Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Life gets in the way…

Wednesday, October 29th, 2014

I’ve been trying to sit down and write for a while now but being overly bombarded with deadlines is taking it’s toll on me.  I’ve had a few major sites that I’ve been keeping tabs on, and pulling 16+ hour days on to keep on top of things. Most recently was disappointed after an 18 hour run to only find that the deadline was missed.  I was so ticked off, you have no idea.

On the Tooth front, with the use of antibiotics it’s fine for now. I do still need to see a dentist to have things taken care of, but the unfortunate waiting list to see anyone down here is starting to turn into the “Story of my life.”  I took 10 days worth of antibiotics, and haven’t really had any aspirin since the excessive use of it damn near killed my stomach.  I’m not someone who goes looking for prescriptions, if it can’t be solved with aspirin there’s something seriously wrong.  So when I mistakenly took more than 10 in a day (because the pain was so intense my brain was literally not functioning) I wound up with some abdominal pains and that was that.  At least those pains took the focus off the tooth for a little while.

This past week was pretty nice though, I’ve officially hit 30 and now it’s just downhill from here.  It’s weird stepping into a new age bracket. My father and sister came to visit. She’s never been to Delaware before and we took some time to hit up as many stores as possible so she could enjoy Tax Free shopping.  She’s the kind of person who has to frequently do laundry because she’s down to her last few pairs of pants.  So, that was the main focus during our shopping trips, I think she got about 10 new pairs of pants in total so hopefully that means she isn’t doing laundry as frequently.  I know she picked up shoes and shirts as well.

I didn’t really go that crazy on clothing, as much as I really do need certain items. I work from home, though. It’s really unjustified for me to pick up nice looking clothes when I literally have no place to wear them. So I did get a few decent looking T-shirts so I could continue my shirt rotation, and even invested in a few jersey knit type of long sleeve shirts because it has been getting a little chilly lately but all of my longer sleeve items were either heavy sweat shirts or just didn’t fit right anymore, so I’ll probably throw the older stuff into the rotation as well.

“Rotation?” – Yes, I wear my clothes to death to the point that they’re repurposed.  Once every few years I stock up on nice looking shirts, mostly tshirts. I wear them to death to the point that they’re no longer acceptable to wear out of the house and then push them to the bedshirts pile. Then I go through the bedshirts, if they don’t make the grade I shred them to use as dust rags, cause that’s really all they’re worth.  I would donate, don’t get me wrong, but feel it would be cruel to donate clothing that is literally holding on by a thread.  This is just my version of recycling.  I think at this point I could do some kind of patch work throw pillow with the remnants of fabric that I have to go through… that requires a sewing machine though – something I don’t currently have. That’ll probably change though, I’ll hopefully be hitting up thrift shops in the future.

So while they were here I decided that since we weren’t going to all be together for the holidays I’d have them come early. I went ahead and did a big thanksgiving dinner in October. Technically speaking I celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving but even that was 3 days late.  My dad is coming back between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I don’t believe my sister was going to be with him, so I wanted to at least get that out of the way.  As far as actual Thanksgiving is concerned… I doubt we’re doing anything, honestly. We’ll figure it out as we get closer.  I might spend the day setting up for Christmas but that’s because I’m itching to find an excuse for rearranging the living room to put the tree up.  The Den won’t really have any decorations in it though. I may be able to pick up some stuff from thrift shops, but I’m not really going out of my way to over decorate the house when factoring in that at this point in time it’s just Sean and I until we decide we’re ready for children.

So yea, it was nice spending time with my family, nice getting some shopping done, and nice having a few days off from work while they were here so I could relax.  Since they left on Saturday, though, I’ve just been non-stop working which has opened a whole new can of worms.

My sleep schedule is BEYOND messed up.  I woke up on Saturday about 10am after a few hours of sleep because I wanted to be awake to say goodbye to my family.  I then wound up crashing on the couch at a certain point of the night after getting some work done. From there I went to sleep around 10am on Sunday, I woke up at 5pm and then was awake and working until 12pm Monday afternoon.  I got some sleep and woke up around 9pm then solidly worked until 2pm the next afternoon, fell asleep, woke up at 9pm and worked until 6am, went back to sleep and woke up today at 4pm.  Needless to say, my schedule is completely screwed up.  Now, waking up around 4pm isn’t that abnormal for me as I’m accustomed to going to sleep around 7am, but having the freakishly long days kind of threw me for a loop. There really isn’t enough coffee in the day to keep me going anymore AND at the moment it’s taken me a few looks on the taskbar to realize what day it is.

In any event, I have a WooCommerce site to get started on, and lord only knows how many edits for other sites cause I’ve been afraid to look into any business emails tonight.  I just had a cup of coffee and I’m patiently waiting for it to kick in so I can get my second wind.

Productive procrastination?

Monday, June 23rd, 2014

Believe it or not, I’ve actually been actively attempting to complete a blog post for the last week. This is where my life has pretty much gone in the shitter. I’ve sat down and started writing this particular entry probably 15 times, and still have yet to complete it. So my goal for the next 20 minutes is to complete a thought and hopefully be able to hit the “Publish” button instead of saving the draft. Work has taken up a lot of my time which has caused me to slack just about everywhere else… but it’s not like I’m being a lazy ass either… right?

First and foremost, my dad came down to visit this past week. He’d never seen the house before and probably hasn’t been to the state of Delaware either EVER or at least within the last 30 years that I’ve been alive, so it was a nice little vacation for him. Typically when he takes his mandatory time off of work (he accrues his hours, but never uses them), he takes off two weeks in a row and will maybe spend a few days in Atlantic City but for the rest of the time he’s hanging out in front of the TV complaining he’s bored. So, as a nice little change for him he got to leave New York and had a place to stay for a week that wasn’t his own house. He seemed impressed by the size of my master bathroom, which hell even I’m impressed with that. The house itself also (like it did with Colin previously) seems much smaller in pictures. When you actually walk through it and take in the 3,000 sqft it’s semi-shocking.  It’s way too large for just two people, but that’s just how it goes.

Moving on, while he was here I got to celebrate father’s day with both him and George, which was a nice thing to finally have some family members together from both sides under the same roof.  We took him to the two restaurants that I know he couldn’t possibly have up in New York. First of which is Cracker Barrel, because hey that place freaking rules and $30 for three people to eat A LOT of food is just an awesome experience. Then another night we headed over to Bethany Blues in Lewes because it’s just damn good BBQ. I’m a sucker for their Mac & Cheese (even though I find mine to taste better, it’s just a nice change to get it from there). I wasn’t happy with my rib choice, should have stuck with the brisket or pulled pork but I wanted something different, and it just didn’t work out that well. That’s ok, dinner was still enjoyable, and dessert was freaking awesome so I really can’t complain.

He left us on Wednesday, he took the ferry up to Cape May and then drove up to Atlantic City for a few days and noted that he not only got to see a few hawks floating around, but even spotted little dolphin following the ferry. He knows based on prior experiences with seeing hawks that it’s just not gonna be a good gambling time, he experienced that almost every time he drove up to Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. It was no different when being on the ferry heading to Cape May. So, even though he unfortunately lost in A.C. he enjoyed his week away from New York.

So, moving on. We had a few big plumbing issues this week. Something happened to the pump in the basement for the bathroom  and we wound up springing a leak. Of course Sean over reacted and made it seem like the basement was flooding out and it was just a trickle of water that we were able to take care of. George came in and fixed the pipe, sealed things up and now we no longer have the weird sewer smell either, which was freaking disgusting but I already know once we get a good chunk of money together we’re completely gutting the basement and starting over. The assholes who previously owned the house compromised so many different things by building the basement that we really have no choice.

basementholesI got to the point, while my father was here, that I actually put a hammer through the wall in the basement because the fucking morons who built up the basement decided it would be smart to block a window with drywall because they couldn’t figure out how to cover a pipe. Yep.. block a window… lose ventilation as well as an exit point in case of fire. FUCKING SMART! I took the pic of the aftermath of this area off of Sean’s Instagram. The photo to the left is my exposing of the window, and the photo to the right is us exposing the super fucked-upedness of the previous owners.  Now… Sean has two vents in his office for the HVAC. Both of which BLAST air into his office, but then you look at them on the other side of the wall (in the area where the holes are now) the vents were half-ass placed on the wall, and then they were clearly leaking because with how cold Sean’s office was getting, the room (where these holes are) was a good 10 to 15 degrees colder.  So, he taped up the vents and then heard a weird noise coming from the wall behind the shower, he opened up the wall to find a HUGE hole in the duct work where it appeared that they were attempting to heat the back wall of the shower in order to get around the lack of a vent in the bathroom. So, prior to us locating this hole we knew that the bedrooms upstairs did not have good airflow at all, it was always either too cold in the winter, or blistering on the recent hotter days when factoring in that the A.C. will never kick off because the house would not get down to the 65* that the thermostat was set on.  So, once this hole was located and patched a blast of freezing cold air came through the vent in the master bedroom. While we’re confident that there are still leaks here and there, I feel the A.C. is now even functioning better because it’s actually turning off when the house hits the temperature it’s supposed to.

