From the desk of HLP

New BLOG

2010-01-01T21:42:00.003-05:00

I have decided that instead of having a regular blog that occasionally posts book reviews, I am now blogging for just books and reviews. Please join me on my new blog

www.bippityboppitybook.blogspot.com

Holly

Sites I love

2009-07-06T14:31:00.002-04:00

I am a complete historical fiction junkie and in the past year I have run across some really awesome sites to feed my reading needs:

#1 on that list is of course www.paperbackswap.com which is a book swapping site. You list the books you don't want, someone orders one from you, you mail it and get a credit. You then use said credits to order other books you really want. I went from about 30 books on my shelf to over 300 in a year. I am michiganderholly on there.

Other HF sites I love:
www.histfiction.net which lists the 100 top selling HF books at the moment and also lets you divide them by timesline. You can also look up by author.

www.historical-fiction.com I have completely maxed out my PBS wish list because of this site. She gives great reviews, has lots of giveaways and also does www.royal-intrigue.net which is all Jean Plaidy all the time and includes the 2009 Plaidy Challenge (see button).

http://www.historicalnovels.info/ Lists HF by timeline. Found alot of good ones here too.

www.historicalnovelsociety.org Besides looking through the coming soon section on the Barnes & Noble website this is one of the sources I find upcoming HF at.

Other Non-HF sites I love:

www.bookcloseouts.com I find alot of great deals on books here. I just got 15 books for $83 and that includes shipping.

www.goodreads.com This is where I keep track of what I've read, what I want to read, and what I'm currently reading.

www.kiva.org You become a lender and browse entrepreneurs in 3rd world countries and lend $ through paypal. One of Kiva's microfinance partners distributes the loans and the entrepreneur pays them back over time. Once you get your money back you can either put it back in your bank account or lend it to someone else.

www.listsofbests.com Lists of the best music, books, movies, places etc.. Includes definitive lists and peoples personal opinion lists.

Mission Accomplished :)

2009-06-23T15:41:00.001-04:00

As of June 7, 2009 I have completed my 101 books in 1,001 days challenge with 101 books read in 492 days. Yay!

REVIEW: Meridon by Philippa Gregory

2009-04-13T11:46:00.002-04:00

Meridon is the conclusion of Philippa Gregory’s Wideacre Trilogy and tells the story of Meridon who has longed all her life for “Wide” a land she has never seen but cannot forget. Meridon grows up living a hard life as a child of gypsies with her “twin sister” Dandy. M has a gift for horses and she and her sister are sold to Robert Gower, a man with a horse show, so her stepfather no longer has to be responsible for them. Robert sees M’s gift with horses and trains her as a horsewoman and develops an aerial act where he trains Dandy and his son Jack as trapeze artists. After tragedy strikes M strikes out on her own and finally stumbles across Wideacre, the place of her dreams but finds herself at odds with the lifestyle of the Quality and how the estate is run.

I liked this one better than book 2 but I still think book 1 was the best of the three. I like that Gregory made Meridon a strong female character like Beatrice was. The only thing that irked me was I kept wondering what happened to some of the minor characters from book 2. It never said what happened to Ralph Megson or to the Haverings that owned Havering Hall beforehand. I felt it would have been a little bit better had this been explained and I also recommend that all the books be read back to back. I did read 2 and 3 back to back but I read the first one 6 months ago and forgot quite a bit of the back-story between then and now.

REVIEW: The Favored Child by Philippa Gregory

2009-04-13T11:45:00.001-04:00

Favored Child, the 2nd book in the Wideacre trilogy, continues the story of the Lacey’s of Wideacre. This time the book focuses on Julia and Richard, “cousins” and joint heirs to the Wideacre estate. Unlike Beatrice Lacey in the first book, Julia Lacey was not as strong of a character throughout. Richard was the one hell bent and determined to prove that he is the Favored Child and the rightful squire of Wideacre. This stems from a legend in the village of Acre that only one of them is the true heir of Beatrice who had a special relationship with the estate and could make it grow and prosper.

This book was not nearly as dark as the first one which shocked you repeatedly with its tales of rape, murder and incest, all for the love of the land. This one did have some dark undertones too though.

I had a hard time with Julia being such a wishy washy character, especially when Beatrice Lacey was such a no holds barred one in the last book. I also had a hard time believing that her love for Richard blinded her so much that she couldn’t see how evil he really was. I love Philippa Gregory’s books and although I didn’t like this one as much as Boleyn Girl, Boleyn Inheritance or Queen’s Fool, it was still a pretty good read. I definitely think it had a little bit of “middle book” syndrome though where the 2nd book in a trilogy still manages to progress the story but it just kind of sandwiched in between the 1st and 2nd book and not nearly as good.

REVIEW: The Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

2009-04-13T11:44:00.003-04:00

Interesting read which tells the story of Griet, a Dutch girl who is sent to live as a servant for the painter Vermeer to earn money for her family after her father is blinded and can no longer work. The Vermeer household features several children, Catharina-the cold mistress of the household, and another servant. Tensions arise when one of the girls takes a dislike to Griet and constantly tries to get her in trouble. She also creates tension when Vermeer recognizes her abilities and tasks her to assist him which creates jealousy among the household and also when she catches the eye of a wealthy customer and must resist his advances. Eventually the only way to appease him is for Griet to sit for a portrait (The Girl with the Pearl Earring).

I like that the focus of the book stayed on Griet and that kept the story simple and enjoyable. There are so many different points of focus the book could have had but I think Chevalier was smart to keep the focus on the protagonist, Griet. In doing this I got a good impression of what it was like to live in Delft and the differences between the classes and how people were expected to act. Its not easy to picture in your mind how characters should be in a time you know nothing about but I felt liked the way the writing and descriptions allowed you to “see” it without it being too much. I also didn’t mind the background story of the butcher’s son vying for Griet’s attention throughout the book. Good description, likeable main character and it made me interested enough to look up some of Vermeer’s work on Wikipedia so I could see for myself the paintings that were discussed in the book.

REVIEW: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

2009-04-13T11:43:00.001-04:00

I don’t think I have ever read a book that was narrated by Death before. It definitely gave the book an interesting perspective. The Book Thief tells the story of Liesel Meminger who comes to live with the Himmerman family in Nazi Germany after her mother can no longer care for her. Death tells the different times he meets Liesel and how she came to be known as the Book Thief. It also gives a glimpse into how it was to live in Munich during the time of the Nazi’s and also the trials the Himmerman family goes through to hide Max, the Jewish son of Hans Himmermans’ old deceased war buddy, after Hans made a promise to help his widow if she ever needed anything.

If this story were told from the perspective of one of the actual characters (Liesel, Hans, Max, or Rudy-Liesel’s neighbor and best friend) I don’t think the story would have been nearly as good. It’s the story told from Death’s point of view and how among all the people in the world and all the suffering at the time this girl stood out to him and his telling of her story and those around her which puts the book in a class by itself.

I like books that allow you to put a human face on tribulations endured. For the Holocaust the Diary of Anne Frank did that, Elie Wiesel’s Night did that, and the Book Thief accomplished this also. Great, although very sad read.

REVIEW: 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows by Anne Brashares

2009-04-13T11:42:00.001-04:00

Brashares decided to branch out from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and create a new sisterhood of sorts. This sisterhood only has three members Ama, Polly and Jo. In this book Ama, the braniac of the bunch, is awarded a scholarship to attend a program at one of the local universities over the summer but to her horror is assigned to go to a wilderness camp. Polly decides she wants to be a model (even though she is not the “model” type) and Jo decides to stay with her mom on the beach and takes a job at a local beach café after her mom and dad split up. While there she meets and older boy and has to vie for his affections after his old flame (Effie, younger sister of Lena from the SOTP series) shows up to work there again.

I was a little concerned that when I started reading this that the author would have basically the same characters as the original sisterhood but have given them all different names. I was pleasantly surprised because the characters of this new sisterhood stood on their own and didn’t remind me of the original girls at all. I’m not sure if I liked the character names though. When I read Ama in my mind I kept seeing Anna. I like the individual story lines of each of the girls and I think the author did a good job of showing how people who grow know each other for most of their lives can still reach that point where they grow apart a little bit. I know I have friendships like that-still friends but we all went our individual ways.
I think the only thing I didn’t like was the cameos from some of the SOTP characters, namely Effie. I didn’t like her in the other novels and I didn’t like her in this one. I can see that the author was maybe trying to do a passing of the torch type thing but I think the book could have stood by itself without bringing the old characters back.

REVIEW: The Witch's Trinity by Erika Mailman

2009-04-13T11:37:00.002-04:00

The Witch’s Trinity centers on a village in Germany in the 16th century and how the villagers slowly turn on one another by accusing each other of witchcraft in explanation of the long period of bad crops and starvation they have been experiencing. The main character, Gude, is an old woman who lives with her son, wife, and two children and is accused by her daughter-in-law as a convenient way to get rid of the old woman so they would no longer have to feed her. This occurs after Gude’s dearest friend is accused and found guilty after a Priest tries her using the Witch’s Hammer, a “Bible” of recognizing and dealing with witchcraft.

I have to say that I really enjoyed this short read and was able to finish it within a couple of hours. The author definitely has a good imagination. She does a great job of conveying Gude’s vulnerability as an old woman, and does a fantastic job in blurring the lines so we don’t know if Gude really is experiencing what is described in the book or if it is just an old woman’s imagination run wild. Also the glimpse we get of the teachings of the Witch’s Hammer and the methods of torture used to exact confessions from the accused actually made me cringe. I can’t imagine having to go through any of that.

I read The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent which centered on the Carrier family and the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. That story was interesting also but was dull and bogged down in parts and you sort of lost the characters. In my opinion Witch’s Trinity is a much better read because I can’t recall any dull parts at all. I loved the writing style and I hope I get to read more from this author.

MORE REVIEWS

2009-03-31T09:49:00.003-04:00

THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED- Wally Lamb

I really liked Wally Lamb's other two books so I was anticipating a good read with this one and I got it.The story at first seems to be about the tragedy at Columbine but really it is about how a married couple deals with the fallout from the tragedy as well as other things that have affected their lives. Also the exploration of the family history of the main character takes up the latter half of the book. This may at times make it seem like HIFB is two separate stories rolled into one which can be wierd for some.What I really liked about this book was that the characters were human and really believable. I didn't necessarily like Caelum Quirk or his reactions to some of the issues he deals with in the book but it is how I would imagine a real person would react.I loved how the book dealt with the PTSD issue. I have PTSD so I was really skeptical about how accurately the author would portray the relationship between Caelum and Maureen after the Columbine fallout. I realize not all people will react the same but a lot of the symptoms are the same and Mr. Lamb nailed the struggles on that front. There were parts of the book where I felt the author had to have been standing in my living room observing me and my hubby before he wrote this book.The history of the Quirk family was interesting also but it was in this section that the story kind of got bogged down a bit. The author was laying the groundwork for this phase and it got a little less interesting but it did pick back up as the story got more involved.The story deals with heavy issues so it is probably not for someone who requires a happy ending to everything they read. It is rare that I retain much from a book for more than a day or two but this one stuck with me. Great book overall. I am looking forward to Mr. Lamb's next one.

VICTORIA VICTORIOUS - Jean Plaidy

***don't read if you don't know the history of this time period****

You would think with her taking the throne at such an early age her relatives would have had an easier time manipulating her. Not so. This is one lady who stuck to her guns throughout her entire life. She didn't let her mother or her uncle or any other member of her family push her around. During her reign the powers of the monarchy were much more limited than they had been before but it was still a big job and one she performed admirably well considering that the gov't kept changing parties and thus she was forced to change prime ministers more than normal people regularly change their underwear. She was also fortunate enough to find the love of her life and Prince Albert did seem to compliment her rather well. She governed through many difficult periods (crimean war, irish potato famine, war between prussia/denmark, russia/turkey etc). On top of all this she also popped out children faster than Ford could make a car pre-assembly line, for a grand total of 9 children, strategically marrying them off and cleverly uniting England to most of Europe. She also suffered the loss of a great many people she loved. What a Lady to have gone through this and with all the dignity and regalness expected of a queen.
Only thing that got me about the book was it didn't focus too much on the changes in the world but it was supposed to be her story from her POV so I can see why that would be.

Short Update

2009-02-18T21:26:00.002-05:00

Still alive and reading alot . I have been collecting the Happy Hollisters series for boy and I have almost all of them. I just need four more. Had a friend contact me out of the blue through myspace about joining the Army so I went with her to the appointment today. Its not often that happens since pretty much all of my friends said I was stark raving mad to join the Army when I did it in 2000. Oh well. I can totally understand why someone would want to do it in this economy.

We signed boy up for soccer which will be starting in early april. I love watching little kids try to do organized sports because they just don't get how it works so they are running the wrong way down the field but its fun to watch them anyway. When they're young like that its not about winning yet and I can't imagine that a parent would put a pressure on a young child like I've seen them do the older ones (unless they are total losers..) It will be interesting to see how he does because he is a very energetic child to begin with.

Is it Over Yet?

2008-12-20T09:35:00.004-05:00

Totally unrelated to what I'm about to write: If you're looking at my 101 books list I did read A Mercy by Toni Morrison in between the Shack and Myself, My Enemy but since it didn't meet my minimum 200 pg requirement I can't add it to the list. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.......

I just really wish Christmas would be over. I don't mind the real reason for the holiday but I just really don't like commericialized Christmas. It used to be fun to go buy gifts for everyone. This year I went to two malls.

My experience at the first one: I went last saturday and my biggest purpose for going to this one was to take the boy to see Santa because they have a nicer set-up at that mall than they do at the local one. We get there, fight for a parking spot for 45 minutes and finally find one that isn't 10 miles from the mall. We go in and immediately get in a LOOONNNG line for Santa. Two hours later we finally get to see the jolly old fat guy for a bargain price of $40 in order for me to get enough pictures for the whole family. All the time we're waiting there are people cutting through the Santa line to get to the theater because they are too freakin' lazy to walk around to the other side of the Santa thing where there is NO line. There are also the other morons who come up to where the gap is for letting the first set of movie going morons through and try to get in line there because "Oh, so sorry, didn't realize the line that stretches halfway around the foodcourt was the Santa line. I thought this was the back of it". Ever tried to stand in a line for two hours with an impatient four year old? Not fun. He did pretty good though considering. By the time we got through all that we both had to go to the bathroom so we did that and boy says he's hungry and wants a snack so I take him down to Auntie Anne's pretzels. We get in that line where, again, MORONS who don't realize that the line is going sideways instead of straight out so people can actually get through, try to cut the line. So we finally get our pretzels and we can't find anywhere to sit to eat them so we end up sitting on the floor on our jackets across from Macy's. Our second purpose in the mall being to get presents for everyone so we go to the lower level to get one of those toddler carts for boy so he doesn't have to keep walking everywhere. People were being very pushy while walking around and I was getting sick of them running into the poor child and almost knocking him down and then just moving on like nothing happened. So we get downstairs to get a cart and its $5 and they generously give you ONE whole dollar back when you return the cart. Can we say ripoff? I get the cart and we look around the whole crowded mall and do not find one thing for anyone. I get down to the end with the Starbucks kiosk and get in line as everyone knows Starbucks is my anti-homicidal medicine and at this point I needed it. The people already in line had the line going the wrong way- like past where you're supposed to pick up the drinks. The lady at the counter asked that if we were in line to order, please make the line going the other way. Well I am the only one that actually did what she asked, effectively losing my place in line while everyone else ignored her. I had had enough at this point and we returned the cart and headed to our car. Then the fun really began. I had to circle the mall 5 times in order to find a way out because it was so congested and by time I did a whole hour had passed. People are in total asshole gear this time of year and think its a crime against humanity if they have to stop their vehicles and let someone coming off one of the aisles in. So we head home. I drop boy off with the hubby and decide to go to the other mall in town.
My experience there: not nearly as bad actually but I couldn't find one thing there either that I thought anyone would like. It doesn't help that the only person in my family I'm shopping for is my dad while my husband's family is 15 people and I don't know what any of them like but I'm the one stuck doing the shopping every year. I finally said screw this, everyone is getting gift cards. We went out wednesday night to the store and bought everyone except the two younger kids in the family gift cards. I still have to go back out sometime this weekend and finish shopping for my son.
I realize part of the reason for my issues with shopping is my experience in Iraq which has caused my fear of crowds. Everytime I get in a crowded place I get all anxious and sweaty and on edge and it feels like I'm going to pass out. Kind of feels like the crowd is closing in on me and I don't like it. I actually flinch when people accidentally touch me in a mall and if they press up against me in a line, my first reaction is pure defense mode. I've been lucky I have been able to catch myself and haven't tossed some poor sap on the floor in one of my panics.
Also I've realized that just the three month run between december and february has been generally bad for me so its no wonder I'm always so stressed out and down in the dumps this time of year. I had a miscarriage in December fo 02' right before we deployed to Iraq. February 13th of '03 I had to put my cat I had for 13 years to sleep because he had cancer. February 27th of the same year I got on a plane to Iraq to spend what would be the most miserable year of my life. I came back in February of '04. On New Years day of '05 I lost my mom to lung cancer. Thankfully nothing too horrible has happened in the past couple of years but I think those things right there were enough to pretty much kill this time of year for me indefinitely. The only thing that saves the holiday for me: my son, of course. Watching him open the presents on Christmas definitely lessens the feelings I have towards this time of year.
And with that, I hope everyone does have a good Holiday :)

REVIEWS

2008-11-18T21:40:00.011-05:00

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor

The premise of this book is that Alice in Wonderland is actually Princess Alyss of Wonderland. who ended up in Victorian England while escaping her evil Aunt Redd who kills her parents and takes over Wonderland. Alyss (re-named Alice by a teacher who insists that she's spelling her name wrong) finds a sympathetic ear in Reverend Dodgson (i.e. Lewis Carroll) and tells him the entire story of her childhood only to have him make nonsense of it and turn it into the book Alice in Wonderland. Alice continues to grow up in England while Hatter Madigan, her family's bodyguard continues to search for her so they can return to Wonderland (and the city of Wondertropolis) to battle Redd and reclaim Wonderland, as she is its rightful princess.

An interesting storyline, no? It is a satisfying read if you're looking for something fast and glossy but you get the sense that the author is hoping you'll be so distracted by his new additions to the story (Redd's Army, White and Black Imagination) that you won't notice that there is really no substance to the story. I actually really liked his reimagining of Wonderland because it gave it a slightly darker twist.

I do think he needs to work on character development though and maybe in his descriptions of Wonderland. I saw Redd as a very dominant character who would be difficult to defeat and Alyss didn't seem that strong throughout the book. Also he spends an adequate amount of time describing Wondertropolis but the descriptions of any other location in the book are cursory at best- just enough so you know that is where the character is at that point in time but not enough so you get a feel for the place. I also thought the ending was a little too neat. This book is actually the first in a trilogy and I'm reading the second book now. Overall I give the book a C+

The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam

This is the first non-fiction book I have read in quite awhile. The book begins by describing her girlhood in a remote area of Cambodia. She goes on to describe how at the age of 12 she is eventually sold to a brothel where she endures continuous and horrific rapes, torture, and abuse. She chronicles her escape from the brothels, her move to France and her subsequent return to Cambodia. She starts small- first offering condoms and soap to girls working in brothels and tries to educate them and her foundation continues to grow into what it is now where she helps girls escape the life.

What I liked: The writing is simplistic and it is an honest account of what she endured. It must have been very difficult for her to relive all those experiences for this book (the sale of which partially benefits her foundation). She tells her story in a kind of detached way, yet you really get a sense of what she is trying to convey. The way these girls are forced to live is something I cannot even begin to wrap my mind around and I've been in a war torn area and saw some pretty upsetting stuff. It is awesome that without regard for her personal safety she has championed the cause of these girls and continues to do so in the hope that she can lead them to a better life and she does a great service by reliving her experiences in the hopes that it will clue some of us in and inspire us enough to get involved.

