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!

Would someone PLEASE remind me why I do this to myself? You know what I mean, offer to do WAY more than I know I’m humanly capable of in order to try and help someone who has more to handle than they humanly can themselves? We’ve all “been there, done that, got the t-shirt”, so I know you know what I’m talking about!

I’ve spent part of last night and all of today making salsa and tortilla chips as well as peeling, depitting and slicing half a bushel of peaches, and I still have a LONG ways to go before I’m done! And the kicker is, I need to leave for my moms house by 11 AM tomorrow morning.

Here’s what’s left…..I have to finish up the tortilla chips (I’m about half way done), then I have to mix up all the ingredients to make 2 batches of peach cobbler. While the cobbler itself isn’t that much work, it has to be baked in the morning so that it’s fresh. It’s the chips that are driving me nuts and that are going to take FOREVER! I can’t believe I’m only about half way done making them, I know that they are time consuming, but OMG, I had no idea it was going to take this much time…LOL! The end result is definitely worth the work and time, I just wish I’d have started making the chips last night rather than the salsa!

But because of how stressed and frustrated I am right now I am one ORNERY person! I’ve yelled at the hubby and both kids for the stupidest of things in the last half hour. I’m totally exhausted and just feel like saying to heck with everything! But I can’t and I won’t. Time to push forward!

I’m not one to pretend that my life is perfect, because I know that it’s not. Most days, I struggle just to get through the day without losing my mind! Recent cuts in my husband’s hours at work have left us scraping just to pay the bills, and many times, we aren’t even able to do that. This week has been no exception!

Yesterday morning started off as a “typical” late summer morning. I woke up around 9 AM, grabbed my first cup of coffee and headed out here to watch the news and do a little bit of web surfing. I had remembered that my husband had told me that I should be able to go online to schedule a package pickup for a box that I’ve needed to get sent out since Monday, so I did that while I was thinking about it. I then checked out my normal first thing in the morning websites (i.e. News and my feed reader as well as a forum I frequent).

I had a few blog posts I wanted to get done so I logged in here and started typing one up. As I went to add an image to the blog post I got an error message that said I wasn’t connected to the internet. My first thought was to look at the little icon down in my tool bar, which showed that I still had a connection. I then looked over to the modem, which told me that I wasn’t connected. I won’t deny that my phone/DSL bill is past due because it is. But I had a letter that told me that I had until the 26th to pay it before it was disconnected. Thinking it could possibly be a glitch; I called the tech support for my DSL and was told that my account was indeed suspended and that they’d send me over to the billing department.

Once on the phone with them it was again confirmed that my account was indeed suspended and that in order to have my services reinstated I would need to not only pay the past due amount, but also the current bill with no exceptions. Yes, it is my fault for not paying the bill on time, but when I have a piece of paper that tells me I have until the 26th to pay it and you shut it off 5 days prior to that it creates a bit of a problem.

See, not only is our home phone and DSL on this bill, so are our cell phones. With the work that I do, if I can’t get online, I can’t work and if I can’t work, I can’t earn money. And my husband is called by his employers on a nightly basis to let him know if or where he is working the next day, so if the cell phones and the house phone is off, they can’t call him, which means he can’t work. And when I explained to the phone company rep about the letter sitting in front of me stating that I had until the 26th to pay the bill, she did confirm that is what their files said as well and she wasn’t sure why it was turned off 5 days earlier, but since it was there was no way to turn it back on without the bill being paid in full.

Honestly, days like today make me want to run away, FAR, FAR AWAY!! You know what I mean, find one of those remote Caribbean villa rentals and just plop my butt down in the sand and just escape everything! Yes, I know, doing that takes more money than what I’ll have to pay to get my phone and DSL turned back on, but it sure is tempting after days like yesterday! I’m honestly not sure when I’ll be able to get my phone and DSL back on, it could be as early as today or it may not be until next week, but I’ll let you know when I’m back!

And in case you’re wondering just how it is that I’m making this blog post if I don’t have an internet connection, well, you see, I have a WONDERFUL friend who came to my rescue and let me come over to her house and borrow her computer.

Good morning! I’m sitting here scratching my head this morning trying to figure out where in the world did this week went?? Honestly, it seems like we were up at the races the other day, but that was Sunday and it’s now Thursday! UGH! I’ve seriously let this week slip by me and now I’m in a situation where I have a TON of stuff to do in just a few short days! And I’m honestly not sure that’s going to be enough time to get it all done!

