Welcome Back

If there is anyone left reading this I’m sorry to say but this post isn’t going to be any good. I KNOW I am going to ramble and wonder and digress and maybe even babble so you can’t say I didn't warn you. This concludes your warning, so on with the crap!

My lack of access to the internet is really affecting me! Since I’ve been cut off I obviously haven’t kept up with MY blogs, and by this I mean all the peeps I read on a daily basis. It’s sad really. I check in once and awhile but I feel I’m missing so much. Is that pathetic? I miss you internet and I don’t care who knows! Secondly, it has also affected my inspiration. When I don’t read other great blogs I feel less inspired to dribble about on mine. I’ve also had to face the fact that I’m afraid of said inspiration.

Let’s back up shall we?

I’ve been depressed. Hey – who hasn’t right? Join the club girlfriend, sheesh!
No, but I actually went to my doctor and got me some meds. It was scaaaaarrrrryyy. I had a friend talk me up about first. I mean in order to get drugs you have to first admit to yourself that you do need them and then you have to tell others. Aahhhhhhhhh! Others! My husband was the worst. "Hey Honey, I know your ex wife went on anti-depressants and then left you but I really think I need them because we’ve been fighting daily and I cannot stop crying for the life of me. Whadda ya think?" Ha!

So for those of you who read my first couple posts you know that Hubby was supposed to join the National Guard right. And so we had to hurry up and get married you see. And we moved in to a really uber small apartment because we thought it was just going to be the kid and me for a few months right. And we thought we were going to be getting a 20,000-dollar enlistment bonus soon to get us out of this hole and we borrowed money from our parents for said shotgun wedding and (inhale) that will teach us to do anymore thinking. Hubby ended up getting denied. SO… we submitted waivers and wrote letters to the governor and reopened court cases to get charges amended (like his DUI) and re-applied and held our breath. And after awhile when he didn’t hear back from his recruiter he called another recruiter at the office and it went a little something like this: "Hi, I’m checking on my application because my recruiter won’t call me back". "Well sir it says here in the computer that your application to join was denied a week ago. Sorry. Try back in a year". That was a fun night in our house. That was in January. In the meantime he’s been a stay at home Dad since we already pulled the kid out of daycare to save money before he left. I hate it. I’m the one that was supposed to stay home with my baby dammit!

Ok, so I’m adjusting to seeing my husband all the time whereas I had mentally prepared myself to not see him for 4 months and I got my family breathing down my neck on every phone call ‘when’s he gonna find a job?’, and we’re piss poor and we’re sharing one car and I have to tell everybody that no, he’s not leaving now and yes, I’m the one who works and yes, I’m just fricking fine with all of this.

Not! It’s frustrating. It sucks. I want my old life back. I want to crawl in a hole and cry 24/7, but I can’t and so since I can’t stop the crying I do it anyway and people look sideways at me as I swear that really I’m fine. Normal people cry at their desk all day right? Oh, and it’s winter in Wisconsin so guess how much fresh air and sunlight I’m getting? And I’ll tell ya another thing, I ain’t losing any weight during any of this either!

So, I’ve been on meds for about 6-7 weeks now and I’m feeling much better. Hubby and I went to Las Vegas 2 weeks ago with our tax money (more on that in another post) and we are doing much better. It’s getting in the 40’s during the day so it’s a damn heat wave and I can get outside once and awhile. In other words, I can see some light at the end of tunnel. It’s up there somewhere. Hubby is still looking for a job but I’m not breathing down his neck anymore because – hey who knows of any time that that has ever worked on a man and also then we’d have to find and pay for daycare and baby bug wouldn't get to stay in her pj’s all day long! Lookee I am an optimist after all.

