Because The Computer Is Laughing At Me....

I am getting what I have come to know as "The Circle Of Life" across my computer screen...and when that happens at work there is literally nothing I can do since we have become a "paperless" company...wanna know the true irony of that?  It was my idea...  I was the one that went into the offices of the people that make the decisions and stated that we were drowning in our own paper fecal waste and it was a travesty and we needed to end this now...  that was 9 years ago.. 9 years ago when the computer went down at work I caught up on filing and helped other people do projects that required a certain amount of paper and paperwork.... now...nothing... eerything stops when the circle of life starts turning and doesnt stop...and thanks to the situation at the ports we are not bringing in any products so we can not bill any products so we can not collect money on any products so who is supposed to pay the IT to go fix these machines?  Circle of Life...

I know there are worse things going on in the world today so I refuse to say that the last nearly two weeks has been devastating but you know what...  to us in our situtation in our shoes it certainly felt devastating... our music hard drive fell to a harsh death on a tile floor and the data can not be recovered... the new car suffered at the wrath of an unrelenting pothole that required a completely new tire... the car i drove to work instead had maintance required lights a go-go...  so i basically SHAT 900 bucks what with planned and unplanned doctor visits and car shite.  Wonderful.  Our tax refund is already on its way and we cant help but redefine its parameters.  The jump it will give our savings account is very much welcome.  Everytime i look at the now much lower balance due to inclimate weather i throw up in my mouth a little...everytime.

Just now i went and checked to make sure...yep..still vomit worthy.

But hey, not a lot of people can say "I had a problem and I handled it right away," right? Right. 

But it would be nice if Thing 1 had told us right away she thought she broke her wrists so we could get her into her dr right away and that xrays could have been taken right away...instead of drawing this out for 10 days...  a blue cast on the left arm later and we are half way to healing.  Seeing your kid in a cast is not something I recommend, for the record. 

The house is as "together" as its going to be for right now.  Not that money is the issue, i decided when it comes to the house, screw it and write the checks...no its the discombobulation that comes with having the house upside down.  I dont like that. The kids arent fans and neither is the mister.  So we are waiting on further house To Do Lists.

I have mentioned before we do not do Valentines Day and with Thing 1 getting older is more and more apparent that she notices this trend.  We decided that we are going to make Valentines Day family day.  So now, there will be a bad ass home cooked meal and baked goodies of the red heart persuasion and maybe a stuffed animal and stickers for the kiddies.  Thing 1 likes the stuff...she likes the ambiance of the hearts and cupids.  And although she understands after explaination that her dad and I dont need one day a year to show our love and appreciation, doesnt mean that there arent some cute things to be had during that one time a year.

Chugging along with my Goodreads and my cross stitch..  So glad my cousin lit that fire for me again.  Hers are those dirty double entenďras kinds of cross stitching whereas mine are slightly more tame, but its a nice break from crochet which I also am still doing.  I blame the tablet for the poor grammar due entirely to the fact that I am not used to this tiny keyboard yet.  I have been eye balling a slightly larger and much more capabel tablet as of late, but seein as how devastating our week was and the end of last year I will probably wait on that for awhile later.

Choni has some great ideas to expand his production business and might start focusing on his you tube channel.  The stadium just picked him up for another year and with the weather we are experiencing here right now it is a wonder why I cant just up and go to a ball game tomorrow!  Seriously, I now the East is buried in snow, but its equally unnatural to be out on a beautifully sunny day and theres no baseball to speak of...none... zero.  Its sad. I hate it.  Im sure we'll find ways to fill our time, though.

Anyhoo, thats all from this end.  With all the Choni storyboarding his new project there hasnt been much Dream Casting talk lately which is a little sad when I think about it, but when I think about his project he is working on I love it.  He is so excited about it and the excitement is so contagious that even though we had a shitty week I still dont really feel that bad.

I wonder though if what I do feel is residual... or maybe thats not the right word.  Maybe obligatory...because when bad shit happens we are groomed to feel shitty about it... but you know what?  I am really tired of feeling shitty.  I am.  I wanted to cry and get mad over Thing 1s arm(s)...but in the same breathe I was thinking how tired I am of feeling shitty...so heres to not feeling shitty and just getting over stuff that you have zero control over and rolling with the punches ever so slightly more than before.  Work is crazy insane and my time is getting more and more eaten up life things...  and again... I notice,, but Im not upset.

