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Trying a new pre-paid debit card.

By
Kat
on March 6, 2010 1:28 AM | | Comments (3)
I have a PayPal debit card, a State of Florida child support debit card, and an Amscot card.
They are all used for various things, like Paypal is for work payments, the child support card is for obvious reasons, and the Amscot card is for my SSDI to be direct deposited.
I had to get both my SSDI and my child support checks direct deposited to cards, because someone once stole a child support check from my mailbox, and even though it was a piddly little $21.05, I couldn't risk someone stealing those every week as it's court ordered, (not that he pays every week as court ordered) and I certainly didn't want to risk my SSDI checks being stolen.

I can deposit any kind of check or money order, in any amount, deposited to my Amscot card, but I can't always get there, so I usually have to wait until I can get a ride there to deposit things like that.
If I get cash, it's the same thing, I can deposit it, but I can't always get there to do so.
I don't like carrying cash with me, I don't like using cash, it's really dirty and I already wash my hands (OCD) a lot so yeah, I don't like to carry or use cash unless I absolutely have to.
I also don't like banks.
I take great issue with the government being able to access all of our private financial information if they feel like it, if they decide that you or I are a threat, or have possible ties to terrorism.
I don't like that banks require so much of your personal and private information to open an account, and for you to update your information so that they comply with the regulations of the governments "protect the home front" policies.
None of the cards that I currently use, have ever asked me for the same kind of information that banks do, as a matter of fact, I think several of the cards only have my name, date of birth, and phone number(s).
Banks also charge crazy fees for every single transaction that you do no matter how small, and now some even charge you a fee (I've heard this fee can be as much as $10)  for physically going in to the bank and interacting with a human teller, whose job it is to help you deposit or withdraw your money. 
So when I had some cash this week that I didn't want to carry with me, have it sit in my wallet driving me crazy that I can't get up to Amscot to deposit it, so I decided to try a new pre-paid debit card that I can get re-load cards from right at 7 eleven.

I bought a Green Dot pre-paid Visa debit card at 7 eleven for $4.95*, and a money pack re-load card, also for $4.95*
I gave the cashier the amount of cash that I wanted to load onto my pre-paid Visa debit card, and he added that amount through the cash register's POS systems card reader.
I came home, logged onto the Green Dot website, entered in the Visa debit card number, the expiration date, created a password, and logged in to load the card.
Loading the debit card from the money pack was really easy, and now I have all of my cash, all of my income sources, on debit cards, 2 of them are pre-paid, and 2 are not.
I only have to touch cash when absolutely necessary, when I get it, and when I hand it to the cashier, so now I don't have to be grossed out by the thought of handling very dirty paper money for too long.

Once I've used the Green Dot card for awhile, I will give it a proper product review, but so far, it gets 4 out of 5 stars for it's ease of use, fast money transfers from the money pack to the debit card, (the time it takes you to type in the numbers from the debit card and money pack) and the fee refunds.
The only downside is that they are not available everywhere yet.
While they can be purchased at over 50,000 retailers nationwide like CVS, 7 eleven, Kmart and Walgreen's, it will/would be really nice if they were also available at grocery stores as I go to Publix far more often than I go to 7 eleven, and I hate that place because while convenient, they charge excessive prices on almost every single item that they sell. 

* The $4.95 that you pay to buy the card and the money pack re-load cards, are credited back to your account (refund!) in about 1 business week, and the only fees for using the Green Dot pre-paid card is a monthly service charge of $5.95, and fees if you use an ATM, and those fees are just .50cents per transaction.
I don't plan on using any of those, so just $5.95 per month to help me control my OCD is ok with me.

**EDIT
My first fee (bought on 3/2/2010) refund was posted to my account today, 3/6/2010.

 
GreenDotReloadFeeRefund.jpg
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Completely forgot that I had it.

By
Kat
on February 8, 2010 11:57 PM | | Comments (3)
Our little mini netbooks that is.
I was so sick, like OMG I think I'm dying call an ambulance sick, for like 2 and a half weeks, and all I could do was lay on the couch, run to the bathroom, lay on the couch.
I didn't eat, I didn't sleep, and I barely drank anything either, as anything that went into my body, came right back out.
But anyway, I totally forgot that we had the mini netbook, if I had remembered, I could have at least tried to get some work done, tried to respond to emails and stuff.
I just didn't even think of it.
I will blame it on being sick and not me being stupid.
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Some one of these days, I'll actually do it.

By
Kat
on January 28, 2010 9:52 PM | | Comments (2)
I will get some term life insurance one of these days, I feel like I'm running out of time here.
Lately, it's been one thing after another with me, it all feels like it's falling apart, fast.
I turn 40 on March 1st, and my body is breaking down faster and faster as each day passes, or at least that's how I feel, that's what it feels like what's happening to me.

Intestinal viruses, drastic weight loss, illness after illness, medication changes, and then at 4am today, this Thursday morning, my way back right molar, which has been broken for a long time, freaking exploded like I got shot in the face.
I couldn't sleep, as usual, and all of a sudden, it felt like I had literally been shot in the face.
The entire right side of my face immediately swelled up huge, my gums are completely swollen, my whole face hurts, the swelling is moving up the whole side of my face, my right eye is swelling shut, it's really pretty bad.
The antibiotics that I have are not working on it, not yet at least, I need to go see a dentist, but there is absolutely no dental coverage on Medicare, none.

I simply do not have the money to go see a dentist, I won't have the money to see a dentist for a very long time, and even if I did have the money, I cannot open my jaw wide anymore, an extraction of that broken tooth would have to be done while I was put under, and they would have to be extremely careful or they could break my jaw.
Being put under for extractions cost a ton of money that I just do not have, will not have.
But first, before anything like an extraction could even be discussed, I need the correct antibiotics to get rid of this massive infection that is taking place and spreading.
If this abscesses, it can get into my blood stream and make me even sicker than I already am all of the time.

I'm so tired people, so so tired.
 
I'm tired of being sick, I'm tired of having things go wrong, I'm exhausted from struggling to make ends meet, I'm stressed out all of the time, it's really no wonder that I don't sleep and can barely eat, I'm far too stressed out to even properly function half the time anymore.
I lay awake all night long, sick, stressed out, worried about how I'm going to pay the bills, the rent, pay for all of this medical crap that is constantly happening.
Every single day is a medical and financial nightmare for me.
I'm so tired and so scared.
I'm absolutely terrified that I'm not going to be able to hold it together for much longer.
I get sick and then I can't work because I'm too sick to even sit here and type.
If I can't sit here and work, I lose making the money that I so desperately need to pay the rent, bills, and medical crap.
I'm feeling like total crap right now, the right side of my face, the whole right side, is completely swollen, it hurts, my whole jaw hurts.
I called both my pain doc and my primary care, I asked if they could call in some antibiotics, they said no.
They told me to go to the dental clinic butcher shop downtown, or go back to the ER.
I am probably already marked as a "frequent flier" at the ER, so yeah, I really don't want to have to walk back in there, show them my face, and beg them to help me, again.
 
I'm sick and tired of my ex-husband paying the child support once a freaking month because he knows that he can get away with it.
He doesn't even have to pay that much anymore!
Mark is 18, so he only has to pay for Sebastian, just $59.56 per week, and he refuses to pay it every week like he's supposed to!
He knows that he can miss 3 weekly payments in a row before any legal action is taken, so he doesn't pay for 3 weeks, then pays just the one payment of $59.56, and then doesn't pay again for another 3 weeks!
He hasn't paid a freaking dime since January 8th!
I know that's not much money, but I need every single penny that I can get, that I'm supposed to have.
That weekly child support payment pays for my doctor appointments and medicines, Mark's doctor appointments and medicines, helps buy food, and helps to pay some of the bills, and he just keeps avoiding paying it.
It's not fair!

When I say that I'm really scared, I mean it.
I honestly don't know how much longer I can keep this pace up, how much longer that I can try to hold my life together financially.
Everything is a mess, I get sick, I lose work, I lose work, I lose money, I lose money, I get behind on my bills and rent.
I am falling apart here, just falling apart and I'm scared.
I need help, I need someone to just come and make it all better, take the burdens off of me for awhile.
I need someone to just come into my life and take over for awhile, pay the bills, buy the food, pay for the medicines and appointments, and clothes for the 2 growing boys, I need someone to just come take over, I am struggling so hard and I am terrified.

It is so hard for me to admit my failings, to admit that I need someone to help me, to just take control before I lose control and lose everything, house and job, everything, but I am losing it here folks, I'm really losing it.
I really don't know how I'm going to hold it together for much longer.
I have so many bills all due during the first 3 days of February, and I do not have the money, I just don't have it.
I'm not going to have it.
Do you see?
Do you see at all?
Have you ever been so scared that you're really going to lose it all this time?
That this is it, this time is going to be the time that you just can't hold it together any longer and you can do absolutely nothing at all about it?

I can't do anything about it.
Nothing.
I'm so lost and so scared, and just wow, I really don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to hold this life of mine together.
This life of mine.
It's not a life anymore, it's just fear, stress, and worry 24 hours a day, I'm really losing control.



 

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I'll keep looking.

By
Kat
on January 10, 2010 8:51 PM | | Comments (1)
Mark was not in the mood today to talk anymore about school and getting his online degree, but I went and kept looking around anyway. I
 found that he could get an online IT degree, and a bachelors or master in IT security, if he wants to.
I also found that WGU, Western Governors University, is extremely affordable and offers financial aid as well.
Basic tuition for most of their programs is just $2,890 per six-month term.
They charge a flat every 6 months so that you're paying for the time, not the credit hours.
WGU is also a non-profit, and generally more affordable than other online universities, and  it's a fully accredited online university too.

It's another option for Mark, I just keep looking because there will be one that he wants to go to, he will make up his mind eventually.
He's accepted the way his life is, now he just needs to make up his mind how he wants to proceed and what he wants to do with the rest of his life.
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Sorry, it's cold there too.

By
Kat
on January 10, 2010 7:24 PM |
I saw a blogging friend of mine had posted about looking at some Orlando Florida hotels for a vacation, to get away from the cold and snow where they live, but I got some bad news for them.
Florida is at a 26 year record low for temps, the coldest it's been in 26 years, and we here in Sarasota are in the low 30s every night, and Orlando is in the 20s every night.
I'm not kidding, take a look at the Orlando Sentinel weather section.

They are in the 20s and 30s every night, and will be for the remainder of this cold spell, and probably will be in the 30s every night for the rest of the winter.
Now that may be warmer than some place in the mid-west, but it's absolutely way too cold for Florida.
Brrr.
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Site maintenance.

By
Kat
on January 3, 2010 2:46 AM |
I've been sitting here for the last 3+ hours doing some site maintenance.
Movable Type version 4.12, does not come with a close comments on old entries function, and every plugin that I found that was supposed to close comments on old entries, has not worked.
I know how to install plugins, I've installed a few different ones, so I know that I installed it correctly, it just doesn't work, so I've been sitting here manually closing comments on my old entries.

Luckily, I haven't written too many entries to have to do this manual close on, only 427 entries.
I've only been blogging at this site since July 2008, so it hasn't really been a long enough time to build up thousands of entries like my other blog, My Single Mom Life, has.
I've been writing at MSML since February 2004, and I've racked up 5757 entries, and have 21,373 comments.
That's a whole lot of comments!

Anyway, I'm going through and closing comments on all of my old entries because of spammers.
They have found this blog and the old entries and have taken a liking to those old entries.
Perhaps they think that because they are old, that I won't notice their spam comments, but spammers are totally stupid.
BOTH of my blogs are on comment moderation, all new comments get emailed to me for approval.
Here on KatScan, when the comment moderation email comes in, I have 4 options to deal with it.
I can approve it, view it, edit it, or report it as spam.
Once I report it as spam, I can go straight to that entry and close the comments on it, so this close comments project that I am on, isn't that bad actually, I've already closed the comments on probably more than half of my entries already thanks to those spammers.
I know that I just wrote a post similar to this on December 21st, and I know that I said that there were maybe only 50 entries left that needed to be closed, but I underestimated that number.
There's maybe 100-150 entries left that need to be closed now that I've been manually closing them from entry # 427 and moving backward to the newest entries.
It's not a long process at all, MT 4.12 rebuilds the entries very quickly.
But I have found an issue though that has me completely stumped.

On just some of my old entries, the posts are completely gone.
When I get to the edit entry page, the only thing typed there is the post title.
None of my post is there.
I click on "view" and there's nothing on the published page, only the comments people have left and the leave a comment form.
I click on "cached snapshot of page" in the Google toolbar add-on for Firefox, and there's no cached snapshot to copy, and I've gone to the Wayback Machine to try and find the posts, and they aren't there either.
Lucky for me, there aren't many missing entries, perhaps 18 at the most, but it is quite the perplexing issue.
It's such a perplexing issue that I've posted at the MT forums asking for help.
I have no idea what happened to those entries, why it happened, or how to prevent it from happening again, I'm really, totally, stumped.

If there's anyone out there who uses MT version 4.12, or any version of MT at all,  and has the slightest clue why this has happened, please please please, post to the comments of this entry and tell me why it happened and how to prevent it, or email me at mysinglemomlife@gmail.com
Any help anyone can offer would be most appreciated.

Thank you!

EDIT**
Stupid fucking spammers.
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Dear spammers,

By
Kat
on December 21, 2009 11:32 PM |
I'm sure that you are all thinking that you have my site completely figured out and that is why you so boldly state things like  "I will at once grab your rss feed to stay informed of any updates."

But I got some news for you.
MT4 makes it ever so easy to dispose of your spam comments.
First, all comments are on moderation, this means that not a single comment gets posted unless I want it to post.
Second, when I get the email notification of a new comment, I am given 4 options to deal with the comment.

Approve comment.
View comment.
Edit comment.
Report comment as spam.

Each one of those is a link.
For your spam comments, I click on Report comment as spam, after my site then marks your comment as spam and reports it to the spam blacklist database, I get a link to go directly to the post you left your comment on.
Once at the post, I click to remove the check mark from the "allow comments" box, and then I click save which rebuilds the entry.
Once the entry is rebuilt, there is now no longer a way for you to leave a comment on that entry.
This whole process takes me less than 1 minute to accomplish.
I actually find myself enjoying the process because it saves me a lot of time having to go through and remove the commenting ability from every single one of my posts.
I only have a total of 425 posts on this blog, and because of you spammers and the super fast process of marking your comment as spam and removing the ability to comment on old posts, there are now only about 50 posts that need to have the commenting ability removed.
If you guys keep doing what you're doing, all of my old posts will have the comment ability completely removed in about 1 week.
So thanks spammers for helping me close off comments on old posts, it has saved me a ton of time!
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I finally ordered the netbook!

By
Kat
on December 8, 2009 2:11 AM | | Comments (2)
It may not be an industrial computer, but I finally (been thinking about buying 1 since school started up back in August) ordered the netbook that I've been wanting to get for Sebastian, and I have been talking about it on my other blog, and debating with myself for months and months and months.
YAY!!!
I Twittered about getting the really awesome deal that I got thanks to Verizon, I mean, really, it's a totally sweet deal, how could I not publicly thank them?

The netbook is actually a really great one for the price.
HP Mini 110 series
  • • Black Swirl
  • • Genuine Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3
  • • Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor N270 (1.60GHz, 512KB L2, 533Mhz FSB)
  • • 1GB DDR2 System Memory (1 Dimm)
  • • 160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
  • • Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with a 5-in-1 Digital Media slot
  • • 10.1" diagonal WSVGA LED Anti-glare Widescreen Display (1024 x 600)
  • • HP Mini Webcam with HP Imprint Finish (Swirl)
  • • Wireless-G Card
  • • HP Color Matching Keyboard
  • • 3 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
  • • Microsoft(R) Works 9.0
When I got Fios installed back in July, Verizon told me that in 3 months, if I paid the bill on time and in full for those first 3 months, I would receive a gift certificate for $299.00 to buy anything that I wanted from a certain website, so my gift certificate came about a month ago, and I finally used it tonight.
The netbook's price was exactly $299.00, and then I bought a mouse and a carrying case for it.
The mouse was $12.79, the case was, $11.99, they had 20% off of them individually, not 20% off if I bought both together, but 20% off of them by themselves, and then I had to pay for shipping for all 3 items.
The subtotal was $324.77, shipping was $19.00, Florida tax was 24.07, making the grand total $367.84.
The $299.00 gift certificate was applied and so I only had to pay $67.85 in total.
I LOVE an awesome bargain like this!
W00t!! W00t!!


Today like around 9am or so, I am going to go to the pharmacy and pick up the scripts that are waiting for me, then go do the grocery shopping, and then tomorrow, I get to go see my other doctor and tell him about the issues that I am having with my feet and hope that it isn't diabetic neuropathy, because if it is, I know that he's going to put me on insulin and I don't want to be on insulin.
I don't have a problem with needles, no problem with needles at all.
It's that having to take insulin will further restrict me and what little freedom I have left.
Because of all of the health issues that I have right now, I am truly a prisoner in my own home because of my own freaking messed-up body.
Having to take insulin will just make me even more of a prisoner.
I know that calling myself a prisoner isn't good, but it's how I feel, my life is so restricted, I can hardly do anything because of the constant pain that I am in, being forced to watch myself, test my blood sugars constantly, will just make that feeling even stronger.
It sucks.
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I need to have my doc check this.

By
Kat
on December 4, 2009 2:34 AM |
Right now I am in some really horrible pain in my left ankle, no, not another spider bite, and no, I didn't twist and sprain it, but I think it may be diabetic neuropathy.
When I tried to get up from my chair here in my little office furniture corner of the living room after posting my review of my new Christmas decoration, (it took me about an hour to write that post, I kept getting interrupted) when I went to put my feet down on the floor from my usual placed up on a high foot stool, my left ankle started throbbing immediately.
I couldn't put any weight on it at all.
It's not like a pinched nerve or tingling kind of pain, this is like a twisted ankle kind of pain, it's that bad.

Diabetic neuropathy usually creates a tingling or numbness sensation in the feet, but it can "occasionally creates a severe burning pain, or other very unpleasant sensations, that are extremely frustrating."
And yes, it is extremely frustrating to know that I did not do anything to bring this on, I did not do anything out of the ordinary at all, I went for my regular 2 walks every day, and the general walking around my house to clean and do dishes and make dinner kind of stuff.
My ankle did not hurt or even tingle when I sat down to write that post, it just happened over the course of the hour that I sat here with my legs propped up, while writing that post.

In all these past 6 or so years since I was told that I had diabetes, I have been able to control it and my blood sugar through diet alone with the help of my doctors keeping me on track making me keep food and sugar readings diaries every single day.
Once a month, I bring in my diary notebook, the nurses photocopy the new months entries, the nurses go over highlighting anything either above or below normal, and bad foods that I know I shouldn't eat but do anyway, and then when I get in the room with the doc, he reads all of the highlighted entries and tells me (yells at me actually) what I'm doing wrong and how to stay on track, how to get and keep my glycosylated hemoglobin value into the normal range, and to keep my blood sugar tests normal as often as possible.
But if when I go to see him this coming Wednesday and tell him about this foot pain and he goes over my diaries, he may tell me that we had a good run, but it's now time for insulin.
That will totally suck if it happens and it's probably going to, but I did have a very good run, I went almost a full 6 years controlling it through diet alone, I did really great at it only messing myself up a few times.
There have been times that I needed to spike myself up or I wouldn't have any energy at all to even make dinner for the boys, so I would intentionally take on too much sugary foods, like some ice cream mixed with marshmallows, followed by a full can of Mountain Dew to help wash down a Snickers Bar and a few Twizzlers.
The sugar spike would have me buzzing around the house cleaning everything I saw, the house would be totally spotless in like 2hours, dinner would be done cooking, everyone would be done eating, and the dinner dishes would be all washed and the sinks and counters wiped down and sparkly like Fly Lady tells us to do.
My docs yell at me for doing that, but seriously, there ar just times that I am dead tired, have zero energy, and if I don't do it, absolutely nothing at all will get done and the teens won't be fed.
It's really that bad, I just lay on the couch on those days and sleep off and on all day and night listening to the tv for anywhere from 24 to 48 hours.
Sugar spiking myself and then crashing after it's all done, is sometimes the only way, and it IS like the number 1 thing that my docs yell at me for doing.

I'm afraid that my awesome 6 year run of no insulin is over.
Diabetic neuropathy can be controlled by controlling the sugar and the glycosylated hemoglobin in my blood.
I don't hate needles, I've had so many jabbed in me over the last 10.5 years to give me shots, take blood, give blood, so it's not a fear of needles, it's realizing finally, that I cannot control it on my own anymore, that I've failed and need to take even  more medicine.
I'm so over taking medicine, every single day, pill after pill after pill, all day long every single day for the last 10.5 years and will be taking pill after pill every single day for however long I live.
It sucks.
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Hoping it's not super serious.

By
Kat
on October 24, 2009 1:40 AM | | Comments (2)
I posted on Thursday about a friend who needs to see a specialist really soon but is having trouble getting in because of what kind of medical insurance she has, Medicaid.
She just recently found out that she has cancer, she doesn't know what kind it is yet, but at least we do know that it's not mesothelioma, the one that there are all of those lawyer commercials for on tv so much lately?
Yeah, it's definitely not that one.
But she still doesn't know what kind it is, or how serious it is, how it can be treated, or if it can be treated at all.
She finally got the call from the new patient coordinator at the cancer treatment hospital, after a week of waiting, and has an appointment for November 4th.
She needs to go and get all of her records for all of the tests that she's had so far, and all of her catscan films and slides they did several weeks ago.

She is definitely better off getting them and taking them herself, there have been many times that I was told that my records and films were going to be sent to my surgeon, and I would get all of the way up to his office, hours and many miles away, and find out that they were never sent by courier at all, which made me have to reschedule my appointment for when he got the films.
My surgeon would still see me that day, basically to ask me how I was doing, what his thoughts were, and talked about all of the possible treatment plans, but without the films and written results from the radiologist, he wasn't able to give me many specifics.
After that happened to me 3 times, I made sure to always wait after I had an MRI or catscan for the films to be developed and the report to be printed up, and then I would also ask that they be sent by courier too.
On the day of my appointment, I'd bring my records with me just in case I got there and they didn't have them yet, or at all in most cases.
I also started keeping my own medical file, and I suggested that my friend now do this for herself.
She may have to pay $1-$5 at some doctor's offices for copies of her records, but it's well worth it.
If you have your own copies of everything, of every single appointment notes, every test result, every MRI or catscan film or slide, and all of the written radiologist results, you have a better understanding of your own health, you start to learn what all of those big medical terms mean so that if you go and see a new doctor and he starts talking really fast to you in medical terminology, you're not sitting there all baffled and confused, you can actually keep up and understand what's being said to you.
There's nothing worse than having some doctor talk to you like that, like you're just supposed to know what he's talking about, and you have absolutely no idea, but the way he's talking, and the words he's saying, all sound incredibly scary.
If you have all of your own medical records and doctor's notes, and you go home and read through them, look up all of those scary sounding words on the internet, you learn all about it and are now an active participant in your own health care, not just a patient who just does whatever the doctors tell you to do.

So anyway, I really hope that her type of cancer is nothing super serious, that it can be treated quickly and easily with the least amount of pain and discomfort.
She has a very young family to care for and live for, she's young herself and has the rest of her life to live and look forward to.
Plus, I'm kinda selfish, I want my friend around for a lot more time, a long time.
I don't have many people in my life that I consider really good and true friends, I really only consider 3 women as my best friends, and she's 1 of them, so yeah, I want to see this be the kind of cancer that can be taken care of as fast as possible without too much pain and suffering for her, she doesn't deserve to suffer.
She's good people ya know?
She's truly a good person, she has no ulterior motives for anything that she does, she wants nothing in return for helping someone, she just does it because it's the right thing to do.
Her whole family is like that, just really good, honest, kind and caring people, so I'm really wanting this to be quickly treated and gone so that she can be around for her family and her friends, for a long, long time to come.
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140 characters or less.

By
Kat
on October 21, 2009 2:21 AM | | Comments (2)
We have become a society of quick and short.
We want information, but only if it's in fast and small bites.
This is why Twitter is as successful as it is.
Everybody has something to say, lots of somethings to say, and everybody wants to be heard, have their somethings be read.

This whole blogging thing is interesting, I've been doing it for more than 12 years now, and blogging is all about us, it's all about the blogger.
We are writing about ourselves, our lives, we want people to read us and know us, read what we write.
But now there's a lot of bloggers, so many people have blogs, everybody is blogging and everybody wants to be read, but because we've become a society of fast and short like Twitter, blog posts are becoming shorter and shorter so that people will read it.
If you write a huge post, your readers will just skim it.
But they want you to read their blog posts, every single word.

The other thing I find interesting and highly amusing is other blogger's opinions of other bloggers.
I've read many times now over the years, where a situation comes up, like a little "blog war".
It's when a certain blogger and their friends who are also bloggers, don't like another blogger anymore, so they start picking apart that blogger.
They start picking apart the posts, talking bad about the contents of posts, and talking bad about the blogger's life, and talking bad about the blogger.
It always cracks me up when someone says something like,
"I can't believe so and so, did you see what they wrote on their blog?!?!? They always think that everything is about them!!"

Um, it's a blog.
A blog IS about that blogger, so yes, it IS all about them...LoL
Your blog is about you, her blog is about her, and my blog is about me.
We all love to talk about ourselves, we all like writing about ourselves in our blogs, and we all like it when other people read our blogs and leave us comments, share in our experiences, be a part of our lives.
Blogging is narcissistic by it's very nature.
Blogging lets people talk about themselves and have other people read and comment on what we have written about ourselves, so to read someone say "They always think that everything is about them" when they post it to their blog and are referring to another blogger's blog, is hysterical.
Maybe they don't see the irony of what they said, but it's true.
If you blog about your life and say something like that about another blogger, you're pretty much being a hypocrite.

Ooops, this post is getting to be a bit too long.
If I don't want my readers to just skim it and totally misunderstand what I've written, I need to stop writing now.
And that, by the way, is usually the reason for a whole lot of the misunderstandings between bloggers.
The reader just skims the post instead of the whole thing, they only read what they want to, they only take away from it what they want, and they can and usually do, totally misinterpret the entire thing, and then tell another blogger that so and so blogger thinks that everything is all about them.
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You ever get so sick you feel like you're dying?

By
Kat
on October 5, 2009 4:57 AM | | Comments (3)
I absolutely hate being sick, it sucks for everyone of course, but ever since having spine fusion surgeries, getting sick is absolutely freaking miserable.
I'm pretty sure that Sebastian has the flu, or something resembling the flu.
He's had a high fever since late Friday night, he's been exhausted, achy from head to toe, no appetite at all, and just plain miserable feeling and miserable to be around.
I started to feel like crap on Saturday afternoon, I blew it off at first, blamed it on my back, but by nighttime, I felt like he did and I had a fever to boot.
My fever seems to have gone, so maybe I don't have what he has, (because he still has a fever as of bedtime) but for the entire day on Sunday, I was downright horrible.
I had a massive migraine, my entire body hurt, I was coughing a little bit, my nose was a bit stuffed up, and I didn't want to eat anything at all, not even look at food.
Mark went and bought him and Sebastian some subs from Publix for dinner, Sebastian only ate half of a half of it before puking that up, and just smelling their subs made me puke.
3 times.
I felt so freaking horrible, felt like I was going to die at any minute, that once I started feeling like I could sit up, I went to one of those get free instant life insurance quotes here websites.
I still have not bought any life insurance.
I talk about getting it all of the time, I've even made quite a few phone calls to insurance companies about it, but I just have never actually taken the time to buy it.
I know that I need it, I know that it is something that I absolutely have to have for my sons in case something bad happens to me, but buying it just freaks me out.
I don't know, it's like if I actually purchase a life insurance package, it's like I'm going to jinx myself or something.
I don't believe in jinxes and stuff, but a part of my brain says 'if you buy life insurance, you are going to die much quicker than you wanted to/plan to, like tomorrow.'
Seriously, my brain gets all stupid like, I just start thinking completely irrational.
I know that buying it is not going to cause me to die soon, but that's how my brain reacts.
Totally stupid huh?
I know it is, I know it's stupid, but I can't help it.
I know I can't be the only one who thinks totally crazy stuff like this, or am I?
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I have my own life.

By
Kat
on September 22, 2009 5:38 AM | | Comments (1)
Monday was just one of those days, the kind of day that makes you just want to rip your hair out and start shooting people.
I hadn't gotten any sleep since like a few hours on Friday, my period started, I pulled a muscle in my right side lower back, and things were happening that just made the whole day even more miserable.
Things started to go wrong on Sunday about mid-day, and just progressively got worse from there on out.
I had to spend the whole day dealing with those things that had started to go south on Sunday, and then I had to deal with other people complaining about that and other things, all of the day on Monday.
It's a job and I do my job, but man, some people seem to forget that I have a life outside of that job, and that nowhere in my job description does it say that I am allowed to be verbally abused and treated like garbage.
My job is to answer questions that I can, that I have the answers to, and to help with the work that we do if I can.
I answered the same questions repeatedly, for the same person, for 3 hours on Monday afternoon.
I just kept repeating the same answers because the same questions were being asked repeatedly, just in different ways.
 
