My Imagination…

Well I was hoping to find a “Reward if Found” post and then I’d claim the reward and spoil you all with a new blog entry ;) Guess it didn’t work so here I am!

I do not have access to websites at work any more so the convenience of posting from work on my down time was eliminated. My time at home I get side tracked and forget to post, plus I am not online near as much as I used to be aside from popping in and out of facebook.

December has found us! Who can believe it’s almost Christmas? Seems like just last year I was busy avoiding Christmas :P Oh wait, that was last year! I guess this year I will try to embrace Christmas and not run and hide from it as much this year now that I have someone special to share it with :)

I was home to PEI about 3 weeks ago to visit my friends and family. I went alone because Eric was working. It was my first solo drive from Moncton to PEI and back and it went great! I didn’t end up in Timbucktwo! I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again any time I had the time and money to go. Before I left, my Mom and I loaded up my little car to the rafters with my boxes of Christmas Decorations and winter hats, mitts and such.

I found Christmas items I forgot I had, even an entire box I had bought 4-5 years ago and they got lost and forgotten! It was like Christmas going through them when I got back home. I soon came to the realization that ooops I have too much stuff and not enough room to display it all!!! That didn’t stop me from cramming as much as possible into our apartment :) It looks like Christmas threw up at our place! I still need to decorate our tree. We need to buy rope and lights for it as it’s a new to us tree that is much bigger than my last tree and I haven’t got enough. So hopefully in the next week we will take care of that.

I only have a few presents bought. I guess I’ll need to address that this pay check as well and get things moving. I dread the expense! I won’t be able to buy fo many people this year. I’ll have to wrap them all and bring them to PEI with me when I go home for Christmas!

I’ve decided that I will be going home to my family for Christmas with or without Eric. It is unclear if Eric will end up having to work on Christmas, I already know I have at the very least Christmas Day off. It made no sense for me to hold off on my families plans in case I ended up sitting home on Christmas alone while he is at work. My grandmother was anxious to have me come to PEI for Christmas dinner at her house, something we’ve never done on Christmas Day before, we always stayed home at Mom & Dad’s for supper. So if Eric is off work he can come with me if he wishes or if he is working I will go alone.

Since I am getting Christmas Day off, I will have to work New Years Eve in exchange. Small price to pay I think since I am not a big drinker and never usually do anything much on New Years Eve. Hopefully all those who have rented a room for that night will behave! If not I will be a cranky night auditor banging on your door and telling you to be quiet :P

Work is same old same old… You spend all night fixing mistakes of the people who work days. Gets pretty old after a while! Lots of small conflicts and things that need to be addressed for the tenth time and fixed once and for all. Hours are being cut and management is on a budget crisis. Good times! :\ There’s times I wish I was off night shifts but it’s times like these I’m glad I am not around during the day for the management storm and drama…

Eric likes his new job as security but he’s still not getting full time hours and it’s a problem. If he doesn’t get full time hours soon and stay at full time hours, even after Christmas he’s going to have to look for something else. Finacially we’re tapped out and drained, can’t keep going on with just my wages floating the boat. I cannot and will not live in massive debt where money stresses me out any more. Lived that life for 10 years, it’s not in me to do it again. So we’re going to have to take the necessary steps to fix things soon.

Eric’s lemon of a car bit the big one, so his grandfather was gracious enough to help him out in getting a new one. He is happier than a pig in you know what! He’s totally in love with his car! It’s a yellow 4 door Suzuki Aeiro Hatchback. Looks like new and is a cute little car I must say! So happy for him, he has had nothing but bad luck since I met him, this was the first little good fortune that I saw make him smile :)

I’ve gotten away from photography much too long! I lost my way for a year or more… Life got crazy, alot of changes happened and then I moved to a strange land with no friends and started working the graveyard shift. All contributed to my new camera essentially collecting dust! I had a wake up call recently and said no more! I need this, I want this, I must do it again! I’ve been stuck in a rut of gloominess. I know money and Eric’s job sitatuations were a huge factor but there was something else and I finally figured out that I truly missed photography and it was what I needed to feel better!

I’ve been working on editing pictures that I took back in 2008 and a few random ones I took this year at family events. Eric said it’s so good to see me sitting at my computer and smiling and not frowning. He sees a big change in me since I started tinkering on my photography again and I do too to be honest :) I saw a few courses at the NB Community College I’d like to take in February/April if I can find the money to register before all the seats are taken.

The first one is introduction to Digital SLR’s, I figure it’d be a great way to get to know my new DSLR Nikin D60 better since I am new and unfamiliar with it. The second course is Intermediate Photoshop which I really really want to take because it’s Editing my photos I want to aspire to get better on. I already know the basics of photoshop and I can even do some advanced things but I need to know more and learn right across the board. They are only 15 hour courses, likely 2 hours a week or so. I’ll have to check out my money situation and figure out if I can do one or both. Fingers crossed!!!\\

Well I must run for now… Write more soon I hope! Merry Christmas just in case ;)

Hello hello… It is I! I have returned to grace you with my rambling presence once again :) Grab a drink and a cozy seat and join us for the next chapter in my life!

The past week has been a whirlwind… I got off work last Wednesday morning and took a very very nervous Eric to the hospital. It’s a good job we went early because the visitor parking lot was full and we had to wait in line to get in. For every car that left the parking lot toll booth, one got to go in. Long boring process!

We followed the green dots on the floor (very convenient dot system they have in there!) and went to the day surgery unit. It wasn’t long before we were ushered into a little private room with a curtain door, this would be his room for his entire stay. To say he was adjitated and a nervous wreck would be an understatement. He has a fear of doctors and hospitals especially, so his anxiety was a little high, especially since this was his first major surgery aside from wisdom teeth.

We warned the nurse looking after him for the day, the OR nurses and the anesthesiologist that when Eric wakes up after surgery he will be highly in a state of panic, he will try to jump out of bed and run! We weren’t joking. This happened when he got his wisdom teeth out and is a common thing when he is startled awake even at home. They all assured us that he would be fine and too groggy to do anything of the sort when his surgery was complete…

I was waiting in his little private room, they told me he wouldn’t be back until an hour after his surgery because they would spend an hour monitoring him in recovery. 20 minutes after his surgery they brought him back to me. The minute I saw him I knew what had happened. His eyes were flaming red, he was sitting straight up and he looked cranky as a bear!!! He confirmed my suspicions, he had freaked when he woke up.

Well let’s just say ‘we told you so!’ :) He woke up as they took the breathing tube out, he was in a terrified panic and immediately tried to bolt out of bed but had 3 nurses, an iv pole and a wall trying to block him in once they seen the terror on his face and him jump up. It was quite the bruhaha with him freaking and them not wanting to get too close. Can’t say I blame them, an unpredictable 300 pound man who wakes up in a terror and is thrashing around, I wouldn’t want too close either! They tried to calm him down and order him to lay down and such. Didn’t work, there was much obscenities and panicing going on. Not good at all…

The nurses who brought him back looked frazzled and like they wanted to choke him. He was asking for water because it was now 12 hours since he could eat or drink and he is a huge water drinker. They snapped at him no, that he’d get sick. He kept insisting he’d be fine, he felt fine, he didn’t have an upset stomach, he wasn’t groggy, he just wanted damn water haha… A very annoyed nurse went and got him water and I think she was dissapointed when he didn’t get sick ;)

This was the beginning of what was already a very long day!!! He was still a little freaked out from the recovery room bruhaha and just wanted to go home. No such luck, after tonsil removal you must stay 6 hours to be monitored for bleeding. So I had a long 6 hour stretch of trying to keep him from bolting out the doors in his johnny shirt! A dozen or two popsicles and endless cups of water later we were bored out of our minds. We eventually were told we could get him up and walking and sit in the lounge area with the dinosaur tv. We watched Oprah, Dr Phil and other shows to pass the time.

