My Single Mom Life

I'm dead exhausted, I may actually be able to sleep.
This would be amazing.
Didn't even take the non-working sleeping pill tonight, and I'm tired.
I might actually just get in there and pass out.
That would be awesome.
I just hope I don't end up having the same weirdo dreams I had around 4am this morning.
There is something seriously wrong with how my thought patterns go sometimes.
I'm not even gonna tell you what it was, because it was one of those whoa baby, where did those thoughts about that guy come from.
But he is sorta hot.

Internet friendships have effects on the human brain I tell ya.
Not even gonna talk about it.
Later days.

Posted by Kat at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

They make you appreciate the really good ones even more.
We just got done watching I know who killed me.
Someone should just kill me.
Bad, oh so bad bad bad.

Sebastian and I went to Publix to grab some food and stuff. I picked up some easy dinner for tonight, subs and nuke 'em foods. It was another I'm not cooking day.
Anyway, I have a question.
I know these have been out for months and months now, but I want someone to explain to me the point of eating a cereal like Froot Loops with reduced sugar.
Really, what is the point?

Don't tell me because you love the taste of them but want less sugar, or the sweetened cereals are the only ones your kid will eat but you want them to have less sugar.
Not buying that.
You want less sugar in your diet, stop eating sweetened cereals.
Easy.
Don't take the reason I eat that stuff away from me man.
You healthy freakazoids need to get out of the sugar coated cereal aisle, and leave our happy sugar high stuff the hell alone.

And here's another question I'd like someone to answer.
How come at 99.9% of the grocery stores I've ever been to, the diet foods like rice cakes and slim fast, are in the same exact aisle as the cookies and candy?
They are just on the opposite side of the aisle, so here you are walking down planning on treating yourself to some ultra bland rice cakes, and you have to look at Oreos and chocolate chip cookies, and bags of M&M's.
I think the grocery stores secretly plan to help you fail at your weight loss goals.
I've called out Publix on this a few times now, and they just look at me like I'm crazy.
But it's the truth!
Pay attention the next time you shop, the diet foods are in the same aisle as candy and cookies.
They are sabotaging your health and they know it!

I have a few more movie reviews to write up, we've watched some completely crappy ones lately, but we love them all.
That sounds nuts, but we do.
It's fun to watch total crap and rip it apart as it goes along.
But really, read my review of I know who killed me before you bother watching it or renting it from Netflix. It's not worth a single penny of your hard earned money.

Ok, have a few things to do before I can get to replying to emails tonight.
Later days.

Posted by Kat at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Have you ever signed up for a newsletter from a blog?
I have, and sometimes the letter is just a summary of their latest posts, but most often, it's news about what's going on at their blog like contests, favorite posts of the last week, and articles of interest.

One of the most used ways I've seen to send this newsletter is from icontact, and now they have a new community all about tips and tricks for email marketing.
I happen to think that more bloggers should offer a newsletter.
Feed reading is great, but sometimes there are so many posts, I'm sure I over look some really great posts.

A newsletter that highlights those posts, sent out once a week, would help attract more views to those great articles.
The bloggers would get double the page views, and possibly Stumbled or Dugg, which would drive even more traffic to those posts of interest.

I've been checking out the community forums, it seems to have just been started not long ago, and it has some great posts of interest.
I've often thought about a newsletter for my own blog, but I honestly don't have the kind of content to warrant one.
I'm a personal mommy blogger, but I do sign up for newsletters from other bloggers that have great articles about blogging.
I have subscriptions to some of the pro-bloggers, mom bloggers, and even a few arts and crafts bloggers.
I enjoy all the different aspects of each type of blog, and the newsletters help me read the more valuable posts on each.
Do you have one? Do you subscribe to any?

Posted by Kat at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I kept the boys home today, I'm sure others did too.
How it was all handled yesterday was really pretty bad, and the suspect, if there even is one, still has not been found.

We're just taking the day together, hanging out, will probably watch the other movie we got.
I need to write a review of that movie. Oh gosh, I actually have like 3 movie reviews to write up!
I've gotten so behind the last few days.
So far today, nothing is going on and for once, I'm relieved.
Later days!

Posted by Kat at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I don't think I have ever hugged them as tightly as I did when I picked them up today.
It was scary and they are my babies.
They are both ok, they said it was scary, but they knew they were ok, they just both wanted to let me know they were ok all day long, Mark especially.
He said he wished he hadn't left his cell phone home, that he would have argued with the teacher to use it to call me. He knew I'd be worried and panicking.
I think they comforted me more than I comforted them honestly.
I was a mess all day.

I know some people probably are thinking wtf Kat, how or why did you blog this as it was happening?
I blogged it to stay busy.
I was worried and upset, scared, not getting enough information, and if I didn't do something, I probably would have started bawling my eyes out.
I hate what is happening with our kids at school these days.
More and more, homeschooling is making a gigantic appeal to me.
If it isn't the crazy expensive supply lists, the lack of a decent education, it's worrying about this kind of stuff.

The schools tell you they have a zero tolerance policy for violence, but they don't have one for bullying.
They don't see it as the big issue that it truly is.
They say they handle it, but obviously they don't do it, and don't do enough.

An interesting bit about today though.
Sebastian knows this kid, is friends with him. They share the last class of the day together, and he says this kid is friendly, always joking around, a nice kid, but he is bullied relentlessly by other students.
Sebastian thinks he was set up.
He doesn't believe that the kid came to school with a gun at all.
See, the hallway where this supposed conversation and showing of the handgun took place in the one and only hallway in the entire school, with no surveillance cameras.
The cops and school have no video of this kid even on school grounds today because he's not on any video, and no video was taken of this conversation incident.
Why does he think he was set up?
Because the bullies who are always picking on him are always saying how they'll get him kicked out of school, they don't want him there, he doesn't belong.
Maybe the whole thing was a lie.
If it was, it doesn't make what happened today any less frightening, and it would be a completely shitty thing to do to someone.

The school was surrounded by shotgun wielding police officers, dogs, swat helicopters.
I sat here for hours trying to get as much info as I could until I got the all clear to go get them.
I had tried calling the school non-stop since right after Sebastian made that first call to me this morning at 11:30, only to be met with a constant busy signal.

I made calls to moms of other students who were at work and maybe didn't know what was going on, my sister who was able to get some info to help ease my worry, Sebastian made as many calls to me as he could get away with and not get caught, but it was nerve wracking.
I am keeping them home tomorrow. I don't know if the kid was found, and right now, I don't really care, I just want to keep them with me, spend time, and hug them about a million more times.
Mark's all mom stop it, and I'm all nope, I'm gonna keep on hugging you so deal.
He laughed, squeezed me tight and kissed my cheek.
He told me not to worry so much, he can take care of himself.
That may be so, he is taller than me, huge broad shoulders, strong, but he's still my first baby boy, the kid who changed my life.
I don't ever want to go through something like this again, and I don't want any parents to have to either.
It's like a parents worst nightmare hearing these kinds of calls come in from your kids.
All I could hear in my mind were the panicked phone calls of the students from Columbine ya know?
I was freaking out, on the verge of tears, so I blogged as a way to calm myself down and stay busy.
Maybe other people can't understand that, but it's how I dealt with it when I couldn't do anything else.

I ordered food for dinner, we all sat and watched a movie, talked about what happened and I told them they are staying home tomorrow.
They totally understand and are ok with it. Sebastian's friend Stephen called and said his mom wasn't letting him go tomorrow either. I imagine a few parents will keep their kids home.

Now that everything is calmed down around here, (me) I can get busy replying to emails and comments. Sorry I am just now getting to everything.
Later days.

Posted by Kat at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

The local ABC station has updated the story.

"A student reported having a conversation with a male subject while on campus during which the subject displayed a handgun that was tucked in the subject's waistband. The school was put on lockdown at approximately 11:50 a.m. and a thorough search of the campus was conducted however the subject was not located. At approximately 1:10 p.m. the campus was put into limited lockdown.

The subject is described as a white male, 17-19 years old, approximately 6'0" and 180 lbs with brown hair and some facial hair. The subject had a silver stud tongue piercing and two large hollow black rings within his earlobes. The subject was wearing a silver skull ring on the middle finger of his left hand. The subject was dressed in a black t-shirt with white skulls and black cargo-styled pants.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Sarasota County Sheriff's Criminal Investigation Bureau at 941-861-4900."

This kid is in Sebastian's last class of the day because it is mixed grades, it's a class called 'infotech'. I'm seriously wanting to keep them home if they don't find him tonight.
The kid they described looks so much like his brother that they were questioning.

Posted by Kat at 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I have my kids. It was absolute chaos at the school, the kid with the gun has not been found yet.
They cornered his older brother and were questioning him on the whereabouts of his brother when I arrived. Poor kid was surrounded by about 7 cops, the principle, and looked terrified.

No students were even allowed to use the restroom, kids were peeing in a bucket in my oldest sons classroom, and in my youngest sons class, the girls used a bucket to pee in a closet, and boys peed in empty water bottles.

The local news website still says parents have to pick up their kids at their last update at 2:08pm.
"Parents that wish to pick up their students need to go to the school's front office. Students cannot leave unless a parent picks them up."

I arrived at 1:55, and they had forced all students to get off campus!!!
There were hundreds of kids racing off campus on foot, bike, seniors driving out of there. Parents were in cars honking and screaming with security where their kids are.
They lifted the pick up rule between the time I left my house and arrived there.
The school is only 7 blocks away from me, but because hundreds of parents were trying to get there, it took me way longer than usual to get there even on foot. I had my friend drop me off 2 blocks away, and I had to weave my way through students trying to get off campus going in the opposite direction.

No one is hurt, but the student with the gun still has not been located.

One of the things that is supposed to happen during any lockdown is this, the automated emergency phone system is supposed to call the home and cell of every single parent of every student as soon as lockdown is started.
That never happened.

Sebastian's first call came in to me at 11:30, 20 minutes before the school notified police.
He said the school was on code red lockdown, that swat teams were on the way, a student with a gun had been reported. He said he'd call me back, everyone was panicking.
He called me again, told me he knew who the student was, his name, why he may have brought the gun to school.
This kid is gay and was always being bullied and picked on, said he hated his life. Sebastian was friends with the kid, told me "Mom, don't worry, I'm his friend. I'll be ok. I love you."
He hung up, that's when I posted the first time.

Mark didn't take his cell to school today, I had no way to reach him. He is now telling me that any student in his class who tried to use their cells to call parents, had their phones taken away so as not to create a panic.
Too late!

I called Mindy, she was at work, told her what was going on, try to call her own son. He had bad reception but told he her was ok.
I called my sis, she managed to get me some insider info from a friend who's related to a sheriff. They said that the student could not be found anywhere. Not at home or anywhere on campus, but it was confirmed this kid had been seen with a handgun walking down a hallway.

Anyway, my kids are safe, no one was hurt, I'm probably keeping them home tomorrow unless this kid is found tonight. They are still searching for him.
I don't want to send my kids back until they have this kid in custody.

Posted by Kat at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I'm heading up there in a few minutes to get my sons.
School is under code white, limited lock down, students can only leave campus with a parent.
The suspect has NOT been found.
They searched the whole campus and surrounding neighborhood, cannot find this kid.
Sebastian knows who it is.
I will post more later, need to get dressed and go.
Waiting for Mindy to call me and see if teh school will let me pick up her son too.

Posted by Kat at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sebastian just called me, said the high school is in lockdown, there's a student with a gun.
As soon as he hung up, the local news came on with the breaking news story.
The swat team is there.
WTF!?

newslink

Posted by Kat at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

It's a terrible shame you can't hear that noise. I am so freaking tired from last night's mopping fun.
The house didn't totally flood, cuz we caught it in time, but something happened and we ended up using every towel in the house to clean it up.
None of us had even been in the bathroom prior to it happening.
I think my neighbors screwed up or something, there was water in places that no water source could have provided unless it came through the baseboards or something.

Anyway, I'm wiped out. My lower back, hips, and right shoulder are on fiyah!
Excruciating.
And the Fedex guy came like 20 minutes ago, with this gigantic box.
He practically beat down my door, I answer it and he's half way down the drive to his truck already.
He turns around and says, "That has some serious weight to it."
I'm like uh, fuck.

So I did the only thing I could do because the boys weren't home.
I pushed the box up over my step and slid it across the floor into the house.
Serious weight to it my ass.
Holy motherfuck!
That box is sitting right where it is till the boys get home, I cannot move it another inch.
Damn.
I know what's in the box, my friend Pete sent me a tower for the boys, he said it was coming by Fedex today, I just can't open it or move it.
It's a huge box, so I'm dying to know what kind of tower is in this box. Huge I tell ya.
I want to get it out and set it up, get it working for the boys, but honestly, after last night, I'm lucky I was able to waddle my way to the bathroom this morning to pee.
I'm hoping after I lay around all day and rest that I can get this out of the box and set up for the boys.
Sebastian has stuff to do for school, worse comes to worse, I'll let him type it up on my pc.
I know I can get that new tower set up, just not right now.
But Thank you Pete. It arrived safely and is very much appreciated.

Posted by Kat at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few days ago I received two premium bottles of wine from Gold Medal Wine's wine of the month club, to try and give my review of.

They were delivered very quickly by Fedex, and were packaged securely in shaped styrofoam, and snuggled tightly inside their shipping box.
When I got them out, I noticed how well they were each presented, wrapped in tissue paper and tied nicely with a bow matching the contents inside.
One red, one white.

They came with a beautiful gift card addressed to me, lots of informational materials, order forms, and a wine tasting score sheet postcard to mail back on each wine, with instructions on how to judge the wines.
They also came with a newsletter with all the information about the winery, Hambrecht Family Wines of California.
The newsletter also contains a few recipes that would go well with both these wine selections, and all the details of each wine, as well as information on last months wines and directions on how to see the full list of available wines.

I no longer have any nice wine glasses, I need to pick up some more for myself and for when I have guests. I had them on the shelves above my sink, and one of the cats had gone tearing through the house one day and knocked them all down.
So for this tasting, I used one of our latest collector cups from the Simpson's movie promo a few months back.
It would have been nice to use a real glass, but all mine were broken and Christine wanted to see my cups, and I'm only too happy to oblige a friend.

On to the tasting!
Let's start with the Bradford Mountain Grist Vineyard 2004 Zinfandel.
It was aged in oak for 12 months, and only 1,800 cases were produced.
This Zinfandel won several gold medals, and is very intensely flavored.
It had a brilliant appearance, a slightly musty aroma, full bodied, a mild texture, and a bit of a rough aftertaste.
At first I wasn't sure if I liked it, so I took another sip and swirled it around taking it all in.
I do like it, I think it would go with ribs, lamb, or a nice filet mignon, and/or heavy tomato pastas very well.
I then took a few minutes break making sure to completely rinse my mouth out with water, even lightly brushing my tongue, so I could taste the Chardonnay next.

The Belvedere Russian River Valley 2005 Chardonnay was aged in oak for 10 months, and 5,000 cases were produced.
It's a light yellow color, a pleasant aroma of pears and apples, and a hint of pineapple.
It has a light body, full fruity flavors, a mild texture, and a fine aftertaste.
I think it would go nicely with a garlic chicken dish and/or pasta.
Of the two, I liked the Chardonnay the best.

If I drank more often, I would definitely join this wine of the month club.
I was very impressed with both wines as well as how they were presented and shipped.
I noticed on one of the sheets enclosed, that gift packaging is available, and the boxes were gorgeously designed. The price for gift packaging was very reasonable and I could see ordering a few bottles as a gift for friends who enjoy fine wines.
I do need to go buy some new wine glasses now so that I can enjoy both these bottles over the next few weeks.

*Scenes from an Italian Restaurant by Billy Joel.

Posted by Kat at 8:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For what?
For the table of death of course!
Yes, once again, it had a mountain of crap on it.
It took me about 2 hours this time to go through all of it, sort it, junk it, put it all away, but it's done.
Again.
I've had an exceptionally productive day for only getting a few hours of sleep.
I went to bed sometime around 3, up at 5:45, and just did stuff all day long.
The laundry is done, dishes, the floors, the bathroom, and the "T.o.D.".

I was waiting on the UPS guy all day to bring my new skillet, and of course, the one minute I'm in the bathroom, he comes to the door.
Did he knock?
Of course not!
The UPS people never knock.
I hate that. That's the only thing that annoys me about them, they don't knock and they just leave my boxes sitting next to the column.
But oh well!
I'm having a great day, I feel good, I got stuff done, and now I just need to take a shower and I'll be ready to chill for the rest of the day.
I have some super yummy stuff to taste later, so I want to be clean and relaxed, and ready to just enjoy the night.
Later days!

Posted by Kat at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Why is this such major news?
The Today Show spent like 10 minutes talking to this girl like it was a major catastrophe, a huge disaster, tragic!

"Pageant organizers said they hope to catch and expose whoever was responsible for dousing Rivera's evening gowns with pepper spray and spiking her makeup, causing her to break out in hives."

She won anyway, but beauty pageants are just so outdated in my opinion, and there have been rumors of them being rigged for years, other scandals like sex, nude or inappropriate photos, and now pranks bordering on sabotage.
But really, was this a major news story?
I've been up since 5:45am, watched all the local morning news, and have been watching the Today Show since it started this morning at 7am.
They had this story in the top 10 minutes of the show, as a major news item.
But is it really?
The contestants are getting more and more catty every year, blackmailing each other, attempting to tarnish each other, and some of these girls are just dim witted twits, so why is this stuff making the mornings breaking news?
I don't get it.
Yes horrible, her gowns and makeup were supposedly doused in pepper spray, but pageant officials aren't even totally sure it happened as the girl claims.
I just find it totally ridiculous that this made the top news stories of the day.
Did nothing else really important happen anywhere in the world?

Posted by Kat at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It was time for my semi-annual skillet replacement shopping, and I did so the other day.
I picked up a new Rival 12-Inch Square Skillet with Glass Lid, and when I just checked on it's shipping status, (it's coming today!) I noticed a link for a special offer I didn't see when I ordered it.

If you buy anything from Amazon's home and garden department totaling $25 or more before taxes, gift wrap, and shipping, you can receive a free 1 year subscription to one of three magazines.

About 1 to 2 weeks after your purchase, you will receive an email with directions on how to redeem your free magazine.
You can choose between Gourmet, Domino, or Bon Appetit.
I'm going to go with the last one, Bon Appetit.
I know it's not chock full of recipes, but of the 3 mags offered, it's the best one.
And it's free because my skillet was $29.99 before shipping, which I chose the super saver shipping so it was free ($9.71value) and I had $5 left over in gift certs, so my total cost for the new skillet was only $24.99.
But I totally qualify because they said before taxes and shipping.
ha!
So get my new skillet and a free 1 year subscription to a pretty nice mag.
I love bargains.
I would have liked it even more though if they had offered a subscription to Everyday Food.
It's a far better magazine for real recipes that anyone can make.
But free is free!

Posted by Kat at 6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There, I said it, I admit it.
I was doing the dishes earlier and was washing out one of my Anchor Hocking mixing bowls, and realized how much I love those bowls.
Nothing sticks to them, they come clean so freaking easy.
I think I want every dish and every pan, and all the bake ware I own, to be that Anchor Hocking glass stuff.

I use those 2 quart mixing bowls for everything I make practically.
When I need the boys to get down under the cupboard and get my bowl, I just say get the glass oven ware, and they know exactly which bowl I'm talking about.
I've dropped them on the hard terrazzo floor, and they didn't break, not even chip.
They've been in the sink and had silverware or a pan thrown in on top of them and not broken.
They freaking rule!

I have used them for everything from mixing cakes and making dips, to serving hot soups or to make jello.
I've even made an ice cream crunch frozen dessert and popped those bowls in the freezer, and they don't crack or chip from the temp changes.
I want all of my dishes to be made of that stuff.
It would be awesome.

Posted by Kat at 1:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you already decorated your house for Christmas?
I know some people who did it like 3 weeks ago, and others who did it the day after Thanksgiving.
I never decorate before December actually gets here, the holidays are so rushed already, I don't want to rush them more.

I'll dig everything out in a few days, and then start putting it all up, so when did you do yours?
Have you already sent out your Christmas cards?
I have my card list ready, and if you want to exchange with me, just send me an email with your name and addy, and blog url so I know who you are, and I'll add you to it.
I do love the holiday, but just don't like to rush it.
I like to take time to enjoy the tree and the lights, all the specials on tv and stuff.
I am getting excited though.
Fa la la lala, la la la la.
Ha!

Posted by Kat at 9:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Just for some fun and found on Draven's blog.

