Good day everybody. Last night I headed to bed and crashed within minutes after I got done with the blog. Even as I read it over, I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. Being that tired, I could not keep focus enough on the words that I wrote. Finally, I finished reading it, sent the dog upstairs, gave Erin a kiss good night and headed up. She would have come up too but she had a few assignments she was working on.
Today went pretty good. I had an email right off the bat from my teacher. She was not going to be on campus today and so class was cancelled. When I woke up first around 7 and got Ally up for school, I felt pretty good. It was the first time in a little while where it felt like I had 8+ hours. When Ally was on the bus, I came back upstairs and layed back down. Today was Erin's first day training in the kitchen at her job. Finally! She has been there for about 6 months so far, and has worked her butt off in the front of the restaurant for them, and now they officially are taking her further into training. It is yet one step closer to getting the hours she wants and who knows what else.
So since I now had the afternoon free from school, Erin called the sitter and told her that I was going to be home and we would have Zoe be up there tomorrow while she was working. The sitter was like "ok! Sounds good!" I went back to sleep till about 10 or so and then Zoe was calling out for me from her room. I changed her diaper and then came downstairs and put the wiggles on netflix on the wii for Zoe.
This afternoon after Lex got home, and Erin was home from work, I took Lex out to the YWCA pool again. I figured it was a good time to get some extra exercise in myself. While she was playing with the other kids in the pool, I was in the deep end doing laps. I ended up doing twenty laps back and forth. It was a good work out. Before we went to the Y, we made a quick stop at the Sheriffs department. I picked up an application. They are hiring for Sheriffs Deputies, and I'm trying for it.
So again, there is not a whole lot going on in my mind today, and so the blog entry will be a little short again tonight. I will write more for you tomorrow.
Thanks for being here.
CB
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Day 30
Good evening everybody. I'm thinking tonight's blog entry will not be too long. We will have to wait and see how long it ends up with. The reason I might not be writing much today is a simple fact that I am having trouble keeping my eyes open. I'm so tired! Last night, Erin and I were watching Buffy on the Netflix streaming. At around 2AM I stood up and decided I would go to bed. Erin asked me about it, saying "You don't want to watch another one?" I was like "No, if I'm going to get to the YwCA by 7AM for the water aerobics, then I need to go to bed."
At 6:30, I got up, and woke Lex up. Compared to the 2 hours of sleep I got the day before, I got 4.5 hours last night, and I felt twice as good. The water aerobics was great. I really enjoy doing it. Yes it is unGodly early, but it is worth it. So I got back here roughly around 7:55. I came in and was like "You ready to head out Lex?" She was like "Yup!" We loaded up in the truck and I took her to school. Immediately I went to work doing little jobs around the house. Finished what I was working on around 1 in the afternoon. There were other things I wanted to do, but I was kind of starting to feel tired. Needed to relax and chill out for a bit.
Erin had come down and was on the recliner. I picked up the tv room (mainly just had toys that Zoe had just spread out across the floor while I was working on another job in the kitchen). She put on Food Inc on the netflix streaming and I sat down to watch the show with her. It's amazing to see how brutal the processing people are when it comes to processing cows, chickens, and pigs. Wow. That's all I can say is, wow.
Today I met with the guy I meet with weekly. On the nice weather days, we go walking while we talk. The walk was good. Afterwards he was like "I have to get back and mow my lawn." I was like "I have to head to soccer practice." "Oh! You're still doing that?" he said. "Yup. It's fun! I like it!" "Great!" he said. Soccer practice went well. I told the coach the main things the girls need to get better at were 1) attacking the ball and not backing up from it or being afraid of it. 2) not being afraid to take kick it hard/shoot at the goal.
There were only 6 girls there tonight. She decided we would scrimmage, 3 on 3, with me helping one team out, and the coach on the other team. We emphasized that we wanted them to keep spaced apart. We were going to only play half of the field, and the girls on my team kept wanting to dribble past half towards the other goal. The coach stopped play again and tried to emphsize again about how when we get the ball, we will take it from the center line. I said "Do we have 2 soccer balls we could use? Let's set up a makeshift goal here at the center line and that way we will have 2 goals and still be only playing half the field." She thought that was a good idea and so we did it. After scrimmaging like that for a while, the coach changed it up.
The next scrimmaging she had us do was me, her, and this young boy player that was just stepping in to help, against all 6 girls. A few times the coach passed me the ball, and I started to slowly dribble towards the goal. There were 3 girls not too far away from me, but they kept moving away from me as I came in. I said out loud "if you aren't going to attack me, I'm just going to keep coming in!" Suddenly they started trying for the ball. Throughout that round of scrimmaging I did notice them attacking the ball much more. That's good! They need to get down and dirty and go after that ball. They need to not be afraid that they will get hurt.
There were a few times when I slipped and took a fall because my shoes aren't soccer shoes. I did this fancy kick, passing it to whoever was on my team. Next thing I knew I was rolling in the grass. The girls were like "You ok Chris?" I was like "I'm good. When you're a player you will take falls every so often. That's perfectly fine!" So after soccer, we dropped Lex off at gymnastics. Then Erin, Zoe and I went to the grocery store with the food stamp card and picked up ingredients for dinner, plus we picked up gatorades and stuff. Dinner tonight was a dish from india. Erin would be able to better describe it. It was really good though. It had a nice little kick, but wasn't overwhelming.
In closing I will say that I felt great when I was out there running around with the girls on the team. I had already walked about a mile or so, and exercised in the pool. Plus I am alraedy noticing my shorts being loose. Last week or the week before I'm sure they felt snug around the waist, but lately I feel like they will fall down to the floor any minute. Erin kept poking me in the stomach, and I found out that the reason was that she says my stomach already looks smaller. I can't notice anything just yet, but I'm glad she thinks so. I will keep doing what I have been, and eventually I will be able to see it too. I do 'feel' it though. More energy, more focus, etc. When you are eating right, and exercising, etc, your body functions better. The sleep last night didn't catch up with me till around 7:30 while Erin was working on Dinner. I suddenly had the desire to lay down and sleep. I stayed awake but fell asleep a little bit on the couch until Erin brought dinner out. After I ate, I was dozing off again and Erin mentioned that I should go ahead to bed if I'm that tired. I thought "That sounds great to me...but oh wait, I still need to post tonight." So here I am! I'm happy I was able to get here tonight. I will write more for you tomorrow.
Thanks for being here!
CB
At 6:30, I got up, and woke Lex up. Compared to the 2 hours of sleep I got the day before, I got 4.5 hours last night, and I felt twice as good. The water aerobics was great. I really enjoy doing it. Yes it is unGodly early, but it is worth it. So I got back here roughly around 7:55. I came in and was like "You ready to head out Lex?" She was like "Yup!" We loaded up in the truck and I took her to school. Immediately I went to work doing little jobs around the house. Finished what I was working on around 1 in the afternoon. There were other things I wanted to do, but I was kind of starting to feel tired. Needed to relax and chill out for a bit.
Erin had come down and was on the recliner. I picked up the tv room (mainly just had toys that Zoe had just spread out across the floor while I was working on another job in the kitchen). She put on Food Inc on the netflix streaming and I sat down to watch the show with her. It's amazing to see how brutal the processing people are when it comes to processing cows, chickens, and pigs. Wow. That's all I can say is, wow.
Today I met with the guy I meet with weekly. On the nice weather days, we go walking while we talk. The walk was good. Afterwards he was like "I have to get back and mow my lawn." I was like "I have to head to soccer practice." "Oh! You're still doing that?" he said. "Yup. It's fun! I like it!" "Great!" he said. Soccer practice went well. I told the coach the main things the girls need to get better at were 1) attacking the ball and not backing up from it or being afraid of it. 2) not being afraid to take kick it hard/shoot at the goal.
There were only 6 girls there tonight. She decided we would scrimmage, 3 on 3, with me helping one team out, and the coach on the other team. We emphasized that we wanted them to keep spaced apart. We were going to only play half of the field, and the girls on my team kept wanting to dribble past half towards the other goal. The coach stopped play again and tried to emphsize again about how when we get the ball, we will take it from the center line. I said "Do we have 2 soccer balls we could use? Let's set up a makeshift goal here at the center line and that way we will have 2 goals and still be only playing half the field." She thought that was a good idea and so we did it. After scrimmaging like that for a while, the coach changed it up.
The next scrimmaging she had us do was me, her, and this young boy player that was just stepping in to help, against all 6 girls. A few times the coach passed me the ball, and I started to slowly dribble towards the goal. There were 3 girls not too far away from me, but they kept moving away from me as I came in. I said out loud "if you aren't going to attack me, I'm just going to keep coming in!" Suddenly they started trying for the ball. Throughout that round of scrimmaging I did notice them attacking the ball much more. That's good! They need to get down and dirty and go after that ball. They need to not be afraid that they will get hurt.
