September 11, 2007
I’m not used to not writing a lot. Writing is a passion of mine, it lets out what is stuck inside of me on a daily or weekly basis. For some reason though lately I get a brain block when trying to think of things to write about. It’s all the chaos that is in my life. I get distracted so easily these days. I’m trying to prioritize my life, but I’m struggling with that. I’m still getting into the new school year routine.
My friend Julie is finally getting a house. I think when that is all final, more will be a peace. She will still have the few problems that exist, but I think in general they will have the space they desire to keep the peace. The latest house they love they put an offer on, and I have a feeling everything will go ok with it. It makes me sooo want to sell my house, but of course I won’t! We tried to put our house on the market last year but we just didn’t have enough equity in it to even cover the realtor’s wages. Instead we decided to make our house liveable and put money into it, so that we can be comfortable for the next 10 years. We have done nothing this summer to our house, in comparison to what we did last year. It has been one heck of a boring summer. This fall I plan on gutting my bathroom and installing a jacuzzi tub, granite tiles and a new sink. That is going to be a complicated task We are going to do most of the work ourselves. Matt is comfortable in his electrical skills, and I am comfortable doing drywall and tiles, but I think we’ll have to hire out a plumber. There is like a 1 inch difference in width with the new tub and several inches in depth, which requires us to move the plumbing over a few inches. I have a small budget for it, but that’s because all the work will be done on our own. If we had to hire all of it out, our budget would be consumed soley by labor charges! We also want to rip our carpet out of the living room and lay down hard wood laminate flooring over the hardwood that is already there. Again this will be done all on our own. Ideally I want to lay down a radiant floor underneath the wood so that in the winter the floors won’t be so cold. We also need a new roof, but that will not be done by us!
Chris started kindergarten last week. I thought things were going ok with it until I asked his teacher today how he was doing. I asked her if he was focusing in class and she said no. She said his academics are at stake if something isn’t done and she jumped right on the medication bandwagon. I have a feeling it’s going to come down to that. All summer we spent getting him to visually recognize the letters of the alphabet and numbers. We spent 45 minutes on a, b, and c. One day I gave him the letter A, walked away for 5 minutes and told him to keep telling himself that this letter was the letter A. I come back and jumble up the cards. I pull out the A and ask him what it is and he says he don’t know. He just cannot focus. He is incredibly smart and catches onto things quickly, when he’s able to focus. It’s getting him to focus that is difficult. His kindergarten class is full days twice a week and a half day once per week. He comes home on those full days really stressed out. Today I called Childrens Hospital and left a message with the children’s psychiatry division that I needed an appointment. He has to get into some sort of medical management with this. The unfortunate part about doing this is that it takes months to get an appointment.
We got our new xbox 360 in the mail finally a couple weeks ago. We have been letting Chris play it each day. I think it is helping him in a lot of ways. He’s learning to use the hand/eye coordination and he’s learning something…. he’s only been playing basic Xbox live arcade games like Sonic the Hedgehog from like 1995. Harmless games that hopefully will do something. I don’t want him to become addicted to playing games. If only they made something educational for him to throw into the xbox. That is what I am looking for. It sucks because not all old Xbox games are compatible with the 360.
Well my education went nowhere. My financial aid is all screwed up, so now either I enroll at Baker college, or I wait until the winter semester at WSU. I was supposed to sign the master promissory note to receive my loan funds, and I did, but they never got it, and by time I did it, it was too late to register for the classes I needed. If WSU falls through, at least I know exactly what I will be doing if I have to go to Baker College. They have a really nice medical laboratory technician program. There is a phlebotomy aspect to it, but mostly i’m interested in running the labs… you know, that secret place where they take your blood and you never see. I want to look at disease and bacteria! I think it would be a highly interesting program.
Matt however is going to his classes just fine. He’s on his way to a Master’s degree in Computer Science. He is doing well, but it is very very intimidating. You would not believe the stuff they want you to know. You haven’t seen math until you’ve taken a graduate computer science class. His first classes are Theory of Computation (the very hardest), and programming the world wide web, which is simple for him because he already knows all the materials. It’s the classes that involve higher than calculus mathematics, like algorithms and theory classes. My god I seen the computation book and I could never do that. He will finish in just under 2 years going part time.
We are supposed to go to Vegas over Thanksgiving. I doubt Matt’s parents know it’s Thanksgiving time when they are coming. We are actually going to be able to return home for Thanksgiving dinner, which i’m happy about because I enjoy having dinner with my family. We will arrive home at like 4:00p.m. that day. His parents will be on a tour of the west coast, and we are just meeting them there. They are staying at the Flamingo, but I am unsure if I want to stay there. I always said if I go to Vegas I want to stay at the Bellagio or the Venetian. We are only staying two whole nights, so it’s not a big trip, but I bet we’ll lose a lot of money.
Speaking of casinos, my mom officially starts her new job tomorrow at MGM Grand in Detroit. She is in security with them and is making more money now than she has in many many years. Unfortunately she’s being thrown in midnights to start, but that’s what happens when you have no seniority. The new casino opens on Oct. 1st I believe. It looks really nice from the road. She carries handcuffs so she probably feels like she has some power! Ha ha…. well I hope they don’t make her do some obscure job like walk the perimeter in a city like Detroit!
I woke up this morning and turned on Fox News (I watch it all day long) and of course because today is 9/11 they ran through the entire events which happend in 2001. They promised they were only going to show the planes crashing just once. I’m glad they did that… I was quite traumatized by the events of that day and I for one did not want to see it happen over and over again on the news all day long. Some networks go out of their way to just repeat the same stuff all day long. That is way too much. Seeing it once was good enough to remind me of what happened. I had a problem with the upclose footage of some poor guy who jumped out of a window. They zoomed in on him and followed him all the way down until he hit the top of a building. That was horrible. I did not need to see that today.
What else…. well I’m back on my healthy eating routine. I have just this pesky 50lbs to lose, but it’s hanging on for life. The last year has not been a good year, and I think for the most part that is contributing to my lazy factor. I haven’t gained and I haven’t lost. I kinda just lost all motivation. I have been sick several times this summer and that has added to it.
I cannot believe summer is ove
r with already and winter is coming. I am not looking forward to winter. I have had a lazy unmotivating summer, all I need now is the winter blues to add to it. I have to snap out of it and get something done this winter. I kinda want to go to St. Maarten (Lesser Antilles) next year and i’d prefer to be in a bit better shape. I guess on one hand i’m glad this year is almost over with. Next year will be a good year, at least I hope so. Matt is making more money than ever, and our house should look better by next year.
On a stupid note, I have become a master of those stupid machines at the stores that you grab stuffed animals with a hook with. Now, almost everytime I put a dollar in one of those machines I come out with a toy. I think Beth is jealous. Today I walked out of a restaurant with 3 stuffed animals in hand. I think back to a Spongebob Squarepants episode where Squidward wastes all of his paycheck in one of those machines just trying to win once, while Spongebob wins everytime he puts a quarter in. He says to repeat to yourself, “Be the claw” and then Squidward somehow manages to win a toy, even with his eyes closed. He then goes around taunting everyone that he’s a winner and they are losers. That’s how I am when I win a toy!!
