Holly’s Happenings

Sometimes I just feel like throwing my arms up in the air and yelling I’M DONE at the top of my lungs! Why is it when stressful times in my life seem to go away, new stressful things come in?

It’s been two weeks since we buried my nephew. His death and funeral provided four of the most gut wrenching, stress filled days I have experienced in a very long time. But thanks to the support of my wonderful husband and children as well as several online friends, I made it through those days. Then with the success of finding a job this past Wednesday, it finally felt like some of the drama and stress that was going on in my life was about to subside.

You know, the affects that stress have on your body are amazing! I swear stress is better than even the best fat burner when it comes to weight loss! It prevents you from being able to eat, and it causes migraines that induce nausea and vomiting, at least it does in me! This is exactly where I’ve been since around 10 PM last night, thanks to a family member.

I’m being accused of losing/misplacing the memory card from my late nephew’s digital camera. I brought the camera home 2 weeks ago when I was making his video. I took the card out of his camera, put it in my computer, copied the pictures off the card that his family wanted used, put the card back into his camera and put the camera back into it’s bag. I am 100% certain that this is what I did because I told my husband as I was putting the card back into the camera that the last thing his family would want right now would be for me to lose or damage the memory card. I had the top of my desk 100% cleaned and organized while I was working on his video so that nothing would get damaged or lost.

I’m the first person to admit to and fix what I’ve done wrong and correct my mistakes when I can. Keeping his memory card serves me absolutely no purpose or benefit. I know what I did and exactly how I did it, I also know what I didn’t do. I can’t fix this and it’s ultimately going to cost me my entire family and what pisses me off is that I didn’t do anything wrong! So, I’m throwing my hands up in the air and giving up. At this point in time I’m not sure I’ll ever do anything for anyone again because it causes nothing but stress and grief!

All I wanted to do today was rest. It’s been an extremely exhausting and emotional week, I had one night where I didn’t sleep at all, and two other nights where I slept no more than 4 hours. So all I wanted to do was sleep in and rest.

The morning started off with what I thought was someone pounding on the front door, which turned out to be one of the dogs thumping the floor with their foot while scratching themselves. I hate waking up like that, ya know? And besides waking my husband and I up, it also woke up brat gurl, and she wasn’t one bit happy about being woken up like that either…LOL!

So we get coffee going, let the dogs out and turn the computers on, you know, our normal morning routine. Things were going along pretty well, brat gurl decided to kick back on the couch with a puppy, I finally got my coffee and the news was on.

It wasn’t until brat gurl decided to get up and turn her computer on that things went down hill. The computer she’s using is the one I replaced when I bought my current computer. It’s a few years old, but when I gave it to her, it had plenty of life left in it! But for some reason, she’s completely incapable of treating a computer right. Even though I completely reformatted the hard drive when I set it up for her, within just a few days she was already having problems with it. After some careful investigating I soon discovered that she had deleted the anti virus program off it and had managed to pick up a pretty nasty virus.

Over the past 8 months the hard drive has been reformatted two more times. I could tell by the sound of it when it’s running that it’s honestly not going to last much longer, but I just kept hoping it would hang in just a little longer. This afternoon she came back and sat down at hubby’s laptop, I asked her what she was doing and she said “MySpace”, so I asked what was wrong with her computer and she said “It won’t start up”. Hubby went out later to check it out, he could get it to start in safe mode, but not regular mode. So I guess he’ll be spending tomorrow trying to see if there’s any chance it can be salvaged enough to get her by a few more weeks. Cross your fingers for us please! He still hasn’t found a job and things are bad enough as it is, there’s no way we could even think about replacing a computer right now!

Yes, I do get frustrated fairly easily these days, but with some things I honestly think that there isn’t anyone on the face of this earth that wouldn’t get frustrated themselves! Like the current situation I’m going through with the kids’ school district!

One of my biggest complaints with this school district has ALWAYS been their complete and total inability to have any type of communication with students parents! It’s so easy to pick up a phone and give parents a message about something that involves their children, but for some reason, it’s just not possible with this school district!

Right now we’re going through a situation with them where we’ve been chasing down a letter than was sent to us going on 12 days ago. The letter is something that is very important, something that should have been received in our mail box no later than a week ago today. But because of a screw up by the school when they were inputting the kids’ information into the computers, they somehow TOTALLY screwed up our address! for our house number and street name it should say 1122 S. Holly’s Road, but for some reason or another, they entered it as 1122 Holly’s S. Road, and for our zip code it should say 43558, but for some reason they put 43528. Now keep in mind that we filled out the information on the cards and paperwork for the school correctly, but for some reason they are incapable of reading something and entering it the way it’s written, they instead choose to put it into the computer in what ever way they see fit.

We finally found out last Thursday that the letter was returned back to the main office for the school district and waited until late Friday afternoon for someone to take two freaking seconds to contact us and let us know exactly which building we needed to go to in order to pick this letter up, since we were told that because it was delivered back to them as undeliverable they legally could not mail it back to us. By the time they got back to us on Friday with the information it was too late to go pick the letter up then, so we made arrangements for my husband to pick it up this morning. GUESS WHAT?? When he got to where he was told to go to pick the letter up, he was told that it had mistakenly been mailed back to us on Friday! EXCUSE ME! You specifically told me on the phone that you COULD NOT mail this letter back to me! We SPECIFICALLY made arrangements to drive all the way out to hell and back to pick the friggin thing up on the next business day only to be told when we get there that you MAILED IT?? And guess what? They mailed it to the screwed up address again!