What I didn't like: I realize that the purpose of the book is to bring attention to the cause but sometimes it felt infomercially like at certain points in the book I expected a passage to read "to donate now, call this number..." Maybe a little too "help us now or these girls will suffer" type thing. I don't mean that to sound insensitive. I just think the book would have been more powerful if that aspect had been more subtle (she mentions that certain locations have had to close due to lack of funding etc..) and the reader was allowed to draw their own conclusions.

I admire what she is doing and I hope one day girls being forced into prostitution is a thing of the past. A heartbreaking story to say the least. I give it a B.

2008-11-09T00:01:00.001-05:00

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WTF???

2008-11-07T01:03:00.001-05:00

Okay for whatever reason its not letting me add anything to my 101 books in 1,001 days list so I guess I'll post them here for now

Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 11/1/08
Second Summer of the Sisterhood 11/3/08
Girls in Pants: Third Summer of the Sisterhood 11/6/08

I'm thinking about going back and doing reviews of some of the stuff I've read this year but I'm not sure I'll have the time.

DC

2008-10-01T17:56:00.002-04:00

Got back on Sunday from the 1st bi-annual get together in Washington DC. Why is it that just about every time I go on vacation I come back more exhausted than when I left? Maybe it was the 10+ hr car ride both ways. I dunno....
The trip down there was uneventful until we got into the DC/Alexandria area and the traffic was maddening. We got there a little after 4 and didn't actually get to the resort until just after 6 because we were stuck in traffic. Then the parking garage was super confusing and I ending up blowing a tire after hitting a curb in the parking garage. Many thanks to Kev for loaning us the $$$ to get another tire so we wouldn't have to roll home on a donut.

The resort itself was not as nice as the one we toured in Nashville but it was still much better than a hotel. Unfortunately we are incredibly slothful people which means we didn't get out of the room on friday or saturday until after noon sometime so not as much time to do stuff as I thought. We did make it to the Air and Space Museum on the first day though. We ate at Asian Bistro and I tried Pad Thai for the first time and it was deelish. The next day we split up and Chris and I went to Arlington Cemetary. We saw JFK's grave and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We watched the changing of the guard which was awesome to see but my dad picked that inopportune moment to call and then when we didn't answer call again and then leave a voicemail so we have 100+ people staring daggers at us for the interruption. I felt horrible about that.
Next we hopped the metro to the National Mall and did A LOT of walking. We went to the Washington Monument, the WW2 Memorial, walked down the reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial and then to Vietnam wall. This little jaunt reminded me of my aversion to large groups of people. The other tourists seemed like cockroaches to me- all over the place, only in this instance there was no way to turn a light on and make them all scatter. Honestly for the Wall I think I would have rather did that one myself instead of with Chris because I asked him nicely several times to back off and leave me alone so I could be well, alone with my thoughts, and he refused to back off. He just followed me around and it pissed me off so the emotion and the whole thought process I had at the time was completely wasted/lost. I have decided if they ever do a monument to Iraq I won't be going. Its not for wanting to forget the people that didn't make it home but more because I don't want to dredge up the memories of my being over there because 99% of them were bad.
That night we ate at a greek restaurant called Taverna Cretekou and it was some of the best food I've ever tasted. A little pricey but REALLY good. I was also thrilled they had a Starbucks in the Hilton right next door.

Unfortunately due to time constraints there was some stuff I wanted to see/do that I didn't get to. I did want to see the White House, the Korean Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial and I wanted to go to the Holocaust Museum and the Museum of American History. They were also having the National Book Festival while we were there and I had planned on going but by time we got that area it was mid-afternoon and I had to make a choice between that and seeing the monuments and I chose the monuments because it is not likely I will go back to DC soon but it is likely that I will attend a book festival/sale at some point in the near future.
Of course the best part of the whole trip was spending it with friends. I am glad Chris got the opportunity to know Kev and Krista a little better but I still wish Sarah and Liz could have come. The one thing that really bugs me about me though is even on vacation I am completely unable to relax. Part of the problem is that Chris and I are polar opposites in that respect. I feel most comfortable and able to let my guard down when all the ducks are in a row so to speak. I like to have at least a vague plan of what I'm doing. Chris likes to just go with the flow and leave everything until the last minute and it drives me STARK RAVING MAD. I CANNOT handle living like that and when it is like that I am constantly on edge and I know it affects the mood of those around me but I can't help it. Its not like I have to have everything on a schedule down to the last minute but I have to have order in my life. I really missed Collin while we were gone and we didn't get home til 10 sunday night and he was already asleep. He was out cold and we couldn't wake him up so we didn't actually get to see him til monday. Overall it was a good trip. The resort staff did put a damper on it right at the end though when we went down to do the survey we agreed to in exchange for $100 in free gift certificates. While they promised it would take 1/2 hr it took over an hour and the bulk of the "survey" was trying to get us to refinance our timeshare and become VP members which would have given us more points but also would have upped our payment another $160. We could tell the guy was getting visibly annoyed with us and he was kind of pushy which I thought was slightly unprofessional but oh well. The rest of the trip was good.
I am trying to plan a family vacation for us and the fam in NY to Newport, RI for next summer but that requires Chris to call them and find out if they're interested so I know what to book. As for the next bi-annual trip Vegas won hands down and thankfully we'll be flying to that one :)

In other news, work has been snooze-worthy since I got back and I am just about caught up on the homework/participation I neglected to do while on vacation. I'm going to a library sale on saturday so I guess that will make up partially for missing the book fest. So life is just about back to normal :)

I'm Alive!

2008-09-04T17:54:00.003-04:00

Almost got in a horrific car crash today. Some doofus in a minivan was pulling a trailer with some logs in it. It was in the right hand lane. Not looking, it goes to swerve into the left lane. The Audi in front of me slams on his brakes to miss it and ends up hitting the trailer. I slam on my brakes to miss the Audi and thankfully I do after coming within inches of colliding with the back end because the guy was smart enough to pull way off the road. Unfortunately the minivan slamming its brakes caused the logs go flying off, one of which collided with my car and caused minor damage. I spent an hour and a half standing in the rain waiting to get it sorted out with the state trooper that came. I borrow the Audi guys phone and finally get ahold of Chris who somehow interprets the "I'm fine but the car is a little damaged" as "I'm fine but the car is totalled and there is a log through the windshield" so he tells my dad that and everyone is worried about me for the next two hours until I make it back to the office. I missed Boy's preschool orientation because of this. My dad had to take him by himself and almost collapsed from having to walk so far because he didn't realize the preschool is located in the back corner of the school and came in through the front door.
On top of that I have been sick with the worst head cold ever for 3 days and I still have one more 4 page paper for the LIT class and the 10 pager for the HR class to write. Needless to say this has been a craptacular week. I am still alive though so I guess I'll celebrate by giving myself the night off from homework to finish reading Harry Potter 5. Cheers.

Ruined Endings

2008-08-17T12:07:00.002-04:00

So this is the second time in a month that I've been reading a book and some other element of the book has completely ruined the story for me. For example, I was reading Black Ships by Jo Graham and saw this little who's who of characters in the back so I read through them like an idiot and find out the main character and another character get together and have two sons! This was well before this happened in the book. Then this week I am reading the Awakening by Kate Chopin and the person who did the introduction states right in there that the main character commits suicide at the end! So WTH is the point of reading the book if the introduction gives away the ending??? Why would they put that in there???
Maybe I'm just grouchy because I've had a migraine for two days and because my dad is pissed at me for no good reason AGAIN. Apparently on friday when they were outside and I was in the house, Chris told my dad he was working sat/sun and my dad said well maybe we'll all take a ride out there and have lunch with you. Mind you no one mentioned this plan to me. So Chris calls yesterday and asks if I want to go out to Allendale and we go. We don't even get to eat lunch with him because he's so busy so we go grab McDonalds and leave it there for him to eat when he gets a minute. I get home and put Boy down for his nap and 10 minutes later my dad calls and says "Where have you been? Why didn't you tell me you were going out there? I was going to go with you! I could have been dead over here and you haven't even called me all day to check on me!" This is at 2:30 BTW. My response "No one told me about us all going to have lunch and I just got home about 20 minutes ago." Well he says "Ok I'll talk to you later" and I haven't heard from him since. I know he's pissed because of the tone he used but this is NOT MY FAULT. I didn't know we were all supposed to go have lunch with Chris as no one told me and if he would have went he would have been miserable because a) the parking was far away and he would have had to walk and he can't walk b) there was nowhere to sit where chris was and c) Chris wasn't able to leave to have lunch anyway and he would have been pissed off because "we drove all that way and he couldn't eat lunch with us" so I fail to see what the big deal is.

Also my husband knows I have a tremendous amount of homework due to the LIT class and I'm taking another class along with it. In fact I have 2 three page papers and 1 ten page paper I need to start on today. Yet he insists on guilting me CONSTANTLY because I don't spend enough time with him. I really wish sometimes that I could leave and be by myself somewhere for two weeks just to clear my head. This would not be fair to my son though who I already do not spend enough time with and can only go about a day without seeing me without being extremely upset. Good grief... Does it ever get better??? Ideally our financial situation would go away and I could quit my job, work part time somewhere and be home with my son for the rest of the time. I wish my siblings would realize how completely unfair it is that I am giving up the best years of my life to live in this crappy town to take care of a man who is prone to mood swings at the slightest provocation while they live their lives as normal. I understand its a little much to expect them to pack up their entire lives and come up here but I need help beyond a visit or two a year. When they do come I am glad he has something else to occupy his time but also he is very posessive of them to the point of telling them if they are coming over to visit me they "better not stay over here for long" because he wants to hog every second of the time they're here. I can completely understand why K moved far far away from her mother but unfortunately I can not do that with my dad and feel ok about it because he is in really bad health and probably not going to be around much longer and what kind of daughter would I be if I left an old man to die alone?
And that brings me back to the book. I did not like the character Edna Pontellier but I do relate to the whole hopelessness/despair thing and the wanting to be who she wants to be and not who everyone else wants her to. Not like I'm going to swim out into the great blue yonder of Lake Michigan and just sink to the bottom but still, come on already. Can something good happen here just ONCE?

Whew! August already?

2008-08-02T16:07:00.002-04:00

Well things have been busy busy busy.

I just finished HRM435B which I dropped about four times because I kept getting the same instructor and her teaching style and my learning style just don't mesh well. This happened to me my senior yr of high school too. I had Mr. Green for english and even though he was a good teacher it just didn't suit the way I learned. I did much better in Mrs. Holden's class (whom many hated but I loved her class). Anyway, I passed the HRM class with an A BUT found out that one of the two classes I just started thursday is being taught by the same teacher I whose class I kept dropping last time. Good grief! Out of all the instructors that teach HRM classes, why do I keep getting her? Also re-attempting my LIT302A (The American Novel) class. I am about 1/2 thru Huckleberry Finn now. Started researching Grad Schools since I will be graduating w/my bachelors in May. I am debating whether or not to hold off on grad school until August of 2010 because the VA has come out with a new GI bill where benefits might be transferable to a spouse but this doesn't happen til late next yr. My GI bill will be used by then but Chris will still have half of his left so I'm hoping he'll be able to transfer some of it to me and then I won't have to take out a $20,000-30,000 loan to pay for school.

Apparently I also have a second job now. I am my dads housekeeper for one day every week. I have been helping him out the past couple of weeks and he says he's been looking but can't find anyone else that will do it so I guess its me. Hurray. I don't even have enough time to keep my own house clean 80% of the time.

In other news, someone stole our dog Sammie. Chris put her out at about 10:30 pm a little over a week ago so she could tinkle. He put her on her leash we walk her on and tied it around the post we have our birdfeeder on. He went back out 1/2 hr later to get her and shes gone and the leash had been cut. Now I don't know why the dumbasses didn't just undo the leash and take the whole thing but you can tell its been cut and its not something she chewed through. It isn't frayed like its been chewed at all.

The in-laws are supposed to be coming sometime this month but they haven't told us when yet. They might be trying to ambush us for all we know. I REALLY need a vacation and only six more weeks or so til I get one. Glad the DC trip is about here because I need to get away for a minute.

Just skippy ..

2008-07-05T22:54:00.002-04:00

Weight loss since Jun 3rd: 6 lbs down (morning dry weight)

School: Going better than thought. This teacher is more lenient on tardiness than others so I may actually pass this class after dropping it several times in the past.

Motherhood: Boy is being a turd. Going through the not listening phase and no amount of reasoning/discipline/bribery seems to be working to get him back on track.

Work: STRESSFUL. Major inspection in one week followed by visit/inspection by VIPs the following week. Am NOT ready at all and I have to help the other locations get ready as well.

Home Life: Eh. He pisses me off. We fight. We reach a truce. I piss him off. We fight. We reach a truce. He's addicted to computer games which he plays with the friend of his I detest in NY. This is starting to become a real issue because he prefers to spend more time downstairs at his computer than with us. Like a true nerd, I take my solace in books. Wish we had the same priorities so things would not be so difficult here. No one ever said marriage was easy......

On the dad front: difficult as always. I worry about him. I am torn between the need to take care of him because there is no one else and the need to live my life. I'm pretty much in limbo indefinitely.

Friends: Carpooling w/Kev is over, joyous as it was. He will have to find a new arch nemesis and I will have to find someone elses car to drop cheerios in. Need to see Liz soon. We had planned to ages ago before boy burned his feet and haven't rescheduled yet. Writing a eulogy for K as I have not heard from her in quite some time and have assumed the cats made quick work of her and her skeletal remains are lying somewhere in her apartment waiting for S to discover them.

Sleep: Deprived, obviously, or this post would not exist.......

The #3 Stall

2008-06-09T19:40:00.003-04:00

It just occurred to me the other day that I am such a creature of habit. I am destined to turn into one of those old people that like things just so and have a monstrous fit when something is out of place. The reason I say this is I realized the other day I have a preferred stall in the bathroom at work. There are three and if its open I usually take the one all the way to the right. I have no idea why but I always go for this stall and I actually get mad when someone else is in there. And then I realized I do this with alot of things. I tend to order the same drink at Starbucks. I read the same types of books. I can go days eating the same foods. And the thing is I don't get bored with it. The only thing that bores me is I am not free to do stuff in general like travel due to lack of fundage/time/babysitter.

Funny I never realized before now how much I like my routine and everything to be in its place.....

Ugh...

2008-05-06T21:30:00.002-04:00

I had quite the busy day. My bosses boss came to the area to do inspections and visit so the 9 million or so phone calls he normally gets came to me instead. Also we had to do an inventory of our personnel. Its not hard. They send me a list of names, I have everyone verify their info is correct, they initial next to their name and they send back. Monkeys could do this but apparently recruiters can not because one station sent it back to me with missing pages and another one decided not to send it to me until literally TWO minutes before I had to send it back up. Not to mention that everyone that is not there to sign it because they are on vacation/in school/at home sick, I have to provide documentation proving thats where they were. Two minutes is not enough time to gather that documentation. We were an hour and a half late getting it up there because of this.

To brighten my day I get an EXTREMELY rude email from someone who bought something from me on ebay because it went outside the US and they felt they had to pay too much tax on it because of what I put on the label. I have no problem giving a partial refund because I didn't realize this would happen but the person didn't have to be so nasty about it. Seriously, if someone addressed me like that in person I would pick up the nearest object and do my best to shatter their jaw with it. Just not a good day.

I start two college courses in two days. I'm kind of looking forward to it because the classes sound interesting but kinda not because I'm sick of taking classes and this will cut into all that reading time I've had from not taking classes.

Question: Does anyone else have a family member who gets offended when they bust ass in the car with all the windows rolled up and it smells like they are rotting from the inside out and *gasp* you have the audacity to roll down the window and keep it rolled down until the smell has dissipated? Well yeah, I was deemed asshole of the year yesterday because I insisted on keeping the window rolled down.

Okay- bad day at work, crappy ebay experience, stressful college, and horrible gas. I think I'm done here.

They Like Me, They Really Like Me!

2008-04-18T21:11:00.002-04:00

Well today was my 2nd day back at work. My coworker/friend called me on wednesday to see how I was doing and casually mentioned that "1SG was just wondering when you were coming back..." which is code for please get your ass back to work. They are going nuts with the phone calls". She also told me they got me a get well present and I'd really like it. Well today after they come back from training my boss lays a card and a little stuffed puppy dog on my desk. I'm thinking thats sweet cuz the puppy was cute. Well I go to read the card and lying underneath it was a preloaded Starbucks card. At this point I'm thinking cool, they put $5 on it for me. Well, try $105! The WHOLE company pitched in and got me a preloaded Starbucks card with a hundred and five freaking dollars on it. As Krista would say SQUEEE FREAKING SQUEEE SQUEE SQUEEEEE!
So that really brightened my day. All 55 of the people I work with have now become enablers for my addiction. :)

I decided I had to post this to remind myself next time I got on here to write about how craptacular life is, that there are some good things that happen :)

Going back to work tomorrow :I

2008-04-16T20:19:00.002-04:00

I had my gallbladder out last friday and have been off since then. I am not scheduled to go back to work until friday but apparently they miss me and I really want to save my vacation days if I can so I am going back tomorrow. I know that I will have ALOT to catch up on and I'll probably be exhausted by noon tomorrow but I have to go back sometime. On the upside during this little bit o' time off Chris' brothers were here for a day and a half and the boy worships both of his uncles so that was fun for him. The neighbors were nice enough to make us a lasagna so Chris wouldn't have to cook dinner one night and it was really good.

I have read ALOT since I haven't been able to do much of anything else. Finished Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles which were quite good once I got into them and read the Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox and will have The Kitchen Boy finished tonight. After slogging through the warlord chronicles which were 400+ pages each I am hesitant to start any longer books because I think I am getting burnt out on reading long books. I had every intention of starting Philippa Gregory's Wideacre trilogy after the Cornwell books but just could not do it because those are 600+ pages each I think.

As far as school goes I am so tired of taking classes that I am thinking of taking six weeks of the summer off again but that will delay my graduation til next year. I had to drop my international human resources class again after I found out when the surgery was going to be because I knew I would not be able to handle two classes during all that. The one I am left with which is women's history is just boring me to tears and each night it comes time to do my homework I am finding myself putting it off until the last minute because I don't want to do it at all.

Have a few things coming up in May that I'm looking forward to. May 1-4 they are doing the Wizard of Oz at the Frauenthal and I want to go if we have the money. The saturday before Fruitport Old Fashioned Days starts they are having the annual book sale at the library so I'm going to hit that up. Then theres the three day for memorial day. Probably going to stick around town this year but more time off so yay! Also Sex and the City the movie comes out that weekend and I am going so hopefully all my surgery wounds will have healed by then and the weather will have improved and it will be a good month.

The only cloud currently raining on my parade is one of our insurance companies keeps denying just about every claim sent to them so I keep getting bombarded with medical bills. Can't wait to see what the fallout is from this surgery :(

Free to Good Home....

2008-03-17T00:58:00.003-04:00

One gallbladder free stones included. Yep thats right. The discomfort I've been having on the right side of my body was caused by gallstones so I have to have it removed. They are supposed to be calling me by wednesday of this week with an appointment to see the surgeon and then my surgery will be scheduled at that appointment. Lucky me, this will be my 5th surgery in 5 years and the third one in the last 12 months. This was not the reason for the blood in my pee however. In addition to the futzed up gallbladder on the right, I had a small kidney stone on the left and a lower UTI so I was just all kinds of messed up. I'm finding it sad that my chief worry here is not that I have to have surgery or that it may be painful but that once again Mercy Hospital will not bill both insurances or bill them in the correct order so I will be stuck with a gynormous bill like I was for my foot surgery last july.

