Changes.

I cannot believe March 27th was my last blog post. I used to keep up with my blog fairly often, but things have been crazy busy with me and mine.

Things have changed so much since my last blog post that I haven't had a proper and sufficient amount of time to adjust to everything. Before I share all of the events and happenings in my life...

And an early Happy Fourth of July! Here are some fireworks for you!

Happy Birthday America!

Time is really flying by at an alarming rate! I wish there was a way to slow it down. One minute it was my birthday, and the next it's July!

I can't believe it's July 4th weekend!

I'm exhausted and unable to focus today so I thought I'd compose a blog post.

This is how I feel 99% of the time.

Other than the trip to Washington DC and the brief visit to Delaware to see my mother and Arlene, March was fairly uneventful, so we'll move on to April. In April, I celebrated my 3?th birthday. My birthday also fell on Easter Sunday this year. That hasn't happened since my ninth year, so it was pretty cool. We didn't do anything special. I was exhausted, which is the story of my life. I ended up taking a nap around 6:30 PM. I told Doug not to wake me until 8:30 PM. The plan was to wake up, eat something, have a glass of Moscato, and watch a movie. Unfortunately several serious acts of drama occurred, which I do not feel like rehashing. They didn't involve us directly, but there were phone calls and text messages, so I didn't get to do what I wanted to do until after midnight. The result of one act of drama ended up changing my life and Doug's entirely.

Five days after I turned a year older, Doug and I became parents to a twenty year old young man. I know some of you are thinking maybe I got knocked up in high school and gave the baby up for adoption, and the kid tracked me down, but that's not the case.

We had planned to wait a little longer to become parents...

We've been involved in this boy's life since he was seven, and his mother has referred to us as his honorary parents. Now we're full time honorary parents. It's a bit of a long story, but it's my blog, and therefore I'm just going to be honest.

We have been supporting our honorary son since late February/early March. This young man's stepfather was starving him and verbally abusing him because he couldn't find a job.

 

The stepfather is a very sucky person.

The kid had a job that offered sporadic hours, but this greedy stepfather wanted money, and the boy was trying. I took him to put in applications, and to interviews over the past three years. I also redid his resume for him right before he graduated high school. This economy is bad. When I was job hunting, I had one interview in three years! That's why I started writing full time. I couldn't find a thing, even with my knowledge and experience. I know it's not the kid's fault. His stepfather, who desperately wanted him to get a job, denied him internet access. Most potential employers require potential employees to fill out an online application. This man took away my honorary son's ability to search for and to apply for jobs, yet he called him a lazy freeloader. When our honorary son stayed with us to watch our cats while we were in DC, he used our internet to apply for jobs. Does that sound like a lazy freeloader?

Like it's that easy...

Our honorary son had nowhere to go. His mother isn't in a position to take him in. After my year and a half of being homeless, I wasn't about to let that happen to him, so Doug and I agreed to taking him in. At the time, we lived in a three room cottage, which was a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and a loo, and it immediately turned into a three room cottage, which was a kitchen, a bedroom, a bedroom, and a loo. Since I didn't have an actual office outside of our bedroom, I could no longer work on my book series or Insomnia, which was supposed to be released on May 31st.

At this point, I was calling everyone I could think of to help him find a job and a place of his own, but the government is useless and offered absolutely no help. They would have just sent him to the city mission. I've been to a city mission before. Thankfully I lived in a small town, and there was no one else there, so I didn't have to worry about anyone bothering me or my stuff. I've heard stories about the city mission here in the city where I currently reside from people who stayed there. Other residents stole their things, and they had curfews, and lousy food. Doug and I couldn't let our honorary son go there. So our family grew, which meant we would have to find a bigger house.

House hunting was not as successful as I expected it to be. Doug and I discussed how much rent we wanted to pay and the search was on. We found many prospective homes. One of them was perfect, but they only accepted one pet, and I wasn't about to choose who would go, Trinity or Moo Bear, so that was out. Many of the places we called did not accept pets, so we looked into purchasing a home. I didn't really want to buy a house here, because we don't plan on living in this state for the rest of our lives. I want to move closer to my family, but at the time, it looked like we were going to have to purchase a house in order to keep our cats. Moo Bear has been with me all but six months of his life. He's 16 and a half years old. He's on Enalapril (beta blocker) and Furosemide (diuretic). Trinity will be eight years old next month. I couldn't just get rid of them. They're not my pets. They're family.

