how I play. If it is looking like we have a chance of winning, I play as best I can. (Right now I'm a level 60 playing in the 60-69 level battlegrounds, so I'm back to dying really, really fast.)

If it's already sucking pretty badly, I just die, and move far enough away from the Spirit Healer that I won't resurrect. Then I just wait for it to be over, moving around so that I'm not AFK.

Well, I've got 100 marks (earned the hard way) from Alterac Valley, 30 from Arathi Basin (some played for, some I stayed dead thru), and right now, 2 marks for Warsong Gulch. I only need 30 from each battleground to buy the cat. So that means that I can either play another 28 losing rounds of WSG or get lucky and play 9 winning rounds and 1 losing one. I'd rather play winning, but at this level, I doubt I'm going to make a difference.

Plus, it doesn't help when my action bars routinely just vanish on me and I can't get them back.

He might be a little mad... / Shopping alone in Nashville

Well, I was right. He didn't stop by on the way to his workshop out of town, but he did invite me to come and visit, which I did. :) So I'm sitting here in a hotel room waiting for him to get back. So far everything's been very pleasant.

Except for one thing... I didn't sleep well last night. (I kept waking up sweating or freezing, and I had a dream that there was an earthquake here which caused a huge chunk of the highway to collapse and kill a bunch of people. It's probably because I mentioned to him on the phone, trying to get un-lost, that the retaining walls sidelining the highways here look like they wouldn't stand up to a small earthquake.)

I remember waking up after what seemed like hours, lying there with my eyes closed, thinking that if I did it long enough, I would eventually fall asleep. When I looked at my cell phone, it said that it was 3 am. I'd only been trying to sleep for about 2 1/2 hours. :( And I still wasn't any sleepier.

It certainly didn't help that I felt like I was all twitchy. LOL But then again, so was he, so I might have been noticing both of us being unable to really sleep.

Here's the bad part. He was really sweet when he left and put the do not disturb tag in the lock. I got up at about 8:30 and went down for breakfast, came back up and fiddled around awhile on my computer, and then I got so tired I needed a nap. I thought that with as little sleep as I got last night (nobody's fault but my own - I'm the fool who's been staying up till 4:30 in the morning getting that room together), a short nap wouldn't be a bad idea.

Well, I slept for 2 hours, stayed really hot the whole time, and realized that housekeeping is probably not going to bring in fresh linens because I dragged my ass taking the tag out of the door.

There's still a clean towel in there, and I certainly don't mind reusing the one I used, but for some reason admitting to oversleeping , and the resultant consequences with housekeeping, makes me feel really... I don't know... trashy? Tacky? Something along those lines anyway.

I guess I'll just confess when he comes in.

I didn't go shopping like I'd thought about doing. Really just a passing thought anyway, because getting lost last night made me a little edgy, and the thought of getting lost even in the daylight REALLY bothers me. Shopping alone would make me really nervous anyway, so heading to Opry Mills might not be a positive experience for me.

Shopping isn't something I enjoy at all. A rather painful task for me, most of the time. I prefer stores that I can get in and out of quickly, having found exactly what I needed fast, with no time for anybody to stare at me. Something about it just unnerves me. Maybe it's because I don't like being by myself for everything, and I prefer having someone to talk to while I shop, but that whenever I go with my sister (the only one I have to go with, incidentally), I'm just there to keep her company while she shops for herself. No time sticks out in my mind that she has done that for me.

Lucky for her she likes shopping by herself. I just never have. Please not that this is not an official whine. :D I did go downstairs and eat breakfast by myself, and it wasn't that bad.

I did head down to the vending machines a little while ago for a snack. Twix and two Pepsis. LOL I would have only gotten 1 Pepsi, but the first one got hung on the way down and I had to buy a second one to finish knocking it down the chute. Nothing else I could think of worked, so I'm glad that did. If nothing else, I can save it for later or for my drive home. (Which is tomorrow, I guess?)

