Holly’s Happenings

I’ve sat here all night crying and wondering why such a young and vibrant man is now forever gone from this earth. It’s probably been one of the most painful nights I’ve spent in many, many years and unfortunately it’s only the beginning.

Around 11:45 last night I received a phone call from my sister. As soon as I heard her voice I knew that the news was not going to be anything I wanted to hear, she could barely speak through her tears. She told me that my brothers oldest son’s body had been found and that he had apparently drowned while he was fishing in a local river. It’s been over 5 hours now and I’m still in complete disbelief, it just does not seem like something that is even remotely possible and honestly, I don’t want it to be true!

I’m worried about his parents (my brother and sister in law) as well as my mother. My sister told me that they had to call an ambulance for my sister in law tonight and even though it was obvious she needed medical help, she refused to go to the hospital. She’s had some fairly serious health problems over the past few months and getting the news that her eldest son was gone brought some of her health problems back up to the surface. I also am worried about my mother. She has spent so much of her life giving and doing for her children and now her grandchildren, they are her whole world and this loss is going to take a very hard toll on her!

I know that death is a part of life, it’s been a part of my life for many years now. But knowing that doesn’t take the pain away or make it any less. All I can think of is what a beautiful young man he was and what a wonderful future he had ahead of him. He had been planning a wedding, he was an Uncle to two adorable little boys, a brother, a son, a grandson, a great grandson, a nephew and a cousin, and my heart is absolutely breaking right now! It’s almost unimaginable that I will never see his smile again or stand on my tip toes to put my arms around him and give him a hug. It’s just so impossible to believe that he’s gone! I’ve cried all night wishing that this was nothing more than a horrible dream and that I’d wake up and have it not have happened, but the pain in my heart right now tells me that’s not going to happen. It hasn’t even been a whole day and I miss him so much already!

Rest In Peace Eric, you will forever be in my heart!

OMG, I can’t even remotely explain how excited I am right now! I got the tracking numbers last week and have almost stalked the UPS website checking for updates. The delivery date said May 13, which is tomorrow, so that’s what I expected. But when I got home from taking my son into school a little while ago I almost died when I seen a package on the front porch!

As you may recall, back in February I wrote this post with a video that I made telling why I felt Buy.com ROCKS! I had so much fun making that video and it started me on a video making spree…LOL!

But that video won me one of THESE!!! I am SOOOOOO totally excited, this is something that my family has wanted for a VERY long time, but it just was one of those things that, as much as we wanted it, we just couldn’t justify the cost! Well, thanks to Buy.com and the company that sponsored this, I now don’t have to choose between paying a bill or putting food on the table and buying something that is going to bring my family even closer!

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

I just thought I’d give you a heads up and let you know that I’m going to be taking a trip in a few weeks! It’s not one that I had planned or expected, it actually came up very unexpectedly in a conversation yesterday!

I’ll be leaving around Memorial Day and will be gone for a week or so. I’m going on a road trip with two wonderful ladies to the West Coast, our final stop being San Jose, California. Along the way we hope to be able to make a few stops and seeing some of the many wonderful sites our country has to offer and after arriving in San Jose I think we might try to sneak up to San Francisco before flying home.

It will be the first time in the 15+ years that I’ve been a parent that I’ve gone away from my kids for more than a couple of days, but I have no doubt that they and their father will be fine while I’m gone. OK, I lied, I do have my doubts….LOL! But you know what, I NEED this more than I’ve needed anything for a VERY long time! I give everything I have to give to my family and rarely do anything for myself, so for once I’m going to be selfish! I think I have the right to be…LOL! I do plan on taking my husbands laptop along, but not for anything more than keeping in touch! I need a break from everything, but that’s not saying that I won’t pop in and say hello and let you know how my trip is going!

