I haven't been in the mood to blog lately.  It is as simple as that.  Tulip and Picasso are sleeping in their bed. Yay! It's cold here. I'm sure it is cold where you are at, but us southerners are not so used to constant bitter cold.  It is boring  but yet somehow we fill the days. For one thing, I'm not looking forward to school getting back in.  I'm not looking forward to the childrens' school nor mine.  I feel like I drive all day with them, which isn't true but it feels that way.  I'm reading a novel which is new. I haven't been reading for some time now. It is set in Charleston. I've never been to Charleston. Everyone I know has. I can't tell you why not other than I don't want to go by myself and I haven't had anyone to go with or the time.

Hope the world is treating you right.

I love my children. They are the best. Me and Aaron have renamed Thanksgiving Con an American Day. We've had a stuck inside and we're going insane day though the dogs included. Its cold and misty. Miserable weather.

Maryann.  In the beginning of the school year she liked this boy. They supposedly were "going out" which is 13-speak for just saying you are supposed to be exclusive.  The boy called it off and it broke her heart. She poured tears, and it broke my heart. Then the same boy and his brother prank called our house leaving a message that read.

Maryann I'm tired of you fucking not returning my calls. You whore. You slut.

I called his parents and they brought him and his brother over to apologize. I told the boy never to call my house again. Then, school got back in and she started mentioning his name casually.  Well.. apparently they are supposed to be "going out" again except it must not be going well. A friend of hers has told her that he's flirting with her.

She's being all secretive with me about it though because I've explicitly made it clear that I'm not pleased.  I'm not pleased at all. First, I know they really aren't dating so my concern is surface level but it is the implications there. Here is a boy that has treated her badly, he first broke off their exclusiveness not by even telling her personally but having some random kid do it for him, then the prank call, now this... She told me way before this stuff happened that he bragged that "he likes to break up with girls". What upsets me though is that she's taken him back, even if its this superficial not really dating game they are playing.  That really pains me. As a woman that put up with abuse for so long I really really hate her even remotely no matter how innocent enough it seems allowing a boy treat her this way. 

Make no mistake the boy is not even cute. When he came over to our house I was shocked. I was expecting a cute boy. He's not even remotely cute he's ugly. He's all junior red neck in training-ish.  There is nothing to the boy. Maryann is so trendy and vanity and she's taking this kind of treatment from this boy that really looks non too bright and not even good looking. I'm really saddened. He's not her type. Of course, I'm her mom and I guess the cliche phrase would be no one is good enough for mama's baby. But really folks, this little kid doesn't have much going for him. Let's not forget the evidence in that he called my house and left a message calling her a whore.

I'm really put out with Maryann over this. She should have more pride. Maryann is a pretty girl and she's smart as a whip.  She can do much better. She's going for the first kid to show her attention. Why does that scare me? I did the same thing my self confidence was low.  They are not actually dating being so young there is nothing that I can do really. I can't forbid her talking to him at school. It doesn't bod well.

School has got me whipped. I'm really pissed. Pissed about everything. You don't want to get me going! I have a horrible aura going.

Tulip has a couple of new friends. Minnie and Barney. They live in a posh house a couple of streets over. Tulip is quite smitten with Barney, a standard, stocky, dark, and handsome young man. Minnie is in dog therapy for not making friends (she is threatened easily).  But now, boy now, she wants to go outside to take a walk in anticipation that dear Barney might be out there. As far as I can see his mommy walks them in the mornings. But that does not stop her from begging to go for a walk now at every turn.

Tulip. Chill Out. Don't look too eager. Play it cool.


Then Maryann and a friend from school have figured out that they live within eyeball distance of each other. She's gone now to play.  She'll be back in an hour. That leaves me and Aaron the loners. I've been working in the back yard. I have a temporary solution for our fence problem. I bought a rake and am turning over the dirt.  The dogs that lived here killed the grass and the dirt is hard. Just a few feet a way the woman in the duplex beside us has great green grass to envy. So I know it can be done. There is only a fence between us after all. There was great grass here too I bet just that those awful tenants killed it. If there was grass out there once for sure we can get some again.


I bought a bike this morning but the thing is too tall. Seriously, I'm too short for a 26 inch bike. I'm really grieved over it now because God was it ever a pain in the ass getting it home and now I have to drag that big thing into Wally World for a refund.  Mom has this really weird attitude about me buying a bike she keeps this "why in the world would you do that, you can't ride a bike" attitude. Honestly, I love my mom, she does so much for me, but at the same time my mom can be really really weird. I see women my age riding bikes all of the time she acts like it is a kid's activity. Mom hasn't been out and about in the world much.  It is a little embarrassing at times. The really sad thing though is that Maryann looked outside this morning and saw the bike and thought I had bought her a bike. Psych!  Then I had to tell her that not only is it not hers but even I am not keeping it.  Though if I can find a smaller fitting one that is a cruiser and not a ten speed I will replace it and also, she can use it if she wants.

