yesterday, jim called me into the bathroom while he was showering.  he said he had a bad pain in his chest. i could tell he didnt look well and he was shaken up by it. he even sat down in the tub and i sat on the floor beside him and held his hand.  he tried to shrug it off and ignore it, and he went to work that night.  in the morning, he was still not feeling well, so he picked me up at 6am and we went to the ER here in town.  when we went in, his BP was really high. they did blood work, ekg, xray, ct scan.  luckily they all came back as normal. after a few hours there, his BP even settled down to a nice fine normal spot.  there was worry it couldve been a pulmonary embolism since he’s been traveling a lot of hours recently. the ultimate ruling?  he probably pulled a muscle in his ribs.

… the whole time, i had never been more scared in my whole life. there is nothing worse than seeing your better half hurting, in a gown, and hooked up to all kinds of buzzing and beeping monitors and machines. (made even worse by his hairy chest that kept making the leads come off and all of the sudden he would flat-line). but its over. he is fine and told he is very healthy.

still, 12 hours after leaving the hospital, i still feel horrible.

i guess it made me realize my superman is mortal. ive never seen him sick or hurting or in a lot of pain. (really; ive even asked him before why it seems like i get sick, even colds, more often then he does).  ive never seen him in the hospital.  ive never seen him as anything but this very strong man and suddenly something couldve been wrong and there was nothing i could do to help him.  nothing i could do to make it better quickly.  it was such a helpless situation.   i didnt cry in front of him. i didnt want to get him upset or worked up more while we were there. i just held it all in; but it still feels like they are there and needing to be cried.

no real reason why… ive been pretty busy. we went for a two week vacation. we went back to pa, but decided to drive across country instead of fly. we took the long way home and spent a little bit of time in wilmington, nc (one of my new favorite towns) and myrtle beach, sc. right after that i started a make-up class. i had to drop out of it when i got sick last year. it was a semester length class in a month. it was hard, but i survived it with my 4.0 intact.

i have two weeks off before classes start back up. i’m missing my cohort friends and it will be good to see them again.

i’m currently reading “the hour i first believed” by wally lamb. he truly is one of the greatest authors ever. he is absolutely tied with flannery o’connor as my favorite writer. i’m down 600 pages in 4days. its a long book, but he is such a talented writer that it is hard to put the book down and the reading just flies by. i read a wonderful line today that said “embrace the suck.” somedays, you just gotta wake up and embrace the suck.

im tired and depressed and slightly irked about a situation that i’m powerless to do anything about. its starting to give me headaches and turn my stomach just thinking about it.

healthwise, everything is the same. i guestimate that i’ve lost about 40-50% of my vision in my right eye. i have good days and bad days with it. some days i can see a little more and some are dark and blurry days. it hit me today how this is most likely permanent damage that will have changed my life forever. if i ever have children, i can never hold him/her on my right hip and walk about; i might walk them into something. i still have a pretty bad blind-spot and still walk into things and get spooked when people just appear out of nowhere next to me. luckily, my headaches have virtually gone away. i am very thankful for that. i can live with the blindness (be it grudgingly), but the headaches, at times, could be debilitating.

i broke my diet on vacation and forgot about it after we came back. this week i’ve started it up again. it took a bit of whining and prodding, but jim got me back into going to the gym. i forgot how much i like it. of course i lifted too much on my second day and pulled/strained a muscle in my shoulder. i was a little grumpy about that. i shouldve known better. i still remember my weightlifting classes in high school; i knew i shouldve gone slower / did less.

i kinda made up with an old friends. it was very good to hear from her and talk to her. however, i’ve started to take on jim’s sleep-schedule, making me sleep days since he works nights, and i havent been able to talk to her since that initial conversation. i feel a bit bad about that.

the other day, i noticed that there was something stuck under my space bar, so i popped it off and cleaned it out… of course now my space bar isnt working right. i have to beat the living crap out of it just to get a space. *grrr*

my favorite part of the days: jim saying “they’ll be shitting in style!” (in reference to my mom buying a new kitty litter box). this is closely followed by jim saying “i feel so bad, i tried to kill your mom!” (in reference to him starting to drive off while she was halfway out of the door when he was dropping her off in front of a store. “no, that wasn’t the door closing. that was the door opening!”)

