adjustments

The adjustment period of moving into my mom's has been relatively easy. in fact, I don't really feel like there's been much of an adjustment at all. After the initial shock of having to move and all the change, I think maybe the fit is just right. I miss the kids but at the same time I don't miss being around 24/7. One of the luxaries of being an aunt is being able to enjoy your nieces and nephews without feeling too much like a parent. The past two years have not been like that. The Monkey and I have been more like second parents than an aunt and uncle. We shared in the responsibility of doling out discipline, helping with school work, and plenty of other parenting duties. It's not that either of us minded, but it really affected the dynamics of our relationship with the kids. I want that to change. I don't want them to look at us so much as second parents anymore. I want to be Auntie Lissa and Uncle Monkey again. And while I don't want them to lose respect for us or think that we won't discipline them if we need to, I want them to think of us more as the ones they come see when they want to be... you know, spoiled.

You'd think with my BIL having gotten his way his attitude would have changed a bit. Yeah, not a chance. This weekend we rented a U-Haul to move our stuff into a different storage unit and get the majority of our things out of Michele's. The Monkey's brother came over and helped and we knocked it out in like three hours. While we were at Michele's, The Monkey and and his brother pretty much had to tackle all the big stuff by themselves. So rather than sit out in the heat, I retreated into the house to talk to my sister and meet my nephew's new (tattooed and pierced!) GF. It was crazy hot on Saturday. Even though we got started early, it was already well into the upper 80s by the time we got to my sister's. So when I went into the house I went into the kitchen cabinet and got a cup and helped myself to some icewater from the fridge. Whoever had ice before me had put it on crushed. I don't care for crushed ice so I switched it to cubes. Still, when I pushed the lever, the fridge spewed out some crushed ice first. Some missed my cup and a few bits landed on the floor. Oops. I picked up the bigger pieces but I wasn't overly concerned about hunting down ice on the linoleum kitchen floor. I mean, really. If I'd spilled Kool-Aid or iced tea or soda or even a large amount of water I would have mopped it up diligently, but a few pieces of crushed ice? Give me a break. I went to the living room and sat down to talk to my sister and my nephew. While my sister was engaged in a conversation with Becca, my nephew's girlfriend, I hear my BIL in the other room make some off-hand remark about "damn ice on the floor" in the kitchen. Oh. My. Freaking. God. Are you serious? Like this doesn't happen a zillion times a day with the kids! Mostly I thought it was funny because I knew he was trying to get to me. But here's the thing. He can pick at me all he wants. He can try to make me grovel at his feet for "all he did for me" until the day he dies. Until he acknowledges that HE benefited from The Monkey and me living there as much as we benefited from living there I have no reason to thank him. I have given thanks where thanks is due and that is to my sister. He is not going to stop me from coming around to see her or the kids. I don't give a damn what he does. I still have a key to the house because my sister told me to keep it. I will not relinquish it until she asks me to and he will not make me feel bad about using it whenever I damn well feel like it. I have a good mind to remind him off all the hell he put her and his children through over the past two years. I can't imagine what it would have been like for them had The Monkey and I not been there. All those nights my sister sat up and cried. The nights the kids came running to the garage during their screaming fights. So, whatever. I told my sister that she and those kids are HALF MINE too and he's just going to have to get used to it. And that's that.

In spite of everything, I really like being here at my mom's. It feels so much more permanent. So much more like home. I spent all day Friday hanging and rearranging and organizing all of my mom's clothes. This may sound like an easy task but the woman has more clothes than you can imagine. Enough that she fills FOUR closets. And this is after downsizing. Um, that's not including dressers. Or other folded clothes. Like t-shirts, tank tops, sweaters, and jeans. What can I say, the woman likes her variety. Aside from the throbbing pain I had in my neck afterwards, I mostly enjoyed myself. When my mom got home from work, she literally started crying. She's so adorable. I really don't think she ever thought it would get finishd. I kept telling her it would! I try to keep myself busy because the house is so quiet and empty during the day and that gets pretty lonely. Well, it's empty except for the five cats and the dog. That's pretty exciting. Which is kind of silly because we had five cats and a dog at Michele's. But our cats were trapped inside a box. Now all of our animals are together. We have four girls and two boys. The Chihuahua, Frankie, is my little side kick. He pretty much follows me around all day long. We're working on getting him fully house trained which is a bit of a pain. Little dog, little brain and all that. Most days he does pretty well; especially when I take him out regularly. I bought him a leash and harness to take him on walks but the little spaz reacted badly to being on a leash. (He basically freaked out and cowered and refused to move.) So there goes that idea. The cats are pretty hilarious. My boy (whose official name is William but answers to Fat Cat, Fat Boy, and Little Kitty) thinks he's a pimp. He's taken to chasing all four girls around the house at random which really pisses them off. Especially my mom's two, Muffin and Cupcake. Olivia is really happy. I honestly think she was starting to get cabin fever. She was starting to act really strange at Michele's. Jasmine has taken up residence in my mom's room. Which has also pissed my mom's cats off because that was their spot. There's something really endearing about waking up at 2:30 in the morning (which I've been sadly doing quite a lot) and finding a different sleeping cat on each of the sofas.

I have three active pills left in my pack of birth control. I'm considering going out on payday to buy a new basal body thermometer and starting up charting again. I need to start my essay for the IVF sponsorship or at least start jotting down my ideas. I'm going to need to schedule bloodwork and my yearly with my RE soon. I'm pretty sure I need a new prescription for my Synthroid. And I suppose we can talk about getting back on the TTC rollercoaster. I'm looking at starting off very slow. I think I just want to chart for now. Maybe see if my cycles are even remotely regular and if I'm ovulating on my own at all. That's probably the logical first step anyhow even though this raging case of baby fever I have wants me to being doing an IUI cycle yesterday. Must focus on more important things. Must focus on The Monkey's health. Must focus on losing some more weight (198 as of today, by the way). Must do what is necessary to better our financial situation (which is looking more and more like my filing bankruptcy). But, in the meantime, it will at least be nice to get out of this incredibly long holding pattern.

So it goes, so it goes.

ch-ch-changes

One can only assume it was a matter of time before we wore out our welcome here, right? I mean we've been staying at my sister's for going on two years and that's a long time to live with someone. It's definitely more than I can expect. More than anyone can expect, I guess.

