My 2010 resolution.

This year, I'm going to be cracking the whip on myself. I have a lot of goals to accomplish, and for all of them, I need to be more disciplined in one very large area of my life.


Money.


Yes, I know. Don't cringe, I'm cringing enough for three people.

Pretty much, I've decided that every extra penny is going to be put into savings. Bills will be paid, and we will get a certain amount each month for fun, and that's it. No more. No less.

We reached our limit for this month already by a long shot. Since the 31st, we have spent over $200. Only some of it was food for both of us. Some of it was a game for Andrew's birthday, some was a bookshelf that was on sale and I couldn't pass up. And the rest? I honestly don't remember. It's that bad.

So, no Starbucks or Border's cafe for me today. No lunch at the food court. Nothing, Nada. Zip. Zilch.

I'm also starting a new cleaning schedule for myself. Mondays will be dishes and laundry. Tuesdays, I clean the bathroom. Wednesdays, it's dusting and vaccuming. Thursdays, more dishes and a good clean of the kitchen. Friday will be the general pick everything up day, and the weekends, I take a break, lol.

Let's see how this goes, shall we? Wish me luck. I'm craving Starbucks like you wouldn't believe.

Dear Santa... Writer's Prompt from Mama Kat

Ah, Thursday. Day of Writers' Workshops. I was born on a Thursday...they say, "Thursday's child has far to go." Seriously, isn't Tennessee and all of it's odd weather far enough?? The only thing further for me would probably be India...but at least it gets hot there.

But I digress. Brace yourself, this is gonna be a whopper.

Alexes did it.. I bet that if she wasn't having red and green food for Advent dinner, Michelle would do it. Therefore, I am gonna be a follower today and use one of Mama Kat's Famous Writers' Workshop Prompts :D

(Boy, I am just full of linky goodness today, aren't I?)

Dear Santa Claus,

This is not my best year. In fact, this might be the craziest year of my life so far, and given that you see me when I'm sleeping, when I'm awake, when I'm actually supposed to be sleeping but am instead awake doing ungodly things in the middle of the night....*ahem* Sorry, let's continue....you know that life so far for me hasn't exactly been --how shall I put this?-- SANE?

Ere-go, I've got quite the list for you. I don't doubt you can do it, but whether or not I merit it is still in question. I'm not really all that nice. Hence the snarky letter you're receiving atm. (That's chatspeak, means "at the moment". I'm sure you knew that. Mrs. Claus probably texts you like a madwoman when you're out with the reindeer doing whatever it is you do with them on the off season...)

First, though, I want to say thank you. It's been rather a while since I wrote. In fact, I was about 13-ish, and madly in love with Justin. I thought, heck why not? and asked you for a boyfriend that would love me "at least as much as he loves himself". Got that line from a book by Lynn Kurland. She's awesome, btw, I recommend her to the Mrs. wholeheartedly. Well, Santa dear, you delivered. In fact, you old over-achiever you, I didn't just get a boyfriend from the deal. I got an entire lifetime goober! =D Said goober is at work right now, but I'm sure he sends his love. He wants CODMW2 for the 360. (Again, I'm sure you're familiar with all of these acronyms by now. My life seems to be filled with them these days. That one there is Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Like we need another bang bang you're dead game around these parts, right? Because I don't already hear REAL gunfire when I go get a gallon of milk at the commissary, right?? *facepalm*)

So yes. Thank you. I loved him. He came at a weird time though. October? I mean... really? But it's made up for by his original plan to propose on Christmas....too bad that didn't go through. Friggin Army. But thank you =D I'll keep him for a good long while, feed him, all that good stuff. Unlike the Nano Baby that was in my stocking one year. I... *sniffle* I don't talk about Onan often. It hurts too much...*wipes nose on shirt*

This year, Santa Baby, I want a yacht. No, I'm joking. I can't swim. Why would I want a boat??

No, I want to win the lottery. Here is my plan. I want to win the Tennessee Lottery and move back to Arizona. Then, I want to with the Arizona Lottery. With both winnings, I plan to buy a little ranch somewhere around Oracle. Maybe... hmm, maybe somewhere off behind Great Grampa's old house. I wanna get a pair of good, sturdy saddle horses, a mare and a stallion preferably, one white and brown paint and the other a nice deep brown... oh, or one of the tan ones, with the black manes and feet. I'll plant watermelons and daisies and lavender and strawberries in my garden, as well as beautiful tall Ponderosa pines, like G. Grampa did for the Forest Service. We'll get a white Jeep Wrangler, and a nice sports car for Andrew. 350Z should do, dark metallic blue, and makes sure our road is mostly paved so that it doesn't hurt the suspension on it.