so i updated my wordpress.. something that i haven’t done in ages and in a million wordpress upgrades. so now i’m trying to get use to its very different and new interface. i’m not really feeling the new interface and its going to take me a while to get use to it.
i dropped my summer classes and changed my emphasis/endorsement from early care and education (ece) to history/social studies. ece is considered a specialized endorsement and none of my ece credits would have transfered. i would have to have taken many of the same courses all over again.  so changing it allows my history credits to transfer over..  i only need one more history for the endorsement.

while i’m working at that, i’m going to finish up my AA in ece. i’m just a few credits shy of it, so i might as well finish it.
so i’m reading the national news and its just so scary.. unemployment is rising, the price of gas is increasing, the price of everything is increasing..  i think its good that we are where we are. both of my parents and jim have really good, secure jobs and are making more money here than what they did in pa. i know when i’m good to go to start teaching, that there will be plenty of jobs here for me.  they’re going to be opening up a new school every year for the next four years here to help with the city’s population boom. the nau advisor told me that the neighboring town was hiring people to teach who didnt even have their teaching certification.  so i know that in two years ill have a secure job.  everything is really good here.. i feel pretty blessed.

today i go for a one-month follow up with holiday. i think i might ask to be bumped up on my seroquel and i need to get a new prescription for my xanax.  i went to a plastic surgeon on monday who said that my scar was a sabacious cyst.  i was reading up on it and it doesnt sound like thats what it is, but she’s the doctor.. i told her i wanted to make sure the insurance would cover it and she said that they would have to send in pictures of it to the insurance to check.. it would take about 4wks.. if they dont cover it, its in the 540range and jim said we can pay for it ourselves. she said that they do it there in their office. she would inject lidocaine around it, excise it (cut it out), and then stitch it up. it will give me a more fine, straight-line scar. so that would be nice.

im starting to upload pictures from our trip. i didn’t realize that a hiccup made me loose my gallery. so i’m in the process of putting the gallery back up and my other pictures back up as well. ill probably finish it today.

first off.. bleh.

my pump died in my fish tank. my cucumbers died. my bamboo shrimp died. the other day, my guppie died. now one of my tetras died (but in all fairness, im not sure if it was because of something wrong with the tank or because my dempsy just ate it for fun and food). bleh. i dont know what im going to do about any of the above.

ive been meaning to write the past few days, but havent had a chance.

saturday night we went out with ppl jim worked with. i had too much to drink and was introduced to jagermeister and red bull. wow. ill leave it at that. lol on sunday we stayed in and replanted my cucumbers so that they could have more room to grow. we also went out and tried a new chinese place. it was kinda bad and i think it made me sick. ive been feeling more than a little bleck lately. on monday, i forgot to water we also mapled and got some take out from t&m. at some point we watched “dan in real life.” a friggen awesome movie. today i did work for school, jim had a meeting, and we went out with my mom to costco, target, and buffalo wild wings.

on monday we also did a hell of a lot of work. we cleaned up the house (i finally mopped!) and we called a guy about the ac. we tried turning it on sunday night and it wouldnt come on. it just made a nasty loud humming sound and blew warm air. it was on pure luck that we were able to get someone the next day.. a lot of the places we called said a 4+ day wait. (umm. yeah. i dont think so). one ad said “same day service” but jim thought it looked cheap and didnt want to go with them. when he finally called them, they were very professional and (the first we called to do so) asked what we were experiencing. the guy they sent out was friggen GREAT.

ok, backstory. last year our ac was acting up. wasnt blowing that cold and was blowing all of the time. some came to the door one afternoon and i let him in the backyard to fix it.. yeah.. well. i thought my mom had finally scheduled someone to come out and had forgotten to tell me. turned out the guy was just at the wrong house. paid him a lot of money. he left. two day later the ac goes COMPLETELY out. yeah. i had jimmy get us a night at a hotel in eloy because it was just too friggen hot to sleep. i was in the pool every two hours to cool down and was just exhausted from no sleep. (yes, we took poochies with us so they could sleep cool too for a night). my mom did have to call the insurance ppl and they sent someone out. they replaced the motor for the nominal charge of the insurance price and everything was pretty ok after that until sunday when we tried to turn the ac on.

now back to this weekend. fri-sun me and my mom had been snippy at each other, mainly about whos responsibility it is to do what. because of all of this, me and jim opted to call in ac repair from some one out of the phonebook instead of me arguing more with her and waiting th week+ that the insurance would take to find and call someone out.