I swear to God this school district is ran by complete and total ASSTARDS! They’re more worried about not letting a child wear a shirt to school because it’s the incorrect shade of a color or about not letting them wear a vest to school because the stitching INSIDE of the vest is a different color, thus making it not a solid color resulting in a detention for not wearing a solid colored vest. EXCUSE ME, when does the stitching INSIDE of a piece of clothing have ANYTHING to do with the color of it? Especially if that stitching isn’t visible except for if something happens and the collar of it happens to fold back a little bit?

Maybe you all should spend a little more time on giving children the education that they are LEGALLY entitled to rather than focusing on reasons to punish them that don’t affect their education. And maybe, just maybe, you should worry about making sure that these children are truly educated, rather than pushing a failing child through to the next grade, or allowing a child who failed their ENTIRE senior year to graduate, just so that you can pad your numbers and give teachers bonus checks that they in NO WAY deserve!

Now that I have you scratching your head wondering what in the heck I’m talking about, I’ll fill you in…LOL! A week ago our home phone/DSL and cell phones were turned off because the bill was behind. They’re all from the same company and on the same bill, which I’m now realizing might not be the brightest idea I’ve ever had….LOL!

We “thought” we had a week to make the payment, that’s what the piece of paper on top of the bill pile for this particular bill said. But because the services were turned off we were told that they would not be turned back on without the entire bill paid in full. This particularly stunk because we knew hubby was going to have a smaller than normal check this week, but thankfully I had a better than normal pay coming in, so we thought we’d be fine. But, as the saying goes, that’s what you get for thinking!

After cashing his check and adding in my pay, we’ll be four dollars short of paying the bill. And that’s before the ATM fees to take my pay out of my account, and before the fees to put all of the money onto the prepaid debit card that we use to pay this particular bill AND before the fee that we have to pay each time this card is used. So, once you total those fees up we’ll actually be almost $10 short. We didn’t think it would be a big deal, I mean, it’s almost there ya know, and when you consider that I was overcharged by almost $20 on my cell phone bill for text messages, which is in dispute, I really didn’t think it would be a big deal.

But once again, that’s what I get for thinking. Hubby called the phone company to double check and see if they would still turn the services on if the payment was $10 short of the total amount, and what did they tell him? No sir, your services will not be turned back on with a payment less than the entire bill paid in full. All I can say is )(#@#)(*$&#@*(&)#@$&#@*$^)#@$&)@*(#&$)@#*&$#@)(*%^@)#*($^

OK, now that I have that out of my system I feel a little better, but I’m still friggin pissed off! But, I’ll get over it! In the mean time, since realizing we’re short on paying the bill, I’ve been a raving lunatic tonight but when you add in the fact that my stomach bug is about a billion times worse and Aunt Flo decided to arrive two weeks early again, I guess it’s not surprising. I HATE MENOPAUSE AND DIAL UP!

I’m probably one of the least judgmental people you’ll ever come across! I know that people make bad choices and mistakes and that sometimes the things they do can get them into trouble. What’s most important is that when someone makes a choice or mistake that gets them into trouble is that they learn from it, change their lives and do their best to not repeat their mistakes!

We recently had a very good friend who made a bad choice and got behind the wheel of his vehicle after having too much to drink. Fortunately, no one was hurt when he made this choice! He was stopped by the police and charged with a DUI. The night that he was stopped and arrested, his vehicle was impounded and he was told that he’d have to wait until after his first court appearance to ask the judge if he could remove his personal items from his vehicle, which included his work tools. Without these tools, he was totally unable to work, thus causing him loss of income.

His first court appearance was yesterday morning, and I was the person that was going to drive him there. As expected, he was worried about what was going to happen. The judge he was going before has a reputation of being hard ball. But our friend knew the decision he made was a bad one, and is making the steps on his own to make the changes in his life so that he doesn’t repeat this mistake.

Thankfully, the judge seemed to be in an abnormally decent mood yesterday and when my friend was called to go before him he explained about the tools and other property in his vehicle that were necessary for him to earn a living. While my friend was not allowed to get his vehicle out of impound, he was allowed to go to the impound lot and remove ALL of his personal property from his vehicle. Although that was a wonderful thing, it turned out not so wonderful.

It was immediately obvious that his vehicle had been gone through. Although he’s not the neatest person in the world, he’s very impeccable when it comes to his work tools being in order. As soon as we looked into his windows, it was obvious that his tools had been dumped and gone through. After opening the door and trying to get some sort of order to the mess, it was obvious that several of his most important tools were now missing.

Yes, he was 100% in the wrong for drinking and driving, he knows that. Yes, the law had the legal right to have his vehicle impounded for doing this! But how in the heck is it acceptable for these companies that impound peoples vehicles to STEAL peoples personal property when they take control of these vehicles? It’s a commonly known fact in this area that this happens ALL the time! It’s bad enough that peoples lives are put into turmoil because of the very bad decisions they make that cause them legal repercussions, but something needs to be done about the towing companies that think it’s their “right” to STEAL peoples personal property when impounding someones vehicles! THAT’S JUST WRONG!

