I've Moved

I have permanently moved my blog to Wordpress.

Find me HERE.

Technology is Confusing

So, I'm doing a new website. And I'm so confused. They say that it's easy, just follow these directions, blah, blah.

But it obviously assumes you know techy lingo and understand what php and cPanel and a whole plethora of stuff. I do not know what most of it means. I just want it to be up so I can do stuff. Is that so much to ask?

So, that's how I'm spending my Friday evening. I am the most exciting person on the planet, and don't you forget it.

New and Old

New:

Some TfT news will be coming soon!

Old:

My son is much better today. Yay! My mom thinks he should stay home one more day since he did have a very low fever most of the day. I HAVE to go to work tomorrow, so she’ll have to watch him.

New/Old:

The satellite is finally fixed! I am so glad for hulu.com. Seriously. If I would have had to miss my weekly date with Alex O’Loughlin, heads would have rolled.

And that’s all for today. Super exciting, I know!

Sickness, Healing, Prayer - and All That Stuff

My mom is sick.

We (and by we, I mean several doctors so far) can't figure out what's wrong with her.

It started in early December. Dizzy, weak, faint-ish.

Over a month later, still the same.

She's been to three or four doctors, who've all taken blood and done heart tests and all sorts of stuff. She's tried a few medicines (she's uber-sensitive), eats more and better (not that we eat bad to begin with). It's so frustrating because she's had to basically quit life. She can't drive, and it uses so much energy to get ready to leave the house that she can barely make it through whatever she went out to do.

I HATE my mom being like this.

[Sidebar - a wonderful doctor friend of ours is determined to figure out what's going on and get her well. Unlike the other doctors that have done standard tests, taken some money, then say, "Oh, well, I can't help you. Next."]

Which brings me to the healing part. I wonder sometimes if God still heals people.

Yes, I've heard - just recently in fact - from friends who have experienced or first-hand witnessed it. I think that's awesome. But, I guess I wonder if it's ever going to be something I see.

The Bible says all sorts of things about prayer and healing and so on. "Where two or more are gathered..." "Whatever you ask for in my name..." Those are a couple of the biggies.

So many people have been praying for my mom, in His name. She's not better. Then you start to wonder if you're praying right, or hard enough, or if you did something that you haven't confessed or whatever. And you start to doubt that God will heal. Or answer your prayers in general.

I believe God CAN heal. I know that He answers prayers for financial, job, marriage, blah blah. I just wonder if He will ever answer me.

Thank You, Captain Obvious

Today's post is definitely obvious after the phone call I am about to recount to you.

The satellite is down. Not working. No signal. It's been acting up for a couple of days, which I thought was the rain or something, but it's not working at all today. My mom, being the football fanatic that she is, immediately called DirecTV first thing this morning. They are sending a technician out on.... Tuesday! Yay! [Not.]

Then she made me call them back to make sure they are going to give us a credit for the 4+ days that it's been out, especially since she is missing the playoffs. (She doesn't strike as a football fan, does she? But she is. She will hole up in the media room and watch about 42 games in a row.)

So I call, and 'Pat' answered. (I'm not explaining that. If you don't know, YouTube some OLD SNL.) I state that we have a service call, but since they're not coming until Tuesday, and we're missing the playoffs, we should get a credit for the time the satellite is not working. Ok, that's the plan, moving on.

I ask if they live stream or if they have any recommendations of where we can live stream the games. First, I don't think Pat knows what live streaming is. I had to repeat it. The first answer was, "The football games show on your local stations." I had to pause for a moment. Then I said that yes, I know that, but we don't have any satellite feed, remember? "Oh, yes, I see that here on the service call." You mean the service call that you've been looking at? That one?

Then the answer was, "I know that there are a few restaurants and sports bars in your area that will show the game. Also, if you have a friend or family member that gets local channels, you can watch with them." Thank you, Captain Obvious. I never would have thought of that. That isn't what I asked though. I started to repeat the question, which I think confused Pat more, so I just said never mind and thanked Pat.

Sometimes I wonder about people.

Are We Dogs?

That is the question I posed to my 10 year old daughter today.

This followed:

Her brother crying, followed by running and a slamming door. The door slammed as I heard her say, "No, don't say anything." Followed by me sighing and going to open the slammed door to hear, "Don't tell mommy. I said I was sorry."

