Snow, snow, snow!!!

These are some shots from outside our apartment windows today. The snow started falling and blowing at about 11:00 last night and it's now almost 4:00 in the afternoon and it hasn't stopped yet! It's hard to tell how much snow we've gotten because of the drifts. The shots are pretty much self explanatory, I guess, except for the fact that under that big drift in the last picture outside our dining room window there are the 4 a/c units for our half of the apartment building. :-)

That's my car, the dark green one, in the middle there...

According to The Weather Channel, we've gotten about 8 inches so far with drifts of 2 to 5 feet! I think all those drifts are outside our apartment building! LOL!

My goofy email of the day...

>Why God Made Moms

>Answers given by 2nd grade school children to the following questions:
>
>Why did God make mothers?
>1. She's the only one who knows where the scotch tape is.
>2. Mostly to clean the house.
>3. To help us out of there when we were getting born.
>
>How did God make mothers?
>1. He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.
>2. Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring.
>3. God made my Mom just the same like he made me. He just used bigger

>parts.
>
>What ingredients are mothers made of?
>1. God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice
>in the world and one dab of mean.
>2. They had to get their start from men's bones. Then they mostly use

>string, I think.
>
>Why did God give you your mother & not some other mom?
>1. We're related.
>2. God knew she likes me a lot more than other people's moms like me.
>
>What kind of little girl was your mom?
>1. My Mom has always been my Mom and none of that other stuff.
>2. I don't know because I wasn't there, but my guess would be pretty
>bossy.
>3. They say she used to be nice.
>
>What did Mom need to know about dad before she married him?
>1. His last name.
>2. She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he get
>drunk on beer?
>3. Does he make at least $800 a year?
>4. Did he say NO to drugs and YES to chores?
>
>Why did your Mom marry your dad?
>1. My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. And my Mom eats a
>lot.
>2. She got too old to do anything else with him.
>3. My grandma says that Mom didn't have her thinking cap on.
>
>
>Who's the boss at your house?
>1. Mom doesn't want to be boss, but she has to because dad's such a
>goof ball.
>2. Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the

>bed.
>3. I guess Mom is, but only because she has a lot more to do than dad.
>
>
>What's the difference between Moms & dads?
>1 . Moms work at work and work at home & dads just go to work at work.
>2. Moms know how to talk to teachers without scaring them.
>3. Dads are taller & stronger, but Moms have all the real power 'cause

>that's who you got to ask if you want to sleep over at your friend's.
>4. Moms have magic; they make you feel better without medicine.
>
>
>What does your Mom do in her spare time?
>1. Mothers don't do spare time.
>2. To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.
>
>What would it take to make your Mom perfect?
>1. On the inside she's already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of
>plastic surgery.
>2. Diet. You know her hair. I'd diet, maybe blue.
>
>
>If you could change one thing about your Mom, what would it be?
>1. She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I'd get
>rid of that.
>2. I'd make my Mom smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who
>did it and not me.
>3. I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on the back

>of her head.
>
>
>WHEN YOU STOP LAUGHING -- SEND IT ON TO OTHER MOTHERS, AUNTS,
>GRANDMOTHERS

Have you heard about *THIS* crackpot?!?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/06/astronaut.arrested/index.html

Good lord! We can't even trust NASA anymore! Aren't astronauts supposed to be, I don't know, one of the last true bits of Americana we have left? You know...right up there with hot dogs and Mom's apple pie?

What is this world coming to?

My goofy email of the day...

Well I'm not over 40 yet, but I identify with quite a few of these :-)

Subject: Gotta Be Over 40 to Understand

Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and
spread mayo on the same cutting board with
the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't
get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the
counter AND I used to eat a bite raw sometimes, too.
Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper, in
a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I
can't remember anybody getting e.coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in
the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring),
no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone
in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury
with a pair of high-top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of
having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles
and built-in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but
they must have happened, because they tell us how much
safer we are now....

Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I
guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the National
Anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts
of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

What an archaic health system we had then.

Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything,
and she could even give you an aspirin for a headache or fever.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before
I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah..and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked! Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10- day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either, because if we did, we got our butt spanked there, and then we got butt spanked again when we got home. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof.

It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a "dysfunctional family". How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T----
SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING

My Bloginality is ISFJ!!!

It's been a while...

This is not going to be a long post...it's late and I gotta work in the morning...but this is just my way of getting going again. You know, kinda kicking myself in the ass a little bit. :-)

Just a few quick updates...

1. We finally moved out of my mom's house and into an apartment of our own in Bloomington, IL.
2. I finally got a better paying job. I'm just finishing up training to work in a call center for State Farm Insurance at the corporate headquarters here in town. It's cool. I like it.
3. The twins are 4 now and in "school" at a day care that is a collaborative with HeadStart, which is a pre-school program, and they love it!
4. Shannon also recently got a new job working for Country Companies Insurance, which is also headquartered here in Bloomington.
5. It has been frigging COLD here in central Illinois lately!!!