There were a few times when I slipped and took a fall because my shoes aren't soccer shoes. I did this fancy kick, passing it to whoever was on my team. Next thing I knew I was rolling in the grass. The girls were like "You ok Chris?" I was like "I'm good. When you're a player you will take falls every so often. That's perfectly fine!" So after soccer, we dropped Lex off at gymnastics. Then Erin, Zoe and I went to the grocery store with the food stamp card and picked up ingredients for dinner, plus we picked up gatorades and stuff. Dinner tonight was a dish from india. Erin would be able to better describe it. It was really good though. It had a nice little kick, but wasn't overwhelming.
In closing I will say that I felt great when I was out there running around with the girls on the team. I had already walked about a mile or so, and exercised in the pool. Plus I am alraedy noticing my shorts being loose. Last week or the week before I'm sure they felt snug around the waist, but lately I feel like they will fall down to the floor any minute. Erin kept poking me in the stomach, and I found out that the reason was that she says my stomach already looks smaller. I can't notice anything just yet, but I'm glad she thinks so. I will keep doing what I have been, and eventually I will be able to see it too. I do 'feel' it though. More energy, more focus, etc. When you are eating right, and exercising, etc, your body functions better. The sleep last night didn't catch up with me till around 7:30 while Erin was working on Dinner. I suddenly had the desire to lay down and sleep. I stayed awake but fell asleep a little bit on the couch until Erin brought dinner out. After I ate, I was dozing off again and Erin mentioned that I should go ahead to bed if I'm that tired. I thought "That sounds great to me...but oh wait, I still need to post tonight." So here I am! I'm happy I was able to get here tonight. I will write more for you tomorrow.
Thanks for being here!
CB
Monday, May 3, 2010
Day 29
Good day everybody. By the time I finally got to sleep, it was roughly about 5AM. There was one time previously when I had been up that late and had to get Lex up for school. Instead of setting my alarm for 6:30 and trying to get her to the bus stop, I have been setting it for 7:30 and driving her to school myself. This morning I also had my conference scheduled with my english teacher at 8:30. So I set my alarm for 7:30, woke up, got Lex up, ran downstairs and got cereal poured for both of us. I figured I wanted to leave at 8AM to take her to school so that I could get to the college in time. Lex was not acting like she wanted to get up. After about fifteen minutes I went upstairs and she was up, but she was still in her pj's. I was like "I have an 8:30 appointment. I'm leaving at 8, which is in 15 minutes. Your cereal is on the table. If you want to eat before going to school, you better hurry and get dressed and get downstairs." That did the trick. She got downstairs pretty fast and ate her breakfast. She was ready to go, and we left at 7:59.
The meeting with my teacher went pretty good. I got to the school at 8:24, and printed off my paper from the library. During the meeting, my teacher read over the paper *which I had been up late adding to*, and she gave me some really good suggestions. I went in there feeling like my paper really was pretty thrown together so far, but she seemed to think I had done pretty well. She even made a comment "This is actually the most put together draft that I have had from any of the students so far during these conferences. A few had a small draft, but most just had a paragraph or two." I was like "Well that is encouraging. Well ma'am I am definitely a writer. I write as much as I can every single day." She was like "That's great"
So this Wednesday we have actual class. It has been a few school days that we have not had class because these conference days. She said that on Wednesday we are to bring our rough draft in progress. She said that with the amount I have done already, that technically I would be able to bring what I have if I want to. When I had left to go to the conference meeting, my original plan was to go back to bed around 9 when I got home. For some reason, I thought "I'm up, I might as well hang out for a little bit first. Watch a movie and get some WoW time in." I meant to go to bed sooner, but for some reason I waited until 1 oclock. Then I looked at the clock and thought "damn I only have till just after 3. I better go back to sleep." When I woke up, I still kind of felt like crap, but at least it was a nap. Oh well.
Lex's swim class went well. Again she made a big effort to not fool around too much. I even took video of her swimming across the deep end by herself. The instructor was having them each do that while he swam two feet away. Tonight I really did not do a whole lot. I did end up falling asleep on the couch off and on. Erin had eaten, so I grilled hotdogs and made mac and cheese for me, Lex, and Zoe. Then played on my other character on World of Warcraft for a little bit, and have been watching buffy with Erin while she plays on one of her characters. I am going to call that it for now. If I want to go to the YWCA water aroebics class in the morning, I need to go to bed really soon. I don't want to decide not to go simply because the thought of going back to bed sounds better. 1:30 AM isn't necessarily that late, but when you want to get to a class at 7AM, I guess it is. So I will call that it for tonight. I will write more for you tomorrow.
Thanks for being here!
CB
The meeting with my teacher went pretty good. I got to the school at 8:24, and printed off my paper from the library. During the meeting, my teacher read over the paper *which I had been up late adding to*, and she gave me some really good suggestions. I went in there feeling like my paper really was pretty thrown together so far, but she seemed to think I had done pretty well. She even made a comment "This is actually the most put together draft that I have had from any of the students so far during these conferences. A few had a small draft, but most just had a paragraph or two." I was like "Well that is encouraging. Well ma'am I am definitely a writer. I write as much as I can every single day." She was like "That's great"
So this Wednesday we have actual class. It has been a few school days that we have not had class because these conference days. She said that on Wednesday we are to bring our rough draft in progress. She said that with the amount I have done already, that technically I would be able to bring what I have if I want to. When I had left to go to the conference meeting, my original plan was to go back to bed around 9 when I got home. For some reason, I thought "I'm up, I might as well hang out for a little bit first. Watch a movie and get some WoW time in." I meant to go to bed sooner, but for some reason I waited until 1 oclock. Then I looked at the clock and thought "damn I only have till just after 3. I better go back to sleep." When I woke up, I still kind of felt like crap, but at least it was a nap. Oh well.
Lex's swim class went well. Again she made a big effort to not fool around too much. I even took video of her swimming across the deep end by herself. The instructor was having them each do that while he swam two feet away. Tonight I really did not do a whole lot. I did end up falling asleep on the couch off and on. Erin had eaten, so I grilled hotdogs and made mac and cheese for me, Lex, and Zoe. Then played on my other character on World of Warcraft for a little bit, and have been watching buffy with Erin while she plays on one of her characters. I am going to call that it for now. If I want to go to the YWCA water aroebics class in the morning, I need to go to bed really soon. I don't want to decide not to go simply because the thought of going back to bed sounds better. 1:30 AM isn't necessarily that late, but when you want to get to a class at 7AM, I guess it is. So I will call that it for tonight. I will write more for you tomorrow.
Thanks for being here!
CB
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Day 28
Good day everybody. This morning, Erin's mom headeded back home. Erin had to work. Her mom had gotten Lex a lap top computer for her birthday, and she ended up being a bit regretful about it mainly because it was so much computer for a 9 year old. What she had said to Erin in her defence about getting Lex a computer at such a young age was that she wants Lex to not be so behind the rest of the grand kids. Apparently a lot of them already have their own computers and are very computer savvy. The funny thing, at least for me, is that I never had my own computer till I was a junior in High School. We had a desk top computer at home, which was the family computer, and even with not having my own computer I still learned how to be very good at computers. My parents even referred to me as their computer wiz. Even after I left home, sometimes they would have problems with their computer and call me. For instance, one day my dad called me and said "Our computer has over 350 cookies. I called a tech guy and he said he would charge $300 for me to have him come out and take care of it." I was like "Holy Crap dad! Cookies are easy to take care of! You don't need to pay $300.00 to get it taken care of. I will come home and clean up your computer for free!"
So I did. After that point, any time they had a problem, I was the first person they called. Times have changed quite a bit. I haven't had to help them with computer issues in a while. I don't know if its because of how different my life is now, if it's because they have learned how to do things themselves, or if my younger sisters take care of it now for them. I know they no longer just have a desktop PC. They do have the desk top (not the same one I grew up with, but a newer faster one fortunately), but my mom has her own laptop. When I watched her on it trying to download music or an audio book from itunes, I could still tell that they are not the 'greatest" with them, but they are much better now. I guess a lot of people that didn't grow up with computers are making it a point to simply learn how to do the basics. They still don't know the in depth stuff, but they know how to operate and clear cookies and such. That stuff is pretty easy.