well, the guy we called out said that the ppl the insurance ppl had out last summer had put in a crappy motor. he said it was so crappy that his own company stopped carrying it awhile ago because its total crap. the problem with it? they’re notoriously known for going out after a year (2 if you’re *extremely* lucky). in other words our insurance was going with a company that was ripping them (and us) off and using super-cheap parts. since it was under a year the old motor was still under waranty and we could call insurance company, argue, wait a week, have them send the ppl out from last year, get another crappy motor replacement, or just have the guy who was here then replace it for like $350. yeah. we chose the latter. so.. yeah.. jimmy got a great back-rub for being such a great provider on monday and will probably get a few more before the week is out. my parents offered to split it and pay jimmy back half(+), but he has declined. (we did get dinner on my mom tonight, so thats a plus lol)

on monday we also called some window repair ppl. it seems as thought a little doggy might have fallen on the back of the couch and into the window (or perhaps they just jumped on it) and there is now a crack going right across it. we’re not really sure when it happened. murphy really likes that window and he stares out of it all of the time (so does rusty, to a lesser extent). jimmy is worried that someone might push against it and have it break and come shattering down and hurt them. so hopefully be the weekend someone will come out and change it out. someone was suppose to come out yesterday or today to measure it. they said they would have to order the glass and should have it in in about 3day or so.

we’ve also been talking about what to do with the front and side yard. it just so happened that we had a huge magnet (we got it from the place where we rent our storage unit from; they had a stack of them and i took one) that had local contact numbers for fire, emergency, and poison control and such. well, along the side of it it has about 4-6 advertisements from local businesses. one of them is a temp agency and it states 4hours for $55 or 8hours for $110. theyll provide ppl to do anything from packing, cleaning, moving, to landscaping and yard work. we want to take out a few trees and a few stumps and cut back some bushes. we also wanna look into putting down some type of edging between the landscaping rocks and the sidewalk.

our neighbor just completely redid her front lawn (put in grass in a kidney-shaped area with this wonderful edging around it, new red landscaping rocks, begonias, and a few citrus trees) with the help of another neighbor. the “another neighbor” is new to the neighborhood. they’re an older retired couple and as nice as peach pie. we went out one day to find that our alley had been cleaned up and our bushes along the side of the house (along side the outside edge of our wall (we dont have fences out here, we have walls) and often forgotten about) had been pruned. we had no idea what happened. then we met the neighbor-man and he said that he hopped that we didnt mind and that he had done. i guess he is newly retired and has been trying to keep busy. well.. he’s just infectious i guess.. the other neighbor lady redid her front yard with his help and now we’re thinking of redoing ours.. especially so if we can get work done for $110/day. i would love to put some citrus trees in, but we have some decorative olive trees in now and they’re just a pain in the ass with the mess that they make.

jimmy said he would be willing to pay for it, but he’d want to get a lot of things taken out and really get his money’s worth lol my mom said it would also be something she would like to do.. however all four of us have trips planned to go back to pa (my mother in father in early may and me and jim in mid to late may).. so it would probably have to wait until we come back and after we get our tax money. it should be really nice though. i cant wait.

ive still been really amazingly happy and high on life lately. today after my shower i just burried my face in a towel and smiled at how fresh it smelled and how great it felt against my skin.

ive really been thinking lately that i want to get published. im working on a creative writing class and im doing really well in it. my teacher has been raving about two short stories in particular. i would like to work on them more, develop them into novels, and submit them to some literary agents. is it too late to change my new years resolution? : finish a novel. get an agent.

(i made this for my myspace blog since i havent posted in there for a while, but it ended up being so long that i decided to put it here as well. i have edited a bit of it to exclude things i’ve already talked about recently in this blog)

things are going pretty ok. i’m putting off crappy work that i dont really want to do. me and jim are both sick. its like the cold from hell. ive had it about the past two weeks. i’m starting to get better, but its hard to shake off. of course, i gave it to jim. he started coming down with it on friday/saturday. he just keeps getting slowly worse. i’m hoping he starts to get over it soon. we have a little mini-pharmacy going on here with different cold medicines and tissue boxes all over the place.