Well I guess that's it for now. More updated details tomorrow!

The funniest thing I saw today...

I was checking out at the grocery store when a woman got in line behind me and started placing the items out of her basket onto the conveyer belt. I watched her put down Pedialyte, a couple jars of baby food, a can of powdered baby formula, some Baby Orajel, some baby powder, baby lotion...and the very last item she placed on the conveyer belt...?





One very large bottle of Malibu rum.

Fuck I need a cigarette

I had to quit smoking. I know, it's the best thing for me, for so many reasons, to not smoke, but I didn't *want* to quit. Doesn't that sound stupid? I didn't want to quit. But I had to. I had started having heart palpitations and shortness of breath and some dizzy spells, to the point where I really started wondering if I wasn't having some small heart attacks or something. It really started to scare me. As it turns out I've been having Premature Ventricular Contractions, or PVC's. It's screwing with the rhythm of my heart and making me sick and two of the largest causes are nicotine and caffiene. There go my smokes, and I'm gonna have to cut down on my coffee, too. Fuck.

Actually, I'm not doing too bad on the not smoking. I'm on day 3 without one now, and for the most part I don't have too many cravings or anything. There's just certain times of the day when I really want one. Right now is one of those times. It'll be okay, though. After today all the nicotine and carcinogens should be out of my system and it'll get better and better every day. At least I hope so.

Wish me luck...

...and send me some gum.

Terri

Damnit I really need to get a grip on this blog thing

So here we are - end of January already! The girls are now 3 years and 4 months old and oh my god are they a handfull! So many things are a challenge right now - getting them to behave, getting them to listen, getting them to GO TO SLEEP AT NIGHT!!! Argh! Tomorrow I'm taking some time off of work to take them to a screening for Head Start. I don't know if they'll get in. I know I will probably sound like a pompous ass saying this, but I think they might be too advanced. They are doing just great developmentally, and to my knowledge Head Start is more for kids that might have problems learning to read, write, etc., or have higher risks of developing learning disorders, but they need something more than they're getting right now. They need interaction with other kids their age, and to be truthful I can't afford full time daycare. Because of my financial situation I might be able to get them into Head Start. So, we'll see what tomorrow brings.

As for other things, work is going well and I like the job, but it keeps me away from home full time plus some as I have an hour drive there and an hour drive back. The drive is getting old, and so is the price of gas, so I don't know how long I'll be able to put up with those two factors. Shannon's still in school this semester but she's pretty much decided that, to make things better for us financially, she's going to take a break after this semester and go back to work full time for a while. I love my mother, I love the convenience of not having to get the girls up, get them dressed and ready to go to a babysitter early in the morning so we can go to work and school (they stay home and grandma babysits them), but we feel like we have nothing of our own. We have no privacy, no social life, no sanity, no ability to make any decisions for the household or make any rules stick...but right now we are not even financially capable of getting out on our own. It sucks. My goal is to get us out into a place of our own by the end of the year.

It makes things even worse, for me anyway, to have this feeling like everyone around me is doing fine, great in fact, out on their own, holding down the fort, getting good jobs, buying houses, making things work. Everyone in Shannon's family is making good money, doing great, have nice cars, nice houses. Her sister, the newly pregnant one, is buying some $160,000 house with her husband out in Denver and Shannon's parents just went out there for the weekend to visit and they're planning on driving back here in a couple months to have a big ol' baby shower, yadda yadda yadda. So far so good with Shannon's parents treating the girls just the same, maybe even a little better, than they did before we found out S's sister was pregnant. I hope it stays that way. They've made several comments about already having two granddaughters so now they want a grandson, etc. I just hope that when the baby comes they don't treat the girls any differently.

I don't know, I guess maybe it's just "the Green Eyed Monster" rearing it's ugly head, being jealous of people doing better than me, being tired of not doing so great myself for me and my family and feeling like no matter what I do, we're still struggling. The girls have a hard time going to sleep at night and it makes it even worse that this house is so small and cramped and never quiet, and I feel like I can't get them out of here even though I know it would help tremendously for us all to have a place of our own where they could have some peace and quiet to sleep in at night. It would help me too. I just feel like it doesn't matter what I do, how much money I make, how hard I work...it's just all gone as soon as I make it and we have nothing more to show for it at the end of the week than we did at the beginning of it. Sigh. What to do?

Oh, and I broke my computer. Thankfully we got Shannon this laptop when things were a bit better for us so we have a backup. Hopefully I'll be able to get the big computer fixed soon.

Well on to catching up with the rest of my email and internet surfing!

Talk to you all again soon!!!

Terri

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Ok, so it's a little late...and I didn't even make a Christmas post. I've been bad. I know. I do hope that everyone had a great Christmas, though, and that your New Year is off to a great start. :-) As for us, well, Christmas was good...nice and relaxing. Had a couple days off from work for the holidays so I got to stay home and relax with the family for the most part. The weekend before Christmas we had Christmas with the in-laws 'cause that's when Shannon's sister and brother-in-law were in town from Colorado, then on Christmas Eve we all went down and had Christmas with the rest of Shannon's family, then Christmas Day and the day after Christmas were all just me and Shannon and Mom and the girls here at home. Santa Claus brought the girls some cool stuff that they were really happy with, but now Mommy and Momma have to make sure we keep a stock of C batteries on hand! LOL!