You know, there are MANY things in life I can deal with that most people can’t! I can deal with extreme stress, I can deal with 2 kids that refuse to listen or get along, I can even deal with being called ALL of the derogatory names that many women are called! But one thing I CANNOT and WILL NOT deal with is being lied to, by ANYONE! I don’t care if you’re a person I see and deal with on a daily basis, or a simple online acquaintance that I hardly ever deal with, if you lie to me and I find out, you are CRAP in my book!

Nearly 4 months ago I made a “comment” online to someone that didn’t sit very well with them. It wasn’t necessarily that it pissed them off, it was just very obvious that it wasn’t what they wanted to hear. Prior to this we had had an “ammicable” online friendship. We really didn’t seek each other out, but we also didn’t avoid each other either, well, I didn’t avoid this person, but I don’t know how they felt about me 100% for certain, but I never got the feeling that they avoided me.

Anyway, just prior to making the comment that I talked about above, I had actually entered a contest this person was having for a small and inexpensive, but kind of cool item that I knew I’d actually use. Amazingly, after the “offensive” comment was made, the winner of said contest was drawn, and it turned out to be me! I was excited but also shocked at the same time, after everything that had happened, I never expected to win, NEVER! So I contacted them with my personal info and was told my prize would be sent out ASAP. Within a few weeks, I hadn’t received my prize, so I sent them a polite note asking if it had been sent out yet and the comment back was something to the effect of “OMG, I can’t believe I forgot to mail that out, I’ll get it out in tomorrows mail.

We’re now just a few days away from 4 months since I found out I won said contest, and to date, I still have not received my “prize”. Yet I see CONTINUOUSLY where this person is advertising contest after contest after contest. Yes, my prize was a VERY inexpensive item and NO, my life will not end if I don’t ever receive it. But my point is that you don’t tell someone they’ve won something and turn around and PURPOSELY never send it to them! How do I know it’s not being sent on purpose? Because this person is now completely avoiding me! All I have to say is LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!!!! Karma baby, what comes around goes around, it’s going to come back and bite you in the A$$ B!T

I’ve spent the last 10 years listen to everyone from everywhere rag on my favorite NFL team for every possible reason they can. Many are TOTALLY stupid, even lame and nit picky, but this latest one is beyond STUPID!

OK, first, for anyone that doesn’t already know, my favorite NFL team is the Cincinnati Bengals. (A moment here for those of you to say whatever sarcastic thing you want to say about them) ………… OK, that’s enough time! While I agree, they’ve done some really stupid things both on and off the field, they are still MY team and I am completely loyal to them. Why? Because they are the team I chose to follow 10 years ago and the thing is, when you’re a fan, you stick with the team you choose through thick and thin. Being a fan has NOTHING to do with winning or losing, PERIOD! Yes, winning is a better feeling, but life is about more than winning, life is about being loyal. Both to yourself AND your team(s).

Anyway, a couple weeks ago Carson Palmer was IN Los Angeles and was talking ON the air at a LOCAL radio station and made a statement that went something like this

“I cannot stand the Buckeyes and having to live in Ohio … it drives me completely nuts. Listening to them talk about their team makes me sick. … I just can’t wait for this game to get here so they can come out to the Coliseum and experience L.A. and get an old-fashioned Pac-10 butt-whipping. … And next year I hope we’re home the week S.C. visits the Horseshoe so that I can go there and watch the Trojans stomp them again.”

Now, many of the Buckeye fans are in a huff. They think that since the Bengals are an Ohio team, that Carson should be loyal to the Buckeye’s. While I could easily understand this “IF” Carson had been born and raised in Ohio, the fact of the matter is, HE WASN’T! Carson is a California native and a University of Southern California (a.k.a. USC) graduate. Now, tell me, wouldn’t YOU be loyal to your “home team”? Only a complete and total IDIOT would expect Carson to say he hopes the Bucks kick some USC butt at their next matchup! OH, WAIT, we’re talking about Buckeye fans here, I guess it makes a little more sense in thinking that they would expect him to not be loyal to the team that he played on for four years!

GET OVER IT! Can you imagine how freaking BORING this world would be if we all were fans of the same damn team? How BORING would THAT be? Team loyalty sparks some of the most outrageous moments in sports history and THAT my friend is anything BUT boring!

OK, so maybe Carson chould have been a little more careful in the wording of what he said, but for God’s sake, he was in California talking to a California radio station about the college football team that HE played on for four years. Who in their right mind would honestly think that he would say “GO BUCKS” even “IF” he were a recent Buckeye’s convert? NOT ME!!!!

First, for those that have no idea what Boost is, it is a pre paid cell phone company that is, from what I last knew, a branch of Nextel. We have had various cell phones through Boost on and off for several years now. We’ve used the mostly because of the ability to use the 2 way or “chirp” feature with family members who are ardent Nextel users.

We currently only have one cell phone through Boost that my son uses for the rare occasions that he needs a cell phone, which aren’t very often, and he did take the phone with him to Baltimore just in case he would need a cell phone while he was out there. A couple of days after we got home from taking the kids out to Baltimore I got a postcard from Boost telling me that they had given us a free $15 credit on the account, which was cool! I asked my son if he had been using the phone while he was out there and he said it’s still in his suitcase and he hasn’t even turned it on.

