Michelle's Moments

This month of April...

2009-04-29T09:30:00.002-04:00

My April is going OK so far, but it is not one of the better months I have had. I have been having pain in my gums for a while now and started waking up feeling like I was sucker-punched in the mouth. I finally dragged myself to the dentist, I haven't been for a while because it seems every time I went they would try to convince me to remove my wisdom teeth and at that point they were not bothering me at all. I have heard so many stories from people about how much it hurts both during and after so I was scared to death to have them done because I do not like to be in pain. I have a few cavities that need to be filled and of coarse my wisdom teeth need to come out. But this time I am letting them go but I have to be put under in order for me to be more comfortable in having it done. My appointment is at the end of June.

Lilly turned 1 on Sunday, April 19.

My parents have started looking into getting us plain tickets already! I am getting really really excited to go. I think Chuck is looking forward to going as well. It'll give us an excuse and a reason to get away from here! A bunch of my family from like Kansas are coming up to Colorado while I am there and my dad is planning a BBQ the day after I arrive. I guess I am a good reason to have a family reunion, lol! I did have a weird dream the other night, I dreamt that we were in Colorado going somewhere and my dad was driving. As we were going over a hill I said to Chuck that this was Colorado Springs... I wonder if this was some sort of premonition?! I have always liked Colorado Springs, my dad's biological mom lived there before she passed away several years ago. We used to go up there a lot, I remember you can see Pike's Peak from her window.

Earlier this month I canceled my My Space account. I am on Facebook all of the time and most of the friends I had on My Space are on my Facebook friends list as well, so I did not see the reason to keep the account. I do miss being able to keep in touch with the friends I had that are not on Facebook yet. Hopefully they join soon!

A weekend celebration

2009-03-23T15:05:00.006-04:00

Yesterday was my birthday and I had a "birthday party". We celebrated two birthdays yesterday, mine and my sister-in-law's. Her birthday was a couple of weeks ago but I wanted to make our party on a weekend that they had the kids and we had recently been paid. We had a lot of funI chose a game Saturday that I figured everyone could play together. It was called Beat the Parents. It was kids versus the adults, which was perfect! We all played it and had a great time. Chuck had gotten a couple of small carrot cakes while I was in church on Sunday morning, they were really good and I still have almost a full cake left so it is a good thing they were really good.

Saturday we had Lilly groomed. She looks so much cuter now! She looks a lot smaller and happier than she looked before, and she smells really good now that I do not mind sleeping with her at all now! We not only had Lilly trimmed up but we had Gracie's nails clipped as well. So they both looked so pretty for Sunday.

2009-03-23T08:55:00.000-04:00

Hurray, it is warmer

2009-03-18T09:10:00.007-04:00

Boy I haven't been on here in a while! It did finally starting to warm up though so now I can spend more time on the computer. Been in the upper 50s with only some patches of snow left on the ground. Yay, it is about time but unfortunately it is to drop back down to the 30s by the end of the week. *Sigh*Is Spring ever going to get here?

Everyone is doing good around here. I finally got my wheelchair back from the repair shop a couple of weeks ago. It is about time I get it back, after all they have had it in the repair shop since early November! I was starting to get very tired of the loner chair I was using in the meantime. It just do not fit right and I was missing being able to tilt back.

We were having trouble this winter keeping the dogs inside of the fence. The snow was getting high enough to cover the chicken wire that we had run across the bottom so the small dogs couldn't get out, so the dogs would walk through the big square holes like nothing was there. That would make us nervous because the roads were icy and we were in no hurry to have to bury another dog so soon after Bebe. We are still having trouble keeping our dogs in, and are going to have to invest more money into more chicken wire for the fence. I want to be able to go sit on my porch and enjoy the warmer weather without having to worry about the dogs so much. My cat does nothing but sleep all day, but once Chuck comes home he wakes right up and starts purring and eating. Which is weird because Chuck yells at him all of the time!

My parents are now living in Colorado and I haven't ever seen their house since they moved several years ago but in pictures. As a matter of fact, I have not even been to Colorado in over a decade! My parents have always been the ones to come down (more like come up) to see me and they have been trying to convince us to come out. Here recently they told me that they would pay for our trip there this year and take it out of the money that they would have used to come see me anyways. Chuck said he would fly since they are paying for it. That surprised me because he is so afraid to fly! But I am so happy because this means that we will get there so much faster now, instead of spending three days in a car... which really screws up my sugar and my back. So we are planning a trip over there on September 5 and staying until the 12th. I really can't wait to go!

A few weeks ago Chuck broke a couple of ribs and fractured a couple of other ones. How you may ask? He fell off the roof... being a stupid, careless, thoughtless man! His back had been bothering him for a couple of days but once it started feeling better, he decided to clean out the chimney. The snow was going through a melting patch and therefore our porch was really icy. His ladder slid out from under him, and he fell off the roof taking the gutter with him and he hit the side of the lawnchair and fell face first into the snow. He was in a lot of pain whenever he would use the left side of his body. I told him that he probably broke some ribs, but of course he refused to believe me. Finally two days later, he went to the hospital and was told that he had broke some ribs! He is doing lots better now, but is still taking it easy... he walks like an 80-year-old man and gets up and down off of the couch like a 9-month pregnant woman! Makes me chuckle every time I see this, lol!!

Please check this out

2009-02-09T09:52:00.010-05:00

Yesterday I was watching TV after church while my husband went to his dad's to pick up my nephew, he was needing help to stack wood and asked Brenden to help. On TV they were talking about President Lincoln turning 200 and President Obama and how and why they may be similar, and length and then all of a sudden a new show came on called Keeping Kids Healthy. What really surprised me was the topic, it was about Freidreich's Ataxia! No one has ever done anything before on the topic of FA... that is my muscular disorder.

The website has the video (show) but I could not figure out how to save it to my computer, but I do have the website address;

">click here

Please check it out and watch the video -- the video is approximately 20 minutes long.

First an apology and then a hilarious joke

2009-02-05T09:57:00.006-05:00

I have not written a post on here in a while. I am feeling just fine, but the weather has just been so cold here lately that I have not felt much like getting on my computer. My computer is by a couple of big windows that are old and they leak air. It is fine in the summer but the winter is another story, especially this one!

The Miracle of Toilet Paper
Fresh from my shower, I stand in front of the mirror, complaining to my husband that my breasts are too small. Instead of characteristically telling me it's not so, he uncharacteristically comes up with a suggestion.
"If you want your breast to grow, then every day take a piece of toilet paper and rub it between your breasts for a few seconds."
Willing to try anything, I fetch a piece of toilet paper and I stand in front of the mirror, rubbing it between my breasts.
"How long will this take?" I ask.
"They will grow larger over a period of years," he replies.
I stop and ask, "Do you really think rubbing a piece of toilet paper between my breasts every day will make my breasts larger over the years?"
Without missing a beat he says, "Worked for your butt, didn't it?"
He is still alive, and with a great deal of physical therapy, he may even walk again. Stupid, stupid man.

New wood stove

2008-12-19T09:37:00.007-05:00

The price of corn has really sky rocketed this year and that is how we have been heating our home. We do have propane, but the price of that has gone up also so we use a little tank for our stove. We did not know how we were going to heat without going totally broke. Ken had put in a nice wood burner outside of his home a couple of years ago, inside he had a cute little wood stove that was in there originally. He took out the wood stove in October since it took up most of his living room and gave it to us. We put it up just in time because the snow has really been coming down since Halloween... and it doesn't seem to have an end!

I had asked Chuck to put up our Christmas tree this year because we did not have it up last year. He said that he threw it away and he can't find our decorations. The next day I went to church and was telling Ken how we could not put up our tree again this year. A lady at my church was looking for someone to take her extra Christmas decorations, which includes a tree! Brenden was out of school the other day... a snow day. So he came over and decorated the tree. It looks really good for now, I can't seem to get Lilly to stop taking off and chewing up the tree decor!

My two beautiful dogs

2008-12-18T09:27:00.010-05:00

Here are a couple of pictures of the dogs taken sometime last week. I wanted to scan that picture that Maggie took of our dogs in June, but the printer will not turn on... I think it needs a new power cord.

The weekend of my hospital stay

2008-12-17T13:59:00.005-05:00

I hope that everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. Mine was alright, had dinner at Chuck's dad and Maggie's. They were supposed to have the big Taylor family Thanksgiving get-together but most of the people celebrated with their other family and not many people were there. I really do not like this time of year myself. Christmas and Thanksgiving are the big family holiday's and it makes me want to be with them. I get really homesick at this time!

There is a lot I did not remember from my hospital stay, like when exactly something happened. They kept me so doped up I slept most of the time. I do remember that on Saturday, June 28, I was visited by Ken and his family (that includes Kelly and all four of their kids). They gave me a rose bush... with very pretty pinkish red roses on it... and a helium get well soon balloon. Now the only question is if I can regrow the plant... I do not have much of a green thumb!

Sunday morning I had many visitors, like my pastor and his wife and Chuck's aunt and uncle. His aunt and uncle brought me a basket full of silk flowers, now those I can grow... LOL! Then I went to sleep and awoke to the best surprise ever! My parents :)!! I hadn't seen them since that previous July and I was really starting to get homesick. They flew in on Saturday and were flying out that following Saturday. So they were going to be here for the fourth of July.

They had gone back to their hotel later that afternoon and Maggie had came. They all had just missed each other again. I have been trying since last summer to get them to meet, but a few days before my parents were scheduled to arrive for a visit Maggie and the dad had gone to New York to visit Maggie's family. Anyways, Maggie wanted to check to see how I was doing. She told me that the dad was on call that weekend so they planned on stopping by Monday evening. She had brought me a picture that she took of our puppies since she was watching them while I was gone. She also gave me a butterfly that Carrie had made for me, she told Maggie that she was making a pink one because I like the color pink!

Sunday school sayings

2008-11-07T08:54:00.006-05:00

STORY OF ELIJAH
The Sunday school teacher was carefully explaining the story of Elijah the Prophet and the false prophets of Baal. She explained how Elijah built the altar, put wood upon it, cut a steer in pieces, and laid it upon the altar. And then, Elijah commanded the people of God to fill four barrels of water and pour it over the altar. He had them do this four times
"Now, asked the teacher, "Can anyone in the class tell me why the Lord would have Elijah pour water over the steer on the altar?"
A little girl in the back of the room started waving her hand, "I know! I know!" she said, "To make the gravy!"

LOT'S WIFE
The Sunday School teacher was describing how Lot's wife looked back and turned into a pillar of salt, when little Jason interrupted,
"My Mummy looked back once, while she was driving," he announced triumphantly, "and she turned into a telephone pole!"

GOOD SAMARITAN
A Sunday school teacher was telling her class the story of the Good Samaritan, in which a man was beaten, robbed and left for dead. She described the situation in vivid detail so her students would catch the drama.
Then, she asked the class, "If you saw a person lying on the roadside, all wounded and bleeding, what would you do?"
A thoughtful little girl broke the hushed silence, "I think I'd throw up."

DID NOAH FISH?
A Sunday school teacher asked, "Johnny, do you think Noah did a lot of fishing when he was on the Ark?"
"No," replied David. "How could he, with just two worms?"

HIGHER POWER
A Sunday school teacher said to her children, " We have been learning how powerful kings and queens were in Bible times. But, there is a higher power. Can anybody tell me what it is?"
One child blurted out, "Aces!"

MOSES AND THE RED SEA
Nine-year-old Joey, was asked by his mother what he had learned in Sunday school.
"Well, Mom, our teacher told us how God sent Moses behind enemy lines on a rescue mission to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. When he got to the Red Sea, he had his army build a pontoon bridge and all the people walked across safely. Then, he radioed headquarters for reinforcements. They sent bombers to blow up the bridge and all the Israelites were saved." "Now, Joey, is that really what your teacher taught you?" his mother asked.
"Well, no, Mom. But, if I told it the way the teacher did, you'd never believe it!"

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD
A Sunday School teacher decided to have her young class memorize one of the most quoted passages in the Bible; Psalm 23. She gave the youngsters a month to learn the verse. Little Rick was excited about the task -- but, he just couldn't remember the Psalm. After much practice, he could barely get past the first line. On the day that the kids were scheduled to recite Psalm 23 in front of the congregation, Ricky was so nervous. When it was his turn, he stepped up to the microphone and said proudly,
"The Lord is my Shepherd, and that's all I need to know."

Church Smiles
There was a very gracious lady who was mailing an old family Bible to her brother in another part of the country..
"Is there anything breakable in here?" asked the postal clerk.
"Only the Ten Commandments," answered the lady.
While driving in Pennsylvania, a family caught up to an Amish carriage. The owner of the carriage obviously had a sense of humor, because attached to the back of the carriage was a hand printed sign ... "Energy efficient vehicle: Runs on oats and grass. Caution: Do not step in exhaust.
Sunday after church, a Mom asked her very young daughter what the lesson was about.
The daughter answered, "Don't be scared, you'll get your quilt."
Needless to say, the Mom was perplexed. Later in the day, the pastor stopped by for tea and the Mom asked him what that morning's Sunday school lesson was about.
He said "Be not afraid, thy comforter is coming."

Give me a sense of humor, Lord, The grace to see a joke, To get some humor out of life, And pass it on to other folk.

My hospital stay part B -- my first visitor

2008-11-06T09:44:00.004-05:00

*I had voted for the very first time Tuesday, and now am so happy that the person I voted for had won! Yay, no more Bush!!*

Because I was so dehydrated and was really wanting something to drink, they had given Chuck some ice chips and sponges that I could suck on for water. I was doing just fine with this special diet, I wasn't getting sick or anything. A couple of hours later a male nurse came up to me and asked how I was doing. I told him how thirsty I was and that my lips were extremely dry! He disappeared for a few minutes and came back and put something in my IV. He then told me that he wasn't supposed to give me anything but he had some more ice chips to give me. He gave me one spoonful of ice and I threw it up. He took the ice away and had a bunch of different other nurses come in to help me clean up.

I was also having trouble with my heart/pulse rate beating too fast during this time (which was causing a lot of confusion because my blood pressure was extremely low and all of the medicine they could find me to lower my heart rate would also lower my blood pressure). They had found some medicine to lower my heart rate wich also causes nausea, but the nurse didn't put two and two together and instead took away the ice chips saying that is what made me throw up. So here I am thirsty as h*ll and I couldn't have any water. The one thing I really didn't understand was that for the past several hours Chuck had been giving me ice and I hadn't gotten sick! A couple of hours later a female nurse came in and put some more medicine in my IV. A few minutes later I started having dry heaves, they finally looked into it and found out that it also causes nausea so they gave me some water and never gave me that medicine again.

While I was in the ER Chuck had called his family and mine to tell them what had happened and where I was. They then moved me to a room in the intensive care. The room was very familiar and I asked Chuck if this was the same room his mother was in after her suicide attempt. He had left to talk to the doctor and call his brother. The doctor didn't know for sure what was wrong they thought maybe I had had a stroke at first but I was moving around, so they just figure I had some sort of virus... I keep telling Chuck that I must have had West Nile! Chuck had come back and told me that his mom was on her way up. I was not really thrilled over this news, but hey what could I do? I do not know how she knew I was in the hospital, I think Ken had told his mawmaw (Sharon's mom) and she in turn called Sharon.

The visit went just fine. She had come with a friend of hers... I didn't know nor have I ever seen this woman before... but her friend spent most of the visit in her vehicle. She also thought the room was the same room that she was in. Chuck had told both of us that she was in the room next door, right across from the nurses station and my room was across from the door. Sharon left to go home after visiting for 30 minutes. I am so glad that she didn't say something stupid and start an argument.

Day one of my hospital visit -- part A

2008-10-24T13:39:00.005-04:00

I felt fine all day on Thursday, the 28th of June. Then Chuck made us pizza for dinner and then minutes later I threw it up. I was throwing up so much that I was starting to vomit up nothing but stomach acid! Friday morning I was extremely dehydrated and when Chuck got me some water I threw that up too! That is when we checked my blood sugar and it was really high and we decided to bring me to the ER.

My husband and I live in a really small town and there is no hospital around here. The hospital is in the next town over, more than 13 miles away. Since my sugar was super high, I was really tired and kept nodding off (whenever your sugar is high sleep is the best way to lower it) but Chuck wouldn't let me sleep. It took me a while but now I understand the reason why. He was afraid that if I fell asleep he may not be able to wake me back up... as has happened before. Man, that drive seemed to have taken forever! I kept telling him to drive faster because I wanted to go to sleep.

Once I arrived they put me in a bed right away. The bed was one of those that takes your weight at the same time and I thought that was cool because I had had no way to weigh myself before. Chuck would weigh himself and then would hold me and figure out my weight that way. We did it that way sometime in January and we figured that I was 119lbs. and since then I am sure that I have put on some more weight. After the doctors had asked me some questions they looked at my weight and said aloud "Wow, only 105"! Boy, talk about losing tons of weight!! Just takes throwing up everything all night long. They did ask me when I had my last period and I honestly told them that I hadn't had one since early May, so when they took some blood they also did a pregnancy test. It was negative of course.

I am back... miss me?

2008-10-07T14:52:00.004-04:00

It has been a really long time since I have written a blog. But I am back now, so quit worrying about me...:) I was in the hospital from the end of June until the beginning of July. It was only for five days, but it feels like an eternity! I also lost my voice and it had taken almost 3 months to get it back a little bit and now I can start using my voice program again. Leaves you wondering, what good is a voice program if you don't have a voice?

Why did you go to the hospital and how did you lose your voice, you ask ? I had started throwing up at around seven o'clock Thursday night and I just kept getting sick, like every 30 minutes, until seven o'clock Friday morning. I could not hold anything down! Chuck checked my blood sugar and it was 449! Really really high, practically comatose level. So we decided that I should go to the hospital. A couple of days later is when I lost my voice and we all figured it was because I threw up so much that it had irritated my throat.

Since my voice isn't fully back yet (it is 90% better), I will have to take my time when I write about my hospital visit. This little post took me since nine o'clock this morning and my voice is starting to get hoarse. I do want to let you know who came to visit me!

My weekend fun

2008-06-25T14:10:00.005-04:00

This post is about my boating fun I had on Saturday. I would have written this sooner but on Sunday I was gone, Monday I didn't feel too good and Tuesday the Internet was down all day. A couple of weeks ago Ken had bought a used boat (a speed boat). He mainly was thinking of fixing it up to sell it for more money. He has taken the kids out a couple of weekends now and I have been asking when Chuck and I could go. It only seats 6 people (which is how many people are in Ken's family) so Chuck and I could only go every other weekend... Ken's two kids go to their moms and Kelly's two go to their dads -- which happens to be married to Ken's kids mom! This past Saturday Ken had asked if Chuck and I wanted to go boating. He picked us up at 11 o'clock in the morning and drove about 15 to 20 minutes away to a lake called Little Long Lake. Ken had also brought along an inflatable tube so he and Chuck could go tubing. Chuck went first... after Ken had informed us that neither of the kids would try it until after their uncle Chuckie did it. He had fun and was only flipped out twice! Then Ken went but he stayed on. Then everyone tried talking Kelly into going but she didn't want to. Not really expecting to be able to go nor even really interested in going, I said "I'll go". So I went and had fun! I didn't flip although it sometimes felt as though I was going to go... LOL! Chuck was telling me Ken had it up to 25 mph! After I went Kelly finally decided she would go. We all had fun, hopefully we can go again soon! Ken said he may trade in his boat and get a bigger one so all of us can go.