The person was really aggravated with some things, and it is my opinion, that I took the brunt of this person's anger and frustration simply because I was there, because it's my job to help and answer questions, because it's what I am supposed to do, but taking anger and frustration out on me is not ok, that's not part of my job description at all.
But I took it, I dealt with it, I simply kept repeating the answers that I knew in the most polite way that I could.
And I was polite, I was cordial, I just kept trying to help the person with their issues, tried to help them understand why things are a certain way, and they just kept getting angrier, my answers were not good enough, but even when I explained how they could get the answers they wanted from the only people that could give them those answers, they just continued to get angry because they wanted those answers now, from me, and I am not capable of giving those answers.
I really felt like I was being stepped on because I was there, available, someone to dump on.
I even said a few times that I needed to log out, that I needed to go make dinner for my kids, they just kept going.

When I was finally able to log out, I had to rush to get dinner going, and I was washing a spatula in the sink, didn't see the big carving knife, and I cut my left index finger.
It kept bleeding and bleeding, 3 bandaids couldn't stop it, and I didn't feel like going to the ER for stitches, so I superglued it.

People need to realize that I was asked to do it because I paid attention from day 1, and I have an excellent memory for pieces of information, I'd be great on Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit.
I can recall an exact bit of information or a message and approximately when it came out, and people are able to find that message in the system during the time frame and title that I gave them.
Keeping me tied up for 3 hours to have someone to yell at, is really, truly, not fucking ok.
I'm not a punching bag, I'm not the one you can yell at, but come on, we all know that when given the opportunity to yell at the people that are the intended targets of this hostility and anger, instead of yelling, it all ass kissing and brown nosing.
There's a ton of "You're so awesome Txxx!" and "This company rocks!" and "I love you guys!"
No one ever actually tells them the thingscomplaints that get said to me in the way that they are said to me, because the people who complain with their left hand, and ass kiss with their right hand, don't want to get fired from this job.
I see it every single day on the forums.
Complain, bitch, moan, repeat until the owner shows up, and then suddenly it's all thank yous, and I love yous, and all kinds of assorted ass kissing.
They leave, and it's right back to complaining again.

Some of them have one face that they show to the boss and everyone else on the forums, and one that they only show in private messages to me.
The one on the forums is all nice and sweet, polite, kind, trying to be helpful, and the other that they show to me in private messages when they feel like complaining, is a really mean, nasty, angry and frustrated face with anger lines instead of laugh lines.

I'll tell you what though, I'm really tired of being dumped on like that.
My job is to answer the questions that I have the answers to, and to help with things people need help with, that's it.
I am not the one that anyone is allowed to just pour out all of their anger and frustrations on.
I am not the doormat or the punching bag, I am the one who takes time out of my days and nights, out of my life, to help other people and answer questions.

I do have a life ya know.
Yeah, it may not be a glamorous one, it may not even be one where I am going out with friends all of the time living it up, but I do have a very busy and hectic, very stressful life.
I have a ton of pretty major health issues, and now I have a son who I have given some of those health issues to as a genetic gift.
I have my own doctor appointments every month, and now I have to schedule his in-between mine. 
I had to cancel his MRI on Monday at the last minute because our ride had an issue with his car,  we were outside waiting for him to show, and he called my cell to tell me the car was dead, dead battery or something, wouldn't turn over, so I had to come in and cancel it.  a
And now I have to reschedule it when I can find another ride or come up with the $15 each way to take a cab.

I'll probably end up doing that on payday this week once I see how much pay I'm going to have.
I lost a lot of work this past week due to my son's medical appointments, and my own ear infection last week, and because I spent a great deal of time helping people, doing my job.
I was busy helping people, the system flipped over to the next time period or whatever it is that it does, and all of the work I had, completely vanished.

I spend so much time, like I did on Sunday and Monday, on the work forums helping other people and answering questions, that I have to scramble and race to get my own work done on time.
I highly doubt that anyone even thinks of that, as a matter of fact, I'm like 99.9% positive that nobody thinks that I have my own work to do, so it's not a big deal to them to keep me there asking question after question, or like today, keeping me there to have someone to yell at for 3 freaking hours.
There's only 3 people who know that I have my own work to do and that I end up racing to get it done almost every single payroll period.

I mean would you just look at the freaking time that I made this post?!
I spent almost all day Sunday on the work forums, I spent almost all day on Monday on the work forums, minus the time mid-morning on Monday that I took a shower, made Mark take a shower, and then waited for our ride that eventually couldn't make it, all of the while going through medical documents to make sure that I have everything, filled everything out, crossed every 't', dotted every 'i', and signed by him because he's now 18 and considered an adult, legally old enough to deal with his own medical procedures, yet he doesn't have the slightest clue what any of those papers say, so I have to go through everything with him and get him to understand it all and then sign his name, and all of the while I'm doing all of that and waiting for our ride, I still kept hopping on the work forums to help people.
And because of how things went on Sunday and Monday dealing with an issue that everyone was having, and then dealing with that 1 person for 3 hours on Monday, I never got to post to either of my blogs until now, almost 5am on Tuesday.
It's extremely frustrating.
 
Please don't anyone mistake this as me hating my job and maybe I shouldn't do it anymore, don't even think that, not even for 1 stinking second!
I LOVE my job, I LOVE what I do, I LOVE helping other people, it is soooo gratifying, it gives me a sense of purpose, it makes me feel like I'm doing something good for others.
But when people take what I do for granted, or treat me bad, or speak to me so dis-respectively, it really hurts.
I give of my time, my life, to help other people every single day for hours and hours and hours, so to have someone spend a lot of time, my time, talking to me negatively because they are upset about something else, or at someone else, or yelling at me for things which I have absolutely no control over or any power to do anything about, really, really sucks.
And it hurts, it hurts a lot.

I think people just assume that because I am a disabled stay at home mom who does this job, that I must have no life and nothing to do, so they totally take advantage of me, they take advantage of my time like it's not a big deal, they rarely ever say please when asking for help, and they like never say thank you when the help has been provided. 
Not too many others say thank you for the help either, it's like manners don't exist anymore.
If someone helps you, say thank you, if you need help, say please when asking, and try not to be a total jerk-face to the person who's trying to help you.

If you're mad about something or mad at someone, try really super duper hard to NOT take it out of the person who has been helping you as much as they possibly can.
Try to remember that they are not the reason that you are so angry and frustrated.
Try to remember that they have a life too, but they are helping you because it's a good thing to do, because helping your fellow man is the right thing to do.
It feels good to help someone who needs help, it feels really good, but when you don't get a please before or at the start, and a thank you after, or if the during the time you are helping them, they are being a snarky freaking jerk to you, it can totally drain all of the good feelings that you had and instantly make you feel hurt, sometimes sad, sometimes angry, betrayed, upset, and stressed out.
But mostly, you just feel bad inside, and taken advantage of, used as someone's emotional punching bag, and that feeling sucks the big time.

I felt that way on Monday night, I felt that way while it was happening, I felt that way when it finally ended, and I have felt that way all night Monday and now here it is Tuesday morning at 5:30am,  (I started posting this at about 4am Tuesday) and I still feel totally beaten down and drained from that whole thing, I feel like an emotional punching bag that totally got the stuffing just kicked and punched right out of it.
In other words, I still feel terrible.

That whole thing made me cry to be totally honest about it.
I did my best, I gave up 3 hours of my time and life, I looked for answers, sorted through my emails, through threads and posts, I did everything that I could to help that person, and they still kept coming at me with some hard left hooks and some painful right uppercuts.
It really is so not ok to take out your anger and frustration that you have for someone else on the person helping you.
It's just not.

*Raises can of cold Diet Coke*
Here's to hoping that Tuesday is a much better day.
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I forgot my pin.

By
Kat
on September 3, 2009 7:31 PM |
I went to add money to my VM phone today, and I can't recall the PIN number so I can login and put some minutes on my phone.
Grrr.
I actually have 2 cell phones, 1 is my VM and the other is the one that I got as my emergency backup phone.
I'm glad that I have that one, 88 more minutes just got added to it on the 1st, but I'm still mad that I can't remember my PIN to add more minutes to my regular phone.
I know that it's my birthday, but I can't remember if I used the zeros or not, and I tried it all different combinations but none of them are working.
I'm really hoping that I didn't change it when I was sick and out of it, and just don't recall what it is.
I'm going to be really mad if that's what I did.
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IT sounds interesting, but too complicated for me to do.

By
Kat
on August 25, 2009 12:28 PM |
I was up all night long again, I still haven't been to sleep, so when things got a bit slow on Twitter and I couldn't find anything on tv to watch, I decided to go looking some stuff up that I've always been curious about or interested in.
One of the jobs that I've always been curious about, is the IT field.
I think it's fascinating to know all of the ins and outs of computers, the internet, how to fix them, how to stop hackers, how to prevent hackers, all that kind of stuff, and while I do know a little bit, being in IT is not for me, there's just so much information, and that information is always changing, so you always have to be up to speed on all of it.
So I went and looked up what all it would take to get a Masters of Science in Information Security, basically, to be an IT specialist.

There's a lot to it whether you want to be doing the technical concentration, the actual IT work, implementing the security fixes, stopping hackers, keeping the information secure, or the managerial concentration, be the one who keeps an eye on the technical security of individual lives, people's personal privacy, and the ever growing information security risks facing the safety of people's personal information, and the risks for businesses and government.
The more technologically advanced we get, the more at risk all of the information is, and it's up to the IT managers to find ways to keep all of that information secure while having to deal with the laws, public policies, and people's rights to privacy, and how we keep all of that information secure without trampling on people's rights, but stopping the bad guys from accessing all of that information.

It's a pretty complicated job, and getting a masters in it would be some serious hard work, but for the right person, someone who has the patience for it, gets excited by the risks and works just as fast at stopping security attacks as the baddies are at trying to access the information, it can be quite a fulfilling and rewarding job.
I know that I don't have the patience for it, I get very upset when my internet goes out and I can't fix it within 30 minutes, so I know this isn't the right path for me to take, but someone else may be just the right person to do this and help keep all of our government's information safe and secure, as well as regular everyday people's information.
The more technologically advanced we get, the more IT people are going to be needed to keep everything safe, it could really be a great career for the right person.
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Sendin' all my love along the wire.

By
Kat
on July 17, 2009 5:58 AM |
People don't use the postal service as much as they used to, mailing a hand written letter used to be the only way that you could communicate with someone in another state or heck, even town.
Depending on how far your letter had to go, it could take anywhere from a few days to a few months.
Mail used to be delivered by horse and buggy.
The teens don't believe that, so I asked them once how they thought letters got from the little house on the prairie in Walnut Grove to the big city of Winoka in the Dakota territory.
They sat thinking about it for a few, and then said "Ah, ok, yeah, a horse and buggy. We forgot that didn't have cars then."
Ha ha.

It got even easier to communicate with people once the phone was invented, but people still used the mail to stay in touch, to send cards for birthdays or holidays.
But now with the internet and cell phones, people are using text messages, IMs, and emails to stay in touch.
A lot of people now also use online greeting cards to send their friends and family a card for a birthday or holiday, it's widely accepted by pretty much everyone these days.

When I first started using online greeting cards, I felt kind of bad, like maybe the recipient would think that I was just being cheap, didn't want to spend money on a nice paper card.
Of course the recipients never thought that, it was my thoughts, my own issues with money came into play.
The recipients were always glad that I sent a kind note or birthday wish, they were always just happy that I even remembered their birthday.
Ha ha.

My parents 50th wedding anniversary is coming up on July 31st, and I will probably send them an online anniversary card and a paper card.
I already have the paper card, I just need to write a little note in it and mail it out, and then I will find the perfect animated online card to send them on the morning of their anniversary.
I know that my Mom gets up a bit earlier than my Dad every day, she starts the coffee maker, gets dressed, and then goes to check her email before waking up Dad.
Every single morning.
So I will send them an online card wishing them a happy anniversary, tell them I love them very much, and hope that they can celebrate many more years together.
I really do wish them a happy anniversary, they are just so perfect for each other, they work well together.
Where one of them may not have what something calls for in a situation, the other does.
Together they have all of the skills needed to get anything done that they want to get done.
A perfect team in my opinion.
 

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Selling everything off part 2.

By
Kat
on July 6, 2009 12:59 PM | | Comments (2)
I posted a few days ago about having a yard sale sometime in the near future and also selling off all of my jewelry.
I don't have a lot, exactly 23 pieces went into the envelope, but it's all I have and I hope it brings me at least some decent amount of money, $400-$600 would be great even though I know there's at least 1 piece in there worth at least $1,000.
It'd be great if I had like some Ferrari parts for sale to make some money super fast, but I don't, so this is my only option.
I don't trust any of those places that are advertising to buy your scrap gold jewelry right now, I have heard way too many bad things about them, and if you do a Google search on each of their names, you find not only their site, but sites where people talk about being completely ripped off.
They don't even come close to half the value of your jewelry, barely a third, and in some cases, downright stealing from people for mere pennies.

There's a local place in Tampa, I thought that I would actually have to go to them to trade in my stuff for cash, but they have a "gold kit" too, so I requested one.
It came in today's mail and I have gone through every single piece of jewelry and packed it all up to stick in tomorrow's outgoing mail.
The Gold & Diamond Source in Tampa, is where I am sending my jewelry.
From the FAQ's about their buying services, "We accept ONLY precious metal jewelry and genuine precious gems & diamonds, including broken gold. Please do not send costume jewelry as we cannot return these items."

Nothing I am sending them is costume jewelry, it's all gold, a minimum of 10k, .925 sterling silver, and jewelry with real gemstones in them, and some of them even have diamonds.
A few of the pieces are broken, so I know I won't get a lot of money for them, but my finances are in really rough shape right now so this is something that I have to do.
They say they they will mail a check within 24 hours of receiving my envelope, and so because they are right in Tampa, I know that I will have a check in my hands probably no later than Saturday, probably by Thursday.

I really hate to sell my stuff, but like I said, things are really super bad right now, I am having panic attacks for like the first time in years, panic attacks so bad that my heart is practically exploding out of my chest.
I know that's not true, but that's how it feels.
It feels like I'm having a heart attack, and I know that it's the stress over money issues that is causing it.
For quite a few years now, I've been on a good track, paying all of my bills on time every single month, really doing ok, and then the surgery in September happened, depression happened, I wasn't doing as much work as I should have been doing, used to do, the AC had to be replaced in October 2008, and then again this past February, so almost $1,000 on the AC, my health, prescriptions not covered by my insurance, yeah, things just kept coming and coming, and before I knew it, I was buried under money issues again and now it's at the point where I can barely freaking breathe from the panic attacks.
I mean, I'm sitting here right now, and my heart is beating so damn fast it's unreal.

If the Gold & Diamond Source gives me at least $500 for my stuff, I'll be in a way better position than I am right now.
It's not what I need of course, and it's certainly not what everything in that envelope is worth, again, 1 item alone has a value of $1,000, never been worn, mint condition, but I have to take whatever I can get right now.
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Blind little sheep eating up the lies.

By
Kat
on July 6, 2009 6:42 AM | | Comments (1)
I have never even had any types of  jobs in finance, but even I know that what is being told to a certain group of bloggers is complete and utter crap.
Ok, listen up folks, PayPal, has NO minimum payment rules.
None.
They have a maximum payment rule, you can't send anyone more than $10,000, but there is no rule on how little you can send someone.
This applies to both individual persons and companies that use PayPal to pay employees or "independent contractors".
It doesn't matter if they are using mass pay or paying people individually, which is what is happening in this case, there is NO minimum payment amount that can be sent.
They DO NOT attach any fees AT ALL to the sender, not a single penny.
They do, however, take a fee from the recipient of the funds, a small percentage, and it doesn't matter if the sender sends you $1.00 or $100.00, PayPal will take that small percentage of fees from the recipient, NOT the sender.
The only time they do not take any fees is when the sender uses mass pay, but again, that's not the case with this particular issue.
You have been told that PayPal has forced a company to raise their minimum payment to $50.00.
You have been lied to.
PayPal has NO minimum payment amounts.
NONE.

Quit being blind little sheep and start questioning what you're being told.
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HBO's True Blood.

By
Kat
on July 4, 2009 4:17 AM | | Comments (2)
I don't have cable, I really hate our local cable company, Comcast, and due to some sort of purchasing rights agreement between the city and them, we are stuck with them instead of being allowed the choice between them and Brighthouse, which is far cheaper and has far superior customer service as well, but whatever, we have lived without cable for like 9 years now, not really a big deal.

Most of the shows that are on cable, produced by the premium channels like HBO, Showtime etc, are available on Netflix once the season ends, so if my friends and everyone else says that some show is truly amazing, I wait for the season to be over, and then add it (the whole season) to my Netflix queue.
Such is the case with HBO's True Blood.
They have just started season 2, so that's the website you'll see if you click that link.
True Blood is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries, aka Sookie Stackhouse, Books 1-7   book series by Charlaine Harris.
The series details the lives of vampires and humans coexisting in the fictional town of Bon Temps Louisiana.
The series centers on the main character Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress, who falls in love with vampire Bill Compton.

Almost all of my friends have ranted and raved about this show, it was True Blood this, and True Blood that, and OMG Kat! You LOVE vampire stories, well this is the most kickass vampire show ever, they fall in love, it's modern, you'll love it!
And all I could really think was yuh, right, that's what everyone told me about Twilight too, and OMG, I wanted to stab my eyeballs out with a spork after that absolutely horrible and so freaking stupid vampire crapfest.
Seriously, Twilight is the lamest vampire series I have ever read in my entire life, it's just so damn emo and pathetic, and W.T.F. vampires don't go out during the day because they glisten?
And then I watched the movie, (I did read the books, a friend sent them to me to read) and I saw the glisten scene and was all OMG, no, Stephenie Meyer was smoking some crack rock or something when she decided to write that the REAL reason that vampires don't go out in the sun is because they glisten.
She completely ignored hundreds of years of folklore on the subject, and made the vampires in her books these pathetic, glistening, emo vampires who I would have shoved a stake through all of their glistening skin and emo hearts just to make them stop all of the damn whining.
And please, don't even get me started on the piss poor actors they chose for the lead roles of Bella and Edward.
The guy is NOT good looking folks, just because he played a vampire does not make him hot, he's just not ok looking at all, there's something very weird about the placement of his facial features, and Kristen Stewart, wow, the girl is just a very bad actress, but she plays the role of emo pathetic follower girl wonderfully. Bella is the type of girl who can't be alone, she has to have a man in her life to be complete, and in book 2 when Edward leaves her so his family doesn't eat her, she gets pretty damn cozy with Jacob all the while still pining away for Edward.
If ya can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one with your with.
Bella is co-dependant and gives independent girls everywhere a really bad name.
If I had a tween-teen daughter, I wouldn't let her near those books or movie because of the poor role model that Bella is for girls everywhere.

Wow, went off on a sucky vampire tangent, sorry about that.
Anyway, back to True Blood.
Like I said, all of my friends have been raving about it for a very long time, and after a thread on the local forums where even a bunch of guys that I know who normally are not into this kind of stuff, were posting how much they loved it, I decided to add season 1 to my queue.
I only have the 2 movies at a time but unlimited monthly rentals plan, so only discs 1 and 2 showed up yesterday, each disc had 2 episodes on them, I already watched all 4 episodes, and will be mailing them back immediately so that I can get the next 2 discs in the series, and there are 5 discs in total.
And then I'll have to wait for season 2 to finish before I can see what happens.
*sigh*
But so far, after just 4 episodes, I am totally loving this show!
THIS is how vampires are meant to be, strong, powerful, dangerous, mysterious, they don't go out in the sun because it will burn them, they have the power to control their human victims, and the show is just extremely well written.
It's super funny in some parts, bloody in others, incredibly hot and sexy in others, and wow, just wow, my friends were right about this one.

As I was watching the show, I was noticing how well the scenery is, how authentic it all looked, so I was curious where they filmed it, I wanted to know if it was really filmed on location in Louisiana, or on some Hollywood back lot, or if they got a great price on some  Wilmington NC real estate due to how southern looking that area is, and I've heard that a lot of movies are being filmed there lately.
Well I found out that they film it in several locations actually.
They do film parts of it in Hollywood of course, some in Los Angeles and  Eagle Rock California, and they also do film on location in Shreveport Louisiana, which is mentioned quite a few times in the show.

Anyway, I am really liking True Blood, I plan on watching all the rest of season 1, and if I still feel this excited about it at the end of season 1, I'll wait for season 2 to hit Netflix and I'll keep up with the whole Sookie and Bill, human and vampire love story plus murder mystery, drugs, sex, and other sordid story lines.

Vampires glisten in the sun, oh man, I still cannot get over that whole thing.
It's just so incredibly stupid. 
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I really hate it when people waste my time.

By
Kat
on July 3, 2009 12:55 PM | | Comments (0)
Since yesterday morning when I started to feel a lot better, I have been going back and forth with this guy in email about doing some product and website reviews for him, mostly discussing the length of the posts, the pricing, and how long the posts would be on the blog.
I have been doing this kind of thing for a very long time, I know how this works, I do it day in and day out, and just when I finally thought we were at the closing, he freaked out about Google page rank.

To make a wicked long and irritating story short, the guy needs to take some
sales training classes in regards to online advertising in 2009.
It's not what it used to be, page rank is pointless these days and not only does every blogger know this, but so does almost every single advertiser out there.
It's a number made up by the Google gods, 100% pointless.
What is important is stats, the traffic details, hits, page views and search indexing, those are far more important than that silly number from 0-10.

The guy pretty much wasted hours and hours of my time over the course of  24 hours now,  that I could have spent doing all of the other stuff that I really needed to be doing, because he doesn't understand that page rank has become completely obsolete.
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Atheist Rights and Responsibilities

By
Kat
on June 21, 2009 7:31 PM | | Comments (2)
This list comes to us from I Am An Atheist, from their page entitled 'Atheist Rights and Responsibilities'.

  1. Have no gods.
  2. Don't worship stuff.
  3. Be polite.
  4. Take a day off once in a while.
  5. Be nice to folks.
  6. Don't kill people.
  7. Don't cheat on your significant other.
  8. Don't steal stuff.
  9. Don't lie about stuff.
  10. Don't be greedy.

That's a pretty damn good list, that's how I live my life, and I didn't even know about the list until today when I saw it up on Friendly Atheist.

They aren't commandments, they are our rights and responsibilities.
That's how we as atheists should live, how we should treat our fellow human beings, just live and treat others as you want to be treated.

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In the fall when he really needs it.

By
Kat
on June 15, 2009 7:18 AM |
I knew that I would not be able to get Mark that HP notebook that Buy.com had on their weekly special, it's not on sale this week plus I didn't have the money, but I really don't need to worry.
They have a whole section of their site specifically devoted to laptop deals .
That's pretty freaking awesome.
They have every possible brand, every possible size, and every possible price range, and many of them on sale at some really incredibly low prices.
So I know that when I need to get him a laptop in the fall for college, I will be able to find him a really good one at a really good price from them. They make it so incredibly easy to find just the right one, he'll even be able to pick a color on certain brands and models if he wants to.

I started shopping at Buy.com years ago, like back in 2004 or 2005.
I started shopping with them because I was doing paid surveys for a company, and at the time, they only paid in Buy.com gift certificates, they now pay through paypal and Buy.com gift certificates, so that's cool they offer a choice now, but I still take the gift certificates.
I would cash out my gift certs from the site, they only gave us so many days to redeem them at Buy.com, and then I would just let them build up until I had a lot of them, and then I'd go shopping.
I've been loving shopping with them ever since.
I love their low prices, their fast shipping, and the fact that they have free shipping on almost every single item that they sell.
Not too many other online retailers offer free shipping on so many items, heck, most don't offer free shipping on hardly anything unless you spend like a minimum of $25.
At Buy.com, I bought a $6.99 DVD, and got free shipping, so yeah, I'll shop there over other retailers any day, especially when it comes time to get Mark his laptop because those suckers are wicked heavy and if I had to pay shipping, it would be like super freaking expensive.

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It's a job.

By
Kat
on May 10, 2009 4:58 PM | | Comments (4)
Most people don't realize that I am a moderator of a few online forums, one is a local forum where I mod a specific section, and then there's a mom/parenting forum, and then there's a work forum.
I do all of them because I was asked by the owners of each one of those forums to do it because of my availability, and because I listen and do what I'm asked to do.
Being stuck at home, I have tons of time to do stuff on the net, but it's not always fun, as a matter of fact, 99.9% of the time, it sucks big time.
I would quit doing it if I wouldn't be letting people down, and I have quit modding other forums because it just got to be way too much emotionally for me to do anymore.

Like I said though, I do it because I was asked, and with the work forum, I was asked to do it by the owners, and I post what I'm told to post, and yes, sometimes what I'm told to post is the wrong information, but I always come back and correct that information with the correct information when it's told to me that a mistake was made.

Right now I'm being blamed because someone is quitting work because of a post on those work forums.
There is a certain way that people are told to ask for work, and a certain way that work is assigned.
If people post their work request in the wrong way, I am told to remind them how work is assigned.
People can say that I'm reprimanding them, but I'm not, I have been told to remind people how to request work and how work is assigned.
Yelling, posting in caps, posting reasons for wanting/needing work are not allowed.
Why?
Because everyone wants/needs work, everyone has their reasons for needing money, and if everyone posted their reasons for why they need money, the work requests would be the most depressing things to read ever, and no one wants to read all of those depressing reasons.

If I had responded the way 1 person thinks I should have, I would have gotten taken to task for telling them that their work sucks, instead of being taken to task because they felt that I reprimanded them for using excessive punctuation, and reminding them how work is given out.
Was I supposed to say, "Well maybe you should post more often than when you have an assignment? You have huge gaps in the dates of your posts, each 1 of your posts is the bare minimum word count, they are like 1 paragraph each, they each have 1 link, they look spammy."
Is that how I should have responded?
Sorry, not my place or my job.
My job is to simply remind people how to ask for work, and how work is assigned, and to not yell or give reasons for needing work.
I'd be damned no matter how I responded, but I responded the way that I am supposed to.
Blame me all you want for deciding to quit, but maybe you should read the internal messages that say no banners for other companies, and read the messages that tell you to write more and more often, to not make it look like a spam fest, instead of blaming me for doing the job that I was asked and told to do.

I didn't appoint myself as anything.
I was asked to do that job and I do it exactly as I was told to do it.

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A tax on digital downloads in Florida?

By
Kat
on April 28, 2009 6:07 AM | | Comments (4)
Yup, that's what state representative Kevin Ambler, a Republican from Tampa, wants to do.
He has filed an amendment to a bill that aims to repeal a variety of tax exemptions.
The amendment would establish a tax on "digital downloads" including music, audio books, ring-tones and videos.
The average price increase would probably be around seven cents per 99 cent download.
Ambler also filed another amendment that has to do with air-craft taxes.
The measure is set for a chamber vote sometime Tuesday afternoon.
This amendment would tax us on all digital downloads in the state of Florida, and the reason it's being done?
Well Mr. Ambler had one of his staffers do some research, (he looks far too old to even know what an iPod is) and discovered that if they taxed every single digital download of music, audio books, ring tones and videos, that the state could get several billion dollars in revenue.
The news report on the corresponding tv channel, Fox 13, did not say how many years it would take to get that much revenue, but I will update this post if they say.

This guy is a total money grubbing asshat.
I would like to know exactly how they intend to pull off this tax.
It's only for Florida, it's not nationwide, so how are they going to implement this tax on sites that offer digital downloads?
Music, for example, are they going to send notice to iTunes and other music sites like Amazon, and tell them that they need to start taxing everyone with a Florida address in their profiles, and/or a Florida based IP address?

Even though this goes to a representative chamber vote this afternoon, I am sending all of my reps an email urging them to vote against this.
The state has already nailed us with an increase in the sin tax, and now they want to go after anything else that brings us even the slightest bit of enjoyment.
It's not right, especially in this economy.
We're all getting battered here by losing jobs and homes, the cost of living increasing, the price of gas and essentials like food and medicine keep going up, and they upped the sin tax on April 1st, and now this.
Why don't they just hand every citizen a rope so we can all hang ourselves because life is kicking us in the ass over and over and over, and we're stressed the fuck out and depressed.

I urge every single Florida resident to send emails to their state reps this morning, do it immediately, and tell them to not pass this amendment.

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God wants you to be dumb.

By
Kat
on April 26, 2009 8:46 AM | | Comments (3)
I was reading updates on Twitter a bit ago, and came across a tweet from a Think Atheist member, Jin-Oh Choi, who posted a video on the site titled "Creationists threatens youth with eternal damnation". (links to the video on youtube)
This video was put out by a group called Revolution in Christ, and I went to their site to check them out.
They are a group who wants all churches to get back to the real biblical teachings, no more of this "come as you are, stay as you are, we love you just the way you are", and accepting of other lifestyles, and abortions, divorces etc.
They want the full on biblical experience to be taught and preached, which personally, I don't think will go over very well because whenever I've had a conversation with a self-professed Christian, they do not like the old testament, they think that it's when God was speaking in metaphors, that the new testament completely wipes out the old, and this group, Revolution in Christ, is all hell no folks, the bible is a book, 1 book, and the whole book is the unerring and completely infallible word of God, it's all his word, nothing in it wipes out anything else in it, God will punish you severely for not believing in him and sinning your asses off.
I looked around the site a bit and found a page called Munitions, where I found many links to all kinds of things like a 12 year old girl speaking out against abortion, and an article on megachurch pastor, Joel Osteen.