The kids start school in just a few short days and I still have a ton of supplies and stuff to get for them. I also have to take my daughter shopping because she has to wear uniforms for school again and she has NOTHING! But with as tight as finances have been lately, I just haven’t been able to get her anything! She and her brother both need shoes as well, UGH!! I’m REALLY going to have to get creative this week to get this stuff figured out!

The next couple of weeks are going to be busy as well! We’ve got moms annual Labor Day family reunion coming up on September 1st, that’s also the week of the fair that we all love going to. We’ll have to deal with getting the kids back on as decent of a homework and sleep schedule as possible, which is really going to prove to be a challenge because they’ve both been having some fairly significant sleep problems lately!

OK, I feel like I’m about to lose my mind thinking about getting all this stuff done….LOL! But I do work well under pressure so I have no doubt I’ll somehow manage to pull it off! Just cross your fingers that I don’t lose my mind trying to get it done…LMAO!

I tell you, I have had more frustration over kid stuff in the last week than I have in the past year! It’s to the point that it’s not only taking it’s toll on me, it’s also starting to get to my husband as well! I understand that parenting is not an easy job and does not have a users manual, but for it to get to the point that it is affecting my family this much it’s beyond ridiculous!

After everything we’ve been through in the past week it would be so easy for me to turn to drugs or alcohol to try and numb the feelings I’m dealing with, but I know that’s not the answer or solution. Besides that, knowing me the way that I do, I’d end up in alcohol or drug rehab because it would become an addiction for me, and with everything we’re going through right now, we don’t need that added to it!

So please bear with me for the next couple of days, I have a TON of things going on and need to deal with them and get them out of the way, then I can get back to the things in life that are enjoyable to me, a.k.a. blogging and hanging with my online pals!

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!

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?????

Those must be two of the deepest words in the human language, at least they are to me. I’ve sat here this morning pondering them and wondering just what the meaning and purpose of my life is and asking myself if there has to be more. But, if there is more, can I honestly handle it?

I’m angry lately, VERY angry! To the point that I find myself withdrawing further and further from people and society! I hate going anywhere anymore, I don’t like being around people and I honestly am not liking myself very much either. I know that this isn’t good at all, but I just can’t help it, it’s something that is inside of me that has decided to rear it’s ugly head! It’s like one of those deep, dark, hidden secrets that you hope never comes out, only to those that know me, what I’m going through right now isn’t a secret, it’s always been a part of me.
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OK, so we moved into this house almost 5 months ago. My oldest child did not change school districts, nor did his bus number even change. But the frustrations that we’ve experienced because of his school transportation has been ridiculous! First, it took them over 2 weeks to change his bus stop from the old house to the new house. Then, once they did get it changed, he some how got bumped back to the old house, so the bus stopped stopping here. Once we finally got that fixed his bus driver went on a 2 week vacation and the sub driver started off by showing up over 20 minutes earlier than his regular driver did. The day after that, my son was out at the end of the drive on time and the bus drove right past the house without slowing down or stopping. Finally, on the third day with the sub driver, things seemed to be back on track, albeit 20 minutes earlier than we were used to. Once his regular driver came back from break, we were back to the time that we had been used to the bus coming.

Shortly after Christmas break, they split my sons bus route, and he once again missed his bus because it came 20 minutes earlier than normal. After that day, we were ready at the earlier time again. Things have gone well for almost two months, until this morning. I leave the house by 7:00 to take my daughter to her bus. As I got about a mile or so away from our house I looked in the rear view mirror and noticed a bus with flashing red lights. I looked at the clock and it was 7:02 AM so at first I thought that it couldn’t be my sons bus. Well, I was WRONG! Once again his bus showed up more than 20 minutes earlier than it had been with absolutley NO notice. So, I get on the phone and call the bus dispatcher. Sure enough, they’ve once again split the route and his scheduled pick up time is 7:03 AM. When I explain that his bus has been coming at approximately 7:25 AM I’m then told that’s not his normally scheduled pick up time and that he needs to be ready and waiting for the bus at least 5 minutes before his scheduled time of 7:03. I say that’s not a problem, but that some sort of notice or warning about the changes would have been appreciated, especially since we live about 20 minutes from his school and when I ask if it’s possible for parents to be notified of changes like this, I’m told “We don’t that”. EXCUSE ME? You keep changing the time my son gets on the bus, substitute drivers keep driving past the house without slowing down or stopping, what do you want me to do, set up some sort of digital signage that will let your drivers know where my house is and let me know when your drivers are close to my home?

Ok all you parents with teens, getting our kids up and ready in the mornings is bad enough, but having to have them ready 20+ minutes earlier with NO warning to me is asking a little too much, what do you think?