First I would like to thank Tulip for waking me up at 5:30. It was just the right hour to wake me up too early. Even though it was too early I couldn't simply go back to sleep because I should wake up at 6:30 and that meant I could possibly oversleep. Thank you Tulip for making me miss an hour of sleep.

I have a dentist appmt. I haven't been in ages. Dennis doesn't have me on health insurance but found it in his heart to put me on dental. He assures me the health coverage sucks anyway and that I wouldn't want it.

*sigh*
Anyway, I think i have a couple of large problems and I'm dreading this awful.

I have classes right after with a quiz. My spanish prof saw fit to tell us we'd have a quiz on the second day of class and I've been sick all week. To the point that I've been pretty useless. I still feel bad and wonder if I should have rescheduled my dentist appmt. I'm better generally speaking but have sinus drainage sliding down my throat.

More facebook chat. No I wouldn;t tell this except I think it is funny.

Aaron is only 11 years old. The age for facebook is 13. He went online last night and made himself an account. With Maryann we had sat down together and created her account. From the get go I made her believe that she could only have one at all if I were monitoring it. So Aaron sits down last night and makes an account (he had to lie about his age),. I came in and looked at it. I told him he needed to add me and he says NO! He doesn't want any adults on his account. Maryann has her grandfather and aunts and all kinds of adults.

Aaron looks at me like I'm crazy and says,, "wouldn't that be awkard?"

So poor Maryann got the shaft with privacy because Aaron has insisted on it. Of course, I have Aaron's password because he uses the same one on everything. I don't worry as much with him is that a sexist notion?

I have to go study now.

So many things disturb me about the health care debate. One that so many people are willing to believe some truly crazy stuff just because someone else out there just threw it out unto the airwaves. Do you believe just any old thing?

Obama needs to be clearer and he needs to lay out some specifics. As I am understanding it there are three bills up for consideration. When congress goes back after their break they are going to reconcile the differences and continue to nail it down to one bill. Sure it needs to be spelled out in bold letters. Here is the thing, I think the whole debate has gone south. We'll know nothing and get even less because politicians are a bunch of cowards anyway. What we get out of this in the end, I am predicting, is them saying well we'll just cut some of the red tape involved and that will save money. No major overhaul. No insuring the uninsured, just what they call "cutting costs". Which is politician speak for the same system just a litte tweaked.

I'm really saddened that so many people don't think that having millions of people uninsured is a huge problem.

I'm saddened that I don't see more pro health reform protesters. A lot of people voted for Obama on health care alone. Where is everyone?

I'm saddened that people don't see that insurance companies themselves are a "death panel". If you don't have a good policy or you have no policy, what do you think happens? Medicaid doesn't pay for many services, they let you die. Insurance companies do everything they can to get out of paying for services, so if there will be losses, they'll let you die. 

Hard working people don't have insurance. There are different types of occupations. If you are in an industry/career where health care is not being cut, how can you look around you at those that have had that happen and say, "I work for my insurance, they should to".  Define work.

Mostly, I am sickened at  our society in the U.S and our collective attitude on the poor and the working class poor. It all comes down to Reagan years ago talking about a welfare queen. We live in what we proclaim to be the most righteous and religious of all nations. "A beacon on the hill" but yet we have very outdated highly political ideas about the poor.

How many times do I hear in debate, "I don't want my tax dollars going to those that have never worked a day in their life".  I hear it not from one person but I hear it and read it over and over again.

Apparently, this whole nation are unaware of the fact that one can work 50 hours a week and barely make it by. That most of us that are above that level had some kind of fortune in our lives. It might have been good health, supportive responsible parents,  intelligence, or any number of things. These things yes are fortune!! How many women will lecture  me that their husbands work hard for what they have or that they do themselves, seeminly unaware that they or their husbands had to be in good health, had decent intelligence, had enough emotional intelligence to make it by. And yes he or she might have worked, but they had at least some of these factors going for them. Not everyone has that and not everyone starts off in life from the same starting position.

