Turning off the TV

Monday I spent the entire day glued to the TV, crying my eyes out. Tuesday, I decided it would be best not to turn on the television set and find something else to do. Lily and I had a lovely day. We weeded the back yard a bit. We found a children's park a block from the cookie store. This is the most amazing playground in the world. Complete with stream, bridge, ancient squirrel infested oak trees, beautifully landscaped grounds surrounding several climbing and swinging areas. Too bad it is a 20 minute drive from our house, but what else do we have to do?

Wednesday I watched a bit of the news in the morning but had to turn it off. We went back to the playground and then to Walmart. We bought some lovely hanging spider plants for our front porch and some flowers for the flower bed out front. We spent the rest of the afternoon weeding and planting it was lovely. Later when Lily took a nap I tried to fix my computer and set up a wireless router. Turns out that the thing you plug the Ethernet cable into... hub, socket??? Well it got damaged in the move. It also turns out that the new cable modem I bought isn't working. This all caused me unimaginable amounts of time on the phone with customer service, and without Internet. Have a temporary fix, not sure what the permanent fix will be, thinking it should involve a sledge hammer and the Gulf. Perhaps computers should not be my career field of choice, cause right now I am not terrible fond of them.

Speaking of school, I have registered for college, start at the end of May, will cost a fortune. I am on track to finish my degree before Mandy starts college. Hopefully I will then be able to find a job that pays for her college. Not that I am going to allow her to leave home. Just saying.

Mandy continues to be happier than I think I have ever seen her in her entire life. Bubbly would be the term best used to describe her. Remember Darlene on Roseanne, when she was going through her wearing black and grumpy all the time stage, that was Mandy, and now she is giggling and silly. I used to believe that my poor parenting skills were the cause of her funky moods. Turns out I really don't have that much of an impact on Mandy at all. I am still the type of mom who is not sweet and full of sunshine, but a bit too critical and usually pretty grumpy and now instead of being upset at me for days, she brushes it off and is smiling and telling me some funny story within five minutes. You know I am not perfect and when I have a three year old screaming at me, and a non working computer with customer service on the phone, and Mandy wants to know when she can check her email, my response was not exactly all sunshine and butterflies.

Today I am on a mission to find stamps, enjoy the sunshine, and to buy more cookies, and find out exactly how much sledge hammers are going for these days.