Pushing Myself

Although this is only a 2 1/2 day work week, it is kicking my ass. I only have a four hour work day tomorrow, thankfully. But yesterday and today have kicked my tail. I came back to quite a bit of work waiting for me after my four day weekend. Since I carpool to work I have no say in what time I get to work (as long as it's on time) and I have to leave on time as well. So that leaves my lunch hour and cranking out as much work as I possibly can.

Yesterday I only took a 15 minute lunch. Today I took a 20 minute lunch. My lunch "hour" is normally 45 minutes long. And I do not get small breaks during the day. No 15 minute breaks. Just an extended lunch.

But since I was cutting my lunches so short I was busting my ass all day yesterday and all day today without much down time to speak of. As a result tonight I'm tired and sore. I feel worn out and it's only been two days of work. Sometimes I think I push myself too much at work. But I want to do a good job, I want to make a good impression. I want to keep my job and I figure the best way of doing that is to do as much as I can the right way every time. Yes I make mistakes, obviously. But they are minor and few and far between.

As a result, I bust my tail and sometimes it bites me in the ass. (No pun intended.) Tonight is one of those nights. I feel worn out and just kind of blah.

Although tomorrow is looking promising. I only have a four hour work day. Shortly after I get home Master and I are meeting His dad for lunch. We haven't seen him in a few months now so it'll be fun to catch up. After that the car goes in for an oil change. Then? Nothing. We can just chill and have a good time. Saturday we are going down to spend time with my mother. So that should be fun as well.

Well I've spent about 9 hours typing on a computer today at work. So I think I'll cut it short right here.

Feels Like Home

I grew up about 45 minutes away from where I currently live. I was born and raised in my hometown. I lived there until I was 22 years old. The only reason I left was to come up here and live with Master. We were engaged at the time. (Yes, we got engaged before we started living together.) So anyway, up I came. We lived together for two years before we were married. So in total, I've lived up here for 6 years. So 6 years versus 22 years.

I still know parts of my hometown like the back of my hand. There are certain parts that are unchanging and I'm glad that they haven't changed. They were my favorite parts of my hometown. But other parts... there is nothing familiar about them. So I think that may have something to do with it not really feeling like home anymore. I mean it will always be my hometown, and who knows where the future may take Master and I. It may take us to His hometown, or mine. But for now, our home is here.

I really like the area. Everything we need is very close. Within 5 minutes drive time we have two grocery stores, a Walgreens, two gas stations, a dollar store (hush you can find some good stuff at a dollar store) and several fast food joints just in case we feel like something quick and easy. Our bank is at most a 10 minute drive away. Like I said, everything we need is very close to our home. We're spoiled because of it. Whenever we talk about moving we start to ask ourselves if this store is close by, or that store. Like I said, we're spoiled. My job is 45 minutes away, but I do not want to live out by my job. We've talked about it in the past, but eventually both of us agreed that it would be a bad idea. The cost of living out there is much higher.

We want to eventually move out of this apartment. It's not really the apartment that feels like home to me, but the area itself. To me it doesn't really matter what you live in. It could be a house, an apartment, a condo, a trailer.. you get the idea. It's the area that matters. I moved several times in my hometown. It was never the house or apartment I lived in. It was the area surrounding me.

I don't know if that has something to do with the fact that the house I grew up in was foreclosed on when my father left to go live with another woman. He was the bread winner and my mom couldn't afford the two mortgage payments. So they foreclosed on the house. I used to think of that house as my home. I lived in it from the age of 5 until I was 17. That was home. But as soon as I realized that no matter what you live in, it can be taken away. From that point forward I decided that it was the area that mattered. I sometimes pass the house I grew up in and I'll look at it. I have some memories that run through my head, not all of which are happy ones. But that's it. It's nostalgia. Nothing more. It's not home. Never really was. It wasn't the house that mattered.

I'm sure that one day Master and I will move out of this apartment but we already know we'll be staying right around where we are now if we can help it. There are several condo complexes near by as well as townhouses only a little bit further away. Not to mention that there are other apartments and then of course the houses. We'll stay in the area because Master and I have made it our home.

End of a Long Weekend

I am sad to see this long weekend end. I have had the past four days off of work and it has been very relaxing. The extra time with Master has been wonderful. I know that I get to see Him every night when I get home from work and that I get the entire weekend with Master as well. But on the work days I have to do my post, my shower, my exercises, some web surfing to just keep up and then quality time with Master. The nights never seem to be long enough as I have a bed time of 11pm.

But this past four day weekend Master and I have had a lot of time together and it's been wonderful! We talked, watched movies, fucked, joked around and spent some quality time with our dog as well. Since it's been nice out we've started sitting on our porch with our pup tied up so he can roam a bit. Master and I just watch the pup have fun and play while we talk and watch the birds flying by. It's relaxing. Master and I both greatly enjoy nature. Now where our viewing of it is limited on our porch, we at least get to see trees and the birds flying around. It's been too hot to go for walks, so hopefully it'll be cool enough to do that sooner rather than later.