And the house we can have specially built. Two stories, with lots of open space and big windows... and a wide, open staircase so I don't have crazy vertigo like at Camp and Teresa's. Wood floors with big, soft rugs (the kind that don't slip, lol, you know me, Santa...) and a big kitchen, with an island in the middle that has a sink. Stainless steel fridge, one of those cool ovens that are stacked on top of each other, like the one in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But I won't keep guns in mine. Oh, no, they will be fully functional, and fully used. The house will have to have at least 4 bedrooms, but we should probably mark that up to 6 bedrooms. We have a lot of family, and I know that eventually, someone will want to come stay with us. Six bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, a family room, and probably 3 bathrooms. Or maybe 2.5....definitely want one in the master bedroom, with a big clawfoot tub that I could (hypothetically) drown in. I don't really want to drown. I wouldn't be able to enjoy all of this as a ghost.

We could then have our three beautiful children that will have my coloring and Andrew's eyes...but probably need glasses and classes on how to move gracefully. I'll take them with the kids, for that matter, I could use a little extra grace... Oh, and a husky we'll call Hank Jr. and a Great Dane I want to call Clyde. Or Clementine. Cats, too, we need two, not including our lovely Kahlan, and maybe Diddles. But two cats usually turns into 12 cats eventually, so two breedable kitties will do fine.

Yes, Santa. I want all that for Christmas. It doesn't have to be this Christmas. I understand that some things take time, and I can imagine that the lottery, in two states nonetheless, could be tricky. But I'm confident that if we had both lotteries, we'd be able to pull all that off just fine. Oh, one more simple wish, though....could you pay for our schooling? I mean, if the lotteries don't cover it. I want to be a Midwife. Andrew is looking for something, but he would love to be a wolf rehabilitation expert.Then we would be able to afford all of this once the lottery dough runs out.

But... if you can't get me any of that, can you just make Andrew realize we need to move to better apartments? I'll take my life as it comes, Santa, but maybe living somewhere NOT filled with bugs (the crawling ones and the ones that you can fix) would make me very happy.

Merry Christmas.

PS. I know we moved, but if you could please bring our gifts in whatever form to Leslie and Chip's house in Arizona on Christmas Eve, we'd sorely appreciate it. For some reason, Grandpa Cavanagh doesn't want us at his house on Christmas Eve, so we're headed for the ranch instead. Be careful on the road. Grand Pappy Wash is a doozy in the winter time, even if you are flying over it. And remember, it's just after the Chapparel steakhouse on the Florence Highway. See you around when we have kids of our own :D

NaBloWriMo Day 5: Zedd the Car is Screwed.

This is new for me.

I am sitting in a coffee shop, with my lovely little laptop in front of me, blogging away. Yes, okay... so what if the coffee shop is Border's? It sells coffee, it has WiFi, it has tables. Ta-da.

I feel very hip and cool today. I'm wearing my favorite baggy brown sweater, I should post a pic one of these days, lol, and my old jeans and the tennies that I had to dig cactus out of to put on this morning, so I look fashionably boho-grunge, LOL, and I'm...

Yeah, who am I kidding? Hip? Not so much on this end.

So it was pretty awesome yesterday. I stopped by NBWM to check out my next blog and there was a post by Not Hannah mentioning me! Me! Of all people! I was pretty excited to see it, I've never been mentioned before. It rocked my world. Thank you, Not Hannah!

I guess I better get this out, because I am about to cry. My car is screwed. Poor Zeddy! There is SO much wrong with him! He's got lots of work and we don't have the lots of money to get it done, but we're doing the brakes (90% used!!), the brake roters and the wheelbearings. It's going to cost us a lovely $675 to get it all done... and that's only a portion. The whole of it would have been closer to $1400, and that's a whole paycheck, so uh... No.

But it has to be done. We simply CANNOT go without brakes. I told Andrew what I had picked for us to get done and he agreed, brakes were a priority. I just wish it wasn't soo sooooo much.

This might be either a very lame or a very non-existant Halloween party :(

I need more coffee.

And maybe a nap.

I'm off to the bathroom, Halloween Express, and the rest of the mall for a while. Window shopping and people watching, ahoy!