We did end up having to give up the idea of Vegas because we never did find anyone that was willing to go with us. The last couple we asked said they didn't want to spend the money right now which is cool. No big deal. I have learned my lesson and I will never buy one of those packages through my timeshare again. We decided that if we didn't get to go to Vegas we would visit the fam in NY instead. Well now that isn't happening either because I have to save those days I would have taken off to go to recover from my gallbladder surgery. I only have two sick days and four vacation days left until october and they told me recovery from the surgery will be between two and six weeks. Unfortunately I can only take a week off so if I have to stay home any longer than that it will be without pay and we CANNOT afford for me to do that. Hopefully I recover fast so I can go back to work. So no NY or Vegas. Instead it will be laying on my couch for a week. Oh what fun! This also means I might have to move our DC trip from September to Oct or after so I can use the two days I was saving for that for recovery also.

Also sucking for me is that the VA somehow messed up my enrollment verification for february. Apparently when I verified my enrollment in january and told them I dropped my two classes and not to pay me for that month, the dropped me from all of my classes instead of just the two I dropped. Instead of just taking me out of the classes that ran from January 3rd to Feb 13th they took me out of my classes from Jan 3rd til March 27th so when I went to verify for feb it said I had nothing to verify when in actuality I should have been able to verify enrollment from Feb 14th to Feb 29th which would have given me about $570. I am now short that much and my tuition is due March 27th. I can't start my spring quarter classes until the winter quarter is paid off and there is a fat chance the VA will get it fixed by then given that they are under budgeted and under staffed and they take forever on everything because of it.

At least I am still passing the two classes I am in now and only have this week and next to go and I have been reading alot lately which is good. I am just so bummed everything is getting messed up because I really needed some time away from here and now the next time I'll be able to have any sort of vacation is 6 - 8 months from now.

In good news though I got to hang out with Liz and Kev again. We ate awesome chinese food and went to a nice little coffee shop in GR where we played Sorry and then went back to Liz's dorm where she totally kicked my ass at cards. Didn't get home til midnight that night and got in trouble with the hubby cuz I didn't call and he was worried. That'll teach me to stay out past my curfew :)

Time for Bed. Happy St. Patrick's Day to all. Maybe this will be my lucky day. I am irish after all :)

Vegas in Limbo

2008-02-29T23:14:00.002-05:00

Well now we don't know if we're going to Vegas or not. The people that were supposed to go cancelled on me and the ones that are considering going in their place still don't know if they are going to because they have a 7 month old baby and no one to babysit while they are gone. I don't blame them for being iffy about taking him along. I can't imagine there would be much you can do with a seven month old in Vegas. I'm still holding out hope we'll be able to go but with as much difficulty as we've been having getting someone to commit it doesn't look like its in the cards for us. Chris and I decided that if we don't end up going to Vegas we'll use the time off we put in for to drop in on the family in NY. I already put aside $600 to pay for plane tix to Vegas so if we don't go we can use that to travel to NY.
Chucky got better a few days ago, just in time for me to get sick. Hooray! Thats usually how it always works. In keeping with attack of Murphy's law for some reason either my college has their head up their bootay or the VA does because I went to certify my enrollment for february and its showing I have nothing to certify. I have been back in school since Valentines day so I should be getting a check for $570 for the 15 days in february I attended. Now I will have to wait for the college to straighten it out with the VA so I can get paid and I'm hoping this happens before March 26th because this is when the rest of my tuition is due for Winter quarter. The college will not allow me to start spring quarter without winter quarter being completely paid for. Oy vay.
I've been plugging away at the reading. I am starting book 4 on my reading list so yay for that. Sometimes there will be stretches in there where everything goes really well. I guess its just time for one of those stretches where everything doesn't. Hope it doesn't last too long :(

Egads

2008-02-16T00:07:00.004-05:00

My break from school is over and I have started back up with my math for business and philosophy of ethics class. Here's hoping the next six weeks go smoothly :)
So the budget thing is working out fantabulously so far especially because I got a check from the VA for $200 that I wasn't expecting. This is the third paycheck since said budget was instituted and neither one of us has bought one thing we weren't supposed to. Its difficult because this year we aren't even allotting money for gifts for special occasions (i.e. birthdays, valentines, mothers/fathers day, anniversary etc)... Here's hoping we can stick to this budget until the end of the year and we'll be debt free. Hooray!

I even almost have enough money to buy our plane tickets to Vegas. The only bad thing is the couple that is supposed to be going with us might not be able to go because the wife might not be able to get the time off from work. Since this is one of those deals through my timeshare I have to bring someone to tour their resort and that is the reason I got the package so cheap so if I don't bring anyone and still go I have to pay actual cost which is a couple of grand. If I don't go I'm out the $200 I paid for the package that would have normally cost a couple of grand. I'm hoping he emails me back shortly and lets me know either way so if he can't go I have a good month to try and find another couple to go. Also I talked to my big sis the other day and she said since she wanted me to have a good time on my first trip to Vegas, that I could pick out one of the Cirque du Soleil shows and she would pay for me and chris to go. I'm really hoping this works out where we can go because I really need the mini vacation and I have been looking forward to it for months.

Been really busy at work too and have had to deal with many people doing stupid things that make my job that much more difficult. I have monday off so thats three whole days off in a row which should mean plenty of time for reading, homework and spending time with my boy.

A Challenge for me

2008-01-31T22:08:00.000-05:00

So I ran across this site that lists all kinds of challenges related to reading and I think I'm going to do the 101 books in 1,001 days one. So if I start this tomorrow that gives me until October 10th, 2009 to read 101 books. I think I can do this. I hate it when people do these contests and count 20 page books like Green Eggs and Ham as a book so I will not count anything under 200 pages. Right now I'm in the middle of a book that is 800 pages so I will be counting that one :)

In other news I have spent the last week making up a budget for the family to get us debt free except for our mortgages in 1 years time. It is entirely feasible BUT it means we have to stick strictly to the budget and not go off it at all and since there is no room for bad things that cost money to happen I am really hoping something doesn't go wrong. Then next years fundage will be devoted to house repairs that must be made (electrical, furnace, roof etc...) and socking away three months worth of expenses for that emergency fund everyone is supposed to have. Unfortunately, although I was planning on starting my 401(k) this year, I will have to put it off until next year because I cannot find room in the budget. So heres hoping the book thing and the budget go well. I did manage to budget for the Vegas and DC trip so at least this year won't be a total bust. Time for bed.

Taking a cue from Oprah....

2008-01-21T23:03:00.000-05:00

This is my things I love episode! Since I have taken another 6 week break from school due to the new blackboard upgrade they did over winter break sucking big smelly balls and me not being able to deal with pages not loading or taking forever, I have decided that I will get in all that reading I've been missing out on since I started college. And whats better than reading? Reading books that are free! I have rediscovered my love of the library and visited one for the first time in almost a decade (the one in Grand Haven). I don't remember it being that small. Also although I signed up for it way back in June, I just recently posted my nine required books to www.paperbackswap.com and have since spent my three initial credits and am currently waiting for the arrival of three books and have mailed out eight of my own in the past week. What a great way to get books without paying full price. However, most of the books I would really like to read have wish lists that are miles long which is the whole reason for my trip to the library. I am currently reading Anna Karenina which should keep me busy til at least the end of the week but after that I had nothing to read and I didn't want to wait until one of my wishlisted books got mailed to me so I moseyed on over to the library and picked up Mary Queen of Scots by Margaret George and Excalibur by Bernard Cornwell (Historical Fiction being my favorite genre). What I didn't realize, stupid me, was that this was the 3rd book in the series so now I have to go back and get the other two so I'm not reading them out of order. Oh well. At least I will have plenty to read and be saving a ton of money by not buying them for full price at Barnes and Noble (which I still love but I'm really trying to cut spending this year). I even got Chris on the bandwagon so now we can order his forgotten realms books at paperbackswap instead of paying $8 a pop for them at B&N.
Also on my list of things I love is the charity that I have decided I am going to invest heavily in and that is www.kiva.org. Kiva is a non-profit that lists loans that are needed by people in poorer (almost typed "pooper" there) countries to get their businesses off the ground and help them lift themselves out of poverty. You can donate as little as $25 or fund the whole loan if you're feeling extra generous. It is not a donation. It is a loan because the person you're loaning it to pays it back gradually over time and once you get back the money you loaned them you can either loan it to someone else or draw it back out and put it back in your own piggy bank. They have a very low rate of default as most of the people pay the loans back. My goal is to give $25 every month if I can. Its not a lot considering I spend at least that much on Starbucks in any given month. So far I have helped a young woman in Samoa with her ice cake business and a man in nigeria who is selling phone accessories.
And finally the last thing I love is..........SNOW TIRES! We put them on the rear of my car before we left for NY and since we've had the blizzard from hell this past weekend and its still snowing, I can really tell the difference with them on there. I know for a fact that if I had driven through that mess this morning with regular tires I would never have made it to GR with me and my car in one piece. There were six people off the road on the way there and thanks to my spiffy new tires I was NOT one of them.

RANTEDY RANT RANT

2008-01-15T22:49:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I think the whole idea of getting a new President within the next year and the ability to play a part in that is fan-freaking-tastic. What I don't like is how certain members of my family think they have the right to influence my vote and to keep on my ass when I tell them firmly and repeatedly that I will vote for whomever the hell I want to regardless of what they think because it is my decision based on my beliefs and since I was willing to fight and die to protect my rights, one of them being to vote and live in a free democratic society, I should be able to vote for the person of my choice without being harassed about it.
I should NOT have to repeatedly defend myself about not having made a set in stone decision about who I voted for in the primaries tonight and who I will vote for in November.
So here is what the issue boils down too. The member of my family that is badgering me to death does not want me to vote for Barack Obama. Mind you, I never committed to or said I was voting for him. I said I was considering it as an option. I consider myself fortunate to be a young person in this country who can see past the racial issues and decide whether someone would make a good President based on the merit (or lack therof) of their ideas. Unfortunately, there are some members of my family who have just not made it to that point and probably won't before they go to their graves. Today I was sent that stupid email circulating about how Sen. Obama is a radical muslim and we shouldn't vote for him because he will help to destroy the US from within. It is all a big load of malarky and can be debunked simply by logging onto www.snopes.com. This person made it a point to call my place of employment and insist I take time out of my workday to read that email. In response I found the correct info on the above mentioned website and mass emailed it to everyone on that list so that they could at least make an informed decision and not one based on the pack of lies in that email.
Ya know what the kicker is? I DID NOT vote for Barack Obama this evening. Please if anyone does read this do not ask me who I did vote for because I will not tell you. Its my business. I did not even tell my husband who I voted for. The whole thing is it just makes me extremely angry that someone thinks I should cast my vote based on their ideals and their biased opinions and not recognize that I have my own set of beliefs and my own ideas about what direction this country should head in and who would be the best person to get it there. I am not anyones puppet but a free thinking human being. Secondly, the whole thing makes me sad that race is still an issue here. I don't care if the person is purple with pink polka dots. If I think they would make a good president they will get my vote. All through my life if I had an issue with someone I have never attributed their actions to their race. If I don't like you, its not because you're black or hispanic or whatever. Its because your actions (NOT race) make me think that you are a colossal asshole. Anyway, come this November, I will vote my conscience and do what I think is right and NO ONE will intimidate me or harass me to the point where I change that. Thank you ladies and gentlemen and goodnight.

No resolutions

2008-01-11T00:36:00.000-05:00

I absolutely hate making new years resolutions because I never ever stick to them. Sure, there is a whole bunch of stuff in 2008 that I want to accomplish. Finishing college and getting our finances in order is on the top of that list. Beyond that though I make no promises to myself other than for this year to be a better year than last year.
So we went to NY over christmas which turned out to be the worst vacation ever (if you don't count that year long one in Iraq). My boy got sick and was sick for pretty much the whole time we were there. So much so that we had to delay our return by 4 days and take extra time off from work so he would be well enough to travel. Poor kid was running a fever and broke out in a rash all over his body and just did not want to eat or do anything but sleep. Turns out he had Epstein Bar virus (the one that causes mono) and a double ear infection. Besides that the visit was ok but this is one of those vacations that makes you feel like you need a vacation from your vacation. He is doing much better now though except he has a nasty cough.
At least I get to make up for the sucky vacation with a nice little trip to Las Vegas in April. I finally found someone that will be willing to sit through the timeshare presentation if it means they get their room free so yay for that. We are staying at Bally's which I've heard is smack in the middle of the strip and across from the Bellagio. Should be a fun time. Also in September I get to travel to our nations capital to hang out with my awesome friends and maybe do a bit of sightseeing. We've been meaning to do something like this for awhile only this time I actually went ahead and reserved us a condo so we're going. So far everyone is on board. Well as usual I'd like to say more but I'm exhausted. Here's hoping everyone has a stellar year :)

Insanity

2007-11-01T21:27:00.000-04:00

Wow, I completely missed updating at all last month. Well life has been completely insane for me. My sis and her family moved in with my dad for awhile and then he got fed up with them and threw them out with next to no notice so its created quite the uncomfortable situation for me. My dad is a very vindictive person when he feels he's been wronged and I have tried to stay out of it but am caught in the middle. Every time he comes over he complains about her and every time I hear from her she complains about him. Its ridiculous really. I am SOOO sick of them badmouthing each other and so sick of hearing about it. I wish I could hole up in a secret location until the whole thing blows over.
I have actually had a lot of stress inducing things happen as of late. My foot surgery I had in July that I thought would be paid for between the two insurance companies...well it wasn't. Somehow even though I am insured through Nationwide and Blue Cross they only covered about 2/3 of it and I still owe almost $1,400 for the surgery itself plus another $175 for the anesthesia which they didn't cover. How is that possible to be covered by two insurance companies and still owe that much money??? I don't have that much to pay them so I'm going to have to set up a payment plan with them or something. Needless to say, the second surgery that I had scheduled for the 7th of this month and then rescheduled for the 29th will be postponed indefinitely. Like until I win the lottery or $2,000 falls out of the sky. Just when we think we're on the right road with our finances something else always happens. I still also have 3 cats I need to get shots for and get neutered and I have to get my car fixed before we go to NY in december.
Also I have set the goal for myself of making the President's list for college this quarter. I just finished up SOC 321-cultural diversity and MGT 114-Customer Service and got A's in both so I am half way there. Today I started two new classes: Foundations of Financial Mgmt and HRM 291- Human Resources Seminar. You would think these classes would be a good match since one looked like it might be a lot of writing and the other looked like it might be a lot of math related stuff. WRONG. Both of these classes require projects with a MINIMUM of 10 pages as the final project. I am in for 6 weeks of pure academic hell so wish me luck and pray I don't shoot myself half way through.
A few good things have happened too so it hasn't been all bad. I got to hang out with the fabulous Liz and Kevin a little while back which is something that hasn't happened in forever. I really miss my friends and I think we all pretty much let our demanding schedules get in the way of maintaining those friendships which is sad but I had an awesome time with them and hope to do it again with even more of us sometime later this month. Also the Annual Training Conference for the recruiters which admin assistants are NEVER invited to is actually allowing us to go this year. Every year they have a company party with some sort of theme friday night and then the formal dinner saturday night. The company party's theme this year is superheros/supervillians so I have to find a costume for that and I've been helping in the planning of it to try and make it awesome for the recruiters. For saturday I got an awesome burgundy colored strapless gown which I had to buy in a size 3 sizes bigger than what I actually wear so the twins would fit in it. This little outing to buy the dress prompted a return of the South Beach Diet so here's hoping I stick to it and lose some major poundage this time around.
I do have a lot more bouncing around in my head that I'd like to post but unfortunately homework beckons. The only day I don't have something due for the next six weeks is on fridays :( So TTFN

Blur

2007-09-03T23:49:00.000-04:00

That would be life lately, a big blur. Okay so I will start this post with a confession. We have On Demand and one of my guilty pleasures is watching episodes of Sex and the City. Yes I know some of you are rolling your eyes in disgust. Go ahead all my intellectual friends, get the scoffing out of your system.... but I like the show and I've watched every episode at least once season 1 - 4. Its always interesting how when Carrie is writing her column she comes up with all these witty ponderings about sex and relationships and I think "if I were a writer I would never make it because it would be so boring". People always say write what you know but what do I know that would actually interest people? How to be a soccer mom in training? Or how to alienate women and scare the crap out of men with my "Army personality"? Thats pretty much it these days. I think I will stick to my current profession because that I am good at even if I had to write about it, it would most definitely suck. I do miss my artistic side though. I used to like to write and draw and sing and do all of that stuff. I am a pisces and that is just how we are. I haven't done alot of that in a long time. Even though I go to college I don't really think I'm in touch with my creative or my intellectual side anymore which is sad. If I had one wish for the coming year (yeah I know, way too early for new years resolutions) it would be to start doing the things I used to love again and really embrace my inner nerd. I know underneath all the stress and the daily grind there is just a really big dork waiting to come out and I think its about time to let her.
Anyway in family happenings I think I finally convinced Chris to start college. He is becoming more and more disenchanted with his job and I have repeatedly told him that the degree in the field he wants to get in to is where our financial security will be (he wants to do computer programming/networking). I will be done with my BA in Human Resource Management next fall and should I choose to look for another job I might find one that will bring in slightly more than what I make now but if he goes from being a cable guy to the programming field he will double his salary right off the bat.
We are still considering a move to NY although there are so many obstacles we would have to overcome, the biggest being what would we do about this house? I personally would want to rent it out because once it is paid off it will be extra income coming in for us. Chris wants to just cut sling, take our losses and move on. I don't see us being able to do that because if we do that we will be moving with debt hanging over our heads. We have already managed to run both our credit cards up quite high and its going to take all of our tax money just to pay those off.
At least I have the college paid off now and will be able to start school on the 20th like I'm supposed to. Unfortunately, two of my books for my classes were over $100 and because they are brand spankin new additions I couldn't find them cheaper anywhere else. I did find one of my books on EBAY for $88 and I won it but the chick's listing said she accepted paypal and I paid her with my paypal buyer credit account but then she denied the payment and sent me an email saying I had to send her payment a different way. This totally baffles me and I have never had it happen before. If she wants me to pay through paypal with one of my credit cards then what is the difference between doing this and paying with the paypal buyer credit account? I pay for almost all of my purchases from EBAY with paypal buyer credit. So now I have to pull $88 out of my ass to pay this chick. Its like life sticks a really big boot in your ass and just when you finish surgically removing it, life has another really big boot to stick in your ass to replace that one.
I have been worrying alot about our financial situation lately and it is really stressing me out to the point of getting migraines and losing sleep. In fact after this post I am sitting down to make out a budget for the next month or so to see if we can get going in the right direction again. We just have so many things that we need to pay for and never enough money to do it. Things in our house need fixing, I need to get my car fixed, I need to get all three of our cats neutered (my meows are getting so big!!), plus I still haven't received all the statements from the insurance companies about my surgery so I don't know if that was fully covered yet. In good news though, it looks like my insurance which I had originally thought was a craptacular policy covered $1200 of it but they said the anesthesia wasn't covered. Chris' insurance covered my crutches but I'm waiting to see if they cover the anesthesia bill and if now that will be almost $600 we will owe out.
Also in other news by some miracle Chris managed to get a couple of days for vacation for x-mas so we are going to NY (I guess I can stop calling his boss the grinch who stole x-mas now) but we will have to drive since we can't afford the $1,300 airfare to fly there. We are planning on taking the route through the states and stopping overnight in Erie, PA and then continuing on our merry way. Not fun to take a 13 hr trip with a toddler but we really have no choice. Well it is getting late and I have budgeting to do.

trudging along

2007-08-15T21:07:00.000-04:00

So its been awhile since I updated. Chris and Chucky were gone for that last week in June then a week after they got home the in-laws came to visit. On the 17th of July I had surgery on my right foot (oh what fun!) and I didn't get off crutches until the first week of August. Right after I got off the crutches Chris' grandparents and Uncle Eric came to visit so it has been busy busy busy. Even though I took the entire summer off from school (because a- I needed a break and b- I still owed the college close to $2,o0o when summer session started and they don't let you start new classes when you owe them money) I haven't had much time for anything.
Now that my foot is in a bit better shape I can resume my getting ready for my huge yard sale which I am thinking I will have the weekend after labor day and getting ready for school to start again on Sept 20th (my dad's 67th b-day). I wish I had the energy to write more because Chris and I have really been trying to nail down some plans for our future and I've been thinking about a lot of things lately that I'd like to write down to clear my head but I just don't feel like doing it right now so a longer post will be be coming later.
Also I am trying to change my blog layout and for some reason it just isn't working and I don't feel like making my head explode trying to get it to.
Fiddle dee dee.

