I'm Grateful for Sunshine

Another Grateful post for Maxabella Loves





This week I am grateful for:

1) The sunshine that has decided to grace us with its presence after at least three days absence if not longer.  Everything seems better when the sun is shining.

2) Being able to take a break.  We don't have the kids this weekend, my family is away, and my boyfriend works till this afternoon.  I've spent a wonderfully lazy morning catching up on fellow bloggers and commenting on their wonderful posts.

3) Having only one week to go until my weeks vacation.  Everything at work has gotten super hectic, like it always does right before vacation.  It just makes me appreciate its impending approach even more.

4) Last of all I am grateful that I have the ability to ride my bike, shop, and browse all by myself for a little while today.  I do love the other people in my life but it's nice not to have to hear their insistent questions on how much longer this is going to take? Or, are we almost done yet?

Beth Ann

Oh Stress!

Let's start with an I'm sorry its been so long since my last Blog.  The last two weeks have been hectic and we had my boyfriends two kids for the weekend last weekend which is always busy times.  But it has been a bit more hectic than usual.  So much so that last week I was ready to just plain freak out.  It's just been too many things that are issues all at one time.  Basically many parts of my life are in limbo right now and it is really starting to get to me. 

Example 1:
I'm looking for a different job.  I have been working on finding a new job in my spare time for the last year and it has been getting really frustrating.  Job searches are meant for the short term because they are stressful and are not healthy to be participating in for long periods of time.  It's gotten so hectic that yesterday I went to work, got out early to go to Gordon Food Service, stopped to make a return phone call that turned into a phone interview.  And then drove to a regular interview I had scheduled for that day.  Ended up having to put off stopping at Gordon's until after the interviews.  Also had a phone interview last week and a skills test.  I just feel like I have been talking about my work experience and waiting to have judgement issued on me a whole heck of a lot lately.

Example 2:
My boyfriend is going to be taking over custody of his two kids in about August.  He has a just turned 12 year old son and a soon to be 13 year old daughter.  Now we've been told that after you turn in the paperwork for custody it will take about two months before you can get a meeting on it because of the back log.  Well the kids grandma has not turned in the custody paperwork yet.  Now she wants us to have them as soon as possible, and the plan was the end of July, but now its almost the end of June and the paperwork hasn't been turned in yet.  So last weekend I had to put my foot down and say we can't have the kids start living with us until the paperwork is turned in and everything's cleared for my boyfriend to have full custody.  So hopefully it'll all be done by September when school starts.

Example 3:
We only had until June 23rd to enroll the kids in schools.  Since I'm quite a bit Type A I have gotten all the documents online and printed them out.  Made my boyfriend call the school to see what we'd need, had the grandma send us the kids birth certificates, and set up a time with the school to enroll the kids.  That time was last Friday. My boyfriend called on tuesday to set up the time and make sure the lady would be there.  We get to the school on Friday and guess what?  She has left for the day but we can leave the paper work and have somethings photocopied and hopefully everything will work out.  I was so mad.  My boyfriend did call on Monday and talked to the lady and she said we had all the right paperwork and that everythings set for the kids to be enrolled.  But still how frustrating is that.

Example 4:
My boyfriend and his friend/neighbor are all set on us moving into his half a house at the end of July.  They have a list of things that need to be done and continually talk about it.  But they never do anything on the lists.  And they keep coming up with excuses.  As soon as his sister moves out.  As soon as all her cats are gone.  She'll move out in the middle of June.  She'll move out at the end of June.  She'll move out the first week in July.  Are you kidding me!  The guy had the nerve to stop by the other day to tell me that he is planning on painting sometime this week and he hopes that eases my concerns.  I just gave him a look because I have nothing nice to say to that.  Oh your still talking about doing something at some point in time.  While time to do things is just getting sucked on by but why don't you just hang out and talk about it all the time and that should ease my concerns because I believe that all this talk may lead to something, someday, sometime in the future.  GRRRRR!!! 

Then the guys, being guys so they must have small brains or something, think it would be a good idea for the 12year old boy to have a bedroom in the basement.  The basement!! Our half of the house is on the second floor.  Why the heck would his room be in the basement?  I'm fighting them on this one because I don't care what he says I know he doesn't want his room in the basement.  When he asked about his room the first thing he said was he wants it by the bathroom.  There's no bathrom in the basement.  He'd be no where near a bathroom.  Poor thing.  So yeah that's not happening.  I guess their concern is where they are planning on building a room for him there is no electrical outlet.  This is the first time I'm hearing about this and it is too freaking late.  They're just going to have to figure something out.  The basement.  Are you freaking kidding me.