It’s silly but I have John (this guy) to thank for blogging again. I had given up writing because it was too painful. It hurt just to be me, let alone talk about being me. But yesterday I googled Dr Frank Spears (cause it was work related and I can do that boring crap on the internet) and it lead me to his blog and I was all ‘so, the internet IS still out there’ and ‘I didn’t know dentists were real people’, [j/k] but if he can blog about work, family, life (isn’t that what all blogging is about) then by-golly I can get back on that horse too. So, thanks. I owe lots of thanks, to many people, but for right now, thank you oh-holy-blog-of-pouring-my-life-out-on-virtual-paper-if-for-nothing-other-than-for-therapeutic-value. I needed this.

2/1 Utilities Included

Our apartment is still what I’d call “new” to us. We only just moved in August from a house that we’d previously lived in for 19 months. Our old house in the country was the place I brought my baby home to. It was where we lived when I got pregnant and it was where we had a yard and had bon fires and raised pigs. It was “our” home. And I hated it! Yes, we are renters so I knew it was only temporary but for some reason we couldn’t ever leave there. We didn’t have a lease and we didn’t have anywhere else more pressing to be. We talked constantly about moving from there. I told people we were looking all the time. It got to the point where they would all just nod and smile at me like the little girl who cried wolf. It wasn’t until Hubby decided to join the Guard that we got serious. Our landlord hated us, of this I’m sure, and couldn’t have been more glad to receive our notice. We’d found the perfect apartment right up the road and were excited to move. Note: I did not say “pack”. When you are a packrat, that’s the part you dread. However, when our dream apartment fell through (read shit bag new landlords who decide to take other applicants before you give them money) we were how you say “up shits creek without a paddle”. I read the paper every day and called on millions of apartments. It would have been easy to find another place to move to if we didn’t have an obese dog and cat to try to explain, “No really he is a lap dog!” and had to stay in a specific area of town to stay close to our babysitter. Oh, and a budget of course.

So, as the days ticked down until we had to move, the stress went up. I was muddled in panic. The prospect of moving in with my mother in law or to a curbside box was near. Then one day I read an ad in the tiny town flier for an upstairs apartment downtown for rent. I went and looked at it the next day. She could have just told me about it over the phone for all I cared. I knew we had to have it, I knew it was our only option. Hubby did not go with me to the viewing. I was there for a total of 60 seconds before I handed her a wad of cash to be considered our security deposit and left with key in hand.

Now, as you are saying to yourself right now and as I should have thought, “This cannot be good”.

It’s not.

The other night; in the middle of the night; we heard the strangest noise. Like a recording of a train almost. It woke both of us up so Hubby got up to look out the window and check it out. It was some special dipshit with his hot rod on the street that had a car horn that sounded like a train and kept honking it. Wow. I love punks. This is almost as good as living directly across the road from a dairy processing plant. I have no idea what they do there, there are the size of a regular house and are located on a city block but there are always one or two semi trucks parked on the street that start up in the middle of the night just to let the engine idle. Or, you know, whatever it is that semi’s do when they just sit there and run and sound annoying as hell. I guess I don’t hang out around enough truck stops to know this one yet.

Our heat is controlled by the lady below us, the same lady (herein referred to as Looney Bin) who gets fall down drunk on a daily basis and listens to her TV at max volume as to cover up the yap of her pint sized shit machine that never shuts up. I’m surprised we have heat at all. I imagine it’s nice and toasty when you fall asleep fully dressed on your couch at 7:00pm. I can only tell when she’s awake by the plume of cigarette smoke that billows up the heat vent when she awakes at 4:00am. Yum.

There’s the neighbor across the street that holds a bi-weekly White Trash Of America meeting in his garage listening to 80’s metal while drinking beer all night (the same man who whistled and cooed and my mother in law one day when she came over). Also the same guy who woke my kid up at 2:30 am after having the cops called on him for a domestic dispute on the lawn with his wife.

There are feral neighbor cats that cry and fight at all hours of the night. In our yard.

Looney Bin shovels her snow behind our car!

Our screen door does not shut all the way. It slams and bangs in the wind every night. Our “front” (read: ONLY) door is downstairs. You must open it and immediately walk up another flight of stairs, through a baby gate to get in to the place.