Our new pride and joy

2008-06-13T09:02:00.008-04:00

Boy, I haven't been on here in a while. I am sorry for this. I do plan to write a short update on what's been going on today and let everyone know that I am still here. I have been spending a lot of my time on Facebook lately and went camping on Memorial weekend. Had lots of fun and cannot wait to go back again! We stayed in that campground with the Little House on the Prairie cabins only this time we slept in the big, extendable camper with my father-in-law and his wife. Last Saturday (June 7) Chuck and I went grocery shopping, but instead of groceries we ended up with a new dog. I know I know, we were stupid and naïve to get and another one when the one we have isn't quite a-year-old yet (her first birthday is July 1). But she is so dang cute! On our way home Chuck said that we have spent all of our grocery money for the next two weeks on the new puppy. So I told him that we could just throw her on the barbecue and eat her for dinner tonight because she is just so cute I could eat her! LOL!! Anyways, she is an 8 week old Cocker Spaniel (a purebred) puppy that even came with AKC registration papers for us to fill out if we want. Her name is Lilly and her and Gracie gets along wonderfully! Gracie has turned out to be such a great big sister... she has grown-up now to be about knee-high and is even taller then all of her brothers and sisters from the same litter! We are not sure if we want to breed her or have her fixed. We know Ken and Kelly would love to one. But I do not know if I want to go through all of the hassle that comes with a bunch of puppies. Here are a couple of pictures that we have taken so far (they were taken June 10).

In these next two pictures Gracie and Lilly are playing. The last one is of her napping on Chuck's slipper. She actually pitches a fit whenever she cannot find them!

Sunday School Humor

2008-05-20T09:34:00.003-04:00

STORY OF ELIJAH
The Sunday school teacher was carefully explaining the story of Elijah the Prophet and the false prophets of Baal. She explained how Elijah built the altar, put wood upon it, cut a steer in pieces, and laid it upon the altar. And then, Elijah commanded the people of God to fill four barrels of water and pour it over the altar. He had them do this four times "Now, asked the teacher, "Can anyone in the class tell me why the Lord would have Elijah pour water over the steer on the altar?" A little girl in the back of the room started waving her hand, "I know! I know!" she said, "To make the gravy!"

LOT'S WIFE
The Sunday School teacher was describing how Lot's wife looked back and turned into a pillar of salt, when little Jason interrupted, "My Mummy looked back once, while she was driving," he announced triumphantly, "and she turned into a telephone pole!"

GOOD SAMARITAN
A Sunday school teacher was telling her class the story of the Good Samaritan, in which a man was beaten, robbed and left for dead. She described the situation in vivid detail so her students would catch the drama. Then, she asked the class, "If you saw a person lying on the roadside, all wounded and bleeding, what would you do?" A thoughtful little girl broke the hushed silence, "I think I'd throw up."

DID NOAH FISH?
A Sunday school teacher asked, "Johnny, do you think Noah did a lot of fishing when he was on the Ark?" "No," replied David. "How could he, with just two worms?"

HIGHER POWER
A Sunday school teacher said to her children, " We have been learning how powerful kings and queens were in Bible times. But, there is a higher power. Can anybody tell me what it is?" One child blurted out, "Aces!"

MOSES AND THE RED SEA
Nine-year-old Joey, was asked by his mother what he had learned in Sunday school. "Well, Mom, our teacher told us how God sent Moses behind enemy lines on a rescue mission to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. When he got to the Red Sea, he had his army build a pontoon bridge and all the people walked across safely. Then, he radioed headquarters for reinforcements. They sent bombers to blow up the bridge and all the Israelites were saved." "Now, Joey, is that really what your teacher taught you?" his mother asked. "Well, no, Mom. But, if I told it the way the teacher did, you'd never believe it!"

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD
A Sunday School teacher decided to have her young class memorize one of the most quoted passages in the Bible; Psalm 23. She gave the youngsters a month to learn the verse. Little Rick was excited about the task -- but, he just couldn't remember the Psalm. After much practice, he could barely get past the first line. On the day that the kids were scheduled to recite Psalm 23 in front of the congregation, Ricky was so nervous. When it was his turn, he stepped up to the microphone and said proudly, "The Lord is my Shepherd, and that's all I need to know."

Church Smiles
There was a very gracious lady who was mailing an old family Bible to her brother in another part of the country.. "Is there anything breakable in here?" asked the postal clerk. "Only the Ten Commandments," answered the lady.
While driving in Pennsylvania, a family caught up to an Amish carriage. The owner of the carriage obviously had a sense of humor, because attached to the back of the carriage was a hand printed sign ... "Energy efficient vehicle: Runs on oats and grass. Caution: Do not step in exhaust. Sunday after church, a Mom asked her very young daughter what the lesson was about. The daughter answered, "Don't be scared, you'll get your quilt." Needless to say, the Mom was perplexed. Later in the day, the pastor stopped by for tea and the Mom asked him what that morning's Sunday school lesson was about. He said "Be not afraid, thy comforter is coming."

Give me a sense of humor, Lord, The grace to see a joke, To get some humor out of life, And pass it on to other folk.

The continuation...

2008-05-08T10:16:00.008-04:00

*I'm sorry that it took so long for me to write the continuation of what happened with my mother-in-law. The Internet has been working fine for the past couple of weeks (my husband found out that it was his computer that was messing with the router which in turn was screwing up the modem so he spent a weekend working on it), but my friend and my brother had sent me some games on Facebook a while ago and I have become totally addicted to these games! So the fault lies on me this time.*

Then on Sunday I had gone to church and Kelly told me that all the letter was basically asking for was the boys' forgiveness. She could have a least talked to the boys in person instead of writing them letters. Chuck already forgave her a long time ago, he just hasn't had the opportunity to tell her yet. When Church got out and as we were piling into the van Carrie asked her dad when their mamaw would be coming over. He had told her about 12:30. When I got home Chuck had told me that his mom and Joanne had stopped in while I was at church. She didn't know that Bebe had died about a year ago and when Chuck had told her he said she looked as though she were about to cry. I found this weird because I know for a fact that I had sent an e-mail to Joanne and Bill a few days after it had happened. She was disappointed because I wasn't there (I just started going back to church about a year ago) and she did not like Gracie at all, but she did like all of the work that we have done to the inside of our house (she loved the carpet and our new accessible toilet with the bars that we bought). I saw the letter that she had wrote to Chuck lying on my desk and I was getting ready to open it, because I was dying to know what she had written. But Chuck had seen me and took the letter from my hands and threw it behind my monitor (where I can't reach). I told him I basically know what it is about but I want to read it anyway, and Chuck told me that his brother read his and he said that it was no big deal. That she was leaving again... but where? We do not know.

Then we sat down to watch a movie when there was a knock on the door. Chuck had opened the door and Sharon and Joanne had walked in. They had said that they had wanted to come back and at least say goodbye to me. She looks a lot different now, healthier, thinner and even tanner. She says that she works out every day by lifting weights and doing stretches... now why didn't she do this while she was married to the dad? She mainly stopped in earlier to see Bebe and was very disappointed to learn that she had died, as she was saying this Joanne just stood there like a bump on a log and acted surprised when Chuck and I had explained what all had happened to Bebe. She also told us that she had paid off that entire bill for the credit card machine and doesn't understand why we still receive phone calls from the debt collection agency, she figures that Carol must still be using the credit card that they were given and not paying them back. That does seem very possible, so I definitely believe her on this one because I can see Carol doing this.

She had stayed talking with us for quite some time it was nice to be able to see her and talk with her instead of hearing and relying only on what other people have said about her. She was saying that she wanted to see everyone one last time because she was getting ready to leave and will never see anyone again. It took quite a while and then we finally got it out of her where she was going. She is going to Bangladesh because her husband is losing his job and doesn't know what he will do (so she is going over there to make it harder on him because he will need to feed her also because she cannot possibly help out by working until she at least understands the language), also because Rassell's parents are pushing him to marry someone over there since he cannot be with Sharon. So Sharon wants to go over there so they stop trying to make him be with someone else. We all kept saying that she can't keep doing this to us, entering our lives again and then boom saying goodbye and leaving again. That is not fair to us because we are (Chuck and I) willing to accept Rassell into our lives, I kept telling her that she could at least come to visit both her and Rassell or else they could send us a letter or even e-mail us. After saying this she nodded her head and then left. So I do not know if she got what we were trying to say or if that was the last time that we would see her. Although, she did say to Chuck right before getting into her van "see you later". Leaves you wondering?!

She's back... again

2008-04-24T12:47:00.004-04:00

I haven't been able to update my readers on what happened last Sunday. The snow and is all gone now and I have been spending a lot of my afternoons outside in the warmer weather. My friend sent me some information on different websites that offer free surveys the other day, so I have been spending a lot of my mornings looking at these sites. I was interested in filling out surveys to be paid, Chuck is not making as much now that he is working only 40 hours a week and we desperately need some extra income. But I was not willing to pay a fee just to join and become a member of a certain site. I found some websites that offered some good sounding, legit surveys, but since they are free websites they have no money to pay you and you have to register with their partners site in order to get paid. The problem with this is that you are required to enter all of your personal stuff like your full name, address, phone number, etc. on each site, and some sites will not let you request a payment until $100 or more is in your account. So if you want $100 you will need to register with about 100 partners sites and then once you get your $100 you will be required to register for 100 more. I do not think so! I have given up on this idea but I do not know what I will do for extra money.

Well anyways, on to last Sunday (actually it was April 7 ) with my mother-in-law...
After she left she had started telling the kids that she had moved to Tennessee. We had still been talking with her brother Bill at this time, so we knew this was false because she was still living with them! She even went as far to tell them that she had a house of her own with a pond out back and a couple of dogs. She had two vans and was working on trading them in and getting a pickup truck instead. Then she even gave them her "new address" so that they could come visit her. We tried pointing this out to Brenden because he had wanted to write her a letter on a couple of occasions. At first we would tell him no, but he would still insist on doing this. So we eventually told him that his mamaw was still living in Michigan with uncle Bill, he did not want to believe us at first kept calling us liars. He finally figured it out after a while that his mamaw was the one that was lying to them.

Last summer (probably around April or May) Chuck and I were in the kitchen and he said that his mom just drove by. My heart went to my throat and I thought I was going to puke. I was still... and even am still... upset with her. Mainly because of what she did to her very own children, disowning them. However I really did want her to stop and come in because she is Chuck's mom after all, but she didn't she just kept on going. I could tell that he was kind of hurt by this though and he started getting into a really bad mood as a result.

Then last Saturday (April 5) she drove by while Chuck was outside barbecuing and this time she waved. He came inside and told me that his mom just drove by and I was like "so?". Because she didn't stop and I didn't want Chuck to get to his hopes up and then be hurt and then be in a bad mood again. He did talk to his brother that night and Ken told him that she pulled up in the driveway at their house to talk with the kids since they were already playing outside. She also left a couple of letters, one for Chuck and the other for Ken. He had read his and said that it was fine, but he didn't say what was in it.

To Be Continued...

She is packed and gone!

2008-04-11T14:46:00.002-04:00

*We have been experiencing some difficulty with our power (the electricity) and the Internet here this past week. So I have not been able to post as many blogs as I would have liked, so instead of being done with this story about my mother-in-law this week it will probably be done sometime next week.*

Wednesday morning came and I was getting very nervous. Getting so nervous that my stomach was starting to ache and my blood sugar was starting to drop. I am diabetic and have been since I was 17 years old, I do alright managing it because I am not that bad yet and I only need to take one shot in the morning. I even have to eat some type of candy everyday because sometimes it ends up going to low! Maggie (the dad's new wife -- but at this time the girlfriend) also has trouble with her sugar level so I called her to bring me over a candy bar because I could not find any. I admit I would have called her to come over even if my sugar was okay. I was just so nervous about having to see Sharon that I needed someone to be with me in case something happened. It was nearly 1 o'clock in the afternoon by the time they showed up. I heard them rummaging around downstairs before coming up (Sharon was storing some of her bigger items in our basement, so I do not think it was any big deal she was down there especially since the most expensive items that Chuck and I had down there was the washer and dryer). When she came up the first thing she said to me was, "It is a good thing that you have somebody here with you, now I can't bash your head against the wall." I didn't say anything to this, I just smiled and shrugged my shoulders then turned and walked/rolled away.

She then went to the front door and opened it to let a man in. I couldn't believe this, the man she had invited into my house was a known enemy of the family! This man's daughter was married to my brother-in-law and had been known to try to run Sharon off the road on a couple of occasions. Not only that but he had also beaten Ken black and blue because of an argument between Ken and Chandra. He almost caused Chuck to get in to an accident with his car on the road while I was with him, by speeding up to go around us and then slowing down to a crawl all of a sudden in front of us and the roads were icy. When Chuck got control of the car once again, the guy (Larry) flipped him the bird. So that is why I didn't want him to see not only where I lived, but especially the inside of my house. But anyways Sharon had invited him in to help her move some stuff. That makes me wonder two things; 1) why she is all of a sudden asking for his help and acting as if Larry and his wife are her best friends?, and 2) does this mean that he was also in my basement? What really makes me angry is that she had him go through our house in to the room that she was staying in and unhook her computer and carry it out. Once he did this he had left. If this was all he was needed for, Sharon could have asked me over the phone that previous Monday to get her computer ready for her and we would have done this without a problem!

She and Joanne finished packing up her things and Joanne put them in the vehicle while Sharon said her goodbyes (mainly to Bebe) and they left. She had lived with us from January until May of 2006 and told us every month... sometimes even twice a month... that she will be leaving by the next month, and she never did! I am glad we gave her that little push out the door or else she would more than likely be here even now.

She is gone... well sort of

2008-04-09T20:53:00.005-04:00

So she left. On the day I happened to have Candy and her kid over. After she had disowned Chuck, he had left and she told Candy that after she leaves that I will lie about her and call her a b**ch and Candy should not believe anything I say! Then turned to me and said since she is still working at the motel in Clare and will be staying with her friend (a fellow worker that she works with), and will work out a time next week to come get her stuff. Then she walked out the door and I thought to myself, "Good riddance!"

I still had Sharon on my Yahoo messenger friends list, so I knew whenever she was on or not. I tried to message her a couple of times, but she wouldn't respond so I figured she must have me on ignore. She left on a Wednesday afternoon and that following Monday late morning I received a phone call from the motel in Clare looking for Sharon. She had been on the computer that morning, but I did not know for sure where she was logging in to from. For all I knew she could have taken the day off and was using a library computer. I told them that she did not live here anymore and I had no way to get in touch with her (I nor Chuck knew her cell number). Then five minutes later she had called me and told me she was in the break room at her work, I said "Well if that were true then why did the front desk just call me five minutes ago asking for you?" She told me that the front desk must not have seen her come in. "Then they could have seen that you punched in on your timecard." I didn't say this but I thought it and now I think I should have said it. Anyways she had told me on the phone that her and JoAnne would be here Wednesday morning to get the rest of Sharon's stuff. Then she had hung up before I had a chance to ask her how she kept logging on to Yahoo even when she was supposed to be working. But Joanne called me later that afternoon and I got a chance to ask JoAnne. She told me that Sharon would sometimes login while she was at work on the work computer. I felt something fishy going on at this point... I mean, here is a woman who is so against any type of a lie and I actually caught her in a big, boldface lie because you cannot possibly login on a work computer and the work not know you are there... unless you have a Harry Potter invisibility cloak.

The annoying phone calls

2008-04-08T11:39:00.005-04:00

*I started writing this yesterday, but before I could post it the Internet screwed up and went down.*
Something happened Sunday with my mother-in-law. Before I tell you about it, I need to finish telling you what happened in the past. So I will be spending the next few days writing about it. Don't worry, I am almost done anyway.

Around the month of March in 2006 we started getting phone calls from a debt collection agency. Turns out that Sharon and this lady Carol Wardell rented a Visa credit card machine for their shop and when things went sour between them, Sharon kept paying for her half but Carol didn't pay anymore. Sharon called the collection agency from our phone one day (I think she was checking to see how much she had paid or something to that effect) and un-beknowest to us they had locked in our number as a way to get a hold of Carol. The caller ID would say unknown name and unknown number whenever the agency would call and my parents would sometimes show unknown name and unknown number when they would call, so I would answer and they would ask to speak to Martha Wardell... her full name is either Martha Carol or Carol Martha and she would use Martha for some things and Carol for others. While Sharon was living with us she would never answer our phone, instead she would always use her cell phone (which has always made me wonder why she used our phone to call them and not her cell). Sharon kept telling me that she had enough money to pay off the debt ... I even remember counting out the money she had to make sure she had enough ... because Chuck and I were getting very s upset from these phone calls. Then they quit for the month of March and I figured that she paid them off.

They then started calling again in April! We kept trying to tell them that we are in no way associated with Martha and do not know how to get in touch with their, but they wouldn't listen and instead kept calling us for Martha. Sometimes when they would call I would not tell Chuck because I knew his temper and I did not want to cause any trouble between him and his mother. I asked Sharon why they were calling again and she told me that she had the money but she did not feel it was her responsibility to pay them for Carol's part. Chuck and I both tried explaining that when Sharon signed the lease with Carol that automatically makes her responsible for it all if Carol was to default. Her only reply to this is that they were not calling for her instead they were calling for Carol. Then we talked to her brother about what was going on and he talked to her and then the phone calls stopped. Oh yes, before I forget to mention when we told them we did not know Martha we gave them Sharon's cell phone number. The phone calls would stop for a day or two but then start up again because Sharon admittedly said she was ignoring the phone calls, she even went and changed her phone number so they couldn't get ahold of her any longer. When we were explaining about the lease and how sick and tired we started becoming from those stupid phone calls, she tried to convince us that we needed to change our phone number. There was no way that we can do this, Chuck was looking for a new job at this time so I had sent out a bunch of resumes that had our phone number on them already!

Sharon was still driving us nuts but at least the phone calls had stopped. We did not know for sure what Bill had told Sharon, but what ever it was it worked! Chuck thinks that when he told Bill that he would give the agency Bill's number it must have scared him enough to convince Sharon that she needed to hurry and pay them off.

At least the calls had stopped for a while because in May they started up again. This time we were getting very furious about this, so Chuck and his mom got into a yelling match and he had asked her to leave. After disowning him once again and telling him that he was no longer her son and he was no longer to call her mom ever again, she left. The phone calls quit a couple of weeks later and didn't start up ever again...well for another year or so.

