Five things that make me happy
- Waking up yesterday to find that my 19-year-old son had stayed up all night to paint enormous watercolors of animals holding staffs for his drawing class. (Pardon the awful and blurry iPhone photo.) I think that he’s actually going to be able to make a living from the thousands of hours he spent doodling on his school assignments.
- After fiddling with it for a good long while, I was finally able to fix the ankle zipper on my husband’s track suit bottoms. This will not only keep these pants from needing to be tossed, but it was an oddly enjoyable and satisfying task. I’m trying to not have a mending pile, but to mend things as soon as they come to my attention. (“Pile” is rarely a good thing.)
- Portland’s sunnier weather has naturally resulted in people spending more time outside their homes, which means more conversation and community building with the neighbors. People are smiling, borrowing and lending; and it’s a beautiful thing.
- My husband’s workplace almost went on strike this week, but it was voted down. That would simply be the very last straw for us dealing with various stressors that are going on in our lives right now. I am very happy he’s not about to go on strike!
- My son’s artwork. I just love his passion for what he does! He has an extremely unique eye and view of the world, which reflects strongly in his art.
One thing that’s pissing me off
- Dealing with a $750 unnecessary fee at my son’s university has become a never ending thorn in my side. The person I deal with does not return phone calls in a timely manner nor does she reply to e-mails in a normal time frame. All of this has meant that the process is never ending, and in turn makes it look like I’m being financially flaky. I have some other things going on in my life which means this issue cannot be my number one priority, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to spend $750 to make this go away. Today I’m going to give it a half-day of my full attention and hopefully make some headway, but really, I simply want to scream. Loudly. And often.
Now your turn. What’s making you happy, and conversely what’s pissing you off?
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
{ 44 comments… read them below or add one }
Right now, for me it would be 5 things that are pissing me off and one thing that makes me happy.
We’ll skip all that negativity.
One thing that is making me happy is I only have a half hour commute to my teaching placement now. I no longer have to get up at 5:30!
I sometimes think that these places deliberately don’t return your calls and messages, hoping that you will just give up and go away. I feel for you!
I am happy because I am making a little money and getting rid of unwanted items on eBay.
I am happy because my student husband has CALMED DOWN about his mid-terms. He was very testy.
I am happy because it was just announced that we will be getting raises this year. First time in three years.
I am happy because it’s supposed to snow again and I can work from home, which is a nice change of pace.
I am happy because my Passion Planner should arrive this month. I have been using the PDF, and LOVE it.
One thing that’s pissing me off – just because I am a software developer DOES NOT MEAN I WILL FIX YOUR COMPUTER!!!
You should get the “NO, I WILL NOT FIX YOUR COMPUTER” T-shirt from ThinkGeek. I got it for my husband several years ago 🙂 Oooh, they have a coffee mug now too! http://www.thinkgeek.com/brain/whereisit.cgi?t=no%2C+i+will+not+fix+your+computer
I guess it wouldn’t be very frugal, though…
Watch a few episodes of “The IT Crowd” on Netflix and then get yourself a shirt that says, “Have you tried turning it off and then on again?”
Or tell them they probably typed “Google” into Google and they broke the internet:) (I love “The IT Crowd”!)
LOL! I love the IT Crowd! And yes, we always as, “Have you tried turning it on and off again?” Or “Have you tried closing the application and coming back in?”
I got that mug for my IT-guy-hard-to-buy-for brother for Hanukkah. TG had it marked down to $2.99, plus it free shipping on my order. I haven’t seen him laugh that hard in a long time. They do run good sales and you might be able to get it with Geek points.
Natalie and Cathy – I have seen that t-shirt and definitely need one!
Ah, Katy, welcome to the wonderful world of universities. If I might also tell something that always occurred with us– the first person you talk to will refer you to a second, and so on, until you’ve talked with five people. It always seems to be five people, and by that time, you’ll have had five answers, all different. Always insist they give their full name, and ask for the instructions in writing and signed, if need be. That usually makes them actually look up the correct procedure, not just toss random information or another name at you to get you to go away. And they are not eager to help you with your money problems. Good luck! You WILL find someone who can help you – eventually.