Of course we all know that "Don't tell mommy" means that someone did something they knew would get them in trouble. MB managed to tell me, in between sobs (and not at all over-dramaticism) that, "[MG] bit me."

Really?

I actually said that. This was one of those moments.

As I put her to bed, immediately, I asked if we bite people. "Are we dogs? Do we go around biting people like hungry little vampires?" She giggled, of course because her mom is incredibly funny even when disciplining sometimes, but stopped when she saw that mommy was not laughing.

MB finally got over it. A little mark, but nothing terrible. Luckily he was wearing a thick sweatshirt.

So, no, we are not dogs. Just in case you were wondering.

Strange Habits 2

(See? I told you the title was genius.)

I have this thing with my pillow. I do not like people touching it. Do not touch my pillow. Seriously. I have been known to change the pillow case should someone mess with it even slightly.

First off, I'm not crazy about people sitting on my bed. It's my bed, not a chair! Bugs me. But get on my pillow? It's on. I mean, it REALLY bugs me. I will walk over and take my pillow and put it in a safe place, after I change the case, of course.

All of my family laughs at me. My Grandma has teased me about it my entire life. Only my kids, when they were babies, could lay on it. Now, not so much. I actually get nervous when someone starts creeping to closely and I think they might touch it.

When my son was a baby, a diaper had fallen out of the garbage or something, and so my dad (since I totally did it on purpose) put the diaper on my pillow. ON. MY. PILLOW. I washed my pillow. The whole thing went in the washer. I almost killed him.

I shower every night, so I like to pretend that my pillow is only touched my my clean hair. I guess the best course of action for anyone is to give my entire bed a wide berth. If you ever visit me, just don't even go in my room so that you can avoid the freak out that will come if you get near my pillow.

I know I can't be the only person in the world with a pillow thing. Someone join me!

Oh, Good

The kids have a 4 day weekend, plus they got out early today.

Didn't that JUST have a two week vacation? Did I dream that?

I don't get it. Please enlighten me.

Really.

The one good thing about me being stuck in the house with them for four days (please warm up and not be 20 degrees anymore) is that the alarm won't wake me up. AND I won't have to fight with them to get up and get ready and out the door. I may actually not be ticked off completely by 7:10 am.

Still, I wish I could take lots of random days off and not lose anything. To be a kid again...

Favorite Things

So, after working, then picking up my mom and going to the chiropractor, I got home about 4:45. I made dinner for the kids, which was done about 5:15. I scarfed some down because I had to leave and be back at the church at 5:45. Left the church at 7:10 and got home about 7:25.

At this point I've been home for less than an hour the entire day. I walk in, and my dad meets me at the door saying my mom wants to talk to me. She proceeds to practically grill me about the evening (it was our Monday night women's group thing, and she is doing Wednesday mornings and neither of us have ever been). During this time she is getting a little negative because she has not been feeling well and generally rooms full of estrogen and pink make us nervous. I am still in my coat and gloves.

I say hi to my dad, who is sketching a new invention dealing with presto logs, then walk upstairs. My kids were ready for bed and Geemaw had let them watch SpongeBob, and I don't even get a helllo, but at least my son waves at me.

Here's my favorite part. They come out of the TV room, and I don't get a hello or a hug or anything. Instead, I get from my daughter, "The toilet needs to be plunged. I put it in the bathroom."

Hi, mommy, please plunge my poop.

Snow in Texas

It's snowing today. Well, Texas snowing. Texas snow is much different than other snow.

It usually consists of it finally getting into the 30s during the day. Then we get rain. Lots and lots of rain, making everything all soggy and muddy and gross. After everything is all soggy and gross, the air somewhere up there drops to freezing, and the mass amounts of rain that's been coming down starts coming down slightly whiter. It slowly turns from plopping white rain (that's really what it is) to snowflakes.

Of course, the snowflakes are no longer snowflakes at the exact moment that they hit the ground, because usually it was 70 degrees the day before and the ground is not quite ready to allow the snow to stick as snow. Eventually, enough of it falls that the cars and dead grass have a thin layer of protection against the warmer ground and then they start to look white-ish.

The roads generally do not accumulate actual snow. Instead, the temperature drops to the 20s or so during the night and the roads are now ready to allow snow to stick. Only, it's not snowing anymore. Or raining. The roads are just very, very wet from the snow and rain and it all freezes. So now you have roads covered with a nice, thin sheet of ice.