So anyway, moving on! About the laptop grandma bought Lex. The day she got here, I jokingly said "You know? There is a Best Buy in Davenport if you want to exchange for a smaller computer!" with a wink. When she was saying she was going to get Lex a laptop, Erin recommended getting her a netbook. She told her about my computer, how nice and compact it is, how I can still do everything I did on my old larger laptop, but how much better the netbook is. I love it! I got a Dell Inspiron mini, which has similar, if not maybe even better specs than my old Gateway. My gateway has a few things that made it a very big neusance. 1st thing was the battery life. From the day I bought it, the battery life was nothing like what it claimed. It said "Approximately 4 hours of battery life!"
What they didn't say was "you have to pretty much be doing absolutely nothing in order for it to last that long!" I swear! I never did 'a lot' on the computer that you would think it would die quick. I mainly browsed, listened to music, did college course work, etc, and my average battery time was maybe a little over an hour. One time it died in about 45 minutes. IT SUCKED! Problem #2. After I had it for about a year, a few of my keys fell off. I reattached some of them, but they kept coming off. I knew I was just patching it up temporarily and that pretty soon I would have to put it to rest. The only prob was, and I was well aware of this, that I knew I couldn't afford to buy a replacement computer immediately. We moved here to Clinton, lived here for a little over a year, and then I finally unpacked the computer. Problem number 3 with it was the ac adapter outlet. I don't know if it was the cord, or the outlet. Melissa remembers me talking about this. I could plug it in, and sometimes it would charge, sometimes not. If I rotated the plug, sometimes I could get it to start charging. So I, at one time, took scotch tape and got it to start charging, and then taped the plug in the position it was in. That worked for a while. I called around and researched what it would cost to just get my laptop repaired. The cheapest quote was $250.00 just for the repair. There was added costs because of me having to ship my computer to them.
Well as we neared tax time, I decided that for school I really needed a working computer. I also decided after talking it over with Erin, that instead of going for the same type of computer that Erin has (Macbook), I would go with a netbook. These smaller versions of laptops range in price from $250 to $500. The one Erin and I selected was priced around $350.00. After taxes and such, it was over $400.00. I wasn't sure what to expect. All I know was the day I got my laptop and started running the window's updates on it, and started doing things on it, I love it. My gateway was 15 inches wide. It was so heavy and not very easy to carry around. My netbook is ten inches, very lightweight. I literally can walk around carrying it in one arm without any possibility of dropping it. The gateway had to always be plugged in because of the short battery lilfe. My Dell netbook can last 7 hours unplugged. Having had to keep my old laptop plugged in, I am always running my netbook unplugged. The only time I use it while being plugged in is if I am playing World of Warcraft. It can last maybe 2-3 hours unplugged when on that game. I figured this would be the case because of the intense graphics that the game has.
So anyway, back to grandma getting Lex the big dell laptop. When I joked around about best buy, she actually thought it was a good idea. Apparently she was already thinking about wanting to exchange it. Well, last night she said "I want to talk to you about something. How about tomorrow you and I take two cars out to Davenport. I want to go to Best buy and go ahead and exchange the computer for a netbook." I was like "I'm confused. Why do we need to take two cars?" "I'm leaving to go back tomorrow." She said. I hadn't thought about that. I knew she was leaving on Sunday. Now it totally made sense. Saturday morning, while we were eating breakfast before heading out to Lex's soccer game, I was talking to her about netbooks and why they are so awesome. I told her how mine is actually as fast as my regular laptop was. I told her how I could still do everything I would normally do and it handled them great. I logged onto it and let her play around with it. From what Erin told me, when Erin recommended 'netbooks' for Lex, her mom thought she said "Notebooks." Well I guess seeing how well mine ran convinced her that a netbook was a much better fit for Lex's first computer.
I had mentioned to Erin after the talk about going to Davenport that I was just concerned with gas. I am pretty good about making my gas tank in my truck last between paychecks. Lately I have only been filling up one out of my two tanks. Sometimes as I'm a few days away from payday I have to really stretch it thin, but usually I have been able to make it. She talked to her mom and her mom said she'd be more than willing to help me out with gas. That was great. So this morning when Erin left, Lex wanted to ride with Grandma, and they were going to follow me. We stopped by the gas station and she put $15.00 into my truck. I was perfectly happy with that because I was on a quarter tank and $15 would be enough to get me out to Davenport and back and still have enough to last me the few days until the next pay day. Thank God for GPS! once we got into Davenport and on the right street, I recognized the area immediately. We were right smack dab in the middle of one of my Route areas from when I was a Schwans driver. Ah the memories. ;)
Thankfully I kept Zoe happy on the way there when it was just she and I riding together, because I brought a baggy filled with two different kinds of cereal for her to munch on. I realized shortly after we left that I forgot to bring a binky. When we got there, my back silently squeeled at me when I climbed out of the truck. 45 minutes of sitting and bumps, still in recovery from when I hurt it apparently. So we went into the store, and flagged down a sales rep. We immediately went to where the netbooks were, and grandma showed lex which 3 she had narrowed her options down to. The one Lex chose was cheaper than mine cost, but had a slightly larger hard drive. The big difference is operating system. Mine came with Windows 7 and Lex's computer is XP. Both are very good operating systems. When we left, I figured we should have a few dollars in our account still, and I knew the ride home without a binky would be hell. So we stopped at Target just down the road. Looking at the binkies, the cheapest pair was $2.69. As far as I knew, we only had $2.40 in our bank account. So I called our HR Block emerald card. Last time I checked it was when I drove down to Des Moines to meet the grandparents so that I could pick Ally up and bring her home. Sort of a "meet in the middle" kind of arrangement when Ally had been down there with them for a week. I literally was going to run out of gas and I pulled off at a gas station. I pulled my wallet out and pulled out every card I had, 99% were prepaid cards with one being the income tax HR block card. Thank the Lord, the emerald card had $16.00 on it. I put gas in and we made it home. Until that happened, I did not know what was going to happen.
I remember driving the usual 5 MPH above the speed limit and thinking "what am I going to do? We will make it home. How though? It doesn't matter. Thank you Lord for being with us. Thank you Lord, for I know that we will make it home. I know that you are watching out for us." Well then to hear on the card, expecting only like $2.00 or something, "You're emerald card account balance is $16.58." I was like "THANK YOU!" When we were at target, I thought "lets see how much is on the cards I have." The first card I dialed was the emerald card. Seeing as I put $16.00 in gas in, and the balance had just been a little over that prior to that fill up from what I could remember, I was positive that the emerald card would be a no-go. When I entered the card number, it said "Your emerald card account balance is $6.47." I looked up again and once again said "Thank you God." The thoughts going through my head again were that I walked into target knowing what I needed, and God was watching out for us. Not only did he make it possible for me to get the binkies Zoe needed, but I bought a box of 100 Calorie snack packs for us to munch on on the way home. It wasn't a lot to eat, but I figured a snack would be enough for the ride home and we could make lunch at home.
Faith, for me, is very hard. It's always been hard for me to just give it all to God and have 'faith' that he is taking care of it. But with how lately I am giving everything negative in my life, all worrysome thoughts, cares, stresses, etc, to him, I have also noticed other things. I think I already mentioned this, but at Erin's job, they are now going to train her on another part of the restaurant. That means Erin will be more useful to them. She will get more hours, and possibly get payed more and be happier with working there. While I was walking around doing my rounds at work, I was thinking about this. After a few minutes, what occurred to me was this. I have been giving everything troubling me to God. Thanking him for us both being employed. Asking him to continue blessing us in our job. Acknowledging the fact that 'yes we do not make enough to pay the bills,' but that I know in my heart that through His help, everything will be taken care of. Shortly after that, Erin is in a way moving up. There can be only one explanation, and it is that God is in control of everything. He is the one who is responsible for all the good that happens in life.
Tonight when we were all hanging out here at the house, I layed down on the couch just to relax. Well, I was tired before then and I really felt it when I layed on the couch. Cool breeze coming through the window, I was very comfortable and I easily was dozing off. I didn't really get a "nap." I just dozed off for a little while. Zoe needed some more diapers and so I took the girls with me and went to the store to grab some. I decided I really didn't feel like cooking, so I picked up meals that you can cook in the microwave or bake in the oven. They were good, but apparently extremely rich. I had similar problems with my stomach that I did when I ate pizza ranch the other night. Apparently my stomach prefers me to eat very light foods. OH WELL!
I had to do some more work on my english paper, but wanted to get some world of warcraft time in. I decided I would first log on to WoW, and play for a while. I ended up leveling my new mage from 3 to 6 in probably about an hour and a half. I love that character! My priest will always be my #1 and favorite character, but my mage is definitely worthy of being #2. After I reached a point where I was ok with logging off, I shut the computer down. I went and got dinner ready, and after we ate, I logged back on the computer and continued my english paper. We will see what my teacher has to say about it in the morning. I have a meeting at 8:30 with her. Conferences of some kind. All the students had to sign up for a time slot to meet one on one with the teacher. I don't know if we will just talk about the paper, or about the whole class, or what. Although I'm dreading it, I signed up for 8:30 figuring that I wanted to get it out of the way first thing so that I could just go home and maybe go back to bed for a little bit. Erin's working, so Zoe will be at the sitter, which will give me at least a few hours to catch up on sleep.
