Category: Day To Day

Tonight, after work, I finally cleaned up the spare bedroom.  I hadn’t really gone in there since my roommate moved out.  I know it has been a while since I have had anything to say, but that will be changing.  I had a roommate for a little while, and although it wasn’t all bad, it really wasn’t that great.  Now he is gone and I cleaned the room that he occupied and soon I will paint it.  It was good to finally get it done.  It has  been a few weeks since he left and I had been keeping the door closed and avoiding the whole process.  I seem to be pretty good at avoiding things sometimes.

Newsflash: I received a pretty good review at work and some other exciting things have happened in the last week.  Time to go, but I will tell you about it all later.

My business trip to Joplin, Missouri went very well.  I was well prepared and impressed our customer.  I arrived back home Friday evening and was glad to be back.  Saturday I had a barbeque pool party at my house.  There were a bunch of good friends, a bunch of good food, lots of jungle juice and swimming in the pool.  Sunday, I spent most of the afternoon and evening doing chemistry homework.  My sons are still in San Diego with their father, and I am keeping very busy enjoying my break.

It is 12:45am. I just got home from dropping off my dog, Charlie with my friend Karl. He is going to watch Charlie for a few days while I travel for business. I am going to Joplin, Missouri. It might be fun. I am excited about it because I have never been there and I grew up in the midwest and it will be nice to have a change of scenery. So, my friend, Karl, is watching Charlie while I am gone. And, as you know, my two boys went to visit their Dad last friday for 5 weeks or so. And so, just now, I arrived home feeling very alone. There was my cat, Becky, wandering around (my roommate will feed her while I am gone). She meowed at me and I petted her. My roommate is out for the night and it is soooo quiet here. I am so used to children and television and the dog and the telephone and the knocks at the door from friends stopping by…. whew! And here I am and it is quiet in my house. And I have been cleaning my house, here and there, since my kids left. And it is so nice to actually be able to get somewhere with the cleaning process. When the kids are home, it seems like an endless task. But now I can see the major improvement in just a few days. And what I clean, stays clean, and my stuff is where I left it when I went to work that morning. It is nice. It is funny, though, that I realized that I have called them everyday since they left. I was thinking it would take a little while before I started missing them, but it was really right away. And now, with Charlie gone….Wow! I am feeling fairly lonely. Well, now it is after 1am. I have to pack for this trip. I know, it is last minute, but I started school on Monday (Chemistry with Lab) and the class is Monday through Thursday night after work, so there was no time to pack ahead of time. My friends would probably say that I always have something causing my procrastination. Before I go pack, though, I want to tell you that my step-dad had a stroke last night. He is still in the hospital, and my mom has been there with him. He is in my thoughts and prayers, and I am sure everything will be ok.

It is 2:30am. I went outside to test my pool chemicals and clean the filter and set up the timer so that my pool is ok while I am gone. It was weird to go outside and not have Charlie at my heels. He always wants to be outside with me. I cleaned my filter, checked my chemicals, added some cholorine tablets to my floater, and now I am ready to pack since the dryer is done spinning and my clothes are ready for the suitcase.

bis spater.

Today, I took the day off of work and drove my children to Yuma to go with Mark. They are going to San Diego with him for the next 5 weeks or so. It will be nice to have a break. I start Chemistry class on Monday and it will be nice to focus on that and my work without having to worry about my kids for a while. Plus, the kids will have fun with their Dad and it will be a nice vacation.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Tonight, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I am not going out for St. Patty’s Day. I am sitting here with my roommate making Blarney Stone Cookies. My Mom used to make those all the time when I was a kid. Now I am making them. My roommate is playing guitar. (long story short, I needed the money and Jason needed a room). So, tonight, there will be no Patty’s Party. Payday is still a few days away and my budget is tight. Making cookies as Jason plays and sings Elvis Costello is really a cool time. I just put the icing on the cookies. Now he is singing Brown Eyed Girl.

There has been so much that has happened and so much that I have realized in the last month. I have not created entries here because I was either too busy or too proud to let the world know what was happening. I made a few bad choices and I became pretty darn broke. The budget I created in December is getting me back to life slowly. Another month or two should really do it.