You Can Hear a Pin Drop

2007-07-01T14:43:00.000-04:00

So its been tomb-like quiet here the past week since Chris and Chucky are in NY. I get to go pick them up at the airport tomorrow. They left last sunday and since about wednesday twice a day I have been getting calls from my little guy where he is wailing into the phone "Momma! I wanna come home! I miss you so much! Momma can I please come home?" It really makes me sad because this is only the second time my baby has been away from me for more than a day and last time they were only gone for four days. I wonder what I'm going to do when he's grown and gone away to college and the only calls I get are "Mom! Send money! I'm sick of eating ramen noodles!"
I am so tempted to just sit here and play on the internet for the afternoon BUT I have a ton of cleaning to do and I'm still sorting through our 500 tons of crap to see what I want to put in our yard sale which will be sometime after the inlaws go back to NY. I also have to go grocery shopping sometime this evening so we actually have food in the house when they get back.
I am so happy that they are coming back but it was a good thing they went because I was at the breaking point with the stress and Chris and I were at the point where we needed to get away from eachother for about a week.

My Furry Little Orphans

2007-06-29T22:46:00.001-04:00

Okay these are our new additions to the family.

The first pic is my cat and his name is Oliver.

The second pic of the little tiger kitty by himself is my son's kitty and his name is Gilbert.

The 3rd pic is Oliver in the background and Gilbert's twin brother Stewie getting ready to take a poo. Aren't they precious?

So now I am outnumered 5 to 2 in my household. Me and my beagle Sammie are the only girls :-)

In the News

2007-06-27T20:44:00.000-04:00

So I saw two things on the news tonight that caught my attention, one because I thought it was freakin' awesome and the other one because it made me sick to my stomach.
The first was about a 72 year old man who fought off his attacker while being pickpocketed at a convenience store in Grand Rapids. This dude (a former Marine) was almost 50 years older than the guy who was trying to steal his money yet he hauls off and slugs the guy upside the head like 6 times. That guy was arrested and he definitely got what he deserved. All I can say to that one is Semper Fi baby!

And the now for the thing that turned my stomach. In Kalamzoo they are considering charging a 13 year old boy as an adult for the severe beating of a toddler. Apparently this little 15 month old boy wandered away from his house and the 13 year old found him, took him into the woods and started beating him. The mother found them. I can't imagine what would have happened to that little boy had the mother not come in time. Now that little boy has cuts, bruises, permanent damage to one of his eyes and has tremors and nightmares all the time. Then the kid's lawyer gets on there and says "yes what he did was wrong but this is a 13 year old child and my job is to make sure the courts realize that" Well lady what about that innocent little baby that the 13 year old beat within an inch of his life? I hope they throw the book at that kid, try him as an adult and put him away for a long time. What kind of sick bastard beats up a baby? What the hell is going on in the world that parents produce kids that violent? The 13 year old should be thrown in jail and they should throw away the key and the mother should be sterilized so she doesn't produce any more sick fucks like the kid she already has. Maybe I feel so strongly about this because I am a mother and my son is close in age to the little boy that was beaten. I hope that my baby never encounters that kind of evil but rest assured if he does the case will never make it to court because I will have vengeance on the person who hurts my baby.

Okay enough of that. I had the day from hell today. I wake up this morning and go to take Sammie outside. I open the garage with the door opener, set it down and walk her outside. As I'm getting her food and water (halfway around the side of the house) I hear the garage door start closing. Mind you, I didn't unlock the house before I came out so the garage was my only way into the house. So I drop her dishes and run my ass off, diving under the door just in time to keep from being locked out of my house in my pajamas. I don't know if someone else around here is on the same frequency or if our garage door is just posessed but that really sucked. Then today at lunch I had to go to the post office to mail two books I sold. I'm walking towards the building minding my own business when I walk between two cars. Out of nowhere I here this loud growl and see something lunging at me from the car on my right. I screamed and dropped my stuff thinking I'm about to get eaten by a big frickin dog but when I turn around I see a lady pulling her growling snarling POODLE back into her car. She goes "sorry, he's not friendly" Oh really?! The fact that he tried to tear off my arm told me that! Why, if the dog is so viscious didn't she have the sense to roll up the window and turn the air on for the dog instead of leaving the window down so he can attack people? Some people are just plain stupid.
And here's one more for the just plain stupid file. After I get home from work my dad calls and asks if I can come over and type a letter for him that he needs to send to the VA. I say ok and jump in my car to go over there. I'm at a stop sign waiting to turn to the road that leads to my dad's house. I edge forward and I'm about to go but a UPS truck comes flying around the corner from the opposite direction at about 60 and I have to wait for it to go by. Apparently the dumb blonde on her PHONE didn't see me stop the second time and ass ended my car. Luckily other than a few surface scratches that can be buffed out there was no damage to my car. Hurray for the durability of the HHR! And one more thing to brighten my day. I come home and flip the computer on to realize I have no internet. I call Chris to ask him how to fix it and he walks me through it but I have to go downstairs and reset the modem. Well stupid me, I leave my bowl of soup that I just made sitting at my computer desk and when I come back up the bowl is tipped over and the soup is running all over my keyboard and my three darling cats are up there enjoying my dinner. (I swear I will make mittens out of all of them if they do it again). So, how way YOUR day???

The Answers my friend, are blowin' in the wind...

2007-06-26T21:18:00.000-04:00

For those of you who know I'm a wrestling nut, I'm still trying to figure out the whole Chris Benoit killing his family and himself thing. It is a sad situation and I honestly don't know what to think. I loved Chris Benoit the wrestler. I think he was one of the best to ever step in the ring but what kind of demons must that man have been wrestling with to kill his wife and his innocent child?? I don't think the world will ever know and I don't think its something I will ever understand. I could never imagine harming one hair on my son's head let alone killing him. My heart goes out to the members of the Benoit family and I really hope they can find some peace after this tragedy.

So I am getting overwhelmed at work lately. I have to schedule appointments for people to update their HIV tests and physicals and dental exams so they will be medically deployable because our stats suck right now and its important that they are up to date on everything. I also have a mess of leave forms to get straight and a few things the Cdr wants me to do by friday so I've been gainfully employed all week. I also have alot to get done here at the house. My in-laws will be coming in three weeks and although my house is not a giant dirt ball, it is nowhere near my standard of clean. Chris and Chucky are visiting the family now so I'm trying to get it all done before they get back.
I am also taking a 6 week long break from school because mentally, I needed one. I have Business math and the American Novel as my next two classes which start August 2nd. The other reason I am taking the break is because I still have not received my Michigan Merit Award and I still owe half my tuition from spring quarter. Well I can't start any new classes until I get that paid off so I'm working on that too.
We're in a little bit of a rough spot right now. The pressure of our financial situation is making me feel like I'm in a room thats slowly running out of oxygen. Its nothing we can't bounce back from if we manage our money carefully enough but I am getting sick of having just enough to pay the bills. I would like to actually have money left over to go do something once in awhile or start investing in fixing up this house. Even if we don't stay here I need to at least start doing the things necessary to get it ready to rent or sell. I still don't know what we're going to do but I am holding to my decision not to make any moves until I'm done with school.
In other news I went to the dentist and found out I need to get a couple of wisdom teeth pulled AND I need braces on my bottom row AGAIN because the dentist who did my braces the first time screwed up and left a tooth in he shouldn't have and now my teeth on my bottom row are all pushed together. On top of that I went to see a podiatrist about my bunions and (lucky me!) he wants to remove both of them. So I am having surgery on my right foot on the 17th and when that one heals up I'll be having surgery on my left foot. So by the middle of next year my weight will be back to normal (12 lbs gone so far...) my feet will be fixed and my teeth will be too.
And finally I have adopted three furry orphans recently. We saw a stray orange cat over at my dads house that was really friendly. We were thinking about taking it home but we knew if we put it in the car it would freak out and shred the interior of the car so we decided not to take it. Dad's neighbor feeds it all the time so its kind of at home there. Well we decided that we'd look around and see if we could find another cat. We saw an ad in the Chronicle for free kittens and we called it. The guy still had all 3 kittens left because the boobs at the chronicle put his ad in the four wheel drives section instead of the pets section and we just happened to see it. We met him and his girlfriend in the parking lot of the N. Muskegon Meijers and he pulled the three cutest little kittens out of the carrier. Two of them were grey tiger cat twins and one was grey tiger with white patches. Chris liked the twins and I liked the other one and he kept hemming and hawing and wouldn't make up his mind. We felt bad about breaking up the twins and Chris didn't want the one I wanted so I ended up agreeing to give a home to two of the kitties and promised the couple that we would take the third one along and try to find a home for it since we lived in town and they lived out in farm country and no one was willing to drive out there to see the kitties. Well we got them home and now Chris refuses to get rid of any of them and I got sick of arguing with him so we now have three little kitties (all males). Chucky's cat is Gilbert, Chris' cat is Stewie and my cat is Oliver. So now we have one dog and three cats. Hurray for me and the hundreds of dollars I'll be spending on vet bills.

Jackasses...............

2007-06-12T00:45:00.000-04:00

So I've been feeling like complete dooky all day today (thank you mother nature, I appreciate it). I took a nap when I got home and a little while ago Chris and Chucky went to bed. So at about 11:45 pm the phone rings and thinking that it may be an emergency situation (you know since Chris' great grandma just got out of the hospital and his brother is in Iraq and my dad is well.... my dad) I pick it up. The following conversation ensues:
ME: Hello?
Guy in a girls voice: Is Chris there?
ME: He's sleeping
Guy in a girls voice: Well tell him I love him to pieces and I really miss him
ME: (after silence) Hello?
Guy in girls voice: Hello? Um I have to go.

WTF? Who the hell would be a big enough jackass to call my house this late when everyone but me is sleeping pretending to be a girl when I can hear someone snickering in the background? Who does this crap?

Maybe I should have responded like this:

ME: Hello?
GIGV: Is Chris there?
ME: He's sleeping
GIGV: Well tell him I love him to pieces and I really miss him
ME (in hysterics): You sick bastard! I don't care what your ransom note says. I don't have the $500,000 before you'll return Chris to me now please stop cutting off his fingers and mailing them to me and just let him go!"

Or maybe I should have told them that Chris decided he was tired of the lie. Two weeks ago he packed up his clothes and most of mine too, changed his name to Christiana and left me a note telling me he was going to Vegas to pursue his dream of being a showgirl.

Anyway if you can't tell, I'm really tired which is when my imagination gets all bizarre like this. I still have to shower and let the mutts in. Hopefully phone idiot doesn't grace me with another call this evening.

South Beach Update Week 1

2007-05-13T00:05:00.000-04:00

Happy Mother's Day all! Well, I will have been on the diet a week tomorrow and I am already down 7 lbs. Since I am a person who tends to give up on alot of (but not all) things if I don't see results right away this type of progress this early on is definitely good. Wish I could lose 7 lbs every week. I'd be at my goal weight in no time. Since it is Mother's Day my siblings and I have decided that this is the day we are going to honor my mother's wishes and put her ashes in Lake Michigan. My Aunt also had her ashes spread there when she passed away and my mom wanted the same.
Hoping there is no drama when we go because my sister is mad at me. She came over to my house to vent about all her problems but I had to interrupt her because I was in the middle of cooking dinner and she let my son out into the kitchen and he was wreaking havoc on my kitchen and getting into things that could be dangerous for him so I interrupted her to tell him to put the stuff back so he wouldn't hurt himself or get it dirty because I still needed to use it and she got all pissed and stormed out the door. I HATE that there is always so much drama here. If my dad isn't getting pissed off at me for something, she is and it drives me nuts. I'm at the point where everytime someone gets mad at me I'm like "oh well, sorry you feel that way" and I drive on with my life. I'm desensitized to it now because it happens so frequently.
The in-laws are coming in July and my sis that lives in texas and her hubby are coming in July or August. They are taking my dad up to Mackinac Island for 4 days and I am SOOO jealous because I've always wanted to go there and have never been able to. At least my Chicago trip is only two weeks away. Well I want to do a little reading and then go to bed so TTFN.

South Beach Here I Come

2007-05-07T00:11:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow Chris and I are starting the South Beach Diet because we're both a couple of fatties who need to lose some serious pudge and we have been putting it off for far too long now. I used to be a whopping 104 lbs about 3 years ago but then I got pregnant and then I got depressed and everything went downhill from there. At one point in my life I had a great body and I felt great. Now I don't and I don't. I am not delusional in thinking that I will reclaim the body I had when I was 20 years old but I do know I can look and feel 100x better than I do right now so I am going to give this South Beach Diet thing a whirl and see how it goes.
South Beach is really strict on what you can eat in the first two weeks. You are basically cutting all sugars and starches and most dairy and fruits out of your diet for two weeks. After two weeks you move to phase II and you can add certain things like fruits, a few more veggies, and certain starches back into your diet. After that its on to phase three which is the healthy way of eating that you are supposed to maintain for the rest of your life. We went grocery shopping tonight to get all the healthy stuff we would need for this diet and our bill came to $346 which is about $175 more than I usually spend on groceries for us. Why the hell does it cost so much to eat healthier? That alone almost put an end to my plans to do a diet because I was that close to having a heart attack right there at the register.
On top of the diet I have started exercising on my treadmill. Yesterday I walked/ran/jogged for a mile. Today I did just over two miles. I am planning on doing at least 2 miles a day from now on. Doing the treadmill thing is actually not that bad except it makes my right foot hurt so bad I want to chop it off. The reason for this is because I have a huge painful bunion that causes me to walk on the outside of my foot to alleviate the pain in the bunion but that doesn't work because it makes it feel like I'm about to stress fracture my entire foot. I really need to see a podiatrist to see what I can do about getting my feet fixed but I've been putting it off since most likely it will be the right foot I'll need to do first and if this is the case I'll have to wait until next year to get it done because I can't get surgery on my driving foot and get it all bandaged up and have no way to work. I can't expect Chris to drive me to work every morning until my foot heals.
So I did an online weight loss calculator online. I added up the calories I generally consume in 1 day (2,400- for shame). It says to lose weight I need to create a calorie deficit. So I decided a 1,500 calorie a day diet would be good which would give me a calorie deficit of 900. Taking into consideration my current weight, my goal weight, and a calorie deficit of 900, I should reach my target weight in just over 5 months, so sometime in October I should be where I want to be. This doesn't seem too bad.
So finally I am being proactive about getting me healthy and looking decent. I am using the proactiv for my face to clear up that mess that is triggered by something here in Michigan because I didn't have acne problems when we lived in Kentucky. I am on the diet and exercising to take care of the weight issue. I have an appointment later this month to get my teeth evaluated to see what work has to be done there. I'm going to find a podiatrist and get my feet looked at sometime soon. Now all that will be left is doing something with my hair and praying that the twin towers won't be all saggy after the weight loss because then I will have to do something about that also. How did I ever let myself go this much????? Anyway I guess that doesn't matter now that I am on the road to fixing all the damage.
I wish I could be one of those people whose self esteem was not tied to the way they look but unfortunately that isn't the case. I just keep thinking that I have so many issues that would be made better if I looked and felt a little more like my old self. I will probably be horrible to deal with while getting used to this diet but hopefully it will pay off in the end.
A huge part of my wanting to get healthy is because I am extremely paranoid about developing some sort of cancer or heart disease that will kill me and take me away from Chris and Chucky. My mom, aunt and grandma all died of cancer, one of my sisters has cancer now and has been battling it for years and there is a whole myriad of other health problems from both sides of the family. I just want to get healthy and stay that way so that I am not increasing my chances of being the next one in the family to get something that can't be cured. I don't want my baby to be without his momma. Guess thats the best motivation of all for me right now. Well I am exhausted and I have about 40 pages to read on South America for my Western Geography class so I better get to it.

Thought from the other day

2007-05-05T22:53:00.000-04:00

This is a thought from sometime mid-week that I never got to post. It is something I wanted to put out there after my drive home from work that day:

Attention owners of Cadillac Escalades and Lincoln Navigators: I wish to inform you that even though you paid an exorbitant amount of money for your vehicle, the purchase price did not include the roadways on which your vehicle will ride. I know the reason that you must have been doing 20 miles per hour under the speed limit in rush hour traffic while refusing to let any of the 40 cars piling up behind you pass was because your large expensive vehicle was weighted down by your own self importance and you could not possibly have gone any faster even if you wanted to. I know, such a difficult life you lead having to share the road that should rightfully be yours with the rest of us peons but if you could please take a moment and humor the rest of us by pulling your head out of your ass and moving over so we can pass you and get home to our families or whatever else we need to do, it would be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,

Holly
Your fellow Michigander

Awesomeness

2007-04-28T01:23:00.000-04:00

But first something that wasn't too awesome. It seems that the people at my idiot bank don't know how to count. When we first bought this house our payment was $975 a month and that included the house insurance and taxes escrowed into the payment. Well last year we got a letter saying they had taken too much out in escrow and that they were going to reduce our payment to $925 plus they sent us a check for almost $1,000. Well this year I get a letter saying that because they dropped our payment down and our taxes went up they fell well short in our escrow and would have to up our payment to $981 so they would have enough for taxes next year. BUT because they chose to reduce our payment last year instead of leaving it where it was we were $1,100 short on our taxes so the bank paid it and on top of the new $981 payment we owe them an additional $84 a month for the next 14 months to pay back the $1,100 they paid for us in taxes because they were MORONS and didn't leave the payment alone in the first place so we would have enough in escrow. Had they left the payment at $975 like it was when we first bought the house we would have maybe been $100-200 short on the taxes and paying that back would have been no big deal. Now because these simpletons can't do their job right our frickin' house payment is $1,065 a month for the next 14 months which is something we were NOT prepared for. I got a fixed rate mortgage so my payment would stay the same not jump around by a couple hundred bucks every year. I am so sick of my bank. They have been screwing us over since we decided to get this house. The thing is I really would like to drop this bank and get a different one but I don't know if I want to go through the hassle of refinancing my mortgage with another bank to do it so we just might be stuck with them, at least with the mortgage.