What a relief to have her gone, we could actually breath a lot easier and no longer had to worry about trying to please her all of the time. What really frustrates me about this whole situation with his mom is that if things aren't going her way she not only gets mad but will disown you and then will run away. And she will never apologize for any of it, instead she will put it all of the blame on you and say it is all your fault!

*we started receiving phone calls from the debt collection agency in January of this year... after not getting them for over a year and a half. We tried to explain once again that we had nothing to do with Martha or with Sharon, we tried telling this not only to the sales rep but the district manager as well. It still didn't work, the calls still persisted. So Chuck decided to write them a letter to explain the mess, he did threaten to lawyer up if the calls didn't quit. That must have worked because the calls had stopped completely two days later!*

Back to my mother-in-law...

2008-03-27T13:24:00.004-04:00

I haven't written about my mother-in-law in a while and I figure it's about time I did so. Okay on to where I left off... the eBay try.

Sharon was doing odd "habits" that were just driving me nuts! Like watching a movie with me or my husband and getting up right in the middle and leaving for her bedroom to talk on the computer, burning stuff in my brand-new microwave that I still haven't been able to get clean, or giving the dogs "people" food (all of our leftovers in the refrigerator) making our dogs so fat that they had rolls! She and I got into a couple of altercations during this time. She was always talking negative about my husband, his dad, his brother and his family (the extended family), as I said before I do not like to keep things from my husband that will affect him in some way or another. So I would tell my husband what ever she had said about him. This would cause her to get very angry with me and she would start yelling at me. We did this a few times and the last time she actually called me a lying b***h and slammed the door on her way out (she would leave several times and stay gone for the weekend but this time she left and was gone for a couple of weeks). The worst habit was whenever my sister-in-law would come over, she would disappear into her bedroom for the whole time she was there. Chuck would literally drag his mother out of her room and tell her to quit being rude and to at least say hi. She would say hi to Ken but totally ignore Kelly and go back in to her room. Can we say rude?!

Now this is funny!

2008-03-24T14:50:00.004-04:00

The Pastor's Ass

The pastor entered his donkey in a race and it won.

The pastor was so pleased with the donkey that he entered it in the race again, and it won again.

The Local paper read: PASTOR'S ASS OUT FRONT

The Bishop was so upset with this kind of publicity that he ordered the pastor not to enter the donkey in another race.

The next day, the local paper headline read: BISHOP SCRATCHES PASTOR'S ASS.

This was too much for the bishop, so he ordered the pastor to get rid of the donkey.

The pastor decided to give it to a nun in a nearby convent.

The local paper, hearing of the news, posted the following headline the next day: NUN HAS BEST ASS IN TOWN.

The bishop fainted.

He informed the nun that she would have to get rid of the donkey, so she sold it to a farmer for $10.

The next day the paper read: NUN SELLS ASS FOR $10.

This was too much for the bishop, so he ordered the nun to buy back the donkey and lead it to the plains where it could run wild.

The next day the headlines read: NUN ANNOUNCES HER ASS IS WILD AND FREE

The bishop was buried the next day.

The moral of the story is....being concerned about public opinion can bring you much grief and misery...and even shorten your life. So be yourself and enjoy life... Stop worrying about everyone else's ass and you'll be a lot happier and live longer!

Have a nice day!

My upcoming birthday and Easter

2008-03-20T13:09:00.004-04:00

I would have written this tomorrow but Chuck has the day off (they chose this day as their floating holiday), so I am posting this today. Tomorrow Chuck and I have to go grocery shopping and maybe we will go to Pizza Hut for lunch. I have always liked Pizza Hut but there isn't one in this small town, however there is one about 30 minutes away so we do not eat at it very much. Not like I did when I was in Kansas, I practically ate there once a week. We already did our grocery shopping last weekend, but Saturday I am having a couple of friends over for my birthday and the stuff I got to barbecue Chuck cooked it the other day! Hope you all have a happy Easter Sunday!

glitter-graphics.com

He still has it!

2008-03-20T09:54:00.004-04:00

I have got some really good news! We found out yesterday that he still has a job. They were supposed to interview both Tom and Chuck but never did, but come to find out Tom was given the decision whether or not he wanted to stay in the office. I am so proud of his dad (Chuck's dad... I would go ahead and use his first name, but his first name is Chuck also and to avoid confusion I will continue calling him the dad.) He finally grew that backbone and was telling Tom who Tom actually worked for -- him! The dad was also starting to get tired of this ordeal with Tom (he has actually been in trouble with the job before, but it was all left up to him to decide if he wanted to stay or not) so he told Tom that it was only 40 hours and he could not be a hand on the trucks on the weekends anymore. That was the straw that broke the camel's back, he needed the extra pay so he gave up the office job to become a full-time truck driver. Now here's the bad news. Since Chuck already has a CDL he was going to drive on the weekends, now his dad has kind of closed the door for a while on that idea. So now we were poor to begin with but we are now facing a big chunk out of his paycheck each month. Chuck says we are at the poverty level now! He also not only is in charge of the paper work and stuff but now he is also in charge of the dispatching side. But I am so happy that things worked out and he still has a job, thank you to everyone who's kept us in your thoughts and prayers!

A sweet and thoughtful poem

2008-03-13T15:15:00.004-04:00

*This poem was e-mailed to me a while ago and I really liked it. I hope you like too.*

I asked God to take away my habit.
God said, No. It is not for me to take away, but for you to give it up.

I asked God to make my handicapped child whole.
God said, No. His spirit is whole, his body is only temporary.

I asked God to grant me patience.
God said, No. Patience is a byproduct of tribulations; it isn't granted, it is learned.

I asked God to give me happiness.
God said, No. I give you blessings; Happiness is up to you.

I asked God to spare me pain.
God said, No. Suffering draws you apart from worldly cares and brings you closer to me.

I asked God to make my spirit grow.
God said, No. You must grow on your own! , but I will prune you to make you fruitful.

I asked God for all things that I might enjoy life.
God said, No. I will give you life, so that you may enjoy all things.

I ask God to help me LOVE others, as much as He loves me.
God said...Ahhhh, finally you have the idea.

THIS DAY IS YOURS DON'T THROW IT AWAY,
May God Bless You, "To the world you might be one person, but to one person you just might be the world"

A birthday surprise!

2008-03-12T11:00:00.010-04:00

I have been wanting to write about what happened to me this past weekend, but Monday I got sick with diarrhea so I had to keep going to the bathroom (seems to happen every time I start), and Tuesday the Internet was down all day.

I had a long weekend but an exciting one! My friend had graduated from college in December and was having a graduation party in March. I do not know the full reason she wanted to wait so long, but I think it had something to do with her being on spring break. She got a bachelors in biology (I think in Environmental Studies) and couldn't find a job, so she enrolled in mid-Michigan Community College into the Nursing program. A couple of weeks ago I got an invitation to her graduation party in the mail, I did not want to go at first because I saw that she was having it in the Mormon Church. There is nothing wrong with the Mormon Church, I know that for a fact because I have been there many many times before. I just do not agree with their religion, I especially did not like the way they separate the congregation. They were together during the service but right afterwards all of the men went one way and the women went the other way to do a type of Bible study. I just didn't understand this because the Bible clearly states how all people (men and women ) are children of God and will be accepted into the kingdom of heaven, so I do not understand why separate them? Shouldn't they all learn together? The children were kept together still in their own type of Bible study... but that's how a lot of churches do it nowadays. However I do know a lot of Mormon people and I think they are really cool individuals! Anyways, I was afraid they would have some type of Mormon service and I didn't want to have to listen to Chuck complain about it. But after learning that they would have it in their back rooms I decided to go. It was on Friday and started at 4 and went until 8, but because it was on a weekday and Chuck has to work we did not get there until 7. It was fun, I hadn't met her husband yet and I finally got the chance! I invited them over for my birthday in a couple of weeks, I do hope they can come though since she is such a busybody she may have made plans already.

Saturday we didn't do much at all, I just hung around the house and played my game while Chuck plowed the driveway. We had been invited over to my brother-in-law's house on Sunday afternoon to celebrate his wife's birthday. I was disappointed and felt somewhat left out because we usually celebrate our birthdays together. But I figured that since she is turning 40 she may be wanting to celebrate it with her family because the weekend they are to have the kids again (which is my birthday that Saturday) is on Easter weekend and their mother/stepmom may want them for the holiday... like she has every single holiday in the past several years! I went to church with them that morning (Sunday morning), and my niece asked her dad if Chuck and I were coming over for dinner. I was thinking

"I am right here, you can always ask me what my plans are",

but I didn't say anything because her dad said to her

"Yes and remember what I told you?"

Her brother started whispering something to her but I could not hear him, then she said,

"Oh yeah!"

Right then I knew something was up, but I didn't know what for sure. Then coming out of church Kelly asked me if I liked cheesecake with cherry topping and I thought

"It's your birthday why does it matter what I like?"'

Then I went home and we went over there a couple of hours later. People started arriving (her parents and my/her in-laws) and she wanted to have the cake and ice cream first... my brother-in-law said it must be a 40-year-old thing. She got out two cakes and put them on the table and was getting ready to put candles in them, while she was doing that my brother-in-law turned to me and said,

"Oh by the way, we are celebrating your birthday too."

Everyone knew about it and brought me gifts to, even in my own husband knew about it! I told my mom on the phone about the party and that I have always wanted a surprise party and I finally got one! I only had to wait 33 years to get one though. That was a very cool birthday!

And the president is...

2008-03-06T16:29:00.005-05:00

Every morning my husband watches the weather on the news and when he leaves for work I continue watching The Early Show that comes on after the mid-Michigan news. I have been watching the primary debates that are going on right now. I have registered to vote for the first time in this next presidential election, I have never voted before so I am pretty excited. I mostly registered because I am sick and tired of the horrible job that Bush has done! The first time he was running, I don't know how to explain it I just know there was something I didn't like about him so I did not want him in the office. He was doing a poor job so the second time I did not want him in the office anymore at all, after hearing he won I said to myself "and now our country is going to s**t!"... it's amazing how right I was (guess my instincts are right after all!). So I decided to vote this next time hopefully to keep guys like Bush out of the office.

These presidential debates were really exciting at first, but are now getting really old. Mostly because of who is left running, especially on the Republican side. Yes, I agreed with Giuliani and his views on abortion, but that is where the similarity ended. I really didn't care that he dropped out at the beginning. That other guy, the actor from Law & Order, I knew nothing about and I do not feel bad that he is not running anymore. Then there were three Republicans left; Mick Romney, John McCain and Mike Huckabee. I just loved Mike Huckabee. He stood for basically every thing I believed in, I so wanted him to be our next president! I am still very disappointed that he has lost. I was telling my mom a couple of months ago that Romney is throwing fits like a little two year old, always blaming Huckabee for taking his votes that he needed and telling Huckabee that he should drop out. When debating here in Michigan I was for Huckabee all the way but this state voted for Romney, no wonder Michigan is in the s**thouse! They are the biggest bunches of idiots I have ever been a part of, this state even voted for Bush! I guess the main reason they voted for Romney was because I guess his Dad was Governor of Michigan or Something. But anyways, Romney dropped out after trying to convince Huckabee to drop out. So then there were two... McCain and Huckabee. I did not know anything about McCain only that he looks really old so I looked him up on the Internet to read what his views are. , he is just like Bush! I kept telling my husband that Bush is going to back him! The debates took place in the southern states so I did not hear much about Huckabee anymore, I mostly heard about McCain. Well Huckabee did lose and McCain ended up winning the Republican side. Now on the news is talk about how Bush is giving McCain his full endorsement and is backing him 100%. That scared me because I do not want to suffer with another Bush as president! I find it weird that my instinct told me Bush was going to back McCain and now he is!

Now the only Democratic debaters I know about are Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama. These two have been going at it for a while now. When I registered I had a slight feeling that Clinton would run but I had no idea that this Obama guy was going to run. I knew absolutely nothing of Obama, and I still don't! I have never even heard of him before. I don't understand him nor what his views are but I do know that his policies are geared to a change, but what kind of change? I do not want any kind of change, I just want an improvement. Mainly to clean up the mess Bush has created. That is what Clinton says she wants to do. For a while there we all thought Obama would win but Clinton surprised us by winning the bigger states. I was happy about this, I want her to win , I do not want Obama and McCain to be on the ballot, I would rather have an experienced women who will get the job done! That is one thing that makes me very angry with Obama, he keeps whining and complaining that Hillary does not have any experience. She has a lot more experience than he does! We all know that while Bill Clinton was in office Hillary was the one basically running the country. Why do you think everyone knows Bill as "Billary"? Anyways Hillary, you definitely have my vote. If she does not win I am definitely voting for an independent.

Just stuff in general

2008-02-22T10:57:00.006-05:00

No news yet whether Chuck gets to keep his job or not. His dad, talked to his boss on Monday but didn't bring up the proposal instead he basically said that since the Beckman office is bringing in so much money they can easily afford to keep Chuck on. I guess there has been many complaints about another office that keeps track of the brine wells (the salty water found mixed in with the oil in the ground), so that they may quit keeping track of them. Chuck's dad brought up the fact that Tom could very well keep track of the brine wells and if he does this Chuck could continue working there. His dad also brought up the fact that once Chuck loses the office job he is gone for good because he will not go back to driving. Chuck says his dad plans to hold off on the proposal until it deems necessary for him to use it. The boss is going to think about it for another week or so. *sigh*I wish they would tell us soon!

Gracie is doing great. She is such a pure joy to have around... especially when Chuck is in a bad mood like he has been since finding out his job may go down the toilet! She may be potty trained now but she still has accidents every now and then. She is not a barker (usually all little dogs tend to be an annoying little barkers) although she will bark when she is playing. Whenever she does need to go out, she will not tell you that she needs out instead she just stands a few feet in front of the door and if you're not watching after a bit she will give up and pee somewhere. That in itself is very annoying! She is still in her puppy chewing stage right now and has totally destroyed one couch and has been caught chewing a whole in the other one. BTW, Dawn I have a couple of the chicken flavored rawhide chew bones that are too big for Gracie. Once you get through this trial period with Reba, would she like to have the unopened one? That is if she can still have chicken.

We are to go over to my father-in-law's tomorrow to celebrate his birthday which was Wednesday. They are having a dinner which is great because we can have a "free" meal I think Maggie is an excellent cook! It is nice to have a good cook in the family (well except for Kelly... she is a wonderful cook). You can tell Chuck's dad enjoys it also (He is a little fatter every time I see him... LOL), especially after Sharon who could not cook even if her life depended on it! I mean this woman would burn popcorn in the microwave! We also may end up with a kid or two... but we'll see.

Management Lessons

2008-02-20T11:08:00.002-05:00

*I got this in an e-mail from my dad the other day and I had thought it was funny and very accurate!*

Lesson 1:
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower, when the doorbell rings.
The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs.
When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next-door neighbour.
Before she says a word, Bob says, 'I'll give you $800 to drop that towel.'
After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob, after a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 and leaves.
The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs.
When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks, 'Who was that?'
'It was Bob the next door neighbour,' she replies.
'Great,' the husband says, 'did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?'

Moral of the story:
If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.

Lesson 2:
A priest offered a Nun a lift.
She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg.
The priest nearly had an accident.
After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg.
The nun said, 'Father, remember Psalm 129?'
The priest removed his hand. But, changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again. The nun once again said, 'Father, remember Psalm 129?'
The priest apologized 'Sorry sister but the flesh is weak.'
Arriving at the convent, the nun sighed heavily and went on her way.
On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129. It said, 'Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.'

Moral of the story: If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.

Lesson 3:
A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp.
They rub it and a Genie comes out. The Genie says, 'I'll give each of you just one wish.' 'Me first! Me first!' says the admin clerk. 'I want to be in the Bahamas , driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.' Puff! She's gone.
'Me next! Me next!' says the sales rep. 'I want to be in Hawaii , relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life.'
Puff! He's gone.
'OK, you're up,' the Genie says to the manager. The manager says, 'I want those two back in the office after lunch.'

Moral of the story: Always let your boss have the first say.

Lesson 4:
An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing.
A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, 'Can I also sit like you and do nothing?' The eagle answered: 'Sure, why not.'
So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Moral of the story: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.

Lesson 5:
A turkey was chatting with a bull.
'I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree' sighed the turkey, 'but I haven't got the energy.' 'Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?' replied the bull. They're packed with nutrients.'
The turkey pecked at a lump of dung, and found it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree.
The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch
Finally after a fourth night, the turkey was proudly perched at the top of the tree.
He was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot him out of the tree.

Moral of the story: Bull Shit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there..

Lesson 6:
A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold the bird froze and fell to the ground into a large field.
While he was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on him.
As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, he began to realize how warm he was.
The dung was actually thawing him out!
He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy. A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate.
Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him.

Morals of the story: (1) Not everyone who shits on you is your enemy.
(2) Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.
(3) And when you're in deep shit, it's best to keep your mouth shut!

Lesson 7:
A very hungry fly was almost out of energy when he spotted a pile of cow dung in a barn He immediately swooped down and ate until he was so full he could no longer fly. He spotted a pitch fork propped up against the wall He thought about his circumstance for a while and then decided that if he could crawl up the handle of the pitch fork he could then fly since he would already be in the air. After a long and arduous climb up the pitch fork, he jumped off the handle only to plummet to his death.

The moral of this story:
Don't fly off the handle if you are full of shit

THUS ENDS THE FIVE MINUTE MANAGEMENT COURSE

No job update

2008-02-15T14:37:00.005-05:00

No word whether Chuck gets to keep his job on not. Last Saturday his dad had said that he was going to run an option by his boss that Monday. The option, well it wasn't really an option but more of a "what if we did this...?" kind of thing. If they get rid of Chuck the office will need to put in a $10 secretary to replace him. The only difference would be the pay, he gets a little more than the $10... oh yeah and of course, the secretary would more than likely be a female that 95% of the males would prefer because they are mostly males that work there (come to think of it there are no females at all! His dad is going to propose that Tom and Chuck both work 40 hours a week in stead of 50, Tom will work from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. every day while Chuck works from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. Chuck has been really sick this past week so for now he just gives up and no longer cares, but I do. I haven't been able to eat or sleep very good lately. The boss wasn't in his office on Monday nor on Tuesday and now Chuck is saying that his dad is probably waiting until next Monday to offer his proposal. If his boss does accept this plan, Chuck and I will get to sleep for another hour... yay!