Being the meddling mom that I am, I decided to log into the Boost account this morning just to check it out and see whether or not he had been using the phone. To my amazement I seen a daily charge to the account for an application called “Boost Hookt”. I had no clue what this was so I Googled it and found out that it’s an application that allows people to connect to several different things as well as people using their phone, and that it’s an application that you have to actually sign up for. Although my son uses the phone, the account is in my name and I know that I never signed up for this Hookt thing…LOL! And I tried to go into the account activity to find out exactly when this was supposedly signed up for and for some reason I can’t see any account activity before Boost applied the “free” $15 credit. So, even though the phone isn’t being used at all, this “free” credit that they gave me is being eaten up little by little because we’re being charged daily for a program that A). I don’t recall signing up for and B). a program that you’re only supposed to be charged for if you actually use it.

HMMMMMMMMMMMM…….something sounds VERY fishy to me!!!!! And yes, I did contact them and am waiting for them to contact me back. But past history has proven to me that their customer service SUCKS! I’ll keep you posted as to what they say back to me!

Our car insurance is up for renewal in a few weeks and I wasn’t too happy with the price that came in on the bill. When I said something to my husband about it he wasn’t that happy either so we decided that I’d do some calling around and try to find a better price.

You’d think that my husband would inform me of something called a TICKET wouldn’t you? Oh no, apparently he thought that if he didn’t tell me, I’d never find out about not one, not two but THREE tickets that added points to his license. I tell you, I was NOT a happy camper when I found about about them today! And if it weren’t for a very nice lady at one of the agency’s that I called, I may have never found out about them.

So after I got off the phone with her I called the company that we currently have our car insurance through and asked them if his tickets were the reason for the drastic increase in our bill, and sure enough, they were. I paid the bill right then and there because after talking to the other places I called today, our current company ended up costing less than the others did. But I’m NOT thrilled about this at all! How is it I can go 23 years without a single ticket yet he can get three in a span of 8 months and not tell me about a single one of them? Did he honestly thing I’d not find out?

I tell you, the past 13 or so hours have been the longest 13 hours of my life…LOL! I was sitting here at my computer last night around 8 or so when the news guys broke into the regular programming warning about some very strong storms that were heading right for our area. As I sat there and watched them talk about the storms, they jumped in telling the people that live in the area that my mom does that they need to take cover ASAP that the winds with this storm had registered near 100 MPH and there was rotation forming in the clouds. I quick called her to make sure she knew what was going on, which she didn’t because she was driving and not at home, so it was a good thing that I called her.

Within minutes after calling her, we got hit with the heaviest rain I’ve seen in a very long time. From the kitchen window I could see that the rain was coming down in at least 2 different directions and it was coming down so fast and heavy that I couldn’t even see across the side yard out to the trampoline. The weathermen then came on the TV and said large hail was being reported in areas close to mine so at that point I decided that I needed to wake my husband up because he was asleep in the recliner directly in front of the sliding glass door. Good thing I woke him up when I did because within minutes the sliding glass door became a flood zone.

The door was installed not too long before we moved in here and they never completely finished the installation. I was thinking what was unfinished was more cosmetic than anything, but I discovered last night that the top of the door was never sealed when the rain started pouring in through the crack at the top of the door. Thankfully I save the 2 1/2 gallon buckets that we buy ice cream in, so I started putting those under the “streams” of water that were coming in. But there were so many that it was basically impossible to catch everything, so I ended up with an inch or so of water covering a good part of the floor out here. We were grabbing sheets, blankets and towels to try and at least stop the water from running to other parts of the room.

After the storm finally passed and we got all the water back on we discovered that although we never lost power somehow the DVR had shut itself off and reset. I figured if we just kept hitting the continue option everything would be OK, boy was I wrong…LOL! We ended up having to call the satellite company to get things figured out, but thankfully they were really nice about it and were able to fix it fairly quickly.

When I finally sat back down at my computer I went to open a website and all of a sudden my computer went whacko! Before I knew it I had over 40 tabs open in my browser and the browser wouldn’t shut down by clicking the “X” or by the task manager, so I had no choice but to restart it. When it was powered back up I ran my anti virus/anti spyware program to find out that I had a total of 3 different “worms” on my computer. Excuse me, HOW did my computer get worms on it? I don’t visit odd sites, I go to the same sites over and over again. It was apparent that while I was gone on my trip someone had went somewhere on this computer that I wouldn’t have approved of.

So, at about 10 or so last night I started going through a step by step guide that included downloading 5 other programs in order to try and remove the worms from my computer. My own antivirus/antispyware program would not remove them, no matter what I did, and this was a guide that I had used once before on the kids’ computer with success, so I decided I’d do it on my own computer, hopefully with the same success.

To make a long story short, it did work, but it ended up taking nearly 5 hours to get everything ran. Yes, I could have put it off until this morning, but I also knew that the kids had an appointment this morning and I also didn’t want to shut my computer down knowing what was wrong with it, so I was up until a little after 3 AM.