So in closing, I would appologize for this mile long entry, but I'm not going to. ;) I'm a writer. Hardcore to the bone, and I'm not afraid to show it. In fact, the more that comes out of me through writing, the better I feel. The other day when I wrote in my book, I took my book from page 85 to page 92. I got on a good track and I opened up my mind even further and I just went with everything that came through. I do have my dry spells where I want to write, but don't have much coming to mind, as I'm sure Melissa has also had. However, even on those days, I will still write as much as my mind will allow me. If it turns out to be a short entry, or short addition to the book, so be it, but I will write every day none the less.
The lesson for today will be this. Faith. Like I said, it is so hard. To simply say "I have faith that this will work itself out," and believe in it, is hard as hell. But when you are able to give it completely over to Him, and have complete faith in what you are praying for, then amazing things happen. The best part of all is that when they happen, you will be able to tell. I know not everyone out there is a religious person, and if that is the case with any of you, then obviously this won't mean anything to ya. For those of you that know where I'm coming from, I'm sure you will understand and hopefully agree about this. That is pretty much the lesson for today. Have faith, believe, and know that He is working on it. The bible says "Ask and you shall receive," and "knock and the door will be opened to you." Think about it. ;) I will write more for you all tomorrow.
Thanks for being here.
CB
So I did. After that point, any time they had a problem, I was the first person they called. Times have changed quite a bit. I haven't had to help them with computer issues in a while. I don't know if its because of how different my life is now, if it's because they have learned how to do things themselves, or if my younger sisters take care of it now for them. I know they no longer just have a desktop PC. They do have the desk top (not the same one I grew up with, but a newer faster one fortunately), but my mom has her own laptop. When I watched her on it trying to download music or an audio book from itunes, I could still tell that they are not the 'greatest" with them, but they are much better now. I guess a lot of people that didn't grow up with computers are making it a point to simply learn how to do the basics. They still don't know the in depth stuff, but they know how to operate and clear cookies and such. That stuff is pretty easy.
So anyway, moving on! About the laptop grandma bought Lex. The day she got here, I jokingly said "You know? There is a Best Buy in Davenport if you want to exchange for a smaller computer!" with a wink. When she was saying she was going to get Lex a laptop, Erin recommended getting her a netbook. She told her about my computer, how nice and compact it is, how I can still do everything I did on my old larger laptop, but how much better the netbook is. I love it! I got a Dell Inspiron mini, which has similar, if not maybe even better specs than my old Gateway. My gateway has a few things that made it a very big neusance. 1st thing was the battery life. From the day I bought it, the battery life was nothing like what it claimed. It said "Approximately 4 hours of battery life!"
What they didn't say was "you have to pretty much be doing absolutely nothing in order for it to last that long!" I swear! I never did 'a lot' on the computer that you would think it would die quick. I mainly browsed, listened to music, did college course work, etc, and my average battery time was maybe a little over an hour. One time it died in about 45 minutes. IT SUCKED! Problem #2. After I had it for about a year, a few of my keys fell off. I reattached some of them, but they kept coming off. I knew I was just patching it up temporarily and that pretty soon I would have to put it to rest. The only prob was, and I was well aware of this, that I knew I couldn't afford to buy a replacement computer immediately. We moved here to Clinton, lived here for a little over a year, and then I finally unpacked the computer. Problem number 3 with it was the ac adapter outlet. I don't know if it was the cord, or the outlet. Melissa remembers me talking about this. I could plug it in, and sometimes it would charge, sometimes not. If I rotated the plug, sometimes I could get it to start charging. So I, at one time, took scotch tape and got it to start charging, and then taped the plug in the position it was in. That worked for a while. I called around and researched what it would cost to just get my laptop repaired. The cheapest quote was $250.00 just for the repair. There was added costs because of me having to ship my computer to them.
Well as we neared tax time, I decided that for school I really needed a working computer. I also decided after talking it over with Erin, that instead of going for the same type of computer that Erin has (Macbook), I would go with a netbook. These smaller versions of laptops range in price from $250 to $500. The one Erin and I selected was priced around $350.00. After taxes and such, it was over $400.00. I wasn't sure what to expect. All I know was the day I got my laptop and started running the window's updates on it, and started doing things on it, I love it. My gateway was 15 inches wide. It was so heavy and not very easy to carry around. My netbook is ten inches, very lightweight. I literally can walk around carrying it in one arm without any possibility of dropping it. The gateway had to always be plugged in because of the short battery lilfe. My Dell netbook can last 7 hours unplugged. Having had to keep my old laptop plugged in, I am always running my netbook unplugged. The only time I use it while being plugged in is if I am playing World of Warcraft. It can last maybe 2-3 hours unplugged when on that game. I figured this would be the case because of the intense graphics that the game has.
So anyway, back to grandma getting Lex the big dell laptop. When I joked around about best buy, she actually thought it was a good idea. Apparently she was already thinking about wanting to exchange it. Well, last night she said "I want to talk to you about something. How about tomorrow you and I take two cars out to Davenport. I want to go to Best buy and go ahead and exchange the computer for a netbook." I was like "I'm confused. Why do we need to take two cars?" "I'm leaving to go back tomorrow." She said. I hadn't thought about that. I knew she was leaving on Sunday. Now it totally made sense. Saturday morning, while we were eating breakfast before heading out to Lex's soccer game, I was talking to her about netbooks and why they are so awesome. I told her how mine is actually as fast as my regular laptop was. I told her how I could still do everything I would normally do and it handled them great. I logged onto it and let her play around with it. From what Erin told me, when Erin recommended 'netbooks' for Lex, her mom thought she said "Notebooks." Well I guess seeing how well mine ran convinced her that a netbook was a much better fit for Lex's first computer.
I had mentioned to Erin after the talk about going to Davenport that I was just concerned with gas. I am pretty good about making my gas tank in my truck last between paychecks. Lately I have only been filling up one out of my two tanks. Sometimes as I'm a few days away from payday I have to really stretch it thin, but usually I have been able to make it. She talked to her mom and her mom said she'd be more than willing to help me out with gas. That was great. So this morning when Erin left, Lex wanted to ride with Grandma, and they were going to follow me. We stopped by the gas station and she put $15.00 into my truck. I was perfectly happy with that because I was on a quarter tank and $15 would be enough to get me out to Davenport and back and still have enough to last me the few days until the next pay day. Thank God for GPS! once we got into Davenport and on the right street, I recognized the area immediately. We were right smack dab in the middle of one of my Route areas from when I was a Schwans driver. Ah the memories. ;)
Thankfully I kept Zoe happy on the way there when it was just she and I riding together, because I brought a baggy filled with two different kinds of cereal for her to munch on. I realized shortly after we left that I forgot to bring a binky. When we got there, my back silently squeeled at me when I climbed out of the truck. 45 minutes of sitting and bumps, still in recovery from when I hurt it apparently. So we went into the store, and flagged down a sales rep. We immediately went to where the netbooks were, and grandma showed lex which 3 she had narrowed her options down to. The one Lex chose was cheaper than mine cost, but had a slightly larger hard drive. The big difference is operating system. Mine came with Windows 7 and Lex's computer is XP. Both are very good operating systems. When we left, I figured we should have a few dollars in our account still, and I knew the ride home without a binky would be hell. So we stopped at Target just down the road. Looking at the binkies, the cheapest pair was $2.69. As far as I knew, we only had $2.40 in our bank account. So I called our HR Block emerald card. Last time I checked it was when I drove down to Des Moines to meet the grandparents so that I could pick Ally up and bring her home. Sort of a "meet in the middle" kind of arrangement when Ally had been down there with them for a week. I literally was going to run out of gas and I pulled off at a gas station. I pulled my wallet out and pulled out every card I had, 99% were prepaid cards with one being the income tax HR block card. Thank the Lord, the emerald card had $16.00 on it. I put gas in and we made it home. Until that happened, I did not know what was going to happen.