No job

2008-02-06T13:54:00.000-05:00

My husband just called me to tell me he may be out of a job soon. It is a real confusing high school drama that is going on at his job. It goes like this:

A couple of days ago Beckman Production Services that my husband works for (Beckman is an oil and transportation service which my father-in-law is a production manager for, my brother-in-law drives the crude oil truck side for, and my husband used to drive the water side for but now works as a "secretary"... which he likes a lot better and so do I) sold off the crude side and is only keeping on the water and hot oiler side. They are keeping most of the drivers that are working now, so thank God my brother-in-law still has a job. One of the guys that works in the office along with my husband has been saying that when crude goes he also is going to "jump ship" and go along with them. More than half of his work load will leave anyway since he is the dispatcher for both sides besides no one really liked him anyway, his personality is really bad and he is very hard on people... not just the drivers but the employers as well. When he said he was going to go, that got me my husbands hopes up because then my husband's job would be more secure for he would be dispatching the water side also. Chuck's dad was talking to one of his bosses yesterday and asked about Tom's position and where he stood. His dad was told there was no room for him to stay on, yesterday evening he asked his boss once again about Tom and was told there was no room... Chuck witnessed this conversation even! Well this morning the crude division found out the new office would be located about 30 to 40 miles north of here. Tom does not like the idea that he will have so much farther to drive just to get to work every day. He mentioned this to Chuck's dad and his dad told Tom there will be no room for you here. So Tom went above his dad's head (straight to his bosses) to complain and they basically lied on Chuck's dad and told Tom that they never said that and that Tom would always have a job. So Tom told Chuck's dad what they said and that there may be only room for one in this office and he knows the computer and what Chuck does anyway. So it is all up in the air right now but it is starting to look like Chuck maybe out of a job.

Please help me pray that he will get to keep his job because here in Michigan the job market is really really bad, that is why he had to go straight for working for his dad right after college. We could not find him a job right after college for a year!

And she gave up

2008-02-05T15:25:00.000-05:00

She eventually gave up on the eBay venture and told me I could just keep the all of the money whenever I sold an item. She also told me that I could have everything that was left over to sell for myself. I liked this idea, I figured she owed me something for all of the work I had done for her. She did ask me to write an affidavit about her relationship with Rassell and e-mail it to her lawyer. I did this mainly to stay on her good side even though my husband told me not to.

I really had no idea what to say because I had never met him. I did, however, IM with him a lot on Yahoo messenger and would ask him a bunch of questions of why he wanted to come over here and why he married someone so much older then him. So I wrote this affidavit behind my husband back. I feel she owes me for that too!

She is doing well

2008-02-05T13:38:00.000-05:00

Gracie is back from her surgery. She came home Thursday morning... I was hoping that she would not come home until Thursday afternoon, but no, Chuck had to bring her home Thursday morning. They told us to try to keep her from all jumping and running around for the next five to seven days... yeah right! The first couple of days with her was a big pain. She could jump up on things but she could not jump down off of things with out causing her a jolt of pain. So I would end up keeping an eye on where she went, or else I would have to listen to her whine all day! She is doing a lot better now than she was, is really active and is back to stalking and chasing her brother (my cat) around.

EBay and her do not mix

2008-02-01T14:48:00.000-05:00

OK, onto where I left off about my mother-in-law... that dreadful phone call asking if she could move in. I did not want her to move in, I figured that the past 8 years was long enough. I knew that once she moved in, I could not get away because I was no longer in school nor could I drive. But on January 1, 2006 she moved in. She put me through a lot during this time that she lived with us, but since it was a couple of years ago I do not want to bore you with the details. Although I will say that she sold the new house... well actually she did not sell it, instead she gave it back to the original owner... and then she got herself a part-time job as a housekeeper at a motel up here, so she could have the income to put in the income box on the Visa form to get Rassell over here. She then asked me to sell all of the items (mostly bridesmaid dresses) on eBay that were left over from a big sale we had scheduled.

They (Sharon and Joanne her sister-in-law) had rented a hotel conference room at to have the sale in. Joanne wasn't going to be there so Sharon had asked me to go to help her with the money and things. She didn't do much for the decorating of the room, all she did was match up the dresses by their colors and throws them on a table... so all the blue dresses were all scattered in one pile and all of the red dresses were in another pile but thankfully all of the wedding dresses were hung up. When the doors had opened we were busy with a lot of onlookers and some buyers but not a lot of buyers.

Joanne showed up later in the afternoon, I should have gone home then but for some reason I didn't. After she showed up we didn't get any more shoppers... not even browsers! At the end of the day we were packing up the dresses that were left for me to put on eBay. Joanne knew that I was going to put the items on eBay, so she folded up the dresses and put them in boxes that was labeled blue dresses, red dresses, green dresses, etc. and she wrote down the size of each dress like kept the list for herself.

I had never sold anything... heck I never even bought anything before... On eBay before so I did not know what I was doing. I was going to sell the simple items like the flowers and the gloves first. I kept getting e-mails from people asking me for pictures or a more thorough description especially when I was trying to sell the dresses. Since neither of them knew the specific sizes or description of each dress, I had my friend Candy come over on a weekend that Sharon would be gone. We opened the boxes and took pictures, when we opened the boxes all of the dresses were really wrinkled and some were not in a proper labeled box. There were black dresses in the box labeled purple dresses and none of the dresses looked the same... so it is a good thing we opened the box or else I would have sold a box of the purple dresses and that person wouldn't have gotten what they pay for and I may have gotten in trouble or even sued by the person! When Sharon returned all she could do was blame Candy for not folding things when she put the dresses back in to their boxes. That made me very angry because I know for a fact that Candy folded the dresses carefully and took some good shots! She wouldn't believe that Joanne (her precious sister-in-law) was partly to blame.

I then sold a couple of the dresses on eBay, the pictures and a better description helped out a lot (plus too I was selling the dresses individually instead of in bulk... selling about 10 mismatched dresses in a box... like I was told by Joanne to do. So Sharon decided to take all the wedding dresses down to Joanne and model the dresses and take pictures for me. They also wrote down a description of each dress. The pictures turned out really good but the descriptions were bad so I ended up rewriting them, the only thing I had trouble with was the sizes. I could say if the dress was a size 10 or a 12 but I could not give the answers to the bust size or anything like that.

Since I was working with Sharon on this eBay venture, I was really starting to see that she had absolutely no concept of money. She did not understand that you have to pay some seller fees regardless if you sold the items or not and that's why he she was not making the same amount that we had put down for she knew nothing about eBay either. I was starting to get a big headache every time I tried to explain this to her so after a while I just gave up and started paying the seller fees out of my share, so I wouldn't make any money but I was doing all of the work!

I am back...

2008-01-30T11:50:00.000-05:00

My microphone wire was loose and sometimes it would work but sometimes it wouldn't. What was really annoying was when I would be writing (saying) an e-mail and it would all of a sudden stop working and wouldn't work for the rest of the day. So I Had to order a new one from walmart.com a few weeks ago and it finally came. I like it a lot better than any of my other ones, it blocks out background noises so Chuck can be watching his TV and I do not get a bunch of gibberish across the screen. Gracie went to the vet this morning and will not come home until tomorrow. She's in there to be spayed and have her teeth checked (they want to make sure all of her teeth had come out all right, to make it easier on them and her they wanted to wait until she was under anesthesia already). Since she is gone for a couple of days and I have my new microphone that works I can update my blogs and maybe finish writing about my mother-in-law.

Actor, Heath Ledger, found dead in his NYC apartment

2008-01-23T18:41:00.000-05:00

*This news totally caught me by surprise! He was one of the best I thought and for him being the only 28 (younger then me) he was way too young to go.*

NEW YORK -- Heath Ledger, the talented 28-year-old actor who gravitated toward dark, brooding roles that defied his leading-man looks, was found dead Tuesday in a Manhattan apartment, facedown at the foot of his bed with prescription sleeping pills nearby, police said.

There was no obvious indication that the Australian-born Ledger had committed suicide, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

Search for more on Ledger
View results for:
Heath LedgerHeath Ledger moviesHeath Ledger photosLedger had an appointment for a massage at the SoHo apartment that is believed to be the home of the "Brokeback Mountain" actor, Browne said. The massage therapist and a housekeeper found his naked body at about 3:30 p.m. They tried to revive him, but he was already dead.

"I had such great hope for him," said Mel Gibson, who played Ledger's vengeful father in "The Patriot," in a statement. "He was just taking off and to lose his life at such a young age is a tragic loss."

Outside the Manhattan building on an upscale street, paparazzi and gawkers gathered, and several police officers put up barricades to control the crowd of about 300. Onlookers craned their necks as officers brought out a black bodybag on a gurney, took it across the sidewalk and put it into a medical examiner's office van.

As the door opened, bystanders snapped pictures with camera phones, rolled video and said, "He's coming out!"

An autopsy was planned for Wednesday, medical examiner's office spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said.

While not a marquee movie star, Ledger was an award-winning actor who chose his roles carefully rather than cashing in on big-money parts. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as a gay cowboy in "Brokeback Mountain." During filming, he met Michelle Williams, who played his wife in the film. The two had a daughter, now 2-year-old Matilda, and lived together in Brooklyn until they split up last year.

It was a shocking and unforeseen conclusion for one of Hollywood's bright young stars. Though his leading man looks propelled him to early stardom in films like "10 Things I Hate About You" and "A Knight's Tale," his career took a notable turn toward dramatic and brooding roles with 2001's "Monster's Ball."

Ledger's publicist, Mara Buxbaum, said in a statement: "We are all deeply saddened and shocked by this accident. This is an extremely difficult time for his loved ones and we are asking the media to please respect the family's privacy and avoid speculation until the facts are known."

Video: Stars react to Ledger's death
In the Australian city of Perth, where Ledger was born and raised, his father called the actor's death "tragic, untimely and accidental."

"He was (a) down-to-earth, generous, kind-hearted, life-loving, unselfish individual, extremely inspirational to many," Kim Ledger said, reading from a prepared statement. "Heath has touched so many people on so many different levels during his short life."

Ledger eschewed Hollywood glitz in favor of a bohemian life in Brooklyn, where he became one of the borough's most famous residents. "Brokeback" would be his breakthrough role, establishing him as one of his generation's finest talents and an actor willing to take risks.

Ledger began to gravitate more toward independent fare, including Lasse Hallstrom's "Casanova" and Terry Gilliam's "The Brothers Grimm," both released in 2005. His 2006 film "Candy" now seems destined to have an especially haunting quality: In a particularly realistic performance, Ledger played a poet wrestling with a heroin addiction along with his girlfriend, played by Abbie Cornish.

But Ledger's most recent choices were arguably the boldest yet: He costarred in "I'm Not There," in which he played one of the many incarnations of Bob Dylan — as did Cate Blanchett, whose performance in that film earned an Oscar nomination Tuesday for best supporting actress.

And in what may be his final finished performance, Ledger proved that he wouldn't be intimidated by taking on a character as iconic as Jack Nicholson's Joker. Ledger's version of the "Batman" villain, glimpsed in early teaser trailers, made it clear that his Joker would be more depraved and dark.

Curiosity about Ledger's final performance will likely stoke further interest in the summer blockbuster. "Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan said this month that Ledger's Joker would be wildly different from Nicholson's.

"It was a very great challenge for Heath," Nolan said. "He's extremely original, extremely frightening, tremendously edgy. A very young character, a very anarchic presence that taps into a lot of our basic fears and panic."

Ledger told The New York Times in a November interview that he "stressed out a little too much" during the Dylan film and had trouble sleeping while portraying the Joker, whom he called a "psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy."

"Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night," Ledger told the newspaper. "I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going." He said he took two Ambien pills, which worked for only an hour, the paper said.

Ledger was a widely recognized figure in his Manhattan neighborhood, where he used to shop at a home and children's store. Michelle Vella, an employee there, said she had frequently seen Ledger with his daughter — carrying the toddler on his shoulders, or having ice cream with her.

"It's so sad. They were really close," Vella said. "He's a very down-to-earth guy and an amazing father."

Before settling down with Williams, Ledger had relationships with actresses Heather Graham and Naomi Watts. He met Watts while working on "The Lords of Dogtown," a fictionalized version of a cult classic skateboarding documentary, in 2004.

Ledger was born in 1979 to a mining engineer and a French teacher and got his first acting role playing Peter Pan at age 10 in a local theater company. He began acting in independent films as a 16-year-old in Sydney and played a cyclist hoping to land a spot on an Olympic team in a 1996 television show, "Seat."

After several independent films, Ledger moved to Los Angeles at age 19 and starred opposite Julia Stiles in "10 Things I Hate About You." Offers for other teen flicks soon came his way, but Ledger turned them down, preferring to remain idle than sign on for projects he didn't like.

"It wasn't a hard decision for me," Ledger told the Associated Press in 2001. "It was hard for everyone else around me to understand. Agents were like, `You're crazy,' my parents were like, 'Come on, you have to eat.'"

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2007-12-21T13:12:00.000-05:00

glitter-graphics.com

2007-12-21T09:20:00.000-05:00

I Received my new computer a couple of weeks ago, and am still working on bookmarking all of my favorite websites. For a while there my Sims2 games wouldn't work right and so we had to switch the monitor over to analog but then everything on the screen was huge and the game didn't look right, I couldn't even see most of the decorations on the webpages such as my pretty layout on my space page! It was so frustrating that I was practically in tears every day while trying to figure it out. My husband then realized that he forgot to install the monitor driver so now it all works on the digital display just fine. Yay!

Last Friday we attended my husbands office Christmas party. It was a lot of fun! The office had gotten everybody that attended a room at the hotel, I guess it was because there was a lot of drinking and I am sure the office didn't want the responsibility of having one of their employees get a DUI! I found out that we were staying in a resort motel and as we approached the place I saw that it was humongous... you could not miss it for it stuck out like a sore thumb. Inside on the main floor was a "mini--mall" that had lots of clothing stores including a gift shop on one side and on the other was a big welcome area are with the check-in aisles (looked like the lobby in that movie Home Alone 2). It also had a big fountain/waterfall and a little bar where you could order drinks while you waited for your party to show up and they had a sports bar by the elevators. They also had another set of elevators that take you all the way to the top floor (which they called the Tower) and the elevators were one of those you could watch and see through (a big window), we went up it after the dinner was some of the other office people . My husband doesn't really like heights but I do not mind them so as we were going up I was standing as close as I could to the window and Chuck was over by the elevator doors, but since it was dark (like around eight o'clock at night) I couldn't see much besides my own reflection... and I do not like my reflection at all! But I do know that we were not as far up as we were at the Sears Tower. Upstairs was another bar, since I do not drink I thought it would be boring but it was a lot of fun being able to laugh at the drunk people!

I finally finished up my Christmas shopping Sunday. I do need to go back tomorrow and pick up a birthday bag for my nieces gift. Chuck hasn't done his Christmas shopping yet (well for me, I am the one that takes care of the shopping for everyone else) so I am hoping that he doesn't take advantage of Saturday and have me pick out something I want for Christmas. I hate it when he does that because I like to be surprised for Christmas and besides he has known me for 10+ years so he should know me by now. We do not have our Christmas tree up yet and we probably won't have one at all this year. My husband is such a Scrooge and it gets worse every year specially for me because I like Christmas and I am so far away from my family... it's so depressing when he acts so uninterested. My nephew came over Monday night and he said he would put up our tree, Chuck went downstairs to get our tree and he couldn't find the decorations that go on the tree like the lights, the tinsel, and the bulbs. I kept asking him to at least put it up last weekend especially since he told Maggie and his dad that he would put it up that weekend but he wouldn't do it. It isn't a major deal that we are missing everything that goes on the tree, but some of those hanging decorations are nonreplaceable and have a sentimental value!

2007-11-26T15:16:00.000-05:00

How was everyone's Thanksgiving? Mine was alright. We went up north to Chuck's aunt and uncles home for the __ family Thanksgiving dinner... they have two of them every year between the three kids, one at Thanksgiving and the other at Christmas. The Thanksgiving one is where everyone draws names and gives them a gift at the Christmas one, this year I drew my sister-in-law, Kelly's, name so I think that will be fun shopping for her because I know what she likes. The meal it self was good but since I was in my manual wheelchair and couldn't roll myself, Chuck was helping with the Turkey so he would leave me in the middle of the conversation. People have a tendency to walk as they talk (I have observed this for many years now) and they would end up talking behind me and since I couldn't turn myself around I could just sit there... very boring! We left early (Chuck started to get bored too) mainly because we had to leave Gracie shut up in the bathroom while we were gone and we were afraid that she would get in to the cupboards and tear everything apart. She did really well though, she only peed once... don't worry guys, it was on the linoleum and not on the carpet!

Most everybody seemed to have forgotten that yesterday was our 10th anniversary. I have actually survived Chuck for 10 long years! We didn't do much except to go out to eat. He was going to rent a room but I told him no lets wait and do something when we can afford it. So yesterday afternoon, Chuck and I looked at the Dell website and for my anniversary gift Chuck got me a new computer! I am so excited to get it, it has a bigger 19 inch flat screen monitor and we even got a new printer too and we even chose to have the best video card so it can play my Sims 2 games without any problems! Now the big thing that is going to suck is that now (well once I get the new computer) I will have to delete all of my saved games and start all over again! I am not looking forward to that :(

To all...

2007-11-20T11:36:00.000-05:00

glitter-graphics.com

2007-11-16T13:43:00.000-05:00

Here are the two pictures that we have of Gracie in her new hoodie:

I will share a cute story about how much she likes her hoodie. Monday night she took off her hoodie in our bed and Tuesday morning we forgot to put it back on her... you know "out of sight out of mind". So all day Tuesday she ended up going without it. She must have gotten cold because that Wednesday morning she searched our bed until she found her hoodie, drug it from the bedroom in to the living room and laid it at her dad's feet and sat down looking up at him with those big puppy dog eyes!

You are all probably wondering what has been going on with my adoption. Well, here is the update...At the end of the second meeting, we had received the paperwork for the doctor's approval (and physical) to move on to step two. Then that following Monday Chuck got a call from the adoption agency saying we shouldn't waste our time or money and proceed with the adoption. Chances are we will either be turned down because of my condition, or we will be put on a waiting list for several years. These kids are from pretty tough backgrounds and I may not be able to control them. I still wanted to try because I have always wanted to be a mother, but Chuck just gives up and doesn't want to bother with it anymore. It has been several months now and I still haven't been able to convince him to keep trying, so I have now just given up also. I guess I will never be a mother!

*Just a Note*
After receiving my friends comment and question made me re read my post and realized I forgot something... I meant to answer the question beforehand, but for some reason I didn't. The agency told us that they wouldn't be the ones that would turn me down, it would either be the child's lawyer that is actually the one that places the child with a certain person or the person that does the home study. The agency was really impressed by me and the fact that I have degrees in Child Development helped a lot. So as you see it would not matter what agency I went through, all children that are adopted have a lawyer from the time that they leave the home until they are adopted and it is them that will discriminate and give us trouble.

The continuation...

2007-11-08T14:24:00.000-05:00

I finally got Gracie potty trained! Well actually, I shouldn't take all the credit because I know God helped me with it. She still has accidents every now and then but nothing major and nothing on the carpet. But what can you expect? She is only four months old and it is getting really cold outside! It would make me so mad whenever Chuck would tell me that I could not do it, whenever she would pee on the carpet or somewhere in the house he would pitch a fit and say we are always going to live like this! But now I love to tease him and say "and you told me I couldn't do it!"

