T minus how many days?!

Christmas is in full swing around here! I officially began baking tonight, and I'm about a week behind. As a result, I am having to double up on cookies and goods per day. Today, I did 5 dozen chocolate chip and M&M cookies and 2 dozen chocolate crackle top cookies (a new one for me this year!). Tomorrow will be iced ginger cookies (who needs traditional gingerbread?), Wednesday I'm doing snickerdoodles and a struesel cake for my dad AND apple muffins for my grandma. I thought about doing sugar cookies, but the grocery store was out of every reasonable color of icing OR sprinkles, so I think I might do peanut butter instead. I have some red sprinkles (I could have sworn I had green, too. Maybe some more digging?), and I have a little semisweet chocolate left, too. So maybe some plain peanut butter, some with sprinkles, and some half dipped in chocolate? Sounds like a plan :)

In addition to my Betty Crocker accomplishments today, I had a major WIN moment, too. Like I said last night, Tyler is all about his guitar. Well, today, he brought out his acoustic to play while he was sitting on the couch, and he was trying to do the opening bars of Nothing Else Matters by Metallica. I was sitting here, listening, and it occurred to me that it sounded "off". A little known talent of mine: I have pitch perfect hearing. I don't know why, but I do. Tyler seems to, also. But for whatever reason, it wasn't occurring to him right away that his guitar needed to be tuned. He kept trying, though, and he finally said "I wish Matt was here". To which my reply was "Why?" (not what I said in my head, though lol). He said "I think my guitar is out of tune". I said "I think you're right, but I also think we could tune it without him". And Captain Skeptical said "How?" So I told him to give it to me. He reluctantly handed it over, and with only a couple of minutes and a few adjustments, I did it! I DID IT. I tuned Tyler's guitar, by ear, myself. ME. I was like WOW. And Tyler was super impressed. I guess sitting there listening to Matt do it a thousand times embedded something in my brain because I knew how to do it lol. It was a major Mom Win moment, and an even bigger FUCK THE EX moment haha.

And, just like that, Tyler was playing the opening bars to Nothing Else Matters, IN KEY. I was so happy. For both of us lol.

Tyler finally has a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so hopefully we can get these allergies and asthma under control. Of course he was having big time trouble breathing tonight. He usually does when we don't have an inhaler. It's the law of averages. I'm going to try to get it resolved tomorrow so we don't have these kinds of problems anymore. Thankfully, his dad can't hold us hostage anymore by refusing to give me insurance info, doctor info, or taking care of it himself. It's very liberating!

I'm freaking exhausted. Luckily, we get to sleep in again tomorrow! Gotta say, I'm not hating the fact that I don't have to get up and take Tyler to school. And, thankfully, he is already talking about when he will ride the bus and go to school up here, so he knows it's borrowed time at his current school. I just explained that I can't drive him to school for the rest of his life, and frankly, if I have custody, it's not legal for him to attend school there while he lives here. In fact, I'm sort of surprised that his school hasn't said something to me, because they know he's not with his dad right now, and that I don't live in the district. The only thing we have on our side is the current court order, which states Tyler must attend school in the district his dad lives in. And I'm not moving to South County, sorry. So Tyler will likely finish the school year there and then change this summer and start his new school in the fall. The good news is, he has tons of friends here already from playing outside and at the park all the time, so it won't be a completely new start. And school is school. One is pretty much the same as the other.

I might try to blog more tomorrow. I do have a couple of topics I want to talk about. Some things I have been tossing around in my head the last few days. So, until then, here's to a great night's sleep!

OH, and ps: Heavy Metal Parrot thanks you for your time!