Two, and three.

First, the Oatmeal. I was out shopping the other day in the middle of the afternoon. I had actually made a shopping list and was going to stick to my budget so I was feeling pretty good about life. We (meaning myself, Orclette and Miniorc) got to the cereal aisle and I thought about buying some. Cereal is rather expensive, however, when you compare it to Oatmeal, so I decided that I was going to be virtuous and buy the cheaper option. It was a great idea until the next morning when my morning brain threw a fit against my afternoon brain because my morning brain DOES NOT COOK. Not even the minuscule amount of cooking that it takes to make Oatmeal. So the moral is: do not do your breakfast shopping with your afternoon brain. Secondly, the Shirts. I was switching out the kiddos summer clothes for their winter ones (it's just now getting cold here) and I discovered that the Orclette had practically nothing warm to wear. So I packed the kids up and headed out to Savers, one of our local...

I think we are. Everybody we know is having a rough or stressful or life-changing semester. Ours is simply stressful; some grades haven't been what we wanted them to be and there are always teachers/fellow students to grapple with. And it's been this way every semester. I have end-of-the-semester stress symptoms every May and December. It seems to be worse this year, however. Last Fall I was still baking, actively planning Christmas and making sure my friends felt the love of the season. This Fall I collapse on the couch to start watching my stressed-out go-to show: The Gilmore Girls . No baking has been done, Christmas planning will just have to wait, and does anyone actually want a Thanksgiving dinner or can we just do pizza? I've analyzed the situation, of course, and I have come up with two reasons for our extra-tiredness: #1: Our class levels are higher. There is a huge difference between a 100-level course (that's a beginner class) and a 400-level class (that...