I remember driving the usual 5 MPH above the speed limit and thinking "what am I going to do? We will make it home. How though? It doesn't matter. Thank you Lord for being with us. Thank you Lord, for I know that we will make it home. I know that you are watching out for us." Well then to hear on the card, expecting only like $2.00 or something, "You're emerald card account balance is $16.58." I was like "THANK YOU!" When we were at target, I thought "lets see how much is on the cards I have." The first card I dialed was the emerald card. Seeing as I put $16.00 in gas in, and the balance had just been a little over that prior to that fill up from what I could remember, I was positive that the emerald card would be a no-go. When I entered the card number, it said "Your emerald card account balance is $6.47." I looked up again and once again said "Thank you God." The thoughts going through my head again were that I walked into target knowing what I needed, and God was watching out for us. Not only did he make it possible for me to get the binkies Zoe needed, but I bought a box of 100 Calorie snack packs for us to munch on on the way home. It wasn't a lot to eat, but I figured a snack would be enough for the ride home and we could make lunch at home.
Faith, for me, is very hard. It's always been hard for me to just give it all to God and have 'faith' that he is taking care of it. But with how lately I am giving everything negative in my life, all worrysome thoughts, cares, stresses, etc, to him, I have also noticed other things. I think I already mentioned this, but at Erin's job, they are now going to train her on another part of the restaurant. That means Erin will be more useful to them. She will get more hours, and possibly get payed more and be happier with working there. While I was walking around doing my rounds at work, I was thinking about this. After a few minutes, what occurred to me was this. I have been giving everything troubling me to God. Thanking him for us both being employed. Asking him to continue blessing us in our job. Acknowledging the fact that 'yes we do not make enough to pay the bills,' but that I know in my heart that through His help, everything will be taken care of. Shortly after that, Erin is in a way moving up. There can be only one explanation, and it is that God is in control of everything. He is the one who is responsible for all the good that happens in life.
Tonight when we were all hanging out here at the house, I layed down on the couch just to relax. Well, I was tired before then and I really felt it when I layed on the couch. Cool breeze coming through the window, I was very comfortable and I easily was dozing off. I didn't really get a "nap." I just dozed off for a little while. Zoe needed some more diapers and so I took the girls with me and went to the store to grab some. I decided I really didn't feel like cooking, so I picked up meals that you can cook in the microwave or bake in the oven. They were good, but apparently extremely rich. I had similar problems with my stomach that I did when I ate pizza ranch the other night. Apparently my stomach prefers me to eat very light foods. OH WELL!
I had to do some more work on my english paper, but wanted to get some world of warcraft time in. I decided I would first log on to WoW, and play for a while. I ended up leveling my new mage from 3 to 6 in probably about an hour and a half. I love that character! My priest will always be my #1 and favorite character, but my mage is definitely worthy of being #2. After I reached a point where I was ok with logging off, I shut the computer down. I went and got dinner ready, and after we ate, I logged back on the computer and continued my english paper. We will see what my teacher has to say about it in the morning. I have a meeting at 8:30 with her. Conferences of some kind. All the students had to sign up for a time slot to meet one on one with the teacher. I don't know if we will just talk about the paper, or about the whole class, or what. Although I'm dreading it, I signed up for 8:30 figuring that I wanted to get it out of the way first thing so that I could just go home and maybe go back to bed for a little bit. Erin's working, so Zoe will be at the sitter, which will give me at least a few hours to catch up on sleep.
So in closing, I would appologize for this mile long entry, but I'm not going to. ;) I'm a writer. Hardcore to the bone, and I'm not afraid to show it. In fact, the more that comes out of me through writing, the better I feel. The other day when I wrote in my book, I took my book from page 85 to page 92. I got on a good track and I opened up my mind even further and I just went with everything that came through. I do have my dry spells where I want to write, but don't have much coming to mind, as I'm sure Melissa has also had. However, even on those days, I will still write as much as my mind will allow me. If it turns out to be a short entry, or short addition to the book, so be it, but I will write every day none the less.
The lesson for today will be this. Faith. Like I said, it is so hard. To simply say "I have faith that this will work itself out," and believe in it, is hard as hell. But when you are able to give it completely over to Him, and have complete faith in what you are praying for, then amazing things happen. The best part of all is that when they happen, you will be able to tell. I know not everyone out there is a religious person, and if that is the case with any of you, then obviously this won't mean anything to ya. For those of you that know where I'm coming from, I'm sure you will understand and hopefully agree about this. That is pretty much the lesson for today. Have faith, believe, and know that He is working on it. The bible says "Ask and you shall receive," and "knock and the door will be opened to you." Think about it. ;) I will write more for you all tomorrow.
Thanks for being here.
CB
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Day 27
Good evening everybody. Today was one of those semi-sleepless days. I got off at 6, rushed home hoping that I might be able to get into bed and to sleep quickly. Ally's soccer game was scheduled for 10:15 and so I knew I didn't have a lot of time. I got upstairs by 6:20, but had to get my phone working again. At about 4 this morning, it died. Just an hour earlier than that, I'm sure, when I looked at the phone it still had two bars. I don't know what happened. I know that when I plugged it in, after a few minutes I was able to get it to turn on. I don't know how it completely died, but oh well.
So, at 6:40 I was finally going to sleep. I set my alarm for 9:45, but Zoe decided to wake us up at 8:30. I hobbled out of the room, and into Zoe's room, picking her up. As is usually the case whenever I have been only on 2 hours of sleep, I swayed back and forth, just trying to clear my head and wake up. When I wake up that quickly after going to sleep, I always feel super up tight and cranky. It takes me a little bit to completely wake up. I gave Zoe her binkie, and layed her back down, and gave her a kiss. When I did that, she rubbed her eyes, and looked like she was ok with the idea of going back to sleep.
Then I crawled back in bed and told myself "one more hour. At least one more hour." By 9:20 or 9:30 though, Lex was coming in saying "Mom wants to know if you want pancakes and bacon." So I was like "Tell her I'm coming." Climbed out of bed, still swaying back and forth. Got dressed, and came downstairs. Drank a few sips of a mountain dew, but did not finish it.
I've been trying really hard to eat a heck of a lot better lately. For instance, I might eat cereal or some eggs for breakfast. For lunch lately I have been making myself a salad. Sometimes I put things like croutons, light ranch, and a table spoon of bacon bits. It could even be just croutons and light ranch. A few times I have boiled eggs and then diced the hard boiled eggs (max of two of them usually) into the salad. The great thing about hard boiled egg in a salad is it makes the salad fill you up better.
Then I don't concern myself with how big or healthy dinner is, and then on the nights when I'm working over night, I will make a salad and take it with me to work, eating it in the middle of the night. Plus now I'm enrolled in the water aerobics class taking place on Tuesday and Thursday at 7AM. I figure, I would like to technically exercise at least 3 times a week. So I am thinking that on Friday or Saturday when I get off, I will change into my windpants and running shoes and will go for a jog/walk, or whatever. I'm not sure where I would go. Maybe I would just take off down 4th street and go till I get about 10-20 blocks south, and then come over to 3rd st and head back up towards home.
I actually enjoy the salads. After having done them for the past four or five days, and trying to mainly drink water, I have been feeling better physically. This routine I'm in was the same type of diet and exercise plan I followed when I lived in Newton with my parents prior to shipping off for the Air Force. I tried to eat a light breakfast, go for a walk or run, drink lots of water, eat a light lunch, every other day I would go to the Y and either lift weights or hit around in the racquet ball court. When i arrived in Newton, from Montana when my ex and I initially split up, I had dropped from over 230 lbs to 212. Then during the two months I was following this plan before I shipped off, I went from 212 to 192lbs. I'm looking forward to dieting and exercising this way and maybe 2 or 3 months down the road, step on a scale and be down near 210. It can be done. I know it can. Then I can continue doing the same routine and slowly work my way below 200.
So today, Lex's soccer game played as scheduled even though it had rained yesterday. We were happy about that. They have already come so far in just the 2 games that they have played. This time they looked like an entirely new team. They were defending more, and being able to get the ball down the field more. Big weaknesses are still: taking shots on the goal when close enough to the goal, and attacking the ball. Some of the girls would keep backing up as the other team came into their end of the field. We would yell "GET HER! TAKE THE BALL! DON'T BE AFRAID OF IT!" and they would say "I'm not afraid of it! I'm just waiting for them!" We'd be like "DONT! JUST RUN UP AND TAKE IT!" It will take time.
Lex's 2 part birthday party went really well. First she had a party at Claires. The girls were able to try on stuff, and play dress up. Zoe even walked around the stoor putting on glasses, beads, and just having a blast. We didn't have a regular camera with batteries, so I had the digital video camera with us. I recorded 40 minutes of the claires party. It only lasted maybe 20 minutes longer. One of the photos posted here is when the staff at claires took the girls outside and took pictures of them all dressed up. The 2nd part of the party was at Pizza Ranch. There was me, Erin, Lex, Grandma, her friend Michelle and michelle's mom. When it was 7PM, Eric and Sophie hadn't showed up yet. We were just getting ready to call to see what was going on and they walked in. It was nice to see them. Pizza Ranch was good. For lunch today, I made salads for Erin and I. I figured I knew that dinner was going to be big, so I knew it would be worth the usual salad lunch.
