So, this weekend!

I moved last weekend, and often what takes people weeks, months, years to do I managed to do in two days. I was able to get my entire house situated with the exception of a few things (new vacuum, things to garden, etc) which I did accomplish throughout the week. I was really looking forward to this weekend, mostly because I wouldn't have to move and could just, you know, settle.

Things often got out of hand at the other house and it always seemed like just one person was doing the majority of things. So in the new house I acquired a dry erase board and have two sections: Daily Chores and Weekly Chores. Everyone has something on the list. Last week M had dishes, I had laundry. I don't want a repeat of the other house where things are piling up, you get home from work and just sigh because you have work ahead of you. I told M this and told him I really wanted no dishes in the sink when at all possible. This translated into I did a lot of dishes while M played some Battlefield, went over to his friends, sat there. Now to be fair, he did the laundry once last week, and I only let him because he told me he was going to, not because I asked him to do it or because I didn't. L and N questioned why I was doing it if it was M's chore that week and the answer was simply, "I want it done." I found I was much happier when I walked in and they were done. It was easier to relax with a cup of tea when there wasn't dishes in the sink. I actually became happier knowing I didn't have everything to do at the end of the night.

This week I gave myself dishes. It also starts the day that I had 6 people coming over, 2 of them under the age of 5. M went out and I entertained. I didn't stop moving for about 8 hours, literally. M has laundry now. The sheets were washed and when he came home he went to get them and needed me to help him make the bed. When I got there he left the room to go look at the ice cream truck. All this happened when I was in the middle of doing the after dinner dishes for 11 people. He did the laundry, but left it unfolded in the living room before he left. I couldn't let it sit there all day, so I took care of it.

I think next week I will just give myself dishes and laundry and call it a day.

I know I am complaining, but this is my space and I can. Really though, I am not unhappy doing housework, if anything, just the opposite. It calms me. I can put on some chick rock and zone out washing a pot, sweeping a floor, folding some clothes. I like the house being clean, I enjoy not having to rush around last minute trying to clean everything up before someone comes over. If I have to do it myself at least there is some security knowing it is done. It doesn't however make me feel like I am a wife. I feel like I am a mother to 4 children.

I wasn't able to call Shaun because by the time my family left it was close to GoT time and my new work schedule for the next 6 weeks is 8 - 4:30. I originally thought I was only going to have my brother over, but it quickly turned into my brother(s) and their girlfriends and kids. My simple dinner turned into hamburgers, hot dogs, cheese dogs, sausages, potato salad, regular salad, corn on the cob and pasta for the youngest guest who isn't really old enough to eat the above items. One day my life may settle for a bit!

If I didn't say my life is chaotic. Most days I am not quite sure if I am coming or going. Up, down, left, right, I have no clue. I am really trying to just not let myself do what I normally do when I get stressed out and hide into a ball of myself, but it's hard to let that habit die.

I am moving this weekend. I will have my own space again, with my interwebs back on Saturday. I hope it all goes well.

I think what happened is sometimes you just want so very hard to be happy that you are willing to think you can just force yourself to do it. In the end though, it just catches up to you. You can't make that shit happen, it just does.

Back to work tomorrow. I would post more, but it was a ridiculous day that almost ended in divorce. I am not entirely sure it isn't going to end in divorce.

Thank goodness I am back to work tomorrow.

The answer is everything and nothing all rolled up into one little neat box.

Life always continues on at its breakneck speed. I lost two weeks somewhere along the way, I have no idea where they even went! It isn't a bad thing but it is always a little scary when you realize it is a lot later in the month then you thought it was.

Work is fine. I picked up my third Excellence Award, which means that I will be attending another Hartford Prom. Yay for dress shopping! Actually, I am almost never excited to go dress shopping. I don't like dresses. Well, I do like my one 1950's style dress, but I still haven't worn that one anywhere. Ah, well, it's a good thing.

There have been a lot of changes at work, but I am not being affected by them presently. I feel rather secure in my position since I don't see them outsourcing phone jobs any time soon however it is giving me the stark realization that I am not going to have much in the way of growth opportunity. It makes me a bit nervous since I really don't want to be in my present position for the next 5 years. We'll see what happens. I am kinda locked into it since I only have one car, but hopefully that won't hold me back forever.

On a really positive note, my friend from NZ is coming in for a visit in a month. I took a week and a half off to show him the sights of CT, not that there is a whole lot of sights here. I will take him to NY and various other places but I am very much looking forward to hanging out with him in person. I expect it will be fun!