But I am a litte and I have to ask myself am I upset out of obligation or am i truly upset about it?  Sometimes it feels like if I dont get upset about not blogging, does that make me flakey to be so flippant about something I started and am not finishing?  But there is no FINISH, there is just END.  One day I will end this when I feel like, when it is time to move on...and the reason i do it is because I have a voice that is hard to be heard when I am in an office 9 hours a day and on the road an hour and a half a day and with my kids three hours and then dedicating the remaining hour to my sweet darling mr. Other half...  I tried writing for myself again, but it hurts my hands SOmuch more than actually typing things out...and my brain has an issue with typing things and not sending them into the void... so one day i will get over all my crazy and do something else.. 

And if any of that made sense, you might want to see a psychiatrist...  not that I would know anything about that...

Happy Thursday and have a pleasant tomorrow...

Throwback Thursday: This Time 13 Years Ago...

Not a very exciting story, and I wish I had thought of it sooner so I could include the ONE picture that encapsulates the moment, a blurry early selfie of me and Choni on my couch.  I can always add it later.. if I do you'll find right here>>

In the meantime:  This time 13 years ago, I was undergoing the recoop process from the late teen/early 20's right of passage that is having your wisdom teeth removed.  I was living at "home" (I say loosely due to the fact it was merely a house my mother and ESM lived in, NOT my quote 'Home').  I had self inflicted red hair, disheveled and rightfully so.  Bruised, swollen face is a look I do not recommend for anybody and I don't think we had started back to college just yet because Choni was over all the time.

Quick back story: We did not live close to eachother.  He lived four towns/cities away, a good solid 30 to 40 minutes in traffic away from me.  Part of the drive was just tedious, boring country roads.  Also, it took 5 minutes to drive the few feet on our road that was only a road in the technical sense that it "TECHNICALLY" got you to where you were going...but mostly just fucked up your car because of all the dips and holes and dirt...

For this guy to do all that everyday for a week for me ( I think there was a work day or two in there) was amazing...  He worked at a little Korean dude owned video store then, so he brought over TONS of movies.  In my Vicodin daze, I remember mostly one title in particular that he scooped up from his store of ancient B movie titles, "Ice Pirates"...  Oh yeah, that was GREAT stuff when I was a kid and it reminded me of my dad (who at the time was merely two states/one 1 hr and 30 min flight away) so I was stoked that, again, he pulled a gem out for me.

Ma was home taking care of Lil Sis at that time, so she was there, but she was busy doing the toddler two step so it was helpful having Choni there.  I had my pillow, my blanket, my jammies, my bathrobe (it was winter, it gets cold even in SoCal), my Choni... I was the most comfortable a person could be in that situation...  Luckily I was dazed enough and wasn't eating solids, so I was not expected to dine with the ESM and Ma during those days... Aaaahhhh....

I lived solely on Instant Breakfast Shakes, I wasn't complaining...not at all... Those spoonfuls of vitaminy chocolate were wonderful... Funny, most people wouldn't have FOND memories of such a week, but I do... I have them because Choni made them better.  Not to say he didn't do his foot work, boy did he... but in those it wasn't too hard to trump what was going on at home... anything positive was a vast improvement.  It was great/is great to be around a person that I don't have to TRY SO HARD to make happy... it's organic, it just happens... he just makes me happy... Sometimes I want to swat him and sometimes I do because you gotta keep them on their toes, but I look back on the life I walked away from and for a second I think, "Geez, what did I do?" and after a thought or two it quickly turns into "OH YEAH!!!  Made the better choice!!"  Haha...

So that's my wisdom teeth story... I wonder if I'll find that picture...

"Broken" Home For The Holidays...

I feel like our house had a major surgery... piece by piece, scar by scar, laughter begetting more laughter... we are becoming WHOLE again...

Christmas was good to us, in the sense that we had one...

However, my 2014 would not be complete without a sickness for my planned vacation...

Oh ye gods!  Thank you!

I call bullshit... every time we have tried to plan time together for any length of time I get something wrong with me...  Sick, ill, call it what you will... it sucks.  I did get through the entire SERIES of How I Met Your Mother...  Ithankyou...

It was, in fact, legen-wait-for-it...DARY!

I have been yelled at for years about not watching the show, and now I can tell you all to suck it cause I watched it, it was wonderful, and now we're moving on to other things...because not only does it now remind me of the great flood/renovation of 2014, it reminds me of how I was sick on Christmas, AGAIN...

You know, sometimes, change is a really good thing folks.

