Life In A Nutshell

Cause I'm Just Too Cool To Pee Without It Burning

2009-09-24T23:19:00.004-04:00

I'm leaving for my trip, very shortly. So true to usual fashion, what happens? I get sick.

Gotta love it.

Last week I felt like I was getting a UTI, but then the next day it went away. So I carried on with life, until yesterday when I felt like my whole crotch was burning off. I was ready to flush my nether regions with bleach, just to lessen the burn. This, warrants a trip to the doctor.

So I go, very reluctantly. I've only had one panic attack in my life, but I came about 2 seconds away from having another one, just at the mere thought of all of those sick people sitting there with me. Thankfully, no one looked "ill for real", and I made it out of there just fine.

That is, after the mental games with the doctor, who apparently thought I showed up at that germ infested place, just to get antibiotics for an infection that doesn't exist. Yep, that was top priority on my list for the day buddy. Thanks.

Anyhow, I procrastinated and didn't even get my stuff packed until today- a probable first for me, because I am always packed days, sometimes weeks, in advance. But now? I'm ready to roll.

Be back next week ;)

Tourist For A Day

2009-09-20T23:33:00.021-04:00

I had a nice day playing tourist in my own town. It was fun to walk around and take pictures, and look generally lost/confused. I have learned though, that my town is better seen in person, it's really hard to capture what a cobblestone street looks like in a picture, without it looking like...well, just a cobblestone street. I promise that there are lots of little neat-o shops and stores that line each side. If you want to know how nice it is, then you'll just have to come and see for yourself ;)

And so, without further adeu, here is what I have captured of my town. I started off the day with my little point and shoot camera, I suspect that if I would have carried around my Cannon beast, I would have had better pics. But I also would have had sore shoulders and a potential migraine by the end of the day..

(apparently I made the pics small, click on them to enlarge..I think.. ;) )

Starting off my journey....so NOT the side of the horse that you want to find yourself behind, with windows down..

The fort...one of those that you definitely have to see in person to appreciate. It's big, and ...fort-like. No, it really is neat, it's just huge and not camera friendly ;)

The old town sits right on the bay- which leads into the river (the site of husbands lack of boat driving and sign reading skills), and right into the ocean. You're basically looking at all 3 of them in this picture-labeled for your enjoyment.

A view of one of the main streets, from the fort.

Soldiers, on a coffee run ;)

A few of the town in general

The Casa Monica Hotel- gorgeous inside (didn't go in this time)

This is Flagler College- once a hotel, then converted to an all girls college. They give tours everyday while people are in class. Part of me has to think that would be distracting. At any rate, it's a beautiful school.

Not bad for a City Hall, huh?

This one's for you Bridgett ;) (the store is called Notions and Potions)

I just liked this one- the town square has the oldest, most beautiful, huge trees everywhere. Lots of shade and Spanish Moss, it's very quiet and serene most days :)

Well there you have it. My heavily-pictured post on my life as a tourist in my own town for the day. I got a few weird stares because I think at this time of the year, most people are locals. I was also alone, and walking and snapping pictures at the same time, so I'm sure I looked a bit goofy. It was a beautifully hot and humid day too :) I walked all through the town until I got to the dress shop, only to realize I had forgot my credit card in my car. Needless to say, after all that sweaty walking, I came home dressless, but still satisfied ;)

Bitches

2009-09-19T22:37:00.004-04:00

Side note- I wanted to title this entry "Cattyness", but I'm not totally sure if it's spelled like that, or as cattiness*, so, Bitches will do. :)

I'm finding myself sitting here tonight wonder why there is so much hatred in the world, why so much rudeness? I've seen it first hand this week- although the issues have been very mild, I've seen it. Both ironically have been in the facebook world, and I'm considering just deleting my page altogether. Just tonight, I actually had a girl tell me that I have NO CLASS because I said that I hoped a football team would lose! Seriously people, who gives a rats ass about football enough to insult someone they don't even know. Who?! As much as I would really just love to give people a peace of my mind, I try really, really hard to not hurt other's feelings, or put them down. I want my kids to be good people when they grow up, and I do try to lead by example. And so anyway, here is my virtual toast to you, BITCHES, for being just that- bitches.

I feel better now ;)

This weekend has been very nice and relaxing. Today we rented a boat, and explored our town from the other side- the water. It was a really nice day, despite the fact that son hated the boat. Yup, my son who loves nothing but being home and playing, also hates boats. He was saying "I don't want it, I don't want it" long before we ever even got on the boat. We took our chances anyway, and after a little bit of crying he finally settled down and just spent the rest of the trip laying on me. His ears are really sensitive lately, and he seems to cover them a lot when something is loud, so he spent part of the time on me, ears covered. He survived though, and I'm hoping the next time we try it, it won't be so bad.

The highlight of the trip was when husband was going wide open, which mind you is not that fast in the ~~minivan of the sea~~ pontoon boat, and we came upon a sand bar, literally in the middle of a really deep river. Granted we were only going about 20mph, but then we came to an abrupt stop, and quickly realized what happened. Husband freaked, and starts the motor full speed ahead, and we're going nowhere. I finally convince him to settle down, and we decide there's no other option but to push the boat. So, in the middle of our very deep river, husband gets out. The water is not even waist deep, and he pushes us out of there to safety.

Of all days to forget my camera... !

I'm seriously thinking I should talk him into a re-enactment so that I can catch it in print ;) Once we got out of there and headed back towards the dock, we saw the rather large, bright red, buoys that were a giant warning to stay out of that area.

Note to self: when boating, look for red buoys. And try to avoid boating at low tide, for obvious reasons.

Tomorrow I'm determined to hunt down this really cute dress that I saw in the old town the other day, and to hopefully take some pictures too. As much as I bitch about living somewhere boring, I honestly do love living in Florida. And if you catch me in the right mood, the beauty of the old town definitely gets me :) It's never occurred to me to actually photograph where we live, because that is quite tourist-y, but in that, I realized that I have no pictures of our new town, and that's something I may want one day. In fact, I know it's something I'll want, I wanted it last week ;) So tomorrow I'm on a mission.

This next week is going to be really busy, lots of house cleaning to do, and packing, and did I mention that I'm leaving for Jamaica in just one (hopefully short) week? :)

*((According to spell check, it's cattiness, but Bitches has grown on me)). My blog, my rules. ;)

The Old Town

2009-09-15T00:19:00.004-04:00

Things around here have been crazy to say the least. I had NO clue how big of a transition it would be for daughter to go from Kindergarten to 1st grade. She's expected to read 20 minutes a night, and has to document it to be reviewed each week, or she's penalized. We also have math homework, plus spelling homework, which takes the longest of all of them. I'm pretty sure I giggled a little when I heard someone say that 1st grade was hard, but they weren't joking. Obviously they meant it was hard for the parents, because 1st grade is kicking my ass. We do all of this in addition to gymnastics, Girl Scouts, and soccer, while still trying to maintain an 8:30-9:00 bedtime. So far, it's not working out so great, but I'm sure we'll fall into place soon enough. I had a much better routine last year, just have yet to make it there this time around.

The weekend was nice and low key. My parents flew in on Friday, which was also husband's birthday. We ate at a local Cuban (Spanish? I don't know) restuarant in the old town of St Augustine. I have to say that the old town grows on me more each time that I go there. Plenty of people obviously love it, since they vacation here. To me, it was a bit of a let down from the start. Pretty crappy thing to say about the oldest city in America (literally), BUT the reason I was let down was because we left a tiny hole-in-the-wall town to move to a big city. We got to the big city, and realized that the crime and crappy school system was so piss poor, that we had to move the next town over in order to get a good education for our kids, and refrain from having a cap busted in our asses. This town is St Augustine, which happens to be about the same size as the town we moved from, and a lot older and somewhat outdated. We're not all the way in town, but rather in a golfing community about 20 minutes out, so we're conveniently located to nothing, but at least we're midway between the city and the town. Anyhow, Friday was perfect. The dinner wasn't great, but we were finally low on humidity, and there was a wonderful breeze that was preceeding the storm coming in. It was dark with a crystal clear sky, and walking around the old town was wonderful. One of these days I'm going to actually take pictures of where we live. Seems like that would make sense, no? We had lots of rain Saturday, but all in all it was a great visit.

The highlight of the trip had to be when we went to the outlet mall. Husband and I took son into the Disney store, and daughter was with my parents. They then decided to tell us when we came back, that daughter went into the store to find us (we weren't in there) and sent me into utter panic that she had been lost/stolen/kidnapped. Oh what, you don't see the humor in this?

Yeah, me neither. It didn't go over too well. Ugh.

With this trip behind us, it puts me one step closer to my GIRLS TRIP, which is less than 2 weeks away! I've got a lot of personal things- internal debates, struggles, and annoyances going on right now. I'll save it for another post, but let's just say I really am ready for this trip!

Cleaning Crew

2009-09-06T00:56:00.004-04:00

I'm lacking in updates, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes I just want to come on here and ramble. Nice for me, boring as crap for you. ;)

At this point, I am doing what I do best, which is preparing for company. Husband turns 30 on the 11th and so my parents are coming to watch the kids so we can go out.

Right..my parents are spending a few hundreds of dollars to come down for my husbands birthday? Not so much. We welcome company at any time, so I guess that my mom felt that maybe since she called me literally 2 hours after daughter had left from visiting this summer and asked to come down, that she needed a good reason. At any rate, I need an escape and so I'll take what I can get. Don't know where we're going or what we're doing, but I am ready for a moment of sanity. I'm thinking a night of game playing at Dave and Busters, because I am all about any place that serves alcohol AND tells adults to play games. Does it get any better than that??

Once my parents leave on the 14th, it will be 11 days until my mother in law and bestie get here for the girls cruise. No, mother in law isn't going, but merely providing her child watching services to the kids, because husband can't. That's a whole other rant in itself.

So one would think, well I will spend that 11 days getting clothes laid out (I am a very detailed packer, people),doing my normal day to day things, and relaxing (does that happen, seriously?) etc. But what will I be doing?

Scrubbing the ever loving shart out of my house.

This sounds ass backwards to me- I'm getting ready to leave on a trip and I am cleaning like a mad lady? Unfortunately, true.

I don't know why, but when my mother in law visits, she also thinks that she has to clean my house. Don't get me wrong, it's nice, but I object. I like to do things my way, on my terms. It's safe to say that she does them as close to the way that I do as possible, but what I have issue with is that fact that she's supposed to be here watching the kids, not cleaning. While I am confident in my own abilities to do both, I'm not confident in anyone else's. I'm just weird like that. When she cleans, she goes all out and so it really takes a lot of her attention. She is also on the heavier side, and when she works on the house all day, then her knees get really messed up and she gets grouchy. It's hardly the ideal situation. On top of that, she also does my laundry. And when I say does laundry, I mean DOES laundry. She folds socks for crying out loud. She folds underwear, blues are only washed with blues, browns with browns, you get the point. It's quite the production, and now I see why she hates laundry so much. It's an all day and night job. I also do not enjoy my mother in law washing my underwear. Is that not a bit weird? Just a bit?

So...this means that I literally will have to spring clean my house once my parents are gone. It's the ONLY way to ensure that she doesn't do it while she's here, and it's one less thing that I will have to worry about. Right now I'm contemplating hiring someone else to do it for me. Of course the fact is that once she's here means that we will be headed to Jamaica, and that is a fantabulous reward for all of the hard work that I am sure to put in beforehand.

There is no other real news around here to report. I'm in one of my funks about living in Florida. Don't get me wrong, I love the state. I love our house, and the schools and everything like that. But it's hard to meet people, and it's even more hard when I don't put myself out there. Obviously you can't make new friends, if you are at home 24/7. It's definitely a different dynamic because I am the youngest person with kids our kids ages around here. People are all around unfriendly it seems. I've met about 4-5 people that are really nice and lots of fun, but I miss that "best friend" feeling of being able to call and talk to someone, or go out to dinner or just hang out while we're getting groceries, etc. There are actually 2 other moms on my street that are my age- literally across from my house- that have kids that are the same ages as my kids--the girls even ride the bus with daughter, and yet, they don't speak. Maybe I stink and I don't know it? I dunno. All I do know is that I need to start whoring myself out for some adult friends soon, before I go nuts. It really is a daunting task, one that I'm trying to work up to. I went to a moms night out last night and it was really fun, I knew the main girl hosting it because our kids are in Girl Scouts together, but it's hard to meet new people in a house of 25 drinking women ;) ::Sigh:: Still hoping to find that balance and that the answer comes to me soon, before I get the itch to just tell husband to move us somewhere else that I may be bitter towards too, and start all over again. I feel like I've been home with my kids for so long and not had to actually go out and meet new people, because we always lived near family and old friends, and now when I am faced with the situation I'm just all around awkward. Bah. Pardon the pity party.

Besides all of that, I've had a stiff neck/shoulders/3 day migraine thing going on, that I'm finally recovering from. Soooo.. needless to say, when my parents come to visit this weekend, husband and I may end up with a hotel room somewhere so that I can drink myself into a relaxed state once again. ;)

The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of School Bells

2009-08-25T12:50:00.004-04:00

Daughter started back to school yesterday- I think that she had a great day.I have to say that so far, I am really pleased with her teacher, and just the school in general. Florida ranks terrible for public schools, so I'm glad that our county tested #1 in the state. It makes me feel better about being here, even though we are a bit too far out from town for my taste. As we were walking in, her principal said "Hi (name)!". It really amazes me that with 600+ kids, he knows names, and especially of the smaller kids who have only been there a year or so. She's learned to read and spell, and has learned SO much in her year there. Color me impressed :)

I have to admit, and I hate to admit, that I am really having issues about her being in school this year, due to the whole Swine Flu thing. I can honestly say that this is the one and only time I wish we still lived in WV, back in the safe little bubble, feeling practically removed from society. My family has barely heard a thing about the flu, I guess no one is going out of town, and no one is coming in either in that area. So while as a nurse, I know what has to be done to keep from getting sick, there are only so many times that you can drill cleanliness into a 6 year old's head, and most likely it still will not strike a cord. I have tried to let her know that this can be very serious in some cases, and after all, I don't want any of us sick. Or worse. :( I think that I probably wouldn't be bothered, had we not had 4 deaths one county over from us, the most recent being a woman who was only 26- a year younger than me. Ugh. It's one of those things that is for the most part, out of my control. So I try not to think about it, but the bigger of a place you live, the more often you see it on the news. Damn the news.

In other not-so-exciting news, I had my annual GYN appt yesterday. I was 3 months past the time that I should have went- something that I've never done. Honestly, I feel like there are so many things wrong with my body, and then I feel like a nut case for mentioning them because at my age, I don't think I should have anything to complain about. But, I have been having dreadful periods, lots of cramping, and am SO tired that sometimes I am not sure that I can make it back off of the couch. Unfortuntely these are very vague symptoms, and so she's doing appropriate bloodwork to see if we can come up with any ideas. We have thyroid problems in the family, and she also suspects that I could be anemic or have a few vitamin deficiencies. She also said that my uterus is enlarged, and I may have fibroids. So, my friends, gynecologically I am falling apart. It could be a lot worse, so I will count my blessings and hope that my pap comes back normal. And hopefully soon, I can drag my ass out of bed and not pour a glass of Coke, so that I can get my bloodwork drawn. She was, at least, the nicest doctor that I have EVER met in my life, hands down, and I left out of there feeling like there may be hope after all. She also suggested birth control for my migraines, but I'm nowhere near that desperate yet. Don't get me started on how I feel about birth control, because I won't shut up about it. Let's just say, I don't take it. :) It has nothing to do with religious beliefs, I just hate the stuff, due to past experiences.

So there you have it my friends. A very, very boring update :) I have nothing of true excitement to report because we've been busy working on the house. Husband and I spent the entire weekend working on getting rid of things here to donate and sell, and I am pleased to say the least. Of course we didn't make it as far as getting it OUT of here, so once it's gone to Goodwill this weekend, I will be jumping for joy :) We have 3 closets totally full of stuff to get rid of, and threw away about 15 bags of stuff. Only about 2 hours later, it was more like 7 bags, because for some reason people came and dug through our trash once we went in. I can only assume that they take it and sell it. But seriously, they dug through my trash. It's true people, you honestly can't escape redneck, no matter where you live. :)

I Live To Hear Another Day

2009-08-19T22:33:00.010-04:00

Daughter and I survived our trip to see the Jonas Brothers. I honestly have to say that I've never heard anything so loud in my life. We've seen Hannah Montana in concert, and I've also been to many Nascar races without ear plugs. But this, my friends, was far more loud than those two combined. Just imagine over 20,000 screaming girls if you will ;) For a split second, I thought that I was never going to hear again. But thankfully, all is well today and the constant hummmmmmmmmm has disappeared.

I won't really go into too much detail because I am sure to bore everyone. We had great seats on the floor, 14 rows back. Of course anytime one of the boys came near us (there was also a walkway on each end, so at times we were a mere 3 seats away from them), the whole row squished on top of us for just a slight chance to touch one of them.Ugh. So seats on the floor? A definite mistake. When I went to buy them, it gave me seats in the lower level first and I got rid of them. I was thinking along the wrong lines- I was forgetting I was taking a 6 year old and not an adult. So for about 3 1/2 hours, we stood on our feet, and I held her the majority of the time because she couldn't have seen otherwise.

My arms hurt.

Some may say I'm crazy, or may say that you hate the Jonas Brothers, etc etc. Truthfully, I am glad that I can do things like this for my kids,and with my kids. Music has always been something that I love, and I hope that that passion is passed on to my kids. Music kept me going on many occasions in my teenage years, there are so many songs that I have identified with through my life. I can only hope that music is something that my kids love too, because it can be a great outlet. So as long as I think that what they like is appropriate, I'm more than glad to take them, regardless of personal opinion. I also have to say that I am a fan of talent. It seems like a lot of people these days make it based on so many other things. So to see a group of boys who sing, write, and play their own stuff is refreshing. There's nothing wrong with "just" being able to sing, but it's nice to see people who can play a guitar, and a piano, and drums, etc.

So what if my ticket collection ranges from the likes of Aerosmith to DMB to the Jonas Brothers? ;) I still remember in high school when my dad, the preacher, took me and a boyfriend to see Aerosmith because I was totally loving them. He didn't support the cursing, or the people in front of us getting high (lol) but he took me, for me. I remember that. What's important to me is having a great time,just like it was important to him, for me. When I was a teenager, I swore to myself that I would let my kids do whatever they wanted and that I was going to be a totally cool parent. Of course I'm nowhere near as easy going as I thought I would be, but anytime I can be the cool mom that I planned on being, I hope to do so. Sometimes, I feel much older than 27. Last night was a good example of that, but it didn't stop me from dancing and singing along, because I want to show daughter that having fun is possible no matter how "old" you are.

This little mini trip wraps up our summer travels. Looking back, we've definitely had an adventurous time over the last couple of months. From normal vacations, to my disastrous Bahamas trip, to our failed attempt at going to WV. I can only say that I am glad to end the summer on a high travel note instead of a low one. Sometimes I prefer not to go out in style, thanks.

Now we move into school mode on Monday, and then a few visits- my parents are coming for husbands birthday in September, and at the end of September is my girls cruise. Mother in law is bringing my best girl down with her, and we will take off to Miami the next day. Son did just fine here with husband while we were gone last night and so that makes me feel soooo much better about leaving him. He's been known to cry for me for hours at times, just when I'm making a trip to the store. So I'm hoping that a successful time away from me last night, coupled with the fact that he's been asking for mamaw, will mean that he's going to be fine without me for 5 days. Goodness knows I need a break and I'm excited for some girl time!! The ocean and beach soothe me, and the Caribbean sea is like a drug- I can't get enough of that beautiful blue water :)

With that, I will leave you with just a few pictures from our travels..

Daughter- in the car when our trip began:

A typical drive in Florida- long, flat, and sometimes rainy ;)

Tampa- or part of it:

Daughter, modeling her concert attire

Jordin Sparks from American Idol- she did a really great opening act, I was surprised and impressed!She looked great too!

A couple of concert shots- the second one being when they came out on a crane type thing and doused the entire lower level audience with foam and water. Personally I thought it was cool (and funny in a smart ass type way)- especially since they are boys and there are most likely a lot of girls in that audience that spent hours on their hair and makeup ;)

And finally, if you want even just a taste of what my eardrums were subject to last night, then view this and imagine it 100000000x more loud ;) It's at about the 1 minute mark where they are finally seen, and already singing. In person you could kind of hear it, on my camera it's so loud that you don't hear anything but screams. Whew.

I came, I saw, I conquered.

Another Day, Another Dollar (Spent)

2009-08-16T22:49:00.007-04:00

Every time my mom comes to visit, she brings something for my kitchen. It's kind of a crack on my less-than-spectacular cooking skills, and also a running joke that we have going now. Anytime she mails a package to son or daughter, I always get a "present" too. Sometimes it's tongs, (not to be confused with thongs because that would be too much fun), sometimes a spatula, an egg flipper or whatever they're called. You know, the kind of stuff that you're just itching to get in the mail. ;)

I'm sure I've mentioned many, many times that I love to shop. So the other day it dawned on me. I need a better and more functional kitchen, and I also love to shop. Why not combine the two?

I started by tossing all of my plastic. There have been sooo many bad things in the news lately about plastic, and I was just tired of even having to worry about it. so I tossed all of our plastic drinking cups and replaced them with glass.

Instant sophistication Riiiight.

Then I tossed all of my plastic storage containers and replaced them with glass, and tossed my plastic serving pieces and replaced them with some really neat wooden ones.

Bored yet? This is fun to me people! (No really, I just lack anything else to talk about).

Then I wondered, as much as I love to spend money, why have I had the same pot holders for almost 7 years now? They are filthy, burnt, and just gross. They barely even worked to begin with. So I bought new pot holders, and new dish towels too.

I think the main reason my kitchen lacked in updating is because that's just not fun. I'd much rather spend my money on fun things for myself and the kids, not to mention my Jeep guzzles gas and so a good chunk of money goes to that too. Plus, it's much more fun to make my mom feel sorry for me and my culinary deficiency, then she goes out and buys me all sorts of new serving things and fun glass stuff. Partly because she wants me to have it, but mainly because when she comes here and cooks, she gets tired of asking me for something, only to have me say "I don't know what that is". ;)

Not joking though, I usually don't know what she's talking about..

The end result is something that would bore you all to tears, much like I am sure the rest of this post has, so I will just post a picture of my kitchen, and not all the crap I put in it, in order to pat myself on the back for all of my hard work. ;)

Woot Woot Kitchen!

Moving on.

Things around here have been normal, quiet, and dull. I appreciate that at most times. Daughter has a terrible attitude problem, but nonetheless, we are leaving Tuesday for the Jonas Brothers concert. Had I not bought her the tickets for all of her hard work in kindergarten, I would have sold them by now. But her hard work in school still deserves to be rewarded, and so leave, we shall. I have to admit that I'm looking forward to going and relaxing. It kind of seems like a contradiction to go to a concert of thousands of screaming girls and claim to relax, but that's just how I roll.

Our only other news of excitement is this:

It doesn't appear that any of these things are going to cause problems for us, except that Bill is huge and we aren't sure where it's headed. As of now it isn't supposed to come to us, but I am sure we will deal with lots of rain and wind for a few days at least. After many, many days of 90+ degrees, a little wind may not feel so bad ;)

Home again, home again, jiggity jig...

2009-08-06T21:41:00.006-04:00

(Not our actual plane)

Home again, so soon, you ask?

Oh yes. I'm home.

Our trip (that never was) started off yesterday on a late note. Husband had a long day at work and came home about 6. We got on the road about 7, and headed to Orlando. No biggie, the airport is less than 2 hours away and we arrived with no problems.

We had a nice, new, hotel room. Of course with that came the new smell, and my overly sensitive nose. I managed to avoid the migraine that I was sure would occur, and so off to sleep we went.

Until I realized that we were in fact sleeping on THE loudest bed. ever.

I'm a total bed whore, and not in that way, just that I am very much in love with my own bed, and I have a hard time making it anywhere else. This bed wasn't nearly as rock hard as the one we had on vacation, but it was so damn LOUD! Seriously, every movement could be heard, and felt. Ugh.

When the alarm went off at 5am, I felt like I had just barely went to sleep..and I probably had :/ We got ready, and made our way to the airport for our 6:50am departure.

We squealed tires and screeched into the terminal with about 10 minutes to spare before take off, only to find out that the flight was delayed 30min. This actually played to our advantage because we were nearly going to miss the flight. Upon check in, the guy tells us that he cannot seat us together, we each have a seat in a separate row.

"So I'm supposed to let my 2 year old sit ALONE on a plane? Ha."

Thankfully, when we got to the gate we realized that he had sat us together after all- not sure what the mix up was. Oh and might I add, we weren't the very last people to check in- 2 guys beside us checked in and had to rearrange their luggage because they were going to have to pay a $50 overweight luggage fee. Why, you ask? Because he had a suit case FULL of drills, screw drivers, and tools of other various persuasions. When he found out that his suitcase was too heavy, he took them OUT of the suitcase and used them in his carry-on. Yeah, that made us feel safe. A guy with a bag full of drills and screw drivers.

Anyhow, we get to our gate and they make an announcement that the plane will not take off at 7:20a, but rather at 9:00a due to fog in WV. That's ok with us, we can tough it out for another hour. At 9:00a, the screen says our takeoff is "To Be Announced", and they come on and say that the weather is ok, but that they don't have paperwork on the plane that allows them to fly it..it's lost, they can't find it.

WTF?! This turned out to be a non-issue before too long, because they brought another plane over, changed the crew onto it, and loaded the luggage onto the plane. Only apparently we would soon find that this plane was not inspected. Or maybe it was, but whatever.

We finally get on board about 10am, 2 hour and 10 minutes after we should have already landed. As soon as we take off, son starts saying "I want down! I want down!", and he didn't mean out of his seat, he meant off of the plane. I start freaking out, thinking that he was going to freak out for the next hour and a half. I'm sure that he could tell that I was tense, but if you knew me "in real life", you would know that I am terribly afraid of flying and so there was no avoiding my freak out. I even tried to be tough and not take my nerve pill before we took off, but apparently I should have taken both of them ;)

Shortly after take off, son falls asleep and so I try to do that as well (didn't happen). We get about 30 minutes into our flight, and the plane takes a hard turn, only when I look out the window, we are actually turning almost a complete circle. I ask husband "Did we just turn around??".

For the next 10 minutes, people look somewhat confused, and the pilot calls the flight attendant 3 times during this period. With the last call, she looks a little concerned, and then an announcement comes over the speaker.

"Uh..ladies and gentlemen, in case you haven't noticed, we have turned around and are headed back to Orlando. We know that you've had a very long day, but we are getting some readings up here that something in the cockpit needs to be checked out. Uh...no reason for concern...just needs to be checked out..."

The next 25 minutes that followed were quite nerve racking. The plane did lots of weaving from side to side, a good bit of bumping, and due to being so close to where we took off from, we descended quite fast to be able to land. I was ready to have a heart attack, and throw up all at once. We land, HARD, and come to a stop. At this point I am telling husband "They have to let me off of here, you don't understand. I'm NOT staying on here and taking off again." Fortunately they made everyone get off, and at that point I am OVER the whole ordeal. It's been 5 1/2 hours and we're back where we started, son is exhausted and so are we, and 2 out of 3 of us are traumatized. At least son was being SO well behaved, I was quite impressed!

At that point, we make the decision to just go back home. They couldn't guarantee us when the plane would take off again or anything. It ended up only being 3 hours later, which wasn't so bad, but with a tired 2 year old and the bad flight, we just weren't willing to wait anymore. Husband called the corporate for the airline, and they actually gave us a full refund- or so they said. 24 hours later, it's not pending in my bank account, so I'm not sure what's going on there. Refunds through airlines are generally unheard of, but husband negotiates for a living most days, so it wasn't an issue ;) As long as the money goes back in there. If not, I just feel sorry for those people when he calls back. We are not the kind of people that are rude for no reason, or call to tell people off for the hell of it, but when husband called and the lady at corporate said "It's not my problem", well.. they are kind of on his bad side now.

We go to leave the airport, and I realize that son's carseat is underneath the plane as checked luggage. So a little bit more waiting, and coloring in son's notebook in the massage chairs, we were out of there. Husband was on such a roll that he even got us out of paying parking at the airport. Sometimes he is actually useful ;)

Of course the flip side to all of this is that while I was dreading the guilt we were going to get while visiting, we are now getting 10x more for not coming. I totally understand them being upset when we went from coming, to being late, to not coming at all, but the lack of understanding just annoys me to no end. No. End. I have to do what I can- as usual- to listen, but let some of it just roll in one ear and out the other- I can't deal with the constant guilt trips and phone calls of what we should have done, or what they would have done, etc etc. It's wondeful to be loved and cared for so much by family, but sometimes it can still annoy the crap out of me.