I see Joel Osteen on the tv every week, several times a week probably, as I'm surfing through the channels, and sometimes if there's nothing else on, I watch Joel preach to the thousands in attendance at his megachurch.
Personally, I don't like him, I think he's another fraud who likes raking in millions from innocent people who just want to believe so much in God and Jesus, and that when they die, all of their pain and suffering will be taken from them and they will live in the loving embrace of their savior for all eternity.
These people, in my opinion, are simply afraid of death, they cannot bear the idea that when they die, that's it, nothing.
And I also just don't trust Osteen.
He has super squinty eyes, he blinks like a gazillion times in 1 minute, and his smile is faker than the painted one on a Barbie doll.
I read something once somewhere, can't recall where or when now, that said something about small, beady-eyed people and those who blink a lot, like extreme blinking, and how 9 times out of 10, they are proven to be liars and more untrustworthy than other people.

Anyway, I was curious what this article had to say because the title of it is "Author sends out press release in defense of Osteen."
The article is basically 1 Christian, article author Ingrid, slamming another Christian author, Richard Young,  who came to the defense of another Christian's (Osteen) latest book.
The article writer, Ingrid, goes after the Christian author for defending Osteen, and then goes after Osteen.
Ingrid wants "Joel Osteen to repent of his false teaching and his man-centered gospel and stop misleading the millions of people who follow his ministry. He is a false teacher and the consequences are eternal."
 
What I found interesting in the article though, was the criticism of Osteen's use of scriptures in his latest book, and Ingrid feels that Osteen uses scriptures to make himself appear to be a follower of Christ, yet he's really not, and then Ingrid said this;
"He has people raise a Bible over their heads at the start of his messages to assure everyone that he believes the Word of God. Then he proceeds to completely contradict the very Word he claims to follow. We are here on this planet for God's glory, not our own. God does not want us on a journey of deeper "self-discovery" as Osteen claims in his new book. He wants us to go deeper and deeper into the knowledge of His Son, Jesus Christ. We are to decrease and Christ must increase in our lives."

The part I find really funny and have been thinking it myself for many years now is this, God does not want us on a journey of deeper "self-discovery",... and he wants us to go deeper and deeper into the knowledge of His Son, Jesus Christ. We are to decrease and Christ must increase in our lives."

I''ve been saying it for quite a few years, Christianity wants to keep you dumb.
The dumber you are, the easier it is to convince you that you're a sinner who must repent to a God that many men created about 6,000 years ago in a book. (It's also a whole lot easier to get you to part with your money)
There's a couple of great quotes from the late musician Frank Zappa, that I think fit perfectly with what Ingrid said about believers gaining more knowledge of Christ rather than of themselves or any other knowledge.
I'm going to quote a few of them here for you, they explain his thoughts on this subject the best, and I happen to agree with it completely.

The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the idea that intellectualism is the work of the Devil. Remember the apple on the tree? Okay, it was the Tree of Knowledge. "You eat this apple, you're going to be as smart as God. We can't have that."

Nope! God cannot have you anywhere near as smart as he is, because then you'd know he was pulling your leg on a whole lot of stuff! LoL

The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden story. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.

Bwahahahahahahaha!

And; So, when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, if you go for all these fairy tales, that "evil" woman convinced the man to eat the apple, but the apple came from the Tree of Knowledge. And the punishment that was then handed down, the woman gets to bleed and the guy's got to go to work, is the result of a man desiring, because his woman suggested that it would be a good idea, that he get all the knowledge that was supposedly the property and domain of God. So, that right away sets up Christianity as an anti-intellectual religion. You never want to be that smart. If you're a woman, it's going to be running down your leg, and if you're a guy, you're going to be in the salt mines for the rest of your life. So, just be a dumb fuck and you'll all go to heaven. That's the subtext of Christianity.

th_NEWROLLONFLOOR.gif
But it's true, (the story) look it up in the bible, it was the 1 thing in the entire garden that he forbade them to touch, forbade them to eat the fruit from it, and he stuck it smack dab in the middle!
It was the biggest of all of the trees, it's apples were huge, red, and shiny, practically beckoning them to come eat them.
And he told Adam what it was, and then he lied to him.
Genesis Chapter 2: 16 And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat: 17 But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.
He told Adam that the tree of knowledge contained all of the good and all of the evil and all of his knowledge, and if he ate even 1 bite, on the very day and moment he took that bite, he would surely die.
They both took bites and did not die, and they did gain all of the knowledge, they knew both good and evil.
And when they took that bite and gained the knowledge, they knew he had lied to them, they became fully aware and intelligent, the 1 thing he didn't want of his creations.
He wanted them to remain blissfully stupid for all of eternity.
And then later on as his son Jesus (God impregnated a virgin with himself so that he could live as a man, die, and then become God again and have a ghost of himself) is dying on the cross, Jesus tells everybody that he's dying to save us from our sins, that he's taking the punishment for all of us because the first 2 people God created disobeyed and sinned, and now we're all sinners for all eternity unless we believe Jesus, repent, and beg for his forgiveness.
Not once in all of that, does God take any of the blame on himself, he's a liar, he lied to them.
He had Adam and Eve living in fear of that tree, that if they took a single bite, they'd die a most painful and wretched death, and it was all a lie, but nope, no siree bob, he allows his own son, his reincarnated self, to die to save us all from our sins, but he's the real and ultimate sinner here.
Heck, 1 of his own 10 commandments, is thou shalt not lie.
#8 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, which simply means, you shall not lie, when in fact, it's God who lied in hopes of keeping us stupid for all eternity.

Now we have a new group of Christians, Revolution in Christ, who wants all churches and all Christians, to get back to the bible, the real bible, what it really says, not all of this comfy and cute we love all of you exactly the way you are so that we can fill up the pews every Sunday and take some more of your money, so that we can decrease ourselves and increase our knowledge of Christ.
They want Christians to become dumber, stop gaining general knowledge, stop improving themselves so that they can serve God better.
He is not happy with his creations, we are sinning every day of our lives, we are getting more and more intelligent every single day, but that's not what the bible tells us, that's not what God wants.
God wants you to be dumb.
He created us, created paradise, planted a huge tree full of his knowledge smack in the middle of it all, told us what it was, lied to us, and then punished us when we learned the truth.
That IS the subtext of Christianity, and every time some group makes a new video trying to convince us that evolution is a lie, that it's evil, it is their way of trying to make us more stupid, to make us stop searching for the answers, to stop digging up fossils, to just stop all of our pursuits for knowledge and information, so that we can stay dumb and be idiotic servants that he can control easily.
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I'm quite content not being in the spotlight.

By
Kat
on April 25, 2009 5:18 PM | | Comments (5)
I used to want to be one of the "big bloggers", get interviewed for articles and tv stuff, but since being burned by the media a few times, I am no longer doing any interviews for any media people.

I had agreed to do interviews for 2 newspapers and 1 tv appearance, these interviews took hours, I provided all of the details, I answered every question honestly, I was assured, promised, that my story would be told accurately and honestly.
NONE of the interviewers kept their word.
Or, I should say, none of the media outlets they worked for kept their word.
They twisted the story to be this giant piece of sensationalism so they could get readers and viewers, they made me look like a complete idiot, those 2-3 hour long interviews were chopped down into tiny little paragraphs completely void of the facts, and the tv interview was cut down to a less than 2 minute segment where once again, it was chopped and twisted to be sensational, void of the truth and facts.

I am telling you all this because whenever I post something about the teens and school or another issue that comes up in my life, there are usually at least 2 people who just go ahead and contact the media on my behalf.
They don't ask me if I want the media involved, they don't ask me if I want to tell my story to the press, they just do it without my permission.
That is NOT ok.
I don't do interviews anymore, I will never do another interview again, so DON'T ever contact the media on my behalf ever again.
It is NOT ok.
If I wanted the media involved, I know how to get in touch with them the same exact way that you do, and I would do it.
Only 1 person, a friend, said that they would contact the media if I wanted them to, to just let them know and they would, but they won't do anything without my express permission.
I appreciate that.

So please, do not ever contact the media on my behalf again, do not involve them in my life without my permission.
I appreciate the enthusiasm and wanting to help, but please, please, please, do not ever just take it upon yourself to get them involved about me, my kids, and anything I've written on my blogs.
Thank you.
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Meg Ryan?

By
Kat
on April 18, 2009 6:52 PM | | Comments (6)
Sorry, I just don't see it.
I logged into Myspace a couple days ago, and had 3 messages from 3 different guys.
Each one of them said I reminded them of Meg Ryan.
I really don't see the resemblance at all.
Here's one of the messages;
"Has anyone ever told you that you look similar to Meg Ryan , who I think is they sexiest woman alive ... I had just ran across the picture of yours and thought I would let you know."

The picture of me is the exact picture I use as my main profile pic on Myspace, so that is the one they are seeing to make the comments.
I honestly do not think I look like her.
At all.
Don't get me wrong, I think Meg Ryan is beautiful in these pics, not so much anymore since she had all that plastic surgery and has major fish lips now, but I just don't see how people can think I look like her.

I'll take it as the compliment it was intended as, but I still don't see it.


katnewpic1.jpg


Meg-Ryan-Posters.jpg


meg_ryan_instyle.jpg
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lagging.

By
Kat
on April 4, 2009 7:16 PM |
I think I need to spend some time cleaning up my computer this weekend because it's seriously lagging.
I know it's not a problem with the computer memory because that's all new, well, in the last 7 months new, it shouldn't be the cause of the trouble.
Here's what it's doing.
I find a funny picture I want to save, or any picture I want to save really, and when I save it, it's seriously lagging.
Before, it would just save it in like 2 seconds, now it's taking up to 10 seconds to save it.

dont-look-behind-cat.jpg I admit that I haven't cleaned it in a few weeks, just kept forgetting to do it, so I think I need to spend some time defragging, cleaning up disc space, run spyware and greyware scans etc.

 It'll probably take close to an hour because it's been a few weeks, but once it's done it will work awesome and fast again.
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I don't want to wear a tent.

By
Kat
on April 1, 2009 11:01 PM | | Comments (2)
There are times that I feel like I should be taking more nutritional health supplements, and trying even harder to lose weight even though exercise is totally out of the question for me right now.
Why?
Because shopping for clothes is a total nightmare for me.

Someone had linked to some plus size fashion website this morning on Twitter, and while I hate that term "plus size", I guess that's the term that fits my size.
I'm not huge or obese by any means, I run between a size 14 and 16, but that's considered plus sized, so those are the kinds of clothes I have to shop for.
Did you know that even size 12 is considered plus sized?

So anyway, I click on the link, (not going to link it, just search for plus size women's clothing, and you'll find many sites like this one) and everything I see is either the women in huge blowy dresses, or covered up in duster jackets, and bathing suits called swim-dresses, because they are made with a whole lot of material.
All of the tops and blouses, are also tons of material and huge, wild, and flowery bold prints, nothing has any shape to it at all, it's like they took a big piece of material, cut it a bit, made arm holes, and a head hole, called it a billowy-sleeve tunic, or a ruffled tunic, or a Georgette tunic, slapped on a big price tag, (gotta make up for all of the fabric used to make it so "billowy") and set it out for sale.

All of the clothes are the same way, dresses, sweaters, evening and formal wear, even the lingerie is big, has no shape to it, huge prints that draw even more attention to the amount of fabric you have on your body, and sorry, it's all just hideously ugly.
I mean, just look at this blouse, it's called a "boho blouse", the site I found it on says it's a top seller.
Are women really buying and wearing this hideous thing?!

bohoblouse.jpg













Every single plus sized blouse I found was like that one, huge, no shape, big and bold prints, just ugly in my opinion.
People wonder why I am always wearing black, it's because it goes with everything, for one, you can dress it up or down simply by adding a few pieces of jewelry and doing your hair and makeup, and because anything else in my size looks like that blouse above!
I can't stand those prints, I can't stand those loud colors and patterns, they are just awful.
The sad thing is that women who are plus sized don't really have a whole lot of options when it comes to clothes.
You either have to hunt around for all solid colors, or you end up with stuff like that, and I've seen so many women in them, and I have to look away.
Really beautiful women in really ugly clothing because there's no options for us.
We need shirts with some shape, just a bit of color, some nicer patterns and prints, not stuff like that, and we don't need yards and yards of fabric.
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Feeling better, docs, meds, and money.

By
Kat
on March 24, 2009 3:30 PM | | Comments (1)
I was so sick yesterday and last night, most of this morning, and I'm just finally starting to feel better.
I don't know what it was, but man, my stomach was just wrecked, I was throwing up, cramping up, in tons of pain, and my feet that were swollen and had gone down, had started to swell again.
I managed to pull myself together to go to my new pain doctor appointment, and went for my 3:15.

It's a very strict office I'll tell ya.
They make you pay your co-pay or self pay before they see you, and there was this one guy who was $10 short of his $350.00 fee, and they turned him away, told him he had to reschedule it, they don't mess around man.
I had enough to pay my co-pay and for my scripts, but I was 2 days too early for my insurance to fill them, so I have to go back to the pharmacy tomorrow morning and pick them up before I go to my surgeon appointment at 2pm.

But anyway, the new doc is very strict but also very nice.
He took a look at my records, my CT scans from the 19th, and my blood test results, and we started there.
He said, "So you had spine fusion in 2006 from T3 to S1, wow, that's really big."
I said, "Yeah, but I just had another one, I'm now fused from C1 to S1, the whole spine."
He said, "Wow, you are the biggest spine fusion I have ever personally seen. Did you say that you're having another surgery?"
I said, "Yeah, I see my surgeon on Wednesday, and hopefully he'll have a date and a plan for what and when we're going to do. C1 and C2 collapsed after the surgery in September, my head is stuck down, I don't have much movement at all in my neck, muscle spasms in my back and legs, sometimes the spasms are so severe that if I'm sitting at my desk with my feet up and my keyboard on my lap, the spasms actually throw my keyboard clear off my lap and knock over my foot stool. But C1 and C2 were congenitally fused from birth, there's no disc space there at all, so I have no idea how he's going to fix me."
He said, "Yeah, I'm looking at your CT scan and I honestly don't know how he's going to do it, I'm not a surgeon, so I really don't know, but I can now understand why Doc R. sent you to me. You are much more complicated than the patients he usually deals with. He's a rehab pain manager, he helps people get better and get off medication, and honestly, I know you probably don't want to hear this, but I don't see you coming off of medication for another 5-8 years, maybe the rest of your life based on what I'm reading in your records. You not only have had major spine fusion and another one going to happen soon, but you have arthritis, stenosis, nerve impingement, and a lot of disc damage. It could be years before anyone even thinks of taking you off of medication, or never at all. I'm sorry."
I said, "That's ok, I already knew I was bad off."

So he wrote out my scripts, added a muscle relaxer, which I hate taking because they make me sleep for anywhere from 6-8 hours, so taking those 4 times per day, I'd be sleeping all of the time, and he added Lyrica , which is for neuropathic pain.
I didn't get to pick that one up because it needed like pre-authorization or something, and I may not pick it up at all because as of right now, the Walgreen's website says it's $82.46 for just 30 pills.
That's crazy!
I refuse to pay that much for a medication that I have no idea if it will even work for me yet.
Maybe it hasn't been processed through my Humana insurance yet, but if it has and that's how much it costs, I may not pick it up at all, or I may wait until I get my tax refund back on Thursday.
I don't know yet, have to wait and see, but as of right now, it's still not ready for me to pick up anyway.
Apparently, they still don't have the authorization for it.

So tomorrow morning, I'll go pick up my pain meds, come home, and then get ready for the long ride to Safety Harbor to see the surgeon with my sister.
I'm giving Mindy the day off...LoL
Mindy does so much for me already, and she's been working hard at her cleaning business, taking care of her family, and other things, she's exhausted, so Wednesday is her only scheduled day off, so now it's really a day off for her.
I personally think she needs a nice long vacation somewhere really nice, like maybe go out to California all by herself, stay at a nice San Diego hotel, go see a few sites, and get some much needed rest.
She works way too hard and needs a good, long break.

I've made some really decent new friends over the last few weeks.
It happened sorta by accident, I met Dustin and his girlfriend Stacey through another friend, and they have just been really awesome.
They are like totally blown away by the amount of titanium I have, Dustin calls it the 'chainsaw back' because when you look at a front view of the xrays, it looks like a chainsaw blade.
But anyway, they are both just really sweet, Dustin helped me get to my doc appointment yesterday and to the pharmacy, and today, they both just stopped by to see how I was doing.
Stacey said that after my next surgery, she'll come by anytime I need help, help clean the house, help me take showers, shave my legs, brush my hair, stuff like that, because with the halo brace on, it's going to be very difficult to do things by myself.
I had been telling Dustin yesterday while sitting in the waiting room at the docs, about how awesome my teens are and have been after my surgeries, they helped me in and out of bed, in and out of the bathroom, they have even shaved my legs, brushed my hair, they do all of the grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and so he told Stacey, and she was like well hell, this single mama needs help sometimes so let's help her.
I thought that was really sweet of them to even offer, and who knows, I may take them up on it sometimes if I'm having a wicked rough time after surgery.

Oh, Sebastian just went out and got the mail, and in today's mail was my settlement check from the Airborne class action lawsuit.
I got a check for $34.95.
Nice!
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Going green little by little.

By
Kat
on March 21, 2009 2:01 PM | | Comments (1)
I'm starting to get more into the whole green thing, I'm recycling more things instead of just tossing them in the trash, I am slowly replacing all of the light bulbs in my house with CFLs as the old ones burnout, and I'm trying to use less and less electricity around the house.
I make sure that the teens turn off all lights and computers, fans etc, when they leave the rooms, I make them take shorter showers, and I make sure that they recycle what we can according to our city's recycling rules.
I'd love to get some led home lighting   around the house, like holiday lights, instead of the usual tree lights we have.
There's so many kinds of led lights for Christmas trees, indoor and outdoor lights too.
LEDs use way less electricity than normal light bulbs, they last longer, and they can be recycled when they no longer work.

I also recently joined a new website for going green, it's called Green Hangout.
There's a button for it in my sidebar, but it's a pretty cool site if you're looking for ways to go even greener.
They have forums where you can post your tips and tricks for recycling, saving electricity, water, and money.
It's a pretty good site, you should check it out and sign up, the more people that join, the more ideas we can all learn.
They have also said that they will be having contests where you can win money by posting pictures of something using a keyword that they will post, and the best picture that perfectly shows that "green" word, that person will win money.
But you can't win if you don't join the site, so hop on over and check it out, post up your recycling tips and tricks, and together we can help clean up landfills, save electricity, and make the world a better, cleaner place for future generations.
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Atheist funny and people like me.

By
Kat
on March 15, 2009 4:14 AM | | Comments (2)
I was reading along on Twitter tonight, saw I had a new follower, so I went and checked them out and immediately started laughing.
Endofworshipping had posted this:
Creationist: Bananas have the perfect shape for the human hands and mouth. Me: So do penises.

I laughed out loud really hard, probably shouldn't have given the hour of night, er, morning that it is, but it just made me giggle, much like the inspiration for what they said.
Where did they get the idea to say something like that?
From my favorite creationist of course! (no really, he is my fave)
Ray Comfort!
I've posted this video before on MSML when I used to post my weekly Sunday Sermons, (atheist quotes or other religious themed posts) but it's always worth re-posting just for the absolute laughs I get from watching it again and again.
Be-hold!
The atheist's nightmare! (said with a nasally New Zealand twang)




Oh man, you gotta love Ray, even if only because he makes you laugh, he really truly believes what he's telling you in that video (and always), but had he done his research, (which he never, ever does) he would have learned that the banana he holds in his hand is only like that because man (the people of Papua New Guinea) cultivated and farmed it for a long time (5,000-8,000 years ago) for the banana to become what it is today, a soft, peel-able, easy to eat fruit.
The original banana was a small, hard fruit with seeds in it, and man, not a god, cultivated it and made it the fruit it is today.
 
But the video and the idiot in it are the inspiration for the above funny about penises, or is the plural for penises penii?
I'm pretty sure it's penii if it's more than 1 penis. (do correct me if I'm wrong)
Plural penis.
Heh.
There's that fun game where you take a movie, book, and song titles, and you change the last word of the title to penis or penii if it's plural, funny, hahaha.
Penis.
The Fellowship of the Ring Penis
The Green Mile Penis
Sixteen Candles Penii
How about some of the billboard top 10?
Lady Gaga- Poker Face Penis
The All American Rejects-Gives You Hell Penis
Miley Cyrus-The Climb Penis
Lady Gaga- Just Dance Penis
Kelly Clarkson- My Life Would Suck Without You Penis
Jamie Foxx- Blame It Penis

You get the idea...LoL

Now for the people like me part of this post.
I've added and been added to the atheists blogroll run by Mojoey.
I have this blogroll on MSML , but I wanted to add this blog, and Joe was kind enough to go ahead and add this blog to the roll too.
Since being added to it and adding the roll's code to my blog, I've found so many amazing blogs to read, other people like me, more atheists.
I live in the bible belt and for a long time, I felt really alone, even on the internet for a few years, I didn't find many other free-thinking humanists, but we are starting to come out, speak out, and it's a really cool feeling to know that there are a lot more people who think and believe like me, (no belief in any god or gods) out there.
There's a lot of us, and many more are starting to speak up too.
NBC Nightly News did a poll a few weeks back, more people now say that they have no belief in any god or gods, have no association with any religious group or church, and consider themselves to be atheist. (16.1% of Americans are not affiliated to any faith, that is approximately 48 million people)
That's way cool if you ask me, which you didn't, but I felt like sharing anyway.

Maybe I'll start my Sunday Sermons back up, do them on this blog, stick to parenting, the teens, school, home/family type stuff on MSML, and start doing my Sunday posts again.
I really enjoyed doing those.
Yeah, I did, I will.
Consider this my first Sunday Sermon on KatScan.
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Wish they sold it there!

By
Kat
on March 10, 2009 3:53 PM | | Comments (2)
I absolutely love my NuWave Oven Pro, as a matter of fact, I am cooking with it right now, but man, I so wish that Buy.com had them, and also had them on sale , because I'd be telling each and every one of you out there to buy one of these, it's fabulous!
I have used it almost every single day to cook almost every single meal we have eaten, and the teens have been cooking with it too.
But they don't sell them yet. *hint hint Buy.com*

But they do have this really cool looking Smartshopper Grocery List Organizer thing, that you simply speak your shopping list into, and then on the day you go shopping, you hit print, and it prints out your list.
How cool is that!?!

groceryshopper.jpg It uses voice recognition software, comes programmed with over 2,500 items, you can add a quantity of an item, it has a coupon flag, meaning if something on your list also has a coupon, it alerts you, you can add any of your own specialty items to the master library making it totally customizable, and attaches to the fridge with magnets so you always have your grocery list right where you need it, in the kitchen!






I've seen these things go for as much as $250.00 at some retailers, but Buy.com has it on sale right now for just $39.99!
I know other people who have them or one like it, and they love how easy it makes their shopping.
They simply speak what they want to buy into it, add quantities, add in their coupons, and then when they are ready to go, it prints the list.
This would be so convenient for so many families because if a kid uses the last of the milk, they can push the button, say "milk", and it's added to the list.
The whole family could help make sure that all of the needed groceries are on the list every single week.
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Hips, knees, and

By
Kat
on March 10, 2009 12:50 AM | | Comments (5)
Apricot trees.
Heh.
I made a rhyme.

I thought I was back on the mend yesterday, but when I woke up this morning, my hip and knees were still killing me, I had a migraine to boot, my brain was like in "off" mode too.
I couldn't think a good decent thought for more than 2 minutes, so I spent the day watching stupid stuff on tv, reading Twitter, and just generally annoyed with myself.
I have work to do, I'm letting people down.
I'm letting myself down, and that annoys the crap outta me.

I hate when I get like this, when I can't focus, when I can't think, when I can't do what I am supposed to do.
I'm already in a funk, and then not doing everything that I need to do, puts me in a deeper funk, I start dwelling on it, and then that's all I can think about when I am thinking about any 1 subject for more than 2 minutes.
Like right now.
I've had all day to do work, I've had all day to reply to emails, but no, I couldn't do any of it, so now I'm sitting here just aggravated with myself and hungry.
I just want to eat and eat and eat, and nothing is satisfying me at all.
Why?
Because emotionally I'm not satisfied.
I know this about myself.
I know that when I am an emotional mess, I want to over eat, I want to eat sweets like cake, ice cream, cookies, but once I have it, it doesn't taste right, and I try finding something else to fill the void.
But it's a void that cannot be filled.

My brain is a total mess lately, and I know what's causing it.
I know that the things my surgeon said to me on the last visit have entered my head and never left it.
Halo brace, 3-4 months.
Possible paralysis.
Possible trach tube for 3-4 months.
Not eating, not breathing through nose or mouth, no speaking.
No speaking.
It is weighing so heavily on my mind, no speaking at all, no speaking to my sons for several months.

That thought consumes me day and night, I'm drowning in it.
I know he told me the possibilities so I could be prepared, but I am drowning in those possibilities, those thoughts, those what-ifs.
It swallows me from the moment I wake, when I do finally sleep for any amount of time, until I sleep again, which is like non-existent these days, because those thoughts are just there, they aren't going away.
I lay awake in my bed listening to music, trying to drown out the thoughts, and they power out the music, I picture myself with that trach tube in my throat, not speaking to my sons, not telling them daily that I love them, not asking them how their day was, not helping them with whatever, not answering what's for dinner, not telling them to stop arguing, and so many more stupid mommy things that I say to them on a daily basis.
I don't see the surgeon until the 25th, I don't know the surgical plan until then, I don't have any more percentages of things that could go right and wrong, and so I drown in the information I do know and I can't let it go.

Just make it go away, I want it to go away.
I want to be empty-headed, upbeat, happy,  and "ok", but instead, I am consumed, and drowning, and letting myself and others around me down with every passing day.
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Would I sign it?

By
Kat
on March 9, 2009 1:49 PM | | Comments (2)
If any of my doctors asked me to sign a contract to not post any reviews about them anywhere online, I don't know if I'd want to sign it.

There are new radical changes in the doctor patient relationship.

While more and more people use the internet to find a doctor, they are also reading patient reviews of that doctor.

There are now dozens of websites with comments on more than 200,000 physicians across the country.

But some doctors are sick of this, saying the sources are often anonymous - and they are unreliable.

Some are going so far as to insist their patients sign a contract that they will not post any reviews online.


I love my doctors, I think they are great, I finally have a pain management doctor who understands my situation, isn't making me take crazy medicines like weekly testosterone injections like the last guy did, he doesn't freak out over the high white cell count or the high blood pressure like the last one did either, and he is the doctor who found the thing wrong with my neck, the vertebrae closing in on my spinal cord killing me, he saved my life.
And my surgeon, he continues to be one of the most caring and compassionate doctors I've ever been a patient of, and I've seen literally over 2 dozen different doctors and surgeons in the last 10 years before finding him.

If they asked me to sign a contract to not talk about them online, I'd have to ask why because I have nothing but glowing praise for them.
I understand that others may not and that's why some doctors are now wanting these contracts, but wouldn't a doctor want a patient like me who has nothing but good to say about them on a possible forum where others may be badmouthing them?
I'd sign it if I had to choose between signing it and being allowed to see them anymore, but I don't think it's right that doctors may be forcing patients do sign these kinds of contracts.
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This house is missing some flair.

By
Kat
on March 4, 2009 12:30 PM | | Comments (2)
I love this duplex, I have now lived in it for 11 years.
I love the central location, the neighborhood, it's nice and quiet, people are nice for the most part, but the actual duplex apartment that we live in has no flair, no style, it's just kind of boring looking.

One of these days, my sister and I are going to get around to painting the inside like we've been talking about for such a long time.
We have such beautiful colors to paint with, and then once the painting is done, or maybe we should do this before we do the painting (?), I'd love to put up some really nice molding.

I found some really nice corbels that I think would look nice in here, I need to settle on just 1 design, but I like this one, and this one, but I am leaning towards this one.

 
c21_wood-corbels.jpg













I found all of these at Inviting Home, where they offer beautiful products for the home at great prices.
They work hard to insure that you are knowledgeable about your purchase, find exactly what you are looking for, and the guidance and expertise needed to make a good purchase.







They even have a blog that is broken down into categories to make it even easier to find what you are looking for, to get decorating ideas, and they even have some great "green" ideas for decorating your home if you're trying to make your home and life more eco-friendly.