We had our company christmas party and might I say, it was great.  I was just great to sit in the front Lobby, phones off... but ringing that initial ring that takes them to voicemail in such a way that you would swear it was Howie chiming in... "That could be an order!", he would say if he were here...  and he was...

We had a great weekend considering... we had a nice night Friday the 19th, Saturday was nice, Sunday was Christmas with Gma and it was lovely... Then I woke up Monday to the ever dreaded sore throat/swollen glands... I felt feverish and chilled... I went down drastically in a matter of hours and had to go home.  Tuesday, stayed home and went to the dr.  Got two doses of anti-viral in me and went to work Wednesday for our ever appreciated and fantastic half day for Christmas Eve, went home and we had a Turkey dinner!  Our first ever Turkey Dinner for our family on Christmas Eve when it was JUST US FOUR!  Actually, come to think of it, it was our first ever dinner on Christmas Eve with just me n Choni.  It's always been Christmas Eve at the In Laws, Christmas Day at my Ma's...  Funny... talk about breaking free from tradition, that was holding strong 14 years!  Hah!

Anyhoo, woke up Christmas Day after the neighbors decided to party ALL NIGHT...  and into some of the morning... Until I picked up my handy phone with the handy list of contacts...one in particular being our County Sheriffs... Yeah!  I'm THAT CHICK! SO WHAT!!  I'm ALL FOR parties man, and I know Christmas Eve is a biggie for some people... BUT REALLY?!?  3AM!!!  And I don't mean the song!  I shut that fucker down@!@#%#$@%$#@

Christmas Day I woke up sicker...  I stayed on the couch while the kids ripped open their second batch of gifts, I saw awe and wonderment in what was probably the "smallest" Christmas ever and I felt great afterwards (emotionally).  We got up our things together and made the trek to Noni's for third Christmas and had another great time, more yummy food stuffs and we even got to take some home :)  My sis and bro in law and their (combined) 4 childrens were there, a houseful of kids.  What my Ma always wanted!  As the day went on, I was feeling less awesome.

I woke up Friday to the ickiest of ickinesses and I called my dr's office.  Told them how I was feeling and what was new and was gone and they called me in a Rx.  I then proceeded to have a couch bound Christmas break/ New Year's.  I STILL don't feel 100%.

I feel like I need to sleep a few more days.  I over do it the second I feel well.  That's a big problem for me.  But I can't help it, I feel like such a slug when I'm sick!!  I hate that feeling... that there are things to do and I'm not doing them.

But here we are, new year, new gear.  I am thinking that I am much more accepting already of the new year than ever.  I wanted to be done with 2014 so badly.  Generally there is a time frame that I go through where things need to be gotten used...  Happy to report, writing out that 2015 comes much more naturally than any year ever!  2015...FLOWS LIKE A RIVER FROM MY PENS!!  Wonderful...  I had a busy busy busy super busy Monday and today was much more doable... I had much more coffee too, so I'm sure that had NOTHING to do with it!  hehe...

Well, it's that time kids...gotta warsh out my mug and make the trip to the loo before my long trip home...  I need to write a note to myself to tell you about the great Purge... no not that mediocre movie...  we did our own purging during the great renovation and it felt great!  Loved it!

Spoke Too Soon Too Much Too Fast...Or How We Came To Realize That We Had No Idea What We Were Doing With A House......

Something about our little part of California that most people don't realize is that its got green yards and evergreens PLANTED INTO MAN MADE YARDS AND GARDENS.... it's a fuckin desert...

  Its like Peter Pan Syndrome for our region... Southern California is a man that doesn't want to realize or accept the fact that its getting old so it buys a Ferrari by way of planting and over watering grass in a desert climate that needs succulents and desert indigenous landscaping. 

If that even makes any sense.

Our house was previously owned by geniuses...rocket scientists disguised as homeowners...  And of course, the bank we bought our house from couldn't wait to get this thing off their hands either...then comes us...apartment dwelling for so long we forgot what it was like to be in a house...  one reared by a father ringing the bell of Work Smart Not Hard all day long and the other with no Mr Fix It in their life at all...We had no idea that the backyard was graded too high...that the dog run was put in wrong...that everything about it would kick us in the ass one day...

And it did...HARD...

 

Three weeks before Christmas, in a tiny Who House, we are forced to take 400 sq feet of belongings and shove them into the remaining 800 sq feet of house that did not receive rain damage.  I can see how a renovation can tear and strain relationships...  ours is doing just fine because my husband is amazing...  our family has been wonderful as far as my mother offering sanity via venting and ranting and my mother in law still having rooms set up for us to stay the night.  Thing 2 has been wonderful as well due entirely to her ability to sleep comfortably in the pack n play as long as her trusty boppy lay beneath her and her build a bear Hello Kitty is by her side... 