He'll be done here at noon tomorrow, so I really don't know when I should leave.

My self-made worktable

I think I saw this in a scrapbooking organization special publication a year or two ago, or something like it anyway. The instructions said to buy wire drawer-basket sets as the base for a table, then put on melamine shelving as a tabletop.

Unfortunately, the fellow at Lowe's had no idea what I meant by a tabletop or melamine shelving. I told him I was trying to create a large worktable, and he suggested foot-wide shelving boards.

Yeah, I thought he was stupid, but I just let him run away and worked on a solution for myself.

In comes Rubbermaid buffet tables. :D I think that the one I bought was on sale for $35 at the time. The only problem was that when I unfolded the legs, the drawer bases wouldn't fit under there at all - and the whole point of making a table like this was that I would have drawers for storage of my crafting stuff.

Grrrr....

Then I realized that I could just use the table as the tabletop. Nothing said that I had to unfold the legs!! I just positioned the bases and slid the table on top. It was almost perfect. The problem now was that the slightest bump sent the table careening off the bases and onto the floor, and at about 30 pounds, that table could really crush a foot underneath and break some bones. I also didn't feel like taking the chance that a project I was in the middle of (paint, water, small pieces, etc.) would easily get knocked onto the carpet.

Bright idea - nonslip shelf liner! Since laying it in sheets over the open topped drawer bases didn't work, I decided to roll up a small amount and fasten it to the top rails of the drawer bases with cable ties.

Now the table / top doesn't slide around anymore. :D

Bonus: If I quickly need a buffet table for any reason, I can just take the top off my crafting table, unfold the legs, and use it anywhere I need to.

The quickly-deteriorating kitchen chair that I'm using at the table needs to be replaced with something that's higher though.

Organizing ribbon spools! :)

LOL NOW I have heard it all... Listening to the XM radio station, and they're playing a song called "General Hospi-tale" by the Afternoon Delights. It's kind of a disco-rap song that runs down all the dirt that was happening on General Hospital in the early 80s. hahaha They even mentioned Rick Springfield playing Noah Drake. It's cracking me up. (I don't care what anybody says... if he ever gave me the go-ahead, I'd probably jump him. LOL)

Anyway, back to the organization of the craft room... I've thrown away a ton of knitted and crocheted UFOs, which makes me a little sad, considering that one project had been a baby sweater for my nephew who is now 6 1/2. :( But I kept telling myself I'd feel better once I threw away those unfinished things, probably so that I can forget about them. )

It's not hurting quite so much now that they're in the trash. (The garbage BETTER be picked up tomorrow... if they skip my house again, I'm gonna be REALLY pissed off.)

Anyway, back to the mini milk crates and modular storage for my stuff. I realized that if I poked a dowel through the side, I could hang spools of ribbon on it in the middle of the crate, then run the other end through the other side. I put a big binder clip on the outer side so that the dowel wouldn't fall easily. Bonus: I was able to hang some cards of raffia on the dowel too, by enlarging the cards' hanging holes.

And I didn't have to buy anything extra to organize so far. (Well, with the exception of that new box of trash bags a while back. but that's a really good thing to have to buy. :D

I'm kind of scared to tempt fate by saying this, but I've got about half of the room fairly well sorted.

And now I'm starving. Those mandarin orange slices I ate a few hours ago are now gone from my tummy. I think I have earned some pizza from Papa John's. (Too bad there's not a Chinese restaurant that delivers.... I could really tear up some Szechwan or something...)

Thieves in my yard :(

I am still very angry that on Friday I discovered that someone had stolen my hammock right from my back yard. I could always get the other one from the lake, but what if that one is stolen too?

What the hell do I have to do, lock everything onto the porch? It's my backyard - why can't I just have MY stuff that I worked hard to get, back there for my enjoyment??