Things have been going downhill for a while. I'm not sure exactly why. My sister has always been clear that she is fine with us being here. She enjoys our company (and I think a part of her enjoys having a 'buffer' between her and her husband). But her husband feels otherwise and I guess that's fine. The whole mess started out over money. I'm a little irritated that he's taking things out on us that aren't our fault. (Like the fact that the boat he and my dad went in on together is now in default because my dad is in jail. Or that he didn't account for things coming out of his retirement like, oh say health and dental insurance. Or that he didn't listen to me when I tried to tell him how SSD really worked. And now he's getting no where even close to the income he thought he was going to be getting now that he's out of the military. So all of a sudden The Monkey and I should start paying half of the $400 electric bill? And help with other utilities? And prepare meals several times a week? And I should talk about filing bankruptcy since I clearly can barely afford to keep up with my credit card payments.) But all of this would be water under the bridge if it weren't for the conniving way he went about "asking" us to leave. Because he didn't. He picked an argument with my sister and gave her an ultimatum -- tell them to leave or I'm leaving. What kind of husband does that??

So, we've been tossing around the idea with moving in with my mom. We can't afford a place of our own until my disability kicks in and that could be several months from now still. (Have I mentioned lately how incredibly tiring this process is??) We hadn't gone forward with it because we were mostly worried about my sister's feelings. She'd already mentioned that she didn't want us to move out. And it went from that from that to this overnight.

So I guess we'll be spending the next week or two getting things organized and moved into storage. We won't need a lot of the things we have here. Our TV and dressers can go into storage as can most of our furniture. We mostly just need our clothes and essentials. There's a big part of me that's utterly relieved. No more worrying about creepy crawlies and sweating to death in the summer time. The Monkey and I can finally look at getting back on track with eating properly. My cats will finally have room to run around. Olivia has really been acting strange lately. Almost like she has cabin fever (if it's possible for an animal to get such). It's certainly going to be an interesting adjustment, though. Our three cats, my mom's two cats, and her chihuahua. Wow. We're definitely going to need a couple more litter boxes.

With this has come all sorts of new questions. My mom keeps telling me that I should stop my BCPs and we should start TTC again. (FYI - this living situation could be semi-permanent. Once my dad gets sentenced, he's likely to get prison time from anywhere from 10 - 15 years; if not longer. My mom has the room and she's not bad company or hard to get along with.) I've already told her that we are not going to be ready for that right away. (I will admit that it's totally tempting; but we're not in financial shape right now to TTC much less support a child. But it is nice knowing that maybe we can start some sort of "countdown" to trying again. Perhaps a 2011 or 2012 baby is on the horizon?)

In the meantime, I have surrendered my credit cards to The Monkey. I am going to start with my lowest balance card and start hacking away at balances the best I can. It's not going to be easy and it's definitely not going to be quick but it has to be done. With any luck we'll have a couple paid off by the end of the year and we can use our tax return to pay off one or two more.

Change. fdsjkf;sjdk

the rain, rain can bite my rear end!

It has been incredibly wet the past couple of weeks. We had a lot of rain last the Wednesday before last. To our dismay, water got into the garage (aka our living space). We were thankful, however, that it wasn't anywhere near as bad as the incident back in March.

Sunday morning whilst cuddling with The Monkey in bed, our fat cat jumped up with us for some lovin' (he was probably just hungry) and I noticed immediately that his feet were soaking wet. We jumped out of bed and, sure enough, it had flooded again. UGH. But, once again, it wasn't nearly as bad as it was in March. (Though it was worse than the incident a couple of weeks ago.)

We were completely convinced that it was coming in from under the garage door. We weren't exactly right but we were close (it was coming in between the brick and the door frame). At any rate, I rushed to Lowe's to find something that would seal off the crack and hoped that would be the end of our flooding woes.

No such luck. Not at all.

At about 4:00 PM the rain started to fall heavy. It wasn't long before water was just gushing in by the door. We hooked up the Shop-Vac (which doubles as a 'sump pump' as well) and started sucking up the water as it came in. It was working just fine until my sister noticed that water was starting to come in from the back wall. That is where it came in from the first time (from a crack in the floor along the wall). We'd patched it back in April with some liquid concrete sealant stuff. For the most part the patching worked. Perhaps a bit too well because even though it was still seeping in (and rather quickly I might add) the sealing we did slowed it down enough to allow it to rise high enough to get into my sister's house. I feel awful. Even though it's not directly our fault. At any rate, about half of her downstairs den was sopping wet. Carpet and padding and everything. My dad came over and we dug trenches and put down tarps in the pouring rain. We were all soaking wet and completely covered in mud. In the meantime the garage got a good four inches of water. It wasn't standing because it is at enough of a slant that it ran out the door but it was enough to float something small. A golf ball perhaps?

After the rain slowed The Monkey and I cut up and removed all of the carpet (which was also sopping wet) and hauled it outside. Then we rearranged all of the furniture the best we could at the only (very small) spot that has seemed to stay mostly dry. In the process we found ANOTHER leak in the floor. Yay. Once we got that done my sister started hacking at the patching we did in April with a chisel and hammer. As soon as she busted through that stuff and yanked it up water came bubbling out. It looked like a fountain! The Monkey and I did as much squeegeeing as we possibly could. The rain has slowed to a drizzle but we're supposed to get rain this morning sometime around 4:00 AM. Yay again. Then it's supposed to rain all day.

Thankfully I talked to The Monkey's boss and he has tomorrow off so I won't be fighting the flood waters alone. In the meantime we are just trying to figure out what we can do to fix the underlying problem. At this point we are not sure what the problem is. Whether it's a crack in the wall under the house or possibly a foundation leak. Either way, my sister's home owners' insurance does NOT cover flooding.

And I ask... this crap couldn't have waiting until AFTER Christmas?!? UGH UGH UGH.

And now I am going to take my aching body to bed. I am sure to fall out rather quickly (I hope). We are in for a long day tomorrow, that is for sure.

this is what happens

When depression hits as hard as it has in the past month, things stop getting done. Important things like laundry and scooping the litter boxes. There have been a couple days where I've realized late in the afternoon (sometimes the evening) that I've forgotten to feed the cats.

For the past two weeks The Monkey has had to scrounge for work clothes. I did wash and dry all of the clothes last weekend but I didn't really fold them. And I certainly didn't put anything away (who could be bothered??). So my poor Monkey has had to deal with ironing this week. (Normally he can toss his khakis and a polo into the dryer for a few minutes to "dewrinkle" them.) And searching through heaps of clothes for two matching socks and clean underwear.

Guilt, guilt, guilt.