Still...  there is an amount of guilt...there is the thought that I could have single handedly prevented this in so many (albeit unforeseen) ways... because someone always knows more or knows better or can do better than me... than us...  and that's fine... but still.  I'm not going to ridiculously pretend like its not actually passing through my mind every other minute.  Coworkers and friends are to our rescue as well and I feel like the chunk out of our savings is not as big as it SHOULD be due to us not being covered for this particular instance under our homeowners insurance...lame.

Living room camping on our pull out couch is what we have been doing... Monday(today) our dry wall gets put back on and hopefully our vanities will get put back on and we can take showers here again...  I am a lot calmer than I was,yet still not completely calm... fantastically we are still a family and still together and still breathing so that's nice....  

My hubby stepped up amazingly fantastically superbly and dug a huge nasty "French drain" in the side of the house and started leveling it out.  Then CoWorker Husband #1 came over and checked out our house and the temporary drainage ditch. Yes we need a permanent one, but the temp one will hold just fine until then.

No we're "There"... over there, by all those people investing into their houses...that's us.  That's our spot in life right now... at the same time as trying to be US we have to be "homeowners" too...  it's a tough juggle when you buy what you can afford.  It was either this or stay apartment dwellers for quite a while longer, and LORD KNOWS where we'd be if we did.  I actually don't want to think about it..  Because as clean and easy and glorious as that sounds, that's not us...Not anymore...it's universes, galaxies away from us. You never go forward by going backward, I truly believe that... so I'm going to apply that same logic to this right here...

Meanwhile:

EVERYTHING ELSE IS FUCKIN AWESOME!!!!

I mean that... work...wow, we just got a great update at work about how well we're doing... We were sailing in yachts, then we had to downgrade to dingys, then we were drowning... in scuba gear with oxygen at 1% and boom, we were back in dingys,  And there we've stayed because of the recession... Fine...  But now, now we're profiting again in ways that make us have numbers in line for our 1st quarter already and I can't tell you how exciting that is, especially when we have a nay sayer walking around like a god and everything out of their mouth is "Peril!" "Plight!" and I can't take it anymore...so the op's manager sent out a little email from his corner of the universe and it made my day...  Little things keep happening that make things great and I'm so happy... but isn't true...when one facet of your life is picking up steam another falls fantastically to pieces...  Amazing how true that really is.  Anyhoo, that's all from this end...  hopefully.  I just want to go home tonight and have walls.  I never realized how accustomed to our little lifestyle I was until I woke up one day and it was gone... 

Basically I Feel Like This...All The Time...

I wanted to write something about how I like to write a lot of somethings...and that no it doesn't always come out interesting our coherent, because I don't always think that way...Some of the best inside jokes I have with Choni are completely uninteresting and incoherent...and then I read this...and this is so much...me.  Right now.

School Daze...

Clever no?  No?!  FINE!

Thing 1 is in 4th grade.  She decided NOT to do band this year because it takes her out of the class for a certain time of day and she is responsible for making up that time and that freaked her out and she didn't want to do it.  Next year I am hoping that she changes her mind a little.  Unfortunately, after meeting her teacher, I feel THIS year would have been the best time to see if she wants to do orchestra/band.  She is very timid and doesn't like the thought of people looking at her, even if I convinced her she would be lost in the crowd.  I told her about choir when I was in High School..she is still not convinced. I am clearly in error here. Fine.  But check THIS out...her after school program is doing a pagaent and her grade is putting on a play and singing a song.  For the play, she is doing set up for sets and props... I am so proud!  She did say she wouldn't mind being the narrator...I can see in my head right now the kind of narrator she would be... I think this is the best choice.  The narrator is not meant to read the script off of a paper with their head down, mumbling, and then RUN off the stage...  see what I mean?

The parent teacher conference that I always have in October with her teacher was, as always, fabulous.  Doing above average, yet still a B student because she just doesn't overachieve.  It's not her style.  Under the radar suits her to a T and that's where she will stay.  The books her teacher has her reading are advanced and she even asked me if I had something more advanced at home because she's basically at a 6th grade reading level.  Takes after her mom, what can I say?!

Right now she's reading the Rick Riordan books and she loves them.  She got pieces of two sets from a relative. I am using the library to fill in the blanks. I am in love with our County library system.  I can get books at the library by work and have them sent to there from all over the county.  And if Dad needs a book, I have them sent to our local home branch from all over the county.  It's AMAZING!  I need to show him how to do that, that reminds me...