Lets101 Quizzes - Fun quizzes for blog & myspace

Posted by Kat at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I totally forgot both the boys are going out with George tonight to see 42nd Street and dinner.
D'oh!
Now, what am I going to do while they are gone?
And what am I going to eat?
I had dinner all planned out too.
I was going to make chicken with cheesy noodles and salad.
Guess I'll just make myself a sandwich now.
*sigh*

But, while they are gone, the tv will be mine, and I can look around at some wholesale fashion jewelry and maybe buy a piece or two that I saw and liked.
I love buying pieces and seeing how they are made, so when I can get back to making stuff, I can try my hand at them, plus then I get some nice jewelry for myself to wear or give away as gifts.
The teens won't be sitting here telling me I should stop looking at stuff.
I do have to buy my own gifts for Christmas ya know. *wink*

Posted by Kat at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Mark's big George is catholic, and one of his brothers kids is going to be having communion soon.
Mark is treated like part of their family, so they invite him to all the family celebrations.
I just went out and got the mail, and there were first communion invitations for all three of us.

All three of us went to George's wedding at St Marys church, Mark has been to a few other religious celebrations for their family too, so these invitations are not a surprise, but what kind of gift should I get the little girl?
I've only been to one first communion, and that was a long, long time ago for my childhood best friend Maureen.
I remember her white frilly dress and gloves, the little veil.
It's a pretty ceremony, but as an atheist, it feels odd going to these things.
I respect George and his entire family, and I love how they have taken Mark in and treat him as family, they treat all of us that way, but it still feels odd going to these things sometimes.

Posted by Kat at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Ack!
Today only, you can buy the Halo 3 Legendary Edition for just $60!
I know the boys like this game, but would they actually want it for Christmas?
It doesn't really come with anything all that great it has the helmet collector thingy, but the game is just the same game.
This is a true Halo fan edition, you have to be like an addict to buy this one.
I don't know!
Argh!
I'm gonna hold of from impulse buying and ask them when they get home. The sale is all day long, so I'll just ask them if they really want the game or not.

Posted by Kat at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Odd title I know, but I have so much to do today, and just added another thing to my list.
I may look into some travel insurance for the boys.
They may be going somewhere without me, and I want to make sure they will be ok.
I don't know if I really need it, but when I'm not with them I worry.
I know, silly mommy, already thinking about missing my boys and there's no finalized plans yet.

I need to call a few docs today, change an appointment with Doc M so my sis can actually take the time off to take me there. I need to write a letter and get it printed out in triplicate.
I hope my ink isn't all dried up, I haven't used my printer in ages.
I'm feeling a bit better today, but not awesome, but I do need to leave the house and take care of something important as soon as I can wake up and get a brush through my hair.

Posted by Kat at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night as the boys and I were watching Desperate Housewives, this commercial for Kraft singles came on.
I nearly bust a gut because some marketing genius decided that it would be awesome to start a new catch phrase.
"Have a happy sandwich."

The very first thing I thought of when I saw it was "Have a happy period."

Seriously, I had tears rolling down my cheeks from laughing so hard.
That marketing genius at Kraft should be fired.
Instead of wanting to eat cheese, all I could think of was maxi-pads with wings.
I didn't want a grilled cheese sandwich, I wanted a happy period with no leaks. hahahahah
They are having a video contest where you can win $50,000 by making a video and a sandwich with Kraft singles.
Do you think I could win if I took two maxi-pads and slapped some cheese in the middle, and said now I can have a happy period because I have Kraft cheese singles?
Hahahahaha

Posted by Kat at 1:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Not for me sillies!
For my nieces!
Have you all see the FurReal Friends Butterscotch Pony?

That thing is just too cute!
It moves, it blinks it's eyes, moves his head, and responds when talked to and touched.
I know that Susan would absolutely love something like that, she just loves animals and horses mostly.
If I could get her that, I'd also get her some cute little horse riding apparel to go with it. It would be so damn cute don't you think?
I hope that by next year, I'm able to get them something like that, they would absolutely love it.

Posted by Kat at 1:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A few days ago I came across my content on the subject of guitar hero 3 being scraped on a site.
I left a comment telling the site owner that I don't appreciate having my content stolen.
I called the site owner a few names too.
His site is ALL stolen content from any and all sites that mention GH3.
This is one of my entries on his site. I have removed the http:// so he doesn't get a link from me. Simply copy and paste it into your browser to see it.
guitarhero3.co.uk/guitar-hero-3/guitar-hero-3-turkey-day-battle-results/

Every single entry on this site, guitarhero3.co.uk/, is scraped from other people.
He emailed me and had the nerve to say this;
"I am sorry you did not enjoy the privilege of being featured on my guitarhero3.co.uk Guitar Hero 3 blog. With the free back-link as well as traffic."

Privilege? It's a privilege having my content stolen and featured on his site?
Sure it is! Right along with every other site he has stolen the content they took the time to write.
Go look at his site, not a single entry is written by him. It's all stolen content scraped from feeds.
Sure he provides a link back, but traffic? I didn't receive a single hit from his site, not one.
I only found it because I have my feed reader set up to find any links to me by other bloggers.
Every single entry I have written in the month of November on GH3 (he just started his "blog" then) is scraped on his site, right along with every other blogger who mentions GH3.

Is there a way to stop certain sites from posting your feeds on their sites?
It's not a privilege, it's theft.

EDIT***
He just scraped me again on my post about Kevin DuBrow.
I hope he enjoys having this post show up on his main page in a few minutes.
THIEF!!!

Posted by Kat at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

For a long time, I have wanted to homeschool my sons.
I get angrier and angrier each year over the ever increasing supply lists and the lack of education they receive.
It's irritating when your kids watch the news with you, and a major public figure is being spoken about and they have no idea who it is.
Tonight it was Putin, a few months ago it was Castro.
Why don't my kids know who these people are unless I tell them?

I never thought I could homeschool, but there is a way you can get K-12 Free Homeschool for your kids if you are interested.
I've looked at the site and it seems simple enough.
I thought to myself there has to be a catch, but there isn't one, just a small $4.95 labor and shipping costs. Here's how it can be tuition-free.
Read it over, it's not bad at all.
They ask that you do surveys, you can also make donations, that's totally optional though, and some of the courses they offer are not free but also not required to take either.
They are actually given at a 50%-75% discount, so it's still not a major expense.
All of their courses are paid for by corporate and non-profit sponsors, as well as donations by parents who use the courses.

Enrollments are limited and students are put on a waiting list, but that list is usually only 2-5 days for a space to open.
That's not too bad, I could wait that long.
The only thing I worry about is would my sons be accepted. They are in high school now, so maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to try and homeschool now.
I don't know, I'll have to look over their catalog and site more to find out more information.
I'm going to check out their K-12FreeHomeschool.org Course Catalog and see if it has the classes and credits that my sons would need, and think about it, perhaps for the next school year coming.
I'm really disappointed in the public education system, so maybe homeschooling is the way to go for their last years of school.
Maybe they'd actually learn more than they do right now.

Posted by Kat at 8:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It has been reported that Quiet Riot frontman Kevin DuBrow, was found dead in his Las Vegas home around 5:20pm Sunday night, November 25th 2007, of unknown causes.
DuBrow was age 52.

Drummer Frankie Banali
had a very simple message posted to his website today about the passing of his long time friend.
"I can't even find words to say. Please respect my privacy as I mourn the passing and honor the memory of my dearest friend Kevin DuBrow."

They were famous for their mascot, a straight jacketed man in a metal mask. It has been considered as one of the all-time most familiar heavy metal symbols.
As a kid of the 80's, Quiet Riot was one of those bands you could sing along to, and me and my friends did.
I'm sure my parents recall having to tell me to turn it down a time or two.
Songs like Metal Health, Cum on Feel the Noise, and Mama Weer All Crazee Now, were staples at parties and radio air play.
The song Cum on feel the noise, was actually a cover of the song by the band Slade, and used in movies and video games such as Showdown: Legends of Wrestling, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. It was also used in The movie Crank as part of the soundtrack and in Footloose.
Bang your Head (Metal Health) is also a playable song in Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80's.

Posted by Kat at 8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today would have been a great day for one of those modern platform beds for sure.
I was in and out of bed like 1,000 times.
On and off the couch, couldn't get comfortable to save my life.
I hate being sick. My stomach has been doing flips and flops, felt like George Foreman was in there using my stomach as a punching bag.
I finally couldn't take it anymore and went to Walgreen's and picked up some Imodium, and some antacids, and some Gatorade.
I'm completely dehydrated and exhausted.

Who knows how I caught it.
My niece Skye was just getting over a cold, but we went to Denny's, Circuit city, the grocery store on Saturday, so who knows.
Maybe I was the lucky one who touched a door handle or cart handle that some sick person had touched.
I usually wipe down the carts at Public with the alcohol wipes they provide, but if it was a stomach virus, I don't know if the wipes can kill it ya know?
And it's not like you can wipe down every product you pick up and put in your cart, or wipe down the credit card/debit card reader at the checkout.
I catch freaking everything and it sucks.
At least the Imodium is finally starting to work.
I swear, if I have to run to the bathroom one more time today, I am gonna cry.

Posted by Kat at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

White cells that is.
I have a (ab)normally high white cell count, so why aren't they fighting?
I really should look into life insurance when I recover from this blasted cold and fever I have.
I've been down for the count the whole day.
I woke up to puke, and have just been sleeping off and on all day.
I feel like crap.

Posted by Kat at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I just found that funny.
Cuticles, pharmaceuticals and skinceuticals.
I don't know why, but the sound of those words make me grin.
They just sound funny.
But skinceuticals are skin care products, and pharmaceuticals are something I know a bit about, and my cuticles are in need of some attention.
I'd go get a mani/pedi, but don't feel like spending the money or trying to figure out what the Korean ladies are saying about me.
They do need some work.
I hate toes, I could never be a pedicurist.

Posted by Kat at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was just in the bathroom and noticed that the sink area, that whole cabinet section, is missing a piece of the siding.
I know this is an old house built in the 70's, and the bathroom vanities are not exactly spectacular, but it looks like the piece came unglued and some fingers may have helped it out and pulled it off.
Where it went though is another story.
It's no where in the bathroom.
I guess I'll be asking the teens when they come home where it went.
*sigh*

Posted by Kat at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's terrifying what the state of Maryland has done.
There is no law that says any child must be vaccinated, but the school health people insist that getting every child vaccinated will cut down on diseases.
The hep B vaccine, contains 12.5 grams of mercury.
That's 100 times more than the EPA says you can administer to infants, and it's done in a single shot.

In the first 15 months of life, babies are given 21 different vaccines, all containing thimerosal.
1 out of every 166 kids born in this country, now have autism and that number is rising.
Babies that were born perfectly healthy, are now being diagnosed with autism by age 3.
Thimerosal was banned by every other country in the world 20 years ago, we are the only country that still uses it.
The amazing part of this whole mercury issue is that doctors tell pregnant women not to consume large amounts of fish during their pregnancies because of mercury. Then as soon as the baby is born, we start injecting them with it.

All childhood vaccines now come with a mercury free version.
Ask for it.
It is your right.
The hep B shot is given at birth, so ask for it when your child is born.
Do not just let them whisk your newborn away to have it's first shots, because they will use the mercury version unless you tell them not to.

Posted by Kat at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Children were herded like cattle this past week into a courthouse with armed police and attack dogs, to receive vaccinations and threw parents who refused into jail.
"The children were forcibly vaccinated, many against their will, under orders from the State Attorney General, various State Judges and the local School Board Director, all of whom illegally conspired to threaten parents with imprisonment if they did not submit their children to vaccinations."
Health authorities stated that parents who refused would be taken from their kids and placed in jail for up to 30 days for failing to comply.

There is NO law in Maryland that says children must be vaccinated.

The number one reason parents don't vaccinate has nothing to do with religion, it has to do with protecting their kids from the dangerous chemicals found in vaccines (including thimerosal, a chemical additive containing a neurotoxic form of mercury).

There are doctors who oppose what is happening in Maryland.
Parents were "told to appear in Court on Saturday November 17th 2007, and to subject their children to on-the-spot state-mandated vaccines of up 17 vaccine doses, or face imprisonment. Parents who ignore the court's demands could face a $50 fine for every day their child is out of compliance or up to 10
days in jail."
That's a dangerous amount to give a child all at once, and what if a child is allergic to one of them?
The medical and religious exemption forms were missing from the packets handed out to parents to fill out, and were denied if asked for.

There are 8 questions to ask before vaccinating your child, they are:

1. Is my child sick right now?

2. Has my child had a bad reaction to a vaccination before?

3. Does my child have a personal or family history of: vaccine
reactions, convulsions or neurological disorders, severe allergies or
immune system disorders

4. Do I know if my child is at high risk of reacting?

5. Do I know how to identify a vaccine reaction?

6. Do I know how to report a vaccine reaction?

7. Do I know the vaccine manufacturer's name and lot number?

8. Do I know I have a choice?

Just what is thimerosal?
You might want to check it out before vaccinating your child.

Posted by Kat at 1:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

So I'm like totally bored tonight, it's always like this when the boys go away.
I can't stand all the blip blip blip of video games, but the silence in here is deafening.
Maybe I should just turn on the xbox for distraction?

So anyway, I start surfing the net after some tv watching, never did watch a movie, got sucked into some show, and anyway, I found myself looking at new tvs and then the coolest thing, electronic tv lifts for plasma tvs.
I had seen these on a tv show before, but thought like only the super rich could have them custom made.
Oh no no, anyone with a plasma tv and some extra money laying around can have one.
Pretty cool if you ask me, I'd love to have one. I'd love to have a plasma tv too, but hey.

And then I surfed around some more, caught up on the hot blogging subjects of the day, er I mean, month, and laughed.
The whole google thing is still driving people nuts!
And oh forbid you have an opinion that differs from the masses, you might be talked about in hush hush circles.
I asked to be removed, deleted, links deleted, and they weren't, and oh my, I posted that comment somewhere.
Let the discussions begin of the traitor!
Ooooh, so very bad, you bad bad traitor you. *lol*
Sorry, it amuses me.
I know I shouldn't find it funny, but I do.

Posted by Kat at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I'm all hanging out by myself, chilling watching some tube, cuddled with a blanket and the kitties, and I hear noises coming from the back room.
Lots of noises.
All 3 o the cats were with me till we all heard the noises, then they jumped off the couch and flew to the door way of Mark's room, ears perked, hissing.

Um would you kitties mind telling me what the hell you're all hissing at?!

So I go in, flipping on the light of course, the kitties follow me in, rush past me, jump on top of the dresser and start trying to get at whatever is outside.
Now, I'm home all alone, I have like no intention of flipping those curtains back when I'm by myself, so I call the neighbors, I know they are always on their back living room, and I'm all hey, something or someone is right outside my back windows, I'm home alone man, can you please take a look?

The husband went out and looked, and sure enough, the wild critters were in their trash eating the turkey carcass, knocking over the bins, ripping through everything.
Damn animals, scared the shit outta me.

Posted by Kat at 9:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I forgot to mention I'm all alone tonight, not really sure what I'll do, but I know I am not eating any more turkey today.
I just ordered myself some Chinese, and I want to just kick back with a movie.
I'll be totally uninterrupted, so yee haw!

Where are the boys?
They went with sis back to her house to babysit the girls tonight, and also to get to play WoW.
The only time they ever get to play it is when they are at her house, because there's no way I'm installing that on my pc, nor am I paying another subscription fee for a game.
I already pay the $50 a year for xbox live, and the $9.99 a month for PSU, I am not paying for another freaking game.
I was so happy when they agreed to cancel their Runescape paid account, but really, I ended up paying double.
The deal was I'd pay for either PSU or Runescape.
Well, I should have said I'd pay for Runescape cuz that was only $5 a month.
D'oh!

I do have a movie here, I have Happily N'ever After.
Sebastian wanted to see it, I have no interest in it, so I think I'll pass on that one, it got bad reviews anyway.
I did watch Ocean's Thirteen, it wasn't horrible, but 11 was definitely better, 12 was ok, and 13, well, it just lacked something.
I'm not really sure what, but it was missing the 'zing' of the first two.
I'll write up a review later.
It was ok to watch, enjoyable, but just didn't give me that 'wow' feeling like 11 did.
Still a good time watching it though.

I do have the option of watching Netflix watch now on my computer, but what to watch?
Do I want sci-fi, thrillers, horror or romance?
Romance, blah, sci-fi, so-so, it's a choice between horror and thriller.
Hrm.

Posted by Kat at 6:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

At breakfast this morning, Skye who was sitting near me, noticed my sterling silver spider ring.
I've had it for years, since I was about 17 I think, anyway, Skye does not like spiders, I do not like spiders, but I do love this ring.
So anyway, Skye being freaked out by the ring reminds my sister of this hike her and her family took the other day on a path near their home.

They were just walking along, looking at nature, when her husband stopped her and told her to look up.
About 1 foot above her head, was a huge spider the size of her hand.
Then they started looking around and noticed that they had pretty much walked into a huge nest of spiders.
Webs everywhere, covered in these giant spiders.
Sis let out a scream, which caused Skye to notice the spiders and scream, and they all freaked out and grabbed the girls as quick as they could and ran back out along the path.

I would have either fainted or had a heart attack.
Just hearing sis re-tell the story had my heart racing, my sons were laughing because I was honestly panicking just listening to her tell it.
She even took a napkin and drew the spider with the crayons Denny's gives little kids.
It was enormous!
I felt queasy, light headed, and just sick over the very thought of spiders that large.
I can't go into parks, national parks, I can't go camping at all. The whole idea of all those multi-legged critters everywhere, forget it.
Sleep in a canvas tent?
No way!
I don't camp at all, not even in a camper. The closest I get from sleeping away from home is a hotel room, and even then I make the boys go around the whole room and look for spiders before I can sit on chairs, beds, use the bathroom.
Just writing this is causing my hands to be sweaty and my mouth is dry.

Posted by Kat at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My sister had on the most beautiful costume jewelry necklace today. I just remembered I wanted to ask her about it, duh Kat.
It was like a 3 strand necklace with all kinds of little charms and gemstones on it, very, very pretty.
Skye kept wanting it and as you do with little kids sometimes, you tell them it's stuck and won't come off, because little hands tend to break stuff.
I need to ask her where she got it though, or maybe she'll let me borrow it for a day so I can copy the pattern to make one.
It was something I know I could make if I could just see it close up to get a good look at how thy laid it out and what kind of clasp they have on it.

When we got back, I had a huge stack of mail to go through.
I got the new issues of Cosmo, stuff my medicare part D drug coverage from Humana, and some child support stuff, and a letter from an elementary school in North Port.
Let's talk about the child support first.
Way back in April, I applied for modification to my child support.
Today, they finally mailed the form for me to just SIGN stating that yes, I want to have a hearing.
The last letter they sent said it would have the date and time of the hearing, not a form to sign.
Grrr.
It's gonna be what? Another 8 months before I get the letter with teh actual hearing date in it?
Ugh!

The letter from North Port Elementary is confusing.
It has my name and address hand written on it in ink, but inside it says that I am the mother of some other kid who lives in North Port.
Apparently I'm the divorced wife of some guy with the name of W. Ziegler, and mother to W. Ziegler Jr.
The kid was born in 1997.
Um, I think I would have remembered getting married and divorced again, and I certainly would remember having another child.
The letter is about this kids ESE plan, he's in special classes for speech therapy I guess, and my presence is requested at a meeting to discuss how he's doing on November 30th at 10am.
I'm not this kids mother, nor am I this guys ex-wife.
I'm very confused as to why my name and address is hand written on this letter.
Did the dad pull a name out of his butt or something, and give it to the school?
Something is not right about this.
We've never lived in North Port, I've never had another child aside from my own 2.

Posted by Kat at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sis came and picked us up at like 10am-ish, and went straight to Circuit City where we were lucky enough to snag a parking space as some really happy guy was pulling out.
We walked in, pushed our way through the crowds of the insane shoppers, and found a red-shirted clerk.
I asked him a simple question, "Do you have any of the Acer desktops that were on sale for $229, left?"
He gave me this look like I was out of my frigging mind, and said "We've been open since 5am."
So, do you have any left?
"We've been open since 5am, we're lucky we have anything left, but no, not that."
So we left and headed to Denny's for breakfast.

But look, I am not one of those completely insane people, who wake up at 2am to stand in a line at a store that opens at 5am.
Why do stores do that anyway?
It's their fault that people get up before the sun, it's their fault they have nothing left to sell during oh my gosh! normal business operating hours, don't look at me like I'm the one off my rocker.
Seriously, I know it's the one day of the year that companies do really freaking awesome, but come on, order enough freaking product to at least last you to noon you idiots.
Don't offer amazing deals and then stock only 10 of them.
Arrgh.
They did have tons of other stuff though, pink xbox 360 controllers, like a zillion of those, stacks upon stacks of tv utility carts, thousands of copies of Guitar Hero III, but no Acers, and actually, their computer section was pretty much wiped out. I didn't even see any display units on the shelves.

