Dammit

I was starting to get hopeful.. But now I think I have cramps

In my absence…

Today is my first day off since Thursday. I just worked three 12s in a row. I did have a lovely weekend at work complete with a little free time, and a little drama and a few scattered emergencies. I came downstairs to make my breakfast this morning and was greeted by this staggering image:

Now, we’ve sort of divided up the chores around here and the kitchen is technically my chore. HOWEVER. Hubbin is 35 so I’m pretty sure he is capable of throwing out his garbage.

Wiping up cooking spills on the floor

and stove before they harden.

And perhaps rinsing out the dishes wouldn’t be too much to ask…

even though I’m sure loading them into the empty dishwasher is.

Just as a comparison,

the kitchen got a through cleaning

before I went back to work for a stretch

including a stove scrub and mopping.

I sent him a text at work today that said “I’m cleaning the kitchen. In all seriousness I need you to be a little bit better about the kitchen when I’m gone for a few days”

Gimpy Piglet

So our little Piglet is actually doing pretty well. We force fed her more calcium than we were probably supposed to for a few weeks. And while it took a couple weeks she slowly started to be able to move her back legs again, then was slowly able to grip things with her legs. …then walk around and get to the food bowl on her own. I’m pleasantly surprised by her progress. She’s still slightly on the gimpy side, and she may always require a private gecko apartment to avoid bullying but she’s really doing quite well. She even started to be able to jump short distances again not too long ago. I was terribly excited the first night she attempted a jump. I wanted her to get better (I still want her to get well enough to try for eggs with Little Dude) but I didn’t know if she’d actually make it to the point where I wouldn’t have to feed her with a dropper every couple days, I mean she couldn’t even walk! Amazing!

…. my computer on the other hand is a fucking disaster. Disaster. I will never buy another Dell. I think next time I’ll get a mac because then when something’s not working I can take it to the store. And speak with a human. Who will probably speak English. I spent I kid you not 1.5 FULL hours straight on the phone with the dell tech support line with Indians.

First I called the warranty people and mine was obviously expired after two years, but for a mere $120 they would renew it for a year. I took them up on it because I’ve already reformatted the harddrive twice and it’s still fucked up. The first person I spoke with after reupping my warranty tried to explain that I needed to buy the accident insurance too because accidental damage wasn’t covered. And she kept repeating herself until I said “I don’t want the accident insurance because it hasn’t been in an accident. I haven’t dropped it, nothing has been spilled on it”. Then the second time I spoke with a person she tried to tell me it was my battery, and that dell recommends replacing my battery after 1 year and mines overdue, on and on, until I finally said “LISTEN, it’s not my battery. My battery lasts for hours. My battery is FINE“. Then they started with the damn disconnecting. I must have been disconnected 4 times. “ohhhh let me transfer you to tech support”… or “hold on just a minute while I look that up”….  and every time I got disconnected it took another 10minutes of the phone tree to try and get back to a human. And godforbid you don’t answer the electronic phone tree questions right or the computer says “goodbye” I was SO IRRITATED.

Two different tech support people tried to troubleshoot the computer. (The first one disconnected me while I was running a diagnostic–not that it matters anyway because the screen was all pixilated with bizarre looking illegible characters anyway) Finally my good friend “Cuneet” said he would overnight me a box to ship my computer in. So my computer is across the country now, hopefully getting a lobotomy?

Incredibly Frustrated

See, this is why I took a break from blogging, the negativity. Now school started and I’m right back cranky again!

My computer and I are still fighting. We managed to wipe it clean and reinstall windows but now vista wants to install every update since 2007. I’ve started doing them just 5 at a time, and all goes well till it gets to the part where it wants to reboot to finish installation and then it goes “whoa whoa whoa, nevermind, I can’t make it through start up afterall, back up to before that install” round and round we’ve gone like this for a WHOLE WEEK now! I’ve gotten some installed, but there’s still like 20 updates that throw it for a loop everytime. Plus my speakers aren’t working now, and my trackpad isn’t working now. UGH.