What’s making me glad today?
The weather, after days of gray, rainy, chilly, get-in-your bones weather, turned warm and we actually are seeing some sunshine. It won’t last, but I’m enjoying it.
I have a wonderful pair of new rain shoes, thanks to one of my daughters. She let me pick them out and paid for them for my birthday.
I’m happy to have family who called me for my birthday because they love me, not because they feel they have to.
I’m happy that our onions are growing in the raised beds.
I’m happy that I found 30 cents to put in my mite box for Lent.
And I’m NOT happy at the changes at work which add another job to my job description, with no warning.
I am a college professor and to get to that point, I was a college student for 11 years. Here’s the thing– once they decide you owe them money, it’s damn near impossible to make that charge go away. I’m not shocked by what you are going through. And the sad truth is– they can essentially hold transcripts, grades, etc hostage until fees are paid.
I feel for you. My only advice is you will have to actually go to the college to resolve the issue. Phone calls are useless to a place like that. No lie.
Good to know. I’ve actually physically gone to the school five times to deal with this issue. I’m realizing my day is already too full today, so tomorrow I’m going in person to fill out the forms with my son that will make it so that my father has access to his records. He’s worked at this university for 50 YEARS, and has knowledge about the ins and outs of administration that I don’t. Hopefully, then he can start helping.
Yeah, FERPA is tough– it’s supposed to protect students in many ways, but it’s tough when you have a student who is still a minor and needs a parent to navigate those things.
I worked as a secretary at the college while I was in grad school and parents would call and want to know something and I was bound, by law, to not say anything about the student, what classes they were in, or if they even were enrolled in school. As a professor, I often have well meaning parents email me and want to know how Junior or Sally are doing and I am bound by law to reply in no way.
It’s not any of my business really, but can your son deal with the university directly? They might be more helpful to the actual student. I graduated from undergrad 3 years ago and I would have been mortified if my parents came on campus to manage my tuition issues for me. My mother is a professor and has even had students’ parents contact her about grades and assignments – I know she refuses to deal with her students’ parents, maybe the administration is similarly discouraging of parents involvement.
Believe me, it’s been a team effort with my son and I working together on this!
Four bags of trash and recycling out of my home office – I’ll be darned, there *is* a floor in there!!
In the process, found some items that I haven’t seen in ages.
Snow day, so I got to stay home from work and Mark took the car, so he’ll be doing the picking up of groceries after work.
My granddaughter is 15 today!
I love my new yoga pants….
However, I’m still pissed off that American Airlines hasn’t dealt with my broken camera. Grrr.
Things making me happy:
* Booked to visit auntie in Vancouver BC for a fortnight…by myself!
* Have holiday booked with hub for a week. Last holiday we had in September I was very ill for the whole week, so really ready for this.
* No appointments tomorrow!
* Not too much work on, so I might get to sew for myself.
* Got knitting machine (gifted to me some time ago) off via UPS to a purchaser in South Korea. Hoping to get a text in a few days to say it has arrived. Spending money for holidays.
*Six good things, so maybe I can have 2 negatives, pretty please? Am making real inroads into sorting out and throwing out/giving away/donating things taking up room in my house.
On the negative side (not pissing me off)
* dd with CFS/ME has now had 10 days of being in bed almost all of the time.
* My SAD has reared its ugly head a fortnight ago after such a good winter so far. Yeah, well this is pissing me off, especially as my IBS is giving me a rough ride as well.
Hugs Pauline! I deal with SAD as well as Crohn’s Disease (I am currently in remission) so I know that struggle well. Best wishes for you!
1. I spent 2 lovely hours today at my bible study.
2. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel will be showing Friday. I have already made plans to see it.
3. I rescued one of those put-together-yourself shelf units and was able to fix the problem with not too many swear words.
