I am dedicating this post to the Uniboob Club!! Taking my lead from Cliff over at WIXY's Gone Bananas, he does such a great job introducing bloggers, I want to comment on how beautiful this Blog by Cristina is.
First off as many of you may already know, my mother died of cancer and I watched her weather away to nothing from this horrible disease. Cancer sucks. What Christina has done is not only create the most beautiful dedication blog about cancer, she has made it so that the family members of survivors and hero's have a place where they can tell their story.
I gotta tell you, when I first started blogging I had no idea how powerful this wonderful tool really is, until I came into this world, my world was so much smaller. i feel so very connected and that I have a voice and that I have people who have common interests and hobbies and there is a connection here that I never knew existed. The last post I read from The Uniboob Club, was about a woman who had lost her battle with lung cancer, the same as mom, but the story is told by her daughter and her husband and I could just hear them both sharing their story as I read along and it is so heartfelt and wonderful. If you get a chance stop on by just click one of my links to Christina's Blog or click on my blog roll link to the left of my blog. Have a read watch the home video and leave some words of encouragement, as they are so very helpful and welcome in this community. Thanks for reading and to those who leave me comments, I really love everything you have to say today's thought;"I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves."
--Alexander Humboldt
Monday, March 30, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
snow and finances
We Got SNOW!!! Wow what a beautiful day!!. I think i lost my bell peppers, they haven't spouted yet and some of my tomatoes have not either, but my kitchen sprouter just arrived and I am growing fresh sprouts all day!!
We just turned out our lights for earth hour and then I plugged in online to watch the dramatic skylines all over the world go dark!! What an amazing thing to be a part of, next year i will contact the democratic party in Sedgwick county to get involvement there!!
I will be planting more peppers, i just started some rainbow bells, so I will redo the green ones. I was told not to get discouraged and just try again so that is what I am doing, they aren't going anywhere for a while since the ground is covered in ice and snow!!! I did not hear any thunder though. My girls and I went outside to try to make snow angels it was so much fun they threw snowballs till their little noses started running then the only way of getting them in the house was to get them in the bath tub immediately.
We spent the earlier part of the day in the blizzard, shopping. Groceries don't last as long when you are buying primarily produce. And it is so hard on a budget. We have been listening to suze orman and we are building our savings and it means cutting back on so much, my "A" just earned over 80 buck in babysitting last month and then we just found out we need to pay an extra 50 bucks for her soccer games. It is an athletic charge if your high school student is playing sports, this is the cost. Well my girl asks me if she is going to need to pay the 50 bucks herself and my honey says Maybe. This completely mortified me. I hate not having an income. And on top of that who am I to ask to pay for a sitter 3X's a week so I can go do some tutorials from Libby hen we can't even afford to pay my own daughter!! So on top of that I took some items off the grocery list that I wanted to get because i was not going to take away from my daughter. It is just so hard when everything is costing so damn much and there is a squeeze on everything and more money keeps going out and not enough is coming in.
So this is a little bit of something that is eating my lunch. I feel so powerless and where do I draw the line. i mean I know it is what is best for the family but my emotions are eating me up about being a taker from my own family. It is very humbling to not be contributing a paycheck to your family, i know some of my friends have been laid off and it may be a while before they work. but there are times, and I know this is my shit, that it feels like i am being judged for living off of somebody else, not being an independent woman who takes care of her kids without a man. Then they will come in and say "well i know how you feel i just got laid off myself." Then my addict in me says "the hell you do I haven't had a job in 4 years!!" you know it is one thing to not have a job in a few months but to have had a great paying job with benefits I might add. The only thing I could do was wear low hanging shirts, tight jeans and let grabby drunken assholes grab me for a buck!! So not only am i not working but i have no skills to get a job that would be worth getting to pay for a decent sitter!! Even if i got a job paying 10 bucks an hour, I would have to hire a sitter at 4 bucks an hour per kid!! Do the math. And I go through this feeling every time I have to say no to my child who deserves a yes. I still don't know if we have the 50 bucks for sports, and we discussed her excess babysitting and there was the convention, but then I was like then how do I justify paying someone else to watch my babies!! quite a vicious cycle my little addict puts me through. I am so very grateful for everyone out there who cares so much about others.
I am so very grateful today that all that shit I just put down in my blog did not come out of my mouth today. you know i know it is just life on life's terms and 2 years ago I couldn't even look at my debt let alone talk about paying it off. pride is a nasty little hidden defect sometimes. today I pull out my bills we discuss insurance and other things like how to spend money and how to save money. I am very proud of the fact that I have less than 700 in bad debt, it used to be much higher and I am close to paying it off. I have about 8000 in student loans that are in deferment and asap I will be putting that in good standing to get a better FICO score. it is just that sometimes the real part, you know the moment where you need to decide is something a necessity or a want, sucks. and for this little addict my mind goes there. I am grateful that i can process these thoughts today in a loving a caring manner both to myself and my family.