As you know from the previous post, I have one heck of a mess on my hands. It’s going to be a heck of a process getting it done, but I have faith, especially after the progress I made today! I was chatting with my gal Sassy this morning telling her how overwhelming it felt after looking at the pictures and that I didn’t even know where to begin. Her words were “Start where you spend the most time”. Now, if you know me well, you know that I spend a good part of my time in my new memory foam bed….LOL! Yes, I do spend a good amount of time there, but the bulk of my awake hours are spent right here at my desk, and the fact that you couldn’t see the top of it really was embarrassing! So I decided that I’d start with the family room since that’s where my desk is, as well as my desk, printer table and bookshelf area. I took the before pictures from this morning and put them side by side with the after pictures of the same area. In some of the pictures I noticed that there doesn’t seem to be much difference in the after pictures, especially the bookshelf, but there really is! The entire thing is much more organized, so much so that I have a completely empty shelf now…LOL! And yes, you’re seeing right, although it’s all cleaned and organized I totally did not dust off that bottom shelf. The photos are after the fold!
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Yes ladies and gentlemen, you are about to embark on what, to date, will be my most embarrassing blog post EVER! I am going to put myself “out there” 100% because if I don’t embarrass myself about this, I’m never going to do anything about it! Ladies and gentlemen, I am a pack rat and a clutter bug! I’ll admit that I’m not the worlds best house keeper, not even close! But I always have tried to make sure that I take care of the important things, i.e. dishes, laundry, floors, etc.

Lately I’ve been in a “funk”, so to say. My hubby and I have been arguing quite a bit lately, it’s gotten to the point that I’ve seriously wondered if my marriage could possibly be ending. Add to that the drama with the kids that’s gone on lately, and some of the financial stuff, and I’ve just not been in a good state of mind at all! Usually when spring arrives, I’m able to shake off my winter “blues” and get my butt in gear, but this year I just have not been able to do that at all, and the pictures you are about to see are the end result of what can happen when you don’t do something about a fairly significant case of depression.

Before I show you the pictures I have to add a little something in my defense. Yes, I haven’t done the best job of keeping up with things, which you are about to see, but I also have another adult and 2 teens living in this home who absolutely are 100% incapable of picking up after themselves, and frankly, it just gets FRUSTRATING! I don’t expect them to do major work, I just want them to rinse their dirty dishes and put them in the sink and/or pick up their dirty clothes, nothing that major!

So, without further adieu, click on the “read more” link to see pictures of my clutter! Starting today, I am going to be AWOL from my computer until I get this mess under control, because it’s completely ridiculous and makes me sick! I figure if I put them out there for the world to see, then you all can keep asking me for updates….LOL! Here goes, pictures below “the fold”, click on them to view larger
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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 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!

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!

OK, I’m sure my regular readers know that I do not normally blog about the types of things that I’m about to write about, but this time I simply can’t help myself. Partially because when I told my kids I was going to blog about this they said “NO YOU WON’T”, and partially because, well, I’m sorry, it’s just TOOOOOOO funny! (and somewhat gross)

The kids are off school on a snow day today and the morning was a nightmare! The kids were fighting all morning long about anything and everything you can imagine and were completely driving me up a wall! Fortunately, they seem to have calmed down some this afternoon! Sometime after 12, I decided that I REALLY needed to get a shower! We have 2 full bathrooms here in the house, the one up front has a tub/shower combo and the one back here just has a shower stall. For some reason the shower back here just does not get good water pressure. We’ve checked everything to make sure there are no water leaks or anything like that that could cause the lack of water pressure, but found nothing. When we first moved in, the kids actually preferred the shower back here because the one up front has a window in it that has that bumpy opaque glass in it and it freaked them out to think about showering in front of a window even though we proved to them that NOTHING is seen outside! In time, however, their fears of using the shower with the window passed and eventually it ended up that no one was using this shower back here, so we actually turned it into our indoor storage area for wood for the wood burner…LOL! But the commode in both bathrooms are regularly used, which is VERY handy in a house with four people!

So, back to my decision that I REALLY needed to take a shower…LOL! (See, us old people tend to get off track now and then…LOL) As I went to take my shower I went to use the commode and upon lifting the seat was greeted by the smiling face of a near 6 foot long Mr. Hanky! Yes, I am drastically over exaggerating when I say 6 foot, but I’m not over exaggerating when I say that the size of said Mr. Hanky is something that should NOT come out of a human! The worst part is that I have what could probably qualify for the weakest stomache on the face of the earth! I can see something or smell something and sometimes even hear something and will IMMEDIATELY start gagging! So when I seen the version of Mr. Hanky that was greeting me, yup, you guessed it, it made me gag!

Since I knew it did not come from myself or my husband I went out to where the kids were and informed them that one of them needed to take care of the situation ASAP! This led to an argument consisting of the two “perpetrators” insisting that said Mr. Hanky did NOT come from them. OK, let’s be amateur detectives here for a moment. The inhabitants of this house consist of myself, my husband, my two children and three dogs. Neither my husband or myself use said bathroom except just before showering and none of the three dogs are trained to use the toilet, and even if they were, well, I won’t go into that here…LOL! That being said, the ONLY other people that have been in this house today are my darling children, both of which almost exclusively use the front bathroom.