It was hard to see him in so much pain. The pain medicine they prescribed him was liquid codeine and tylenol. It barely took the edge off… We finally got to leave the hospital after 7pm. Eric was not impressed that they made him leave via a wheelchair ;) I pushed him to the lobby and went and got the car. Having been at the hospital for over 9 hours I was worried what the charge for parking would be since we were on a budget of $15.00 left to our name until the next day. Thankfully $5.75 was the maximum daily charge and I didn’t have to crash the gate to escape ;)

We then had a predicament on our hands. We had to get Eric’s pain medicine prescription filled and buy liquid tylenol. $9.25 was not going to cut it! I didn’t get paid until the next day, Eric didn’t have any money. So we had to call his Mom and borrow some money until I got paid, otherwise I’d be taking him home with no pain meds and that’d be sheer torture since they told him to take them every 4 hours no ifs ands or buts! We had to call his mom to transfer some money into his account to pay the $35.00 to get his medicines and I had to pay her back when I got paid the next day. Blah!

It was after 8pm when we finally got home and I don’t know who was more tired, him or me. I hadn’t slept in over 24 hours and I just wanted to keel over. He was tired from all the lack of sleep before the surgery and after the days stressing events. We both were in bed by 10pm and asleep! Day one was over…

It’s been not so much fun the past week. They warned that his pain would increase as each day passed, not decrease. They had a hard time removing his tonsils and infected tonsil stone areas they had to cut away a lot of his throat and back of the roof of his mouth and cauterize it. As the cauterized areas healed it would increase in pain and day 5 to 7 would be the worst days as the scabs started to peel away and fall off. Let’s just say day 3 to 6 thus far has been agony for him. He can’t eat, drinking water even bothers him. His codeine ran out on day 3, he’s just on children’s liquid tylenol now because he can’t swallow pills. He is in absolute hell with the pain! :(

Since he has only been able to eat 1 small cheeseburger, one small bowl of soup, 2 bites of macaroni and cheese and a few chicken nuggets with the batter peeled off in the last 7 days he is very weak. All those food attempts did not go over well and resulted in a lot of pain, so he has been reluctant to keep trying until this latest pain spike goes down as one large scab takes forever to peel. The past 3 days he has been sleeping a lot, or trying to I should say. He has no energy, he’s just in so much pain he lays in bed and naps in and out of consciousness trying to pass time and forget the pain briefly.
It’s been no picnic and I feel so bad for him… I knew they said adult tonsils are a lot worse than kids, but I had no idea it would be this bad!

Only one good piece of news has come out of the past week. I happened to get a message from someone I rarely talk to on msn. I met them a year ago online, every so often they say hello. They also live in Moncton and mentioned that a security company they work for was hiring. They gave me their bosses personal email address if Eric was interested in applying to work there. Security jobs were something Eric and I had discussed in the past. He was worried I’d not want him working those kind of jobs. Quite contrary - I have faith that he can handle himself and I think he’d be good in that role. His sheer size and his ability to look intimidating without even trying would work in his favor. He can just be staring blankly into the air and he sometimes looks like he’s pissed off and scary looking haha. Total bonus in security. So we had said that he might look into that line of work down the road.

So he updated his resume and emailed it off on Thursday night. Monday at 5:50pm Eric found a voice mail on his cell phone from the security company asking him to call them back. They asked if he could be at an interview for 6:30pm! That was 40 minutes to get him showered, shaved and dressed and out the door! That was not easily done considering he was in a lot of pain and super tired. He met them at a restaurant with 8 other applicants and the boss went table to table interviewing them and giving them lots of security emergency scenarios. Eric passed with flying colors and he was one of the lucky ones offered a job!

They said they would pay for his training which takes 2-3 weeks and is intensive. They cram a 3 month course into that time frame! In the end you are given your security license and you pay them $30.00 up front for that. They require him to get his finger prints done and all that sort of thing through the police department. That is a $35.00 cost apparently that you pay up front. He’ll get 35-40+ hours a week and his schedule is done up a week at a time. Most times you are given permament assignments at the same location. Sometimes you switch around where needed. They are unsure when training will start. Could be anywhere from 1-3 weeks from now.

They are aware of Eric’s surgery and how he is still heeling. I refuse to let him start before he is healed and his energy and strength back up. So I hope they don’t try to force him into anything too too soon! We got a phone call today that they wanted to meet with him in 2 hours time. So he went and met with a supervisor who wanted to meet with him and 3 others. Apparently of all the new hires, they were considered the top 4 backgrounds and potential. They want to pitch these 4 guys to a new client on Wednesday! (Apparently the company is booming and taking on a slew of new contracts and will be hiring up to 50 more people in the near future to keep up with demands).

They are going to call Eric at 9:30am Wednesday to tell him when and where to meet his supervisor and this client. All 4 of the guys will be meeting up there and they want them to wear dress pants, shirt and tie if they have it. One slight problem… Eric owns nothing but t-shirts and jeans. The jeans are old, stained, and his sneakers are garbage cans on feet. We were about to update his entire wardrobe when he got layed off. He is in bad bad bad need of a wardrobe makeover! Panic time! His unemployment check will not be here till next Wednesday and it’s spoken for with bills. My pay check isn’t in til next Thursday and what little money I have left in my account is for my car insurance which comes out October 1st, and the $35 he needs for his finger print appointment Wednesday at 10am and the $30.00 he has to give his boss for the license Wednesday as well and $20.00 to get me some gas on my near empty tank!

Ohhhhh I hate money… It’s so stressing me out! We had nothing for him to wear and no money to buy anything. We had no choice to call his Mom and take out a small loan to go buy him an outfit. His Mom and Dad are in no financial position to be lending out money either, but we had truly no choice. Thankfully they were able to help out. We’ll have to repay them somehow asap, as it was their bill money :\ So I got up early even though I was dead tired and took Eric out to find something to wear to this meeting in the morning. So in the end we got dress shoes, sneakers, socks and underwear (badly needed haha) at Walmart. We found a pair of dress pants at the Big & Tall store but they were $60.00! Walmart had nothing so Eric felt he had no choice but to get them…

After I remembered Dad gets all his clothes at Mark’s Work Wearhouse! So we went there, their dress pants were cheaper but Eric was in so much pain, so tired and cranky he didn’t have it in him to go back and return them and start over on the pants. So we found the cheapest long sleeved dress shirt we could. I hope it will do. We skipped on the tie because nothing matched his shirt’s pattern and to get a patternless shirt meant dropping another $20-$30 on the shirt’s current price tag of $19.99. So no tie it is! So if his new pants, socks, underwear, shirt and dress shoes are not good enough, then screw it. That cost nearly $180 for those items!!!! Just for one stinking interview with a client!

This new job is going to break our bank into a million pieces before we even see his first pay check! Lord knows when that will be! So I am just a tiny bit stressed about money!!! :( I spent 10 years of my past relationship in deep debt and debt and empty bank accounts now panic me! I’ve invested a lot of money into helping Eric out with his job losses and incredibly bad car luck over the past 4 months and if we don’t win a lottery or see a steady double income soon, I am going to have a head of all grey hair or an ulcer :( He feels horrible having to have borrowed so much money from me every pay check to get by and he feels like dirt, but I keep telling him he can pay me back whenever he can. I love him and am not going to kick him out over money. Yes it can’t always be me bailing him out, that has to change, but that change will come with the new job. I have faith it won’t always be like this…

So now we play the waiting game. Wait to find out when his training starts. Wait to see what his training involves and how intensive it is. Wait to find out when he starts getting paid. Wait for his first pay check. Wait to see how long it takes for him to heal for his tonsils. Wait wait wait… I hate waiting. Another thing we’re waiting for is his car. It’s been in Nova Scotia for a while at his sisters waiting to be fixed. With him starting a new job, he will need his car back. It also needs to be inspected as of today actually. Lovely. Another expense we don’t have the money for. Sigh…

Blah hum bug. If there was ever a time we need a pick me up, it’s now. It’s just been so stressful with him being unemployed, the money stress has been bad, now this new job is a good thing but it’s also causing much stress. Then watching him deal with the incredible pain from his surgery, he is down right misserable. I think we just need a vacation!