Why are all my posts long?? I'm sorry :(

I never thought that I would be in this place again. This place that is somewhere between hungry and okay, between having just enough and not having any at all. I thought that when I moved out for the second time, when I started living on my own and buying my own groceries and living supplies, that it wouldn't happen anymore and that even if it did, it would only be for a day or two, until I could go shopping and in that mean time, there was a McDonalds or a Taco Bell or something else nearby.

You see, my childhood was an odd one. My life started out as the daughter of a copper miner, a journeyman mechanic at was once the most productive copper mine in the world. See that penny from the 70's in your hand? Yeah, that copper probably came from the ground just outside of my quaint little hometown. My grandfather, my father, my uncle, and every other male in that town over the age of 18 worked in the life-giving Magma copper mine. Look it up. There's a book called Mother Magma and it will tell you everything, if I could just remember the author's name. Something Hispanic... anyway. But that's where my life was from 4 months old til I was about 8 or 9. We lived in a well-kept 2 bedroom house on a quiet street in a town of about 4500 ppl, a quintessential Mayberry. The yard was green, we knew all of our neighbors all the way down either side of the street by name, and the elementary school I went to was only a block away. To the left when you exited the front door, we had Rudy, Esmeralda, Rudy, and Inis. The next house was my mother's older brother, my uncle Timmy and his family, Aunt Belinda, Buddy Dave, Dougy, and Cody. If you kept going down that way, you'd get to a dead end turn that led you up another street to the left and if you turned right onto Ave B, you would get to my grandparents house and across from them, my mother's little sister, Aunt Cindy and whatever boyfriend she had at the time, and her youngest son, Austin. Everyone I wanted, needed, cared about was right there within less than a half mile of my house, my bedroom. It was wonderful.

First, and this is important, there was one bar in San Manuel, Arizona, and I don't remember the name of it then, but it might have been called The Place (very creative, these miners, I tell you... guess what the high school mascot was? Can you? Yep, you're right. The Miners -_-). My Aunt Cindy worked there, and she was very good at it. She was also a 5'7" blond, blue-eyed Barbie doll in those days, so you know...

Anyway, one day, and being as young as I was, I don't really remember the whole story, but my dad got caught with a power tool that he was not allowed to take home in his lunchbox. Now, from what I've gathered over the years, this was a very heavy power tool, but I also remember not being able to lift my dad's lunchbox ever, empty or full, and I can't say as he would have noticed the difference either, but I don't know. Another thing is that he kept it in his truck the whole time, and so after lunch wouldn't have lifted it until he got home. Well, as he went through the gates one day, the guard (by the way, my grandmother was a guard at one of the other gates, he should have gone to that one) said that he had to search my dad's truck. This was highly unusual, my dad had been working there for 8 years and had never been searched for anything, let alone by a gate guard (who, if my 60-some year old grandmother could do it, was not that cool, really). The man opened my dad's lunchbox and found, lo and behold, a very expensive, very NOT my dad's, power tool. I think it was some kind of drill, might even have been a Makita, and if you're familiar, Makita drills are downright awesome... and downright expensive, too. To make a long story short, my dad was accused of stealing it. There were trials, lawyers, and because my dad had refused to join the Union there, ppl were against him. More than that, my dad can be, pardon my language, an asshole. He had enemies, and it was obvious, because my dad was fired. My mother stayed at home. She sold Avon, she cleaned the house, she took care of me and it was happy... but then she had to find a job and she had to leave me with a man that, because of his work, I didn't really know very well. I stopped having birthday parties that year, and I don't think my dad was ever at any of them anyway.

So my mom got a job...but my mom has no high school diploma. She doesn't even have a GED, so she worked as a waitress in a small town Mexican food restaurant and brought my churros every night that no one wanted to eat. God, I love churros. I want one now :( This was in 1996 to 1997. We lived out of meager savings for a while, but my parents had been the average American family: they had money and they used it. I remember the day our brand new white Ford truck was towed away. I watched from inside the screen door and I cried because, even at 8 years old, I knew what was happening. I watched us have yard sales... I watched the food in the house dwindle to almost nothing and I wondered what was going to happen next. Pretty soon, my parents had to make a decision. We were being kicked out of the house that they were renting to own, the only house that I really remembered living in (the one before, we'd moved out when I was 3 and 1/2, so yeah). They bought a trailer in the "new" trailer park (it was built in the 70's as opposed to the old one, built in the 50's) for $2000, pretty much all they had left. The roof leaked, the floor was rotting, and if you layed an egg on the end of the counter, it would roll into the sink. I had a lot of fun with that counter. It had 10 year old swamp cooler on top, and no heater whatsoever.

