Sweet Victories

So my NaBloPoMo tally:

Total posts:10

Slightly passive aggressive sentiments: 4

Posts about NaBloPoMo (including this one): 3

Not great, I admit. However if any of you would like to come over to watch my kids and do my laundry so that I have more time to blog, I’m all for it. Really though, I’m kidding, I don’t do laundry, that’s what husbands and dark-colored sweaters are for. Perhaps next year I will do better (on the blogging, not the laundry) or at least have more realistic expectations for myself. I’m going to now brag about myself so that I can feel that even though I was a NaBloPoMo failure, I am still successful in other parts of my life. So these are the highlights that I accomplished in November:

1. I finally figured out how to personalize the little sidebar thing on the right. admittedly, WordPress does try to make it easy for you, but for the last 6 months, I kept wondering what in the heck a widget was, and why my blog kept encouraging me to personalize them. I didn’t know what they were or how to personalize them, and the word widget kept creeping me out, so I just avoided my widgets all together. You may now take a moment to admire my personalized widgets. Aren’t they pretty?

2. I rocked my college Chemistry class. Technically, until I take my final, it’s not in the bag. However, I took the last regular test this week, and I feel really good about it, so I feel that a 4.0 may actually be within my reach. This is probably the thing that I’m the most proud of. I’m about 9 years older than the average student, so I feel pretty good about my old lady brain this month.

3. I made a new friend. Laugh if you want to, but stay at home mamas are not usually presented with tons of opportunities to make new friends. It’s not like elementary school where you can just run up to the kid with the awesome Teddy Ruxpin back pack and ask if they want to play kick ball at recess. Adult friendships take a bit more finesse. My lab partner and I hit it off, and we chat socially, as well as chemistry-ily (chemically?). Plus we already have a post final wine date planned. Which, may I mention, is another advantage to being an old lady student- I can have a drink after finals. Wahoo!

4. I got all my Christmas shopping done. Please refer to my Black Thursday post. It was both awful and awesome at the same time. But it’s done. Done, done, done. Okay, I’m done bragging. Done.

5. I have taught my 3-year-old all of his colors. All of them! It’s amazing. As of October, I was ready to take him to the doctor because I was SURE he was colorblind.

6. I’ve got my 3-year-old consistently pooing on the potty. I realize that you may not want to hear about his poo, but I most certainly didn’t want to ever clean it off my walls, so realize that these unpleasant truths just tend to be part of life, and give me this one. Although, I’ll be the first one to admit that the poo-training may have had less to do with my awesome parenting, and more to do with “sucker-treats” (or dum-dums, as you may call them). I’m still claiming the victory though.

7. I got to feel smarter than my computer for once. Pertussis, it’s a real thing, even if 07 Word doesn’t think so. Take that Windows Vista! I know more about childhood vaccines than you do. And I’m done gloating about being smarter than the spell-check. I feel the need to embrace spell check’s inadequacies, because it’s usually so condescending. It’s like “don’t you remember your 4th grade spelling tests, Nicole?” It’s rare that I get to mock spell check the way it mocks me, so you bet I’m going to run with it. (Edit: let’s not talk about how spell-check just nailed me for misspelling both ‘inadequacies” and “condescending.” And now I feel like I need to spell-check this sentence. AGH! I misspelled sentence. I probably misspelled “misspelled” and “AGH!” for that matter, but I’m leaving spell-check alone. I have pertussis on it, and that’s all I need.)

I’m celebrating the little victories right now. Because if there is anything I have learned from being a multi-tasking student-mama, it’s that I’ve got to take what I can get.