In general

I think this is how the American public is feeling right now:

Didja watch Oprah?

Let me start out by saying that scheduling my tivo from work worked wonderfuly. I got home and all my shows were there! Now when someone says: Have you watched this? I can just schedule it and watch it when I want ;o)

Anywho, there was a family on Oprah yesterday and they were all addicted to heroin. If you saw the show, I think you'll see where I'm coming from. They were actually kinda normal. I mean, the dad was a hardworking guy who was injured, got hooked on the prescription meds, lost his job because of the injury, couldn't afford the prescriptions and turned to heroin because it was cheaper. At this point they're all in a homeless shelter with no chance of getting rehabed because who's gonna pay for it? (Oprah did!) I just really think this sucks that we are such a money hungry society and people are so desperate to be out of pain that they turn to street drugs. I think being in pain changes people and they want to do anything they can to function normally. Now I'm not going to get into the rest of the family or the pregnant woman on the show who were all addicted. I'm just talking about the one guy. Can't you see where society has driven him to this?

Life may never be the same...

John hooked up our new DirecTv reciever last night, finally! Well, in the instructions for the receiver it says I can program the DVR from anywhere there's an internet connection. It took me a while, but I've got it now. Oh yeah, life may never be the same!

You never know what battle someone is fighting

I've been following with interest the story about the man in Nebraska who dropped 9 of his children off at a local hospital under their 'safe haven' law. I honestly wasn't quite sure what to think when I first read this, when the father was completely anonymous and didn't have a 'story' to go along with his actions.

So today when I check the news, he has a story. He is widowed and unemployed. A recently widowed single dad raising 10 kids (one was over 18). Obviously this guy can't work, there's no way that one person could put in 40 hours and then keep up with that many kids. Unless he's making super-huge bucks, he wouldn't be able to afford daycare. So, I'm just kind of miffed. I mean, on one hand, I can certainly see where someone would get overwhelmed in that situation and be too proud to ask for help, but is that really justification for just giving up on your kids? He claims that he feels the kids would be 'better off without him'. Is any kid better off without any parents?

I guess it just makes me very sad that this guy felt so helpless. Those poor kids though. To know that their dad gave up on them. At the same time, who does he think he is having that many kids? Did he not know how to stop? What would the Dugger's do?

the most painful thing you can imagine...

I need to introduce this story before I jump right into it. Please do not read if gross bodily stuff makes you queasy. I swell with fluid. Alot. So earlier this week, my hands swelled to the point where I couldn't close them. Consequently, my rings (wedding band, diamond) were very stuck. On Tuesday, my fingers swelled to the point where my finger split under my ring. I will pause and allow you to think about this for a minute. Yes, uncomfortable is exactly the word I would use to describe it.

So, a girlfriend of mine is a paramedic in town. I asked her next time she worked to call me and I would slip over and have her remove the rings. Today was the big day. She stopped by my place of employment, in the ambulance and proceded to operate on me right there in the back of the ambu. 45 minutes later, she called for backup. Finally, after an hour and a half and 2 paramedics working on me, the rings are off. I get off the ambulance a little shaky, she hugs me and says 'I wanted to throw up an hour ago'. Please don't let this happen to you. The pain caused by having the rings cut off is like nothing I can describe. I yelped a couple times and finaly after like an hour I had to shed a couple tears and I don't remember crying over physical pain for many years. If you are prone to swelling (damn prednisone!) like myself. Just take them off while you can!

I never would've guessed!!!

I mean, thank god he told us...

Flylady

Please motivate me!