So yeah anyway, we went to Denny's and met up with my sister's friend Henata for breakfast.
I cannot believe how much food that little cutie pie pictured there ate.
That is Skye, and this is what mommy ordered for her, and what she finished completely.
3 kid size pancakes, 2 strips of bacon and 2 sausage links.
That was a kids meal!
Then she saw what I ordered and wanted to "help Aunty Kat eats it."
I ordered the meat lovers breakfast which is 2 eggs over easy, hash browns, 2 bacon strips, 2 sausage links, 1 small ham steak, and a 3 stack of pancakes.
Sebastian took my bacon and sausage, all 4 pieces, Skye ate over half of my ham and 80% of my hash browns.
I ate my eggs, the other half of the ham and hash browns, and then decided to try and eat some of the pancakes.
Skye kept asking to "help" me, so I kept giving her bites.
I asked her mom if it was ok, she said it was, and between Skye and myself, we almost finished the stack.
I looked at this tiny 3 year old who asked if there was more "meats and hashes", and said to her, "Skye, where did you put all that food?"
She gave me a super puzzled look and then said,
"In my mouf Aunty Kat."

Posted by Kat at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It was loud, it was funny, and in the end, I got my ass handed to me on a platter!!

We each played 3 songs, and combined the total points earned, not the percentages completed or correct, but total points.
So let's just get this total asswiping over with and get on to the results shall we?

In third place (me) with a seriously lame score of just 21,478 points, Kat! (boo, hiss, you suck!)
In second place with a very respectable score of 458,783, Mark! (w00t!)
In first place, and winner of the $20 Guitar Hero 3 Cooper Thanksgiving day battle, with a super most excellent score of 542,360, Sebastian! (winner, bow down)

Posted by Kat at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

One of the other things we saw on our walk today were the apartments up the street which are currently being touted as affordable, luxury condos for sale.
Just a few years ago, this apartment place was full of people, it's been pretty much empty for some time now, and the reason is the owners defaulted on like 10 years of property taxes and filed bankruptcy.

Some new people took it over and are trying to change them into condos to sell.
Well, they painted the outside of the buildings, installed a new swimming pool that no one has been allowed to use for 2 years, and planted flowers and trees.
They made the outside of these units look fabulous.
Driving by you'd think wow, very nice.
But take a look inside.

That's just one of the many empty units that squatters are living in now.
Just inside the window out of view was a leather couch with a blanket neatly folded on the end.
There was a pile of clothes neatly folded, and the trash can contains new food trash items.
Squatters are living in all those units.
We saw them peeking out from the corners of walls.
It's winter here, and cold on the streets at night, and hey, if there are empty apartments with rooms you can hide in with carpeting, a toilet to use, and even shower, the homeless are taking advantage of it.

The only things they don't have are electricity, cable and landline phone.
The apartments keep the main water on for all the units, even the empty ones, so people are living in there, sleeping on old couches, taking showers and even washing dishes they have.
We spotted about 10 units with living stuff in them, proof squatters are in there, and just biding their time until construction gets around to remodeling the unit they are in.
There are about 175 empty units right now.

Posted by Kat at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sebastian and I just took a walk like we had planned on doing, and swung into 7-11 like we usually do to get Gatorades for our walk around the neighborhood.
On the counter was a note written by the store manager, alerting patrons to the death of long time employee Cathy Orlando.
She died yesterday, November 21st, and the note said more details will be available later.

I don't know if Cathy was sick, she never mentioned having anything wrong on my many trips to the store, instead she was always smiling, happy to see people.
She always said the same thing to us as we reached the counter, "Hey guys, how are you doing? How's the kids today? You have great boys, you should be so proud."

Cathy was a very sweet woman, I may not have known her outside of the store, but she was a great and kind human being.
Always happy, always helping.

It was a shock to see that note.
I asked the clerk who was there, if it was Cathy with the short brown hair, and he said yes, we only had one Cathy here.
I am deeply saddened.
I saw her every few days, sometimes every day if I went walking, for about 9 years now.
She will be missed very much even if I didn't know her well.
We crossed each others paths many times over the last 9 years, she knew our names, we knew hers, she always remarked how tall the boys were getting.
She pretty much saw them grow up.
I'm just really shocked, wish I knew what happened.

Posted by Kat at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I never use a recipe when I cook a turkey, I just wing it (ha!) and add whatever I fee like adding.
This years bird was spectacular, and the boys said I need to do it like that again for Christmas.
Ooops!
No recipe!
Honestly, I didn't really measure anything, but here's what I did.

One 20 pound turkey*
1 plastic lemon juice lemon
approximately 1 cup of margarine
approximately 1 cup Merlot
1 cap full of Mrs. Dash original

Remove neck, giblets, throw away (gag)
Rinse out the turkey
Grab by ass and neck, and place breast side up in the roasting pan
Squeeze contents of entire lemon into cavity
Take cap full of Mrs. Dash and throw inside the cavity
Melt the margarine in the microwave
Pour in the Merlot and stir.
Pour butter and wine mixture over and inside the turkey
Lightly cover with foil and cook at 400 degrees for 3.5 hours (cooking time will vary on size of bird) basting every 20 minutes.

That's it.
I never ever, stuff the inside of the bird. It causes cooking times to increase, and the blood of the turkey ends up in the stuffing. (yuck)
It came out so damn moist and flavorful, OMG yummy!
It has a sweet and tangy, but salty flavor, mixed with all the flavors of the Mrs. Dash. It was seriously fabulous.
I forgot to take a pic of it, but it had a gorgeous golden brown color, the skin was crusty on the legs, wings, and tip of the breast meat.
The skin also had a wonderful sweet flavor from the wine, margarine and spices.
It was terrific!

*I know, way too big for the boys and I, but they will eat the leftovers until it's gone.

Posted by Kat at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

That's just on one meal too.
Scary to think about how much the average American will eat today during their feast.
I imagine people are already planning on how they will work off all those extra calories.
Walking, ellipticals, weight lifting, sit ups, and however people find it most effective to work it all off.

I plan on taking a walk myself after I come out of the turkey induced coma.
We have about another hour before the turkey will be done cooking, and then we'll be sitting down to eat with a movie and then probably naps.
I hope everyone is having a great day so far with food, family and friends.

Posted by Kat at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

To all my blogging friends, readers, family and real life friends!
There's so much to be thankful for this year, I won't make a list, but will say how much I am grateful for this year.
It had it's ups and downs, but all in all, it's been a good year.
I have so so much to be thankful for, and I hope you do too.
I'm not about politicizing the day, celebrate it or remember how you choose, just make the best of the day, do not take it for granted.
I think that's one of this years lessons for me.
I learned not to take a single moment for granted.
Through everything I had been through, I somehow was able to be grateful for what I did have, and that I was here with my sons.
I had moments of total despair and panic, was given a scare, and it's really too bad that a scare was what it took for me to start living in the moment, but it did.
I would ask each of you to not be like that, to start living and loving in the moment.
There is so much we all have right now, we may not have it all, things may be really tight or even bad, but take a look around at what you do have and just live in that moment, laugh, love, and appreciate it all, even the bad stuff.
Sometimes it's the bad stuff that gives you the most clarity, the most to be thankful for.

As is traditional in our house, we will be watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, and once again I'll tell my kids that it was 50 years ago today, that ninny and pop pop, (my mom and dad) had gone to New York to each perform with their churches band, and met.
They were both members of the Salvation Army, Mom from Pennsylvania, Dad from Maine, and right there in front of the Macy's front doors, they bumped into each other and found true love.
That day they each met their other half, the one who would complete their lives and who they would build a new one with.
They met that day, married that coming July 31st, and have been together ever since.
50 years together has seen a lot of changes, a child of their own, adopted daughters, foster children, health issues, money issues, but there they are today, still together with their love just as strong as it was 50 years ago.
I am thankful to them for taking in all those kids.
They took in a sick little baby the doctors had no hope for, but with love, care and nurturing, I'm still here 37 years later.
They still share that same love, care, and nurturing with all who pass through the doors of their home, and it amazes me every single day, just how strong their marriage still is.
50 years is a long time, and it's an honor to celebrate their love and life, and retell their story.

Posted by Kat at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

My sis and my boys have some geocaches around where we live, a few state parks, and every couple of years she takes out her GPS and they go find their own caches again.
They started doing it when the boys were really little, like when we first moved here.
Their original cache was a spiderman action figure, a ring, some cool pencils, and a half dollar.
Other people came along, found it, took something out, and replaced it with something they brought.

The boys have been talking about going back out and finding their very first cache again.
To see if it's still there, and if people kept it up.
I know one year because of a hurricane, the water had risen up so much, that the tree they hid it in, got submerged under water and the cache moved a few feet from the mark.
After though, someone was able to dig it out of the mud and put it back.
Now the boys are curious to see if it's still there like 6 years later.
I hope they can go again soon and find out.
If they go, I have a few little trinkets I want to put in it.
It's kinda cool to see the stuff people have put in and taken out.
I know my sis has the site with all the coordinates and stuff for it, I'll have to ask her about it and get the link.

The last time I looked at it, there were people from England who had found the cache, and reported back on the site how much fun it was to find.
They took pictures and posted them to her cache page.
It was really cool to see, because they took pics of the alligators and spiders they saw in Myakka Park, and they took a pic of one of those giant banana spiders, and what they had written was hysterical!
They were like what the hell is that thing!? *LOL*
I will try to get the link and show you, it was wicked cool.

Posted by Kat at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Was that not like the best freaking episode ever?!
I love Weeds!
I loved how Nancy finally decided to take charge of her life, rather than have to react to what was happening.
Celia is a total bitch. I knew she'd fail them. Rat!
The conversation between Nancy and Guillermo about hills and valleys, moving on, great stuff.
Doug was truly awesome in this episode, walking around with that banjo and singing songs about all the happenings at the evacuation center.
I cannot believe the writers went there with the whole "just like the superdome" song, but it was great!
Andy, "Where there's smoke, there's smoke."
"I think they shot Peckers of the Caribbean here." --the fireman, on seeing the grow house.

Really terrific episode, I can't wait for season 4.
Tampa?
Can't wait to find out!

Posted by Kat at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've had a lot of time to think about all the medical stuff today, and I don't know, maybe I'm over reacting, some people think I am.
I know mistakes can happen, I make mistakes myself.
For instance, I really thought a plasma cutter actually cut plasma, you know, like blood plasma?
But nope, it's a tool for cutting types of metal and steel.

So yes, mistakes in diagnosis can happen, but I still feel this was a huge freaking mistake.
I feel like he should have kept his mouth shut about cancer until he knew for sure.
That is why I have been so stressed for the last few months, and I didn't want to talk about it because I didn't want anyone to worry needlessly without proof, and it was indeed needless worry.

I am just angry that he put me through a nightmare barrage of medical tests for nothing, forced me to see doctors and take all kinds of medications with the threat of no longer treating me if I didn't comply.
It even says that in his letter, that he has the right to make me comply with every order, or he would stop being my doctor.
So yes, it was a forced deal.
I was forced to switch my primary care and gyno docs, forced to see that hormone doctor and take those injections, forced to see a psychiatrist.
I don't know, I'm still sort of shaken by the whole thing.
I don't know if I would have done anything differently or found a different doc right from the start, if I had known he would be forcing me to switch my 4 year long primary care physician to one he preferred better.
Hindsight is 20/20, I don't know if anyone in the same position would have done it differently either.

Posted by Kat at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Anyone ever file a malpractice suit?
Dr. F. sent me a certified letter today explaining his reasons for dropping me as his patient.
He stated that I refused to be seen by the doctors he recommended, and I was refusing to follow his orders, and refusing to be seen by a psychiatrist for evaluation.
He also stated that I was "in need of further and urgent medical care for the elevated white cell count."
That the pain I was complaining about, was in my head.

I have the results of my tests, got a call from the radiology department so that I wouldn't be freaking out.
Dr. F. (the pain management doctor) was convinced that my white cell count was so high due to cancer.
See, when I had to call and make that appointment for the second hematology consult, they told me what he was looking for.
He believed I had leukemia and "am in need of urgent medical treatment by specialists in the field of cancer", and that is why they wanted to run the second full, thoroughly invasive, consult having to draw bone marrow from the bottom of my foot..

Six months ago, I heard something snap in my hip, that day, I called Dr. F.'s office and told them something happened. The nurse on the phone said it was probably just a joint cracking, like popping your knuckles.
Every single visit to Dr. F., he asked where my pain was and I told him that my left hip was on fire, it hurt, ached, throbbed. That my lower back was always locking up and hurting.

Do you think he ever ordered an x-ray?
A CT scan perhaps?
No, he didn't.
Instead he sent me to a hormone doctor who didn't take insurance, and forced me to see him, forced me to take a weekly injection of testosterone because mine was too low and that's why I was in pain.

I had a primary care physician and a gynecologist.
He didn't like who I was seeing, and ordered me to go to a new primary care physician who also did not take medicare.
He ordered me to see a new gynecologist who also did not take medicare.
He ordered a psych evaluation because people in chronic pain and on narcotics, are severely depressed.
How many times did I post right here, I was not depressed, but frustrated with the amount of tests and doctors I was being forced to see?
All the while I kept telling him something was really wrong with my left hip, and he blew it off as general hardware pain.

Doc M., my surgeon, ordered two tests, a Ct scan and an Imdium scan.
Well guess what?
I have the results of both the CT scan and the Imdium scan.
The CT scan confirms I have a broken iliac screw in where?
My left hip.
It also shows that the discs at the L-1 through L-2 levels are severely dessicated and degenerated.
The Imidum scan test results show no problem with my white cells.
The opinion of the radiology doctor who performed that test is "negative white blood cell study".
What does that mean?
It means I'm not sick, it means I don't have cancer or anything else, just an elevated white cell count.
The CT scan results prove that I have a broken iliac screw and disc degeneration, so um, is that pain in my head?
I don't freaking think so.

Doc F. put me through hell, demanding that I see doctors who didn't take insurance, demanding I see certain doctors that he wanted me to see instead of just letting me make appointments with the doctors I am currently being treated by.
It is my belief that he failed to do his job and order the proper tests that would have found the real cause of my pain, the broken iliac screw and degenerated discs, that the pain was not in my head, that there was no reason for me to take a testosterone injection, there was no reason to have a bone marrow test, or switch to doctors he thought were better.
It is my belief that he wanted me to switch to these doctors for kickbacks.
If he had just ordered a single x-ray of the area where I indicated I had pain, he would have found the broken iliac screw, and would have saved the both of us, months and months of unnecessary medical tests and drugs that were not ever needed.

So there we go, I am not sick, I am not in need of urgent medical care by cancer specialists, and I do have a very real cause for the pain in my hip and lower back.
Two tests, instead of all the tests and doctors he insisted I see, were never ever needed.
I am angry he put me through all of that, he had me scared to death for months that I was very sick, and I never was.
Two simple tests would have told him that I was in very real pain and not sick.
I have filed a formal complaint, but I am now considering taking this further than that.

Posted by Kat at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I just got this call from FPL, that's Florida Power and Light, my power company, and Sebastian handed me the phone too late for me to really understand.

All I heard was we are refunding your payment, it will show up on your bill in the next few days.
I was like WTF? Refunding my last payment?!
Why?!
I make sure that's the first bill paid every month, I calculate correctly, it's paid, it could not bounce or anything!
Accckk!!

So I logged into FPL to check.
*phew*
They refunded my security deposit of $256.24!!
See, when I first moved here 10 years ago, I had never had any bills in this state, I had no utility company "credit" to verify I was a good customer, so they charged me a security deposit that was enormous as you can see.
Today, 10 years later, they gave it back.
Yes I know, 10 whole years later, they gave it back, but hot damn! They gave it back right in time for Christmas!
I will not have to pay a bill in December which means more money for Christmas!
Check it out!
click for bigger

W00t! No pay for Christmas!
I'll have money for more presents for the boys, the clothes and shoes they need, maybe I'll get each of them some chia pets for a few laughs.
This really came at an awesome time.
Thanks FPL!

Posted by Kat at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The teens and I are watching Dancing with the Stars, and Michael Flatley of Lord of the Dance fame is going to be on, and they were like who is that?
So I showed them the Riverdance line clips on youtube, and they were all man, that sounds so cool.
I was all yeah no kidding!
I'd love to have something like a Bose home theater system and crank it all the way up, and watch them do that dance stuff.
It sounds so cool.
I know a lot of people don't like the Riverdance stuff, but come on, you gotta admit it looks cool, and sounds wicked cool.
All that clickety clackety clack clack, super fast, perfect timing, no one misses a step, it's just cool to watch.
I hope he does some tap like that.

Ha! While typing this up, he's on now.
Sailor outfits, huge tap line.
Very cool!

Posted by Kat at 9:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I forgot to update my Netflix list after returning my last movie, and now Ocean's Thirteen is on it's way to my house. I'll have it tomorrow.
I have heard mixed reviews about it, some good, some bad.

Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 60% fresh rating.
Rolling Stone gives it 3 out of 4 stars.
Roger Ebert gave it 2 and a half stars, and said to rent it, ownership is a headache.

So what did you think of it?
Did you like it?
Was it worth the theater price, or is renting it the way to go?
It's a great cast again, but was that enough to make it worth watching?

Posted by Kat at 6:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Are you having any wine or other spirits with your holiday dinner?
Will you be having a red or white with your turkey, or if you're having ham, which one?
Or maybe even both?
I picked up a nice Merlot the other day, I'm actually having a small taste of it now, it's very yummy.

I remember when I thought wine coolers were totally awesome, that's all I would drink.
Sometimes they can still be fun and handy when going to a picnic or the beach, someplace like that.
They make so many different kinds now, I just stand there staring.

But anyway, I'm having turkey and grabbed a bottle of Alice White Merlot to have with my turkey.
I just couldn't wait and cracked into now.

Posted by Kat at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Ok, well not me, but my sis and the girls will be heading up north to visit the folks for Christmas, and I still have not given sis her Samsonite suitcase yet.
I keep forgetting, she keeps forgetting, we are two absent minded, busy moms.

I would absolutely love to go back up north to visit at Christmas, but it's just too cold, and I'm fund-less, so maybe next year, who knows.
I guess I need to wait and see if surgery is going to be happening, how much money I can put together, but it would be super nice to take the kids to mom and dad's for Christmas again sometime.

I get all childhood nostalgic during the holidays, wanting to be back in the house, sitting around with family and watching all the holiday shows.
It was so magical when we were kids wasn't it?
All those specials on tv getting kids excited for the holidays.
Tonight on ABC at 8pm, is the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special, and then another one, a new one I think, comes on right after it.
I love the Peanuts Thanksgiving special.
This is one of my fave parts of the special.

Posted by Kat at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am going to try like hell to get it on Friday, it's such an awesome deal!
I checked through the Black Friday ads, looked through every listing for places that sell computers, and I found the absolute best deal at Circuit city.
Take a look at the list of Circuit City's black Friday deals.
This is the computer that will be $229.97!!!
It's totally in my price range!!!
W00t!!!

It's an Acer Aspire desktop, same brand I have and love, and this is what it comes with.
It's perfect!

• Intel Pentium Dual Core E2140
• Memory card reader
• Burns DVDs and CDs
• 250GB hard drive
• 1GB of DDR2 memory
• Windows Vista Home Premium

That is a wicked good deal on a wicked good computer.
I have been very impressed with my Acer, I love it.
It has so much memory, I have movies, mp3s, games, full tv episodes, and like a gazillion pics on it, and still have a ton of room left on it for more stuff.
I have both C and D drives, both had 40 GB of space, and both still have over 25 free GB of space.
That Acer is the perfect one for them, and it's a great freaking price!
Now, I just have to deal with my hatred of large crowds in stores, and actually get there on Friday to get it.

Posted by Kat at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I went and picked up my CT scan films for Doc M, my surgeon, so he can see if that iliac screw is really busted and determine if I need to have surgery.
Radiology said that they faxed the results of the Imdium scan to him already, so now I just have to wait and see what they found.
I hate waiting.

This morning on a message board before I left, Patrick posted a link to his blog where he posted about one of his fave holiday specials was The Year Without a Santa Claus by Rankin Bass.
He posted the clip of the miser brothers.
That is one of my fave parts of that special too.
I love the miser brothers!

After watching that, I noticed that there were any other Rankin Bass holiday specials clips up on Youtube, and one of them was The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.
This special was written by L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and it was very different than any of the other Rankin Bass specials because it was dark, kinda creepy, and made no mention of God.
It had the great god Ak, and his fairies, and the immortal elders who over see earth. And there is a battle to the death!
I recall it only showing once on tv, and people became outraged over the message it was sending, the lack of traditional holiday themes, no religion, a very twisted tale.
Does anyone else remember seeing this as a kid?
I know it aired that one year and then it was never shown again.
You can check it out below.