I also am worried ‘what if’ he doesn’t like this job. I’ve been hearing some not so good feedback about this company from random sources since he took the job. What if he hates it, what if they are bad to work for. It was my idea to apply for the job, it was my friend who told me about it. What if he hates it and then I will feel like it is my fault for pushing him in the direction of this job. Since they are paying for his training to get licensed if he quits before he’s been working for them for a year, they have the right to make him pay them back for the training which can cost up to $900.00+! Yikes, that’s all we need, is to owe them money! I just got to keep my fingers crossed that everything will work out… Wish us luck!!!

Hello, I have returned and will try my best to write yet another blog entry. I am not feeling the best, so this may be short and sweet or I may find a second wind and make it long and rambly…

After having 3 days off from work it was no easy accomplishment to come back!! While I was off I was on a ‘day’ schedule, in bed by 10pm one night even! Imagine that! So to switch back to nights tonight has not been fun. When my alarm went off tonight I felt like death warmed over. I think something is brewing… My guts are not happy and my sinuses are building pain and pressure. I am over due for a doozy of a cold and it may very well be on it’s way! Eric seems to be coming down with something too… Sooo not good!!!

Friday afternoon we got a surprise phone call! It was the hospital calling to confirm Eric’s surgery to remove his tonsils on Wednesday September 23rd! Whaaaat??? Less than a weeks notice??? What happened to advance notice??? They claim to have mailed out a letter on September 3rd to notify him of his surgery date, we received no such letter! So talk about mad scramble! I had to make several phone calls and emails to arrange to have my work schedule changed, was a very stressful time, on what was supposed to be my first relaxing day off!

Sooooo I managed to make some changes and now I have Wednesday night off. So I now get off work Wednesday morning at 7am and have to have Eric at the hospital by 10:20am to go to admitting. His surgery is supposed to begin at 12:20pm and they warned he may be kept for up to six hours afterwards. I will be getting no sleep till late Wednesday evening and there would of been no way I could of went to work that night and functioned. Also, the hospital requires that someone stay with him for 24 hours after his surgery because there is a risk of post-surgery bleeding.

His mom offered to come up and stay with us for one week to take care of Eric during and after his surgery. I like his Mom and all… I just don’t want a house guest for one week. Especially in our tiny apartment and me working nights. In the end I left the decision up to Eric. It’s his Mom, his surgery, if he really wanted her there I’d survive somehow… Thankfully he was of the same mind set as me.

He decided as much as he loves his Mom, he just wanted to be home with me taking care of him and no company. He doesn’t think he’ll feel up to having anyone else around. His Mom of course cried and was upset that her ‘baby’ didn’t want/need her for his surgery. He’s never had surgery before aside from wisdom teeth, so she’s very emotional and nervous. We promised to keep her updated with phone calls :)

We made a nearly 3 hour drive to Eric’s Grandfather’s birthday party on Saturday. Met tons of people whom I will likely never meet again or remember their names. Eric didn’t even recognize most of the people there haha! The party was a great success and I guess I met the family’s approval as no one kicked me out ;) There was more food than an army could of ate! Lots of left overs got packed and taken back to Eric’s parents house. A tray of sweets got sent home with us, yummy!!! Molasses crinkle cookies are the best ever!!!

We decided to spend the night at Eric’s parent’s house. We brought our own pillows this time because last time the pillows on the guest bed near broke our necks. I hate high lumpy pillows, I need flat soft pillows :) This time sleep was better than last time but still not quite so great, their mattress hates us both, kills my back. I loaded up on muscle relaxers and pain reliever and did my best to catch some Zzzz’s, we were exhausted and asleep by 10pm! Had yummy bbq’ed chicken and new potatoes for dinner and we left around supper time on Sunday. Took the Sunrise trail back home which was nicer scenery than the divided highway. We were very glad to be back home!

Got to spend some more quality time with Eric’s nephew. He is such a sweetie! While at the birthday party I was on baby duty for a while, feeding and holding him. Eric got to go help on diaper duty ;) Such a cute lil man! He’s a heavy little brute though! At six weeks old he is weighing in at nearly 12 pounds! He’s growing super fast :) Wish they lived closer so we could see him more often!

So all in all, life’s been busy and now we’re trying to prepare for Eric’s surgery. Eric is not a fan of Doctors or hospitals, terrfies him really. So trying to keep him calm and under control… I fear that his nerves will get the best of him Tuesday night when I am at work and not home to talk to him and distract him. Wednesday could be an interesting day! We got pudding and popsicles, just need to make some jell-o and hopefully we’ll be all set for some comfort ‘food’ when he gets home. I don’t imagine he will feel like or be able to eat very much in the beginning, so cold, wobbly items it is ;)

I hope he’ll be ok and not try to bolt on us wearing a Johnny shirt ;) He’s a jumper!!! Seriously… If you wake him up suddenly or startle him from sleep, he literally will flip out of bed and be on his feet running before his brain even clues in what was said or just happened. It’s amusing at home, but not when he’s in the hospital hooked up to IV’s and such! He did the same thing when he came out of anesthesia from his wisdom teeth, jumped up and was pacing the tiny room like a mad man as soon as they woke him up and freaking out. I could have my hands full… Fingers crossed that I can keep him from running with his johnny shirt flapping in the wind ;)

Tuesday is my second happy un-anniversary! Wow, where has the time gone? Is this really the second year of being seperated on our anniversary? Hard to believe 8 years ago compared to now. Just goes to show how life can change drastically! I had the cinderella fairy tale wedding 8 years ago. I think Mom still has the ‘anniversary teir’ cake from our wedding cake in her freezer that we kept forgetting to eat on our anniversary. Guess she can throw that out any time ;)

Lots of happy memories but I don’t think I’d ever go that big or extravagent again. It’s such a catch 22! I’ve been there done that before but Eric has not. It’s no big secret to our families and friends that Eric wants to get engaged and married as soon as I feel ready for such another big step… Although I do not want a big wedding again and likely could make due with a civil ceremony or a topical destination, I also have to weigh in the consideration that it’s Eric’s big day too He’s never been married, he is their only son and youngest child and so his family may want something local where all his friends and family are invited. So much to consider and think about, but not today :) Down the road, sure! Today is my happy un-anniversary day and the last thing I am going to do is think about planning a new wedding day haha! Wait till the divorce papers are complete first before we even go there ;)

Oooh ya… My birthday! It came and went again this year… It was very uneventful. I went home from work, Eric treated me to “Spa de Eric”. Essentially a foot soak, scrub and massage with lotion. I stayed up tinkering online and responding to many many facebook birthday messages until dinner time. I went to bed around 12:30pm with the intentions of getting up around 7:30 to get ready and go out to supper before I had to go to work. Well Eric and I both had the worst sleep ever! Kept waking up, back was killing me, just was misserable all around. When the alarm went off at 7:30pm Eric asked me if I really wanted to get up now? We were both exhausted still. I said nope, re-set my alarm for 10pm! So I stayed in bed until I had to get up and get ready for work. So it was a pretty lack luster birthday if you ask me ;) Maybe next year I will get it off :P

Well time to get back to work! If you don’t hear from me for a few days it is because I’ll be taking care of Eric after his surgery. I am off Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, took an extra day unpaid to look after him. I’ll post when time permits! Cheers!