The only reason we really started to investigate into things was because my father had mentioned that the room he was staying in just didn’t have a good flow of air and it was only realized after he’d shut the door to go to bed for the night. Now, I don’t like the idea of someone being uncomfortable in my house, it’s one of my biggest pet peeves. If you know me in person, you know that I’ll make it a point to keep things as comfortable as possible. Case and point would probably be Karen, she’s got poor circulation and is commonly always cold. So, I make it a point to turn the A.C. off before I know she’s coming, or turn it to a higher temperature. Sean and I are comfortable at 70*F, she’s more comfortable at 80*F, so I compromise and bump it up to 75*F and make sure that there’s a fluffy sweater within reach for when she gets the chill.  Knowing that my dad is on a normal persons schedule and eating habits, I made sure to have cereal, cold cuts and other things in the fridge/pantry so that he had what he’s used to noshing on at home. I went and bought a double decker air mattress (as the temporary bed until I can get my mattress from NY), this way he wasn’t sleeping on the futon, or on the floor, plenty of clean towels, even found some of the shampoos and stuff I’ve taken from hotels over the years of travelling back and forth with Sean and put them in the bathroom in case he’d forgotten anything.  I just, I dunno, I just want to make sure you’re comfortable.  I’m not the “Oh do you want a drink?” type of person. I show you where everything is and you help yourself… but that’s just a ‘default’ thing for me because anyone who does stay here, or stop by for whatever length of time is typically someone I’d consider family anyway.

So yea, it was an eventful week and thankfully a few things have been fixed. We still need a roof, still need to get all of the rest of their shit out of our garage, and also are quite possibly going to need to gut the basement and start over. I know Sean doesn’t want to lose his office, but if we can make it better… why not?  The goal for next year is to tackle anything on the outside of the house, we want to put up a fence, a pool, get a shed for the lawn/pool equipment, so the next few years are going to be tight, but we’re thankfully pretty settled in and minus the lack of furniture for the master bedroom, pretty damn comfortable.  I think the saving grace is the fact that Sean and I both have our defined office spaces and things just run smoothly. I find it’s easier to concentrate when I’m working in the office and not in the den, which could be why it took me almost 3 weeks to blog, because I get side tracked by the T.V. while I’m working.  So sitting in the office with music and both feet on the floor in a proper upright working position I was able to spend 16 hours yesterday finalizing a site for a client.

I’ve been working on big name things that I’m not allowed to talk about and it freaking kills me, because my portfolio would look fucking fantastic, but when dealing with NDA’s things just get tricky and I personally do not want to deal with a lawsuit for my boss, or even me.

So… I’m heading off, I’m actually going to hit the “Publish” button, and I’m happy as hell about it.

It’s been….rough…

Friday, November 22nd, 2013

First and foremost, I fucking hate HostGator and am currently looking for a new place to house my servers.  Upgrading to WordPress 3.7.1 almost completely had the servers shut down because of how often WP was being called on for updates.  Now, this was easily controlled with a wp-config update that marked all auto-updates to false.  I’m pissed because this is something that should have been built into WP directly with an “Enable/Disable” function but whatevs.  To tell me that two sites are using 80% of the server-load is bull shit considering there’s 30 CPU’s available to it.  So yea, they fucking suck.

In the “Home” front, we’ve been searching, searching, searching.  We’ve seen more than I can remember, and while some were doable, others were just “Uhm… wtf did we just walk into?”  We’ve narrowed down the area we want to live in, as well as the  basic requirements that need to be in the house before we even consider looking at it.

Right now it’s the matter of waiting on the broker to get all of the numbers crunched.  We have the pre-approval for $250,000.  He’s finalizing the paperwork so that it’s a pre-qualification.  This gives us the ability to look within the price range, and if we happen to find a house he’ll be fast-tracking the paperwork as much as he possibly can.  Since everything we’re looking at is either a stick built or a class-c there’s absolutely no reason for there to be any kind of issue popping up that’s completely illegal. We got screwed on the last house because the lender (not the broker) blacklisted the community, this is 100% not legal and I’ve already reported to the proper authorities but really don’t care enough to pursue more than that.  It’s cheaper, in the long run, for Sean and I to just buy a house on it’s own property and go from there.

We’ve found a house that we love, the listing price is $249,900.  Built in 1977, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, living room, dining room, kitchen, family room, floored attic, unfinished basement, decent sized yard, huge front porch and a nice cozy back deck, and since we’re in a beach town of course it comes with an outdoor shower. Is that a waste to me, yes, but it’s easy enough to remove if we so choose.

It’s a relatively lightly used house, even though it’s over 30 years old it was very well cared for and you can clearly tell just by looking at it.  I’ve never been in a cleaner basement in my life. Sean and I already know how we’re going to frame it out and set it up.  If we do it right, considering the massive size of the basement, I can easily turn the 3 bed 2 bath into a 5 bed 3 bath with an office.   That’s the ultimate goal over time.  The other goal would be to do some upgrades in the kitchen but that’s something that can come later on down the road.  For right now, since it’s just the two of us the kitchen shouldn’t be an issue – but in the long run when families start visiting… and one gets started… the increase is going to need to happen.

Maybe it’s an Italian thing, I don’t know, I just know that teaching someone to cook, or having a mini-assistant is important to me and that’s just the way it’s gonna go.

So we’re taking a second tour on Monday with Sean’s father so he can do a once-over of the house as he has more of a ‘contractors’ eye with things, hopefully putting in an offer the same day and then crossing our fingers and playing the waiting game.  Everything seems to be falling into place thus-far… hoping it runs the same way.

 

 

It’s been freaking crazy!

Monday, August 26th, 2013

The past few weeks have been nothing but eventful around here, and of course that means I haven’t had any downtime to blog.  Going back to my last post, I’ve had a follow-up visit with Bella, she’s got a clean bill of health. I’ve got all of the paperwork together to send back to Del Monte and I’ve made it a point to photo copy freaking EVERYTHING so they can’t claim they never received everything I sent to them.

Our friend Colin came down last week, we were able to get a few nights of fishing in and a night of mini-golf but unfortunately Sean and I were overbooked so that was kind of limiting to any real fun.  It isn’t too bad though, we got to see our best friend for an entire week and while he was here we were introduced to a new member of the family.

smokeyLast week a little Grey cat showed up out of absolutely no where, and me being a push-over when it comes to something with four-legs I instantly said “Go get some food for him”, he ate, came on on the porch and rubbed up against my leg and from there he stayed. Knowing full well that I didn’t want to deal with another flea problem, we kept him outside, I treated him with Frontline (which doesn’t work BTW) and then was utilizing the Vets Best Flea & Tick Spray to help cut down on his itching. Note: That stuff works fucking beautifully when it’s used as a Mosquito repellant too! I’ve been using it instead of “OFF!”, it smells so much better. I just ordered the 32oz replacement bottle of it cause I can’t get over how well it works.  So thankfully with this spray (that my mom introduced to me when we brought the last lil girl into the house) it’s kept the fleas at bay.  I do believe that the stuff that the exterminator put down a few months ago helped quite a bit but thankfully we’re good to go.

During the course of the week a lady showed up at the house wanting to know what animal we were feeding and told us that he bounces from house to house, just about everyone in the complex feeds him so he’s – by no means – malnuroushed. BUT the alleged owner of the cat isn’t this lady, it’s someone else.  I then got a nasty look when she was informed that the cat was treated for fleas and ticks, she claimed that the owner actually treated him – considering the amount on him I’ll just go ahead and call BULL SHIT on that one.  Out of respect, I said if I was going to actually keep the cat I knew I needed to speak with the ‘owner’. So today I went looking for the alleged “owner” and found here with no problems (everyone knew who she was), the lady claimed he actually wasn’t hers and said take ’em, she doesn’t care and if anyone sees him in your window you just say “Too freakin bad, he was on the street long enough to be picked up and that’s that”. Someone else said that she was full of shit about not knowing who he belongs to but whatever, I wasn’t going to argue, I already knew he was gonna be mine anyway. I was only standing there out of respect, I didn’t care if I was told “No” when asking to take him off the street, clearly the ‘owner’ couldn’t do it – why should I continue to allow him out there?

So I went and contacted my vet, they gave me Capstar which works within a half hour and lasts for 24 for complete flea removal.  I was able to get that into his mouth (with a can of Tuna as a chaser of course) and then not even 10 minutes later I brought him to the vet because they scheduled the appointment ‘immediately’ (for some unknown freaking reason) and they did a complete work up on him, he was perfectly clean (minus the fleas), his bloodwork came back normal and he had no medical issues at all. He got his nails clipped and a much needed bath (he’s so much softer now!), and we were informed that he’s actually about 2 years old, he’s not the Kitten we thought he was. So…he was brought home and now he’s a member of the family.

I kept him in the bathroom initially, he does still have a few fleas coming off of him but thankfully they’ve been medicated with the Capstar so of course it’ll clear him right up. The bath at the vets office certainly helped quite a bit, I’m confident I would have seen many, many more floating around in the bathroom if they didn’t bathe him for me.

Karen and I (after getting him situated in the bathroom) left for Walmart to pick up the necessary supplies. We needed a second litter box, and food, and the usual “I’ve got a new cat” shopping spree. Two hours later I returned home with a crap load of stuff and after getting everything situated we decided it was time to introduce him to the rest of the house. Knowing that Bella was OK with him we knew it was just the little girl (Meow-Meow) that was going to be the problem.  She didn’t like him AT ALL, and normally for me that means OK, we’ll keep him in the bedroom and then slowly re-introduce them to each other.  The problem now is Sean is having a horrible allergy attack and putting the cat in our bedroom is counter productive to get his allergies to calm down. I’ll be throwing a Zyrtec down his throat later this evening when it’s bedtime for him.