Dad fixed it as best he could and we moved in. In the windowsill of my tiny bedroom, the one that I did my best to personalize, the one that my cat gave birth in, the one that at one point housed Andrew and I for over a year, there is a tiny engraving. It says, Helen Bernice Jorg Dec. 1997 and then the little symbol I had come up with for my name. It's still there and sometimes it can make me cry. I lived in that house with my parents, a potbelly pig, a bird, a dog, a cat, and three-four fish for 10 years. A decade.

Dad could never hold a job after that. Something always went wrong, or he opened his mouth at the wrong time... there was always something. Mom eventually got a job at Minit Market and it payed a little more. It's the only thing that kept us fed, kept us clothed, funded my years as a wrestling cheerleader and my years of driving to see Andrew every weekend. I didn't understand how she did it back then...but I remember the first 4 years or so. They were hard years. Dad was in and out of jail, but that's a story for another time, and at 9 years old, I learned how to stay home alone. We had no choice. By then, my uncle and aunt had both moved away, and my grandparents with them. We had no money for a sitter for a girl that could take care of herself anyway. Dad showed me how to shoot the .22 we kept in the bedroom and how to take it down if I had to. Mom told me to call her before I attempted to use the stove. I remember being 10 years old, standing in front of a gas stove, making myself fried Spam and noodles for dinner as my mom gave me a hug and left for work.

But that was on a good day. On a bad day, there would be a small pot of buttered noodles on the stove to fill three people. Dad was dad... he ate a lot even on his least hungry days. I knew that. Mom worked... she needed all the strength she could get and strength came from eating well. I knew that, too. So I took smaller portions, enough to keep my stomach from growling and bugging me, but not enough to fill me up. Besides, I figured I had a free lunch and a free breakfast as school every day, why should I take food away from my parents, who got nothing except what my mom was able to steal during the day and pay for when her check came in? And then on the worst days, the ones in summer, when Mom had very little hours and Dad was home, we didn't have dinner. We had maybe some popcorn that we found at the back of the cabinet, or I would use my baby sitting money to buy a few packages of Ramen for the house, but that was all we had. Those were the nights when I couldn't sleep because I was too hungry, so I'd get up and drink some water and go back to bed, get up drink some water, go back to bed... and then peed like crazy the next morning.

*Edit* I told you to remember the bar, but I never brought it back up. I was too swamped in my own hungry misery, I suppose... but Aunt Cindy worked at that bar and she was a great waitress, a great bartender, and a great source of information. About a year after we moved into the trailer, she was working there at the bar and talking to some guy that we all knew. He had worked with my dad. He had hated my dad, hated him for his pretty wife and cute kid, hated him for getting the journeyman job, hated him, hated him. My aunt found this out and came to us crying one day, because this man admitted while he was blind drunk to her that he had put that drill in my dad's lunchbox and then told the guards at the gate to check, knowing what gate my dad went to every day, knowing that he left his lunchbox in the truck after lunch because they ate together every day. But because he was drunk and my aunt was known as a whore, the confession wouldn't hold up in court. And pardon my language, but I have to tell you this the way it is. My dad beat the holy living shit out of that man about a week later after confronting him and getting another admittance and a sneer in the face. I should tell you more about my dad. He's wild. Now, continue...

The point of this post is that's where 10 years of my life was spent, that in-between spot of hungry and not hungry. I didn't want to come back here. I promised myself I never would, even if it meant flipping burgers for the rest of my life, I never never would, not after living with them the last time.

But here I am. And I caught myself doing the same old thing last night with dinner, and today as well: I'm drinking water to stay full because I know that Andrew is the one working and Andrew is the one that needs his strength. I can lay in bed all day, I can sit around and do nothing and keep my strength up. But he's got physical training, and a demanding job, and hundreds of other things, like dealing with Jeff the Jerk all day. It's like when I do laundry: his work clothes first. I can run around the house butt naked with the blinds closed, I don't need clean clothes, lol... him, not so much.

The problem was that they messed up the account number. They added 4 digits at the end where they didn't belong and so, nothing came to us. They put in the change yesterday, but Andrew went back to check today and it hasn't gone through yet. Until it goes through, he can't apply for what they call Casual Pay, which is money from our check sent between paydays to help out. If we get that, we'll get it sometime next week. If we don't, we should get October first's pay, along with all of September's pay, on the first of Oct. Until then, I guess I'm in this place again, but as with all things, it's only temporary. Only temporary.

An epiphany that we can't afford.