Posted by Kat at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thanks for all the comments on where I can get a new tower for the boys.
Dell will probably be the way I go, not sure yet, sis and I are going to do some comparison shopping when we brave the crowds on black Friday.
I just want a tower for less than $300, but I know I'm gonna be around $400.
That will probably be all they get for xmas, they said it was ok because they need one really bad.
It finally just died today.
It went beep beep beep, and then nothing.
I have no idea what is wrong, and I'm ok at fixing stuff usually, but this one has me confused.
It may be total hard drive failure, but I don't know.
It's a really old computer anyway, at least 10 years old.
It was handed down to the boys, when we got it, it still had windows 95 on it.
I wiped it and put on XP, and it held up a long time so I'm not mad about it, I just don't want to, can't afford to, spend a ton of money on a new one.
Sis is going to pitch in with me, so I'm sure we'll find something affordable and good enough for what they do.

In blog news, I'm so sick of all the whining about the Google smack down most blogs took in the last update.
Any blog that did any kind of paid linking, using links without the nofollow attribute, got spanked down to a page rank of 0.
Those of us who do any kind of paid blogging knew what we were doing.
We knew, the companies we worked for knew, or else they wouldn't have told us we couldn't have a blog with nofollow in the meta tags.
No paid posts were allowed to use nofollow on the links.
Every single paid blogger knew Google didn't approve of paid linking because it screws up the SERPS, so it really shouldn't have come as a surprise that something like a 0 page rank would eventually happen.
I admit I was mad when it happened, but after long and careful thought, I know that what I had done was against Google webmaster policy.

People are calling for a boycott against Google, they are telling people to write their congressmen about anti-trust issues.
Here's the deal.
Page Rank was something Google came up with, they are a private company.
They are free to increase or decrease page rank any way they want to.
We bloggers and paid blogging companies are the ones who made page rank an indicator of worth.
The paid blogging companies are the ones who said that higher page ranked bloggers could post higher paying posts.
Not all the paid blogging companies used Google page rank as that kind of indicator, they did use it, but it wasn't the big deal other companies made it to be.

I personally am not joining the boycott.
I find it incredibly silly to boycott a private company over the webmaster rules they have always had, when we're the ones who made page rank a big deal.
I know people don't agree with me, and that's ok.
I know I'm not making any friends with my stance, I'm sure I've even lost a few blogging friends over the issue, but I don't really care.
Boycotting a private company over something that we made bigger, and to have more importance than it really is, is stupid.
I will keep using Gmail, adsense, Google analytics, Google feed reader and their search tools like standard Google search, and Blingo where you can win prizes for searching.
I've won quite a few times, I get good search results, I make money with adsense, and I freaking love Gmail!
I'm so over the use this search engine, switch to this email, use this stat analytic, dump adsense, and write letters bullshit going around.
We made page rank have some sort of importance it never really had, we have no right to whine about it now considering Google is a private company.

I'm really happy that one of the companies I work for has not started a campaign against Google. I'm glad they never gave it that much importance, and I'm thrilled they haven't told bloggers to boycott them and write letters to congressmen.
I can only hope they don't cave into the pressure of using another company's ranking system which will be launched for public use in about 2 weeks.
I won't use it.
I have serious reservations about visiting the blogs of some of my friends after the new system launches due to the type of tracking that will happen.
Anyway, I'm just over all the hate Google speech going on.
I use what I use, and won't be switching because other people can't grasp the fact that they made PR more important than it is, and violated the policies.
Report me, de-link me, whatever.
Just stop sending me emails asking me to boycott with you.

Posted by Kat at 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I got all 3 of the girls some awesome educational toys for Christmas.
I'm so excited!
The girls are going to love them!

I got Kayla, who is my step-niece, an Alphaball.
"Electronic Word Game makes spelling and word-building practice irresistible–in English and Spanish! Players choose a language setting, spin the trackball to scramble the letters of a word, then race to solve word puzzles."
It's perfect for her. She's at the age where she's really learning to spell more words, and this game makes it fun.
It looks cool too!

For Skye I got Animal Crackups.
They are little animal puzzles in sort of big shapes, that she can take apart, and put back together again.
"Flexible, washable plastic crackers lock together easily and can be mixed and matched for creative play. Snap together a horse and a duck to make a "dorse" or a rabbit and a pig for a "rig"."

For Susan, I got an animal hospital pretend set.
She loves animals and is already playing veterinarian, so this is the perfect gift for her too!
"Role play encourages students to practice oral language and writing skills while learning about the responsibilities of caring for pets. Sturdy, tri-fold board with built-in storage pockets allows quick and secure clean-up. Includes a brown puppy to care for."

I showed my sister all the toys and she loves them.
She is always buying them learning toys from Learning Resources, she gets their catalog, and just loves everything they have, so I knew these toys were the perfect choices for the girls for Christmas.
I can't wait to give them to them!

Posted by Kat at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

How hard is it to just sell a bare bones computer tower?
I just need a tower with an OS.
It doesn't need any virus or spyware, no office, none of that extra junk, just an OS.
I just need a freaking tower.
I have been hunting all over for a cheap tower to replace the boys with, and it comes with all kinds of crap they don't need.
They don't need a monitor, speakers, keyboard or mouse either.
Just the tower.
Can someone tell me where I can just buy a freaking tower, that's it.
Everything I am finding starts at $400 and goes up, and it comes with all kinds of crap we don't want or need.

Posted by Kat at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I saw one of the most beautiful bustiers ever on the local forums this morning.
One of the girls posted some pictures of some that she wanted to buy, and asked for opinions.
It was black with leather edging, a really neat design. I loved it, but all the other girls didn't.
They ended up picking a different red one that was made with satin.
Bright colors are not my style, but I need to ask her where she found that one, I'd love to see it, the price and stuff.
It was really pretty.

Posted by Kat at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When both Mark and Sebastian were babies, bedtime was a pain. They wanted to be rocked asleep, and just when you finally thought it was safe to get up and put them in their crib, they'd wake up and start crying again.
The loved motion, swinging, car rides, anything that kept them moving slowly.
I wish I had one of these baby beds then.
It's a baby hammock that cuddles the baby, and gently swings them.
So they get the motion they want, and also the cuddling from mom that they want.
Just check out this video, Mark would have loved this thing as a baby!
I had a swing, it sat him upright, but he would have stayed in it all day long if I had let him.
Once the swing wound down, he'd start crying, I'd go crank it again, and he'd go back to sleep.
This would have been absolutely perfect!

Posted by Kat at 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I hate crowds of people, and this coming Friday stars the dreaded holiday shopping season.
When I worked retail, it was like an adrenaline rush to be that busy for 8-12 hours.
Now, you would have to kill me and drag my corpse in there and slap my dead hand holding a credit card on the counter.
I'll do it all from home from the peace and quiet of my my own home.

I am having trouble though.
I don't know what to get the boys.
Yes, they want video games and stuff like that, but i want to give them each something really nice too.
I have looked at nice shoes, raymond weil watches, a new computer which they do need, and all kinds of other stuff.
I think I'm just going to get them a new computer.
They need one.
Theirs is just no longer working great at all.
I need to find a cheap place though, something under $300.
Yeah, like I'll be able to find something in that price range.

Posted by Kat at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

That sums up my day today.
Nothing new, nothing going on, just lots of boredom and an aching back from those damn tables I had to lay on.
I think the couch is calling me.

Posted by Kat at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Seriously, I'm hoping for a decent night tonight, wish I had one of those memory foam mattress pads or something.
After two days of laying on hard testing beds at the hospital, my back is spent!
It is so freaking stiff!

Anyway, the teens and I have been playing some Guitar Hero III tonight, and I noticed something.
There's no AC/DC and no Zeppelin.
What's up with that?
Two bands who had two of the greatest guitar players ever, and they are not in this game?
Crazy!
We heard a rumor there will be custom download song expansion packs with some tracks by at least AC/DC, and even some Queen.
That will be awesome.
We also read that there will be a Flyleaf song.
I don't know about that.
As long as it's not Cassie, I guess it will be ok.
I do not like the video I saw for that song, it is not the real video the band made, it is a user created video.
You can watch at your own risk.
But I warn you, it is graphic, it is footage from the Columbine massacre, put to the song by Flyleaf as they wrote it for the girl who supposedly said that she believed in God.
Ya know, I don't like Flyleaf anyway.
They came on the scene hiding the fact that they are a Christian band, and then used this girls tragic death, "to honor the people who stand up for God."
It annoys the crap outta me when bands hide that they are a Christian band.
If they are so damn proud of being Christian, just tell the people buying the music right from the get go.
Don't hide it in the liner notes, don't sneak stuff into the lyrics and dress all goth or do screamo so people can't understand the lyrics you're screeching out in God's name.

We actually had a conversation on the local forums about this the other day, how some bands hide it and don't tell the music listeners that they are Christian.
I just don't get the point of hiding something that they claim is such a huge part of their lives, the inspiration for their music, their saving grace, the reason they won a Grammy or MTV award ya know?
There are a lot of bands out there right now with a huge following and a lot of their fans have no idea they are Christian.
Like who?
Let me give you a small list.
Flyleaf of course, Norma Jean, As I lay Dying, Demon Hunter, August Burns Red, The Devil wears Prada, Maylene and the sons of disaster, Sinai Beach, Zao and Pillar.

Now I'm not saying these bands aren't good, they are, they have some great talent, but a lot of them hid the fact they are Christian. They play metal, death metal, screamo, and hardcore.
They have names that conjure up other imagery, they write most of their lyrics with no mention, they then have a song or two on each CD that is so clearly Christian, but it's never the songs that get released and played on the radio. The very songs that get kids to go buy the CD are not the Christian songs. It's the mainstream, played 20 times a day stuff, that gets kids to shell out money on the CDs.
Then they listen to the whole thing and realize they were duped.

Now Stryper, they came out, were right upfront and totally honest about it.

You knew immediately they were a Christian band. All their albums had religious names, bible verses, crosses in the design. Their latest CD is titled Reborn, so yeah, 100% honest about who and what they are.
I can appreciate that. At least I know if I see a Stryper CD in the store, I know exactly what I might be buying.
I know what you're thinking, Kat bought a Stryper CD?!
Well not a CD, but I did have a cassette tape of their very first album, and I even saw their very first tour right from the front row.
I have the pick and the bible they handed me, still.
Crazy huh?
I was 17, and that was the summer I saw every single band that toured the entire New England area.
I saw shows at the very tip of northern Maine, all the way down to Massachusetts.
All totaled, I saw 157 concerts from late April through the end of September.
I saw approximately 120 different bands, some of them more than once obviously.
That summer was the Aerosmith Permanent Vacation tour, and I saw them 7 times, Metallica 17 times, Stryper once, (hee hee) and countless others like Megadeath, Ozzy, and Queensryche.
Probably one of the best summers of my life.
I worked at the arcade just to have concert ticket money.
That was also long before ticketmaster started screwing people on prices.
No show was ever more than $17.50.
Yup, a single paycheck could pay for at least 8 shows, and some t-shirts.

Wow, I totally went off on that one eh?
Oh well, later days!

Posted by Kat at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I'm finished with the Imdium scan, I don't have to go back tomorrow. I don't know what they found, but they found something because they said nope, go home, do not come back tomorrow.
Feh.
It is a neat test though, claustrophobic, but neat how those radioactive cells appear on the screen.
I saw these two huge masses, organs, completely lit up like a Christmas tree, and was like WTF is that?!
The guy said that's your liver and kidneys, they make the white cells, that is totally normal.
I was like *phew* because let me tell ya, seeing two large organs all lit up when you know that the radioactive cells will light up the infected area, is something totally scary to see and not know what it is.
I admit I totally panicked thinking a couple organs had shut down or were really sick or something.
The guy doing the test wouldn't show me everything like the girl did yesterday, so I'm assuming he saw something and doesn't want me to freak out.
Well too bad, not knowing, freaks me out more.
I don't know when I'll get the results.

I came home, ate a few wings the teens ordered while I was gone, then we watched The Boondock Saints, and then the Outsiders.
They liked it. Watching it now, man, the music was so damn corny, but looking at that all-star cast when they were so young, impressive.
The Boondock Saints though, it's one of our favorite movies.
I could watch it all the time.
The accidental shooting of the cat gets me every time. I don't mean it upsets me, I mean it practically makes me snort soda out my nose it's so funny.
The language is rough, there is a ton of violence, but it's an incredible movie.
I don't think people should just go all vigilante, but you'll never hear me complain when a robber gets shot by a homeowner ya know?
I think we should always have the right to protect ourselves against the criminals.
If you break in my home, try to steal my stuff, threaten harm against me and my family, I will take you down.
The law here in Florida says I can, and believe me, I will.
I don't own a gun (yet) but I have several weapons that I have hidden in various places just in case I can't get to another room to get the weapon.
I have stuff and will use it.
I wish more states had better gun laws.
I mean, I was one of several people who got to review a couple safety and self defense products, and more people would have done them, except their states do not allow them to even own pepper spray, never mind a gun.
In those states, if someone dials 9-1-1, the police better hurry up and get there then.
People should be allowed to protect themselves and their families, and if you won't allow that, then get there pronto when they call for help.

Posted by Kat at 6:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Man, I really hope we didn't all eat something bad last night, but so far Sebastian and I have been taking turns clogging up the toilets this morning.
Maybe it's just the natural bowel cleansing abilities of MSG, but I do feel lighter.
Ha hahah!

I need to take a shower and get ready to get my butt back to the hospital to be scanned again.
It's not so bad, only takes 45 minutes, but it's so close to your face it's like being in a box.
Once it moves down and you ca see the ceiling again, it's ok, seems to go faster and that's not so bad.
I just don't want to go back ya know?
I'm like over this test already.
But when I get home, I'll tell you what it shows you on the screen later.
It is kinda neat.

By the time I get home, the mail should be here, and Netflix is sending The Outsiders.
The boys have never seen it!
I don't know why I've never shown it to them, and I know it's old, but it's one of those stories that is just so good, and the boys are the right age to see it now and understand it all.
I know, cheesy, but I remember reading it in school and being impressed with it, and then when it came out as a movie in 1983 (holy hell I'm old) it was just an awesome way to bring the book to life.
I had a cool teacher that year, she had us reading so many classics, writing, expanding what we knew from our limited lives, to all these things around us, possibilities.
She died when I was a senior in high school.
I think our entire class who had her in 7th and 8th grade, and then when she moved up to teach 11th grade English lit and we had her again, felt the impact of her loss.
She was one of those teachers who told you where you made a mistake, but turned around and praised you for taking a risk with your writing.
She never just criticized, she never just circled misspelled words in red pen, she would tell you things like just clean these areas us, and this will be a great story, we can submit it to the writing competition or have it printed in the paper.
She gave you something to go for.
She handed us books the school didn't want us to read, she allowed us not to be censored.
Every now and then I think of some of the amazing teachers I had and wish my sons had teachers like them. They cared, they actually taught, they let you explore the world around you.

Man, I'm sitting here rambling, I have things to take care of, shower, dishes, stuff.
Later days!

Posted by Kat at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I love who I have my accounts with now, but I keep hearing more about WAMU (Washington Mutual) checking accounts again.
When they first opened up here, I went in to get an account, and ended up walking out due to poor service, but people keep talking about how much better they are getting all the time.
Do you use them?
If so, what do you think?

I don't have a standard checking account, mine is more like a debit account, but I can cash checks, get direct deposits, get cashers checks for things I need a paper check for, but it's not like a normal bank account.
Maybe it's time for me to give them another try if people are so pleased with their service.

Posted by Kat at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I went back to the hospital at 5:15 for my Imdium scan.
I actually got there at about 10 till the hour, and they took me right in.
That is such a claustrophobic test!
It's worse than any MRI I have ever done.
That machine is inches from your face, like if you stick your tongue out, you'd be touching the scanner.
Ack!
But it was only 45 minutes, not too bad. I won't have any results till probably after Thanksgiving, as I have to go back tomorrow at noon, and again Sunday at noon, to be scanned again.

My sis and the teens, and my niece Skye, went to the park while I was doing that, and then we all went out for ninese (Chinese) food.
It was so yummy!
I love the Oriental Buffet so much!

Then we swung by my bank so I could get some money from my checking accounts.
I need money to be able to get back and forth from the hospital tomorrow and Sunday.
I like how I can use my various debit cards to withdraw money from just one ATM and not be charged any fees.
That's one of the awesome things about them, plus I can do all my banking and bill paying on line.
I ended up taking money from two different accounts, because I use each account differently.
I'll explain why I do that sometime, but it's a really good system for me.
I can either withdraw from fast cash or checking.
One account I do fast cash, and one account checking.
Again, I'll explain why sometime.

Then sis brought us home and I let her borrow my Netflix copy of Ratatouille to watch tonight with the girls and step-niece Kayla.
I really think all of them will love the movie, even Dean.
It's just that good.

Ok, I need to get busy on those emails huh?
By now, people probably think I've totally ignored them, I haven't, I've just been very busy.
Later days!

Posted by Kat at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Would that really be so wrong?
I mean, just the incompetent twits who deserve it, and the overbearing self righteous ass kissers.
Come on, who would miss them?

This is how my day was supposed to go.
9am, check in, get blood drawn out, come back home.
Go back at 1:15pm, have white radioactive blood cells put in, do the 1 hour Imdium scan, go to CT for a lower lumbar and pelvic scan.
Be home sometime around 5-6pm.

Do you think that's how it went?
You guessed no?
Good answer!
You get a cookie!

I went in at 9am, they drew about a pint of blood, used an iv line.
Told me I could not leave the hospital grounds.
They called down to CT to beg them to squeeze me in early so my whole day would not be wasted.
CT gives in, I wait an hour and a half for them to rush me through the CT scans.
Radioactive blood guy has my cell number so he can reach me anywhere on HOSPITAL grounds, (he made it clear if I left, I'd be in some sort of trouble) and leaves me to wander aimlessly until he calls.

So I ate lunch, a really crappy lunch in the hospital restaurant.
I wandered between floors, I wandered the gift shop.
I ended up buying two packs of xmas cards they had. They were totally cute!
I then got the call to go back upstairs to have my blood given back to me and do the scan.
Wrong!

I get up there and he has this tiny itsty bitsy syringe with only a small bit of blood in it, he injects that into the line, and tells me to go home and come back at 5:15pm for a 30 minute scan.

Wait a freaking minute what?!

Yes, I have to go back tonight and do a 30 minute scan. Then, if they don't get the images of the infection, I have to go back tomorrow at noon.
And then again on Sunday at noon, and then Monday at noon.
No one told me anything about a 24, 36, 72 hour deal on this test, but apparently that's what it is.
Ugh. My whole freaking weekend will possibly be spent at the hospital, and no results will be available until they get all the images they need to get.
Lovely.
I have absolutely no answers to why my white cells are always so high.
I don't have the answer to one of the questions, it's still up in the air.
As for the CT scan results, nope, I don't have those either and can't have them until they are read by a radiology specialist.
Kill.

So sis is coming over after work, she'll be taking me there for my test tonight, and then we'll all be going out to dinner.
I'm tired, irritated, drained.
Good thing we're eating out, it would be microwave burrito night at Casa Cooper otherwise.

Posted by Kat at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just fixed my AC again.
It's always dripping, well not always, just sort of randomly drips, makes my carpet underneath it all wet, then I have to fix it.
I've become quite good at repairing electronic stuff, home appliances, plumbing.
I'm a Jackie-of-all-trades.
Ha!

I'm sitting on a ton of emails and comment replies, I am sorry for that.
I have a lot going on and I hope that after tomorrow I can explain it all, and laugh at how stupid I was worrying so much, or I'll have some major news to break.
We'll just have to wait and see.
In the mean time, I'm taking out piercings, and removing jewelry.
I know this routine by heart.

I wish I had some mind blowing something or other to say, something other than all this medical garbage that I'm so sick of talking about, that I'm sure others are sick of reading it.
Man, I really wish this wasn't the all-consuming piece of crap that has taken over my life.
I'm trying so hard to just get through a single hour of any day, without thinking about it, having to call about it, deal with it, worry about it, and talk about it.
I had the surgery so I could get back to life, and here I am, almost 2 years later, still stuck in medical mode.
I need to get out of it and get back to living mode.

But Mark told me something tonight that made me feel a bit better.
He said, "Mom, sometimes you're gonna have to be down in order to get back up."
And I know he's right.
Sometimes you have to get thrown off the horse, fall off the bike, come down from where you are, in order to find your way back up.
So this is my down time, and here's looking at my up time.

Posted by Kat at 9:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

It's just the boys and I for Thanksgiving, we've come to enjoy just having the 3 of us alone together, and we have our own silly traditions of video game battles and horror movies about killer turkeys and tomatoes.