Speaking of getting colder, I have been waking up to snow on the
ground for a couple days now. It doesn't stick or anything... usually it has been gone by the afternoon, but I still do not like the snow it makes it harder for me to get outside and get around. I did order Gracie a hoodie to help me get her to go outside during the day. It is purple -- well actually violate -- in color with pink rolls on the bottom and the arms and the hood is purple and white striped. She loves it! It looks so adorable on her, I took some pictures but I need Chuck to put the memory card in my computer and then I will post them.

I forgot to tell you all about what was going on with my brother-in-law during this time. He started dating someone at this time, I hadn't met her yet but the kids seemed to like her. I learned the weird story about what was going on from Chuck, Ken's ex-wife was dating a guy whom was divorced also (I think they started seeing each other before he was divorced, but I am not sure). Those two met while dropping off both of their kids (she also has 2). Then that Thanksgiving, a couple of weeks after Sharon's suicidal attempt, my father-in-law and his girlfriend were having Thanksgiving dinner at their house so we all went over there. Ken and his girlfriend were going to be there and she had an engagement ring on that was given to her by Ken a few days earlier. They were getting married in about a week. I really liked her, she seemed really nice but was way too quiet! During the next week before they got married they went over and met Sharon at the house. After their meeting Sharon came over to talk to me. Boy, Sharon did not have one good thing to say about Kelly! I think it was due to her not having been the one to pick out Ken's new girlfriend because she was always trying to set Ken up soon after his divorce. What she kept pointing out was that Kelly would not shut up, she kept talking and asking personal questions and wondering about the cost of things. Things that were really none of her business. I asked "Are we talking about the same Kelly?"

What really surprised me was the fact that Kelly is such a divine Christian woman and has set and lives by high morals. Well so is Sharon... well so everybody thought. Sharon, herself, was always reading the Bible and listening to Christian music and watching the Christian channel on TV. She also set pretty high morals, but I do not think she lived by them. For instance she had taught both boys not to have sex before marriage but I do know that she was pregnant when she was only 16 and lost it a couple of months later and married the guy several years later!

Then in December they got married and moved in to Ken's house, so it became the six of them instead of the three. Chuck refers to them as the Brady Bunch! I enjoy having her around, she is much more accepting of me in my situation than any of the other females in this family (Ken's ex-wife and my mother-in-law). Ken seems happier and the kids seem to really love having her there also. Sometime earlier this year she and Ken started bringing me to church with them since my husband will not go. I am so grateful for that, since I am in a wheelchair and do not drive I do not get out of the house much so I do not know anybody in this town... except for those I have been introduced to by my husband or my mother-in-law/father-in-law. I love being able to get out of the house to be with other Christian's every week.

A big disappointment...

2007-11-01T15:24:00.000-04:00

Wow, I have not been on here in a while. I think it's time I wrote something!

You know, Halloween has turned into a big disappointment. This is our third Halloween in this house and we do not get any trick-or-treaters, not even my nieces and nephews! Our first Halloween we decorated and made sure to turn on the outside lights and even bought a bunch of candy. We didn't get any visitors that first year, which surprised us because our niece and nephew who are of age did not come. Chuck mentioned something about it to his brother the next day and his brother said he forgot and well remember the next year. All of the candy that we had became mine, so I didn't need to buy myself any sweets for a while (it would have been longer but my mother-in-law kept eating it too). The next year we didn't decorate but we still had lots of candy, and still no one showed up. By that Halloween my brother in law had remarried and had 2 step kids plus the two of his own that were all of age and still no one came! This year we didn't do much at all, got some candy but not a whole lot... I told Chuck it is better to be safe than sorry. No surprise though, we didn't get anyone. When I was growing up, I remember how fun Halloween was. Dressing up in creative costumes hoping no one would recognize me, going around with my friends house to house trick-or-treating, getting boatloads of candy. When I was in high school and too old to go out trick-or-treating I took my brother out and we had fun! I remember going to a house and I did not know these people from Adam but my brother did and they saw me standing in the driveway and even gave me some candy. The next year, I was unable to take my brother out because I was then diabetic and all that candy was too tempting. But he came along and gave me some sugar free candy that was given to him by those people from the year before to give to me, I thought that was so nice of them! I remember being so jealous of my parents, I figured they had an awesome role answering the door to trick-or-treaters and I could not wait until I grew up and had a house of my own so I could play that role. Where did the trick-or-treaters go? What happened to this holiday? I have often wondered if it's because of the town I live in... most of all the state! Maybe it's just too cold up here or maybe the town is just too small and the people are known to be too untrustworthy. My parents don't get as many trick-or-treaters as they used to, but at least they get some. They now live in Colorado and it is cold there. Maybe the holiday is just plain better in Kansas. Halloween Sucks!!

Shall I be worried?

2007-09-06T15:57:00.000-04:00

It has been a while since I have posted a blog. I finally have a break from that puppy! She is no longer the cute cuddly little newborn puppy, she is now the cute obnoxious active little pain in the butt. She has entered the "terrible twos" stage and keeps me on my toes throughout the day. She had a vet appointment this afternoon and my husband took her about 30 minutes ago... ah yes, a well deserved break!

Next Saturday is when my husband and I go to the first training session. We are excited to get this done and have a child. Yet, we are also very worried that the state will disapprove us for the adoption because we live in a fixer upper home that still is being worked on. But we do have enough room for another person so hopefully that is all they're interested in knowing. My father-in-law's new wife, Maggie, wanted the website for the adoption agency to give to her daughter. She was telling Chuck and I that in the state of Ohio (where her daughter lives) that the children available for adoption are only those that are mentally ill. That had us worried because I could not physically handle a child with limited mental capacities in certain situations. I again thoroughly searched the website for Michigan to see what kind of children were available to adopt. I did find a perfect child to adopt. She is named Jennifer, is 10 years old, loves animals and to be outside, but most importantly she prefers to be an only child! Hopefully she will still be available when we are approved... if we are approved.

Gracie pictures

2007-08-21T19:50:00.000-04:00

Here are some pictures of my new puppy Gracie I told you I would put up. The pictures were taken on Friday, August 10 when we first brought Gracie home. She was 5 weeks and 5 days old in these pictures:

The weekend we got Gracie, we were also watching my father-in-law's dog, Mitzy. This is one of my favorite photos of them giving each other a kiss hello:

, adopting, a new dog, and my mother-in-law

2007-08-08T16:19:00.000-04:00

Wow, I haven't written on the troubles that I had with my mother in law and a couple of weeks. As you know, my husband and I have started the adoption process and we are required to attend a training seminar next month. There are two of them that we need to go to, one is on the 15th and the other is on the 20th. We are both really excited about being parents, but the longer this drags on the more worried we get that we will be turned down. We are not rich and I have a lot of physical ailments that may give them a reason to turn us down.
This coming Friday, the 10th, we will be getting a new puppy. I know I told everybody that we were going to wait a while before getting another dog, but these two months without a dog have seemed so lonely and long! So my brother-in-law's neighbors have some newborn puppies that they are giving away. I met the dog that we are getting Sunday. She is so cute and tiny! She is a mixture breed a Chihuahua/Miniature Pincher/Jack Russell, I will have to post a picture when I am able to. She will be six weeks old on Friday and I chose the name Gracie.

Several weeks had passed and Sharon was losing interest in the shop. She had decided to sell everything and close up shop. We had a big sale (which played a big part in my re building the relationship between Candy and I) at the shop and another one in the Days Inn conference room. The rest of the stuff that was left I said I would sell on eBay for her.
Then on December 31, 2006 is when something that I had dreaded happened. I received a phone call from her asking me if she could move in. My husband said yes, being his mother I understood why. Her reason for wanting to move in was because she was lonely....

8 Random Things Meme

2007-07-30T16:16:00.000-04:00

The rules:1. Let others know who tagged you.

2. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.

3. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.

4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

tagged by:Dawn

8 random facts:

1. My mother has been trying for years now to convince me to write a story based on my life (an autobiography if you will). I started doing this earlier this year, but am now experiencing a writer's block and have not written on it in the last few months.

2. I was raised in Kansas, but born in Washington, DC, and now reside in Michigan. I do not remember much about Washington, DC... for we moved when I was six months old and my dad's enlistment for the Air Force was over... but I really miss Kansas and am not very fond of Michigan... I do not like the snow and cold weather!

3. I have been married for almost 10 years and we have started looking into adoption, even sent in an application last month. Now we are awaiting our next step, going to adoption parenting classes (I have no idea what this is, they probably explain how and what to expect when adopting).

4. I have been watching that show, Ice Road Truckers, on the History Channel every Sunday night and really enjoy it. It only has four more remaining episodes and will not be back on next summer which is kind of disappointing because I secretly have a "crush" on that rookie TJ.

5. Besides Ice Road Truckers, I absolutely love that show Eureka!

6. Even though I am diabetic, I have the biggest sweet tooth imaginable. You name it I probably have eaten it!

7. I read the book Harry Potter And the Chamber of Secrets a few years before the movies started coming out. I really enjoyed the book and I was about to start reading the one that comes after it, but then the movies started coming out. When I went to see The Chamber of Secrets, I knew what was going to happen and who the "bad guy" was. Kind of ruined the movie for me. So that is why I have not read any of the others yet... I want to wait until after all of the movies have come out before I start reading the books again.

8. I went and saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Saturday, I liked it except that they threw in several new characters without much explanation of who they were. They were just there and were accepted by and friends with the others. I had to look it up on the Internet and there I found out who they are, I take it that the book explained things a lot better.

The 8 friends I tag:

1. Amber
2. Nathan
3. Sheila
4. Stacie
5. Kristi
6. Suz
7. Brianne
8. Gina

The week after

2007-07-24T11:54:00.000-04:00

Once she got to the hospital, they pumped her stomach and kept her in ICU for a few days. Sharon was found to have overdosed on her antidepressants and aspirin so they had to keep a close eye on her. When Chuck went to her house to gather some clothes for his mom while she was gone he noticed all of her drawers were like almost empty! She had no clothes but the ones on her back and a little bit in the hamper. Nor did she have any books or a TV, it's no wonder she tried suicide she probably drove herself crazy by only being able to keep herself occupied by thinking and reflecting on the past.
I went to visit her, and the very first thing she asked about was how Bebe was doing I told her fine (she was too, was keeping my big dog company). Joanne was there too and Bill and Chuck (and Ken was even there) were busy talking to the doctor. Sharon was telling JoAnne and I how upset she was at Chuck because he never showed any signs that he cared for her before, so why did he choose to show up then? He should have just left her alone! I told her that it wasn't just Chuck that cared what happened to her, I was the one that asked Chuck to go check up on her because I was worried too. Plus too, I told her, even Ken is worried for her because he came here and is outside the room.
When Sharon was able to go home, we were all worried about her and her safety. So Bill took time off so he could stay with her and she told me to keep an eye on Bebe for her. That was a long week for Bill and for everybody else. Chuck bought food and supplies with Bill and Chuck's manaw would call every other day to ask our opinion about how she was doing. They also transferred some money to us so Chuck could go and buy her a cash register or something she really needed. Chuck and Bill used the money to get Sharon some different items, they looked into a register but they cost way more than what they had. The leftover money Chucks mammaw told Chuck to go ahead and keep it. But of course, Sharon would remind Chuck just how greedy and uncaring he was.
Bill had left after a week to go home (he was starting to get really stressed out from watching Sharon go through her temper tantrums and suicidal actions) and Sharon was going to a counseling session with the hospital at the time and she reassured everyone that she would be fine, so she stayed behind. But I found out that while she was in the hospital she had sold her business to Bill and JoAnne for $1, I was a little upset over this... she kept telling me that she was leaving the business to me! But Sharon still had the run of the business and she still needed my help with counting money for change and such.

The suicide attempt

2007-07-13T11:32:00.000-04:00

So, after Carol left I was in charge of a lot more. Sharon is unable to count out the money, actually now that I think about it the only thing she was really good at was the decorating (after being told what to decorate and how to decorate it) and some of the organization. She had started talking to her brother again and they decided to get involved with the business. So they would show up every now and then... well it was mainly her sister in law, her brother was working... and I would feel I was in the way, so I would go home. Her sister in law, JoAnn, is one of those goody-goody types, she likes to take charge and allows you to feel like such an idiot when you do not do it her way.
I had been making plans with Sharon to come in on a Saturday to help with the shop because JoAnn had to work and wouldn't be there. She even kept asking me the day before if I was still going to be there and I hadn't changed my mind, and I would reassure her that I would be there at 10 o'clock in the morning. Then at nine that morning she had called to ask me if I is still wanted to come in since the shop was so cold, I told her I would be fine as long as I had my electric heater and I would see her later. She sounded really tired and drained on the phone and I was thinking she had just woken up so that is probably why. Then at 945 she had called back and told me not to come in. She still sounded really tired and I asked her if she was okay she said she was good, and I asked her why she did not want me to come in and she told me she just didn't feel like opening. I had a really bad feeling in my stomach that something was wrong, so I kept calling her back to see if she was sure she didn't want to open but no one answered the phone. I even called her cell phone and still no answer. The feeling in my stomach was getting worse, so I had Chuck go check on the mother. He called me on his cell phone and told me the doors were locked and he couldn't get in, he wondered if I was talking to her because she wasn't coming to the door. I told him no and she wasn't answering her phone. He then called his aunt and uncle to see if they were talking to her. They weren't, but JoAnn had talked to Sharon earlier and had noticed also that she sounded really depressed and tired. Then Chuck called his mamaw and she wasn't talking to Sharon either. So Chuck ended up having to call the police station. After a couple hours Chuck called me and told me that the ambulance had found his mother on the floor of the bathroom and Bebe was pitching a fit. Chuck found a "suicidal note" that said tell Rassel it wasn't his fault and a bag full of pills that she must have taken.
I got online and told Rassel what was happening, because I believe that once you are married you are not supposed to keep secrets from one another. Then Chuck showed up at the door with Bebe in his arms. He set Bebe down and told me he had to run to the hospital to be with his mom. Then Bill and JoAnn are coming up and staying the night with us. I was almost proud of myself for knowing that something was wrong and trusting my woman's intuition and because of that she was still alive.

My weekend fun

2007-07-10T14:25:00.000-04:00

We got the kids Sunday night, all three of them. Usually we just get Brenden and Carrie but this time their stepbrother, Zac, wanted to stay too. It was a lot of fun and it kept me busy watching them and helping them play my game, Sims 2. Sunday when Ken and Kelly came to pick me up for church, Carrie asked if she could stay. Then on our way to church Brenden asked if he and Zac could stay, I said okay.

After church Ken and Kelly dropped me off at my house so Chuck and I could change into shorts. Then we went over to his dad's for barbecue and birthday cake. Then everyone in Ken's family (Kelly plus four kids and their dog Peppy) came over to celebrate Ken's birthday which was on Saturday. It was a great meal and a really good visit. They all seemed really interested in our adoption process. Carrie and Zac wants us to adopt a nine-year-old because that is how old they are, Branden wants us to adopt a 10 or 11-year-old since he is 11, Jessica didn't really have a preference... or at least she didn't say one. Chuck and I have not sent in our application yet, they want to see your house so Chuck and I are cleaning our house and removing all the unnecessary items that we have piled up. I am excited that he is now starting to take having a family seriously. It is about time I wasn't the only one. After we ate and the talk had died down, we went home and Ken followed us and dropped off the three kids. That evening we all watched Bridge to Terabithia and then they took turns on the computer or on their PlayStation that Brenden brought. Then they watched Ice Road Truckers and went to bed.
Monday I had them all to myself. Since it was a rainy day they spent it inside and played on my computer or on the PlayStation. By noon we noticed that it started to get awful dark... it was so dark, I couldn't even see the hands of the clock that was located 3 feet in front of my face!... then it started raining really hard. Soon after that we heard the tornado sirens go off. Since I grew up in "Tornado Alley", I was not worried at all because I knew what signs to look for and besides I was watching the news and I knew it was nowhere near us. I did tell the kids that if we were in any danger, they would go down stairs under the stairs and block them in with big boxes because of the big sliding glass doors by the stairway and I would go into a closet. The storm didn't last long, about 15 minutes after it had passed my sister-in-law showed up to pick up the kids. She was in a hurry and got the kids and left. It kind of upset me that she didn't even call to tell me she was on her way. I wasn't expecting anyone until five o'clock, so I didn't have the kids ready to go yet. They were at least dressed and fed, but they hadn't a chance to pick up all the toys that they had gotten out. Once they left I went in to the computer room and had to weave back and forth to avoid running over the PlayStation. Next time I would appreciate a phone call to tell me which you would be there at least!

The second disownment

2007-07-06T09:56:00.000-04:00

I almost forgot to mention that when Sharon was buying the house and even the rental home, she also put the houses in Chuck's name too. He had a job and income so he gave her permission to buy the properties but she would be responsible for the costs and any damages. She also let me know that she left both properties to both boys in her will (I found it great that she was thinking of Chuck and Ken and not just Rassel).

Whenever I would go visit her, I would actually get excited about the houses one day belonging to us. Then a few weeks later Chuck got into a big fight... a yelling match if you will. Sharon was already living in the brown house and they got into a disagreement about the way Sharon was acting in regards to Rassel. She always talked about him like he was the best man to ever walk on this earth. He was not used to having his mother talk about a guy like she did Rassel. After all, this was her third marriage. Not only that, but she was married to Chuck's dad for 30 some years and she wasn't one to refer to a guy in such a way that Chuck nor Ken could recall. She couldn't expect them to graciously accept this new guy, it would take while.

But Chuck did call Rassel a bad name, which he shouldn't have done since Rassel wasn't there to defend himself. That just made Sharon even angrier with Chuck, so she told him to leave and since I was with him that included me too. As he was helping me into the car, she came out and told Chuck to leave and never come back because he was not her son any more... at least she told him to his face this time.

I was angry with Chuck for saying what he did, so I would not talk to him until he at least apologized. He thought about it and he apologized the next day. She accepted his apology and she claimed him as a son again, but still didn't fully trust him again.

An edit

2007-07-06T09:37:00.000-04:00

Here is an edit for a bad business venture

The opening for The Jeweled Peacock was in November not January! Sorry about that, don't know were my mind was when I wrote that!

Happy birthday America!

2007-07-03T20:56:00.000-04:00

I know it isn't until tomorrow, but I want to wish you a good one anyway!

A bad business venture

2007-07-03T14:25:00.000-04:00

So Sharon and Carol were setting up shop. And I was filling out her paperwork for the Visa. I would go visit her at the shop for a few hours once a week, and when I would go the inside decorating got uglier and uglier! It looked like a bunch of old people (a Ma and Pa store) started a secondhand dress shop. Nothing that attracted a young bride to buy from. They did a good job on the display window and the front of the shop looked good, but once you entered it took a downward spiral. At first they had it open as they were trying to move-in and organize their merchandise, nothing was out to sell but people could walk in at any time... they said this was so people would know that their shop was there. I kept trying to convince them to get a sign, it didn't necessarily have to be an expensive one just one to let people know going down the road that the shop is there. I do not know how many times my husband and I drove down the road and overlooked the house because for one, there was no sign and number two, the house is set so far back on the road that no one realizes it's there at first.