After pizza ranch, my stomach was twisting constantly. I guess all that grease did not sit well with me. I should have taken it easy, but I figured I would enjoy it while I could. My mistake! It's all good. The other picture you see posted here is from Pizza Ranch. They had someone dressed up as a chicken and dancing while they sang happy birthday to Lex.
In closing, things are going pretty good. We still have a ways to go, but things will get better. In fact, tonight I mentioned to Erin that I was planning to apply for the openings of Sherifs Deputies here in town. She was surprised. Well when we got home, I mentioned that I should call the national guard recruiter to ask him what the word was on whether or not I would be cleared for the jobs I listed. She mentioned that if I was going to try to be a deputy, something about, why would I try to join the guard? I'm not sure exactly what she said, something like that. I'm sure she will comment here clearing that up if she wants to. ;)
I will write more for you tomorrow.
Thanks for being here!
CB
Friday, April 30, 2010
Day 26
Today was a better day as far as the amount of sleep is concerned. When I first layed down to go to sleep, I thought "wait, I forgot to pray." What's funny is this. Usually when I pray before going to sleep, I kneel beside the bed. Well when I thought about it, I was laying in bed, covers pulled up high. My eye lids were already heavy, and I knew I would be gone soon. So to make up for not kneeling, I rolled over partially on my side, but with my head bowed. As soon as I layed back down again, I was gone in probably a minute. Erin had work today, so she was taking Zoe to the sitter. From the moment I went to sleep, the next thing I remember is just before 2PM, my phone going off. I have it set on silent usually when I go to sleep *because too many things come through on my phone; emails, texts, calls, etc*. But what I did was in the settings I set Erin's profile up so that if she calls no matter what I have the current volume set to, her's will come through loud and clear. Not on texts, just on phone calls.
When I initially woke up, I had to run downstairs for a minute to help Erin with Zoe. I carried Zoe upstairs, and layed her in her bed *which she did not complain one bit. In fact, she was rubbing her eyes sleepily*. Then I went and climbed back into bed myself. I didn't know if I was going to be able to go back to sleep or not. I just wanted to savor and enjoy the feeling of being in a nice and comfortable bed. Erin came up, and after a little while we both went downstairs. She put on "Super Size Me" on netflix. I saw that with my mom a while ago, so I got onto WoW. I wasn't really having a good time with the warlock I created. I was dying too easily. With my priest, I could take on characters that are 2 or 3 levels higher than me, without getting killed every time. With my warlock, I'm level 3 trying to hit level 4, and I kept getting attacked by level 6's. I would take their health down almost to 1/4 level, but then I would usually have to try to run away or die. They took my health down just a little bit faster than I could theirs.
So, I went back into the new character section, and created a Mage. I think a Mage is kind of like a witch. Lots and lots of magic abilities that they can learn as they level up. I accepted a few quests right off the bat, and right away I was easily taking out characters that were 2 levels ahead of me. By the time I killed them, they probably only hit me twice. I looked over at Erin and said "I think I will get rid of my warlock. I'm just not enjoying that character. The mage on the other hand is great!" For me, I don't "disslike" video games. The things that turn me off to them are if it is played to extreme. Like, my former brother in law in Texas was on his PS2 playing Dynasty Warriors almost 24 hours a day. He would stop to do the basic functions like eat, sleep, shower, use the rest room, then back to dynasty warriors. He always asked me if I would team up with him, and I never would. The reason was, I was sick of the game. I saw it so much, that even without playing it, I didn't like it. It got to be that way for WoW too after I was divorced because the ex got so into it with her friends on WoW that thats all she wanted. FUN TIMES!
So anyway, I leveled the Mage up almost to level 4 in about 30 minutes. I was like "DamN! Piece of cake!" So I think I may have found my 2 characters. A mage and a priest. One that will end up with a hell of a lot of magic, and one that has some magic, but also the ability to heal and ressurect.
Moving on! Last night at work, I spent a lot of extra time out in the parking lot. We have had a young kid prowling. I think I already talked about them. Well, after he/she showed up two nights in a row, the parking lot was much more heavily guarded last night. Only this time though, no sign of him at all. I told the house supervisor "I hope you really gave him a scare, because I haven't seen any signs of him so far tonight." Even as it got to 5AM and I only had an hour left, the parking lot had been nice and quiet all night. There was not a single random person walking through. We had a Charter Bus, which I thought was interesting. I stopped to talk to the driver, and asked what they were at the ER for. Apparently they were transporting a junior high girls soccer team. One of the girls took a soccer ball to the face and her eye was swollen.
So just after 5 this evening, we got a call from Erin's mom. She had been on the road for a while, and was still about an hour away. We went up into the guest room that we loaded some of the furniture in that threw my back out, and put up a curtain rod and some small curtains. We brought sheets up for the bed. At just after 6, her mom arrived. We all loaded up in Erin's car and went to a local mexican restaurant for dinner. While we were there, Ally asked Erin if she could try cherry coke. Erin thought "Sure why not. It's your birthday." Well, when she was half way done with this huge cherry coke glass, she was so hyper. We really don't let her have caffeinated beverages. Soda's for her are anything that is caffeine free, such a sprite and such. It was funny. Both Betsy (her mom) and I looked at her and were like "You let her get coke?" LOL. Yeah, well I understand what Erin thought. It's Ally's special time and the most harm it'd do to her is make her extremely hyper. Thats where having her run laps around the house and doing some of her gymnastics bridges comes in handy. Easy way to tire her back out! ;)
This morning, I thought to myself "Should I do the friday morning deep water-aroebics? Or should I figure go with the Tuesday Thursday one that I had them write my name down for?" By the time I was home, it was already 20 after 6. I got Lex's breakfast on the table, grabbed a small bowl of cereal myself, and decided that I was really tired. With how much sleep I got yesterday, I decided I would watch another episode of Season 1 of Hercules. That's when I had gotten on WoW first today, only that time I tried to see if it'd get easier on my warlock. Nope, I died so many times in the 30 minutes that I was online. At 7:28, I shut the tv off and was like "Ok Lex! Time to go!"
In closing, when Betsy arrived, and we all loaded into Erin's car to go to dinner, the first thing she said was "You're truck is huge Chris!" Telling someone you have a Ford F250 XLT, and explaining how long it is, that apparently doesn't do it. When they SEE it, they are like "DAMN!" I think I will call that it for tonight. I will write more for you all tomorrow.
Thanks for being here!
CB
When I initially woke up, I had to run downstairs for a minute to help Erin with Zoe. I carried Zoe upstairs, and layed her in her bed *which she did not complain one bit. In fact, she was rubbing her eyes sleepily*. Then I went and climbed back into bed myself. I didn't know if I was going to be able to go back to sleep or not. I just wanted to savor and enjoy the feeling of being in a nice and comfortable bed. Erin came up, and after a little while we both went downstairs. She put on "Super Size Me" on netflix. I saw that with my mom a while ago, so I got onto WoW. I wasn't really having a good time with the warlock I created. I was dying too easily. With my priest, I could take on characters that are 2 or 3 levels higher than me, without getting killed every time. With my warlock, I'm level 3 trying to hit level 4, and I kept getting attacked by level 6's. I would take their health down almost to 1/4 level, but then I would usually have to try to run away or die. They took my health down just a little bit faster than I could theirs.
So, I went back into the new character section, and created a Mage. I think a Mage is kind of like a witch. Lots and lots of magic abilities that they can learn as they level up. I accepted a few quests right off the bat, and right away I was easily taking out characters that were 2 levels ahead of me. By the time I killed them, they probably only hit me twice. I looked over at Erin and said "I think I will get rid of my warlock. I'm just not enjoying that character. The mage on the other hand is great!" For me, I don't "disslike" video games. The things that turn me off to them are if it is played to extreme. Like, my former brother in law in Texas was on his PS2 playing Dynasty Warriors almost 24 hours a day. He would stop to do the basic functions like eat, sleep, shower, use the rest room, then back to dynasty warriors. He always asked me if I would team up with him, and I never would. The reason was, I was sick of the game. I saw it so much, that even without playing it, I didn't like it. It got to be that way for WoW too after I was divorced because the ex got so into it with her friends on WoW that thats all she wanted. FUN TIMES!