we went out this weekend and probably shouldn’t have. on sunday we stayed in and played video games. i got him addicted to Gears of War. we spent almost all day sunday playing. he had to climb up on the roof and fix a few slipping tiles. luckily a neighbor pointed them out the other day and we were able to fix it before any damage was done. in the evening we went for a drive, got some take out, and had a little picnic in the park. we haven’t done that in ages. yesterday, he had to go into work for a little while and then we went up to chandler and did some shopping. the usual stopping at petco to pick up treats (are doggies love the goodies at their treatbar), picked up some light bulbs at lowes, snuck into sam’s club and scoped it out (we have a costco membership, but think we might want to get a sam’s as well), had dinner at longhorn steak house (friggen *excellent* btw), then stopped at the theater and saw ‘jumper.’ of course when we came home, we played GOW. it was a good day, but jimmy was pretty bad last night; just lots of coughing. i felt bad for going out and not letting him just stay in and rest.
we got our state tax refund this weekend. jimmy wants to buy some bikes and go bike riding. we’re planning on putting our federal (a decent bit of money) aside and saving it as a down payment for a house. we’ve been trying to do a lot to get ready for buying a house (fixing credit, saving money, etc).

we’ve been talking off and on about our vacation this year. we want to do something more than just ‘go home.’ jimmy wants to go to cancun, but i’m leery. i would want to venture off the beaten path and thats how tourists in mexico wind up dead. personally, i would love to do a cruise up the pacific coast to alaska and see the northern lights. of course he countered with a whirlwind tour of the east coast: a few days home, a few days in d.c., a few days in nyc, a few days in philly, a few days in boston. i think we’ve kinda agreed on this (for now). he has to go up to plymouth, ma next month for training and says he’d really like to go and spend some extended time in boston. as a history buff, i would love to go to boston and see the historic sites (and graveyards!). i also love the idea of spending a few days in nyc. when we first met, he took me there as a surprise. neither one of us really didn’t know what to do and spent the weekend there wandering around and getting lost (and we did get to go ice skaing in central park and see the 9/11 site); it was loads of fun. of course, what i really want to do is go to the new york public library and see winnie the pooh and go to the museums there.. and of course you can’t go to d.c. and not at least spend some time museum hopping there.. but i’m not sure if my desire to museum and graveyard hop for vacation is really jimmy’s desire too. it just so happened that last night i noticed the ‘travel’ section in the paper. i think i’m going to have to google some new places tonight.
its going to be a busy spring. jimmy has lots of meetings now that he’s a supervisor and working on all kinds of committees. one of his friends from back home is going to vegas for a bachelor party and has asked jim if he’d want to go and meet up for the weekend. i’ve been encouraging him to. i know he needs to get out, hang out with the guys, oogle other women; he knows the rules: no touching, no fucking, no killing. oh, yeah, ‘no killing.’ i’ve seen the movies, i know what goes on in those parties… so things are going to be busy for him. i’m trying again to transition into NAU. i have an appointment wednesday after next to meet with their advisor. its basically about applying to NAU’s school of education. bleck. i still need to work on changing my name, getting my license, find a new dr, and of course the rest of the typical day-to-day shit that goes on.

i still have my learners permit. i got a lot of driving in this weekend. i’m doing pretty ok, but sometimes forget simple little things like speed limits, not making 90degree turns at 40mph, and not hitting other cars in parking lots. i do pretty ok. i get a little freaked at the speeds here. just going on some side roads, the speed limit is the highway speed limit back in pa. i almost had a panic attack last night coming home. was doing almost 70, pitch black and couldn’t see far (of course with just enough on-coming traffic to keep me from turning on my high beams for any extended period), and on the reservation where cows are known to sneak out of fences and wind up by/on the road. i’ve personally seen two cows on the side of the road at night on that road.. so, yeah, i got a bit freaked. and of course there is nothing scarier than the guy two cars back in his lexus that wants to do 90 so he decides to pass me and the guy behind me at the same time and, yes, of course i could see the lights of on coming traffic and my own immediate demise because of one fuck.. -grumbles- or the bitch from michigan who saw that her right-hand lane was ending, but almost rammed me into oncoming traffic to the left just to get in front of me. its not my driving that makes me nervous and paranoid as it is the fuckers from arizona driving.

-grumbles- but i digress..

i’m hoping to do a lot of dog-focused things next weekend. i want to go to the dog park. i wanted to go the last two weekends, but we haven’t been able to. as luck would have it, it has rained a day or two before our weekend, so we know it will be muddy there and jimmy doesnt like them playing in the mud. im hoping next weekend will be nice enough for us to take them again. they really like getting to run in a big area and socialize with other doggies. murphy needs groomed. badly. for some reason, his head smells like bacon grease; because of this, walter likes to lick him. when we came home last night i noticed my poor murph-a-roo looked like a wanna-be-trendy preteen with gel spiked hair going every which way on his head. i bathed them both a few weeks ago, but i hate doing it. they both hate taking baths and murphy really resents me for a few days after. so, they need groomed. when we were out yesterday i noticed that the petco we were at was going to have a local pet photographer in. it got the thought in my head that i really want to have some family portraits taken. we looked at the website for those people who were going to be there and i didnt really care for their style. so i wanna look around this week and try and find a good photographer who does pets and people. i think a great weekend would be park, grooming, and pictures. fingers crossed, we can get it done this weekend or next.