AND. As if that wasn’t enough, the online class program my school uses was upgraded from Blackboard 7 to Blackboard 9, and they changed our usernames in the process. Well I’ve had it up to HERE with blackboard 9 because every single time I’ve logged on since they upgraded it says that my password is invalid. So I have to do the “forgot my password” BS where you fill out a form and they send you an email and you have to follow a link to reset the password, then I get in and you have to change the password. I’ve done this (not even kidding) 12 times already and it can’t seem to remember my password and the next time I log in it’s invalid again. GAH!

My patience, she is wearing thin.

Miss Piggy seems to be limping along, she’s still in her little papertowel bedding “ICU” tank, still getting dropper fed calcium and water and fingers of food. I did however find her in a different position this evening than what I left her in last night. (that’s good) AND I took her out to do a little lukewarm water soak and witnessed her clumsily move each extremity (very good) to inform me that the water was too warm. She’s still lethargic and still struggling with coordination, but hopefully she’ll continue to improve and bounce back.

My husband just served me pancakes for dinner! This evening may be making a turn for the better afterall!

God-daughter

So part of the reason Hubbin went and spent three weeks in Germany this summer was to get sworn in as god father. His good friend from college who was also the best man in our wedding is now also married with two children. The second one was born in November and they wanted to get them baptised together this summer and asked Hubbin to be the god father. Hubbin was incredibly flattered and spent probably two full weeks with them bonding with the little girl who is now four. The last time we met her she was probably about 10 months old. Thanks to the new iPhone hubbin was able to send me both pictures and video of them together during his trip. This picture he sent me as a taunt because Germany has the best big soft pretzels I’ve ever tasted and I loooooove them. I’d feel a little wrong posting the one of the videos he sent since it’s not my kid, but he sent the cutest video of the two of them in the car together. You can see her dirty stuffed pig that she carries around everywhere (we sent that as a baby gift) and she was sitting in the van behind hubbin and repeatedly throwing the pig on the floor and then pout/whineing to sweet talk him into picking it up for her. He sent me the video in which she’s saying something to the effect of “pleeeease pick up my pig for me” (in german so I can’t understand anyway) but the explaination hubbin sent with it was “she’s pleading with me to pick up her pig and totally just trying to see what she can get away with and make me do, and then at the end of the video she realizes that I’m completely not buying her whineing and she knows she’s been busted and starts laughing”. It’s terribly adorable because she’s sticking her lip out and pouting the whole time she’s pleading for the pig and then at the last two second of the video you see her watching him out of the corner of her eye and her mouth starts twitching up and then she starts laughing and Hubbin starts laughing.  I’m glad he had a good time with their kids because it helped him see that maybe us having a baby wouldn’t be the total end to his world.

A test

I’m testing wordpress for iPhone and it’s testing me.

I swear to you I just tapped out a nice long post here at work on my iPhone about our trip to NYC complete with photos and then posted it.

AND IT’S GONE! The wordpress app ate it!!!! I’m so mad!!!!!

Summer Evening

It’s the first truely hot day we’ve had here this year (by my recollection anyway). Tonight I tried an experiment to make thr chocolate refridgerator roll cake my grandma used to make. Were having dinner with my parents tomorrow night and I thought it would be a nice surprise for my dad. Then I made some of my special hamburger patties which are currently waiting in the fridge for hubbin to fire up the grill. Now I’m just waiting for dinner on the deck with a glass of wine and my current crochet project. Life is good. Very good.

–I decided a few months ago that I needed a hobby. One that I could pick up and put down and actually make something too. A bunch of nurses at work have been addicted to knitting and crocheting and I got some supplies and made them teach me. I’ve alredy finished a handful of scarves and two baby blankets with matching hats. I’m still working on booties I like, I havent found the perfect bootie yet.–

Summer Review

Aww thanks Ashley Nice to know I’ve been missed (PS, can you let me read your blog again? I miss knowing what you guys are up to)

I took a blogging hiatus mainly because I felt like I had nothing to talk about and due to school I was just a giant pool of negativity. Rather than post nothing but whining I thought maybe I should take a break.