4. Mom’s health is improving.
5. As a single woman, I have found a handy man who is absolutely wonderful at fixing stuff for me and a young neighbor who gives me his muscle. They are both blessings.
One thing that is making me mad today is owing money to the government who wastes sooo much of it! It’s not a huge amount, but I wonder how much of it is thrown down the toilet.
I absolutely love your son’s art work. I definitely think he will be able to make a living, with talent like that.
Making me happy:
1. I took the time to lock in our electricity at a good price for the next three years. It meant doing research and switching suppliers but will be worth it.
2. It is time for me to order a replacement filter for our air conditioner. I hope that means that winter will actually end in the near future (there was freezing rain at lunch time today).
3. Several years ago my someone gave me a paper cutter that was being thrown out at work. I believe we have used it once. A friend that teaches art wanted one for her art room. I happily passed it along to her today.
4. I remembered to buy gift cards through Scrip for upcoming gift giving occasions (a grocery store card for my MIL, as she is practically home bound, a DD gift card for my nephew, he is difficult to buy for as he is an adult with Downs Syndrome). I paid face value but a good organization received a portion of the cost.
5. I have an awesome family and friends and good neighbors. They all help make my life better everyday.
Pissing me off:
The unrelenting winter weather. If I wanted real winter I would not live in the Mid-Atlantic region. Also totally pissing me off is that a good friend has a cancer with no cure. She is very depressed over it and none of us are happy about the inevitable conclusion.
Awesome artwork! Your son is truly talented.
5 things that are making me happy
1. Coffee date with my MIL this morning.
2. Dinner in the crockpot
3. Long shifts that allow me to have many more days home.
4. Wanting to move in a few years has greatly made me consider very closely what comes into out home so we don’t have to worry about moving things across the country.
5. Meal planning and grocery shopping for March all done.
1 thing that’s pissing me off would be the arthritis in my foot that has become painful with every step and is limiting my ability to do things. I’m only 30.
– My home-done haircuts on the boys turned out fairly well.
– It’s beautiful and sunny outside.
– Tacos for dinner- my favorite!
– My 14 month old has started to give me hugs and loves (he’s been Daddy’s boy).
– My post-weight-loss Goodwill wardrobe is cheerful and makes me feel good.
One thing pissing me off: My husband can’t find a job that pays enough for to come out ahead after childcare, despite 2 college degrees and 13+ years of professional experience.
things that are making me happy:
* Watching The Big Bang Theory on dvd’s as we speak
* A beautiful email from my husband telling me how proud he is of me and how he believes in me
* Lunch with a good friend today
* A “new to me” vibrant green summer dress (it will come eventually!!)
* That my boss did not give me a hard time for needing 2 days off to attend funerals out of town
* My new Nashville cd
* that my house is in relative order
Ok, that was 7 things, i’ll stop there
One thing I am unhappy about…
* My apparent inability to stick to a diet of some sort. Really hard for me to not overeat and to stop eating junk. 😳
Your son really does have a great eye. The faces look so life like!
I’m happy about just about everything, and pissed off that it’s still winter.
My main task today was tackling our taxes and it’s been a nightmare. We have a pretty sizeable tax bill due. I cried. There, I said it. Hubby will sit with me so we can review everything and see if we agree on what needs to be done. In the meantime, my best friend gave me the name of a CPA firm in Orlando. I’m thinking that we might need to use their services moving forward because we’re obviously too dumb (well, ignorant and allergic to financial mumbo jumbo!) to handle our own tax planning. On the plus side, we’re having those problems because my husband made a very healthy living last year so it’s much better to have those kinds of problems than to be struggling financially. Great, so now I feel like a big baby. Once we file our taxes, I have to fill out the FAFSA for 2 of our kids and that’s another nightmare (we have a complicated home situation) and a total waste of time since they won’t qualify for any grants anyway, only loans.
I’m making meatball subs for dinner: hoagie rolls that I defrosted and store-bought meatballs that I’m about to nuke, spaghetti sauce, shredded cheese. It’s better than ordering pizza, which is what I really want to do. I need comfort food.