I read a lot of blogs of family members of addicts and see them straining to understand or ask themselves "why", "was there something we could have done different?". you know the answer to the latter is no. As for the why, some things aren't meant to be known just accepted. for an addict our thought process is f***** up. the thoughts i just shared about the finances and the trigger of what put me in a bad space seems so amplified to the common human, "earthlings" as we call them. but those thoughts are running like bumper cars through at least this little addicts brain all the time, and the only serenity i find is in the program and I try to share this with others. I never had a piece of mind before. it was more like a squishy lump of goo that wouldn't stay in shape and it kept me running like crazy, the only thing that would make it stop moving was dope. but that stopped even the good feelings, today I want to keep the good so I have to deal with the bad as well i am grateful for my tools today, today i choose life. for my thought;"Older and wiser voices can always help you find the right path, if you are only willing to listen." --Jimmy Buffet
Thanks to all my voices who help guide me today!!
We just turned out our lights for earth hour and then I plugged in online to watch the dramatic skylines all over the world go dark!! What an amazing thing to be a part of, next year i will contact the democratic party in Sedgwick county to get involvement there!!
I will be planting more peppers, i just started some rainbow bells, so I will redo the green ones. I was told not to get discouraged and just try again so that is what I am doing, they aren't going anywhere for a while since the ground is covered in ice and snow!!! I did not hear any thunder though. My girls and I went outside to try to make snow angels it was so much fun they threw snowballs till their little noses started running then the only way of getting them in the house was to get them in the bath tub immediately.
We spent the earlier part of the day in the blizzard, shopping. Groceries don't last as long when you are buying primarily produce. And it is so hard on a budget. We have been listening to suze orman and we are building our savings and it means cutting back on so much, my "A" just earned over 80 buck in babysitting last month and then we just found out we need to pay an extra 50 bucks for her soccer games. It is an athletic charge if your high school student is playing sports, this is the cost. Well my girl asks me if she is going to need to pay the 50 bucks herself and my honey says Maybe. This completely mortified me. I hate not having an income. And on top of that who am I to ask to pay for a sitter 3X's a week so I can go do some tutorials from Libby hen we can't even afford to pay my own daughter!! So on top of that I took some items off the grocery list that I wanted to get because i was not going to take away from my daughter. It is just so hard when everything is costing so damn much and there is a squeeze on everything and more money keeps going out and not enough is coming in.
So this is a little bit of something that is eating my lunch. I feel so powerless and where do I draw the line. i mean I know it is what is best for the family but my emotions are eating me up about being a taker from my own family. It is very humbling to not be contributing a paycheck to your family, i know some of my friends have been laid off and it may be a while before they work. but there are times, and I know this is my shit, that it feels like i am being judged for living off of somebody else, not being an independent woman who takes care of her kids without a man. Then they will come in and say "well i know how you feel i just got laid off myself." Then my addict in me says "the hell you do I haven't had a job in 4 years!!" you know it is one thing to not have a job in a few months but to have had a great paying job with benefits I might add. The only thing I could do was wear low hanging shirts, tight jeans and let grabby drunken assholes grab me for a buck!! So not only am i not working but i have no skills to get a job that would be worth getting to pay for a decent sitter!! Even if i got a job paying 10 bucks an hour, I would have to hire a sitter at 4 bucks an hour per kid!! Do the math. And I go through this feeling every time I have to say no to my child who deserves a yes. I still don't know if we have the 50 bucks for sports, and we discussed her excess babysitting and there was the convention, but then I was like then how do I justify paying someone else to watch my babies!! quite a vicious cycle my little addict puts me through. I am so very grateful for everyone out there who cares so much about others.
I am so very grateful today that all that shit I just put down in my blog did not come out of my mouth today. you know i know it is just life on life's terms and 2 years ago I couldn't even look at my debt let alone talk about paying it off. pride is a nasty little hidden defect sometimes. today I pull out my bills we discuss insurance and other things like how to spend money and how to save money. I am very proud of the fact that I have less than 700 in bad debt, it used to be much higher and I am close to paying it off. I have about 8000 in student loans that are in deferment and asap I will be putting that in good standing to get a better FICO score. it is just that sometimes the real part, you know the moment where you need to decide is something a necessity or a want, sucks. and for this little addict my mind goes there. I am grateful that i can process these thoughts today in a loving a caring manner both to myself and my family.
