Just Simply Holly

It’s been YEARS since my step father looked at my mother and told her he’d never forgive my husband for something that didn’t even affect his life (my step fathers). I’ve dealt with it for so long that I don’t even give it a second thought about it most of the time. But yesterday, while talking to my husband about the funeral I have to attend tomorrow, he turned and looked at me and asked, “I’m won’t be allowed to attend, will I?”. And then it hit me, for the first time in a LONG time, why can’t he just let it go? Not my husband, my stepfather.

So, I made the obligatory phone calls to the people that would know, they said they’d make a few phone calls and get back with me in a few minutes. And while I was waiting I got angry, REALLY angry! The thought of saying goodbye to Del tomorrow and not having my husband there for support made me angrier than I’ve been in quite some time! And if he couldn’t be there, it would be because of a “man” who knew Del for one hell of a lot less time than I did, and someone who never had a care or concern about Del either. I was stewing and was tempted to find some Callaway irons, so that if they did tell me my husband wasn’t going to be able to be there for me, I could pound them to a pulp.

Then the phone rang, and what I heard almost made me drop the phone. The words were “There won’t be a single problem with him being there”. Guess I can put the clubs away now…LOL

It’s been a rough few days, but I finally found something that helps get my mind off things. I dug up my daughters REALLY old MP3 player and grabbed one of the extra SD cards we had sitting around, uploaded a bunch of my favorite songs and have spent a good part of the past few days jamming. Some of the songs might not be the best ones for me to be listening to right now, especially some of the country songs, but the music has been helping me, so that’s what matters the most!

I was sitting here tonight going through some of my moderated comments and just about cracked up over some of them, others were REALLY gross! For instance, sandwiched in between two comments for animal s3>< (that's an X so I don't have to spell the word), there was this HUGE comment with advertisements and links for all different types of online stores.

While I wouldn't mind if someone posted a comment that included a link promoting one or two online stores for things like company logo shirts, I won’t approve comments that have literally hundreds of links. Do you ever wonder exactly what kind of people post comments with a massive amount of links? Are they a young mother struggling to feed a small baby? Or a college kid trying to make ends meet and keep up their classes? I just don’t think I could be a person that would post spam comments to peoples blogs and websites!

All in all though, it’s been a pretty good day. It’s been quiet and laid back, and for like the third day in a row we have been able to have the windows open rather than having the A/C on. I was really getting tired of the A/C running 24/7! It’s supposed to stay decent for a few more days too, so hopefully I can keep the windows open a little longer. We had a storm run through this afternoon that dropped the temp quite a bit, so much so that I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about having any fans on over night! YAY!!! It’s good that it’s been an easy going day though, tomorrow is going to be long and difficult, and I’ll be glad when it’s over.

I don’t know about you, but for me, a good portion of my day is spent reading and/or watching news. I have several different sites and TV stations that I go to when I need a news fix, and I love the fact that each and every one of them almost certainly carries different types of stories. So no matter what type of news I’m looking for, I can almost always find what I need for my news “fix” at the time.

One of my favorite websites and TV channels is tru TV. Although I can’t always get into the court hearings they have on during the day, by early evening they show a lot of different types of reality type shows. My all time favorite is Inside American Jail, it has to be one of the funniest shows I’ve seen on TV in a long time. No, I don’t enjoy seeing and hearing about people who have gotten into trouble and have gone to jail, what I think makes it funny is the fact that these people are dumb enough to actually get away with some of the stuff they do!

I’ve seen people that were drunk or on drugs trying to proposition the officers thinking that doing so will magically make the officer drop the charges and release them from jail. One time there was this dude who had been caught selling drugs who had actually “hidden” the drugs in unmentionable places in the hopes of not being caught with them. COME ON PEOPLE, get real! I can guarantee you that we won’t be seeing any of the people on this show running a high powered corporation and winning cpm awards any time in the near future!

It’s just like watching shows like COPS and Most Daring, where people honestly think they’re going to be able to push their vehicles to insane speeds attempting to not get caught. Yeah, that’ll work…..NOT! In the words of Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does”…..LOL

Last night I wrote a post over at Jo’s Java Thoughts about how I totally changed the family room around yesterday to accommodate a “new to us” couch that we were given this week. While I was totally happy with the outcome, I wasn’t totally sure about how much my hubby would like it because he just does not like change, especially when it involves his “stuff” being moved around!

I’ll admit, I was nervous when he came home late last night! But I’m happy to say that he really liked how the room turned out, especially his “area”! Although we only had a few minutes together because of how late he got home and the fact that I was making his dinner while he was taking his shower, he did tell me one thing that’s even more obvious about this room to him.