Inviting Home offers all kinds of information, and product inspiration to help you make your home more comfortable, more "green", more inviting, more of whatever you want your home to be.
I love looking at sites like this to get ideas, I swear, if I had a lot of money, like won the lotto or something and could buy my own home, I would be using their site to get decorating ideas and get step by step instructions to make my space the most functional and the most beautiful it can be.
They just have so much to offer at their site, there's so much information, ideas, products, it's really a great place to go to to start getting ideas for your new home.
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When I needed it the most.

By
Kat
on February 24, 2009 5:42 PM | | Comments (4)
I have been going through a rough patch these last few weeks, I'm stressed out and worried about the upcoming surgery whenever that will be, I had lost trust and faith in people due to some nasty people with nothing better to do than harass me online.
I'm no stranger that, but it's still never fun to deal with.
I've been tired but not sleeping, then sleeping when I should have been awake, having blood pressure issues, and just all kinds of stuff.

I lashed out at everyone around me, my kids, friends in the off line world, friends in the online world, I lashed out on the forums for my job.
I blew up, just absolutely exploded on everyone around me, I had reached my breaking point and exploded.
I felt terrible after I had done it, I deleted the thread on the work forums, I apologized to both my friends online and off, and have been trying to find other ways to deal with all of the issues that have come up in my life recently.
I've been doing a lot of laying down and listening to music, playing games, watching movies.
Maybe those things aren't exactly the way to deal with things, but they take my mind off of everything.

And then just when I needed to know I was cared about, that everything I do IS noticed, that people really do want me to be ok, people showed me that I was.
 
I told you how some friends all got together and sent me the NuWave Pro Oven that I had been wanting to get so that the teens won't have to eat junk food, and take-out or delivery food, while I recover from that upcoming surgery, and it really does rock, it's freaking awesome.
And then about 10 minutes ago, the FedEx guy knocked on the door.
Mark got up and answered it because I was laying down on the couch with 3 of the 4 kitties, (another stress reliever for me) and it was just an envelope.
The sent from address was from Publix, my local grocery store.
Inside, I found 3 gift cards for $100 each, but no note, no sent from name or address.
I laid there on the couch asking out loud, "Who sent these?!"
I couldn't figure out who sent them, I laid there racking my brain as to who could have sent them, and then I remembered an email I received earlier today in reply to 1 I sent out this morning, and this was written at the end of it;
       "Be on the lookout for something we sent over also."
So I *think* I know who sent it, I did email them, no reply yet*, but it has to be them.
They know who they are, so thank you, it helps me so so much, you don't even know.
Now I can go ahead and start stocking up on any meats that are on sale and stick them in the freezer so that the teens can cook for themselves with the NuWave oven, as well as get regular groceries too.
Money and food is always a source of stress in my life.
I have so many doctor's appointments to pay for, medicines that aren't covered by my insurance to pay for, and transportation to all of those appointments, that money left over for food is tricky.
I don't have a car and no license either, (Thanks State of Florida!) so getting everywhere I have to go is either by cab or friend with helping to pay for gas.
I swear, money issues is one of the things that keeps me awake at night.

So yeah, just when I needed it, just when I needed to know that people do care, that I don't have to lose all my faith in people for the stupid things other people do, people showed me that they do care, that I am not dealing with all of this stuff alone.

By the time I finished typing this, the people who sent the gift cards responded, it was them.
Thank you guys and staff, it is so very much appreciated.
 
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It just keeps building up inside.

By
Kat
on February 16, 2009 1:31 AM | | Comments (8)
I hope that when I go back to see my surgeon on the 25th of March, that he's picked a date for the revision surgery, and that it's as soon as possible.

I know I've been complaining a lot lately, posting about all of the things that are going on with me, my health, the pain I'm always in, the stress of all of my health problems, and the things that people have said about me.
I know it's all too much, I'm sure that people are sick of reading about it all, I'm sick of posting about it all, I'm sick of thinking about it all, sick of dealing with all.
That's my biggest problem, having to think and deal with it all.

I can't do it anymore, I'm about ready to explode.
I just want to scream, I want to rage and lash out at everyone, I'm so so sick of all of it.
I've lost my faith and trust in people, even people I've known for a long time.
I'm feeling anxious and stressed out, almost becoming paranoid, I don't know who to trust anymore.
I feel like I'm just steps away from a complete mental breakdown.
I'm not sleeping, I'm barely eating, and when I do eat, it's just small bits of junk food, sugary things, I'm comfort eating and I hate doing that because it's so bad for me and my health, but I don't really know how to cope with all of it anymore.

I have so much going on, so many things to think about, worry about, make decisions that will affect my son's lives again in a big way, and I don't think I can do that to them again.
I don't want to put them through it again, but I can't live like this anymore.
I'm not ok, I'm just not ok.
And I feel like I can't talk to the usual "friends" I would normally talk to because I don't feel like I can trust them anymore.
I'm falling apart and have no one I can talk to, I don't trust anyone anymore and I hate that!
I just want to go away, just get away, all by myself, or just take a wicked long break, but I can't.
I can't afford to take a break, I have to stay and keep working, and working, and dealing with all of it all of the time.
I have bills to pay, doctors to pay for, tests and medicine.
I work just to pay for doctors and medicine, just so I can get by, so I can try and get better, but every minute of every day that I'm sitting here working and having to deal with everything and everyone, I hate it more and more, and I am starting to feel hatred welling up inside of me.
Hate for everything and everyone.
I'm falling apart and I can't stop it from happening.
I've tried, I'm still trying, but 1 minute I'm sitting here getting angry, and the next minute I'm bawling my eyes out over it all, because I can't trust anyone, can't talk to anyone, and I can't stop it, I have to just keep going, just keep doing what I have to do to take care of my sons and work so I can pay bills and doctors.
I'm so tired of everything and everyone, and I can't stop, I can't take a break, I can't not keep going no matter how badly I want to, and the anger, hate, fear, worry, stress and tears, just keep piling up inside of me and there's nothing I can do.
Nothing I can do about any of it but hope that this all passes, hope that somehow I get through it all.
I hate you, I really truly hate you, and I hate that I hate you, and I hate feeling like this.
It's so ugly, it's ugly and nasty, and I don't like myself for feeling like this at all.
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Sometimes, humans suck.

By
Kat
on February 11, 2009 11:23 PM | | Comments (16)
There are times when people do some great things, most of the time, people are ok, they treat their fellow man the way they want to be treated.
At other times, they treat people worse than they would treat a piece of shit stuck to the bottom of their shoe.

Over the course of the 12 years I've been online and blogging, I've encountered my fair share of internet assholes.
I've had super nasty things said about me, about my family and friends, but in the end, those things turned out ok, things got cleared up, apologies were made, all good.

Tonight though, I encountered a new-ish asshole.
I've known about the blog for some time, I blew off the things said about me because they were harmless, I was simply doing my job and this person took it as me just liking to talk far too much.
But tonight, I saw that this person, whoever they are, the anonymous coward that they are, because they have chosen to post the entire blog anonymously, took it a step too far.

They posted something about me completely untrue, 100% defamation, and if it takes a court order to get Google to hand over the isp and name of the blogger, I may go that far.
I have had a lawyer for years now, I've had to fight internet libel battles before, I even have a private investigator who has done work for me, and if need be, I will go that route again.
I am hoping that the person decides to take down my name, take down what they posted, but I doubt they will.

They believe they are completely protected because they post by phone.
They believe they are completely protected by freedom of speech, but they are not, not when it comes to defamation.
Stating, for example, that I am someone who does porn, that is indeed me in a certain video doing something pornography related, using my name, stating that is indeed me, is by it's very definition, defamation.
 
Well, phone records can be subpoenaed, even mobile phone records, I've had that done before too, I can do it again.
Yes, all of this will cost me money, but I have a great attorney who works with me on the bills, let's me make payments, but most of the time, no payments from me is asked for because he gains valuable internet slander/libel experience while doing it.
He's only ever asked for payment once, and it was only $50, because we managed to solve the problem without having to go to court, the PI did most of the work anyway.
The lawyer only had to draft one letter which never even had to be sent because the other person backed down.

But anyway, sometimes people just really suck, they shouldn't be allowed to have a computer if they think that this kind of thing is ok.
I've been dealing with a crapload of anonymous cowards lately both involving me and others, and yes, they are cowards.
If they really felt so strongly about the things they think and say, they'd have the courage of their convictions to put their name on it, say it from their own mouths.
But no, they are cowards lacking any type of moral fiber at all.
They are total pieces of crap as far as human beings go, and someday, they will get what's coming to them.
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Smooth Away product review.

By
Kat
on February 6, 2009 2:27 PM | | Comments (7)
I was asked to try out a new hair removal product, and because of all my spine issues, not being able to bend, I said sure, why not!
I have such a difficult time shaving my legs due to my spine fusion surgeries, so I'm always on the lookout for new, easy to use, and good working hair removal products.

When the package showed up last week and I opened it, I had to laugh, it was a product that my teens and I laugh uncontrollably over every time we see the commercial for it.

In the big padded envelope was the product Smooth Away Hair Removal  with 2 Applicators + 24 Pads + Hair Inhibitor Moisturizer to use after your remove the hair.

Why do the teens and I laugh every time we see the commercial?
Because it's high grade sandpaper.
The Smooth Away pads are "covered with superfine crystals that buff away unwanted hair leaving your skin so soft and incredibly smooth."

Years ago, like when I was about 17, maybe 18, there was another product exactly like this put out by Sally Hansen, and I bought it to try it out.
I hated shaving because I was always nicking myself, I hadn't mastered the technique yet, and I lived in Maine where if you took a shower longer than 5 minutes in the winter, you would run out of hot water, and as most women know, cold water closes your pores, which pretty much makes sure that trying to shave your legs would be difficult.
The pores would be closed, my legs would be covered in goosebumps from the icy cold water, and so yeah, I'd nick my legs to death.

But when my Dad saw my purchase of the Sally Hansen product, he giggled, and said to me, "If you had told me you were going to buy some sandpaper to get rid of your leg hairs, I could have saved you some money. I have a whole box of sandpaper in the basement in all grades, I'm sure I've got one just like this down there, could have saved you your money."
Then he started laughing again.

But I had agreed to try out the Smooth Away and do a review of it, and so, I have tried it out.
I got it last week, and wanted to try it out for a whole week to be able to do a proper review of both the Smooth Away and the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer that came with it.
The Smooth Away does work, it really does, but it takes a bit of time to do it, much longer than shaving or waxing, much much longer than using Veet, but it does indeed work.

You take the handled buffing pad, and then remove the sticky backing from one of the Smooth Away pads, and stick it to the buffing pad.
Place about 3-4 fingers inside the handle, and start rubbing in a circular motion on the areas that you want to remove the hair from.
You have to rub in small circles several times in 1 area to remove the hair, so it does take a bit of time.
If you want to use this, I would suggest doing it the night before you need to be hair free, and set aside about an hour to do it.
I would suggest taking a shower, do not apply any lotion to your legs or arms, (if you remove your arm hairs) and then dry your legs thoroughly before starting.
The places you want to remove the hair from must be completely dry or it won't work, and it definitely doesn't work if you have any lotion on your skin.

I also tried out the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer lotion after removing the hair, and it's very silky, it leaves your skin feeling very soft and smooth, it has a very pleasant smell, and is a terrific moisturizer.
As for helping to stop new hair growth, it does an ok job as far as I can tell.
You have to apply it every day for several days after removing the hair with the Smooth Away pads, in order for it to get into the hair follicles and work, so after every shower, I applied the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer instead of my usual moisturizer, and I would say it doesn't stop new hair from growing, but it does slow it down.
I would wait about 5-10 minutes after removing the hair before applying the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer or any other lotion, so the skin has a chance to "calm down", or you may end up with a slight redness like I did the first time I tried it out.
My skin was slightly irritated, and so adding the moisturizer right away left it looking a little red.

As for exfoliating your skin, I suppose it works, it is a high grade sandpaper, so it does remove some dead skin from the top layer leaving you feeling a bit smoother after.
As for how long it lasts before you have to do it again, about the same amount of time as shaving, maybe a little less, because it's not lifting and cutting the hairs off, it's simply sloughing them away from the surface only.
You do get stubble when it regrows, but if you use the hair growth inhibitor lotion, they take more time to grow back and slightly less course hairs grow back, but there will still be stubble.

The kit I received comes with 2 handled buffing pad applicators, 1 for large areas like legs, arms, men's backs or chests, and 1 small handled buffing pad applicator 1 for the bikini line or upper lip and chin areas, 24 crystallized buffing pads, 12 large and 12 small,  and 1-4 ounce tube of of the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer, and 1 case to hold the pads and handled pad applicators, and it retails for about $29.99
They also offer smaller kits, with just the 1 large buffing pad and 1 small buffing pad, and only 10 crystallized hair removal pads. 
 

SmoothAway.jpg


















This product does work, but it's not a good fit for me.
I cannot bend all the way down to reach my lower leg areas with a long handled razor, so trying to bend and reach down with my hand inside of a buffing pad, was impossible for me to do.
I managed to get to just above my calves with it, and then had to use my regular razor to remove the hairs below it. 
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Furthering your education from home.

By
Kat
on February 4, 2009 12:08 AM |
Have you ever thought of furthering your education, getting a degree or another degree, to help make making money easier?
There are so many online schools, but how do you chose the best one for your needs?
Well, if you're interested in project management, being able to lead teams of other people, then you might need a CAPM certificate and Saint Joseph's University might be the way to go for you.

The link I provided, shows all of the courses they offer and what the median salaries are for those positions.
They offer the following certificates for furthering your education and making more money.
Engineering Managers, Construction Managers, Management Analysts, Natural Sciences Managers, and Computer and Information Systems Managers.

If I was already a professional, had a business degree already, and was able to work outside the home, (maybe someday again) this is something I'd be interested in doing.
There's so much information there, and the fact that you can get a certificate from home, is a major bonus.
So many of us are already busy, working, raising our kids, who has the time to go to college?
But being able to get an education from home on your own time in a field that interests you, is something I'm sure a lot of people could find the time to do.
I've always wanted to get a degree, but not really sure in what.
Maybe one of these days I'll figure that out, and maybe I'll choose Saint Joseph's University to do it.
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Crazy drivers live north of me.

By
Kat
on January 29, 2009 3:07 AM | | Comments (3)
Ok, not all of the crazy drivers live to the north of me, but I'd say a very large majority of them do.
It always makes me glad and feel a bit safer to know that Mindy has good car insurance when she drives me to my appointments in Tampa and Safety Harbor..LOL

I know I just laughed, but seriously, when we were lost and driving all over half the state, other drivers were just all over the road, speeding, swapping lanes with no blinkers, motorcycle riders not wearing full gear, taking off from red lights doing wheelies, people zooming through traffic on the interstate only to end up exactly 1 car lentgh in front of us.
The people out there were crazy!

Honestly, I do not understand how people can live in Tampa and the surrounding big cities like St. Pete, Clearwater etc.
I love big cities, I love being in big cities at night, the lights, the sounds, the millions of things to do, but I do not like living in them.
I like going home at night to my nice and super duper quiet street that I live on.

I used to live in a fairly big city in Maine, Portland, but I was much younger, I was only 19 and 20 when I lived and worked there.
I loved the hustle and bustle, the constant movement of people at all times of day and night, but I lived in a really nice apartment building that was well insulated.
Once inside, you couldn't hear all that noise outside at all.
It was peace and quiet indoors, and I loved that part of living in the city.
I could go out and enjoy all the sights, sounds, and smells, and then go back home to my peaceful apartment and feel like I was far removed from it all.

But Tampa?
OMG, that place is insane!
I simply cannot stand how it is there trying to drive somewhere.
The traffic is just insane, and so so many cars I saw had damage to their front or back ends, or a door smashed in, and it's really no wonder the way that people drive there. 
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I've seen 194 out of 239 films!

By
Kat
on January 23, 2009 11:12 PM | | Comments (4)

I found this one over at Tina's blog and just HAD to do this one!!

I love movies! Hahahaha!

SUPPOSEDLY if you've seen over 85 films, you have no life.

There are 239 films on this list. Put x's next to the films you've seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun.

(x) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
(x) Boondock Saints
(x) Fight Club
(x) Starsky and Hutch
(x) Neverending Story
(x) Blazing Saddles
(x) Airplane
Total: 10

(x) The Princess Bride
(x) Anchorman
(x) Napoleon Dynamite
(x) Labyrinth
(x) Saw
(x) Saw II
(x) White Noise
() White Oleander
() Anger Management
(x) 50 First Dates
(x) The Princess Diaries
() The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Total so far: 20

(x) Scream
(x) Scream 2
(x) Scream 3
(x) Scary Movie
() Scary Movie 2
() Scary Movie 3
() Scary Movie 4
(x) American Pie
(x) American Pie 2
() American Wedding
() American Pie Band Camp
Total so far: 26

(x) Harry Potter 1
(x) Harry Potter 2
(x) Harry Potter 3
(x) Harry Potter 4
(x) Resident Evil 1
(x) Resident Evil 2
(x) The Wedding Singer
() Little Black Book
(x) The Village
(x) Lilo & Stitch
Total so far: 35

(x) Finding Nemo
(x) Finding Neverland
(x) Signs
(x) The Grinch
(x) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
(x) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
(x) White Chicks
(x) Butterfly Effect
(x) 13 Going on 30 (Suddenly 30)
(x) I, Robot
(x) Robots
Total so far: 46

(x) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
(x) Universal Soldier
(x) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
(x) Along Came Polly
(x) Deep Impact
() KingPin
(x) Never Been Kissed
(x) Meet The Parents
(x) Meet the Fockers
(x) Eight Crazy Nights
(x) Joe Dirt
(x) KING KONG (2003)
Total so far: 57

() A Cinderella Story
(x) The Terminal
() The Lizzie McGuire Movie
() Passport to Paris
(x) Dumb & Dumber
() Dumber & Dumberer
(x) Final Destination
(x) Final Destination 2
(x) Final Destination 3
(x) Halloween
(x) The Ring
(x) The Ring 2
() Surviving X-MAS
(x) Flubber
Total so far: 66

(x) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
(x) Practical Magic
(x) Chicago
(x) Ghost Ship
(x) From Hell
(x) Hellboy
(x) Secret Window
(x) I Am Sam
(x) The Whole Nine Yards
(x) The Whole Ten Yards
Total so far: 76

(x) The Day After Tomorrow
(x) Child's Play
(x) Seed of Chucky
(x) Bride of Chucky
(x) Ten Things I Hate About You
() Just Married
(x) Gothika
(x) Nightmare on Elm Street
(x) Sixteen Candles
(x) Remember the Titans
() Coach Carter
(x) The Grudge
(x) The Grudge 2
(x) The Mask
() Son Of The Mask
Total so far: 89

(x) Bad Boys
() Bad Boys 2
(x) Joy Ride
(x) Lucky Number Slevin
(x) Ocean's Eleven
(x) Ocean's Twelve
(x) Bourne Identity
(x) Bourne Supremacy
( ) Lone Star
() Bedazzled
(x) Predator I
(x) Predator II
(x) The Fog
(x) Ice Age
(x) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
() Curious George
Total so far: 101

(x) Independence Day
(x) Cujo
(x) A Bronx Tale
(x) Darkness Falls
(x) Christine
(x) ET
(x) Children of the Corn
() My Bosses Daughter
() Maid in Manhattan
(x) War of the Worlds
(x) Rush Hour
(x) Rush Hour 2
Total so far: 111

() Best Bet
() How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
(x) She's All That
(x) Calendar Girls
() Sideways
(x) Mars Attacks
(x) Event Horizon
() Ever After
(x) Wizard of Oz
(x) Forrest Gump
(x) Big Trouble in Little China
(x) The Terminator
(x) The Terminator 2
(x) The Terminator 3
Total so far: 121

(x) X-Men
(x) X-2
(x) X-3
(x) Spider-Man
(x) Spider-Man 2
() Sky High
(x) Jeepers Creepers
(x) Jeepers Creepers 2
(x) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Little Mermaid
(x) Freaky Friday
(x) Reign of Fire
(x) The Skulls
(x) Cruel Intentions
() Cruel Intentions 2
() The Hot Chick
(x) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2
Total so far: 136

() Swimfan
(x) Miracle on 34th street
() Old School
() The Notebook
(x) K-Pax
() Krippendorf's Tribe
(x) A Walk to Remember
(x) Ice Castles
(x) Boogeyman
() The 40-year-old Virgin
Total so far:141

(x) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring
(x) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
(x) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King
(x) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(x) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(x) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Total so far: 147

(x) Baseketball
(x) Hostel
() Waiting for Guffman
(x) House of 1000 Corpses
(x) Devils Reject
(x) Elf
(x) Highlander
(x) Mothman Prophecies
(x) American History X
() Three
Total so Far: 155

(x) The Jacket
(x) Kung Fu Hustle
() Shaolin Soccer
() Night Watch
(x) Monsters Inc.
(x) Titanic
(x) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(x) Shaun Of the Dead
(x) Willard
Total so far: 162

(x) High Tension
() Club Dread
(x) Hulk
(x) Dawn Of the Dead
(x) Hook
(x) Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
(x) 28 days later
() Orgazmo
(x) Phantasm
(x) Waterworld
Total so far: 170

(x) Kill Bill vol 1
(x) Kill Bill vol 2
(x) Mortal Kombat
(x) Wolf Creek
() Kingdom of Heaven
(x) The Hills Have Eyes
() I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
(x) The Last House on the Left
(x) Re-Animator
(x) Army of Darkness
Total so far: 178

(x) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(x) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(x) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(x) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(x) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(x) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
() Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
() Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far: 184

(x) The Matrix
(x) The Matrix Reloaded
(x) The Matrix Revolutions
(x) Animatrix
(x) Evil Dead
(x) Evil Dead 2
(x) Team America: World Police
(x) Red Dragon
(x) Silence of the Lambs
(x) Hannibal
Total so far: 194

Now Add them up and...
Put "I've seen ... out of 239 films" in the subject line and repost it.


Hahahah! Ok, so yeah, I watch a lot of movies.

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Said I'm stressed out..so tired, my days..so long, gotta..move on.

By
Kat
on January 15, 2009 3:48 AM | | Comments (2)
The last 15 hours have been rather stressful for me, drama, drama, drama.
Here I am trying to get my life in order, get organized, and I've got the stress coming out my ears.
I need a serious vacation.
I swear, one of these years I'm just gonna pack up my stuff, just my stuff, and I'm going to take off for a week, some isolated place all by myself.
Go rent myself a cabin in someplace nice like maybe one of those Outer Banks rentals that people are always talking about.
I'd wanna go in like the mid-fall though, when most of the tourists have gone home yet the weather is still a bit warm.
That way I could take long walks on the beach by myself with no shoes, dip my feet in the water, do some sight-seeing by myself, eat, sleep, be completely alone for just one whole week someplace beautiful.

I have so much faith in people, faith in them to do the right thing, to tell the truth, and it upsets me so much when they don't.
I know, I'm holding people up to standards they can't possibly live by, everybody is always looking out for themselves, trying to be bigger, trying to be in the center of it all, and so they do things, they say things, that are not truthful and hurt other people.

I am part of it, I'm not going to lie about that, I've become a trusted person who gets spoken to about a lot of things, so that puts me in the middle of it all.
And I don't mind it, not at all, I try to be helpful and listen, and come up with ideas, and help implement others, so this makes me privy to information that other people don't know.
And because of that, I'm a trusted person, it's not my place to share anything that is said to me with anyone else, but when I'm left with no choice because of other people's lies, what am I supposed to do about that?
I'm left with no choice but to say what was shared in confidence with other people to try and clear up the mess and drama that someone else started, and frankly, that's not fair.
But what was said really hurt someone, and I can't just stand by and allow a friend to be hurt when I know the truth.
I know how difficult it was, I know that other ideas were bounced around for several days before doing the only possible option, but still, it wasn't my place to say any of it but I had to.
Oh and the lies that just kept coming, and I ask myself why people lie, and I keep coming back to wanting to be the center of it all and self esteem issues, and so I looked it up, and so yeah, that link is pretty interesting, you should read it.
 
"We're trying not so much to impress other people but to maintain a view of ourselves that is consistent with the way they would like us to be," Feldman said. We want to be agreeable, to make the social situation smoother or easier, and to avoid insulting others through disagreement or discord."

I think some people do lie to create disagreement and discord though, to hurt others, to start some drama, and that is what happened that caused me so much stress and left me having to try and explain.
I am greatly upset that lies were told that hurt someone that I consider a friend, and it's causing me a great deal of stress.
 
Here it is almost morning again, and I have yet to even try to sleep, all I can do is think about how badly a friend is hurting, that it should have never happened, and that no matter what I say, it won't be believed because there is a a he said/she said thing happening and a lot of hurt feelings.
But I know the truth, and the truth is that it was a lie said and it hurt someone.

I am so so tired, but I can't sleep because of all of this, it's not right.
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FREE Reach Access Flosser.

By
Kat
on January 14, 2009 3:43 PM | | Comments (1)
You can sign up to received a FREE Reach Access Flosser, while supplies last of course, and it also comes with a coupon for the flosser refills.
You can sign up to get it for free by clicking here.

I actually have this and use it.
I signed up for this same freebie like 2 years ago when they ran this promo, and I LOVE it.
It is so much easier to floss your teeth with this than it is with the string.
No wrapping it around your fingers cutting into your skin, and no trying to maneuver your fingers into your mouth to get the way back teeth.
It's just like a toothbrush, it fits easily into your mouth, you can reach every single tooth easily.
And it's great for kids too because it's so easy to use.

After getting my free sample and loving it, I went and bought the teens their own, and there has been no arguing or yelling to get them to floss, they just do it because it's so easy.
So sign up, get your free one, and you'll see how easy it is to floss and keep your teeth healthy.
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Jessica Elliot jewelry and MomLogic rocks!

By
Kat
on January 14, 2009 11:38 AM | | Comments (1)
I told y'all how I won another necklace, this time it was from MomLogic.com and Jessica Elliot jewelry.
It was supposed to be a single necklace.
Well yesterday, the FedEx guy knocked on the door, handed me an envelope, and when I opened it, I found 2 gorgeous jewelry pouches.


JEjewelry1.jpg


















I opened them up and found not 1, but 3 necklaces and a really heavy bangle bracelet!
There's a nautical designed necklace, a small handsaw necklace, and a really pretty 3 ring choker.
All of the pieces of jewelry are absolutely stunning!
And they are all in silver too!
I LOVE it!!

JEjewelry2.jpg



















I freaking love this bangle bracelet! It's big, heavy, and in silver, so so pretty!

JEheavybanglebracelet.jpg


















Thanks so much MomLogic and Jessica Elliot!!
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Final update on ABC Distributing and an apology.

By
Kat
on January 13, 2009 12:55 PM | | Comments (2)
As I had said, if this all turned out to be my banks fault, I would apologize to ABC Distributing in email and here on my blog, so I am.

Melissa from ABC Distributing has been working on this like she said to me in email, by phone, and even leaving a comment on my blog, and she finally got to the bottom of the excessive shipping/hold money in the amount of $146.04.

ABC's billing specialist spoke with someone from my credit card company, Demetria, and she said that they released the hold on 1/5/09.
Well no, they actually hadn't, I would have noticed it, I would have seen it, I scoured my online CC statements repeatedly because that is a lot of money to be held for so long.

After Melissa emailed me that information this morning, I logged into my CC records online, and what do ya know?
My account balance is magically $146.04 more than what I had in there last night, and really early this morning around 5:45am when I got up with the teens to go to school.
I've been obsessively checking my account balance since this whole thing started as I said in this post.
I have been super duper careful with my money since this all started, I've been checking the balance daily, on some days, I checked it nearly every hour, I went over it with a fine tooth comb, the find feature in my browser, I used a regular calculator and the calculator that comes with the accessories on my pc.
I had my son look it over, they did not release the hold on 1/5/09, they released it this morning sometime before Melissa emailed me around 9:45am.

I prefer to shop online because I don't handle large crowds too well, I absolutely hate going to places like the Westgate mall because of the large crowds of rude and pushy people, and I probably could have found these same comforters at the mall or another brick and mortar store, but I don't like having to go shopping at stores, I don't have the transportation to go shopping all of the time either, so shopping online is how I have to do things.
But when shopping online you do take a risk, and I'm usually very careful which retailers I shop with, I've only shopped at the most well known and trusted online retailers for years and years now, and this experience, while not ABC Distributings fault, it really turned me off.
I was very, very upset, I felt like I had been ripped off big time, and as I posted and other bloggers posted to their blogs trying to help me and spread the word, people who read those blogs started to leave comments about ABC Distributing , making me feel like an even bigger idiot for not doing my online shopping homework. (Thanks Charlotte)

But Melissa really did do what she said she was going to do, and that was to get to the bottom of this.
She emailed me, she called me for my credit cards phone number so they could call them, and they told her they had released the hold on the 5th, which they did not.
So my anger was entirely misplaced.
I should have been angry at my bank, and I am, they have already been called and I've yelled at them this morning after getting Melissa's email about it, and seeing the hold money appear in my account this morning, so I do owe ABC Distributing an apology for making such a huge stink over this.
What happened was not their fault, even though at the time due to the way the statements looked, it appeared that way.