i love my dogs. they’re my children. there is nothing in this world better than puppy snores. when jimmy’s alarm started going off this morning, walter came in and laid with us. i had to scoot over and give him room and he snuggled in right between us. i woke up after jimmy got out of the shower and was rooting around in the closet for clothes. i hadn’t realized jim had even gotten up yet. i felt walter behind me and thought it was jim. four hours later, walter is still sleeping with me. i heard my father’s phone going off with a text message and went to go turn it off, he came out into the kitchen with me, i gave him a goodie, and he brought it right back to bed. yes. i think there is a green, heart-shaped biscuit hidden in my blankets right now; but i still love him.

i have a lot of little things that i want to do this week. we bought the previously-mentioned bookshelf from target and since its in a box, we need to put it together, but before i can do that i need to find a place for it. right now i just have five or six overflowing bags of books in the computer room. not that long ago, me and jim installed a new kitchen faucet. we had to get new shut-off valves and flex tubing things, but didn’t get the right type; we need to pick up something that has an extra hole in it for the dishwasher. right now our dishwasher has no access to water. i need to go to target or walmart and pick up a jewelry cleaner. jim has bought me some really nice jewelry over the years (my engagement and wedding ring, diamond stud earrings for my birthday) and i want to make sure that i always have them looking nice. i also want to pick up dexter. we’ve been buying and watching a lot of tv-on-dvd sets. while the strike has been going on, we’ve been watching heroes and jericho. i’ve heard great things about dexter and want to watch it. (its a showtime (i think?) show about a serial killer. its now on cbs, but i dont want to watch it edited). target (i think) has it on sale for like $20. i wanna get some new croc shoes, but what i want is sold out, so i need to look for some resellers. the weather is *excellent* here (despite the one rainy days before weekends that ruin doggy park plans). its been sunny, in the 60s/70s. its like a great spring day. i really want to look into turning part of our yard into a little vegetable garden.

before we got murphy, my parents didn’t really want us to get another dog. (i think a large part of it was it being too soon after rowdy’s passing, but i wanted a dog to try and help ease my own pain). we managed to talk them into it by sectioning off a part of the yard. its a U-shape. when we moved in, the back corner leg was sectioned off. while the majority of the yard was grass, this section had a railroad tie, that separated it. the end was sandy and had a prickly pear cactus. me and jim cut it down, cleaned it up, put up a fence, and created a big wooden box. our bedroom window looks off into this section. a perfect little place for a dog.. yeah. that was the plan. that never happened. roo spent half of his first night outside (on the patio no less) and then came right on in to the foot of our bed. so the penned off area is just this empty area that has some wood in it from the box (we broke it down). i think it would be a perfect place for a little vegetable garden. it gets full sun in the morning, shade in the afternoon and evening, and its seperate from the dogs by a fence. all it would take is some plastic sheeting, a few more railroad ties, a dozen or so bags of dirt, and some seeds. it would be pretty easy. its definitely perfect weather to start a garden.

i have a lot of crappy work to do this week for my class. so before i can do anything, i need to do my work… that i’ve been putting off.. for the past 4-5hours. last year i started an organization habit i plan on keeping for a while. i have an excel file that is set up in weekly blocks. i plan out my homework by it and keep track of what needs done, whats been done, whats late. in seperate tabs in excel i keep track of my grades in each class. since i’ve been sick, i have one assignment that is really late that i *need* to get in today. its almost a week late. last week i was just too sick to move and then the weekend came and i was feeling better and wanted to spend time with jim. i had planned on my calendar that two other assignments are due today and need to get done. plus i have a creative writing class that i need to write something for, have peer reviewed, and turned in by thursday. i know i wont have it done and reviewed by then. if i dont, my grade automatically goes down to a B. -sighs- i need to work.

yesterday was a good day.
i called the school and i have all of my classes figured out. i’m done with my aa in ee degree and i’m happy with just that for now. i’m not going to stress myself out trying to get a crappy certificate in something i dont really want (preschool).  i need to buy my books now and call a prof who wants to have a phone conference before class starts. i had to sign up for one more class to be a full time student and almost everything was filled, so i’m taking intro to ethics.  should be interesting to say the least.