Katy, I commiserate about the lack of communication. I emailed my son’s middle school principal over a week ago with a specific question and I’ve yet to receive an acknowledgment or reply. If I have to go there in person, it won’t be a pleasant experience for anyone. Maybe I should wait until after I’ve filed the taxes and mailed the check…
I work at a school as a teacher and I get probably 20 or 30 emails a day all wanting a reply right now. Not a reality but doesn’t mean I don’t care. I can only imagine how many a principal gets in a day or week. I would email again with a pleasant reminder that you emailed last week. Could be the principal honestly forgot to reply. You catch more flies with honey…. Just saying.
I agree 100% with you.
I would normally agree but I have emailed that same principal a couple of other times in the last 2 years and have never gotten an answer from her. I ended up getting my answers some other way. I do have several children in public school and all the teachers and other administrators have always gotten back to me either the same day or within a few days. She’s the only one who consistently doesn’t reply. In this particular case, my request concerns something that she would have to approve personally so I can’t go to anyone else. Everyone is busy. I don’t think it would be a bad practice to send a quick email and say “I saw your message, I’m working on it, I’ll get back to you.”
Katy, have you tried calling her superior? I don’t complain, necessarily — sometimes I’ll just ask for the name of the person who is covering for her while she’s away. Because I think she has either left or gone on vacation, because it has been “x” number of days since I’ve heard from her.
That normally works for me.
1. Got a doctor appt. done and over with for a year. Keeping up on your health can be money and life saving.
2. Made lovely fresh tortellini for supper. Where have you been all my life?
3. Was able to get to and home from said appointment without getting hit with the brunt of the snow/sleet.
4. Tax refund is in the checking account!
5. Ds’s car payment is in the checking account. He bought dh’s car from him to take to Texas.
6. The sound of sleet hitting the window.
Two things pissing me off:
1. Thanks Katy for reminding me that my daughter’s college owes us money. Need to get daughter into the cashier’s office.. We are in NJ she’s in CO.
2. The weather. More snow/sleet/rain. Dh stayed at work til it seemed like most of the traffic is done. He called at 7 p.m. to say he was leaving – wonder how long it will take him to go 20 miles.
-hubby was off of work today and spent the day doing home projects!
-a frugal dinner with bakery outlet buns and couponed meat
-a year anniversary at a new job that inspires me, a good evaluation from my boss, and a small increase in salary
– new siding, installed this week, paid by our homeowners insurance after a big hail storm
-house of cards on Netflix
– an endless streak of frigid temps and snow is pissing me off!
We just discovered “House of Cards” a few weeks ago and are completely caught up. OMG, what a fantastic series.
Your son’s artwork reminds me of this
http://blog.tattoodo.com/2014/02/amazing-watercolor-like-tattoos-sasha-unisex/
1. The beautiful weather we’re having in Seattle!
2. Our buy nothing group for my city broke up into smaller, neighborhood groups. This will mean less travel around my large city, knowing my neighbors better and hopefully a better chance at getting what I’m looking for when I ask!
3. My best friend is coming next month to visit! I haven’t seen her in over a year so I’m excited to see her and take time off! I even managed to get 2 $3 off coupons to the local zoo/aquarium, something we both enjoy.
4. DST this weekend means more light after work!
5. Binge watching Friends on Netflix.
One thing that’s pissing me off: we agreed to go to a friend/former coworker’s wedding, only to find out that it’s 4 1/2 hours away. And it’s at 5 pm, so on top of gas to get there, we have to get a hotel room too. Sharing a room with someone isn’t an option, and there’s only 1 hotel in the area (and it’s $150 a night). I have a pretty bad attitude about this, which I’m working on! At least I have until October to come to terms with it.
1) My kids are happy to have cold pizza in their lunchboxes, so when I finished making pizza for their dinner tonight, it meant I’d also finished making tomorrow’s lunches. I just keep 2 slices per kid and put them right in the lunchbox.