So I am truly sorry to ABC Distrbuting for making such a huge fuss, and I apologized to Melissa in an email reply to her this morning explaining that it's such a large amount of money to lose or to be held for so long, especially in this economy, and she completely understood.

I also want to thank everyone for all of their help and support during this whole thing.
I was totally losing my mind at the thought of being ripped off, I had no idea what to do or how to do it, and so many wonderful people came here and let comments, Twittered it, blogged it, and helped me get some attention to this, which I believe, is why they investigated this so thoroughly and found the answer.
So to all of you who helped me, thank you, and to ABC Distributing, I am sorry for making such a huge fuss over something that was not your fault, and thank you for lighting the fire that made my bank really release the hold on the funds.
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The necklace won from Gemaffair.com arrived today!

By
Kat
on January 12, 2009 6:38 PM | | Comments (2)
The necklace I won from GemAffair.com on one of their Twitter contests, arrived today, and it is so beautiful!
Katy included a personal note to me along with an informative sheet about jewelry and gemstones, what stone goes with which month for birthdays and anniversaries, but I really liked that she included the personal touch to say something about me.

"Enjoy your pendant and good luck w/powerball!
Katy & the GemAffair.com team"

gemaffairdotcom1.jpg


















The pendant I won is a diamond journey pendant, but not one of the usual squiggle line journey pendants you usually see.
It's in sterling silver and shaped like a ladder sort of, not really sure what name this shape is called, but it totally suits me, I absolutely love it!
How did Katy know that I'm a sterling silver kind of girl?
No matter, it really is perfect for me, as soon as I opened it and saw it, I loved it!
You can click for bigger to see it better.

gemaffairdotcom1diamondjourneypendant.jpg


















Thank you so so much Katy and GemAffair.com, I love it!
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Living with M.S.

By
Kat
on January 11, 2009 11:20 AM | | Comments (1)
My sister-in-law, Jen, has M.S. I did the blogathon in 2007 to raise money for M.S. for the Montel Williams M.S. Foundation because of her, I saw what this disease had done to her, how it affected her and her whole family.
She was diagnosed many years ago, when her daughter was just 2 years old, she hadn't even had her son yet, but back in the early days of the disease, it wasn't so bad, she was still mostly healthy, still had mostly good days.
But over the years, the M.S. has gotten worse, it's caused a wide variety of symptoms, and now Jen has to be in a wheelchair because the M.S. has made her lower body not work right anymore, she can't walk, she can't bend down and lift, and my brother Mike, has to help her get dressed everyday, well her lower half anyway.

Jen does not let M.S. run her life, far from it.
She does so much every single day, she is a fighter with a good attitude, and she wants to help others with M.S. realize that it's not a death sentence unless you choose it to be, it's all attitude she says.
So Jen has created a new blog, Living With M.S., and so I'm sharing her blog with you, to spread the word, get her blog link out there to the world.
Maybe her blog can help other people, newly diagnosed patients, and families of people with M.S.
So go stop by her blog, say hi, spread the word about her blog if you can, the more people that know it's there, the better the chances that her blog and Jen, can help other people understand this disease.  

M.S. does not hand out membership cards to people, it just strikes randomly, and there is no cure yet, but we can spread the word, we can help raise money to find a cure.
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I won another necklace!

By
Kat
on January 9, 2009 1:35 PM |
MomLogic just called me to tell me that I won one of the signature necklaces from Jessica Elliot in the contest I entered a few weeks ago!
Yay me!
Don't enter that, the contest is over, I was just linking to the contest that I won.
I have no idea which necklace I won, but it will be delivered by FedEx in a few weeks she said.

I'm so excited!
I have been on a winning streak lately, definitely need to buy another Powerball ticket I think.

Thanks MomLogic and Jessica Elliot!

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I won a diamond pendant from Gem Affair!

By
Kat
on December 31, 2008 4:28 PM |
Gem Affair has been doing some re-tweet contests on Twitter, all you do is re-tweet their message when they announce a contest and could win some really nice jewelry.
I just went to Twitter and saw the following;

@mskat WooHoo. You won the Diamond Pendant! Happy New Year! Please send me a DM with your email.

Holy crap!!!

Thank you so much Gem Affair!
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Fear of being what I loathe.

By
Kat
on December 30, 2008 1:13 AM | | Comments (4)
I'm in like this work holding pattern when it comes to all of this internet money making stuff.
I want the money, I want the success, but I don't want to be one of those over the top pushy bloggers that I loathe.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy for their success, but I hate the way they go about it.
I'm sick and tired of seeing messages on Twitter from bloggers saying enter this contest, I don't have many entries, yet when I get there to check it out, almost feeling sorry for them that they didn't get a lot of entries,  I see that they have 300+ people entered into a random drawing for 1 single item.
I'm tired of seeing people outright ask advertisers on Twitter, to send them a product to review and give away.
I'm tired of the posts about making money, tired of the posts where they discuss how much money they've made.

That is my biggest peeve of all.
To me, it is absolutely disgusting, and exceptionally tacky to post about how much money you make from all of your paid blogging income sources.
It's gross.
I always think of it like this, if you were in an elevator with 12 people, would you just start talking about how much money you make?
If you held an office job and on payday when the checks are delivered, would you open yours up, stand up, and shout to the entire office how much you made that week?
No, you wouldn't, so why do people do it on their blogs?
To brag about what a great blogger they think they are?
To try and show advertisers that they are the blogger to work with, because look at how much money other adverts spend with them?
Talking about how much you earn is tacky.
Tack-y.
And I'm not alone, I saw this tweet from someone tonight;
Enough already. Making money online. Hasn't anyone got anything else to blog about?
It's not just me feeling this way about the subject, people are starting to be so freaking over it.

But therein lies my dilemma.
I want to be a truly successful blogger, but I don't want to be pushy about it, I don't want to be obnoxious about it, I don't want to ask adverts to give me stuff.
If an advert wants to work with me, then I'd like them to contact me, not the other way around.
I'm not afraid to ask for things after they contact me, like a product to review, maybe one to give away, but I just don't have it in me to contact them first, and start that first contact off by asking for things.
No hello I am so and so, but a straight up Twitter request for products and/or accessories.
I cringed when I read that.
I cringed and said out-loud "Holy hell tacky".

My dearest readers, if you ever see me starting to be one of those really successful bloggers who lets it get to my head, and you see me straight up asking for stuff, send me an email, send me a tweet, tell me that I am becoming one of those bloggers that I loathe.
I promise I will thank you for helping me come back to my senses.
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Imaginary Bitches.

By
Kat
on December 25, 2008 9:29 PM |
Eden Riegel, who plays Bianca Montgomery on ABC's All My Children soap, has a web series called Imaginary Bitches, and it is absolutely hysterical!
I just found it last night, but it's been online since May 2008 I think, and it will be going into it's second season this year.
Imaginary Bitches is about a girl named Eden, (Eden Riegel) who is single and all of her best friends are hooked up and in relationships.
None of them have any time for her anymore, and when they do have time to get together, all her 3 friends do is talk about their relationships and their boyfriends.
After Eden has an amazing one night stand, she calls all of her friends to talk about it like they all do after a night of mind blowing sex, but once again, they are all too busy to talk to her.
Suddenly, she has 2 new friends, imaginary friends, named Catherine and Heather, and they are total bitches.
These 2 new imaginary friends are more than just people to talk to, they end up becoming a major part of her life, they screw up new and potential relationships because she gets caught talking to them a few times.
When her real friends find out about it, they try to help in their own short and fast ways, but the whole thing is so freaking funny, I watched all 12 available episodes last night and laughed through every single one.

There are 13 episodes total, but one of them has been taken off line, episode 6, because it has been made into a short book.
Each episode is only between 5 and 9 minutes long, but you will love each of them, they are so damn funny.
It's ideal for all the single women out there who have friends who are in relationships, if you're single, you will totally relate to Eden's dilemma, being the only single friend, being left out of couples only dinner parties, couples only trips etc etc.
Eden does what most of us do when blown off by our hooked-up girl friends, we talk to ourselves about it, but she takes it a bit extreme and has real imaginary friends that never blow her off.
Check out the teaser below and if you like it and laugh, check out the other episodes, I swear I laughed my ass off watching all of them.
 
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I like music and winning stuff!

By
Kat
on December 19, 2008 3:22 PM | | Comments (1)
I absolutely love getting promotional items or products to review, winning contests, etc.

I have been watching the book club adventures of 4 girlfriends on the new CBS web-series called Novel Adventures.
They ran a few small trivia contests on their Twitter, and I was one of the winners!
What did I win?

I won an autographed cd from singer Keaton Simons.
His music was featured in one of their episodes, and since I've been watching the series, I knew the answer to the trivia question.
The cd came today, and it is soo good.
I love it!
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Are you a hardcore atheist? A new meme.

By
Kat
on December 16, 2008 3:35 PM | | Comments (2)
The Friendly Atheist posted this meme, and as I was reading through it, I was laughing and nodding, and saying yup, so here we go.
I've not only boldfaced the items that I've done/had happened to me, but added a few notes where applicable.
Copy and paste the list below on your own site, boldfacing the things you've done. (Feel free to add your own elaboration and commentary to each item!)

1. Participated in the Blasphemy Challenge.
2. Met at least one of the "Four Horsemen" (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris) in person.
3. Created an atheist blog.
4. Used the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a religious debate with someone.
5. Gotten offended when someone called you an agnostic.
6. Been unable to watch Growing Pains reruns because of Kirk Cameron. And I used to think he was so cute back then too. *sigh*
7. Own more Bibles than most Christians you know.
8. Have at least one Bible with your personal annotations regarding contradictions, disturbing parts, etc. I actually own 7 bibles, 1 with some serious notes and underlines and highlighter marks going on.
9. Have come out as an atheist to your family. I don't think Mom and Dad were happy, but they still love me so it's all good. My brother still considers me a heathen, but eh, can't win 'em all.
10. Attended a campus or off-campus atheist gathering. There's not many here in Sarasota, but I've attended the ones I knew about.
11. Are a member of an organized atheist/Humanist/etc. organization. Proudly.
12. Had a Humanist wedding ceremony.
13. Donated money to an atheist organization. Whenever I can.
14. Have a bookshelf dedicated solely to Richard Dawkins.
15. Lost the friendship of someone you know because of your non-theism. It's painful to lose a friend for any reason, but this one stinks.
16. Tried to argue or have a discussion with someone who stopped you on the street to proselytize. The local Jehovah come in large scary groups to get me!
17. Hid your atheist beliefs on a first date because you didn't want to scare him/her away. After losing a few friends, I hold off on saying anything until I know the relationship might have a chance. If it turns them away after I say it, so be it.
18. Own a stockpile of atheist paraphernalia (bumper stickers, buttons, shirts, etc). The Normal Bob Smith tracts are my fave to leave places...LOL
19. Attended a protest that involved religion.
20. Attended an atheist conference. Only 1, but would love to go to more.
21. Subscribe to Pat Condell's YouTube channel. That man is seriously intelligent. I love to watch him speak.
22. Started an atheist group in your area or school.
23. Successfully "de-converted" someone to atheism.
24. Have already made plans to donate your body to science after you die. Oh heck ya! My body is going to be written about in science texts! hahahaha
25. Told someone you're an atheist only because you wanted to see the person's reaction. Especially after they have gone on and on about Christ's blessings in their life. It shuts them the fuck up.
26. Had to think twice before screaming "Oh God!" during sex. Or you said something else in its place. Atheists actually say your name. (I read that somewhere LOL)
27. Lost a job because of your atheism. Old Navy to be exact. The main reason was the complaints from my co-workers who said they didn't feel they could trust a person who did not believe in god, that I might steal something or take god's name in vain in front of them. I was shocked.
28. Formed a bond with someone specifically because of your mutual atheism (meeting this person at a local gathering or conference doesn't count). I've made many friendships with fellow atheists. It's very nice.
29. Have crossed "In God We Trust" off of -- or put a pro-church-state-separation stamp on -- dollar bills. I hear that this is like a crime, but I do it anyway.
30. Refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I state the original pledge of allegiance.
31. Said "Gesundheit!" (or nothing at all) after someone sneezed because you didn't want to say "Bless you!" I don't say anything at all.
32. Have ever chosen not to clasp your hands together out of fear someone might think you're praying. Yup. I don't want anyone to mistake me for being a believer.
33. Have turned on Christian TV because you need something entertaining to watch. Man, the late night movies are so freaking entertaining!
34. Are a 2nd or 3rd (or more) generation atheist.
35. Have "atheism" listed on your Facebook or dating profile -- and not a euphemistic variant. Of course.
36. Attended an atheist's funeral (i.e. a non-religious service).
37. Subscribe to an freethought magazine (e.g. Free Inquiry, Skeptic) I had to cancel it this past year due to finances, but when I get back to being ok, I will start them up again.
38. Have been interviewed by a reporter because of your atheism.
39. Written a letter-to-the-editor about an issue related to your non-belief in God. Yes!
40. Gave a friend or acquaintance a New Atheist book as a gift. Fellow atheists only. Other people are not quite as accepting.
41. Wear pro-atheist clothing in public. I have buttons and a few t-shirts.
42. Have invited Mormons/Jehovah's Witnesses into your house specifically because you wanted to argue with them. Yes. It's what I do for fun on Saturday mornings when they are "in season".
43. Have been physically threatened (or beaten up) because you didn't believe in God.  Not beaten up, but I have been threatened with physical violence on more than 1 occasion.
44. Receive Google Alerts on "atheism" (or variants).
45. Received fewer Christmas presents than expected because people assumed you didn't celebrate it.  Yup. That whole christ is the reason for the season, people assume I don't celebrate. We celebrate the real Christmas, and it has nothing to do with christ. People need to do some research on the whole thing. Researchers are now saying Jesus may have been born in June. That might put a damper on the whole reason for the season thing eh?
46. Visited The Creation Museum or saw Ben Stein's Expelled just so you could keep tabs on the "enemy." I haven't been to the museum yet, but I have watched Expelled on Netflix, Jesus Camp, and quite a few other documentary type films.
47. Refuse to tell anyone what your "sign" is... because it doesn't matter at all. True, too true.
48. Are on a mailing list for a Christian organization just so you can see what they're up to...
 49. Have kept your eyes open while you watched others around you pray. I like to see how many of them open their eyes, unfold their hands, pick their noses etc etc.
50. Avoid even Unitarian churches because they're too close to religion for you. A church is a church is a church. 
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Countdown to sleep.

By
Kat
on December 14, 2008 2:34 AM | | Comments (1)
Once again, I have insomnia, and I was thinking about going to bed, at least laying there trying to sleep, but as usual I found others things to occupy my non-sleeping brain.
I found a pretty cool electronics blog to check out, it talks about all kinds of electronics, computers, video games, lots of stuff, and then a movie I love came on, so now I really can't sleep.

No matter how many times I have watched Independence Day I have to watch it every single time it's on.
It sucks that it started at 2am though.
I have insomnia anyway, but I was going to try and sleep, but if I go in there now, I'll be all "but that scene with Will Smith punching out the alien is coming up, and the fireball, and the oh crap when the dude is stuck in his car, and the stupid people on the roof of the building with big signs", and then I'll have to come back out here anyway.
My brain won't shut up long enough to try and let me sleep, and that sucks.
So I guess I'm going to be up until this movie goes off.
My brain, it just won't turn off for anything.
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Up and at 'em!

By
Kat
on December 10, 2008 8:03 AM |
I've been awake since the alarm went off for the teens at 5:45, after finally going to my room and attempting to sleep at 2am.
I just wasn't tired at all.
I finally fell asleep at 4am, so yeah, a little under 2 hours of sleep last night.
Today is going to be a very, very long day.
I have not gotten more than 2 hours of sleep at any point on any day, since last Thursday.
What's going to suck is that I have a very long car ride ahead of me this morning to the docs, and the combination of the warm sun and the motion of the car, will have me dozing off every few minutes, but I can't nap on the way there.
I'm the co-pilot, I have the directions, it's my job to not get us lost.
I usually do have trouble getting us there anyway, even though I've been o his office over 2 dozen times since 2006.
Poor Mindy, I hope that she sorta remembers how to get us there, I really do suck at it, and I even have the directions on my cell phone.
I'll get us there, I always do, but my brain gets foggy about all the various roads and turns we have to take, and seeing as how she never goes up that way except to take me, she doesn't know the area well either.

I need to get in the shower, she'll be here at 9am so we can head out, and my clothes are in the dryer de-wrinkling, and also getting the cat hair off of them.
I specifically washed and dried them, folded them up nicely, and laid them on top of the dryer, and over night, Shahiro stupid kitty decided she was going to rearrange them and sleep on them, leaving new wrinkles and cat hair behind.
Damn cat.

I was watching the Today Show, and they were talking about ways people can make money during these tough times.
Today they talked about doing paid surveys online and product reviews, paid telephone surveys etc.
I've been doing this for years, not just on my blog either.
I have worked for several major survey companies since 1999, and have made some decent money from them over the years, as well as paid product reviews for all kinds of stuff.
I've just always found being a consumer reviewer a lot of fun, and I've also been involved with tv show broadcasting companies about the shows we watch.
Yup, I'm the reason certain shows get canceled on the big 3 broadcast networks. Ha! (ABC,NBC,CBS)

Okey dokey, I've got to get my but in gear and hop in that shower.
Later days!
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Best holiday skit ever!

By
Kat
on December 9, 2008 1:32 AM | | Comments (4)
sschweddyballs.jpg














It's the holidays, and there are tons of great classic movies and specials being shown on tv as we quickly approach Christmas, just 17 days to go now. (including today)
One of my most favorite, and quite possibly one of the funniest holiday skits ever written, was for Saturday Night Live.
It was a recurring skit on SNL called the Delicious Dish, it was a parody of public broadcast radio shows.
It starred Ana Gasteyer as Margaret-Jo McCullen who used the phrase "good times" over and over, and Molly Shannon as Teri Rialto, two very bland radio personalities as the radio show hosts.
The guest star for the night was Alec Baldwin.
He played a character named Pete Schweddy, owner of Season's Eatings Bakery, and one of his best products were his balls, a sexual double entendre referring to testicles.

This skit kills me every single time I watch it.
I laugh as soon as it starts, I laugh until tears are streaming down my face, it is just so damn funny.
How the 3 of them did not laugh through this skit, I have no idea.
I seriously crack up as soon as it starts,  all the "mmm, balls, tell us about your balls Pete, mmm, your balls are so soft and moist Pete", has me rolling as soon as it starts.

Please make sure that there are no children in the room or within hearing/viewing distance before you click on the link below.
Headphones may be a really good idea if you do not want your kids to hear any of it accidentally.
Also, if you are the type of person who gets offended by sexual double entendre, just don't click it.
If you do click it and get offended, if your kids accidentally hear it, do not complain to me.
You have been sufficiently warned.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you, Pete Schweddy's Balls .
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Close comments for MT4?

By
Kat
on November 25, 2008 7:36 AM |
I know not many people use MT much anymore, everybody loves WP, but I know there are others out there, somewhere, who use it.
I downloaded the plugin Blog Janitor which is supposed to close comments after so many days setting that you choose, but even though it's installed correctly, it is not closing comments on old entries.
Is there another plugin for MT4 that will actually close the comments?
I really don't want to do it by hand, but if I have to, at least I don't have many entries on this blog to do that to.

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Just leave it at the door please.

By
Kat
on November 24, 2008 11:04 AM | | Comments (1)
The FedEx guy just knocked on the door a few minutes ago to drop off a product for me to review.
I hollered through the door, "Please just set it there, I'm sick, you might catch it", and you should have seen the guy drop it and haul ass back to his truck.
It was quite funny.
But honestly, I am not feeling well.
I have the coughing, sneezing, sniffling, and some stomach issues.
Not really stomach sick, no puke or poops, but more of this weird feeling.
I feel hollow in my chest and stomach areas, I can't really explain it beyond that, but it's a hollow feeling, empty, and eating doesn't make it go away.

I have some minor stuff to clean up around here, some pots and pans from food we did eat and then just couldn't deal with after we ate, and I need to do the floors too.
All I really want to do though is sleep or at least lay down and be totally lazy.

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It all needs to be done.

By
Kat
on November 22, 2008 5:31 PM | | Comments (2)
After a whole week of illness, this house is absolutely trashed.
There's stuff everywhere, it smells like sickness in here, I'm grossed out by my own home right now.
I really need to clean it.
I'm thinking that tomorrow, everyone is going to wake up at a reasonable hour, and start cleaning this entire house, every single room.
ALL of the dishes will be done, the bathroom scrubbed, bed linens washed, dried, put back on beds, floors swept, vac'd, and the hard floors mopped.
All the tables cleaned off, and maybe I'll even attempt to clean a little bit of the table of death.
It's so so bad, omg, it's terrible.
I'm completely disgusted.

This is me in my new Blogads t-shirt.
I've been a Blogads publisher and advertiser, for quite a few years now, and about a week or two ago, I filled out a publisher/advert survey, and so they sent me a free t-shirt.
Blogads is by invite only, and sorry, I have no more invites.
I gave them all out to a bunch of bloggers who said they were interested, understood it wasn't going to make them rich, (unless they are Perez, he makes quite a bit from his Blogads) and they all said they understood that it would take time to start building it up, before they made decent money from the ads.
I gave out all 10 invites, and out of the 10, only 1 (one) is still running her adblocks, and she's doing pretty decent from it too.
It kind of irritates me that the other 9 bloggers have wasted those invites, I could have given them to other bloggers who really would have appreciated the ability to have an adblock on their blogs that would make (eventually) them some decent recurring income with hardly any work involved on their parts, simply approve the sold ads when they got bought.
Oh well, it's their loss right?
But it still annoys me that I can't get any more invites because 9 people don't even use it, wasted them, and so I can't get more.
Maybe if I find another blogger who has patience, will leave the adblocks up, will join the hives, promote the hives on their ad pages, keep the blocks above the fold, I will risk it again and ask for another invite or two, but right now, no way.
But I am glad to see that at least the one blogger is making decent money every month from them and appreciates it, she sent me a thank you a few weeks ago after selling a huge paying ad campaign.
I'm very happy for her.

And in this pic, you can see me and my down-turned head from the spine/neck fusion.
That is as high as I can lift it.
Pretty sucky eh?
But yup, that's as far as it goes.
I know I look like total shit in the pic, and the bathroom mirror is way dirty, but we've all been sick the whole week so yeah, that's what I look like right now.

random 075.jpg
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Is there a kick me sign on my back?

By
Kat
on November 20, 2008 11:20 PM | | Comments (1)
Ya know, just when I think things are getting better, starting to looking up, life decides to kick me in the ass again.
Both of the teens have been really sick all week, I've so far remained unscathed, finally starting coming down with it myself.
They started theirs last Thursday, a full week and neither of them are better yet, well Mark is starting to get a little color in his face, but Sebastian is in pretty bad shape.

Around 6pm or so this evening, my nose started getting wicked stuffed up, I coughed and nearly hacked up a lung, (I'm pretty sure my right lung is still loose from being jarred like that) my chest hurts, and while I was coughing up that lung, this ripping and burning sensation tore all the way up through my esophagus and throat, and my tongue also started twitching and feeling scratchy too.
I'm trying to fight it off, I have echinachea, some antibiotics left over from my surgery, Nyquil, Tylenol, multivitamins, and lots of juice even though that will give me hives. (allergic to orange juice and most juices)

As far as my insomnia, it's not really any better.
I was awake from about 7am Tuesday, and didn't go to sleep until about 5am today, Thursday, and only slept for about 5 hours.
I've been wide awake all day, and right on schedule it seems, I caught my second wind and am so wide awake that if it wasn't so late at night, I'd be cleaning the house.
This has to stop but all sleeping aids, even prescription ones, have the exact opposite effect.
Instead of putting me to sleep, they perk me right up and make me behave like I took 20 hits of speed or drank 5 gallons of coffee.
I'm hoping because I'm starting to get sick, that it will somehow make me get some sleep tonight.

I have some stuff to do and then need to get back to answering all kinds of emails.
They are built up in there and I'm working on it all k?
O-k.
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If this blog looks weird....

By
Kat
on November 10, 2008 9:51 PM | | Comments (1)
If the far right sidebar is being cut off, like half of the Blogads graphics or other buttons appear to be cut in half, and you're using Firefox, you will need to upgrade to Firefox 3.0.3

This blog looks fine in IE, Opera, Safari, and Firefox, but if your Firefox shows the sidebar being cut off, upgrade to the newest version and it will be fine.

Thanks to Jenn for letting me know.
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So it's after 4am again....

By
Kat
on November 9, 2008 5:31 AM | | Comments (0)
And here I am, wide awake again.
It seems that when I'm physically feeling better, I can't sleep at all, and when my body aches badly, all I can do is sleep in 20 minute intervals every other hour, for days at a time until the muscle aches go away.

So anyway, I am really bored at this late hour, just blog hopping and forum surfing, when my other blog started getting slammed by spammers who post those nonsensical urls.
You know the ones, http://xhgeteiihjhxgsueipow.hgu
Yeah, they don't work, and they don't make any sense at all.
I think they post those urls in an attempt to see if the ip addresses get banned.
I'm not sure if that's the reason, but it seems logical to me.

Anyway, so I was going through the unpublished-waiting to be moderated comments on the other blog, which were mostly spam, when I came across a few comments that I never allowed to be published because it was replies that assumed they knew what I was venting about.
I read them all, and yes, I can see how they could be misunderstood, but only 1 person ever emailed me and outright asked me what I was ranting about when I had offered to answer what the rants were about to anyone who asked and just needed to know.
And I told her, and I even linked her to the actual forums that were causing me the stress.
She understood, it was all good after that, and life went on until the next time I ranted/vented about the forums again.

The forums were about cars, auto parts franchises , people who did cheap auto repairs, auto painting, auto detailing, cars for sale, and a sub-forum for sex and relationships, home businesses, work at home jobs for moms, a single parents sub-forum, and an all women sub-forum, on the huge network of forums that housed all of these topics.
I was the moderator of 5 of those sub-forums for about 1 and a half years, before I finally had to quit doing any of them because of the constant stress.
That network of forums and sub-forums went through moderators faster than a cruise ship full of people with e-coli and food poisoning, could go through 5,000 rolls of toilet paper before they reached port.
It seemed that every week there was a new moderator, or 10, and most of the older mods left in a final blaze of  typing glory.
When I was posting to my other blog all of those rants, I was venting there so as not to go out in a crazed posting frenzy calling everyone immature idiots and a few other choice names, before I finally quit.
Things were bad and getting worse as each day passed, it would become apparent later on that another online forum had found these forums, and had created tons of troll names simply to come on and cause drama.
They were playing a game with us and the members of our forums.
The game was called how many e-fights and e-drama can be started before our user-name gets banned or a moderator blows their lid and quits.
It may have been fun for them, but for us it was a nightmare.
Our long standing members were messaging daily for some kind of help, begging us to ban certain user names, all kinds of nasty posts, and emotions were on high strung with no xanax to be found anywhere.
Continue reading So it's after 4am again.....
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Through winter snow, the scarf's a flying.

By
Kat
on November 8, 2008 1:59 AM |
Mark's Big and his wife Amy, gave me a gorgeous silk scarf a few years ago for Christmas.
It's this really beautiful long silk tie or scarf, whatever you call it depending on where you were raised.
The base color is white, and it has hand embroidered red and pink roses with various shades of green for the stems and leaves.
I don't wear it often, but when I do, I get tons of compliments on it.
I think Amy used to sell them at her store down in St. Armand's Circle.
She sold her shop for quite a nice profit last year sometime.
Amy used to sell a huge selection of products from all over for a bunch of high end items.
She sold a ton of really awesome beauty products that I could never afford, but she used to give me some products sometimes.
She also sold scarves like the one she gave me, silk ties shirts, dresses, skirts, wine, candles, all kinds of stuff. It was a really beautiful store right down in the circle.
I love going there, but I can't walk it much anymore, but when I do go, my last stop before leaving is always the Ben & Jerry's ice cream shop, for a small cone with some Phish Food.
Yum.
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New blogging friends!

By
Kat
on November 3, 2008 11:51 PM | | Comments (3)
My friend Leeanne and her husband Tony, have both started blogging.
Leeanne's blog is called Happy Mommy3, and Tony's blog is called TurboMacnCheese
Add them to your RSS feed reader if you like them after checking them out.

I talk about blogging so much on the local forums that people started asking me about it and got interested.
Not only have Leeanne and her husband started blogging, but another gal on the forums just messaged me tonight about it and will be starting hers up too.
I'm like the town crier for blogging...LOL
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I won!

By
Kat
on November 3, 2008 7:02 PM | | Comments (2)
I won Misikko's Before and After contest!
I was the one $100 winner, and there were 2 $50 winners.
I sent in my pictures that I took on the day I used my Turbo Ion Croc flat iron for the first time, and won.
W00t!

Dear Kat, I would like inform you that you are the winner for the $100 Gift Certificate for Misikko's before and after picture contest.  Congratulations on the amazing before and after picture you submitted to us. You have definitely shown what a woman could do with a great flat iron and some spare time.
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Butterfly award.