I am so happy that I can trust her to do her homework on her own, and I was really leary about the teacher at first, but at Back To School night I knew me and this lady were on the same page.  It feels so good, to walk through a day in the life of a mom...working, driving, banking, shopping, and NOT worrying about how my oldest is doing in school.  Of all the things, it's nice not to worry about THAT thing when there are so many others going on...  I know what it means to want to lavish your child with rewards because they did above and beyond expectation, but at the risk of spoiling, I didn't.  We DID do something a little special.  We got some books.  I think the reward fits the...crime?  Hmm, how would I word that better?  eh... anyways...

Finns is the latest addition to our family...the family fish.  A Betta that's red and blue and she just had to have it, to replace the one she killed that Noni gave her because she didn't feed him enough or she fed him too much.  The jury is still out on that, but we'll know more when we get the toxicology report....

Too much SVU... That's what she said "Too bad we can't test the fish like on that show..."  Oh geez... time to get a new show kiddo...hehehe...  well, that's all for school... Thing 2 is so far from school it's not funny...what with her bday being in January... hey, she was planned, just not THAT well planned...  Like, 80% planned...  that 20% was not accounting for time of year born...

Moles and Trolls...

Work work work...

Oh what it is to be with a man with a strong work ethic.

Something my Ex Step Monster never appreciated.

My Ex Monster in Law (Bitchie Valens) decided that he would call in sick when it suited him or when he was too hung over to go in, or if in rarer occasion was STILL drunk from the previous night's escapades...  always a good time finding out which one.  Yet, HE never got the SHIT from the ESM that Choni did for working on days that we had family functions... I mean, really?  Which is the lesser of  the two evils?  I didn't mind lending him out to the retail world because I knew I got him every other day of the year...  everyday is family day, the holidays just make it more special in our house.  But really, EVERYDAY should be family...but anyways, that's neither here nor there.

That being said:  He still has a strong work ethic.  Our house is very kept and our lives are well oiled machines because of our co-working.  He works hard on our kids and to make sure everyone is taken care of...so do I... we are just as much an in-love couple as coworkers in the company of the household.  Fantastic... it took Choni a while to realize that he had a passion and had a dream and he wanted to make sure he knew what that was before saddling himself with another job.  We were somewhere and someone asked him what he did.  Without pause he said he was a videographer.  Just so matter of factly that I think it dawned on him then that he IS a videographer.  That is his profession, his passion, obsession...  Since then, everything he looks for in an off season job requires him to be behind a camera.  He did a wedding and it was beautiful.  He KILLED it... they all cried when they saw the video he put together and he even got a bonus at the end... yay him.  THEN he gets on line and trolls for more jobs and finds one filming a 3 day national sporting event...ON Thanksgiving, but that's what Pyrex is for.  Leftovers.  No, he will not physically be with us, but he is doing this for us as much as himself... maybe a few percent less actually.  It's very important for my hubby to LOVE what he does.  He's a very emotional person.  I accept that as one of the things I love about him as much as something we work around.  But that's love...that's marriage.  I want to work around it.  I am fantastic at it, nobody can work that emotional thread like I can, because I am his wife.  I know him better than anyone including his own mother.. including himself at times.  And that's why when I saw we could afford for him not work, I chose to discuss with him staying home with the bebes, than run him out of the house for some soul sucking fakakta job.

I honestly can't wait for him to come home and tell me all about it!  Actually, that's not what's going to happen.  The even starts tomorrow (Thanksgiving) and goes on til Saturday.  On top of that, it starts at 5am the first day, 6am the second day and 7am the third day (an hour drive to get there, so he's gotta get up at 430 on the first day and an hour later each proceeding day) and lasts about 12 hours or so.  He'll have intermittent breaks and they pay for food.  I won't really be hearing about it until Sunday morning more like... but that's ok.  The wedding went swimmingly, this will also go great and hopefully his boss has some more off season jobs to include him in to keep him AND the sports relevant in the off season!  It's a very exciting time for us to be in our particular job positions right now.  They are bringing commuter trains to our area, when that is finished, it will open his job opportunities even more!  Very exciting time...  Hopefully he'll be able to shoot a few extras to bring home and show us his work.  If this event does well, maybe he'll get some kind of automatic flag put on his name for call backs, kind of like it is at the stadium for him now. Seeing someone you love doing something they love for a living is priceless....