A little while ago today, I had what some people would call an epiphany. That's very likely the right term for it, too, and now, looking back, I wonder that I didn't see it before. I started with the usual little kid, When I Grow Up dreams... a ballerina, a firefighter, an archaeologist (okay, maybe not THAT usual) and moved on when I realized that I liked helping people to a nurse, a psychiatrist, and a teacher. The last one is the one that stuck with me. In high school, I didn't know what I wanted and because I enjoyed English so much, as well as working with people younger than me, I made up my mind to be an English teacher. It was a good plan. My English teacher was thrilled with the idea, lol, and I was going to settle for it.

That was my first mistake: settling.

I worked from my 7th grade year as a Vacation Bible School helper every year until I graduated high school. I loved the little kids, and I eventually found myself working in the church nursery for a little cash every week. I did that for several years and during those years, I got to take care of and play with children ages 0 to 5, as well as babysitting that I did on the side. I loved it. I adored the babies and I worked with the kids, and I just enjoyed sitting and watching them play sometimes. Other times, I wanted to beat my head against a wall and duck tape them to the roof... but that's how life is with preschoolers, lol.

After high school, Andrew and I moved in together. We got jobs, we moved on with life... and I missed working with children. I missed it so, so terribly, but there were no opportunities around for me to rectify the situation until we moved in with my parents again. We coached jr. high wrestling and the girls' wrestling team as well, and I loved it. I loved the fact that my husband to be willingly tossed me around like a rag doll and willingly allowed his younger brothers to do the same to prove that if I, a girl who usually showed up in skirts with make up and curled hair, could be flung this way and that, so could they, by golly. And of course, we were working with kids, so both of us were incredibly happy.

Life goes on, and the motherhood ache started right about then, so... maybe in about the end of 2007 to the start of 2008. It had always been present, but that's when it starting biting me in the... uterus, as it were, lol...

As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that my happiest moments were spent with babies, whether screaming or laughing, and that I've always been interested in the woman's body, the entire pregnancy process and what happens afterward. I can't see my own blood, but my period has never been a problem. I've watched countless marathons of A Baby Story on TLC without cringing, and the idea of bringing someone into this world fascinates me, not just on a motherly level, but as a spiritual human being. Now, I'm not silly enough to realize all of this makes a good reason for a new career and Lord knows, I might change yet again before I take the steps to accomplish it.

I'm considering being a Certified Professional Midwife. I've looked at the classes, the time it will take, the work it will take, and everything in me is saying, I can do that. I can be there. I can help these women and help these babies. The classes would take about 3 and a half years, but it might take a little longer depending on how many births and exams I can attend to in that time. Aviva Institute offers distance learning through online classes and hand-son experience with qualified women in the area you specify. A CPM is not a nurse midwife. They don't have a nursing degree or anything along those lines, but they are allowed to practice in 11 states, including Arizona and Tennessee.

Aviva Institute Homepage

Midwives specialize in home births and natural births, water births and a lot more, including herbal techniques. There are so many resources behind that link, it boggles the mind. The classes are all interesting to me, with the possible exception of using an IV *feels queasy*, and it's something that Andrew supports whole-heartedly as well.

I'm not going for it yet, but I'd like to. I'm interested and I'm excited about it... and I've never been as excited for a career as I am for this. It's something I'm thinking about... but the fact that gets me is, as many times as I've thought about it, I assumed you had to have a nursing degree. To find out you don't is a dream come true and I wonder why I didn't look into it before. Stubbornness? Settling? I don't know. I feel a little like I'm at a turning point, though, a door that opened and showed me a little more of who I am than I've known before.

Now if that door would open again and show me Andrew's TWO (count 'em, 2) paychecks that have not arrived, I would be a happy camper.

Yeah, we're still living out of savings. This is the last month it will be possible. I don't know what will happen if we don't get something soon. We're out of food as it is, scraping the barrel for stuff to make for dinner and I'm drinking water all day so I don't eat lunch. There's still one more bill to pay, but God has blessed us with not having to pay car insurance or internet this go round, so that helps, but on top of all of it, Andrew has a Class A inspection next month. He has to have certain patches sewn onto his uniform, and moreover, specific boots called jump boots that he has to wear. They cost close to $130 if not more, the patches not sewn on are $26, and all of this plus food, rent, electricity, bird food, the car is on it's last half of a leg with no exaggeration... all this little stuff that we are completely fine with when he gets paid is suddenly HUGE. The only help we might have is if we take out an Army Emergency Relief loan that has no interest, but is a small amount and still has to be paid back. How long will even another $1000 keep us afloat, you know?

*sigh*