Ok and that was the non-awesomeness. Now for the awesomeness. I got to thinking the other day when I received my associates degree in the mail that my high school diploma was an honors diploma. How do you get an honors diploma you ask? By passing all portions of the MEAP test with a level I or II score which I did. And why is this important? Because is 1999 the State of Michigan passed a bill/law/whatever stating that students who passed all four portions of the MEAP with a level I or II would be awarded the Michigan Merit Award which is $3,000 in college money. So I figured, hey I met the requirement so why not call the Office of Scholarships and Grants and see if my name was on the list as a recipient of the Michigan Merit Award. I called today and they said yes I was on the list and that this was the last year I could use it and because I had waited so long I would only get half. Then I explained to them that the reason I haven't used it in the past 7 years was because 4.5 of those years I was active duty military. Well that happens to be an exception to the only getting half thing so now all I have to do is send in a copy of my DD214 (thats a my discharge paper to all you civilians) and a copy of my marriage license because my name has obviously changed since high school and call them back in a week and they will certify my award online and send the $3,000 to the school of my choice. So in a week or two they will be sending Baker enough money to cover my expenses for spring quarter. I also get paid two payments of $1,075 for my GI bill between now and the end of spring quarter so that will allow me to set aside the $600 I needed for my trip to Chicago, buy my books for summer and fall quarter and pay ahead on my tuition a bit. This by far has to be the easiest $3,000 I have ever made. So note to all you Michiganders who graduated class of 2000 or after and completely forgot the Michigan Merit Award existed- it might be looking into because you could have a free $,3000 sitting in the state treasury.

A smaller bit of awesomeness- allergy season is starting up and for the last week or so my sinuses have been draining and fluid has been building in my ears which really make them hurt so I've been taking Tylenol Severe Allergy to help it. I have been getting to work wide awake and an hour after I get there I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. Well it finally dawned on me today that the barely being able to stay awake things coincided with when the allergy pills were kicking in so now that I know its the damn allergy pills that are putting me to sleep I can get something else that won't do that. I actually fell asleep at work today for about 15 - 20 minutes and luckily no one noticed but falling asleep on the job can get me fired so I'll be switching to some different meds now. Happy day.

Where were you when the world stopped turning?

2007-04-25T00:18:00.000-04:00

Recently there has been quite a bit of discussion on the boards for college about 9/11 and if it could have been an inside job. One lady posted a link to a documentary which covers this topic and it does a very good job of making you think that there is a chance that our own government was responsible for 9/11. The documentary is located at www.loosechange911.com. (Beware: this sucker runs for 90 minutes). I honestly don't know what to think about what happened on 9/11. I do know three things:
1) it affected me personally because the US deciding to go after terrorism before it hit us again sent me to a war zone for a year.
2) it made me realize that the US is not the untouchable badass that everyone thought we were
3) I will always remember where I was the day the twin towers came down.

I was on a field exercise in Camp Colburn, Korea. Myself and a few other people from my section were huddled around 1SG's laptop watching the planes hit the towers on CNN. Shortly after our Company Commander called a formation and told us that the United States had been attacked and that we had to pack up immediately and convoy back to Yongsan. Earlier that day I remember thinking how much it sucked to be away from my barracks and stuck on Camp Colbern living in tents and having to eat at a Dining Facility instead of being able to go down and get a burger somewhere. I was only 19 years old at the time and at that point in my life the world was still about me, me, me. 9/11 definitely changed that for me. When I originally joined the Army I thought there would not be a possibility that I would be going to war. I thought I could do my two years which was my original enlistment and get out and go to college with the GI Bill. I know the purpose of joining the Army is to defend the country if need be but when you're that young I think you tend to put things like that in the back of your mind in favor of the things that sound more appealing. When I joined all I could think was I am getting the hell out of Muskegon, I will get to see alot of places I probably would not have been otherwise, and I got a steady paycheck and college money. Going to war was so far down the list it wasn't even a consideration.
I remember that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach when I watched the footage of those planes hitting the towers. Its the same horrible feeling I had when we first touched down in Kuwait 15 months later because I had no idea what to expect. I remember wanting to call home and tell my family that I loved them in case I didn't get the chance again. How many people in those towers and on those planes didn't get the chance to get those last I love you's in? It is hard to believe that one day could give someone such a big dose of reality but I think it did for alot of us. I sincerely hope that the documentary is wrong and the government is not responsible for 9/11. I know the documentary is just one opinion and that different video clips and quotes can be spliced together to make any position look favorable but now that seed of doubt is there. I hope some day they find the truth and are able to punish the people that were responsible for the tragedy whether it be Osama Bin Laden or members of our own government. And I hope we never become as complacent as we once were and can avoid suffering through another 9/11.

So here's the plan...

2007-04-18T00:12:00.000-04:00

Been considering two things lately: whether Chris and I should stay in MI or whether we should move after I'm done with school and should I go to graduate school after my bachelors and if so what for and where?

So the consensus between Chris and I is that we both don't want to stay in Michigan for the long term. As I've stated before, I thought this would be a fresh start for me and it turned out not to be. Almost everything that could possibly go wrong for us since moving here has and we both associate our time here with not so pleasant memories which is not a good thing. Add to that that I don't see my friends I do have here and the only family I have here is my dad and my sister, there is really no good reason to stay here for the long term. Now we're pondering things like when should we move. I told Chris I don't want to move until I'm done with my Bachelor's which won't be until September of next year. Since I don't want to move in the winter the earliest we would be moving would be spring of 2009. Most likely the move will be to NY but then we have to sell this house, evaluate our financial situation afterwards and see what kind of living arrangement we can come up with after that. With the housing market in the tank getting rid of this house will not be easy.
Also I mentioned this idea in passing to my dad today (not moving to NY, but just not staying here long term) and it went over like a fart in church. I pointed out that I would have no one here except Shelly after he's gone but still I can tell he's not happy that we might be moving.

The other thing is if I'm going to continue my schooling after this. I want to but not in the Business field. I have been not so seriously researching graduate schools both here and in NY, MA, CT area (basically colleges within 2 hours of Chris' family) and I've found a few I like. I would like to get my master's in history and get into teaching and eventually teach college but on top of my bachelor's I will have to take at least 18 credits (6 classes) of history before most colleges I am looking at will consider me since my BA will not be in history and most of them also have a foreign language requirement. I'm thinking after I'm done with my Bachelor's I will take the required history classes and a few french classes at MCC so I will meet the requirements to get into Grad school. I think this would be best because I can afford MCC without financial aid. Lots to think about. I can't wait until next month's memorial day weekend trip to Chicago where the only thing I'l be thinking about is what tourist attraction to visit and what kind of food I'm in the mood for. I still have a ton of math homework but luckily this instructor is pretty lenient so hopefully I'll get everything I'm missing knocked out tomorrow and be back on track for the remaining 2 weeks. I don't like Trig. It's harder than I thought it would be but I love the geography class. Off to bed I go.

you win some you lose some

2007-04-12T23:37:00.000-04:00

The last couple of days have been interesting. Monday morning I woke up at 6 am with heartburn so bad I seriously considered the idea that I might be having a heart attack. I knew this wasn't the case because of where the pain was coming from but still, it hurt like hell. Turns out this was just the beginning of what would be an unpleasant two days. After I was awakened by the heartburn I had a really bad gas sensation in my chest. This sensation kept making me want to burp (you know, to try to relieve the sensation) but everytime I did the burp tasted and smelled like rotten eggs. I felt so horrible that I had Chris call me in sick to work. I felt crappy all day and slept most of the day. Then that night Chris starts throwing up and continues to do so all night long. He called in sick to work on tuesday. I got up and took Chucky to daycare and then since I had used my ONE sick day I had saved up on monday, I took my happy ass to work tuesday morning. I was there for a whopping two hours, still dealing with the general feeling like crap, rot gut stomach, and rotten egg gas when my boss told me to go home. I wrapped up what I was doing and came home two hours after I got to work. About an hour after I got home it was vomitus maximus which actually ended up being a good thing because as soon as I upchucked I felt alot better and the rotten egg burps went away. I still couldn't eat anything for the rest of the day. The next morning I was feeling fine but unfortunately that little episode left me unable to get out of bed much less do my homework for two and a half days so now I am way behind in one class and took some serious hits with my participation in another. I am still not caught up and if I don't turn everything I am missing in tomorrow I won't get any credit for this week's stuff at all.
Also today my dad was trying to dial his lady friend in Gaylord and called me accidentally instead and we ended up getting into it. We haven't made up yet but we've reconciled enough for him to want to come see Chucky tomorrow. Also because I missed part of tuesday I'm making my time up on saturday which sucks because there goes my weekend. My nephew is spending the night over here tomorrow night and my sister is coming to watch Chucky saturday while I go to work. So I've felt like crap all week and I have five billion tons of homework to do in the next two days. I was planning on doing some of it tonight but as of this moment I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open so that ain't gonna happen.
I did have a few things go right this week. I got a $400 refund check from my tire and wheel protection plan on the car from when I hit the pot hole and had to have the two tires I popped replaced. Chris got a raise so that will help a bit and I had a package from Baker College waiting for me when I got home today. I opened it up and inside was my diploma for my associates degree. One degree down, two more to go. And now I must put on my PJs and go to sleep before I fall asleep here, drool all over my trig book and ruin my chances of reselling it on Amazon when I'm done with it.

Past my bedtime :)

2007-04-08T01:05:00.000-04:00

Well its been awhile since I've posted so I figured I might as well. I only got like 5 hrs of sleep last night because I had insomnia and stayed up until 4 am watching the movie Panic Room with Jodie Foster (only saw the last half and it was okay). Then even though Chucky went to bed after 11 pm he got me up at 7:15 am. I took a nap the same time he did for about an hour or so but that didn't help because I am still really tired but plagued by the insomnia again so I'm hoping I wear myself out with this post.

Lots of things weighing on my mind lately, the latest blowout with my dad being at the forefront. Today is Easter and its the first year Chucky colored eggs and my dad missed it. Why? Because of a stupid fight where neither of us will concede that the other was in the wrong. What happened: About 2 weeks ago my dad called and asked if we wanted to go out to dinner and that he would buy because it was a couple of days before we got paid and we were out of cash. I said ok but I would have to ask Chris. He asked me to look up the # to the restaurant and call and see what time they closed. Well in between that conversation my sis and her hubby came over, Chucky got all upset (over what I can't remember). Ten minutes after I talked to my dad the 1st time he calls back. I don't answer the phone because my sis is just leaving and I have a screaming toddler I'm trying to deal with. As soon as he leaves the message on my answering machine I pick up the phone and go to call him back only being the impatient person he is, he is already gone and on his way to my house to see why I didn't answer the phone (not out of concern mind you, but because he knows I'm doing something else and can't wait the whopping five minutes it would take for me to call him back). So 10 minutes later he pulls in my drive way and does he come to the door? No. Instead he sits in my driveway and repeatedly blares his car horn until I come to the door. It took me a minute to get there because of Chucky. Well by time I get to the door I'm really pissed because 1) he never seems to understand that I'm not just going to drop whatever I'm doing to deal with him and couldn't wait the five minutes it would have taken me to call him back and 2) because him sitting in the driveway blaring on the horn was rude and embarassing. I have neighbors who already have proven they don't like us so him doing the ghetto ass horn shit in the driveway was NOT helping. So I was pretty short with him when I got to the door. I tell him I couldn't get ahold of Chris to ask him if he even wanted to go and I couldn't find the phone book to call the restaurant. He asked why I didn't answer my phone and I said it was because I was dealing with Chucky and talking to my sister. Admittedly my tone was not friendly (more annoyed than anything) so the conversation ends and he leaves. Well I have no idea anything is wrong until the next day when I realize I haven't heard from him all day and my phone rang and when I picked it up the person either hung up on me or got cut off so I called his house to see if it was him. He said it sure and the hell wasn't him and that he was sick of me being disrespectful and a few other unpleasant things and that he just wouldn't bother my ass anymore. Well not wanting to get in an even bigger argument with him we hung up and he hasn't called or come over since.
I guess on the outside looking in that argument seems like no big deal but this is a culmination of many episodes like this one since we moved up here in July of 2005. One of the main reasons I moved up here was so my dad in his advancing age and declining health would be able to spend time with his grandson while he still can. My brother and sister are older and already settled elsewhere so I wanted to move back here to be around for dad. Well the episodes like the current one started the very first day we were up here when somehow I became a major asshole for asking my dad for the key to my house back because Chris and I didn't want anyone to have a key to our house but us. He said I embarassed him in front of the family members helping us move in and made him feel like I didn't trust him. My thing with the key was that Chris and I are adults and we want our privacy and since its our house we have the right to not give anyone else a key. Well since he was so upset, even though I felt like I did nothing wrong I swallowed my pride and apologized for upsetting him about the key. Since then about every six months he gets pissed at either me or Chris for something and every time its been either me or Chris that has had to suck it up and apologize so things could go back to "normal". Well this time I don't want to have to be the one to suck it up and apologize because we were both wrong only he refuses to see that he did anything wrong at all which is how it usually is. So as usual I'm the asshole. He goes around telling everyone in the family his version and what an asshole I am and then everyone thinks I'm a big idiot. I have just reached that point where I don't want to have to be put in the position to make nice and walk on eggshells all the time just to get along. Thats not the way I want to live my life. The really horrid thing about the whole situation is that everytime he gets mad at me or chris he stops coming over to see Chucky. I told him the last time that we had an argument that this was NOT okay and that eventually Chucky would reach an age where he would be asking why his grandpa doesn't love him anymore because he stopped coming around. I never want my child to think that when things go bad it might have to do with him. He is always the one that gets the short end of the stick when these arguments happen and I'm SICK OF IT. My son will not be treated that way by anyone. Chucky has seen my dad once since the whole argument happened and he used to see him everyday. He isn't of the age where he can vocalize his feelings about why grandpa stopped coming around but I can tell he wonders about it and he asks about him all the time. I just don't get it. No matter how angry Chucky may make me I will never tell him so long, have a nice life and my dad has said that to me more times than I care to count since I've lived up here. Its my job as Chucky's mother to make sure he doesn't get hurt like that. The whole situation bothers me ALOT because I love my dad and I wish things were not like this and I am honestly at a loss for what to do in this situation. If I swallow my pride and apologize AGAIN I set myself up for the same damn thing to happen six months down the road and if I let things stand the way they are eventually one (or both of us) are going to go to our graves with all this animosity between us and with Chucky not having the chance to know his grandfather and I don't want that. I just have no clue what to do.
Well I intended that whole bit to be alot shorter than it was. In other happenings I went to Wrestlemania on April 1st and it was kind of a disappointment and definitely not what I expected. We only got turned around once on the way there and we made really good time. Parking was ridiculous ($20 to park at Ford Field WTF?) Add to that that the tickets themselves were $740 (we had floor seats 16 rows from the ring) and a soda was $6 (this was like a large from McDonalds). Beer (not that I drink it) was $8 a bottle and the merchandise was just as outrageously priced. Seated in front of us were some of the most ignorant people on the planet, of course. First we had "flag guy" who wore the American flag like a cape (I wanted to slug him in the face just for that because IMHO that is completely disrespectful. The symbol of our nation is not meant to be worn.) Several times during the first match he would untie said flag and hoist it over his head. The flag draped down past his shoulders so everytime he did this he would block the view of about 30 people seated behind him. The guy behind me went and asked him nicely to not do this during the matches because we paid good money for our seats to watch the matches, not to stare at his flag. His excuse was "Well everyone in front of me is holding signs up" Well yes, that may be true MORON but when someone holds a sign up you can still see underneath it. When you hold a flag up that falls past your shoulders the people behind you can't see anything. I didn't pay $300 a seat to watch the American flag. I see it every day, thanks. Next there was "pogo stick bimbo" seated two seats away from flag guy. They probably came together. This girl had a huge sign and during the first two matches she would constantly get up and bounce all over the damn place so everyone behind her couldn't see. (Her dumb ass was trying to get on TV). The people in the area where I was sitting screamed at her to sit down. She ignored us. Then we all screamed sit the fuck down. She ignored us. Then we all screamed sit the fuck down you dumb bitch and she ignored us so we got security to threaten to throw her out if she didn't sit her ass down because at this point me and everyone seated in front of me, in back of me, and along side me was ready to run up there, tear her sign to shreds and kick her teeth down her throat. Finally she sat her happy ass down and we were able to see. The first match was the money in the bank match which included a move gone wrong that took Jeff Hardy and Edge out of the match. Edge was carried out on a stretcher and Jeff Hardy was laying there with a big pool of blood around his head. Mr. Kennedy won that one which I didn't like because I was rooting for Matt Hardy. Next was the Kane vs Great Kahli match which Kane lost (another disapointment because I was rooting for Kane). It irritates me when Kahli wins because he has no wrestling ability at all. He just uses his size to win. The Chris Benoit vs MVP match for the US championship ended with Benoit retaining the title which is good because I'm a big rabid wolverine fan. The women's championship match went as expected with Melina retaining the title. I don't like Melina but I knew she would win because even though I like Ashley, Melina's wrestling ability is far superior and Ashley needs to put on a few lbs. You can see the girl's ribs which is nasty. Someone a couple rows in front of me had a sign that said "Ashley can't wrestle but you should see her box" alluding to her pictorial in April's issue of Playboy (she was the covergirl). Also I thought this was supposed to be a Lumber Jill match but I think one of them only got thrown out of the ring once so the only purpose of the divas outside of the ring was to stand there and look pretty until the match ended and they all had their huge catfight for no other reason than to let the male audience members see as much T & A as possible before moving on to the next match. Battle of the Billionaires was freakin' awesome. It was my first time seeing Stone Cold Steve Austin as he was the guest referee. Of course Vince tried to cheat and conveniently Stone Cold got a Samoan Spike from Umaga allowing Vince to do just that and almost get away with it. With Stone Cold out of commission, Shane McMahon inserted himself as referee, gave Bobby Lashley a coast to coast and it seemed like everything was wrapped up for Vince with a tidy little bow until two things happened: Donald Trump (my new hero) finally had enough of Vince trying to cheat, ran around the ring and clotheslined Vince to the floor and dotted him in the eye a few times and Stone Cold revived just in time to give Shane and Umaga stunners allowed Bobby Lashley (whom I think is an awesome wrestler and a former Army Sergeant) to pick up the win and Vince to get his head shaved. The BEST match of the night was the World Heavyweight Championship match between Batista and the Undertaker. I knew the Undertaker would keep his streak alive but I felt horribly bad for Batista because the crowd was really booing him. I don't think it was a dislike of Batista so much as all of wanting to see the Undertaker win. I really like Batista but seeing the Undertaker win was something special. They had an ECW Originals vs New Breed match which was the least interesting of the night to me because I don't watch ECW although I really like Bobby Lashley (because he's former Army) and Rob Van Dam (because he's from MI). The Originals won which is good because I didn't know who anyone from the new breed was and I knew every one of the originals. The main event match (John Cena vs HBK) was the hugest disappointment for me of all. First of all I was wearing a John Cena shirt to the event even though I was for HBK because the HBK shirt I have was too small and Hot Topic didn't have any HBK shirts so I already felt like a big dork wearing the shirt of the guy I wasn't rooting for. Then Cena somehow ends up putting Shawn in the STFU not once but twice and HBK ended up losing the match which the Detroit crowd was NOT happy about because like me, they were clearly pro-HBK. It was a sucky way to end the night because HBK is my favorite and I really wanted him to win. I think they didn't let him win because Triple H is coming back at Summerslam and Shawn being champ would get in the way of the whole DX angle but COME ON! Compared to other Wrestlemanias this one had to have the least number of title changes of any of them. Other good things about Wrestlemania: the Aretha Franklin opener was cool, seeing the hall of fame class of 07' (Yay for JR and the King!) was also cool and the bonus match with Flair and Carlito before the show started was a nice surprise since I had hoped they would find a way to make Ric part of Wrestlemania. What was not so good besides those things already mentioned: they said that there would be enough giant TVs that you would be able to see no matter where you were sitting. What they failed to mention was that there would be all kinds of equipment hanging above the ring that would almost completely obstruct the view of those giant monitors. If people were standing and we couldn't see the ring we had to turn around and look at the monitor behind us to see what was going on. Another thing: the seats were microscopic. We were packed in there like sardines. My husband took up his seat and half of mine because he's so big. If I am paying $300+ for a seat I expect to have enough room where I am not half in the lap of the stranger next to me (cuz he smelled like he forgot the deodorant) and those bitches were uncomfortable too (hard plastic for 6 hrs....yay.) Also I had thought we would be able to hear what the announcers were saying since we were in the arena but we couldn't hear them at all. The commentary given by the announcers is what adds life to the matches so how hard would it have been to hook up some audio so those of us in the audience could hear the announce teams. What in the hell is the point of introducing the announcers at the beginning of the show if we didn't hear one word from them for the entire thing?! The last bad thing: What was up with the entrances? In past years WWE has pulled out all the stops on the Superstar's entrances for the Wrestlemania matches. Apparently DETROIT is too much of a hole in the wall to spend the cash for some awesome entrances. With the exception of John Cena's entrance of driving into Ford Field in a souped up Mustang and crashing through a glass barrier the entrances were like the everyday crap you see on a live taping of Raw or Smackdown. Compared to past Wrestlemanias like the Cena vs Triple H match where Triple H came up through the floor in a barbarian king costume on a throne and John Cena came in with a gangster theme, the entrances this year sucked big sweaty balls and were a huge disappointment. I expected much much more. So that was Wrestlemania. Battle of the Billionaires and the World Heavyweight Championship match were the only things that made it worthwhile otherwise I would label it a complete loss and a waste of $750. We didn't end up getting back home until almost 4 am and I had to be to work at 9 that morning. Needless to say I was exhausted and trying to catch up on my sleep for the rest of the week.

