The Good, The Bad & The Damp

today is the first day all week that I haven't felt the need to take a nap by 10am. I think that has to do with the fact that I went to bed before 10pm last night and although I woke up at 1am (call of nature) and 6am (call of technology - darn kid's cell phone alarm is set for 6am! wth?!?!) and finally got up at 7:15. I think I've finally recovered from the weekend. Now if I could just get my house to recover from the weekend all would be golden. My scrapbook stuff is still scattered about.

We've had a good week/bad week around here and it seems, with the rain that began falling overnight....the rest of the week shall be a damp one, not to mention loud and muddy. Proof of this was when I opened the back door this morning. Since I'd gone to bed early, nobody thought to let the fat cat or the fatter dog in for the night. One was quite cranky about this fact and told me so. The other just left a trail of paw prints behind him as he brought his overweight self into my kitchen and shook. Point taken oh non-vocal mutt. This is the kind of weather where you just want to stay indoors.....and I haven't decided yet if I'm more inclined to make the kids stay inside and brave the sounds of cooped up kids or kick em outside and deal with the inevitable mud and laundry. Since Owen left his jacket outside last night, I'm already ahead of the game as far as wet clothes go.

I think this rain also puts a brief stop to the walks we've been taking lately. Okay. I admit. Mostly it's been Al and the kids walking but I did take them one night while he was at work. This may sound silly but this is a new activity for us. Not the walking part, but the walking around here part. Living on a busy highway, it's not exactly high on my list of things to encourage the children to do and up until now we've limited our walks to being an 'in town' activity. Now that the kids are older, we're more comfortable (ish....i found it way stressful personally) with taking the 1/4 mile walk along the side of the highway to the gravel road and then letting the kids run wild as we walk a half mile or so before turning around and heading back. Somehow I'm not keen on taking that trek in the rain or even shortly after any rain as the cars go flying past us is sure to make for loads of laundry.

I must say, I'm a little nervous about the start of this rain. A couple of the blogs I read on a daily basis have mentioned lately an abundance of rainfall of biblical proportions and there has been mention of Ark living....or indoor living a time or two as well. We are only on day one of the rain here and I sure hope it doesn't last too long. I don't like boats. Of course, I don't like snow shovels either and I heard rumor of dropping temperatures and the possibilities of this rain going all flakey on me.

Hearing the rain on the roof when I first woke up this morning did bring a slight smile to my face though.....because I am not outside working in it. Hahaha It's funny how perspective changes things. Closing our business was hard (and still is hard at times) but we realize more each day how much of a blessing it has been. Regular readers may remember Al's doctors visit when he was getting that physical for his class 1 license and the concern his doctor had with his blood pressure and weight. Well, he went for a follow-up earlier this week and his blood pressure is almost perfect. That new low-stress, minumum wage job of his seems to be working wonders. The lack of money....and lack of ice cream seems to be helping too. He's dropped 5lbs.

Of course my blood pressure is probably making up for his as I struggle to make ends meet and deal with the mountain of paperwork still left to do for the business. Selling those trucks parked infront of my house - constant reminders of money owed to people that we won't have until they sell - would help too. Seems the guy we thought would for sure buy them is just yanking us around and now he says he doesn't need them.....right now. Ugh! General consensus is he figures since the trucks are so specialized there won't be a huge demand for them so he's got time and by waiting as long as possible till we will be so desperate we have no choice but to let them go for cheap. He doesn't realize that the longer he waits the more money we will need and we've had other people ask about them....although nothing has come of their interest either so far.

On top of this money stuff....... I'm sure I've found those 5lbs Al lost. Maybe I need to go for that walk tonight - rain or not. Naw....think I'll just go make a batch of brownies and stay inside where it's warm and dry and listen to the cat complain. He's asked to go out twice already but then just sits in the doorway looking at me like it's my fault it's still raining.

~K

Stop-Payment

Those are hard words to deal with.

We've had to put a stop-payment on the automatic payment for the lease of the truck this morning. There's no money in the bank account to cover it. It's come to that and I hate it. Al's cousin, who is in the truck sales business, figures we have about three months before things get to the point where the lease company will repossess the truck for non-payment. I hope he's right because there's a whole lot of fine print in that lease agreement and the word immediately pops up quite often regarding this matter. What I really hope is that one of the people who've said they may be interested in buying the damn thing will show up with money in hand already because I hate this feeling of being so totally helpless.

I've been working on a scrapbook page (ya....last minute stuff for crop this weekend.....darn procrastination gene) and it's pictures of my kids taken last summer and I was trying to come up with a title or something to go on it. I had to pop into the city yesterday to get adhesive refills......and birthday presents and I heard a song on the radio that not only made me cry (lots!) but also screamed to be used on this layout. I can't wait to get a chance to finish the page tonight.