The shop was pretty small to begin with and in the main room where the cash register was supposed to be was a big long table with red crepe paper (reminded Chuck of the tables selling prom tickets/raffle tickets that you see), and across the way was a little round table with a matching wire chair with out the bottom and a wing chair that was found on the sides of the road and the arms were totally ripped up (like they were mauled by a cat) so they put on an ugly piece of fabric over the chair to hide the arms. They had some other stuff, like a sewing table (only without the sewing machine), and an armoire (full of cake top and other bridal accessories). The room was so small that with all the junk in there, no one could hardly move! One of the neatest decorations they had was a picture of a Peacock with shiny gems throughout the tail, it was made by Carol and since the store was named The Jeweled Peacock it fits.

I was asked to make some flyers for the shop so they could announce the grand opening. I was actually glad to be participating and not have Sharon be downing me by saying I was too lazy to help like she did my husband. They had their grand opening, but it wasn't so grand. No one came, but in a way I do not blame them. The basement (the shop) was not heated and it was in the middle of January and there was snow on the ground. A few days later, a pretentious bride bought a wedding dress from them. I wasn't there, so I can only go on what I was told, but I guess the dress was a halter top one and she had to try the dress on in the back room... the furnace room... in the cold. Sharon told me her arms were all full of goose bumps and were turning a light purple. I kept trying to explain that they need to invest in some sort of heater right away. But according to Sharon they did not have enough money right now, I told her well your ex-husband (the dad) has an old gas heater sitting in the garage which he is not using right now and I am sure he'd be more than willing to work out some sort of payment plan so you could have heat. She would just shake her head and claim he would be so mean and tell her no.

After they got their checks for the shop, Sharon would notice little odds and ends appearing around the shop. Carol would walk around with the checkbook on her just to make it look like she actually had money. Sharon did not know it she could trust her after she had put herself as president and Sharon as a manager without consulting Sharon about it. We found this out as I was filling out the last of the Visa papers and the I had to put a job description and such. So Sharon had asked me to keep an eye on the bank account (I basically turned into a bookkeeper for the business) and tell her how the money was doing. I said okay because I had already submitted the Visa papers.

I do not know the full reason why, but Carol got upset one morning and threw the checkbook at Sharon's feet and said she was done and stormed out. Sharon did not know the first thing about running a business and she was terrible with money, so was under a lot of stress and would cry whenever she talked to her mother (which was every day, several times) I was asked by her mother to help her out in the shop and I said okay (like I knew the first thing about running a business!).

My first job?

2007-06-26T12:04:00.000-04:00

I made a slide show with music of Sharon's new house and e-mailed it to Rassel for her. He loved it and so did Sharon. I took the pictures of the dresses they had taken and even some pictures I had taken and put them in a slide show set to music. They both loved it and decided to play it for people in the shop that needed a broader view of the dress. Sharon then offered me a job of making slideshows of peoples weddings for the person, they would offer this option on the flyers and in this shop while people were trying on dresses. I thought this would be fun and I was so excited and couldn't wait to get started.

I was still not talking to candy at this time, and I found out that Sharon had asked if she would be willing to take pictures at the wedding and give the pictures to me. Once I found this out, I was no longer as excited as I was before. When Candy was hired to be my attendant, she basically used that excuse for free room and board. I used to watch Boston Public every Monday night at nine o'clock, I needed to take a shower so I had asked her to help me take one before my show started and she kept dragging her feet as nine o'clock approached. Finally she got me in there, but when I was finished and she came in to help me back to my wheelchair the phone started to ring. She quickly threw me on the shower chair... I was barely sitting on it and grabbed the bar, but since I was still damp I started slipping... to answer the phone. It was just my brother in law calling candy (his girlfriend) to chat. She decided she'd rather talk to Ken for the next 15 minutes then help me! I started screaming for her to help me as I was slipping, she finally came but I was mad and I kept telling her that she could at least told Ken to call her back in five minutes he would have called you back. She went and grabbed me really hard under the arms, banging my two front teeth on the bar as she sat me back on the chair. I was very angry and hurt at this time so I told her that now I have missed the beginning of my show thanks to you, it was only Ken and he could have called you back in five minutes! She got angry with me and started yelling at me that I was so selfish that I only care about what happened to me and I said if you want to see selfish take a look in the mirror sometime, and then she left me on the chair in the shower and walked out the door slamming it shut. Her four-year-old son heard the commotion and he opened the door and started yelling that I was so selfish. I studied child development so I pretty much knew that little children imitated the actions of their elders, but she could have at least told him no. I was on the shower chair for about 20 minutes and I thought it over and came to the conclusion that I would have to apologize or else I would be in the shower forever. I then apologized to her (even though I didn't mean it) and she got me out of the bathroom. After that ordeal I started looking in to a replacement. I found one and I asked her to leave.

Because of this Chuck had to take a dishonorable discharge so he could come home early. So no one found it necessary to talk with her anymore. I still liked her and thought of her quite often, but I was needing a little break from her. Everyone agreed with me, that's why it took me by surprise that Sharon (who told me I was in the right so she wouldn't talk to her either) was still talking with her.

Oh no, not another one!

2007-06-25T16:47:00.000-04:00

Just thought I'd let you in on the happenings with the dog, Grover. Thursday afternoon he started to get sick, by throwing up and not keeping anything down. However he was drinking and that was good, until he started puking up the water. He would show signs that he was improving, so we didn't feel it necessary to take him to the vet. Friday he still would not eat but he would drink water. That evening, since we were still unable to figure out the type of food he ate, I gave him the last lick of my chicken pot pie on my finger. He ate that really good. I did not want to over do it, so I let him eat the last little bit of what was left (which was the gravy). He seemed to perk up and even played with Chuck. Saturday we went to Chuck's dad to introduce Mitzy and Grover (we are babysitting Mitzy this week) and Grover did just fine. That is until he threw up his soft canned food on their front lawn and he started moping around again. We brought him home and he wouldn't drink nor eat anything. Saturday night was horrible, he kept hacking and having dry heaves, then he started having diarrhea really bad and kept Chuck and I up most of the night. Sunday morning we talked it over and decided it would be better on me to give him to Kelly and have her nurse him back to health since I couldn't do it and even keep him afterwards. After church, she took him home with her and then came back and took me to a special evening session they were having and left the dog home alone... which in my opinion, was a bad choice. After the sermon and dropping me off Ken and Kelly found the dog had died. I am not as upset as I was when Bebe died. I liked that dog and everything but I just wouldn't allow myself to get attached because it was just too early yet. I am sad that he died, but I feel really bad for Kelly because she is probably blaming herself and she fell in love with him that day she picked him out.

Grover

2007-06-22T21:29:00.000-04:00

Well I was right, my niece did take it pretty hard. She was depressed for a couple days and to pull her out of her grief, she decided to get us another dog. Chuck and I were not really interested in finding a dog right now. We were going to focus more of our attention on adopting a child and then we as a family would pick one out. However, I understood how she was feeling because I went through the same thing when my aunt's dog died while in my care. So if she wanted to get us another dog to help her I wasn't going to stop her. I didn't find this out until Wednesday afternoon when Chuck called me and told me she was looking for another dog and Ken kept asking him if this dog will work or that one. Chuck kept telling him no, but he should have explained the reason why.

Thursday morning I was at my computer when I heard a knock on the front door. I glanced to my right and looked out the big window and saw Ken and Kelly's white van in our driveway, to be honest my first thought was "oh no, they better not have come with a dog!" Before I had a chance to take off my headset Carrie came bounding in the room all excited. She said that she had a surprise for me outside. When we got to the door, Carrie opened it and in walked Kelly holding a dog on a leash. They had picked out a little orange Pomeranian from the pound. It had been there a while and was about to be put down. He already has been neutered and looks pretty healthy and I think he is already housebroken (but I still have to check on him every half hour because it is new surroundings and I am still not 100% sure that he is totally housebroken) except they are not certain about his age... we are guessing about 1. He also didn't have a name that they knew of so I told Carrie she could name him. She couldn't think of a name that he seemed to like, so I said the first name that came to mind... Grover. He seemed to like that name and so did everyone else, so that is the name we gave him.

When I first got him, he was active and perky and was running around playing with Brenden and Carrie and licking our fingers. Brenden and Carrie spent the afternoon with me to help me with Grover in case he wasn't potty trained yet. He was all happy to be playing when them, but a few hours later he started throwing everything up. He would go drink his water like there was no tomorrow then he would throw it up. He would not only throw up his water, but his food too. After that all he wanted to do was sleep. I do not know if it was his nerves from being in a new place making him sick or from the kids causing him to much excitement. But today all he does is lay around and he will not eat. Even my friend came over and knew right away that he was sick and told me try a little can dog food.

This evening when Chuck came home, he had bought some puppy food for him. We are unsure of his true age but everybody guesstimates about one and when I did research on the Internet for Pomeranian it would always say to give them dry dog food. He also got him to try a little Pepto-Bismol to see if that would help settle his stomach. Then we ate pot pie's and I decided to give him the last little bite by putting it on my finger for him to lick off. That seemed to help because once I did that he seemed to perk up and even played with Chuck a little bit. So now we know that we need to get to him soft can food. He's still not as active as he was yesterday, but at least he is showing signs of improvement!

A painful loss

2007-06-19T17:16:00.000-04:00

My niece and nephew stayed over Sunday night. Monday morning I asked Carrie to fold up the couch bed so I could get around, she came over and folded it up and put it away. I had a candy bar in my hands that I was unwrapping, usually my dog hears the noise right a way and comes running up by me waiting for me to give her some. When she didn't come I figured Brenden had let her out. A couple minutes later Carrie asked me where Bebe was, she looked all around outside but couldn't find her then we looked all around the house and kept calling her name but she still didn't come. Then I looked at Carrie and said you didn't fold her in the couch did you? So she quickly took out the bed and started freaking out when she got to the last fold. Brenden ran out to help his sister fold out the rest of the couch and there was Bebe tangled in the blanket and in a pool of drool. She was breathing in and out really fast and her nose was dry. I called Chuck to take her to the vet, they were unable to slow her heart rate down so Chuck had her put to sleep.

I miss having Bebe around and Chuck is taking it hard himself, he wonders if maybe he made the wrong choice in having Bebe put down. He wonders if she would have made it through if we would have left her alone. Now what I am worried about is how my niece is handling the news. She is only a nine year old little girl and she was so fond of Bebe and now I am afraid she will start thinking that it was all her fault since she was the one who folded up the bed.

I realize that I have not yet gotten to the part where Sharon gave me Bebe. But she did and I think that was one of her best decisions she has ever made. Do not worry, I will be coming to that part soon!

Here is a picture of Bebe:

RIP my Bebe girl!

I am still here...

2007-06-14T15:29:00.000-04:00

Oh my, the week is almost over and I have not written any posts yet. But I doubt anyone has missed me anyway. I have been reading a book I got over a week a go and I couldn't put it down! It was a real page turner, was a suspenseful mystery type book even with a bit of sex thrown in. I loved it! The only problem is now I have nothing to read when I go outside since I finished it last night so now I have to wait until Saturday to get another one.

I had a doctors appointment last Friday and things went well. The last time Chuck and I went in to see her, we were not at all impressed with her attitude. She seemed very moody and/or tired, so I was going to give her one more shot and if she still had a negative attitude then I would start looking for another doctor. But her attitude was greatly improved by our next visit, so I'm staying. I wasn't sick or anything but I had to see the doctor in order to get some refills on my insulin, and now I just need to go get my blood work done. But I can't get it done until I find a way we can pay for it. It makes me angry though when doctors keep telling you what not to do and what not to eat over and over and over, like they presume you are mentally incompetent. It's like "I know this stuff already I'm not stupid". She was trying to convince us that we need to be taking two shots per day and I tried telling her that even with just taking one my sugar still goes low and I have to eat a candy bar or something sweet to raise my sugar, but she would not listen to me just kept telling us that we needed to take two so that it will even out my glucose levels instead of being high all the time. But the really funny part is that every time I get my blood work done to figure out my average glucose, it always is and always has been really really really good... excellent! So I am now wondering if I am really truly diabetic? I am always eating things that I'm not supposed to, like candy bars and Pop tarts and cake and ice cream and sugar cookies and rice crispy treats and fudge... and the list goes on and on. So Chuck told me not to worry about her and eat what I want like I have been doing because I have been doing just fine.

I watch Maury everyday in the afternoon, except I tend to change the channel unless it is a show on my paternity tests. I like those shows, I like hearing the reasons that they sometimes give for not being the father... "that baby is too fat to be mine" or "that child is too obnoxious to be mine". This afternoon I turned in on to Maury to see what the topic was about before turning it. He was talking to different people about their phobias and giving them help. When I flipped it on a lady was on there describing her fear of cotton balls and how she would have a recurring nightmare of a man made of cotton balls trying to kill her. Maury just kept laughing at her, but when a man dressed in cotton balls approached her and started to chase her off the stage that was taking it too far! So I turned it.

Her move

2007-06-07T11:23:00.000-04:00

While Sharon was getting ready to move into the house, she was just finishing up the work on the rental. As she was doing the repair work, she got another dog. This time it was a one year old, long hair, Shitzu named Dutchess. She also started speaking to Ken again, she would let him remove some of the trees in the trailer yard that were dead already. Ken and Chuck also helped their mother put up new drywall inside of the trailer. Whenever the boys went over there, I would go too. As they were working outside I would stay in and talk to Sharon and Carol. Ken would even go over and offer to help his mom without us being there. At one point, he was over there and offered to help his mom take out some old carpet to the dump. It was already rolled up and leaning against the enclosed porch wall and it had been there for several weeks. But his mom told Ken not to worry about it because she already had help with that. He then offered to help his mom to patch some holes in the wall, but his mom said no she already had help with that. He even offered to help her paint, but she already had help with that. After a while Ken gave up and went home... which I don't blame him, I would have given up too.

When Sharon was moving in to her new house, Chuck and Ken and I went over to the house and looked at what we could do to help her out. It was so neat inside, but was huge for just one person and her dog! The house was three stories, what was to be the shop was on the first level, the kitchen and living room and main bathroom and two bedrooms were on the second story, three bedrooms and a half bath were on the third story. Lucky for me I was in my manual so Chuck was able to pull me up the steps. We had an old door that was left in our basement when we moved in, so we gave that door to his mom so she could block off the upstairs so she wouldn't have to heat it.

I had only seen her dog, Dutchess, once when she was working on the trailer and it was playing around with Bebe. Before she was able to move in, she had decided to give her away because she didn't seem to like the house when Sharon, the pastor and Carol moved Sharon in.

There is nothing more depressing than Social Security

2007-06-05T13:22:00.000-04:00

You know what makes me really mad? This Social Security and everything being income based. I have never had a job, except for babysitting when I was younger, so I could never put money into Social Security. When I was attending Kansas State, I started drawing SSI. I needed to make money somehow and this was the only way I knew how. When I got married, my husband was in the Army and I reported it, I was still able to draw some money just not as much. Six months later I moved to Michigan and started to draw SSI again, I was even able to get Medicaid. Chuck and I were going to school and were still able to draw it in during school year, but as soon as the summer started and Chuck went to work I no longer drew as much. Once Chuck was activated and went to New Jersey, I was no longer able to draw SSI because he was making too much money. I moved to an apartment on campus so I could stay in school and still get my student loans. But I was no longer able to get Medicaid, so I had to pray that nothing would happen. If an emergency came up I would have to go several miles to an Army hospital.

I wish I was still able to get SSI, but no. According to their guidelines, Chuck makes to much money. He only makes a mere $800 every two weeks, granted that is more than the measly $500 a month I was getting from SSI, but they seem to have forgotten that out of that paycheck there are bills that need to be paid. So after each paycheck, we are lucky to have enough money for groceries... we do need to eat... and for my medical supplies... my husband's work insurance requires a co-pay each time we pick up a refill on my medications. Since I no longer qualify for Medicaid, we have to cover the rest the doctors bill that the insurance won't cover.

I am the one in charge of the figuring out our finances every two weeks, I end up balling my eyes out because we will not be able to afford living for another two weeks. It makes me really depressed knowing I can not help and wishing I could.

Medicaid will cover in-home care, but since Chuck and I can no longer get it (Medicaid is now income based too) and we have to rely on his work insurance and his insurance will not cover in-home care. I am stuck at home all by myself during the day while Chuck is at work. I am getting slightly weaker as the days pass and desperately need some help with things. I have to make all my meals in the microwave, I no longer trust the nobility in my arms to make anything on the stove top or the oven. For our dinners, Chuck usually makes it not I (which I always thought was the stay-at-home persons job) and that makes me feel even worse. If I was to drop something, I would either need to wait for Chuck to come home after work or call him to come home right away to get some thing for me... lucky for me, he now works right down the street. I hate doing that because he needs to work so we can hopefully get to a bigger paycheck. Since I am alone, I cannot use the bathroom. I have to wear a pull--up throughout the day, and pray that I won't have to go poop! And boy, I have such a diaper rash it isn't even funny!

Just this afternoon my microphone wire got all tangled up in my chair wheel and I had to call Chuck home to untangle it so I could go let the dog out. Then I had to call him back to come home and plug-in my microphone because it had come unplugged. Now my feet have fallen off the feat rests and are dangling by the tires, so I have to tilt my chair back so my feet won't get caught in the wheels. If only it had someone here to help me while Chuck is gone.

How are the rest of my friends able to get to help and still have jobs? I need help too and the government isn't willing to help. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Fall in love but never get married? That's not fair!

A new house and a shop

2007-06-01T11:19:00.000-04:00

A few months later, Carol convinced Sharon to open up a bridal shop with her. Sharon did not know the first thing about running a business but Carol had experience with one, so they decided to go in together and start a business. They would go to different bridal shops that were going out of business and get a good deal on dresses and their accessories. They would also shop at thrift stores, such as goodwill. Sharon was the one buying everything for the shop, it all was coming out of the money she had after her divorce settlement.

then put the pictures on my computer and make a slide show on CD, sometimes I would even set the pictures to music. They look some beautiful pictures, there was one of a girl in a white dress on the grass with the dress spread out all around her and was in a heart shape. Although they could have used some better lookShe would borrow my camera to take pictures of the group of people that were wearing her dresses. Carol was selling different floral arrangements that she had made out of silk flowers, that they would also take pictures of. Although they could have used some better looking models, the woman were just too old to be wearing a white dress... they were either extremely overweight or were covered in wrinkles or sags. Looking over the pictures just about made me want to turn away from the screen, I could just about imagine someone else's reaction when they tried to view it before buying a dress.