Right now, however, the little one is in the bedroom with Karen (where she usually sleeps anyway), and then the little guy is hanging out in my recliner while Bella snores away behind me. Sean is down the hall sneezing away (poor guy).

We’ve named him Smokey, supposedly he was “Macey” to whoever actually found him first, but he doesn’t look like a “macey” and since he’s mine I can change it whatever freaking name I want.  More than likely I’ll wind up continuing to call him “fat boy” anyway lol. Who knows what’ll happen…

I do know that I haven’t had anything to eat today AND I’ve only had one cup of coffee, so if I’m gonna put in about 8 hours of work tonight (somehow) I’m gonna have to start brewing that cup right away or I’ll never be able to meet my deadlines.

Busy…busy bee…

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

Life hasn’t stopped in the past few weeks, I’m honestly surprised I have an ounce of downtime to even sit here and blog but I’m doing it, and the only way to get through it will be numbers…

#1 – A new pet…
While outside for my usual 4am smoke break I couldn’t help but hear excessive meowing coming from the lawn across the street. I believed it to be either a cat in heat, or one about to give birth. So, of course, you could imagine my surprise when there was all of a sudden a little face coming out from under my car begging for attention. Me, being an animal lover by default (one of my weaknesses), I figured she’s super tiny, more than likely a kitten and very thin so she’s got to be hungry. So I threw some of Bella’s food at her – she scoffed it and kind of went away but was lingering because she was clearly feeling us out (Sean and I were both outside at this point).  She lingered so much to the point that she wound up walking around on the deck while we were sitting there.  For an animal this social there was no way in hell she was a ferral cat because if they aren’t socialized within the first 2 months of birth they typically will never like people. Obviously someone was caring for this little thing in the past but lord knows where that owner is now (it’s been 3 weeks, and to date there’s been no one looking for her).  After she hopped up in my lap I instantly knew that this had to be someones cat, even if they were only feeding her outside, she absolutely had to be someones cat.  So all of us (Karen, Sean and myself) continued to check on her during the course of the next few days. She was easy to find, she never left the porch.  Karen and I brought her to the vet where she was treated with frontline and given a distemper. The vet confirmed my thought of her being between 6 and 12 months old, she’s way too tiny to not be a kitten – no matter how malnourished she potentially was.  We kept her, regardless of the fact that Sean’s allergic to her and she was scared shitless of Bella (bull in china shop that dog is, I swear).  We got her all setup in Karen’s room, she’s been overloaded with toys and the luxury of sleeping in a super fluffy King bed with Karen (who has a feather topper on it so it’s extra damn fluffy, like sleeping on a cloud).  There’s no way in hell this cat’s going anywhere, she’s too comfortable… even though none of us are…

Why?

#2 – FUCKING FLEAS
This cats infested with fleas, well – was.  Her time spent on the deck was enough for a few of them to jump off of her and go under the house and then I’ve been playing exterminator for the past three weeks.  My legs are bitten to crap from mosquitos because I was out on the deck every single day scrubbing it down with borax, bleach, dawn (which supposedly kills them) and ammonia.  Thank goodness I was outside considering I was technically making mustard gas just to get rid of the damn bugs.  Nothing I was doing was working and we couldn’t get the exterminator to the house thanks to the absolutely dreadful weather we’ve been having.  Thankfully I did start to get things under control, and damn do we have the cleanest deck in the complex.  Mother Nature, instead of working against us (in numerous different ways) decided to work in our favor this past week and on Friday the exterminator came in and sprayed down the whole exterior of the house. For two days I didn’t see a single damn bug, and they had plenty of opportunity to pop back up. THANK GOD FOR EXTERMINATORS!  The inside of the house was treated a week and a half prior to them treating the outside. The first guy showed up on a day when it was pouring and there was a moat around the house, but he got through it and got us started on killing everything off inside of the house.  It didn’t 100% do the trick because there was still the massive infestation outside. So thankfully with the second coat on the carpet, and the coat put on the exterior of the house and the whole perimeter of the property – we’re good to go… just a bit itchy from all of the bites but at least I know they’re gone!

#3 – WORK SUCKS
I’ve been non-fucking-stop with the tight deadlines. My eyes are burning from staring at the screen all day and each deadline is getting tighter than the last. The thing that kills me, and never ceases to amaze me… Clients will take 3-4 days to get back to you and then decide they want something done in 24-hours or they won’t pay for it. Listen up dickwads… your lack of ability to read your email instead of sexting with your wife/girlfriend would probably make ME less bitchy when you do ask for something… just saying.

#4 – Travel, Travel, Travel
I feel like for the past year I’ve spent more time in my car than I have anywhere else.  While this might not seem odd, for someone who works from-home… it kind of us. Either I’m up in Baltimore, or just over the MD border on Delmarva or up on Long Island… I feel like it just doesn’t stop and I should always be prepared for a long ass car ride. The most recent one was yesterday, Sean and I are up in NY for my father and sister’s birthdays this week.  We’re rushing back on the 30th so I can get Bella to the groomer on the 2nd, and hopefully have enough time to completely clean up the house for the 4th when our friend Colin is coming down to stay with us until the 9th. And yes, there are days in between but this isn’t like driving an hour out east to visit family like we used to do. It’s a 4.5 hour car ride and when you’re dealing with traffic that number has the ability to be doubled at any given time.  Case and point – driving up here yesterday took us over 6 hours. Why? We had a nice storm following us up and major construction on the NJ Turnpike so of course getting to Long Island in a timely manor was completely thrown out the window. To make matters worse, the poor dog is in desperate need of a grooming and it was a super muggy day so it took forever for the car to properly cool off so she could be comfortable.  I felt so bad for the poor thing, she must have had a full 20 oz. bottle of water just for the ride up – she never drinks that much but could not stop panting, and even though we’re in a relatively cool house now (being maintained at 68*) she’s still panting.  I can’t wait to get her shaved.

#5 – Heat Wave…
The official first major heat-wave of the NY season (to my knowledge) is starting tomorrow. Of course I’m extremely grateful that Colin helped me to recharge the AC in the car tonight because the amount of time it takes for the damn car to cool off was pissing me off to no end.  It should not take an hour before I’m comfortable in the car when the AC is running at full blast.  It does eventually get cold, 6 hours in the car yesterday my toes were turning purple because we were absolutely frozen trying to get the dog to cool off. So you could imagine my surprise when I went into the car just after he finished with the booster and it was already cold. THANK GOD FOR COLIN!  I could not have managed getting around while I was up here without that AC being taken care of.  NO WAY IN HELL.

#6 – The week ahead..
I know off the bat that there’s two major deadlines to complete, and to top that off I’ve tacked 3 deadlines onto it that are a little more on the tricky side but at least I’ve got help.  The two major ones are under NDA with the usual boss so I can’t discuss those, but the 3 smaller ones are two personal deadlines and one kind of big deal for me.  The personal ones are knu and agndesigns. I know I talk about that all the time but I’ve finally been getting off of my ass and doing something about it.  Adam, my bestie from the Westie, has created a base theme for me utilizing a few colors that I threw at him and I finally got around to coding it so that should be up on k.nu within the next week or so.  He also created a theme for AGnDesigns for me as well based off of a few themes I fell in love with but couldn’t quite figure out how to place the sections on the page without it looking completely off balance. He took care of both of them for me and I can’t help but thank him for it.

He’s part of my “Help”, we’ve partnered up and he handles the Photoshop stuff and I code everything.  Case and point would be his domain, rockchild.net, he came up with the concept – I made it work. jQuery is in every nook and cranny of that site but it made it flashy and that’s what he was going for.  He throws a few projects my way whenever they require coding – I would love to throw him design based stuff because he can get it done so much faster but when you’re under contract it’s hard to pass things off to someone else when you know you’re the one who’s supposed to be logging the hours and need to have the ability to answer every single question on the fly at any point of the day.

The other help, which is connected to the last project, is actually my Mom.  I’ll be building the Fire Dept. website over the next few days and she’s comfortable enough playing around with just about anything you throw at her so she’s in the process of getting her bearings on WordPress as she’ll be responsible for all of the content that goes up on the site.  I’ve been able to come up with a fairly awesome template for them, jQuery up the ass, all kinds of galleries, custom post types, advanced custom fields, and fancy templates for the mailing lists that will be built into the site.  A lot of people don’t realize how advanced you can get with WordPress. It’s not just a blog, or standard CMS anymore – the possibilities really are endless.  Case and point would more than likely be Dover Downs, that site is 100% powered by WordPress.  Not many people believe me when I say it… but take a look at the source code – you’d be surprised.

In any event, it’s knocking on 1am which (oddly enough) is about two hours past my bedtime. My schedule has completely switched by 12 hours. Usually I was going to bed at 10am but now I’m ready to pass out by 10pm. I’m up by 8am (at the latest) and working all day. The plus side is I’ll be able to get myself to the beach more often this summer, I only live 2 freaking miles from it after all… and my pale ass is in desperate need of a tan.  My arms are nice and dark, but my legs (no matter what I do) are still pale as hell.  I always say that my legs are Irish and my arms are Italian, I’m typically burnt on the bottom and as dark as one of those Jersey Shore fuckers (without the Orange tint, obviously).