I looked on Zillow for houses. I did look at houses for rent first, but that was a joke and a half. We found four houses that were in our price range, one that wasn't, and I contacted real estate agent on a house that Doug and I thought was perfect. It was in our price range, and it was two stories, had three bedrooms, and one and a half baths. I just wanted to LOOK AT the house, but the real estate agent insisted that I call some woman at the bank for financing information. I argued with her for ten minutes, telling her that I wanted to look at the house first before I made a decision about purchasing it. If it was falling apart or full of vermin, my answer was obviously going to be no, but she reiterated that I had to call the woman at the bank to discuss financing, and I told her that this wasn't going to work and hung up on her. Buying a house was now on our Anti-Bucket list. (It rhymes with bucket, I can tell you that.)

Just when I thought we were going to be crowded into a small cottage for the rest of our lives and that my career as an author was over...

Someone who had a house for rent that we had contacted actually contacted us. As if that wasn't awesome enough, pets were accepted! Doug and I met the landlord to look at the house. At first, we weren't sure it was going to work. It had been listed as a four bedroom, one and a half bath, but all we saw were two bedrooms and one bath, until the landlord said, "Check out the downstairs." We went down the steps and found the other two bedrooms and the half bath. We immediately decided to take it, which was a good idea, since only one other potential landlord contacted us. When we get everything unpacked, I'll post a blog with pictures. I have some of my new office, but they're on my phone and I'm on my lappy.

I was able to return to work once my office was set up. I'm happy to announce that Insomnia will be released Fall of 2015! I was so depressed and felt like I was dying during the time I was unable to work. Only other authors/writers would understand why. During the two and a half months I was unable to work, I learned something, or perhaps I presumed it rather than learned it. Everyone needs to have a purpose. As long as we have a purpose, we will wake up and see another day. I survived, but I wasn't a happy person. How I didn't just yell and scream at everyone with whom I interacted is beyond me.

I was so happy to get back to work!

So aside from becoming a parent and moving to a new and bigger house, there are other changes that resulted from having our honorary son coming to live with us. He's severely allergic to peanuts, which means I can't have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and plain chips for dinner. Comfort food is a staple during the warm months for me, because I have Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder. I get depressed during spring and summer. Nobody takes that seriously, because "that's not possible." Come and ambulate in my shoes and you'll see I'm being honest. Also, I'm never alone, which is good, because if I have a migraine and can't get out of bed, I have someone who can help me and look after me while Doug's at work. If a giant wasp or other scary insect shows up, instead of shutting off the room and leaving to go panic in a safe room, I have someone who can defeat it for me. But the best part of being a parent to my honorary son is that I have someone who loves me and thinks I'm awesome, even though I know I'm nowhere near as awesome as he thinks I am. (When he meets my mother, I'll become chopped liver. He doesn't believe me, but it's true.)

In other news...

We've had a few problems with the new house. For starters, I hate, abhor, and detest the kitchen. It's deplorable. It's just an ugly color, and it's about as small as the kitchen was in the cottage, only slightly longer. The light fixture needs repaired in there, but the handy man just had surgery, so Doug's probably going to have to do it himself. We also haven't set up the kitchen because the landlord gave us two fridges that didn't work properly. He finally broke down and got a new one. The former tenants took the fridge and stove when they vacated the premises.

The deck is unsafe for anyone to step on. The holes between the boards are large enough for me to simply slip through. The former tenants of the house trashed it, but the deck got the worst of it. They had animals tied up out there, and the dog house and leashes and stuff like that are still on the deck, but it's not safe for anyone to go remove those things. Once those things get repaired, all will be right with the world. Until then...