Happy Birthday to meeeeeeeeeeeee! Happy Birthday to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! Happy Bithday dear meeeeeeeee :) Happy Bithday to me! Well it is official, I have entered the land of 31. My Mom called tonight to get my new mailing address to send me my birthday card. She said the big 31. I said yes I am getting old! She said if you are old that must make me ancient! Hahaha! Yes Mom, I am old and you are ancient ;)

I rang in my birthday at work checking in a guest. Good times! Eric was here dropping me off my supper so I got to chat with him a few minutes before he left. I’ll spend the first seven hours of my birthday working, then the next 8 sleeping then after that supper and who knows before it’s time to come to work for the last hour and a half of my birthday. Sounds exciting eh? Not really :P

When I got off work yesterday morning Eric and I got breakfast and then went to Centennial Park. I’d heard that it was a great place to go and I had never been there before. We kept meaning to visit it, but procrastination kept us from doing so. We finally went! I only saw maybe 5% of it! It’s huge! From what I saw so far it is pretty awesome. We saw a kids water park that had some really neat looking water features and a huge playground! It was all free and open to public. What a great resource for families!!! We went down a walking trail to a lower level and were greeted by many ducks and pidgeons and a saucy squirrel!

We ended up going on a long walking path around a large lake. It was really pretty and the only annoyance were a cloud of mosquitos trying to take me down for breakfast! I brought my camera and snapped some pictures. Lots of duck shots! They were so tame and demanding food. We had none with us to give them though. Eric teased them with grass and pine cones instead. Two ducks got in a tug of war over a pine cone and a third duck jumped in yanking feathers out of one of the ducks. I told Eric “see what you did!?!” I took a picture of the duck holding the other ducks feather’s in his beak :P

It was a nice change from going home and watching tv or on the computer while Eric played his computer game. We vowed to do this more often before the snow flies. I need to wear more comfortable footwear next time. The flip flops I brought were a little rough between the toes! So we plan on going back again soon :)

I am anxious to set up my computer and desk so that I can download my pictures and go through them. I miss working on pictures and most of all taking them. Perhaps this will help jump start me back in that direction. Now I have to charge my battery up for this weekend. Eric’s Mom has asked that I bring my camera and take some pictures. So I am finally getting some use of my camera lately. I have oodles of pictures to edit and look through from the past few times I used it. The pictures I edit and like I will upload on my new gallery once it is all set up. I’ll keep you posted on that!

I ‘was’ anxious to go home and watch the Big Brother Us finale in the morning. It was on last night. Well as usual, Facebook ruins the ending for me. I should of known better than to log onto facebook (I view it on my cellphone when at work on breaks) before I got to watch it. Every second person was shouting to the world the name of the winner on their status updates. Way to ruin the surprise for those who didn’t get to watch it live folks! Pet peeve of mine… People need to realize there’s people in other time zones, as well as people who record the shows to watch later. Instead the minute they find out a winner of a show or a twist of a story line on a popular tv show they feel the need to be the first to blab about it in their statuses… Grrr Arrrgh! Drives me crazy… So now I know that _________ won and I guess I’ll eventually get around to watching how it all went down. No rush now!

Time to get back to work, no rest, not even on your birthday ;)

Night 4 of 7 is upon us… After tonight’s shift I will have 3 more night shifts to go before I get my 3 days off. I cannot wait! I am tired and drained and just want some me time away from work!

The past few days and nights have been very very stressing… There was a scam incident that happened Saturday night at work and it’s caused me a lot of stress, headaches and heartaches. I cannot go into details but suffice to say I was played like a fool, my kindness and trust violated by a con-artist and it’s left me just sick to my stomach about the whole ordeal.

The whole incident brought back all the horrible memories of my camera being stolen in August 2008. Having to go through all the police statements and such for hours brought back a ton of memories that I didn’t care to relive. If these con-artists are caught I dread having to go to trial to testify and all that is involved because of the sheer stress of it all.

I’ve been there, I’ve done that before with the girl I charged for stealing my camera. I went through that rollercoaster once and in the end she took off and didn’t show up for court and has an outstanding warrant out for her arrest still to this day. It was a horrible experience and I don’t want to go back!

Soooooo long story short, I feel like a fool for being played and falling into their trap. A few other hotels had the same experience. If I could do it all over again hind sight is 20-20. I just got roped into a sob story and was trying to do my best to help a so called “guest” in need. My only hope is that I continue to be the best customer service person I can be, but have my guard up more next time and maybe not be so trusting. Time to build up the wall again so people will stop taking advantage of me… I could kick myself… It’s had be stressed up the wazoo since it happened :(

So I am in desperate need of my 3 days off so that I can forget this whole mess and put it behind me. There’s still no concrete plans for my 3 days off. Friday no plans, Saturday drive to Nova Scotia for the birthday party, Sunday no plans. I technically don’t get off work until 7am friday morning, so it’s safe to assume I will need to sleep some of friday away.

Eric and I may just stay home friday and lay low and relax. Satuday we will be up early and on the road for Nova Scotia. It’s a 2.5 hour drive. Maybe we will take the scenic route and leave early to take some pictures along the way or perhaps do that on the way back. We will most likely spend Saturday night at Eric’s parents house. Sunday we will either stick around or drive straight back. Decisions decisions. Perhaps we will just go with the flow and see what happens…

Another 24 hours and I will be another year older. I am slowly climbing the 30 ladder! I’ll have to go to bed early in the morning so that I can be up and go out to supper with Eric before I head off to work on the night of my birthday. Working on my birthday sucks but Mmmm donair panzerotti and ceasar salad! I can hardly wait :) I love Pizza Delight! Don’t think I’ll be getting a Birthday cake this year. Eric says he is horrible at making cakes. He makes yummy bread and cookies from scratch, but not cakes. So I guess I can live without a cake, or maybe I’ll make my own. Rainbow confetti cake and icing, yummy! I am not so much a chocolate fan.

I need to go home and tidy the apartment when I get off in the morning. Our toilet chain/rubber stopper broke in the toilet and we have to manually flush it. First we first used our hands, but the inside of the tank is rusted and the water is icky looking and the stopper covered in black slime. So we switched to using a metal coat hanger than Eric bended to flip open the rubber slimey stopper to flush. Also our bottom oven element is burnt out. So we have to call them in the morning about both those issues and have them come over to fix them. I’ll give the apartment a quick tidy up, Eric could care less, but I am anal about letting people in when the place is cluttered or messy.

Still sooooo many kitties to give away on kijiji!!! It’s so hard to resist temptation! Eric’s Mom decided to get rid of all their pets. They were all pets of Eric and his Sisters and when they all moved out she was stuck with 2 dogs, 3 cats and 1 bird. So Eric’s favorite cat Oscar, his Mom had asked if we wanted to take him. Oscar is black and white and cute, but he’s primarily an outdoor hunter cat. Catches and eats anything and everything, even squirrels. I don’t think he’d be happy being an indoor apartment cat. Eric agrees and we will not be taking Oscar to live with us, unless he changes his mind when we are home on Saturday…

Still no word on when Eric’s surgery will be to remove his tonsils. Soon I hope, because they are bothering him horribly. He has severely large tonsils and they are full of tonsil stones, which are like calcium hardened pebbles. They are painful, they hurt alot when a stone or two or three pushes their way out at a time. It makes it hard for him to swallow even water sometimes without choking. His surgery was supposed to be in September. At this rate it will be October…

I miss having a family doctor. There are many walk-in clinics over here, however I call them sniffle clinics. Unless it’s something minor they won’t see you. I keep having reocurring stomach and bowel issues and they won’t see me for it, not even to refer me elsewhere. Same for my Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (Pcos), they won’t even see me for that either. I just want a referral to a specialist for stomach problems, and a local Ob-gyn. No such luck.

