Five on Friday (with pluses and minuses)

Conferences

[+] Less time in front of students
[+] More prep time (just the extra 15 minutes every morning was much appreciated)
[+] I got a lot of scoring done. I think I will be going into this weekend with NOTHING to score!
[+] A different week (just the fact that it was different is a positive for me)
[+] Makes me even more excited for the three day weekend.
[-] All the meetings with parents was exhausting.
[-] I was asked to translate multiple times. A couple times this meant I couldn’t attend conferences for students that were struggling in my classes. The district should be hiring a translator and it drives me crazy when they just assume I’ll be available to translate last minute.
[-] I ended up staying on campus 30-60 minutes later most days this week, because they scheduled conferences until 3:30pm.

[-] I am sick AGAIN
[-] My sinuses are a mess and my ears are stuffy
[-] I have a dry cough that I can tell will be lingering for a while
[+] This cold is WAY less intense than the last one
[+] I felt it coming on early Monday and took lots of Umcka and Airborne before it really hit
[+] My throat has not been sore at all (I felt like I had strep last time)

[+] I don’t want to support Amazon and not having Prime will help me do that.
[+] I can easily hit $35 to get free shipping when there is something on the site that I can’t find elsewhere.
[+] My Prime Membership expired late on 10/6, so I got to buy a few things during the sale (mostly for my classroom – bulk headphones and such).
[+] I can always pay for a month of Prime if I need stuff for school and there is a big sale.
[+] I didn’t use the fast shipping that much (it always seemed so unnecessary), so waiting longer won’t really be an issue.
[-] I’ve been a Prime member basically my entire adult life and it feels weird not to be anymore (is it weird that it feels weird?!) I was getting it for free through my parents until last year – I thought they forgot about me honestly, I thought I fell through the cracks or something because I’d been getting it through them for well over a decade! And when they finally told me I couldn’t be in their “household” anymore, they gave me a year for $15 so I took it. And now that year is up and I’m out.
[-] They are harassing me at every turn to join again. Navigating the app is even more of a nightmare now (this is probably actually good, because I don’t want to give them my business).
[-] I’m embarrassed to write about this at all, but it’s been living rent free in my head for a couple days now and I need to get it out.

[+] We got the almost 13yo his new phone (which he knows nothing about), and a case, so we can give it to him early (while the husband is still in town to set it up and trouble shoot with him).
[+] Now that the almost 13yo will have a phone (and not an Apple Watch with cell service), we can finally dump Veri.zon, which we give crazy amounts of money to for abysmal cell service
[+] The husband set us up on a new, cheaper, cell service provider and already moved me, the 16yo and himself over with no issues.
[+] The five kids the 12yo invited to his birthday can come next Friday
[+] We’re celebrating with his friends a week early, so the husband will be in town to help me with the party (last year I did it alone and it was HORRIBLE).
[+] My friend is letting us borrow her car the night of the party, so we don’t have to take two cars
[-] We’re taking the kids to a go-kart spot where the party package is prohibitively expensive, so we have to just go and hope we can get them all in for two races when we get there (I hate this plan, but I hate spending $800 on six kids go-karting even more).
[-] The husband is out of town on the 12yo’s actual birthday.
[-] The husband is in town for only one evening the two weeks during and after the 12yo’s birthday, so we have to spend that evening doing his family birthday with the grandparents.
[-] I will have to get the house ready for said family birthday with the grandparents alone, after a week of solo parenting.

[+] The Valkyries won the first two games of their semifinal series against the Aces this past week.
[-] They didn’t win either game by much and the next game is in Las Vegas.
[+] I got Pumas (on sale for $50!) that are a perfect shade of Valkyries purple. I love them so much!
[-] After watching the first two games at home, we’ll be missing game three because of a dinner with my parents. I hope I can keep myself from checking the score on my phone…