My hubby tried to wake me up before he left for work, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I told him just to set the alarm for 9 and I’d get up then, what a HUGE mistake that was! When I got up with the alarm, I walked out to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and noticed a “puddle” in the family room. My first thought was that the puppy had an accident before hubby left for work and he didn’t realize it. It would have been nice if it were that simple. When I got out to the family room I realized it was raining really hard again and the sliding door was once again leaking! So, off I went to try and scramble up some more towels or sheets or anything I could find, this time it was running down the door, so buckets weren’t going to catch it.

NOT the way I wanted to start my day, hopefully it gets better, but I have a feeling I’m going to get a stern lecture from the kids’ doctor this morning over an argument I had over the phone with his nurse. Oh well

During my recent trip, I decided that I was going to see just exactly how I felt, and just exactly how things went at home while I wasn’t here. You see, our home seems to be nothing but stress and arguments. Now, I do understand that with teens comes the mouthiness and argumentativeness or trying to find their way. I also understand that after spending nearly 17 years with your spouse that things do change. But what I don’t understand is why it’s so difficult for four people to get along.

Here’s a very quick synopsis of how my trip went. Even after being sleep deprived and PMSing, I only had one time where I got even the tiniest bit upset, ONE TIME! Here’s a quick synopsis of how things went here at home while I was gone. EVERY day was filled with some sort of argument or disagreement, some of which caused extreme anger issues in the kids and my husband. Yet amazingly, even though I wasn’t even home, other family members that don’t live in my house seem to think the reason for all of the problems while I was gone is still completely my fault. It’s my fault that the kids pushed their father to the point of being so angry that he slammed a door hard enough to pull the door jam 2-3 inches away from the wall. It’s my fault that my children fought the way that they did and didn’t take care of the responsibilities they were supposed to, and it’s my fault that the kids neglected to care for the dogs the way they were asked to.

OK, EXCUSE ME, HOW is this my fault when I was thousands of miles away and not a presence in this home? Let’s see, at one point while I was driving through the mountains I received a very angry phone call from my daughter because she couldn’t find something that I had given her with the instructions to put it in her suitcase for grandma’s on the day that I left. After a few calls with her as well as a few calls with my husband, it was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to help, and since I was driving I told them that I did not need the distraction and when I ended the call I would be turning my cell phone off, which I did. Approximately 2 hours later I turned the phone back on only to be greeted with umpteen voice mail messages from my lovely 12 year old daughter who called me everything EXCEPT mom. Those, of course, were followed by a message in which she was crying and apologized because, amazingly, the item was right in her suitcase, even though she SWORE she had completely went through it. So what did I do you ask? Did I get angry? NOPE, I called her and let her know that I loved her very much and told her not to worry about it because I knew she didn’t mean it and told her to have a good time at grandma’s house.

Here’s another example of something that happened, or actually didn’t happen, while I was away. I busted my ass making sure this house was clean and laundry was done, I made sure my desk was completely cleaned and wiped off since my husband was going to be using my computer while I was gone. I made sure everyone knew where all of the important things they’d need were at and when I walked out the door this house was cleaner than it had been in a avery long time, with only maybe 2 loads of laundry that needed to be washed (due to my son deciding a few hours before I was leaving to FINALLY clean his room and bring out his dirty clothes). Yet, when I got home, not only was the house a FILTHY mess, there was also a TON of laundry piled up, a load of clothes in the washer that had obviously been left there all week (the smell about made me puke) and the load of clothes that was in the dryer when I left had been taken in to my room had several heavy objects piled on top of it thus making EVERYTHING in the basket wrinkled to the point that they all have to either be ironed or rewashed. (I’m rewashing them because I REFUSE to iron t-shirts).

The arguing was almost non stop last week, EVERY time I called home I would get the latest low down about who had done what and what daddy’s reaction was. There are a few things around the house now that are broken, a few others that are simply gone and the tension in this house when I came home was so thick, you can could it with a knife. Yet, I’M the problem?

Yes, I am a stay at home/work at home mom, which means I do feel that I’m responsible for the bulk of the housework and stuff that has to do with the kids. But when I’m not home why is it left for me to do when I get back home? ESPECIALLY when I busted my ass before I left to make sure it was DONE?

And why am I the reason “this family is the way it is” yet when I’m gone I’m completely stress free with almost no anger issues, yet everyone here at home continued on the way they do when I’m not home? Do I have anger issues? YUP! But only when I am pushed to the point of no return, when I am so completely stressed out that I feel my only venue for dealing with the stress is to get angry. And when I get so fed up because although there are four people in this house that are TOTALLY able to clean up after themselves, yet because I don’t have a “job” they all feel that I’m the one that should do it.

So my trip was definitely an eye opening experience. In just a few weeks my kids are going away for a month and it will just be the hubby and I at home with the dogs. At first I had the feeling that he and I would discover how much we loved each other again, but now, I have this gut wrenching feeling that we’re going to discover otherwise. I admit to what I do wrong, I’ve never denied the fact that I get angry and upset, EVER. But when I’m not around and things continue just as they did when I was here, that tells me the problem isn’t just me. Yet I’m the one that everyone blames, and what do they tell me? Get back on your meds. I’m sorry, a pill is NOT going to solve the problems with this family! And I’m not sure how much longer I can go on letting them put the blame completely on me before I simply walk out the door!