So now, husband has to get up at 5am tomorrow, drive 5 hours to meet mother in law halfway, get daughter, and then turn around and come right back home.

What a week......

Another travel..

2009-08-04T22:54:00.003-04:00

We're headed out again tomorrow-to WV. To "home", to pick up daughter- who has been there since the 26th of July. I think she's more than ready to come back, and we're more than ready to have her back :) She will more than likely come back with a big I can do anything I want, you're not the boss of me now, attitude. It's expected, and it will take awhile to get her back into normal mode, but I'm up to the challenge ;)

Due to what I am sure will be a guilt-induced,non-stop grief ridden trip, I've cut it short and have already planned out most of the time while I'm there so that I don't have to hear about living here and not there. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my family. They are awesome, and they have always been wonderful to me. You would never know by the insane amounts of complaining I do as of late, but I am very appreciative of the family I've been given. However, moving here put a strain on our relationships, and it's only just now starting to come back around. I know that for each person, they are only saying the things that they say out of love- but when you get those sayings from 5-10 people at minimum, I end up coming home emotionally spent. So I do what I can to be accommodating to others feelings, while drawing a line to make sure I spare my own feelings and sanity. It's what has to be done ;)

In the midst of all of this planning and preparing, son has taken on the task of completely disrupting his sleep schedule. I blame it partly on myself and summer, because we are a lot more flexible with bedtime during the summer, within reason. it started out with us just bumping bedtime back an hour for him- which put him in the 9:30ish range. When he goes to bed, he sleeps an average of 10-12 hours, which is normal for his age. However, over the course of the last few weeks, he has managed to push his bedtime back to midnight- and that's even with me not letting him take a nap. Ugh. I'm not really sure what has thrown him off so much, but it has definitely been worse since the Bahamas trip. I haven't really bothered to try to get him back on a schedule, just because we are leaving again tomorrow and I know that it would serve no purpose. Daughter was always good to sleep away from home, because we allowed her to sleep in the bed with us. However, I refused to have another kid in my bed for 4 years, and so son sleeps in his crib and does very well- but it makes travel difficult. Especially coming back home because then he wants to be in the bed with me since he's been able to do it while we were gone. Whew.

I say all of this to say, I am mentally beat. I go home, to two ill grandpas. My one grandpa who is living with the return of his cancer, and- against my advice- no one in the family has told him that they know that his cancer is back. It's a real communication issue, don't you think? My other grandpa was put in the hospital the day that we came back from the Bahamas- July 26th- and is just now being discharged. Only he has been in the hospital for so long that he is so weak. He's been through many, many, tests, and had to endure many days in a row that he couldn't eat. So he's very weak and has to be discharged to a local nursing home for rehab physical therapy. It's all VERY hard on my family, because he's nowhere near needing to actually be in a nursing home. He's very healthy normally, and very self sufficient, so for him to be in a nursing home is very frightening for him. Imagine being yourself- completely in your right mind and healthy, just weak, and being surrounded by Alzheimer's patients and people who are calling out and moaning all hours of the night. I have to admit for me, when I was in nursing school, the nursing home rotation was the hardest for me. You see lots of things that you don't want to see- you don't want it to happen to your elderly family members. You also don't want to see the people there that are neglected by family, and a lot of times neglected by the staff as well. It's a place full of people- often times too many- yet it always felt so lonely to me. So as you can imagine, having my totally healthy grandpa in a nursing home is quite traumatic for my family. If you've ever been in one, just imagine yourself there as a resident. Meh. :/

So in between seeking constant updates on my grandpa(s), dealing with guilt that sometimes creeps up on me for not being there, juggling a few personal problems of my own, and son's apparent late night party habit, I am spent. I can only hope that after this trip, life resumes some sense of normalcy and I can relax a bit.

Yeah right...

Pictures & Prayers

2009-07-31T01:23:00.006-04:00

I'm going to attempt to show off a few of our photos from our vacation, and our bahamas trip :)

Here's son and I in the pool- that's about as much of myself in a bikini that I'm willing to show on here ;)

How cool is this? Daughter, and my new underwater camera!

Son, in our condo (in Destin)-- it's rare that I get him to sit still for a pic, let alone smile for it!

Daughter,showing off her necklace and bracelet that my grandma got for her

The view from our hotel in the Bahamas- wouldn't you like to wake up to that everyday? Honestly I do have to say, that the water is much better from a distance. Freeport is quite north in the Caribbean- only 55miles off of the coast of Florida. So the water there, is not nearly as pretty as some of the other places we've been. But, it sure beats the Atlantic ;)

And, the kiddos..

Sometimes they do love each other! Don't let this picture fool you though ;)

I have a lot more pictures, but most would be boring to anyone that isn't family ;) There isn't much else going on here- I just wanted to send a quick shout for some prayers and positive thoughts coming my grandpas way. He's still in the hospital. They aren't sure what is technically wrong with him, but he's required 6 pints of blood thus far. He's totally conscious and everything, but they can't figure out where the bleeding is coming from. It was looking like he was going to go home without a diagnosis like he did in March, but all of the sudden they are concerned about prostate levels (PSA), and also that his bone marrow is not producing platelets, which explains why he keeps on bleeding- he's not clotting. He's having a CT scan tomorrow and we're not sure what they are looking for. He has THE biggest bitch of a doctor, and I'm having a really hard time convincing myself to stay here and not fly up there to beat her ass. I fail to see why people would ever want to go into medicine, when they completely lack compassion. She waltzed into the hospital room tonight, told him "You have a vein in your heart that is going to burst at any moment", and walked out. When he tried to ask her a question, she said they would talk Monday, and that was that. Does anyone closer to WV want to go and beat her ass on my behalf? Seriously, I'm having a hard time not making a phone call to let that woman have it BIG time. So, send lots of good thoughts his way because he surely needs them.

Reopening, and the Trip That Should Have Never Been

2009-07-27T12:26:00.003-04:00

Before I go into details of what could have possibly been THE single worst trip of my life, I wanted to say that I am sooooo excited to be a part of a wonderful blog, Chic Chat! The ladies are awesome and have invited me to join in contributing to the blog with them. It's an all-topic, all- encompassing, everyone welcome type of place to be! We're re-launching the blog today, so come along, won't you? :) Just follow the cute little box below! :)

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My trip, is quite possibly the single worst trip ever. Before this, I would have told you that it was my 3rd anniversary trip that would have taken that award, but by far this trip has taken first place.

It started Thursday, with a lonnnnng morning with the kids. I was finishing packing, and also trying to get the house cleaned, because I am one of those weird people who cleans before vacation. By the time 3pm rolled around and we backed out of the garage, I was exhausted and dreading the 5 hour drive.

We got about 2 hours down the road and my phone rang, it was mother in law. Come to find out, their flight is delayed, and not just by a little bit. By 5 HOURS. I was running on time, giving myself just enough time to get to the airport and greet them at their gate at 7:30pm. Now, they didn't even take off until 10:15 pm.

By the time their flight landed, and the taxi cab driver got lost and called asking for the hotel phone number, it was almost 2am when they walked into the hotel room.

Did I mention that we had a 4:30 am wake up call? Yep. Ugh. :/

Rewinding back, the car ride down with the kids was definitely an interesting one. We've taken them on several lengthy car trips, but this was my first one that I had done alone. It could have been a lot worse, but I was hoping it would have been a lot better.

We arrived at the hotel, exhausted and hungry. I called in pizza to appease us all, and realized that we had no milk for son. During this time, about 20 min after checking in, the fire alarm goes off in the hotel. It sends daughter into a panic because she thinks there really is a fire, and it also sends son into orbit since he has over sensitive hearing now with the tubes in his ears. Oh, good times. Incidentally, said fire alarm also shut down the elevator and it didn't work again the whole time we were there (which was only about 3 hours, mind you) but it meant that we had to carry our luggage up and down 3 flights of stairs.

Waking up the next morning- or a mere 2.5 hours after we went to bed- was pure hell. The kids were exhausted, we were all grouchy, AND we were running late. Very late. We did make it on time though, to what I will forever refer to as the most in depth embarkation process in my life. We have been on many cruises, and this one was by far the craziest thing I had dealt with. It took over 40 sheets of my printer paper to print out all of our paperwork, and it took equally as much work to get on the boat itself. Whew.

For those that have ever been on an actual cruise, this boat is not that. It's merely a cheap way to get from the US to Freeport, and is often the method of transportation that the Freeport natives use to come to the US to shop. Everything over there is so expensive, that it's just cheaper to come over here and shop. Of course, there are people that use it for vacation purposes as well, because it's much cheaper than flying. So they do have activities, a casino, restaurant and gift shop on there. However, with that they also slow the boat wayyyy down in order to make money off of you. So while Freeport is a mere 55 miles off of the coast of Florida, they take 5 hours to get there. Plus at least an hour to get on and off the boat. Each way. OMG.

Once in Freeport, we were literally beat. We finally made it to our hotel at 3pm and checked in. We did manage to ask about an upgrade, a tip I learned while reading reviews of the hotel, and so we got an ocean front room for the same price. :) It was a gorgeous view! The hotel was far above and beyond what I was expecting, and the service, while slow, was excellent. But, after such a long and time consuming journey, we only had a couple of hours of beach and pool time before dinner.

Dinner was interesting- we walked into a restaurant that literally looked deserted. we later figured out that even though it was already 6pm, we were apparently early compared to when most people there dine. We unknowingly were seated in an area where local music was being set up to play, but it really added to the atmosphere. once they started to play, the masses of people swarmed the area and started to dance. By this point, daughter had fallen asleep at the table, and son was out dancing in the middle of the aisle (I'll try to post video of this at some point).

We ate our dinner, and woke daughter up to leave. As we are leaving, she literally just pukes in the middle of the restaurant floor. We were really shocked because normally she doesn't just throw up out of nowhere, and definitely not without telling me. It had to be from sheer exhaustion and traveling, because she was perfectly fine the next day. But, you can imagine my stress level by this point. Nothing has gone right, son is so tired and whiny, daughter has just puked, and I have lost what tiny bit of patience the sleep deprivation hadn't taken from me. We turned in early that night, for sure.

Waking up the next day, it was storming and so our actual beach and pool time was limited to about 4 hours...total. We decided to walk across the street to a local market, just to do something in the rain.

Keeping in mind that the Bahamas do not typically have franchised things- they have no Walmart, no major chains of anything- I was quite surprised when we found a Hello Kitty (Sanrio) store in the market. Daughter loves their stuff. Ever been in one of those? It's not your $2 Hello Kitty notebooks that you see in Target- it is $50 charm bracelets and even more expensive luggage, with some lower priced things mixed in. I happened to notice a good amount of seats (maybe 15-20) lined up out in front of the store, looking terribly out of place. But, my brain was fried and I never thought that something might have been going on. Not wanting to have son tear up the whole store, I took a seat outside and let daughter go in.

Then, in a dream like scene out of a movie, a crowd of people come out the door in suits and dresses. Am I in the middle of a wedding, a funeral? Here, at a Hello Kitty store?? I finally decide that I have no choice but to ask if I am about to be a part of something that I shouldn't be a part of, and I learn that it's their grand opening at that very moment.

This could only happen to us.

Here I am, seated with my overly active and loud 2 year old, in the midst of about 15 beautiful and well dressed Bahamian people, about to take part in what appears- according to the program- to be a very lengthy opening ceremony. Complete with pink and purple ribbon cutting.

I decide at the last minute that I need to get out of there- I figured either way, I'm most likely being disrespectful, but I'd much rather see the ceremony from inside than to be out there having son cause a scene. But what I didn't know, is that when I ducked into the store, mother in law did not follow. I look back out a few minutes later, and here she is standing there looking around while they are singing their national anthem, and I officially am about to burst into fits of laughter. It could be a "you had to be there" moment, but it was by far the funniest point of the trip. it turns out that if we would have been able to stay, they were going to let daughter walk through the ribbon. Why? Because she's following in my shop-a-holic footsteps. She was the first customer ;) I've tried to find an article about it online, but I can't. Trust me though, you don't make this kind of stuff up. :) We were in a rush to get back to catch a taxi to the boat, otherwise it would have been really neat to see the ceremony and let daughter be in it :)

The boat ride back was, well, hot for starters. Our air conditioning in our cabin wasn't fantastic, but it wasn't worth complaining over for a 5 hour ride. We sailed back through a storm, and it's felt a lot more on a boat like that then it is a big cruise ship. Thankfully, no more puking. Beyond that it just felt like it took forever, and once we pulled into port, I made a comment about how I felt like I was coming back from war. (No offense to soldiers, I don't mean real war, I mean personal war ;)) Upon pulling into port, we learned that my grandpa (a different one) has fallen ill and was put into the hospital while we were gone (his wife was the grandma that was on the trip with me). He is hopefully on the mend, but sadly I think that this past trip will be the last one my grandma makes, as she is now plagued with guilt for leaving him in the first place. I just wish our trip would have been much better, if it was her last then we definitely ended on a sour note- not on our terms personally, but just with a crappy trip.

The next morning, I dropped off my grandma, mother in law, and daughter at the airport. Daughter has gone back to WV to visit for a week or so, at which point I will pop a Valium and fly up there to get her ;) Daughter was trying not to cry- she wanted to go, but was still a little sad, just as you would expect a kid to be. Son and I made the journey home, and I was EVER so glad to be here. I've since talked to daughter and she's doing fine- I even called to ask her if she wanted me to sign her up for soccer this fall and she said yes, and gymnastics. But not dance. This saddens me greatly that my kid is already ready to take a break from dance! She does so well, but if it's not her passion then I cannot force her :/ Ugh, they grow up so fast!

Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away

2009-07-22T23:37:00.005-04:00

(Insert my drool here)

Aren't they beautiful? Ok, don't lie to me. These are two terribly hideous purses. However, what you may NOT have known, is that I am a lover of hideous purses. Acutally I'm just a purse whore in general. I've got my eye on these babies, and I've managed to convince husband to get me one of them. It's only a matter of time....did I mention that I am highly skilled in persuasive speaking too? ;) I get told at least a few times a week that I should be a lawyer. Mainly just because I like to argue, and refuse to lose ;)

I'm headed out again tomorrow for our Bahamas trip. Here's another fact for you- I'm all about the weather. I know that there is no way I would be smart enough to learn all of the science stuff about weather, but it's interested me for a long time. So, as I usually do before a trip, I go to the weather channel site. I also check out NOAA because they keep my anxiety at a low when hurricanes are approaching. I like to be informed. ;)

Well, you can imagine my surprise when just two days ago, the waters of the Caribbean were calm and still. Today? I get this.

Fun times, fun times. Oh, and trust me, it looks a lot worse on the weather channel than it does in my copied and pasted picture.

I'll be back Sunday, provided we get to the island to start with ;)

Home, if only for a minute

2009-07-20T23:07:00.003-04:00

OK, so I hope that I am a little better looking than that lady, but that about sums it up. I am BEAT, big time, and the fun has only just begun.

Vacation was nice, we had gorgeous weather, and a great place to stay. Daughter had a blast, and son had a blast up until about Wednesday. Then he was officially over being on vacation, and it was hit or miss from there on. :)

We saw some HUGE sea turtles in the ocean- thankfully they were sea turtles. I have to admit that when you're in the ocean and there are several LARGE black shadows coming towards you, one has a tendency to freak out at what they may or may not be. But, one popped it's head up to let us know that it wasn't anything harmful, and so it was all smooth sailing from there.

I also bought THE coolest camera- I'll have to post some pics that I took later, but this is officially the best camera I've had, and I haven't even had a chance to really do a whole lot with it. I took lots of under water pictures of daughter in the pool, and a few in the ocean too. The water was a beautiful green color, nice and clear. It's surely to be even more clear in the Bahamas this weekend, so I'm hoping to put it to even better use then. Not only is the camera a normal digital camera, it's waterproof, shockproof, crush proof, and did I mention that it's just bad ass? ;) We have a huge paparazzi camera that we take, but I wanted a small one that I can tote with me in the car and feel ok leaving it in there without it being seen, and this one fits the bill :)

Other than that, not too much to report. I'm busy getting laundry finished up and RE-packing to leave Thursday, along with packing a totally separate suitcase for daughter, who will go right from the Bahamas to WV to visit. My parents were supposed to bring her back, but with the recent news of my grandpa, I will now be going up there to get her so that I can see him. Rest assured I want nothing more than to spend time with my grandpa, but beyond that, my visit will be very short. In all honesty, I HATE going "home" for many reasons and I don't know how long that will take to change, if ever. More bitching to come on this topic, I'm sure ;)

I'm also counting down- 68 days!!!!- until my girls cruise. Stoked does not even begin to describe it!

Travelin' Lady

2009-07-12T15:05:00.003-04:00

If I'm needed, this is where you will find me. ;) We're headed out in the morning for vacation, and after all that has gone on in the last month or so- I desperately need it. But first, a little bit more packing, and the space shuttle launch (watching from the beach here) tonight.

I'll be back in town Sunday, only to turn around and head to the Bahamas that Thursday. But if you haven't guessed, I'm totally not complaining.

My only downfall to this trip? We're staying in a condo, and so I miss out on the hotel sized shampoos and all of that other fun stuff. Don't ask me why I love them, but I do. Enough that I have a small travel train case full of them ;) Seriously, stick me in the travel and trial sized aisle at Target and I can be entertained for at least an hour ;)

Happy trails...

Betrayed

2009-07-10T13:43:00.003-04:00

It's quite possible that betrayed may be a bit too harsh for my title post, but I'm rolling with it anyhow.

I feel like we have been 100% completely surrounded by death and heartbreak the past month or so, I honestly don't know how much more my heart can take. First, it was the grandma of a childhood friend, who was kind of like a grandma to me. Then it was my dad's good friend, and then our neighbor. I still grieve- DAILY- for our neighbor, and honestly I think I will until the day someone else moves into that house, or we move off of this street. It's a constant reminder of how short life is, when I look across that street and see an empty driveway. It's terribly upsetting to take the kids out to play, and look over there waiting on him to bring his kids out like he always did, until I remember...

then came the passing of several celebrities. These really didn't affect me on a personal level, but I had already been cloaked in heartache for those that did for several days now, and so I kind of felt like I identified with those families more than I would have under normal circumstances.

Then, today comes. My mom calls to tell me that my grandpa is in the hospital. This is unfortunately a slightly frequent occurrence because he's had lung cancer and health problems that have resulted from it. For several years now, cancer free. She says that they are running cardiac enzymes to see if he had a heart attack, because he went to the hospital with chest pains. On top of other things, he has small vessel disease, and therefor cannot find a doctor to do stints in his very blocked heart. It's a scary situation, so any type of chest pain send them to the ER just to be sure. Mom mentions a PET scan, blood test, and headed home tonight, will call when I hear something new, etc, Bye.

Then husband calls. He's been out of town for a couple of days, and I notice that the conversation is strange. When he calls I tell him that I think I have figured out that I would like to go to NYC for our anniversary- given that a good friend of mine just posted her new NYC pics (Hi!) and I am just itching to go :) Husband seems very agreeable, and asks me several times "What else is going on?" and I respond with the normal chatter like "Oh, doing laundry.." , "Oh, unloading the dishwasher.." etc. Then husband says that we need to talk when he gets home, which is something that no one should EVER tell me, because I do not like delayed news, surprises, anything unexpected, or anything resembling any of those things. So I hound him until he says "Your mom called me today at 7:15 bawling her eyes out, and said that your grandpa had a PET scan and his cancer is back. She said for me to NOT tell you until we get back from vacation because she didn't want to ruin your trip, and that I HAVE to figure out how to convince you to go to WV to pick up daughter when her visit is finished from up there, I told her there's no way I can convince you to do that unless you know that there is a reason."

I am beyond devastated. My grandpa has had large portions of each of his lungs removed, and I don't see him doing chemo or anything like that. And even worse, with this feeling I have of NOT knowing what is going on, or what course of treatment they will take, or what the prognosis is, I can't even call anyone to ask because I'm not supposed to know. Not only that, I'm the ONLY one in the family that "doesn't know".

I understand that my mom thinks she was doing me a favor by not telling me, when I think quite the opposite is actually true. I can't count how many times I have heard her say that someone was sick and that no one bothered to tell her, and that she felt upset and can't believe that they would keep it from her, etc, and here she is doing the exact same thing to me. the EXACT same thing! In the grand scheme of things, a vacation is not important compared to knowing things about your family and being involved and prepared. I am a huge family person, no matter how far away, and to keep me in the dark is just so hurtful. And to call and burden husband with that information and expect him to be ok about keeping it from me just makes no sense. Now I'm in this horribly awkward position of knowing and being terribly upset, with no one in the family to talk to about it, and having to act as if I don't know when I do get told, so as not to damage the relationship between my mother and husband.

The past month has just been so hard, on my heart. Not in health, but in spirit. I know now more than ever, that we have so much and so much to be thankful for, but I am just mentally spent. I am physically suffering. My stomach is sick, my chest is tight, my emotions are just out of control. And I think, understandably so. Right now I just want to be so far away from all of this, and it seems like every time we turn around another thing has gone wrong.

So for those of you that do, please say a prayer or kind word for my family. I can't tell you how good or bad things are, because I am in the dark and totally clueless. But I can assure you that to think or pray kind things never hurts, no matter the circumstance.

Firework-ed Out

2009-07-01T22:46:00.005-04:00

I've spent some time recovering from company, as I tend to do. It amazes me how much upkeep my house requires- something that I realize each and every time I have company, as when they leave it looks like a tornado has blown through.

Speaking of, we had 4 water spots and 1 tornado up the road last week. Aside from seeing an alligator (which I fully accomplished and care NOT to do again, thankyouverymuch), a water spout is next on my list. From a safe distance of course. How did I miss 4 in one day? Ugh. One even piddled around at husbands work, apparently it stayed on the river for over an hour. But he had already left for the day. One day I'll see one people, one day I will. Oh! And speaking of rivers, we have quite a big one here- it by far chumps any river I've seen in WV. 3 miles wide at some points!

Anyhow, moving on. We had a nice holiday weekend- saw fireworks twice, and decided against a 3rd time because frankly, we're all just pooped. I spent the day cleaning house and my legs are ACHING. Typically this means storms in the forecast, though the aching legs are new to me all over again- haven't dealt with that since my pre-teen years.

In other fun news, I crossed one thing off the list of my total body tune up that I've decided I desperately need- an eye appointment. Now of course this is of no excitement to those of you who are reading, but my prescription has stayed the same going on about 5 years now. Who else can say that one thing in their life has been completely constant for 5 years running? ;) I surely can't say it about anything else around here. ;)

I also marked something else off of a list- if you were a reader of mine back at the new year, you may recall my list of pseudo-resolutions. #5 on my non-resolution resolutions list is by far the most difficult and still most daunting, to this day. May 28th (or 29th? Can't remember) marked our one year anniversary of moving here to Florida, and other than a few people that I've met through association like daughter's Girl Scouts, I have no friends here. Wahhhhh! (I do have to give myself props though, because I have halfway accomplished #s 1, 2 and 4 as well. So for that, I will not beat myself down over not even trying #3 ;) )

It truly is my fault- I know that I'm a totally likeable person, I'm funny and super easy to get along with. But when I join a mom's group and then sit here and refuse to go to meetings, that kind of makes it hard to meet people. We'll call it a transition period ;)

so anyway, 4th of July we went to one of husbands coworkers for dinner and drinks. I have to say, it's always nice to get out and socialize with people, and we get along well with them anyhow. I was asking about the moms group that the coworkers wife is in, and she invited me to a playdate that she happens to be hosting. This is a BIG score for me, because now I get the comfort of being in the house of someone that I already know, and she is new to the group too, so that makes it a little easier on both of us :) Said playdate is tomorrow morning, 10am. Quite early for my tastes, because I'm not really a fully productive and functioning member of society until at least noon, but I'm going to try it out for the sake of playdates for my children, AND so I can make a friend or two for the love of Pete. Come one people DAMNIT be my friend! ;) What is it about showing up in a room full of unknown people that freaks me the hell out? ;)

Oh but wait, there's more. As if one playdate wasn't enough, we're headed straight from that playdate to another one. It is with a mom that I already know from Girl Scouts, so no big deal or freak out there. Then I'm headed back home, to get ready for a Girls Night Out with another mom from Girl Scouts at my favorite restaurant. 3 activities on one day? Yep. Just call me the overachiever ;) Actually this week kicks off our very busy July, in which we have already painted and redecorated daughters room, and will be taking at least 3 (possibly 4) trips, and squishing a trip to see a shuttle launch in between. Starting next week, I will only be home 5 out of 19 days. I'm definitely looking forward to the break and a small step out of reality, after all that has been going on here lately. I only dread the laundry that will have to be put up afterwards ;)

My Mug

2009-06-28T23:03:00.003-04:00

Hiiiiiii ;)
In a rare move, I thought I'd show my face on here. You know, just to prove that I do exist in human form. So here's me and my kiddos. Aren't they cute? ;)

Our weekend was most certainly interesting- I can definitely say that I've never had to attend a funeral and a wedding in the same day, less than 8 hours apart. Each was beautiful in their own respect, though obviously the funeral was a terribly, terribly sad event that we would rather not have happened.

This past week has brought a lot of things into the light for me. I don't think that I've ever felt so affected by the death of someone that I didn't know very well. I can see myself in that position- not literally- but they are just like us in several aspects. Young, and he was the worker, she stays home with the kids. Their kids are just like ours- an older girl and a younger boy, and they are about the same age as our kids too. I sympathize for his wife, but I truly sympathize for the whole situation- the adjustment of having to become a working mom, a single mom, and now kids who will never have their daddy back. I know that I need to either figure out how to get my license back into active status, or have something else to fall back on in case of anything such as this (God forbid).

With that being said, I've hit another hump in what I like to think of as my 20's induced life crisis. Yes, I still have NO idea what I want to be when I grow up, and in just 3 short years I will be 30. So I'm currently researching other things that I may want to do with myself, besides the nursing career that I never even started (I did graduate and hold a license for the record- then had kid #2 and never went to work). Don't get me wrong, nursing is a wonderful profession and I know that I have the heart for it, and I am a caring person. But.....well, just but. I don't know what I want to do. For now that's ok. I at least will keep myself busy with researching options in the mean time ;)

July is just around the corner..literally. Where has this year gone? We have a busy month coming up, and I have to say I'm looking forward to it, BUT dreading the cleanup afterwards. We'll be leaving mid-month for vacation, then back on the 19th. Then the kiddos and I will be taking off for a weekend Bahamas trip. Once I get back from there, daughter will head to WV to visit for two weeks and I will hopefully spend a couple of nights at Disney visiting an old high school friend. All of the sudden it will be August, and I am sure to find myself back here wondering WHERE has the summer gone! But! Fear not my friends, not August, nor September, signal the end of summer here in Florida. It only means that we go from sweltering heat and near fainting, to tolerable heat and still large sums of humidity. ;)

With that my friends, I turn in for the evening. I lack anything exciting to report, but I can definitely assure you that I have had a terribly busy weekend, and for once I am ready to start a new week, bring on a Monday!

In Memory Of...

2009-06-22T10:17:00.003-04:00

We've had one of those weekends around here where the sad news just keeps coming. A good childhood friend of mine lost his grandma, my dad lost a dear friend, and our neighbor died in a car wreck.

I think that of all of these, I'm really affected by our neighbor. He had two small children that are the same ages as our kids. They are all just good, good people. He was so helpful and nice, we never saw him look mad or angry, always had a smile on his face.

I can't imagine being his wife. She was out of state visiting family, and they had to track her down and let her know what happened. Can you imagine taking a 4 hour flight to know what you're coming home to? Going in your empty house with all of those reminders of what had been, just not so long ago? I can't imagine having to break that kind of news to my kids and tell them what has happened. What would you do when they ask for daddy, I can't imagine the sadness this would bring. I had dreams about them all night last night, waking up in between with overwhelming sadness at the thought of how drastically changed their lives now are.

Tomorrow is no guarantee, nor is the rest of today. Sometimes the people that we lose have only been in our lives for a short period before they are quickly taken away. We should cherish those that we have with us, and value that time that we have. It can be gone just as fast as it came.