And so today, the guilt has overtaken the depression momentarily. I've decided that today, I will finish the laundry if it kills me. I will scoop the litter boxes. I will vaccuum and take out the trash. I draw the line at making the bed, though. Pshaw. (And I did remember to feed and water the cats this morning; just so we're clear that I'm not starving my furbabies to death.)

In the mean time, I am babysitting my niece. It's kind of incredible that she is already turning TWO this month. She's a good girl (albeit very spoiled and sometimes rotten). I have to bribe her to get kisses and sometimes she is flat out mean to me for no reason at all. But I guess that's just a toddler for you. My oldest niece was the same way at this age. My nephews, on the other hand, were always loveable to me. So it must be a girl thing.

My whacked out hormones combined with my depression-fueled over eating has caused me to pack on a good 10 pounds. My new jeans are snug. My muffin top is harder to conceal. My face is a LOT fuller. I really and truly need to get back on track with losing weight. I still have two months to meet my resolution/weight loss goal for 2009. I'm toying with the idea of signing us up for Weight Watchers while we still have Cigna insurance. (Cigna offers a discount on Weight Watchers but on January 1st our insurance changes to Blue Cross Blue Shield.) The Monkey is on board for it as long as we don't, you know, fork out the money and then diet for a week or two and quit. Perhaps I'll do some research today in between loads of laundry.

I haven't cooked supper in weeks. So yesterday I went and picked up all of the ingredients to make Philly Cheese Steaks and Tater Tots. We'll see if my Yankee blood shines through.

living in the moment

I have a bad, bad tendency to live my life in moments. Not little, insignifcant moments but BIG and potentially life altering moments. Everything in between becomes dismissable. Which is a shame because life isn't always about the BIG moments.

I think this is why I don't write as much anymore. I don't really have anything to say unless something exciting is going on. And even then I find it difficult to write because I get so caught up that I sort of get lost for words.

The holidays are coming up. I am sad to think that we may truly have to hide under a rock. Or run away. So people don't buy us gifts and we aren't expected to buy anyone else gifts. Last year we didn't have the money but we had the credit and that is what we used. But as it stands, every single solitary credit card we have is maxed out. Or nearly maxed out. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. I miss the days when I was absolutely TERRIFIED of credit cards. I miss the days where I was totally and completely 100% debt free. Now I'm barely treading water with the credit cards. And my six month grace period on my student loans ends this month. Now I have to do a mad dash to call everyone and convince them that I am unable to pay my loans at this time and request a deferrment. Honestly, that's not the part that scares me. The part that scares me is the amount of interest $60,000 can accrue in a mere year's time. It almost makes me want to feign death. Does the government forgive student loan debt after you die? I am happy to say, however, that as of February 2010, we OWN two cars. Two cars that have been very reliable over the past five years. Let's hope they STAY that way.

I'm still finding it a bit hard to believe that another year is nearly over. I keep thinking of a former coworker that always used to tell me the older you get the quicker time seems to pass. I find that it becomes truer with every passing year. The Monkey and I are watching the kids for my sister this evening. They went to visit my sister's best friend in Georgia. (The family was there for a funeral and it's basically "right around the corner" so she went to show support.) Madison is growing up so quickly. It was getting close to her bedtime. She gave me a fit about putting clothes on (she, uh...likes being naked) but once she was in her jammies (which I tried to hype up as much as possible since they were new big girl jammies) she was fine. I sat with her in the glider and started scrolling through all the pictures on my phone. I have quite a few of my sister on there and every time we came to one I said "Who's that?" and she'd grin really big and say "Dada!" I couldn't help but laugh and say "No, that's MomMom." Then we'd come across a picture of me and she'd say "Oh! MomMom!" Once again, laughter and then correction. (She also called a picture of her Aunt Desirée 'MomMom' too.) I also have quite a few pictures of her in there. I came across one I took when I first got my phone (in late January) and was kind of amazed how much she's changed. And my GOSH how much hair she's gotten! I looked at a picture of her when she was about six months old she was SO bald. And she pretty much stayed that way until she was well over a year. But now.. it seems her hair is growing like wild fire. I kept brushing it out of her eyes to no avail. She needs a "pretties" in her hair to keep it out of her face but it's quite a feat getting her to keep any kind of bow, barette, or rubberband in her hair. She is cute as a button, though. We still can't decide what color her eyes are. They are definitely NOT the crystal-clear blue that my nephews and niece all have. But they are not the distinct green that my sister has, either. I think she's going to have eyes like mine. The kind that change color. All of my identification has 'blue' as my eye color but anyone that looks me in the eye will tell me they are more green. Ever since my sister found out she was pregnant with my oldest nephew I wanted her to have a green-eyed little girl. Maybe she finally does.

I've been on birth control for nearly two months now. I can't say I'm loving it. Having PCOS means my body chemistry is bass ackwards. The majority of women gain weight on the pill -- I've always lost weight. But not so much this time around. I'd like to go back on Yasmin but all of the FDA warnings and the class action suits have me scared. I'd prefer not to have a heart attack or stroke or DVT, thanks very much. But man this birth control pill is horrendous. I seem to be retaining a tremendous amount of water. I've gained about eight pounds. (Okay, some of that can easily be attributed to my less-than-desirable eating habits while in Pennsylvania, but come on already!) But I think the worst part of it has been the headaches and the incessantly aching BOOBS. I have never experienced this sort of soreness in the twins. EVER. They hurt so much that I sometimes flinch when The Monkey...uh...goes to play with them. :P It's ridiculous. The one good thing I have to say is my skin. Oh MAN does my skin look fabulous! I still have the stray pimple here and there (in fact, I'm nursing one on my chin at the moment) but the horrendous breakouts that I was having are a non-issue since I started taking the pill. It didn't even take a full pack to see the positive effects! So I'm kind of on the fence about the whole thing. I'm supposed to go back and see my RE to have all my levels rechecked and such. I think I'll talk to the nurse about a different type or brand.

I've taken a recent interest in serious cooking. I've been experimenting with a few of Alton Brown's recipes. I'm planning on trying out his Carrot Cake recipe for The Monkey's birthday cake. (Did you know that Carrot Cake is really more of a muffin than a cake? If not, now you do, and you should totally feel compelled to now have a slice of Carrot Cake for breakfast completely and totally guilt free.) Speaking of Pumpkin... oh... wait. Well, whatever. I'm craving a Pumpkin Spice Latte like crazy! I could get my "fix" right here at home if International Delights and Coffeemate would hurry up and flood the stores with the holiday creamers! Mmm... Gingerbread and Pumpkin Pie.