Completely making up for the lackluster Wrestlemania experience was the fact that Krista was home from Mar 28th - Apr 5th and we got to hang out several times while she was here and catch up. Unfortunately since Muskegon is such a dead town we ended up going out to eat alot and we saw Meet the Robinsons which was a cute but predictable movie. I took her to my fave chinese place in GR and we ended up eating once at Johnny Carinos. On her last full day here, we picked up Kev and went to Famous India where she gave us a crash course in Indian food (looks disgusting, tastes surprisingly good although the dish I brought home to Chris he deemed disgusting and promptly tossed in the trash). I am really glad she came home because I needed to get out of the house and do things with another adult. Its so easy to forget to have "me time" when you're a parent. Also I've come to realize that true friends are the ones where you can go years without seeing them and the next time you do you can pick up where you left off like you just saw them yesterday. I count Krista among a handful of people that are true friends. Also she bought Chucky a book to keep him quiet in Meijers, and she brought me a Klingon keychain from a Trek convention which adds to her awesomeness because she didn't have to do either. Awhile back I was trying to plan a reunion for the old friend group but I didn't get much of response and different plans got in the way but I think I'm going to try this again and shoot for next summer and see if it works this time because I think we would all have a great time together. Also if I can I'm going to try to visit Krista in Philly before the end of the year so I won't have to wait another 2 yrs to see her and so I can finally meet Sarah and the cats and also because I've never been to Philly. Hopefully I can work something out where I can do this.
Obviously I shouldn't go so long between posts so they don't get this long! I started two new classes last thursday-Trigonometry and Western Geography both of which I like so far. I got a little behind in the trig class with everything going on but I'll be caught up and hopefully get a little bit ahead tomorrow (or actually later today since it is 2:30 am on Easter Sunday. We went out to eat at Applebees tonight since I got my $400 refund for my car repairs (which is half of what I paid considering the fees I paid for the rental car SUCK). Then we came home and helped Chucky color Easter Eggs for the first time. He did a really good job. I can't wait to hide them all for him after he wakes up and can't wait to see his face when he finds his Easter basket. I took a bunch of pics of him coloring eggs which I should be sending out tomorrow sometime. Well it is late and this is by far the longest post I have EVER written so I think I'm going to go to bed now. Happy Easter to all who happen across this blog.

A short list

2007-03-25T00:13:00.000-04:00

I give you the top 5 movies you should watch if you should ever forget just how great your friends are:

1. Beaches
2. Now and Then
3. Thelma and Louise
4. Fried Green Tomatoes
5. The Adventures of Milo and Otis

Because I said so, so there!

Schedules

2007-03-18T23:00:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking lately and I think what will help me tremendously with several problems is if I put myself on a schedule. I think part of the reason I feel like I'm getting clobbered by life repeatedly is because it seems everything is coming at me all at once. Maybe if I inserted some semblance of order into my life it wouldn't seem all that bad. So far I'm thinking 0700 will be the start of my day except on weekends. 0700-0745 will be my treadmill time and I will run/walk on that sucker a minimum 5 days a week until I am 40 lbs lighter and wearing between a 6 and an 8 (not an unrealistic goal since I was a size 3 before pregnancy/weight gain). That will take care of several health related issues right there. 0745-0815 will be get ready for work time. 0815-0845 will be my commute to work. 0845-1645 will be work (can't really schedule this out since my level of work to do and business varies daily). 1645 - 1715 my commute to the daycare to pick up Chucky. 1715 - 2100 will be Chucky/Chris time. So I don't have to stress about dinner I think I'm going to start premaking three meals on sunday and we can have them monday - wednesday. Thursday and friday chris can take care of. 2100 - midnight will be homework time and after that bed. The schedule seems simple enough but the hard part will be sticking to it no matter what becuase sometimes I don't get the help I need from Chris and that throws everything off.

I think I am going to do schedules for the weekend too. I can sit down with Chris and we can figure out what we both need to do and schedule it in to the weekend. I have always been one of those people that keeps my life ordered with post-its and to do lists and I much prefer order to the chaos I have now.

I have been feeling alot better since the last post. Also I have Wrestlemania to go to on April 1st with Chris and a family trip to Chicago planned on memorial day weekend. Chris and Chucky are going to NY either the first or last week of June. I'm thinking I need a break. Krista suggested that I need to be a little selfish and take care of myself for once and I think a step in that direction would be just going somewhere by myself for a three or four day weekend (maybe 4th of July weekend?) and just let Chris hold down the fort while I go relax somewhere. Problem: I have no idea where I would want to go and if I would be willing or we could afford to pay for me to go somewhere for three nights. Suggestions anyone? Well guess I better get back to the homework. I am actually ahead in my algebra class for once and I am plugging away at the test but am stuck on a problem so I thought I'd take a break and make a post. Back to work now though....

Worst Luck

2007-03-12T01:13:00.000-04:00

Whatever happened to the luck of the irish? I'm irish dammit and I've got to be the unluckiest person to walk the face of the planet (well maybe not that bad, but still). I am really depressed about the way things are going with my classes. Right now I am earning a B in both of them. The intermediate algebra class is whats really bothering me because I have a very strict teacher that really is not willing to work with her students at all. Last week I had the 10 point project due that I worked on for about 3 hours but since I forgot to post it to both locations and posted it to just the one I lost credit on the whole thing. I got sick two days later and missed the math test for that week so there goes 20 points for that week. Illness is not something I can control. My head was pounding so bad I couldn't even stay awake. I try to get all my stuff done as early as possible but I work full time and I have a two year old and a household to take care of so its not easy to get everything done early in case something happens the day an assignment is due even though I try.
This week was even worse than last week. My son got sick with a fever on friday. When I took his temperature friday is it was 101.7. I gave him tylenol which helped a little and the daycare was giving him motrin which seemed to help a little but as soon as they wore off the fever was back with a vengeance. When I woke up saturday morning I took his temperature because he felt really hot and he had a temperature of 103.2 so I had to take him into the emergency room. They were really concerned about how high his temperature was so they wanted to take a urine sample and do chest x-rays. Well the chest x-rays went fine but he couldn't "do pee pee in the potty" for the urine sample so they had to take his urine with a catheter which was very painful for him. He was screaming the whole time they were doing it and I felt very bad for him. They said he had a viral infection and sent us home. That night I decided I was going to make him brownies to make him feel better and I started to mix everything but realized that chris had used the last of the oil so I had to go to the store to go get some. Well on my way back from the store as luck would have it I hit one of those famous MASSIVE michigan potholes and popped both of my tires on the passenger side of my car. Being that it was late saturday night and nothing was open then or all day sunday, and because my car is new and has an uncommon kind of tire, we couldn't find the tires we needed to replace the ones that popped so now I have to wait til tomorrow and take it to the dealership and have my dad get up at the ass crack of dawn to follow me to the dealership to make sure I make it there on the two spare tires we have on the car and then he gets the joy of driving me all the way to Grand Rapids so I don't miss work and my ass doesn't get fired from my job.
So in the last two weeks my grades have taken a nose dive for reasons mostly out of my control, I got sick, my son got sick, and I damaged my car costing us to spend even more money we couldn't afford to. I'm starting to wonder if it can get any worse. What next? Am I going to step inadvertently walk in front of a bus tomorrow or something?
I like to think that under normal circumstances I am a glass half full person but life is just kicking the crap out of me lately and I have this feeling that I am on the verge of a massive meltdown. I almost had one today. I have no outlet for the stress I am under, nowhere for the anger to go and I just don't know what to do anymore. I have had problems with depression since I got back from Iraq. I actually had the thought today that I don't care if I get better anymore. As long as I am functioning well enough to be a good mother to my son thats all I care about. The rational side of me tells me that hell no, that is not good enough because I have always been the person that wants to be good at everything but the emotional side of me is waving the white flag right now. I am scared to go see the VA for help because I'm scared if I do they'll want to put me on medication and I don't want to be on any medication. Even if I did agree to being on medication, I suck at remembering to take it anyway which is why after the pregnancy I asked for the Depo shot as opposed to the pill because with that you only have to remember to do it every three months and the pill is daily and I knew I would forget. Of course that was really stupid in hindsight because the Depo shot is 50% of the reason that I'm fat (the other 50% being that I can't find time to exercise like I should).
I just hope things get better but I've spent years now hoping things will get better and the optimistic side of me is dying a little more everytime something else goes wrong. My last couple of posts have been pretty negative lately. I'll have to remember next time to post something lighter and isn't so soul suckingly depressing. Someone remind me to do this.

it's beena long day, always ain't that right......

2007-03-07T23:43:00.000-05:00

First I'd like to start this post by saying that I thought this pic of Krista rocking out to White and Nerdy with the Spock picture was freakin' awesome. That made me smile in a week that has been less than stellar. It just has not been a good week, not that anything has gone majorly wrong but its just a bunch of little things combined that have made for a pretty craptacular week.

Saturday Chris and I took Chucky to his first circus (that would be the Shrine Circus that comes to the LC Walker Arena in Muskegon every year because I am too damn cheap to pay $28 per ticket to go see Barnum & Bailey's). The show itself was alright and Chucky really liked it although some of the noise scared him. I took us all to the circus on the money that was sent to me for my birthday figuring I'd be nice and it would only be $21 so no big deal. Well we decided to let Chucky ride a few of the animals there which you needed tickets for. I figured no big deal, we would buy him a couple of tickets because it couldn't be that much. Well I made the mistake of handing Chris all of my birthday money and he went to buy the tickets. Well he didn't bother to ask where the money came from so he bought Chucky 4 tix at $6 each out of MY BIRTHDAY $$$. When I told him he just spent half the money I got for my birthday he goes "oh i thought you pulled that from the account" I'm thinking fool, when do we ever have money like that in our bank account to just pull out? So my birthday present this year was taking Chucky to a mediocre circus. Now it would have been a great family outing except for one thing (and if you don't consider yourself a patriot, then maybe this is where you should stop reading..). Before the show started they had us all get up, face the flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance. While everyone is reciting the pledge the stupid bastard behind me, instead of saying the correct words is making comments to the effect of "and to the republic which doesn't like black men, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all black men" WTF?? Now if there is one way to piss me off to the point where I will turn around and punch you in your ugly ass face, its to be disrespectful while singing the National Anthem or saying the Pledge. Freedom of speech! you say. He should be able to say whatever he wants! Um no he shouldn't. I am a former Soldier of the United States Army. I went to war for this country with some good people who unfortunately did not make it back for your right to sit there and say some ignorant ass shit like you did while saying the pledge so you could impress your girlfriend who looked like someone took the biggest pig on the farm they could find, the ghetto-est creature they could find, and the cream of the trailer park trash crop and fused them together to make her. I hope it was worth it to you to completely disrespect all of the people who have fought for this country in the past and all of the people that are over there with their asses on the line now so you could get a few laughs out of swamp thing. And by the way, thanks for letting your bratty ass little crumbsnatcher kick my seat for the entire show. So with that being said, let everyone be forewarned that you do not want to sit next to me at a football game, circus, wrestling show or anywhere else where they will play the National Anthem or recite the Pledge and say anything but the words that are supposed to be said because I am the crazy ass bitch with PTSD from the war that will stalk your ass and run you down in the parking lot for that type of disrespect. This goes for all flag burners, people who won't shut the fuck up when the National Anthem is being played and the people who won't remove their hats either. This is America baby. You say its your right to say what you want when it comes to the flag and the pledge and the anthem? I say its my right to knock your teeth down your throat in response. You don't like that then move your ass to Canada. Okay I'm done now.

On to the rest of my week. I'm still really tired and I had planned on going to sleep early tonight but it just didn't happen as usual. Chris did not get home tonight until 9pm and Chucky fell asleep waiting for him to get home. I have been doing relatively well in my math class until monday when a project that was worth 10 pts was due and I had it done in time but you're required to post it to two different places and I only posted it to one so I get no points even though I did all the work and I can prove that I did have it done on time. The teacher I have for this class is good but she is a REALLY strict grader which makes the class more difficult. I emailed her and explained my mistake and she said she couldn't give me any points on it because it wouldn't be fair to other students who had made the same mistake. So apparently we're not allowed stupid human errors every once in awhile. On top of that we're moving from the office we currently occupy at work to the one right next door which is bigger. They have been getting the new office ready for us for the past two days and they have been painting in there. Since my desk is right by the door of our current office I have been smelling paint fumes and coming home with monster headaches and a sour stomach for the past two days from the smell. They won't open doors or windows to ventilate because it is balls cold outside and would make the whole building cold. Because of said monstrous headache yesterday I came home yesterday feeling like crap, fell asleep to try to get rid of the headache, didn't wake up til right before 11 pm and didn't have time to finish my math test and turn it in. Since she accepts no late assignments at all I also missed the 10 points for the test this week. So I went from an A in the class to a B if I'm lucky by not getting credit for the one assignment and missing the other one. At least the other class is going okay. I think I'll end up with an A- in that one. I just have to come up with my paper topic in the next couple of days and I have no idea what I want to write a seven page paper on.

Also adding to my week of misery was the fact that my husband forgot to put our pug in his cage before he went to work yesterday so the dumb little mutt had free run of the house until my dad got there to let him out 5 hours later and he peed and pooped all over our house. I didn't find the last pile until I went to put Chucky to bed that night and stepped in it WITH BARE FEET.

Lately too what has added to my feeling down is that sometimes I get the feeling that concerning our life here I'm in the fight alone because I don't get the support I need from Chris. He works full time and I work full time. Granted I work set hours and he works shitty hours but when he gets home its a fight to the death to get him to help me with Chucky. He argues me to death about how he shouldn't have to wash him up when he's in the tub or change his diaper or put him to bed because he just got home and wants to relax. I point out to him that when I got home I didn't get to relax because I had to take care of Chucky. He also argues with me CONSTANTLY about cleaning the house. Every day he says he'll clean the kitchen up before he leaves in the morning and every night when I get home the kitchen is still in a huge mess and the rest of the house is exactly like it was when I left. He thinks cleaning it up really good one day on the weekend is good enough. I can't stand having a dirty house. He argues with me over whose turn it is to make dinner. We're supposed to be taking turns but there are some nights where he just goes "I'm not making dinner" and he expects me to make Chucky's dinner and find something for myself. Also he has no involvement in paying our bills. I take care of all of our finances. I have often thought of handing the financial reigns over to him just so he can see how stressful it is to have to budget and pay the bills but if I did this even for a short period I have this fear that our bills would go unpaid and we would be in financial ruin in no time. Its never a good feeling to feel unsupported by your partner. When we are not fighting and we are getting along its great but sometimes I just get so damn sick of feeling like the relationship is lopsided and the pressure is on me. Maybe its the depression and PTSD thats making me feel this way, I don't know but I hate it and I wish we could change it but it takes two people to make a change and I think both of us are too stubborn to budge.

Well if this post hasn't been all over the place. I have even more to write but I also need to go to bed. You know, that work thing in the morning......

Sleep? What is this word, sleep?

2007-03-01T22:18:00.000-05:00

That is basically how I have felt all week. Its been crazy for me for a variety of reasons. Work has been really slow lately which gives me alot of free time to do homework while I'm there. All week long I've been able to get everything done I need to by noon or 1pm and then do a few homework assignments in between answering the phones. When I get home though, its a different story. Chris has been sick all week which means no help with Chucky, the dogs, cleaning the house, cooking, or anything else that needed to be done this week. On top of that I haven't been able to fall asleep until around 1 or 2 am every morning and then I get up at 7:30 and do the whole thing all over again. I hope he feels better soon because I really need this weekend to catch up on my sleep. On the plus side I'll be catching up on that sleep in our brand new bed which arrived today. Its SOOOO soft.

Oh yeah, I made it through my 25th birthday and thanks to all who sent me birthday wishes. I actually had a decent birthday for once. I got the bag I wanted and I got my traditional pineapple upside down cake that my dad always makes me. I also got to go eat dinner at my favorite chinese place so all was good.

I'm trying to decide right now if I want to continue working on my degree 1 class the first term and 2 classes the 2nd term for the quarters or if I want to do two classes both terms of a quarter. If I do the 1 and 2 combo I'll graduate with my bachelor's in Feb of 09. If I do the 2 and2 combo I'll graduate with my bachelors September of next year. I do want to graduate the earlier date but that means risking burning myself out even more than I am now and I don't know if I could do that. I really like the classes I'm taking now though. I'm in intermediate algebra and POL201a American Political Systems. I'll be done with those in 3.5 more weeks and then its on to western geography and trigonometry. Oooh the excitement. I was going to write more but I am really tired so I think I'm going to try to go to bed early for once (well early for me, anyway....)

Mission Accomplished

2007-02-19T00:18:00.000-05:00

No I did not just prematurely declare an end to the war in Iraq (cough, cough, President Bush, cough). I am referring to my grade in the psychology class. I did pass it (barely) and I will be retaking it during the 2nd half of spring quarter so it does not completely tank my GPA.

My dad did the unexpected today and called to ask if he could take Chucky out for a couple of hours so we said sure and while they were gone Chris and I went shopping for a new bed. I'm sure I've mentioned it in other posts that Chris is a big behemoth of a man. If not there it is. He is quite big. Well we currently have a queen size bed which would usually be adequate for most couples but definitely not for us. He takes up most the bed which is bad enough but he makes claims of "poor circulation" which he says makes him uncomfortable and causes him to roll all over the bed all night. I usually have about a foot and a half of space to sleep in because of this. That was all fine and dandy when we first got married and I was a size 3 but I am definitely not that small anymore and I am tired of sleeping like crap. The color under my eyes is a lovely shade of purple which I try to hide with makeup so I don't scare people. I've reached the point where I'm tired of looking and feeling like a corpse so dammit we are getting a new bed. I'm sure I'm not the only one to have a sleeping partner I'm incompatible with. We're getting a king size. Moving up in the world we are.