OK, I know that I’m NOT a young chickie, and that honestly does not bother me! But I’m NOT old, nor am I disabled! So imagine my surprise when I received an envelope in the mail yesterday from The Scooter Store that said “Open this envelope to improve how you measure your independence”, and the other side urged me to call now to get a free magnifying ruler* (*limit one per household)

COME ON, how do these companies get peoples names and addresses to mail this crap to? I also get letters telling me about medicare insurance and something else, that I obviously am not even close to old enough to qualify for…LOL! And while I was chattin with my BFF Beth this morning I found out that she got something in the mail today from the AARP, and she’s only 32!!!!!

People, people, people! You wonder why your company is having financial problems? Could it be because you mail these types of things to THOUSANDS of people that have absolutely NO use for them or are way too young to qualify? Or do you just model your business choices after our Government who sends not one, but TWO letters to people who qualify for stimulus checks this year when one simple post card type of notification would have been more than sufficient!

Anyway, I just thought that was funny, and I hope you do too!

I figured I’d better stop by and give you an update about what’s happened since my post last week. Nothing with the situation involving my daughter has been settled, but that was to be expected because of the fact that this week is the OAT testing, and every student needs to be present for that. However, there was something that happened last night that has both my husband and I very upset, my husband more so than me.

There was a track meet last night and my husband went and took one of the dogs with him. While he was walking around with the dog he turned a corner to see the main girl that we’ve had problems with going through our daughters bags at the same time that one of her friends drop kicked our daughters lunch box 20 yards across the football field. When they seen my husband coming towards them they ran away, but several other kids that were sitting there watching these two do this came forward telling my husband what all had been done. The girl we’ve had so many problems with had taken my daughters cell phone out of her bag and had been making calls with it while digging through my daughters bag. There is also a missing digital camera, but we’re not 100% certain it was in her bag yesterday.

My husband gathered up my daughters things and went to the track coach to get our daughter and told the coach she was leaving. When the coach asked what was going on, my hubby explained about what he had just seen and the coach was IRATE! He told my husband he understood and said it was fine for our daughter to leave because all that was left to do was clean up and the other kids could take care of that, he also assured my husband that what happened would be dealt with. This morning my husband took our daughter to school so that he could go in and talk to the principal, but amazingly the principal had a feeling one of us would be coming in. The coach had called him at home last night telling him what had happened at the track meet. The principal told my husband that after testing was over for today the situation would be dealt with immediately and that he would call us and let us know the results. My husband made it clear to the principal that this kind of harassment was going to stop now or we would take it up to the next step. He also took in our daughters lunch box that was ruined because of being drop kicked across the football field.

I just want this to stop, both what is being done to my daughter and what ever my own daughter is doing. It takes two for a situation to get this out of hand! But I also cannot believe that the girl that has been doing this is stupid enough to now be caught by both myself and my husband. Does she not realize that because of everything that has happened lately that people are keeping an eye on what’s going on? Or is it more that the only people that are going to do anything about it are my husband and myself and that’s why she just keeps doing stuff like this? It’s just so frustrating! I’ll update later when we hear what all happened!

After the events that unfolded at one of my children’s schools yesterday, I find myself sitting this morning thinking about how much things have changed since I was a kid! When I was in school, you felt safe and supported. Yes, there were bullies back then, there always has been and there always will be, but they were usually put in their place and the bullying came to a stop. The same goes for kids teasing other kids, it’s always been around and it always will be, but the teachers and principal always knew when a line was crossed and it was time to put a stop to it!

I have never been a parent that sits back and says my children are perfect and/or innocent, nor will I ever be. I know how my kids are here at home and I know the things they have done in the past. But you have to try to move on from things that people have done and you have to try to give them a chance at changing their lives. Just because someone does something once, or more, doesn’t always mean they’re continuing to do so. I “try” to give people the benefit of the doubt until they give me reason not to.

At one point yesterday it became necessary for me to pick my child up from school because of some teasing and making fun of that was being done by their peers. Although my child had told me that these persons had given them problems and had been just plain mean and vindictive to them for some time, I chose to think that my child had been doing the normal thing by stretching or twisting the truth to make things worse than they were. But imagine how I felt when I walked into my child’s school to pick them up and seen a group of children standing outside of the office doorway laughing and pointing and saying some not so nice things. And imagine how surprised I was as I neared the office only to see that when this group of kids moved away my child was sitting there with tears running down their face and that it was my child that was the focus of their attention, and that the office staff was just standing there, watching and allowing it to happen without saying or doing anything!

I’m not going to go into details because it’s just not necessary, but I will say that as a parent, this was probably one of the most heartbreaking moments I’ve ever experienced. To see my child sitting there, literally falling apart, and absolutely no one was supporting them or making these children stop what they were doing. I can’t help but wonder what type of parents these children have that would allow their children to think treating someone like this is totally acceptable. I also can’t help but wonder how these children’s parents would have reacted if they had seen their child being treated the way that I seen mine being treated! I kept my cool, but I did cry in front of the office staff and I did tell one of them that I could not believe that I seen what I did and that it was 100% UNACCEPTABLE and I would not tolerate it! And before you tell me to just deal with it, you need to know that what was being said and done went WAY beyond the realm of normal teasing.