Sliding Doors

2009-06-08T22:00:00.003-04:00

Ever seen the movie? It's been awhile since I've seen it, but basically it's the story showing what would happen to the same girl, if she had taken a path different than the one that she had taken.

Typically I stick to the usual ramblings in this blog. I don't like to make it too personal, and sometimes personal can equal boring. There's been a lot going on around here, and sometimes I just need to get it all out. And well, this IS my blog, and I guess I should take advantage of that.

My own life is like the movie, Sliding Doors. Not necessarily the movie itself, but the plot in general. I am one side of that story, one part of the "what if". Only I don't get to watch for another 45 minutes and see how the other side would have turned out, I just wonder. Almost daily.

I was always sort of a rebel child. A preachers kid who just wanted to break out of her shell. I experimented in my teenage years, I did things I shouldn't have. Somewhere along the way, I dated a few guys that were ok, no one that ever really stuck out.

After I graduated high school, I met a guy. In a bar. Sounds simple enough, right? I was 18, he was (at least 18). No? What?

Ok, so I dated this guy that was 2 years younger than me- I found out several weeks after we had been together, and we were already developing really strong feelings for each other. Age is just a number, right?

To spare you all of the seriously messed up details, it was a totally destructive relationship. At one point I moved to North Carolina with him and his dad, before something snapped in me 3 months later. I came back to WV, and never looked back.

I won't "knock" that part of my life- it was who I was at the time. I was blind to my stupidity at the time, and embarrassed by my actions now. I hurt my family, I alienated my friends. I gained so much knowledge experience from it, and I grew so much after it. I became a different, better person.

When I came back from NC, I moved back in with my parents, got a job, and started over. Life was really good. I had my own car, I had my family and I had my friends back.

I could tell you so many stories about how I met the love of my life. We knew each other in high school, and several times in life, fate has brought us back together in ways that you only see in a really good movie. Once I came back from NC, we started dating again. One night after dinner, we'd only been together a few days when he told me he loved me. It wasn't the first time, but it freaked me out that it was so sudden. We hadn't seen each other in years, we were different people giving it another go.

And I ran.

I literally cut ties with him, I for once in my life had TRUE love and I let it go. I freaked out, and I lost it.

That same night that he told me that he loved me, was the night that I met my now husband. We were out at a bar, the boyfriend has been drinking and was acting goofy, a a drunk tends to do. I had had a long day at work and all I really wanted to do was shoot some pool, which I was damn good at back in my day I must say ;) My now husband was there with a friend and so I played them in pool. The boyfriend was on the stool acting ridiculous, and the future husband was confident. He was self assured and seemed to be having a good time. He asked me for my number and I gave it to him, and we went on our first date that next weekend.

I don't know why I went out that night. I'd had a bad day at work and I just wanted to relax. And more importantly I don't know why I gave the now husband my number that night. I was with a guy that loved me more than anything, and I gave it up because for once in my life, I was scared of love. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, and I ran through the wrong "sliding door".

I say all of this to say that rarely does a day go by that I don't realize that I married the wrong person. I didn't fall in love with my husband, I fell in love with what he could give me. I had come out of a terrible relationship with (literally) a teenage boy, and met a guy who was nice, who took me on trips, who was fun loving and respectful. And who was fake. He won me over, and then the curtains closed and the real guy came out. his attitude makes him ugly, and the fact that I could still love my ex boyfriend from forever ago helps nothing in our situation. I truly have lived the movie Sliding Doors because I know how it feels to wonder what if. I know that the love of my life is out there, engaged to someone else now (this is fact) and probably getting married soon. I know that if I STILL think of him and love him NO less than I did 7 years ago, then it is true. I know that you cannot possibly have a schoolgirl crush on someone for 11 years. This is how long I have known him.

I married my husband because I got pregnant with daughter. I know now that it was not the right thing to do, but as I've said in a previous post, many eyes were on me and my family and I felt like I had to do it. I know better now. I know that I would have had the best support system in the world as a single mom, and I know that my husband does not make me a good mom. I am a wonderful one without him, and sometimes in spite of him. It was the one thing that I didn't doubt when I became a statistic of teenage pregnancy. I never once doubted my abilities to be a good mother.

When we first got married, divorce was imminent. We fought non-stop, it was nothing but stress. I kept in touch with my ex, certain that I would end up back with him. At one point it was so bad that I took my then 7mo old daughter, and drove 6 1/2 hours to the beach. He lived an hour from there and we met up. my husband later found out about this, and I can honestly say I still don't feel bad about it. Call me a bitch if you must. We ran into each other a few times over the course of the next couple of years, and each time was just like we'd seen each other the day before. Literally nothing changed each and every time.

It finally ended shortly there after. And by "it", I mean communication. We did not have sex, there was nothing like that going on. He was begging me to leave my husband and move in with him, offering to pay for me to go to school and everything. I look back now and I wonder, why didn't I do things like this? I've always been a daring person, I've always gone against the grain. So why didn't I go with my heart instead of worrying so much about what other people would think of me? Why didn't I care about myself for once? I married while I was 8 months pregnant because I was so worried about what people would think, why didn't I take my chance to get out of the situation that I got myself into?

Don't get me wrong. From the outside looking in, we have a great life. We have a wonderful home, two beautiful healthy children that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world, husband has a great job. It's the little things that matter to me- the rudeness, the lack of respect, the things that TRULY count to me.

We moved to Florida, and I truly hoped for a fresh start. The guy that I was not with, ironically moved back to WV from SC, and said that he did it for me. Things didn't work out like they were planned obviously. I had hoped that moving here would give me a fresh start, mentally. But nearly daily, I wake up and at some point during the day, I think about what could have been. It's not the way I should be, but it's the way I am. There are things that I smell, places and things that I see that remind me of the past. Songs that I hear remind me of nights that we drove around with my head on his shoulder listening to him sing, and being nothing but content.

Something this past weekend at Disney reminded me of how things used to be. I can't remember what it even was now. It's been over 3 years since I've talked to my ex, and that last communication was a friendly one- he, telling me about his fiance, and I, telling him about how we were expecting our second child. So imagine my surprise tonight when I log into my messenger and I see that I have a request from him for me to add him to my chat list. I don't know why, there was no message attached to it or anything at all. Just there he was, reminding me that he does exist somewhere other than in my mind.

Why do I say all of this? For starters I haven't said enough. I could tell story upon story that has a fairy tale feeling. If you've never been in love, I can tell you what it feels like, and sometimes I'm afraid that I won't remember before too much longer. If you want to know whether to take that leap of faith, I can say with certainty, DO IT, because you may just spend the rest of your life wondering what would have happened it you had.

On The Road Again

2009-06-05T23:26:00.003-04:00

Those of us who have kids, know that traveling with kids is no easy task. The saying "It Takes A Village", oh, it totally does. To raise them, to travel with them, all of that. I truly believe that in order to effectively raise a child and ever get anything else done, one must be an octopus. There's no other way to function fully, and I often find myself wishing for 8 arms in some weird, circus-freakish way.

But traveling is one of my loves in life, and so the show must go on. Now and then I get brave and plan a trip out of town for us to take for no particular reason. So tomorrow we're headed to Disney. :)

I'm really excited, because we're trying out Typhoon Lagoon (water park) and Animal Kingdom- 2 parks that we have yet to visit. I'm a total freak for the Magic Kingdom, so normally it takes up one day of our trip. I'm definitely sad that we won't be going there this time, but, I suppose I'll live. ;) We're leaving really early tomorrow morning and heading into Typhoon, and then Sunday doing Animal Kingdom before we come home. Did I put "Close proximity to Disney" on my list of things that I like about FL? I should have. With such a short drive, it takes a lot of the pressure off of us, we don't feel like we have to cram everything in like you do when you vacation there. We operate at the kids pace, and if we don't get to it, we'll see it next time. On days that we go to Magic Kingdom, we normally don't even go into the park until 5 or 6. Not so with either of these parks, since they operate on daytime hours (10-6 and 9-5).

Anyhow, I planned all of this last weekend, to give us a chance to get a hotel and so that I knew how to budget the paycheck and leave us extra money to go down on. I ALSO planned this when I thought that lovely time of the month was coming right away. But, as usual, mother nature laughs in my face and AF shows up 4 days late. So now I'm headed to a water park. On the heaviest days. Isn't that fab? Ugh. On top of that, I think my whole body is literally swollen. Like BLOWN UP. This has never happened to me to my knowledge, and trust me, I think I would have noticed if something like this had happened before. I literally can NOT get my wedding rings off. They've been stuck for several days, and I'm just hoping that once this month's dose of womanly hell passes, that the stinkin rings come off. It's uncharted territory for sure. What the hell has happened to my body??

So anyway, that's my upcoming weekend in a nutshell. I'm headed to a water park, hopefully coming out on the other side of it with no embarrassing moments. Just look for me in the wave pool, I'll most likely be the one that doubles as my own inner tube :/

Yesterday was daughters program for kindergarten. I have to say that I am beyond shocked that I will soon have a first grader (school is out Wednesday). Where does the time go? It seems like she was just a little baby, my little tag along that went everywhere with me. Now she's 6, and I truly don't know how it happened. I'm looking forward to a nice family weekend, NOT answering the cell phone (my mom is really good about calling 5000000x when she knows we're out of town), and hopefully good weather- so far the forecast is rain. This will be a nice little break before husband leaves Wednesday for a trip to see his best friend (insert many comments laced with curse words and hatefulness from me here), and then 4 more days from there for work. I won't even get into that whole ordeal, it's too close to bed for me to get all stirred up. Plus I'm too excited at a chance to be a kid for two days to be bitter ;)

Hope everyone has a nice weekend!!

Recovery from Houseguests

2009-06-02T12:28:00.002-04:00

Well, we survived the weekend and came out relatively unscathed. Of course any time you have 5 extra houseguests, it can be loud and chaotic, but the worst part is the disruption to son's sleep schedule. Hopefully he's back on track today.

My dad jumped out of the plane, and floated back to the ground safely. I was a nervous wreck just thinking about it, so whether I ever end up doing this myself remains to be seen ;)

Daughter's recital went well, and I must say I have NEVER been so glad to put those styling products back into the cabinet. By day #5 of hair and makeup on a 6 year old, we were both totally over it. The show went well, but was far below the standards of the dance school that she went to in WV, so we'd like to keep her on track. At any rate, she did great and her pictures turned out wonderful :)

I think that I have so much to talk about at this point, that I don't have anything to say if that makes any sense ;) Husband leaves next week for 10 days. Not that that's a long time, because I've been home alone a lot longer than that by myself, it was just the manner in which it all went down that resulted in a huge fight and lots of bitterness- mostly on my part. Men sometimes. Seriously, what is wrong with them?? Anyhow, in an effort for a little fresh air and a break of sorts, I think we're headed to Disney for the weekend. I have been craving a water park for awhile now ;)

Busy Busy

2009-05-27T11:19:00.003-04:00

Well I am a total loser at blog updating lately. Yikes! Not that life isn't busy as usual, but I just haven't had anything out of the ordinary to talk about. My birthday was the 18th, and it started raining the day before, and rained for about 8 days straight. So needless to say, there were lots of new "lakes" and ponds around here for a few days. We're getting a nice break from it now, but it's still a possibility of rain for the next 7 days.

Daughter has approximately 11 days left of school. I can't BELIEVE I am the mom of a soon to be first grader! Time truly does fly and I can't believe how much she's learned in one year. Her school is most definitely awesome. Son's speech is starting to pick up, some days he nearly babbles all day, and then some days he just busts out with random words like applesauce and rainbow- things he's seen around the house, but that we haven't coached him into talking about. Truth be told, I think he's just stubborn and will talk when he feels like it. ;)

Memorial Day was nice- we had a break from the rain and we were able to go swimming all afternoon. Son has made a complete 180 from last summer. He can tolerate the pool a lot longer, and he LOVES to swim! I don't think we're going to have any problems teaching him. Daughter has not learned yet. You can definitely tell the difference between the kids who have always lived here, and those that haven't. The ones that have always lived here can swim better than I can it seems! Then like us, we only went to the pool once a year- on vacation. The pools in our neighborhood in WV were quite junked and full of some interesting folk, so we never went. Hence why daughter can't swim- she's taken lessons, but not enough. Son LOVES to float in his arm floaties, holding totally still and just smiling SO big, he's so proud of himself and it just melts my heart!

The family will be here Friday to watch daughters dance recital. 5 people at my house. Only 3 are staying here though. This week is really busy for us. I have 5 separate days that I have to have daughter in full dance costume, hair done, and makeup. She has two separate picture days, 1 rehearsal day, and 2 recital days, with her usual gymnastics class squeezed in there as well. Needless to say, I will most likely be over the whole dance thing by the end of the week. 5 days of hair in a bun is a bit too much for this mama to deal with, it takes at least 20 minutes to get it "perfect" each time. ;)

So anyhow, the family arriving on Friday kicks off what I officially like to think of as a very busy, but hopefully fun, summer. Between all of the busy stuff, we plan on just hanging out in the pool in our neighborhood all day. The family leaves here on June 1st. Husband will be out of town the 10th-20th. A week of summer camp in there somewhere for daughter. Then my mom will be back here on the 25th-28th. Then on July 12th, we leave for family vacation until the 18th. Then on the 23rd-26th, I take a short cruise to the Bahamas with the kids, my grandma and mother in law. Daughter goes back to WV with them to visit, and comes back on Aug. 9th. Then she and I leave Aug. 18th to go to her Jonas Brothers concert- which she still doesn't know about, I'm giving her the tickets for kindergarten graduation. Then back home the next day, and back to school the 24th. Then I have about a one month breather before my girls cruise.

Are you tired yet? ;) It's definitely a lot of traveling, but it's something that I love to do. Of course I hate the mess and laundry afterwards too ;)

Happy (almost) anniversary!

2009-05-14T11:57:00.003-04:00

The end of this month marks one year since we moved here to FL, and I honestly cannot believe it's been that long already. Do I feel settled? Not completely. Moving somewhere as adults, and fitting in, takes time. It's nice to go outside and actually TALK to our neighbors now. I would say about 50% of people we encounter here are standoff-ish, and some just downright not friendly. But there are good ones that make up for it. Things take time. This major change in my life is trying to teach me patience. I've gained some, but not a lot ;)
Some days I feel like I've made my place in life- we've moved away, we've proved we can do it on our own. And some days, I feel like I'm just temporarily here, waiting on husband to drop the ball and say "we're going back". I know that that all rests on my shoulders- I get the feeling that he will never truly be content here, but he will never leave unless I say so (and I have no intentions of any such thing).
My major hurdle is still the lack of friends- it's a hard thing to do when you're not working, and not in school. I am hoping to get involved in the mom's groups this summer and meet some moms my age. There seem to be few of them. Most people are older, with kids our age- maybe that's another difference I hadn't thought of. Apparently there are other things to do in FL as a teen then get into trouble and/or have sex- thus, mostly older parents, and not younger like I encountered in WV ;)
So without further adieu, here are things I have learned and noticed in my first year as a FL resident (gotta love those Disney discounts! ;) ). This obviously doesn't cover them all, but my intention is to only SLIGHTLY bore you to tears ;)

#1- There are no native Floridians here. We have met about 2 of them. Everyone else is from some other state, which leads me to believe that people who grow up here can't wait to get the hell out of here, and the rest of the country can't wait to get here.

#2- The schools suck. For anyone who ever considered moving here, the schools suck. You basically have to look at the state of FL, pick the good county school districts (few), and then pick a place to live near one of them. There is no such thing as moving, then just going to whatever school you live near, it could spell disaster. Florida ranks 50 out of 50 states in public school funding. Hence the reason we moved out of the city a bit, because the schools were junk in our area. Now we're a bit further out, but in a fabulous school. Love it!

#3- The water here is the nastiest liquid thing I have ever encountered in my life, other than beer. ;) Seriously. Lots of sulfur water. It's a real damper for someone who hasn't lived here forever because I walk around knowing that I stink like that water- and so does everyone else, but I guess they're just used to it. So yes, we stink,but at least we're just like everyone else. I go through a TON of fabric softener- liquid and sheets- to cover this up. It's not smelly everywhere, but it is here. The worst is getting a fountain drink- you can totally taste it. ugh.

#4- The power bill is outrageous, and food is through the roof. Publix, a wonderful super market- I'm sure no one could ever beat them in customer service, but they are on average $.20- $.50 higher on EVERYTHING. It adds up when you have to do a lot of grocery shopping.

#5- However, house prices (at this point) are much lower than where we were in WV. I still can't figure out why, because there was nothing to offer in our area there, but home prices were ridiculous.

#6- It's bathing suit and flip flop season pretty much year round. I had on flip flops at Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The pool does not shut here- ever. There's no waiting until Memorial Day weekend to go to the pool. There is no time to get in shape for bathing suit season, because it's ALWAYS bathing suit season!

#7- On that same note, it is perfectly normal to see people outside in a sweater or long sleeved shirt when it's 75 outside. You wouldn't believe me if I told you, but there are days that 75 feels COLD. It's amazing how fast your body adjusts. When we first moved here and I saw people in long sleeves I thought they were crazy. Now I am also on of those crazy people.

#8- We have weird, hard, sharp, grass. It's called St Augustine grass. and it hurts!

#9- There is a serious lack of furry creatures here. I don't hear a lot of birds chirping (I think mostly because they are in the water), I have seen 2 deer since we moved here a year ago. Which is nice, because I don't have to worry about plowing them with my car ;)

#10- The lack of furry creatures have been replaced with a surplus of reptiles, much to husbands horror. There are at least 10 frogs in our yard or on our driveway each night. They are all over the roads. There are lightening fast lizards all over the sidewalk and house. They constantly run in the house and they are a pain to get out- especially if husband vacates the premises as soon as one comes in. Gators 'o plenty, and snakes here and there. I've been told there are scorpions as close as 15 minutes away,by husbands friend who got bit by one. Which I am sure means they are here too- hopefully they do not come here.

#11 Having "the bug guy" at your house is not a bad thing like it was in WV- having the bug guy there was like "Ohmygosh! What do they HAVE??". Here, the bug guy comes every other month, for everyone. You wouldn't want to live here without him. Bugs O Plenty as well- spiders, earwigs, LOTS of ants, etc etc.

#12- There are 2 seasons here- Summer, and February. It's the only time of the year that it cooled off, and we actually saw some frost and freezing. You should have seen how people act when it freezes here- quite amusing :) The leaves did change and fall off- about the 3rd week of December, and it was a very fast process that lacked the really vivid leaf changing colors. It did happen though. :) I still wouldn't call it fall, it was too warm :)

#13- It's perfectly normal for my air conditioning to run ALL day at home. When I get up at 7:30 and it's on, you know it's hot ;)

#14- People here use their garage as a second hang out- our neighbor has his TV, beer, huge fan, and nudie posters in his. He has it made I tell you! But he's not the only one. Either there are a lot of bad husbands who have been banished to the garage (or gone there voluntarily), or there is something cool about the garage that I just don't know about. All of our neighbors have their football parties in the garage too. I guess at least the house stays clean..

#15- People driving around @ 7am with their convertible car tops open, totally normal. Did I mention it's damn hot here? Also totally normal to go to Walmart/Publix/store of your choice and see at least 2 or 3 people with their bathing suits on under their clothes/dresses. It is nearly constant tourist season after all ;)

So there you have it. I've become quite knowledgeable of totally useless things in the last year. I'm hoping that this next year coming up is much better than the first part of last year. ;) I'm off to pat myself on the back for (almost) one year survived!

Post-Mommy Day

2009-05-11T10:59:00.002-04:00

Hope that all of you mommies out there had a fabulous Mothers Day! My day was quite nice- I slept until 10:30 (nowhere near late enough for me, but it beats the usual). Then we poked around the house, before getting ready and heading out for the afternoon. I did a bit of shopping, mostly for the kids, but it just feels so good to get out and do what I want. Husband chauffeured me around town and stopped at wherever I pointed to hehe ;)

The real kicker was dinner- oh, dinner. Ugh. In husbands defense, he wanted to take me somewhere really nice. But, given the last incident when we ate at this place, I didn't think they were ready to see us back anytime soon. We drove around for a bit, thinking about where to eat and noticing that of course everywhere was packed out. So we settled on-

Golden Corral. OMG.

I seriously hate public buffets. Not only are they full of germs, they normally also have quite a mass of not-so-clean people (who coincidentally probably spread most of the germs). don't get me wrong, for families with young kids, sometimes it's the only way to go. Son is wild and sometimes sit down dinners with a waitress are just not going to happen. We need to go somewhere where we can shovel it all in, and flee to the car before a meltdown happens. But a special breed of people were out in full force yesterday, that's for sure. The place was gross, the food was blah, just...ugh. Quite an experience.

But, the gifts were much better. Husband got me a bike- something I have been wanting but wasn't expecting. Obviously in FL there are no hills, so our neighborhood makes a great riding place. Daughter and I have been taking evening bike rides which is nice. Hopefully once husband gets his bike, we can put a baby thing on it and all go together. I also got some very cute handmade cards from daughter, and son even signed them with his custom "gurkles" (circles). He also got me a cosmetic bag from Juicy, so all in all I'd say they did quite well. Of course he gets a double whammy since my birthday is Monday, so it's double the trouble of figuring out gifts ;)

Other than that, the weekend was pretty low key. It's been in the mid 90's since Friday, quite hot. It is quite funny when the meteorologists talk about our "cold front" moving in, which will send a chill tomorrow- a high of 79. Oh BRRRR ;) Daughter did a spa day for Girl Scouts on Saturday and then we went to the water park, only they closed half an hour after we got there, but I'd already promised her we would go in, not knowing that. So, I paid $40 for 30min of water play. ugh.

It's another hot day here today, but we'll be out in it. At 2:00 son and I are riding down to the beach, with hopes that the sky is still as clear as it is now so that we can see the Space Shuttle launch. :)

Son

2009-05-08T23:17:00.003-04:00

Simple title, huh? ;)

Long before I ever planned on having kids- but funny enough, not so long before I actually did- I always said I wanted two kids- both boys. Of course when daughter was born, I couldn't imagine myself having anything other than a girl. So then I got pregnant again 4 years later, and decided at that point that I wanted another girl, and had a boy. And of course, I couldn't imagine life without him :)

I've always heard how different each child can be, but I never imagined just HOW different my two kids would really be. Daughter was so content as a baby to just sit and play, read books, and to go out with me. We'd spend hours outside or at the mall, and she was wonderful. She could talk plain as day around a year old.

Son, is wild. I'm fairly certain that there is none other on the planet like him. In fact, I know there isn't. There can't be. He has no interest in sitting still, ever. He's constantly high flying off of whatever piece of furniture is most close to him at the moment. He refuses to behave when we're in public,he beats the crap out of his sister (yes, we try to stop it).

Son turned two last month, and I meant to give him a post dedicated to how he truly is a blessing in my life. I have a really strong bond with him, he's 1 of my two favorite people in the world- daughter being the other ;)

Then, I wanted to talk about how son makes me earn my money. Not that I'm getting paid- in anything other than hugs or kisses of course (and totally worth it!). But if I were getting paid, I would not be making nearly enough.

Take this year for example- and mind you, this is only May. Starting with early 2009,son meets our coffee table head first- courtesy of the dog, and ends up with 5 stitches in his cheek and 4 in his eyebrow. February, we have tubes put in each ear, and his adenoids out. March and April were semi normal, and then we met the past two days.

Starting with Wednesday night, we're all outside playing. Daughter has recently learned to ride without traning wheels, and she FLIES on her bike. She's riding along, and son steps out in front of her, and she PLOWS him on her bike. He falls to the ground and goes to scream and cry, only he doesn't. He holds his breath, and then he passes out. Fabulous.

Husband didn't freak out like I thought he would, suprisingly. And son recovered in about 10-15 seconds, all was well.

Fast forward to tonight, just son and I having a mommy and son dinner, while husband and daughter are out Mother's Day shopping. He's running around in the kitchen having fun, and trips on something and falls, pounding his head on our lovely tile floor. Ugh. He does cry immediately which is good, I'm certain it hurt him bad enough that he *almost* lost his breath again and I almost thought he was going to pass out again. Once a lifetime is enough of that, thanks.

I'm fairly certain that there's no concussion or anything like that- I hope. I'm keeping an eye on him and hoping that we go injury free for a long time from now!

And so on this Mother's Day weekend, I'm thankful for the two rugrats that I have, for the chance to be their mommy. I screw up often, but I really do try. I'm also thankful for my new pink bike that husband got me, since I have been wanting a bike since we moved here. I hopped on it tonight, and let's just say I'm a little rusty ;)

Chomp, Chomp

2009-04-29T22:57:00.003-04:00

I have been pathetically lacking on my updates, sorry bout that. I am back, and in decent form ;)
Ok actually I feel like ass, but I hated to start off on a negative note. I think I have a combo of PMS and something else that mildly resembles the flu (no, not swine flu). And I'm here alone with the kids while husband is away. Good times! Moving on.

I've been saying since we moved to Florida that I want to see a gator "in the wild". Our subdivision has 5 or 6 "lakes" (in WV, it's known as a small pond ;) ), and they have signs about not feeding the alligators at a couple. I have yet to figure out if this is to be cute, if it's purely for decoration, to possibly avoid a lawsuit, or what. But I have yet to see an alligator in there, or anything resembling it.

So this past weekend, we take a day trip to a state park for daughters Girl Scouts. the park was very neat- the neatest thing being that it is an island, and that it used to be completely swarmed with snails, which is what the residents (Indians) lived off of. Now, the entire island is covered in snail shells. I had to threaten daughter with jail time for removing state park property, just to avoid coming home with 1000 empty snail shells- all of which looked alike ;)

We ride the ferry (like a 15 second ride) to the island, and eat our lunch, let the girls play ,etc. Our "outdoorsy" mom as I like to call her, suggests that we go canoeing. And I agree.

Why? Someone, tell me why.

There were 3 adults and 3 girls that went, and knowing that I could not maneuver a canoe on my own (seeing as how I've never set butt in one), one of the moms comes with me and daughter. They untie us, and we immediately start drifting backwards, into the bank. 10 minutes later, we inch forward out into the open channel.

From there, it's about 20 minutes of screaming, lots of drifting towards the bank, and TONS of circles- no forward movement, just circles. It was quite humorous, and annoying all at once.

Fast forward about 15 more minutes and we finally develop a rhythm. We head down the river, and I see a "dead head" (log) sticking out in the water, and we're drifting towards it. But then...what the.. all of the sudden , the log starts swimming.

And it's a gator.

We, the useless canoe operators, are drifting right towards what is, in my opinion, a very large gator. Very large.

Team work becomes priority all of the sudden, and out of nowhere we learn (quite quickly!) how to stop, and reverse, and get the hell out of dodge.

Escaping what could have been a potentially bad situation, we head the opposite direction on the river. And not 5 minutes in, there's another one, sunbathing. Needless to say, that was the end of my first (and most likely last) canoe trip. We later learned that it's mating season, and that's it's a good idea to avoid them because in the park rangers words, they are "quite hostile".

WTF? She didn't feel the need to tell me this BEFORE I almost turned myself into some reptiles lunch? Where were the signs for this? Or are we the only idiots who actually rent those canoes?

Anyway, I'm back unscathed, and now I can say that I have officially met my first FL gator- almost too close for comfort, and without my camera, but I still have the possibility of recurring nightmares to keep it fresh in my memory. ;)

In other news, I'm currently searching for "the" perfect dress to wear to a wedding, in addition to 2 outfits to wear to daughters dance recital. I have some time to work with, but apparently not the body to work with. Since when did I become so much bigger than I used to be? Or maybe clothes became MUCH smaller? ;)

The good thing is Newport News and Speigel both have sections on their websites specifically called "What to wear to a wedding". Beyond that, they even have them divided out into categories (beach, city, etc). So why can't I squeeze my arse into something cute? Who knows. Still waiting on that miracle diet cure here people! ;)

Ahhhh...

2009-04-21T23:41:00.005-04:00

*~Sorry if you had this blog emailed to you, I forgot to change my settings!

Ahhhh the smell of an almost clean house, so refreshing to my nose on a spring day (night). :) It's been awhile since my house has been this clean- the sad part is that by my normal standards, it's really not that clean. But I actually mopped tonight, Go me!