The good thing is that I only have a two and a half day work week due to the four day weekend and this being my half day Friday. This also means I have to cram a lot of work in during those two and a half days. But I'm not worried. I'll just clock in early and either cut my lunches short or skip them all together. No big deal.

Yesterday was spent moving my blog here. It gave me a nerd fix. I've actually enjoyed it. At first I kept the same theme that I had on my old blog. But I ended up not liking it as much as I thought I had before. On my last blog host I was extremely limited by the themes they allowed. I could not upload a new one. Here? I can upload any theme I can find that is compatible with Blogger. Which is fucking awesome! Since I wasn't so hot about my old layout anymore I went theme hunting. I found this one. I love it. It's pretty, it's interesting and it's organized.

I do believe I'll be keeping it. I even got the pictures to show up next to comments for those who have a picture assigned to their profile. Rock the hell on!

Side Note: Due to my changing the color scheme of my blog, I've also updated my background picture on Twitter and changed my avatar picture on both here and Twitter. The nerd in me demands that everything match. And she is a nagging bitch too.

Blog Tweaking

You know, I honestly had forgotten what it was like to tweak a "new" blog. It takes time, patience, a bit of fumbling around... But it's fun. Well, to me anyway. I don't have everything perfect and I'm not really worried about it being perfect because I'm sure even if it was I'd still want to change things here and there. Although I am glad I got to keep the fusion theme. Watch, I'll find a different one later that I like better and have to go through all of this again. Knowing me, that's entirely possible. *sigh*

I'm trying to add more pictures slowly but surely to my pictures page. Yay! I can have a pictures page again! The only problem is that it's a bit time consuming because of how I am having to do it. But that's okay! Once I get used to how to do it, it'll be a piece of cake.

 And no, this does not count as my post for the day. Nerd posts don't count. I just felt like rambling a bit.

Although there is one thing that I have not been able to figure out yet that is driving me insane. I can not figure out how to get avatar pictures to show in the comments section. I have it set up to allow them, my own avatar is uploaded. I don't know if it's part of the coding or what. I've searched through the forums but can't really seem to find a resolution that actually works for me. So.... if any of you happen to know how to do it, please feel free to let me know.

Well Hello There!

Hopefully you have found me by hopping on over from my former blog. All the old posts are here. Well, 99% of them. Some of the stuff from 2007 didn't transfer over because the file was too large. But honestly, you aren't missing much. I didn't post a lot back then, unlike these days where I blog daily.

 One thing that I am very happy about regarding the move is that it isn't so... limiting. I actually paid a yearly fee at WordPress in order to do customer CSS and I could not upload templates. I could only use what they had, regardless of the fact that I was in fact paying in order to customize my site. Oh, but now they had these "premium themes" that you could pay an arm and a leg for. *rolls eyes* Along with some other things that have recently come to light, I decided to jump ship over to Blogger. Which, oddly enough, is where my blog started. I honestly forgot why I moved it to WordPress. I would have saved a lot of time, trouble and headaches if I had just kept my tail here.

Since I'm a nerd, one thing that I totally forgot about with Blogger is that you can customize CSS and upload templates that you have downloaded from a different source. How awesome is that? And I don't have to a pay a penny. That is how I got the theme I used over on WordPress. I am still tweaking some things as my blog just moved today, but I'll get there.

I posted over on my WordPress blog one last time so people could find me and not think that I had fallen off the face of the Earth. I have also updated my link on my Twitter account. Please update your bookmarks and/or links on your blogs so that it comes here.

Nap Time

I got out of work early yesterday. I was home a good two hours earlier than normal. After we ate dinner I was tired because I hadn't slept well the night before. Master was tired because He hadn't slept well either and the sinus medication He takes makes Him sleepy.

So, for the first time in about a year Master and I went to the bedroom, curled up and took a nap. No sex. No molesting. Just curl up, cuddle and pass out. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with fucking before a nap. Hell we do that about once a month. But there is just something... sweet about just curling up to one another to take a nap. I'm sure that sounds very odd, but I think it is sweet.

We got about a two hour nap in. We hadn't set an alarm. Master woke me about five minutes after He got up. It was about 9:30pm already. We got up, I took care of the dog (who had also decided it was nap time) and Master took care of the rabbits. I took my bath and we enjoyed the rest of the evening/early morning just relaxing and talking in between episodes of Pawn Stars on Netflix.

We didn't go to bed again until 4am. But that's one of the best things about having a four day weekend. It doesn't matter how fucked up my sleep schedule is for three of the four days. Oddly enough not having to be in bed by a certain our or getting up to an alarm in the morning is incredibly relaxing to me.