The good news is that the washer and dryer are now in a separate room! They were in the cottage kitchen before. Also, we have a dining room! I love dining rooms. There are some people who don't, but I like the idea of the dining table being in another room by itself. It's not a huge dining room, but there are three of us. That's not all, we have an actual wood burning fireplace! I may be doing a lot of writing in front of a roaring fire this winter. (I can't wait for fall and winter now!) We'll have to hire a chimney sweep to make sure it's cleaned and usable. It's difficult to say whether or not the former tenants trashed it. Stockings can be hung by the chimney this coming Christmas! (And not that I believe in Santa, but now he can actually come down the chimney and deliver gifts! *LOL*)

Not only did the space and the fireplace entice Doug, we also have our own carport and driveway! When we lived at the cottage, we had to fight for parking. Most of the time we lost, so we would have to walk a long way from the car to the cottage. It got ridiculous. We also had neighbors who refused to use their driveway. They would park one of their cars on the street and they would leave nasty notes on our car telling us that we had no right to park there when it was a public street! *smh* Thankfully I never found any of the notes, or I would have marched over there and it would not have been pretty. I also would have called the police and asked them to please tell our hateful neighbors that it's a public street and anyone with a car could park there.

I'm starting to fall in love with the house. The problem is that I loved the cottage so much that I don't know if I can give this house the love it deserves. Still, it's nice to have space, a fireplace, a dining room, an office, and our own carport and driveway. I'm not complaining. It's just that the cottage was where I published Dormiveglia, my first published book. I had hoped it would become my office where I would go and write when Doug and I visited family here, once we move somewhere else. Our landlady was awesome too. She's in her nineties and as sharp as a tack! (I want to be like that when I'm her age!) I should give my new landlord a chance. I don't know him yet. I'm just not much of a nonfictional people person.

Now that I'm finished talking about the huge changes in our lives, I need to stop and share some sad events that have taken place along the way.

On Good Friday (April 3rd), Doug's aunt (my aunt-in-law) Jo Kimble passed away. She was 86 years old. I'm not exactly sure of her cause of death, but she simply got sick and died. She still had her wits about her, which was awesome. I've seen and heard of too many people dying from dementia, and I hate it! I could listen to Jo talk all day. She had this amazing life. She got to see the world change dramatically before her very eyes as she grew up. She got to witness the birth of technology. Jo is with her husband George now, and while I'm thrilled to know that, I'm also still sad. She left her possessions to her family in her will, including me and Doug. She left us her van. We were not expecting that. I was under the impression that she was going to sell it, but we now have her van. I have a difficult time thinking about it as our van. To me, it's still her van. I cried the first time I drove it. While I'm thankful that we have a second vehicle, I'd rather have her here instead, but I know she's in a better place with her husband.

On May 19th, one of my new found loved ones that Doug and I had the privilege of meeting when we went to Washington DC, Mark Vandersluis passed away. He was 51. We found out that he was battling cancer during our visit. Mark was this amazing person. He was eighties music video cool. He was bright, and colourful, and funny, and intelligent, and random. He was devoted to his wife, his mother-in-law, and his church. I'm so glad I got the chance to meet him. Please pray for his wife, Amie, his mother-in-law, Charlene (he called her Charlie), his step-daughters, and the rest of his family, friends, and loved ones.

Now we'll move on to happier news. Doug and I had the most spectacular weekend last weekend. My niece Zoey, who was born on Doug's birthday last year, turned one this past Saturday! We were able to go to her birthday party and we visited my brother and sister-in-law. We got to spend time with them and our adorable niece and nephew.

Pauly is four now. He's gorgeous, and he's really well behaved too. He reminds me of my brother, but he's starting to look a lot more like my sister-in-law. (This is mostly his facial features.) He has my brother's hands (they're eerily identical), his build, and his facial expressions. And some of the things he does is like going back in time and watching my brother do them all over again. He's such a sweetheart!

Zoey is a lot louder and more opinionated than her big brother. We have no idea who she looks like yet, but she's beautiful. In some pictures, I see my sister-in-law. In others, I see my brother. This will continue to change until she's five or six I'm sure. She's definitely got my brother's face shape and eye colour. The jury is still out on whose nose she inherited. It might be my brother's. (Pauly's nose looks more like my sister-in-law's these days, but when he was smaller, he was an exact replica of my brother.)

While we were there, we went to the pool. The kids had a spectacular time. Doug did too. He would live in the water if he could. He got sunburned despite putting on sunscreen. I surprisingly did not burn, unlike when I went to King's Island water park with Crystal, Amos, and Yolanda, and I put on sunscreen twice and got one of the worst sunburns ever.