Really nice weekend…

Monday, March 4th, 2013

Being 4 hours away from everything I’ve ever known has started to take it’s toll on me.  I miss my family, I miss my friends, and I’m always reminded of the friends I’ve lost over the years, especially in March being as this is when I lost two of the most important ones.  I’ll mope around quite a bit and it’s just a funk that I can’t seem to get myself out of.  But then, there’s that ray of light when you realize that you have one of the best of friends that anyone could ever ask for.

Colin and I met in middle school and maintained a friendship for 15 years, there were times when we didn’t speak to each other for years at a time but that bond has always been there.  That bond grew much stronger after Lucy passed away a few years ago, and since that point we’ve been a regular part of each others lives.  To make things even better, he and Sean are pretty much BFFs.  It’s to the point with them that I consider it more of a bromance than good friends, but either way the three of us are always happy spending time together and you can imagine my surprise when Colin says “I’m coming to DE for a few days”.  He did that this past weekend and I have to say, it’s gotten me out of my funk.

See, Colin is one of those guys that can be counted on no matter what the situation.  He’s always just a phone call away and will do just about any and everything for you.  Him coming down here for us proves that no only is he missing the crap out of us the way we miss him, but that he’s ideally one of the best friends you could ask for.

He got here on Friday night, we had a nice meal/trivia night over at Buffalo Wild Wings. He and Sean were on their XBOXs the rest of the night because it was pushing after Midnight by the time we got back to the house so of course it was a little too late to really venture out into the town being as we knew there was a pending tattoo appointment the following day for him.  Saturday was spent at Applebee’s, two tattoo shops, the arcade (with a super hyper cashier that was all over Colin) and Dover Downs because it was time to teach the guy how to use a slot machine lol.  He was enjoying himself until the Casino had taken the money he walked in there with but it’s the luck of the draw.  Sean did well, he managed to leave with the same amount of money he walked in with and that’s good enough for him.  I lost $100, but I can’t argue because I enjoyed my time there and that’s what counts.  We also hadn’t been up to a Casino in almost a year so the itch was there and all it took was telling Sean he could walk around Best Buy as the stipulation to even stepping foot in the Casino.

Sunday afternoon was spent with a quick lunch at home (He’s a sucker for my Mac & Cheese) and some video game play for the two guys.  I, for some reason, completely passed out after he left around 3:30 and then saw that it was after Midnight on the clock – my system has pretty much been messed up since.  I did get another couple of hours between 4am and 8am (tossing and turning, but I’m sure there was a substantial sleep in there somewhere), so at least I’m back on the normal schedule.  I’ve managed to completely flip mine, I’m no longer waking up at 5pm and completely wasting the day by only working at night. It also helps to be up early considering Bella’s going in for a grooming tomorrow morning and she needs to be dropped off by 9am.

So yea, while we didn’t really do a lot while he was down here we still all got to spend some quality time together that’s given me a boost of energy to get me out of my funk.

You really can’t ask for a better friend, and I honestly think this is the first time I’ve ever referred to him as a “Friend”, to us he’s more “Family” than anything.

It’s all coming to an end…

Wednesday, December 26th, 2012

With the Holiday’s winding down, I’m finally able to wind down long enough to actually knock out a post. I’ve pretty much been running around like a chicken with my head cut off since Thanksgiving. Work, as I noted previously, is coming in waves, but at the same time the tide hasn’t really gone out. It’s not the luxury of “Ok, I can take some time on this and then bounce back to this.” it’s been “Do it now, and faster!”

@AGnDesigns - Instagram @AGnDesigns - InstagramWhile that can get a little annoying, it also worked to our benefit this year.  All family members were well taken care of for Christmas, Sean and I did spend quite a bit of money on ourselves but it was on things that we both wanted (for a while) and desperately needed.  We know the difference between Wants and Needs – unlike anyone under the age of 16 these days.  We both were in desperate need of new desks.  I had my Mac sitting on a Rubbermaid folding table and being as the 27-inch iMac (2011) weighs about 40 pounds, it was starting to sink down in the middle. To avoid it completely caving in, we went out and got me a new desk.  It’s a super nice one, with plenty of storage and it’s even a little bigger than the previous folding table so I actually got the chance to organize things where I can still completely function without any issues at all. Obviously after Sean spent 7 hours putting this thing together (one warped piece was throwing EVERYTHING off) he gladly took a little nap.  I decorated the drawers with dollar store shelf liner so that they can list a super long time without getting destroyed. There’s more than enough room for the work phone so my boss can stay on my butt too heh. I had it across the room next to the TV because we didn’t have a long enough Ethernet chord, but that was taken care of with the addition of a ZyXEL wireless switch that now sits behind my monitor. It supposedly boosts the Wifi in the house, but turns the Wifi into an actual plugged in connection as well, so I’ve got the phone plugged into it and if I needed to I could plug a printer in to it. It was actually strong enough of a feed to handle Sean’s XBOX 360 for a few weeks as well, so obviously it works how it’s supposed to.

@leprakhauns - InstagramSean, after my desk was put together, began increasingly becoming annoyed with his desk. After drilling into him that he spends way too much time at his desk and needs a new one…. we headed back to Staples a little over a week later (this past weekend actually) to pick up a new desk for him.  The one he’s been using for years was a typical students desk with the metal legs, the pull-out keyboard and the thin table top. One you’d see in college students dorm, basically.  So it was creaking like all holy hell and we wound up replacing that one as well.  He found a nice wide desk that he was in love with, but it unfortunately was not going to fit in the room so he went with one that was closer to size (in comparison to mine).  He’s in love with it as well.  It’s very nice dark wood with a nice sturdy base, some drawers – finito.

While picking up his new desk we browsed around the store a little bit, and came across the Google Nexus 10″ – Android Tablet.  Of course I was instantly in love, this thing is more powerful than the Droid 4’s that we upgraded to in October.  The $500 price tag instantly turned this item into a “Want”. We’ve been bouncing back and forth about Tablet’s for a little while now.  Sean really wanted to see what the new Microsoft Surface was about, I personally had no interest in it at all being as I’m as anti-Windows as you can possibly get these days.  Upgrading to Mac has spoiled me rotten.  I don’t have to deal with excessive upgrades, daily virus/malware scans and the blue screen of death that Microsoft claims to have gotten rid of , but I’ve seen it on both Windows 7 AND 8 because it’s very easy – when you know what you’re doing – to trigger everything Microsoft claims doesn’t exist.

@AGnDesigns - InstagramEither way, we both were playing with the Tablet for a little while and found out when browsing through the Settings to get all of the stats that it was now possible (with Android – Ice Cream) to have multiple users.  This sparked our interest almost instantly, and we both looked at eachother and I was like “I want”, he said “Go get it” (cause he’s fricken awesome) and while I was pulling the car around (cause he was picking up his desk the same day) he paid for both. Turned into an expensive shopping trip on our parts, but we walked out of there with a want, and a need.

 

@AGnDesigns - InstagramWhile he was in the Bedroom for a few hours setting up his new desk, I was prepping the house for Christmas.  I did more baking in the past few days than I ever thought possible. Everything from cookies, to breads, to brownies – you name it, I probably baked it. I went all out for Christmas this year, because I actually had more room to do it. I know that sounds a little weird but it’s true. A huge living room and a big footprint in reference to the front end of the house, things just kind of happened.  The baking was really just phase two, we’d spent quite some time decorating prior to my even pulling the flour out of the cabinet.  So the tree was decorated, the bulk of the outdoors was draped in white lights and the rest of the house had random little touches here and there.  Thankfully, minus today, there was really no wet weather going on outside so my garland didn’t get all mucky and was nice and clean for Christmas. I was also really happy with the tree in the living room. With the combination of Karen’s ornaments and mine everything kind of came together that worked out really nicely.

Traditionally, families open their gifts on Christmas Day. Around here? Christmas Eve. I think it’s a tradition based on impatience but to each their own. Sean cleaned up this year, outside of the gifts purchased for ourselves of course. New shirts, plenty of toys and gadgets to keep him entertained and the guitar I bought him. I know I usually complain to him about how much noise he can make on his own (without an accessory) but at the same time we’ve both had a pretty rough year, him more than I, and it was something I know he always wanted. So I got him a nice stand for it, and a DVD so he can learn how to play and we’ll go from there.

@leprakhauns - InstagramI also got him some new Happy Feet, this is a brand that we were in love with long before Snooki put it on MTV. I’ve always had a pair, and so has he and his were worn to the point that his toes were going to start popping through the bottom. Knowing how comfy they are I changed it up a little bit and got him the “All Around” ones, they look like real sneakers and there’s about an inch-thick rubber sole on the bottom of them. They’re better than my usual outdoor slippers so of course I’ll have to pick up a pair for myself in the future but for now this was all about him and that’s what he got. So that was one pair, and instead of getting him the standard color variations I decided to take a look under the “Animals” section and got him the most ridiculous ones I could find – and his favorite animal – the Penguins. Watching him walk around in these is more amusing than the slippers themselves, but they bring a smile to just about everyone’s face so it was more than worth it.