My Pcos is still very much a problem and likely will be the rest of my life. I had a great PEI Ob-gyn who was treating me but I haven’t seen her since last fall, a few months after I had surgery. I knew a visit to a doctor was inevitable but it was keeping to itself and being it’s usual dysfunctional self but no immediate cause for alarm, just the usual. However in the past few months it’s become a problem again and the sooner I see someone the better. Otherwise I’ll be back in the surgery boat again, which I do noooot want because I suffered complications to the last surgery that left me in agony and hooked up to an IV of pain meds in outpatients for endless hours last time!

My Mom was going to visit my family Doctor on PEI of 30 years for a check up of her own. I had her ask if they could do a referral for me to an Ob-Gyn even though I now had a NB Health Care card. Thankfully they said they were going to refer me! They didn’t say to who, and they didn’t know how soon I’d get in. Just knowing that I will see someone in the forseeable future is great! Eric was beginning to worry and was going to drag me to outpatients soon and who knows how many hours and how fruitful that would be!! So I’ll just wait for the referral and hope it is a Pcos friendly knowledgeable doctor! Time to whip this Pcos back where it belongs, I don’t like when it gets a mind of it’s own ;)

My back is still very much a problem. I am always in mild discomfort to extreme pain, never a break. I’ve found a new muscle relaxer and pain reliever combo at Shoppers that has been helping me sleep a little better at night. I can sleep for longer spurts which is nice. I am used to waking up once to twice an hour to use the bathroom and reposition. Eric says I whimper moan and sometimes cry in my sleep from the pain. I guess I am just so used to constant pain that I didn’t know I was doing these things. Workers, even though I no longer have an open case per say had sent me a letter that they wanted me to go for an evaluation to see how much permament disability I had from this injury, This was months ago, I left them a message back and never heard peep. I may have to give them a call again…

Time to go! Have a great day!

Hello hello! So we meet again! It’s the wee hours of the morning when most normal people are sleeping. I am at work with a few spare minutes on my hand. Usually by now I am up to my elbows in news paper black ink. The delivery truck that brings us our morning delivery of newspapers must be running behind again because they should of been here over an hour ago. Once they arrive I have to roll them up, put them in a special plastic bag and load them onto a bellcart to deliver to the door handles of all guests staying in the hotel. It’s apart of my job that I hate! It’s tedious, it’s boring and I hate the feel of newspapers and the black ink it leaves behind. So I will not shed any tears if the delivery gets here too late for me to deliver them to the rooms ;)

I just finished my two days off, now I am back for the long haul of seven 11pm to 7am shifts in a row. Almost one down, six more to go. I need a calander and a red marker to count down the days! My days off were ok but nothing exciting. Wednesday when I got home by 7:30am and I stayed up fairly late in the day. I went to bed late afternoon and got woken up around 8:30pm. It was my grandmother calling to invite Eric and I to supper the following day. My grandmother’s second husband lives around 10 - 15 minutes away and they spend half their time living in his house there, the other half in her house on PEI.

So I agreed to go to supper the following day and never went back to sleep, just got up and thus began being up for over 24 hours straight out of stubborn stupidity ;) I should of got some sleep somewhere in there, but instead I cleaned the house, worked on blinkies, watched tv shows, ran some errands, paid some bills, read a magazine and the list goes on and on! By the time I went to sleep Thursday night I was exhausted. However I couldn’t let myself sleep too long through the night, I had to get back on my sleeping pattern for nights, so I got up at 2am and didn’t get to bed until after 3pm Friday. I didn’t get near enough sleep and I am super tired! Oh the joys of working nights and trying to fit into a day time society…

My Grandmother gave me some pre-birthday money. I am trying to spend it wisely, but I do admit I did some shopping on my days off. I didn’t get much mind you, but I am happy with what I got. My favorite silver hooped earrings that I wore to work all the time were tarnished and had gone ugly beyond repair. I have 3 holes in each ear, I wear small cheap studs in the top two usually that I buy as an 8 pack at walmart for $5.97 and when they tarnish and make your ears turn color I toss them out. I had been out of the small stud earrings for a month or so and kept meaning to get more. So I found some great earring bargins on hoops in the 5.00 range for single and multi pack pairs and studs at walmart. My ears are happy once again :) I got a cute star necklace, it’s all interlocked large stars, I thought it was longer than it was, so it fits like a choker. It’ll take some getting used to.

I went to Ardene’s one of my favorite stores for cheap accessories and I got their 5 pairs of socks for $10.00 deal as well as some headband packs on sale. I seem to be wearing small thin black plastic headbands to work lately and wanted some more backups and variety in case mine broke. If you’ve been reading my blog a while now, you may recall I hate wearing socks, but for work purposes I must and if I must wear socks, I’d like them to at least be funky and cool looking. Ardene’s is the place to be for that! Mmmm colorful funky socks!

I need to find a top to wear to Eric’s Grandfather’s 85th Birthday Party next Saturday. I was browsing around and by coincidence found an awesome deal on good old faithful undies. Regular $11.99 and up on for $2.00! Score! They are cute, colorful and comfortable, so you cannot go wrong for $2.00! My only other noteworthy purchase was a 12 pack of multicolored ink pens from Shoppers, on sale for $1.99! I am dying to give them a whirl! So that was my big splurge with some of my Birthday money.

The rest of my days off were unevenful… Swept the apartment, dusted, watered plants, cleaned the bathroom and so on while Eric did Laundry. I went through my boxes of shoes, and believe it or not, I picked out 27 pairs to donate to charity! Shocking I know! Me, parting with shoes!!! Who would of thought??? Eric’s going to take them tomorrow to donate before I change my mind… I shall miss you shoes! The other shoes who made the cut are now organized and packed neatly back into one box. Don’t get too excited, the box is at least 3 feet tall and wide ;) Lots of flip flops in there though.

So all in all my days off went by very fast, I should of slept more, but them are the breaks! Now it is back to work and go crazy until my next time off :) I was going to go home and stay up a while until I had to sleep until work, however my boss twisted my arm to attend a staff family fun day picnic today. It’s from 1pm to 6pm. I’ll go and make an appearance and then come back home and sleep. Day time life sure is inconvenient sometimes :P

Well time has run away on me, I need to get back to work. Adios!

I must be going crazy ~!~ Yet another blog entry so soon. Shocking I know!!! :) Enjoy it while it lasts, all good things must eventually come to an end…

I am at work right now and have a few minutes of down time before I go count some inventory. I am writing in notepad and will upload this to my blog in the morning when I get home. Alls quiet so far, school is back in across the maritimes so the bulk of our guests are business men and women. I’ll enjoy some peace and quiet while I can! ‘

Had a nice little surprise when I came into work tonight. I had a Thank-You card from my manager thanking me for my hard work in preparing for the audit trainees. Nice to know my work did not go unnoticed! She also gave me a $10.00 Tim Horton’s gift card. I am not a coffee drinker but it still will go to good use!

My new work schedule is out. I had better enjoy my next two days off because after that I have to work seven 11pm to 7am shifts in a row alone. Uggg… It’s my own fault though, because I requested over a month ago a 3 day weekend off for September 18th to the 20th. So I will be coming back to a long haul and likely none too happy about it. I will be needing those 3 days off by then! We’ll be going to Nova Scotia for at least one of those 3 days off for his grandfather’s 85th birthday. The other two days are undecided as of yet.

