bills bills bills bills

I'm making pretty good headway on the bills. I have sorted out everything, and discarded the junk mail. I have about half of the actual bills paid, and the rest ready to be paid in the morning. I'm starting to get tired, though, so I think I might go to bed pretty soon. The important stuff like Bill's dorm room down payment went out already this morning, along with the broken dvd's.

Work was OK tonight, so maybe this week will be OK. We're already short handed for tomorrow night, though, so maybe not.

I think for now I will just continue to do my best to ignore the former friend. Maybe if I keep just staying as far away as possible, eventually I will get over the urge to vomit whenever he is around.  I'll get some nice breaks anyway in the next few weeks. Maybe those, and the lack of stress (from work) surrounding them, will help me feel better about the whole thing.

I have been reading some books on vacationing and day hikes in the Tetons and Yellowstone. Sounds like the perfect place on Earth for me. Lots of wildlife, high mountains, canyons, lakes, rivers, hot springs, geysers, waterfalls, forests, etc. Don't know if we can afford to go next year, but one of these years...

sunny spring day :-)

Today is a surprisingly gorgeous spring day. Not too hot, not too cold - and the sun is bright as anything!  It's close to being a perfect day. You should see the tulips blooming right outside the back door. They are bright red with yellow in the middle, and they have three rows or ruffled petals - more rose shaped than tulip shaped - they are simply stunning.

Have been spending the day paying bills and stuff like that. Hopefully I can get finished when I get home from work tonight. That will be one task done for the month!

I did watch one of my netflix rentals this morning. The three movies have been sitting there a week or so, and I finally got around to opening them this morning. One of the three was fine. One was cracked in half. One was shattered in a bunch of pieces like broken glass.  I was really surprised.  It's the first time I have had any problems with them like that - though I suspect that the discs were damaged somewhere in the mail.

Work had calmed down a lot last night. I had been completely dreading going in, but things were a lot better than last week. It was actually pleasant.

Dan and Bill burned a lot of leaves yesterday - the piles are still smoldering. I went into town early and got some prescriptions refilled and then farted around at the bookstore before going in to work.

My former friend has been hanging around a lot all of a sudden in the places and with the people where our worlds intersect. Every time I see or hear that he has been around, I feel like throwing up.  That is obviously my problem, not his, and I have to find a way to deal with it.We both have a perfect right to be in those places, and we both have a lot of mutual friends that neither one of us should have to give up. So I have to find a way to deal with wanting to puke whenever he is around. Short of leaving those places and people myself. Well, I'll be out of town a lot and/or very busy towards the end of the month and into next month. Maybe just being too busy to be in those places and with those friends will help with my disgusting problem.  Maybe I will have outgown that urge by the time I have more time?????

thank God for the weekend

Well, Thursday night at work was every bit as bad as I had been dreading/fearing it might be. I am not sure how I managed to make it through, but somehow I did. I do not want to talk about it anymore.

The weekend has been pleasant, though today was a bit chilly. We will be getting a frost tonight, so I am glad I did not jump the gun on getting the more perishable plants for the garden yet (like peppers and tomatoes and annual herbs).

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo, and in this area of the country it means that many people eat Mexican (or Tex-Mex) food. We had a nice family dinner with chips and salsa, tacos, Spanish rice, refried beans, and sweet corn cakes. It was pretty yummy.

I spent the day resting from the nightmarish week at work and grocery shopping. I also went to the nursery and got three blueberry bushes (to replace the one that died over the winter and a couple of bonus bushes that looked very healthy) and two blackberry vines that are very lush and healthy looking. That trip to the nursery tempted me greatly to get vegetable plants and herbs for the garden, but with tonight's frost, I am very glad I did not give in to that temptation.

Today was sunny and lovely, but chilly. We went to Steven's soccer game this afternoon, down in Tecumseh, and poor Steven took a hard shot in his private area. Poor kid grabbed himself and went instantly down on his knees. He's OK now, though.

We got home in time to watch the Kentucky Derby, and then we had a southern style dinner to celebrate Derby Day. We had salad, barbecue, mashed potatoes (with six cheeses mixed into the potatoes), black eyed peas, and honey cornbread.

This weekend Bill has been studying for his upcoming AP tests in American government and chemistry, and I helped him get some paperwork ready to send off to Ball State about his room and board and freshman orientation. Steven played soccer today and will play again tomorrow and again Monday. Dan has been working. I rested as much as I humanly could. The dog has spent most of his time sleeping, as he usually does these days. The cats have been cuddling and purring a lot.

Tomorrow Dan and bill will burn what is left of last fall's leaves. I might escape to Ann Arbor early to get away from the smoke.

still grouchy

Well, work was frantically busy, and there was a lot of heavy lifting again. I had to make 18 bags of bedside dialysate, each of them being 5 liters of fluid. 5 liters of fluid is heavy, especially when it is stored on a shelf down near the floor.  So my back is very angry with me tonight.