The porch light is wired to the hallway light. Both must be on together. No either/or. Speaking of wiring! All outlets are on one circuit. If you want to have the air conditioner or the heater or the blow dryer or the microwave on you must first make sure every other light is off or they will pop and you will have to go outside, downstairs and around the house, pass the yapping dog to the circuit breaker to reset it.

What was I thinking?????????

Patience!

I'm working on something so bear with me. I'll be back with a post soon, I promise.

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Program

To bring you this shitty news.


I've been shut down folks. I know. It bites. It blows, no it sucks a big fierce you know what!

So, as you know I work a full time job and I blog. I do one from the other. You guess which. And while I'm hugely successful at my job, others are not. I do what work needs to be done, I do it well and then I use my free time to get on the Internet and see what is has to offer. I tool around, connecting, if you will, to the outside world. Connecting to other people's entertaining lives, to my email, and to my pictures. I do NOT browse porn, I do not look up how to make pipe bombs, I do not circulate annoying ass emails with animals flipping you off and insisting you must forward this to 18,000 of your email friends.


Apparently, this does not matter to corporate America. Apparently, I do not matter. (Ok, well, yes I did already know THAT, but I'm whining so work with me here)

Oh the horror! The tragedy! More important: the fuckbags who had to go and ruin it for us all, I spit in your face. May you, the slackers, die and slow and painful death staring at your monitor all day and actually DOING your JOB!



Yes: my Internet access at work has been removed.



Just as November is starting, it has quickly ended for NaBloPoMo. Why, you ask don't I just blog from home. Well simply put, I have stuff to do here man! You know! Dishes, dinner, bath time, nookie, etc. Work, man, that's where you like do the work stuff at man. (Um, ps, remember that blog where I told how my hair grows three centimetres every time I'm online here because that's how long it takes. Seriously. Have you seen my luscious mane? It's from uploading pictures!)

So, while I will continue to spend my time at work productively I have decided, no vowed, to do it bitterly and stubbornly until they bring back the web. I have no doubt that I will be bringing m,y library book with me tomorrow so that I have something to do. You know: besides work.

October the Last

Oh, end of month! Praise be to Halloween for ending up this crappy month at work (and candy), amen.

This year, the first to be celebrated with a costume, Baby Bug is going to be the worlds most adorable pink poodle: Fi-fi. Hey - don't blame me, that's what the name tag says! I first put it on her last Friday and then proceeded to gush with adoration at the cuteness. I even took sneak-preview pictures. Want to see one? Sure you do, I mean it is Halloween. Why wait another day!





Now, go and check out this most awesome post by Dutch. I really love their blog over at Sweet Juniper. I mean really, I look forward to it so much that I usually save it for Friday's when I have time to slowly read and savor each post from the week. Dutch's style, his way of reminiscing especially makes me want to write more. But that story....well it was just icing on the cake.

Month 13

So, this is where I will recap the prior month in the life of Baby Bug. It's something new I'm going to shoot for each month. Mostly because I want to remember each adorable moment that has so quickly passed us by, and partly because her crap-bag baby book only goes to month 12 and I don't like the alternative which is a trillion little pieces of paper - or better yet Post It's - sticking out every which a way from the damn thing. Just what she needs is one more 'pop up' book to rip all the pop ups out of!

So, in honor of my laziness we will now commence with bullet points:

Dear Baby Bug,

You are a silly little one year old. So far I very much enjoy 1! Keep up the good work.

Love, Mom

PS - Here's what you did last month that was new AND that I remembered to jot down before I forgot it.