we put the doggies in the car and took them over to the new doggy park. its only a few blocks away and opened up just a handful of days ago.  when we got there, there were some landscapers working in the main area, so we took our doggies over to the timid dog area. we walked them around on their leashes first and made sure there werent any areas they could sneak out of (we found two  :sad:  but they werent really big enough that our dogs could easily escape through) and then we let them off of their leashes and let them run.  walter was pretty happy because he has a ball addiction and we brought one with us. he played fetch for a good bit of time, but murphy really didnt know what to do. he would run with walter, but then got bored and tired out.  soon, the landscapers left and a few other people and their doggies showed up and went into the main area. murphy became really focused on the other dogs and wanted to go play with them, so we put them back on their leashes and took them over to the main area. one couple was a little concerned because we were in the timid area and coming into the main area. we had to explain to them that there were landscapers with a gate open in the main area when we got here. we let the boys off of their leashes and let them play with the other doggies for about 5-10minutes. they did really good. they walked side-by-side and sniffed other doggies that came by. after awhile a mother and her two children came in; one was a teen, but the other was young (3-4), skittish, and seemed to be mentally challenged.  There are rules against such young children being there, but i guess the woman didn’t care. so since we dont know how our boys do around young children, we decided to leave.

we came home, showered, waited for my mom to see if she wanted to go around with us (she didnt), and then we went up to chandler and to the mall up there. my wedding ring has been a little too tight and his has been a little too big.  the lady who waited on us was very nice. she took our ring sizes and explained about how even though my my wedding ring was too tight and my engagement ring just right were actually the same sizes. i guess the wider the ring, the smaller they feel. my wedding ring is pretty wide and then my engagement ring was added on top of it, so it felt really tight.  poor jim had to use a ring guard/huggie to keep his on his finger. it would just fall right off without it. while we were there, he asked if there was anything that i liked, so i looked around and found two things.  one was a set  (ring/necklace/earrings) that was diamonds and pink diamonds(? or maybe it was some other light pink gem) in a flower shape. the other was a small diamond stud earrings. he didnt like the earrings. he thought they were a little small. so he ended up buying me one size larger.  just these gorgeous 1/4th carat round cut diamond earrings.  he told me back in november i could pick out anything i wanted for my birthday, but they didnt have anything that i liked at the time. so i asked if this could just be considered a late birthday gift.  i put them in right away when we got in the car. they look *gorgeous*, but HUGE.  i’m use to having tiny little diamond chip earrings. they look huge in my ears.

after that we went out to eat at olive garden. we managed to get a table right away in a nice little corner. we both tried something new on their menu and were both pleasantly surprised. i had purchased some lactaid the other day and took some with me and  had it with dinner and YAY! no upset tummy!

we went home after dinner and crashed on the couch and watched a movie. we ended up going to bed earlier because jimmy had to be up at 7 today to go in early to work.  of course i graciously gave him a nice long back rub for damn near spoiling me to death and he’ll probably get another tonight.
i’m a little grumpy actually.. they said our rings wont be ready until saturday.  well, jimmy works on saturday and on sunday he is leaving for bullhead city (right across the river from laughlin, nv). they’re meeting with 911 people from there to see what kinda system set-up they have. apparently jimmys work has been looking for a new set-up/software so they’ve been having meetings with various software developers and 911 centers to see what they’re using and how its working out for them and if its something they should purchase or not.  so i guess on sunday he’s going with another supervisor and 2 other people up there.  its only a one-day meeting, but its a long drive, so they decided to spend the night so they wouldnt have to drive-meeting-drive.  so that would mean that jim wouldnt have his ring while he’s gone..  now i trust jim, but i dont trust other women.  a wedding ring is a nice little “back off bitches! he’s mine!” statement to trampy hoes.  yeah. jim needs his statement if he’s going that far away and into that kind of area.

everything has been going really, really well.  the best that they’ve been in ages!

i really love jim working on this new shift. i know it means a slight decrease in pay because there is no more mandatory overtime, but it means that i get to see him so much more.  at 9-9.30 i make dinner, he comes home around 10.30, we eat, and then snuggle up in bed and watch tv together. its our happy us-time. we had been recording ‘life’ on tivo since sept, but hadn’t watched any of it.  well, now that nothings on, we’ve went back and started to watch it. its like a quirky ‘law and order.’  last night we got into the ‘hero’ dvd set i got him for christmas.  we spent like 4-5hours last night watching it. we wanted to start watching it when it came out, but just didnt have the time.  we were talking about going and getting ‘jericho’ and watching that before its season two starts up in february.