It was tough having to leave and go home. We live too far away from each other. I'm hoping one day that will change. Doug's more fortunate in this aspect. The majority of his family lives fifteen to twenty minutes away, including his mother. We're going to have to go back and visit soon, and if we can't get away during the warmer months, there's always October.

I think I've covered all of the events and happenings. A belated Happy Easter, a belated Happy Mother's Day, and a belated Happy Father's Day to my readers. Happy Fourth of July! Have a safe and happy holiday weekend.








Cheers...

FALL IS FINALLY HERE!

Yesterday was the first day of Fall, but it technically did not begin until 10:29 PM last evening, so...today is the first official day of Fall in the states! I'm sure you know what that means. This blog post will contain nothing but fall gifs and colourful leaf pictures and the like. Forgive me while Fall explodes all over my computer.

This is my favourite season ever!

Allow me to assault your mind with images of Autumn (as if I haven't already done that).

(The sunlight filtering through the trees would give me a migraine in real life...)

Can you see the beauty of Fall? Can you at least see why it's my favourite? If not, allow me to attempt to further convince you.

Still not convinced? Then allow these words to speak for themselves.

Congratulations on making it this far into the post, where the actual reading part begins. I'm sure most of you by the second set of pictures probably felt like this:

or...

So to those of you who are still here, what I'm trying to say is, HAPPY AUTUMN! (It took me long enough, didn't it. I'm sure some of you feel like I assaulted you with a branch of coloured leaves and threw a pumpkin spice latte in your face!)

There's just something about Autumn that chases away my cares. Just two days ago, I was freaking out about everything, and today, I don't have a care in the world. *shrugs* This is my Christmastime. I wish there was an Autumn holiday besides Halloween and Thanksgiving just to celebrate the beauty of it. We could decorate a fall tree, hang fall socks to stuff fall treats into and give to loved ones. Why hasn't this been invented yet?

Don't get me wrong, I like Christmas just fine. My father was obsessed with Christmas the way I am with Autumn. He always made it seem magical, the limited time I had with him during the first five years of my life. He went all out for Christmas, and I always slept in the living room on Christmas Eve and stared at the lights on the tree that cast a glow about the room until my eyelids grew too heavy for me to remain awake. It's one my favourite Christmas memories. To this day, after the tree goes up, I'll turn everything off except for the tree lights and sleep in the living room.

There's just something about the foggy mornings, the warm days, the crisp nights, the colourful leaves jutting into the backdrop of the Robin's egg blue skies, the sound of dried leaves crunching under my feet, and the fall festivals. (There's one we stopped attending simply because it became more like a country music/arts and crafts festival with a bunch of food vendors. There was nothing really "fall-like" about it.) Doug has grown to enjoy these things probably mostly because of me, but I'm glad he enjoys them along with me. 

Doug is a Summer type of person. His birthday is during the first week of Summer. He loves to swim. (If we had a pool, I would never see him.) He loves to grill. He just loves any excuse to be outside. I avoid the outdoors like the plague. I only go swimming for his benefit. I find pools to be nothing but a germ infested body water that is nothing short of human soup. Forgive my repugnant description, but it's true. I don't see how chlorine can kill every single germ in the water. But I will get in a pool just to be with Doug, all the while praying that I don't contract some horrible disease. (YAY OCD!) I will sit outside in the Summer with Doug while he grills. I try to enjoy these things, but I just don't do it with as much enthusiasm as he does with Fall for me.

I do feel bad for my lack of enthusiasm, because I really do have the best husband in the world. He doesn't just love me, he cherishes me. He also does these really sweet things for me. For example, he helped me with my quest to find an orange purse on Sunday after church.

I hate shopping. I absolutely loathe it. I want to go into a store, grab the things on my list, and get the heck out of there, and I know that my husband is not a fan of shopping for girl things like purses and shoes (I can only shop for shoes for twenty minutes), but he can spend at least an hour in any electronics department of any store, and I've already collected my items. I'm the one sitting on the bench with the other husbands who are waiting on their wives. These guys look at me like I don't belong there.

