2 kids.

6 bicycles.

2 kids fighting over 1 of the 6 bicycles.

sheez. I remember when I felt lucky to share one bike with my brother and sister.

Imagine someone handed you each of the amounts listed below, and you have to spend it all on yourself, what would you buy?

$1,000,000
A modest, five bedroom dome home. Two new vehciles, probably a Honda Hybrid, and a minivan of some sort. A trip to Italy/Europe. A beach home in Destin, Florida. A yatch to sail around the gulf in. And geez, I really can’t think of anything else. I have a hard time spending on myself, I’d probably end up buying stuff that I like, and giving it away to someone else.

$100,000
A smaller house, and only one car.

$10,000
A nice down payment on a car. (See where this is going?? Lol)


$1000
New bedroom furniture and a awesome dual control air bed.

$100
groceries. You can never have too much food in the house.

$10
This probably sounds silly, but I would spend all ten bucks on Ben and Jerry’s
Cherry Garcia!

$1
Whatever caught my eye at the dollar store.

$.10
A piece of bubble gum.

$.01
Geez, I dunno, a WHOLE penny??? Sometimes you can find some of the red hots in the machine for a penny…haven’t seen those in forever though.

Talk about having a lousy week. Back problems persist. I ended up home from work on Monday, again on Wednesday, and I had a doctor’s appointment on Thursday. I worked a whole two days and to say that I enjoyed my time off from work would be an utter lie. There is nothing like laying on the kitchen floor in so much pain that there is nothing to do but cry and beg for mercy. I have no idea what or why I have these muscle spasms, but I can tell you that it’s not fun, and I could definitely live without them. At my last doctor’s appointment the NP prescribed some pain medicine for the muscle spasms, witch I’m sad to say was like I took nothing at all. Didn’t work, not even a little bit.
It’s back to the narcotics. The NP would like me to have a MRI, witch with no insurance I can’t afford, so the likely hood of that happening is nil. I have another appointment in two weeks to see the doctor who is on vacation because the NP can’t prescribe narcotics. She said most likely it will be a very strong muscle relaxer and even though I may feel great enough to work, I shouldn’t. Go figure. The one thing I want to avoid is missed days at work, can’t afford it at all. I suppose though as the NP stated, my health is more important than a paycheck and the alternative is making my back worse by working while in so much pain could ultimately make matters worse and more costly in the long run.

Fortunately while my back is still sore from all the tension of the past week, it’s feeling a bit better. I was able to get out yesterday and do some much needed yard work and got a nice burn in the process. Hopefully I won’t peel too badly. I generally burn very rarely thanks to the Italian blood, but this is really the first time this summer I have had the prolonged exposure to the sun. My next door neighbors normally cut my grass for me because I have a rather large yard and a push mower, while they have a riding. Takes me two hours with the push mower, takes them 30 min. Big difference especially when you factor in the Alabama heat and humidity. They have gone out of town for a month, so it’s up to me to take care of the yard while they are gone. I don’t mind really, I actually rather enjoy it, of course I would enjoy it a lot more if I had a nice cool swimming pool in the back yard to cool off in.

My nasty car problem has worked itself out. My dad got a newer car so I will be getting the hand me down hand me down. I said I wanted a Honda…so I’m getting a Honda. Lol, just not the model I wanted, but it will do. It’s a 1989 Honda Crx, used to be my brother’s when he was in college and my dad took it when my brother got a new car. My dad has only been driving it for a little over a year, although he has had it for a lot longer than that. It’s in fair condition and should be a good little car for me. From what I have read those Honda’s just go on forever with minor need for repairs. Here’s hoping!

I haven’t done much on my template making this past week. Been in far too much pain to sit for very long, and I’m still experiencing some creative blockage. I have an idea of what I want to do, just need to figure out how to do it with the html and css factored in. I have made a couple of graphics but when I put them into the template, I didn’t like how they turned out, so it’s back to the drawing board. I’m working on getting some new filters for Photoshop witch will make things a bit easier in the creative process.