I cleaned up pretty well myself. Karen got me the “In-Styler” which is a hair straighter I’ve always wanted. I’ve used a friends before and it was probably the fastest way to straighten my hair that I’ve ever used. Some people have mixed feelings on it, others use it totally wrong and wonder how their hair gets wrapped up in it. As long as you read the directions it works out exactly as it’s supposed to, so I’m bringing it up to NY with me while Sean and I head up there for New Years, and after I get a much needed hair cut (via Mom) and dyed (via my sister), I’ll be using it to style my hair. Mom and I are also hitting up the nail salon, I’m long overdue for a manicure AND I desperately need my eyebrows done it’s been almost six months and I just can’t fricken take it anymore.

As usual, I bought myself a few articles of clothing while I was doing some shopping for other family members and had Sean wrap them for me. There was a jacket at Old Navy that I’ve wanted for a while, and I was in need of new yoga-pants so I threw those into the shopping cart as well. He wrapped everything for me, knowing that he was supposed to actually buy the items for me for my Birthday back in October but never did (I oddly got a Christmas tree instead), so he switched Holiday’s but kept the wrapping paper basically lol.

@agndesigns - InstagramThe thing I was surprised about, however, was the ViewSonic 24-inch Monitor that was under the tree. I’ve been using a 17-inch monitor as my “Email Screen” for the past couple of months and it was working out pretty well for me. I kept my email completely on that window and when I was actually in Photoshop or Dreamweaver I would just load project free TV and watch television right on the desk, no complaints at all. So you can imagine my surprise when Sean upgraded me to a much larger screen. This was one of those items that wasn’t on my wants, or my needs – which then turns into a complete and total surprise. And that wraps up Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day was a completely different story – I was non stop in the kitchen. I was cooking/cleaning for a good 8 hours yesterday. I fired up the crock pots early in the day to get the sauce going, the meat balls and sausage wound up in the pot a few hours later and from there it was just the matter of getting the pasta in the water so I could get everything into the oven. I even managed to get a spiral ham in the oven with everything else going on. As soon as dinner was done, I had a quick cig and was back in the kitchen to clean everything up and start baking the brownies. Why? Cause for the most part the cookies from Friday were already gone and the ones that remained were a little on the hard side. I figured that some time of dessert was required on Christmas and I went the double thick double fudge brownie route – more than half of them are gone which – to any cook – damn good sign.

Then Wednesday comes…..

Today was supposed to be a day of packing, working and getting ready to get out of here bright and early tomorrow morning for the long drive up to New York to see friends and my family. Of course that hasn’t been the case at all. Even though I woke up relatively early, I’ve been doing other things (not sure what) but nothing that I had originally set out to do. I do know that a load of dishes was done, all of the laundry was folded but nothing was put into the suit case at all. I also needed to get about 8 or-so hours of Work completed because we’re losing an entire day tomorrow to the drive up to New York and lord only knows what kind of a drive that’s going to be considering the storm sitting over the Northeast right now. Thankfully, in southern Delaware, it’s just rain but unfortunately it’s A LOT of rain and the complex is completely flooded. This was heaps of fun when it came to walking the dog. I don’t mind the drizzle, that wasn’t the problem, the excessive amounts of water just sitting because the complex has absolutely NO proper drainage systems is 4 inches of just mud and twigs to walk through. Poor Bella wound up taking a swim on multiple occasions tonight just because we completely misjudged the depth of the puddles we were going in to. I also found out that my winter boots are absolutely NOT water proof. As soon as I was in up to my ankle, my foot was soaked and of course they’re too big for me so they were rubbing weird and my sock wound up slipping down – needless to say it was not a good experience for anyone involved and Bella only really went to the potty twice (usually she goes about 4 times) but she still wound up having to be thrown into the sink for a nice bath to get her color back to white, she’d turned into a muddy brown fur ball for the bulk of the walk, the puddles did help but it just darkened everything and I wanted her to be nice and clean for Grandpa tomorrow.

We’re hoping to leave here before noon, now no ones gifts are wrapped and I haven’t done any packing but that’s completely the plan for the morning so that we can get up there in a decent amount of time and have the time to stop somewhere on the turnpike to pick up a roast beef sandwich from one of the Roy Rogers along the way for my father because that’s his one and only request for my time in New Jersey on the way to Long Island. I’m also needing to make a stop while we’re down here to pick up some cigs (for peoples xmas gifts) and some fudge from Candy Kitchen as I promised other family members that I would.

I can honestly say… there’s no way in hell we’re getting out of here by noon…that’s for damn sure.

We’re only going to be up in NY for about a week. Sean’s father is staying down here with his mother while we’re up there, she’s got 2 Chemo treatments this week and then unfortunately she’s going to lose a week to sickness because she’s not getting the third day of extra fluids because they supposedly don’t do that on Saturdays around here, and she didn’t go in today – for whatever reason – to start the scheduled 3-day cycle. So now she’s going to lose a day and I just hope that George keeps pushing large glasses of water onto her so that she can stay hydrated enough to get through the nausea that’s going to completely consume her for the next week.

We’re ringing in the New Year and NY and I personally couldn’t be happier. Being down here for the last six months I’ve really missed my friends and family and just can’t wait to get home. Even if that means I’m not sleeping tonight just so we can get out of here tomorrow – I’ll do whatever it takes.

I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to get into my Dashboard for a while since the work is still piling up and this is a ‘mini vacation’ for me, so I’m wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year! I hope 2013 is a hell of a lot better than 2012… at least we won’t have to deal with all of the Mayan Calendar bullshit anymore, heh.

Let the chaos begin…

Saturday, December 1st, 2012

I’m not someone who’s easily overwhelmed by ANYTHING. The past hour, however, has set my head into such a spin that I feel like I’m dealing with some type of internal tornado.

I’ve been working for a design firm in Manhattan for quite some time now, Sean actually was the one to get me the job with one of the company owners to work on one of their websites and from there was bounced to the other owner who’s the #1 on the Web department. It’s been steady on-going work, primarily in WordPress and after the last year and a half I’m utilizing areas of WordPress that I didn’t even think existed in this world. The way things are morphed and hacked (without physically touching the core files) blows my fricken mind. I don’t think I’ve done one site that didn’t require heavily modified template files to cater to custom posts and custom fields. The repeater field on Advanced Custom Fields just about made my head explode when I was finally able to figure out the ins and outs of it.

All that aside, obviously I’ve been able to keep myself busy with a lot of things to do, the thing that’s kicking my ass right now is the fact that there’s 4 sites that basically need to be done by Wednesday (just for this company) and I have no idea how to wrap my head around the amount of work that needs to be accomplished. I’m not against working a 16-20 hour day in order to get everything done, don’t get me wrong, but the issue now is the fact that I’m needing to figure out how to do this while still sitting in the cancer center on Monday and Tuesday for Karen’s chemo. She did OK for the first cycle (3 weeks ago), she had the typical side effects of nausea, headaches, vomiting but it subsided after a few days and she’s been pretty comfortable since. The woman is eating her weight in food on a daily basis and her newest addiction is potatoes and corn because she’s carbo-loading like a best thanks to the Steroids. Her recent discussion with her doctor, and the fact that she had a very strange reaction with the first cycle (almost immediately) now has her on the path to receiving a different type of Chemo that needs to be administered over the course of two days instead of the one. So on Monday morning and Tuesday morning someone needs to accompany her to the cancer center so she’s got someone with her for the 5 or so hours it takes to get her treatment. Now, if things were a little slower it wouldn’t be an issue at all but having such tight deadlines for four massive sites… I don’t know how I’m going to be able to accomplish it all.

I just really hope that the cancer center doesn’t have restrictions on their WiFi. I don’t mind switching back over to my laptop to get in a few hours of work while I’m there, but the last time I tried to work in a hospital I was quickly shut down because they don’t allow uploading on their network, and it’s not exactly possible to connect to FTP when that’s the case. Sean and I had a shit-ton of bad luck when we were at Johns Hopkins (main hospital for 5 days back in July) because of the restrictions, and we didn’t actually have a hotel room to go back to until 2 1/2 days after we got up to Baltimore so we lost a lot of time on our punch cards in order to deal with everything going on there. We didn’t try it while Karen was in Hopkins (Bayview – for two weeks in September) because we bounced back and forth from the hospital to the hotel multiple times a day and were able to utilize the wifi at the hotel to get everything accomplished.

Now, the Tunnel Center (where she’s getting her Chemo) is local (literally four blocks away) but this doesn’t mean that I’ll have any kind of luck connecting to a network that allows some type of uploading based solely on the fact that there’s lord knows how many offices in this building and they’re all competing with the download time for BeeBee medicals internal file-sharing system that stretches amongst their entire network, including the imaging center right next door.

I guess I’ll just need to figure out everything when it happens, I can only hope that they’re super dumb (compared to Hopkins) and don’t have that kind of restriction because everyone in Delaware is a hell of a lot more trusting than they are in Baltimore.

My goal for tonight is to finish the edits on Site #1, so I can then get a few hours of sleep (hopefully at least 4) and then wake up to complete the remainder of Site #1 being as all of the PSD’s haven’t been moved into WordPress yet. My day tomorrow is completely booked worked wise, but at the same time I still have A LOT of cooking to do. I’m starting the crockpot around 11am, throwing in the meatballs/sausage around 1pm so they can cook for 6 or so hours to be done for dinner. I still have chicken to make before it goes bad, and quite a bit of baking to do because I was very unhappy with the bakery in the supermarket tonight. So with everything else going on I still have to make Fudge, White Chocolate Chip and Regular Chocolate Chip cookies, PLUS a Banana Nut Bread because, as I said, Karen is carbo-loading but I still need to figure out how to sneak some kind of fruits/veggies into her that aren’t just potatoes cause that’s way too much starch.