My boys and my dog and I did manage to go camping this past weekend by the Rio Verde River. It was so nice. I borrowed a tent from a friend and packed up a bunch of blankets, sleeping bags, supplies and food. We met up with Karl and Mike and Stacy and Brenda and Erik and Erik’s daughter, Destiny, and four other dogs. It was a great time. The weather was great on Saturday and Karl cooked french toast for breakfast. The kids and the dogs and all of us went walking by the river. The scenery was beautiful, the air was great, the day was nice. At night, we had food and marshmellows at the fire. The kids went to bed, the grownups talked around the fire, the dogs slept on the dirt. It was fabulous and the moon was full. Sunday, it rained all day. The dogs got muddy and we all got pretty wet, but it was nice for the most part. We ended Sunday at about 5pm and the boys and I drove home.

During lunch today, I rode my bike up to the ASU campus and finalized some stuff on my application to graduate school.  It is such a nice day outside and the bike ride was very nice.  I parked the bike and walked around the campus.  There was a band playing in a courtyard and there were students walking around everywhere.  It was a great feeling to be back on a campus wandering around.  I will be glad to start school again.  Graduate school is going to be a challenge for me to juggle with everything else I have in my life.  I work well when challenged, though, and I am very excited about this.  It is about time I stop spinning my wheels and get moving.

Well, it is another Tuesday morning.  Like most mornings, I spent an extra 54 minutes in bed enjoying the coziness of my covers and dreading the thought of getting up and getting dressed.  My alarm clock goes off at 6:30 and I press snooze.  It is an easy thing to do, and I do not even really have to wake up to do it because the snooze button happens to be the biggest button on my alarm clock.  It does not take much to hit the thing.  Then I curl back into my warm fuzzy blanket and begin to calculate how many 9 minute intervals I can afford and still make it to work on time.  What is up with the 9 minute snooze anyway?  Why 9?  Why not 10?  I find myself laying in bed sharpening my math skills every morning.  I have gotten quite good at calculating time by multiples of 9 in my sleep and find myself finally getting out of bed at 7:24.  It is a great way to sharpen my math skills in the morning.  But why is it 9 minutes and why is that snooze button so darn big?  I put my alarm clock on the other side of the room away from my bed thinking that if I had to actually get out from under my cozy covers it might help.  However, the alarm goes off and I seem to have become quite skilled at bouncing out of bed, hitting the thing, calculating the next time it will go off, and being back under my covers all without really waking up.

It has been a few months since my dog, Charlie, and I went on a long walk together. We go to the circle K up the street sometimes and we walk around the block. But, tonight, I decided to go on a long walk. We were gone for 2 hours and it was great. We practiced some commands and Charlie is really doing well. He is such a good dog. Downtown, there are a bunch of statues of people and animals. Charlie took quite an interest in many of them and let out a growl. We met a man who was sitting at a park bench and stopped to talk to him for a while. We looked in all the shop windows and discovered some new shops that were not there the last time we walked and some others that were going out of business. I have always loved walking on Main Street in Anytown, USA. There seems to be something about it that is nostalgic to me. I remember when I lived in Escondido, CA. I loved walking down there. It was small, but it was so nice to walk late at night when the shops were closed, or on a Saturday when the street fair was happening, or early in the evening when the French Restaurant was still open and I would go there for coffee and french desert. I love the atmosphere on a small town Main Street. The moon was beautiful tonight and the air was perfect. I have been stuck at a skip in the record lately, but I think it is time for me to reorganize the things that are really important.

Today is the one year anniversary from the day I purchased my house. A lot has been done in this past year on the renovation of my house and much more is yet to come this year. This is an exciting day!!!

Well, Thanksgiving is quickly approaching. I finally have a stove and that is good. My kitchen is almost finished, but at least I have a stove to cook the big meal on Thursday. My X-husband and his girlfriend and his daughter are arriving today and staying through friday and we are going to have quite a feast of turkey and green bean casserole and yams and pumpkin pie and mashed potatos and whatever else I end up cooking. Plus, of course, plenty of beverages of both adult kind and kid kind. Thanksgiving is so great. It is a day of family and friends and being thankful. As always, we will start the meal with a nice grace.

My friend, Halcyon, is hosting a virtual grace at 9:30am eastern time and 12:30pm Pacific time at www.digitalintimacy.com/grace/ Be sure to check it out. There is a nice documentary about the gift of giving at http://giftingit.com/ be sure to check that out too.

I wish all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thanks for visiting my site so frequently and reading my thoughts. You are all wonderful.