Maybe I should start thinking about getting a fence built, and then keep it locked. I can always put my garbage cans on the side of the house by the storage room window. It's not like that's a good gardening space anyway. I just need to remember that I need to have a gate on the bedroom end of the house so that I can get yard equipment in and out of there. I still need to buy a new shed though. I hope that the insurance company will still let me do that.

Organizing all of those paint bottles....

Last night I was looking around on the net for some kind of efficient display / storage for all of my paint bottles, and I only saw one spinning rack that even looked useful - but it had a large footprint, I'd have to order it, and it was $25 + shipping, handling, tax, and all that. Then I came across a note from someone about how they had just turned their bottles on their sides on a shelf and stacked them, and they held very well.

It suddenly occurred to me that I have about 10 mini milk crates that I could turn on their sides at the back of my work table and stack the bottles in them. Bonus: the crates join together so that they don't slide around. And they're all a nice speckled light grey, so visually they don't even demand a lot of notice. (Yay Dollar Tree!!)

The paint bottles fit in there PERFECTLY, too. :) I had enough room to put in all of my paint bottles, with one cubby for the enamels, one for metallics and mediums, two for off-brand paints, and the rest for my One Stroke paints.

I also moved the worktable from the middle of the room to in front of the window, which necessitated moving the catch-all bins from the corner into the middle temporarily. All of the plastic drawers I put in the corner beside the table, in a double stack. The rack for my scrapbook papers is on top of the drawers with my scrapbooking bag now, though I might move that heavy thing under the table so that I can avoid worrying that it's going to fall over and off the drawer bank.

I'll post some pictures when the room looks less like a disaster area - right now there's a little more room to move and work in there, but it's still pretty perilous.

Unfortunately, I only managed to fill up the garbage can once, but truth be told, I did spend a lot of time last night organizing stuff that I knew I wouldn't be throwing away. And the garbage can is totally packed. I am getting my house-painting tools back together.

I realized as I really got going in the job that I needed a place to put all of my drawing stuff, and that I didn't need to use the entire left side of the desk drawers for painting supplies and tools. Since I moved all of the paints onto the desktop, I put all of the Creative Gear painting bags together into one carrier and put it on top of the cabinet. I'd toyed with the idea of hanging the bags on the wall with the bottles in them, but it would have meant finding display space for 8 bags, and I still wouldn't have had any place to put the off-brand bottles or the large bottles. I can always pull out the Creative Gear bags again if I need to take my paints and brushes somewhere.

The room already looks less visually tiring and I'm starting to feel the urge to get in there and do some creative work. :)

Two file boxes are now empty, though I can't actually find their tops. I'm thinking that maybe I could put my most often-referenced magazines and books into them and then when I need to find something, all I'll have to do is pull out the correct book - especially if I sort them by category.

Considering that people are now stealing my stuff, I'm hesitant to drag everyting out to the carport. With all the theiving kids out on spring break like me, they're probably being allowed to run around the streets unsupervised at all hours of the night. If they know me and where I live, they'd probably tear through my stuff just for meanness - even if they couldn't find anything they wanted to take.

I know that if I pulled everything outside and then started putting it back inside, organizing as I go, things would work better. But now I don't even trust anybody in the daylight with my stuff outside.

I still need to take the shelving system I bought over to the school for our teacher work area. And I also need to sort through all my yarn so that I can let other teachers have what they want. I was thinking last night that it wouldn't be unreasonable to keep 1 skein of each color for myself, and donate all the rest. Except for the really expensive yarn of course. I know that I have enough skeins of one Homespun dye lot to make a sweater, so I'll keep that. It's virgin yarn and it cost me about $60 anyway. I'm sure it wouldn't take up much space to store that. Anyway, that should get me past the "what if I need it?" pack rat urge. I'll still have enough different colors for any little uses I might have, and if I ever need a bunch of yarn for a big project, I'd probably go and buy it anyway. I might as well throw away all the barely started experiments since I can't remember what size hooks or needles I was using, and I won't remember what patterns I was trying out anyway.