I've decided as of late that I want to start reading again. Maybe not as much as I used to because I just don't have time for that. I used to be holed up in my room all day long some days when I was younger and back then I'd be able to get through 2 300 page books a day. I would also stay up until 2 am reading and then get up at 7 for school with no problems. I just can't do that anymore. I would like to fit it somewhere in my schedule to be able to read at least one book a month, textbooks for college not counting of course. I don't think this is too overambitious so hopefully I can do it. Just for giggles here is a list of some of my all time favorite books:

1. The phantom tollbooth by norton juster. Our teacher made us read this in 6th grade. By the time she made us read it I had already read it at least 10 times. Still have a copy of it in my basement somewhere

2. The Egypt Game by zilpha keatly snyder. Read this one mulitple times as a kid too.

3. Imzadi by Peter David. Every Trekkie worth their salt has a favorite Trek novel and this one was it for me. A trek love story. I first read this back when I had a crush on Jonathan Frakes who played Commander Riker. Krista decided one morning in 7th grade that it would be hilarious to draw a picture of leapord print underwear and put Cdr Rikers pic in the middle so when I opened my locker that morning it would pop out at me.

4. Roots by Alex Haley. This book was just amazing. Even better was Queen also by Alex Haley. Both were made into a miniseries, neither of which even came close to comparing to the books.

5. The Stand by Stephen King. I think this is the most popular (and possibly the longest) book he's ever written. I love me some Stephen King books.

6. Wanderlust by Danielle Steel. I've read alot of her books but this one is my favorite because its the first one I ever read.

7. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. This is my all time favorite movie. Seeing the movie made me wish I was alive in the era when Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh were big stars. The book was even better. The follow up book Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley was awesome too.

8. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. She is a great writer. I heard they are making this book into a movie starring Scarlet Johannsen. This author started my current love affair with historical fiction books.

9. I love anything written by Michael Connelly but my favorite in the Harry Bosch series is the Concrete Blonde. Don't know why but I just really liked that one for some reason.

10. Last but certainly not least on this list is Pride and Prejudice. I think we read this one in school and I know we watched the movie. I liked all of Jane Austen's books I have read so far but by far this one is my favorite.

And now that I have shown my true nerd colors by posting that list, I think I will go do me some homework before I get too tired.

Praying for a passing grade

2007-02-16T22:46:00.000-05:00

Well I did all I could to resuscitate my psychology grade during the last week of class. Now its just waiting to see if I passed it or not. I had a really difficult time with it because i have been burnt out and exhausted for weeks now and I just couldn't do the late nights to get the homework done. There will be consequences if I do not pass the class because my schooling is paid for by the VA and if I don't show "progress" in my degree then they can stop my benefits and it may take awhile to get them started again so here's hoping I passed the class. If I did I'm planning on retaking it again the coming quarter so I can get the higher grade to boost my GPA back up. Yesterday I started two new classes: American Political Systems and Intermediate Algebra. Wierd thing is I feel such a big sense of relief from having finished the psychology class that it gave me alot of motivation to start these two classes off on the right foot. Hopefully I can keep that going for the next six weeks.

Not much going on otherwise. I have been sick with a cold this week. It started out as a sore throat. Once the sore throat got better my nose got all plugged and my ears started hurting because my sinuses are draining. I'm hoping this goes away soon because I'm tired of feeling like my head weighs 30 lbs and I hate having that feeling in my nose like I'm going to sneeze and I never do.
I have monday off and I'm planning on sleeping in til at least 10am every day this weekend. I stayed up til 4am thursday morning to finish my psychology paper and then I got up and got ready for work at 7:30. I haven't quite caught up on the missed sleep yet. Gonna get some homework done before I go to bed. TTFN.

Randomness as Usual

2007-02-11T15:11:00.000-05:00

So my 25th birthday is coming up in 10 days. Is it sad when you look forward to a birthday because your car insurance is going to go down? Yet another example of how I am a far cry from the person I was just 5 years ago. I don't really look forward to birthdays all that much. When I was little my dad used to have a birthday party for me every year. When I got into my tween and teen years though since my dad and stepmother were both working I would come home to some birthday cards and a pineapple upside down cake (my dad makes me one every year) on the table and that was that. This year I don't want much. I just mainly like cash these days so I can get myself new clothes. I am one of those people who doesn't have a huge wardrobe, just about 5 or 6 outfits that are in heavy rotation all the time so they tend to get worn out faster. My dad said he is getting me a cell phone for emergencies which is definitely something I need because I have a 70 mile roundtrip commute to and from work every day and if something happens during that time I have no way to get ahold of anyone.
Last year I slid off the road at 70 mph, slammed into a road sign and skidded to a stop about a foot from a big tree. I walked up to the road and some lady was nice enough to stop and pick me up and give me a ride to a gas station so I could call Chris and have him come get me. So the cell phone will definitely help if a situation like that happens again.
I used to be one of those people that oohed and aahed over things with designer labels but I've never owned anything designer in my entire life. JC Penney is about as high end as I go shopping for clothes and I don't have a problem with that. This year though there is one item that is designer that I would just love for my birthday and I can't afford it. There are 3 bags that are designed by Dooney & Bourke. I want either a medium banana bag, a saddle bag, or a pocket sac all in denim. Those suckers retail for between $195 - $300. Well for the past week I've been bidding on brand new ones on ebay and every single time I've been outbid because I can't bid more the $90 on it. Hopefully sometime before my birthday I'll win one. Thats all I really want for my birthday this year besides saving whatever money I get for the trip to Chicago in May.

Today is going to be busy for me. I had to work yesterday to make up for monday when I stayed home sick because I completely misunderstood the sick leave policy that the company that took over my contract has. Today I have A TON of homework but I am planning on laying down for an hour or two before I start it. I was planning on sleeping in til about 11 this morning but Chucky woke me up at 9:20 this morning because he wanted to see his daddy and Chris was downstairs on his STUPID computer game again and didn't hear him get up. I swear this happens to me every single sunday. Sunday is my designated day to sleep in. Either Chucky ends up waking me up because he can't find chris and he wants his oatmeal or somebody forgets that I asked that they not call before NOON on sundays and the phone ends up waking me up. And every time they say "Oh, I thought you'd be up by now". Um, no and i've told you 5 hundred billion times not to call here this early because I WILL BE SLEEPING STILL. No, this doesn't piss me off, not in the least bit.... Anyway I don't want to start the homework when I'm still feeling tired because around 11 pm I will be hit with a wave of exhaustion and won't be able to work anymore and I don't want that to happen.

Unfortunately when I wrote a week or two ago that I had to catch up on the homework for my psychology class or I would probably fail, well that never happened. Now its the last week of class and it really is do or die because the class ends wednesday and considering almost everything has been late I probably won't pass it anyway. I'm going to try like hell though. My goal is to get the D to pass so I can sign up to take it again spring quarter. If I don't pass it this time then I get in deep dookie with the VA, possibly with them cutting my funding until the certifying official at the school tells them to re-enroll me and who knows how long that will take? Oh the messes I get myself into sometimes but I've been feeling SOO EXHAUSTED lately and on top of that the first week of class was when my old computer took a crap and I had to get a new one and the fifth week of class chucky, chris and I were sick. I'll work it out hopefully.

So, I have a whole lot of stuff that I need to sell. I just need to decide where I'm going to sell it. I could do EBAY where the most people would see my stuff or I could do Craigslist because thats free. Right now I have my extra set of wrestlemania tickets posted on Craigslist and Stubhub for $200 so hopefully they sell. I'm sure I could make a good chunk of cash if I could just find the time to list all the stuff. One thing I did purchase recently from amazon was Quicken Willmaker 2007. Krista's girlfriend Sarah did a post about it and although I wanted it for different reasons, I think its a good thing to get because we can't afford an attorney to do one either. I discussed this with Chris about a week ago and we both agreed that we needed to get this done soon because if something happens to both of us and there is no will, the state of michigan is going to decide what happens to our son and I DO NOT want that to happen. It should get here sometime next week. Hopefully I can set down with my dad and do up his will too so he has it in writing what he wants done. I think if we do that if will give peace of mind to both of us.

I also started Chris' 401k plan through his work this past week. I did a little research and found out that I cannot start one with my place of employment until I've been with the new contractors for a year. Since I don't want to wait a whole year to start my retirement savings because my goal was to start that this year, and I don't have $2500 to dump into and IRA or $200 a month to contribute to one, I need to do some research sometime today to find out what I want to invest in for my retirement. I'm finally getting the feeling that we're on the right track. After I get my tax check the only debt we will have is the house, the timeshare, and the payment for my car which I only owe $5,000 on.

I've been thinking alot lately about what's going to happen when my dad is gone and I think there are going to be big changes in store for me and my family when that happens. He is really the only tie that is holding me here in Muskegon. When I moved back here in July of 2005 I was hoping for a fresh start but that fresh start kind of sputtered out before it began. Nothing really changed for Chris and I but our location and thats not what I wanted. So I've been thinking lately, is there really any reason to stay here once he's gone? The only person I will miss if I left would be my sister and I can't stay here just because of her although I know it would upset her a great deal if we were to leave because she would miss Chucky. We've both been considering selling this house and my dads if something happens to him and moving to NY. It would be quite the upheaval for all of us and we'd really have to think on it but I'm confident I can find a job through the state or a federal job that would pay me at least as much as I'm making now and by the time something does happen to my dad (God forbid but its going to happen sometime in the future)I should be done with my Bachelors and working on either a 2nd bachelor's or a Master's degree. Lots to mull over anyway. And now for that power nap...........

Busy Day

2007-02-03T14:12:00.000-05:00

Leave it to mother nature to completely put a damper on my plans today. We went the entire month of december with hardly the sighting of a snowflake and most of january was the same way. Now here it is february and its snowed a foot in 1 week. They actually let me come home from work and hang out at the Muskegon Recruiting Station until 5 when I go home because a winter storm warning was issued and I was afraid I was going to get stuck in Grand Rapids. My car, as I'm finding out, is great for fitting alot of stuff in and for roadtrips in general but it is absolutely horrendous in the snow.

Tonight is supposed to be Chucky's first overnight trip. He was going to spend the night at my sister's house. Now because of the weather and also because he got sick last night I don't know if that is going to happen. He kept complaining that his belly hurt yesterday and he kept farting all day long so I knew it had to be gas and that he was probably constipated. Well he woke up last night with the same complaints so Chris put him in our bed and he fell back asleep. He woke up at 1:30 am asking for some juice so I got him some and he fell back asleep. Half an hour later I wake up to the sound of the poor kid wretching all over my husband and his side of the bed). It was like a scene out of the exorcist. Well Chris got him cleaned up and I tore all the bedding off the bed but the room still stunk so bad we didn't want to sleep in there. Chris ended up sleeping on the couch and Chucky and I slept on the twin bed in the spare room. He seems to be doing alot better today besides being over the constipation, having moved on to explosive diarrhea. So now I'm trying to decide since he is feeling better except for the pooping thing, if I want to let him go to my sisters as planned or keep him here.

We were planning on going to our favorite chinese place in GR if he did go to my sister's. Okay, now that we're over that bit of grossness, moving on....

Has anyone ever looked up their exes (I mean not called to say hi how ya doin' but just googled them or put their name in myspace to see if they had an account and what they're up to now, you know, just to satisfy your curiousity? I have done this before because most of my past relationships have not ended on a positive note. There was only one that I can remember where we promised eachother we'd be friends and stay in touch even though that never happened. Well in my searches, here is what I found out:

The person I considered my first "real" boyfriend way back in the 8th grade is gay now.
Both people that I dated in sophomore year of high school (they went to a different school) are married and one has a baby.

One of the guys I dated in senior year of high school (also from a different high school) is now married with a kid. This is the one I was supposed to stay friends with and didn't.

I have no idea what the hell happened to the other guy I dated in senior year (the one with the kid, that almost drug me down into his pit of nothingness and ruined my life) and frankly I don't care what happened to him.

The guy I dated in Korea that I was engaged to and broke it off when I got back to the states is still in the Army and still searching for "the one". Developed a bit of a drinking problem, that one did.

The guy I dated after him that went a wee bit psycho on me and kind of became a stalker after we broke up for good is married with a kid.

And then after that there was Chris. Met him in may of 2002, married him 6 months later and he's still here 5 YEARS later. The guy deserves a medal or something. I looked up the hubby to see if he a myspace account and he did. Funny thing was he didn't fill out the profile at all so it is set to the default info. His profile says single, doesn't want kids and "no answer" under his sexual orientation. I pointed this out to him and teased him mercilessly about how he's trying to get rid of me and Chucky to find himself a myspace ho and since he has no answer for sexual orientation he must be a closet pooper poker (members of the gay community please do not get offended, I have no problem with people being gay at all, I just say that to him because it gets him all flustered).

For those of you who don't know my husband, he is a good guy but he doesn't like me or anyone else messing with his tough guy persona. Normally his physical appearance alone is enough to make most people think he could snap them like a twig (he's 6'2", 250 lbs). Still he likes to talk the good game about being able to beat the crap out of anyone, anytime, anywhere (# of people he's beat up in the last 5 yrs: 0) and associates himself with the usual manly activities (burping, farting, scratching, smelling up the house when he takes a dump, dominating the remote, gaming and computer nerdism etc...) just to cement his complete masculine status to anyone he may encounter. So insinuating he's gay.... yeah he's not exactly thrilled when I do it which makes his reaction and inevitable attempts to prove how manly he is all the more hilarious to me. He has his comments he says to get back at me though so don't feel too bad for him.

Well its almost an hour later, Chucky is still napping (I tricked him into taking some Motrin by putting it in his juice) and I still haven't decided if he's going to my sisters. Guess we'll see how he feels when he wakes up.

Planning Ahead

2007-01-26T23:02:00.000-05:00

I really need about a week off just to sit around and do nothing. Unfortunately I am not going to get that luxury anytime this year because my job is a government contract position and the contract was taken over by a new company on the 2nd of January. What this means for me is that since a new company has the contract, even though I've been working for the GR Recruiting Company since October of 2005, its like starting a brand new job which means I have to wait til my probation period is over with this company for my benefits to kick in (no big deal as I am covered under Chris' insurance) AND I am not allowed vacation for the first year of employment with the new company. Yep. Thats right. No time off for an entire year save the 10 federal holidays that we get off a year. I decided that since there was no chance for a real vacation this year that I would plan something for one of the three day weekends that I was going to have.

I have a timeshare that Chris and I bought into and have been paying on since April of 2004. Since then we've regretted our decision in buying it because we're paying out $250 a month until the 17,000 loan is payed off on it and in the almost 3 years we've had it we have yet to use it. For anyone out there that is considering buying a timeshare I recommend that you do not go through one of the companies that actually sells them as you will be paying alot of money for a piece of propery that has a resale value of about 10% what you bought it for. Once you buy a timeshare they are really difficult to get rid of. Believe me we've tried. We had two different companies rip us off to the tune of $1,200, promising that they would sell it for us and for a good price, in 6 weeks or less. They took our money and ran. Anyway our property is deeded for a resort in the Smoky Mountains in Seiverville, TN but since we are Fairshare Plus members we can use our annual allocation of points for any resort or affiliate resort they have. We can also use the points towards cruises, airline tickets, rental cars, and hotels. I decided to use our points for this year to get a hotel in Chicago over memorial day weekend.

I figured this would be a nice weekend getaway. We're going to be staying at the Four Points by Sheraton which judging by the online reviews I've read is a nice hotel in a great location (magnificent mile!). Normally hotels in the magnificent mile area cost a whole lotta cash (which we ain't got...). The particular room that we reserved for our stay is normally $245 a night but since I used my points all I have to pay is a $35 service charge. Not too bad of a deal I think. Now all that is left to do is to decide out of all the things to do in Chicago, what do we want to cram into 3 days.

Here are the ones I'm thinking of: I want to go the Navy Pier, the Children's museum for Chucky, Lincoln Park Zoo, Shedd Aquarium, the Sears Tower, The Museum of Science and Industry and the Field Museum. Nevermind that the last two you could take up and entire day for each. Not likely that we'll be able to see all that while we're there but we sure can try. They also have a chicago city pass which gives you admission to 5 tourist attractions in Chicago that combined would normally run just under $100 per person to the bargain price of $49. Since I'm all about saving money (I'm one of those people that can squeeze a nickel until a booger shoots out of Jefferson's nose, or until the buffalo shits depending on what kind of nickel you have) I'm really thinking this would be a good deal for us to snatch up two city passes. Lucky for us at his age Chucky gets in to just about everything for free. Well I have almost four months to figure it out anyway.

In other exciting news, it is already late and I will be hitting the books until at least 2 am because I am STILL trying to catch up. I'm to the point where I have no choice now. I either pull it together and finish out the last three weeks strong or I fail the class and throw away $700. So guess i had better get to it.

My Son the Actor

2007-01-23T23:39:00.000-05:00

Its easy to forget how sensitive kids are when they're little. We were putting our darling Chucky to bed tonight and he was being a stubborn little turd. I picked him up to put him in bed and he reared his head back and headbutted me right in the jaw. It hurt really bad. Chris heard my yelp of pain and came to see what was wrong. I told him and he looked at Chucky and told him "You're a naughty boy. You hurt your momma. Daddy's mad at you he's leavin!" and he walked out of the room. As soon as he did that Chucky burst in to tears. I kept asking him "Buddy whats wrong?" Between sobs he goes "Daddy say I naughty boy. DADDY NO LOVE MEEEE!" Poor kid! I felt so bad for him. Chris came back in and spent the next 1/2 hr reassuring Chucky that he did love him and that he wasn't mad at him anymore. My son is a total daddy's boy except for when he's tired and wants to cuddle or when he's sick. Then its momma time. That child is just too smart for his own good sometimes. I worry that Chucky is going to end up like my niece. She was big for her age just like he is and my sister would get dirty looks all the time because in appearance Jordan looked like a 10 yr old girl when she was only 6. They would look at my sister like "why are you letting that child whine like that? She's too old for that!" and really she wasn't. She just looked like it. Chucky is the same way. He towers over all the other kids his age at daycare. I guess we shall see.

I have a few shows that I watch regularly. I think it averages out to maybe one a night but we have DVR and On Demand so really I could watch every show I like in one day if I wanted to. Here are the ones I currently rarely miss:

Sunday: This is my off TV day. Sometimes I catch Desperate Housewives but not very often because my husband hates this show with a passion. He calls it desperate buttwipes.

Monday: Monday Night RAW. I was in to wrestling when I was a wee one back in the late 80's. My dad used to watch it all the time then. He convinced me to pull out my loose tooth when I was eight by tying a string around it and tying the other end to a door and slamming it shut because "that is what Hulk Hogan would do if he had a loose tooth". I got back into it in 2002 because I lived in the barracks then and the guys used to watch it in the dayroom all the time. Since I didn't have a TV of my own I'd watch it with them.

Another one I watch on mondays: I Love New York. Yes that would be the whacked out chick from Flavor of Love that got rejected by him twice so VH1 felt bad for her and gave her her own show. Why the hell do I watch this you may ask? Because that show and the people on it are hilarious. Take for example, the guy dubbed Romance by Ms. New York. On the 1st day he met her he broke down in great big sobs about how his precious Yorkie "princess" died 3 wks ago and how his heart was broken and now he wanted to make New York his princess. The way the guy carried on you couldn't help but wonder if he had a more intimate relationship with his Yorkie. Can we say nutjob?

Tuesdays: Another day where I don't have a particular show I watch. This is usually a day where I'll watch something I recorded or browse on demand.

Wednesdays: I got into Courtney Cox's new show Dirt on FX when it premiered. I love this show, especially Don Konkey, the functional schizophrenic photographer who keeps having strange hallucinations every episode. I will definitely keep watching this one. I was surprised I actually got into this because I'm not a huge fan of Courtney Cox Arquette. She annoyed me on Friends and in the Scream movies. I used to watch Lost but lost interest in it.