Current Mood: Alarmed

Mondays have always been one of the days of the week that I’ve actually looked forward to for a while now.  When I was working, it always seemed like I managed to get Mondays off, and for school I’ve made sure not to schedule any of my classes on Mondays either.  So once the hubby leaves for work and the kids are off to school Monday has kind of turned into my day for me.  Some days I spend it doing things around the house, some days I spend it doing homework and some days I actually spend it doing as much nothing as I can!

Today is my son’s 15th birthday, so my first goal today was to have a decent morning so that his birthday wouldn’t start out on a bad note.  It was “bad enough” that for the first time in a few years, the kid actually had school today.  All was going well until it was time for me to head out the door to take my daughter to school.  My son said something about having his keys which made my daughter realize that she didn’t have hers.  Now, normally that’s not that big of a deal, but since last week, her key ring also includes the key to her gym locker, which she shares with two other girls.  So not having the key meant that they wouldn’t be able to get into the locker and get their gym clothes which meant points off for gym.  We looked for nearly 20 minutes for those keys until I finally told her that I we HAD to go or she would miss the bus.  Wouldn’t you know it, since I was getting a later than normal start to her bus stop, I got behind another school bus that had to make several stops on a very narrow road.  This meant that it was not possible for me to pass the bus, which ended in her missing the bus.

Now, normally this wouldn’t have been a bad thing except for the fact that my husband left me his truck, which was SUPER low on gas.  There was no way there would be enough gas in the truck to make it all the way out to her school, and he had what cash we had, so I couldn’t go and put gas in it.  So, I ended up with a brat child home with me today.

The rest of the day wasn’t going that bad until I went to put in the DVD for my one online class into my computer so that I could watch the assignment for this weeks assignment.  For some reason the DVD wouldn’t auto play, so I went in to try and manually start it and discovered that somehow I had lost all the drivers for it.  So I went to Gateways website and downloaded the drivers, installed them, restarted the computer, and NOTHING.  The DVD drive still wasn’t recognized!  I then talked to my best friend who is one heck of a computer guru and she suggested that I may have possibly lost my software to actually play the DVD’s.  So I downloaded a trial version of a program to play DVD’s, installed it, restarted the computer, and NOTHING!  I went directly into the DVD program and tried to add what I needed to play and got an error message saying I needed a DVD player installed on my computer.

I’ve known for a while now that I either needed to reformat this computer or replace it!  Only 3 of the 8 USB ports are working, my card reader for the card from my camera keeps needing to be reformat every time I’ve taken it out of the card reader and it’s simply totally bogged down considering the size of the hard drive, the amount of memory and the processor I have on it, all of which are VERY good and not low.  But the fact of the matter is, it’s a Gateway computer and it’s a HUGE P.O.S.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I ended up watching my DVD on the portable DVD player at my desk and taking notes so that I would be able to answer the questions that I needed to.  But it was just a HUGE amount of stress that I really didn’t need right now!  I’ve had a couple of very crappy nights sleep along with a HUGE amount of stress from a situation that happened with my daughter over the weekend and all I wanted today was a quiet day so that I could get my homework done!

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!!!!!!!

If you read my post from yesterday you know that we’re going through the process of getting ready to move.  The hope is to be completely moved by next weekend, but I’m still not sure if that will happen.  There were a few other things that “happened” yesterday that left me in a completely stressed out state of mind by the end of the day.  When I shut down for the night last night I was so frazzled that I forgot to turn off the fan that sits in the window by my desk.

This morning, when I went to turn my computer on, it wouldn’t start.  The fan would turn on for a split second then nothing, it did this over and over again, before it finally started to power up.  But the first time it acted like it was going to power up, it didn’t, it just sat there with the main fan on the computer running in turbo mode.  So I held the power button down and shut it down.  I went back through the steps with the fan kicking in for a split second then nothing for quite a while, to the point that I was bawling uncontrollably.  I have so much info on this puter and I was just sure that my mother board had finally given up and I was going to lose everything.

Finally, in the midst of my bawling breakdown, the computer finally completely powered up and started.  My only thought is that because I left that fan on last night, and it was a cool damp night, somehow moisture got into the computer.  It’s running now, obviously, but the main fan for the computer never did come on, meaning the problem is more than likely the power source.  I ran to Walmart this morning and grabbed some burnable CD’s and I’m going to back up all of my files.  But let me tell you, that’s NOT the way to start the day!  So if I’m not around for a while, you know my “lovely” Gateway finally took a dump!