Day 24: Snow Days Are For Baking

Today was a high chance of snow, do my boss at Brickz for Kids let me know yesterday that there was a high chance of my preschool class being canceled.

So this morning I had to be productive to make up for yesterday's just nothingness. I had to clean my bathroom and do my laundry. The laundry was most important since I am leaving for Georgia in a day and I like to pack early to make sure I have everything. Lists are the best for packing, I honestly think they are my salvation. They super help me keep organized. 

By the time I was done with cleaning my bathroom and starting my laundry, it was around 12. This is when I would start debating on working out and getting ready for work. Young and I made plans to work out at 5:30-ish, so I didn't have to think about that. Luckily I got a text from my boss saying that classes were canceled since it started to know at 10-11 AM. 

Since there  was no work and it was snowing, this meant that I could bake the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie n' Fudge Brownie Bar. This I, of course, found on Pinterest, my pictures do not do it justice, but wow it is delicious. 

I actually didn't have enough Oreos since this week and last, Hyman and I have been eating them. So the original has so much more. 

I left this out to cool for about 3 hours before cutting it and it was still hot and fudgey in the middle. 

I had it as a dessert treat with vanilla ice cream and chocolate fudge on top. I will say that I do not do it justice like the website does. I am just not that artistic. 

Currently as I am writing this, I am in absolute pain from the work out Young and I did, plus no recovery from my work out yesterday. We did a 30 minute dance work out from PopSugar Fitness on Youtube. My thigh are just fatigued to the point of pain. I know that it is worth it and it is healthy, but wow. I am beat. Tomorrow I am doing yoga without a doubt or I might continue the pain depending on how much packing I get done to night.

I wish the music matched the moves we learned today and towards the end I was really dizzy and worried about my vertigo; but all in all it was a lot of fun. 

Young and I was laughing a lot during this. It didn't feel like it was too crazy of a work out. I think the best part of having a work out buddy is that you don't feel like you are working out you are having fun together. You are achieving a goal with someone, I think it is more fun. But I don't want to be solely dependent on Young. I was last year and when she moved I just stopped working out which was bad. I want to continue no matter what. That is what I would like to achieve. 

Day 18: Why do my groceries end up costing so much?

I woke up around 10 since we had a late night of watching the Raid 2 and I had to facetime with my brother at like 10AM. The movie didn't end until like 1AM, my housemates were super tired after we were done watching. They seemed to like it.

I woke up to no real food that was good for me. So I made Shin Ramen Black with an egg (yolky) and a cup of kale. I then added some kimchi for more veggies, Sriracha, and lemon juice. It was pretty delicious. It just came to bite me in the butt later, much later. It was not pretty. Young actually came home and found me in the bathroom. Ramen retaliation. I love spicy but spicy does not love stomach.

I started to wash my sheets and clean my bathroom. I tried cleaning it with a dryer sheet since on Pinterest I saw that it would cut the cleaning in half. It was like the same but my bathroom smelled awesome and I didn't have to scrub since the dryer sheets were scruffy.

After showering, I went to Safeway to go shopping, and from my previous post, my groceries ended up being $118. I got about 43 items. I got lemons, tater tots, green beans, sweet potatoes, spinach, italian seasoning, string cheese, parmesan cheese, cheddar cheese, greek yogurt, hummus, cucumbers, baby carrots, berries, sweet onion, chocolate chips, brownie mix, cupcake liners, cool whip, frozen broccoli, chocolate sauce, oreos, sausage, panko bread crumbs, ground turkey, red wine vinegar, parsley flakes, chicken, and steak.

I think I get too much, I need to work on how much I get since I feel like I am sharing my food, which I don't mind. But I need to work on getting food for just me. But I feel like that is a selfish thought. I just need to work on actually getting things I need for that week. I think I need so much but in the end I only use about half of it.

After I put the groceries away, I started to work on making turkey meatballs which was going to be by meat for a couple of days. I used a large mixing bowl to combine ground turkey, italian seasoning, egg, salt, pepper, panko bread crumbs, cheese, cayenne pepper, garlic, and onion powder. I used my hands to make balls and baked them in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

I don't think the cheese was a good idea since it oozed out. But they came out great and can be added to any pasta sauce. I like using tomato sauce with it. I also made about a liter of pesto sauce as well to finish off what was left of my kale in the refrigerator. I put the extra sauce in the freezer to save for a later date.

Young invited me to go to Zumba at Gold's Gym with her coworker. It was a ton of fun, this was the first Zumba class I took where instructors were white. It was fun, there were little to no Asians like I am used to at other Zumba classes. We even talked about going to an Xpose class that is free for a trial since it is a pole class.

We came home and realized that we left our IDs at the gym so we had to go all the way back to gym and get it. So we didn't get home until about 9 and started to finish making our dinner. We decided to watch Big Hero 6 while we ate. Young was able to finish making her food first, so I let her eat first. Once my stuff was done which was pasta, red sauce, and meat balls, I sat with Young to watch the movie. I forgot to turn off the stove, luckily Hyman caught it and turned it off. I didn't know at all. He didn't say anything to me until I asked though, which I thought was weird. I would have told myself something a long the lines of: "Hey Dummy, learn to turn off the stove!" Yeah I apologized a lot for almost causing a fire. I am just not the smartest. Life Lesson of the day: Always turn off the stove. 