This year I asked them if they wanted the big huge meal we do every year, or would they prefer something else.
They both agreed that all we really eat is the turkey, the mashed potatoes, the kick ass turkey gravy from Publix, plain green beans, Hawaiian rolls, and some ice cream pie.
I usually buy the big meal kit Publix has, which includes the turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, this nasty cornbread stuffing we end up tossing out after a week because I hate to waste but no one eats it, green bean casserole which all 3 of us detest with a burning passion, and scalloped potatoes.
That's a ton of food for 3 people, and more than half of it gets wasted.
Mark is the only one who eats cranberry sauce, but he doesn't like the Publix stuff, he likes the crap in the can, shaped like the can.

So I'm just going to buy a huge turkey because we can eat turkey till it starts to smell funny in the fridge, the Publix mashed potatoes and their turkey gravy, some fresh green beans, a big package of Hawaiian rolls, and an ice cream pie.
And of course, Mark's can shaped cranberry sauce.
I know that doesn't sound like much of a Thanksgiving, but it's more than enough for the 3 of us and the life we live.

We'll have more time to fight each other in video game battles, and watch stupid movies.
We'll watch Shaun of the Dead, A Christmas Story, and whatever else we feel like watching.
We also have a best out of 3 battle planned for Guitar Hero III.
It will be based on total over all score, not how many notes or percentage of notes hit.
It's the only fair way cuz I suck at hitting every note, but I'm pretty good at getting a high score for doing other things.
The teens thought this was hysterically funny the other day.
I played a song almost all the way through, I totally screwed up at the end which ended my song, but I won an achievement badge for completing 90% of the song but failing it.
It awarded me like 250 points for screwing up. Ha!
See, there's $20 on the line to the winner, it will be paid by me, so yeah, if I can score some more song failures, I'll totally win the battle. *LOL*

On Friday morning, my sis will be coming down in the morning with the girls, and we're all going to go out to breakfast and then go do something totally crazy.
We're going to go to the mall and wander around on black Friday.
I must have been out of it when I agreed to that, i hate large crowds, but eh, it'll be an interesting people watching day.
I'll bring my camera and see what kinds of shots I can get.

Posted by Kat at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I just got done doing my recertification for health benefits, my medicare and medicaid supplement, tried to pay my part D drug coverage but the system is down of course, and trying to prepare myself for tomorrow's tests.
I have the Indium scan and CT scan tomorrow.
Kinda nervous about what kind of infection that Indium is going to find.
Keep your fingers crossed that it's just the iliac screw being broken ok?
I know that sounds nutty, an atheist asking for lucky fingers, and I don't really mean it.
Prayer and wishes have been found to actually have negative effects on the minds of patients who knew they were being prayed for.
A study was done a few years ago among heart patients, half were prayed for and told people were praying, and half were not prayed for and not told they were not being prayed for.
The patients who had been prayed for and told, actually had more stress and worry than the ones with no prayer.
Interesting right?
So yeah, no prayers, no good wishes, just science.

Google page rank is moving again.
Down.
Again.
In the big scheme of things, PR is not something I actually care about right now, but in case anyone else wants to email me and tell me I'm at 0 just like 90% of the sites on the net, yup, I know.
And no I don't think it has anything to do with sidebar buttons.
That's a ridiculous thing to say, because there are sites with no buttons, no ads, nada, and they've all been hit too.
Then there are a few blogs with a gazillion advertising buttons on their sites, that didn't get whacked down, so come on people, quit panicking and falling for the oldest advertisement scam in the world.
What scam is that?
That an advertisers competitor is to blame for the problems.
Drink pepsi? Well, the coke makers are gonna tell you how much pepsi sucks, pepsi is gonna tell you coke sucks, and company 3p is gonna tell you that it's company p2's buttons fault.
The facts are very clear, Google is punishing blatant advertising, and you can remove buttons and run your own ranking methods, but google is still going to punish blatant ads.
Learn to deal with what you do for a living, and ignore the crap in the middle.
If company 3p has found a way to go around google rank, and can convince their adverts that real rank based on traffic is what is important, then use that.
But just as with any type of ranking system, there will be people who game it and inflate hits.
Let the games begin I say!
I love a good show!
But for me and my life right now, today, tomorrow, until test results come back, page rank is so small on the list of do-care-about.
It's way down there.

Posted by Kat at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sebastian and I did make it out to the store this afternoon to get all those dry goods we needed, and we swung into Walgreen's first to pick up some more Urine Gone.
They are the only store that has it, and I'd rather just buy it locally if I can, rather than order it, but I do order it from time to time too.
I'm telling you, this stuff works on pet odors so freaking awesome!

But anyway, as we were checking out, I notice this bin at the register with a product in it called Ready Brush.
These are individually packaged toothbrushes, with toothpaste already in the bristles.
Now maybe these have been around for awhile, the cashier tells me they just got them in, but I was intrigued enough to buy one and test it out.
They are airline friendly, and made in the USA, so what the heck right?
So after our dinner of frozen pizza and frozen wings, and a movie, (best movie I've seen in years by the way) I decided to give it a test run.

It's a neat and tidy package, compact enough for travel, the toothpaste is in the bristles, just wet the brush and brush your teeth.
You can actually see the toothpaste in the bristles too.

So I turned on the water, wet the brush, and went to town cleaning the old enamel.

The package says that the bristles are soft, but they were definitely not soft when I first ran them over my teeth.
Maybe the toothpaste in the bristles made it feel hard at first, but after a few minutes of brushing they did loosen up.
The toothpaste is a nice minty flavor, not overly strong, not weak, I'd say just right.
I brushed for two minutes, spit, rinsed, and then popped the brush in my holder.
It's a good solid toothbrush, and even though it's meant to be disposable, I just couldn't see tossing it away after one use. (That's the cheapo in me)

They are .99 cents each, and I can see these as perfect for the constant traveler, the road trippers, camping, and other such events that call for a toothbrush but you don't want to have to carry a toothbrush case and a tube of paste around with you.
Just rip open, wet, and brush.
I really like the idea, and because they are airline friendly, I can really see these coming in handy on vacations.
Just grab about 5 per person for the flights and hotels, I can even see buying a few of these to tuck in my purse for when going out to dinner.
Eat, excuse yourself to the restroom, and really freshen your breath and clean your teeth instead of an after dinner mint.
I'll probably pick up a few more on my next visit to Walgreen's.

Posted by Kat at 9:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I rarely ever log in to Myspace, but I just did to go through messages and friends requests, and I had a friends request and a message that made my eyeballs bleed.
Public education failed this girl in a big way.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOK well baisically im judi ( waves ) im 17 i live in kingsteignton woo hoo ( not reli dat xciting ) ive jus done my as levels well drama thts it!.i av sum reli gr8 friends n sum not so gr8 friends but im not guna name names cough annie cough!!! i work but aint guna say where ill leave tht up 2 u 2 find out! ill give u a clue its the home ov the wopper!! i av a GORGEOUS boyfriend called colin he is my world! love u baby! any way im runnin away so COMMENT ME PLEASE i feel unloved! kisses x x x

And I know it says she's only 17, why she requested to be friends with me i have no idea, but she does not look 17 at all.
She looks like she's in her mid-30's.
I'm not kidding.
If she's really 17, she's had a really rough life already.

Posted by Kat at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I'm not so sure it isn't all dogs either, I've never encountered a dog that didn't have that dog smell.
You know what I'm talking about right?
That wet, slobbery drool, dirty, mixed with dog shit smell.
A dog can jump on you for a split second, lick your hand, and the entire rest of the day, you smell the dog smell.
It's on your clothes and skin, even if you wash your hands completely and with scalding hot water.
The smell remains.
I hate it.

We watched Spider-Man 3 last night, and it was ok. They killed people off too quick, I hate the MJ story line with a passion.
Tonight we will watch Ratatouille because I heard it was pretty good.
I hope it is, I really need a laugh right now.
I have so much on my mind, and I have tried talking about it and am met with a brick wall of not wanting to deal with it, so yeah, we'll watch a movie and laugh to blank out the thoughts.

I need to go grocery shopping, just go pick up some food, cat food and litter, tp, stuff like that.
I don't want to go, but I will.
I have paid all the bills, paid back the loan, and need to budget the rest of it so I can live ok for the next few weeks.
Gah, there I go again thinking about what I have lost and how the freaking hell I'm going to try and catch up again.
I'm gonna go take a shower now and get moving.
Later days.

Posted by Kat at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I called medicare and filed a formal billing complaint on Doc F. for the constant over charges.
I explained the "we lost your paperwork" line I heard so many times, how I was forced to pay out of pocket even after handing them my insurance cards and letting them copy them, verify them, and file them.

Every time I went to his office, I was charged something different, they couldn't even be consistent on what my wrongful co-pay was.
Just to let you know, my legitimate co-pay amount was exactly $2.00.
I paid that amount once.
I paid $25.91.
I paid $65.73.
I paid $68.91.
I paid $34.72, and so on and so on.
There was a visit I went to and expected the $2.00 co-pay, and they told me it was $65.92.
I didn't have that amount, and so they refused to see and treat me.
I went outside and sat at the bus stop, cried a few minutes, and then called my sister.
She had them charge it to her CC because they will not treat a patient without being paid first.
That is their rule.
Every visit was exactly the same, the payments were made before even being treated, so it's not like I was seen and treated, then charged according to what services were actually provided.
They made every patient pay before services were rendered.
Every visit was identical.
Every single time I went, they claimed they lost my insurance cards and information.
I would hand it to them, they would copy it, call and verify billing, and put the pieces of paper in my record file.
Then they would still charge me.
If they did this to me, and I was like the youngest patient they had, I am sure they did it to other patients who were elderly, dropped off by nursing home or medical transportation buses.

I then called medicare quality control and filed a complaint about all the tests, all the doctors that he was sending me to, all the tests he was ordering and some of them he made sure accepted medicare, and some he made sure I had to pay out of pocket.
I believe there was a method to his billing craziness.

I then called and filed a complaint with the state medical board, they are sending me all the forms to fill out and send back.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get something to eat, and attempt to relax.
I am still shaking from the events of yesterday.

Posted by Kat at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

My sister has used a self storage place here in town a few times when she went from house living to apartment living, and then back to house living again.
It's the only way to keep all your furniture and stuff in between moves so you don't have to start all over again.
She used a place down on Bee Ridge, but when I was the shipping and receiving manager for Pier 1, (yes, I do totally miss that job. I miss working so much) we sometimes had to use a public storage unit for over flow.

At one point during the years I worked there, we had gone from a manager who kept a reasonable supply on the sales floor and stockroom, to a hyper manager who thought 30 of every wicker piece of furniture needed to be had at all times.
It was crazy when she took over ordering our furniture pieces.
I remember very clearly when she took over the job from me, the one I had been trained to do and be reasonable about.
I mean really, how many people are actually going to buy a wicker chaise?

But anyway, she took it over and that very first shipment was atrocious.
The truck driver opened the back door and I nearly fell over.
Angela (Angela was our first assistant manager, I was second assistant and shipping manager) and I looked at each other and said almost in harmony, "WTF?"
There were literally, 30 pieces of every piece of furniture we sold in the store.
No one ever had come in to the store and ordered whole sets.
It was very rare that someone would come in and order the entire line of one style of furniture, so this shipment was insane.

We unloaded it in our usual time frame though.
Angela and I had an awesome system for getting that truck unloaded and into the stockroom.
But when we finished, there was absolutely no room in that stockroom to walk.
There was no path for safely escaping through the fire exit, the fire alarm was buried under a stack of wicker chairs.
The fire extinguisher was nowhere to be seen, and Angela and I made the executive decision to move more than half of the shipment to the storage unit down on Clark road.
We didn't care what the new manager would say, we cared about what the fire marshal would say if he walked in.
We knew that leaving all that stuff was a serious hazard, and we'd get nailed for it.
So we grabbed the store delivery truck, loaded it with about 15 of everything, (not all in one trip mind you) and made multiple trips to the storage unit.
It was done so quickly and flawlessly, that the manager never even realized we moved half the shipment.
We continued to have to do it this way until she finally moved on to a new store, and Angela was promoted to store manager.
We then went back to our normal ordering process and eventually were able to get rid of the storage unit over stock during our annual 75% off sale.

Posted by Kat at 12:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There were two large blogging web conferences this past weekend in Vegas.
I was originally planning on going, but because of events with the company that was planning one of the events, I decided not to go.
I was one of the very first to register for it too.
At the time I registered for it, I was very much excited about the idea and the company, so I logged in and registered, and even got free admission to the one, and some free tickets to the other.
But as time passed and things with this company took a nasty downward spiral with their customer service and treatment of people, I couldn't in good conscience attend something I no longer believed in.
I wasn't the only one who registered and didn't attend either.
Apparently only 50 people showed up out of at least 150.
So all the guilt people have been trying to lay on me, yeah, lay it somewhere else, others saw it the same way I did.

But at least this one company made a way for people to watch it on line using some web conferencing technology.
I was able to watch various parts of the sessions along with others.
I would say at the highest number of people who were watching one of the web seminars at the same time I was, there were 32 people watching.
That number kept going down as one of the sessions dragged on and on.
I honestly couldn't understand why this particular person they had speaking, was chosen for a blogging conference, they run a shopping website.
Maybe they had said something that related to blogging before I logged in about 7 minutes after her session began, but I watched the whole session, and got nothing out of it.

Since people have come home and started blogging and posting about it, I see now that my initial reactions and concerns were not alone.
There are other people who are having some serious doubts, and even more serious concerns over it.
I'm glad that these people are sharing their honest feelings about it.
The overwhelming sickly sweet devotion and berating me over my feelings, was starting to wear very thin.
I have been told a few times that people are drinking the kool-aid and loving it.
Some people are not drinking it and that's good.
I think people need to remember something very important about loving and drinking down the kool-aid.
Every one at Jonestown, died.

Posted by Kat at 12:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I know it will be a long time before I can get off the pain medication because of the possible iliac screw removal surgery, but when it does come time, due to the many years they have had me on pain drugs, I'll end up in a drug rehab.
I have no doubt about that now.
I know what they've done to me and my body.
I know that my attempts to wean myself off of the ever increasing doses they had me on, have failed miserably.
My body craves them now.
It is such an incredible feeling, such a disgusting feeling, to know that my body needs these drugs, to know that a single day without them, sends me into a very ugly place that no one should ever know.

Many years ago, I did a stint in a drug and alcohol rehab for both things.
I survived it, I hated every minute I was there, I didn't like being force fed the religion they claimed was needed to heal me.
I hated the sappy counselors.
I hated the blame they placed on music, and how they made my use the fault of the music I listened to, the people I hung around with, when it was entirely my own decisions.

But this, this is what they have done to me.
Instead of fixing the very real broken screw, they just upped the dosage and count.
Instead of 1 pill every 6 hours, they upped the strength and amount to 2 pills every 4 hours.
I went from having 180 pills a month, to 360.
They held my appointments till the day they knew my pills would run out, then forced me to take other drugs, see more and more doctors who put me on more drugs, before they would give me the drugs my body now needed to feel "normal".

People have often remarked at how I can possibly function on the amounts of pills I take.
I tell them, just as I'm telling you here, I function because my body is used to it, because my body doesn't need them for pain, they barely touch the pain anymore.
My body uses them to feel good.
Without them, I am sick, so sick I cry for help, so sick, I beg to be taken to the ER.
I feel like I'm dying.
I blame them for this.
I blame them for the condition I am in today.
I hold Doctor F. personally responsible for not listening to me the many times I told him something was wrong with my left hip, and instead of doing something about that, he simply increased the drugs and blamed it on me aging closer to 40.
It will take going to rehab, around the clock care, to get my body off of all these drugs they told me I needed to take.
And for that, I am beyond angry.

Posted by Kat at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After my last post, I decided to go for my daily walk, help take off some of this stress and work it out so I didn't take it out on anyone else.
I walked around my neighborhood, some of my neighbors have really nice homes and gardens, but one of my neighbors goes a wee bit overboard.
As I was walking down the street, one of his lawn aerators was spraying way out into the road, completely missing his lawn.
There are droughts in some parts of our country, and here's this guy watering the street.
*sigh*
I kept walking and looking and another neighbor had a gorgeous yard, flowers everywhere, roses, wildflowers, all sorts of beautiful flowers and plants everywhere.
He takes part in the natural Florida lawns, but he's added other plants like roses and peonies. It looks gorgeous.
He was out there plating some new grass seed.
Some parts of his lawn are dead from the scorching sumer heat and the lack of the normal seasonal rain.
He had seed and sod, and was busily working away on his yard.
One of these walks, I'll go take some pictures of it.
It's the kind of yard I'd love to have.
So beautiful and peaceful looking.
Like just looking at it calmed me down and made me smile.
I would love to be able to do something as beautiful in my yard, I've lived here 9 years and the best I've done is keep the lawn mowed.
Maybe tomorrow on my walk, I'll take the shots.
It's really gorgeous.

Posted by Kat at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have so much to do here, I have some posts that I need to get written ASAP, and I was trying very hard not to flood you all, but I am running out of time thanks to the latest events in my life.
I need to get them done, they will still all be about me posts, but you know.

I am sorry for my outbursts.
I am sorry for anyone who may have had to deal with my wrath today, but man, I have felt like a circus dog for weeks now, jumping through hoop after hoop for this doctor, only to have him turn around and drop me as his patient because I couldn't get appointments as fast as he wanted me to.
I am beyond angry at him.
He's put me through so much stress, so much stress, it felt like I was going to have a heart attack a few times, that my head would explode.
Stress makes me sick, I have been sick for weeks on end trying to get all of this done, and he was unsatisfied with my human abilities to force people to give me immediate appointments.
I am just so sorry to anyone who has had to deal with me and my stress issues.
I have work to do, things to take care of because I need that money.
I've paid out more money than I could rightfully afford to pay, and it's financially killed me.
It will take me weeks to recover from the amount I have lost.

So anyway, there may end up being 4 back to back posts done this evening.
I have to get them done, no choice.
I apologize if this upsets anyone, but hey, at least I don't work for the post Nazis anymore.
They can't penalize me for doing what I need to do on my own blog.
Every cloud does have a silver lining, you just have to find it.

Posted by Kat at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You and your entire office need to be shut down for incompetence.

Today, your nurse Christian called me to verify my appointment on Thursday, then asked me if I had all these other appointments done yet.
When I explained that no I hadn't, but they are all scheduled, she said I need to call you back.
An hour passed and a list of demands was made to me.
All these doctors needed to be called and told to have them call her.
I jumped through hoop after hoop calling all these places the first time, and now today I was doing it again.
All the calls were made, my phone was in non-stop use the entire day to the point the battery finally bit the dust at 3pm.
By right before that happened, your office nurse called me one last time to inform me that I was no longer a patient of yours because I failed to get these appointments done within a months time.

Excuse me?
Do you honestly think I have that much pull or authority with any doctors office, that I can call them and demand an immediate appointment with them just because that's what you want?
I did make the appointments, no they weren't immediate, but they were all scheduled, every single one, just like you told me to do.

And do we need to even discuss the amount of times your office over billed me because they lost my insurance paperwork and made me pay it out of pocket?
Of course you don't want to talk about that, it would be admitting that you over billed because you could, because you refused to see any patient until we had paid.
By my calculations, you owe me over $500 in over charges, and believe me, I will get every penny of that back because medicare is getting a phone call about your billing practices.

How about all those doctors you sent me to, who didn't take any insurance at all, and forced me to pay out of pocket?
How about the fact that your office failed to fax any of the needed records to any of these doctors you wanted me to see, yet they still scheduled all these appointments anyway?
No?
Don't want to talk about that either?
I can understand, it would mean admitting that you have an office staff full of incompetent nitwits, who stand around drinking starbucks and eating delivery food instead of faxing records where they needed to go.
Believe me, I understand how you just want to get rid of the loud mouth patient who made you very aware of all your flaws today, but guess what asshole?
I am calling the state medical board and medicare, and filing formal complaints.
I jumped through all your hoops, I paid hundreds out of pocket when I shouldn't have, I did every single thing you wanted me to do, and it still wasn't good enough for you.
Maybe having a state insurance investigator visit will be fun, maybe having your medical license revoked for malpractice is something you were hoping for cuz guess what douchebag?
It's coming.
If I have any thing at all to do with it, I will have you shut down.
I'll make calls, I'll write letters, I'll do whatever it takes to have your doors closed.

Posted by Kat at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This was said to myself and another person on the local forums a few minutes ago, and it took everything I had within me to not tell this teacher in training where to stick it.

I'm not a teacher?!
Who the hell are you, to tell me, I'm not a teacher?!

I've been teaching my sons since the day they were born.
I'm the one who taught them how to talk.
How to walk.
I taught them their ABC's and 123's.
I taught them how to use the toilet.
I taught them their colors, their shapes, their ages.
I taught them how to say their names, and not only that, but I'm the one who taught them how to write their names correctly spelled..
Have you taught a 2 year old boy how to hold his pencil and write out the name "Sebastian" so he knows that is his name?

I'm the one who still teaches them to spell and use proper grammar, because teachers want to have them use a spell check machine instead of teaching them how to spell.
I'm the one who makes them write out their math problems in long hand, because the teachers want them to use a calculator that does it for them.