"My Wish" by Rascal Flatts

I hope that the days come easy and the moments pass slow,
And each road leads you where you want to go,
And if you're faced with a choice, and you have to choose,
I hope you choose the one that means the most to you.
And if one door opens to another door closed,
I hope you keep on walkin' till you find the window,
If it's cold outside, show the world the warmth of your smile,

But more than anything, more than anything,
My wish, for you, is that this life becomes all that you want it to,
Your dreams stay big, and your worries stay small,
You never need to carry more than you can hold,
And while you're out there getting where you're getting to,
I hope you know somebody loves you, and wants the same things too,
Yeah, this, is my wish.

I hope you never look back, but ya never forget,
All the ones who love you, in the place you left,
I hope you always forgive, and you never regret,
And you help somebody every chance you get,
Oh, you find God's grace, in every mistake,
And you always give more than you take.

But more than anything, yeah, and more than anything,
My wish, for you, is that this life becomes all that you want it to,
Your dreams stay big, and your worries stay small,
You never need to carry more than you can hold,
And while you're out there getting where you're getting to,
I hope you know somebody loves you, and wants the same things too,
Yeah, this, is my wish.

My wish, for you, is that this life becomes all that you want it to,
Your dreams stay big, and your worries stay small,
You never need to carry more than you can hold,
And while you're out there getting where you're getting to,
I hope you know somebody loves you, and wants the same things too,
Yeah, this, is my wish.

This is my wish
I hope you know somebody loves you
May all your dreams stay big


*****


Beautiful Song! It's my wish for my kids....and for everyone!
Have a beautiful weekend. For my scrapping friends -- Happy National Scrapbooking Day tomorrow and know that I miss you all and wish you were here....or I was there with you. I'll be thinking of you!

~K

and then there was one

Only one day left. Today is officially done (well the work part of it) and there is only one more day left of our contract.

I'm COLD. Not a damn it's freaking cold out cold but a soaked to the skin, stepped in a ditch full of water up past my ankle, spent the day wearing dripping wet gloves/mitts x3 kind of cold.
Temperature wise it wasn't too bad. There were times it got a little nippy and I could see my breath but then it would warm up a bit and be okay. Somebody remembered to turn the rain making machine way down to it's lowest settting and I spent most of the day in a fine mist to slight drizzle which was just fine....would have preferred NONE at all but I am really really glad it didn't actually rain big fat drops like it was in the wee hours of the morning. Of course everything is covered in water so I got soaked anyway but at least it wasn't as bad as it could have been. And I know from experience it could have been way way worse and I'm glad it's over.

A funny thing happened today. I didn't see it personally, but I've been told that the crew that won the contract were following each of our trucks around for an hour or so today. Now I'm just gonna get up on my soapbox here for a quick minute and say...... hey dumb ass, you've undercut me and taken one of my contracts forcing me to give up my 2nd contract and go out of business and now you have the nerve to follow us around and see how we do it. Figure things out your own damn self and stop watching us. No wait. On second thought, I hope you did learn something by watching us. It's called customer service and your record isn't that great in that department so I hope you were paying close attention. My customers are used to top notch service and you'd better not give them anything less.

I really am glad there's only one day left - cuz I'm tired of it but I am going to miss it and all the people we've met over the years.

Aren't ya all gonna be so happy when I stop talking about garbage? LOL One more week.


~K

The Good - The Bad - The Fugly

The title pretty much sums up how I'd describe the first 15 days of December. Only 9 more days till Christmas and really I'm not feeling the usual pre-holiday stresses. Too busy with the normal everyday ones that I haven't even hit Christmas-is-coming-and-I'm-so-not-ready on the stress-o-meter....yet. But it's coming. I can feel it.

Still light on the 'good' these days but still managing to keep sane with only the occasional melt down. The 'bad' snuck in and bit me on the backside. My mom's scope tests scheduled for 7am almost two weeks ago but were cancelled at the last minute due to medication conflicts with the procedure. After much eye-rolling it's been rescheduled for the first week of January. They tried to reschedule it for last week but again a medication conflict which is a good thing because we wouldn't have shown up. She got way sick last week. We thought at first she had a stomach bug (which has definately made the rounds through town...and my house) and I thought we'd dealt with that reasonably well but then discovered, after a routine blood test, that her potassium had dropped too low - dangerously low. The symptoms were so similar to the flu though that we totally missed it. When she wasn't feeling better...actually getting worse by this weekend I hauled her into the ER where we were pleased to hear her potassium levels had returned to normal BUT (and it's a really big BUT) at some point while her potassium was too low, she may have had some sort of heart trouble. Blood tests done in the ER showed markers that indicate she many have recently experienced a heart attack. Can't say for sure when but the marker levels have since decreased so I don't think there's any lasting issue. In the mean time she still wasn't feeling well......but why was a mystery. A mystery until the doctor pressed on her face and she went through the roof in pain. We had a huge d'uh moment when we realized the worsening of her symptoms on Saturday had nothing to do with potassium or the flu. She has a sinus infection. 24hours of advil cold and sinus and some anti-biotics and she says she feels like she might live (always a good thing) and is getting stronger by the day. Will the fun ever stop???