I'm still debating the whole skydiving thing. I have this ridiculous idea that maybe if I "debate" long enough, I'll call to make an appointment and someone will have already taken it. Which may already be true. Oh please let it be true ;)

It's kind of one of those things where you just KNOW you want to do it, but don't want to do it, but will regret it if you don't do it. I know I will regret it if I take my dad up there and watch him (which I plan on doing), and don't do it myself. And if I don't go with him, or before him or whatever, I know I never will. Since having kids, gone are my days of wild hairs where I wake up and decide to do something ridiculous. :)

I don't know why I started thinking about it again- it has been lingering in the back of my mind since he suggested it, but tonight I started thinking about it again. I was trying to figure out what is the main part of it that leaves me uneasy, in hopes that I could sit here and have a silent conversation with myself that may sway my decision in one way or the other. But it was at that point that I realized that it's the ENTIRE process that freaks me. The going to bed the night before (or maybe the week before!), knowing what I would be doing at 8am the next day (who jumps out of a plane at 8am?! It's the only appt that they have left that day, dad's is at 9am). The getting up that day knowing what I'm doing, the nerve racking ride there, knowing what I'm doing, filling out that paperwork, knowing what I'm doing...do you get my point here??

So I decided to check out the website again, just because. Feel free to check it out yourself HERE. While browsing, I came along a link that said "watch tandem video". I watched this, thinking it may ease some of my fears, and I kid you not when I say that my entire body broke out into a sweat. My stomach had butterflies. My palms were sweating, even the bottoms of my FEET were sweating. I was a nervous, nauseated, disgusting mess, right here on my couch. Sounds promising, no? ;)

First off, I knew it would not be a jump out of a 747, but it's one of those shoddy planes that I've sworn never to get into, because well when a plane doesn't make it, and makes the nightly news instead, it's typically one of those kind. I guess the upside would be that if anything bad seems to be happening to the plane, you're already attached to a chute. HA. It is from that point I decided that I would possibly do this, but not without the assistance of a Valium. Then, the video progresses, and they are REALLY high up in the plane (this place advertises the highest jump in FL- 15,000 feet if I remember correctly)and the guy says "Ok, we're about halfway!"

Yikes.

Not only do I hate planes- yes, a plane ride in itself requires a Valium*, and that's when I plan on just sitting perfectly still, buckled in my seat, and commanding that all others around me do the same. Seriously, no one on a plane near me can get up and move around, it totally freaks me - but I also hate heights, and I am just not sure if I'm ready to come out of a puddle jumper plane attached to some strange man, 3 miles up in the air at 8am. Ugh. Decisions.

I think my last big hurdles are the obvious- what if there is an equipment problem? I plan on calling them to ask if someone else jumps out with us- this will do a decent job of squashing that fear that if we have a problem, hopefully that other person can swoop over and we can hang all over him for dear life. I do feel better that it's tandem, because then I know the guy is extra careful since he's attached to me. LoL ;) The other would be if I have some sort of medical issue- what if I freak so bad I pass out, or puke, or have an anxiety attack with limited air at 15,000 feet. I've only had one anxiety attack my entire life, but I can assure you that it's something you DON'T want happening 3 miles in the air! Maybe I need 2 Valium..

Did I mention what you look like doing this? Sky diving is so not flattering to the face- that girl in the video looks like one of those dogs with 10,000 wrinkles! ;)

Ugh. I don't know if I've ever wanted to do, and not do, something so bad in my life. Other than give birth. ;) I can only hope that this would't last nearly as long, and do a lot less damage to my body..

*(For the record, I don't take Valium, my grandpa does and so if anything traumatic is upcoming, my grandma swipes one for me and mails it to me LOL ;) )

Up Up and Away

2009-04-17T16:10:00.002-04:00

I have a slew of family coming to inhabit my house at the end of May for daughter's dance recital. This would include my mom, mother in law, 2 grandmas, and now my dad, who originally said he was not "traveling with that many hags" LOL. ;)

We really hadn't made many plans for that weekend that they will visit. Daughter has rehearsal when they get here Friday, and recital on both Saturday and Sunday, then they fly back out on Monday. So the weekend pretty much planned itself for us.

Except, for my dear ole dad.

I think that he has ants in his pants, or something similar, because he's just not content to be still. So he decided that in the mornings while he's here, that he wants to rent a scooter and go through St Augustine one day, and sky dive the other day. Yeah. Dive out of a plane, into the sky. Where the clouds and birds live.

I have to admit that sky diving has always been one of those things on "my list". I also have to admit that I've always lived within a 40min drive to a skydiving facility pretty much my entire life in one state or another, and have never had the balls to do it. So yeah, the opportunity has always been there and I've never taken advantage. Because I'm a sissy.

Dad invites me to go along with him, and I have no clue what to do. I am so NOT going to even try to be funny here and ask what is the worst that can happen, because the worst the can happen, is exactly what you DON'T want to hear is the worst that can happen in any situation. EVER.

Am I afraid of dying? Well, I'm certainly not looking forward to it, nor do I ever like to talk about it. I know that it happens, but still. So the idea of going in a plane (one of my biggest fears- HATE to fly), and then jumping out of it while attached to some stranger, and a backpack with a chute on a rope, it's pretty daunting. Ok, it's downright terrifying. Not only do I have two children and a husband, I am also nowhere near where I want/need to be on a spiritual aspect- which in part contributes to that never ending 20's identity crisis that I loathe. I have to make a decision soon, they only have one appointment left that day, an hour earlier than when dad goes. I don't know what is stopping me from being able to say yes or no, but at any rate I'm crazy for even considering it.

Maybe I'll just stay on the ground and photograph dad as he comes into view...or join in on the scooter trip ;)

Email me~

2009-04-14T22:42:00.000-04:00

I was getting ready to do a few changes to my blog, when I realized that I'm not that great about figuring out some things on here. So if you're a regular reader of my blog and would like to continue doing so, will you please email me so that I can email you an invite? This blog is getting ready to go private :)

Thanks!

Shedding

2009-04-13T15:21:00.003-04:00

After I finally came out on the other side of a terrible itching spell that made me feel like I was going CRAZY (!!!!the lovely post sunburn itch!!!!), I am finally shedding my poor ruined skin cells, and looking quite the lizard these days. I'm hoping this is my lesson to wear some frickin sunscreen next time, but in all honesty, people like me don't stand a chance in the FL sun. You go from Casper to Mr Crabs in 15 min flat. Ugh. At any rate, I can finally take a not cold shower (those soooo piss me off), and hopefully I won't have disgusting dead skin all over me soon enough ;)

We had a nice Easter, though I feel like a TOTAL loser for not having an Easter Bunny picture this year. Seriously, what is wrong with me? I have never missed one of those- Santa, Easter Bunny, you name it, I have one of the kids with him/her/it. So I'm feeling quit loser-ish for missing out on that. We did get some pictures of the kids outside when we got home though.

We ate a nice Easter brunch at a Marriott here. It was really pretty- it's where they hold The Players golf tournament each year. This doesn't interest me, but it does interest husband. Meh. ;)

I'm still not sure what made husband have the nerve to reserve at a place like this- son is nearly impossible to eat out with. I don't really know what we can do, short of just not eating out (and we are about there). He refuses to sit in his seat, he's loud, he's destructive, neither of us can enjoy our meal, etc etc. I don't know if I can paint you a good mental image of the theme of the day, but I'll try. We walk in to this pretty hotel, with this grand set up of food. There's every meat you can imagine, a very impressive salad spread with sushi and everything, all of the stuff that doesn't interest me since I have the eating habits of an overly picky 5 year old- not joking on that one. They did, however, have a "Create your own macaroni and cheese bar", a DREAM for me. I could have just hung out there all day ;)

Anyhow, we walk in to this place and the first thing I notice is that I see no other kids in the area, at all. Eventually some did come in later. We sit down and son is exhausted already, and in a bad mood, already. He starts to fuss, and proceeds to grab nearly everything on the table- multiple pieces of silver wear, saucers, sugar packets, he got it all. Once I cleared his immediate area, he decides to stand up in his chair (high chairs are a no go), grab a champagne glass, and slam it on the table. Only he really didn't slam it that hard, he just was trying to set it back down and didn't do it easy. How gentle can a 2 year old be anyhow? The champagne glass breaks immediately, at the stem, in his hand. GREAT. He looks at me like he's scared to death, and I quickly grab the broken glass out of his hand and start to pick the smaller pieces of glass out of his hand and off of the table. I think we managed to avoid any of it getting in his hand. From there, husband starts to panic and rather just explain what happened, he feels the need to destroy the evidence, and so he TAKES the freaking broken glass, and sticks it in his coat! This is all literally within the first 5 minutes of arriving at the place, set to a man playing violin in the background, we are all sweating and exhausted.

You would think that was enough, but we decided to eat anyhow. Son was of course full of junk since we took him to church, he's cutting teeth and we didn't even ATTEMPT to send him to the nursery. So he filled up on goldfish during the service, and obviously is in no mood to eat- thank goodness the kids were free. Whew. Boys I tell you, a totally opposite world of any baby experiences with daughter. We eventually give up, and husband takes him outside. Once mother in law is finished eating, she goes out there with him and he falls asleep on the couch in the patio area, while we eat a semi peaceful meal with daughter, in a rush. Ahhh family togetherness. Sort of. ;)

Tomorrow son will be 2, and I can't believe that this time 2 years ago, I was hanging out in the hospital, waiting on the start of my dreaded pitocin, for the second time in my life. It's amazing how different my two pregnancies were, but how similar both labors were. I can't believe that my "baby" is going to be 2- and more so, that this may be our last one. It's so crazy how fast time flies, and we don't even realize it. We have his party planned, complete with Blues Clues decorations and cake, and of course presents. I wanted to get him his own ride on battery powered car- like daughters Barbie jeep that he loves. So we got to the store to see if he like the truck, and he picked a red mustang instead ;) He literally went crazy over the thing, wanting it over all the others. I can't wait to see him in it tomorrow!

Ouchhhhhhh

2009-04-10T21:42:00.003-04:00

The word Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, was specifically invented for me.
I am one step away from being a char coaled, deep fried, pickled white girl. Seriously.

What made me decide that I was actually going to tan on my first day out in the real spring sun, on an island, in Florida?

I have NO clue.

But I am seriously hurtin' here people.

All pain aside for the moment, our trip to Tampa was nice. It was bitterly cold by FL standards when we got there on Wednesday, and warmer (though not by much) when we ventured out to Caledesi Island on Thursday. I have to say, to have been rated the #1 beach in America at some point by some person, I was not impressed. Maybe I was expected too much? I don't know. It was nice to try something different, but we could have had the same experience by just going to some local public access beach and saving ourselves the wait time and ferry fees. None the less, America's #1 beach scorched my ass and I would pay millions for a suit made completely of Aloe for the next week or so. Ouch.

Thursday night we went to the hockey game, a fun thing to do now and then. It gave me a birds eye view of where I will take daughter to see the Jonas Brothers later this year, and scope out hotels too. I had already reserved one, but found one even closer. The hockey game was fun, loud, and especially cold for someone whose skin temperature has to be at least 115 about now. ;) Yes, I'm whining. I blame myself though..

Mother in law will be here tomorrow to kick off round two of sons birthday festivities. I'm just hoping his Blues Clues decorations get here in time, or else they will be dealing with one red woman (figuratively and literally speaking!) HA!

On The Road Again

2009-04-07T15:57:00.002-04:00

We have a few busy days coming up, so I may be scarce. My parents will be here in a couple of hours, and in the morning we're all leaving for Tampa. I am ready to get out of here and do something different,even if only for 2 nights. Thursday, we're taking my dad to his first (in person) professional hockey game, so that will be a blast. :) We're watching Tampa Bay play Washington DC Capitals- which happens to be the team we "root for" (DC). Hopefully Thursday it will warm back up and we can spend a day at one of Tampa's many beautiful beaches! I'm jonesin for some sunshine and crystal clear water. You definitely don't get the clear water on the east coast :)
We'll be home Friday, and mother in law will be here Saturday. I don't know how long she's staying. She's coming down for son's birthday, which is the 14th. I CANNOT believe my baby boy is going to be 2! It seems like just yesterday he was born. Oh, I feel so old! We'll be having a party, complete with Blues Clues decorations since that is what he is soooo into at the moment. It wasn't an easy task to find either, since it doesn't come on TV anymore.

I don't have much else to talk about really. I dyed my hair last night to cover up all of the greys that have snuck up one me- well, it's a LOT darker than I had planned. It's actually probably almost my natural color, but I haven't been this dark in awhile.

Seriously, I have nothing exciting to talk about. ;) Be back in a few days!

Am I A Buzz Kill?

2009-04-04T21:50:00.002-04:00

I think I've been given a complex by a 6 year old.

Rewinding- last night daughter had a friend stay over from school. Great times for all of course- except for the mess that is left behind now, but I expected that much. Her friend came over at 7 last night and we let them play outside for awhile until it got dark. Husband helped them play baseball, soccer, etc., and I stayed close by son trying to keep him occupied.

Later that night I came into daughters room to tell her it was time to settle down for the night, and I find them in full dress up gear, rocking out to Hannah Montana. I closed the door and started to walk down the hall and I hear

Daughter: "That was SO embarrassing"

Friend: "What?"

Daughter: "My mom seeing us dance like that"

Friend: "Oh, I know. Hey, your daddy is really nice!"

Daughter: "I know"

What?! I am the uncool mom? Am I going to be the mom that every one of my kids friends hate? You know, the mom that is the total buzz kill who is always grouchy. Sheesh, is that me and I had no clue? Ugh. I surely hope not. I happen to think I am pretty cool, especially considering the age difference between me and daughters friends is about the same as me and most of her friends moms. But maybe I am old and not cool and I just had no idea. Thanks a lot, 6 year olds, for making me feel like the old witch with the wart on my nose.

Leaving that rant and moving on to the next one... I'll spare you all of the details of my dilemmas, but I am reaching a point where I'm utterly fed up with husband. It's a long story with a lot of history that I doubt I will EVER find the time to explain on here, but while we are talking about buzz kills, if ever I had one, he is it. (And I'm not referring to anything abusive or anything like that) So think of me now and then as I constantly battle with myself in my head over what I am doing with my life and myself. I tell you, since we have moved here I have been going through a serious identity crisis. I hear that happens in your 20's. I never believed it before, but I do now. I think growing up so close to family, I've sort of defined who I am by who I was surrounded with and where we were. Now that absolutely everything in my life is different, I have no idea who I am. Seriously. All of this has left with me with lots of stress and feeling like I have no time for myself. I know something has to change, soon, somewhere.

I Confess

2009-03-31T13:21:00.004-04:00

I have a confession.

I used to be a shop-a-holic.

Ok wait, I still am. It's just that all of my credit cards are either cut off, closed, or maxed out, so there fore I am a recovering shop-a-holic. Ugh.

Impulse shopping was my worst, especially on make up. I'll admit, I have a closet full of clothes and some are expensive, BUT, I wear them. I love them. With makeup, I have so much sitting brand new (probably expired), that I just had to have because of cute packaging. I'm a sucker. I do wear the clothes though.

Or at least those that..ah-hem... don't seem to have shrunk. What's that about? ;)

Anyhow, I can't impulse shop anymore. Or shop at all for that matter. We're trying to get finances in order and this time I am trying to stay committed. I rarely shop here, mainly because we have no money and I am sure husband would kill me if he knew I used a credit card. Some of them I just refuse to cut up, like Old Navy. It's the only thing that allows me to shop at Gap without having to buy one piece at a time, and without having to apply for their credit card. We have to have it for kids school clothes, summer clothes, etc. But, I still haven't been using it though it kills me to have that available credit.

Well in light of my attempt at not shopping, I have developed a new (bad?) habit.

I am an impulse traveler.

If you recall last week, we planned a Girls Cruise this fall. I already have plans of using my birthday money to pay for it. Then husband finds this. A ferry service on a small cruise ship from Ft Lauderdale to Freeport Bahamas. The poor guy was just trying to research an option for a family vacation that we can actually afford, and showed that to me. I mentioned it to my grandma in passing, just making conversation, and she got so excited about it that I felt like I need to take her. About 6 years ago my grandpa had open heart surgery. He's probably more healthy than anyone else his age (78), but mentally he is just not. He is 100% competent, they drive themselves, etc, but he is just in a funk. I guess it's part of getting old, but he just likes to sit around and sleep. So they never go anywhere, and I feel bad about that. They used to be heavy travelers, they've been so many neat places. Before we moved away, we took my grandma with us everywhere- well, we invited her, she wasn't always able to go. I feel bad because she is SO lively (at 76 years old!) and healthy, but feels like she need to be home with him.

So when I told her about the ferry she went on and on about how she'd LOVE to do it, especially since with good planning it could be done in a 3 day weekend, which is about as long as she will come down for. She doesn't like to leave him alone long, though he is fine.

I got the wheels turning and now my two kids, mother in law, grandma, and myself are headed to Freeport Bahamas at the end of July. I know I sound like I'm complaining, I'm really not. Once you've been to the Bahamas once though, I think most people see no need to go back just because there honestly isn't much there. So we compromised on a one night trip- just so we can say we went to the Bahamas for the weekend. It always makes me feel good to do something for her, to make her smile. I wish, daily, that I could just convince them to move down here and move in with me, so I could take care of them. They can take care of themselves, but you know, I could just be there. I am probably most close to them than anyone else in my family, and my world will be very dark when they are no longer in it.

Ok anyhow, before I upset myself for totally unnecessary reasons, we booked the trip. We are all excited, everything is mapped out and I must say that I think I had some hiden travel agent skills. It took quite the arranging to get them down here, to the bahamas and back within a 4 day 3 night time span, including reserving 5 different hotel nights at 2 separate locations, 5 ferry tickets and 2 airline tickets.. With my birthday money already spent on the girls cruise, my only other thought is

How the hell am I going to pay for this??

I'll get back to you on that one, as ideas are still forthcoming. Actually I have no ideas, so hopefully some will come forth. :)

I could always use that massive tax credit that we will get in paychecks now. A whopping $15 per paycheck. I'm sorry, I realize that over the course of millions of people, this equals a lot of money being pumped back into the economy. But seriously, $15 per paycheck? What does this do for the average family who is struggling and already so far behind? Notta, in my opinion. Something is better than nothing, but $15 isn't going to go far. Especially when you have to air condition a 2 story house in the summer in FL.

OK that's all that I have to say for now. It's another stormy night here, so I won't be sleeping for quite awhile. Ugh. I seriously hate storms, it is my one major turn off about living here. When you move away from mountains, a thunderstorm on flat land is a whole new experience. Lightening lights up for miles, the thunder never seems to end. Why can't it storm during the day when I can keep a better eye on things??

Sunny Day

2009-03-29T12:46:00.004-04:00

Despite 50+mph winds, the loudest thunder ever, and the Arc floating by our house about 4am last night, it's a beautiful ,sunny, and breezy Florida day. For some reason, husband feels the need to be out in the garage pricing yard sale stuff. I seriously HATE yard sales. The pricing, the packing it up, the setting it up, not to mention the droves of strangers at my house- that part bothers me the most. I'm always convinced that there is going to be some creep in there that's just scoping out the house to see if they can break into it, or something sicko like that. The worst part is that that isn't so far fetched that it doesn't ever happen. :( I have to admit that I was royally spoiled in this department by MIL- we used to go through the house about once or twice a year, gather up TONS of yard sale stuff, take it to her and she would sell it. Mainly because they own a business (car garage) and so they had heavy traffic and could sell better. Not to mention that she would usually make us about $1000 that we would use for vacation money. Living in WV, some people live for yard sale season. No, seriously. One of my ever-thrifty family members did her Christmas shopping at them. Yikes. I keep trying to convince husband to just send the yard sale stuff back with MIL when she comes down next month for son's bday. It would be sooo much easier, and she could even just keep half the money.
So anyhow, back to the task at hand. Husband is out there on this glorious day pricing our junk, and I have NO clue how we have so much junk. We just had a HUGE yard sale right before we moved here last May, and yet I have a whole house full of stuff to sell again. Most of it is toys. Given our budget crunch this year, I have no idea how we have so much to sell, when we shopped way less than we ever have before. At least having both kids birthdays early in the year is nice, because I am able to go through old things and have them ready to sell by summer. At any rate, I tried to convince husband to make poster signs with prices for common items rather than price each and every item individually, but he doesn't listen, so, waste his day he shall. At least the house is somewhat quiet since the kids are out there "helping", though someone comes in or out every 2 seconds and really pisses me off. Can I just relax for TWO seconds? Thanks. :)
We've come to learn that once you have more than one kid, or a kid for that matter, vacation seems to take on an entirely new price range.Son is almost 2 and will now require his own airline ticket. Husband used to do a lot of traveling for work, and they always stayed Marriott. So for several years, we have had enough Marriott points to get nearly free vacation stays. It's been sooo nice. This year will be the last year we can do that (or whenever we use the points) because he doesn't travel nearly as much, and we'll be out of points. The good news is that we have points for some really fabulous vacations- namely Mexico, Aruba, St Kitts, etc. Living here in FL, it's kind of hard to plan a vacation. I think most people go to the mountains, but we came from the mountains and we don't ever want to vacation there ;) 26 years was enough for me for awhile. So we kind of want to do something exotic, but it's a hefty price once you have to buy 4 airline tickets instead of 3 or 2. The taxes alone are just ridiculous! We've found tickets for around $600, which are then over $1000 by the time you add taxes. Just ridiculous I tell you! So, we may end up vacationing somewhere here in Florida, which seems weird but it may be our only option this year. Stupid credit and recession and crappy economy and...
Ok I'm off to either a)clean the house, or b) sit here and watch 50 First Dates. I would like to go for the movie option, but SHOULD go for the cleaning house option. We'll see which one wins ;)

Are You A Marilyn?

2009-03-28T14:40:00.002-04:00

I'm lacking much to update today, so I saw this on Bridgett's Blog and thought I'd give it a go. Who are you on this quiz? Do you think my result accurately represents me? I have to say I waivered on the choices- I was stuck between 2 of the 3, so I just tried to pick the best one :) Some of the personality things fit me, but the child/parenting things do not. I definitely didn't come from a broken home of any sort, and I definitely don't have a problem setting boundaries for my kids :o)

"

Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz...

You Are a Marilyn!

You are a Marilyn -- "I am affectionate and skeptical."

Marilyns are responsible, trustworthy, and value loyalty to family, friends, groups, and causes. Their personalities range broadly from reserved and timid to outspoken and confrontative.

How to Get Along with Me

* Be direct and clear

* Listen to me carefully

* Don't judge me for my anxiety

* Work things through with me

* Reassure me that everything is OK between us

* Laugh and make jokes with me

* Gently push me toward new experiences

* Try not to overreact to my overreacting.

What I Like About Being a Marilyn

* being committed and faithful to family and friends

* being responsible and hardworking

* being compassionate toward others

* having intellect and wit

* being a nonconformist

* confronting danger bravely

* being direct and assertive

What's Hard About Being a Marilyn

* the constant push and pull involved in trying to make up my mind

* procrastinating because of fear of failure; having little confidence in myself

* fearing being abandoned or taken advantage of

* exhausting myself by worrying and scanning for danger

* wishing I had a rule book at work so I could do everything right

* being too critical of myself when I haven't lived up to my expectations

Marilyns as Children Often

* are friendly, likable, and dependable, and/or sarcastic, bossy, and stubborn

* are anxious and hypervigilant; anticipate danger

* form a team of "us against them" with a best friend or parent

* look to groups or authorities to protect them and/or question authority and rebel

* are neglected or abused, come from unpredictable or alcoholic families, and/or take on the fearfulness of an overly anxious parent

Marilyns as Parents

* are often loving, nurturing, and have a strong sense of duty

* are sometimes reluctant to give their children independence

* worry more than most that their children will get hurt

* sometimes have trouble saying no and setting boundaries

Take Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz at HelloQuizzy

Another One Bites The Dust

2009-03-25T11:25:00.003-04:00

I'm working on recovering from the worst migraine- possibly the worst one ever. It came like a thunderstorm in July, at 5am on my poor defenseless head. Of course I had put off picking up my migraine medicine, and my Excedrin, so I was totally hurtin'. I don't have a clue how I got daughter to school without killing us all, and I was far too in pain to go to the drug store to even get my medicine, so I came home, threw up twice, and had to call husband to come home for the day. Not a fun day at all! At least he did come home with my medicine, and I slept for FIVE hours. What a day. I really don't want to go on preventatives, but I may be heading in that direction. In any event I guess I need to go back to my doctor because headaches waking you up, and vomiting with them aren't really the greatest things.

Anyhow, I guess I should have mentioned in my previous post that the wonderfully ultra close concert tickets that I scored were for the Jonas Brother concert for daughter- it's on my list of summer plans. Well, if they were summer plans for me they obviously wouldn't include that, but they aren't my summer plans ;) I got tickets to Disney on Ice too, which is listed in there too. So at least I am being productive in the ticketing/entertainment department. :)

Other than that, not much to report going on around here. I spent all weekend with a friend from nursing school, who was nice enough to take a train down here to visit me (hi Monique!). We had lots of fun, and ate way too much food, and the best part of all is that we planned a girls cruise for this Sept/Oct. I soooo need an adults only vacation, I can't wait! A short jaunt out of town in the fall is just what I need, and we've already made plans to zip line through the jungle in Cozumel, which is sure to be a blast! :o) Yay for girls cruise!

Now I just need to get back to magically dropping weight- at least 20lbs by October. I think to satisfy my curiosity of it's effectiveness, the Acai Berry was front page on Yahoo today. I couldn't decide if they were making sure people know it doesn't cause weight loss, or if they were just warning about the hidden small print, $90 a month charge people are getting after the free trial. Either way, I probably won't be ordering any more. On to the next miracle cure :o/

In closing, we have AGAIN had another credit card close on us. This time, Lowes, with which we have had credit for SIX YEARS and NEVER been late once! We also had a zero balance on the card! Can you believe this!? Given the bank that owns them, I am certain that Old Navy and Sams Club will be next. If that happens, expect to see me on the national news for going ape on someone, because it's getting ridiculous and I'm sick of being penalized for other peoples faults. Ugh.

Back to cleaning house..or at least thinking about it ;)

Mission Accomplished

2009-03-23T12:22:00.001-04:00

See that lovely red "X" on the very teeny section labeled A4? That's where I scored daughter tickets to the concert this summer. Yay me!! :)

I'll update more later. :)

Snot and Batteries

2009-03-19T15:36:00.003-04:00

Well I am back with good news. Mona Vie tastes much better chilled. Notice that I did not say that it tastes good, I just said it tastes better. I still plug my nose and chug it through a straw, but I am holding my nose for less and less time afterwards- HA!- and I no longer want to gag myself just to see if vomit does in fact taste better than said miracle juice. Baby steps ;) I'm also forcing husband to drink it every night when he comes home from work. I don't think he really appreciates it...one day he will ;)

Tomorrow, I have a friend from nursing school coming to visit (hi Monique!) and I am super excited. So, in honor of that, it's only fitting that I do my typical "company cleaning". I always clean like a mad lady when I am having company, but on top of that my house just REALLY needed it. I honestly am not sure when the last time I cleaned was-and that's pretty bad coming from someone who used to clean every single Friday. The only problem is that this house is too big for our own good, and I am ready to poop out about halfway through, just leaving the rest of the house in ruins. I have managed to get the entire house clean except the never ending laundry, and the floors. Oh, the joy.

I got up today with a plan- I will clean the house like mad (or as much as son will allow), go to the bank, pick up a few things from the store..you get my point, I had plans (for once). So it only makes sense that I get up today and my Jeep won't start when I go to take daughter to school. Great. I still don't know what's wrong with it, it would appear that the battery was dead, but we don't know how this is possible since everything cuts itself off if you leave it on. I had to call husband to come all the way home from downtown, jump my car with a booster that he borrowed from security at work, and then take daughter to school, and go all the way back to work. He also took my car back with him, so hopefully he makes it home ...hehe.

I send daughter off to school an hour late, son is up and he is a face full of snot. The poor guy feels terrible. He is sneezing all over the place, his nose is a mess. I've noticed this afternoon that he does have a low fever, so I hope this isn't anything related to the ear tubes. Trying to give him amoxicillin results in bad things if you recall. Daughter is hacking her head off, and as much as I feel sorry for her, I have to shamefully admit that coughing really pisses me off (hangs head in shame). But, it's not just her coughing- constant coughing from anyone. I know (she) they can't help it, but it just bothers me to no end. Yes, I realize it's not all about me.But this is my blog, so in a sense it is ;) But still, it's annoying. I am assuming it's the pollen, since it's really high right now. Daughter has been allergy tested but that was several years ago. I had allergies something FIERCE when I was a kid- I think I spent my first 13 years of existence with a tissue up my nose- how's that for flattering? The boys loved it. :o/

And so, it's been one of those days. I've spent it cussing at my car, cleaning a dirty house, wiping snotty noses and blessing lots of sneezes. I look forward to some adult time this weekend with my friend. I need one good day of baking in the sun. Well, in reality I need about 20 good minutes because after that, I usually look like Mr Crabs.

