Working Mom

Today has got to be one of the most hectic days of my life.

Swe-cha started school this year and his bus service has not been set up yet, we are still waiting for the school district to enter his information into their computer system before the transportation department can go ahead and process his service request.

Work-wise, my Thursdays are usually full because I have to attend two team meetings wherein everybody reports their current "hot" activities so the meetings tend to drag on. Worse, both meetings coincided with Swe-cha's school drop off and pick up times. And worst, I had another meeting to attend in the afternoon. So what was a mom to do ? I attended conference calls in the car, while picking up, driving and dropping my son off to & from school and daycare. *whew*

Feel na feel ko ang pagiging working mom.  I am so exhausted.

On a happy note, hubby just walked in the door with my favorite Pork Carnita Quesadillas from Baja Fresh, I have not had these in years.

Photo-finish in 2012

Did a lot of last minute stuff these past few days leading up to the year-end.

- renewed our car registration

- renewed hubby's driver's license

- renewed my driver's license

- stayed up overnight (nagpuyat) to finish Swe-cha's photo album for his 1st birthday (oo, 2 years delayed na and if my voucher weren't expiring on 12/30, this will probably still remain pending, haha!). The good news is that if this comes out nice, it'll inspire me to get started on his photobooks for his 1st, 2nd and 3rd  years.

- submitted our elections for our medical & dependent FSA (photo-finish rin ito, last minute submission for the 12/31 deadline)

- hubby finally put up the plastic sheet that we use to seal our balcony door against winter drafts, our master bedroom is so much warmer now! Let's see if he can put up the one for our living room balcony door & possibly get another one for our 2nd bedroom's windows.

- threw trash away (lots of them - around 7 big grocery bags. he kept going down to the trash chute to get rid of pahabol soiled diapers because Swe-cha kept pooping. He was probably purging himself for the new yera too :)

2012 has been a wonderful year and came with lots of blessings for our family (hindi ko na iisa-isahin, overwhelming kasi).

We wish you all a blessed 2013 :)

Dishwasher - another DIY

So our dishwasher broke down last month and if I had not already said so, we love ours and use it regularly. The dishwasher is such a lifesaver and in our case, it's a no-brainer for us because our hot water cost is already included in our monthly condo fee - not really sure how much the old dishwasher costs us to operate in terms of electricity since it was a dinosaur (20 years old), this new one costs $35 / year to operate assuming you run it 4x a week.

Anyway, losing use of this appliance was such a hardship. We couldn't even use it as a 'drip pan' to drip-dry our dishes because it died in the middle of its wash cycle and it still had a puddle of water at the bottom of the tub which we couldn't completely dry out. Also, since it died mid-cycle, I wasn't up to cleaning the drawers / trays. So on top of having to wash our dishes manually, we also had to air-dry them on our kitchen countertops. It was so difficult to find free space after a while.

The bad news is that we had just replaced our washing machine last month and our wallets aren't quite ready for this on top of the holiday spending for December. The good news is that, apparently, compared to other appliances, dishwashers are pretty affordable and since ours is a standard-sized dishwasher, you could easily get one for as low as $250 or as high as the high $1000 range.

We decided to DIY the installation as it seemed fairly straightforward. We saved ourselves between $90 (handyman fee) and at least $139 (home depot installation fee) or $169 (Sears installation fee) by doing the installation ourselves. It would cost more than $139 or $169 to have it installed professionally because we also needed an electrician to do power hookups.

For this project, I did the wiring and hubby did the plumbing.

Here is the new washer, we will install the footboard (the cover at the bottom of the washer) and remove the plastic sheet on the door & the energy guide sticker after we run it a few times and make sure that there are no leaks.

We've already run a load last night and it ran wonderfully - quiet and efficient.

The forgotten one

My husband forgot my birthday and yes, despite the fact that we're not big on celebrating our birthdays & anniversaries (no parties, presents, flowers nor any hullabahoo), I was very disappointed that I did not even receive a greeting from him. How can he forget me ? We've been together for more than a decade plus I bore and gave birth to his only child!

He claims that he did not forget my birthday but he just lost track of the days - but hey, does it really matter at this point ?

It's been a few weeks and I still have not quite forgotten how it was to be forgotten. Other than the side comments (translation: parinig) every now and then, I've been pretty good about it, I think. I've been extra nice (possibly so he'd feel even more remorseful, I don't really know) and even got him a Samsung Note II (okay, it was more like a joint decision and he was long overdue for a cellphone upgrade but I said yes to the additional expense).


Anyway, I'm beginning to think that having one's birthday forgotten does have its perks. I am blogging now, see ? Hubby put our child to bed tonight and despite Swe-cha still being awake after 2 hours, I don't hear any screaming from hubby. He's still hanging in there patiently. Goodness knows how disappointed / mad I will be if he cannot do this one thing - put our child to bed - for me tonight.

Also, he's taken the enormous task of doing general-cleaning in our house. Our place has been in total chaos, even more so after I started working again. He volunteered himself for this task (w/o any reference to forgetting my birthday) and I promised him that in return, I'll stop with the snide comments.

If and when he finishes cleaning up our house & organizing our closets ? Okay na and it'll be worth the heartache (or close). Yes, our house has gotten *that* bad.

Chili Sauce Container

One of the ways that I've re-purposed our old milk-storage bottles is to use them to store condiments.

Pictured is a container of chili sauce - the type that you usually get with dimsum. When we get some dumplings for take-out, we usually get a small container or two of the chili sauce and they come in those flimsy disposable containers. They're okay but they do tend to spill.

Don't worry, I don't plan on using these bottles for breastmilk ever again :-)

My not-so-baby brother

My not-so-baby brother came for a short visit last week. He left yesterday.

As I was helping him pack his luggage*, it suddenly occurred to me this was probably the last time I was going to pack his stuff for him because the next time he comes visiting, he'd be a married man! His wife will be doing the packing, haha!

I found myself in tears that night. My baby brother may still be a baby when it comes to packing luggage but he's all grown up.

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* our older sister helped pack his bags for him when he left CA and our Dad probably packed his luggage when he left Manila :)

Hoarding

So our neighbor sees hubby pulling this loaded trolley up to our house and comments, "wow, how do you fit all that in a tiny apartment ?" Hubby says, "Easy, you take out everything in the closet and you put these in." and they both laugh.

I think that our neighbor was just too polite to ask her real question - "you can use all that ?"

The thing is,... she didn't see what we brought in 2 weeks ago, these bottles of water & packs of toilet paper  are from a separate shopping trip. If she had seen these, her eyes would pop out.

So why do we do this ?

Simple. Our warehouse club membership is expiring and since these are the only things that we buy there - bottled water (for when we go out on trips), toilet paper and roasted seaweed, I didn't think that $55 a year was worth the savings that we get from these supplies. So, the plan is to buy a lot and just renew our membership when we run out. These will surely last us months.

Yep, I'm cheap that way.