I just hope that the eggs I bought two weeks ago didn’t go bad already, and I really hope that we have butter in the house because I was stupid and didn’t check that when Sean and I went grocery shopping tonight. Crap I just remembered I need oil. I guess while I’m waking up with my first cup of coffee I’ll be dodging through the supermarket to pick up everything just to get back here in time to start the rest of my day.

Lord help me, even Music won’t calm this nerve down.

Time to get back to work so I can go to sleep.

I’m a Delaware Resident…again.

Friday, October 12th, 2012

As previously (and briefly noted), things haven’t been going too well medically for Karen (Sean’s Mom).   The upper lobe couldn’t survive on its own and she wound up having to go in for the section surgery to have it removed.  She’s fully lost her left lung.  Originally we were all set to believe that this was a Carcinoid tumor and was something that could be removed and wouldn’t require anything further than the healing time from the surgery.  Unfortunately… it’s not the kind of cancer we were all originally informed of.  Karen is in stage 3 lung cancer, it was found in the lymph nodes and at this point in time the only option for her survival is to begin Chemo.  The doctors want to wait until she’s reached the 6-12 weeks recovery mark.  They’re factoring in that she went in for two major surgeries 8 days apart, also factored in that she had a heart episode after each surgery.  The first one being a possible heart attack that they’re referring to as an “Episode” (crock of shit there Hopkins, crock of shit).  The second episode (following the second surgery) was a complete fuck-up by an ICU tech where she was basically overdosed on a pain killer and wound up having her heart rate at a dangerously low level.  The biggest thing to piss me off about this second “episode” (as they’re calling it) is the fact that NO ONE was called to say that she was flat-lining. The secretary is sitting there on Facebook making plans for the night – what the fuck else do you have to do??!?!!?

So we spent a total 12 days in Baltimore, basically living at the Best Western on o’Donnel Street (They are more than accommodating to Hopkins patients/families in case you’d ever need it! They truly go above and beyond expectations.)  We were informed by her doctor that she was going to be released earlier than expected so Sean and I pretty much high-tailed it out of Baltimore to get the house prepped for her arrival home.  We gutted the living room, cleared paths for her to get around, and I scrubbed/sanitized the bathroom like it’s never been scrubbed before.  We when loaded ourselves into the car and drove up to NY (the following afternoon) so that we could begin the daunting task of packing up all of our clothes Bella (who’d been in NY for almost 3 months without us), and necessary belongings to head back down to DE indefinitely. We hopped back into the car the following afternoon and met Karen and George (Sean’s father), at the house.   So figure in the course of 2 1/2 days – we were on the road for 16 hours.

We’re now slowly settling into life back in Delaware.  Originally I had everything setup in the corner of the living room but it’s proving difficult to concentrate when there’s constant activity in and out of the living room and the house itself.  There’s been absolutely no smoking in the house for the past two months and I’ve done everything I can to try to void/mask the smell but there are still some areas that it’s just so soaked into I’m unsure how to go about clearing it out anyway.  The activity increase is the fact that the dog is constantly running around the house finding bones that she forgot she hid 10 minutes before (attention span of a damn gold fish), plus there’s George and I going in and out for cigs (he more than me, but I’m no stranger to my seat on the porch either).  Plus it doesn’t help that when you get a whiff of it, you wind up wanting one yourself. SO, to solve all problems, we’ve reorganized the spare bedroom and I went out and purchased a $37 folding table from Kmart that I’m now using as a desk.  It’s larger than the table I was previously setup on and the table itself is a lot more sturdy so it makes me feel better about having a 40lb iMac permanently resting on it.

My sleep schedule was under control for a little while, but now I’m finding myself having trouble accomplishing just about everything work related.  I’m up earlier in the day (which is nice, I enjoy the sunlight for a change), but I’m back and forth running errands and going to doctors appointments.  We actually just got back from Baltimore not too long ago for a post-up follow up.  It was the “Let’s discuss our course of action” day with the Oncologist.  From there it lead to blood work and a scan.  Woke up at 6am, was out of the house by 7am, home by 4pm and now (after reorganizing and dealing with a horrible headache), I’ve finally be able to sit down and get something accomplished – Blogging.  I’m supposed to be working.  I just needed to vent and having the same conversation with people inside the house just wasn’t doing it for me.  I need to talk to the World and we all know that Twitter limits your character count… I’m already on 860 words hah.

So where do we go from here?  Sean and I have basically taken over the house.  It’s not that we wanted to, by any means, we just had no real choice in the matter – for our own conscience and moral well-being.  Karen is heavily medicated to deal with the pain, she has no left lung, she’s slowly losing her eyesight and she’s dealing with high blood pressure.  She’s only fricken 54 years old, she’s not someone who’s in her 90’s where this was a “Welp, you lived a good life, right?” situation.  She should be able to go on at least another 15-20 years!  Every time I’ve pictured my life 10-20-30 years from now, she was in the bulk of the pictures.  Why? Because she’s a second Mom, and a woman I hold dear to my heart.  Yes, like any ‘mother-in-law’ she’s a pain in my ass, but I wouldn’t change a thing because regardless of the quirks (that we both have) we get along really well.  Not many people can say that.  There’s always this ‘aura’ of the Demon mother-in-law… I personally don’t believe it and Karen’s living proof of that.

With our moving in we’ve done more than taken over the house, obviously.  We’ve been working our asses off to get all of her debt paid off.  Thankfully she doesn’t have any credit cards, so it’s really utilities/cable that we’re taking care of but she had disconnect notices for just about everything.  She did have a job prior to all of this crap going on, but she was spending her entire paycheck to put gas in the car to get to work when you crunch the numbers.  She worked 25 miles away and drives a 2006 Dodge Caravan.  It’s a gas guzzler in its own right.  PLUS, when we started with the frequent trips to Baltimore it was more gas in the tank and tolls, but less coming into the account because she obviously wasn’t able to go to work when she was 3 hours away in a different state.

So we added a good 1,000 a month to our outgoing expenses.  Thankfully by changing the billing address with Verizon our cellphones dropped like $20, that puts money back in our pocket.  We’d like to drop the car insurance down but we’re having some trouble (with the stacks of our paperwork) locating the loan information for the truck and Delaware makes you pay sales tax on a car while there’s a lein on it.  I find that absurd considering the sales tax in NY is a hell of a lot higher than DE will ever be.  I bought the truck on Long Island, we’re on the top 10 highest counties in America for crying out loud.  In order to get everything shifted down here it’s going to cost either 10% of the car, or 10% of what’s left on the loan (not sure which, honestly), but based on the balance left on the loan and the Blue Book – we’re screwed for about $1,200. So obviously the priority (before attempting to save $100 a month) we’re going to insure we’re doing it for the cost of registration – not 10% of the truck.

So yea, I didn’t want to sit here for a half hour but I couldn’t really stop myself from typing so I went with it.  Minus the medical stuff, I guess we’re all doing OK. Mentally we’re fucked but that’s because we’ve been hit with news that no one wants to hear.  It’s scared me to the point that I’m actually working on quitting smoking all together.  I’ve been a pack-a-day smoker for at least 10 years and the time has come to put it down and walk away.  I’ve got myself a pile if Mint Nicorette that I’ve been dabbing into whenever the urge is there, the training factor is whenever I’m in the car with Karen because we’re obviously not smoking anywhere near her.  So the 3+ hour car rides are gradually helping me to increase my self-control.  Since I’m technically on “Step 1”, I’m allowed one piece per hour.  I’m actually content with one piece for the entire ride.  Which is odd considering when we’re driving up (and smoking), I’m doing one every 20 minutes or so.

Sean’s taking things as best as he can… he’s not one to voice personal matters (even to me) very often so when he brings something up we discuss it and move on.  He’d prefer to be inside of his own head for things and while that’s typically very damaging to ones psyche, he actually does well with it.  He’s a special case with his mom though, she really was the primary while he was growing up (her and his Grandmother, who passed from the exact same Cancer and other issues that Karen’s experiencing – it’s scary to read her Autopsy report and compare it to Karen’s current charts, let me tell you).   He loves his father, don’t get me wrong, but there’s that “Mommy’s baby boy” type of bond there – so I think if something were to happen to her in the near future it would hit him pretty hard.  This is where we’re concerned for Chemo and the “5 year outlook” as the Oncologist described.

Either way, we’re back in Baltimore on November 6th for another follow-up appointment.  This time is for the talk of which method of Chemo are we going towards, the one that can be administered down here where she’s going once a week for sixteen weeks, or the new trial treatments that they’re doing in Hopkins where we’d be going up to Baltimore once every three weeks for upwards of a year based on the treatments themselves AND all of the follow-ups there after.  In the long run it would probably be cheaper to shut the house down in DE and rent an apartment in Baltimore for a year, honestly.  But we’re not taking that route, for all we know (knock on wood), they pulled out all of the infected Lymph Nodes and we’ll be able to say “Cancer Free” in the near future.  The reality of that is very slim, and obviously we’re not getting our hopes up.  Unfortunately this string of cancer is a death sentence…the question really is just how long is she going to be around?