Eventually my darling daughter volunteered to make sure that Mr. Hanky was properly disposed of, all the while giving us plunge by plunge details about what was going on…LOL! It was one of those priceless moments in life, if you have the state of mind to find things like this funny! And it totally turned our day around, at least for now. So, yes, it is a bit gross, and yes, it’s definitely not someting that I write about here regularly, and for anyone that was offended, I’m sorry! But I just couldn’t help myself!

I thought I would stop by and give you an update to THIS post that I made last month. The video that I made was chosen as one of 10 winners! And my prize? A queen sized memory foam mattress and foundation! Saying WHOOOHOOO doesn’t even begin to explain how tickled I am right now! This is going to be SOOOOOOO awesome and I can’t wait until I get my new bed!!!

But the REALLY exciting news is THIS:

My bed is on the truck here in my town!!  I wish I could just go get it rather than having to wait until Monday….LOL!!!!  I’m just so thrilled and excited!  The bed my husband and I are currently sleeping on is one that we purchased shortly after we were married, and our 16 year anniversary is less than 3 months away…LOL!!  It’s needed to be replaced for quite some time now, but we’ve just never been able to justify doing so, we’ve always found other places where we felt the money could be better spent.  So stay tuned and I’ll update you after I get it set up Monday!  I’m REALLY looking forward to a wonderful nights sleep!

THANK YOU BedInABox.com and PayU2Blog.com!

My husband just called to let me know that he and the guy he was going to ride with just made it out where they needed to work tonight. It’s not a big deal that he just made it there, except for the fact that they left at 6:00 and it’s a little past 8:00 now. He then told me that they had a VERY close call driving down the road. It seems that there was a work van a few vehicles ahead of them that had a ladder hooked to a van rack, and the ladder flew off the top of the van and fell in the road causing the cars behind it to swerve to miss the ladder. Fortunately, everyone was able to keep from hitting the ladder and there were no accidents, but considering that the roads are wet, it could have turned into a bad scene! I don’t like driving trucks and vans that have racks with equipment hooked on the outside of them for this exact reason! But I also know that for many businesses, these types of racks are necessary.

I was sitting here reading through some of the top news headlines at my favorite news site when I read one of the headlines to my husband. The headline read “Is Nicole Richie back in drug rehab“? My darling daughter, who seems to think she has to butt into everything my husband and I say to each other, blurted out “Nicole Richie has the diarrhea”? My husband and I about fell out of our chairs laughing! One of these days she’s going to get herself into a sticky situation if she keeps butting in on peoples conversations!

Today’s mail was filled with the usual items, bills, bills and more bills…LOL! I also got a FUN package that I’ll tell you more about later, a letter stating that our health insurance is going to be canceled in one week because we forgot to sign something and a bank statement.

First topic, letter about the insurance being canceled. The last piece of paper that I signed for this insurance was in April, over 7 months ago! I immediately got on the phone to find out WTF was going on and the person I need to talk to about this matter wasn’t available and I was sent to their voicemail. I left a very detailed and polite message and hung up the phone. I then called back and asked for this persons supervisor, figuring that if the person I needed to speak to wasn’t in, their supervisor might be able to explain. Once again, I was sent straight to voicemail and once again, I left a very detailed AND polite message. I then went online and looked up an email address so that I could send an email trying to find out what is going on. I mean, for God’s sake, it’s Friday afternoon, no one is available on the weekends, Thursday is a holiday and they’re saying my policy will be canceled on Friday. That gives me a grand total of 2 freakin days to try and keep my insurance policy from being canceled. Am I the only one that sees something wrong with this scenario? So, I sent out a very detailed AND polite email in hopes that between the voicemail messages and the email that someone would get back with me today, to at least acknowledge that they’ve heard from me. I mean, how difficult is that? Apparently too difficult, because it’s been 2 hours now and I’ve heard NOTHING!

But, the other piece of mail brought GOOD news!! Yes, I’m talking about my bank statement. The last time I had checked my checking account, I had a grand total of $1.51 in it. I figured I’d just let it sit there and draw me a penny’s interest every quarter….LOL!!! Imagine my surprise when I opened my statement today to find that my account no longer had $1.51 in it, instead it had MORE! So now I don’t have to fret and worry about how I’m going to pay one of the bills that was due yesterday, which is a HUGE relief!