All of my stomach issues have finally been resolved. Come to find out I have Celiac's so gluten has been my main issue. I have had to completely change everything about my food intake which ended up not being a bad thing since I have lost over 20 lbs in the past two months :P It can be hard sometimes, like when I really want something I previously loved, like pizza, or pretzels. They have some gluten free options but trust me it isn't the same. I haven't had bread in over 2 months. I have found a new love for things like yogurt, fruits and rediscovering fresh vegetables and it has been pretty good.

So, I am off for now. I think I am going to play a little Skyrim. I just got married and I can't keep my husband waiting!

Good with the bad, right? That is how it always go, but man what a few couple of weeks.

Power finally came back on Friday, and thank goodness. I didn't think my psyche could take another day with no power, esp with the weekend coming up. I am pretty sure all the children and myself were starting to go a little bit stir crazy. So, Friday I come home and there is power! I was so excited! Then came the daunting task of cleaning out the fridge. On the Saturday of the storm we had went grocery shopping and then lost the power about 2 hours later. So, needless to say, anything that was in the fridge on Saturday was thrown out on Friday.

I noticed after we got back from dinner on Friday that one of my best friends had called me. I figured she was calling to check in on the power status so I gave her a call back. As soon as I heard her I knew there was something going on way more then power outages. Her husband, Karl had passed away that morning. I cannot express the emotions that I have gone through in the last few days. I was the maid of honor at their wedding 5 years ago. Their son Adam was born three days before Julia. In fact, Amy and Karl were in the hospital room right next door to us. Birthday parties, BBQs, just visits, and now this. It didn't and for some part, still doesn't feel real. I spent the weekend talking to Amy, left work early on Monday to help her go through pictures for the funeral. Today is the funeral, and I just don't know how to feel.

We hear all the time that life is fleeting. You hear it can go at the turn of a dime. It always hits you the hardest when it actually does happen, and it is unexpected. I am sad that I lost a friend, and I am sad for the pain that my best friend feels. For once, I don't have any words of wisdom. I don't know what I can say, nor if anything I could say would even help. I just know I am sad and expect to be for some time.

I am off my internship at work and am not back on the phones. It isn't bad, but it is really busy! I knew it was going to be a bit of an adjustment for me to get back on the phones and be so structured after not being structured at all. I will get back into a groove and work on my communication skills. Right now my focus has been just making sure that I remember how to do my job.

Shower time, then getting the kids off to school. I don't feel I should be seeing off a friend but sometimes there is just no choice in the matter.

Today is Nick's 11th birthday. Everything went off without a hitch, and we will still be celebrating tomorrow when we go to my moms. Yay for weekend birthday trips! Julia came back from Washington DC tonight. It is good to have her home, it was kinda weird not having her home for 3 days. I will have to start getting used to my kids coming and going. Nick started Boy Scouts this week and he already has a weekend camping trip at the end of the month.

Nick and I finished Lost today. Not gonna lie, I cried through the entire last episode. It was 2 hours long. Needless to say I am pretty wiped out!

Maybe I shouldn't have said all I said, esp since I haven't talked to you much. I don't regret it, it needed to be said. I do hope you are feeling better.

But it just isn't in me.

So, I sit here after taking the hottest shower I think I have ever had in my towel with no desire to put clothes on. I totally blame the kids that I am going to have to find something soon.

Today I attempted the ren faire with Julie. It was the utmost of disasters. I should have known after the movie incident, in fact I planned on making (and had) other arrangements for her when we were going to go. Mike's mom seems to have a way with her and she promised she would come with us so Julie could go. My spidey senses tingled, but after her promising 18 times that she would do it, I said fine. I told Julie that she was going to go and that child remembers everything. Day of, Mike's mom bails and there is no way I can not take Julie at this point. I hoped for the best. I figured there would be enough there to keep her in line, and it would work out. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. So bad. I can't even put it into words. Next time my spidey sense tingles, screw everyone, I am just going to listen to it.

Due to my horrendous adventure today I decided tomorrow would be a me day. I am going to do something. Alone. I really don't get enough alone time. I am a firm believer that everyone needs some alone time now and then.

Ok, time to find some clothes and get out of this wet towel. Then I am going to make a cocktail and watch Lost. I have a funny lost story - I will have to remind myself to tell it.

So true story, yesterday my brother texts me to tell me to go to his new apartment. I had no idea he was even getting an apartment, so good on him. He tells me the person who lived there before was evicted months ago and was a huge anime collector. My first thought, Score! I couldn't wait to get home and get over there to see what there was. Almost like a kid in a candy store, or even when I was younger and thy would show some kid who won a 5 minute free for all shopping spree in Toys R Us. So, after work, after dropping everyone off at home, I made my way to his new place.