Did I mention that she's taking my PF Chang's virginity? Ha! I'll let you know how it works out...

Oh, the Acai..

2009-03-18T10:37:00.002-04:00

I am on a never-ending quest for how I can be lazy and skinny at the same time. Don't pop my bubble people, I know it doesn't really work that way, just let me dream ok? ;)

Anyhow, I should first mention that the inventors of *anything* that is "As Seen On TV" must have seen me coming long before my birth. I am such a stickler for infomercials, and all things junk that are far too overpriced, and probably don't work to begin with.

So my latest endeavour has been checking out the Acai Berry (ooh and guess what, I learned to hyperlink, yay me for catching up with the 1990's! LoL).

The Acai Berry is basically a craze right now amongst people trying to lose weight with little to no effort. But, there are supposedly health benefits to it as well, a couple of them being increased energy and lowered cholesterol. You can read all 59 supposed ones here. Upon doing research, you will find that 99.9% of the reviews and information come from people (consumers), not credible companies or sources, other than the ones promoting their product who will obviously not have anything bad to say. Their stories are inspiring, if true. But the good thing is that unlike most products, I have yet to find anything about scary side effects or reactions.

However, the Acai berry is very rich in antioxidants, which we all know are good for you. You have to find it in a form (pill usually) that has been prepared just right- freeze dried immediately, and not with a bunch of added sugars.

You also have to be weary of where you're ordering the product from, because each "free trial" will start billing you around $80-$90 per month if you don't cancel within their time frame (typically 14-30 days from the date they ship your product, not from the time you receive it).

My first endeavour was with Acai Berry 500, or something like that. It came in the mail, and was purple chewable tablets that tasted great. It was a small trial- I'm thinking 7 days, as opposed to some that are 30. I started taking the pills and of course noticed no effects, until about 3 days later, I caught myself skipping down our hall for no apparent reason. I sooooo don't skip, and especially not without reason. In my 7 day trial, I changed no habits at all, and I lost 5 pounds with no side effects. I REALLY wish I would have continued that trial, but I canceled and now I cannot find that company again. Ugh. If I had lost 5lbs per week on that stuff, then I really would have been one of those "-30lbs miracle".

I let it go for a month or so and ordered a different free trial, which gave me NO energy like most advertise they do, and so now I'm trying a different trial, and a version from GNC.

I'm saying all of this mainly because if I am a miracle that drops 30+ pounds by doing nothing like these people claim to have done, then I want to blog about it. Or, I'll be back on here in a month talking about how I haven't lost JACK and it's a scam. Either way, I felt the need to share ;) Feel free to do the research, so far I have not been able to find one bad thing about the Acai Berry itself, and I figure that' good enough reason to keep at it until it's obvious that it will or will not work for me- or in other words, when my two months free trial supply is up ;)

If anyone decides to try it for yourself- of course consult your doctor first because things like that can interfere with some medications. Now, don't blame me because I warned you ;) I am also not a salesperson or representative, nor am I trying to get you to do/be/try/buy anything. I have enough to keep me busy as it is ;)

In addition to my Acai pills, I thought I would supplement with Mona Vie . There's of course the same testimony out there from people who love it, and claim awesome health benefits from it. Quite a few news clips on You Tube. I was sold after I saw it on an episode of The Doctors. Of course, there are no doctors or researchers that will say that acai products contribute to this amazing weight loss that people are having- the verdict is still out, and obviously they encourage you to just continue the change of eating habits and add exercise as opposed to unproven methods. Basically, they just take all of the fun out of it. HA :)

So I bit the bullet and decided to order a bottle of Mona Vie. I should say that my main reason for taking all of this is because I stay COMPLETELY exhausted at all times, and every blood work test that I could have has came back normal, so I'm going a different route to see how it works out. The Acai is supposed to be great for energy. I wait for what seemed like forever to get the bottle (probably more like 2 weeks). It came in yesterday and I was sooo excited. They recommend you drink only 1-2 ounces, 2 times a day. Which is good because it's NOT cheap, and (drum roll please)....it. takes.like.crap.

OMG.

Apparently all of those people in the You Tube clips were either paid actors, or they have lost their taste buds in some unfortunate incident because the stuff tastes like watered down blueberry ass. I will say it was much better today chilled, yesterday I drank it straight after delivery and that was a mistake for sure. I love blueberries, which is the fruit that the Acai is most similar to, but this juice is some NASTY stuff. I can only hope that it's an acquired taste that I will soon acquire, because I don't know that I can handle a lifetime of nose-pinching-straw chugging-watery ass tasting madness. But I am hoping that I see some type of result from this all, or I shall just add it to my "as seen on TV, but does not work" pile.

So there you have it. I am easily swayed by mainstream media who promote things that may or may not work, feel free to heckle me now ;)

Monday, Monday

2009-03-16T14:22:00.002-04:00

The weekend was somewhat eventful, and somewhat uneventful if that makes sense. It was HOT here, and while my family spent the weekend freezing in WV, we spent it sweating our parts off here in FL with temps around 86 yesterday. Saturday, daughter and I went swimming. I can definitely say that's the first time I have been swimming in March. And outdoors, at that. She also learned to ride her bike without training wheels over the weekend. Yay! :)

Yesterday husband went into asshole mode, and so we didn't go to the shuttle launch. We drove down to the beach in St Augustine to see it- or tried to, until I hit literally EVERY red light between here and there, and thus we were not parked as it blazed through the sky. A beautiful sight none the less, and I was surprised and just how visible it was from here. There are two launches the same week in May, rest assured I will see at least one of them. I hope that one is a late launch, nothing beats it. It may be the time I finally grow a brain and start adding pictures to my blog too ;) I'm just still trying to figure out how there will be two space shuttles in space at the same time-they launch within 3 days of each other- I mean it isn't as if there is a parking lot up there that they pull into. Having more than one up there at a time kind of seems like a big deal to me. It makes me nervous :) Anyhow, I will be there in May. I'm already counting down ;)

Other than that, there isn't much to report. I could babble on for days about useless random things, but I won't. I will finish with saying, if you haven't been a victim of this: http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/106716/How-to-Blow-Your-Cr then be prepared, because you just might be. So far my mom, with her near perfect credit score, has had 3 major credit cards reduce her limits. We have had 1 of our only 2 major credit cards cut our credit limit- in the most dirty way might I add. We just paid them off, quite a sum of money. We were really excited because that left us one big bill, which we were going to transfer to that said card that was just paid off. I kept waiting and waiting on the balance transfer offers to pop up. I was just certain that since they were no longer getting money from us that they would be just itching to get a balance transfer. Boy was I ever wrong on that one. Not only did they not send us any balance transfer offers, they reduced our credit limit seven thousand dollars. $7,200!! Now instead of having a $7900 credit limit, we have $700. I can totally understand that they are trying to keep people from overspending, but to reduce that much, is just wrong in my opinion. Especially after we just freaking paid them off, and some people probably haven't paid them in months!! So now, we basically won't be taking a vacation unless husband works mad overtime, because that was our vacation credit card. The only other card that we had decided to jack our interest rate sky high and we are scraping to make the minimum payment. ((sigh)) Life, I tell you. Sometimes you really just can't win for losing!

1...1 3/4....1 1/2....

2009-03-13T14:08:00.003-04:00

I have to say that I have had a very uneventful week, and I find it quite enjoyable! (now knocking on every piece of wood in the house).

They have scrubbed the shuttle launch until at least Sunday, so that's where I'll be at approximately 7:43 EST, provided they don't delay it again. Well obviously we'll be there earlier than that, but yeah. I really admire an astronaut, on many levels. Beyond the major and obvious ones- it's things like the fact that they were probably the little boys (and girls!) who played with shuttles when they were kids, and told everyone they wanted to go into space, and grandma would say "You can be whatever you want to be!", so they did. Ahhh. I love it when people follow their dreams. :) It gives me hope that one day I will follow my own, if I ever figure out what they are. But my 20's induced identity crisis is a whole other post in itself. They were probably geeks in high school, but look at them now. Only a few select people can really say they have been in space for cryin out loud. I cry like a newborn when I have to fly from Florida to Virginia. Sheesh.

But besides that, they take the concept of flying to a whole new level. Unfortunately history has shown that even space shuttles aren't always 100% safe. I personally could not ever get on a plane that has made any kind of emergency landing due to weather or mechanical repair. I don't care where in the world I am, I will find an alternate route home. Truth is, once that thing lands because of a problem, it isn't going back to the sky with my arse in it. So for this shuttle to have been delayed several times- and now more in the past few days- I really admire these people getting in there and proceeding. Well, I admire them, and I pee my pants a little at the thought of it. I'm kidding. Maybe.

3...2...1....

2009-03-11T12:47:00.004-04:00

Today is another beautiful day here in sunny Florida- I have no complaints. :)

Tonight is the space shuttle launch, and I have to say that while I am not a big patriotic person, watching a shuttle launch truly brings tears to my eyes. I have yet to figure out why it does that, but it does.

We saw our first daytime shuttle launch out of sheer luck, two years ago when we were vacationing in New Smyrna Beach .We heard about it on the radio, and decided that it was worth the drive (90 min or so) and headed that way. We saw our second one in passing, they launched it the day we moved down here last May, and we saw it from our apartment parking lot in Jacksonville. It is ALWAYS packed at NASA with people watching- some you can tell have made a day out of it, with coolers and food and radio, etc. There are news crews everywhere, and there is just such an excitement in the air. I feel like a school girl all over again ;)

The last launch that we watched was this past November.It was at night. My parents had decided to come and visit one weekend, when I checked and realized that there was a launch that following weekend. I knew it was something that my dad would LOVE, and for those that don't live near by, it truly is a once in a life time opportunity. It also happened to be the last night time launch ever, as the space program funding is set to expire soon. We met my parents down there, about an hour and 45min drive, and got a prime spot right near the countdown clock, across the water from the launch pad.

I have to say that when that crowd started counting down, I had no clue what to expect at night, until the entire sky literally lit up, as if it were daylight again. It was beautiful. The crowd cheers, and then it gets really quiet except for the absolute roar of the shuttle.

The shuttle that is launching tonight is now a night time launch, due to it being canceled and rescheduled several times because of technical issues. I so wish we could go to see it, but I don't want to keep daughter out until midnight on a school night. BOOOO. Last time we hit traffic like nothing I have ever seen, otherwise it wouldn't be too bad of a drive and I would take her.
So we're going to settle for driving down to the beach tonight and watch it. While we are about 1hr 45min from there, you have NO problems seeing it, and the forecast tonight is supposed to be fabulous for viewing. Of course it's nothing like being right there in person, but there are several launches this year and I will be there. Nothing beats a night time launch though ;)

****Whoops! Looks like the launch has been scrubbed until tomorrow night. I am shuttle bound! ;)

Hope you're all having a nice day :)

Sunny Day

2009-03-10T22:32:00.003-04:00

It's been unseasonally warm here in the Sunshine State--or maybe it's seasonally warm, just normal. Don't know, I wasn't here this time last year, I was freezing my arse off in WV ;) Anyhow, we took advantage of the beautiful not-a-cloud-in-the-sky-80-degrees-day, by heading to the beach. Daughter got in the still quite cold water, and son dug up pretty much the whole beach ;) We weren't there maybe an hour, but it was a nice time and made me excited for this summer when I don't have to work around daughters school and extreme amount of extra curricular activity schedule, and can spend many hours baking in the sun :)

Yes, I will wear sunscreen. ;)

Summertime, and the livin is.....

2009-03-07T22:10:00.002-05:00

I am again, lacking anything important to say. Sometimes no news is good news though, right? Or silence is golden, or whatever would be a fitting term for the fact that I have nothing of substance to say. I am going to ramble some more instead though. Please, please, hold the applause ;)

The rental house was nice, very nice in fact. There were a few key things that I really enjoyed, and a few that I certainly did not. The house itself is much smaller than the one we have, however it's still very roomy in all the right places, which genuinely surprised me because it looks so small from the outside. That, I enjoy. I don't enjoy the fact that the entire house is painted the same color inside, because I think that makes it less likely that we could repaint any rooms, or be able to match that color again to paint them back. Master bedroom/bath/closet are big like we have here, but other bedrooms are smaller, and it has a dining room that seems far too large for it's own good. One of my main turn offs is that it's in the curve of a cul-de-sac and I felt very claustrophobic and cut off, I have NO clue why. I myself prefer a "straight" street, with houses on each side. Our street has a cul-de-sac, but we are on the straight part. I like being able to see people. Ok, now I'm just sounding weird, so moving along... It also has NO backyard, just preserve. Which is nice in a way because right now we have a "lake" (us WV girls would call it a pond LoL) view, and while I thought that wouldn't matter, I have grown quite fond of looking out at the water instead of directly at someone else's house. Especially given the close proximity that they build houses within each other here. So it would be nice to still have privacy in the back. But at the same time, I don't want the kids to have to play on the street, though sometimes that is the only choice since I seem to see red ants no matter where I go. Not to mention, we have the worst, most stiff, and most annoying grass ever. I wonder if that's everywhere here.....Damn. I should have checked the grass...

The main point was that the house was much overpriced for rent, and we put in an offer for a lot less. If they don't take it, we won't counter because it isn't that important. We couldn't figure out why the rent was so high, and found the house online for sale for $420K ????! Seriously people I promise you it is NOT worth that. Even the realtor told us she thought it was probably listed for about $200K or mid $200K at most. I don't know if that price was a typo or if they were delusional or what, but that's not happening. At all. Not ever, and especially not in this market. The house we are in now is much bigger than that, and priced way less. We'll see what comes of it. We should hear from her tomorrow, if not then on Monday we will just tell our landlord that we will stay here another year. He's breathing down our necks for an answer and so far we've avoided him for about 4 days now. Eek.

The warm FL weather is back in full swing, and I met it today with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was tired of the freezing temps, and our entire neighborhood looks like a desert because everything is dead and brown. I was ready for a warm up.

We took the kids to the zoo today, and by the time we left it was 81. It felt HOT. It really wasn't, in comparison to what it will be here in about 2 months. Of course I was in jeans because I am SO not a shorts person, and aside from that my legs are stark white, more blindingly so than usual. I will bust out the shorts, or capris, when it hits 90. But for the most part I would rather wear some sort of dress, at least I feel more covered up.

I had multiple flashbacks to last summer when we moved here, mid JUNE and it was hot as two mice in a wool sock. It rained literally everyday for like 3 months straight and I was sure that it was all our fault for coming here and leaving the family, the grey clouds would follow us wherever we would go, to punish us for what we had done. Though I have since regained some of my sanity and I realize that it does in fact rain here a lot in the summer. I will be prepared this year. We just came into the "sunshine state" at the wrong time, as it was more of the rainy state. ;)

In any event, today had me thinking of how freaking INSANE it is in the summer, when you get into your car and it's like 103 in there and the kids are ready to pass out, and you're dehydrated just from walking to the mailbox. Or you're dumb enough to go out not once, but multiple times, without an umbrella, and the heavens open up, you're sure the Arc will float by at any minute, if you aren't struck dead by a giant lightening bolt before then (I did this in case you're wondering).

Ah yes, today made me realize that it might be ok if it doesn't get too hot, for just a little bit longer ;) But, at least once daughter is out of school , I fully intend to spend the summer in the pool and at the beach :)

Aside from that, I felt like doing something different with my blog tonight. I just spent far too long straightening up the house, so rather than do something that is actually going to cause me to have to get up and put forth a lot of effort, such as take pictures, etc., I came up with a different idea. I guess today also had me thinking about tourist season, because I haven't ever lived anywhere that is a huge tourist destination, and I know that that will be a pain this summer as well. So in the spirit of travel, I ask:

How long would it take you to get to where I live (zip code 32092)?

Would you drive or fly?

What is your favorite thing about summer?

Your least favorite thing?

What is your most favorite summer memory?

Feel free to answer me in the comments. I don't know why those came to me, but I will answer about the longest destination that I would have to travel, which would be Karla at To Alaska and Beyond-
* 76 HOURS according to Mapquest. Wowza! I think I would find that to be a bit of a daunting trip, and I can imagine that it would take even longer in the winter, given what I have read in her blog. However, I think that I would drive it, and alone. Maybe a cross country alone trip would be good for me, as long as I didn't make the national news for one reason or another.

*My most favorite thing about summer is the feeling in the air, if that makes any sense. If it doesn't, then you're just not as weird as I am ;)

*My least favorite are the bees, because I hate them!

*And by far, my best summer memories are the yearly trips that I took to Myrtle Beach with my dads parents. My grandma took midnight walks on the beach with me, we spent way too much money on junk, and we ate pizza at 1am every night. I spent all of my days in the pool, and evenings at the Pavillion which is no longer there. Those are definite things that I sometimes worry that I may forget, but I know I never will :)

Random stuff

2009-03-06T11:28:00.003-05:00

I don't have anything exciting to report, so I'm going to do some rambling. I've spent the past few days planning a few fun things for daughter and I this summer. Most of which are purely for her enjoyment, but obviously she can't get there without a driver, or money ;) A few of those things being

*Disney on Ice (April)
* Circque de Soleil ( mainly for me, and this I am still debating on- I'm very interested, but trying to decide if it would be better to go to the "stationary" one in Orlando, vs a traveling tour. Somebody clue me in on this)
* A Jonas Brothers concert (insert your shrieks of horror here. I do it for the kid.)
*a possible weekend trip somewhere

Yes, I realize I have two offspring, but son is not old enough to do stuff like that and it's rare that I get some alone time with daughter. So there's that recap of some upcoming plans.

In other news, we're going to look at a rental house today. Our landlord is wanting us to stay here, but trying to up the rent on us- which is already at the top of what we can afford. So we're checking out something today that is the next exit up. We live in a beautiful neighborhood right now, with a lot of amenities for the kids, but it is just too far out. A move to the next exit up will take about 20min off of husbands commute time, and there are acutally things on that exit like banks and post offices and stuff. We've got none of that here, seriously. This house is in a gated community too, safer for us and the kids. Anyhow, there's that recap too.

Moving on to other things, I am going to take this time to shout out 5 blogs of interest for you. I have NO clue how to hyperlink or whatever, so if anyone wants to clue me in on that then feel free, otherwise, just click on the extremely long links ;)

*This first blog of interest is my www friend Karla. I met her through Ivillage a loooong time ago. She and her husband just recently packed up and moved from MN to Alaska. I love reading her blog because I relive some of my quirky moments from our moving experience as well. Enjoy!
http://karla-alaskaandbeyond.blogspot.com/

*Persnickety Ticker- this blog is hilarious, and one of those that I have no clue how I found. She has the best sense of humor, and a sense of sarcasm a lot like my own. So go check it out!
http://persnicketyticker.blogspot.com/

*This next blog of interest is from a fellow WV girl, Bridgett. I honestly have no clue how I came across her blog, I think it was one of my many days where I just went from "followers" to followers and ended up there. She has two beautiful children, Parker and Autumn. She also has lost 80+lbs on Weight Watchers! and posts yummy recipies from time to time too. You can find her blog here: http://booplustwo.blogspot.com/

*When Bridgett's son Parker was diagnosed with Autism, she started seeking out more natural alternative methods of treatment, and she keeps an absolutely amazing blog on the Holistic approach. Each entry continues to amaze me, the girl is so smart!! You can find that blog here:
http://allnaturalboo.blogspot.com/

*This blog is written by a mommy who was pregnant with identical twins, who mirrored each other. One twin sadly passed on, and the other has endured countless procedures for her heart. I don't know this family personally, and I found the blog through a link in Bridgett's blog. I caught up on it and I love to read it daily and hear of the progress their little "V" is making. They truly are example of the power of prayer! You kind find their blog here: http://kargfamilyupdates.blogspot.com/

Ok, I'm finished with my very scattered post for the day. I have other blogs that I will link to next time, as I follow some that are sooo fun to read- most of which are from people I have never met, but still can feel like I know on a certain level :) I hope you all have a nice weekend!

There's More To A Cell Phone Than You Think

2009-03-04T14:22:00.003-05:00

Boy did I ever get myself into a pickle today! Son always plays with my Blackberry, and after many beats and slams on the floor, the "ball" fell out of it- basically the only way to make the entire phone function, other than dialing. It goes to the menu, it selects, it does everything. It takes the place of arrows on a regular phone. Without the ball, you might as well not have a Blackberry.

I was actually "rednecking" it, and still using the phone. Any time you pick it up the ball falls out, but I was determined to not have to take it to be repaired, because well, AT&T has assholes for customer service. Excuse that remark, if you read my blog and do or have worked for AT &T. I'm only calling it like I've seen it in my experiences ;)

Last week when mother in law was visiting, I was using the phone and daughter was in the back getting on my nerves, and son was wild and I just wanted twofrickinsecondsofpeace and turned around to tell her such, lo and behold the ball fell into the abyss that is mother in law's passenger side floor. Only people who want to lose a limb would dare dig down there. I started to, until I saw the chewed up fingernail and that was it, the abyss can keep my ball.

In the meantime I had already ordered a replacement ball, and figured while I am at it, I might as well order a new casing because I want my Blackberry to be pink. It FINALLY comes in the mail today, from Hong Kong. Damnit. And no, I am not prejudiced against anyone of that descent, I just don't trust overseas products what with the lead paint and all. Ugh.

Anyhow, I open up the tiny and long awaited box, and there is my beautiful pink casing, and he even sent me the tool-like things. 3 of em. Hmmm..tools? Cute. It is at this moment that I realize that I may be getting into more than I bargained for, but with careless abandon, I dismantle my phone, paying NO mind whatsoever to how it was assembled in the first place.

What an idiot.

I have to say, that I was doing really well, until I was down to the bare minimum of parts that were still assembled, only to realize that there are several small micro-chip-ish things that my phone has to have to function, and they are not removable, not replaceable. UGH!! At this point, I had already snapped the two sides in half- totally broke them- because they were hard as crap to get off and I had two brand new ones sitting there, so why bother to preserve those? UGHHH again!

I spend about 30 minutes alternating between working really hard to repair my beloved phone that I just had to have, that I whined to dh about, and walked around for what seemed like months singing that song by Bryan Adams (it's only going to make you love me more) to him, until he finally caved and "surprised" me with it, to throwing the stupid thing out and getting that new purple LG that I've been eyeing for months now. Blame dh, he pointed it out to me.

Eventually I have repaired my phone. I, yes I, have "built" a Blackberry from almost scratch, aside from all of that programming and other geeky stuff, only the STUPID top of it (which was the hardest part to get un-done) will not snap completely into place. The phone is fully functional, I just think that this needs to be fixed or else it's bound to get really dirty in there and eventually ruin. Did I mention you can't get insurance on those stupid things? No, they want you to ruin them and have to buy a totally new one, out of contract for a ridiculous price. I am, however, triumphant because I managed to fix the whole thing myself with NO man and NO technician. Except for that pesky top that won't snap shut.

On to the Gorilla Glue..

We're home

2009-02-26T13:48:00.002-05:00

Son is out and recovered- well, he's sleeping it off. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, though he is highly aggitated (from the anesthesia). I hope that these tubes do the trick, they stay in as long as they should, and that his speech and hearing come to the normal range. A mama can dream right? ;)
Thank you all for your well wishes!

Say a Prayer

2009-02-25T15:05:00.001-05:00

Son has to be at the surgery center at 7:30 am, so please say a prayer or kind word for us that it will all go great, thanks!

Perk Up Buttercup

2009-02-22T22:05:00.005-05:00

Hey guess what? I'm in a much better mood today ;) I have pondered several things today, the first being how I managed to birth two ice-eating children. I seriously hate when people chew ice, it makes my entire body convulse into chills. But yet, both of my children love to do it. (insert full body shuddering here)
I had the weirdest dream last night that I was pregnant and went into labor, and birthed the baby in whoevers house I was in. Husband kept calling and saying to wait, don't have the baby and I kept waiting. But in the end I had the baby before he got there. Then in no time I was out and back into "normal" life, and looking fabulous- much more than I do in reality,might I add. No, I'm not pregnant. It was a really weird dream though, that has haunted me all day for whatever reason.
Anyhow, moving along ;) Husband beyond pissed me off last night, and I HAD to get away today. So rather than just doing some grocery shopping, I took myself out for the day. I bought several new shirts, and even ordered a few online too. It's been WAY too long since I've been shopping and paid attention to myself. I desperately need to update my wardrobe. I'd like to think that I have a good sense of fashion, I love fashion. But I guess I'm stuck in fashion limbo. I don't want to dress like I'm 50, but I don't need to dress like I'm 20 either. The boobs are a major problem too, and boob reduction is way up there on my "things to do" list. I need some nice, simple, yet modern and sophisticated tops that will look great with jeans or black pants. I'm working on it ;) So what if I spent money that was intended for other things. Today I refuse to have buyers remorse. I'm tired or neglecting myself.
Ok enough of that ;)
We're having sleep issues with son. I must say that I am beyond blessed that both of my children slept through the night at such a young age- 8 weeks for daughter, 5 weeks for son. But lately he is refusing to go to bed at night, and I've tired everything. I know I can't cut out his one day time nap, he has to have it. I have to have it. LoL. It's funny how we're taking him to have tubes in his ears, which has affected his hearing. Yet sometimes, he has the hearing of a bionic woman (whatever that means). It seems like he can hear a pin drop.
Putting him to bed is similar to take off in an airplane, that's the only thing I can think to relate it to. We put him to bed, and then spend the next 20 minutes or so sitting there completely still, watching TV and making no sudden movements. Then when I don't hear him tossing around and talking or sometimes crying, we are finally free to roam about the cabin (house) again. Of course in real life when I fly, I believe that people have no business walking in an airplane, or talking or moving for that matter. But that's because I am a spaz about flying and I think that anything someone does will cause unfortunate events. I'm weird like that. But for normal people who fly, that is what I have come to compare putting son to bed to. Take off in an airplane ;)
Mother in law is coming tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day. She's so damn indecisive and it freaking drives me insane! But beyond that, I am lacking anything else important to talk about. ;)

I'm back

2009-02-20T16:18:00.003-05:00

Whew. I'm here, alive and kicking- barely.
I haven't really had much excitement going on, we had a great visit with my mom and grandma, probably one of my most favorite visits since we have moved here. I don't ever do anything to seek approval, but my grandma was the one person left that is able to travel, that hadn't been here, so it was nice to get her here to see that we don't live in the woods amongst serial killers and rapists. Apparently she thinks the worst, always. I feel more at peace here now. Husband and I were able to have a date night while they were here, so we enjoyed some fabulous Melting Pot..Yummmmm. We also found out thanks to his federal ID, we got 50% off of our bill, a BIG score at that place since it can get really expensive! Wooha! I would have been happy with 10%!

They left on Friday and son had his re-check for his ears. Not only was he not better, he was actually worse. So we are slated for ear tubes and an adenoidectomy this coming Thursday. I'm not upset because I know it needs to be done. He has had fluid in his ears since birth almost, and he's already suffered some hearing loss. Since removing tonsils isn't as common as it used to be, I'm hoping that with having both of these done now ,we won't ever have to go back for any other surgery, ever. In an attempt to redeem herself, mother in law is coming down Wednesday- Sunday to help out. I told her we didn't need anyone here, but she insisted, so whatever. I am more nervous about the after care of the tubes and avoiding water, then the actual surgery. That is subject to change though, as I am sure that I will be a nervous wreck on Thursday.

Other than that, not too many exciting things have happened here lately. I'm in another one of my funks, I don't know what is wrong with me. I'm soooo tired, even getting 8 hours of sleep I wake up feeling like I have never went to sleep to begin with. My whole body is sore. Apparently I ran a marathon in my sleep all this week ;) So pardon my lack of excitement in my return, but I am BEAT. Hopefully I will get caught up on sleep this weekend, but somehow I doubt it :/

Oh, the pink stuff...

2009-02-10T15:36:00.002-05:00

I generally avoid the doctor if at all possible. After going through nursing school, germs pretty much occupy 80% of my thoughts. Ugh. The main one is MRSA. The truth is though, most of us already have it- if not through using too many antibiotics, then from that old man that sat way too close at the mall, and hacked it into your air space. Ugh...