Day 4: All I Hear Are Ghosts

The day started off with me making my bed and having plans to cook about a pound of maple bacon and cleaning the kitchen. I remember my mom talking to me the night before about how she feels it is unfair how much I clean here at my new place compared to cleaning at home. I completely understand why she feels this way, but if I don't clean here no one will. If I don't clean at home, our cleaning lady or my parents will; yes this is a spoiled point of view but this is how I am thinking.

I completely made a mess of the kitchen when I cooked my bacon. I was trying to figure out how to place the bacon fat into another place to go into the trash, but I stupidly used a styrofoam bowl, which I thought would hold up for some reason. The bottom of the bowl was melted through. So, there was fat and grease everywhere in the kitchen. It took me about a half an hour to cook and clean up the bacon but about an hour to clean the kitchen. I honestly don't mind cleaning. I feel like I am rearranging things in the kitchen and I am worry that they will not like it. The house smell like straight syrup for the rest of the day, I used the exhaust and everything. I definitely need to get a candle for the kitchen or open a window when I am making that bacon.

Both Young and Hyman are so nice to me, I am scared they won't be honest with me to spare my feelings. I hope they will be honest about how I am trying to insert myself into their house and their lives right now.

After cleaning the kitchen, I heard these voices coming from the basement where Young's room is. I thought it was a neighbor's TV being really loud, but as I was sweeping downstairs, the voices were louder. My initial reaction: Ghosts are in the house. So, I snapped myself being scared to Young. She later explained to me that her laptop might have turned on when she accidentally touched the screen. These are the thoughts in my mind: ghosts. I am not atypical thinking person. I also thought this is later in the night when I was changing to go to bed, and I could hear muffled voices. My first reaction was: GHOSTS! But when I really thought about it, it was Hyman talking on the phone I guess.

I vacuumed my room, which really helped since I will like my hair is everywhere. I feel like my room is a lot cleaner. I really need lately.

Then I did some yoga for beginners. I forgot how serious yoga is, it is all about breathing, but wow right now a day later. I am sore. Super sore. I will keep doing yoga once a day. But I wish Fitbit would track yoga better, it said that I was not active yesterday even though I did yoga for 40 minutes and walked up 18 flights of stairs.

I was offered an interview to babysit for a family in Severn. I searched the address it was 2 minutes away, which was amazing. I was really excited and hoped that I was start building up families around here. I met them after I trained for Brickz For Kids, which I feel more confident about after training with Judy. She had more control over the children and it was a larger group than the day before. She seemed really sweet and loved the fact that I had a lot of questions about the program. She is 19 years old and was about to call herself old until I mentioned how I was 25. She just found out that she is pregnant and seems really excited about having her baby. It was awesome talking her and seeing how long she has been with the program.

The family was really nice and wanted me to start on Saturday. This makes me sad since I wanted to come home home to Germantown home on Friday night to eat my dad's food. Money will always win out in my mind since I am poor. So, I will be going home a day later than I thought. This makes me really sad, but I have to go what I have to do.

Day 3: Eating Like a Poor College Student

I woke up and started to clean my bathroom since... well I blew it up. It was disgusting. But I gave it a good scrub and deep cleaning, under the toilet rim and in my shower. It was super satisfying to shower in my bathroom. I felt clean and the place felt super clean.

After cleaning it was breakfast time, so I cooked my ground turkey and made myself a oatmeal pasta bowl. It was great, but looked like a mushed mess.

I came up to my room to blog, put my face on, and get ready for my training. I went to an Elementary school as part of my new position as a Teacher for Brickz for Kids. I am really excited about the job. I just did not feel that confident about myself and the position. The person I trained with did not seem to like our boss and did not have control of the children. I was worried that it would all be like that, and I do not do well with chaos.

I went there from about 2:45 util 5:00PM, I was so hungry when I got home that I sat and watched CSI:NY as a crushed a half bag of carrots, greek yogurt, and cottage cheese.

I came up to my room and hung out solo for a while until my housemates came home around 6-7PM. We all had dinner together. They had their leftovers and I had a bowl of honeynut chex with almond milk. Hyman made a comment about my cereal and offered me some of his food, it made me feel like I was so poor. Haha. But I know it was out of a good place, but it kicked me into a new place that I should be eating better. I am eating like I am a poor person. I don't really eat any veggies with my meals. I am eating them as a snack. That is not how my meals should be going.

I guess for me it is conflicting since I will only be here for a week. I want to make the most of my food so I am trying to make sure that I don't get anything that will spoil or that I can finish in a week.


My idea is to start planning for a week, making sure that I plan all my meal and all the ingredients for the week. This is my first step to becoming an independent adult: planning and buying my groceries for the week.

What are some recipes or weekly planning tips anyone can give me? It would really help me out a lot. I was looking into Rachael Ray's 3 meals in a day recipes. But I am just worried about starving.