I feel a little better now. Having put some words to "paper" and have them actually make some sort of sense. And have them be about the more mundane aspects of my life rather than the BIG moments. One of these days I will take the time to resize and upload all of my pictures from our trip to Pennsylvania. I have a lovely one of my mom, dad, stepmom, brothers, sisters, and me together for the first time that I really need to post. But part of me feels obligated to explain why that picture is so incredibly special. I hardly speak of my childhood -- mostly because I don't remember much -- but at the very least I feel the need to explain how my family wound up the way it is.

The next "BIG MOMENT" in my life is the Metallica concert. I've never actually been to a concert. (Well, okay, I'll fess up to having been to a New Kids on the Block concert at age 10. Hey, it was sponsored by our church congregation. This is one of the funny things about my memory. I have almost no recollection of the concert itself. The one thing I do remember is when the pastor asked me in front of the entire church congregation what my favorite band was I instictively replied "New Kids on the Block" even though, at the time, my favorite band had to be Guns -N- Roses. Heh. Once a rocker, always a rocker, I guess.) The Metallica concert has me filled the brim with excitement. I've even had a few dreams about it. One I refuse to go into detail about because...er...it might make my husband jealous. And I would hate to see him have a change of heart about his favorite band of all time. The most recent was last night. I fell asleep listening to my iPod -- Metallica, of course -- and it lead to a dream about the actual concert. But just as it started to get good (I was making my way towards the stage) I was somehow back at home on the couch. And The Monkey walked in the door and started talking to me and all I could hear was LOUD music playing. Silly me...suddenly I remembered my earbuds and removed them. But I still couldn't hear what The Monkey was saying! I immediately started crying and panicking over losing my hearing because of a rock concert. Then I woke up. To loud music playing in my ears (No Leaf Clover). I pulled my actual earbuds out of my ears and was relieved that I could still hear. Oddly enough, The Monkey walked in the door right at that time, practically mirroring my dream. [Cue theme to The Twilight Zone]

Buying concert tickets is no easy task. Or, it wasn't for me. Why didn't anyone warn me about Service Fees?? I got all excited over a pair of tickets that were going to cost us $200 for damn good seats only to find out after I went to purchase them that with Service Fees and shipping it was going to cost $300. Eh. I wound up getting some really excellent seats (which I believe I posted about previously). Second [seated] row. Definitely not too shabby. Finding a hotel wasn't much easier. I was agonizing over a cheap hotel and driving to the arena and paying for parking or getting a hotel close to a MARTA stop so we'd only have to pay $8.00 for transportation to and from the arena. Ultimately, the fact that I am a big fat wussy made the decision for me. I booked a hotel near Hartfield Airport. It was relatively inexpensive. We won't have to venture into the city of Atlanta until we absolutely have to. It had excellent customer ratings. And it's only 12ish miles from Philips Arena. (After doing some reading, I decided that I did NOT want to be on public transit at 1:00 AM basically broadcasting TOURIST to every passerby. Especially since we wouldn't be able to carry anything defensive like mace. They don't allow those sorts of things in the concert venue.) I also wasn't keen on either walking to/from the hotel to/from the nearest MARTA station OR parking my car at the free lot at a MARTA station where it would be, for many hours, unattended and quite vulnerable. It would be my luck that some asshole would try to break in it or something. I hate the thought of the $20 parking fee for the garage at CNN Center but I guess it's a small price to pay for peace of mind.

And now that all of the important major details are in order, I can worry about the silly stuff. Like what to wear and how to do my makeup. And whether I or not I want to bring my camera (on which I have NOT mastered the night setting) or borrow my mom's or sister's. And if I do decide to borrow, will I need to look at possibly purchasing an extra memory card. (I would like to take a video clip or two.) Decisions, decisions. Right now the, uh, wardrobe and makeup are taking precedence. I know for sure it's going to be a 'jeans and t-shirt' kind of thing but my problem is what jeans and what shirt. But hey, I have three weeks to think about it, right?

enjoy the silence? not so much.

My sister and the rest of the family left for Panama City Beach on Saturday. I've basically been trying to convince myself for the last week and a half that I really didn't care that I wouldn't be able to go down to the beach with them. Not even for a quick day trip. After all, PCB is so overrated, anyway. And we didn't have the money. And blah blah blahbitty blah. But, sure enough, when the house cleared out around noon on Saturday I was crestfallen. Sad, even. I guess I really wanted to see the Emerald Coast after all.

The Monkey isn't as thick as he sometimes lets on. I was sullen most of Saturday afternoon. Not even the Spongebob Spongebash marathon was cheering me up. That's when The Monkey gave me surprise, middle-of-the-afternoon-the-house-is-completely-devoid-of-lifeforms-that-don't-walk-on-all-fours-be-as-loud-as-you-want sex. Which, I'll admit, did cheer me up. But what really made my day was when he said if we had the $20 it would cost for gas that we should go ahead and make the trip down to PCB for the afternoon. At least we could get some sun and get our fill of the beach. (Not to mention SALT WATER TAFFY!)

We got up early Sunday and got to PCB by 11:00 AM. Naturally, the weather was less than cooperative. We would get hit with the 20% chance of showers. [eyeroll] But we got to swim for a couple of hours. And we hung out with my mom in my sister's condo for another hour. Then we headed to Pier Park and picked up a little over a POUND of Salt Water Taffy for yours truly and headed home. (I am ashamed to admit that the pound of taffy was gone within 48 hours. Er...maybe less.

What made the whole trip go sour for me was not the less-than-desirable weather, though. No, it was the fact that upon our return, The Monkey became ill. Fluids coming from both ends. YUK. We had a bit of a scare when his poo because the consistency of coffee grounds. Thankfully the doctor said it was nothing more than a stomach bug (even though our GP sent us to a surgeon to find this out and for several hours I was on razor's edge thinking The Monkey was going to be having an emergency colonoscopy). He was much better by Tuesday evening. His blood pressure was close to normal (130/80) and he's already dropped 10 pounds (though I'm not sure how much of that was mere fluid loss). He's perfectly fine today and back on solid food again. We had tortellini and garlic bread for supper tonight after living on soup and crackers for the past two nights.

The house is too quiet. My sister's poor dog was depressed the first two days they were gone. He barely ate and only came down from his bed upstairs to go outside. But he's been spending much more time downstairs since Tuesday. In fact, he won't leave me alone!