Everything shuts down, because those of us in the south can't handle actual weather, and we all write on Facebook and Twitter about the "winter storm" that has hit us. We stay inside for a day, then the temperature goes back into the 70s and melts everything and life may continue as normal.

And that, my friends, is Texas snow.

Strange Habits 1

I titled this with a 1 because I may feel like writing about more strange habits later, and so I can call them 2 and 3 and so on, and they will technically be titled differently. Genius, yes?

I have a habit that absolutely bugs the heck out of my mom. Unless I guzzle a glass of water (or milk or any kind of beverage) in one fell swoop, I never drink it all. I ALWAYS, and without fail, leave a small amount in the bottom. Maybe a 1-3 little swallows. Always. I never, ever, ever go back and drink it. I will dump it out and get a new glass. And since we - the whole family - has the habit of taking a glass somewhere, and then forgetting it and just getting a new one when we want another drink, there will be a few glasses around the house with just a little bit of water left in the bottom.

I don't know why it bugs my mom so much. It's not hurting her or anything. She just can't get over that I do that. I felt somewhat vindicated when I found out my aunt does the same thing most of the time.

Why is this a habit? I'll tell you why. That last little bit of liquid in the bottom is probably mostly backwash. Think about it. An entire glass of short sips/drinks/swallows adds up to a lot of backwash.

Now you, too, will never drink the last little bit out of your glass. Once again, you are so welcome!

Over or Under?

I am trying to be good and blog every day.

AND today is Random Wednesday.

AND, since I can't think of anything else, I will discuss the most random of topics: Toilet Paper.

1) I prefer over. I hate going into bathrooms and rolling the paper around for a bit too long trying to find the end only to realize it's an under roll. Messes up the flow.

2) I HATE Charmin. That stuff is like wiping with extra fluffy dust. It poofs everywhere. How is that pleasant?

3) I also HATE Scott Tissue. One-ply? Really? Who the heck knowingly purchases one-ply? Yes, the rolls are mega-quadruple size, but you use about 3 times as much per tear to equal the much better two-ply. And it's like Charmin took all the fluffy from Scott and left the unpleasant sandpaper behind.

4) My children use way too much toilet paper. No joke - we go through at least 6-8 rolls A WEEK. It's insane. If you do not have children, and plan on it, remember to budget 14 times as much in your Walmart run each week for toilet paper.

And, those are my random thoughts for today. Thank you for listening, and have a great night.

Little Big

My little sister turned 20 today.

20.

She was born in Las Vegas at some un-natural time like 4 am. I was 12 1/2. Yes, quite the difference. (Look, I gave my age away. Again. Bad habit.)

And we are quite different.

Anyway, it's weird that she's 20. She didn't really want to do anything. She's kind of a home-body. But it was nice to actually all eat dinner together. We laughed, she snorted, we all laughed more. Then we took turns playing with the pink Etch-a-sketch my mom thought would be hilarious to get her. (I bought her a PSP for Christmas - she's covered for a while.)

All in all, nice and quiet and just what my 20 year old sister wanted.

Happy Birthday, Little Big Sister!

Decisions

Today I had to make some decisions, and not the fun kind, like which dress to wear or restaurant to go to. And considering I can never decide where to eat, hard decisions are torturous.

As I wrote about earlier (here if you missed it), I'm losing my GI Bill, which is just over half of my income, which is not good. I hoped to have it extended, but no go. So, I had to decide what to do.

Full-time school just wasn't going to work anymore, because I need to work more now. I have to drop two of my classes. It's only two of the four because the other two I can do online. Time is freed up, so now to look for extra income. I may have to go back to working two jobs.

Honestly, that makes me cry. I've worked two jobs before, and it sucks all of my energy and time, meaning less - if any - time with my kids. They may drive me crazy, but I need to spend time with them. I need their hugs and madness to keep me going.

The new year usually brings stuff like this, and now you know why I don't place much hope in the changing of a number. The new normal I wanted? I wanted a BETTER normal.

I am feeling quite manic indeed today.

Goodbye Holidays, Hello "Normal"

Well, that's done.

Christmas decorations put up. New Year's party carnage cleaned up. We even rearranged some furniture.

I only want one thing for the New Year. It's not a resolution or even a goal, just more of a fingers-crossed, hopeful, praying-for-it want.

I want a new normal.

The old normal is, you know, OLD. I've never really liked what normal has been for a while. I've done everything I can to make a new one.

So, lots-of-prayer, fingers-crossed normal, please show yourself!