By
Kat
on October 30, 2008 10:42 PM | | Comments (5)
Beth of the Sassy Southerner, gave me a Butterfly award a few weeks ago, for being one of the coolest blogs she's ever known.


butterfly-award.png I love getting these awards from my blogging friends, it lets me know that people care about me, that when they read my blogs, they are truly interested in me and my life.
Over the last 11 years (Holy crap!! has it been that long?!) that I've been blogging, I've met some amazing people and have been lucky enough to become friends with them.
I really wish I could meet them all in person some day, they've all been a part of my life through our blogs for so long now, that I feel like I really know them, that I can call them my friends and they can also call me friend.

So now I'm going to pass this along to some of my longest known blogging friends, and a few of my most recent blogging friends.

Christine
Robyn
Shell
Belle
Jenn
Terry
Christie
Mindy
Jade
Holly
And so, so many more, I should have just linked to my list of fave blogs, but that isn't even a complete list of all of the wonderful and awesome bloggers that I have known for many years now, and some that I've just met, but they are all people that I really care about.
I may not leave comments all of the time, but I have all of those awesome people in my RSS feed reader, and I stay up to date to all of the goings on in their lives that they post about.
I really wish I could leave comments on every single post they make, but if I did that, I'd never be able to do anything else on the internet.
Some of y'all post a helluva lot! 1aaa-lol.gif

Oh, and I don't expect any of you to post this on your blogs, it's not a meme, nor is it mandatory that you pass it on.
Only do this if you want to.
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All I've got is a photograph.

By
Kat
on October 26, 2008 6:01 PM |
I love taking pictures, I'm ok at it, not great, not nearly as good as this chick is, but I still love to take pictures.
I take my little Sony Cybershot with me practically everywhere I go, just in case I see something cool to take a picture of.
I would love to get a really nice camera someday, not saying mine isn't nice or that it doesn't take good pictures, it does, but I'd love to have like a really nice Nikon someday.

So I went in search of Nikon cameras and found this one which has a great rating, and also found this one which has an awesome rating, but wow, that's a lot of money.
And I also found this one because that's the one that Robyn is now using for her picture taking business.
Most of those super nice Nikons are expensive, like way too much for me to ever dream of buying, and they don't even come with a lens, you have to buy those separately. *blink*
But I kept searching for nice cameras, I was just using the term "Nikon" in Google, and I found Nikon rifle scopes,
They make rifle scopes?
Yuppers, they sure do.
Now those I could afford, but you can't exactly attach a rifle scope to a camera.
I'll just have to keep saving my pennies, or maybe with next year's tax return, I could afford to buy the D70 or something.
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Shopping confessions contest.

By
Kat
on October 26, 2008 4:23 PM |
I posted about eBillme's shopping confessions contest over on My Single Mom Life, so you might want to go check that out, and if you feel like stumbling it, that would be awesome.
Grassy Ass.

Oh, and one of these days, I'm going to be doing some cooking with all of those gadgets I have, and probably set the house on fire.
I saw the coolest new gadget on an infomercial today.
An indoor deep fryer big enough to do a 20lb turkey.
Thanksgiving deep fried turkey without the fear of a huge backyard fire, and I won't blow up the house!

Time to get some home insurance just in case I burn the house down eh?
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Weight loss products galore.

By
Kat
on October 26, 2008 12:51 AM |
In my situation, I am always trying to lose weight, always looking for the best ways to help me lose weight, control my appetite, curb my cravings for sweets and carbs, and it's not always easy.
I am currently using a product, I haven't noticed much of a change in weight or appetite suppression yet, but I'm still giving it a good try.
I am also attempting to find other people's stories of using it, product reviews, and I'm not finding hardly anything at all, but I am finding tons of other posts for  orovo reviews, and tons and tons of other weight loss product reviews, but none, or hardly none, for the one I am using.
Maybe it's because it's far too new on the market or people just aren't using it or something.
I'm really hoping that I will start to see some results from it soon or I'll just stop using it.
It's pointless for me to take a product that isn't doing diddly squat to help me.
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Idle hands up all night.

By
Kat
on October 24, 2008 4:23 AM | | Comments (2)
I must have caught up on sleep over the last few days while I wasn't feeling well, because as you can see, it's now a little after 4am EST, and here I am wide awake again.
*sigh*
So I've spent most of the night forum posting, reading blogs, and just looking at stuff for the upcoming holidays.
Did you know that a good majority of internet retailers are already starting to advertise for the 2008 Black Friday start of the holiday shopping season?
They are.
Tons of sites are leaking out links for all of the black Friday sales.
The black holiday sales start on the Friday after Thanksgiving, so that's the 28th of November this year.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I was thinking about this, and talking to my sister about it yesterday too.
Because I just had surgery, I can't bend over to pick stuff up, and I can't lift anything over 5lbs, so what the heck am I going to do for our Thanksgiving dinner?
I decided that I'm just going to go and get a Honeybaked ham for our dinner.
They don't just do hams, they make all the side dishes too, so I can go there and get a ham, mashed potatoes, a veggie side dish, stuffing if we want it, a broccoli rice casserole, or garlic mashed potatoes.
That actually sounds really yummy right now, I love garlic mashed taters!
They make a ton of different sides you can buy separately, or order in like combo packs.
I may end up doing the Honeybaked thing for Christmas too if I am still on restriction then as well.
I have another post-op appointment on December 10th, so if he says that I still can't lift more than 5lbs, I'll end up having to get my holiday meals already done up for me.

I usually do the whole prepared holiday dinner from Publix, the turkey, 2 sides, 1 stuffing dish, 1 cranberry, and 1 gravy bowl, and the whole thing has already been cooked, you just have to heat it up, even the turkey, but if I am on lift restrictions, then I won't be able to do that.
If I go with the Honeybaked, the ham doesn't have to be re-heated, it's actually super tasty cold, especially the glaze crusty stuff they put on it.
It is so damn yummy.
Yeah, I'm totally going to do the Honeybaked thing for Thanksgiving.
I am drooling just thinking about it now.  eat.gif
The teens could help me re-heat all of the sides in the microwave or oven depending on what the directions for heating say.
The sides are, of course, much lighter than the meat, so I could help the teens get them in and out of the oven and not have to bend over to do it either.
See, the teens know how to cook in the oven, but they get nervous doing it alone because they think they'll get burned on the racks and the walls of the oven. 
But if I stay in the kitchen and just stand there with them, they aren't as nervous reaching in and taking stuff out.
I know, kinda silly, but I guess they just like the idea of me being there just in case they get burned.

They are totally getting better at cooking now though.
Because of my current situation, they have had to do all of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping, and they have been cooking up some pretty tasty stuff.
I can't wait to get the George Foreman grill that I'm getting to do a product review on, and the boys will be able to cook on it so much easier.
They love to eat food cooked on a grill, but I have a wicked phobia about grill cooking.
The teens are afraid of getting burned by the oven, I'm afraid of getting burned by a grill.
meh.
I am always afraid that the flame will spring up suddenly while I'm like flipping a burger, and it will catch my hair on fire, or the propane tank will explode from the heat or something.
I know, it's a totally irrational fear, people have been cooking over fire since the cavemen first discovered it, people go camping and cook over fire, and practically every weekend, people all over the whole hood are bbq'ing, and no one ever gets burnt to a crispy, but I can't help it, I'm a total fraidy Kat.
haha

So yeah, I'll be getting the new safe and easy to use and clean George Foreman grill, and I'll be able to bbq and all kinds of other super yummy foods on it, and the teen food inhalers will have grilled animal flesh and grunt like their caveman ancestors did.
Yay!
bbq.gif
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Living in the bible belt stings sometimes.

By
Kat
on October 15, 2008 10:50 PM | | Comments (0)
Living here in the south, I know that I am outnumbered being an atheist, that's ok with me.
I try to make light of the situation as best I can, but sometimes it can get to be a bit much. People are always blessing me, saying they'll pray for me and stuff like that.
So there are times that I enjoy wearing one of my funny t-shirts out when I go shopping.
I would love to get this one and wear it out, plus it would make a nice addition to my small but growing collection of funny religious shirts.
When you're wearing a shirt like this, all those people who want to bless you or pray for you, just look at you instead.
They have a look of horror on their faces, but at least they aren't saying anything to me.

ATHEISM-PROPHET.jpg

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Now I know.

By
Kat
on October 13, 2008 7:19 PM | | Comments (1)
Hardly anyone answered my question below, so I kept doing some searching and found the answer!
I found a site called Learn about perfume, that explained how to store your perfumes so they don't go sour.

Heat can distort scents and cause the liquid to turn sour. You can tell when a fragrance has been exposed to heat because the scent is highly concentrated at first then becomes pungent. It begins to smell like a form of mildew or mold mixed with perfume.

Many times you will hear the recommendation to store your perfume bottle in the refrigerator to keep it fresh. It is also supposed to offer a refreshing shot of fragrance to start your day.

This is fine if the fragrance is eau de toilette or eau de parfum. These types of fragrances do not have as much of the essential oils as pure perfume. The more expensive perfumes should be stored at room temperature so the oils can stay more fluid.

Another factor in perfume storage is light. While most artificial light is fine, sunlight can quickly break down the components of most fragrances. Do not store your perfume on a dresser in direct sunlight or if you do, try to keep it in its box to protect it.

To help combat the problem of breakdown due to light, some manufacturers have turned to using dark colored bottles to protect the liquid inside. This is especially true in the more expensive brands of perfume.

You should also keep the top on the bottle as tight as possible. Evaporation can concentrate and distort the scent. One way to counter this problem is by choosing a spray over a splash. Since the top is always tight there is less chance of losing your scent into the air.

Humidity can also play a part in how long a fragrance lasts. Cologne lasts longest in drier places. Try to store your perfume in a room that is as dry as possible in your climate. So maybe the bathroom cabinet isn't the best place for that bottle of Chanel No. 5 that your husband spent a small fortune for.

Thanks to that site for answering my question, now I know how to keep my new perfume, and my other faves, from turning sour!
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How do you store your perfume?

By
Kat
on October 12, 2008 11:30 PM | | Comments (3)
I just bought a new bottle of perfume, Carolina Herrera - Carolina Herrera - Eau de Toilette Spray, because I love the smell of it.
The fragrance notes are Jasmine, Tuberose, Sandal, and Amber, and they smell so amazingly wonderful together, and I absolutely love Jasmine as a top note, it smells so good, and it works with me and my skin type and natural body oils.

I have several other favorite scents like, Chloe and Tresor, and they may not be super expensive perfumes, but I hate it when a scent goes sour before I can use it all up.
So I want to know how and where you store your perfumes.

Eau de toilette, cologne, Eau de parfum, EDP spray, Eau de Printemps, Elixir de Parfum, and pure perfume oil, and so on.
I know that all of them should be kept in their original boxes because they are specially designed to keep out all light, sun and bulb, and you should keep them in a cool, dry and dark place, but where is that best place?

I know some women keep them in their closet on a shelf, others keep them on their dresser, or in a drawer in their bedroom or bathroom, (bad idea as bathrooms tend to be humid from the steam created from showering an bathing, and this creates heat that can turn your scent sour) and some women keep certain ones in their refrigerators.
Like cologne actually can keep for up to 3 years if kept in the fridge, but most women who know that, also store all of their scents in the fridge, and not all of them should be that cold, but which ones?
Cool doesn't mean fridge temps with certain scent creations.
Like pure perfume, should never be kept in the fridge, because the oils in it can actually congeal, and when you take it out to use it, even after just one night in those temps, the scent has soured, and smells like vinegar.
If any of your scents smell even the slightest bit like vinegar, throw it out, it's gone bad.
Most scents have a shelf life of 3-4 years if stored properly, so how do you store yours?
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I LOVE her work!

By
Kat
on October 10, 2008 11:06 PM |
I want to show you all some photographs from a girl I know from the local forums, her name is Ashley Bates.
Remember that name, she's going to be a famous photographer someday, I just have a feeling about that.
I simply love and adore her pictures, each one is a piece of art, so much thought and detail in each one, love them.
She goes by a few names on line, A.Bates on the local forums, Lady Bates on her ModelMayhem portfolio, mostly just abates though.

She works with all kinds of models, but mostly the non-catalog variety of girls.
The kind of girls who have tattoos and oddly colored hair, they dress differently etc.
She gets her models into some really unique outfits, hairstyles, makeup, and poses.
(I hope you click on all of the links in this post!)
But anyway, she does some really interesting yet beautiful shots, and some of them, I have to wonder if the models should have gotten a health insurance quote before going to the shoots.
Ya know, just in case there are knives involved.

This is one of my absolute favorites.
The model's name is Chelsey Darling, she is absolutely gorgeous in my opinion, and she takes some really beautiful and interesting photographs for a whole bunch of different photographers. (but Ash is the best)
It is clickable for bigger, and please don't repost without credit to Ash, (post her name, A. Bates, link to her profile please) do not remove her mark either. I've notified her that I've done a post about her, used a picture, and gave her full credit for her work.
 
Please respect any artist's work that you may post on your sites.
It's very important that credit is always given because of things like the Orphan Works Act.
If we always give credit and link to the artist's site when using an image, there will be no way that someone can claim they couldn't find the artist, and therefore they have the right to use copyrighted material without permission, basically stealing it, and the artist would have to search a notice of use archive for their works, and then prove it's theirs and they own the copyright. It's totally not fair to any artist be it a photographer, a painter, sketch artist, whatever kind of artist.
The senate should be ashamed of themselves for passing this.

But I digress..

abatesphotography.jpg


































I don't know exactly what it is about this picture, but I just love it.
I know that alley too, it's over near Janus Landing in St. Pete. They have concerts there all the time. I've been to just a couple of shows there.
Ooops, off subject again!
But this photo, just draws me in.
I love the darkness of it, her pose, the way the light hits her face just right, and her expression.
It's a dark, gloomy, and slightly scary place, yet she's happy.
Her face is beautiful, flawless, and no matter the situation in this picture, she's still happy.
It makes me smile when I look at it.
Maybe that's what "it is" about this one.
It makes me smile.
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Books for free from me.

By
Kat
on October 9, 2008 10:44 AM | | Comments (1)
I need to go get some small shipping boxes, small but big enough for like 4-6 books, and then get the teens to mail it out, take it to the post office and ship it to a friend from the local Florida forums.
I have all of these books that I just don't have the time to read, and this friend has been out of work for a long time now due to some health issues, and she's been reading a new book approximately every 3 days.
Books are expensive, but she asked for recommendations, and that's when I told her that I had a ton of books she could have for free, just give me a mailing address.
She agreed, so I need to get them packed up and sent out.
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Many, many thanks.

By
Kat
on October 8, 2008 1:57 AM | | Comments (2)
I think I've said the word overwhelmed at least a dozen times this past week, because it really has been overwhelming.
And amazing.
And humbling.

This year, for the 7th annual blogger boobie-thon, instead of being able to volunteer my time doing some photo editing due to my neck and spine fusion surgery, I was instead the blogger chosen for the bloggers helping bloggers portion of the donations raised.
That amount is $359, and I was extremely greatful when the paypal donations reached that amount, blown away.
But the donations just kept coming and coming, and coming, all week long, right up until the very end of the boobie-thon, with the last one coming in at 11:52pm EST on October 7th 2008.
I sat here all week, in like a state of shock, watching how much was being raised for the boobie-thon and for myself.
I stopped keeping track of the donations for me around Friday mid-afternoon, I just couldn't keep up with them.

The boobie-thon is now over, and they raised an incredible amount!
$9,300.00 this year, it exceeds the amount raised last year, and breaks the record set in 2006 .
That's absolutely awesome!
What started out as a way to get a friend a plane ticket to not have to spend a holiday alone , has grown into an annual event that has now raised over $50,000 since 2002.
The event grows bigger and better every year, with more people volunteering their time to edit photos, calculate donations, publish both to the site, and even more people are sending in their pictures, and more and more people are donating money, and even more people are spreading the word about this wicked fun and great cause.

I have always loved being a part of it, volunteering my time, and when I found out back on August 5th that my surgery was going to prevent me from doing it again this year, I was seriously bummed out.
I always have such a good time editing the photos, chatting with the other volunteers, spreading the word on blogs and forums, and just being a part of something so cool and fun to do, that is helping to raise money to find a cure for breast cancer.
Some people walk, companies sell pink products, other people collect pink lids, and "we" all show our breasts, male and female, to raise some money.

Over $50,000 since 2002.
Who would have thought.

And I am still sitting here completely overwhelmed (there I go again, but I just don't have the words to say it another way) and blown away by the incredible outpouring of support, kindness, and generosity shown to me.
My fellow bloggers, total strangers, (and hopefully new friends) donated money to me this week when I needed it.
I had my surgery on September 8th, and a month later, October 8th, a whole month without being able to work doing product reviews and writing articles on my blog, a whole month without making an income, and people so generously donated money to me to help me pay my bills.
The amount is more than enough to pay my rent and bills both this month and next month.
I finally totaled all of the donations up at the end of the boobie-thon.
$1,495.52.
Amazing, thank you.

I tried to send a personal email of thanks to every one of my donors, I checked and double checked to make sure I didn't miss anyone, and quite a few people replied to me offering words of support and encouragement while I am recovering.
I was humbled by a few of the replies I received, and truly humbled by one reply from someone only known to me by the name of The Butterfly Temptress.
Just when you think you have things rough, there's someone else out there who has it worse than you do.
Her donation was generous, and I sent her an email to say thank you, and she replied with these words;

"I am dying of an inoperable brain tumor. Knowing that you are able to be treated is music to my ears. I was so glad to be able to donate money for a person who knows what it's like to be sick, not some man in a suit who makes a half a million a year."

How quickly life comes into focus.
How quickly I realized how good I have it, I get to live.
I received a few more email replies that humbled me even more, I cannot even tell you the amount of times I sat here and cried this week.
I cried for myself, I cried for others, I cried because this past week has been an experience.
It has been a true experience of people helping people, coming together for a good cause and helping someone else out along the way.
People really are good and kind, and they do good just for the sake of doing it, not for any reward, but just because helping your fellow human being is reward enough.
Heck, I'm sitting here crying right now because this really has been an amazing and humbling experience for me.
I always try to do right by my fellow human beings, I try to help others when I can, it's not always money, but I try to give of myself, of my time, because I enjoy it, I like knowing that I helped someone with whatever it was they needed help with.
Sometimes I get so discouraged by the greed and hatred in the world, and then I read a story of someone helping someone else, and it restores my faith in people again.
This week has been one of those restoring moments for me.
Everyone who donated to the boobie-thon and me, people who sent me get well cards, a friend and her husband doing some home repairs that I can't do right now, it's been an incredible few weeks for me.
I am so lucky to have so many wonderful people in my life.

I think I've wept and rambled here long enough, I really just wanted to say thank you to everyone, and my emotions got all weepy, and well, this is what happens when I get weepy.
I run and ramble on. 
Thank you to everyone.
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Off to get my stitches out!

By
Kat
on October 7, 2008 10:09 AM |
I need to get my butt in gear, I am leaving at 11am to go get my stitches out.
All the way to Safety Harbor.
Ugh.
Such a long, long drive.
Mindy is taking me, my sis is sick with some nasty cold thing and strep throat.
And both my boys are home from school sick too.
They both have stuffy heads, headaches, just feeling miserable.
I really hope that they don't have what she has, I can't even imagine having strep with my neck like this.
Yuck.

I've been so overwhelmed with the outpouring of support from the boobiethon donors.
It's been absolutely incredible, I am just so so greatful, thank you all so much!
I was surprised and greatful to just get the first $359, but it's now over $1,000.
Absolutely amazing and so needed.
I still don't have the ok to be working again, I'm hoping to get that today at my appointment, but if not, I know that I will be able to pay all of my bills thanks to all of the people who have donated to me in support of the boobiethon.
I can't wait to be able to volunteer again next year, it's such a good cause and it's something that I just love doing.

In some of my bored downtime, I have been playing on Twittermoms.
I started a new group, I was feeling "alone", so if you're on Twitter, and on Twittermoms, and an atheist, agnostic, or just not sure, come join my small group for Atheist Moms.
It's small but growing.

Ok, time to go get dressed so I can get these itchy stitches out.
Later days!
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New AC for me? Yup.

By
Kat
on October 4, 2008 1:48 PM | | Comments (1)
Well, last weeks AC fixing didn't go quite as planned.
Mindy's husband Chris did all that work last weekend, installed an old ac unit they had that was working up until Thursday night.
That's when it stopped blowing cold air and started leaking water like a flood.

They came over today to see if they could get it working right, but it just didn't want to blow cold enough, and the leaking water all over my rug was an issue.
So Chris and my son Mark put our old ac unit back in the hole.
They turned it on and nothing happened.
Crap.
So we did what we had to do.

Mindy and Chris drove to Home Depot with my paypal card, and bought a new ac unit for my house.
$212.93.
I only had that money because of all of the donations that have been coming in because of the boobiethon, so I'm so so greatful that I had that money to buy the new ac thanks to everyone who has donated to me.
My landlord will take the receipt for it and knock that money off of the rent, just like he did with last weeks receipts for the drywall and other tools that they bought last weekend.
My landlord is cool like that, so he'll be knocking a total of $302.50 off of my rent for next month. (already paid October's rent)

Chris and Mark will take the old non-working ac unit out, and install the new one, and my house will be cool again.
I can hardly wait!
It is still pretty hot here in Sarasota Florida, and as I've bitched and moaned a few times now, the neck brace is like wearing a freaking turtleneck sweater.
It's hot.
Way hot.
So yay!
In just a few hours, I'll be cool again and it will be awesome.

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Overwhelmed.

By
Kat
on October 1, 2008 6:51 PM | | Comments (4)
I'm having a day here.
I'm on some hefty restrictions, no lifting anything at all, no doing laundry or cleaning or cooking anything that would make me have to bend over etc, but I have stuff that needs to be done and well, it isn't getting done.
And then there's the sitting/laying down restriction.
I am allowed to sit for 20 minutes every 4 hours and then lay down again.
It's boring and the tv is on a low stand, so it's hard to entertain myself with movies or tv shows. What I need is one of those tv lifts things on a remote, so I can get it to the perfect height for me while I lay on the couch.

And I'm feeling overwhelmed by the generosity of the people who are donating money to me for the boobiethon.
I still feel bad about not being able to donate my time this year, it's just something I've done that makes me feel good, and to not be able to do it this year is making me feel bad.
I can't help it, I just feel bad that I can't help this year.
But next year, I'll be right on it, back editing photos every day and helping spread the word as much as I can.
I usually also send in my photo every year, and I can't do that this year either.
I have a stitch line under my right breast from the chest tube I had to have, and I'm still covered in the sticky stuff from all of the tape and heart monitor things, all over my whole upper body.
Basically, my chest looks like crap and I'm not comfortable sending in a pic like that.
I'm not super vain, but I don't think anyone would want to see all that tape and the stitches with a big nasty scab on it too.
I can't send in a covered pic either.
I haven't been able to put a bra on since the day I went in for surgery, September 8th.
It hurts to even put on a clean t-shirt, and I did try to put a bra on, but it was a total no go, total wicked bad pain shot through my upper back and shoulders.

Anyway, I wanted to hop on here and say thank you to everyone who is donating money to me and the boobiethon, you're doing an awesome thing, and if you haven't donated yet, do it.
Save the boobies!

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For the boobies!

By
Kat
on October 1, 2008 12:52 PM | | Comments (4)
*Post has been updated at the end*

I received an email from Mindy this morning, (I went back to bed after the teens left, woke up way later) and she let me know that I had been chosen to get the bloggers helping bloggers portion ($359.00) of the donations received from the Boobiethon.
It seems that she and several other bloggers had nominated me, and Mel and the crew for the thon, chose me to get it.

I have been a volunteer for the boobiethon every year since the first year it went big-time, doing photo-editing for a few hours a day each day of the thon.
This is the first year I haven't been able to help.
I felt terrible about it.
I always enjoy helping out, I love looking at all the boobies, the creative pictures that women send in, and just being a part of something really huge, something that makes a difference.

I know women who have had breast cancer, there's been a few scares in my own family, and once I get healed up from my surgery, I get to go have my very first ever mammogram.
I'm not really looking forward to it, but I know that early detection saves lives, and being adopted, I don't have a family medical history to go on.
My scoliosis and the problem I had with my neck, are all genetic defects that I was born with.
I have no idea if breast cancer runs in my birth line or not, but knowing that almost every single one of my other medical issues were given to me by my birth mother, getting tested for breast cancer is a must for me.

My stay in the hospital ended up being a much longer stay than originally planned, and what I had been hoping for, was to be home on time and hopefully been healthy and healed up enough to help with the boobiethon.
But that didn't happen.
So for now, the only way I can help out is to encourage all of you to go and donate whatever you can to the boobiethon.
All of the money raised after the first $359.00, goes directly to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer research.
I believe they hit $1,000 before noon EST, and today is just the first day, that's an awesome way to start!

So just click on the button or any of the links for the boobiethon in this post, and give what you can.
We can save lives by just giving a few bucks to help fund the cure.
One of these days they will have a cure for cancer, we will, but we need to fund the cause, so go and give what you can, it's for the boobies.

*EDITED TO ADD at 7:05pm*
Mindy informed me that Christine is the one who alerted her and other bloggers to the bloggers helping bloggers portion of the boobiethon, and to nominate me for it.
So I wanted to give a HUGE shout out to Christine for doing that, it was extremely thoughtful and wonderful, she is such an amazing friend to me.
I've known her through blogging for something like 7 or 8 years now, she's one of my best friends even though we've never met face to face.
You should all stop by her blog I linked and from there go visit all of her other blogs too.
She has quite a few of them so I'm sure you'll find one that you can relate to and start getting to know her.
She loves baseball, specifically the Boston Red Sox, cats, crafting and scrap-booking, and micro-brew beers, living in New England, and tons of other things.
She's just an awesome person and you should all go get to know her, I know you'll like her.
One of these days, I will go back to Maine to visit my family and find a way to meet up with her and meet her in person finally.
I don't just consider her a friend, I think of her as family, like a sister.
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It was really decent.

By
Kat
on September 27, 2008 10:27 PM | | Comments (1)
The teens and I watched Street Kings tonight, a Keanu Reeves cop/action thriller, and it was really good.
It has a top notch cast, Reeves, Forrest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, Cedric the entertainer, Jay Mohr and John Corbett to name a few.

Quite a few people on the local forums said it was really good, my sister and her husband also said it was, so I Netflixed it and the teens and I watched it tonight.
I'm still not typing all that well, but my review is in the link posted.

Now I'm off to watch Pathology starring Milo Ventimiglia of Heroes, and check it out.
It got 3.5 stars out of 5 on both Amazon and Netflix, so it shouldn't be too bad.
I'll review it if I can when we're done watching it.
My typing still sucks and my brain is all muddled, so my reviews are not exactly great, but I know a good movie when I see one, same with the bad, and I'd never tell anyone to watch something that really sucks.
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Making it through.

By
Kat
on September 20, 2008 8:59 PM | | Comments (3)
I'm still chugging along trying to get through this first week at home, I have to keep telling myself to just relax, that the first week is always so so  hard, that it really is the worst, so I don't try and over do things.
A lot of just laying down and sleeping.

Mindy was here almost all day long, she did a really great job cleaning my house, it looks wicked nice and clean in here, the teens better keep it this way. LOL
Then she went home and came back with some big huge pans of food.
Her husband Chris made dinner for us, some chicken alfredo, bread sticks, and salad.
It was all so yummy.
He used to work at the Olive Garden, it's their alfredo recipe, so yeah, it's super yummy.
When Chris was here this morning, he took a look at my AC unit, and he's going to come back and fix it for me next weekend.
Box it in to the right size for the AC, clean it up, get it working right again.
It's simply not blowing as cold as it used to, it's not sitting in the housing correctly, and the leaking is because of all of those things plus all box units leak when it gets super humid.
So it will be wicked nice to have it fixed and cool in the house again.

I have a ton of emails and comments in my inbox that I just don't know when I'll be able to get to, if I'll be able to get to them at all, but I wanted you to all know that I have read them and appreciate all of the support and words of encouragement, it's really appreciated.

I did spend the majority of the day laying down and resting, I even slept for awhile, and that is my plan of attack.
My face is still wicked swollen up which makes me feel weird and stuff.
I know the swelling will go down, it's just a matter of time.
For now though, I feel like I either got beat with a baseball bat, or I am a balloon.
People keep telling me it doesn't look so bad, but I've seen my face in the mirror, I know what it looks like.
Doc said it will be ok, it will heal up, but for awhile it's gonna look like total crap.

Ok, time to get back to my couch, watch a little Law and Order repeats and stuff.
Later days. 
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Wake up you maggot!

By
Kat
on September 2, 2008 12:45 AM | | Comments (2)
Tomorrow, er, today, I have my pre-surgery consult with Doctor M.
He's going to tell me exactly what he and his team will do during the surgery, how long I'll be asleep, breathing tube, ICU, how many days to expect, (I'm holding him to 4!) what kind of pain to expect, what they'll have me do upon waking, physical therapy, etc, all of the nitty gritty details.