The week has been boooooooring. The Monkey has to work, of course, so I'm home alone all day. As tempted as I've been, I have not been sleeping until noon, though. I spent some time over at my parents' house and ran errands. At night, The Monkey and I have been enjoying oodles of DVR'd movies from the pay channels. My sister pays for Cinemax, Showtime, and HBO but they hardly ever watch movies. I also caught up on So You Think You Can Dance. (In fact, it's about time for me to go upstairs and watch yesterday's show so I can watch the results show later this evening.)

Only 12 more days until we leave for Pennsylvania. I am pretty stoked! I have lots of stuff to occupy my coming week. I need to get our cars reregistered. On the 30th I have to travel to Birmingham to see my RE. On the 31st I have a hair appointment. Then it'll be another mad dash to clean the house and pack before we depart on the 4th! I should get started on a list of what I need to bring NOW so I'm not scrambling later. If only I could figure out a way to drop these last 10 pounds by the 4th... hmmph.

oh yes, please!

So, The Monkey got his official "Welcome to Verizon Wireless" email yesterday. He is a VZW employee as of June 1st! SWEET! The pay raise and insurance are sure going to be a RELIEF like no other. And I am muchly appreciative of everything that has transpired since his being hired through Manpower. I am especially grateful to our friend Banana who has fought tooth and nail from day one and even before he was hired to get The Monkey not only in with the company but into a better position. She called yesterday evening to thank The Monkey for his continuous hard work and dedication to her team. (My man does have awesome work ethic!) Oh, and just so you know, Banana called her other team member and thanked her as well. She's not giving my hubby preferential treatment. Right now they are VERY shorthanded. The Monkey picked up 12 hours of overtime last week and he's looking at around 10 this week so far. This bothers neither of us because the extra duckies are really helping us out!

Speaking of money, The Monkey's coworker recently got hired on with VZW as well. She had a question about her pay stub and, apparently, brought it to The Monkey for assistance. She had a question about overtime pay or something and then mentioned that she'd received a $900 retroactive bonus on her first paycheck. SAY WHAT?? Oh, did I neglect to mention that, as a VZW employee, he is now eligible for monthly bonuses?? I didn't? Oh, well, now you know! I'm not counting my chickens or anything but WOW a retroactive bonus would be really nice. We could pad our savings acocunt once again (which has dwindled tremendously) and we'd also be able to afford some things that we've been putting off. Like brakes for both cars, for instance. (Also, for the record, our cars are not at all a danger. Our brakes work fine. The Monkey's car needs new pads and rotors because his rotors are warped and his car jerks a bit when you stop. But it does stop with no problem. My car needs a new caliper on the left side. It's sticking and occasionally produces a scraping sound that is definitely cringe-worthy. But, again, it does stop without hesitation. So neither of our cars are posing any sort of danger to us or others.) We could also consider purchasing a dehumidifier for the garage. It's ridiculously humid right now and the air in the garage is very close to palpable that it's a bit uncomfortable. I'm thinking a dehumidifier might help with that.

I spent some time yesterday downloading music. The last "downloading spree" I went on was strictly Metallica. So I went to LA Lloyd's Top 30 to check out some of the new rock songs that are playing on the radio these days. Lots of good stuff. New Nickelback, Mudvayne, Avenged Sevenfold, Hinder, Incubus, 311... the list goes on! So I downloaded about 20 new songs. During my search for potential downloads, I visited one of our favorite radio station's website, WYYX.com to see what they have going on music-wise. Intrigued, I checked out their local concert listings. I was none too excited with their line-up (Godsmack, Kid Rock, Drowning Pool, Green Day, Creed, Theory of a Deadman) because while I would easily go see any of these bands if someone handed me tickets, I'm not really willing to shell out a couple hundred bucks for them. Then, further down the listing, playing on Sunday, October 4th in Atlanta, GA -- METALLICA. I absolutely HAD to price tickets just to see! They weren't ridicilously expensive, either! The wheels in my head started turning. I thought about the look on The Monkey's face when I presented him with tickets to see his favorite band for his birthday. Of course, we don't have the disposable income at the moment so I didn't purchase them. But The Monkey and I talked about potentially going for it. When I asked him the last time he'd seen Metallica in concert he gave me a dumbfounded look and said "Well, never." !!! I've never been to a real concert in my entire life so this would be a REAL treat! The seats would most likely be in the nosebleed section but, still, I'd be able to say that I've seen Metallica live in concert and so would The Monkey! I guess we'll see how things pan out over the summer. I still have my trip up north to think about, after all.

Regarding my trip up north, we are planning for August 4 - 12! I think it's high time that I added a ticker! Just 67 days to go! Hooray!

Now I'm off to tag my new music and then I plan to get a shower. Hoping that the weather holds up through the weekend so I can go swimming! It has been a miserable month weather-wise. TOO much rain.

our carpet is cursed

I swear, since the flooding, this carpet has attracted more crap in the past few weeks than it had in the [almost] year it has covered the garage floor. The last four days have been full of cat puke. Everywhere. At least a dozen piles of it. Plus a few hairballs. (We're working on controlling the culprit's, who turned out to be Jasmine, diet in hopes of solving the issue without an expensive visit to the vet. The only thing I can think is that maybe she ate a bad bug or a spider? But she doesn't puke when she is in the kennel so we're feeding her small amounts in the morning and the evening before bed and putting her in the kennel overnight. This seems to stave off the puke-a-rama.)

But back to the carpet.

This evening The Monkey was sitting down watching a bit of the tube when my six year old nephew walked up to the screen door, promptly dropped his drawers, and began emptying his full bladder onto our carpet through the screen door. The Monkey was like "Dude! Wake up!" but you know boys... once they start, they can't stop. So we spent the last 20 minutes cleaning up pee (my sister helped, of course) and cracking up because, hey, it was pretty freaking hilarious. This is the second time he's done this and all we can deduce is that he's just really tired when it happens and gets lost/confused in his walking coma-like state. The last time he did it he peed on my sister's bed. But that was a couple of years ago, easy. So it's not a common occurance or anything.

Any more freakish fluids on this carpet and I'm going to have to rent a Rug Doctor. Actually, that doesn't sound like a half bad idea at all. :-/

10 is a nice even number anyhow

So after "invading" my sister's space (read: living in her actual house) for the past 10 days, we (my sister, Tony, and I) buckled down this afternoon and got the garage all put back together. There's something to be said about a bit of real spring cleaning. The garage isn't lit particularly well so it was a bit of a shock to see just how many cobwebs we'd grown in the past [almost] year. Yikes! Thankfully, we purchased R2D2's look-alike in shop-vac form when it flooded and we were able to use it to suck up all the big bits of ceiling panel and all the cobwebs and various other yuk that has escaped out attention due to the profuse lack of light. (The garage has two windows but Tony and I keep them curtained most of the time. The extra lighting came from opening one of the two garage doors, which were caulked tightly shut, to allow the standing water a means of escape.)