So I joined this yahoo group, because that's my current obsession. I joined a lot of groups actually, but this one is pretty awesome. It has like 19K members and it's called FlyLady. FlyLady even has her own radio show and all kinds of stuff. So what she does is she teaches you how to organize and declutter your house day by day. I read it every day and I'm hoping that one of these days I'll be motivated enough to actually do it. She says it all starts with keeping your kitchen sink empty and shiny. So I'm thinking maybe I'll start a load of dishes tonight and then tomorrow I'll keep my sink shiny. She said it then radiates out to the counters and throughout the house. Again, we'll see. I don't live in total squalar, but I could definately be neater than I am, flat surfaces in my home are the problem. The dining room table catches mail and whatever comes out of John's pockets (cue: 1970's horror movie scream). I'd love to hear if anyone else out there follows the FlyLady!

Why?

There isn't really a whole lot I can talk about today, if I do, I'll let the pink elephant in the corner come busting through. I just want to know why being an adult is so damn difficult? There weren't any classes in school for these things.... There totally should be a guidebook when you turn 18.

OMG

Whoever is the first person to have me over for one of these, I will officially love you more than I love my pinky finger.

Sally 2.0

Remember Sally Jesse Raphael circa 1986? Yes, I am equally haunted by everything about this picture
How many people did you know with those big round red glasses though? Everyone! They had to have them. It was like John Lennon's little round glasses in the 70's. Finally, a woman wearing a major fashion statement on her face. Well, guess who's the new Sally Jesse with the fashion statement on her face?



Yup, none other than Alaska's first lady. There is currently a 2 month waiting period for these square rimless cuties that she's wearing. At least these appear to be much more flattering to the general public than the original Sally Jesse.

Yup, I'm one of those...

Those people who tries to christmas shop all year, because when I see the perfect gift, I'm not going to remember it in 6 months, I may as well buy it now. Subsequently, this leads to me losing stuff or spending more on people than I should. So, this year I actually haven't bought anything yet, but I have been thinking about it. I have all these people in my life that I feel like they deserve more than a card (neighbors, not-so-close friends, the ladies who accept John's UPS deliveries). So, I've been thinking maybe I'll do up some of those jar gifts. You know, like the cookies or whatever in a jar and all the dry ingredients are there and you just add an egg and some butter? So I have compiled a list from various websites of these recipes and I'd like to share them with you. Since it's 29 pages, I don't want to share it here. So email me at: johnandlaura@verizon.net and I will be more than happy to email you a copy of this list if you're into some cheapy yet thoughtful gift giving like I am.

freeeee

Who wouldn't want a free Hermes bag? Right? And not in one of those emails where you have to sign up for 10 credit cards. Clicky here. Then click on Travel the world of hermes and you'll see the icon for your bag. Oh, did I mention that you have to put it together yourself? Oh, and it's made from paper, out of your printer. But like free beer, free is free!

Update: Peggy just sent me a picture of her completed purse, I think it's quite adorable!

Can we be BFF's again??

Dear Sleep,

What has happened to us lately? We used to get along so well and be so close. We would hang out at least 8 hours a night, more on the weekends. I feel neglected. I feel like I call on you at night to be with me and you instead fart in my face. We have only spend a couple hours per night together the last couple weeks and this is unnatural in our relationship. I talked to Alcohol saturday night and he said you guys were still friends, so the three of us all spent a few hours together Saturday night, but I don't know that I want Alcohol over every night (sometimes he's a bad influence on the pets). Is there something we can work out so we can spend more time together? Prompt (before I go insane!) response would be great.

L-

It's my birthday!

Not a whole lot exciting going on here except TODAY'S MY BIRTHDAY!!! That's the highlight.

Yesterday we had a great going away party for a good friend, my bff Beth's husband Brian is deploying to Iraq for a year. He leaves Friday so of course we had to get him drunk one last time before he left. It was so great to sit around with old friends and new and talk about how much our lives have changed since we've known each other. Some of us went back 25 years +. It was a family friendly event so it was funny that even the moms were coming up to us saying how cute it was that the 'old gang' was back together. Life gets in the way a lot but it's nice when something like this can bring us back together for an evening (alcohol makes the old secrets spill out too!). We felt like kids again staying out drinking until 1 am. Good luck Brian! You'll definately be missed in the next year!