I have my own questions too.
Can I bring and wear my own clothes on like day 2 or something, will I be able to put my contacts back in, (I don't have a pair of glasses to wear) is this going to cause me to start a surprise menstrual cycle like the last surgery did, and if so, can I bring my own gear this time, or are they just going to make me lay there on a "pee pad" like last time.

Will they be shaving off any of my hair from the back of my head?
I know they are going to have to shave a portion of my neck, I have really long hair, I know it comes down far on my neck, so when they shave that, will they have to go any higher?
And if so, please don't fuck it up and make it incredibly noticeable to people.
My hair has been falling out anyway, but I really don't want to lose a lot if they can help it any.

I don't know if I posted about my hair situation or not, but this whole neck thing has been the cause of a lot of my health problems over the last year, year and a half.
With the spinal cord being pinched off, it can't send the right messages from my brain to all of my organs.
The messages are being pinched off, not sent, or sent incorrectly to all of my organs.
All of my stomach and digestive issues, being sick for no real reason, (I don't really go anywhere to catch any germs or viruses) my skin smelling really, horribly bad after eating certain foods, stomach pain, cramps, constipation, or the complete opposite, having days where regardless how many showers I took, how much deodorant I put on, I would have body odor, and my hair falling out.

Everyone loses hair on a daily basis, but this isn't normal hair loss, this is clumps of hair coming out in the shower, coming out when I brush it, coming out when the wind blows.
I don't have any noticeable bald spots, yet, but it's definitely thinned out.
It's nowhere near as thick as it once was, and it's not due to getting old, this is directly related to my neck stuff.
It's been rather sucky.

Sebastian broke down last night.
He just exploded in this 15 year old ball of fear, worry, and anger over this whole thing, crying, screaming, hugging me so tightly I thought he'd break my ribs.
He said if doc screws up and I die, he's going to beat him up really bad right there in the hallway at the hospital.
Mark said Sebastian won't get the chance, because he'll kill him.
To say the teens are starting to panic and be really afraid now, is an understatement.
They keep saying little things, '1 week from today' or 'I hope this week goes by really slow, it may be the last week I ever see you', or 'on Saturday or Sunday night, I'm sleeping with you, I want to be near you as much as possible.'
They even came out tonight and watched the season premiere of Gossip Girl, a show they hate, just to "hang out" with me.

I keep trying to reassure them that it's all going to be ok, that I WILL be coming home, that I'm going to be fine, and Sebastian wanted me to promise him that, but I can't.
I can't make that kind of promise because I really don't know.
I just kept telling him that I will be coming home, that it will be ok, without saying the word promise.

I have so much to do this week, work, the house, helping them with school, still trying to keep this house running as normally as possible, but honestly, I can't focus on any of it for long.
I want to though, I have things that I need to get done, but my mind starts wandering, racing, then my heart starts racing and pounding, and then I get a massive migraine and have to go lay down.
I went to bed shortly after the boys did tonight, they went at 11:30, I went at 11:45, and I laid there checking to make sure their alarm would go off, that mine would go off again at 8am so I can get up and try and do some work before I have to leave at noon-ish, but I started panicking about it all, so I got up and set Snoozester to call me at 8am just in case my cell alarm doesn't go off.
And now here I am, sitting here blogging, awake again, just thinking about it all.

I know things will be ok, but now with such short time left to go, I just want to go do it, get it over with, enough of the testing and appointments, and talks, let's just do it!
I just want it done so I can come back home like I said, that's all I want.
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Rabbit rabbit White rabbit.

By
Kat
on September 1, 2008 1:10 AM |
Don't forget to say "Rabbit rabbit White rabbit" upon waking up this morning, and on the morning of the first day of the month every month.
It's an old superstition, and I really don't believe in superstitions, but I do it for fun.
Seeing as how I don't know exactly what time I'll be waking up tomorrow, er, today, I figured I'd just post it now.

Who knows, maybe it really is good luck, and I could sure use some good luck this month.
I'm having surgery exactly 1 week from today, I could use to make some big time money this week before I go which means I need to get back to work pronto, no more lazy bones-feeling like not doing anything, and hey, maybe I'll win some money or maybe a Caribbean cruises vacation or something for the teens and I to go on after I'm recovered.

A vacation is sorely needed I tell ya.
I'm tired, stressed out, worried about money and bills, and the teens at school.
I really don't want this surgery to affect them like the last time, I don't want them to miss any days for any reason.
I do want them to come see me, but not until after school each day, come at night only.
That way my sister doesn't miss any time at work either, she really can't afford to take time off, so if she goes to work, and they go to school, then come visit me after, everyone will be doing what they need to do, and I'll be getting rest and doing my physical therapy/up walking the halls and all that stuff so I can come home on schedule.

It's late and once again I'm wide awake, so I think I'm going to go dive into my work, get as much done as I can.
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The hate is thick.

By
Kat
on August 29, 2008 11:49 PM | | Comments (3)
As most of my readers know, I am an atheist.
If you're new here, now you know.
Today there was a discussion on the local forums about religion in a group specifically devoted to the topic, of which I am a moderator along with a girl who is a Christian.
We set it up that way so that both sides would be represented, and so that as mods, both views would have a mod to defend them.
But anyway, as an atheist, I often get attacked for my lack of belief in god, and today was no exception, except that some things were said that made me want to pack up and get the hell out of Florida mover NYC style.
Fast and with no way to find me.

Some links to some articles were posted about how most Americans view atheists, and as suspected, the very types of people these articles and polls were talking about, piped up.

"As far as the article is concerned... I think this thread speaks for itself as to why atheist are viewed the way they are."
Someone spoke up in my defense, that in this particular group, I have just as much right to state why I am an atheist, and what I believe in, as the Christian members of the board do.
Try to remember, that I am the moderator of this group, it is my job to not only edit and lock threads, but to keep the conversations going, to post subjects for people to discuss, and I happen to be very well informed on the subject of religion. I know a lot about it, I have studied it, continue to, I know the bible back and forth, old and new testament, and know all the varying versions of the bible, the reasons that there is so much confusion between even believers on just what the bible says.
I'm educated on the subject even though I lack faith in god(s).
Today, being intelligent and well educated on the subject, was thrown at me like being smart is the epitome of evil.
 
"Unlike some, I don't post in every single religious thread, speak negatively, preach, put people down about their beliefs and call them ignorant, try to make people feel stupid, write an entire book in posts in attempts to get my point across, quote "facts"... etc. No matter what anyone says in any religious thread, "You're the almighty one that knows it all." I find that really amusing."

Not once in all of my time on any part of the local forums, have I called anyone any names, told them they are ignorant, I don't preach, I don't speak negatively, and I don't set out to make anyone feel stupid.
If people feel stupid, that is on them, I have no control over how anyone else feels, I cannot control their emotions.
Eleanor Roosevelt said it best, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Do I write a lot?
Yeah, sure I do, because it is a subject I know a lot about, I type very, very fast, and it is a subject I am extremely interested in.
Am I the "almighty one who knows it all"?
No, but what I think upsets them is that I know more about the bible than they do, and that is not allowed apparently.
Atheists, according to that article, are supposed to be stupid, drug abusers and dealers, criminals, prostitutes, the dregs of society, we are not supposed to be smart.
Atheists are not supposed to know more about god and the bible than believers, it's against the rules or something, and from then on out, in other threads, I was accused by other Christians, no matter what I said, of making personal attacks on people, of calling them names, even if I didn't even come remotely close to anything of the sort.

Christians often say they are persecuted for their beliefs.
I have to doubt that very much.
I would love to have any one of those people who say they are persecuted, spend a single day living as an "out" Atheist.
Wear the shirts and when asked what it means, answer, and then they'll feel what real persecution is.
Try looking at the world from an atheists view.
There are signs on telephone poles telling people to repent, teachers openly talk in your child's public school classroom, that we live in a Christian nation.
The president declared a national day of Christian prayer, and every year on that day, television stations nationwide tune in to pray, as a nation.
We are told that this country was founded by our Christian forefathers, it's on all of our monies, it's in the freaking deli department at our local grocery stores, take a number from atop the book rack full of Christian book titles.
Wanna feel persecuted for what you believe?
Look at it through the eyes of someone who believes differently from 98% of the rest of the country.

I am proud to be a freethinker, I am proud to be an atheist, no one needs to feel sorry for me because I lack faith,  "I feel sorry for people that have no faith but I'd rather spend my time more productively elsewhere." just try to accept me as your fellow human being who treats you the exact same way I treat everyone else in my life, and want to be treated.
With respect.
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1 happy, 1 pissed.

By
Kat
on August 28, 2008 3:14 PM | | Comments (3)
So, insomnia again last night, went to "bed" at like 8:30am, woke up at 1:30pm.
Got a phone call from the hospital I'm having surgery at saying I missed an appointment today.
What?!?!
They will be calling me back.

Teens came home from school, brought in 2 packages.
I got another book, it's a duplicate, so I'll probably be giving it away to the first come/first get.
2nd package was from Amazon.
I didn't order anything? *confused*
I open the package, and there's the movie I just posted about on Tuesday that I said I was going to buy myself for Halloween.
Christine had left me a comment with the cryptic, "Oh, and watch your mail.  'nuff said!"
That was just on Wednesday, 1 day ago.
I figured ok, next week, maybe Saturday.
Nope, she ordered it, and I got the movie I absolutely adore today!
Instant cheer up from the pissed off feeling of being told I missed a surgical testing appointment that I didn't even know I had.
I would never just miss an appointment!
I have every single appointment written on the paper calendar, digitally entered on my Google calendar, I wouldn't forget, I wouldn't just not show, this is important stuff!
Is it going to screw up my surgery date?
I only have 1 full week left to get everything done!
OMG! *panic*
How could I miss an appointment I never knew I had?
I've really been so so good about writing them all down, arranging the transportation for each one with my sister doing some and Mindy doing almost all of the others.
I wouldn't forget one!
I checked my paper calendar, I checked my Google calendar, there's nothing written down for today for me to do other than to pay my Verizon DSL bill!
I wish they would call me back quickly, let me know what the hell happened, did someone forget to tell me about this one?
I know I have a lot of different appointments for different things, it's very possible someone just overlooked it, forgot to tell me because they made an honest mistake, because I know what day, what time, and where every single appointment is for everything.
Please don't let this screw up the surgery date, let this be an easy fix.
Please.
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Black is the absence of color.

By
Kat
on August 27, 2008 5:22 PM |
If I do get told after surgery that I can't sit on my computer and blog, surf etc, for long periods of time, I know what I'll be doing.
A wonderful book publishing company has been sending me a ton of books that look really good and interesting to read.
I'll be able to lay in bed or on the couch, and read all of them.
They sent, just this week, 7 new books, all of them really do look great.
I know they send them to me to read and review and then post about, and even though I am a very quick reader, there's no way I can read that many books in a week.
It's only Wednesday, and they sent me 7 new books.
The same employee at this publisher is the one who sends them all to me, I told her what genre I prefer to read, but I'll read pretty much anything except for romance novels, I really don't like romance stories at all.
But I love this girl who works there, she's really awesome at her job, outstanding customer service, because when I emailed her the list of authors I like, the genres I prefer, she either made a note or a mental note, because she's been sending all of the types I really like.
So thank you, I will be starting to read them all pretty soon!

Now for the funny story about my black wardrobe I said I would share.
Yesterday evening after dinner, I forgot that I needed to go to Walgreen's to pick up another script that they had to order, but it was ready now, so Sebastian and I headed out to go get it and a few other things I needed to pick up like some more shampoo for the boys, and a couple new box fans because we had two of them burn out in the same week.
So anyway, we stop at the corner store for some drinks to have on our walk because it's incredibly hot out.
The owner Sam is there and he has a few friends of his hanging out behind the counter with him.
As I'm paying for our drinks, one of the guys starts talking to me.
He asks me why I always wear black, do I have any clothes that aren't black, and if I do, how come I never wear them.
He says he's always seeing me walking all over the place several times a week, and was curious.
I tell him it's just the color I prefer, I do own other colored clothing, but I rarely wear them.
I just don't like other colors, call it a phobia or whatever, but don't call me goth or emo, it's just the color I prefer.
Then he asks me if I'm hot all the time because of the black clothes, they attract heat ya know, he says.
I tell him that while it's generally true that black does make most people hotter because black absorbs more light energy than say white, and light energy does equal heat, not all people are effected by that general rule of science.
Before my blood pressure started being so high all of the time, I could sit outside all summer long dressed in a black shirt and not sweat a drop, but now?
Oh man, like right now, I am sitting in my house, the AC is on on 68, I have a fan aimed right at my face, and I'm sitting here in nothing but a t-shirt and light fabric shorts, and sweating to death.
I didn't tell him all of that, but then I did tell him that black isn't even really a color, it's the absence of color.
The guys just looks at me and says what?
"I said, black is not a color, it's the absence of color. Black is the total absence of light, therefore, it is the absence of color. The colors of light are red, green, and blue (known as RGB), black has no light at all, so it is the absence of color.
He sat there totally dumbfounded.
I asked if he has access to the net, he said yes, so I told him to go look it up when he got home, just go to google and type in "black is the absence of color", and he'll be able to read it for himself.
The additive color theory says that when all of the colors of light are added up, the end color is white.
The subtractive color theory says that on a molecular level, when using actual pigments to color a tangible object with, like crayons or paint, when you add all of the colors of light, red, green, and blue, when combined the end color is black.
But in the natural world, black is not a color, and not all people are effected by black attracting light energy, and in some rare cases, some people actually get colder when wearing black because their skin reacts to light energy differently than the majority of people.

Sam the owner starts laughing and says I told you she was too smart for you!
I said we had to get going, things to do, we were walking there and I needed to pick up some things and head back home before it gets dark, the light will be leaving and we'll be left with the absence of it, and I winked at the guy who had asked, and then we left.
As the door was closing, I hear the guy say to Sam, "I think her intelligence just increased her hotness factor by another 50 points. She'll never go out with me man!"

As Sebastian and I are waiting at the corner for the walk light to let us cross, he says to me,
"Guys are always checking you out, they like your hair, your eyes, your pretty face and your butt. But that is the very first time I've ever heard a guy say that they think you're hotter now that they know you're smart.Would you date him?"
I said I don't know, I don't even know him. He might be a really nice guy, but I don't even know his name. He may have seen me walking all over the place, but today is the very first time I've ever seen him, so how would I possibly know if I'd go out with him?

Sebastian thought about this the whole time we crossed the 4 lane road, and when we got to the other side he says, "Well not only does he think you're pretty, but he now finds you even more attractive because you're smart. Most guys don't like super smart girls, so when you find one that does and he wants to date you, you should grab onto him because the chances of finding another guy who likes you for being smart are pretty slim mom. If he does work up the courage to ask you out, you should definitely say yes, plus he seems like a nice guy."

I dropped it right there, I didn't feel like explaining for the millionth time that I'm just not interested in dating anyone.
I like being by myself because the majority of people annoy me.
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I think I love it.

By
Kat
on August 27, 2008 11:44 AM |
I was clicking around a bit ago, just link surfing, and saw a link on a fellow blogger's blog for Swiss Army luggage.
I had absolutely no idea that they made luggage, I thought they only made knives. hahaha
So anyway, I found a bag on the site that I like immediately felt that oooh must have love it feeling in my gut.
It comes in all black too, so I wouldn't have to have it in this green color which they call emerald, but no no, that's like pea green, really, it is.
I really do like this bag.
I wants it.

swissarmyshopperbag.JPG

I really think I love it. It's cute, stylish, it has a lot of space, interior zippered compartments, a front zippered pocket for access to right-away needs like keys or a cell phone etc.
And the fact that it comes in all black is ideal for me.

Oh, I do have a funny story about my all black clothing to share with you, but I'll save it for another post.
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The 2 hour entry.

By
Kat
on August 26, 2008 2:27 PM | | Comments (2)
The lab only took 2 vials of blood, which I was surprised about, the primary doc's PA, said they were going to take 8.
The guy only took 2, so I questioned him about that, he said they did not need 8, only 2 for the amount of tests she checked off on the lab work-up sheet, and oh by the way, pee in this cup.
So the blood draw was quick, not feeling faint or weak at all, then I went and peed in the cup, and they had those alcohol wipes in the bathroom for patients to use to clean and sterilize their pee-holes before peeing in the cup, and they had the ones that smell good.
No, no, I'm not weird, honestly, there are certain alcohol wipes that smell not much like alcohol, but more like a lemony candy sugar mixed with alcohol smell.
I love those ones!

Then I came home and ate my chocolate donut that was ever so patiently waiting for me in the fridge.
Actually, I ate 2, my bad, but I was hungry dammit!
Then I went out to the kitchen and cleaned out the microwave.
I ran that bowl of soapy water in the microwave for an hour the first time, then changed out the water and added a dash more dish soap, and ran it again for another 30 minutes, so when I came home and got to cleaning it, all the nukified on crud was liquefied, and just wiped right out.
Now, if cleaning the whole house were as easy as that.
I actually want to get (at some point) one of those little hand-held home steam cleaners, you know what I'm talking about?
I want one of these Scunci ones.
It's a small, portable, home steam cleaner for doing grout and tiles, the toilet bowl ickies, the baked on crud on the stove top, it would make cleaning the microwave even easier man.
Want, maybe that will be my xmas present to myself. (?)

Oh yeah, I finally got Twitpic all figured out, that is my actual link, but I finally figured out how to get the image info to post with the pic.
All of my failed attempts are viewable in the Twitpic badge in the sidebar over there.
On most of them, it's just the pic, but the last one that says "Sunset", yuppers, I got it to post the name of the pic.
I was putting that info in the body section of the text message, it needed to be added to the title.
I'm basically blogging how I did it so that I don't forget it.
Take the pic, label it, then address the text message to go to my Twitpic email addy, then click on the more button (left) and choose insert subject, as much info as I want to write, and then click send.
Twitpic completely ignores everything in the body section of the text message, so that's why the names of my pics weren't showing up on my page or in my sidebar badge, or on the public Twitpic/Twitter time lines.
Just the links to the images were showing with no info.
I was totally frustrated with it, and about to give up on yet another pic to post service.

See, for my last surgery, I used Flickr to post pics and blog by phone to post on my blog, but Flickr stopped working for me, just stopped, will not work from my phone at all, but it will post the test thingy from the website only.
Christine then suggested I try Utterz, so I tried to set it up for this blog, but it refused to accept my xmlrc stuff, so I tried to set it up for MSML, and it was going, it was accepting, but then it came back and said that my blog was pornography.
No, I'm dead serious!
See?!? Click that for bigger!

utterzsaysMSMLisporn.jpgThere is absolutely no porn on My Single Mom Life, but ya know what?
I don't feel like contacting Utterz and asking what the hell reason they have for stating my blog about being a single mom, talking about teenagers and new hair in armpits, qualifies it as pornography.
I just don't have the fight in me today.

I still haven't slept, no lay down and rest either.
This afternoon has been a busy one of sitting here trying to write this post since 12:20 this afternoon, but it's been one thing after another.
Emails non-stop, messages, questions, comments coming in, Entrecard people wanting to advertise their so completely not relevant sites on my single mommy blog.
My plan was to figure out Twitpic, which I did, make this blog post which I'm still trying to do, and then go wash the dishes that didn't get finished this morning, and then maybe lay down for an hour or so before making dinner.
But now I've had to start another load of laundry, I have a mountain of emails to reply to, messages, posts, comments etc, before I can do anything else.
I'm not mad or anything, I realize I may be coming off as mad, but it's not anger, it's tired...LOL
So anyway, this post that I started writing at 12:20pm, will now finally be published at 2:27pm.
You would think with the amount of time it took, it would be far better quality content in this here post, but eh, I've been awake since 7am yesterday morning.
Ya gets what ya gets.
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All wound up and feeling good. For now.

By
Kat
on August 26, 2008 8:15 AM |
I haven't had anything to eat since midnight last night, I had to fast for my blood draw at 9:30am, (did I post this already?) and I'm starving!
I ran to the corner store just about 30 minutes ago, grabbed some donuts, (Yum! A chocolate frosted cake donut awaits my return in the fridge) some soda, some other goodies, came back home, and in like 20 minutes, I'll go hop in the shower and get cleaned up for them to suck my blood out.

I could not sleep for anything, and as a matter of fact, the later it got, the more hyped up I got.
So because I couldn't eat, I did other things to pass the time.
I did a lot of net surfing, forum reading and posting, RSS blog reading, and then I got like this wave of enthusiasm to clean my house.
At like 4am.

I did some dishes, I sprinkled the carpet powder down in all the rooms, (I love the smell of it)  I cleaned off the stove top and all of the counters.
I wiped down and cleaned out the toaster, wiped down my crock pot because it sits on the counter and tends to get splashed when I cook sketti sauce in my electric skillet.
I wiped down the entire outside of the microwave, not just the parts you can see, I actually moved it, cleaned under it, behind it, washed the back splash on the whole counter where I prep and cook.
Changed out the like 10 month-old burnt out light bulb on the stove head, put a large bowl of soapy water in the microwave to loosen all the nuked on crud, and I will wipe it all out and clean it really good when I get back, folded the last load of laundry that was in the dryer after I set it on de-wrinkle for 20 minutes.
Changed out the hand towels in the bathroom, turned on the Scrubbing Bubbles automatic shower cleaner after running the shower for steam for 5 minutes, cleaned the toilet bowl and the seat, both upper and under, and the lid, brought back in all of the trash cans after the garbage men came, and made a quick list of things I need at the store later like more spray cleaners, and some floor cleaner which I'm out of.

I have no idea where this burst of energy came from, but I did all of that stuff and am still wired to go.
I'm sure I won't be so hyped up after they take about 8 vials of blood outta me.
I mean, no food since midnight combined with exerting all of that energy, I'll probably come home and pass out for 2-3 hours, and then when I wake up, I will be totally drained and the motivation will be gone.
Dammit.
I was on a serious house cleaning roll man, I haven't wanted to truly deep clean the house in months, I got that burst, and it will literally be sucked out of me by the time I get back.
I want to keep going!
I'm hoping I'll still be good to go, I want to really get down and clean the whole house super de-duper good.

And I've decided what I want for my Christmas, er, Halloween present this year!
I want  The Nightmare Before Christmas (2-Disc Collector's Edition) + Digital Copy
I absolutely love that movie, I have it on VHS, but I want it on DVD, and I want the collector's edition version.
I know every single song by heart, I sing along to it, I love watching it, it's a gorgeous looking movie in all it's dark Halloweenie goodness.
It will be mine, oh yes, it will.
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Up all night, no sleep all day!

By
Kat
on August 26, 2008 5:24 AM |
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It's like a car accident, everyone wants to look.

By
Kat
on August 12, 2008 2:39 AM | | Comments (3)
Ever feel like you're the injured person in the accident, and after getting slammed into by that 18-wheeler, you can't decide if you need a personal injury attorney or a truck accident lawyer?
That's how I feel right now.
Everyone is stopping, slowing down to take a look, rubbernecking, holding up the rest of the traffic on the highway, and making everyone late to where ever it is they need to go.

I'm tired of answering the same questions about my surgery.
How long will you be gone?
Will you have help when you get home?
How bad is it going to be?
Will the teens be able to help you?

Answering the same questions all the time, makes me stop what I'm doing, and have to think about it, and I'm already tired of thinking about it.
I'm answering though because there are genuine people who care, my friends, family members, total strangers on my fave local forum where I play, where they only know me by my posts and my name, but even posting it in the private girls forum, people still talk, so I got a lot of private messages about it, had to reply to posts about it, and all that stuff.

I have a few weeks before I go, I don't know much information yet, I don't know how long I'll be there, I don't know if the insurance will let me have a home health aide, I don't know how bad it's going to be, any of that.
All I know is that it's a 6-hour surgery, and that he promises he can fix me.
That's it, that's all I know.
When I know more, I'll blog it.
But in the meantime until I learn more, I'm trying to live, I'm trying to deal with it all and accept it.
There's more to it than what I've posted, but every time I want to post it, I end up crying because of how big this whole thing is, of all the answers it gave me, and all the what-ifs that still hang in the air, and how much time I have to spend with my sons before I go in for it.
That's what's most important right now, being with them, and spending time with them.
I know it's not what other people want, people want more, they want answers, they want stuff I can't give them.
But it's all I have and it's what's most important.
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I'm having a helluva week!

By
Kat
on August 9, 2008 2:18 AM | | Comments (1)
I'm really starting to regret not signing up for that wine of the month club now, that's for sure.
It's been a long and stressful week.
Crap to the left of me, crap to the right, all kinds of blogger drama all up over this internet.

I dunno, was I supposed to be greatful to be linked up on their drama filled site?
I guess I was, because they were none too happy that I don't want any part of it.
Was I supposed to be flattered that some new blogger used my main domain name as the name of their new blogspot blog?
I don't care if they are a good Christian person, I've owned the name for 11 years, it's been mine, and if you do a search for my single mom life, you get me and that Christian book writer, that's it.
They didn't like the tone of my email because I asked why they chose to use a name for their blog that is already the name of a blog.
I didn't say hey, you rotten woman! Why are you using my name.
I said wow, I honestly don't know what to think of a new blogger using my name on their site.
She wrote back that she didn't like my tone, don't ever email her again.
Um, hello?
You left me a comment, told me you named your site the same as mine, come visit it, so I did, and then emailed you a reply to your comment, like I do or at least try to do, with everyone who comments.
I'm a little bit behind because of the week I've had, but I will get caught up.
I think I have a valid excuse for being behind on emails.

But yeah, 2 bottles of wine every month is starting to look like a really good idea if I survive this whole neck surgery thing.
I don't know why I am feeling so negative about it, I guess it's the whole "sudden death" thing.
I know he said he can fix me, but seriously, you try hearing that you have this problem in your neck that is going to kill you, be careful because a car accident could easily make it happen, and you try living your life as normal as possible for the next 30 days!
Gee Kat, you're awfully snappy the last few days.
Gee, I wonder why.

I'm not afraid of death, I'm not afraid of me dying.
I'm afraid for my sons that I would leave behind.
I'm all they have, I'm their mom, I'm their center, the person who has been through everything with them, the person who has raised them to be incredible young men, and I'm afraid that if I died, it would mess them up pretty bad.
I'm faced with my own mortality and all I can think of is them, what my death would do to them.
I don't want to leave them.
I want to be around to see them graduate and get married, to see them have children of their own.
I want to see them live and be successful.
I want to be there for everything else that happens in their lives.
Mine can be crap, I don't care if I have to live in pain forever, live with never turning my head again, but I want to be there for them.
I don't think I'm being all that crazy, I think I have a valid reason to ask people why they are doing what they are doing if it involves me.
I think I have a right to ask to not be involved in it right now.
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I don't know if I can pull it off.

By
Kat
on August 8, 2008 5:23 PM |
On Sunday, my sis is taking the teens and her girls, and a few friends to one of those franchise kids play places for Susan's birthday party.
She asked me if I want to go.
I honestly don't know.
I would hate to miss her party, Susan is my little bud, but I'm not feeling well, I have a ton of stress and a ton of work to do.

I have a million things to do at home here, plus I have a bunch of actual work to do, and I really need that money.
In order to get all that money on payday, I need to have them all done by Monday morning.
I'm sure I can do it if I just start working and don't stop.
I really need that money, and I really want to be there for Susan.
I'm sure I'll go.
I'll make myself a deal, if I can get more than half my work done, I'll go, and then I'll have to do all the rest of them done by Monday morning.
I can do it if I don't get sick again.
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Running late today.

By
Kat
on August 8, 2008 12:12 PM | | Comments (1)
I'm still not feeling great, I think it's the stress of everything, it's upsetting my stomach, making me not sleep, but making me excessively tired.
I have mega amounts of stress right now.
So much to do, things to take care of, plans to make, money to not make.
Ugh!
It's piling up on me, my mind can't stay focused, and I haven't been able to even keep myself feeling ok or not worried about stuff long enough to get my work done.
It will get it done, but I really need to get my head on straight first.
I honestly think I need to just sit down and have myself a long decent cry, to let all of this stress go as much as I can.

I need to go get in the shower, I have an appointment with Dr. Riegel today at 2pm, thank him, all that jazz, and tell him I can't pay him today.
I am totally broke until Wednesday.
Nothing I can do about it right now, I'll have to tell them I'll pay them on Wednesday, they can take the payment by phone or something.

Sorry to be such a downer, but I just have so so much on my mind, back to school, medical shit, all of it is picking away at my brain, and I'm tired and stressed out because of all of it.
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I'm gagging now.

By
Kat
on August 3, 2008 5:12 PM |
I have really long natural fingernails, and I scratched my ear the other day, the inside of it.
Well, I must have scratched too hard, or cut the skin in there, because I ended up with a slight infection.
It's healing now.
I put some Staphaseptic in there using a Q-tip.
But anyway, I went searching on line for ear/skin infections, it hurts, it was sorta pussy before I cleaned it all out and stuff, and I ended up clicking a link to a youtube video that said "ear infection from a scratch".