It took us about four hours to get everything finished. Our sofa is particularly heavy because it is a double reclining sofa and I managed to pull something while helping my sister move the damn thing. Now my lower back KILLS. I'll be a Flexeril poppin' fool for the next few days, I'm sure.

At any rate it was completely worth it. We are now comfortable, once again, comfortable in our own personal space. Tony won't have to sleep on an air mattress anymore and I can go back to sleeping on my couch. :P Also I am back on my computer and my TV. And the cats are no longer able to bully my sister's dog. Plus it's nice to have reorganized everything and vacuumed every square inch of this small living space. Oh! Plus! I put up all the new ceiling panels that we bought a month ago so no more gaping holes in the drop ceiling. Hooray!

So now I'm going to go stretch out my aching lower back, pop a muscle relaxer, and munch on a bit of my Crème Brûlée chocolate bar and hopefully pass out rather quickly from sheer exhaustion.

More later this week on therapy and meds and other things pertaining to my mental health. And also our weekend excursion to the movie theater with my niece and nephew and my niece's friend to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D.

trying to take it all in stride

Today my sister and I spent most of the day working on her homework. She put it off until today to spend all day yesterday trying desperately to get all of the water out of the garage. It kept me sufficiently distracted from the issue that is our living space. The only productive thing we did [in the garage] today was to take out the box springs and set them in the sun to dry out. Which they did and they look to be undamaged for the most part. Sigh. of. relief. At least we won't have to worry about replacing those immediately.

The carpet is still soaked. We're going to spend tomorrow rearranging everything so we can pull the carpet out. I'm not sure how/if it will dry out completely. The weather man is predicting rain again on Tuesday; albeit not as much rain as we got the past few days. Thank goodness.

Things could be better. Just as they could be worse. They are bordering on just bad enough; I'm dealing better today than I was yesterday.

The Monkey is having a lot of trouble with his back once again. He's limping, walking hunched over, and in a lot of pain. Despite his adamence about taking NO pain killers that would show up on a drug screen he finally broke down and took Lortab yesterday and today. He has a valid prescription for it but the pills weren't his. But as long as he has a prescription he will be covered if they test him soon. Not that I'm worried since the Lortab will be out of his system in a couple of days anyway. I'm planning to make an appointment with our family doctor for his day off this week. That way he can get a new prescription for pain meds. Hopefully those will keep him until he's hired on at Verizon and picks up insurance. Then we can, again hopefully, get him back to the chiropractor. I'm still considering the usefulness of an inversion table, though.

Hopefully this will be the last of our set backs for 2009. [crosses fingers]

natural disasters suck

We have been rather settled in my sister's garage. We had it arranged and setup in such a way that, save for the garage doors, it didn't feel like living in a garage. Just a small extension to my sister's four bedroom, two and a half bath house. It's been working quite fabulously. Except for the occasional bug in the spring/summer, I have no complaints.

Until today.

The past three days have been horrendous, weather wise. I think it's been like that pretty much all across the country, though. We had some heavy rains and early morning tornado warnings. Winds, lightening... nothing too spectacular, honestly. Save for the sirens at 6:00 AM, everything was peachy keen.

Until this morning.

I slept on the couch in my sister's den because I couldn't get comfortable on the bed or couch in the garage. I do this frequently, actually. She has a really comfy couch in the den. I fall asleep almost instantly whenever I land on it. This morning I woke to my sister telling me about the bad weather again. Third day running, like I said. So I drug my tired behind out of bed, poured a bowl of Special K, and went to the garage to turn on the news and keep tabs on the weather-of-doom. I stepped on a tiny (think nickel-sized) wet spot on the carpet by the couch. I thought nothing of it, chalking it up to the cats knocking something over or what-have-you. I ate my bowl of Special K and then went to return my cereal bowl to the kitchen so the cats wouldn't try and devour the bit of milk in the bottom of the bowl (inevitably making a mess).

Imagine my shock, terror, suprise (mostly shock) when I got up and my foot was SOAKING WET. I yelled at Tony to get out of bed that the carpet was soaked! He jumped up and said Holy SHIT it's a freaking PUDDLE over here!

My day did not start off well. And it only got worse.

By the time my sister and I got back from our rush run to Lowe's (we bought a wet/dry shop-vac to suck up the water which was, at the time, about an inch deep in some places) the water had risen to about two inches and the ENTIRE carpet in the garage was saturated. Completely soaked through.

I am devestated.

We don't have anywhere else to go. Of course my sister isn't going to leave us high and dry. We're "camping out" in their house for the next few days (week??) until the insurance adjusters come out and figure out what the HELL is wrong with the foundation of her house. (The water was seeping up from the ground into a crack along the wall in the garage floor.) Thankfully none of our electronics or furniture was badly damaged. Tony got the notion to take the mattress/box springs off the frame a month or two ago so our box springs got soaked. My mom is pricing new ones; possibly an entirely new mattress set. (Something I'm not sure we can afford right now.) We got up as much water as we possibly could but it just kept coming in through the crack in the floor. Our labor would've been a moot point except that we're sure it kept the water from getting any deeper.

Thankfully, around 3:00 PM, the rain stopped and the sun came out. The weather man says it's supposed to be sunny tomorrow, though not very warm. We're going to have to rearrange all the furniture in there so we can pull out all the soaked carpet. Then...well, I don't know what. Hopefully everything will dry quickly once the carpet is gone. Then we can try scavenging for some new carpet. In the mean time, the insurance folks will hopefully come out and the root of the problem can be rememdied before we have to deal with another torrential downpour. Now that it's happened, I am 100% sure that it will happen again. And again. And again... until the root problem is fixed.

Mostly I want to crawl under a rock and hide from all of this. I'm not dealing well at all. :(

Lissa and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

My day started off with my usual three mile walk. As per the norm, I clipped my [brand new] cell phone to the inside of my hoodie pocket. Somehow, someway, I managed to knock it out and it went clattering onto the asphalt. While the new faceplate did take the brunt of the fall, my poor [brand new] Voyager is already scratched.

Damnit.