We went to another nearby mall to look for orange purses. I had already been to our mall, and the only store that had anything like that was the store where the last two purses I've had have ripped inside, and I don't want to pay that sort of money for a purse that isn't going to last. Did I mention that I hate shopping? We looked at every store, and absolutely no orange purses. We did find some at one store, but I didn't want to attempt to procure a bank loan just so I could purchase an orange purse! The cheapest one was $80 and I'm not paying that. So we headed home, and Doug suggested one store at which we rarely shop. At this point, I wasn't feeling so well, but we stopped anyway. There was exactly one orange purse in the price range that we had discussed, so my wonderful husband purchased it for me. My quest had ended. I had slain the dragon...wrong story. Let's move on.

That evening, I was clapped out and just wasn't feeling well. Doug fussed over me. He recorded one of my favourite movies, taking up space on the DVR just so I could sleep longer. That's the kind of sweet things he does for me. 

While I'm bragging on him, he did spend Saturday working around the cottage. He took down a tree in our backyard. I'm not meaning a huge three with a thick trunk, I mean a tree that keeps growing in front of our kitchen window with a trunk that is probably as wide as my forearm, but he had waited so long that the trunk was actually wooden. He said it didn't take any real effort, but still he got rid of it. I had asked someone else with the proper tools to do this for me, but they ran off and I never saw them again.

The Fall decorations are almost up. The leaves are hanging, and the wreaths are on the doors, but I haven't put out the free standing leaves or tucked them behind pictures yet. I'll have that completed by this weekend.

I've been trying to get some time in with my loved ones. I spent Thursday morning/early afternoon with Allison, and my honorary son, Keegan that evening. I had a great time. My Saturday plans were cancelled, so I worked, ran errands, and went on the quest for an orange purse. 

I spent time with Jodi last evening. We watched a movie, ate pizza, and had a great time. It was nice to kick back and relax. I didn't even think about my work. It made me realize that I really am a workaholic and that I need more moments like these with my loved ones to kick back and relax. 

There are a few events and happenings this week. I have an appointment on Wednesday. Thursday, dinner with another loved one I haven't seen in a while. Then this weekend, another friend is coming over for what might be the last time. There's also something going on tonight.

The Moo Kitty has a vet visit this evening. I honestly think he needs kitty Xanax. I think he's a compulsive scratcher. He has scraped the fur off of his neck and his stomach. We've put medicine from the veterinarian on him to kill fleas, and even though it kills them, he still scratches. I think he has anxiety problems. The Trinity Cat rarely has a problem with fleas. We put the medicine on her and she stops scratching. He's going to be angry when Doug puts him in the carrier, then he'll cry all the way to the vet. He'll be examined, run back into the carrier as if he's been tortured, we'll stop by Starbucks, which is across from the vet, he'll cry all the way home. The usual vet visit protocol.

When I got the Moo Kitty neutered in 2000, the vet was in a different location in a miniature strip mall of sorts. To the left of the veterinary offices was a strip club. The vet had an event that particular day called a "Tom-a-thon" where people could bring their male cats in to get their manhood taken away. There was limited parking, and hundreds of people showed up, so we had to park in front of the strip club. Can you guess the name of the strip club? The strip club was called "Bad Kitties". You can't make this stuff up! I could imagine what was going through my cat's mind. We parked in front of a place called Bad Kitties. He was trapped in a pet trolley. Little did he know, he was getting neutered. He probably wondered what he had done to deserve this. I felt bad, but I couldn't stop giggling about the irony of it!

What's even funnier was across the street from the vet and the Bad Kitties strip club was a Tudor's Biscuit World. This is the same day. Their sign boasted new lunch platters offering a choice of beans or burger. Unfortunately, they must not have had another "R" because burger had no "R" in it. Now the sign is too high for someone to mess with and not be caught, which leads me to believe that either the employees of said establishment found it funny, or they just didn't have that extra "R" to use. So the sign read: beans or buger. Doug said, "If they're giving us a choice, I'd rather have the beans." Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.

The strip club has sense been torn down. Walmart was built in its place. Tudor's still remains. There have been no more humourous misspellings on their sign. 

I wish I had taken a picture of these things, but this occurred in a world before mobile phone cameras. Can you believe how much technology has changed in fourteen, almost fifteen years? And before I get distracted by this subject, I'm going to conclude this post.

Happy Autumn, Everyone!

Cheers!