Anyhow, we've all had this cold funk for going on about 2 weeks now. I've known for awhile that mine was a sinus infection, thanks to the techni-colored snot that I am making. Yes, I know you wanted to know that ;) Daughter still has a yucky cough but it's getting better. Son, however, was not. His fever kept coming and going, and he is soooo fussy and clingy, and he too makes techni-colored snot.

So I finally caved last night and took him to Minute Clinic. My mom and grandma will be here today and I wanted him to be up to playing with company. Minute Clinic wasn't fabulous, and not the greatest for babies because it was obvious that the FNP was not accustomed to seeing a lot of kids. It will be ok for me or husband if it's something that we need a prompt care type place for though. They're treating son for a sinus infection, which means to him (and any one of you that were sick as a child), "the pink stuff". Also known by medical people (and people over the age of 12 haha) as Amoxicillin. Can I just take this moment to say how much I LOVE the pink stuff? Like seriously, LOVE IT. It brings back memories of way too many cases of strep throat as a child, but damn did I love that medicine. The smell, the taste...very kid friendly. ;o)

Well you know what? Son HATES the pink stuff.

Is this even American?? Isn't it a requirement that as a citizen, you will promise to love the pink stuff? The child HATES it. Last night was difficult to get him to take it, but this morning when he saw it and remembered what it was, he went NUTS. All I can say is thank heavens that they gave me extra, because at least half of his morning dose today ended up in the kitchen floor, on his shirt, and on my pajamas. We are two doses into this, with 9 1/2 days to go and I have NO clue what I am going to do to get him to take it. My hopes of him quickly starting to feel better are dashed, and I am already dreading tonight when he has to take it again.

My son doesn't like the pink stuff. He must have been switched at birth.

A baker, I am not.

2009-02-06T13:47:00.002-05:00

Ok. I have finally found my weakness. That which makes me sweat, that which makes me choke.

I cannot cook under pressure.
There. I said it.

I've put catheters in people I thought were impossible to cath. I've taken care of people who had more bedsores than skin. I scooped stool up in a plastic spoon to send off for samples, just because it was the *only* way to do it. I did all of this, and more, while pregnant, and never batted an eye or puked in a can.

Yet, it is nearly impossible for me to cook when necessary and have it come out good. What is the deal?

I volunteered to make a "100 day cake" for daughters class. Basically, it's their 100th day of school and they have fun with it, have a cake, etc. All it is, is regular cake mix (I used my favorite- Funfetti). You make 2, 8x8 rounds for the zeros, and then one 9x13 for the "1". I mixed up the cake mix and poured it into the pans. The minimum time was 32 min, so I set it for 28. I went down at 26 thank goodness, because it was getting ready to be burnt. I take out the cakes, and set them aside to cool.

Coming back later, the cakes are cooled enough. I flip both "0" 's out of the pan with no problems. I ice them, decorate them with skittles (per teachers instruction), then write little "100"'s all over them in glitter icing. Pretty nice.

Then I come to the 9x13 pan, and begin to cut out my "1". Common sense now tells me that I should have just bit the bullet and purchased a first birthday cake pan, to make this much more easy on myself. I start cutting the one, and it literally FALLS APART. I transfer the pieces to the cake pan, and have to use icing to hold the 1 together.

My 1, looks like crap.

I feel really bad because I think I cut it too skinny, and spent at least a good hour laying in bed thinking about how there can't be nearly enough cake for 41 kids, and how some will probably be upset that they didn't get any, or worse- the whole thing will turn into a pile of cake when they try to cut it. If I lived anywhere convenient to a place that didn't close at 10, I would have went and got another cake and started over. Ugh. I feel bad.

I emailed her teacher and gave her advance warning, and she said she was sure the cake would be fabulous, but all of this has led me to believe that I simply cannot cook under pressure. How ridiculous is that. I can walk into the kitchen and whip up a fantastic dinner and the family cleans their plates in 5 minutes flat. But I try to bake cookies (see my very first blog post), or a 100 day cake and BOOM, it all falls apart. Literally. ;)

Anyhow, nothing else new to report. The "dream house" that we wanted, well the offer fell through on it and so now we are persuing a different mortgage company and hoping for good results this time. We want that house. The lady at Bank of America has forever left a sour taste in my mouth, and I would love to just cancel our checking and savings through them because they suck, big time. Well, she sucked big time.

Ok that's all. I had plans of giving a few blog shout outs, and showing you what's in my purse since I've been tagged :), but I will have to save it for a later date.

The case of the arachnid and the ever-mutating Rhinovirus

2009-02-02T12:00:00.005-05:00

Well , Super Bowl Sunday was fun. We had lots of food, all of which severely violated husbands diet wagon that he is back on..or is it off? I don't know. Either way, the pace that that boy can lose weight at disgusts me. It would take me years..that is, if I had the motivation to begin with. Tomorrow I'm starting back on the Wii Fit. Though I'm more interesting in that thing I saw on HSN that flexes your ab muscles for you. Now that, is gold. I could do that. Or, er, let that do it for me ;)

Now I'm way off track on what I wanted to talk about. So, Super Bowl was fun. Husbands friend, his wife and their daughter came over. We ate lots, laughed lots. Oh, how I love to see different faces sometimes :) Son was an absolute BULLY- pushing the little girl and not sharing his toys. What have I birthed?? It doesn't help that he is off the charts in height, the little girl was 6 months older than him, he was about 3-4 in taller than her. Ugh. My son. The baby bully.

Anyhow. Today I find myself disturbed, very bothered. For once, it isn't by the mound of laundry that I have been chipping away at for two weeks (I've set my goal- completion, one week from today. HA). It isn't from the left over Super Bowl mess, though I will say our company was fabulous in helping clean up! It is from something that husband's work friend told us last night.

He had a scorpion in his house.
O....M.....G.

OMG. This is literally too much for me to deal with. He says he went into the play room, and there sits his gorgeous little 2yr old girl playing, with this ugly-ass-pincher-toting-beast headed towards her. Ok, he wasn't that descriptive, that is just how it plays out in my mind.

What the HELL is this?! There are scorpions on Florida?? Why didn't anyone tell me this? And more so, why do so many people have stories that they have had them too, but no one felt the need to share this with me? I am beyond disturbed and literally crawling out of my skin 24/7 now. A minute ago, the salt in the bag of pretzels shifted and I nearly shart my pants. If I see one of those things, I honestly think I will have to move. I thought they only existed in the desert.

I had to do a little research and it turns out most in FL are 1"-4" long. 1", I can deal with. 4"- not so much. Anyone that lives in Fl and anywhere hot for that matter, knows that bugs are a problem. We have a guy come in every other month and spray, just so they aren't a problem. The worst we have encountered are fire ants (outside) and earwigs (inside when we first moved in) , which were the grossest (and biggest) thing with a pincher that I EVER wanted to see. And they were pretty small. Scorpions. My feet will be propped up at all times now. Ugh. Ugh!!!!!!

Ok, that's my update for the day. I am back to staring at the floor for movement of anything that should not be moving, and waiting on my dear, sick son, to wake up. The poor thing now has caught on to daughter's well traveled funk. It appears to just be a cold for me, but cough for her, and something involving a fever with him. Daughter and I skipped out on going to the doctor in hopes that we can fight it with our own immunities. Son is roasting though, and I am feeling as though neither of my thermometers are right (I think I mentioned my deal with non-working thermometers in a previous post), as they aren't even registering 98.6- more like 97.3, and I know that we are all at least normal- he, is much warmer than that. Well there you have it. Some type of fabulous cold is mutating in my very own home, right before my eyes. Not cool! So, son may be the first that I actually take to the doctor. The poor little guy wouldn't even sleep in his bed last night, he booted daddy out of the bed, and me and my little man snuggled in the king sized bed all night. I don't think husband was too happy to have to sleep in the guest bedroom, but it sure beats the couch, and I will take snuggle time with son any chance I get. ;)

Productiveness, scrubbed

2009-02-01T14:06:00.004-05:00

I've taken an alternative approach to cleaning the house for company. While in the process, I did think of a couple more interesting things to add about myself on here. Maybe I can just come on here daily and talk only about myself, because I know you're all just itching to know all about me ;) HA.

* I HATE making plans. I think this comes from the fact that my husband is an extreme over-planner, and I can't stand to go somewhere and feel as though I am running on an hourly schedule. My parents call down here and plan to visit months in advance, and want to know our plans. Ugh. Anyone with kids knows that is impossible to plan that far in advance. I've found a happy medium since having kids and I do realize that planning is necessary to a certain extent, but I still hate it. I am very go-with-the-flow, low stress, and all that fun stuff. It doesn't always play out like that,though.

*I also hate feet, other than baby feet. Hate them!!!!!!! When we drive down the road and pass cars where someone is riding with their feet out the window, I want to vomit. I don't know why.

*I love to shop for groceries, but hate to put them up. I love to wash laundry but hate to put it up. What is that? Commitment issues? Problems following through? Dunno. Maybe I'm just weird like that. My single worst and most despised task is the dishwasher. I don't know why, but I just hate it.

Anyhow. Back to the task at hand. Company will be here in 3 hours, and I haven't ran the vacuum cleaner, or cleaned up the kitchen. Rather than put up the laundry I think I am just going to either find a very large hiding spot, or keep the bedroom door closed ;) All of the dirty laundry is hiding in the laundry room- also behind a closed door ;) Cut me some slack. Daughter gave me whatever funky nose running deal that she had, and I am in no mood to clean anything. I am never sick, but apparently I am a lot these days. I hate that too. Ha :)

Hope everyone has a great Super Bowl night. I'm rooting for the Cardinals by default, I really can't stand the Steelers ;)

Date night, scrubbed.

2009-01-31T19:51:00.004-05:00

Well, date night is scrubbed. For next weekend that is.

I can't remember if I told the story, but last summer mother in law was down here visiting. Turns out it was race weekend in Daytona and we didn't know- I thought it was the next weekend. I commented something about how it would have been nice to go, and that was that. No big deal.

Well ever since then, MIL has made it a point every other time we talk on the phone to tell us that she is coming down to watch the kids in Feb so that we can go to the race. Since July she's been saying this. It really hasn't been anything that I was desperate about going to, goodness knows we've been to a lot of races, just not at Daytona. It's only an hour from here, not that big of a deal if we went or not.

Well she insists that we go, even buying our tickets for "Valentine's Day" she says.

As the date is approaching, it is plainly obvious to me that she has absolutely no interest in coming here. I'm pretty darn good at reading people, and she's not a hard one to read. We have called her on multiple occasions asking when she plans on coming down, only to be met with "Do you need to know right now". It was really beginning to piss me off because I knew it was going to get down to the wire and she was going to get grouchy about it. I *hate* to make plans too far in advance, but she was acting like she may be here Thursday night, in which case daughter would be at gymnastics and we wouldn't even be here to let her in. Just a simple question of when she was coming, what day, with the understanding that it's subject to change is all we wanted to know.

Honestly, I don't want *anyone* in my house that doesn't want to be here, and certainly not watching my kids. She is a great person and wouldn't ever harm a fly, but she gets so grouchy sometimes and given all that has been going on lately, I just don't have the energy for it. At. All.

Husband calls yesterday as one last attempt to see when she is coming. You know, it wasn't that big of a deal and I think it could have been handled differently. If she really wanted to be here she could have said things were busy at work and she just wasn't sure yet, or something to that extent. But to bluntly say "Do you need to know right now" just signals to me that she has no desire to come here. So I told husband to un-invite her or else (yes, I threatened), stuck the tickets on Craigslist, and that is that.

Really there is no point to this very boring blog entry other than the fact that I needed to rant about my mother in law, because even though she is very good to us, she can really wear on my nerves more often that not. :) I see a lot of her in my husband, it drives me insane. Needless to say, she won't be down for awhile.

Hopefully I don't sound petty. It's not over the race, it's just over the situation and her in general. On a good note, my mom is coming on the 10th, and bringing my Mimi with her, who hasn't been down yet, so I'm excited to show her around and let her finally have mental pictures to associate with what we're talking about on the phone :) Maybe husband and I can sneak in a date night while they are here. And, at least I have an additional few days to get my house clean. It looks like my washing machine vomited in my bedroom floor, and we're having company for the Super Bowl, Girl Scouts meeting here on Tuesday, and then my mom and Mimi the next Tuesday. Yikes.

I suppose I *should* be in my room putting up said laundry, except that I refuse to put it up until it's all washed, and it's not, and aside from that I have a terrible sore throat thanks to ill daughter. Therefor I am not in the mood to do anything, at all. ;)

Strange but true things

2009-01-30T11:51:00.002-05:00

Well, I thought of two more interesting facts about myself that may make me seem even more weird to the general public. Actually I thought of about 5 more last night, right as I went to bed. I told myself to get up and write them down, but alas I did not, and now I have forgotten them :)

* I hate jokes. This makes me seem prudish, but I am not. I love to laugh, but for some reason I.hate.jokes. I think it's because my aunt used to tell *the* worst joke (sometimes more than 1) every time you saw her. Yep. Jokes. Can't stand em. I actually get pissed when people tell them. Eek.

*I think that not only is daylight savings time a sham, it's a waste of time, inevitably taking hours from your life over the long run, only to give them back 6 months later. Sort of. I hate daylight savings time. Just pick a freaking time and stay with the crap! I know why they do it, I just still think it's stupid. I often wonder what the states do that don't ever participate- I think it's IL or IN, and AZ? It's 2 states I think. What do you do if you live right on the state line and work in the neighboring state, and have to attempt to get ready for work on the other states time? This troubles me. Or more so, just confuses the crap out of me. I think they should do away with daylight savings.

**********

I had the craziest dreams the last two nights. Just absolutely wacked out! One of them involved the need-to-know-too-much mortgage lady calling our house and asking for an explination as to why we had a dead mouse in our house that we lived in in 2005, and what we did to dispose of it. She needed to know the information for our mortgage papers. HA

It at least made me wake up giggling, along with the fact that husband decided to serenade me with "Hot and Cold" by Katy Perry. I could have done without that at 7:30am. But I could totally see the mortgage lady doing that thing about the mouse. It's getting that ridiculous. As a side note, we did actually have a mouse in the house when we lived one place in 2005. It was in a wooded area, and the house went all summer un-rented. Fun times. Me, standing up ON the arm of the couch, and husband running around with a ski pole threatening to kill the mouse. Once I realized he was going to beat him to a pulp, I made him catch the mouse in a big box, and drive him about 5 miles down the road and let him out ;)

I sent daughter back to school today. She's still got a yucky cough, but I'm hoping it was just from the weather change when she went to WV last weekend with husband. I'm going to give her a couple more days before I take her to the doctor. Ugh. Doctors.

Son's face is still healing quite nicely. He for some reason *hates* me putting Neosporin on his cheek, so I have to sneak to do it, but it gets done :) Today I have plans of being utterly boring, cleaning up the house and doing laundry all day since we're having company for the Super Bowl on Sunday. I'm rooting for the Cardinals by default, because I don't enjoy either team. I also don't enjoy the fact that I am only 2hrs 45min from said Superbowl, and will not be there. Maybe next year in Miami.Because I just have 5 grand laying around to blow on $100 face value tickets you know ;) Ugh.

It is nice to have company though. A small reminder that people actually *do* like us! I've met a lot more moms online since I joined the new forum, and hopefully we'll have a playdate set up soon. So if I don't accomplish anything else on my pseudo-resolutions that I made, then at least I am taking care of the socialization part. ;)

A nice, rainy, dull, uneventful day

2009-01-30T00:35:00.003-05:00

Ok. So, nothing exciting happened around here today, and I enjoy that. A lot. Some days, too much stuff happens, and I'm all "why does so much stuff happen", so I like when stuff doesn't happen. Make sense? ;) The highlight of my day was going to the store by myself. Because it was by. my. self. I drove semi-erratically, sang off tune at the top of my lungs, and took my time through the store, because damn it sometimes I'm entitled to do all of those things :P

I have nothing interesting to talk about, so I'm going to steal an idea from another blog that I follow, and tell you some things about myself. Prepare to be bored to tears :)

* My favorite color is pink
*When I was little, I wanted to be a veterinarian. When I started thinking about how animals couldn't tell you what was wrong, I switched to nursing.
*I have near-constant dialogue with myself, in my head. I hope that doesn't make me crazy.
*I was never a small town girl. I was just stuck there for 25 years ;)
*I have the eating habits of an overly picky 5 year old. So not joking on this one.
*I am overly organized. Like borderline OCD. Things have to be put just-so, in the right place, turned the right direction, and if you move them, I WILL know. ;)
*I am a shopping addict- way too expensive jeans, shoes, and purses. And makeup. Oh and shirts. Oh and...
*I have this overwhelming feeling of "Oh No" when I walk into a bathroom in someone else's home and the toilet lid is down. Because I think that someone has pooped in there and not flushed for whatever reason. Yeah, I know that's weird.
*I watch way more "reality tv" than "real tv" like the news and stuff. I hate the news.
*I don't read the newspaper
*I'm actually really smart, and really good at writing. I have lots of common sense.
*Those are about the only nice things I will admit about myself. Now if I just could find a work at home job that required only those 3 qualifications ;)
*If I didn't have kids, I think I would be a travel nurse. I never seem content in one place for long.
*I am a makeup wearing, teeny bopper music loving, Louis Vuitton carrying, pink wearing, pro-football watching (go Cowboys!), NASCAR loving girl ;) So you can't call me a priss, OR a redneck ;)

That's all for now :)

Smell, Swirl, Swish, Repeat

2009-01-28T22:47:00.003-05:00

I went to the wine tasting last night. It's really funny how things appear in my mind and how they actually are sometimes. I expected going into this really ritzy room, and people who were wearing ridiculous amounts of jewelry and some snooty man saying "and now we are tasting a delicious Cabernet", etc etc. And everyone swirls it, smells it, and swishes it, and all of those things that you are supposed to do, while I pretend to take a sip and then spit it back out into my glass in disgust.
It actually turned out to be this really trendy-ish restaurant with a small local band playing. You gave your donation at the door, and they gave you a wrist band. Then from there, you just went to the bar and told them what wine you wanted, as often as you wanted it for the hour and a half. So it turned out to be really crowded, but really low key. Not to mention some drunks because it was a free for all on the wine. They had the wine on tap too, sort of, which I found to be very neat. It was so nice to have some actual adult conversation.The only downside is that the girl that drove, could not. I was soooo carsick by the time we got there, and then even worse by the time I got home. It's been foggy as crap here in FL the past few nights, and that made it even worse because she couldn't see, and I had nothing to focus on. Thankfully I never actually got sick, but I ended up with a bad headache that then made me nauseated. Oh it was terrible! We were home by 9:30, and I ended up on the couch by 3am, so in pain I thought I was going to have to drive myself to the hospital, and I don't know how, or if ,I would have made it. Smart of me, to be out of my migraine prescription. Reaalll smart. I eventually wandered back downstairs and took a Benadryl so that I could get rid of the nausea. So that knocked me out and I finally was rid of it by this morning. I think if we go out again, I will volunteer to drive ;o) I probably should also mention that I decided to not drink the wine, and opted for White Russians instead. And the cause? Raising money to find a place/build a children's museum in St Augustine. So I felt good about giving my money for that obviously :)
In other news, we are almost certain that we have been denied a home loan. Honestly, I think our mortgage lady is so freaking shoddy that part of the blame lies on her. Yes, about 80% of that is our fault- our credit- but she is non-responsive, and SO freaking nosy. I think the only things left that she doesn't know about me is my bra size and date of my last menstrual cycle.
I'm honestly not that upset. Like I said before, owning a home isn't something I feel like I have to do right now in life. I was the one that was all for waiting another year. My Jeep will be paid off, and we will be in so much better of a position to buy. By then we may even be able to build if there are still lots left here. That would be much better. It would be mine, how I want it, ready to move in, and new. I enjoy these thoughts :) So in keeping with her usual business ethic, for now the answer isn't no, but it's "they don't really want to do it". I wish we just knew something- anything. I kind of feel like this lady thinks she has a lot more power than she really does, and I really just want to fire her from helping us, and move along. Move along! Poor husband wants a house so bad that he's just impatiently waiting. If I had communication with her, I would have already dealt out about 50 eye rolls, 20 "Oh no you didn't!"'s, and a few select foul words. Ah well.
Son's face is healing quite nicely. He's still considerably bruised above the eye, but it's getting better. For some largely unknown reason, husband thought it would be a nice get well present for him, to bring in the biggest bag of Skittles I have ever seen in my life. Uh-huh. I actually hid them, but tonight they were on the dresser, and somehow son got them off, dumped out the whole bag, and shut himself in our bedroom (not locked). When I went in there, there was a huge pile in the floor and he looked very suspicious. So needless to say, I'm not surprised that he was up 2 hours past his usual bedtime, he was obviously jacked beyond belief. Men. ;)
Daughter is sick with some nasty-cough-yuck-stuff-in-the-throat-kind-of-hot-but-not ordeal. The thermometer says she's normal, but I never trust those things. Not since the night I just knew she had a fever, and it kept saying 98.6, yet when we woke up that morning and went to the doctor, she *actually* had a fever of 105.1 (!!!) and had RSV. So yeah, me and thermometers are not on good terms since about 2004. I keep at least 3 in the house, and I use each one of them for taking a temp every time I do it, since each method has a bit of a difference in result. If they all 3 are relatively close, then I may (or may not!) believe them. Anyhow, school is probably out for tomorrow, but we'll see in the morning.
Beyond that, life is normal for the time being. Mother in law is coming to visit next Thursday, and I am looking forward to some alone time for me and husband. And looking forward to the Melting Pot. One day, I will branch out and go to other places that interest me. Like this one weird place called Pussers??? The menu looks great- I don't know what the deal is with the name. But for the most part, I always pick the Melting Pot for date night. There's no way we could do it with the kids and come out without 3rd degree burns.
That's about it for now :)

Some real wine for my cheese!

2009-01-27T16:10:00.003-05:00

I've accepted an invitation tonight to attend a wine tasting/fundraiser with two moms from daughter's Girl Scouts. This is *all* wrong for many reasons. But, the most important of them being that I *hate* wine! LoL I had this incident one time in Germany, we were on a school trip. And the legal drinking age is 16. So we all thought it would be cool to buy like 6 bottles of CHEAP-O wine, and drink a bottle...a piece. I did some hard core puking, had to get up at 3am for our flight back home, which was 10 hours. Though the entire flight, only got up once to puke and request a Sprite from the flight attendant, and back to sleep I went. I slept the entire flight except for that short 5 minutes. I had to have lost about 5lbs with all of that puking. Oh, my stupid days!
So yeah, me and wine? Not such great friends. What can I say. I'm desperate for socialization!! HAHA At least we're helping a good cause- I should find out what that cause is. I didn't even ask!

I'll let you know how it turns out ;)

On the road to recovery

2009-01-25T13:19:00.004-05:00

Well as it usually goes after a big streak of things beating me down, it's starting to look up again. I am SO thankful that son is not bothered by his stitches, and hasn't messed with them hardly at all. His eye has gone through the many phases of brusing- the sides are yellowish and almost healed, the top part is still pretty much black and blue. But, his cheek looks pretty good. I am certain that he will have a scar, but hopefully one that he will mostly grow out of. He still runs warp speed down the hall just as he was doing the night of "the incident" , so I am constantly saying "Slow down! Slow down!". He's not slowing down though ;) At any rate, he can trade scar stories with daddy when he's older, since daddy too has a scar on his eye from a lovely meet with a tree while skiing in high school ;) We go tomorrow for stitch removal.

My computer is still deathly ill, so I've resorted to using an older laptop that is very slow, and also has a bright (I mean almost neon) blue strip that runs down the middle of it, but it works, and I can still see through the strip and that is what matters. I will probably have to get my dad to fix the other one.

We won't begin to talk about the laundry- hey at least it's all clean now. AND I fixed my Wii! Who knows what was wrong with it, but after I unplugged it for about 5min, it was fine. Once I get over this HORRENDOUS back ache, I will be back to my promised every other day workout.

We finally got all of the loan papers through for house hunting, and we should know by Friday if we get approved or not. Which that in itself is amazing, given the run around we have been given by our mortgage lady. Once we get that preapproval then we can finally work on putting in bids on houses and hopefully timing it just right. We would like to close around April (end) so that we have about a month to get the places cleaned and painted, and be completely moved in when our lease is up here on June 15th. We spent all last summer moving (twice!) and would prefer not to do that again.

Husband got a new(ish) car- still used, same year as his other (2003), but a LOT less miles and in much better shape. And free, thanks to a mother and father (his) that own a body shop and can get wrecked stuff cheap and repair it cheap too :) The "lima bean" is gone, and replaced with a Z24 Cavalier- much more manly than the Lima (a VERY green Hyundai), and the best part is that is has air conditioning and a radio- probably two of husbands favorite qualities in a car since it gets hot as Haiti here in the summer, and he has a 40min drive to work everyday :)

Other than that, I am still trying to regroup from what ever illness has stricken me. Kidney infection? Mono? I have NO idea, but I've got to get to the doctor this week. I've spent the last 4 days on the heating pad and I am just out of it, and SO exhausted. I hate going to doctors, but it seems like the more I say that, the more I end up going. Ugh!

But, things are looking up for the most part, and it's about time :) We have a night to ourselves in a couple of weeks, MIL will be here to visit and we're going to the NASCAR race in Daytona. Call me redneck if youl will ;) Yes a girl can love her makeup, Louis Vuitton and NASCAR all at once. Just call me versatile ;)

In Memory of Yoda

2009-01-22T11:36:00.003-05:00

I'm coming to you from a computer that may or may not crash at any given moment (for the 50th time in 2 days). I stepped over a mound of laundry waist deep to get here, son has stitches in his face, and husband is out of town for the weekend as of tomorrow. Oh, and we have no dog.

So humor me, if you will.

Yes, I know it could be worse. Long ago (no really just like 8 months ago) when we moved to FL, life essentially fell apart. What was supposed to be a fresh start was clouded by a huge string of bad luck, talk of divorce, and anything in between. So I can't exactly say we got off on the right footing here from the beginning.

It's ok, cause we've moved past it. But now the bad luck has seemed to return. What is it about luck anyhow? Do you ever notice how it comes in strings, like one thing can't just happen, but you have to *really* be kicked when you're down? Why is that?

Let's rewind.

For a short list of just some of the things I have endured over the last 8 months, here's a peek at what happened since we decided to move.

*Mental bashings ona daily basis from my family about moving- this is such a vague phrase, it honestly cannot even begin to paint the picture of what I endured before coming here. I have a fabulous Christian family, but it was as bad as it could get without being non-religious. Yeah.

*Our house was in shambles when we moved here (the second move in a months time since we lived in a corporate apartment for a month)- we moved twice in 30 days, with 2 kids under 5 and no baby sitter. The only organized room in the entire house was our walk in closet, and the next day after I got all of my clothes hung, the whole entire rack came crashing down to the floor.

*More mental bashings while already here

*The first house we chose had a shoddy landlord who lived in AZ yet still had half of his belongings in the house, including a car, insulted us and said our credit was too low to rent from him, and also only wanted a 4 month lease in case he wanted to move back

* Started getting petty about this point, couldn't even go into the bathroom and clean without a shower curtain rod falling on my head, I think just to spite me

*Husbands air conditioning went out in his car, in FL, in the summer. Paid $500 to get it fixed, couldn't warranty the repair and now he has no air conditioning again

*House we moved into is extremely nice, yet had probably never been vaccummed. That's what you get for viewing things online

*Almost couldn't get daughter registered for Kindergarten due to the rudest nurse I have ever encountered in my life- hey I am a nurse, so don't dog me for dogging her. It was bad. I almost made the 30 minute drive just to kick her ass.

These things are honestly only a small percentage of what we dealt with, which all lead up the grand finale of my first ever anxiety attack that landed me in the hospital because I seriously thought I was dying. I have a whole new perspective on people who suffer through those often. It's wretched.

Why do I tell you all of these things? Well because since then, we have had it pretty good. Unfortunate happenings have been kept at a minimum, and yes I know that it could all be worse, but spare me for the time being.

We can fast forward a bit now, to my talking about how I've always wanted a dog. Never had one. LOVE Pugs. Husband comes home about 3mo ago and surprises me with a pug puppy. I was thrilled and overwhelmed all at once. I had NO clue how much work goes into have a smal animal like that, it truly is like having another child. We named him Yoda.

Fast forward a bit more. The dog is WILD. The other night, son gets out of thebath and as usual, comes down the hall to me to get his pj's on. Dog starts going crazy, runs through sons feet, right at the coffee table. It all happened too fast for me to get to him in time, and son hits smack on the corner of the coffee table. He's now the proud owner of 2 stitches in his eyebrow, and 3 in his cheek. Devistated mom doesn't even begin to describe it.