Well that's about it.  Sorry to rant and run but I'm sure some soon to be catastrophe must be headed my way because that's the way that things have been going lately.  If I have a chance I'm going to try and do a grateful post this weekend to make up for all my complaining.

What is currently driving you crazy?

Beth Ann

What a pain in the Butt.

Above is a picture of my Huffy Women's Adult bicycle that I love and ride all the time. It has a new bicycle seat on it that I bought yesterday.  For some reason even though this is categorized as a women's adult bike it came with a ridiculously small bike seat.

This is a picture of the seat.  The first time that I rode my bike it gave me a literal, physical pain in my butt.  I was very disappointed since it was the first time I was on a bike since I was a kid and it was a new present.  So I bought a memory foam bike seat cover that I've used for the last year.  One issue with it was that it was softer but not bigger than the original seat.  The other issue is that my bike was flipped over to work on it and the memory foam must of shifted to the contour of flat cement and has lost its ability to be comfortable.  I unfortunately found this out last weekend on a long bike ride when I realized that if I stood to ride my bike I was more comfortable.  This kept me from wanting to sit back down but I was so tired I couldn't help myself.  So yesterday I purchased a new bike seat that I will be trying out today.

Now this actually looks like a bike seat that can fit an adult women's butt on it.  Unlike the other seat that had to have been made for a child, stick figure, or super skinny supermodel.  All of which I and most adult women are not. 

What have you purchased or seen for an adult women that did not seem right for an adult women?

Beth Ann

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot!!!

My goodness.  Today is the first day this week that I am not hiding out in my incredibly hot apartment trying to not move around for fear of getting any hotter.  It has been in the high 90s with a heat index of 101 this week and this morning I woke up to the 60s and rain.  WooHoo.  I do like warm weather and I'm even okay with hot weather some of the time but we have to call the landlord to put the air conditioner in and he can't be hear until Friday and the heat was sucking the life out of me. 

I was warmly falling into a hazy sleep at 9pm all week.  Everything I thought of doing at home after work was completed very slowly if at all.  For some reason when I get into heat and humidity that high my whole body and thought process slows down.  I thought of blogging but I'm sure my sentences would have been ridiculous and I would have zoned out halfway through. I even caught myself staring in the direction of an attendant at the laundry mat the other day and that was in air conditioning. I'm just slow and sleepy this week.

I've been trying not to use the oven for fear of making my hot apartment even hotter.  But Ho-ray the heat has cleared out for a bit so I'm cooking supper and hanging out like it's the best weather ever today.  I'm doing all the things that I wanted to do this week but couldn't because I was slowly having my life force sucked out of me.  One of the guys I work with said that the factory his wife works at does not have air conditioning.  I wouldn't make it.  Eventually I'd just curl up on the floor and fall a sleep.

Sorry to anyone not having the hottest days ever and missing heat.  I don't mean to offend or upset you.

What weather throws your ability to function through a loop?

Beth Ann

A day with the Moms

Saturday was day two of the Kalamazoo, MI KIA Art Fair  found here.  My mom just happened to be coming, for a last minute decided visit, and I made plans with her and my boyfriends mom to go to the art fair and it was a wonderful time.  You never know what's going to happen when you get two moms together that haven't really spent time together before.  It went wonderfully.  It was one of those days were you spent the entire time talking, laughing, and exclaiming over things.

We started by meeting at my apartment and walking downtown from there.  Then we hit up the huge array of booths in Bronson Park (which we never saw all of).  Then we went to the Park Club for lunch to get out of the close to 90 F degree heat and sit in air conditioning for a bit.  We decided since no one was driving anytime soon and it was 1pm we could have drinks with lunch and take our women of leisurely time.  Then we stopped at one of my favorite little coffee shops Somethings Brewing.  We bought frozen icy eye opening beverages and started strolling down the Kalamazoo Mall shopping area where there was more art exhibits and all the stores were open for the fair. 

We continued to shop and sweat and have an all over wonderful time until 4:30pm when my mom had to head back to try and shower before a dinner reservation and Mike's mom remembered she had to be somewhere to pick something up by 5pm.  All over it was a wonderful day and I'm so glad that these two wonderful ladies have finally had a chance to spend time together. 

I feel lucky to have them both in my life and to have them get a long so well.

What wonderful thing have you done lately or in the not so distant past?

Beth Ann