So, even though I’m really ticked off about the insurance thing, the balance in my bank account made me feel better….LOL!:D

OK, I’ll admit that I’m not one to say that I do believe in ghosts or spirits, however I also won’t say that I don’t believe in them either. Tonight, when I was uploading the photos for the bacon cooker to my computer, I also uploaded the pictures that I took of this house when we were cleaning and painting before we moved in. As I was looking through the pictures I seen something that made me go “HUH”!!!! I’ll upload several pictures so that you can look at them and tell me if you see what I see. The pictures were taken one after another with little time in between them. And PLEASE pardon the mess!!!! OK, here goes, click on them for larger pictures! Click “MORE” to see the pics!
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Please don’t get me wrong, I did not move into this house in the woods thinking that bugs wouldn’t be part of it.  I know that you can’t live in this type of setting without seeing bugs, especially spiders.  But what I seen this morning totally creeped me out!  I hadn’t been awake but maybe 20 minutes when I seen my husband come to a dead stop not too far from my desk and say “OH MY GOD”.  I jumped up to see what he was looking at and seen one of the biggest and oddest looking spiders I have ever seen.  I only stood there for a second before I ran out of the room freaking out, and my husband was quick to give it a quick squish with his shoe, so I also wasn’t able to get a picture of it.  But to see him freaking out over a spider let me know that it was pretty bad!  I’d pull the tissue out of the trash that he picked it up with, but the thought of that grosses me out…LOL!  So you’ll just have to use your imagination and take my word for it.  I’m thinking that I need to seriously consider setting off some heavy duty bug/spider bombs in the house this weekend!

Jennifer over at The Life of a School Bus Driver gave me her Blogger of the Day Award today!  I feel so honored, especially after looking through the previous winners blogs!  So Thank you Jennifer, I’ll display my award with pride!

I decided that just in case you wanted to know what I’d be doing for the next week, I’d give you my itenarary:

• Saturday - Class from 8 a.m. to noon, then homework, housework and packing the rest of the day, I’ve canceled the visit to my sister
• Sunday - Cleaning and packing here with the kids while my husband works all day (FOR DOUBLE TIME…YAY!)
• Monday - Class from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., go to the bank and get a cashiers check for the new landlord, give cashiers check to new landlord and get keys to new house so that I can start cleaning, make phone calls to get utilities switched into my name at new house, go to new house and clean until I have to get my daughter from the bus, bring her home, give kids instructions on cleaning and packing, go back to new house to clean until it’s dark.
• Tuesday - Class from 9 a.m. to 12 noon, come home and change my clothes, head down to new house and clean until it’s time to pick my daughter up from the bus, bring her home, give kids instructions on what I want them do do, go back to new house to clean until dark.
• Wednesday - Classes from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., come home and work on things here for a change.
• Thursday - Class from 9 a.m. to 12 noon, come home and change my clothes, head to new house and clean until dark.
• Friday - NO classes, and hopefully I don’t get called into work, be to new house by 8 a.m. to wait for DirecTV tech to come and install our service at the new house between 8 a.m. and noon, finish up cleaning because Saturday is moving day!
• Saturday - Class from 8 a.m. to 12 noon, unless there is an exam, then we’ll be out by 9:30 a.m. or so, head to U-Haul to get a moving truck, come home and start loading stuff onto the truck to move.

There you have it, that’s what I’ll be doing for the next week.  Would you care to join me?  I sure could use the help/company!!!!!!!

First, I guess I should make an announcement. Within the next 10 days we will be moving. As much as I love my home, I cannot stand my slumlord! The good news is, we’re only moving a mile away and we’re staying out in the country AND we’re getting a 2nd bathroom. The “bad” news is we’re going to loose about 900 sq ft of living space. But it’s a cute house that is much nicer than what we have here, so it’s a good thing!

Now, onto the Christmas topic! I went out today to pick up some boxes and toters so that I could get started on the packing. I also stopped at Walmart to pick up packing tape and a few things I needed from there. While I was searching for those big black contractors garbage bags I seen something that made me stop in my tracks and GASP! Do you want to know what I seen? Take a look at this picture I took with my cell phone!

Yes ladies and gents, that is a Christmas display! I should have taken more pictures but I was scared that someone who worked there was going to ask what the heck I was doing…..LOL! The ENTIRE aisle was filled on one side with all kinds of Christmas decorations. Now, I like Christmas decorations as much as the next person, but this is RIDICULOUS!