So anyway, I leveled the Mage up almost to level 4 in about 30 minutes. I was like "DamN! Piece of cake!" So I think I may have found my 2 characters. A mage and a priest. One that will end up with a hell of a lot of magic, and one that has some magic, but also the ability to heal and ressurect.
Moving on! Last night at work, I spent a lot of extra time out in the parking lot. We have had a young kid prowling. I think I already talked about them. Well, after he/she showed up two nights in a row, the parking lot was much more heavily guarded last night. Only this time though, no sign of him at all. I told the house supervisor "I hope you really gave him a scare, because I haven't seen any signs of him so far tonight." Even as it got to 5AM and I only had an hour left, the parking lot had been nice and quiet all night. There was not a single random person walking through. We had a Charter Bus, which I thought was interesting. I stopped to talk to the driver, and asked what they were at the ER for. Apparently they were transporting a junior high girls soccer team. One of the girls took a soccer ball to the face and her eye was swollen.
So just after 5 this evening, we got a call from Erin's mom. She had been on the road for a while, and was still about an hour away. We went up into the guest room that we loaded some of the furniture in that threw my back out, and put up a curtain rod and some small curtains. We brought sheets up for the bed. At just after 6, her mom arrived. We all loaded up in Erin's car and went to a local mexican restaurant for dinner. While we were there, Ally asked Erin if she could try cherry coke. Erin thought "Sure why not. It's your birthday." Well, when she was half way done with this huge cherry coke glass, she was so hyper. We really don't let her have caffeinated beverages. Soda's for her are anything that is caffeine free, such a sprite and such. It was funny. Both Betsy (her mom) and I looked at her and were like "You let her get coke?" LOL. Yeah, well I understand what Erin thought. It's Ally's special time and the most harm it'd do to her is make her extremely hyper. Thats where having her run laps around the house and doing some of her gymnastics bridges comes in handy. Easy way to tire her back out! ;)
This morning, I thought to myself "Should I do the friday morning deep water-aroebics? Or should I figure go with the Tuesday Thursday one that I had them write my name down for?" By the time I was home, it was already 20 after 6. I got Lex's breakfast on the table, grabbed a small bowl of cereal myself, and decided that I was really tired. With how much sleep I got yesterday, I decided I would watch another episode of Season 1 of Hercules. That's when I had gotten on WoW first today, only that time I tried to see if it'd get easier on my warlock. Nope, I died so many times in the 30 minutes that I was online. At 7:28, I shut the tv off and was like "Ok Lex! Time to go!"
In closing, when Betsy arrived, and we all loaded into Erin's car to go to dinner, the first thing she said was "You're truck is huge Chris!" Telling someone you have a Ford F250 XLT, and explaining how long it is, that apparently doesn't do it. When they SEE it, they are like "DAMN!" I think I will call that it for tonight. I will write more for you all tomorrow.
Thanks for being here!
CB
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Day 25
Wow. It amazes me that in just under a week I will have gone an entire month of writing in this blog. When I was at work on my first day of the week, Tuesday to be exact, I was outside briefly talking to the maintenance man and the house supervisor. They were outside taking a smoke break. I wasn't though. I have never been, nor do I ever see myself being a smoker. No way! So anyway, we were standing there, and this dark figure walked slowly past. The individual looked to me like a teen. Not quite 5' 9", pretty thin, black sweat pants, black sweat shirt with the hood over their head so you couldn't see them clearly. When they walked past us Tuesday night, all 3 of us went "hmmm, that's suspicious." I followed them from a distance to see where they went, and when they went north on 4th street and away from the hospital I let it go, but kept a close eye out any time I was outside.
Last night while I was out on the other side of the parking lot, the house supervisor called me. She was like "You know that kid we saw last night?" I was like "Yes?" to which she replied "He just tried to break into my car." I asked her what exactly happened, and she said that he came up from the direction I had followed him the night before, that she had come out for a break, and that he just walked right up to her car and tried to see if the door was unlocked. The lights came on in her car, and she basically yelled "HEY! WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU DOING!" The kid apparently whirled around, seeming surprised, hands up in the air, and then took off running. When I got over there, I couldn't find him. He was apparently long gone. She told the rest of the staff about the prowler, so that everyone could keep a close eye out. Tonight I let the 2nd shift house supervisor know about it, so that if the kid changes up his approach and tries earlier, people will be more prepared.
So this morning, I got off right at 6. I didn't have to sit one on one with any patients so I was able to get off when I was supposed to. Went home, got Lex's cereal on the table for her, went upstairs and turned her light on. Today is officially Alexandria's 9th birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLY! (Not that you will read this, but hey ;) ) After a few minutes, I went in there and she had pulled the covers over her head. I pulled them off, then said "Drum roll please!" I started drumming my finger tips on the railing as though it were a drum. "Happy birthday to you!" Pause, then I'd tickle her side "tickytickyticky", followed by her saying "doooooooooonnnnnnnnnnt." Then I'd go on. "Happy birthday TOOOO you! tickytickyticky!" "DOOOONNNT!" she would say again. "Happy BIRTHDAY to Lexi! Happy birthday too (I'd mimic the word "too" the way the bird delivering the baby elephant in dumbo sings), YOU! tickytickyticky!" O:-)
Better than 9 birthday spankings I guess. :) When it was close to 7, ally had eaten and was laying on the couch across from me. This morning I finally decided that I should officially get into the water aerobics. So at 6:50, I said to Ally "Lex, I will be back. I have an exercise class I'm going to. Just hang out down here and watch tv, and I should be back just after 7:30 some time. Maybe 7:45 or whatever. Then I will take you to school myself in the truck." She was like "OK!"
The pool exercise is fun. I handed the lady at the desk my YWCA membership card, and went into the pool area. As soon as I came through the doors, I could see that there were probably about 15 to 20 people in the pool. Everyone appeared to be up there in age. When I told Erin about it, I said "senior's." Well I took off my shirt and shoes, set my bag of stuff up on a chair, then turned and jumped into the pool. Today was the first time I have been in the pool at the Y. When you are sitting along side the pool, it is very easy to over heat. That room, for whatever reason, is kept much warmer than the other parts of the building. Well the water was nice and comfortable. It wasn quite warm. Usually when you jump into a pool, you prepare yourself for a bit of shock before you get used to the cool water. Not this morning. I jumped in and the first words out of my mouth were "the water feels great!"
Well for the most part, I was able to do all the exercises the instructor had us to. The ones I struggled with were not because I couldn't, but more so because I wasn't sure what the exercise was. Sometimes she would say "OK! NOW THIS!" and she would describe the movement. I'm a visual guy so for me I have to see stuff that I don't get at first, in order to fully understand it. Thankfully a few times she got out of the pool so she could imitate how the exercise was done. Did things like Cross Country Skiing in the water, running in place, side lunges, stretches, etc. At one point, I didn't feel winded or tired, and my leg cramped momentarily. I immediately straightened it all the way out and waited about thirty seconds for the cramp to go away. Leg cramps suck!
So after the water exercise, I went to get my card back, and asked the lady at the counter how I get officially in the class. I guess it really doesn't matter. I could technically come and take part in the work out without officially being on their list of people. But, I figure for my sake, it will be easier to not allow myself to let it slide, if I know that I am registered with them. Today was the shallow end of the pool, but I believe monday, wednesday, and friday is in the deep end. I'm thinking I will go tomorrow too, so that I can see what that one is like. Maybe I will want to stick with the deep end part of the class. Maybe I will stick with the one I registered in, Tuesday, and Thursday, and then just be a guest on Friday for the Deep End. If I could get up every day (Even on my days off), I think I would be willing to do monday through friday. It's a great work out. I realized it when I was going to bed, and I could feel it in my legs and arms. A small, but not uncomfortable burn.
After dropping Lex off at school, I came home and went to sleep. By this point it was already 8:30. By 11, Zoe had gotten up, and Erin had gone to get her and bring her in. Zoe came over, grabbed my side, and climbed up. After a few minutes, Erin did take Zoe out of the room and close the door so I could sleep. Probably an hour or so later, she was back in the room. She was working on tidying up the house, and was needing to do something in the room. Of course, she needed light for it. Then a little later she left again, turning the light off. Then again not too long from that, she came in, waking me up again and told me that Tinche, our cat, got out the door when she had gone out on the front porch to grab something, momentarily leaving the door open. Our cat goes into heat like every 2 weeks it seems, and we don't have the money yet to get her spayed. I found out this morning when I got home, that there is a male cat lurking around the house every so often. He apparently has heard Tinche and her constant meowing. I was in the kitchen at 6:20 and heard meowing much like Tinche's, but tinche was on the floor by my feet. I looked outside and saw this orange cat that I'm sure is a boy.