Owww owww and more owww… Just had a guest check in and want hot water for his tea. The hot water cannister was out so I took his cup to the kitchen to get some from our coffee/water machine. The kitchen door hit me on the way out and spilled the boiling hot water all over my hand. I look like a red hot burning lobster! I had to run it under water and such, it’s not a very happy camper right now. I am sure it will be ok, but for now, alls I have to say is owwwww!!! Is it time to go home yet? Blaah…

I don’t really have a lot to say, this is the downside of blogging twice in two days… So prepare yourself for some boring dribble… Come on, you asked for it ;) Just warning you now :P

Eric is getting very bored at home now that he is off work. We have to call tomorrow to check on his unemployment as well as if they set the date for his tonsil surgery. He can only play so much Final Fantasy and draw so much before he gets bored bored bored. He’s quite the little suzy homemaker! He loves to bake and cook, so he’s made homemade chocolate chip cookies, homemade bread from scratch, lots of yummy meals and so on.

He cleans the best he can as well and has the itch to organize the spare bedroom tomorrow. Let’s face it guys and girls ideas of cleaning are two different things usually, at least it is for us. For example, my version of sweeping a floor is sweep the entire floor area even if it looks clean, move everything on the floor out of the way etc. Eric’s version of sweeping is spot sweeping, look for the obvious spots and attack only those. He used to get so frustrated when I’d go and sweep the floor behind him and show him all I got in the dust pan. So he’s been trying to sweep my way more now, he’s getting better at it lol…

Cleaning has been one of our only major obstacles in our relationship. Our cleaning styles do not match, therefore he’d try his best in his own way and never felt like it was good enough because I could always still find things to clean when he said he already had done it. I told him not to take it to heart so much and don’t worry about it, he takes it too personal. I feel bad but I can’t help it. I can’t change the fact our cleaning methods are from venus vs mars. I appreciate all he does to help out but I can’t help going behind him sometimes and finishing things my way.

Here is a prime example… When he says he has cleaned the kitchen, to me that means garbage is taken out, dishes are washed and put away, floor is swept, counter tops are completely wiped down with everything moved and cleaned under and the stove is wiped down and so on. Everything is put away and in it’s place, counter top is shining and nothing is left out to clutter.

Eric’s version of a clean kitchen is wash the dishes and leave them heaped in the drying rack like a sky scraper, spot wipe down the cupboard and put away the garbage. The stove still needs to be wiped down or at least more than it was, things still need to be wiped behind and such to get all the loose crumbs etc, the floor still needs to be swept and clutter on the counter tops like oven mitts, salt shakers, butter dishes and such put away. Yea…so not my idea of a clean kitchen ;)

I must admit, he has come a long long ways from when I first met him. The first time I went to his bachelor apartment in Moncton he spent 3 hours cleaning it before I arrived, and I spent another 2 hours cleaning it myself just to make the kitchen look less like a hazard zone and so I’d be willing to use the bathroom there hahaha!!! I appear to be rubbing off on him and he admits he is changing for the better and picking up some of my cleaning skills. He tries very hard now to clean closer to my standards lol. I am not Martha by any stretch of the imagination, that would be my mother, but in my world some things are just not done until they are done right. So until he becomes more like me, we will continue to tease each other about our cleaning differences and try to meet in the middle. At least we are able to joke around about it now and he doesn’t get offended as easily any more. He’s stepped it up some and I’ve relaxed some to compromise ;)

Ooooh the growing pains of a new relationship, it’s funny how all these little things pop up that you’ve never thought about before and are suddenly dealing with for the first time. We grew up in two different provinces with two very different family lifestyles. Food is our other issue that presents many many challenges. He grew up with a stay at home Mom who always had home cooked meals. Most of their dishes were made using rice and often it was all thrown together in a gulash sort of casserole.

I grew up with two loving hard working parents who were not home a lot. Most of my life we owned restaurants and we all worked there daily. So many of my meals were eaten at the restaurant which served home cooked meals, I had the choice of the menu and potatoes were the main staple in our foods. I mainly stuck to simple foods like cheeseburger, chicken fingers, sandwiches, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, fries, all very basic foods. When we were at home mom did cook meals as did dad, but rice was never apart of our meals as Dad didn’t like it. It was always meat and potatoes kind of a meal, a lot of bbq-ing and never casseroles or gulashes and very little vegetables etc.

So as I mentiond, Eric loves cooking and he cooks what he knows best, his Mom’s cooking. I like rice, but I don’t want it every meal, and he likes potatoes but does not want it every meal either. He likes lots of vegetables, I like them but never had them at every meal like he often does. He likes a lot of casseroles and gulashes thrown together, I like individual foods that aren’t touching on the plate ;) See where I am going? Hahaha…

So sometimes it can be a challenge when he’s in the mood to cook his old faithful dishes and then I curl my nose up at them and pick at them only eating a few bites. So we get a lot of moments where he wants to playfully choke or force feed me and or we have a stalemate trying to decide what he is going to make for supper. Never had this problem before because Chris didn’t know how to cook when I met him and didn’t like to cook, so what ever we ate usually depended on what I bought and cooked based on my own tastes. I am more than happy to give Eric the cooking reins in the kitchen but we’ll have to figure out a menu that works for both of us before he throws the cookbook at me hehehe!!! :)

So if cooking and cleaning are the only two areas we have our comical lovers quarrels in, I think we have it made thus far! It helps that we both are talkers and keep the doors to communication wide open. So that works in our favor and we work out any issues before they become an issue. It’s so refreshing to not fight. We may have had 1 or 2 fights in the past 9 months and they were over before they started essentially because we talked them through. Those are my kind of fights! :)

I am pleasantly surprised at how smoothly things have been going… I forgot what it was like to be happy and have someone else want to make me so happy. Some people say we moved too fast with me jumping across the ocean and moving in together so soon. Trust me, I didn’t jump in with two feet and no head. I heavily weighed the pros and the cons. I wanted to make sure I was moving for the right reasons. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t ‘rebounding’ so to speak. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just looking for a way out of my parents house. I thought it through and in the end there was no other place I wanted to be. I have a good feeling about this and I have no regrets at all! Eric is wonderful and he makes me feel like a Queen! :)

I also do not regret my past marriage, it helped me grow to be who I am today. Chris and I have remained on very friendly terms and are in the process of divorcing. We both already signed the divorce papers and I returned them back to the Supreme Court. It’s all a waiting game now for the judge to process our paperwork. We should be officially divorced before Christmas. There will always be some good memories from the past, but we are both happy to move on and are much happier for having done that. We both have new lives and I am happy that we both are happy. Everything happens for a reason ~!~

So all in all life is great right now! Could be better finacially however that all comes in time. We always have to have a down side to appreciate the up sides in life :) Hope all is well in your world!

Surprise! I am back so soon, who would of thunk it! I had a few spare moments on my hands for a change and thought I would drop by and ramble a bit…

One more 11pm to 7am shift and then I get two days off, yay! I hope my days off are truly days off… My co-worker who works nights with me is now on vacation for two weeks. He is the only other trained person to do the audit 11pm to 7am shift. So my manager appointed two people to work together on my nights off to do the audit. Did I mention they have never done the audit before and are not trained to do it?

Soooo it was my job to create a training guide to assist them and walk them through the entire 8 hour audit shift, step by step. Easier said than done! It took me over 12 hours to create and perfect this step by step guide!!! I am proud to say a monkey can now do my job if they read my guide… It’s that literal! I tell you where, when and how to click, you don’t have to do any thinking for yourself. Seriously.