My folks will be coming down next weekend to bring the car down so I need to get to doing some minor cleaning around the house. Hey, it’s just me and the two kitties, not like the house can get too dirty, however the adorable little brats are shedding something fierce and the clumps of hair floating around is a bit bothersome. If they weren’t so afraid of the vacuum cleaner I would take it to both of them and solve that hair problem!

It took a min for me to notice the odd ball in the bunch :)

I knew it was coming. Sunday I felt the tinges of back pain, nothing major, just letting me know it was coming. Monday, well, I had a lousy day anyway. Slight pain also, but pack a bit of depression on top of that and you have a wonderful Monday. At least I can say my work day wasn’t bad at all, just the weight of the car situation has been riding heavily upon me and I am having a hard time dealing with the fact that my options are limited.

I generally try to cover things up and try to not let them bother me so much. Sometimes I am pretty successful at it, other times not so much. I have learned to be a strong person most of the time, because I’m on my own, I have no one to lean on. I have health issues to deal with witch is part of the reason I am only able to work on a part-time basis. Actually, it’s most of the reason.

Needless to say, when I went to bed “early” last night because I was having such a crappy day and felt exhausted from all the boo hooing, the pain was becoming a bit more constant. I’m not even sure if I can call it pain…it’s an odd thing really. I suffer from both back problems and back spasms, weather one has to do with the other I’m not sure, but when I get a flare up, it’s not generally a very pretty thing. Back spasms are different from normal “tics” that I’m sure everyone has experienced at one point or another. Normal tics don’t tend to be very painful, more annoying than anything depending on how often they happen. Back spasms on the other hand are very painful. It’s like every muscle in your back seizes (tightens) up and just stays that way, it doesn’t stop. Obviously after a short period of time the tension being built up in the muscle and having no release, it causes unbearable pain. Most times I’m in so much pain that I’m in tears. Sometimes taking a hot bath helps to relieve some of that tension, but often times it’s just a temporary fix, and I mean, maybe a half hour of ease in pain.

At my last doctor’s appointment I was given a new prescription of “Ultram” witch is a pain reliever for my back spasms. Pain reliever my butt. I don’t know what pain it was relieving but it wasn’t my back for sure. I woke up about 11:45 whimpering because of the pain (funny what we do in our sleep) so I immediately took two of the Ultram and jumped in the hot bath. I was in there for a good 45 minuets I guess. The hot bath definitely helped, but the water does tend to get cold at some point. Lol. The Ultram was not working though. I almost went ahead and took a couple of my “happy” pills (Laratab, Hydrocodone, whatever you want to call them) but being that I had just taken the Ultram I didn’t want to chance anything. I don’t like taking the Laratab unless I have no other choice, because it is addictive, and Lord knows I don’t need that. I’m usually pretty good about taking anything really, even advil. I don’t generally take anything unless there is just no other option and the pain is just so unbearable I can’t stand it any longer. Call it stubbornness, but other than the medications I “have” to take I’m just not much of a pill popper.

Well, I managed to get three hours of sleep after my bath anyhow. It was about 1:45 by the time I got out of the bath, took the Ultram, and got ready to go back to bed. I was awake again at 4:15. Not sure I really ever went to sleep, but I did get some rest. I called work, told them I wasn’t going to be in, and took 2 of my happy pills. I’m starting to feel better now. Starting to get sleepy actually. I guess before too long I’ll be back in bed. Hopefully all will be much better tomarrow.