Today was very low key. Hung out with hubby for a while. He got me some sewing supplies to help with my pillow project as well as some stuff because he would like for me to make some cushions and accessories for his furniture. Out to dinner with Todd, Diane and Marie which of course is always a good time and then back home to gear up for another work week.

How was your weekend?

Fat Lip Friday

So this morning I woke up feeling a little funny. Not bad, but funny. The first thing out of John's mouth was: OMG, you look like Stifler's Mom!!
Yup, big fat lips. How did that happen? I look like I had botox and it went horribly wrong. I figured it was a great excuse to call in sick. I could be having a major allergic reaction (besides I have so much to do today)! So I've settled in with my benedryl to see what happens.

4 hours later my lips have gone down significantly so I feel like I can go to the grocery store without signing any autographs. Hopefully I won't run into anything with them or accidently step on them (ouch!)

Date that cannot be ignored...

We all remember where we were and what we felt 7 years ago this morning. Don't ever forget it. If you see a fireman today, hug him. You might enjoy it just as much as he does.

small discomforts in life...

So I had to call this morning to make a doctors appointment. Does this make anyone else uncomfortable? I don't know what it is... I feel like there's going to be 2 scenerios. Either the receptionist is actually going to care about how valuable my time is and ask if there is a preferred day/time or she knows the doctor's time is more important than mine and she's going to start spouting out dates and times and I have to think quick.

Scenerio 1: She asks what day is best. Well, do I just kind of give an average day and time, or do I give an exact date. An exact date would seem awfully pretentious. Like how important is my ailment compared to other patients? Can I wait a month without dying? At this point, the receptionist doesn't even know what's wrong with you.

Scenerio 2: Receptionist just gives you a date. October 23 9:30 am. Actually that was it in this case. I just jumped in with a yes because sometimes they get really cranky if you're like 'no, that doesn't work, could I have an afternoon?' You absolutely cannot go through more than 3 dates or else you will be guaranteed a 2 hour wait next to a stinky fat man with boils (did I mention this is a dermatologist?) and then the doctor will want to scrape something off of you or something equally uncomfortable.

Them's the rules. I didn't make them, I just wanted to make you aware of them.

I haven't talked about books for a while

So here's a list of what I've read recently and what I thought of it. I'm going to go in reverse order from what I read since my last post to the most recent book.

Such a pretty girl: Really disturbing. The topic mainly is disturbing. Based around a 15 yr old girl who was molested by her dad, he gets out of jail when she's 15 instead of when she's 18 as she was promised. Mother is psychotic and moves him right back in because he 'made a mistake'. Yeah, you really want to shake her the entire time. Young adult fiction but not bad.

The Center of Everything: Very inspirational. I didn't feel like the ending quite did the entire story justice. I wanted to know what happened, like it needed an 'afterward' because I really did become interested in the main character. Excellent coming of age novel though.

Wish: Must read of the summer! What a cute book! All the 80's references and idols were nothing short of hilarious! Great beach read. Light and funny, parts of it were a little intense but the humor just leveled it all out. Great great read.

Stargirl: another YA book. Sometimes I can get into these. This one was okay and I think we can definitely all learn something from stargirl, I just think it was all so exaggerated. Pretty much everything about the entire book felt exaggerated. I guess that's great for YA fiction because that's an exaggerated time of your life and if I'm going to continue to read YA then I should just accept that and get over it. I'll shut up now.

Lost & Found: Don't want to ruin it for you but *finally* a dog story where the dog doesn't die at the end! I love how in this book there's a couple chapters written from the dog's point of view. I always look at my dogs and wonder just what they're thinking, well, this guy is gonna tell you. Quite possibly the best dog ever. Good book, I felt like there were too many sub-plots that didn't quite get tied up at the end of the book but a great portrayal of life with a canine best friend.

That's all for now. I was on quite a reading kick for a while. I'm working on a new book now and then I'll probably move into a little bit heavier books as the weather gets colder.