It is my hope that they will follow this guide down to the very last letter and have no problems. No problems means I get my two nights off and do not have to come in and rescue them :) Fingers crossed! We will also be saving the guide that I wrote for future training purposes for new staff or if someone ever ends up working audit due to someone not being able to make it in for the audit shift in an emergency. I never want to have to write it again! One doesn’t realize how much work you do in an 8 hour shift until you have to write it down step by step! 15 pages and 63 very detailed itemized lists later I now realize I do a heck of a lot of work at night :P

I have no plans for my days off… I am out of funds and do not get paid until Thursday. Sooooo I guess I will sit at home and sort through blinkies and watch tv shows and clean. I lost all my previous years and years of blinkies and a while ago started to re-do the ones that meant the most to me. It’s a long tedious process, however they make me happy and keep me occupied.

I’ve got a little over 2000 downloaded and will not download more until I have these all uploaded and sorted by category. Go ahead and call me crazy! I am used to it :P Chris used to think my blinkies were crazy and now so does Eric. I don’t know why I love them so much, must be the blinking bling or colors and or how such a tiny graphic can say so much. Look out, I may start using the odd blinkie in my posts here! ;)

About a month ago Eric went to a giant outdoor fleamarket and got a huge box of habitrail tunnels and pieces and accessories for $20.00. It included a cage, a maze, a wheel, a ball and more. He created a huge masterpiece of tunnels and places for Molly, our teddy bear hamster, and connected it to her current habitrail condo. It’s huge! I will have to get some pictures of it and her… I decided to put Molly in the ball for the first time the other night! She had a blast zooming around the apartment in her big yellow ball and bumping into the walls and furniture. I don’t know who had more fun, her or me watching her!

She loved it so much that last night when Eric forgot to close one of her domes tight, she got out of her cage and he found her sitting on top of the yellow ball on the floor by her cage! She was trying to tell him she wanted to go for a drive around the apartment haha! So he scooped her up and opened the ball and she dove in and went for another tour of the apartment. She’s a cutie!! :)

Must resist the urge to get a kitten… Eric has always had cats growing up. He left behind 3 cats at his Mom and Dad’s. I left behind my cat Moe at Mom and Dad’s as well, they adopted him over 2 years ago from me and could never pry him away from them now. We both are cat lovers and we both miss having a cat around very very much. We are always on kijiji’s free stuff section and lately there’s a huge spike in free kittens to give away. As much as they tug at our heart strings, we must resist temptation for now. Free kittens still create large vet bills for shots, medications and fixing. Maybe next year… For now, must not take home kitties! :P

Shoes shoes and more shoes… I am the owner of over 50 pairs of shoes, flip flops and sandals and sneakers. I have 2 giant boxes of them. This summer they stayed burried and I never opened the boxes once. I just wore the same sandal, flip flop and work shoe all summer. Never bought any more either. It has been a strange shoe summer for me. Well I couldn’t take it any more. I had Eric bring up the 2 giant boxes of shoes from the basement storage for me last night. I shall go through them on my days off and see if I can purge any or if there’s any I want to add to my daily footwear entourage. It’ll be like Christmas!! ;) Other shoe fanatics will understand.

However I am sad that I did not add any new open toed slip on dressy black sandals to my collection. I have wore my favorite pair to death, the heel is a hallow chunk and if I put too much weight on my left foot when standing idle, the heel collapses down a little. I’ve worn them religiously the past 3 summers. It is time to retire them with a heavy heart. However I just feel that I cannot until I found the perfect little number to replace them ;) Surely someone must understand :P So next spring I will be shoe shopping the walmart isles (I don’t pay big prices for my shoes) in hopes of finding the perfect sandal! :)

It feels like fall… The air is cold, crisp and unforgivingly nipply! The sweet smell of summer is gone, as are the things I wanted to do this summer that I didn’t get a chance to do. Since I now live in Monkey town, I wanted to go to Magic Mountain because I haven’t been there in about 8 years. I live 10 minutes away from it and somehow never made it there. I wanted to go to Hopewell Rocks at Fundy and even though I sent dozens of tourists there a week all summer and live only 45 minutes away, I didn’t make it there either. Eric and I wanted to spend a weekend at his family’s cottage this summer and go whale watching…that too did not happen. I wanted to get out there and take pictures, that did not happen.

I blame working nights and lack of money. When you work all night and sleep all day, by the time your days off get here, you don’t have the energy to stay up all day and do things, you tend to keep your pattern of sleep days and up all night even when you are off otherwise you mess up your body’s ability to function. The days I was willing to for-go sleep and mess up my sleeping pattern we didn’t have the funds to go anywhere. Cruel cruel summer that I never got to see! So I am hoping that perhaps by next summer I won’t be on all night shifts so that I can enjoy some of what summer has to offer around here!

I used to be a huge avid reader but then along came the internet. The number of books I have read in the past 10 years has dropped dramatically and I find myself starting books and forgetting to finish them because I am too absorbed with things online. I recently picked up the Twilight Series. It was slow going to ead through the first book, I’d read a few chapters, missplace the book or not even think about picking it up and be online surfing instead. However once I picked it back up again I let myself get carried away in the series. I am now on book 3 of 4 and loving it. Hoping to read another chunk of it on my days off. The last book of the series is still only available in hard cover, so will have to save a chunk of change for that $30.00 plus tax beauty! I forgot how much I enjoy reading. Maybe I should try my hand at the Harry Potter series some day… That could get expensive though haha! I’m going to have to start browsing the second hand bookstore in town and looking for some good reads as it could be a long cold boring winter at work. If you have any author suggestions, please let me know!

I am debating upon re-activating my photo gallery. I don’t take nearly as many pictures as I used to but perhaps that would change if I had an audience to view them. I do not feel comfortable putting pictures up on Facebook due to copy right reasons. So I lack a place to show pictures to my friends. So maybe in the near future I shall work on that and start putting up some pictures of my life in Moncton and PEI visits. Perhaps it would motivate me to take some pictures!

Is it Christmas yet? For years Christmas was my favorite time of year. Then as things in my marriage started to crumble it brought more stress and problems than joy. Oddly enough for our last Christmas in 2007 together I was in a Christmassy mood for the first time in years! I went and bought a ton of new cute adorable decorations, mostly from the dollarstore who had an outstanding collection! I had our house decorated from one end to the other. It was my best Christmas in years and I hated to take the decorations down! Then Christmas 2008 I was alone and living with Mom and Dad and I didn’t unpack my Christmas decorations as I had no where to put them and was not in a Christmas mood.

Well now that I have a new home, a new life and a new wonderful man, I am super duper excited about Christmas this year!!! :) Eric and I are giddy with excitement to decorate our apartment with all my Christmas decorations and to buy more new decorations to add to my collection! It’ll be our first official Christmas together and it’ll be full of excitement! My Christmas decorations are still at Mom and Dad’s in their basement, boxes upon boxes of them. We have to go to PEI this fall and bring them back. Perhaps I should leave them there as late as I can because when I bring them here you are likely to catch me decorating in early November ;)

I might sound like a loser, but I am excited to see what the dollarstore will have this year. I truly am always amazed at what nice good quality things they have for sale there for holidays. You’d never guess that most of my Christmas decorations came from there! It’ll be a little pricier this year since they now sell items at $1.00, $1.25, $1.50 and $2.00 but still well worth it :) Let the Christmas shopping begin, I have many dollarstores to choose from over here hahaha!!! We just need to find a fake tree and we will be all set. I gave my charlie brown tree away last year and our apartment will not allow real trees. So we’ll have to be on the look out for a second hand tree this fall…

Eric and I have not decided what we are going to do this year for Christmas… It’s not so easy to plan when his family is in Nova Scotia, 4 hours away from my family in PEI… We don’t want to have him go one direction and me the other, we want to be together for Christmas. So how do we put ourselves two places at once? Hmmm… So we either need to do one place on Christmas Day, and one place on Boxing Day, or make them all come to Moncton to see us, which wouldn’t work out too well, no place to keep or feed everyone! Besides, who knows if we will even get Christmas off from work. My hotel doesn’t close and we don’t know where Eric will be working at that time… Could be tricky! Oh well, no matter where we celebrate Christmas we will be together and happy :)

Wow, I guess I really did go on a rambling spree, everything from hamsters to shoes, to books to christmas and more! I need to go for now, talk to you later!