walter has been sleeping with us. he didn’t sleep with me when jim was working nights, but now that jim is back home and sharing walter’s sleeping schedule, walter is right there with us. its been getting chilly lately and i know he has short fur and gets chilled easily, so we’ve given him a little microfiber throw to be his blankie.  every night he comes into the room, puts his head on the bed, gives you sad eyes, waits for a minute before putting one paw up on the bed and then the other.  he’ll look over his shoulder at you, giving you more sad eyes and, yes, you just have to scoop up his bottom and put him up on the bed.  oh, he can get up on his own, he just likes to be treated like a young little puppy still. he doesn’t realize that he’s an 80lb dog. he’ll either lay at our feet or sprawl by my side so i can snuggle and hold him. i always take his little red blankie and cover him up in it. he’ll stay snuggled up in it all night.
jim has a lot of trainings he has to go to. there was one in colorado in the end of jan, but it was canceled. i was sad because he said i could go with him and i was looking forward to seeing snow.  apparently there is one in plymouth, MA that i would *love* to go to, but he’s saying no. it just not financially possible. i guess its cheaper to fly to colorado in january than to boston in march. i’m a huge history buff. i would be giggling and prancing with glee as i knocked over field-trip children to see plymouth rock, the pilgrim museum, and the mayflower II. but alas, jim says no he also has trainings in new mexico and either maryland or virginia (he cant remember where exactly its at).

i went out the other day and bought books from various places. i started reading “the unbearable lightness of being.” i really like it.. parts of it (at least the beginning so far) is very deep and philosophical and zen.  i’m also hopeful to read ‘bonfire of the vanities’ at some point. i also just found out last night about “rhett butler’s people.” it tells ‘gone with the wind’ through rhett’s prospective and totally scraps ’scarlett,’ the crappy sequel another chick did. when i was in middle school i fell in love with gone with the wind. i cant tell you how many copies of the book i’ve went through just from reading and re-reading. so i know will have to get and read this book.

i got an email today from an old friend who i thought was no longer a friend.  it was nice.  i had been silently torturing myself over an initial email i sent a few months ago that hadn’t been replied to. so.. yay! i’m not hated! just crazy and paranoid lol

there is a job that i’ve been eying and eying. it was posted back in october/november, but i just thought that i didnt have everything that they wanted for it. so i just felt bad and did nothing.  well, about a week or two ago, it opened back up. i’m thinking i’ll apply for it. its for a senior library assistant. they want someone who has high school degree/ged and 1yr of exp. as a library assistant.  well, obviously i dont have the latter. but i do adore libraries and have an extraordinary amount of library experience. after all, what do i have to loose?

there is also an ad in the paper for a daycare center that is looking for a teacher’s assistant. but they’ve had the ad in the paper since october, so that just makes me more reluctant. what do others know that i dont?

ok, so me and jim get along very well. we’re almost like exact copies of one another. we fight about very few things.  but sometimes we are just on two completely different wavelengths.  he said that we could look at places after the new year.. so of course.. january 3rd i’m like “ok.. well.. umm.. its after the new year.” and he just goes “-huffs- well we need to save up money again! we still have christmas bills.” of course my reply was “but you said after the new year!” so would it really have been so hard to say like “may 1st” to me originally? here i was counting down the days… i found a few really nice looking places, but oh well i guess. i know it would be a lot easier and quicker for us to get our own place if i was working and helping us to save up.

i would like to try and get some fish this weekend. i’m thinking maybe another guppie or two and i really, really want a puffer fish or two.  maybe a little frog for some diversity. i love the puffers, but i hear that they’re aggressive. but the ones they sell at the local pet store are pretty small.. so maybe they wouldnt do so bad in my tank.

everything is going really well.. i’m still behind in some of my school work, but i’m not so anxious about it. i know ill get it done and everything will be ok. i need to have everything done and in by the 6th.  im doing ok in my classes. my grades had kinda slipped with work not turned in yet, but as i’m turning them in, my grade is climbing back up.

jimmy is at another training today. i guess he’s taking a lot of classes because he’s now a supervisor. he’s taking a lot of management classes.

