SWAMPED!

I'm sorry for not having posted anything yet today, I have a million things to do and I don't have much time.

So, for starters, how about a list of what I need get done from here on to Sunday?

1) Babysit brothers (Mom went out with a girl friend from church today)
2) Make sure brothers do homework
3) Put them to bed
4) Pack
5) Go to Whitakers house (I'm house sitting for them till Wednesday)
6) Check on Jasmine (the gorgeous spaniel)
7) Clean up after her if she did poop in the room she was locked up in since 3pm today since I am tied down here with babysitting till Mom comes home
8) Settle in
9) Burn music CDs for Loh and Kheng Saik whose birthday bash we are throwing tomorrow evening
10) Browse through recipes
11) Make a birthday cake (I'm so pressed for time, I think I won't try anything new this time)
12) Go to agricultural park with friends Sat morning

I'm in the comittee for planning the Single Adult camp thing for church which is in May and so are the rest of my friends. We're going there tomorrow morning to check the place out so we can plan our events. The Young Women's and Young Men's camp will be held at the same time and same place so a WHOLE bunch of people from every comittee will be going, including my mom. I'm really excited, it's almost going to be like camp itself since all my friends are going to be there!

13) Pick Mom up from home first
14) Sack lunch
15) Walk my legs tired at the park (I hope we don't end too late!)
16) Prepare salad for party
17) Buy and scrub potatoes for party
18) Not forget to take barbeque utensils and foil, fire starters and candles from home to use at Lyanne's apartment for the party
19) DO NOT forget to bring swimsuit to party (having my stuff in 2 houses is just confusing me, I have a million details to smoothen out. The houses aren't too far away, but still, I can't drive back and forth just for stuff!)
20) Figure out where exactly I'm going to bake that cake. Buy ingredients first, maybe?
21) Drive to and look for Lyanne's place.
22) Oh. Ask mom for recipe on marinating the chicken. Make sure I have all the ingredients.
23) Have an absolute BLAST at our poolside barbie.
24) Prepare lesson for Young Women at church. It's on Patriarchal Blessings. 25) Try to locate mine. *guilty look* I'm hoping Mom is the one who has it.
26) Pick Jennifer up for church.
27) Don't forget to bring music "Consider the Lilies" so I can rehearse it with the Craguns. (They want to sing it for Sacrament meeting sometime and I'm their pianist, of course)
28) Teach a good lesson, socialize and have a good Sunday service.
29) Send Jennifer home.

*sigh* That girl needs to be more independant. She can't expect me to take her to and from church every Sunday when everyone else can take the bus. I'm one of those people who always offer people rides when I can, even if it's not very convenient. Now she asks me, I don't even have to offer. I have bent over backwards a couple of times now to give her a ride. I don't know if she realizes that.

She called during the week to ask for a ride to church. I said that was fine. The she called to ask for a ride back. "Sure, no problem." I had totally forgotten that I would be living just a couple of blocks from church and would have to drive back in the opposite direction (she lives close to our home) to pick her up. And then, I'd have to drive back there to send her home. But I'll need to drive to PJ (another suburb of the capital, about 40 mins away with light congestion) to have a comittee meeting for the camp thingy. Maybe Mom will help me out on that one. Darn. I don't want Mom to have to fill in for me. I'm always doing stuff like that.

I feel bad. I should be charitable and not complain like this. It's hypocritical of me. I need to learn to say no. I'd like to think that I'm nice enough to just freely give of my time and not care so I give of my time, trying to do the right thing but turn around and complain. Argh. Do I have a right to complain? Or is this just me being selfish?

Anyway back to the list.

30) Attend comittee meeting.
31) Freaking update my blog.
32) Write about all the stuff I've been meaning to: the separation status and my breakup (I've been thinking about that alot lately but haven't been able to write it all down)
33) Reply email from "Samuel Clemmens"
34) Check up on all blogs.
35) Write a gazillion comments on everyone.
36) Reply to comments on my blog
37) Bug Faith and Brian relentlessly

Eating and sleeping goes in there somewhere. I don't know when though.

Phew. Ok, so maybe I have way less than a million things to do - but I think it's cool that I ended on a prime number.

I'm tired. I want mom to come home now so Jasmine won't tear up the furniture in the room. I'm so worried about that. Can't mess up on my first day! My stuff is all pack in the car now, I took a shower, and am in my PJs. I feel like I should be getting all that stuff done but I'm not. I feel like I can't yet, like I can't do anything without mom coming home first.

I was really annoyed that I had to babysit my brothers today since we do have live-in domestic help. They wouldn't co-operate with me when I asked them to do their homework but my edginess didn't help at all.

Ernie and I ended up getting into this HUGE fight. I went bezerk, especially after he locked himself in my room (his room doesn't have a bolt anymore, no one's allowed to lock themselves in, really). It was terrible. I feel like such a bad sister now and am so worried that I will abuse my kids.

I managed to calm Ernie down in between by taking him for a walk, but as soon as he came home, Shuan and Ray just kept getting on his nerves and that made ME go nuts... domino effect. I threatened to tell Mom and I preteneded to call her and rat on him. Big mistake. I lied and told him that Mom was giving him a warning and he would get grounded for a month if he didn't do his homework. But he took that as being as good as grounded and started throwing chairs around and flinging books everywhere. It was then when he locked himself in my room.

I finally got him to open it. Asking nicely didn't work. I banged on the door and yelled and threatened. I think I was more possessed than he was. *sigh* So totally immature. I thought I had mastered the parenting thing already. Blah.

I finally shoved him out the front door and told him he could stay there until he was calm enough to come back in. I helped the other kids with their homework (they were so frightened that they actually WERE doing their homework, tee hee) during that time. An hour or so later, I went out to find a subdued Ernie lying down on the bench on the porch.

Some talking, apologizing and hugging and he was back in doing his homework.

I acted immaturely today and I am still kicking myself for it. I usually don't pay too much attention when Ernie gets into one of his tantrums. He usually calms down by himself. Today, I guess I was just realy mad that I had to be home instead of at the Whitakers like I had planned and took it out on all of them, making Ernie even angrier and for MUCH longer too. I made it personal. Good parents never do.

That's one side of me I hope you guys never get to see. I haven't been that agitated for a long time. I hope I never will again.

In the meantime, I'm still impatiently waiting for mom to come back but she needs this break. I should be more considerate. I'm always pulling crap like that on my family making them do stuff for me and fulfill commitments I'd made whilst I run off to do something else.

I just hope that God doesn't choose to punish me tonight and that He helped Jasmine hold it in and not get too antsy. Cleaning up after her is fine. Poop and pee I can deal with. I just don't know what I'd do if all the furniture got torn up.

Sorry this post was long and boring and a big mess. I'm typing this in a hurry and just off the top of my head. I don't usually do that. I often think through what I want to say ahead of time and go back and edit my posts.

Not tonight. I'm posting this tonight just for the sake of posting.