But wait. We haven't got to the FUGLY part yet. And this is definately F-n Ugly! We waited 25 days and now it's official. We've definately lost our contract. We will wait till the holidays are over before we seriously start crunching numbers and see just how deep in the shit we are and see if there is any way we can sustain the business on just the one contract. Shutting down completely leaves the business (which is it's own entity thankfully!) with a huge debt and our safety net of hauling scrap metal in to help pay that down dropped out from under us when our buyer informed us the price had bottomed out. Could anything else go wrong? Doubt it. We've pretty much covered all the bases here.

So we face 2009 with the prospect of unemployment and are trying very hard to be optimistic and think of this as a new beginning. It's terrifying though. After almost 14 years of being self-employed we are forced now to find work with someone else. Al has already picked up the books and has been studying to get his class 1 license and he should be able to find a job relatively easily. I'm not feeling as optimistic about my options. No matter what happens though, 2009 is definately going to be quite different than what we are used to around here.

I'm keeping busy this week, trying not to think too much about the future and focus on the here and now. And the here and now involves a little home reno and furniture moving.....9 days before Christmas....cuz I'm crazy that way. It might not be the greatest timing but if it solves some of the family dynamic issues we've got going on around here and improves the amount of living space we have - then it will all be worth it. It's kind of my Christmas present to myself and my sanity. I just hope the project moves along quickly because I really need to get that Christmas tree put up...and finish shopping.

Trucks, Phychologists & other random thoughts

My body aches and I'm oh so tired but I feel the need to blog tonight. My thoughts are scattered (stop snickering and thinking - what else is new) and I'm sure the Merlot won't help them un-scatter but I'll give it a go anyway.

It's been an ever so interesting day...ummm week. Lets work backwards shall we.

Today was a very long day (hense the Merlot) and I'm so hoping the children will cease their unwillingness to sleep - soon! Al & Aarica, Shelley & I finally pulled back into the yard after a very long day in 'the beach' around 7:30 tonight. After a long frusterating day, Shelley finally got the parts needed to somewhat fix the big truck and she brought Aarica with her to the beach at 6pm tonight to help us finish up the last of the route. At one point Shelley threatened to pull start the truck, drive it into the city and through the display window of the dealership where we bought it (it's not the first time she's threatened to bring the truck back to them in a dramatic way...one of these days they are gonna call the cops on 'that crazy red-head' LOL) Anyway, as you can figure by now, the 'big truck' pitched a hissy...much like it's driver, and took most of the day off. I went in at 1:00 to take over for Garrett who worked the morning with Al. I was so impressed that they had finished all of Al's route by then. I spent the morning at home unexpectedly and for much of it I wasn't sure if I'd be heading into work at any moment so I really didn't accompish much around here while I was waiting for the big truck to be fixed. While I waited though, I did spend a half an hour on the phone with a psychologist. The title of my post was going to be " And the Pshychologist said......" Actually, it was going to be " Is it bad when a Psychologist says I think you are long overdue for some help?" but that was too long. Seriously though, that's what he said at one point. LOL It was a nice conversation and I'm actually looking forward to meeting him tomorrow afternoon. I hope I can talk as easily to him in person as I did over the phone today. Why the phychologist's phone call and subsequent appointment? Because I fell to pieces in the dr's office on Thursday and begged for help dealing with the teen mood-swing queen.... and our dr sent a consult over to the adolescent psychologist across the hall from him and boom there it is - the phone call of hope. One thing he said to me on the phone -" I don't think I can fix everything but I can help you deal with things alot better." Sounds good to me! For the first time in a long time I feel like there is someone in a professional capacity that 'gets where I'm coming from' and understands me and is willing to help in any way he can. Yipeeee. I'm kinda glad I was at home when he called and was able to take the time to actually talk to him, which wouldn't have been the case had the truck not broken down first thing this morning. Do things happen for a reason? Let's not push it that far. I'm not exactly willing to say that the words Truck Fire will ever ever ever be a good thing. They put it out with the fire extinguisher before I knew anything about it but still - not a good way to start out a Monday morning.....especially at 7 in the morning. At least I'd had a swallow or two of coffee before Garrett tossed that bit of news my way. Maybe if I'd gotten to sleep before 1am (darn girl and her fear of thunder storms) it might not have taken 2-3 attempts to explain what was going on outside for me to actually clue in. LOL

Well, Merlot and I did a pretty fine job of this post I think, but it's definately time to call it a night. I'll elaborate on the Dr's appointment and events leading up to that tomorrow when I have more time on my almost-day-off. I also have a post from mid last week - quite a rambling bit of nothing actually. I may edit it and publish it - or I may not. We will see how that goes. For now. G'night

~ K