I suppose I should get in the shower and get my day started anyway, since you know who said he might stop by on his way to his training in Nashville. I kinda doubt he will though. He's not that good about follow-through.

No New Orleans

My sister called a little while ago to tell me that our trip to New Orleans wasn't going to happen. I wonder if she was annoyed that i didn't sound too surprised or upset about that.

The truth is, I've come to expect it from them. They are the world's worst about making bogus travel plans. I learned my lesson a while back not to expect them to follow through. This way I don't get disappointed, and I get the bonus of saying that I knew it was going to happen, because I really did.

She told me that instead, her husband is going to put in a hardwood floor in their kitchen, and she's going to finish painting the bedroom. I know she's expecting me to come and "help" her. Last year this time when I "helped" them paint, I had a lot of the living room already painted while they were enjoying a nice afternoon in a restaurant and shopping. They knew I was at their house painting. They'd promised to be home really fast to work with me, but I knew already that they would drag their feet hoping I'd be mostly finished before they arrived. Their bedroom and the two bathrooms are the only rooms I didn't paint. She never picked up a brush, and the kids really didn't help.

I think I'm tired of helping them improve their home when I have to do all of my painting myself. Favors are never returned. That wouldn't be so bad, except that I'm freaking expected to do things for them.

I'm single so I am supposed to keep myself available 24/7 for the little chores they want done at their house.

What I'd really like to do over spring break is to clear out my office and craft room and do a "Mission Organization" number on them. I do realize that on that show there's a crew helping with moving everything around, and in the absence of help, It'll take me the better part of a week for each room.

*sigh* But this is the life that was laid in my lap, and I have to deal with the fact that I really can't change anything, no matter how hard I keep trying.

:( Owwww....

I'm not sure exactly why, but right now I've got a pretty bad headache. So I'm not a happy camper.

Actually, I think that it's probably my sinuses giving me this trouble, because it feels like my nose is burning up high inside when I bend over.

Well, I took my migraine meds and I expect to pass dead out before too long. I just hope that it's gone in the morning.

I'm tempted to lie down here on the couch, but I know I'd be more comfortable in the bed. The thing is, I've got laundry going and I need some of it to wear for work tomorrow. And the towels need to be dried as well.

On the bright side, I did make about 115 gold on my main Warcraft character.

And daylight savings time is in one week? I'm really confused about that. 3 weeks earlier now in the spring, and 1 week later in the fall. I still haven't managed to find out why though. Not that I'm complaining about the late sunsets earlier in the spring. I do wish that Halloween wouldn't be in the daytime now, however.

Mmmmm.... I'm so relaxed....

Took another trip to Bath and Body Works today (had a coupon for some free stuff) and used what I got tonight. I used some of their foot scrub and the Tranquil Mint sugar scrub, which is supposed to be relaxing.

Well, I'm relaxed, soft and smooth. And I feel like my skin is breathing, which is pretty nice. Must be the peppermint and rosemary oils that do that. Headed for bed to take advantage of how relaxed I feel. :D

Teacher Tips Blog

I was talking to one of the other teachers today, and I thought it might be a good idea to use a blog for recording our ideas for creatively teaching our curriculum. I'm likely to forget things from year to year since I'm not very consistent about writing in a plan book. I know that these things are some that other teachers have done for years, but my professors were all very traditional, and I never had any training other than a few inservices and workshops, in teaching differently.

Harriet Tubman - groups create a 12 square grid for "Even Dozen" activity. The questions at the end have already asked them to provide 5 facts about Tubman and 5 about the Underground Railroad, so when i have them get together and collaborate on 6 of each, it isnt' really a big problem.

Draw a picture illustrating a quote from the story, and write that quoted piece on the page.

Instead of making all rewards about candy, give out passes for things such as

• 1 homework pass
• 1 extra restroom visit (non-penalty)
• 1 tardy excused
• extra 10 points on a test of their choice
• 1 extra library visit