I'm the one who taught them who Fidel Castro, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and who a million other important people were, because the teachers didn't.

I'm the one who still teaches them right from wrong.
I'm the one who teaches them that the bully is not the victim of anything but his own problems.
I'm the one who teaches them that they can do anything they set their mind to learn.
I'm the one who teaches them to respect their teachers, even when that teacher is wrong.

I'm the one who taught them please and thank you, and to hold a door open for a lady.
I'm the one who taught them to clean up after themselves.
I'm the one who taught them to respect women.

I am the one who is here day in and day out, teaching my sons all the things the public education system has failed to teach them.

No I have not gone to college to become a teacher with a degree.
But I have taught them far more than any teacher ever has or ever will.
How dare you say I am not a teacher and have no idea how to teach?

I have been teaching since the day they were born, and I pick up, where you fail.

Posted by Kat at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I am so stiff this morning from the chill, I can barely move.
My body is actually leaning to the left, those left side muscles just will not straighten up, and I've been awake having taken my meds, a warm shower, and attempting to get it to relax.
And it's still stuck, left leaning, twitching in pain.

But why am I pissed off?

I'm pissed off because I've been through and will continue to go through, the medical testing nightmare.
I've had blood drawn so many times I nearly passed out, I've been poked, prodded, told it was my hormones all out of whack, here, have some testosterone to inject into your ass every Saturday because it will help you with the pain, and here, have some more pain drugs.

The idea that it's a broken screw causing this pain all this time, and no one bothered to listen, truly listen to me, every time they asked how I was feeling and I said very plainly, "My left hip is always killing me doc", says so much about how they didn't listen to me, I'm infuriated.

I have 14 different medications to take. Most of those daily, some of those weekly, and some to inject into myself all because no, it's not the surgical pins and screws, it's your age and your hormones, here, have some more drugs.
Do they even realize what they have done to my body?
Do they know what happens to me if I miss even a single dose of the medicine they have put me on?
I get sick, and I am in agony, writhing in pain, puking, pooping, feeling as though I am dying, until I take one of their magic pills.
They don't touch the pain in my hip, they keep my body from going into withdrawals.
My body is addicted to the pain medication they have had me on for over 6 years now.
Yeah, go ahead and miss a dose, go ahead and try to wean myself off and just get by with Tylenol.
That ain't happening.

And now I'm being subjected to a new gyno doc. How the flying fuck would you like me to put my legs up in those stirrups and be ok with that broken screw in my left hip, while you spread the stirrups wider apart than my body would like to go?
And yes, let's do another hematology run because someone dropped the ball and on paperwork.
Again.
And yes, let's run an Idium scan to find the reason your white cells are so high.
Do any of you fucking nitwits think my white cells are so high because OMG! I have a broken fucking screw floating in there, and my body is trying to fight off the invading piece of floating metal!!
And yes, oh yes please, send me to a therapist so we can find out if after all these years on pain meds, if I'm depressed, because that's the standard with long term chronic pain sufferers.

Does any of this sound like depression to you?
Let me tell you what it really is because it certainly is NOT depression.
It's anger over being poked, prodded, drained, scanned, yanked, bent, stabbed, injected, force fed drug after drug after drug, and telling me it's because I'm old and my hormones are all outta whack and that's why I'm in pain.
It's anger over not being listened to when I called them and told them something popped in there months ago.
It's anger over constantly being asked how I feel and when I say I'm in pain, they say no, that's not what we mean, how do you feel?
I feel like ripping your fucking heads off and shitting down all your fucking necks!
I feel like taking a sword and jamming it into your hips and breaking your hip joint so that you will finally understand that I'm in pain and thanks to your complete lack of listening skills, my body is now addicted to all these fucking drugs and I am going through medical testing fucking hell all over again to fix this problem I told you fucking morons about months ago!!!!
Do you really want to know how I feel doc?
I don't think you do.

Posted by Kat at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am absolutely not buying Gears Of War again.

I've already bought this same game twice now.
That's about $120 between the game cost and shipping, and I'm not doing it again.
They can cry till their eyes bleed this time.

Here's our box. Isn't it pretty? Such a fun game too.

Here's the disc. Do you see it?

Do you see it? No?
Let me show you.

See the crack?
That's not a scratch, it's an actual crack in the disc.
The xbox cannot read the disc if it has a crack in it.
The boys have tried it a million times, I took one look at it and shouted at the top of my lungs,
"NO!!!! I am NOT buying this fucking game again! No!!!"

They sat there staring at me, I don't think they truly believe me, but I mean it this time.
I am not buying that game again.
Ever.

Posted by Kat at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Most of you who have been reading me for any time, know I live in a duplex but would love to own my own home someday.
As more time passes however, I am seriously rethinking the full size, single lot home, in favor of condos.
Why?
Because a full size home is just a bigger space for me to clean and store stuff I don't really want or need.
Oh, those jeans you haven't worn since high school? Let's keep them, we have the closet space!

So I've been browsing the condos for sale section of the local on line paper, looking for a 3 bedroom within a reasonable price range, various amenities like lawn mowing and stuff that we would no longer have to take care of.
I want life and home to be easier. I have this overwhelming urge to purge all the unneeded, unwanted garbage from my life because I'm worried about not being able to do much in my future.
No, not financial wise, I know I should be able to always find a way to make money from home, but physical wise.
I am scared for my physical future and there will be a day the teens no loner live with me and a full size home, yeah, I won't be able to take care of it on my own.
So I'm looking to buy a condo sometime in the next 5 to 10 years, so when that day comes and I am living on my own and my health is not what it should be, at least I won't be outside with a walker or cane, attempting to mow a lawn.

Posted by Kat at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was wicked way tired after the boys came home around 2:40 this afternoon, so I laid down on the couch and just let them play games quietly.
I sprang awake from my sleep a few minutes ago and did the upon wake restroom run, and then rushed over here to tell the dream to you.

I was laying on the bottom of a set of bunk beds, George Clooney was in the top bunk, and we were discussing whether or not the payment I'm supposed to be getting would actually arrive in my paypal account.
The company that promised the payments has a terrible track record with me, they cannot be trusted, and the entire thing feels like a hoax.
George kept telling me to put the post back up if the money doesn't come through and let people fight with me.

He said they deserve to have the biggest fight not just over this promised pay stuff, but because of everything that they have done and are planning to do.
He said what was happening was scary, that he can't believe the absolute blind faith, how people are sheep for a man in a shiny coat and a big cheesy grin.
He said, "Just look at me Kat," and he hung upside down from the top bunk flashing his signature smile. "Look at this smile, look at me, tell me I could promise you the world and you wouldn't believe me?"
I said I probably would, "After all, you're George f'n Clooney."
He laughed and said exactly!

He said he's been reading right along with me and he's scared for the sheep, he sees them getting deeper and deeper into something that they may end up with no control over, Big Brother in any form, is still a Big Brother.
He reminded me not to take sips of either drink, and stick to my diet coke.
Then he asked me about my child support, did it come in today?
I screamed out "Let me check!" and with that I was awake, and I really did yell it, the kids were like mom, check what?
I have since checked and no, it's not on the card yet.
*sigh*
George, thanks for the dream invasion, even if it was just talking.
No worries on the drinks, I can't have that much sugar anyway.

Posted by Kat at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

There was a post on the local forums this morning about another one of those gps vehicle tracking success stories.
Push the button, it helps saves someones life.
I can't find the link for the thread now, it's been a busy posting morning over there, but it was about a mom who was having a heart attack and the little 3 year old unbuckled herself from her car seat, a 5-point harness, after her mom had pulled over into a parking lot and wasn't responding to the toddler, and the little girl knew to push the gps tracking system button on the car, and help was dispatched.
She was barely able to say what was wrong other than mommy wasn't awake, but it was enough to get help set immediately.

We live in such a technology filled age of computers and cell phones, and ways to reach out for help when we need it, and I think about the boys driving.
It's not enough to have a cell phone with them, what if they are unable to speak ya know?
What if their cell doesn't have enough power to give off the gps signal, or too far away from a tower?
A gps button in the car would work if they could push it.
Even if they would be unable to speak, the company who answers those would be able to locate the car and send police to at least investigate the situation.

I think it should be mandatory in all new vehicles and not come with a hefty subscription fee. It is the type of technology that can save a life ya know?

Posted by Kat at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just got confirmation of two of the larger tests I have to have done.
Due to everyone thinking that the other would actually schedule it, it took all this time.
This Friday, I will be at SMH from about 9am until sometime after 6pm I think, not sure.
At 9am, I will have the nuclear injection meds injected, and then have to walk around and wait until 1:30pm for them to do that test. The nurse didn't even know how that one is done, so I'm kind of nervous.
After that test gets done, I will have the CT scan done, and then have to wait for the meds to wear off before they allow me to leave for home.
I'm now just waiting on the hematology and gyno people to call me back about getting the necessary faxes they needed in order to do whatever the hell it is they want to do.

On Thursday, I have my regular appointment with Doc F. and get to hand him all the scheduled dates and appointments and hope it's enough to please him.
I still need to get the blood drawn. Damn it.
Maybe I'll just go early on Thursday, that appointment is at 2pm, so if I go early, I can go to the lab next door and get the blood work done that both Doc M. needs done.
I think stuttering Doc B. wants that stuff all done too.
Blah.

Posted by Kat at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Man, what a long day.
The long days of winter are upon us, and man, did it drag by slowly today or what?
I had a great time with Susan all day though.
We played so much, and just had so much fun.

She spotted my make-up box in the bathroom while washing her hands, and I ended up letting her put on some lipstick and face powder.
She was so thrilled and loved looking at herself in the mirror.
You can barely see the make-up on her, I kept it super light, but she walked around like a super model after that and even posed for pictures. Hahaha

One of the rules her mom had for her today was that if she behaved and took quiet time, not even a nap, she could have a prize from the prize box.
She wanted a little Hello Kitty make up kit that was in there, so she was being super extra good today.
At quiet time, I told her we were going to watch a movie about a princess and a giant, and pirates, and that we would lay down together on the couch and just be quiet and watch the movie together. She didn't need to nap, just be quiet and rest.
She was so good about it because she hates naps, but 30 minutes into The Princess Bride, she was out like a light clutching her blanket in one hand, and my hand in her other.
She only stayed asleep for about an hour and a half, but she did very good and continued to sit and watch the movie after waking up.
We must have gone in and out of the house a dozen times, the weather was perfect for outdoor play, and Sebastian chased her, spun her, played soccer with her, and she pulled weeds up.
I didn't ask her to, she just told me that "The weeds need to go Aunty Kat, I'll do it."
She was just happy doing things on her own all day, not having little sis here, she had all the attention on her.
It was a very fun and good day with her.

In other things, I am so tired of having my feelings and opinion discounted, as though how I feel is not valid.
I have every right to feel like I do.
I was treated badly, brushed off, and my requests completely ignored.
That angers me and I have every damn right to feel the way I do, even if no one else understands why I feel that way.
I would love to elaborate more, but right now, I'm kinda pissed about it, and if I keep talking about it, I will surely say something I may end up regretting later on.
I'll drop it, for now.

It has taken me over an hour now to write this post. Hahaha
I ended up getting an email mid post, that needed my immediate attention.
Hope it actually comes through the way it says it's going to.
That would be nice.

Alrighty, I have so much to catch up on after not being able to do much on the computer today, time to get busy.
Later days!

Posted by Kat at 7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

She's been here since about 9am, and will be here till about 4pm.
We've been to the playground, the new corner store, played hide n' seek, and eaten lots of snacks, and Aunty Kat is already tired...*LOL*

Posted by Kat at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've had a lot of jobs over the years, some of them had some not so fun duties involved.
At Pier 1, I was the shipping and receiving manager, that basically involved unloading the trucks of goods three times a week, unpacking them, pricing, and putting them on teh sales floor.
But it also involved ordering all the stores supplies from pens and aprons, to making sure we had the correct commercial lighting bulbs on hand if a bulb blew out.
I also was in charge of the majority of electrical supplies too.
I did a lot of repairs, painting, and other odd jobs when I wasn't doing shipping and receiving.

The light bulbs were by far one of the most nerve wracking jobs.
The ceilings were about sixteen feet high, and our ladder was only twelve feet tall.
I hated having to get on that ladder, stand on the very top rung, use the special light bulb grabber tool, and remove the old light bulbs, then install the new ones.

I would get up there and have another employee holding the ladder at the bottom, and another employee taking the bulbs and also handing me the new bulbs.
It was so scary up there, and these weren't standard bulbs, they were those huge fluorescents and huge incandescents.
I was always afraid the bulb grabber would not get a good grip, and I'd drop one of those huge bulbs sixteen feet down to the hard floor, and smash into a million tiny pieces like light bulbs do when they break.
I was afraid someone would get cut by the flying glass, or a bulb would land on someone's head, and we'd get sued.
It was truly a nerve wracking job at times.
I dropped one of the big incandescents on the stockroom floor once, and it took me nearly three hours to clean up all the glass.
Then when we were changing the layout of the stockroom around, I found more tiny shards under the shelves, months later.
It's amazing how bulbs shatter and spread out like that.

Posted by Kat at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think I must be overly cranky after my self induced stressed out day, but it really irks me when a mom says something like they don't know how single parents do it, their husband is out of town for a few days, and oh my gosh, it's so hard having to do everything by themselves!
All the laundry, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping and bill paying!
Lord have mercy, it's gonna kill me!

You wanna know the secret to being a single parent?
You just do it.
You get up every single day and you just do it.
You have your moments of complete meltdown, kinda like how I was all day today stressing out over money and bills and food, but you just have to do it, you just have to keep going.

It's not easy, it's mighty damn hard most of the time, but what is our choice?
It's all on us, every single bit of it, and we don't get a break no matter how badly we may need one.
But as our kids get older, we start delegating the chores to get things done.
I had my boys start helping me around age 4 or 5.
I would hand them the wet clothes from the washer and they would place them in the dryer.
I would give them a dust rag and show them how to dust the coffee tables and picture frames.
When they got tall enough to help with the dishes, they did.
Every Saturday as a family, we clean the house from top to bottom, everyone has their set chores they like to do, and the house gets done within an hour.
Kids are capable of helping around the house, doing laundry and dishes, and it's actually good for them.
When they grow up and move out on their own, they'll be able to take care of themselves instead of bringing home their laundry to mommy every weekend.

They can't help pay the bills, their education is more important at the moment, but when we work as a team to get the house in working order, then the bill paying isn't so bad to do.
When they help around the house, it frees up more time for me to get the other stuff done.

It would be awesome though to have someone else here to help pay the bills.
It's very hard at times to be the only income, and when you get thrown a monkey wrench like I have had over the last 2 months, it's very hard.
I lay in my bed and cry, I panic, I worry, but in the end I still have to do it.
I can only hope I'm doing ok by my sons.
I hope that they have learned things from all of this, not just how to cook and clean, but how to survive when things get rough.
Sometimes you have to ask for help and that is so hard to do when you want to do it on your own, pride is a real kick in the ass, but sometimes you just have to ask, and when you get it, you are eternally grateful.
You don't take any offering of help and kindness for granted.
You have a greater appreciation for even the smallest gestures and help.

Posted by Kat at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Seriously, on top of everything else, I am deaf to boot. *LOL*
I have a running joke with friends and my sister, that when I die, I'm donating my body to science.
Imagine the things scientists could learn from my truly screwed up body!

Every now and then I consider getting hearing aids because there are times my hearing is really bad in my right ear, and I am always getting excessive wax build up and ear infections.
I had an ear infection so bad about 5 years ago, I had vertigo and couldn't even walk.
I had tried the home ear cleaning products to see if I could fix it, I had antibiotics, and I even used those ear candles to try and flush out the build up.
Those candles are pretty neat, but in that situation, it had actually made it worse by melting the wax and then it was solidifying faster than the candle could drain it out.
I ended up going to the ER after collapsing in the driveway when I went to get the mail.
I fell and hit my head on the concrete, and my neighbor called an ambulance.
They drained out the wax and oh my gosh, it was like the hugest wax ball I had ever seen.
I don't even know how they got it out in one piece it was so big.

But anyway, I am deaf in my left ear because when I was little, maybe 5 or 6 years old, a doctor messed up my ear drum.
I remember it like it was yesterday.
It hurt so so bad, I recall my mother being furious with the doctor, yelling at him that he hurt me, and he was stuffing cotton balls in my ear to try and stop the bleeding.

As I get older though, my hearing in my right ear is degrading as it does with most people when they age. Things start failing and not working right, and because it's my only "good ear", I think about what I'm going to do if it gets worse.
The technology for digital hearing aids has improved so much even in just the last 5 years that I could get one that is super small, it would hardly be noticeable, but I'd be able to hear much better.
I wouldn't have to turn my head anymore, face people when they are speaking to me, etc.
I've gotten very good at lip reading over the years, but when in large group settings at clubs and places like that, it becomes more and more difficult to hear my friends and be able to participate in conversations.
I'm sure people think I'm ignoring them when I don't reply back, but I'm not.
I simply can't understand what is being said with loud music and multiple persons speaking.

Posted by Kat at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just got back from the store thanks to a loan from a friend till Wednesday.
I cannot tell you enough how much I appreciate it.
I stressed all day, panicked, the usual freak out I do when I screw things up by trying to do the right thing.
It's funny to me, that when I used to hold all bill paying to the last possible day, that I didn't run into issues, and now that I pay every thing on time and agree to see doctors who don't take insurance because "something is so wrong with you", and pay them in cash, that I have problems coming out my rear end.
There's food, I can relax now and do my work that I need to do without freaking out every 10 seconds.
So thank you J. You have no idea how much I appreciate the loan.

Posted by Kat at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The child support still isn't on the card, and now it probably won't be until Tuesday.
I forgot about the holiday, so it's probably going to be held over till Tuesday.
That sucks so bad.

Sebastian went to his friends house today, yet called here like 10 times just to say hi, say he'd be home in an hour, or call back to say he wouldn't be home.
He just couldn't make up his mind all day long.
It's been aggravating on top of me driving myself nuts checking the stupid cs card site.

I have a headache, I have neck tension, I'm stressed.
I screwed myself on this one. I have been doing so good taking care of everything, working hard to pay for everything that needed to be paid, and I had this feeling I should have held some of that money over.
I just had that feeling, but I didn't.
Yay me for not trusting my own instincts on that one.

I just want to crawl back into bed and do it over.
Can we do that?
Can we just turn back time to like 36 hours when I got that feeling, and then actually trust myself?
I'm just fucking venting because I need to or else I'll scream and explode.
I'm just tired ya know?
I'm tired of all of it, everything, busting my butt to pay for crap that I don't even want to deal with.
I don't want to deal with any of this medical bullshit.
I don't want to do it, I don't want to pay for it, I just don't want anything to do with any more of this fucking bullshit.
I just want it all to go away.

Posted by Kat at 7:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I actually got child support this week, it's been applied, it should be on that wonderful card that made us get, but it's not.
Is it because it's Saturday?
Is it because there's a holiday this weekend?
I paid my bills with my pay this week because the child support was there, it's enough to buy groceries, but now it's not on my freaking card!
I swear, this kind of crap only happens to me.
I do the right thing, I pay my bills, I pay for the doctors appointments and co-pays, and all the freaking prescriptions, and try to do right, and I end up screwing myself.
I am so pissed at myself right now!
I should have waited to see if it was actually going to get on the card before I paid all the bills, I should have just waited, but no, I trusted it would get on there.
It was applied on Thursday, it should have been on the card yesterday, but it's not.
It's not on there today, I keep checking.
Argh!!!!!
!!!#$%@!#$!

Posted by Kat at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Source.

HILLSBORO, Ore. -- Are electronic spell-checkers educational? School administrators at Poynter Middle School in Hillsboro are asking parents to buy spell-checkers for class. Although spell-checkers can be handy when writing, not everyone is thrilled with the idea and some said it's a crutch. In a letter sent home to parents, the school asked parents to purchase one spell-check device for their children and one for someone who can't afford it.

"What's the difference between that and a calculator? Don't they get to use calculators on math tests?" said a third parent.

Instead of buying a spell check device, why not buy each kid a dictionary, and have them look up the word to get the correct spelling and usage, and what the word means?
Why are we not teaching them how to spell?
They aren't learning anything if machines are doing all the work for them.

And what is with this buy one for your kid and one for another kid stuff?
As most parents here where I live know, each year our kids bring home within the first few days of school, a huge list of supplies and the majority of them are for the teachers use, they are not all for our kids use.
Sarasota wastes so much money on statues and repaving parking lots, and growing grass or planting trees in medians, instead of on the schools which is what they tell us the money is going to go for when we vote.
Just the other day, we voted on the penny tax, they told us the money would be used for both the schools and town improvements, but the majority of that money is spent on art to beautify the downtown area or beaches to help with tourism, make people want to visit, while our schools have asbestos in the walls and our kids are in portable classrooms, and then they ask us to foot the bill on supplies and machines, instead of actually teaching.
We are a dumb downed society because we rely too heavily on machines for the answers instead of working them out as we should be doing.