New Years was uneventful...just the way I like it. :-) I had three days off from work and I've gone nowhere and done nothing! LOL! Seriously, I'm just not the partying type...I leave that to the younger folks with more expendable income than I. Although, the way I feel today (i.e. like crap) you'd think I'd gone out partying, but I haven't. I think I'm just coming down with something.

So anyway, off to check out everyone's blogs to see what I've been missing lately. Talk to you more later!

Terri

Under The Baobab

Do you ever hit that little "Next Blog" button up in the upper right hand corner? I do. A lot. I love it. It takes me to so many interesting places that I might have never found otherwise. Like Myke Johnson's blog at Under The Baobab. I'm marking it as a favorite 'cause I can't wait to learn more about this guy.

Some people, I guess, have taken the menu bar off their page that has that little "Next Blog" button on it, so I have to hit the "Back" button and then the "Next Blog" button again to find the next random blog. Those people suck.

Oh my gosh it's been so LONG!!!

I've abandoned my post! I've neglected my duties! I'm a bad blogger! Bad blogger!!!

Seriously, though, I have been so tired and working so much, that by the time I get home, spend some time with the kids, then put them to bed and have time to sit down at the computer, it's late and I'm tired and just want to go to bed. :-)

The new job's been going well though. My "class" is done with training and we have just finished up our first week "on the floor." I've been working 9 to 6 and it's an hour drive there (thus another hour back) so we've been getting home only an hour before my girls are "supposed" to go to bed. I say "we" because Shannon works and goes to school in the same town so we've been riding in to town together to save on gas and, well, 'cause we have no choice. My car is kaput at the moment. The A/C clutch is shot, and basically there's no way around getting a new one for it to run right. It's drivable in town right now, but makes a god-awful noise!!! That and since the a/c clutch is going the serpentine belt is rubbing wrong on the defective part and, if I run it too much, the serpentine belt's gonna snap and I'll be dead in the water. So, long story short, we haven't been driving it, at all. And that sucks. I have a buddy who works on cars looking for parts for it. Please keep your fingers crossed that he finds me a good deal and can get it fixed for relatively cheap. :-)

The girls have been doing really well lately. They are three going on thirty, I swear!!! They are too smart for their own good sometimes. Today at 4:50 Alex looked at the clock (not digital - an actual clock with a face and hands) and said "Hmm...it's almost five o clock!" No one has ever taught them anything about how to tell time! I don't know where they get this stuff! They are such joys to watch, every day. They are always coming up with something new to shock and amaze me. :-) Brigid...man! That girl is something else! Such a little attitude on that one! She puts her little hands on her hips and sticks her little chin out...it is a sight to see! She is my little drama queen, that is for sure. Alex, she's been a bit clingy lately...always with the "pick me up, pick me up!!!" She's having a hard time with Shannon and I being gone like all day every day lately. They both are, really, but each shows it differently. I hate to be gone from them so much, but we've just got to make some decent money and get some bills paid up if we're ever going to get out of here and get a place of our own.

Well I can't really think of anything else to post about right now, so I guess I'll wrap this one up. Thanks to both of you who keep checking back to see if I've posted anything new! LOL! I'll do much better in the near future, I promise!

Until then...

Terri

So I started my new job today...

I like it. But I don't like that I like it. It's decent money...$9.00 an hour...and Shannon and I really need for one of us to be working a steady full time job right now...but it's not what I want to do. I want to work with kids. I want to help foster kids and adopted kids and kids that are wards of the state because their parents (or some other fucked up individual) did something fucked up to them and they need someone to give a shit. I want to be that "someone" to a kid who needs it.

But I can't find a full time job in that area around here and I can't afford to move *out* of this area right now, much as I want to.

So, I took this job. It's a customer call center type job, but our department only takes incoming calls and it's not sales. So, no calling people in the middle of their dinner to try to sell them a time-share or some such shit, 'cause we all know how everybody hates *those* fuckers.

We'll see how it goes. There's a lot of smokers and coffee drinkers and dykes that work there, so I guess I'll fit right in. :-)

T.

Elevators are fine places to...

...pick your undershorts out of your ass crack.
...fart.
...burp.
...pick your nose.
...adjust your bra.
...take care of that annoying personal itch that's been bothering you all night.

Or maybe that's just what *I* do in elevators.

Blogging pays off...

...a little bit at least. I used to type about 34 wpm with, I don't know, maybe 90% accuracy. I went to apply for a different job yesterday...just a customer service/call center type of thing. They needed me to type 28 wpm. I typed 54 wpm with 99% accuracy. I guess blogging paid off a little bit after all.