So many things have changed since I was a young child myself. Some of those changes are good, some, not so good. But schools really need to stand up and pay attention to what is going on. And parents need to teach their children to not treat other people how they would not want to be treated themselves! Yes, kids are going to pick on each other, that’s simply part of life. But when it gets to the point that it affects a child so severely that the child is an emotional wreck, it needs to STOP! NO parent should ever have to witness what I did yesterday. To see your child in the emotional state that they are in and know that the people who are supposed to make sure that they feel safe and supported just sit there and allow this to go on is almost unfathomable!

As parents, we need to teach our children that treating people like this is NOT acceptable! No, no child is perfect, and at some point in time they are going to pick on someone. But to do it non stop to the point that it not only affects the child at home, it also affects the child at school, is simply too much! Would I feel this way if it were another child being treated like this than mine? ABSOLUTELY! No child should ever have to be put in this type of a situation, nor should they ever be made to feel this way!

OK, I’m going to shut up now, because I’m starting to repeat myself here, thank you for listening!

I’m so flippin pissed right now, it’s not even funny! I try my best to have mornings around here go as well as possible, I don’t like the thought of my kids walking out the door to go to school being upset, I don’t think it’s a good way to start the day. I’ve known for a VERY long time that neither of my kids are morning people, and that’s fine. We’ve made adjustments and make sure that we set their alarms earlier than what is actually necessary, that way they have a little more time to get ready for school.

This morning my daughter decided to wait until about 10 minutes before we have to walk out the door for the 5 minute drive to where she gets on the bus to START getting ready. Now mind you, I’ve been in and out of her room telling her to get up and get moving for almost an hour now. Just a couple of minutes ago she lays into me about the fact that I didn’t come in and make sure she was up and moving at the time that her alarm went off, and that’s why she’s running so late this morning getting ready. EXCUSE ME? I’ve been in and out of your room since 6:10 telling you to get up and get moving, yet you laid there NOT getting ready until 6:42, and now all of a sudden it’s MY fault? I DON’T THINK SO AND YOU ARE GROUNDED!

So now, rather than a 5 minute drive to the bus stop, I have a 25 minute drive to her school because we won’t make the bus in time. You can bet your butt that her alarm is going to be set 30 minutes earlier and I’ll come in her room with spray bottles and air horns if she’s not up and getting ready within FIVE minutes of that time! I’m SOOOOOOOOO done with this bullshit!

I no more than posted that post and they came on the show going into a house of a person that they believed was an animal hoarder. Now, I love my dogs, but 4 is almost too many sometimes. This lady had a total of 80 dogs and about 30 cats. Her home was so over taken by animals that she was using several air purifiers to try and control the smell and she had also reverted to sleeping on a small cot because of the amount of room that the animals took up. Now I admit that I’m an animal lover, but there is no way I would have so many dogs that they completely took over my house and my ability to breathe fresh air or sleep in a comfortable bed!

My husband and I had to run into town last night to take care of a couple of bills and pick up a few odds and ends that we had forgotten to pick up when we were grocery shopping Wednesday evening. When we were on our way home I asked him to stop at a local home improvement store because I needed to pick up some bird seed and check prices on a few different things I needed for the house.

When I got to the bird seed aisle I seen there was a man there checking out bird feeders and he was looking at one like the one of mine that I totally don’t like. So, I decided I’d offer him my thoughts and experiences with it and hoped that he’d be receptive to them. Surprisingly he was not only receptive, but I actually ended up talking to him about bird feeders and the different types of seed for quite a while. I explained to him about all the different types of birds that I get at my feeders with the inexpensive bird seed that I’ve been using, and I also told him about what a pain I thought the specific feeder he was first looking at was. I then pointed out a different feeder that I have three of, that was actually a third of the price. He was kind of surprised that a very inexpensive feeder had such a good “review”, but it is honestly the best of all the different feeders that I have!

When he and I were finished talking I went to check out the pre cut counter tops and see if they had any six footers that I liked and was totally shocked to see that the price on them had actually gone down quite a bit since the last time I priced them! I was hoping I would be able to get the counter top and post legs that I need for it this week, but unfortunately it’s just not in the budget this week, so I am going to have to put it off for a few more weeks!

The only thing left to do was pick up some paint sample swatches and check out with my lonely little bag of bird seed…LOL! As we walked into a check out lane, we had an older woman jump in front of us. She had several things in her cart, but I didn’t think too much of it until she turned and looked at us and said “That’s my husband behind you, could you please let him through”. My husband and I both turned to look and were greeted with an older man with one of those utility type carts that LOADED with all types of wood and lumber. You could tell he felt a bit embarrassed by the fact that she had jumped in line in front of us and he did try to apologize. I just looked at him and said it wasn’t his fault his wife was a bwitch….LOL!

I know saying that wasn’t the nicest thing for me to say, but it was MUCH nicer than what I wanted to do! There was a display with wall sconces at the end of the aisle and what I wanted to do was throw them all at her….LOL. We had a single item, a measly bag of bird seed, and between she and her husband they had a few hundred dollars worth of items. If the situation would have been switched, I’d have made sure she went through before I did! But I guess that’s just how I am.