Thursdays: Grey's Anatomy. I have watched this since episode one and yes I do think Patrick Dempsey should win an award for "best male hair on a TV series".

Fridays: Friday Night Smackdown of course! Did we forget that I was a wrestling freak? Side note: I have tickets to Wrestlemania 23 (Ford Field, Detroit MI, April 1st). Although I don't have floor seats which I would have gladly paid for had they been available, I don't have nosebleeds either so all of you other wrestling fanatics that will be watching it on pay per view- be jealous haters because I'm gonna see it live!

Saturdays: This is another catchup day for stuff I DVRed or watch on demand.

And here are the couple of shows that I regularly watch through the wonderfulness of on Demand:

After not watching several seasons of the mindless drivel that is MTV's the Real World, I have actually been watching the latest installment: The Real World Denver. Its the same crap its always been- 7 strangers picked to live in a house, get drunk every opportunity they get, contribute to the spread of STD's and live like complete slobs with the occasional knock down drag out fight. Its amusing at least. I also think that were I still a drinker, this would be an awesome show to make up a drinking game to. There could be rules like everytime Jenn says the phrase "rock star" or Colie sleeps with yet another guy or Alex makes an assinine comment you have to take a drink. Then again, maybe not. Everyone would be toasted before the 1st commercial break.

Another MTV guilty pleasure: Laguna Beach. Teenage angst and drama and being so filthy rich you could solve the poverty crisis in several third world countries just by donating the proceeds from one of your many shopping trips. Who can't relate to that?

And finally a show that Chris and I actually watch together. Thats right we actually agree on something! No sumo style fights in the middle of the living room for the remote- this one we both like. Showtime's Dexter. This one is about a serial killer who was taught by his adopted dad who was a cop to channel his homicidal tendencies into something positive by bumping off other serial killers. The storylines for this one are awesome and Michael C. Hall as Dexter is brilliant.

And there you have it folks, my weekly TV schedule. And now I shall be off to bed!

What to do, What to do.....

2007-01-21T23:10:00.000-05:00

Not much has changed on the homework front. I started today well intentioned. I wanted to tackle it all bit by bit and get all caught up. I usually don't start the homework until a little before Chucky goes to bed or after he's already down. The big reason for this is during the week I pick him up a 5:30 and he goes to bed between 9:30 and 10:30 so this only gives me 4 or 5 hours with him every day and I want to spend as much time with him as possible.

The problem that I have been running into lately and what has contributed to my getting even farther behind is that my husband has no clue how to get Chucky to bed other than to scream at him to get back in bed when he gets out and to spank him when he doens't listen. Meanwhile, I'm in here trying to concentrate and all I can hear is hubby screaming "get in bed!" and then a few minutes later I'll hear "you don't want to listen? Okay! Spankings!", followed by the sound of Chucky being spanked and going "Ow OW OW". Well I can only take so much of this before I get completely fed up and tell Chris to get the hell out of Chucky's room. I go in there and either sing to him or tell him that "momma came in there to go night night with you" and I'll lay there with him and if he tries to get up I tell him "you have to be quiet buddy. Momma's trying to sleep". And guess what? Usually in about 15 -20 minutes he's out. The bad thing is that by then its 10:30 - 11 ish at night and by the time I get done putting him to bed I am completely drained and can't stay up much more than another hour working on the homework which makes me get farther and farther behind. Its a viscious cycle and I don't know what to do.

After I got him down tonight I went in there and told Chris that he had to find another way that worked for him to get Chucky to bed because the spanking his ass every five seconds until he finally conks out was not going to happen anymore. I am just sick of it. I told him the child is 2 damn years old. He's the adult and Chucky is the child and he needs to find something else that works because I am not going to put him to bed every night and sacrifice my time that I NEED for other things when he could be doing it just as well as I could. He tells me that the reason it works for me and it doesn't work for him is that Chucky sees me as the parent and him as the play thing so he doesn't listen to him. My whole take is too damn bad. Read some parenting books, call the Supernanny, take anger management or WHATEVER but he is no longer going to use spankings as a way to get Chucky to go to sleep.

I wonder if I am in the wrong here because probably about 50% of the fights we have I am and just won't admit it. Honestly, the more I have to deal with issues like these on top of everything else the more overwhelmed I get. I drift between two states most of the time. One of them is overwhelmed and the other one is hopelessness. This has got to change because I am at the point where I am just too worn out to funciton in either of those states anymore. Anway, enough of my bitch session. I have ALOT of homework to get to that I will probably never get done. TTFN.

Regina George is a fugly slut!

2007-01-20T22:53:00.000-05:00

I have seen the movie Mean Girls quite a few times and though I am no fan of Lindsay Lohan I did think the movie was good. My high school experience was not as extreme as that movie was but there were definitely the cliques including a group I would consider the plastics. Its probably the same in every high school. There are the haves and have nots. In high school I was part of what were considered the have nots. We were the smart people that many people picked on because they thought we were eccentric in some way or because they were jealous of the grades.

In comparison to some of the other people in this nerd herd that I hung out with, I was actually one of the less academically inclined, although this was entirely my fault. In that respect in high school I was my own worst enemy, especially in senior year when I became involved with a guy that was four years older than me and had a two year old child. Everything went to hell for that entire year and I actually didn't go to school for 1/2 of my senior year. My dad had to meet with the principal and dean of students to work out a deal where I could graduate on time. Freshman, sophomore and junior year of high school I actually did pretty well.

Anyway, for some reason that I can't exactly pinpoint I don't remember high school all that fondly. Maybe its just because when I look back on the whole experience it forces me to confront what a MORON I was for that last year. I know why the whole thing happened. It was because of the two year old child that the boyfriend had. This kid grew very attached to me and I to him as well and his mom was like my mom and just dumped him off. I think I thought I could save him from that and I got way too involved to the point where it hurt me with school. Thankfully when I joined the Army while I was away at basic training the boyfriend showed his true colors and I dumped him before I took off to Korea on my first duty assignment.

Some other not so great things from high school: People in the "plastics" crowd trying to convince substitute teachers that they were my boyfriend as justification for why they were trying to copy off of my paper. I had one guy that was part of this group that I had Phys Ed with that would hit me in the ass with just about every piece of sports equipment we encountered-hockey sticks, badminton raquets, whatever. I remember someone else once ganging up on me because I jokingly called one of my friends gay and the dude harassed me for a week about it. Never mind the fact that the guy I jokingly called gay came out to us about 6 months later and we're still friends.

Also I think another thing that made high school not so great was that I hadn't really "blossomed" yet. I wasn't one of the stuck up prissy people that would get up at 5 am just to make sure I had enough time to cake on my makeup and curl my hair before school. I was one of those that put on whatever was clean, brushed my hair and teeth, put on a little makeup and went on my merry way. I didn't wear the in clothes and I didn't have to have the latest this or that. I was called ugly by some people. Strangely enough I kind of morphed while I was over in Korea and I had this awesome body and the majority thought I was really pretty. I was more into the makeup and clothes stuff than some of my friends but I still wasn't as in to it as some girls in my class. There were also the crushes that I drooled over that never would have happened in a million years. There was one guy that I had a crush on during freshman year that was one grade ahead of me and at that time he was just a big doofus but by the time he reached senior year he was pretty popular and as I said since I was a have not-er it wasn't ever going to happen. There were a few that I liked that maybe could have happened but I was too chicken to take any chances in high school. I only dated four guys in those four years . One was the older one and the other three were from different schools.

Some good things I remember: My school had awesome teachers, especially the foreign language teachers. There was also one english teacher that everyone hated and I absolutely loved her class. My friends were (and still are) awesome. We were a unique group of people and although during that time I wanted to be part of the in crowd like I think everyone wishes at some point, I would not have traded my group of friends for the world. They were some of the most creative, intelligent people I have met in my life. I remember picking up Krista and either Keith of Kevin and we would go to Pomona park and play risk and sometimes get chinese. One of these trips was when Kevin was awarded the name "secret eggroll man".

Anyway, I started this whole post by talking about the "plastics" at my school. There were only a few that were actually mean to me personally. The phys ed guy for one, and there was one girl who would point out how in her opinion my clothes didn't match and try to humiliate me in front of her little friends. What irked me too was that they sucked ALL the fun out of events like homecoming and prom because it was a popularity contest every time and the nominations were from the same group of people. Most of the people on homecoming and prom court I didn't like, although the girl that was elected prom queen was alright. She was someone I had known since 1st grade. They just seemed like they were the type of people that just came in the room and sucked all the oxygen out because they thought it was rightfully theirs or something. I know people have had high school experiences that were MUCH MUCH worse than mine, like our friend Lisa who we adopted into our group and felt really bad for because she was teased unmercifully by just about everyone in her grade. I just wonder if every school has a group of "plastics". I wonder if they do how long in life it takes the plastics to realize they don't matter anymore after high school and how long it takes the people who wish the plastics would get hit by a bus to realize that things will be different after high school?

As for me I'm glad I rolled with the nerd herd in high school because some of us have done great things with our lives and some of the plastics are now townies with dead end jobs.

Everyday is a Winding Road

2007-01-18T14:54:00.000-05:00

Another day where I have accomplished everything at work that I needed to 3 hrs before I'm set to go home. Yay for me!

I am still feeling overwhelmed by school and I am still behind but I am hoping to remedy that tonight. I go to school entirely online. I know there are some naysayers out there who say an online education is not worth the paper its written on and that many times what you learn is self taught- you know, read the text do the questions/paper/test. That part is true to some extent but when I was in the Army I did try the traditional classroom environment and ya know what? I absolutely frickin' hated it. The teacher was great, the class was something I was interested in (English) but I ended up pulling a B in a class I could have easily gotten an A in. For some reason I get really fidgety and distracted sitting in a classroom whereas online since I can do it on my own time every day and I feel like I'm still getting the feedback I need from the class and the instructor. Also since I've returned from Iraq I have some serious anxiety issues when dealing with crowds of people. Its just not something I would enjoy having to deal with. I don't think I'm missing anything by not going to a "normal" college. The only thing that concerns me about my choice of college is that even though it is accredited, with certain colleges (like GVSU) many of the credits I earn at Baker will not transfer there.

Another thing that I've come to realize in the past year or so is that I don't know if I really even want to stay in the clerical/human resources field. True, I make decent money but I don't know if its really what I want to do. With my 25th birthday just around the corner you'd think I would have made big decisions like "what I want to be when I grow up" by now but I'm just not sure if I'm heading in the right direction. I'm hoping this will be my year to make significant improvements in many aspects of my life and hopefully I'll be heading into 2008 a little more sure of things.

I have several ideas for what I might like to do but I'm not sure if any of those is right for me either. One of those is to finish out my bachelor's degree and apply for a direct commission into the US Army Reserves as an officer. This is a new thing they've come out with because they are short on officers in the reserves. Going this route I would not have to go to OCS. All that is required is that I have a bachelor's degree and that I attend the Officer Basic Course for whatever branch i go into. It has its pros and cons. The pros are that officers make good money in the military and if I was only a reservist I could quit my full time job and go to working part time somewhere because the money I would be making as an officer would more than make up for what i would lose by not working full time. The drawbacks to this plan would be that I could be moved to a unit that was far away from where I wanted to be and the big one that I fear more than anything is that I would be deployed again. I honestly don't know if I could handle another deployment. The first one did a lot of damage, not physically, but I am just not the same anymore. I think I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or at least some kind of anxiety disorder from the year I spent over there. Things are just not the same for me anymore. Its strange too because its not like I saw anything absolutely horrific over there, no charred bodies, I wasn't attacked by the enemy or anything like that but just the experience as a whole has left me changed. I used to be fine flying and now it scares the crap out of me. I freak out when I ride in a vehicle and other people are driving. I sometimes get the urge to cry for no reason and I get really freaked out dealing with lots of people now. Its almost like I can't be in situations where I don't have complete control. I used to love going shopping at the mall and now I just get extremely irritated and stressed out every time I go. It also feels like I am detached from my life, if that makes any sense. Life is foggy for me and I am not nearly as emotional as I used to be. My dad and my sister say I should go see the VA and get some help but I haven't convinced myself that I need to go that route yet. I keep thinking that maybe if I eliminate the other stressors in my life that it will make the issues that I have left over from the war better.

Anyway, I have also considered continuing on with school for a second bachelor's degree. I was thinking psychology but the field doesn't really open up until you have your masters. At least I would have something to fall back on in case I did decide to not do human resources mgmt. I thought about a master's degree but then I would have to stay in the business field and I don't know if I want to do that either. What I really want to do more than anything is to be able to work part time at Barnes and Noble and spend the rest of my time with Chucky. Not the biggest goal in the world but all I really want is more time with my son. He'll be able to start preschool this coming fall which really means that I'll only have two more years before he's in school full time and I'll have lost the opportunity to spend all day with him. Kids are really great at this age. On a good note, he loves his new daycare. He is genuinely excited to go there which makes me happy. It partially alleviates the guilt of having my kid spend most of his waking hours with someone else.

I asked Chris today if he would be interested in getting a membership to the Y in Grand Haven. He seemed interested until I told him that it would be $83 a month for a family membership. Now this does not seem that much to me because when you break it down weekly thats a little over $20 for all three of us to go there. Thats $990 annually. I thought it would be good for all of us because they have all kinds of programs for little kids that we could involve Chucky in and Chris and I really need to lose about 40 lbs a piece and get back into shape BUT HE SAID NO. To him that was too much money. Then he went blathering on about how we should use the money I want to spend on the Y to fix the electrical in our house instead. It does need to be fixed along with a myriad of other things but I thought it would be nice to sign up for the Y and get us out of the house. Apparently fixing things in our house which could be fixed anytime in the next 50 years since we will be living there until doomsday takes priority. Our house is an older home (it was built in 1964) and when we were getting ready to leave ft. campbell for good I had to come up to MI househunting by myself because Chris' unit would not let him have the time off to come with me. So I ended up looking at 10 houses over the course of 4 days and I picked ours out. Now I was only able to go through the house twice, and it was brief both times, and everything looked fine then. By the time we had it inspected I was back in KY and my dad went through with the inspector. He said a few things might need to be fixed down the line but everything looked good. Well here it is 18 months later and the house needs the electrical redone because the guy that lived there before us rigged everything so its not grounded right, and the house is still running on fuses (we go through tons of lightbulbs because our electrical is messed up). My brother who is an electrical engineer said he had no clue how the house passed the inspection of the electrical because it is seriously FUBARed. Also the house needs a new roof, and new windows(we pay a sky high electric bill because of the drafty windows) and appliance wise we've replaced the washer, dryer, and dishwasher and we're also in need of a new fridge and stove.

In hindsight maybe we should have rented an apartment for the six months when we moved back this way and took our time looking-too late now. Love the house but don't love all the work and MONEY we'll be putting into it. Maybe once Chris makes his next grade at work and he's pulling in more $$$ it won't be so bad.

Life could be much worse. I could still be stuck in Iraq......

Finally a post....

2007-01-16T13:40:00.000-05:00

I finally decided to post something after being told several times that I really needed to get a blog. Part of me wanting to post is that I used to keep a normal journal which I wrote in at least once a week from 7th grade until about 2 years ago. I managed to fill up three volumes going that route. I kind of miss having that kind of outlet for my thoughts because now I just don't have time to keep a journal. I also decided to do this becuase I think it will help people keep track of me and because I get bored at work sometimes and this will fill the space. So there you have it-the reason I finally decided to blog. To anyone who may actually read this, I apologize for the randomness of my thoughts, but anyone who has ever received any kind of written communciation from me will tell you that's how I have always been. Also I don't apologize for being boring because I did not put a gun to your head and force you to read this. :)

Right now I am sitting at my desk with nothing to do and while I should be doing my developmental psychology homework I am avoiding it like the plague. This class is for my Bachelors in Human Resource Management. I have one more thing to do for my Associates in General Business which is write a paper to meet the Work Experience Requirement and I will be done. I've been putting this off for almost a year now. Sad, I know but its just not something that I'm interested in doing at all right now even though I keep getting emails from the college saying if I don't complete it they will have to move my graduation date. I really don't care if they move it or not because I decided I wasn't going to leave this job for greener pastures until I was done with my bachelors. Anyway, I should just do the stupid paper and get it over with and I should just do my pschology homework (which I am about a few assignments behind on) instead of doing this. The problem is that within the last six months or so I have just been going through the motions with my classes because I am burnt out with doing them. I have been doing classes nonstop since february of 2005 and no matter what the subject matter it just gets tedious after awhile. Still, I want to finish the degree as soon as possible so plug away I will.

I am also fighting the urge to call the daycare and check on Chucky (he's a little redhead like his momma and this is what we call him when he's being bad, like the Chucky doll from the movies). This is his first day at his new daycare and I'm sure he's fine but I still kind of want to check on him anyway. When I dropped him off and told him I had to go it didn't seem like it bothered him too much. He just said "Ok bye momma" and that was it. Its kind of disturbing to me that he is so used to being dropped off somewhere that it doesn't even bother him anymore but I guess its better than him screaming and clinging to me and not letting me out the door for an hour. Ideally we would be in a financial situation where I could at least go down to working part time and be home with him more but unfortunately that isn't the case. Maybe someday.

We aren't in bad financial straights at all and we don't live beyond our means but we are still paycheck to paycheck and I hate that. I just paid off all of our credit card debt with an inheritance I got from my grandfather. We still have other stuff we're paying on though and we don't have that comfortable cushion in case something goes wrong. If something went wrong we would be screwed because we'd have to put if on our credit cards and then we'd have to dig ourselves out of that again. I grew up watching my dad do the credit card shuffle to keep us afloat and I promised myself I would never get like that and so far we've been pretty good about it but last year we just had very very bad luck and now we're trying to improve things. There are four main things I would like to do this year:

1- increase the contribution to Chucky's 529 plan. It is so disheartening when you use the calculator on the misaves.com site to figure out how short you're going to be on paying for your child's entire education because at the rate we're going right now we'll only be able to pay for his first 1.5 years of college. I DO NOT want my child to consider going in the military to put himself through college. I'm using my GI bill to go now but I don't want him to think thats the only option he has and I don't want recruiters beating on my door using that line on him to get him to sign up. Don't get me wrong. I fully support the military as a career but if he does go that route I want him to go because its what he really wants to do in life, not because he's in debt up to his eyeballs in student loans and he sees no other option.

2- start 401 k's and and IRAs for me and the hubby. He just turned 25 and I turn 25 next month and I don't want to be old and relying on my kids to support me because I wasn't responsible enough to save for my own retirement when I had the chance.

3- This year I WILL lose 40 lbs and 20 of those will be by April 1st. Lofty goal, yes but I know I will feel so much better about myself if I lose it. I don't have to be as small as I used to be ( a whopping 100 lbs when I came back from Iraq) but my self esteem has taken a severe beating since I had Chucky and made the idiotic mistake of taking the depo shot which made me gain 50 lbs. The problem here is I am not an exercise junky and I have yet to stumble on a routine that I am comfortable with. I've tried Taebo and I do it occasionally but I think I need something a little slower paced to start off with. I'm considering just walking with my dogs every day and see if that will help. The only problem is as with everything, I have next to no time to do it and since my husband works craptacular hours it is hard to fit it into my schedule. I am eating right for the most part so its just getting an exercise routine that I like.

4-Get in touch with all my old friends and restrengthen those bonds. I miss all of you and I was really hoping we could all get together this summer sometime but a few things are standing in the way: one of us is going overseas, one of us is having trouble forgiving another for something that happened in the past, one of us is really hard to get ahold of, one of us lives outside of the state and all of us are on a budget. Still I'm going to find some way to do it.

And now after having nothing to do for two hours, work beckons. Til next time.............

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2006-04-20T14:27:00.000-04:00

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