I would be living in the street right now if it was not for my parents. I don't work because I am holding out for my education. Yes, I could quit and work at a  video store. Do you see the logic here? To get to Point A to Point B takes time and money. Some people don't have the very basics to get to Point A to Point B.  Or maybe it can be done and they will do it, but they are not quite there yet (like me).  The name of the game is to work smarter not harder. Manual labor is very much work. Working at Walmart is work.  I'm looking at the forest of the argument though and not the details. My meaning here is that people are willingly ignorant of the working class poor.  Or they have a sense of self-righteousness that in itself built on false notions.

All things that any individual can do to better themselves takes time and secondly, a base amount of resources.

To pull yourself up by the bootstraps one must at least have boot straps.

The most important boot straps I can think of is health.

You know it wasn't so very long ago I was freshly thinking about dating. I felt on the verge of major changes.
The move has sabatoged all of that motivation. I no longer feel liking making an effort. I feel run down and tired. I feel like my bed has been made and I'm in it.

Maybe I'm still smelling the fresh paint fumes. I feel dizzy in this house. I didn't even notice until my mom came over and abruptly left saying the fumes were getting to her. This morning, I realized, the fumes are getting to me too. I've felt disorientated and dazed ever since we've moved in.

All I'm saying is that I want to make enough money to buy my own little place and I give up on socializing. I want just enough money and space to afford two more dachshunds. My life will be complete. Even my future with my children seems iffy anymore. I want Aaron to go off to film school and I want Maryann to figure out what will make her happy. I'm realizing though they won't be around forever. Then what?

I think I could handle being by myself.

Had a dream that we got another dachshund.

We gotta get out of the house today.

My son has  made a friend at school. My aunt came over this afternoon and we picked up Aaron in her car.  I have been walking him to and from school and so do not observe him at a distance. Anyway, he's actually liking his new school.

I made turkey burgers tonight and he just stepped in to complain. lol.

So yeah.

I have been exhausted to the point of being useless. This afternoon I fell asleep and woke up in the twilight zone. I hardly was able to make those burgers. I feel dazed and confused. I took a peek at the old tenant's power bill. I didn't open it but looked through it. The bill was $200. Now I don't know if they ran the air non stop and without that information I don't know how the power bills are going to run here. Just looking at the bill is incomplete information but I really need my bills to be less that that. hmm....

Do any of you watch Wife Swap? I swear that is the craziest show ever.  How do they find those people? Always some extreme.

A few days without internet will be a good thing. I need to take charge of my life.  Rambling on on the internet should be a side thing I do in my spare moments of time. When you get bored with something it becomes negative. I don't read enough.

Mostly though I need to get back in the gym. I went yesterday.  One day I will take pictures of our gym to show you how nice it is. The thing for me though is that the treadmills and ep machines are on the second floor on a huge balcony that kind of floats above.  The machine that I really enjoyed looks down on the pool. Lately, I've been getting panic attacks looking down. The college students are coming back in full force and the young men are working with the free weights. When they drop the weights it makes this huge hollow boom upstairs. For whatever reason, I've developed a fear upstairs.  There are other machines that sit in the opposite direction and don't look down on the first floor. I'll just have to use them. Though I fell off the wagon so to speak I am very determined yet still to lose the weight and also get in shape. Being skinny isn't the same as being healthy I'm trying to make that distinction. But I do know it can be done!

My life just has to change. My relationship with food has to change. One year ago, I got very ill with gallbladder problems. I learned to cut out greasy foods. I couldn't eat for weeks and dropped twenty pounds before it was all done with.  Over the winter I had a tough semester  in school. I never picked back up the greasy foods. Not at all but I still snacked on sugary foods and starches. In fact, I started making large bowls of pasta.  So I do believe my habits can change. The problem is with needing that comfort food and sometimes plain out laziness. With it being only me and the kids it is very easy and just as cheap to go get some fast food. I did that too much also when I had school deadlines and the grocery store was miles away.  We  move tomorrow! And our place will be in town. We are so close to everything we could walk if we wanted to.  There will be more stress though because my rent went up!

brb.

I need to work out somehow every day. We'll see how my schedule goes when school gets in but if I can excercise everyday I naturally stop eating as much. Excercise also lifts your spirits! Why I haven't made the effort all along I don't know. Dieting doesn't work for me but getting active does. The gym is the one thing that is totallly selfish for me. Even school. I no longer feel is for myself.  I could mother and be a good mother fat. I can have a good relationship with my family fat. The gym is what I do that is only my own. I have to just not let changes in my schedule throw me off track like it has done the last three weeks.

I can handle the stress if I kick myself off the computer and out of the house, and it is as simple as that.