The family room is definitely not a large room. If I had to guess, I’d say that it’s maybe 15 foot by 15 foot. Yes, I do realize that’s not small, but there are a couple of factors to add in that make it a “smaller” room. First, there is a HUGE sliding glass door on one wall that takes up about half the wall. then there is a wood burning stove in one corner that takes up about 1/3 of each of the walls it’s cornered in. Then, there is the opening into the room, which is about 7 foot wide, so that takes up about half of yet another wall. The point is, there is not a single solid wall in this room. And considering that we have a HUMONGOUS entertainment center, it makes setting up furniture in this room quite interesting!

My hubby told me last night that he thought we should think about getting rid of the old, oversized TV and entertainment center and replace them with a flat LCD TV that could be hung on the wall! It would put the TV up at a better level for viewing and would eliminate one HUGE piece of furniture in this room. We could then put this TV and entertainment center out in the living room for the kids since that room would accommodate them much better than this one would. I like his idea!!

I know that compared to my hubby, I have no right to complain right now! That poor guy didn’t get home from work until nearly midnight last night and was back on his way up to the plant by 5:45 this morning. But I had a horrible night last night! I’ve had some major leg spasms going on that wake me up in the night the last few nights. While I’ve had them before, it’s been during times that I’ve been very inactive, and this week, that’s far from what I’ve been!

On top of that, I woke up this morning in the midst of a REALLY bad hot flash! Can you say GROSS!!! And now that I’m awake enough for my eyes to focus, I have an ungodly headache! Fortunately I don’t have much to do today, just a couple of loads of laundry and the dishes I used to make hubby some dinner last night after he got home. Yes, I left them in the sink, I was too darned tired to deal with washing them that late! But for right now, I’m just kicking back with my coffee, messing around online! What are you up to today?

Yikes, has it really been three days since the kids have been home? I tell you, it’s almost as if they were never gone! It’s taken 3 days to get all their stuff unpacked and good grief, I’m amazed I didn’t find a kitchen sink or something in my daughters stuff. Her sister took her shopping a couple of times so she really did come home with even more than she had originally taken with her.

She remembered what I told her to do when packing her stuff up, which is a complete miracle in itself. See, when we packed her stuff to go out, I made sure that I put all of the things like her shampoo and conditioner, her makeup and her acne treatment creams in ziploc bags, that way if something happened and there was a spill from one of them, it wouldn’t end up all over her clothes. I told her to do the same thing for the trip home, but I honestly wasn’t sure she’d remember. But she showed me that she can remember some important things I tell her, if she wants to!

It’s nice having them home again though, I really did miss them. And yes, before you ask, part of me even missed the arguing they do. Well, not the actual arguing, but just being able to hear their voices and know that they were near by! Our next goal is getting them both ready for school, anyone want to offer to help with that one? LOL

WOW!! Talk about a LOOOOOOOONG weekend! Not bad long, just long, PERIOD! Hubby and I hit the road to go get the kids around 3:00 AM Saturday morning. We had actually planned on leaving earlier, but we didn’t get to bad until 10 PM, so we didn’t get up until 1 AM and had to run to the store to pick up a few things before we hit the road.

The trip out went BEAUTIFUL! There was minimal traffic for better than half of the trip and because it was dark, it was also nice and cool, so using the A/C in the van wasn’t even close to necessary! It wasn’t until we got near Pittsburgh, PA before we hit any “real” traffic. But a little over 8 hours after hitting the road, we arrived safely at our destination!

Poor hubby though, he got out of the van, told the kids HI, gave them hugs and kisses, then went into the house to use the restroom, sat down on the couch and immediately fell asleep…LOL! He was TOAST and we all decided to just let him sleep while I sat with the kids and their older sister and her boyfriend to talk about some of the “events” of the past month that caused some fairly significant stress in their sisters life. The conversation got heated a little a few times, but over all, I think it went fairly well! I had a feeling that having both kids for a full month was going to be more than she honestly thought it would be, but she said everything would be fine. We both ended up right, it was a little too much for her, but everything did turn out fine!

“IF” the kids go out next summer, things are going to go a little differently. One of the kids will fly out, alone, and stay for 2 weeks, then hubby and I will drive out with the other kid for a long weekend and when we leave we will bring the first child home and leave the 2nd child. Then, two weeks later, the 2nd child will fly home.

Anyway, we made it home, safe and sound after nearly 20 hours of driving in a 40 hour time frame! The kids are glad to be home, they missed their dogs and their “stuff”….LOL! Of course, they came home to their “stuff”, as well as the rest of the house, being MUCH cleaner than it was when they left a month ago…LOL!

