This Side of Perfect

This past Saturday, I made a one-hour trek out of town in order to take one (of many!) teacher examinations. For those not familiar, thanks to No Child Left Behind (and good, ol' common sense), teachers actually have to prove they can teach your children. (I will let you know in a month if I qualify.)


When you're driving by yourself, attempting to keep yourself awake after waking up and getting out of the door before the sun even rises (and most people are enjoying their Saturday sleep-ins), you tend to find things to do to keep yourself entertained. Considering my Droid Incredible 2 was busy making sure I didn't get lost (Google maps. Greatest. Invention. Ever.) and texting and driving is a tad on the illegal (not to mention, stupid) side, I listened to music.

Traveling through towns, radio stations are a tad sketchy. If I find one I like, chances are, in a couple of minutes it's going to be nothing but static. And static is stressful! As luck would have it, I had cl…

Seems like I'm getting these blog posts later and later. Once again, I'm procrastinating, however. I have a very large teacher test tomorrow morning. The testing site in an hour away, so I will have to leave my house at 6:30 am. This means I will probably have to wake up around 5:30 am. I know that I am not going to sleep well tonight, so I might as well spend my time doing a homework assignment that I've had eight weeks to do but will do in a day. Oh, and this blog post.

So, with money tight, everyone is looking for a way to make an extra buck, right? Unfortunately, many ways to make "easy money" are extremely time consuming, too "gimmicky" or just plain bunk.

Luckily, this isn't the case with Swag Bucks. I don't even remember how I found Swagbucks. It's just one of those things that I stumbled upon and have been using ever since.

Swagbucks is primarily a search engine where you can earn "bucks" for your searches. You can trade th…

Today was the first day back at work for me. Considering I'm still recovering from surgery, I'm absolutely exhausted.

However, one of my New Year's Resolutions (and the only one I plan on NEVER breaking) was to blog 366 days this year. So, since I don't have a lot of energy or brain juice left (and haven't quite gotten the time to schedule blog posts), I will make it short and sweet.

Priorities change. What was important to me 20 years ago is no longer important. What mattered then, doesn't matter now. My priorities now are different than my priorities then. Does it mean that my priorities then are less important than my priorities now? Absolutely not. Priorities change just as people change. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that we get older and we get wiser. Wisdom comes with age; it cannot be taught. I've said it before: I am much more comfortable with who I am as a 35 year old woman than I was as a 20 year old woman. I'm not any healthi…

I am a huge procrastinator. I can find something, anything to distract me from the task at hand.

Such was the case with my coupons. Between work, school, surgery and yes, procrastination, my coupon inserts piled up and up and up. A couple of months ago, I went through them. All of them were expired. In essence, money down the drain.

I vowed that I wouldn't let my couponing get the best of me. Well, you know what they say about good intentions...

I was looking for a way to procrastinate from doing homework the other day, so I decided to tackle my coupons. (At least it's a productive procrastination.) After several hours, I ended up with this:


This is several months worth of expired coupons. *hangs head in shame* While going through all these coupons, I found coupons that I would actually use adding salt to an already-opened wound. As I'm going through them, the following conversation transpires between TMB and myself:

Me: "I found a Hormel Chili coupon! Expired! *defeat…

Here in GA, school has been out since the 15th. The Boy had been doing K12 and was "in" school up to the 21st (we have decided to put him back into a brick and mortar middle school). I had surgery early in December and have been on medical leave since then. Basically, life has been one, long veg-fest. We've been staying up late, sleeping in late, eating late...basically, everything we've been doing has been bumped up a couple of hours. But this time is over.

Tonight is the first, official Girl Scout meeting of the year. Tonight, we also kick off Girl Scout Cookie Season. That's right; in just a few weeks, you'll be seeing rosy-cheeked cherubs help you break your New Year's Resolutions. (Tip: We take donations and we use those donations to send cookies overseas - our soldiers need the little comforts of home. You can help. Your waistline will thank you.)

Tonight also means that baths get taken on time and bedtimes are adhered to because tomorrow, bright …

Whether by chance or choice, every year, the Turtle Clan has a themed Christmas. Where most people choose to decorate their Christmas tree to fit a yearly theme, we gift themed gifts. This year was the Game Year.

The Boy and Baby Girl got a wide variety of games this year, many not even electronic. The Boy wanted (and received) a chess set. Baby Girl wanted (and received) three Angry Birds board games. A game that was on The Boy's Amazon wish list (which I highly recommend, especially if you're a frequent Amazon shopper - we are) was a game called Munchkin.

Anyone familiar with Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Magic might easily merge into this Dungeons & Dragons-like card game "with none of that stupid roleplaying stuff".

The game is full of potty-humored styled cards. The game is played with the simply goal leveling to Level 10 as quickly as possible. Who cares if you stomp on friends and family along the way?

We played New Year's Eve for four hours. The first two ho…

Look around and you'll see that most everyone is posting some type of New Year's blog post this week. Check your blog rolls (or mine) for proof. I've looked at A Year in Review blogs, the best of the best blogs, most read posts blogs and my favorite: the new year resolutions (solutions, challenges, etc). Call me crazy, but I love these type of blog posts the best. Why? Because while most of us never keep our resolutions longer than a few hoursdaysweeks months, there is something magical about the New Year. It is a chance to change whatever it is that was messed up for you during the previous year. Common resolutions include:

1. Stop smoking
2. Lose weight
3. Get organized
4. Save more
5. Spend less
6. Get to the project that is sitting in the basket, closet, or garage
7. Spend more time with family

Did I hit them all? These are on most people's lists. (By the way, stay tuned for the end of this post for links to sites that can actually attempt to accomplish some of…