Hello hello… Long time no type! Life’s been hectic. Lots of ups, downs and never enough hours in the day so it seems.

We are moved into our new apartment and for the most part loving it. It is 2 bedroom this time. We are on the top floor of a 3 floor unit. The 21 stairs and 2 landings are a pain to climb, but having no one thumping and banging on the ceiling above us is priceless!

I have no luck when it comes to weird apartment incidents. People peeping from holes in the ceilings, stangers walking in on me sleeping, etc. Well this new apartment has it’s own memory to add to the list! Shortly after we moved in I was indisposed on the edge of my bathtub shaving my legs and some guy unlocked our apartment door and opened the door with a direct view of me! Needless to say he bolted and I sat there stunned!

When we moved in we were only given one set of keys. I think someone didn’t realize we were moved in yet or thought we weren’t home because Eric was at work and the apartment was in darkness except for the bathroom light. Gawd! Needless to say we made a complaint and got the locks changed! I was not a happy camper!!!

Other than that, things have been good here. We love the open concept of the kitchen and living room with a small divider wall with open shelving. Our last apartment was very closed feeling with all seperate rooms. It’s great having a spare bedroom. We also have a very large storage unit in the basement. It holds stuff we don’t want to see every day crammed in our spare bedroom. Will be great to store my Christmas decorations etc too when I bring them over from PEI. Best of all, we have a nice bathroom that does not leak and is not moldy!!! Yaaaay!!!

We had a heck of a time getting our damage deposit back from our old leaky moldy place though! We just got it back last week! Over a month to get it back through pure laziness or incompetence of our old landlord. Many phone calls through the Rentalsman board later we got it back. So we now have our damage deposit fully paid for the new apartment and are broke once again.

Speaking of broke… Sigh, Eric lost his job the beginning of August! Long story short, hire too many people for a busy summer, then let the excess new people go when it gets quieter. So now we are screwed money wise and still waiting for unemployment to kick in. He has been looking for a new job but we have decided if he can get unemployment rolling to hold off on a new job because he is scheduled to get his tonsils out in September or early October and must take two weeks off work by Doctor’s orders when he has surgery. What new place of employment will take kindly to a brand new employee needing two weeks off in their first month of employment? So it’s best to wait I guess even though we’re hurting for money badly.

Eric’s car needs some work to pass his upcoming inspection. We drove his car back to his home town 2.5 hours away and parked it at his Sister’s apartment. She and her fiance are mechanics on the side and will pick away at fixing it. So for now we just have my car and won’t get Eric’s back for a while. Always something!

Eric is an Uncle for the first time! His sister had a baby boy Owan August 6th. We were there last week for a few days visiting and I had the pleasure of cuddling and loving Owan for a few hours while his sister and fiance were gone out. Eric was feeding and burping Owan like a pro. Soooooo cute :)

I am still working mostly 11pm to 7am shifts, however I now have a sprinkling of 3pm to 11pm shifts in there. It has it’s trials and tribulations and frustrations but I still like my job. I got a raise and extra duties and employee of the month and lots of praise from all my superiors, so I guess it’s all going well…

Not sure if I mentioned, but we added a Teddy Bear Hamster to our household. She’s big fluffy and adorable, her name is Molly. Rescued her from an idiot selling her on kijiji who left her in her cage in a car with the windows up alllll day 8-5pm until we picked her up when this idiot got off work at 5pm. Molly was lifeless and drenched in sweat and I didn’t know if she was going to make it at first! Heart breaking! How cruel of that idiot to do that to her on a sweltering hot summer day! She’s spoiled and happy now, so are we :)

My birthday is coming up in less than 2 weeks. The big 3-1. Man where has the time gone? I am getting olllllddddd!!! I have no plans for my birthday. As far as I know I am likely working 11pm to 7am that night. My only plan is to go to Pizza Delight and take advantage of eat free on your birthday. I was going to go home the weekend of the 18th but we can’t because the 19th we have to go to NS to Eric’s grandfather’s 85th birthday. So I guess my birthday will be a quiet one this year yet again.

Other than that, life’s pretty quiet. I work, sleep, sometimes eat and rinse recycle repeat. My internet time is severely cut back from the olden days. I don’t get to use it at work, the nights I work all night, I sleep a lot the day leading up to it, so I’m not on much except for my usual facebook stalking updates haha… Hope all is well in your world!

Time is zipping by, we will soon find ourselves at the end of June! Guess it has been a while since I blogged. I don’t gave as much access to the internet any more, so I find my blogging time and energy less and less. Dozens of times I meant to and just it never happened.

At work we are not allowed to visit websites such as blogs, facebook and such. So I pretty much can look at the news and weather when I have any down time, so I spend most of my time writing snail mail. When I am home I am often sleeping or on Facebook and I keep putting things off in blog land… Sorry!

Lots to say and update you on… Where oh where to start… Well I am still at my job. It’s still hard on my body, but I need the money, so I endure it as best as I can. Having a lot of lower back pain that when I get home from work and lay down I cease up and can barely move. My sciatic nerve is bothering me again on a daily basis. Oh the joys :(

I finally have some freedom with my own set of wheels. In early June I went back to PEI to take out a small loan to get a car. I got a 2006 Pontiac Pursuit G5. It is a 2 door car, my first time with just 2 doors. It’s iridescent plum purplish grey. Depending on the light and angle my car changes 4 colors and I love it. It has been turning a lot of heads when I drive on a sunny day! I may have to get Eric to drive it and I follow so I can see what they see when I am driving lol…

So I now have a car loan expense every 2 weeks and my car insurance is much higher now , over triple than before. The joys of having a sporty looking 2 door car I guess. Time to win a lottery ;) It’s cutting into my income but I love having my freedom back! No more being stranded when Eric is at work and vice versa, no more taxi’s. I can just go out and wander for a drive on a sunny day if I feel like it… Love it!

We are in the process of getting some boxes to pack up our stuff. We gave our notice to our landlord. The leaking moldy bathroom ceiling issue has not been resolved yet and we’ve been here since mid march! Our sanity and our health has had enough! So we found a new 2 bedroom apartment very close by but in a much better neighborhood. We get the keys to it mid July and cannot wait !!! I dread the packing and moving though :( Fourth time moving in one year… This better be the last!

Eric started a new job last week and loves it. It’s better pay, much better hours, he will get benefits as of the middle of August, the list of benefits goes on and on! So we are very happy that he is doing well at his new job and hope that he gets to stay there a very long time :)

I am having some blood pressure issues off and on. Hoping it is nothing major and just attributed to stress… If it continues to be a problem I am going to be medicated. I went for stage one of allergy testing last week. They are trying to find out the root of a 12 + year never ending back to sinus infection after sinus infection… Stage one showed allergies to tree pollens. Stage two of testing isn’t until around Christmas! Blah!

Summer is slipping us by already and I feel like I am going to miss it all. Working til 7am and sleeping during the days sucks some times. You miss out on sun light hours, you don’t have much of a social life… I really miss getting out with my camera.

Going to try to find some time to do that soon, but it looks unlikely. For example I work the next 5 nights, then 1 night off then work the next 5 nights in a row after that. 10 nights and 1 night off. I’ll be too tired to do anything but sleep…

Well I am going to go for now! Hope to see more of myself here soon ;)