He's taking it all in stride though. Still sleeping great, playing like crazy. I can tell it hurts him but he really is ok. He has a huge,puffy, black eye, though I am sure that he probably looks a lot worse than he feels. Stitches will be out on Sunday.

Which leads to why we no longer have a dog. Spare me the lecture of how animals are not disposable, and pet population, etc etc. I LOVE animals and have always wanted to be a veteranarian. But then I thought about how animals suffer in silence, can't tell you their problems etc, and it tears my heart out and so in a way that is what lead me to nursing. At least sometimes, though not always, people can tell you what is wrong.

However, there can't ever come a time when my animal(s) mean more to me than my kids. The dog had NO clue what he had done wrong, but there was no way I could ever risk that happening again. If son had hit a little higher or lower, he would possibly be blind right now. I loved my dog, and I cried like a baby when husband left to take him to his new home, but it's a chance we can't take while the kids are small. I will miss Yoda so much. He went to a great home with a lady who has a huge fenced in yard, who also happens to be a nurse, and we are confident in that decision but it still saddens me.

Moving on to other things, the house hunt has all but stalled out. Turns out that we found out that mother in law, who should be paying husbands student loan as his college graduation present, was late about 5 times on it last year. Credit score=Shot. Yeah. Our mortgage lady is about the most non-chalant, non-available person out there, and the home that we found that we REALLY like, that is actually in our price range and needs NO work, already has an offer in on it. It really is about 2 coats of paint away from the perfect home. We can't counter and try to beat it until we get our pre-approval from her. Not to mention that we can't even figure out where we will get our closing cost money and 3.5% down.

If you're ready to give me wine (whine)for my cheese, or call the waaaaammmbulance or whatever, I don't blame you. Yes I am whiny, and feeling a bit crappy, and yes I know it could be SO much worse. I am thankful for all that I have but so annoyed at these past few days events.

I at least thought that now that most of my soreness has worn off, I will do my Wii workout while son naps. 32 min on my first day may have been a bad idea, and apparently I am in worse shape than I thought because yesterday I HURT. But today was a new day. Still sore and down on myself, but why not try to be productive. Well guess what. My Wii? Won't even cut on. WTF is that? I fumbled with every single thing on there and every cord and plug in and--nothing. So no workout today either.

Did I mention it's really not a great day? Really not!

Hope is in the air..do you have some?

2009-01-20T12:25:00.003-05:00

I have a wealth of emotions that are running through me on this day. Sitting home in the quiet while son naps, and seeing the first non-Caucasian President being sworn in, swells tears to my eyes that warm my cheeks. Be you democrat or republican, there is a new hope that is in the air. Seeing hundreds of thousands of people braving cold temperatures to support the cause they believe in, it warms me.
*************************
House hunting yesterday was not as great as I had hoped. The problem is that you can rent a really nice house, for a lot cheaper than the cost of the mortgage on that same house. So our taste has significantly outgrown our budget, and it's obvious when we compare what we can afford with what we want. Today's houses seem more promising, I'm hoping so.

In other news, I'm headed back to the doctor-AGAIN-tomorrow, for what may or may not have been a kidney infection all of this time. After a full round of antibiotics for the urinary infection, my symptoms are no better, and I'm having a good bit of sporadic pain in my back now too. Blah. I am not a fan of doctors, but I am a fan of keeping both of my kidneys, so back to the doctor it is.

I also started the Wii Fit today, just as I promised. Probably not the greatest of plans since I am not feeling up to par as it is, but I said I would start today and I did. I was really surprised to see that it categorized me as the low range overweight---??? I know I could stand to lose a few pounds, but when I am wearing a size 6 and 8, over weight was a bit shocking.

Ah well. I put my weight loss goal as 20lbs down in the next 3 months. We'll see. One thing I've learned in life is that after two kids, I am fabulous at holding weight, not so fabulous at losing it. it doesn't help that I have the eating habits of an overly picky 3 year old. I managed a 32 minute workout on the Wii Fit (refusing to round down on that, and taking every credit I can get!), and I feel accomplished for the day on that note. I am not the most fond of it, as it is a bit disruptive to have to stop and start a new sequence each time, but seeing as how some of the small stretches and exercises had me saying "Are you effin kidding me..." and stopping half way through due to the pain, I think it will keep me occupied for the time being ;) After that I will probably buy the Biggest Loser workout and move on to it.

New days ahead :)

Home sick..where is home?

2009-01-18T11:43:00.000-05:00

Am I....home sick?
Maybe, except not for my "home" town.

You see, dh and I have been married 6 years this past December. And we've moved once a year since being married. One year, we moved twice.

Yeah, that's not fun.

Well, maybe in a sense it is. My house stays uber organized, and clutter is always kept to a minimum. There's never any chance to accumulate junk when you never stay in one place long.

Anyhow. The one town we lived in was where all of our family was, and what friends we had left that hadn't moved somewhere else, which was only like 2. We had family who babysat at any time we wanted or needed it, so that was a big bonus. But for some reason, that town never felt like home.

It's not that I am a snob, I can promise you that. But after not living there for 2 years and then moving back, I felt like I was so much better than the place I had came from- if that makes any sense. Not the people, but the place in itself. It had nothing to offer. Housing prices were ridiculous, there were no things for young adults to do except get into lots of trouble. I had moved past that. And my "home town" that I grew up and lived in for about 20 years, never felt like home after we came back.

When we went through the job dilemma, we were choosing to live in either FL or Washington DC. DC was the top choice for both of us, but 100% impossible on one income, and my degree would have to be furthered from an LPN to an RN before I even thought about getting a job that would make it worth it to put son in daycare. But still, every time husband had to go on a business assignment to DC, I would get mother in law to watch the kids and steal a weekend away with him. DC felt like home. Of course, any time you are on vacation-esque trip, you think you could live there. It's always the excitement of something new, not having any responsibilities like bills and cleaning for a short time. Yeah I get it, it's not reality. But it still felt good.

Why am I saying all of this? I don't really know. Life in FL hasn't really turned out how I thought. I had a bad feeling about this move before we ever got here, and now the thought of buying a house is so....permanent. Do I want to move again? Nope, pretty sick of it by now. But now that husband has taken a promotion and what not, it's just....yeah. Maybe it's the inauguration, and all of the excitement that is going on up there, that we know that's where we could have been. DC wasn't any more friendly of a town than it is here, but we felt safe and we felt in place. We've only been here 7 months, but at the same time, we've been here 7 months. I haven't made any friends other than the people from daughters Girl Scouts. That's partly my fault, but....yeah.

Am I tired? No. I think I am just doing some random rambling. Sometimes in life I think we come to crossroads, and often times you are forced to take one path which may or may not be the one you wanted to take. Sometimes you're in a good position where you can choose between either path. I think I am just in a grumbling mood, and I needed to talk it out.

Back to laundry ;)

Mi casa

2009-01-17T16:02:00.000-05:00

Ok yeah, I don't speak Spanish. I should though, living here in FL. Anyhow, my lovely title is a nod to the fact that we may soon be purchasing a house. Wooha!

Well, maybe I'm ahead of myself.

What I should say is that we finally have the loan approval in place, we know the amount, and now we can begin looking in that range and see what comes of it. Our original plan was to build here, but now we are thinking that we may buy a foreclosure. Our subdivision has about 1000 houses in it (I am estimating- husband says around 700some, I think closer to 1200, so I'm going for the mid-range), so foreclosures are a plenty. Most of them are in great shape and really pretty. We will be downgrading in size probably, but that's ok. Right now we are in 3400sqft and it's kicking my tail to keep it clean. I could use a down size :) So we're thinking downgrade in size, upgrade the house we move into, and then re-sell in a few years and move to the gated community next to us.

I have to say, that really owning a home has never been in my dreams. Husband has a big dream of a place to call our own, and I can understand that. No surprise pop-ins, no pre-authorizations to paint a room when we want, none of that. It sucks to have paid so much in rent too. But,owning a house isn't something I've strived for, it's just a bonus if it happens.

Anyway. Nothing else exciting to report on the home front. Daughter went to her first sleep over which was a success and she had lots of fun. Of course having only one kid for the night could have been peaceful, until son somehow managed to get to the ledge on the shower, take out my brand new razor, and cut his finger. Nothing serious, but he must have sensed that it was going to be a nice quiet evening. He's *never* done that before, but you know boys, they can be surprising. So I guess he grew 3in overnight, and it's time to put those elsewhere. Bad mommy!

Other than that, the weekend has been calm. I *finally* went through all of the kids toys. I ended up with 4 huge totes, and 7 garbage bags of stuff to get rid of! It's amazing! In addition to that, it meant that we could finally unpack all of the Christmas stuff that the family mailed down, thus now a whole new mess was formed. Add that to the fact that a wild hair possessed me to redecorate daughters room, and ahhh...another weekend of house cleaning!!

Monday? Time for Wii Fit. Oh no wait, Monday is a holiday and husband and kids will be wild around the house.

Tuesday ? Time for Wii Fit. Promise!

Doctors, Ear Tubes, and Pharmacies, Oh My! Doctors, Ear Tubes and Pharmacies, Oh My!

2009-01-14T00:05:00.000-05:00

Well today was an interesting one. It started with rain, and then some more rain. Not that I mind really. Seeing a day or two of rain now and then is refreshing to me. It can't be sunshine everyday, right? When we first moved to Florida, it rained literally everyday. For three.months.straight. Yeah that was a little discouraging, to move to the "sunshine state" and see rain everyday. Now we've come into this drought like phase, the grass is all dead and the rain is nice.Maybe these things are normal. I don't know, I'm the new kid in town ;) The fog, I could do without. Except that since I look out the window and can't even see across the street, I at least know that I am not being spied on by the landlord at her temporary residence :)
So anyhow, son had an appointment today to check his ears. He has had fluid in his ears since birth. The right ear finally cleared up, but the left has not.
Another underlying issue that we've had is his speech. He says a fair amount of words, but not a lot. Enunciation is a big problem too. So I was hoping to find out that the speech is related to the fluid (which in a way he said it is), and by curing the fluid, we will help the speech and %&*ZAP!*&%- problem solved.

Not so much.

They want me to take him to a speech therapist in conjunction with this. It makes me feel like a really bad mom, like maybe I didn't work with him enough, or that it was something that I have done. I know that this probably isn't true, but still, mama feels bad about it all.

For the time being, we are to schedule the speech therapy consult, which I will begrudgingly do tomorrow. Then he is to report back in 4 weeks. If the fluid isn't gone, then he is already booked for the OR that following week for tubes. Bah. They said his tonsils seemed larger than normal for his age, and that he seemed dry in the throat and congested? Yeah, lots of stuff goes on that I am apparently not aware of, as I had not noticed any of this and I am very attentive to detail. So he's on Nasonex as well. We'll call that Pharmacy Trip #1 of the day. The nice people at the pharmacy were kind enough to fill my prescription for his Nasonex while I sat in the drive thru, so that, as she said, "You don't have to bring the baby back out into the cold". Pretty nice of her I must say--did I mention it was almost 60 degrees? A cold spell compared to normal, but hardly worth cowering in the house for. Oh how I love the FL attitude to cold weather. They are buried in snow right now in WV ;) 60 degrees this time of year is fabulous! Though I do agree with the locals- there are even times here when it's 70 and it feels COLD.

Anyhow, on to other things. We'll call this part of my day "Stupid Urethra, Part II". I'm sure you aren't particuarly interested in these details, but again I feel the need to share :) This raging urinary tract infection that bombarded me out of nowhere, is NOT getting better. In fact, it's getting worse. I finally caved today and called the doctor back and asked if I can be switched to something else. I am not a doctor person, but this was so necessary.

The doctor called me back and was super nice. He was more than willing to call in the prescription, but was also concerned as to why the infection wasn't going away (I have no clue!). So he suggested before I start the new antibiotic, to come in and do another urine sample so that they can send it off to make sure that it isn't something else. This proved to be a bit inconvenient for me. You see, as a mother it often becomes part of our nature to give, or give up. So I suffered through one extra day last week of the UTI, so that I could multi-task. Rather than risk husband having to take off work, or me being stuck in a waiting room forever (though I must say that we have NEVER encountered a wait time in FL like we have in WV), I waited until Thurs to go to the doctor. Husband kept son with him at daughters gymnastics. I was able to go to the doctor, drop off my prescription, and get a few groceries while waiting, all in one. But, this also means that the office is not near here, and so I began my 25min drive in 5:00 traffic to pee in a cup. Did I mention that I'm taking OTC AZO pills, so my pee actually resembles orange koolaid? Yeah, that was interesting to turn in as my sample.

So mission accomplished on that one, and after I went by there I headed to Publix. Why? Because we went to the grocery store last night, which ALWAYS means that I will forget some things. I always refer to this as "2nd (or 3rd) grocery store trip for the week". Got my missing items, plus a few unnecessary things, and headed for Pharmacy Trip #2 of the day.

I was feeling rather dumb about going back to the same CVS, less than 4 hours later and picking up another prescription. The pharmacist was nice and turns out she moved here from WV too. I tell you, I have yet to met many people that are actually FL natives. In fact, I don't think I've met any?? It amazes me how many people are familiar with the hole in the wall town that we came from when we mention it, and how many people from here travel to WV. Apparently it's this great place to visit. Yeah, I'm not getting it either.

Anyhow, I ramble on. The pharmacist was nice and turns out she moved here from where we used to live. Small world! I left the pharmacy and felt pathetic for a moment in time- I think it's pretty sad when I get joy out of a simple conversation in the pharmacy drive thru line. I really need to make some friends around here and get some adult interaction before I go nuts. Yes, it's on my faux-resolutions list. I'm getting there. Baby steps. :)

Then that leads me to Pharmacy Trip #3 for the day, which entailed me going directly across the street to Walgreens to pick up a prescription for husband's blood pressure medicine.( Hopefully when he loses his weight again, he can go off of those things). So yeah. In just 4 short hours, I was at the pharmacy 3 times. It's been a day! I rewarded myself with some Smartfood popcorn- no it's not that great for you and it's beyond addictive. But I had to have it. And a drumstick- no not the chicken, the ice cream drum stick. You know, the far-too-many-calories chocolate and ice cream with nuts? Love it.

Hey don't knock me for piggin out. I've been pretty well behaved lately since husband is on a diet. Darn him for losing weight so fast too. Anyhow, I felt bad if I ate it in front of him, so I snuck my ice cream cone after I shooed him off to bed.

Don't smirk. You all do it too. ;)

Stupid Urethra

2009-01-12T01:45:00.000-05:00

It's the middle of the night (sort-of) and I can't sleep. Why? Because I have a stupid UTI and I have to pee every 10 minutes. SO annoying! SO! I can only assume that this is a result of a lack of,er, affection between husband and I for a good bit of time due to the holiday traveling and what not. Because shortly after resuming normal activities, I am still thinking of that night- though not in positive ways now :)
The worst part is that I started feeling bad on Tuesday, went to the doctor on Thursday. It wasn't like one of those UTI's where you feel like you have to pee non-stop. It was mild and I thought I had taken care of it in time. Well now, after 4 days of antibitoics, I am feelnig MUCH worse in that department. Peeing non-stop, constant burning...you know, all the details you don't want to hear. I feel the need to share :)
So it looks like either I don't have a UTI, maybe something else like urinary stones (PLEASE NO), or this particular antibiotic isn't targeting what it should be and I need something else.

Ugh. back to the doctor again. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

At least before I started feeling really bad, I was able to go out this weekend and spend some of my Christmas gift cards/money. Which is always nice. I racked up at Victorias Secret with 2 bras, 4 pajama sets, and 7 pair of undies! I also got new socks for the kids and new undies for daughter, and threw out all of their old ones. I was able to pack up their clothes that they have outgrown (note to self: living in FL , buy enough summer clothes to last in the winter as well- son is growing like a weed and why are summer clothes hard to find here??? It's 70 degrees for crying out loud!),and bought a few new tshirts and shorts for son. I also was able to purchase the new bedding and stuff to decorate daughter's room in a very woodsy-girly type of deal from Pottery Barn. I am SO loving it already, and it's not even here yet :)

So in spite of having the bladder of a newborn puppy (I say this because I know. My dog pees more than a man with two swollen prostates), I did still accomplish a lot. Those 15+ boxes of Christmas toys still sit, wrapped, in the living room. I refuse to unpack them until I finish my final house organization task for upstairs, which is daughters closet. It's an all day job.

Thankfully my turn-your-pee-orange pills have kicked in and I am beginning to feel as though I may be able to sleep. I hope that next time I can update with more note worthy things :)

2009-01-09T23:38:00.000-05:00

My big plans of productivity are at a halt for a bit. I don't know that I recovered fully from travel, but it was all down hill from there anyhow. Sunday I was sick after eating something that didn't agree with me. Took Monday to recover from that and part of Tuesday too. Then Wednesday I developed a urinary infection which I saw the doctor for yesterday and now I am hopefully getting straightened out. The house is still trashed, the Wii fit and my beyond impossible dreams of dropping 40lbs by Monday are still in the box in the garage, and oh, the landlord is still coming tomorrow. Oh and on top of all of that, the lovely monthly witch is back. but hey, that means still no Discover card twins!

Yikes.

Husband suggested that we go to Animal Kingdom tomorrow, to which I am sure I gave him the "are you CRAZY?!" look. I can't knock him for trying to do something fun, but between peeing every 20 minutes, and going to the bathroom for other womanly problems ever so often, I am hardly in the mood for a day of walking or riding rides. Besides, we just got back from 4 days at Disney/Seaworld/Universal last weekend. I'm not quite ready to go back just yet. :)

Productivity

2009-01-06T12:09:00.000-05:00

Rather than come back to this blog at the end of the year and feel like I have accomplished nothing, I decided to list a few things that I am certain I will do or work towards during this year.

Ahem.

#1- teeth. Yup, the chompers. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I have crappy teeth and that I would almost rather have no teeth than to have my teeth (I said almost). I have wanted them whitened, straightened, and porcelain veneered for who knows how long. No matter how much I brush and floss, I still get cavities. Thanks, mom. I inherited her teeth. BOOOOO! So this year I will do something with the teeth.

#2- finances/home. Throughout the course of our 6 year marriage, husband and I have spent $69,000 in rent once our lease here is up in June. No, that is not a typo, I said $69,000. And we have nothing to show for it as far as home ownership. So this year has to be the year that we get our finances in order and get our own home. Part of this motivation comes from the fact that we received an email from the landlord yesterday that his wife will be visiting for 10 days. TEN! And where is she staying? Directly across the street. And why is she coming? To trod all through our house and walk it with a contractor to think of putting in granite countertops and a few other upgrades. This whole deal bothers me on several levels. For starters, I see no need for her to be here for 10 days. But the fact that she is going to be right across the street makes me feel like I am being watched (and her, along with our nosy neighbors almost guarantees that I am), and on top of that I do not want people in and out of this house disrupting sons routine. We are beyond ready to have our own place with no one to answer to. We just have to get our finances in order. We came to FL almost debt free, but the cost of living here and expenses throughout this time have shot the bills through the roof, so we must chip away at it slowly.

#3-More organization, but less obsession. This is probably the hardest one of all for me. I am uber obsessive about things. If you come into my home and move a candle, I can tell. I like things in their place, in certain order, turned just the right angle, etc etc. Yes, I obsess like that. I like a spotless house, which is a constant job. I also like organization and no clutter. If you look under our beds, there's nothing there (with the exception of board games under daughter's). There are decorations throughout, but minimal things on the tables as to not look cluttered. I am just particular about things like that. So I am going to try to be organized more (which is hard because we are already pretty organized), but try not to be so uptight about things when they aren't "just so". My first one to work on is when people walk on my freshly vaccumed carpet. This is one that I get so mad about - freshly vaccummed carpet with wonderfully fabulous vaccum lines, until there are foot prints in it. I don't know of any other options, as no one in the house has learned to hover over the carpet, and so this is one that I need to just suck up and quit complaining about. Yeah, I'll let you know how it turns out.

As I said previously, I could go on with more things, but I like to set the bar high. Those are 3 things that I absolutely intend on doing, and now this blog will serve as my reminder when it's about June and I haven't done crap about any it. Yikes!!! ;o)

Pooped Out

2009-01-03T15:45:00.001-05:00

Whew. We survived our 8 day stint away from home, and I am SO glad to be back!!! We left the 25th and headed to Orlando to get a room for our lovely 5am trip to the airport. Of course we hit a minor snag on the way. Since we were going to be gone for a week, I had emptied the refrigerator of anything that would spoil, and so no food in the house. Top that off with us getting hungry for dinner on the way there, and nothing open on Christmas Day except....Denny's.

Oh geeze.

I have never been to a Denny's to my knowledge, but I didn't figure it would be so bad, right? And plus it was packed (obviously because nowhere else but the Chinese buffet beside it was open). So we got there and got a table and it was.....yikes. There was definitely a special breed of people in there, and those that actually looked civilized looked just as weirded out as we probably did.

Promptly at 6pm, some random waiter comes over and says that he wants to let us know that for "safety precautions", all blinds must be raised at 6pm. WTH???? Yeah, I don't get that one either, and I was scared to ask why. The guy that let us know about it was almost as scary as the thought of something bad happening every night at 6pm so we just let our mind wander to many different possibilities as to why they do this, including assassians from the outside, and cars coming warp speed through the front glass. C'mon, we were tired and hungry and wanting to stay occupied so cut me some slack ;)

The flight was as to be expected- a normal flight for people who like that sort of thing, and terrible for people like me. The flight back was actually not as great and I was somewhat nauseated, but I survived to see the ground again and that obviously matters the most! Whew, I am glad I don't have to do that again for a lonnnnng time, if ever!!

In between said terrorizing flights, we spent 4 days doing 4 different Christmases, 3 big family meals, too many kids presents, and the ever popular family guilt trips for living so far away. Ahhhhh family :)

In spite of an entirely-too-grouchy cousin, daughter had a nice birthday trip to Disney and a few other parks. We just got back today and I am shuddering at the thought of all of the toys that will soon be mailed here, and all of the laundry that needs washed before hand. ughhh..

New Years Eve was spent at our hotel (Nickelodeon), where at midnight a huge bucket of slime was dropped onto the crowd. I came across some decent tasting (and free!) champagne, which was a welcome change. The only other time in my life I had had champagne was 6 years ago to that very day, and found myself puking shortly there after. Eeek. The kids had "Slime Champagne", and after that we crashed into bed and started snoring before our eyes were even shut, just like the 6 nights before that ;)

I gave up long ago on making New Years resolutions, but if I ever had to, then these would be the ones I make (and yes I will attempt to do them, but I make no promises!).

Ahem..

#1- Be more motivated- I need to get into gear and get things done and be on the ball instead of dragging behind and being lazy (or as lazy as can be expected with 2 kids, which isn't too lazy)

#2- Fine tune and perfect my routine- Son is on a great routine- or was until this extended trip. However when summer rolls around I will most likely be insane while here with both of them. Daughter bores quickly and I don't want a house full of kids all summer either. I hope to go to the beach at least 3x a week and anyone with kids know that this takes a lot of planning, packing, and what not.

#3- Diet..no, make that exercise. haha sorry. I love food too much to diet, and I am far too picky of an eater at that. However, mother in law did get us a Wii Fit for Christmas and I am hoping the mere sight of it propped up against the big screen will motivate me to work myself out at least 5x a week. No wait, make that 4x. Ha.

#4- Be nice. Yeah, I think I could stand to be a bit nicer to pretty much the general population. I am not foreign at all, but I think I could easily act in a movie as an Italian (if I could lose the hick accent and the extremely white skin of course) since I am so loud. So if I were ever to resolve, I would resolve to not be so loud all the time at people and the kids. I've tried to be a nicer driver and a nicer person in general, but you know there are times where it's just not in me to do so. Again, I make no promises.

#5- Socialize if it kills me. Yep. You know, I just hate that whole unfamiliar feeling of walking into a room where you know no one, and trying to make friends. I have found this to be especially true in FL where I almost feel like I have to justify myself as a person in order to make friends (if that makes sense).In other words, people are not particularly friendly. I am a member of a playgroup online forum, but have yet to get the nerve to make it to a meeting. So I will make ways to make friends even if it makes me uncomfortable enough to almost pee my pants.

So I am sure that if I thought about it I could come up with more, but I'm going to credit myself for setting the bar pretty high with those 5. And hey, this is all hypothetical anyhow so I will resolve to not waste so much time resolving, and go do something else now, like sleep. Mama is tired from a loooot of traveling! ;)

Santa Shuffle

2008-12-25T00:17:00.001-05:00

There are a lot of things that happen in life, and a lot of them make me think about how that particular event was for my parents- like, when I learned to drive. We lived in a super small town of 15,000 and so teaching me to drive wasn't nearly as bad (stressful? scary?) as I can imagine it will be for me when I teach daughter and then son to drive in a town that is topping a million plus people now. Oh, geeze.
Another one that comes to mind is Christmas and the whole Santa deal. And now also with daughter, the tooth fairy. She lost her second tooth today and so tonight we not only had to tiptoe around as Santa, but also the Tooth Fairy. I tried desperately to get her to pull the tooth last night, with this big convincing story about how if they both came at once, they may bump into each other and knock each other out, and no one would get their presents or money. But daughter just giggled and said that that would get her in the newspaper, and maybe even jail for ruining Christmas. I hope jail isn't still cool in about 10 more years. Yikes!
So anyhow, wrapping presents is never a problem.I just find a bedroom and lock myself in it. Sometimes if I am behind I do it on Christmas Eve, but normally (and especially now with 2 kids), that leaves me completely exhausted. So I wrapped my presents a few weeks ago.
Given the fact that we are serial movers (move #6 in 6 years), we've spent each Christmas in a different house, so with each year comes finding a new Santa routine. This year now that we are in FL, people obviously don't have basements with the whole hurricane thing, and thus we were forced to hide the presents in a very prominent non-locking closet. It was enough torture to make sure the kids didn't open that closet for the last oh, two months or so.
So tonight husband digs out all of the presents, and starts putting them under the tree. I wrap a few that weren't wrapped, and all is well. It then leads me to start thinking about how my parents did it. I wonder if they were as careful as I am, tip toeing through the house, not leaving a shred of wrapping paper behind and disposing of all wrapping paper after wards, even the unused rolls as to not leave any incriminating evidence.Checking the stairs every 10 seconds to make sure no one is up and coming down them. Did they have other ways of going about it, better secrets? Common sense would say to ask them these things, but it's more fun to imagine. Obviously they did something right because I was way too old to still believe in Santa and my parents finally broke the news to me. I'm actually not really sure why they spoiled the fun when it wasn't causing any harm, as I fully intend to let my kids believe for as long as they want. Who knows how long that is in this day and age.
Daughter is a very heavy sleeper (thank goodness), and son is not. So having him in his crib for now is helpful, and I'm contemplating keeping him in it until he no longer believes in Santa, so that I don't ever risk him sneaking down to find me "being Santa". Of course, if he is as old as I was then he may be a bit too big for his crib.
Little snippets of time like that are fun for me, when I think of how it was for my parents and how different things are now.
We're headed to Orlando tomorrow to start what is sure to be a movie-worthy trip. If I weren't so tired already, I just might would document it and pitch it to Lifetime hahaha. I'll be gone for about a week and a couple of days, at which point I am sure to update with some interesting stories.
Merry Christmas and happy all other holidays to everyone who celebrates anything special to them (did that possibly cover everyone?). May you all be blessed and have a wonderful rest of the year and safe New year!

A list

2008-12-20T20:47:00.000-05:00

I've found my next recipe to attempt, which includes pounding chicken and rolling it out to stuff it with some odd strange mixture. This is sure to be an adventure, and I think I may save it until after the new year!
Things are moving along quickly towards our holiday travel. Looking back, I can't believe how fast this year has gone and how many things have changed. Nursing school was by far THE worst year of my life, but this year has been the most trying and testing for me. It hasn't been a bad year, but it's been a different year. I have learned that I am capable of so much more than most people give me credit for, and I've also learned that sometimes you just have to step up and let people know that. My family certainly didn't expect us to last in FL longer than 6 months (heard from their own mouths), and as our 7 month mark approaches at the end of this month, I am feeling somewhat accomplished (or maybe spiteful? I don't know).
I know that there are a lot of changes that need to be made in the new year. I need to get more active and lose some weight, start exercising and just get moving a lot more. Chasing after son and keeping the house clean are quite a god bit of exercise, but it's not enough. I am hoping that the new Wii Fit that we are getting to go with our Wii for Christmas will give me a jump start on that.
When the new year comes, husband will start his new position at work, and I will need to start thinking more about my own career. Getting my RN is proving to be increasingly difficult with son not in daycare or preschool, and being a bit of driving distance from most schools. My plan right now is to get my license back at the beginning of the year and just try to work for a couple of years and maybe go back at it. There's so much other stuff going on that I am not able to completely focus on my classes. Why can't they make a degree in Common Sense? I could honestly earn a Masters In Common Sense, but for normal academics, I am not so great. Ugh.