Tomorrow will be very bad. Half of day shift for tomorrow and one of tomorrow night's afternoon people had already called in by the time I got to leave work tonight. Tomorrow is going to royally suck! But it is the last day of the week, so hopefully I will make through, somehow. If I could live through my father's death I can live through a bad night of work. If I could live through being betrayed and emotionally tortured by a friend I trusted and adored, I can live through a rotten night at work. I can do this. Somehow.

Tomorrow Bill will not have school. It is a graduation requirement that he shadow a non-family member through work for a day and produce a report on it; the person he shadows has to fill out some forms about his day as well. So he will be shadowing one of Dan's friends. I almost wish now that he could come to work with me so he could do all of the heavy lifting.

I cannot wait for the weekend. I am going to plant my potatoes and the asparagus. They are sending out roots in their bags - I cannot wait anymore for frost free weather. I will just have to risk it. And on Friday we will have a great Mexican dinner for Cinco de Mayo. On Saturday we will have some down home Southern food in honor of the Kentucky Derby. I just hope my back will let me freely move.

grouchy

Bill got home a few minutes ago. He had been taking his AP calculus test most of the day. He said the multiple choice questions were ridiculously easy, but that the free form questions were the hardest math problems he has ever seen. I just hope he did well enough on the thing that he will get college credit for it. If he passes his three AP tests, and since Ball State has given him credit for freshman English due to his high ACT score, he would come into college with one semester of work done. That would save a lot of time and money.

Our dogwood tree began blooming this morning. Bliss!!  I have always loved the legend of the dogwood:

http://www.promiseofgod.com/dogwood/

Last night work was crazy and busy and I had to do a lot of heavy lifting. My back is really sore today. As a result I am quite grouchy and I just want to take lots of naprosyn and lie still in bed. Instead I will have to go to work and it will be crazy and busy and I will have to lift a lot of heavy things and my back will be even more sore tomorrow.  By the time Friday gets here, I will have a hard time even moving, and will be grouchy beyond anything.

I am also grouchy because I had to work last night and Steven had his band concert. I always hate missing things like that for the kids.  And I missed his concert, and work really stank on top of it.

 

amazing animal documentary

Dan and I just got done watching an amazing animal documentary on the National Geographic channel. It was called Predators at War and was filmed at a game reserve in South Africa during a prolonged and severe drought. I do not think I have ever seen such awesome nature closeups. Simply amazing footage. Here is a link about the show:

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/predatorsatwar/

The Red Wings got eliminated from the playoffs tonight. It was to be expected after they lost Captain Yzerman to back spasms a couple of games back - he is the heart and soul of the team. But it still sucks.

One of my friends and his wife are flying out over the ocean someplace right now. They are on their way to Russia to pick up the baby boy they adopted. YAY!!!

Rainy night tonight. It was a good night to come home and cuddle on the couch.

I am hankering to work in my garden. This year we will be trying at least two new things - asparagus (a perenniel vegetable) and potatoes. I have two different kinds of gourmet seed potatoes - blue and russet. We're not past frost danger yet, though, so I cannot plant anything but "cold crops" like snow peas - plants that like cold and wet weather. The red raspberries and strawberries I planted last year are all coming up and doing very well so far this spring. One of the blueberry bushes is happy and healthy, but the other one did not make it through the winter, so I will have to replace it.

I want to work on my photos, but my project this week will be getting Bill's graduation announcements out in the mail. He has his first AP exam on Wednesday this week, and the other two next week. those three classes will be finished and he will be a halftime student until the end of the month. he should be completely finished with school by the time we go to Kentucky at the end of the month. All he will have left at that point is to go to his class honors dinner and his graduation ceremony.

I hope to work on the photos next week, after the announcements go out, and before things get nuts with our vacations and the graduation.

May Day

It is allergy season, and I am having a bit of a rough time of it lately, but am hanging in there. Even with all of the pollen, I am deliriously happy that it is spring. Today one of my friends gave me a bucket filled with flowers and chocolate and other small goodies in honor of May Day. I thought that was really sweet of him to do.

I have been listening to some new (to me) classical music lately. The concert schedules for next year for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, and the University Music Society are already out. Money might be tighter next year with Bill going to school out of state, so I need to be very picky about which concerts I go to. So far the ones I am really leaning towards are the Netherlands Bach Society playing Bach's Great Mass; the London Philharmonic; the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra playing Verdi's Requiem; and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra playing Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, his Seventh Symphony, and Mahler's Second Symphony (those are three different concerts). We shall see. There are also a couple of good jazz concerts I might want to go to. I already have my tickets to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Steven has decided to repeat eighth grade. His grades are fine - he has been on the honor roll all year. He either met or exceeded state standards on the required state exams (and the ones he met he was on the border of meeting/exceeding). Like his brother, he is a late fall baby and so is a year younger (in some cases two years younger) than most of his classmates. So he has decided to repeat this year. There is one higher math class he can take, and he can take band again. And maybe an elective or two. I will probably home school him for English and social studies, as the district will allow us to have a combination of school and home school. I am figuring out the reading list with Bill. So far we are talking the three Shakespeare plays we will be seeing, The Iliad, the Odyssey, and probably further classics to be determined later (Beowulf will probably end up on that list). I think it will actually be fun.