babysitting, baking and other stuff

…I’m just gonna say it: I’m tired. I think it’s because I’ve been pretty busy the past couple of days, and I haven’t been doing a good job getting enough sleep. I got about 6 hours (not enough for me) on Tuesday night, took a two-hour nap on Wednesday afternoon because I wasn’t fit for anything else by two o’clock in the afternoon, but then – of course – proceeded to have trouble falling asleep on Wednesday night! Then I had to get up early yesterday morning to go babysit, babysat until 2:30, and then took 2 ½ hours of ballet classes last evening. So, even though I got about 8 hours last night, I’m still catching up.

I’ve been babysitting my four-year-old cousin for the past two days from 8:30 until 2:30, and it’s been going really well. It’s nice for me that he’s introverted, because he pretty much plays by himself. So considering that I’ve been tired these past few days, I basically got to read while he played. Now, don’t get me wrong, I did play with him some, but I didn’t have to be at his beck and call all day. :) Now, starting next week, things will be much different because my nearly-six-year-old cousin will be there to for me to take care of, so I will have to juggle the dynamics of two brothers playing together. I better make sure that I’m well-rested by Monday afternoon, because I think it’ll be pretty much non-stop with the two of them together.

As the second topic of this post’s title states, I’ve been doing a good bit of baking recently as well. Yesterday evening, I made poppy seed muffins (or more like cupcakes) to go with the rest of some lemon cream cheese frosting we made for my dad’s birthday cake. (I made one recipe, my mom looked at it and said, “This won’t be enough for a layered cake,” made another half-recipe more, then it was too much! Hehe. :) Today when I got home from babysitting, the urge to bake seized me again, so I settled on trying to make some scones for an afternoon tea for me and my dad (we’re the only ones home until late tonight). So I found a recipe for oatmeal raisin scones in The Joy of Cooking – wonderful book! – but of course, I changed the recipe a bit. :) Why use all white flour when you can use some whole wheat flour? And why use only raisins when you have dried cherries and apricots too? So I whipped those up, along with some mock Devonshire cream – cream cheese, sour cream, and confectioner’s sugar…mmm :) – and cranberry-apple iced tea, in under an hour, and my dad and I had a nice snack. I have to admit that I am proud of myself for being able to make everything quite efficiently, and I’m also very happy with how the scones turned out. I can’t claim much credit for that though, because when the recipe contains more than a stick of butter and you follow it closely, how could you go wrong? :)

In other news, I was trying to accept my financial aid this evening, but for some odd reason, my scholarship is not showing up as a financial aid award this year like it did last year, and my university is offering me loans to cover my expenses like I don’t have a scholarship! Aaaaaaaaah!! I’m a little aggravated that I won’t be able to figure out what’s going on for three more days, considering that it is already past close-of-business for the week. Another annoying thing is the fact that my uni’s website is so badly organized and infrequently updated that I can’t figure out exactly how much my tuition and room for this year will cost me and my parents. I can figure out how much they cost last year, but that’s not as helpful as it could be, now is it? Everyone knows that tuition and room always increase… :P

So, I guess that’s pretty much it…I get to have special time with my dad tonight :) because my mom and sister are on their way back from visiting a university that my sister is considering for grad school, and my little brother is on a Boy Scout beach camping trip this weekend. So we are having appetizers for dinner, and watching the rest of Two Towers that we couldn’t watch last night. Really, we only started it last night…I think we watched maybe 45 minutes, so we still have about 3 hours to go! The Lord of the Rings movies are some of my favorites, but since my mom doesn’t like them and my brother is still too young for them, I don’t get to watch them very often. (Plus, they are so long!) So I am planning to enjoy my evening immensely and try to catch up on sleep. :)

May the grace of our Lord be with you all!