i’ve been trying very hard lately to do more wifey things.  i cooked on monday night and made jimmy ravioli and pumpkin bread.  last night i made some cinnamon swirl bread for my mom (she wanted to take something to work for friends) and i made brownies and chocolate chip cookies. I put too much oil or butter (or both?) in my cookies and they all flattened out to a pan-shapped cookie mess!  :lol:   :lol:  i also did a ton of cleaning last night. cleaned up our bathroom, gathered up garbage (jim-a-roo took it out for me), did three loads of laundry, put the new (and freshly washed) flannel sheets on our bed, and took a shower.  i was busy-busy last night..  and i turned in a homework assignment and completed half of another assignment! busy-busy me
jimmy should be getting off work soon. i’m not sure what we’re going to do. i’d like to stop at the storage unit and get our christmas stuff and maybe do some work in the yard while its cool and dusk… i dont think he really wants to though. we’ll probably stay in and watch movies and tv.

life is good. life is amazingly good and i have much more to be happy for than what i give credit to.

the other day, me, my mother, and jim went house looking. we found a house that we really liked. it has loads of character; shaped in a “U” a bedroom big enough to be a second master. we’re starting to think of just keeping our family blended and going all in together for a bigger and better house. something newer, something with a HOA (i hate not having one now), two stories, more storage space. what we have now is nice for temporary living with the 4 of us, but we really need something bigger. i have my fingers crossed. me and jimmy need a bigger room. we’re still thinking about if we want to spend the rest of our days living together, but it makes sense to.. we all get a better house and they’re live-in puppy/baby-sitters.

we took our dog outs today and had them groomed. murphy did ok. walter growled when they tried to take him out of his cage when it was his turn. poor rusty (my parents dog) is very shy/skiddish/scared and they had to just live him out in their open area and cower in a corner. they did an *amazing* job. they are as soft as a babys bottom. rusty was a lil sad coming home. they did the anal gland cleaning and he HATES to have his butt touched. after coming home he spent about three hours hiding in the bedroom.

today was one of the first days in a while that everyone has had off together, so we decided to have christmas early. jim got: lost season 1&2, lost guide book, lost board game (can you tell he likes lost?), a new fancy watch, a few car gadgets, a wii, zelda, maden ‘07, red steel, a game book for zelda. my mom got a sirius radio for her car, a gps for her car (she gets lost a lot), a new camera, a docking/printer thing for the camera, a bigger memor card for it, and loads of printer paper for it. she has been wanting a nice camera with a printing station for a while now. my dad got a few manly stocking stuffers (hes so hard so shop for), tire pressure gauges (since he is so anal about tires. he actually wanted to replace jims new tires with brand newer tires for xmas), slippers from the “boys,” a deep fryer, a car battery back up thing that restarts your batter/pumps your tires/etc etc, a light for his grill for when he cooks outside at night, a 26in lcd hd tv, and an extremely nice telescope. i ended up getting croc shoes (extremely comfortable), a dvd camcorder, a tassimo brew station (it makes coffee, espresso, tea, cappuccino, and latte), a zelda / mario / and final fantasy III games for my DS, and *deep breath* a new laptop (completely unxpected). my parents also got me and jimmy a ps3 along with a game called untold legend: dark kingdom. the puppies got a gillion toys, piggie ears, baccon chewy bones, and pet blankies.

this is so -not- the normal christmas for our family. last year we barely had christmas at all. i dont think my parents did at all. me and jimmy were living on our own and couldnt really afford much. before that we had just moved into the house and couldn’t really afford too much then either. it seems like once every 10years or so we all splurge and have an amazing christmas. next year we’ll probably all get socks and underwear. lol

everyone really got something they wanted and that was totally unexpected. my mom wasnt expecting the camera, my father wasnt expecting the tv, jimmy wasnt expecting the ps3, i wasnt expecting the laptop. my mother and father had both wanted their unexpected gifts, but they weren’t expecting the lvl of the gifts. jim did a lot of research and managed to get a realy nice 7mp cam for my mom and a kickass meade telescope for my dad. they’re watching an informational dvd about how to set it up and use it. i am amazed at the bonding going on between them with this. my mom woke up early this morning so she went to bed early. apparently everything with the telescope is suggested to do during th ay when you can better see things. of course our stupid asses are out there in 30f, freezing our butts off, and holding a flashlight above our heads. tomorrow is going to be a good fun day trying to better align and figure it out.

things are well. life is good. i have a lot to be thankful for. i think i like having commercial christmas before real christmas. it gives me time to reflect on what is, appreciate what i have, and be ever so much more thankful for the people and things in your life.

i know come january 1st, everyone will be working overtime and bitching about credit card bills.