Last evening I was out in the garage taking a break from updating a friend’s template and smoking a cigarette, when I heard this horrible noise coming from the kitchen. I mentioned I have two cats, well, it was louder than normal, but I thought maybe one of them was coughing up a hairball. I ran in the house in the direction of the noise, and no cats. Not even the hint of one, until the ‘noise’ bellowed out again scaring me darn near out of my shorts.
I searched everywhere to locate where the loud noise was coming from, to no avail. By now both cats were in the kitchen curious as to what this noise was also. One on the table, and the other sitting directly under the window sill looking up. I don’t run the air conditioning much, so I had the windows open, so I determined that it was probably a frog sitting right outside the window bellowing inside and went about my business of making the bed and doing some chores that I had been avoiding all day. I listened for the noise to happen again, but never heard it and thought maybe I scared the frog off when I yelled at the cat to get off the table.
I finished up in the bedroom and walked into the kitchen to get something to drink and noticed out the corner or my eye something hopping across the floor. I of course knew it was a frog then, and tried to get it to hop back into the kitchen so I wouldn’t have to chase it all over the living room with the furniture in the way, at least until I could get my “frog” container so I could scoop him up and put him back outside where he belongs. As you can tell, this happens quite often. I’m not sure how the little buggers get in the house, although I have on occasion opened the door and seen them right on the screen door just waiting for the opportunity to jump into the house. Yes, they are the “small” ones. How this incredibly loud noise came from such a small creature, I do not know, and while I hear the frogs chirping (or whatever they do is called) on a nightly basis, I have to say I have never heard one up close and personal like that before.
Unfortunately for the little frog, one of the cats also discovered he was in the house and decided it would be fun to bat the poor thing around and carry him off to play with. Typical cat. I chased that stupid cat all over the house before he finally gave the little guy up, but it was too late, he was gone. Usually I have a couple of minuets to grab the scooper and get the frog before either one of the cats become aware of what is going on, but not this time, Kitty was right on my tail as I walked into the kitchen and while I tried to keep him back…no doing. Now, at least, the next time I hear this indescribable noise, I will know what it is and look a little harder for the frog. I should probably get rid of the plants in the kitchen, might make it easier.

Car Situation

My car situation hasn’t changed much. My dad had talked about putting a new engine in it because he determined that if another head cracked that the engine was probably warped and needed replacement. I guess that idea turned out to be a little more expensive than he anticipated because he called me a few days later wanting to get me a “scooter”.
Now, don’t get me wrong, if you don’t have far to go as far as work and such, and can tolerate the weather conditions, sure, it would be a great thing to have. Good gas mileage, he said, 80mpg! Ok, that’s great. Lord knows we all need a good vehicle that gets great gas mileage. I work about 15 minuets away driving a regular car, in pretty much any type of weather (although sometimes the torrential downpours do tend to slow you down a bit) can you see this on a scooter that goes 50mph? He said, “You’d have to wear a weather protective suit to protect you from the rain.” Um, yeah. 95 degrees, 100% humidity, and here I am riding down the road on a scooter wearing a weather protective suit, in the pouring rain, with 4 bags of groceries dangling from my arms and sweating so profusely that at any moment I may pass out from heat exhaustion as 50 cars pass by me because I’m going to slow for them. Sounds like fun, yes?
I love my dad, dearly, I can’t tell you how much he has done for me over the years, and I understand completely why he would want me to go this route with the gas situation deteriorating as it is, but I just don’t think in the large scale of things that a scooter would be the best route to go. Here I was thinking of something like a Chevy Cavalier or something similar that gets relatively good gas mileage and would get me to my sisters or brother’s place when the occasion would arise. That would be impossible on a scooter. Groceries would be impossible. Lol.
Anyhow, my next door neighbor is looking into getting me a vehicle, and hopefully sometime this week I will be in a newer car. I say hopefully because they are going out of town the following week, and if something happens to the car during the three week period they are gone, I’m pretty much in a sink hole without a ladder. I am to the point now that I have to put water in the radiator everyday, so I don’t imagine it’s going to last too much longer.

New Plates

I will be putting up a couple of new blogger templates at my website. I haven’t been posting much because I have been working so hard on one particular template trying to get it to work the way I wanted it too. Needless to say, I didn’t get it to work the way I wanted, but it’s finished, and I think it looks good.
The second one I’m posting is good also, I think, it’s different in that it has ‘moving waters’. Oddly, that one only took me a few hours to do the graphics and they coding. Go figure.

List of things I need to get done today:
1. Bake a birthday cake for my boss
2. Bake a birthday lasagna for my boss
3. Update my Templates pages
4. Do a load of ‘work’ clothes
5. Post to my other two Blogs

Not too long of a list, but time consuming to say the least. I’m sure there are a couple more things I should add, but of course I can’t think of them at the moment. TTFN!