• Standing up in the bath tub. It drives me nuts because more than once you have slipped and not learned your lesson. Remind me to buy some of those adhesive thingys that go on the bottom so I can stop telling you to sit like the dog every 23 seconds.
• Walking behind your Lion. Grandma got you this silly little toy for your birthday. Yer dumb Ma thought we'd be staring at this thing for awhile before you got the hang of it. Then I actually stood you up behind it just to see what would happen and you took off like a rocket. I love watching this whole new walking thing you've got going on. It's like a little old person behind a walker, except it's YOU!
• We added breakfast to your daily repertoire of things to put in your hair.
• You put food in your hair! Why? After you take a few bites you run your fingers through your hair. It's kinda gross.
• Throwing food. This one drives your Dad nuts. We have to tell the dog to get out of the room 45 times during every meal cause he thinks you are like this cool new food thrower we got for him. The Crumb Dropper 2000. We think you should stop ruining the carpet and try actually putting it in your mouth.
• Digging in the couch. Yes, you are our little scavenger. You've always loved being on the couch. This is nothing new. From day one we would prop you up in between us and chill as usual. Except now you've gone from crawling between us to digging down behind the cushions. You'll lie on your belly and wedge your arm down in there real good and then come out with your treasure. Usually it is a wad of dog or cat hair which you'll inspect carefully before stuffing in to your mouth. But sometimes it's an old piece of popcorn, etc which you will promptly shove in your pie hole. It is getting hard to keep up with this yanking shit from your mouth bit. When will you start to identify food as food and crap as "icky"?
• We turned your car seat around to face forward. Oh happy day: traffic. This was pretty much a non-event. Oh sure, everyone says "Just wait till she can see out and watch you". What they did not say was "Then you'll have no where to attach her toys and she will promptly chuck everything to the floor".
• You had some new foods. Your first: piece of pizza, hotdog, cake!, snickers, yogurt, and chili. (2 out of 6 healthy things. We rock.)

Until next month!

Mmmmmm, Pumpkin!

Yesterday was an awesome day! We went to the pumpkin patch, which um turns out not to be a patch anymore. Guess ya gotta go earlier if you want 'em fresh! But we did still pick one out from a cart. We also walked through the apple orchards and took some really awesome pictures. I wish we had a tripod so we could have got some of the three of us cause instead all we got were these self taken ghetto ones. This one turned out the best.

Then we went home and the cranky one took a nap and the lazy one watched football and the Mommy one baked! I cut and cooked the little pumpkin and then mashed and squeezed it until I had fresh pumpkin puree. Then I made that in to bread and we had yummy fresh as fresh can be pumpkin bread and then I made the seeds. Mmmmmm. After all that though, we had leftovers for dinner cause that was a lot of work and not saying it wasn't worth it but next time I'll probably just buy the stuff in the can and save myself like 3 hours!

Speaking of time savers. Anyone have this new fancy 'high speed' internet thing at home? Cause back in the stone ages where I'm from we still have dial up AKA 'don't waste your time internet'. Sheesh, what a pain. I actually have to take the phone cable from the computer and plug in to the wall in the kitchen and wait to get online and then wait to open the web page. It took 2 hours to upload a set of pictures. That's not included the 16 time AOL kicked me offline and I had to re-sign on and upload again. Then I tried to change my header picture from home and fagetaboutit! It took 30 minutes of "processing" to do what my work computer here did in 2 minutes! Dear Santa, please bring me roadrunner and I promise I will be a good girl all year.

In other news, Hubby is going today to drop off his application to the Army to his recruiter. I am scared. I don't if I'm irrationally scared or if this is normal scared so I put on a brave front and told everyone how exciting it will be to live on base. And inside? I want to grab him by the collar and scream at him "Please don't do it!". I can't though. The alternative here isn't any better. I know he wants this. I know it's a better life for us, but I haven't told him any of my fears because I don't want him a) to know I'm scared for fear of holding him back and b) to use that to back out. Make sense? I'm really trying hard to be this Super Wife who always stands by her man and does what's good for the family but I'll admit, I'm kinda shaking in my shoes here. I told him just Friday that we can't let fear rule our lives. Now, I have to stand by that statement. It sounded so great at the time, lets see if I can put my money where my mouth was.