I read a lot of blogs of family members of addicts and see them straining to understand or ask themselves "why", "was there something we could have done different?". you know the answer to the latter is no. As for the why, some things aren't meant to be known just accepted. for an addict our thought process is f***** up. the thoughts i just shared about the finances and the trigger of what put me in a bad space seems so amplified to the common human, "earthlings" as we call them. but those thoughts are running like bumper cars through at least this little addicts brain all the time, and the only serenity i find is in the program and I try to share this with others. I never had a piece of mind before. it was more like a squishy lump of goo that wouldn't stay in shape and it kept me running like crazy, the only thing that would make it stop moving was dope. but that stopped even the good feelings, today I want to keep the good so I have to deal with the bad as well i am grateful for my tools today, today i choose life. for my thought;"Older and wiser voices can always help you find the right path, if you are only willing to listen." --Jimmy Buffet
Thanks to all my voices who help guide me today!!
Friday, March 27, 2009
Weather Watch
Hello out there is bloggerville!! This is your Wichita weather report. Forecasters are calling for snow, lots of snow. I just googled wunderground.com and saw a big blue cloud on the radar!! So i am looking out my window and guess what, no snow!! We are told to watch for thunder snow!! Look I caught an angel in the sky!! I have never heard of thunder snow.
Empty promises are so boring!! I have been wanting to see some snow all winter, of course if we do get hit this means we will need to re-rototiller the land, but I am OK with that, I see this as God working in my favor. See a lot of other local gardeners have already started planting and have lost some crop, I know this is not good, but I have almost 200 seedlings in my mock greenhouse that are not ready to plant yet, and my teacher told me that gardeners share, so I will be sharing my crop, if it grows, with others. My little cucumbers are so cute and so are my squash!! They have strong little stalks growing up!! All my lettuces are growing along with my spinach!! Do you pick spinach young and that's why they call it baby spinach or is baby spinach an actual breed? And how do you create a male and female plant for pollination?
So the big news in Wichita is this huge storm coming out of Colorado. Wes tells me that they closed down the Denver office, where he works, and that I-70 has been closed since yesterday. We haven't had any winter weather this year so it would be good for the spring crops to get some moisture.
Oh my lessons are going wonderfully, I have been practicing my retouches and I am going to go to kelbytraining.com to watch all the free tutorials they have available. I don't go back until Tuesday so Libby, my wonderful teacher in photoshop, said if I go through all the tutorials and want to learn more to give her a call and she will give me her account info so I can watch the ones she has already paid for. She started me with the photoshop simplified DVD yesterday and I already have learned so much more than I did before.
So I can shave a man in a picture without a real razor!! I can remove bags from your eyes and make your double chin go away!! I can brighten eyes and create fresh sparkles in them i just need to get faster at the retouches. I do not have a wacom tablet, it is a bamboo, but it is great for beginners. Oh and I learned that the MAC is way different then a PC. It was so funny, yesterday I was watching the tutorial by Ed Peirce, and he was talking about calibrating the monitors and I touched the wacom pad and my photoshop closed down!! There was not any reason so i clicked it back on and my pictures I was working on stayed in place, but the program was gone. Then I noticed when the program was running that you could see the desktop right through the program!! It was so weird, you MAC users are laughing right now and I am sure my PC buddies are like "what?" Well get this I press pause on my tutorial and tell Libby we really need to figure out what is wrong with your MAC because only part of the photoshop is showing up. Libby said she was going to call someone who knew how to work on MAC, I said I will call Wes. So I get him on the phone and explain what is going on and that the background screen for the photoshop program is not working and there was some "finder bar at the top of the screen and there were not even any "open", "minimize", or "close" buttons in the upper left hand program of the screen. This is where Wes explains to me, this is a MAC and that is how they work, it is slightly different from a PC but it is perfectly normal, just takes some getting used to!!
Then before i hung up with him he tells me to tell Libby it would be $82.50 for the consultation call!!
So now i am taking MAC tutorials from Wes and Photoshop tutorials from Libby, she has an endless library of learning and has no issue with training me. I am so truly blessed today. Wes is working from home today and just came out to see some snow, but it is just windy and cloudy. I will bring my trays in tonight before we go to bed so they are safe. I have a little space heater that I borrowed from Paula that has been doing great keeping them warm, we are just going to bring them in to be safe.
I want to grow strawberries but i think I may need to order them from Johnny's because they had some at Atwoods but the batch froze, and I don't know how old they are, I have a Johnny s catalog that is advertising they have 18 month old strawberry plants, which would give me berries this year!! You know us addicts, we want what we want when we want them!! I cannot grow blueberries because the PH level in my soil is about 6.5 and that is supposed to be no higher than a 5. So we are going to compost and that should be good for my soil but I do not foresee me having the time to try to bring the PH level any lower, this is my first time doing anything like this.
Well it is early still and i have some silver dollar pancakes cooking for my girls, they want johnny cakes but I am out of honey, so whole wheat silver dollars will have to do. Still no snow in Wichita Kansas , but it is early, i hope for some but the storms always seem to pass us we get snow to the immediate north and south of us but now on us. More will be revealed for today's thought; I've always believed in the idea that each of us has a particular place in the universe where we belong, and that if we find it everything will fall into place and we will flourish. —Patrick O'Connell, chef
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