Blast From The Past

I had a different post in mind when I first hopped on here. But as I was about ready to start making the post I heard something on the TV. Master and I have been watching a lot of Pawn Stars. They were talking about a book that someone's semi-famous grandfather had had in his library and had signed the book.

So I commented that my paternal grandmother (the one I was extremely close to) had signed the inside of most of her books. She had a rather large library. She was an English major and was a school teacher. I then told Master about how pretty her handwriting was. Master said that His grandmother had pretty hand writing as well and still had a letter from her.

That immediately click in my head that I believed I still had a letter from my grandmother as well. I rushed to go check. I hadn't looked at it for a long time so I wanted to make sure I still had it. It would have broken my heart if I hadn't.

Thankfully I found the letter and it's still in really good shape given the fact that I was rather young when I got it.

You see, at the time my grandmother was battling cancer. She wasn't in the hospital at that point. Regardless of the fact that she was on a lot of medication and still battling cancer she was always the teacher. She was teaching my baby brother and I how to write a letter properly. Not e-mail. A regular snail mail letter. She wanted to make sure we knew how a letter should be written.

So she had showed us an example one day while we were at our house and asked us to write her letters and mail them to her when we got home. And we did. We would do anything to make her happy and proud. Hell, she's been gone for some time now and I still hope that I make her proud. I honestly believe that she is looking out for me.

The letter made me emotional. I didn't cry but it got pretty close. She wrote this letter 11 months before she passed away.

For some reason I wanted to post what the letter said. This letter was sent to be on March 13, 1993. (The proper way to write a letter is to include the date.) Please keep in mind she was writing this letter to me when I was 10, so she broke it down so I would understand it.

So here is the letter. (It has my brothers name in it so I'll be replacing his name with the word "Brother".)

Dear Granddaughter,

Thank you for your nice letter. I was really happy to receive it.

The cancers are getting smaller. That's really good news. And, no they haven't spread. That's also good news. Next summer they'll take more x-rays of Grandma's chest to see if the tumors are still shrinking. I sure hope so.

I still have some problems breathing because of the medicine I have to take. But it's getting better. By Easter I should not have to take the medicine any more. Then I should start feeling a lot better. That will be just in time for you and Brother to spend the night out here with us.

I'm glad to know you have so many good friends. I bet they are all very special people. It's fun having good friends you can play with and talk too.

We're also very proud of both you and Brother and how well you are both doing in school. We're glad you both like school so much and are working so hard. Keep up the good work. As long as you try your best that's what is important. Sometimes the work is hard and sometimes it is easy. But you always have to try your best.

I'm glad you had such a good time at your parties. You received a lot of nice presents. Your friends were very nice, and seemed to have a good time.

Please give these pictures to Brother. I forgot to give him the pictures when you were out here for the party.

Love you,

Grandma

Gods I miss that woman. When she wrote that letter my brother and I had just had our birthday party. He was born in January and I was born in March. So when we were younger my parents would just have our birthday parties at the same time. I remember that birthday party. We had it at McDonalds and Grandma was there. Wow was she skinny and pale. My grandmother was a rather plump woman before she got cancer. Seeing her that skinny as a kid (I was 10 years old) scared me very much. As you can probably tell when I wrote my letter to her I asked a lot about her cancer because it scared me.

But she didn't make it to the summer of '94. She didn't make it to Easter either. I know she wasn't lying to me in her letter. She was very hopeful. But shortly after this letter was sent to me her cancer did spread and it spread fast. She was in and out of hospital stays from about May of '93 until the day she passed away, which was February of '94. Her wake was on Valentine's Day.

After that letter I never got to sleep at her house again. When she wasn't in the hospital she was in a hospital bed in her living room on oxygen. She was too weak to walk around or sit upright. When she did come to our place she was in a wheelchair with her oxygen tank. She let us decorate the stand that she wheeled around the oxygen tank in with stickers. She said she wanted us to sleep over but she was so tired all the time and she didn't want us to be bored. We promised we wouldn't be bored but our parents said no, Grandma needs her rest.

The saddest part, to me, about her passing was the fact that she was due to come home two weeks later. She was in remission and the only reason she was still in the hospital was to help her get some strength back. She was in physical therapy when her heart gave out. It had been weakened from all the medication and chemo therapy. She had a massive heart attack and died in the physical therapy room. They weren't able to bring her back. We had made banners, which were already hung up at her house. It must have been extremely hard on my grandfather to take those down. We had plans to pick her up with Grandpa so we had also made signs to show her as she came out to the car. We kept them until about a year later. I was still 10 because my birthday wasn't until March. So it's been 17 years. Seventeen very, very long years. She was my heart. And I hope to see her again one day.