Bored husband...

So, I guess John is laying off the furniture thing for a while because I came home to this:

We've had the new siding now for probably 2 months. I didn't want to push the issue because it's been steamy hot, and I know I would have to help. But today apparently he was inspired. I got to come home and clean up the mess he'd made. Load the scrap wood up on the trailer and peal the backing off the old aluminum siding to take to the recycle. I think I would've preferred a nap but man will a shower feel great tonight!

The domain is mine!

Well, I registered this morning to get my domain for our furniture website. It was available and is parked until my website goddess can upload it (soon I hope!) Keep an eye out! www.chesapeakecl.com

A little table

Todd and Diane encouraged us last weekend to build a table to go with our adirondack chairs. John and I both agreed that we kinda wanted the chair to dictate how the table looked. Same lines, that sort of thing. As artsy-fartsy as that sounds. We've both become quite the furniture critics, we like the lines to be consistent on certain things. So I saw something that inspired me and I told John the gyst of it and Friday evening he had it sketched out and measurements made, yesterday I had my table. I wasn't quite happy with the feet so back to the drawing board on those this morning and now I have the table I am satisfied with. Yes, it does look a little bit like the mushroom from super mario, but I really like how the lines on the top go with the ottoman and the front of the chair. Just right for a glass of wine (or 2!)

Pillow project

So I thought with Hanna blowing through today, it would be a perfect day to stuff and stitch up some of the pillows that Karen sewed together for me. I think they turned out great. I still have 4 bags of cedar to go! I found some fabric upstairs at my house too so one of these days I'm going to get hubby to help with rearranging some furniture to make my sewing machine more accessible. I have one of Karen's large pillows left that I didn't stuff, I was tired after all these. That cedar sure is messy! I think the homeless pets at the humane society will like them though.

The piggy that had roast beef....

*probaby not a post for the weak stomached*

So, I'm really hard on my toes... not THAT hard, but they always seem to be in my way. Last week I got my middle toe (piggy that had roast beef) caught in hubby's little shop and managed to tear it up pretty bad. So of course now that this toe is sore, I have managed to hit it everywhere. It's like it sticks out a foot (no pun intended) farther than my other toes and just catches everything. I got a pedicure last week, trying to dress pig up a little bit, but I forgot about it when the girl went to remove my old polish. Yeah, my head nearly hit the ceiling. So last night I'm getting ready for bed and I stumbled. I'm not graceful, this isn't unusual but of course, I hit my toe again. I go to take my final peepee before bed and I'm sitting there putting some lotion on and all and I notice my foot is wet. My toe had bled a great big puddle on my bathroom floor! And it was still going at it!!! I honestly didn't think I was going to get it to stop. I finally stood up and propped my foot on the toilet so it would just drip in there because it was just making a mess. It was like my toe was attached to a main artery. I think I would've lost less blood had I just cut my toe off. I finally got it down to a dribble and went to bed with a band-aid on it. Geesh.

for the love of 2008!!

I work with a woman who has a mullet. Quite similar to this one in fact. Except she's in her probably late 50's and she dyes it jet black. Imagine some weird, fake Elvira teenwolf mullet and you've got her. I try not to let it get to me, but apparently today I have nothing else to think about because another coworker and I have each commented to each other about it several times today. I feel like she brings us all down. Since I work in IT, we have a pretty relaxed dress code. Capri's are allowed, she wears knickers as John calls them. They're basically knee length shorts made out of stretchy cotton. I'm afraid she's going to ruin the lax dress code for all of us. I try to dress a little nicer, because it makes me feel better about myself and then perhaps I won't be as nasty to those around me. This has not caught on though.

another one about why I hate my job...

