Sheep Guarding Llama

Was doing okay this morning when I got up and got ready for work.  But the car was covered in ice and it took forever to warm up.  I turned it on before getting fully ready to go but it was not even remotely thawed out by the time that I was ready to go to work.  I even made myself breakfast and ate it in the car whilst awaiting its warming.  So I came back in the house for a while.  I even took out a coffee pot full of hot water to speed things along. Pouring the hot water on the windscreen helped a lot.  But overall it set me back a bit getting out of the door.  The Spark has such a tiny, super efficient engine that when you are not driving, it doesn’t idle hot enough to warm up the car.  That is a problem up north.

The drive to work was rough too.  Terrible traffic.  Took, overall, over two hours to get to the office.  Not a fun start to the day.

Dominica was not feeling very well today.  Not horrible, but a little under the weather.  She thinks maybe light food “poisoning” from something that we ate.

Work was slower today.  I thought that I was going to leave the office on the early side, as I was feeling tired and a little under the weather today, but ended up staying until after six thirty anyway getting things done.

Got home just before eight and spent a little time hanging out upstairs but the girls wanted to go downstairs and watch Doctor Who with me, so just before nine we tried that.  For some reason the girls were really restless, though, and Liesl was having a rough night and kept getting into trouble.  I think that she was over tired.  By nine thirty she had gotten in enough trouble that she got put to bed.  I was tired too so Luciana slept with us tonight and came to bed with me.  Dominica stayed up to watch the “Vampire Diaries” for a while.

Last day without furniture in the basement.  Thank goodness for Bob’s Discount Furniture!

As usual, I was awake before everyone else this morning. I got up and made myself a bagel (I am so thankful that we opted for the toaster oven instead of a toaster) and went down to the basement to get some work done. Did all of the bill paying this morning. So nice to have regular paychecks again rather than having to cross every digit every two weeks hoping that we had been paid like it was for the last four years.

Dominica was not feeling well today. She has a migraine and felt awful all morning.

I did not have to leave the house all weekend, except for yesterday morning’s bagel run. This is often how I like my weekends to be. I am away from the house so much during the week that getting home and getting to enjoy the house that we have is a big deal.

The house, these days, is quite a mess. We had an Acadia load of the girls’ stuff come down and those boxes and their contents are all over the house. All we have are cardboard boxes from the move so the toys and books that the girls want, if they want to be able to see them, are strewn all over the living room. They cannot see what is in the boxes, so they empty them out which makes a mess. And they only want to play where we are, which normally means the living room where Dominica has set up camp with the laptop. During the week the upstairs is empty and I only use the basement “office” space a little at night and on the weekends. So even the office remains effectively empty. Our plan is to reverse that, make the basement their play area but until we have a couch down there, it just doesn’t work.

Early today, Liesl wanted to watch Doctor Who since we were left in the middle of a two parter yesterday. So the girls and I huddled on the bean bags in the basement and watched some Doctor Who. Throughout the day the three of us ended up watching three episodes. They just love that show. They get so excited when we are going to watch it. They were even playing Doctor Who games at one point, running away from imagined Daleks. Liesl likes to sit on the pink bean bag next to me sitting on the orange one and Luciana sits on my lap. The girls are really good about following the story and about not getting scared. I found Doctor Who quite scary when I was little and that was the old one that was not nearly as realistic as this and on a much smaller screen.

Dominica got a lot of alone time today, being able to hang out upstairs with the fire in the fireplace and the laptop on the couch while the girls hung out with me in the basement.

Only two days to go until we have a couch in the basement! We can’t wait for that. This will mean that Dominica can move from the living room to the basement and we can all be in one place.

 

 

Liesl came and climbed into bed with us around eight.  Twenty minutes later, Luciana was up too – also needing to climb into bed with us.  This queen, rather than king, bed is just way too small for this family.  I can’t wait until we can move our real bed(s) up from Texas.

I got up and went to Daily Bagel on my own, Liesl told me that last time it took too long and she does not want to go with me this time.  It takes at least half an hour, so she is not really wrong.  I drove out and got $63 of bagels, cream cheese and pastries.  It might sound crazy but it will last us for days.  The bagels there are so good.  Although I always seem to hurt my throat when trying to eat them.

Spent a lot of the day working down in the basement.  Dominica went out shopping pretty early on and was gone for many hours.  She got shoes and a dress for the Christmas party that I have at work this week and went grocery shopping.  So it was just the girls and I for much of the day.

When Dominica got home she camped out on the couch and watched shows on the laptop while I mostly worked in the basement and hung out with Liesl and Luciana.  We got a lot of time together today.

At eleven this evening Liesl, Luciana and I watched an episode of Doctor Who.  They love watching it with me, which I think is amazing.  Who would ever have guessed that I would have a two year old and a five year old who would beg and beg to get to watch Doctor Who!

It’s Friday.  Was hoping that today would be a short day (well, ended around five thirty) but I was in the office until nearly seven.  It is pretty warm, nearly fifty degrees, in Connecticut while in Dallas it is freezing rain and everything is closed and many things are without power.  Quite a difference, nice and warm here with a gentle rain.  And Dallas is in a disaster.  They are really getting it hard down there.  I am glad that we moved when we did!

I got home at eight.  Spent the evening playing with the girls.  When it was just about bed time they asked me if they could watch a show with me.  I asked them what they wanted to watch and Liesl immediately said “Doctor Who!” and Luciana chimed in saying that she wanted to watch Doctor Who too!  I am so proud of my girls.

We watched one episode of the fourth season together then it was time to put the girls to bed.  Once I had read them “George Shrinks” and “Pete’s a Pizza”, Dominica and I went down to the basement and watched two episodes of Sleepy Hollow.

Feeling a big better today.  Went into the office and found out that the girls are coming home today rather than waiting until tomorrow even though I am at the office until very late tonight because there is bad weather expected for tomorrow.  So my plan is to cut out of the party early tonight so that I can get home and see the girls before they have to go to bed.

My drive in this morning had light fog up in Peekskill but horrible fog by the time that I was in New Canaan.  Dominica faced really bad fog the whole drive.  It took her a lot longer than expected to drive from dad’s place down to Peekskill and she was pretty exhausted when they finally arrived.  She had left right after having breakfast with dad at the Omega Grill in Geneseo and going shopping at the Geneseo Walmart where Luciana picked out her new Minnie Mouse Potty to use for potty training which starts today.

Work was fine today.  Good, actually.  Much better than yesterday.  This afternoon I had a meeting that went late and took up the bulk of the evening.  From there it was straight on to Stamford for the departmental Christmas party where I had planned to be all night.

The party was good, and packed.  I had no idea that there would be so many people.  It was very loud and crowded so I spent most of the evening with a Blue Moon in hand outside where it was warm enough that a light fleece was perfect.  I ended up staying for two hours, instead of four, so that I could get home to see the girls.

The drive home from there was only fifty minutes, not so bad.  The party was basically directly on my way home so I didn’t do any extra driving.  I was very thankful for that.  I got home right about ten o’clock which wasn’t horrible.

The girls were so excited that I was home, as I was so excited that they were home.  Luciana was trying out her new potty when I arrived.  It wasn’t long before she had her first success on the potty!  Huzzahs all around.  This is a red letter day.  After months of “problems” this is a big step in the right direction.  A huge step.  We are very excited.  Potty training is a long journey, but at least it is one that we have started on.  We are now on the road to being diaperless, one of the major achievements of parenthood.

We all stayed up till about midnight then we shuffled off to bed. I am so glad that my family is home.  I have a really hard time when the girls are gone.  A day is fine but the past month has been horrible.