Sean and I have a lot of plans… the biggest one being children.  Obviously I would love for her to be around to hopefully get a chance to help raise the little girl she always wanted.  Her and Sean are both only children, she stopped at a boy and then got herself a dog when Sean was old enough to no longer need as much attention.  I know she wanted a girl, she likes the hair/makeup/clothes thing – I don’t.  You’re lucky I even brush my hair before I throw it up into a messy bun anyway lol.  She’d be a good role model for that, and it would give her something to strive for.

I guess only time will tell.

Yup…

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

I have no interest in a really long detailed update, but need to vent.

We’re still not in New York. We’re also not in Delaware right now either.  We’re up in Baltimore in a hotel while Sean’s mom is sitting in the ICU at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She had her lower left lung removed. It was supposed to be a simple robotic surgery but it turned into her having to be cut open so a vein could be created to lead to her heart (causing them to have to stop her heart to attach said vein).  The 5 hour surgery turned into a 7-8 hour surgery where tensions were running high amongst just about everyone.  The next day she had an ‘episode’ that we’ve dubbed a panic attack but I (and a few doctors) believe it was a very mild heart attack.  Things were touchy for the first few days but she’s so heavily medicated to help with pain tolerance that she thankfully doesn’t remember very much. They had to give her a heavy blood thinner so a few of her tubes can’t be removed due to a heavy risk of bleeding – that instantly put a 7 day delay on recovery time.

The bad news we got today was the fact that the vein they created for her is too small (rightfully so, everything about her anatomy is too small) and there’s not enough bloodflow to the upper lobe and now she’s at a 50/50 chance of losing her entire left lung and having to go back in for another surgery, where they’ll have to stop her heart again to remove the vein they’d previously attached. My head is running a thousand miles a minute and even though I’m making it a point to stay awake to get some work done – all I want to do is curl into a ball and get some rest because I know that there’s a extremely long road ahead of us and I feel like Sean and I are going to need our strength more than she will just so we can mentally get through it.  She’s a tough lady but no matter how strong you are mentally – the physical will catch up to you.

We’re basically playing the next week by ear. She’s getting the Epidural tube taken out on Friday, by then the blood thinners given to her this past Saturday will have filtered themselves out of her system so she’s not at too high of a risk for bleeding out.  It’s not the same type of Epidural one would get if they were having a baby, this one is higher up on the back and targeted to her chest cavity for pain relief. I just think she needs to be heavily sedated for the next month (at least).  I saw her back today, I was avoiding it for a while but curiosity got the best of me. The poor thing is purple on her left side and the area where they cut her open just about killed me. I’ve seen stiches before but I’ve never seen anything like that. If they actually did need to go back in to remove the upper lobe I just see her being in three times as much pain as she’s already in.  If she goes to adjust herself in bed she’s just about screaming in pain.

It kills me when there’s nothing that you can physically do to help someone, and I think that’s pretty much how things are going to go for quite a few months during her recovery.  Almost makes me wish I was some kind of pill popping idiot, just so I’d have a stock of something to give to her so she’s numb for the recovery.

Still kickin’….

Monday, August 27th, 2012

I’ve wanted to sit down and blog for quite some time now, but things have been so hectic I just haven’t been able to get around to it. I remember there was a time when I’d be logged into WordPress all day just to post whatever popped into my head, this is probably why I was able to reach my max of over 150 posts in one month. Times have definetly changed, real live has trumped internet ‘life’ ten fold.

We’re still in Delaware. It’s been confirmed that Karen does have lung cancer, and it’s a very rare type of cancer that isn’t smoking based. She’s been back and forth to Baltimore (John’s Hopkins) to discuss every aspect of treatment. She was told, before all tests were final, that she’d need a lower lobectabmy in order to remove the tumor. She was hoping to be able to have a wedge taken out so that there was no major surgery involved, but she was informed today that she’s going to need the full lower lobectamy which means that a little more than a quarter of her lung will actually be removed. The way they’re going to do it is with a “VATS” type of surgery, instead of having to open up her chest and bend/cut her ribs they’ll go in through three small incisions on her side and slice the lower lobe, corterize the bleed and after deflating the lung they can bring it out through the holes. This means it’s invasive, but not as invasive as the alternative PLUS there will be less of a recovery time on her part as well. They claim she’ll only be in the hospital for 3 days and from there they want her up and moving around right after to begin rebuilding her lung function. So it’s going to be a long road ahead, but essentially the tumor should be completely removed and she will need no further treatments with Kemo or Radiation so that’s the upside.

As far as Work is concerned, things have been absolutely crazy. I don’t like having to constantly complain about it, but there hasn’t really been a day where I can say that there wasn’t a stack of things to complete. Right now I’m working on a major family farm/orchard located on Long Island, and I’ve unfortunately had to put a few clients on the backburner – which is nothing I enjoy doing because I hate to prolong things for longer than they need to. There’s some unhappy people and I’m stretched so thin I can’t even cater to it. Absolutely horrible in the business sense, let me tell you.

On top of everything else going on, my back is still completely shot. I’ve had a few days where it was OK, but from there things have just been a downward spiral. Every morning I’m waking up with more pain than the day before, and no matter what I do to try to ease the pain, things just get worse. I’ve found that the only way to maintain any ounce of comfort is to lay down for 15 minute intervals throughout the course of the day, some days its more frequently than others. Right now I’m fighting through the pain just to get this entry written, the sheer act of sitting in an upright position is putting so much pressure onto my sciatic nerve that I don’t even know how I’m not crying in pain. Sean just ran out to pick up dinner so I’m going to continue fighting through it until I can shift to the bedroom with the laptop and hopefully be able to get things done before the 10am deadline.

My sleep schedule is still completely fucked up. There have been some days when I’ve been up and going around 9am, and other days where I’m unconcious until 6pm. The biggest issue is the fact that I can’t get a restful sleep, I’m constantly moving and having random instances of a shooting pain going down my leg that feels as though I’m being struck by lightening. I know it has to do with the sciatic nerve, but would really like to know why the nerve is acting up so much to begin with.

I’m assuming, to a degree, that the bed we’re sleeping in has something to do with it. It was given to Karen by a friend who was redoing their home and it’s obviously just a guest bed but we’ve turned it into ‘our bed’ based soley on how long we’ve been here (2 months as of 8/29). We are heading home at some point in the next week to pick up some warmer clothes, the computers and Bella. I think we’re staying for a few days just to get everything in order, but then we’re back down here for the surgery, and from there we’re not sure as to how long we’re staying. The biggest point is to just be prepared.

It hasn’t been ‘work work work’ the entire time… Sean and I have taken a liking to heading down to Cape Henlopen Park at night to go fishing. We’ve gone just about once a week, got our licenses for down here so we can pretty much go whenever we please. We bought some poles and have a little tackle box and we just head down there with our chairs and if we catch something – great – if not oh well. We’re there for the ability to just clear our heads for a little while, and there are so many stars in the sky you can’t help but relax. No major ambient lights messing with the view, everything is peaceful and calm.

In any event, Sean just walked in the door. I’m starving, and in more pain than I really need to be. I think I’m going to eat some food and head to the bedroom so I can get some work done.

Gonna be a long night.

Malware and Masses BE GONE!!

Saturday, July 14th, 2012

I received a couple of emails informing me of Malware on the site, unfortunately with everything going on I wasn’t able to actually login to work on things more than just upgrading WordPress via my phone. Turns out the Malware was no where near as bad as some of the sites that I’ve been working on. One of the Malware hits was so severe I had to completely recode the website because every template file was infected and beyond repair. “Why not just upload your copy of the theme?” simple – I’m in Delaware – not New York and don’t have access to the original files. Redoing the entire site from scratch was the only way to go.

In reference to the attack here, however, the only effected file was index.php which is two lines of code pulling the blog header file from the WordPress directory. Once I went through all of the template files to confirm there was nothing else to worry about and did a fresh reinstall of the current WP version I now no longer need to worry about anything. I submitted my site through the Webmaster tools with Google so it stopped kicking the error back to me and hopefully there won’t be any problems moving forward. I don’t understand how it happens, but at this point all I can say is “Whatever, it’s gone now” and move along.

So, as I noted, we’re in Delaware. Typically it would be our usual work during the day and head down to the beach at night, being as that’s what we always did when we actually lived down here during the summer months. However, it’s been much different this time around and now instead of “Go to Beach” it’s “Catch the hell up!”.

Unfortunately Sean’s mom has been having medical issues and instead of going to any of the doctors down here (since they suck balls) we made the trip up to Baltimore to spend some time floating around the numerous departments in Johns Hopkins main hospital so she could actually get proper care. After having some chest pain, shortness of breath and elevated heart rate the choice to walk right into the E.R. was pretty much manditory. From there, she was admitted and wound up in the hospital for about 5 days (in total). We went up on a Friday, wound up waiting until very early Saturday morning before she actually made it into a room. I attempted to get some sleep in the car but it was during the middle of the heat wave and we were in a parking garage so that just didn’t happen. Sean wound up crashing in his mothers room a little after 7am and got a few hours of sleep while everyone was trying to make heads or tails of things.

After he woke up we decided to head back to Rehoboth because on top of needing to take a shower and get some proper sleep – we also needed to do some light laundry and get everything together for Sean’s mom due to the fact that none of us had any idea that she would be admitted to the hospital and had absolutely no clothes or any kind of ‘overnight’ supplies with us. We wound up driving two cars back up, which was not fun AT ALL being as we got stuck in the middle of a monsoon on Sunday night. It wound up turning the 2 1/2 hour trip into a 3 hour trip just because we had no choice but to pull over. If I can’t even see the tail lights of the car in front of me there’s absolutely no way in hell I’m going to keep moving. My choice for stopping was warrented, and confirmed when we got back on the road after things had let up and saw a pretty major accident on the south bound lane that was more than likely due to the lack of visability.