Posted by Kat at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

After my surgery, and probably again, if I have to have the surgery on my hips, I'll probably get another travel nursing job nurse.
I was so out of it, I can't recall her name, but she was really good. She came here every morning at 9:30am, cleaned my stitches and changed my dressings, made sure I was using my brace and keeping track of my schedule, and helped me with my physical therapy.
I couldn't do much, but she helped me keep my legs mobile so they didn't atrophy or get cramps.
She's also the one who told me and my sis how I could take a shower without getting the stitches wet using that Glad cling wrap stuff.
It sticks to skin really well, so we just stuck it on my back all the way down, and then I could sit on the shower chair and get clean.
I think at that point, I had been something like 27 days without a shower.
I felt so gross!

She and I talked one day about her job, and she told me how she got started.
She used to work for a travel nursing agency, and had been all over the country doing it.
Whenever and where ever a nurse was needed, she went.
When she got married, she wanted to stay here in Sarasota, but wanted to still do as much travel nursing as she could, so she started her own home travel nurse company.
She has a staff of over 100 nurses who will travel anywhere from Sarasota to Tampa, and as far south as Port Charlotte.
They just go where ever a nurse is needed, she has a nurse to cover that area, and spend the day driving around to make sure patients at homes are taken care of, and even cover shifts at local hospitals.
There is still a shortage of nurses in this country, and travel nursing can be the ideal way to do the job you love, but get to sight see and meet new people and work in a variety of hospitals and private homes.
I'm going to need to get in my file cabinet and dig out my surgery folder if I end up having the surgery, so she can come back or send me one of her other nurses.
She took such great care of me, I want her to come back if I can get her.

Posted by Kat at 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know, all that expertise I have in the medical field. *eyeroll*

When my nieces were here, Skye was just getting a cold or as my sister thought, getting over it.
By Monday, Skye was coughing, sneezing, snotty, and puking out both ends.

Now, I know from my own experience over the last year or so, the more stress I am under, I tend to get sick and catch every thing that is going around.
My immune system is shot to hell, I have been told this by every doctor I have seen for years.
They have all told me, if someone coughs or sneezes, do not shake their hand, hug them, kiss them, wash my hands even more compulsively than I already do. (Hi OCD!)

So anyway, Skye ended up with some sort of stomach bug plus a cold.
I have been coughing, sneezing, have had a fever, and puking out both ends for the last 3 days. (TMI, sorry)
Then yesterday on the local forums, Frankie who has quite the way with words, posted this in a new thread;

So, is anybody else leaking from both ends?
Or do I have food poisoning? I spent all day yesterday, starting at 4am, with one end or the other in the toilet. Today I can't stop shitting liquid and I'm cramped to the max. Is there a stomach bug going around or do I have food poisoning?

So here I am, susceptible to every damn germ and virus thanks to my lowered immunity, had been in contact with not only Skye who had just begun getting sick, but I had been to Publix a few times in the week prior to Skye being here, and the day she got here, to buy the soy milk and other foods they can eat, (food allergies) and many people were coughing and sneezing and in the health and beauty aisle buying things like Pepto Bismol and Imodium as well as Tylenol and Nyquil.
So it appears some sort of something was already going around and lucky me, I got both, the cold and the stomach bug.

I am very cautious when I go places and at home.
When I go to Publix, they have a tub of alcohol wipes right near the carts. I always grab a wipe and wipe down the hand rail as well as the baby seatbelt so I can lock my purse to my cart.
Ever since that incident 3 years ago in October, when my purse almost got stolen, I always lock my purse to the baby seatbelt straps.
No crazy purse snatchers will ever get my purse again.

But anyway, I wipe everything down, and I even take an extra wipe after wiping things down, and wipe my own hands with it again.
They have these tubs of wipes all through the store for people to use, and I use them often to try and avoid germs other people leave behind.
I have to, I get sick all the time if someone even sneezes in my direction.
I wash my hands at home after almost everything I do.
I am constantly wiping down the remotes, the game controllers doorknobs etc etc.
I am so compulsive about my hands being clean because I know how easy I can catch things, and when I get sick, I'm down for the count.

But neither my sis nor I, knew exactly how sick Skye was, we both assumed it was just a cold. I was so vigilant about keeping my hands clean while she was here, but she's my girl, I had to hug her and stuff ya know? I'm Aunty Kat! I love my baby girls!
But now that I know that this stomach thing is going around every where, there really wasn't much I could do to avoid getting sick like I am right now.
But the good news is according to the people on the forums, it only lasts about a week.
I can deal with it.

When the teens get home from school today, I have written them a note to hand to the service clerks at Publix giving them permission to sell the boys some Imodium and some Nyquil, as well as use my debit card, and let them buy some food.
Publix has no problem with them using my card to buy food, they had to do it for nearly two months after my surgery, but medicines are a whole other story.
They generally don't let minors buy any type of medications, but because they know our family well, and if I send a note with my phone number so they can call and verify my card number over the phone and birth date, they let the boys buy them.
I simply can't walk there and buy them myself.
I am just so tired but nothing is helping because I'm in and out of the bathroom nine million times a day.
I hope that none of you get this stomach bug, it sucks so bad.
But I found an old bottle of Nyquil in my medicine cabinet, and took two shots of it.
At least I can sit here now without feeing so dizzy I almost fall over.
I'm going to try getting as much work as I can done.
I need the money very badly. I have several doctors appointments coming up that I need to pay co-pays for.
Ok, off to start answering emails and figuring out which work needs to get done first.
Later days.

Posted by Kat at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

These restoril, the sleeping pills, they suck!
Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me?!
Any normal person would be fast asleep by now. No no, not me.
I'm awake.
Drunk feeling, but awake.
This seriously freaking sucks people, you have absolutely no idea how bad this sucks.

Posted by Kat at 7:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I have been on the phone most of the day again dealing with this whole situation.
The cop at the high school went and spoke to Mark today about this, and explained to him that his part in this whole thing was wrong, but this kid violated the zero tolerance policy at his school by taking the pocket knife with him. That the kids got what was rightfully going to happen to him for the knife.
They went over Mark's school record, he's never been in trouble with the law, he has had some bad grades, but he's stayed out of trouble and this kid has a history already.
They said Mark just needs to stay away from him, not look at him or talk to him, no charges will be pressed because he didn't do anything that the zero tolerance policy covers, Mark is basically in the clear.
Thank goodness.
This could have been a super ugly situation.

I still feel like crap, my stomach is doing flip flops, and I'm completely exhausted.
I have so much work to do too, so I'm just going to let you all know right now I have about 9 review assignments to complete between now and the middle of next week.
I won't flood you, I promise. *LOL*
Momma needs the money so momma is going to do these.
I know y'all understand.
Ok, back to my couch for now.
I will try to reply to emails later on, not sure when.
Later days.

Posted by Kat at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you ever owned a really beautiful set of pearls? Maybe a strand necklace or earring, maybe a bracelet?
I have one really old necklace, and it needs to be restrung at some point, but in the mean time, I'd love to be able to get a new piece, maybe some Black Akoya pearls, a single strand bracelet like the one above.
I could definitely afford that one too if I bought it through premiumpearl.com.
They have a huge selection of pearl jewelry in all settings and styles at very affordable prices.

They are all made here in the USA too, right in San Francisco. They travel the world to find the finest pearls to use to make quality pieces, all of them are mostly AAA quality.
I would love to have that bracelet pictured above.

They have secure encrypted shopping so you can be sure ordering online is safe, and they even have an extended holiday return policy, so you can return it before the 15th of January 2008 if not completely satisfied with your purchase.
They even have a great rating with the better business bureau, so I know if I bought that piece from them, it would be a safe purchase with a company that has great customer service.
I may just have to get that one for myself for my birthday.
I deserve something nice for myself every now and then.

Posted by Kat at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Too much stress, my body is reacting to it in a bad way, I've been up all night sick and not sleeping.
I'll be back when I can, hopefully later.
Time to take some restoril, pull all the blinds, hide under thick blankets, and just wait for this to pass.
So much for looking into that real estate franchise sis told me about.
It;s just not happening today.
Later days.

Posted by Kat at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I am in the twilight zone right now.

No one, no cop EVER went to Mark's school and spoke to him.
There is absolutely no record of it ever happening.
These parents were told that an officer was dispatched to Mark's school, that they had reprimanded him, they had told him to stay 500 feet away from this kid, that he even looked at this kid, he would be suspended.
These parents were told than an officer had been dispatched to my home to tell me what was going on.
None of that ever happened!
If it had, I would have forced Mark to go to court and apologize to this boy and his family in front of the judge. I would have paid all their fines, done whatever I could to help this child get out of the massive amount of trouble he is in.
I cannot believe this is happening.
I told the mother I will pay all the fines they have had to pay, that I will do whatever I can to help this kid get out of the trouble he's in.
I am going to try desperately to get his probation dropped.
I have made so many calls since learning about this a few hours ago, I have filed a complaint against the officer who lied to these parents about an officer being dispatched to the school and to my home.
No one ever came to my home, no one ever called me, no one ever went to Mark's school.
That officer lied!
Do you honestly think if an officer had been here and told me what happened, that I would have let it slide?
Hell fucking no I wouldn't have!!
Mark is in so much trouble when he comes home.
I will be paying off the fines they have had to pay and Mark will be paying it off to me somehow, some way.
He will be dragged over there this evening to apologize to this family for the hell he has caused them.
I cannot even tell you how mad I am right now.
I'm shaking, I'm pissed, I'm ready to fucking strangle him.
This is so fucking crazy!

Posted by Kat at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Way back on September 5th, Mark was involved in some sort of threatening issue with another student waiting at his bus top.
Not Mark waiting, he walks, but he supposedly threatened some kid at that kids bus stop.
Apparently, the cops went to the high school and spoke to Mark.
Did the cops come here and speak to me?
No.
Did the school call me and tell me the cops had spoken to my son?
No.
Did anyone, the school or the cops, notify me, that they had spoken to my son?
No.

This other child was so afraid for his life, that he took a small pocket knife to school, and got in trouble for doing so.
He was almost expelled.
He has been in school court since September 5th, he has had to do community service, all kinds of things.
It has cost his parents over $100 defending their child in school court and community service issues so far.
Who knows how much more they will have to pay and deal with.

I just now found about this from the kids mother today.
Today.
No wonder the woman hasn't spoken to me all this time.
I couldn't figure out what happened, why she was avoiding my calls, not saying hello to me etc.
I finally just cornered her and asked what the hell was going on, this woman was a friend, I needed to know.
When I told her that no one informed me of any of this, she got even more angry. The cops had told her they had spoken to me, that the school had spoken to me, and she assumed I just didn't give a shit.

That is so not true.
If I had known about any of this, Mark would have been dead meat.
I am furious beyond words.
Beyond anything.
I can barely hold myself together.
I don't even know what to do with Mark when he gets home.
I'm at a complete loss here.

Posted by Kat at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I'm eating some Honeycombs cereal, and am amazingly bored.
The restotil is having an interesting effect, sorta like being drunk, but alas, not tired.
It has to be the stress. It just has to be.
Is it wrong to be eating Honeycombs at this hour?
Screw it, I don't really care.
Niche, piche, whatever.
I am somewhat of a purist and I seriously don't get the obsession with having multiple blogs covering a single subject each.
But hey, if you have time to raise your kids, take care of house and home, your normal duties and blog to 8-12 blogs every week, more power to ya I suppose, but please stop asking me to RSS them all, blogroll 'em etc.
Gimme your top 3 and that's it.
I simply can't keep up with all of what you all do.
Rock on with your bad blogging selves.

Posted by Kat at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I got one of the docs I needed, now just three more to go.
Man, this is just, ugh, frustrating.
I have so much other stuff to do, and this has been consuming my entire day so far.
I'm hoping I can get this done or at least mostly done, so I can get out to the polls tonight.

There are some local community issues that need to be voted on, like the penny tax which pays for so many things, and people want to end it.
The penny tax is something we have been paying for a few years now, since 1989, and renewed again in 1997, it's hardly noticeable, but it pays for the city's improvements to our roads and schools, bridges, parks, and libraries.
Removing the penny tax would be so stupid.
That money has to come from somewhere, it might as well be from the penny tax.
And it's not actually a penny, it's 1 percent, so before any local people show up here to blast me for calling it the penny tax, I do know what it is and what it's called.
Yes, it's slick marketing, but it's a 1 percent tax on purchases, and a full one-third of that money comes from tourism.
And speaking of tourism...
Also is the vote on repairing and renovating, Ed Smith Stadium, which holds spring training for a major baseball team, The Cincinnati Reds.
When they are here for spring training, people come from across the country and Canada, to watch them practice and have some show games.
This part of the tourism industry is vital for Sarasota's economy.
The money earned from hotels and shopping, helps pay for so many things in our community.

So anyway, as soon as all the docs offices are closed for the evening and it looks like i won't be getting any more important calls, I'll be heading to the polls.
I hope all of you have gone or are planning to vote today too.
I know voting can be discouraging sometimes, it feels like your vote doesn't or won't count, but it does.
If you don't vote, you have no right to complain later when the wrong guy or bill, gets elected or passed.

Posted by Kat at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ok, so, I made all these freaking appointments at all these freaking doctors they want me to go to, and I did, then this morning, it all comes crashing down.
Three of the doctors are not taking new medicare patients after they had already scheduled my appointments.
!!!
I also have to go back to hematology again, because they didn't get the proper faxes on records and diagnosis information they needed to have in order to correctly diagnose me.
I have to do all that blood work again and I may end up having to do the bone marrow test.

I am beyond not happy.
I am beyond pissed.

I now have to find all new doctors for these things they want done.
This is so fucking frustrating!!
Arugh!!!
The 3 hour long chat with the psychotherapist on Friday afternoon should be fun eh?
You wanna know what my problem is?!
Do ya really?!
I'm sick and fucking tired of all this fucking medical bullshit!!
I'm not depressed you stupid fucking asshat motherfuckers!!!
I'm sick and tired of all this shit! All the testing, all the appointments, all the fucking phone calls!
I am not depressed at all!
No!
But I may just be slightly fucking homicidal at this point!!

Posted by Kat at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sebastian and I had a good time, just the two of us for dinner.
We talked about school and games, more games, how he's kicking my ass at GH3, all kinds of stuff.
I had to snap this pic.
Sebastian has always been a messy eater, and here he is at 14, still as sloppy as ever.
He can never eat anything without making some sort of mess.

We came back home and played some games for awhile, and he must have really wore himself out at school today, or maybe the chilly weather is having that winter sleep effect on him, because he's been dead asleep on the couch since about 7:30pm, with his kitty Shahiro.
But thanks to the chilly weather, I can finally shut off the AC.
W00t for saving money!

George finally has his website set up for his sculptures, and you can check them all out if you want to.
It's called George Bieber, Whimsical Sculptor at Large.
It's all pretty cool I think.
I've seen some of his larger pieces on display, and they are really awesome.

I think we picked out the movies we want next, and I am going to have to really fill up my queue thanks to the writers guild strike.
I hope they can work this out because I hate reality tv, and with no scripts, we may get nothing but reality tv.
That would suck.
Big time.

Posted by Kat at 8:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I don't have to cook dinner tonight.
Yay!
Mark is going out with George for dinner, so Sebastian and I are going to Subway to just chill by ourselves.
It was Sebastian's idea and even though I feel like total garbage, I am keeping my word.
I think I have a cold or something.
I'm all stuffy, my head hurts, and I have slight fever.
I've just been super lethargic all day, laying around, blah.
I hate being all blah.
It sucks.
But my word is my word, and maybe the walk will make me feel better.

Posted by Kat at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It was around 53 degrees this morning when the teens left for school.
Brr chilly!
It's currently 66 degrees, this is no nice!
This is the weather I've been waiting for.

There's not much happening around here this morning, I have some calls to make and some stuff to take care of, but I think my day is mostly free.
I just put my Netflix movies in the mailbox, and so I need to go pick two more.
What should I get?
What's a good new release on dvd, or just a movie I should watch?
Later days!

Posted by Kat at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I went to sit down on the couch, and had my left hand on the arm rest.
Well, I sorta slipped and when I did, my hand slipped and my pinky finger bent back as it slid down the couch.
It's not broken, but it's slightly swollen.

You ever do that?
You ever bend a finger back so freaking far it feels like you broke it, but it's actually just sprained?
I've broken a finger before and it hurt wicked bad, but man, a sprain hurts way wicked bad.
Owie owie owie, and of course, the teens laughed as I screamed.
They thought it was super funny until they saw it swell up.
I gave them the look of death, and they immediately stopped and got me some ice.
They do care, but for some reason, boys find injuries to be extremely funny.

Posted by Kat at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When I worked in customer service for Georgia Power and Gas, we had to use both a telephone system and a computer system that had access to thousands of customer records and performed functions to their accounts with the simple click of a key.
We had both phone and our internet systems tied together in perfect harmony, to provide our customers the fastest and most accurate service available.
It was by far one of the easiest systems in customer service I had ever used, and I had been in customer service for 16 years prior to working for them.

NeoBits is a telephony and computing company for small businesses, that can set up your VoIP and internet, and phone system like Talkswitch, BizFon and Atlas, as well as many other brands of phone and internet equipment.
They are great for setting up systems that have as little as two users or 250 users.
They can install your system in every zip code, and offer dial tone and broadband internet in all states.
They already have over 3,000 customers nationwide, and can take care of your small business as well.
They have an easy and free 1-866 number, as well as live chat to help you get started setting up your small businesses computing and phone system.
If you're in customer service or have a business looking to set up your new customer service department, this is definitely the way to go.
As someone who has been on both sides of that coin, trust me when I say making the system easy to use for your employees and efficient for your customers, is the key to your companies success. Your customer service department can make or break your company, and I've had very recent experience with a terrible customer service department.
Perhaps they should look into NeoBits for their new system, they could use a phone and computer system considering their business is on line dealing with thousands of customers every single day.
With a phone and computer system, even live chat, they could improve their customer service 100 fold, and therefore improve their companies image 100 fold.

Posted by Kat at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mark wants to get George a gift for Christmas, so he's asked me for help.
I had to ask him a ton of questions, and like most teenagers, I got the "I dunno" answer.
Would he like art supplies? (he's an artist)
A gift certificate to someplace?
Movies? Cufflinks? Gas cards? What?
Mark, what would he like?
"I dunno".
Ugh.

So, I need help with buying a man gift.
I am seriously thinking about a gift card to an art supply store, he paints, draws, makes sculptures etc, so I honestly think that would be the best gift, but Mark just shrugs and says I dunno.
I really hate that answer.

Posted by Kat at 6:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Look what I found in my back yard this morning!

We have lime trees!
Two of them!
And a grapefruit tree, but they aren't ripe yet.
I don't know who actually owns the trees, but one of the trees is on my property so I took a couple yummy looking ones.

Sebastian and I came in, cut one in a few slices and just ate it like that. So so tasty!

*Harry Nilsson lyrics - Coconut

Posted by Kat at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Oh my gosh! I forgot to tell you this!
I told you about my neighbors who have been driving over my lawn, how they stabbed the 50 gallon drum of water my landlord put up, and how the cops went over to speak with them right?

Well last night, I went outside after the girls went to bed just to get some air, stand in the cold, (we're having awesome chilly weather!) and I see these same neighbors packing up their car, a minivan, and a trailer attached to the minivan.
I don't really think much of it because they had him and his wife, her two sons and one of his sons, all living in that tiny two bedroom duplex.
I just figure one of the adult sons is moving out, or maybe all three of them.
Nope.
The entire family moved out in the middle of the night!
He and his older son looked over at me, said something to each other, and finished packing, then they all left.

This morning, there was a real estate agent in the driveway putting a sign in the yard, and she had a laundry basket of cleaning supplies and a broom, a vac, and a mop.
I guess they really did all move out.
I wonder what the reason was for the hasty departure.
Could it be the fact that the cop who came over told them that a Sargent for the sheriff's office, owned this property and he "knew" who they were?
I really have no idea why they left so quick, but I am so greatful they did.
Now I don't have to worry about the cars on the lawn or him or his kids trying to "sell" to my kids.
I warned him the day he came over and introduced himself to me and offered his "services", that if he ever tried to sell to my kids, I'd kill him. Not call anyone, not have him arrested, kill him.
He swore he would never sell to kids, that selling to kids is truly evil, but that adults are free to make their own choices, blah blah, blah.
Anyway, just really glad he's gone now.