I got over that fairly quickly only to have the dumb ass working the Arby's drive-thru hand me a bag that was too small for the food I ordered out the drive-thru window, ripping the bag in the process. I would have asked nicely for a new bag but I was already late picking up The Monkey for lunch so I said screw it. Long story short, all but a third of The Monkey's curly fries wound up on the floor board. Then, when I was attempting to clean up the mess my Diet Dr. Pepper sprung open covering my console and my entire right side in the thankfully un-sticky mess. Come to find out the lid that the dumb ass working the drive-thru gave me was cracked and popped loose when I leaned over to clean up the fries.

Mother f*ckers!

I was grouchy all through lunch. Poor Monkey. I managed to get my anger in check with a nice, long, scalding hot shower. Nothing like near-burning your skin to bring about a nice 'warm fuzziness'. (Now I remmeber why I always used to self injure the worst when I was angry -- there's just something about physical pain that dissolves all the emotional GUNK away.) So, in a slightly better mood, I started on my makeup. I was almost finished and went to sit on the bed to put my socks on when I noticed Jasmine lounging peacefully. I pet her on the head and she looked up at me lazily and started purring. Then she got up and stretched then plopped precariously onto her back revealing a nice hole in her tummy. It wasn't bleeding so I contemplated going to Walgreens and picking up some butterfly stitches to hold the skin together and wrapping her in an ACE bandage. In the mean time, I decided the best course of action would be to put her in the kennel and call the vet that did her surgery. Which I did and I tried futilely for a half hour. As it was already dangerously close to 5:00 PM I went ahead and called a local vet instead. They said to bring her in.

Half an hour later (after the poor kitty was poked and prodded and weighed and violated with the butt thermometer) they determined that she needed to be resutured and to do so they had to anesthize her again. I walked out with a semi-healthy cat, $160 poorer. Needless to say, I was not happy. This time around they put a lampshade collar on her to keep her from chewing out these sutures. She has to wear it for a week. I am so pissed that the vet didn't do this initially but the girl said it's really not a standard practice for cats. I didn't have this problem with Olivia or William when they got fixed and declawed so this was really unexpected. Thank heavens the vet accepts Care Credit although now we went from having $0 balances on all but one of our credit cards to only having a $0 balance on one. I'm waiting for something to happen to one of my or The Monkey's tires. Then we'll have a $0 balance on none.



She looks pretty pissed, huh?



Poor kitty!

I am very irritated with this whole situation and having to pay $160 that we really do not have. My sister has been talking about the electric and water bills a lot more lately and I feel like she's hinting around wanting us to chip in. I feel like shit that we really don't have the extra cash to chip in. I thought about giving her some money when we get our tax return but The Monkey STILL hasn't gotten his W2 yet. ARRRGH! Depending on how much we get back, I'd like to throw at least $300 my sister's way. I know it's really not much but there's not much else we can do. We're going to need that money to fall back on for other things. Like groceries. I do not like living like this. I do not want to live like this. I do not want to be sitting at my computer wearing gloves with a blanket draped over me just to keep from freezing. I do not like feeling USELESS and WORTHLESS and POINTLESS all. the. freaking. time. I am tired of the mood swings. I am already sick and tired of the meds and how the Lithium makes my stomach feel like it is in a perpetual knot and I hate that even the micro-dose of Zyprexa has me sleeping 12 hours against my will. (I won't even go in on the food cravings and how my weight is not BUDGING even though I am doing my best to eat less, drink more water, and exercise daily.)

On my to-do list this week:

1. Start looking into getting paid to blog. Since I do it almost daily anyway, why not try to make some extra cash?? Even an extra $100 a month would be a huge help at this point.


2. Find out whether or not we qualify for any other assistance while we're waiting for my SSD appeal.


3. Call my school and see about getting them to credit back the finance charges they tacked onto my bill. (I owe them around $200, they charged me finance charges for for the $6,000+ that was on my account for two months because my student loans too almost the entire semester to post to my account. I am NOT paying interest on $6,000+ dollars!!)


4. See what I can do about registering for next semester -- hopefully my FINAL semester.


5. Try to think of good reasons to keep on living.

On top of everything else, I caught my niece's cold. So now I'm stuffy, sneezy, achey, blah blah blah...

Now I am going to get off of this thing so The Monkey can play WarCrack for a little while and I'm going to attempt to give myself carpel tunnel from playing Guitar Hero on Hyperspeed.

semi-short, sweet, mostly to the point...

My sister and family should be home in about an hour. I'm very excited as I've missed her and the kiddos a lot. But the week of quiet time was nice. The Monkey and I haven't left the house since New Year's Day. In fact, I haven't even gotten dressed/prettied (makeup, hair). (I did shower, though. :P) We spent New Year's Day playing Guitar Hero World Tour together. I finally forced myself to "graduate" from Easy to Medium. Easy was just getting way too boring. At any rate, I played lead guitar on Medium and The Monkey played bass on Expert and we rocked out for like five hours straight! I'm beginning to think that is why my left wrist hurts. Living with my sister hasn't affected our sex life in that we still have sex regularly; but while everyone was gone we had sex almost every single day! Twice a day a couple of times. :-o I guess it was just the lack of inhibition? I mean, we can have sex whenever we please it's just a little less comfortable when you're worried about the children hearing you or knocking on the door and then trying to open the door and wondering why it was locked. :-P We have plenty of privacy it's just not "all inclusive" like it was this past week.

Today The Monkey and I made sure the house was nice and clean. We not only made sure that the parts of the house we use frequently (kitchen, bathrooms) were spotless but also vacuumed the living room and the den and made sure all the towels were put away. It was just as a courtesy and hopefully my sister will be thrilled to come home to a spic-and-span house.

Our new cat, Jasmine, went into heat about a week after we took her in. This confirms two things: 1) she is definitely a she 2) she is not pregnant! However, she is relentless with the caterwauling especially at night. A few times I've wanted to throw something at her but have refrained. She stopped acting all crazy after about a week; just in time for Christmas. By New Year's Eve, she was at it again! I didn't think they were supposed to go into heat that often! I guess I need to do my research. I'm worried that we won't be able to predict her cycles enough to get her an appointment scheduled to get her spayed and declawed. She is a serious pain in the rear end at night. She's been keeping Tony awake. We have a small animal carrying bag (I bought it for Olivia's plane ride to the US but they wouldn't let me use it) and we were "crating" her in it until we went to let her out one morning and she was damp and smelled like pee. (The bath was mostly funny and The Monkey only got a couple of minor scratches.) So instead of putting her in there, we started trapping her under a laundry basket and covering that with a blanket. She seems to stay quiet when she's trapped. However, the sneaky little brat has learned quite quickly and now she runs away (usually under the bed or under a dresser) when we try to grab her. Blast! I'm going to call our vet tomorrow to see what we can do.