I can't say that "score" was the only thing in my mind anymore. The place was a wonderland, I will say that, but I couldn't help but feel sad. Other people were there, going through things, making comments, but I couldn't. I yelped with excitement once I found the life size Sailor Moon cut out, but not because I was thinking of myself, but more of a joy that someone loved it as much as I did!

Now, after my initial excitement, I couldn't help but feel sad. Here was someone's life - their possessions that people were just rummaging through. By the conditions of the items I could tell that they were loved. Things I could have never imagined (like a poster box of Cardcaptor posters - it is beautiful) in pristine condition. Not only that, but I found personal photos, yearbooks. These things put a face to this and I felt that deserved a certain amount of respect. I am pretty sure I was the only one who felt this way, and really wanted to lash out at the people who felt that everything was a joke.

I found out that this person had some mental issues and had his car impounded. He did come back at one point and took the items in his bedroom. Most likely he did not have the ability to take everything else. My goal is going to be to try and locate him through social media and see if he is in a position to have the items I can store returned. It seems to me like the right thing to do. Michael told me I was being silly for being sad, but I couldn't help but feeling like how I had felt when my dad passed away and I was cleaning out his items. I would hope if I were ever in a position such as this there would be someone who would do that for me. I feel as a whole people need to stop thinking about how they can make money and more about how to treat others.

I can't lie and say it didn't scare me a little, too. I don't know much about this man other then he really liked anime. I do know however that he lived alone. I know he felt alone enough to call the cops for a suicide cry. Clearly he was doing alright at one point in time as I saw things for construction jobs that he had worked on, and he had enough money to purchase all of these items. The anime world is not cheap. At some point things turned. I saw a picture of a lonely human being who I feel didn't have anyone to reach out to. His apartment and his car was being taken away for whatever reasons. It is not so far of a speculation to think after all of the economy problems construction jobs were hard to come by. At work, we have a spot that was being built for an Olive Garden and a bank. Those have been unfinished for about 3 years. Things can turn on a dime, and no one is really safe. To quote Boxer from "Animal Farm", "I will work harder." Then again, look how Boxer ended up. There is no guarantee that things will work out the way we want them to, and I suppose that at any point in time I may be in a position like that.

I hope I can find you, Mr. Otaku. I hope that you are doing better then you were and I may be able to reunite you with what I can save. If I can't then I can promise you that I will love those items in your place.

Woooohhhhh I'm still alive.

Sorry, Pearl Jam break and I hate Pearl Jam. I don't even know why I did that.

I took a half day today. Why, you ask? Because I can and it is fricken beautiful out. Going to grab my latest book obsession, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and head outside to soak in the rays. I am pale as pale can be. A girl at work made me buy spf 12. I used it on Saturday, spent hours in the sun and was still hella pale. It was gross!

I really wish livejournal was not acting up.

So I have this internship at work and honestly, I can't wait until it is over. I wanted it very badly and I am really glad I was able to do it because it really opened my eyes to a few things. 1) Any job I take over my position is going to require me to work more hours then I want to. 2) I don't want to work more then 40 hours.

See, a long time ago, a wise man once tried to get through to my stubborn head that having a career where you have to work 50-60-70 hours a week may not be the end all I was making it out to be. It took a long time to get that through but when I took my job I was doing it for a quality of life reason. I was taking a huge paycut but trading it off for more time for my family and essentially me. When I took this internship it started to turn into 60 hour work weeks and while OT is great in the paycheck it is not great for my sanity. So I informed my temp boss that I will hold out until the end of my agreement but after that it is back to my old position where the end of the day really is the end of the day. I am okay with this.

I made a mean ass couscous the other night. I sauteed some leeks, garlic and pine nuts and mixed it in with some pearl couscous and topped it with fresh basil. Add a turkey on that list with some fresh green beans and I was on fire! Not literally, but it was a really good meal!

Another birthday came and went. Whatevs. I can't stop the aging process but birthdays really have started to lose their appeal. Overall it was not a bad day, but it was just a day.

One of these days I am going to go to the beach. The real beach. I talked to Kuna, we were going to go the day before my birthday but I had way too much going on at home to leave for the day. So soon, maybe during the 4th of July week (I have it off), I will go. I need to ocean to feed my soul.

Well, until next time, I have a book to re-read and some vitamin D to soak in :)

Was a better day.