To switch it up a little, I was thinking the other day of things that annoy me, as I often do ;) And so in no particular order, I am going to list things that annoy me, for your reading pleasure . You can thank me later ;)

1. Overdoing it on clothing. Do you ever just find that one absolutely perfect piece of clothing? You know, you see it on the rack, you pick it up and it looks wonderful. You try it on, and it's like they had your exact body double when they made it. It was made just for you. Then you do a spin in the dressing room mirror, and there's this hideously placed button on the back, or one too many pieces of fabric, etc etc? I never understand this, and I think it's part of the reason why I wanted to be a fashion designer. I never understood why designers and companies couldn't understand that some people like simple pieces! I don't like 10 million ruffles on my sleeves, and sometimes I don't want a gold button in the middle of the elbow for pete's sake! I don't know how many times I have picked up a shirt and almost bought it, and then some hideously out of place thing makes an appearance, once again ruining my perfect find. Ugh.

2. Saying X-Mas. honestly , I just can't get that one. Are people so rushed that they can't type out Christ instead of using an x? And if in fact they don't believe in Jesus, then why are they celebrating Christmas? Flame me if you will.

3.People who run you over in the "slow lane". You quickly learn in a town of a million people, that even on a 5 lane interstate, there is no slow lane. Sometimes I don't want to go 85, ok? I think that's my right as an American, to not always want to go 15 over the speed limit.

4. People who stare. I never get that one. Do you honestly not know that it makes people uncomfortable? Sheesh! This one goes along with nosy neighbors. We have one. It sucks.

5. When I go to the store and come home and realize that I forgot to put about 10 things on my list. which is part of the reason I hate grocery shopping. Due to my lack of being able to make a complete list, I end up going about 3 times a week. Seriously.

6. Selective hearing. Damn you, selective hearing. And whoever made up that term sucks, because it gives people an "out". You cannot physically turn off your hearing, unless it comes from a Bell Tone. Why not just admit that sometimes you listen, sometimes you don't?

7. Chicken. Yes, the meat. I don't eat any red meat or fish, so my meat source comes only from chicken and the occasional turkey. And yes, please spare me how they are they dirtiest of the animals, or I will have to revert back to not eating any meat at all which has proven to be bad in the past given my detest for most vegetables. Anyhow, why is that chicken is almost always rotten at Walmart? no matter what date is on it, I open it up to cook it and it smells, well, dead. But rotten too. Thus, I can only get my meat from Publix, and they are so expensive on everything else. Then the 3x a week trip to the store becomes 4 so that I can get most things at Walmart and meat at Publix.

8.Ticket scalping or jacking up prices. Do you know that I love football? Love it. Dallas Cowboys are my team. Do you also know that the Superbowl is just 3 short hours from my house and you can't find a ticket less than $1000 per person. Robbery, it is.

I'll spare you from other things for the time being, mainly because I can't think of a lot of them. There are so many times that things happen and I say, "add that to my list". There isn't an actual list anywhere, but it lies in my head, and many things (and some people hehe) are on it ;)

Randomness

2008-12-14T14:17:00.000-05:00

Ok, so being over the hormonal hump for the month, I feel like I can come back here and talk as a human now instead of a two-headed monster.
This time 6 years ago, hubby and I were married. It's been a LONG, rocky, fun, trying, tiring, exciting 6 years! 6 houses, 2 kids, and 1 dog later, we're still plugging along :)
Of course, we have been in the anniversary slump for 5 years now. We've had some interesting ones. Our first anniversary was nice, but then on our second anniversary we were not even in the same town- husband was on disaster duty for severe floods, and I was packing our house- alone- in subzero temperatures and moving it myself. Yes, not fun. Our 3rd anniversary was spent arguing for 3 days in the nation's capital, our 4th anniversary was spent in town because I was hugely pregnant and in nursing school, then we come to last year- the 5th anniversary in which we had a fabulous caribbean cruise planned and we were all sidelined with the dreaded stomach virus, which caused us to cancel our cruise- mind you, husband was cheap and didn't purchase the trip insurance. Thankfully, Carnival was nice enough to give us credit towards a future cruise, but we used it to take the kids so it wasn't exactly what we originally planned.
This year we aren't doing anything, we're here in a new-ish town, and have no babysitter, and daughter has once again brought illness into the house as she did to us last year on our anniversary. Only this time it's strep throat, and I would MUCH rather have strep throat in the house than the stomach virus. Of course I wouldn't want anyone to be sick, but I prefer anything over barf.
Husband got me a pretty pair of black diamond earrings, and I got him a mix of things such as golf shirt, hat, movie, and black panties (not for him LoL).

Other than that, nothing much exciting has happened. Husband was offered a better job position in his same office building, which would give him a little more of that raise that we were screwed out of, but still nowhere near the original promise. Any bit helps though.

He hasn't made his decision yet, so we'll see what comes of it.

One of THOSE days..

2008-12-11T16:03:00.000-05:00

Today is one of those days where there may be humor all around, but I am surely not in the mood to see it. Yep, that lovely witch is here for her visit for the month. Of course that means I didn't immaculately conceive the twins that Discover Card guy wished for me, so that's always a plus.

Husband and I will celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary Sunday. I finally finished up my shopping for that last night, along with about 80% of the Christmas shopping. Then I remembered 3 more people who will be present at Christmas, so yeah, more shopping.

Husband got his raise today, and out of the $30K we were promised, he got $2K. No, that isn't a typo.

I'm grateful for any increase in funds because yes, it could be much worse, etc etc. However, we moved to FL on the assumption that his salary wouldn't be an issue. We took a huge jump in cost of living compared to where we were, so it's going to be rough now. There will have to be some major adjustments made for sure.

BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. On to figuring out a new course of action, whether it be that I get a job or a new career or....ah, who knows. It's one of those days!

Twins??

2008-12-10T11:24:00.000-05:00

The more I write this blog, the more I am thinking that maybe life is more interesting that I had originally thought. Either that, or the most random things seem to happen to me.

A couple weeks ago a representative from Discover card calls us and says that they have had some hack into their system, accounts have been compromised and that they have reason to believe ours may have been one of them. She calls the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to tell me this, and says they are going to cancel our cards immediately and send us new ones- unless I need to keep it to use to go shopping on Black Friday.

I had to laugh because
A) I do NOT go out on Black Friday. We may be strapped for cash this year, but no amount of savings will lure me out of my bed at 5am to go out with a bunch of people who are (mostly) greed driven, and likely have not showered. It's humid, it's crowded, and I will be beyond angry if someone pushes me or repeatedly bumps into me. It's nearly impossible to navigate a stroller on Black Friday, and all courtesy to women with strollers gets thrown out the window on that day. You are seen as an obstacle. The last Black Friday I went out on was when I was in high school and worked at the toy store, people were fist fighting over Furby's and that was enough for me to know that I am not doing that again.
B) there is like $130 left available to spend, so even if someone does steal the account number, they are going to be somewhat disappointed when they try to use it to buy a new 8 million inch plasma tv.

So even though I said I wouldn't be using it, they were still nice enough to UPS the new cards to us which arrived on Black Friday. As I said, we weren't going to be using them and hadn't even bothered to activate them.

Since we're doing so much traveling for Christmas and it costs $30 PER suitcase (seriously what is that?!) on our airline, the majority of people are getting gift cards, and the rest are getting photo books and calendars of the kids- things that travel flat in my suitcase. Upon checking the Discover bill online yesterday I see that they are having a "deal" on their gift cards. $2 off each gift card (which brings it down to $1.95 service fee per each), and free shipping. We had some cash back bonus and so I got all of the gift cards for the cousins that were getting them, for a small service fee but saved $20 in free money (or money they gave us for spending a fortune with them, depends on how you look at it).

I go through all of the fun stuff- choosing the design, the amount, the recipient, etc etc. I get to the final page and it won't take the card-- oh yeah, forgot to activate it. Crap. So I call Discover and get the operator to activate it. He does his usual spiel about do I want the insurance, you know, you can delay a payment in the event of moving, being laid off, etc, and about that time son comes running down the hall crying over something. I'll have to give him credit for using that as a good transition because he said "If you have more kids, you can also delay payments". To which I responded "No more kids!!! " He laughed and said "Oh, come on, it could even be twins, I'll pray for you to have twins!"

You know, that's all it took. I've been cursed. Or blessed, depending on your view. We don't have any plans on having any more kids, ever. But twins run in my family and I've avoided it twice. Now some credit card representative has spoken it to be true, and I am fairly certain that if I am ever to get pregnant again, it will be twins. I told him that there are MANY MANY things that I would appreciate him praying for me for, but twins is not it! LoL

Sure the novelty of saying "We had twins!" would be great- for like 2 days. Then you would come home from the hospital and have two screaming messes who constantly need everything at the same time, until they start doing completely different things at completely different times which I am convinced would be even worse. I always said I would love to have twins. But I meant as my first and second children, and then snip husband and be done. I never meant that if I ever got the nerve to have a 3rd, that I would want it to be accompanied by a 4th.

Thanks a lot Discover guy, thanks a lot. Probably not so much from me, but from husband. I am sure he will be frustrated to know that he is never allowed to touch me again for fear of multiple babies resulting from it hahaha.

The wrong place at the right time

2008-12-09T10:24:00.000-05:00

This may be another one of those "you had to be there" type things. I tend to have a lot of those. Upon getting smacked in the head with a plastic pumpkin last night and husband commenting about I was in the wrong place and the wrong time, it brought back a memory of the wrong place at the RIGHT time. Or at least I think so.

Which went down in history, and will forever be known as "The Lady Who Got Shrek'd". And yes, I mean like Shrek from the movie.

It was summer of I think 2005. We take a family vacation to the beach every year, and this year we talked my parents into going. They detest the beach in the summer- yeah, I find it weird too. But, they went. It was a great time, great weather, we really had a lot of fun! But, that isn't the point of my story.

The beach was about a 6 1/2 hr drive from where we lived at the time. We were all tired of being in the car when we got there, and so when we checked in, my mom went ahead and took daughter to the room while we unloaded all of our stuff.

Between the 3 of us and a luggage cart, we get it all in about one load. I get to the room and go to open the door and it won't open, so I start knocking. My mom opens the door just a crack, with a pale face and a look of almost terror on it. Daughter is sitting by the closed balcony door crying "I want my Shrek!!!"

There are many things that someone could have thought, but I just went ahead and asked what was going on. My mom opens the door like she is a felon, and my daughter is crying, and we haven't been there but about 20 minutes.

"What is going on?" I ask.

To which my mom responds quickly but quietly "She (daughter) threw her Shrek off of the balcony and hit some lady in the head and now she's down there laying on the concrete by the pool."

I'm sorry, but this is already funny.

After my mom quickly rushes us into the room (I am assuming she thought the knocking from me was the hotel staff or an angry family member seeking revenge), she says that they got in the room and daughter wanted to see the ocean. So mom opened the balcony door. Daughter was really into Shrek at this time, and had a small one that she carried around. When she went to grab the rail on the balcony, she dropped Shrek. He had a very soft body, but a very plastic head and the horns didn't feel that great! He was only about 3-4" tall, but I assume from the 3rd floor balcony, that he quickly goes head-down and gains speed.

Yeah it couldn't have felt good at all.

Shrek comes plummeting from the 3rd floor, and at just the right (or wrong, depending on your sense of humor) time, a lady is walking in that very spot, and Shrek hits her right on the head. She promptly falls to the ground, I am assuming from being startled, and people gather around her. No, she isn't unconscious, and we later spotted her at several different occasions getting drunk (or possibly nursing a migraine? HA- ok, sorry), so she wasn't actually injured.

Daughter cries multiple times for her Shrek throughout the vacation, which everyone refuses to go try to find because this day and age, you never know who might sue you, and we need gas money to get back home. The lady was fine, and yes if she was visibly injured we would have went down there. There are just some times that you need to remain anonymous.

A few days later we are in the kiddie pool, and this boy has a Shrek. It is the exact one that daughter had, so we ask him where he got it from. He tried to make up this big story about how he brought it with him, but we knew he was lying, and thus Shrek (otherwise known as evidence) was returned to his rightful owner. My mom promptly runs over to the beach chair with Shrek and wraps him up in multiple layers of towels. Yeah, she spent the majority of the vacation being paranoid after said incident, and giving us scowling looks when we laughed about it until we cried. I guess she would have been deemed the accomplice, and so she never really found the humor in it.

We spent a good bit of the rest of vacation time peeking over the balcony for anyone who looked like a potential witness before going out there, and my dad and husband would just burst into laughter at random times when they thought of the woman who got Shrek'd. The first night after the incident, they were laughing so hard at dinner that the drinks were sloshing out of the glasses. Thankfully we were in a loud restaurant, and so they didn't stand out too much with their fits of hysterical laughter.

After I got "Shrek'd" with the plastic pumpkin last night, it made me think of that day and how that lady -I am sure- talked about how she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Except that it was just too funny not to laugh, and so in my opinion she was in the wrong place at just the exact right time. At least from our vantage point. Yeah, we have that crude sense of humor.

I brought the Shrek back home and still have him to this day. He lives in daughters baby keepsake box, I am sure a first in the history of keepsake boxes- at least for the same reasons as us. I don't think he'll make any more trips to hotels- unless we're staying on the ground level of course.

Pumpkin to the head

2008-12-08T23:53:00.000-05:00

I think I forgot to mention that due to either
A: selective hearing
B: a miscommunication
or
C: an honest misunderstanding

that I didn't get to go to the girl's night out on Friday. Husband thought I said one time, and I actually said another, point of the story, it was too late when he got home with son and so I went to Publix instead.
Well after the cookie experiment gone terribly wrong, I didn't exactly want to take them to the girls night out, but I didn't necessarily want to just put them in the trash either. My guess was that I would do the usual, I would let them sit, untouched, on the counter, until they were quite old and hard as a rock. Then I would open them and comment about their consistency and how there was no possible way anyone could eat them. Though no one ever intended to eat them to begin with, at least I then felt like I had a justified reason for trashing them.
So I laughed when husband suggested that he take them to work. There are a bunch of "well rounded" (in the midsection) people that work there, and he says they will eat anything (gee,thanks). But it was fine with me, we obviously weren't going to eat them and that was our best option. He came back home this evening with an empty bowl, and said they were gone in 20 minutes. He says that they were all actually enjoying them and said for him to tell me thank you LOL. I kind of feel like I need to make something that actually tastes good to make up for them having to suffer through those, but apparently they enjoyed them and so I think I will spare myself from another cooking adventure at least until the new year.
There wasn't any other excitement in the house this evening, except that for some reason, husband hit me in the head with a plastic pumpkin. More like a mixture of foam and plastic, so I don't know what that is. I took down my fall decorations long ago, except these 4 pumpkins that sit at the top of the stairs. I walk past them 100 times a day, and never pick them up. The dog carries them back down the hall 100 times a day, and I yell at him. There is no real reason for them to be there, and they *should* be put up with the other fall stuff. Yet I never do this. Tomorrow I will (I just decided that).
Anyhow. Husband gets the idea that he is going to "help" me out by getting those decorations downstairs. Then I will stop fussing about them, the dog will quit chewing them, and son will leave them alone. Yet rather than take them all downstairs (hey, not criticizing because I haven't taken them down either), he decided to *throw* them down. They aren't heavy ,they won't break, in fact they probably would have bounced. But, true to the usual fashion of the oddest things always happening to me, I came around the corner *just* as he is releasing pumpkin #1 into the stairwell and it promptly smacks me right on top of the head. I obviously am startled, as I usually don't look for things flying at my head when I go upstairs- though I might start now! It was an accident, right place wrong time I suppose, and thankfully it didn't hurt, or else I may have had to hurt him.

70 in December

2008-12-08T15:57:00.000-05:00

Following my baking experiment gone wrong, and the parade that never was, we had a relatively calm rest of the weekend. I went on to take two tests, which I am certain that I failed, but still somehow find this comforting because it means the classes are over and I didn't need those grades to pass anyhow. All that matters is that I will never see College Algebra again, and this is the best Christmas gift ever!! The weather here is in the 70's while our old hometown is getting pelted by snow. I can say that I don't miss that! Driving with kids, or driving at all, in the snow is just so inconvenient. The slipping, the sliding, the 800 layers of clothes that you have to put on the kids, only to turn around and take it off for them to go pee and start all over, it's not something I miss.
Husband's friend couldn't make it to watch the game Saturday night, so we had some
"spare time" (though there is no such thing after having kids), to put up the Christmas tree. Only that it's pre-lit, and the upper 1/4 of it was no longer lit up. Rather than feel the need to exchange it, husband steals lights from one of our outside trees to fix it. I am certain that we will have ALL of our Christmas decorations complete once it's time to put them up until next year. For now, we have 7 out of 8 front windows with a candle in them (#8 is in the car, along with the mailbox decorations), and 2 out of 3 trees in lights but no extension cord to plug them into since ours all seemed to have shorted out in the move. yes, moving seems to single out your most used and needed things to ruin, that you would never think to check until it's just the last minute.
Aside from that, we are in full-on travel preparation mode. We are making our first flight as a family from here in FL to WV. Anyone who knows me knows that I HATE to fly, and I won't even go into the huge inconvenience that it is causing us. Next year I have already volunteered us to come in for Thanksgiving instead.
Ok, I am off to brainstorm. It's our 6th wedding anniversary Sunday and I have to think of something to buy/cook/build/make that won't break the already fragile bank. Wish me luck as my brain is mush these days and creativity is at it's minimum!

The "parade"

2008-12-06T12:11:00.000-05:00

Do you ever find yourself wondering just HOW you always seem to get involved into the strangest things, or how "it" (whatever it may be) always happens to you (or it feels that way)? I do, for sure. Some of the times, it's things that just come in streaks, making me feel like I constantly have bad luck. That was how it felt when we moved to FL, one bad thing happening after another. It was getting to the point that I couldn't even clean the shower in the bathroom in the guest bedroom without the curtain rod falling on my head- seriously!
I'll spare you all of the long and drawn out stories about how we endured about 2 months of constant bad luck- nothing was ever major and the most important thing was that we were all still safe and healthy, but it does wear on a mind. So rather than go into all of the sad stuff, we'll take a different turn.
At some point, FL decided to let up on us, and now and then there are things that turn comical. Take today for instance. Daughter is supposed to participate in a parade for her dance school. It was completely optional, but I thought it would be fun and help us to get into the holiday spirit. I'll admit I was a bit nervous because I am not one to trod down the street waving at thousands of people and hurling candy at them - at least not on a normal basis. But hey, I'm doing it for the kid, as if she doesn't have enough to do already, and as if I don't have two finals to take at the school today (in about an hour-YIKES).
Of course the parade is optional as I said, but if you participate you do have to buy the hoodie and pink santa hat- which after all was said and done for 2 hats and 1 hoodie cost us about $40. As the date nears for the parade, I am contemplating backing out because we have SO much to do this weekend, and I am disgusted that I don't have my Chritsmas tree even up yet!
So the day-today-comes, and we are supposed to meet at 9:30. It's roughly a 25min drive there, and I wake up at 8:45. CRAP. I imagine 9:30 rolling around and they say "Oh, they aren't here but they will be, they are ALWAYS late", cause well, we are. I hate it, but I cannot be on time for dance or anything dance related it seems! I take a quick shower and get her ready, and off we go.
So we pull out of the house for our 25 min drive, at 9:25. Yeah, we are LATE. Not to mention that I have lost my directions, and have barely a general idea of where I should be going. I put what I think is right in my GPS and haul arse up the road.
We arrive at the road to turn off, and it's where I thought it was- in a really busy part of town. Yet I see no one lining the streets for said parade. Then I see signs (thank goodness), and continue to follow them for at least 2 miles. I wonder if we're going to be walking that whole route, as I can imagine daughter will be tired, cold, cranky, and ineveitably she will have to pee at the worst time where there is no place, and leave us running alone at the end of the parade to catch up and nearing heart attack status.
I cut into the road where the signs lead and all of the sudden it is strictly residential, and sparsely populated at that. We go another 1/2 mile and there is the "festival".
I won't go into all of the details, but when it's time to line up, only the dance school is standing there, and it quickly becomes apparent that what I assumed was a huge Christmas parade, is in fact me, daughter, and about 15 other people walking down the sidewalk, singing Christmas carols to the vendors at the festival, following a hugely jacked up go cart painted in FL Gator colors, and being fumigated from the gas smell from it. We are tossing candy canes in the grass to no one in particular, and I am beyond embarrassed. Yeah, it was like that. The entire "parade" lasted about 10 minutes, cost us $40, but definitely game me something to laugh about for the rest of the day if not longer. Maybe it's one of those things where you had to be there, but I surely will be laughing about that one for a long time to come!!
Moral of the story for me is, I apparently have a very different idea of a parade than some people, so next time I need to be sure to check that out before I am all gung ho in participating LOL
I at least thank FL for giving me something to laugh about instead of cry,I only hope I don't burst out laughing during my tests.

Light & Fluffy??

2008-12-05T12:17:00.000-05:00

Those who know me, know that I am not a fabulous cook. It will be edible, presentation does not count, and that's about it.
So I was invited tonight to a Girls Night Out/Holiday Cookie Exchange tonight, and figured I would try something new. Anyone can go and buy the pre-cut chocolate chip cookies from the store and make them look home made. I'm up for a challenge ,so I decide on Ginger cookies- which I thought were the same as gingerbread cookies, but I am not sure. Plus money is tight and it was one of few recipes that I had most of the ingredients already in the cabinet. Except baking soda, and molasses.
We take daughter to gymnastics last night and I stop on the way home to buy said molasses and baking soda. Much to my worry that I would NEVER find the molasses (since I had to look up what it even was to begin with- hey, I said I don't cook.), it was right there on a display at the very front of Publix. Score! I head to the aisle to find baking soda, at which I am faced with at least 3 different choices. I see the traditional baking soda that usually comes to mind- Arm and Hammer. At this point I become concerned, because even though it does clearly say baking soda on the box, nowhere do I see one of it's uses listed as actual baking. I am *quite* turned off by using it in something that will be eaten when it's first claim to fame on the box is scratchless cleaning of pots and pans, so I settle with baking powder instead, and hope that they are the same thing or similar.
I planned on doing my actual baking today, while son is napping. He is the lightest sleeper in the world, and sounds carry like none other in this house, go figure. So he is finally asleep, I catch my shower and head soooo quietly downstairs to get started.
I gather all of my ingredients and set them on the counter, and naively put some lunch in the microwave. The recipe does say 10 minute prep time, and so I assume that I can whip these puppies up and head back upstairs in no time.
Ha.
For starters, the recipe basically has you make it in 3 separate parts, and then at some point combine them all into one. At no particular point does it tell you where to combine parts 2 & 3, nor does it say it in literally the 1300+ comments from people who are raving at how wonderful said cookies are.
So I make the first part, which consists of just putting together lots of flour and spices and sifting them. No, chef Chantelle does not own a sifter, and so hand mix with a wisk it is.
Part two calls to beat an egg (did it), and at some point add the molasses and water (or someone suggested using Orange Juice for more kick, and so I do), which creates a nasty and smelly mess.
Let me start by saying that nowhere on the bottle of molasses do they warn you that this stuff smells like dog food and beef jerkey, neither of which do I eat. And so I find myself glad that I am not pregnant, because otherwise that is a smell that surely would have sent me running and the whole cookie operation would have been aborted.
So all systems are go, and I'm feeling rather proud despite the mess in my kitchen, which I do not have time to clean, and company is coming tomorrow along with a Christmas parade, anatomy exam, and Math final. Yeah, it's that kind of weekend and I'm baking cookies.

Then we get to the final step. With parts 1 & 2 set aside, I am supposed to cream the butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy. ..........Excuse me?
I can only assume that this is done by mixing those two things (again I tell you, I do not cook, and if I do it comes with very simple instructions), and beating them with a mixer, and so I do. Only my butter was melted and not softened, and nothing light nor fluffy about it.

Time to regroup. I head back upstairs and find out how to soften butter (duh on that one!) and cream the mixture. Armed with my new wealth of information, I head back to the kitchen.

I put the new softened butter in it's bowl, and add the sugar. I put the mixer in and go to town. According to my research, this may take anywhere from 2-10 minutes, at which point it will no longer be a mess, and will be almost like Cool Whip (and then I contemplate using Cool Whip instead, because it would honestly have been a lot easier!). At about the 3 minute mark, I am nowhere near light and fluffy, I have entered a sugar pellets stage. Pieces are flying and the mixture is looking smaller and smaller. At the 5 minute mark, it appears that I have made mashed potatoes, so I'm good enough with that and cut off the mixer.
The last step is of course rolling the dough into balls, rolling it into the sugar, and putting it on the cookie sheet. This is where it all really falls apart. Instead of the dough being sticky AND runny like the reviews have stated, it is of paste- like consistency. I repeatedly have to wash my hands, leaving me to wonder why I felt the need to shower before doing this. This recipe supposedly yields 24 cookies, and all of the sudden the once small mixture seems to have quadrupled and is never-ending. At 24 cookies, I am over this all and I dump the rest of the batter in the sink.
Finally long after the supposed 10 minute prep time has passed, my cookies are in the oven. And 12 minutes later they are out. My kitchen is trashed, but they look decent and they no longer smell like dog food. The only problem left is that they resemble an extremely old sidewalk- in other words, cracked all to pieces along the top. It kind of gives character, but leaves me wishing that my coolest gadget ever- the ultimate chopper- were still in service so that I could turn my regular sugar into confectioner's sugar, and make the vanilla glaze to creatively cover said cracks.
But now the challenge is over and I have completed my first (and only!) batch of ginger cookies, which look like a jigsaw puzzle, but do not taste like Pedigree. I still don't think I will put my name to them, and when someone asks which ones I brought, I will give a very grand wave towards the cookies and say "Oh, you know, those right there", and then disappear to somewhere else when they turn to see. This is my plan. Let's hope it works!

Life In A Nutshell

Cause I'm Just Too Cool To Pee Without It Burning

Tourist For A Day

Bitches

The Old Town

Cleaning Crew

The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of School Bells

I Live To Hear Another Day

Another Day, Another Dollar (Spent)

Home again, home again, jiggity jig...

Another travel..

Pictures & Prayers

Reopening, and the Trip That Should Have Never Been

Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away

Home, if only for a minute

Travelin' Lady

Betrayed

Firework-ed Out

My Mug

In Memory Of...

Sliding Doors

On The Road Again

Recovery from Houseguests

Busy Busy

Happy (almost) anniversary!

Post-Mommy Day

Son

Chomp, Chomp

Ahhhh...

Up Up and Away

Email me~

Shedding

Ouchhhhhhh

On The Road Again

Am I A Buzz Kill?

I Confess

Sunny Day

Are You A Marilyn?

You Are a Marilyn!

Another One Bites The Dust

Mission Accomplished

Snot and Batteries

Oh, the Acai..

Monday, Monday

1...1 3/4....1 1/2....

3...2...1....

Sunny Day

Summertime, and the livin is.....

Random stuff

There's More To A Cell Phone Than You Think

We're home

Say a Prayer

Perk Up Buttercup

I'm back

Oh, the pink stuff...

A baker, I am not.

The case of the arachnid and the ever-mutating Rhinovirus

Productiveness, scrubbed

Date night, scrubbed.

Strange but true things

A nice, rainy, dull, uneventful day

Smell, Swirl, Swish, Repeat

Some *real* wine for my cheese!

On the road to recovery

In Memory of Yoda

Hope is in the air..do you have some?

Home sick..where is home?

Mi casa

Doctors, Ear Tubes, and Pharmacies, Oh My! Doctors, Ear Tubes and Pharmacies, Oh My!

Stupid Urethra

Productivity

Pooped Out

Santa Shuffle

A list

Randomness

One of THOSE days..

Twins??

The wrong place at the right time

Pumpkin to the head

70 in December

Some real wine for my cheese!