As this was going on, Sharon was in the process of looking for a business to buy or rent for their shop, and they were also looking in to different lawyers to set up a legal small business. After a couple weeks they legalized their shop and chose the name Precious Peacock. She also was able to locate a place they could use as a shop, it was a three story home downtown with five bedrooms and two baths, the downstairs was once used as a jewelry store so Sharon and Carol thought it would be perfect. Sharon bought this house even though the house was on a lean with most of the money that she had set a side from her divorce settlement. I went to take a tour of the house after she had bought it, it was absolutely gorgeous! The backyard was awesome and big with a big old fire pit that was surrounded by a boardwalk and benches, with a wooden jungle gym a few yards away. There was even a small wooden gazebo between the fire pit and the jungle gym. The downstairs shop was kind of small, but whatever floats their boat, besides it was their decision not mine.

Before buying this house, Chuck did try to convince his mom not to to buy it. He told her it was just to big for one person, she should have kept that trailer for herself because it was a perfect size for just her. But his mom would not hear of it, kept reassuring him that all would be great and work out just fine.

My heroes

2007-05-30T17:02:00.000-04:00

Missing camp

2007-05-30T15:05:00.000-04:00

How was everyone's Memorial weekend? Mine was okay, nothing special happened. Chuck had a three day weekend and we didn't do anything much except I went to church on Sunday morning then we went to his dad's house and had a cook out. His dad tried awful hard to get Chuck and I to stay over night Sunday, but we left to come home. When we came home, Chuck lit a campfire in our fire pit. We have never had a fire before because we never had a place for the fire pit, now that we found a spot we may have them more often. The whole time I was at the campfire... which was hours... I did nothing but talk about my camp memories and sing campfire songs.

I miss camp, I really do! Is it possible for a person to be homesick for camp... campsick? If so I've got it bad!
Being sound asleep in the bottom bunk and suddenly hearing someone out in the hallway banging pots and pans to wake us up, nearly giving me a heart attack in the process!
Being made by the unit leaders to attend flag raising so we'll get unit points.
Walking out front door and feeling the cool air and walking/rolling to the flagpole, still half asleep and wondering if "he" will be out there.
Entering the mess hall and finding a spot at one of the tables for you and your attendant to sit and have breakfast.
Joining the rest of my unit after breakfast to help decorate and clean up our cabins to win "clean cabin".
Doing an arts and crafts activity down in the boy's cabin, usually we'd do this before lunch.
We would usually do another activity before lunch, like play sports... such as soccer or T-ball or have a water fight (which would turn into a shaving cream fight).
Then we'd go eat lunch and most likely sit by both our attendant and "him" and maybe his camper.
After lunch, we'd retire back to are cabins for a little rest and relaxation (although I do not think the older girl units got much R&R).
Opening the front door again and suddenly feeling the heat and the humidity of a hot summer day.
Going to the pool with towels in hand and being ready to go for a swim.
And being so excited because "he" asked me to swim with him.
Feeling the coolness of the water as it ran over your legs while you floated as your attendant pulled you in the water.
Hurrying to the concession stand for a drink and a snack after swimming, and flirting with "him".
At this time you were getting ready for a special evening, either it be the banquet, the talent show, the hayride, or the dance.
If it wasn't the banquet night, we would all headover to the mess hall for dinner.
Making sure I would sit by "him".
If it was banquet night, we would all get dressed up and do our hair and our makeup (all most like what you do for prom) and wait for our date to arrive.
More than likely it would be "him".
Walking into the mess hall with our date to see a dimly lit room with the tables scooted to make one long table, which were covered with a tablecloth and candles and decorations.
After our wonderful meal, we would walk/roll to the campfire, with our attendant and sing songs or watch the rookie attendants initiation.
Then we'd all go to bed and wait for the guys to give you goodnight kisses, especially from "him".
Except no one actually went to bed, we would all join in a room and share and recap our day and talk about what would happen tomorrow.
"Friends I will remember you, think of you, pray for you... and when the day is through, I'll still be friends with you".

The first step, rental houses

2007-05-24T19:43:00.000-04:00

By this time, Sharon and her new roommate, Carol, were looking into different houses to buy for rental properties. So she would come over to borrow my digital camera and I would then transfer the pictures from the memory card to the computer. After doing that I would e-mail the copies to Rassel. Yes, I knew both of his e-mail addresses and his yahoo ID, she had given me his yahoo ID a week after she returned from Bangladesh and he gave me both of his e-mail addresses. I loved being able to talk to him on Yahoo, after awhile I could see why Sharon fell for him like she did. He did not speak very good English but he could type it somewhat, reading some of his typings took a lot of patience and understanding but once you knew what he was talking about he seemed like a pretty decent... and innocent... guy.

After her trip to Bangladesh, Sharon asked me to look for a lawyer on the Internet that specializes in visas. Wanting to stay on her good side and not getting her mad at me... because I have witnessed how she acts when she is angry at someone, look how she disowned her kids... I found one for her. When the lawyer had directed her to an Internet site to fill out the paperwork for a Visa, I offered to help her fill it out. I did not think that meant for me to end up filling out most of it, I thought she would fill out more than the little bit of personal/financial information that she did.

There was a little place to put it in her income, and she wasn't make any money. They needed this information because you need to be able to prove you can support your spouse when they come over, so said the lawyer. So that is why her and Carol were looking in to rental properties, she wanted the rent money to count towards income. They eventually got a nice trailer... she bought it upfront because she had the money from her divorce settlement... that they fixed up. The guy who used to own the trailer was in an accident and was in a wheelchair and and made the trailer pretty accessible. I think that the guy was sent to a home, so his trailer was put on the market after being adopted by the bank after the guy had failed to make his mortgage payments.

She put up flyers for a renter all over town and got information from a lawyer on what kind of information to include on a lease contract. She finally found a renter with good credit and they started the lease the next month. They had lots of children and the wife started a day care in the home.

The Republican candidates

2007-05-23T09:20:00.000-04:00

I know I have been writing on the problems with my mother in law. But after the death of Gina and reading some of her past posts, I have decided to write about my thoughts about certain things. Do not worry because I will still reflect on my memories of Sharon, it's just my turn now.

I was watching some of the debates of the candidate's running for the Republican party. I never choose a president based on the party that he/she is affiliated with. I go based on the views of the individual presidential candidate. I didn't watch the whole thing from the beginning, so I can't say who I was leaning more towards. But as soon as they got on the subject of abortion, I started leaning more towards Mayor Giuliani.

I know abortion is a tricky subject for some people, I have often tried to to avoid the subject by any means possible. But some views on this subject really makes my heart start thumping. Yes, I am pro-life. I do not believe people should abort their children, especially if the mother is able to carry the child to full term without any risks. There are many people, I being one of them, who are wanting to adopt and more and more people choose either to abort or to keep their child. The problem with this is adopting children is starting to become very difficult and problematic.

However, there is one side me that is pro-choice. If the woman is expecting a child and learns she will not be able to carry the child to full term without the risk of losing the baby. If I was to become pregnant, there is a chance that not only would I have a stillborn baby but I could very well lose my life as well. So I would have to abort because my husband has made it clear to me that he does not want to lose me too. So that is where my pro-choice fits in.

Mayor Giuliani felt the same way I do. He was pro-life until mother's life was in danger also, then he was pro-choice. When President Bush passed the law that all abortion was illegal after a few months, that really made me mad. He was saying that it's morally wrong to murder a child in the womb, but if you read between the lines he was just about saying that it the child is aborted it is murder but if the child dies in the womb it is okay. It is still okay if the mother dies too. So I guess that he is saying that it is okay for doctors to basically murder the child and the mother at the same time. What sense does this make? Besides, a lot of people do not even find out that they're pregnant until a few months later which is about the time it becomes illegal.

Gina, you will always be in our hearts!

2007-05-21T19:22:00.000-04:00

I love you Gina Bauer!

2007-05-17T12:14:00.000-04:00

I received e-mail from Gina... Gina 2... about G. being in the hospital. This news took me by surprise. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have been able to keep in contact with my fellow camp friends. She is like the glue that has held us together, I can't imagine how tough it may be its she is unable to pull through this.She got pretty sick this morning and went to St. Francis hospital by EMS. They had to intubate her and knocked out her two front teeth as they did. she has pneumonia and a collased lung. She is a fighter as we all know and we are lifing her up in prayer to the God she knows loves and trusts in. She has a hard time lately.. In this past year she has gotten somewhat weaker. But always ready to take on a new day. She is in ICU at this time. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

We have decided to gravel

2007-05-14T17:53:00.000-04:00

Chuck and I still have not had our yard surveyed yet. We still couldn't figure out whether we should or should not. Since it's getting warmer outside, we have been spending more time out and looking at our yard. The front yard would look really decent if we laid gravel along the circular driveway, but we were told that several years ago half of the driveway was involved in a neighborly dispute. The guy that lived in the cabin next our home argued that the right driveway belonged to his property. No one has lived in that cabin for many many years, but when we bought this house the right driveway was blocked off which had Chuck and I worried.

There were many poles and a few that were cemented in place, and they had orange markings on the top so we pretty much figured that they had once had it surveyed at one time. So Chuck measured from pole to pole in our yard and the poles in other yards. So we have figured out that the driveway is ours, so is our water well and so is our septic drainage hole. So once were able to come up with the extra money, we can gravel the driveway.

Hooray!!!

Only in America....

2007-05-10T14:26:00.000-04:00

Only in America......a pizza can get to your housefaster than an ambulance.
Only in America......are there handicap parkingplaces in front of a skating rink.
Only in America.....do we use answering machines toscreen calls and then have call waiting so we won'tmiss a call from someone we didn't want to talk toin the first place.
Only in America.....do drugstores make the sick walkall the way to the back of the store to get theirprescriptions while healthy people can buycigarettes at the front.
Only in America......do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.
Only in America......do banks leave both doors openand then chain the pens to the counters.
Only in America......do we leave cars worththousands of dollars in the driveway and put ouruseless junk in the garage.
Only in America......do we! buy hot dogs in packagesof ten and buns in packages of eight.
Only in America......do we use the word 'politics'to describe the process so well: 'Poli' in Latinmeaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsuckingcreatures'.
Only in America. .....d o they have drive-up ATMmachines with Braille lettering.
Only in America......can a homeless combat veteranlive in a cardboard box and a draft dodger live inthe White House.
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EVER WONDER ....
Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin?
Why women can't put on mascara with their mouthclosed?
Why don't you ever see the headline "Psychic Wins Lottery"?!
Why is "abbreviated" such a long word?
Why is it that doctors call what they do "practice"?
Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, anddishwashing liquid made with real lemons?
Why is the man who invests all your money called abroker ?
Why is the time of day with the slowest trafficcalled rush hour?
Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?
Why didn't Noah swat those two mosquitoes?
Why do they sterilize the needle for lethalinjections?
You know that indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?! !
Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?
Why are they called apartments when they are allstuck together?
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress theopposite of progress?
If flying is so safe, why do they call the airportthe terminal?
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In case you needed further proof that the human raceis doomed through stupidity, here are some actual label instructions on consumer goods:

1. On Sears hairdryer: "Do not use while sleeping".
[Gee, that's the only time I have to work on myhair]

2. On a bag of Fritos: "You could be winner! Nopurchase necessary. Details inside".
[Evidently, the shoplifter special]

3. On a bar of Dial soap: "Directions: Use likeregular soap."
[And that would be how...?]

4. On some Swanson frozen dinners: "Servingsuggestions: Defrost."
[But it's *just* a suggestion]

5. On Tesco's Tiramisu dessert (printed on bottom ofbox): "Do not turn upside down".
[Oops, too late, you lose!! ]

6. On Marks &Spencer Bread Pudding: "Product willbe hot after heating.
[As sure as night follows the day . . . . .]

7. On packaging for a Rowenta iron: "Do not ironclothes on body".
[But wouldn't this save even more time?]

8. On Boot's Children's Cough Medicine: "Do notdrive a car or operate machinery after taking thismedication".
[We could do a lot to reduce the rate ofconstruction accidents if we could just get those5-year-olds with head-colds off those forklifts.]

9. On Nytol Sleep Aid: "Warning: May causedrowsiness".
[One would hope]

10. On most brands of Christmas lights: "For indooror outdoor use only".
[As opposed to what?]

11. On a Japanese food processor: "Not to be usedfor the other use".
[I gotta admit, I'm curious].

12. On Sainsbury's peanuts: "Warning: Containsnuts".
[NEWS FLASH]

13. On an American Airlines packet of nuts:"Instructions: open packet,eat nuts."
[Step 3: Fly Delta]

14. On a child's Superman costume: Wearing of thisgarment does not enable you to fly".
[I don't blame the company. I do blame parents forthis one!]

15. On a Swedish chain saw: " Do not attempt to stopchain with your hands or genitals".
Was there a chance of this happeningsomewhere?.....Good grief!]

Now that you've smiled at least once, it's your turnto spread the stupidity and send this to someone youwant to bring a smile to (maybe even a chuckle)...inother words, send it to everyone. We ALL NEED ASMILE EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE America......

Her trip to Bangladesh

2007-05-10T11:45:00.000-04:00

As soon as she returned from Bangladesh, Sharon told me how happy she was that her and Rassel were now married. They had gotten married on the first of August... Like the day after the she got there... At the court house. She told me all about how her mother-in-law and all of the people in the village threw her and Rassel a reception after their wedding. How she was basically treated like royalty while over there and how wonderful the people were... I kept thinking that she was probably treated so well because she was a foreigner but their attitudes would change if she lived there. Chuck told me that if she ended up living there, she would most likely end up being beheaded like all those reporters on the news. She didn't seem to pay any attention to how dangerous things are over there, she was too struck by a puppy love.

Rassel was an absolute dream, said Sharon. He treated her like an angel and paid attention to her the whole time she was there. She wanted to stay there longer but had to return because she had gotten so sick. During her stay, the mother-in-law ended up taking her to the emergency room and the doctor had told her she needed to start getting protein in her body. All they eat over there was rice and being American she needed meat. Not only that but her asthma started acting up again she was unable to get a refill for it, but Rassel's brother had the same breathing troubles as Sharon so she was able to borrow his breathing apparatus.

It did make me mad when she kept talking about the village and the people living there. Sharon would say that they were a close knit family oriented group of people. How the grand mother was in the same house as her son and grandchildren and next door to her nieces and nephews. She really wishes that were like that in the US, but instead we are too busy for one another and would rather put the older people in a nursing home. However, I kept thinking well I doubt that anyone would have disowned their own children, besides if it was so good are over there why did you come back?

Sharon would complain that she now had no way to see the kids. I mentioned this to their dad we made a deal so that whenever kids came over and she was around, I would call her and tell her to come over. She may have disrespected my brother in law and my husband, but she was still their mother and the kids grandmother. So I didn't think it was right for me to stand in the way and I kind of wanted to stay on her good side. So I went ahead and tried to help her by filling out some forms over the Internet to get Rassel a visa so he could come over here. It was not a simple task either, it literally took me months to complete.

At one point when the kids were over and so was she, Sharon wanted the kids to promise her that they would not get married until they were 30. She started telling them that before 30 everyone is just too young and immature to get married, they all end in a divorce anyway. Carrie said that her dad had married her mom before there were 30. Sharon told Carrie that her dad was way too young and look how his marriage ended. She would not let this subject go until the kids had promised her. I was starting to get very upset by this time and I came close to telling her off. I just started shaking my head and then I told her well your son and I got married when we were in our early 20s and we are still married eight years later! So don't be making the kids promise you some thing if it can be prevented by good role models. After saying this, she did not say anymore on this subject.

Hilarious!

2007-05-07T20:22:00.000-04:00

WAYS TO TURN DOWN UNWANTED MEN !!!!

HE : Can I buy you a drink?

SHE : Actually I'd rather have the money.

HE : I'm a photographer. I've been looking for a face like yours.

SHE : I'm a plastic surgeon. I've been looking for a face like yours.

HE : Hi. Didn't we go on a date once? Or was it twice?

SHE : Must've been once. I never make the same mistake twice.

HE : How did you get to be so beautiful?

SHE : I must've been given your share.

HE : Will you go out with me this Saturday?

SHE : Sorry. I'm having a headache this weekend.

HE : Your face must turn a few heads.

SHE : And your face must turn a few stomachs.

HE : Go on ,don't be shy. Ask me out.

SHE : Okay, get out.

HE : I think I could make you very happy.

SHE : Why? Are you leaving?

HE : What would you say if I asked you to marry me?

SHE : Nothing. I can't talk and laugh at the same time.

HE : Can I have your name?

SHE : Why? Don't you already have one?

HE : Shall we go see a movie?

SHE : I've already seen it.

HE : Where have you been all my life?

SHE : Hiding from you.

HE : Haven't I seen you some place before?

SHE : Yes. That's why I don't go there anymore.

HE : Is this seat empty?

SHE : Yes, and this one will be if you sit down.

HE : So, what do you do for a living?

SHE : I'm a female impersonator.

HE : Hey baby, what's your sign?

SHE : Do not enter.

HE : Your body is like a temple.

SHE : Sorry, there are no services today.

HE : If I could see you naked, I'd die happy.

SHE : If I saw you naked, I'd probably die laughing.

August of 2005

2007-05-07T13:10:00.000-04:00

Now it was the month of August and Maggie had to have surgery done in her stomach. Ken asked me if I would watch the kids while he was at work, since the kids for out of school and I didn't work. I was so happy to be watching them, it makes me feel good that I people actually trust me with watching their children. For the longest time Ken had a hard time trusting me being left alone with the kids, especially his youngest, Carrie, when she was baby. Now that they were eight and nine, he had an easier time trusting me this time.

We had a lot of fun, they are a great bunch of kids. They did want to stay in side most of the day though and it would warm up to be a very lovely day. They mostly stayed in to play my Sims two game, but I would make them go out for at least an hour every day. I realize that our house was not an exciting, child ready... We didn't have a swingset nor a kiddie pool... But Chuck and I spent hours outside when we were kids, we would have climbed the trees in our yard are gone out in the backyard and explored the woods that surround our house.

I still remember the month I spent with them like it was just last month. Hard to believe it was two years ago! I do have some photos that were taken during this time.

This picture was taken by Brenden of Carrie and I
This Photo of Brenden was taken by Carrie

Visits from my mother-in-law

2007-05-04T11:52:00.000-04:00

Sharon got into a fight with her brother after their trip overseas, she had told Bill that he was not her brother any longer. She was still angry with Amber for her disappearance while in India. All Amber was doing was just being a typical teenager... She was only 18 at the time! When they got back, Sharon started acting childish towards Amber like ignoring her when she entered the room, when Bill had confronted Sharon about her childish attitude she told Bill he was taking sides and believing Amber when all she was doing was lying about her attitude on the trip. That is when Sharon told Bill that they are no longer brother and sister. So Sharon found a place here in town with a pastor and his wife, they own the church she attended while living here.