The vast majority of my job involves offering support to both customers and co-workers on all things computer related. In the past, this has involved complete overhauls of the system and obviously it involves a teller system that I manage. So, there's this one branch (out of 10) that really doesn't like me. They have accused me of being rude, lazy, dumb... you name it. These are the only ones I have a problem with. So they called to ask me a support question earlier... a question to which there was no real, immediate answer. I told them to wait until the end of the day for their differences in their teller system to wash out. They said that wasn't an option. The next thing I told them to do was wrong and I knew it. But it was the only way to solve their problem.

You can guess where my next call came from within 2 minutes. The big kahuna of course only got the second half of their story telling how I had told them to do something that was wrong. Not the first part where I told them to wait it out and do the right thing. I didn't bother correcting, because I knew as soon as I received this follow up call that the whole thing had been a setup. I just listened and agreed to never ever do it again with my tail between my legs.

Why do people do this? Why set me up like that? I'm offering you the best support I can even though I really don't like you. I would never ever dream of doing this to my fellow human being. I really do go to great lengths if I don't know the answer to a question to find the best possible answer or find someone who can get it for you. Ugh... why can't everyone be like Laura?

2:30 update... So now this customer calls me and wants to argue about how the telephone banking works. I'm telling him that the reason he can't access it is because he just opened his account an hour ago and he's got to give me time to get it on the system (read: get off the phone with him!). He says no, he doesn't think that's the problem. Well buddy, considering I'm the one who does all the maintenance on that system (yup, it's even my voice) I would recommend you don't argue with me.

who's your favorite now?

Like every other girl in my age group, I was *IN LOVE-UH* with the New Kids on the Block. Completely obsessed, bought all my Teen magazines, posters all over my room, just all out pre-teen hormonaly crazy. So I saw this picture of New Kids 2008 on People magazine's website, and wow... they're lookin pretty good these days. I have to admit that back in the day, I was a Joe fan. Probably because he was the youngest and quite pretty (guess I had a pretty boy thing going on). Here is a classic picture of them from left: Joe, Jordan, Danny, Jonathan, Donnie. Must show love here for the satin backed vest that Jon is sporting.

Here we are in 2008 and at least in this picture, I think I'm favoring Danny, who I never would've found attractive before. They all look quite confused here, but guys typically do look confused. For those who don't know, they are from left: Donnie, Jonathan, Danny, Joe, Jordan. (Is Jordan wearing that same satin backed vest?)

So in 5th grade (for me anyway) when they were all the craze, it seemed that every girl had *her* favorite and if your friend had her favorite, you couldn't have the same favorite because you couldn't both marry the same one (no-duh!). So who was it then and who is it now? Oh, and did you have any of the big buttons? Those were all the craze, they were like the size of a paper plate and had a picture of your favorite Kid on it. I had one with Joe's picture of course.

Malaysian men have small penises!!!

I copied this story from here.

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - A Malaysian welder had to have a nut removed from around his penis after an attempt to lengthen it before he gets engaged next week went embarrassingly wrong, a news report said Sunday.

The nut got stuck on his penis following an erection, the Star newspaper said, forcing him to seek help at a hospital in southern Johor state.

Staff from the Sultanah Aminah hospital had to drain some blood from the penis and cut away a top layer of skin before the object could be removed, the newspaper said.

It said the fire and rescue department were also involved in trying to remove the nut from the unnamed welder, who is in his 20s and hoped the nut would weigh down his penis to make it longer.

"The patient is now recovering and we hope to discharge him today (Sunday)," hospital director Daud Abdul Rahim told the Star.

On August 25, another young man in Kuala Lumpur had tried to increase his sexual prowess by slipping a steel ring around his penis, forcing the fire department to cut off the ring after doctors were unable to remove it, the newspaper said.

I have so many things to say...
- Do you think she'll still marry him?
- What's the penile recovery time?
- Would that actually work?
- What kind of nut are we talking about? I'm imagining a small one...
- Did he weld it on?
- Couldn't he just... you know... wait it out? Think about his grandma or something?
- How does it feel to have the fire dept involved in your penis lenthening?

I know you have something to say...