No word from Unicel/Verizon on a job for The Monkey yet. I was worried until he talked to a friend of ours that still works there and she said that they pushed the training class back a week. So that gives them more time to call the new hires. I'm keeping my fingers tightly crossed and our friend is trying to pull as many strings as she can to get him hired.

I lost some weight! My sister's scale said 229 this afternoon! Finally under 230 for the first time in months. Lets hope this is the beginning of a trend. I want need to start walking. I wish my sister had bought Wii Fit for Christmas. :-P

In the waiting line...

Another month in 2008 come and gone. And now October is already half over and I really don't have much to report. Tony's 35th birthday came and went. He's 35 and still no kids. It doesn't seem to bother him so I try not to let it bother me. We didn't do anything all that special. I baked him a four layer carrot cake with homemade cream cheese icing. It was delicious. I bought all the ingredients and my sister made him a wonderful lasagne dinner, per his request. He wanted World of Warcraft for his birthday but we kind of didn't have the money and he didn't hold up his end of the 'bargain' by getting a job. (We're both still fabulously unemployed.) When he didn't receive a gift from me first thing in the morning, he was convinced he wasn't getting anything. But I'm a big ol' sucker for my Monkey and Michelle and I made a trip to Walmart after supper to alledgedly pick up laundry detergent. I surprised him with the game after we had cake. He's massively addicted already, of course. He gets online every night and plays with his brother and two of their good friends. At least he's social in some aspect, right? So that was that.
The month of September also found my just barely 10 month old niece WALKING! She was so wobbly at first we joked and said she looked like a staggering drunk. But she's so smart and she mastered it in a couple of weeks and now she zooms across the living room and only falls down occasionally. She's almost completely abandoned crawling all together in favor of her new found mode of locomotion. She really is a delight and I'm just amazed that she'll be a year old in a month and 10 days!
Nothing else spectacular has been going on. My sister has developed a serious Webkinz habit. She's collected about three dozen of her own, not including her childrens'. They have roughly a dozen each. I wasn't real big on the whole thing and at first just bought the Cheeky Monkey because it was really cute and I thought it would be equally as cute to name it Tony after my Monkey. I stuck with the one since July until I saw the Lil' Kinz Monkey in Walgreens one day. I HAD to have it. Then I bought the regular Monkey. The Lil' Kinz Monkey is named Junior and the bigger version of Junior is George (as in Curious...). I was happy having a little house with three little monkeys and that was that. I planned on buying the Love Monkey in December when it's released and naming it Melissa just because. But then Webkinz came out with a whole Haunted House room theme for Halloween. This prompted me to purchase the bat and name it Leilah (it means 'dark beauty) and decorate her room with all the cool haunted house themed items. Today I absolutely HAD to have the Whimsical Dragon which I named Mysti. My collection is complete for a little while.
Halloween is coming up. Unfortunately my grandmother has been in the hospital for about a month due to congestive heart failure. Her heart isn't pumping enough blood through her body and it's making it hard for her to breathe and such. She has to have bypass surgery sometime next month when the doctors can get her stable enough. My parents were supposed to go down to Florida for a week beginning the weekend of Halloween which meant no Halloween party this year. I was pretty bummed but naturally I understood. However, Mom's vacation got canceled because they're having a huge sale that weekend and her boss pulled the plug on her vacation time. So now the party is tentatively back on. So I have a couple of weeks to throw together costumes for Tony and me. Something cheap and easy. I want to go as Alice from Alice in Wonderland next year and have Tony go as the Mad Hatter.
Tony is actively looking for jobs. He found something promising here in Enterprise. It's an assistant manager position at a local finance place. He's very much qualified and plans to talk to the manager on Monday when she gets back from vacation. As a back up plan, he's submitted apps to Game Stop (because he thinks it would be cool to work at a game store), RadioShack (he's worked there before) for seasonal work, and at PizzaHut and Papa John's as a delivery driver. :-p Hey, it would be income at least.
I, on the other hand, have stopped looking for work and decided to apply for disability. I put in my application today and expect to get a denial on my claim sometime in December. In the meantime, the very nice lady at the SSA office told me to contact a place called SpectraCare that offers free mental health treatment (meds included) to low/no income families. I'm calling them tomorrow. If I get approved for disability without having to go through an appeal I'll be completely amazed. But I'm honestly expecting to get denied and already have an attorney lined up for the appeal process.
In other not-so-special but really fun news for me... I got a yellow iPod Nano the other day! It's loaded up with every single song we have stored on our computer and still have 2 GB to spare. Hooray! I spent two days going through every one of our music files and retagging them using MediaMonkey so they'd all have the right artist, song title, album title, track number, and, most importantly, the album art associated with each one. It was a SERIOUS pain in my ass but totally worth it because my iPod has the cover flow feature just like iTunes. (And, yes, I am a shameless bootlegger and abuse the HELL out of Limewire every chance I get.)
And that's about it for my 'exciting' life. School is still going well. We're in week seven of this term and I have a 99% average in my Fundamentals of Networking with Lab class. Next term I'm taking two classes and the following term one class for a total of 12 credit hours for the semester. I'm going to wind up having to pay about $250 out of pocket for book and technology fees but it'll be worth it to graduate a little sooner.
Also, Ray and Michelle's PCS has been postponed until summer of next year. We're still considering moving with them depending on our situation when the time comes. I still feel like a change could do us some serious good but we'll see. A lot can change in six months, right?

all moved in... wow

So we're all moved into my sister's garage. I can't believe we did it in less than a week. If it hadn't been for Monkey's brother we would've never made it. Thankfully he sacrificed some time with his daughter and brought her along to help us move. She's such a cutie and a joy to be around. Hopefully Monkey's brother will keep coming out to hang out with us. I guess we'll see.

In the mean time, life has gotten incredibly complicated. I knew it was going to happen but I lost my job. Not good timing but when is mental illness EVER "good timing" right? The anxiety attacks just got too bad to handle. I was almost hospitalized again.

So this is my life now and it's ending one nanosecond at a time. But here are some pictures of our wannabe studio apartment in Southheat... I mean Southeast Alabama. So far, it's really not so bad. My brother in law is really enforcing privacy on the kids and has them knocking before coming in. We flipped the door knob around so now we have the locking mechanism on our side. Looks like our sex life won't be taking a nose dive after all. :P