Posted by Kat at 3:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

After the girls left this morning, I decided to play with my Sims for awhile, chill out, relax with my virtual people I kill for fun.
They always want to have fun and play games, and they are very picky about what makes them have fun.
Some are ok with the pinball machines, others like the video game console or the remote control cars, but every single one of them, kids included, gets addicted to the poker tables.
Give your family of Sims a poker table and watch what happens.
They don't get up and eat, they don't go to work or school, they just sit around playing cards and talking.
It's annoying.
You can even tell them to stop playing poker, go eat or go to the bathroom, and they will start to go and then, nah, they walk right back to the table.
I took it away from one of the families and they all threw a fit, screaming and stomping their feet, the kids had tantrums!
So now I have to ween my one family off their poker table addiction.
They are not happy at all.

Posted by Kat at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sebastian and I went to the store yesterday to grab some food that the girls could eat, and on our way there as we were walking, we saw this kid on a bicycle with a Chrysler 300 accessory emblem around his neck on a big silver chain.
Not a nice necklace chain either, but an actual chain.
He actually had the hood emblem on a real chain, around his neck. I about died laughing, Sebastian is elbowing me telling me to shut up.
What made it worse was this was a little white kid, probably around 12 or 13 years old, with his pants around the crack of his butt, his baseball hat on sideways, and this Chrysler hood emblem on his neck.
I was waiting for him to smile or say hi or something so I could see if he had a gold tooth or maybe some grillz too.
I was cracking up!

And also, yesterday afternoon while we were cleaning, I decided to film Shahiro doing what she loves to do.
Attack an old bicycle seat.
I know I sound like a total dork in this video, but the more you talk to her and tell her to kill it, the more excited she gets and does it.
She also will do it more if you pull her tail a bit which is what you see Sebastian's hand doing in the video.
I swear this cat is psycho.
She is 2 years old right now and still the size of a kitten, so we call her kitten, or baby kitteh, more than we actually call her by her name.
She is so tiny!
She's adorable and crazy!

Posted by Kat at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am so lucky I don't live in one of those fancy schmancy luxury homes neighborhoods.
They'd all find a way to slap me with an HOA violation simply because my inside decor is not exactly like everyone else.
I do find those type of homes pretty to look at, but I could never live in a house like that.
We like to actually live in our house, ya know? Live in it, kick our feet up on the coffee table, have drinks with no coasters, have toys all over the floors and have a good time.
Here's Susan playing GH3 against Mark in battle mode. She totally lost.
Notice the clutter, the feet on the table, the mess. This is how we live, we actually live in our house.

The girls are absolutely fascinated with cell phones. They always want to "hold" mine, not push the buttons, but you know, 3 and 4 years old, a button is going to be pushed.
So I took a couple old tv remotes I had stuffed in a drawer, and told them they could have those phones and push as many buttons as they wanted. (Sis, don't kill me!)
They played with their new 'cell phones' all night long!
They called mommy, daddy, Kayla, ninny and pop op, everybody they could think of.
They invited them all to the 'party' and just chatted for hours on their make believe phones.
It was too cute.

Posted by Kat at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Yup, they are spending the night here.
We ran around the yard, jumped on the beds, had a make believe party, a make belive swimming pool, and played make believe doctor.
Susan was the doctor and she covered me with band-aids, pretended to give me stitches and all kinds of funny stuff.
I told her I was still sick and I was going to get a group of Washington DC medical malpractice lawyers to take away her doctors license cuz she made me super sick.
She told me she was the best doctor ever.
She pointed her finger at me and laughed.
She is so damn funny.
We played with the kitties, and Skye kissed Nova like a hundred times which sent Susan into hysterical fits of laughter on the floor.
We let both girls try their hand at GH3, and they didn't do too badly. *LOL*
I have some super cute pics to upload.
My house is trashed, I'm exhausted, but the girls are in bed and falling asleep with no problems at all.
We wore them out completely.
I swear we didn't sit still for a single minute except to sit and eat.
I'm glad they are in bed now though, I need to sit and relax.
I'm pooped!

Posted by Kat at 9:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

That's right, I won $10 for sending Jade from Aftershocks some awesome cover songs.
She had a contest for people to either name or email her some cover songs.
I sent her 5 different songs, and I earned the most points for the ones I sent.
Rock on! \m/

Posted by Kat at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Xbox finally heard my prayers, how to limit how much time kids play.
In a pamphlet that came with the Guitar Hero 3 keychain, a new update will be coming out in December, which lets parents control how much time their kid(s) play.

Family Timer
- A simple tool that lets you manage how much time your kids spend on their Xbox 360.
- Manage time in daily or weekly increments. Easy for parent to suspend or add time.
- Available in December 2007 only through Xbox Live.

Sawheeet!

Posted by Kat at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My sis is coming over later and bringing the girls for me to watch!
Yay!
I'm so happy!
I miss them so much!!!
Susan wants to give me the candy and I guess they have a huge bag of it for us.
Mmmm, chocolate.
I also need to give her her luggage back. I keep forgetting, she keeps forgetting, but they are going up north at either Thanksgiving or Christmas, so she needs it back.
I need to go dig it out of the closet or get one of the boys to.
We are also cleaning the house which we do every Saturday, but we do a double job when the girls come.
Little fingers touch everything, and we have so much interesting gadgets and controllers for them to want to play with.
The guitar controller definitely needs to be put up.
I don't want that to get accidentally broken with little hands or feet being all excited.
I've got the Roomba going, he still doesn't have a name, he needs one.
I need to do the dishes, the bathroom needs to be cleaned, and just stuff like that.
Ok, we need to get busy.
Later days!

Posted by Kat at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last night, another local girl from the forums was robbed in Ybor.
They got her purse, cell phone, all her jewelry including her D&G watch, her digital camera, her boyfriends wallet and pretty much anything they had on them.

This is the second time someone local to me has been robbed out there.
It's not the same place it used to be at all.
You could go there and walk around and not really be bothered except by staggering drunks falling down or bums asking for change. The religious freaks would usually yell at you that you're going to hell, but now it's become a major center of crime.
Police presence has even stepped up dramatically, and it still happens.
They pull up, ask for directions, or even just walk up to you and say hello, then the next thing you know, they have a gun pulled on you telling you to hand over everything you have.

By 6am, all her and her boyfriend's debit cards had been used to get gas at 13 different gas stations, and their cell phones had been used to make hundreds of calls.
She was able to watch it all happen from her home computer. One browser on her bank page, one on her cell service page.
Just watching as things get racked up before the companies could close the services down.
Sad.
They will probably get everything reimbursed by the bank and cell providers because they reported it, but man, how crappy.

This is why when I go out anywhere, I get cash from an atm before I even go, I leave all valuables at home, keep my cash, my id, and my cell phone in a pocket, leave my purse locked in the trunk of the car.
I don't have much but what I do have, I can't afford for anyone to just take from me.

Posted by Kat at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thanks to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, tonight at 1:59am, we all need to set our clocks back to 1:00am.
It's also a great time to change the battery in your smoke detector.

I have always found daylight saving time, annoying.
Spring ahead, fall back.
It screws up my sleep schedule (not that I sleep much) and I'm sure others as well.

"Some U.S. areas do NOT observe daylight saving time like, in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, and Arizona . The Navajo Nation participates in the Daylight Saving Time policy, even in Arizona, due to its large size and location in three states."
How come Arizona doesn't have to, yet California and other states which are farther west, have to?
That's odd.

Anyway, don't forget to fall back and change your batteries.
And if you're going out tonight to a bar or club, maybe you'll be lucky enough to be at one which observes the time change and stays open an extra hour.
Last call will be an hour later tonight in some locations.

Posted by Kat at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's that time of year to start getting the Christmas card lists organized, and last year I missed out on it, but I totally want to send cards out this year.
I love getting cards, we love to open them and look at all the beautiful and unique cards people send out, and we hang them on the wall around where our tree stands.

This super cute design is from Polygraphics.com, I absolutely love this design because it's what our Christmas looks like. *LOL* Lots of sun, palm trees, and the beach.
I may just order that one, or see what else they have, but I really like it.

Anyway, want to exchange cards?
If so, just send me an email with the subject line Christmas card exchange, and then inside, your address.
I promise your address will not be sold or used for anything other than me sending you a card for Christmas, and I'll reply to your email with my address.
Please be sure to include a link to your blog so I know who you are.

Posted by Kat at 1:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm in serious need of a really good but free, budgeting software for personal use.
The software I have (msn money) just isn't cutting it. I keep forgetting to enter things in, it's a resource hog, it's just not working for me.
I need something that runs fast, easy to use, can do automated things like add in fees for purchases from the bank like for example, one of my cards has a .75 cents transaction fee, and the other one actually gives a small amount back for credit purchases.
I swear, it's those transaction fees that are causing me to mess up so much.
It's not calculated at the time of purchase, it's done like 48 hours later, so when I log in and check my balance, I have like 10 of those in a row and bam! That's $7.50 I didn't calculate into my budget.
Anyone have a good one?
Know a good one?
Free?

Posted by Kat at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just walked into my room to lay down and try to pop out my back, when I stepped in something wet and squishy.
I keep my room pitch black, so I had to go turn on the light to see what it was.

It was cat gack.
A huge steaming pile of cat gack.
I hate it when they do that!

I walked out into the bathroom balancing myself on my heal so I didn't track it everywhere, and tell the boys I need help.
When I told them what happened, they both started laughing.
Yeah.
Uh-huh, it's a real knee slapper boys.

Posted by Kat at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I dunno, maybe it's just me, but the song doesn't have much substance to it at all.
The song is called Headlines (Friendship Never Ends).
Their voices sound good, they look great, but what is with all the hooker posing?
Seriously, watch this and tell me what all that writhing and rubbing their own bodies has to do with friendship.
They are laying on the floor, straddled on chairs, laying on each other, rubbing, touching, and caressing each other while singing about friendship.
I was so confused by this videos message.
If it has a message, it says our friendship has benefits.

Posted by Kat at 9:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The holidays are fast approaching on us now, and with them comes the question everyone always has.
What do you get the person who has everything?
Well if they are a sports, music or movie lover, getting them a piece of high quality memorabilia might just be the perfect gift.

They have so many items in all those categories, I spent over an hour going through all the movies and music pieces they have, (not much into sports) and found myself drooling over some of them.
I love the piece above which is the Shawshank Redemption, one of my favorite movies.
This piece is signed by both Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins, and has been authenticated.
It's a little more than I can afford, but man, I love it.

They have Nascar, hockey, football and boxing, and many other sports.
They have game room decor, Giclee celebrity prints. They have cigar displays, historical prints, political memorabilia, you name it, they have it.
They even have a single water color drawing of the Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss.
I would love that!

One of the most impressive pieces they have is in the political category.
They have a framed display of the presidents, with 43 authentic signatures of the 43 presidents.
It has a hefty price tag on it, but worth every single penny, and would be treasured by a person who collects political memorabilia, forever.
That would be an heirloom piece to hand down generation to generation.
Just looking at it on the page is impressive.
It's a great site for collectors who love truly unique, beautifully framed and signed pieces.

Posted by Kat at 8:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Kraft put out a new product in their Philadelphia cream cheese line, called Philadelphia ready to eat cheesecake filling.
I saw the advertisement for it in this months Kraft Food and Family magazine and because I love love love cheesecake, I was all cool, I wanna try it!
Then I did a little digging on the web and right on their own website and forums, I found out I shouldn't even bother.
Apparently it tastes like ass.
User comments:

"I tried this because Kraft sent me a "free" coupon. Me oh my, was not worth the price!!!"

"Not only did they NOT discontinue it, they added a new flavor. CHOCOLATE! I can't even imagine what that will taste like {{shudder}}."

It's also not a totally new product, but they are just now advertising it in their own magazines.
With all the bad reviews on their site, you would think instead of making a new flavor and start pitching it, they would have just yanked the product.

That sucks though. I love cheesecake, I just cannot ever make a decent one from scratch.

Posted by Kat at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When I went for my doc appointment on the 19th of October, we took my niece Susan with us, and when we came home as my sister was bringing a small table into my house, I stayed in the van and talked to her.
Halloween was coming up so I asked her what was she was going to be.
"I'm going to be a witch!"
And what is Skye going to be?
"Skye is a skeleton!"
And what is Kayla going to be?
"I don't know yet."
Is mommy taking you trick or treating?
"Yes, we get to have candy Aunty Kat!"
You do?! I can't go trick or treating.
"You're too old Aunty Kat, it's for kids."
I know, I won't get to have any candy.
"What kind do you like?"
I like chocolate.
"I'll get you some Aunty Kat!"

That was two weeks ago, and on Halloween night as they went door to door, Susan was handed a small bite size Hershey bar, and she looked at her mom and said, "This one's for Aunty Kat mommy!"
She totally remembered that she was going to give me some chocolate all this time.
They will be coming over sometime this weekend to give the candy to me because Susan has been driving her mom crazy asking when she was going to come give it to me...*LOL*
I love that little bugger. She's too darn cute. Isn't that sweet? She remembered she wants to give me some.
Sis sent me pictures of them in their costumes, and a few of her back yard and patio.
I love what she's done back there.
That's one of the benefits of owning your own home, you can do beautiful stuff like this.

Here's Susan in her witch costume, and Skye had taken hers off already.
You can click for bigger, but it's really big. Just warning ya.

And here's Skye in her skeleton costume, and Kayla went as a pirate!
Same thing on clicking for bigger.

And here's her patio and part of the back yard. This is just so pretty!
This one is not as big.

Posted by Kat at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My friend Jade sent me a box with some really cool self defense products in it.
She knows that I go for walks every day, sometimes in the morning or even at night, so she sent me some hot walkers.
What are hot walkers?
They are small 1 pound barbells to have a bit of weight while you walk, but they also have a secret.

One of the barbells contains pepper spray with an easy to reach trigger right where your thumb is to get at it quickly to spray in the face of an attacker.

The other barbell has an opening with a cap, where you can store your house key and some money, or just your house key.

These barbells are very cool. They are 1 pound weights, just enough to get a good little workout in your arms while you walk.
I used them this morning, and I could really feel it.
I also felt a bit safer knowing there was some pepper spray right at the ready, just in case something ever were to happen.
Hopefully nothing ever does happen, but at least I would have that opportunity to defend myself and try to get away.
I can't run, but it would give me enough time to get to a house, or wave down a car.
I stay to the roads, not trails or paths, and my hood is very busy, so the chances of being able to flag someone down for help would be great.
I am so glad she sent me these, I love them.
Thanks Jade!

Posted by Kat at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My newest friend Windyridge, had asked me about the Silver Jewelry Club widget in my sidebar, what's the catch ya know?
I told her, there is no catch. .
You really can buy any piece they have up for sale on the site, for just shipping and handling charges of $5.99.
So she went and checked it out, and then took a pic of the piece she bought to show everyone.
It's good quality stuff. Real .925 sterling silver, real gemstones unless noted, and they come by mail super fast, like within a week.

I told her I'd take a pic of some of the pieces I bought and post them up, so here are some of the pieces of I have bought from the silver jewelry club.

There is a heart shaped Peridot pendant, a White Mother of Pearl Dome Ring, a Round Genuine Swiss Blue Topaz Pendant, a Round Cut Pink Cz Multistone Pendant, an Oval Hematite Bead Filigree Ring, an Armadillo Style Eternity Ring Band Sterling, and a Laser Cut Right Hand Ring.
All together, I've ordered 19 different pieces from them, kept a few for myself, gave a lot of them away as gifts.
They retail for far more than what I paid, (just $5.99) so if someone were to get them appraised, (who would do that with a gift?) they would see that they are worth anywhere between $40 and $80.
I absolutely love the SJC. I order at least one new piece a month, I'm so hooked on that site!
Silver is my fave jewelry, and the quality and price cannot be beat.
Sorry Windy, I didn't mean to give you a new addiction..*LOL*

Posted by Kat at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Every thing has been a battle this week, kids, health, stress, friends, life in general has been totally sucky.
And there are times I have absolutely no idea how to tell you about things like Raleigh accident lawyers or something, but I try, I give everything the best I can do until the stress piles up on me something fierce, and I'm left babbling like an idiot.

I had some of the strangest dreams ever last night.
Yes! I slept! Miracle of miracles, I actually slept!
Side effects of the Restoril includes very vivid dreams and a very groggy morning start.
I just need to wake up, get moving, maybe eat something even though I'm not at all hungry, and then I get cracking on the things that need to be done.
Later days.

Posted by Kat at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I had a really weird, off putting, intense kind of day, and I want to get this out here before the day changes to tomorrow, because tomorrow, I'm putting all of this behind me and not letting it own another single second of my life.

I had a sick kid home all day, I had some very long intense phone calls, and I had an all day email correspondence with a friend who is probably no longer my friend.

The truth cuts and hurts, and I hurt her with the truth she needed to hear, so I guess I was fair game after that.
I was accused of doing things that were illegal, and I cannot believe they did that, but they did.
Instead of taking any responsibility for what happened, they accused me of having access to their personal information, then threatened me.
And through it all, I remained as calm as I possibly could.
I simply kept reiterating the point, the facts, and it didn't get anywhere.
I hate to have to lose a friend over this.
This is someone I respected, someone I was there for through any question or problem they had, I did every thing I could to help them including putting my neck on the line for them, and they accused and threatened me.
To say I am angry is a total understatement, but this is over with, I will not let this effect me tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that.
It's finished.

Posted by Kat at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One of the interesting things about some of the assignments I do, is that it gives me the opportunity to learn something new.
If I hadn't gotten this particular assignment, I probably would have never learned what malignant mesothelioma is.
Do you know what it is?
No?
Well here's what most of us don't know.
Mesothelioma is an asbestos caused cancer that surrounds the serous membranes of many of the body's vital organs.
It surrounds the lungs, abdomen, heart, and sometimes the reproductive organs.
Unlike most cancers that have one large tumor, Mesothelioma is a large number of smaller masses spread out over a large area.
Because of that, surgical extraction is often difficult.

While asbestos use in this country has gone down, there are still 2-3,000 new cases of Mesothelioma every single year.
Asbestos is the only confirmed cause of Mesothelioma.
It has an extremely high latency period of anywhere between 10-70 years after being exposed to asbestos.
That's a hugely long time, so if you worked with it 20 years ago and then they learned about the dangers of asbestos, you could still end up getting Mesothelioma 50-70 years from now.
That sucks.
The truly sad thing is that the corporations that used asbestos, knew of the dangers but never told the employees so they could protect themselves from liability.
Because they failed to warn employees and provide them with protective gear, many people have unnecessarily developed Mesothelioma.
There are clinical trials taking place, there is hope, but if you ever worked with asbestos even once in your lifetime, you should probably be checked every year because of how long it can take to develop this disease.

Posted by Kat at 5:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sebastian told me this a few weeks ago, I just forgot to tell you about it.
We were out at Walgreen's waiting on one of my prescriptions and he was wandering up and down the aisles.
He comes back with a popcorn machine, and asks me what it is.
So I tell him, it's a popcorn machine silly, did you read the box?
"Why do you need a machine? Don't people have microwaves?"
Yes, but some people like to make it this way.
"Why?"
Because some people just like it that way, some people like the microwave kind, and some people still even use Jiffy Pop.
"What's that?"
Jiffy Pop were these little things full of popcorn kernels, shaped like frying pans almost.
You put them on your stover burner, and sorta shook them back and forth until all the popcorn was popped.
"They didn't have microwaves when you were a kid?"
Well no, not until I was older. I think I was about your age when my mom and dad got our first microwave, and Jiffy Pop is how my mom made the popcorn until then, and I think microwave popcorn was invented a few years later actually.
"Mom, you are sooo old."
Thanks buddy. Love you too.
"No mom, really, you're old."
Really Sebastian, thanks for the reminder.
Turdnugget.
"Old lady."
Fartknocker.
"Old. Lady."
Ok, shut up now before this old lady beats you with her walker.
*He laughs and walks to put the box back on the shelf still calling me old lady.*
Kids are brutal man.

Posted by Kat at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Both boys went to school this morning, Sebastian wearing his fleece jacket, and Mark wearing his jean jacket from port authority clothing that I got, because it was chilly this morning, and then around 9:30am, the school called and sent Mark home.

He tried to go today even though he's still sick. He made it through two periods before he just couldn't take it anymore and had to leave.
When he gets sick, he really gets sick.
I feel so bad for him.
He's laying down on the couch right now, I'm letting him play for a little bit as long as he stays laying down.
He has a slight fever again, his stomach is bothering him still. I'm hoping it's just a virus but we don't know that because I can't get him to see his doctor.
They have no open slots today and won't have any till next Friday.
Well, by next Friday, chances are great he won't be sick anymore.
I would take him to the ER, but they get mad at you if it's not a real emergency and tell you to take him to his doctor.
Blah.

Posted by Kat at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm watching Fido right now.
It's very dark humor, I'm laughing, but I can see that other people would not find humor in this at all.
I'll be back with a full review when it's over.

Posted by Kat at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)