Whenever I'd be outside she would drive up and visit while Chuck was at work. Then she started showing up with a little white dog, it was a Jack Russell terrier named Bebe. It was a darling little dog that was all white with light brown spots all over its body, she had big buggy brown eyes and she looked just like Bambi! I had my big Labrador retriever at this time, but they seemed to get along quite well. Our front yard was not fenced in yet, so Chelsea was hooked up to an underground shock fence and since Bebe was a runner Sharon kept her on a leash.

The kids would even come over every once in a while to visit me. Sharon would come over to see them, I didn't have a problem with this for she was their Mamaw. She brought them some of the gifts that she bought them in India. When she gave the stuff she had told them it was from both her and Rassel. The gifts were simple, but cute, pairs of clothing. Carrie got a pair of sandals and a nice sundress, Brenden got some shoes and shorts with a shirt. The shirt was three times to small and Carrie did not like the sundress saying it looked to babyish, but they liked everything else. Sharon did get them other stuff besides clothes, but I cannot recall exactly what they were right now... So I guess it's not important!

After a few weeks, Sharon started planning her trip to Bangladesh the following month. She did not talk to me about her plans like she did before going to India. But everyone knew what she was going over for. I did know that she planned to be in Bangladesh for about two weeks.

Her trip to India

2007-05-03T09:31:00.000-04:00

My husband got me a new microphone with a USB plug yesterday. Now that it is working I can write more often than once a week, maybe I will write twice a week now.

When his mom walked in I felt a feeling of dred turning circles in my stomach. I couldn't believe what he brought home, I was still upset with her for telling both of her kids that she isn't their mother anymore. She didn't even disown them to their faces, instead she CALLED them! She took the cowards way out!!!!!!!

All she did was talk about her trip to India and how wonderful Rassel was. She even showed me some pictures that she took during her stay. Never once asking me how my trip was nor what we did. She didn't even ask to see the pictures I had taken. Instead all I heard was Rassel this and Rassel that. I did notice that she never mentioned the people that she went over with nor did she have any pictures of them. She told me about the hotel that her, Rassel, and her niece stayed in. About how Rassel would take them shopping and was able to bargain with the owner about the prices. How her and her niece, Amber, got in a horrific fight about Amber's spending habits and Amber disappearing for several hours and being caught by the pool flirting with a pool attendant there. She then told me that Rassel had proposed to her before he left to go home. I didn't say anything at this point, not only was I sick of hearing about Rassel but I couldn't believe she actually excepted a proposal from a kid!

Hey everyone!

2007-05-02T19:48:00.000-04:00

Check out the bottom of my page.

Child care decisions

2007-04-30T19:48:00.000-04:00

My mom got me an audio program for the computer as a birthday gift. My typing has gotten so slow and painful, so I took the "easy" way out...LOL! There's a loose wire in the microphone plug and until we figure out away to fix it, I'll be typing again and using lotsa abbreviations! :( So be patient, the mother-in-law posts will come but one wk at a time.

After his mom left, Ken did not know what to do about his kids. After a long custody battle w/ his ex, he was awarded custody about a yr. prior. So he did not want to get his ex involved and go thru another lengthy court battle. He ended up asking the new gf to watch them while he was at work. He would've asked me, but I wouldn't have been able to take the kids to and from school. Plus that July Chuck and I were going to Kansas for a couple wks.

Maggie took care of the kids starting in May (the day after Sharon's hissy fit), then that June she found out she had a really bad infection in her intestine and may need surgery. She was feeling better before I left for KS. While I was gone, her stomach started acting up again and the doctors scheduled surgery for August.

Carpet pics

2007-04-24T14:34:00.000-04:00

Our new look

2007-04-23T16:37:00.000-04:00

We now have carpet! Since Chuck has the new job and has his weekends free, we are now able to do more work to our fixer upper home. Our house still has bare floors because the people who lived here before had dogs that peed all over. So the flooring was all ripped up before we moved in. Well the living room had nice hard wood floors but the people glued down carpet over the floor. Since the carpet was ripped up, the glue ruined the floor. So Chuck and I ordered some carpet for the living room.

HOORAY!

2007-04-23T15:39:00.000-04:00

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!! I'm on! I'm on! I'm excited (couldn't ya tell?) After nearly a month and having to switch to the new blogger, I couldn't log in to my dashboard to create new posts. Well, a few minutes ago I logged in. Don't know how i did it, think it was thru Gmail (Thanks for the suggestion G!) Now,I am afraid to sign out...lol!

2007-04-05T14:08:00.000-04:00

Myspace Layouts

2007-04-03T21:11:00.000-04:00

Blue Cross and Blue Shields

2007-04-03T19:56:00.000-04:00

You Are An ENFJ

The Giver

You strive to maintain harmony in relationships, and usually succeed.

Articulate and enthusiastic, you are good at making personal connections.

Sometimes you idealize relationships too much - and end up being let down.

You find the most energy and comfort in social situations ... where you shine.

You would make a good writer, human resources director, or psychologist.

What's Your Personality Type?

Disowning the first time

2007-03-30T15:29:00.000-04:00

So, that was the first time Sharon had disowned both her children. It was for no reason other than being jealous, although she did keep claiming that she was in no way jealous of or angry at the dad's new girlfriend... Yeah what ever!

No one ever heard anything from her for a couple months. In the middle in July, we heard that she was back in town. So Chuck went to see if he could find her, but secretly, I was hoping he wouldn't. I was still upset at her. I mean, come on, disowning her own children? How can a mom possibly do this to her kids? Anyways, he did find her while she was driving around. I have no idea what they talked about because I was not present, later on he did tell me one of the first things she did was give him a big hug and kiss. A few hours later, Chuck pulled up the driveway and his mom pulled in behind him.

More to come...

Mother's Day 2005

2007-03-26T17:09:00.000-04:00

So anyway, Sharon was all excited about this trip. She and ‘her man’ (Rassel) were going to meet in India, he had already gotten permission from his mom and dad before he would go on a flight to go to another country. As mothers day 2005 got closer, she would come over to my house and tell me of her upcoming trip, she also told me not get her a mothers day gift. She did not want a gift of any kind from Chuck or Ken and to tell Chuck that.

As the day got closer, Chuck told me he wanted to get his mother a gift or a card for mothers day. I did as she told me and told Chuck his mom told me not to get her anything. She didn't even want a card from us. He looked a little upset and disappointed when I told him what she told me to tell him. I, myself, was feeling hurt too.

Then mother’s day weekend, Sharon told me she was going to be spending the weekend at her brother and sister-in-law’s. And incase you do not remember, her brother lives in the southern part of Michigan. On Mother's Day Maggie had invited everyone over for dinner at their house. We all agreed to go without even thinking about what day it was. Then that Monday night Chuck got off work and got a phone call. Sharon called and started bitching out Chuck and asked to speak to me, once I picked up the phone and she started telling me that nobody cared enough about her so she is leaving to stay with her brother. She also said that according to the way Ken and Chuck have reacted towards Maggie and have left her (Sharon) out of what is going on, they pretty much have a new mother now. They are not her son's anymore. She does not want to talk to them or have anything to do with them. They are not even to call her mother ever again.

She then packed up all her stuff and left Ken's and drove down to her brother's that night. As I found out later, the reason why she got upset was because Ken supposedly made these plans for dinner at his dads and didn't even go bother to call his mom to wish her a happy mother's day or even get her a card while his kids remembered to buy her a card. The funny thing is, she kept telling me how her own kids forgot about her on mothers day but instead spent the day with the dad and his new girlfriend when she was the one who told me she didn't want anything from Ken, Chuck, nor I. I believe she was jealous of the fact that the dad had found some one and seemed happier than he had in a long time.

My special day

2007-03-21T15:37:00.000-04:00

Well, tomorrow is my bithday. I know its weird to be thrilled to be turning uh....*cough*...32, but I can't seem to help it. I get more and more exited as the day gets closer. As I told Chuck the other day...

"I can't help but get more anxious for my birthday each day 'cause, according to my doctors, I shoud be dead!"

Have nothing special planned on my actual birthday since it falls on a weekday, but Sat. Chuck's taking me out to dinner. Then Sun. we're having another family birthday dinner, but this time it's for both my sister-in-law and my bday.

The new love

2007-03-16T17:20:00.000-04:00

A few weeks after the separation, Chuck’s dad (Chuck) got himself hooked w/ the online chat. Even coming in to work late several times. He started chatting w/ a female (Maggie) staying in NY.

Maggie has 2 kids and her ex living in NY, and was helping her son and daughter-in-law w/ their 3 young children at this time. She was staying w/ her son at this time but had a house in Ohio, also another online interest...as was written in her profile.

She and the dad chatted online for a few months...although Sharon swears the dad’s been cheating w/ her for years...and, on her way to OH from NY, stopped in to meet the dad face-to-face in late Feb. Guess this meeting went well, she ended up moving in that March and broke it off w/ her other Internet bf.

Chuck was never really fond of Maggie. He thinks she had this other interest as a standby incase this meeting w/ the dad fell thru. Now even Ken doesn't like her, but my sister-in-law and I do. We figure the boys don’t like her because she's not their mom. However, they still treat her w/ respect and are nice to her, which is good. The best thing about this relationship? Not only does the dad seem happier, but she is also the same age as the dad. I’d rather have her around than Sharon anyways!

Back to 2005

2007-03-08T13:51:00.000-05:00

I haven't been much in the mood lately to write about what did happen a few years ago. But a lot of stuff that ties in w/ the past has been happening currently. Before I tell u what is happening now, I need to let u know what did happen. So hopefully I stay on topic of my mother-in-law, Sharon.
Sometime in Feb. she started planning a trip to India. When she was a housekeeper for a motel up here, she had become friends w/ the current owners. They are originally from India and the wife was planning a trip home w/ her 2 younger children and had asked Sharon to accompany her. This trip was supposed to take place sometime in June and last a month.

Sharon was so excited about this upcoming trip. Before making pans for India, she originally wanted to go to Bangladesh to meet this Rassel. But felt this trip to India would be easier and safer...I helped w/ this decision. She asked her niece to go w/ her, even paying for Amber’s ticket (her friends bought Sharon's). Sharon was to stay w/ them and they were even supposedly going to have a party while Sharon was there to introduce her to other Indian people.

I was helping her choose the kind of outfits for her to pack and making some passport photos for her. She was also making a plan w/ Rassel to meet up w/ him in India. See I knew exactly what was going on, Ken had dial-up while I had a cable connection and Sharon would always use my Internet. Once I found out this trip was for the whole month of June, I kept asking what’s to happen w/ the kids since they’ll be out of school. She kept answering that's Ken’s problem...after constantly reassuring Ken since day 1 that she’d always be there.

2007-03-08T12:59:00.000-05:00

We were having problems with the new computer system at the municipal-government office. The police, whose headquarters was upstairs, were anxious to have their paychecks printed. My supervisor phoned the computer company, requesting help. "Next week?" I heard her exclaim. "You don't understand -- there are people with guns here and they aren't waiting until next week!" The company sent someone the next day.

This past weekend

2007-02-26T14:04:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was a busy one for us. Frday Chuck had been offered the Administrative Assistant position at his place of employment. Yes, it's a secretary position, but its geared more towards his Business degree than his truck driving job and it's the job he wanted anyway. I guess the original sec. had up and quit Fri. morning so Chuck starts Mon (today). He's not too worried about it, he's filled in as temp. sec. before so he already is familiar w/ it.

Then Friday afternoon Brenden came over and spent the night. Had a great time, he has turned out to be such a good 11 year old. And a big help too!

Saturday we had the family over for a birthday dinner for the dad. It went well, Chuck and I are thinking of having a family get together at least 1 a month.

That evening Carrie and Zac (my step-nephew) asked to stay the night. It was fun, they were real good. We did worry Zac would get homesick and want to go home at midnight. This was his first time staying w/ us, he usually chickens out at the last minute. Ken picked 'em up Sunday evening, the house now seems sooooo empty!

To you

2007-02-13T15:47:00.000-05:00

over the weekend

2007-01-31T21:02:00.000-05:00

This past weekend Chuck and I watched my father-in-laws dog. It's a 3-year-old Miniature Pincer, a runner in other words. They went to New York.... again, for the weekend to see Maggie’s family and asked if we’d watch her. We have watched her before, but even I (the animal lover) wanted to strangle her!

She was constantly needing to go out every 2 hours at nighttime. When Mitzy (the dog) didn’t want out, Buddy was pitching a fit ‘cause the dog kept eating his cat food and his dish was empty. It wasn't Bebe either; she was in bed with us all night (she makes a good butt-warmer, lol)! Poor Chuck had to keep getting up and down which kept me up. Finally, he had enough and ignored her. So what she'd do? The darn dog peed on the floor!

Mitzy was with us twice as long this time, the dad dropped her off early Friday morning and Chuck took her home Monday night. We wondered if she was showing signs of separation anxiety or something. But ALL weekend? I think her weight had a lot to do with it. She is real fat! She always has been, a tiny head on a super chunky, round body. Maggie claims its not fat its all muscle. Yeah whatever!!! A month ago, Mitzy could jump up in bed with us or fit underneath. This time Chuck had to lift her and put her in bed, or else she’d wedge herself underneath. Here we are worrying about Bebe’s weight (since she is a scrounger), but having our nearly 8-year-old dog stand by Mitzy makes Bebe look anorexic. We wanted them to watch our dog when I went home this summer, now we’re afraid they’ll overdue it with the table scraps like they did to Mitzy.

We also got our niece and nephew Friday night. We expected Brenden to end up staying the night, but on their way over, Carrie decided to also stay. They’ve stayed before, but always one at a time. This time it was both! It was a lot of fun and when my mom heard me with the kids she said I'd make a very good mom!!!

I so lonely....

2007-01-25T11:58:00.000-05:00

High hopes....

My new chair is fixed

2007-01-19T18:52:00.000-05:00

Hooray, my chair has been worked on and is back in my possession!! *sp?

Brake works, display thing works, even a new head rest that fits. Unfortunatey,, still the same legrests. Have no idea when they'll be replaced with the ones (that were supposedly ordred and delivered) that fit...remember I am short and thin, not big and fat that the chair was oiginally built for!

Back to 2004/2005

2007-01-16T13:06:00.000-05:00

Ok where did I leave off? Ah, yes, Sharon moving in w/ my brother-in-law, Ken.

I always have yahoo on. I enjoy listening to my yahoo LAUNCH cast plus while doing other things on the internet...which was (& still is) like all of the time. She was on most of the time, so yes I still could talk w/ her and find out how she was doing.

Once the kids started back to school in January, she would come visit me every so often...only when Chuck was at work. Sharon got a 6 month old miniature poodle and would bring it to the dads before he (the dog) was even potty trained. She would go to the house during the day to get some of her stuff, but mainly it was to use dad’s computer since he still used (and still does to this day) cable hook-up for the internet. While she was on, the dog (and the kids if they had no school) was allowed To run free and pee all over the house. Because of this, the dog still pees when he goes over there even now!

2007-01-15T17:56:00.000-05:00

Shirley Goodnest
A mom was concerned about her kindergarten son walking to school. He didn't want his mother to walk with him. She wanted to give him the feeling that he had some independence but yet know that he was safe. So she had an idea of how to handle it. She asked a neighbor if she
would
please follow him to school in the mornings, staying at a distance, so he probably wouldn't notice her. She said that since she was up early with her toddler anyway, it would be
a
good way for them to get some exercise as well, so she agreed. The next school day, the neighbor and her little girl set out following behind Timmy as he walked to school with another neighbor boy he knew.
She
did this for the whole week. As the boys walked and chatted, kicking stones and twigs, Timmy's little friend noticed the same lady was following them as she seemed to do every day all week. Finally he said to Timmy, "Have you noticed that lady following us to school all week? Do you know her?" Timmy nonchalantly replied, "Yeah, I know who she is." The friend said, "Well, who is she?" "That's just Shirley Goodnest," Timmy replied, "and her daughter Marcy." "Shirley Goodnest? Who the heck is she and why is she following us? " "Well," Timmy explained, "every night my Mom makes me say the 23rd Psalm with my prayers, 'cuz she worries about me so much. And in the Psalm, it says, 'Shirley Goodnest and Marcy shall follow me all the days of my
life',
so I guess I'll just have to get used to it!" May Shirley Goodnest and Marcy be with you today and always.........

2007-01-10T11:31:00.000-05:00

HOPE THIS MAKES YOU SMILE
THE MOST FUNCTIONAL ENGLISH WORD

Well, it's shit ... that's right, shit!

Shit may just be the most functional word in the English language.

You can smoke shit, buy shit, sell shit, lose shit, find shit, forget shit,
and tell others to eat shit.

Some people know their shit, while others can't tell the difference
between shit and shineola.

There are lucky shits, dumb shits, and crazy shits. There is bull shit, horse shit, and chicken shit.

You can throw shit, sling shit, catch shit, shoot the shit, or duck when the shit hits the fan.

You can give a shit or serve shit on a shingle.

You can find yourself in deep shit or be happier than a pig in shit.

Some days are colder than shit, some days are hotter than shit,
and some days are just plain shitty.

Some music sounds like shit, things can look like shit, and there are times when you feel like shit.

You can have too much shit, not enough shit, the right shit, the wrong shit or a lot of weird shit.

You can carry shit, have a mountain of shit, or find yourself up shit creek without a paddle.

Sometimes everything you touch turns to shit and other times you fall in a bucket of shit and come out smelling like a rose.

When you stop to consider all the facts, it's the basic building block of the English language.

And remember, once you know your shit, you don't need to know anything else!!

You could pass this along, if you give a shit; or not do so if you don't give a shit!

Well, Shit, it's time for me to go. Just wanted you to know that I do give a shit and hope you had a nice day, without a bunch of shit. But, if you happened to catch a load of shit from some shit-head...........
Well, Shit Happens!!!

Four Things about me...

2007-01-08T21:00:00.000-05:00

Things you may not have known about me.....

Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. baby-sitter
2. volunteer CCD teacher
3. volunteer pre-school teacher aid
4. a big sister to a bratty brother

Four Movies I have watched over and over
1. Grease
2. Princess Diaries
3. Labyrinth
4. Dark Crystal

Four places I have lived:
1. Salina, KS
2. Manhattan, KS
3. Harrison, MI
4. Mt. Pleasant

Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. Eureka
2. Dead Like Me
3. Monk
4. Maury

Four places I have been on vacation:
1. Colorado Springs
2. Disney World
3. Highlands Ranch, Co
4. Macinac Island

Favorite foods:
1. Mexican food
2. banana-nut bread
3. pot roast
4. brocolli & cheese

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. on a disney cruise
2. Macinac Island
3. in CO
4. in bed

Snow visited MI....

2007-01-08T11:46:00.000-05:00

Guess what? It snowed last night! Not much, maybe 6 inches. It'll probably melt soon, most likely this afternoon. Up here in Michigan it's usually pretty snowy...been known to snow in June! This year Colorado's been getting dumped on while we get nothing. I usually hate the snow, but it's about damn time for some white!!!!! See even I missed it.