I’m not feeling very well, about half way home I broke out into a cold sweat, my forehead was ice cold, but I was sweating HORRIBLE! So I’ll be spending the evening just chilling out and taking it easy, in the hopes of getting to bed early tonight!

I’ve learned a huge lesson in the past 24 hours! NEVER look at pictures or videos of your kids when you need to be with them but can’t!

I have to be honest here, I’ve spent the bulk of the last 16 hours wishing I could turn time back! I know it won’t change anything or make anything better, but I wish I could turn time back and undo some of the wrongs that I’ve done! Somewhere along the line I made a major mistake and it’s coming back to bite me in the butt right now!

But honestly, I wish I could turn time back to when our lives were a little more simple and a LOT less angry! I wish I could have my kids be the silly, goofy, happy go lucky toddlers again who used to run around the house with a towel tied around their necks pretending they were a super hero! I wish I could turn time back to when kissing a booboo made everything all better and dried up their tears!

But I can’t do that, and if I’m honest with myself, I honestly don’t think I’d want to, even if I could! It’s time for them to learn about life on their own, they need to spread their wings and learn just exactly who they are. And we all need to realize that I’m not always going to be there to “rescue” them when they’re in trouble, sometimes they’ll have to fix things on their own.

That doesn’t mean I don’t want to run out to where they are right now and fix it myself, because I do! I’m fighting every ounce of my being right now to pull things together so that I can go out there and take care of things. I’m hurting in a way that I have never hurt before, and it’s very difficult! But I know that it’s just because my pessimistic side is strongest right now, and I’m assuming the worst will happen, when it more than likely won’t. But it’s probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever faced as a parent, and I DON’T LIKE IT!!

OK, I’m going to make a list here of things that have happened to me recently that have made me scratch my head because they make absolutely NO sense to me!

1. Someone wants to purchase a perfectly good TV I’m trying to sell for $10 to save a few dollars, but they want me to bring it to them because they don’t want to use the gas to drive out where I am. UMMMMMM…OK, then you pay me $5 more for the TV because for $10, it’s one heck of a deal!
2. The guys that do the fogging/spraying for mosquitoes for the county FINALLY came to our house to spray but rather than drive up the side of the house that we told them to, they instead drove through our side yard where the leach field is
3. At 43 years old I’m having WAY more acne problems than I ever experienced in my teens. Something about the combination of failing eye sight, gray hair, wrinkles and zits is just WRONG!
4. My puppy can go 6 hours in the house alone while hubby and I are gone without a single potty accident but yet when we’re home she’ll come inside a squat within minutes of when she was just let outside to go potty
5. And finally, WHY would someone pull into a gas station and pump gas for one price when the gas station directly across the road is offering the same gas from a more reputable gas supplier for more than 10 cents less?

So, there you have it, things that make absolutely no sense to me and leave me standing here scratching my head!

Well, we’re home, and I’m happy to say that we came home with MUCH less than what we went up there with yesterday! Not totally because of selling stuff though, although we did sell a good chunk of out unwanted stuff!

See, here’s what happened. When we got up to my sisters house this morning she told me that she had a lady stop into the garage sale just after we left last night. She purchased a few items and after she paid she got to talking to my sister. After a little while my sister discovered that this lady was the mother of the girl that sold my sister the carpeting in her last 2 houses. After talking a little more, my sister discovered that this womans daughter, who is only 38, had suffered a major stroke in November. This lady was going around to garage sales buying up easy sell items that she thought were priced low, so that she could sell them at a garage sale/benefit that was being held to help raise money to pay for the huge mound of medical and therapy bills that her daughter had en massed since November.

So, to make a long story short, my sister agreed that this lady could come at 4:00 this afternoon with a truck and load up the items she had left over from the garage sale that hadn’t sold and she told the lady that she would talk to me to see if I would be interested in doing the same, which I gladly did! Shortly after 4:00 this big box truck pulled up and the lady was so happy that we had offered to donate the items we had left over!!

They backed the truck up to the garage and when they opened the back doors, inside was already boxes filled with clothes, various household items, and a couple of ellipticals. We helped them load our stuff into the truck and then the lady turned to us and handed us a flyer about the benefit for her daughter and asked us to please attend if we could, that she’d love to have us there!

It just made me feel really good, ya know? My sister felt so bad to hear what had happened to this girl, she actually knew her several years ago from an office that my mom used to clean. It’s kind of scary to think about though. She is just 38 years old and because of this stroke she basically lost all use of one side of her body because of paralysis. Live is precious, so don’t take it for granted!