So Sean and I stayed at the Tremonth Plaza in Baltimore for a few nights. The hotel in its own right was really nice, the people were friendly and having the car locked away in a parking garage made me feel very safe knowing that nothing was going to randomly disappear. They offer a shuttle service to the Hopkins hospitals so that you don’t have to worry about navigating your way around Baltimore AND paying additional money for parking.  They offered parking for free at their facility, so that cut down on expenses quite a bit.  It also helped that they offer their rooms at a discounted rate if you’re family of someone who’s currently admitted.

After two nights in the hotel, and countless hours floating around the hospital she was released and we’ve been back down here ever since. Unfortunately it’s taken me forever to catch up on everything when considering I was on some pretty serious deadlines that I had to post-pone for clients. It also didn’t help that my backs been bothering me from all of the excessive walking with horrible unsupportive sneakers.

We’ve been down here for a few weeks, it’s not like we just showed up and instantly went up to the hospital. I just know that his Mom wasn’t feeling too hot the night we came down and things have just kind of spiraled from there. Thankfully everything appears under control now, there are still more appointments to get through but I think after this coming Monday things should be OK. We’re heading back up to Baltimore so she can have the mass on her lung looked into. There are also issues with her heart that need to be looked after, but I highly doubt we’ll be able to get into any offices for that while we’re up there.

Needless to say, this one-two week trip has turned into a longer than anticipated stay. It’s just my hope that everything begins to work itself out, and I’m able to get through the weeks worth of work that I’m backed up with. I’m seriously considering hiring other hands but haven’t seen anyone floating around that can really be trusted with “hush-hush” type of clients. Everyone wants to put something into their portfolio and don’t seem to understand what NDA actually means. It drives me crazy, but that’s the caliber of people floating around these days I guess. I think I’m better off just pushing through exhaustion and trying to get as much done as humanly possible over the course of the next few days.

I just know that I some how need to force myself to sleep by 10pm on Sunday so I can be ready to leave the house by 6:30 on Monday morning. Not looking forward to dealing with Baltimore traffic on a Monday so we’ll see how well this goes. :crosses fingers:

In Honor of HUMP day

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

So here’s the thing, I dont like to complain and I don’t think I ask too much……I just want five freakin minutes of peace!!

I have been battling this new crazy schedule of cranky baby in the day, getting absolutely nothing accomplished except making baba and finding the binkie (pacafier) my son loves to throw under the couch all day. Once my husband gets home from work all I can think is WHERE DO I START! Not only do I have my work that I get paid for to catch up on, before anyone figures out I haven’t completed it all day…..but my house is a freakin disaster. I finally got to the dishes and laundry yesterday. The livingroom and bedroom were glowing on Monday. What goes on in this house that I can not keep it clean for one freakin full day?

So today, my husband was kind enough to remind me that he couldn’t remember the last time I took a shower. I of course thanked him, cause REALLY, I can’t figure out that I stink, duh!! Anywho, I decide I am going to clean tub and take a bubble bath and read my book (maybe even finish it)……Lets see how this went down.

Wash the tub – check

Sweep the floor so its nice when I step out – check

Run HOT water – check

Find stopper – check

Find a old favorite bath salt – check

Hot water is nice and hot, bath salts have been poured in, book ready to be read. I undress, take first step into bath and wonder why there is a weird smell….combination of moth balls and amonia.  Whatever, it will go away, I just need to relax. I get all comfy in the water, reading my book by page two the tub is half empty…..seriously! No worries, I can work with it….I notice the door start to open, here comes the eefing cat. She needs to see what I am doing and use her litter box. Now, I don’t know if anyone elses cat does this, but she goes in there and scratches at all the walls, wtf. So I yell at her to get out…..and in comes the weird smell again, so the combination was that freakin cats toilet and my bath salts that were way too old to enjoy ever again. But the bottle is pretty so I might keep for bathroom prop.

Then my water gets even lower, the cat left door open so draft is making room perfectly chilly. The cat is now in the bedroom, scratching on everything, and knocking stuff over. All I here is “scratch, scratch, crash” I yell at her to get out, and she defiantly meow’s back at me! It just keeps going, finally four pages into my book, a qaurter filled cold bubble bath and amonia/moth ball filled room later, I get out of tub, kick cat out of room. Put on same old house pants I started with, and will go make dinner.

I just want five freakin minutes! I guess when I take my SHOWER, after dinner I can count it as a rest from my house.

To be or Not to be….Offended?

Monday, June 4th, 2012

So as a new mommy, I admit that I do not have many other mommy friends with children the same age. Most have children 3yrs and up or no children at all. I know that this will all change once my son starts going to some sort of school, but in the meantime, we take what we can get. When my son was first born, I was happy to re-kindle a friendship from past with a new mommy to a little boy only 2 months older than mine. Niether of us were working so we would have playdates almost every day. Once my friend got a job, we really didn’t get to see each other. The phone calls and texts became fewer and longer inbetween, then stopped all together. Not in a bad way, just in a I’m busy kinda way. I never thought that we had become non-friends. So when it was approaching her sons first birthday, I received a random group text about the hosting a party (a tupperware type thing) to help raise funds to throw the party about a month before. Then as usual, I never heard anything else.

Last week it dawned on me that I had not heard anything else, and decided to check her facebook….I was shocked to see that she was posting about getting ready for the partty, and that the invites had gone out, yada yada yada. I simply could not resist, I texted her in a fashion that seemed as if I didn’t see this information: “Someone’s big 1st birthday is coming up! It went so fast, can’t believe we haven’t seen each other, we must have a playdate soon!” her reply: “I thought you hated me or something! Im having a bday bbq on sat u should come! Im so glad 2 hear from u!!!” It seemed she had this feeling, but I did, and don’t, know why? At the same time I was completely offended that she hadn’t picked up a phone, or sent my son an invite. I happen to be one of those people that over analysis a situation, for two reasons. One is that I really do want to be a kind person and see the best in all, and second I want to make sure that I was not going crazy and really did not do something wrong to cause this situation.

Fast forward to the morning of the party. I start my over analysis, and question if I should really go to the party. If I don’t go, I would simply text her on Monday to explain that I was offended, and didn’t really feel comfortable attending since we didn’t receive a real invite. Then I cross examined myself and thought, since she extended the invite, even if it was by text, that it would be rude not to make an appearance.  I went back and forth with myself for about an hour n half  before finally deciding I was being silly and to just go. Offended or not, it was proper etiquette  to attend. And figured if it was wierd; we had made our appereance and we could just leave.

When we turned onto her block it was chuck full of cars, I found a spot a block away and headed towards the house. The front yard was covered in a bouncy house, thru to the backyard covered in a huge tent with a dozen tables and chairs, a professional sized grill, five large coolers filled with beer, wine, water, juice boxes, and other adult cocktail mixes. On another table, they served penne al a vodka, sausage n peppers, pulled pork, potato salad, cole slaw, pasta salad, corn on the cobb, hambergers and hot dogs. The tent was decorated with tons of balloons, and there were people EVERYWHERE! This was no ordinary 1st bday, this was for the adults….(in kicked my reasoning for being offended! This was a big affair, and obviously invites had to have been sent, I was offended again!) I immediately called my husband and told him, “get in the shower, you are coming to this party! Im the only one by myself with a baby” I usually don’t make my husband attend such events cause he gets board and annoyed. I wound up having the best time, enjoyed the food, music, and other guests. I didn’t feel wierd at all, and it turned out to be such a fun day for my whole family. So offended or not, I chalk it up to a good time that would never had been if I had kept that negativity of being offended run thru my viens.

Curious though, would you have been offended?

RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER KIT

Friday, June 1st, 2012

Embrace all the fun that summer has to offer while keeping your skin looking its youthful best with our exclusive Reclaim Your Summer Kit. This collection includes everything you and your Customers need to achieve a “sun-kissed” glow while protecting your body from head to toe.  

Value: $227
Retail Price: $202
Preferred Customer Price: $178

 

 

 

Act now. This collection is available until July 31, 2012, at 11:59 p.m. PDT, or while supplies last.

The first three people to place this order will also receive a R+F Beach Towel, as a gift from ME!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

muir@agndesigns.net

muir.myrandf.com

 

Roll away the signs of SUMMER!

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

Roll away the signs of summer!

Step 1 exfoliates the dead skin from the sun.

Step 2 refines the pores and,

Step 3 gives you the perfect sunscreen protection while keeping your skin soft.

Then at night after a long day outdoors, you ROLL!

Message me on how to get started! Give up the caramel look to your summer skin! Be SURE to wear a hat!

Plus for the month of June, anyone who places an order will receive ESSENTIALS SPF 30 Body Sunscreen, a lightweight, non-sticky and non-greasy broad spectrum sunscreen. It contains dimethicone to protect skin’s moisture barrier, antioxidant vitamins C and E to absorb damaging free radicals and anti-inflammatory ingredients to protect skin from environmental stress. I am adding this gift to anyone who places an order starting today 05/29 adding 3 extra days 🙂

muir@agndesigns.net

muir.myrandf.com