I often share with you the many things I see when I look out the windows here. If anything, the view for the past several months has been VERY consistent, and this morning definitely isn’t an exception…LOL! Before you look at the pictures, please keep in mind that the temp here yesterday was in the upper 40’s. ENJOY!

If anyone out there knows how to get in touch with Mother Nature, could you PLEASE tell her that if it doesn’t stop snowing SOON, I may end up going off the deep end like Jack Nicholson did in The Shining….LOL! And if there is anyone out there with several dump trucks that would like to come haul this away for me, I’ll let you have it for free ;o)

Hi everyone and Happy Easter to those that celebrate it! It’s not been the best of days here in my household, I almost wish I could just go back to bed to get the day over with!

It all started this morning a few minutes before 7:00. I woke up to my 12 year old waking me up to say “I’ve been up for a while and I’m bored, can I get on the computer”? EXCUSE ME?!?! You are going to wake me up after a night of heck just to ask if you can get on the (*#@&$(*@#& computer? Sage was waking up at that time as well, so I’d have been up eventually, but that just did not sit right with me at all!

I get up and take Sage outside, come back in and start coffee. Although I’m not in the best of moods I try to get the day going as best as I can. The coffee finally finished and I sat down with my first cup and took a drink and all of a sudden was hit with this HORRIBLE pain in my mouth. It was soon very obvious that I was missing a fairly large part of one tooth. I did have part of the filling fall out a couple of days ago and planned on calling the dentist Monday morning, but obviously the tooth wasn’t going to cooperate until Monday. The pain was almost unbearable!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I was soon to find out that every single one of my websites were down. Apparently the company that I have them hosted through has been moving some of their servers and rather than give the people who pay their salaries notice via a simple email, they decide to be lazy bastards and only post the info on their status page. Making the people who pay for their service go through hell and back trying to find out what’s going on. I sang their praises after a major mistake they made a couple of months ago, but I’m seriously considering moving now. Their inability to openly communicate with their customers is unacceptable to me. If you know that you are going to do something that will take my site(s) out of service, even for a moment, give me the courtesy of letting me know ahead of time! That way, if I happen to have a morning like I did today, at least I know ahead of time what’s going on!

I’d love to just go back to bed, but I have a TON of stuff I need to get done today, so it’s not an option. So if I come across as rude or witchy today, I apologize ahead of time!

I swear, anything that culd go wrong today has gone wrong! Well, let me back up a bit. The morning with the kids went very well, even considering that my son waited until 10 minutes until the bus was supposed to be here before he even started getting ready for school. But we had fun and were laughing, which is the way I prefer getting their mornings started! I was honestly worried that he’d miss the bus, since his bus comes after I leave to take my daughter to her bus stop, but he was gone when I got back.

Normally Monday’s are my favorite day of the week, I look forward to having the day to myself, but almost from the time I got back from taking my daughter to the bus, things went down hill quickly! When I walked in the door I had a pile of white “fluff” in the middle of the living room floor. After some investigating I dsicovered that the fluffl had come from the leather couch and that one of the dogs had chewed a HUGE hole in one of the cushions.

Not long after I got that cleaned up the dogs were looking out the front window barking, which meant that someone was in the driveway. I went and looked and it was a FedEx truck, they were delivering my daughters replacement MP3 player. Amazingly the company mailed the replacement in a box with no type of protection at all other than those plastic blow up tubes on each side of it, but nothing wrapped around the player at all. It’s still charging, so we’re not sure if it works or not.

Once I got the box for the MP3 player opened and the player out, I had to go into my daughters room to find the charger. I was disgusted with the pile of crap beside her bed that I had to dig through in order to find the dang charger, so I decided that I was going to clean up her room. Yeah, right, that’s going to take a week, if not longer. I know that I’m not the worlds best house keeper, but the way my daughter takes care of her room makes me look like a clean freak!

Then this afternoon I went to go pick my daughter up from track practice, the van started just fine, I pulled out of the driveway then put the van in reverse to back up to the mail box to get the mail, and it stalled, right in the middle of the road, and wouldn’t restart! As I’m trying and trying to get it to restart my cell phone rings and it’s my daughter, they let track practice out half an hour earlier than expected and she is standing outside of the school waiting for me. I had my son come out to try and help me at least move the van off the road, but that beast wasn’t gonig anywhere, PERIOD! I just kept trying and trying and finally it did start, so I drove back in the driveway, parked it and took my VERY reliable Honda! On the way to get my daughter I called my hubby SCREAMING, this is the 2nd time the van has done this and I’m DONE! I don’t give a shit if I only get $200 and have to take a huge loss, the van is GONE! It might look nice, but if I can’t rely on it, it’s worthless in my book!

Days like today make me just want to give up! I just want to throw my hands up in the air and not do things that will improve the longevity of life. But I also know that days like today are not common. Yes, things to go wrong occasionally, but not so many things in a single day. Usually it’s just one thing, maybe two, which is managable. But when so many things go wrong in such a short period of time, it’s difficult to not want to just give up, ya know?

Hopefully tomorrow will be better! In the mean time I need get dinner ready, it’s already 6:30, UGH, it’s going ot be a long night too! Can I just go back to bed and wake up tomorrow? PLEASE?????