This afternoon when I found tinche and got her back inside, later on the male cat was lounging at the foot of the stairs connected to our front porch. I said "Erin! Look! That's the cat I told you about!" If she wasn't going to get pregnant, and have kittens, maybe we could try to explore the option of letting her out and seeing that she comes back. 1) I'm afraid she will not come back (get lost or whatever), and 2) if she gets out, and mates with another cat, I don't think we can keep her. In the rental agreement with my parents, I don't want to push it by saying "our cat is having kittens!" No, that won't go over well. We were lucky to be allowed to get Teagan! They almost didn't let us. We adopted him, then were forced to take him back to the original owners for fear of being kicked out, then they rethought it and said he better not mess up the house.
So, today I am pretty damn tired. I napped off and on on the couch, but that kind of napping almost does not mean anything. Sleeping for a few minutes, waking up, then sleeping for a half hour, waking up to something, etc, that is not sound recouperative sleeping. Just like, when I go to bed in the morning, if I only sleep 1-3 hours, get woken up, go back to sleep, awakened shortly after, I eventually get up feeling groggy, EXTREMELY cranky, tired, sometimes depressed, and irritable. If I can get 5-7 hours straight without interruption, then I can usually wake up feeling ok. 7-9 hours and I wake up feeling like "ok! I can take care of this, and this, and this, and this!" But when I'm lacking sleep, I can't motivate myself to get too many things done. Single tasks take too much energy out of me when I'm lacking sleep.
So in closing, when I got up, I grabbed my phone and had 24 emails. They were all comments on the blog from the same person. I texted her and was like "HOLY SHIT!" She was like "?" And I was like "You didn't have to comment! I understand!" I'm glad she did, and now I will make sure to return the favor to her as well, but I was just blown away. I will write more for you tomorrow.
Thanks for being here!
CB
Last night while I was out on the other side of the parking lot, the house supervisor called me. She was like "You know that kid we saw last night?" I was like "Yes?" to which she replied "He just tried to break into my car." I asked her what exactly happened, and she said that he came up from the direction I had followed him the night before, that she had come out for a break, and that he just walked right up to her car and tried to see if the door was unlocked. The lights came on in her car, and she basically yelled "HEY! WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU DOING!" The kid apparently whirled around, seeming surprised, hands up in the air, and then took off running. When I got over there, I couldn't find him. He was apparently long gone. She told the rest of the staff about the prowler, so that everyone could keep a close eye out. Tonight I let the 2nd shift house supervisor know about it, so that if the kid changes up his approach and tries earlier, people will be more prepared.
So this morning, I got off right at 6. I didn't have to sit one on one with any patients so I was able to get off when I was supposed to. Went home, got Lex's cereal on the table for her, went upstairs and turned her light on. Today is officially Alexandria's 9th birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLY! (Not that you will read this, but hey ;) ) After a few minutes, I went in there and she had pulled the covers over her head. I pulled them off, then said "Drum roll please!" I started drumming my finger tips on the railing as though it were a drum. "Happy birthday to you!" Pause, then I'd tickle her side "tickytickyticky", followed by her saying "doooooooooonnnnnnnnnnt." Then I'd go on. "Happy birthday TOOOO you! tickytickyticky!" "DOOOONNNT!" she would say again. "Happy BIRTHDAY to Lexi! Happy birthday too (I'd mimic the word "too" the way the bird delivering the baby elephant in dumbo sings), YOU! tickytickyticky!" O:-)
Better than 9 birthday spankings I guess. :) When it was close to 7, ally had eaten and was laying on the couch across from me. This morning I finally decided that I should officially get into the water aerobics. So at 6:50, I said to Ally "Lex, I will be back. I have an exercise class I'm going to. Just hang out down here and watch tv, and I should be back just after 7:30 some time. Maybe 7:45 or whatever. Then I will take you to school myself in the truck." She was like "OK!"
The pool exercise is fun. I handed the lady at the desk my YWCA membership card, and went into the pool area. As soon as I came through the doors, I could see that there were probably about 15 to 20 people in the pool. Everyone appeared to be up there in age. When I told Erin about it, I said "senior's." Well I took off my shirt and shoes, set my bag of stuff up on a chair, then turned and jumped into the pool. Today was the first time I have been in the pool at the Y. When you are sitting along side the pool, it is very easy to over heat. That room, for whatever reason, is kept much warmer than the other parts of the building. Well the water was nice and comfortable. It wasn quite warm. Usually when you jump into a pool, you prepare yourself for a bit of shock before you get used to the cool water. Not this morning. I jumped in and the first words out of my mouth were "the water feels great!"
Well for the most part, I was able to do all the exercises the instructor had us to. The ones I struggled with were not because I couldn't, but more so because I wasn't sure what the exercise was. Sometimes she would say "OK! NOW THIS!" and she would describe the movement. I'm a visual guy so for me I have to see stuff that I don't get at first, in order to fully understand it. Thankfully a few times she got out of the pool so she could imitate how the exercise was done. Did things like Cross Country Skiing in the water, running in place, side lunges, stretches, etc. At one point, I didn't feel winded or tired, and my leg cramped momentarily. I immediately straightened it all the way out and waited about thirty seconds for the cramp to go away. Leg cramps suck!
So after the water exercise, I went to get my card back, and asked the lady at the counter how I get officially in the class. I guess it really doesn't matter. I could technically come and take part in the work out without officially being on their list of people. But, I figure for my sake, it will be easier to not allow myself to let it slide, if I know that I am registered with them. Today was the shallow end of the pool, but I believe monday, wednesday, and friday is in the deep end. I'm thinking I will go tomorrow too, so that I can see what that one is like. Maybe I will want to stick with the deep end part of the class. Maybe I will stick with the one I registered in, Tuesday, and Thursday, and then just be a guest on Friday for the Deep End. If I could get up every day (Even on my days off), I think I would be willing to do monday through friday. It's a great work out. I realized it when I was going to bed, and I could feel it in my legs and arms. A small, but not uncomfortable burn.
After dropping Lex off at school, I came home and went to sleep. By this point it was already 8:30. By 11, Zoe had gotten up, and Erin had gone to get her and bring her in. Zoe came over, grabbed my side, and climbed up. After a few minutes, Erin did take Zoe out of the room and close the door so I could sleep. Probably an hour or so later, she was back in the room. She was working on tidying up the house, and was needing to do something in the room. Of course, she needed light for it. Then a little later she left again, turning the light off. Then again not too long from that, she came in, waking me up again and told me that Tinche, our cat, got out the door when she had gone out on the front porch to grab something, momentarily leaving the door open. Our cat goes into heat like every 2 weeks it seems, and we don't have the money yet to get her spayed. I found out this morning when I got home, that there is a male cat lurking around the house every so often. He apparently has heard Tinche and her constant meowing. I was in the kitchen at 6:20 and heard meowing much like Tinche's, but tinche was on the floor by my feet. I looked outside and saw this orange cat that I'm sure is a boy.
This afternoon when I found tinche and got her back inside, later on the male cat was lounging at the foot of the stairs connected to our front porch. I said "Erin! Look! That's the cat I told you about!" If she wasn't going to get pregnant, and have kittens, maybe we could try to explore the option of letting her out and seeing that she comes back. 1) I'm afraid she will not come back (get lost or whatever), and 2) if she gets out, and mates with another cat, I don't think we can keep her. In the rental agreement with my parents, I don't want to push it by saying "our cat is having kittens!" No, that won't go over well. We were lucky to be allowed to get Teagan! They almost didn't let us. We adopted him, then were forced to take him back to the original owners for fear of being kicked out, then they rethought it and said he better not mess up the house.
So, today I am pretty damn tired. I napped off and on on the couch, but that kind of napping almost does not mean anything. Sleeping for a few minutes, waking up, then sleeping for a half hour, waking up to something, etc, that is not sound recouperative sleeping. Just like, when I go to bed in the morning, if I only sleep 1-3 hours, get woken up, go back to sleep, awakened shortly after, I eventually get up feeling groggy, EXTREMELY cranky, tired, sometimes depressed, and irritable. If I can get 5-7 hours straight without interruption, then I can usually wake up feeling ok. 7-9 hours and I wake up feeling like "ok! I can take care of this, and this, and this, and this!" But when I'm lacking sleep, I can't motivate myself to get too many things done. Single tasks take too much energy out of me when I'm lacking sleep.
So in closing, when I got up, I grabbed my phone and had 24 emails. They were all comments on the blog from the same person. I texted her and was like "HOLY SHIT!" She was like "?" And I was like "You didn't have to comment! I understand!" I'm glad she did, and now I will make sure to return the favor to her as well, but I was just blown away. I will write more for you tomorrow.
Thanks for being here!
CB
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