2) My husband had some leftover spending money from a recent trip so he decided to get takeout for us, which is a rarity. It was actually inexpensive and the restaurant was donating a large share of tonight’s profits to my kid’s school for art & science programs. So I got a night off 1/2 the cooking duty, and we were able to support a great fundraiser.
3) Snow! Apologies to all the easterners, but we’ve had an unusually warm, dry winter. I live in a very arid state where we worry about water even with a normal snow year. We definitely needed the precipitation. Bonus: all the snow gave me an opportunity to get a quiet, peaceful, free workout shoveling.
4) Almost a month ago, we switched auto and homeowners’ insurance to a different insurer. Two people–one at the old company, one at the new one–hadn’t followed through on processing the termination request of the old insurance. I finally got someone to take care of it today. We’ll be getting a nice refund within a couple of weeks.
4) I’m super happy for the wisdom that comes with age, and the ability to keep my thoughts to myself. There have been several different situations in the last week where people have done things that have frustrated me and/or caused me extra work. Though there are times when it’s important to speak up, sometimes it really serves no purpose to say what I’m thinking, and it’s a good feeling to recognize when to keep my mouth shut.
The thing that’s pissing me off is the attendance office at my son’s school. For the life of me, I can’t figure out when they update information. Last week, when he was out sick, I called and reported the absence (with all the required information) early in the day. Yet I got automated calls late each day informing me that my son had missed his classes. The same thing happened today except today my son missed most of his classes because the ENTIRE junior class was taking a college entrance test. They were taking it AT SCHOOL. So now I have to waste time following up to get his “absence” excused.
Cathy, I’ve been dealing with the same kind of inanity from my daughter’s high school attendance office for close to 2 weeks. Before that, she’d been trying to get Attendance to fix the erroneous “unexcused absences” for 2 weeks. So it’s been a month. Last week I emailed the principal and 3 out of 4 were fixed within 24 hours after I contacted the principal to ask him to take care of it, the last one… I just realized still hasn’t been resolved. Off to send the principal a reminder email. It truly is a waste of everybody’s time. Grrr.
Gee, I wonder if we live in the same area! I just saw your comment above about an unresponsive principal. I had to deal with one of those, too, at my kid’s grade school. Used to drive me nuts. There were certain things that HAD to go through her, but she never ever responded. Ultimately, you’d have to visit the school and try to do it in person. I don’t suppose the principal’s initials are MP…?
Nope, mine’s initials are PC. I’m in Central Florida. I actually have happy news to report this afternoon as both the high school assistant principal and the middle school principal emailed me first thing this morning (I emailed both of them in the middle of the night to remind them that I hadn’t gotten satisfaction on my prior requests of over a week ago), apologized for not replying, and took care of my problems (or, in the middle school case, referred me to the person who will be able to help me with my request). Good luck with yours!
You like snow?? There, you can take all of ours, we have a loooooot here in Quebec, Canada! My pleasure! Can’t wait for spring……
Great drawings from your son!
What type of art career is your son interested in? Disney or such a studio? He has a knack! I know you said he was taking a gap year. Did he decide to attend college instead?
Happy my husband is feeling better today after suffering with a stomach virus yesterday
Ticked off that I have to pay $346.00 for my
mammogram. The first one was covered but because they saw something suspicious the 2nd one wasn’t covered. Sigh.
But ok I’m happy to have health insurance and access to great medical care.
Happy my fit bit arrived.Happy my stomach is flatter but not happy the scale hasn’t budged.
By the way, your son is an amazing artist.
If you want to make some headway with the $750 complaint, and it’s possible, I would go down to the office. It’s harder to ignore a person complaining, at length, in an office. Phone calls, and emails, are much easier to ignore. I’m not advocating being a bully, just turning up and calmly, and professionally stating your case and hoping, and perhaps praying for a good result all round.
I should have read ALL your comments before posting. Sounds like you’ve got it pretty well covered. Good luck!