June- Stu’s dad came for Stu’s graduation from our school district and stayed for about a week. Hubbin looooooved Stu’s dad and promptly announced he wanted to adopt Stu’s dad for a year too. I told him we couldn’t just go adopting every German that swings by. We saw little of Stu his last couple weeks in the US because he was hanging out with his friends and getting in all the last minute social stops and graduation parties he could. We dropped Stu off at the drop off point on June 26th where he went to debrief for 3 days before flying home. All in all, Stu was a wonderful kid to have for a first exchange student because he was so pleasant and easy going. I’m quite sure we’ll have another one in the next few years. Fortunately I’m off the hook this year because Hubbin successfully recruited one of his German students to host another kid. Whew.

July- We celebrated our 3 year wedding anniversary Then the next day I dropped Hubbin off at the airport for THREE WEEKS in Germany. Being a teacher is a very rough life. I finished my summer classes July 14th (finally!) My heart was just so not in the classes this summer and I felt guilty because I felt like I didn’t learn enough. I got ‘A’s in both of them but I did feel like I wasted a lot of time especially with my Advanced Assessment class. After school finished I essentially worked a lot in July and cleaned the whole house really well since there was no one to come around behind me and mess it all up. I swept swiffered and mopped each room in the whole house and it stayed nice and clean until the day Hubbin got home and his suitcase exploded in the living room. Hubbin had horrible flight karma on the way home and missed his flight from DC to home by 5 minutes and then the next flight was delayed because of weather then delayed again and again, so instead of picking him up at 5pm in the afternoon my mom ended up picking him up at 2am because I had to get up for work at 5am the next day. Alls well that ends well but it was highly irritating to be looking forward to pick him up for THREE weeks and then barely get to see him at all when he got home.

August (so far)- I’m finally on my summer vacation and we just spent 5 days in Nice, France We liked it so much on our cruise last year that we thought it would be a nice place for a summer vacation I know it seems like a short trip but I was trying to be budget conscious with booking it It was very nice, we had a lovely time and every time we go on a vacation together where we can relax and aren’t distracted by our computers and TV and actually hang out together and reconnect I’m reminded of how well we fit together.

Now hopefully I can get back to posting more regularly without all the whining.—that may be a little optimistic though because my classes start again in two weeks and I registered for 14credits. Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t this a part time program I signed up for? I thought so. Oh well, I’ll be finished with the BSN in December and then I solomnly swear I will register for no more than 8 credits the rest of the program!

End of Year Fiesta

Yesterday we had a big cookout for Stu… combo gradparty/bon voyage party. Because he technically doesn’t go home until the end of June but his time is rapidly drawing to a close with us and June is already packed full of his own social engagements with his friends. Stu’s father comes next week and will be staying with us through graduation and taking a few little roadtrips with Stu to see as much of the USA as possible before heading home.

Hubbin is really going to miss Stu, but we’re both looking forward to having our house back and for it to be just us again.

I feel like I spend most of my posts now apologizing for the lack of posts and offering up excuses, so I won’t bother.

School is stressing me out, I’m taking 7 credits this summer and even though online Sociology is a lot of “busy work” it’s still A LOT of busy work. I’ll be glad to finish up with the BSN program this fall so I can quit taking BS classes like sociology now and poly sci and global studies this fall. BLEH. I feel like it’s a serious waste of my time and money to take electives.

I’m also currently working on hammering out a plan for summer vacation the second week of August. I’m open to suggestions, got any? What are your summer vacation plans?

Congratulations Erica!

Open to Suggestions

So I’m open to new good-reading blog suggestions. Anyone have any blogs they love reading and would like to recommend? I badly need to update my blog roll as I’m a bit disappointed in how many people I read nearly every day have switched to invited people only or password required.

Got any favorites?