Well, the video ended up being really gross, it was a MRSA infection, and then because I'm so fascinated with the human body and gross things, I must have spent a good hour watching videos that people posted of popping pimples, draining MRSA infections, giant puss filled zits etc etc.

I wouldn't recommend any of you ever go look on youtube for popping pimples or MRSA infections.
What you will see will make you lose your appetite for a very long, long time.
I cannot believe that people film that stuff and upload it.
I like popping pimples as much as the next person, but no, no filming, no sharing it with the world.
That's just really, really gross.
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Nope, just insomnia.

By
Kat
on August 2, 2008 3:21 PM | | Comments (1)
I was asked in an email, if the weight loss product that I'm taking has anything to do with my insomnia, my bad sleeping problems I've experienced over the last few days.
The short answer is no.
The long answer is that I've had sleeping issues most of my adult life now.
It has nothing to do with any foods that I'm eating, or supplements that I may be taking, or drinking a diet soda at 9pm every night, it's just my body doing what it likes to do which is go for a minimum of 3 days without sleeping, to a maximum of 13 days without sleeping more than an hour or two at night, and then when it finally decides it's tired enough, I'll sleep for one night, about 8-10 hours, and be completely back to normal again.

On Wednesday night, I didn't sleep, on Thursday night, I didn't fall asleep until almost 5am Friday morning, and last night, Friday night, I again didn't fall asleep until a little after 5am again.
I woke up this morning around 11am because someone called but I didn't make it to the phone on time before they hung up.
I've just been surfing around the internet most of the day now, reading stuff, catching up on internet news etc.
But now I have a lot of work to do so if I owe you an email or a reply to a comment, it will be coming later on tonight.
I'll probably be able to catch up on everything tonight while we watch the new movies that came in from Netflix.

I am so glad that tonight will be the end of having to watch the Rocky movies.
Rocky Balboa came in today's mail, it's the last one, but Sebastian really wants to see it, and it is the last one, so just a little over an hour, 102 minutes running time, and the Rocky movie watching will be done and over with. *phew*
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Stupid cats.

By
Kat
on July 31, 2008 12:13 PM | | Comments (1)
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Thinking too much to sleep.

By
Kat
on July 31, 2008 5:14 AM | | Comments (2)
Here it is, 5am, and I haven't been to bed yet.
I've been sitting here at my desk all night, I have two little candles to light my way as I type, just surfing the net, blog reading, forum reading, doing anything and everything but what I should be doing, which is sleeping.
I even started a load of laundry an hour ago just to have something to do.

I finally caught up on all 132 emails I had sitting in my inbox, I even checked 3 other email accounts I had and cleared out all the spam.
I broke a nail when I got up to pee a few minutes ago, just trying to scratch my back.
Kind of a bummer because now I'll have to trim down all my other nails to have matching heights.
It sucks actually, because they were all pretty damn long and healthy.
Well mostly healthy.
Can't be too healthy if they're snapping off when I scratch my back right?
Or maybe I was scratching too hard because I still can't feel the skin on my back.
I know it itches, I can scratch it, but I can't feel myself scratching.

I have so much going on in my head, all kinds of thoughts, things I want to say but won't because it will just create more problems, and after 15 years, the child support is finally at an amount I'm ok with.
No, it's still not great, but $78 per week is a HUGE improvement over the $21 per week we had been getting for the last 15 frigging years.
I already know how the hearing is going to go tomorrow, er, today, because the DA called me, it's a done deal, we all just have to say out-loud that we agree.
Part of me wants to say no! I don't agree! because it's still not right, it's still not a truly acceptable amount, but it's the best that can be done under the circumstances.
I tried.

I have been trying for the last 10 years, and to finally have my case before the judge is such a big deal yet at the same time, a total letdown because the rules weren't followed, everyone didn't play along like they were supposed to.
I did everything I was court ordered to do, and I was actually hopeful to be allowed to have my say to the judge, to tell him what $21 per week has been like for 15 years, and I don't get that chance.
I actually wrote out what I would say if asked, and maybe after this whole thing is really a done deal tomorrow afternoon, I mean, this afternoon, I'll post what I typed out.
15 years of pent up frustration with a system that somehow justified such a piddly amount, you have no idea how that feels.
You have no idea how hard I tried, how much I fought to make it right, and it still isn't.
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It was either bad chicken, or my stomach is wrecked.

By
Kat
on July 30, 2008 12:30 PM | | Comments (1)
Mark got a couple cards in the mail for his birthday, and just like he asked for, he got some money.
He decided that he didn't want me to cook dinner last night, he was going to order a bunch of wings from Wings n' Weenies, and he'd treat the family to dinner.

He ordered a half and half box, 50 wings, 25 hot and 25 bbq, and we all sat down and ate the very tasty wings while watching Rocky V.
Then after, we all went back to our chosen playthings to do.
Mark went back to the Xbox, Sebastian went back to his on line video game, and I went back to surfing the net, reading blogs, and playing on the local forums.

We all went to bed pretty late, that may have also contributed to this morning's barf-o-rama.
I woke up and just wasn't feeling right.
I was really hot, had that clammy feeling, but I blew it off.
The yucky feeling started to feel worse, so I went back to the couch to lay down.
Then it hit me like a freight train.
I got up off the couch as quickly as possible and ran to the bathroom.
I barely made it in there in time before the vomit started to rise up my throat.
I must have been in there puking for a good 10 minutes, and it was all bbq chicken wings.
I know it was the chicken because I did have some ice cream later in the night, but all that came out was bbq wings.

They were mighty tasty last night, but they don't taste so good coming back out.
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Costume planning already?

By
Kat
on July 29, 2008 7:46 PM |
Every year, the local Tampa crew has a huge Halloween costume party bash, and this year will be no different.
There is a girls private forum, and some of the girls have already started planning their costumes for this year.
One of the girls found a site that has some racy-sexy nurse costumes and then a few of the other girls found some more sexy costumes they want on the same site.
I do like some of them, but I would need to lose a lot more weight before I would even consider wearing one of those costumes.
Like a major lot of weight. *laughs*
At my current weight, the only one I would even consider wearing is the FBI agent costume.
It's a zip front jumpsuit, and the only skin it shows is cleavage.
I could do that one right now, but I would need to be back down to my pre-pregnancy weight for any of the others.
Maybe by next year.
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Healthy skin and body.

By
Kat
on July 28, 2008 9:11 PM |
Just when I think I've finally found a product to treat Mark's acne problem, he gets another massive breakout.
I need to find him the best acne treatment available, but doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to pay for.
He has such a bad breakout today too, it's worse than I've ever seen his face.
Poor kid, but at least he's still on summer vacation and none of his friends will see his face.

I've had a long weekend of feeling like total crap.
I was sick from my meds all weekend long.
I ran out of one, couldn't call my doc because it was the weekend, and that made me have to use one of the other meds I take by itself.
It has a completely different effect when taken by itself.
The bad feelings are wearing off finally, so I should be back to normal by tomorrow.
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I may or may not.

By
Kat
on July 25, 2008 1:05 PM | | Comments (2)
It's a really good thing I have a really good memory, and can recall exact dates to explain the problems.
I never got an email back from Verizon last night or this morning, so I just called them to get an answer.
I called and explained the entire issue with my address not being mapped to the agent who answered the phone, and he was sort of dumbfounded, so he transferred me over to a Fios tech specialist named Christina.
I explained once again about not being mapped, and she asked me how I knew that my address isn't available for Fios.

I told her what happens when I go to the Verizon Fios website and enter my phone number and address, and also what the tech said when he was out here in February to replace my neighbors Fios box after the FPL transformer blew up after being struck by lightening.
He told me the building was mapped as a one family dwelling unit, that my address doesn't exist on their service map, so I can't have Fios, there was nothing he could do.
Christina listened and she was sort of confused, so I told her to look up the address xxxx south Lockwood Ridge road, she did, she said yes they do have Fios.
So I said now my address, xxxx, is in the same building, it's a duplex, and my address doesn't exist on your service map right?
She said yes, and that she needed to email the Fios service area people, the ones who set up the lines and maps, and that it would take about 1 week to get a response from them about whether or not they can set this side of the duplex up with Fios.

I said whether or not they can?
You mean there's a chance they can't?
She said that yes, it's possible that they may not be able to run the Fios cables to this side of the property due to how they laid the cables because they thought it was a one family dwelling.

I'll have to keep you posted on this when Christina has promised to personally call me back and let me know if I can have it or not.
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Verizon sucks. Again.

By
Kat
on July 25, 2008 12:30 AM | | Comments (2)
I have to wonder if the Verizon employees who mapped out my street, actually work and have jobs in San Francisco, NOT in Florida, because they mapped this address, this DUPLEX, as a one family unit home, when it is so clearly a two family unit home.
Not that I can actually afford Verizon Fios, but I was in a mood and felt like busting their chops.
See, they sent me my monthly phone bill with a sale flyer for Fios service, the fee is incredibly low, like $42.99 per month, just a few bucks more than I am currently paying for DSL at $37.95 per month.
So for fun, I went to the site, and entered my phone number and address, where once again, I was told Fios isn't available at this address because the address doesn't exist.
So I sent an email support request, they sent a general support email back, asking me to explain in detail, what my question/problem is.
So I explained.
In detail.


Hi!,
I've been wanting Fios for awhile but every time I try to order it, it says it's not available at my address because my address doesn't exist..
I know that is wrong because I live in a duplex, and my duplex neighbors have Fios internet, phone and tv service.
How is it possible that Fios is on one side of a duplex, and not on the other?
It's not.
It simply means someone at Verizon screwed up when entering the addresses in to the database, and counted this duplex as one house.
My Name is Kat Cooper my address is xxxx south Lockwood Ridge road Sarasota, Florida 34231
I currently have Verizon DSL.
My phone number is xxx-xxx-xxxx.
My neighbors address, the people in the other half of the duplex, is xxxx south Lockwood ridge road Sarasota Florida, 34231
They have Fios internet, phone and tv.
Their phone number is xxx-xxx-xxxx.
 
This building is two (2) family units, xxxx and xxxx.
It is not one address, it is two.
 
It would super spectacular if Verizon would fix this error as I have been wanting to order Fios for well over a year, but I can't because you have it listed as a one family house which it is NOT!
Yes, I am frustrated because I've been a Verizon customer at this address for 10 years.
10 years, and Verizon thinks my address doesn't exist for Fios, yet it's installed in the other half of this duplex.
After 10 years of being a customer at this address, it absolutely baffles me that Verizon thinks this address doesn't exist.
Verizon certainly has no problems sending bills to this address, which I got today for my home phone service, which is holy cow! through Verizon!
Do you see how frustrated a 10 year long customer might be learning their address doesn't exist to get a service?
Please go ahead and look up my account, my address, go ahead and look to see if Fios can be installed at this half of the duplex, and then go look and see that my neighbors, in the other half, actually have Fios, and then ask yourself why this customer writing this email, might be so stinking upset to learn that their address doesn't exist for Fios, but I can have home phone service, I can have DSL, I get bills from Verizon all the time, but nope, I can't have Fios because my address doesn't exist!!!!!
Sincerely,
Kat Cooper
A 10 year long Verizon customer at this address.
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I knew it was coming.

By
Kat
on July 24, 2008 12:31 PM | | Comments (1)
Last night around 11pm, I got a sharp stabbing pain in my lower back, my left knee swelled up and started aching really badly.
I told Mark, it's going to rain big time, a massive storm is coming.
My rods are cold, my muscles are tight and achy, my knee is hurting pretty bad.
We're going to get a really big, bad storm either overnight or tomorrow, it's definitely coming.

So I was sitting here catching up on some things on line, when all of a sudden, it felt like someone had turned on a few giant basement dehumidifiers, the humidity in the entire house just vanished, the temps in the house dropped so quickly, the AC started dripping fast, and then the skies opened up with a loud bang.
It's been raining now very hard for the last 40 minutes or so, the thunder is clapping so loudly, the cats are freaking out, there's been a few shots of lightening, and you can just hear the rain gushing down out of the clouds like there's a waterfall right outside my window.

The noon news is on and they said it just moved in really quickly, and it will probably do this all day long.
I may or may not lose power and/or internet.
My DSL tends to get crappy when it rains.
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I'm sinking.

By
Kat
on July 22, 2008 11:55 PM | | Comments (4)
The stress of it all, the stress of living and trying to keep my head above the financial waters, is starting to get to me big time.
I want to just hire a couple of moving trucks and pack up all of our stuff, stick it in storage, and just go away.
Just leave, go somewhere, go anywhere, I don't really care anymore.
I'm so tired, I just can't keep getting a little itty bit ahead, and then get hit with another unexpected bill or appliance replacement cost.
It's too much for me right now.

I have the stress and worry about whether or not I'll be having neck surgery, I have the child support court hearing coming up, I have all kinds of bills and expenses due in the next few months, and every little thing is catching up with me and overwhelming me right now.
Like right. this. minute., I feel like crying, just curling up in a ball and crying and screaming and kicking and shouting.
I just want it all to stop or at least slow down.
It's one thing after another these last few weeks.
Last week, the boys got in that fight and hurt each other, I have bills I'm trying to pay and I'm not getting enough work, the economy is getting worse and I think it's affecting the industry I'm in because work has slowed down a lot.
And I have the child support court hearing next week, and I'm just not feeling up to fighting for it right now.
Like today is just not a good day, the whole thing just has me way stressed out because I have other things going on that are occupying my mind right now, and to have to deal with that a few days before I find out if I have to have neck surgery, well, it's just upsetting me so so much.
Anyone understand that?!
I just have things that I have to deal with and am worried about, and I want what's right, what's fair, but I'm so emotional right now that I am afraid that I'll end up crying halfway through the hearing when his lawyer starts asking about my health.
It was one of the questions on the interrogatories, and I know his lawyer is going to try and make it seem like I am not a good mother because of my back surgery and stuff.
My health issues have not stopped me from being a good mom, I do a damn good job, and I pay for everything by myself, and I have the back-to-school expenses coming up really soon that I will be paying for myself again..
They go back to school on the 18th of August, and they need clothes and supplies, and so that's another big expense that I have to take care of.

And then tonight the lawn mower rip cord thingy breaks, so now I have to either repair that part OR I have to buy another lawn mower.
And Sebastian was outside playing and he slipped and twisted his knee, so he spent a few hours on the couch this evening with an ice pack on his leg crying that it hurt.
It's NOT broken, but he did twist it, it's painful, I know that because I've done that and it really hurts pretty damn bad.

But you see!?
It's just been one thing after another and it just keeps coming, and it all hit me tonight.
I'm just an emotional mess tonight so I'm sitting here blogging instead of crying and being all upset in front of the kids.
These blogs of mine are not a business, they are my therapy, they help me cope with everything in my life by letting me say all of the things that are on my mind, they help me deal with my life and all of the things that happen in it because I am stuck in my house and I have no one that I can talk to.
I have had a bad day and now that I've dumped it all here, maybe I can let some of it go.
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It will be done today!

By
Kat
on July 22, 2008 12:45 PM | | Comments (1)
If I owe you an email reply, or you left me a comment and asked a question, I will reply to them all today.
I've been just so caught up in other things the last few days, I mean week, so I haven't replied to anything, I've barely been reading any blogs, but I will get to everything today.

Sorry it's taken me so long to do this, my mind has just been all over the place, but not where it needed to be.
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Liar Liar pants on fire.

By
Kat
on July 21, 2008 9:57 PM | | Comments (2)
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Busy yet not.

By
Kat
on July 19, 2008 11:59 PM | | Comments (2)
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You should go to Vegas!

By
Kat
on July 17, 2008 10:24 PM | | Comments (2)
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Name this blog winner is......

By
Kat
on July 15, 2008 11:15 AM | | Comments (2)
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I'll post the winner tomorrow, Tuesday.

By
Kat
on July 14, 2008 9:56 PM |
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Stupid cables.

By
Kat
on July 12, 2008 10:00 PM |
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Best Bath Store.com provides excellent customer service.

By
Kat
on July 10, 2008 3:40 PM |

On July 5th, I posted about ordering some product samples from the Best Bath Store website.
They came yesterday! That was some super fast shipping, just 4 days.
They used USPS priority shipping, just for product samples, a $4.95 purchase.
That's incredibly awesome!

I ordered the 5 max samples that I could, and I wanted to tell you how I like them so far.
The sample sizes are just small cuts off of a full size bar, about the width of a middle finger, and about the length of your thumb.
I tried each one separately, washing my hands with each one, lathering up and smelling the very full lather, drying off, and then giving a good smell of my hands too, to see if the scent lasts after drying off.
They do last even when dried off.
Now onto my thoughts on the individual scents.

I absolutely LOVE the Summer Citrus body bar!
It smells so so good, and it lathers up super nice.
I also really loved the Orange body bar, it also smells really good, very orangey, and lathers up nice as well. Yes, I know orangey isn't a word, but it really does smell exactly like oranges.
I wasn't crazy about the Rose Geranium body bar though.
There's something in it that smells unpleasant to me.
I can't put my finger on the exact scent though, but I just didn't like it.

Mark used the Acne Facial bar, and wasn't crazy about the heavy tea tree scent, but it lathered up nice, and didn't dry out his skin. His skin felt smoother, and this morning his skin seems to be a bit clearer, the pimples he did have seem to be fading.
He also dabbed on some of the Acne Treatment Gel using a q-tip, and it definitely dried up the whiteheads he dabbed it on. They are healing and fading very nicely.

I also wanted to point out their most excellent customer service.
As I also told you in my post, I used to buy a handmade soap from a fellow blogger, it was Jasmine and Pink Grapefruit scented, and it was to die for! It smelled so yummy, I wanted to eat it.
Anyway, Best Bath Store has a contact form on their site, so I used it to inquire about that scent, whether they've ever made it in the past or if they'd ever try to make it.
I didn't expect a response from them for several days, it was a Saturday on a holiday weekend after all, but Justin who is the CEO, emailed me back within an hour about my inquiry.
To my complete surprise, Justin emailed me back with the following;

"Natural soaps take several weeks to cure after they're made, so it'll probably take about a week to order ingredients / figure out a formula to make this soap, then it'll be 4 weeks before we know how it came out. We'll try a few formulas out in parallel and mark them as A,B,C and you can let us know which one is best.
I will keep you updated as we attempt to create this new soap."


They are actually going to make this soap for me, and let me be the product tester to make sure it smells right.
How freaking awesome is that?!?!
I have a feeling I'll be ordering a ton of products from them if they can get this scent right, plus I'll be buying the acne soap and gel for Mark because it actually works better than anything else we've tried so far, without over-drying his skin.

So if you like using natural products and homemade soaps and lotions, go check out the Best Bath store. They make some great products and their customer service is outstanding!


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Summer colds are really sucky.

By
Kat
on July 7, 2008 1:22 PM | | Comments (1)
I catch everything, my immune system is truly the suck.
I was fine on Saturday when we went out with my sister and my nieces, and Skye had just been getting over a chest cold, and who knows how many kids at McDonald's had a cold or something, but I managed to catch it.

By Sunday morning, my sinuses hurt, my throat was sore, my lungs were on fire, and I nearly choked to death coughing upon waking.
I just went out and bought some Tylenol severe congestion daytime tablets, and hopefully they will help me breath better within a few hours.

Don't forget to enter my contest, help me name my blog and you could win a $50 gift certificate to Amazon!

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Name this blog contest!

By
Kat
on July 7, 2008 1:52 AM | | Comments (19)
As you all know by now, this is my new blog all about me.
Man, that sounds so narcissistic. LOL
But it's not like that, this is more like my personal space to really say my thoughts, a place to discuss my health and stuff without cluttering up My Single Mom Life.

I bought the domain name which is just my name, (hey, it's all about me right?) but it needs a catchy blog name.
Ya know, like My Single Mom Life - Sleepless in Sarasota, it needs a name that's easy to remember, something people can use to link to instead of katjcooper.com, it needs a name that fits who I am, what this space is meant for, and something catchy.

So here's what we're going to do.
Yes I said 'we'.
This contest has a sponsor!
JustB(coz) is a relatively new blogger, she's only been blogging since March of 2008, and she'd like to offer up to the winner of the contest, a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com.
I think that's a really generous offer and a really sweet prize.

Here's how it's going to work:
If you want to enter to win the $50 gift certificate, all you have to do is leave your suggestion for my new blog's catchy name in the comments of this post.
In 1 week from today, on Monday July 14th, I'll choose from all of the suggested names the one I think fits me and this blog the best, and declare the writer of the new name, the winner, and JustB(coz) will be given your email address so that she can send you the prize.
Easy!

That's it, help me name my blog and win $50 to spend on anything you want.
So put your thinking caps on and come up with a new name for this blog!

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Free product samples from Best Bath Store.

By
Kat
on July 5, 2008 6:24 PM |
By
Kat
on Saturday July 5, 2008 6:24 PM | | Comments (0)
Best Bath Store.com has some free product samples that you can pick up and try out.
You're allowed to select up to 5 of the products they are offering, and then just pay $4.95 for shipping, that's it.
So here's what I picked up.
Acne Facial Bar
Acne Treatment Gel
Orange Body Bar
Rose Geranium Body Bar
Summer Citrus Body Bar

I picked up the acne products for Mark, and I picked the soaps for me.
I love homemade soaps, and I really love the fruit scented ones the most.
I've never tried any of the products from the Best Bath Store before, but if their soaps are really good scented and  lather up nice, don't cause any irritation, I'll probably buy them again.
I used to buy the most awesome handmade soap from a blogging friend of mine who had her own homemade soaps and lip balms and other stuff, and she made the most awesome smelling soap I've ever used in my life.
It was Jasmine and Pink Grapefruit, and it was incredible.
Every time I would wash with it before going out, people would be like OMG Kat, what kind of perfume is that, it smells incredible! I'd have to tell them it was just soap, not perfume, but man, if I could find perfume made with just Jasmine and Pink Grapefruit, I would so buy it and wear it all the time.
I guess I'll have to look around this site and see if they either make that scent already, or if they take scent requests.
If they do take requests, I will definitely send one in.

I posted this site up in case any of you may be interested in trying out some samples too.

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Site stuff: commenting.

By
Kat
on July 4, 2008 4:28 PM | | Comments (2)
MT 4.12 has 2 choices when you want to leave a comment, either sign in, which I am not doing registered commenters, or leave a comment anonymously.
Choose the anon option, then fill out the standard comment form, and then hit submit.

All comments from trusted people will be published and trusted, so that those people who comment with blogs, will receive the dofollow link back.
Non-trusted people, spammers, or first time blog readers/commenting for the first time, will be published but not trusted until I figure out who they are.

Of course those people selling penis products or other crap, will be marked as junk and those comments shall never see the light of day, and be completely removed from the server within 24 hours automatically.
Spammers can go to the punishment realm of the deity of their choosing.

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Day 1 of my new doc-approved weight-loss plan.

By
Kat
on July 4, 2008 2:33 PM | | Comments (5)
I am not able to currently work out on my elliptical, but I can still go for daily walks which is highly recommended.
I woke up this morning around 9am, and took my morning does of meds, and included one capsule of Zylene.
I sat here as I usually do every morning, going through emails and work stuff, catching up on other things on the net, until my body has loosened up enough to move properly.
By the time my body wasn't so stiff, the Zylene had kicked in and I had a huge burst of energy, so I took total advantage of it.

I got dressed and decided to do my daily walk right then instead of in the evening when it's usually a bit cooler out.
While it was a bit hot out, I was able to walk faster and farther than I normally do.
This is a definite bonus.
I walked for 3 miles this morning then came back and took a shower, caught up on any emails that came in while I was out, and then went and finished up last night's laundry.

I feel really good, lots of energy, so I'm going to hop off of here for a little bit and go tackle the dishes which I've been avoiding for the last 2 days, and will probably run the vac around the house and maybe even go clean the bathroom.
Seriously, I feel great, I have more energy than I've had in months, but I'm not over doing things that will cause me to be in pain later on, and I'm keeping to my regular medication schedule.

Seeing as today is day 1, I'm going to share my starting weight.
I am as of this morning, 190lbs.
According to Lacey and Faiay, it was at the 2 week mark that they noticed measurable weight loss, so I'll either post my weight again then, or if I notice any weight loss before that.

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Why are some people so negative?

By
Kat
on July 4, 2008 4:26 AM | | Comments (6)
I had posted on MSML about my doctor giving me the go-ahead to start taking this weight-loss product called Zylene 1.1 .
I have not only his full permission, but his full medical supervision as well.
Anyway, since I had seen Lacey shrinking away, I had been also discussing her weight loss and the product with a huge picture of the list of ingredients, in the girls private forum on the local Florida forums.
The thread is now almost 5 pages long, 20 posts per page, and one of the very first questions I asked was, 'is there anything in this list of ingredients that doesn't look safe?'
I asked that in my very first post as the thread starter, on page one.

I described Lacey's weight-loss success, and the cost of the pill, that no pill is the magic cure for fat etc, and a good discussion was going on, the girls were all excited, people started Googling it, and not a single person said a single negative thing until today.
This one girl who is much younger than I am, never married, no natural childbirths, lives an extremely healthy lifestyle of eating clean and working out all of the time.
She really does know her stuff when it comes to eating right and working out, she's great at it.
But she's also a bit of a pusher.

Let me explain.
You ever know someone who swears they smoked for like 20 years, quit cold turkey, and every single time they see you, whether or not you are smoking, if they know you smoke, they suddenly become the authoritative figure on how to quit smoking, how sick you are, how unhealthy you live your life.
Nag nag nag, pushing their oh so perfect healthy living on you when you didn't ask for their advice or opinion.

Before I left for my doc's today, this girl said there were a few ingredients that is in the Zylene that she would never put in her body.
I made the mistake of asking her what ingredient that was, and stressed that I had asked about the ingredient list in my very first post.
Big freaking mistake.
She then proceeded to talk about a single ingredient, chromium picolinate, which by the way, has been used in many different health supplements over the years, not just weight-loss drugs.
She explained how in test hamster cells, extremely large quantities of chromium caused oxidative stress and DNA damage, and the long-term effects of chromium has never been discovered or tested.
I thanked her for her answers as I always do, and had to leave for my appointment.

When I came back, posted to my blog, and then posted the news in that thread that my doc had given me the ok to go on the Zylene, and I did ask him about the chromium just so I could answer her question plus find out if it really is that dangerous.
He explained that in extremely high doses, it can be bad for some people.
I posted about him telling me to not take more than 3 per day, to start at one, move to 2 if I felt I needed it, and to never exceed the 3 per day limit.

Her next post to me was about using Fitday.com, and how it's helped her a lot, and then this question;
How is double or triple the amount of chromium you should be intaking not excessive?

I went back over my initial after doctor visit post, yup, I did explain about his orders to not take more than 3 per day, how I'd be under constant medical supervision, (I see him every 2 weeks. He will be doing weigh-ins, blood tests, blood pressure, check my diabetes etc) and how I had done my own research, asked him a ton of questions about this particular pill, got his ok, got tested by him, he will be supervising my weight loss, and she only saw the part about taking an excessive amount?!

I'll repeat what he said, "In extremely high doses, taking more than 3 per day in his opinion, can be bad for some people."
That doesn't say that 3 per day is the extremely high dose, and it's only for some people, not all, taking more than 3 per day could be bad for some people.

I'm going to be under constant medical supervision while I use this, I'll be seen every 2 weeks, be tested and monitored, I'm ok to go, I'm safe to go.
I'm not stupid about taking any weight-loss or other med for that matter.
I always look stuff up, I research even the medications that doctors have prescribed for me, I'm a well versed medical patient, who will be under medical supervision while doing this.

I really do appreciate how knowledgeable she is when it comes to healthy living and working out, she really does know her stuff, but again, I'm being treated by a doctor, under supervision, and I'm not an idiot.
I would never take anything that could potentially hurt me.
Chromium is actually ok for diabetics to take.
However, when chromium picolinate, which is the most bioavailable form, has been used, all of the studies have yielded positive results (in blood sugar, blood insulin and/or blood lipid [cholesterol and triglyceride] readings).
One of these studies, a 1997 study involving 180 type II diabetes patients in China, is a classic: it documented "spectacular" results in diabetes patients who took 500 mcg chromium picolinate twice daily. After four months, nearly all of the diabetes patients no longer had traditional signs of diabetes. Their blood sugar and insulin levels dropped to near normal--something that medications could not achieve.

In each 1 of these pills, there are 100mcgs of chromium picolinate, so 2 would 200mcgs.
A totally safe amount for diabetics which I am.
I am not an insulin taking diabetic, I have been controlling it through diet for quite a few years now, with the occasional screw up of course, but if chromium, even in an old study, has been shown to take away all of the traditional signs of diabetes by taking 500mcgs TWICE a day, then 200mcgs just once per day, is perfectly safe for me to take, and again, I'm under medical care.

I just don't understand these type of people who have to be so "perfect" about everything, think they know more than a doctor who knows this medication well, and is treating the patient.
It took all I had to not come back and say something snarky and mean, I often bite my tongue in the girls forum.
There's just something about putting a whole bunch of women together, even on line, that tends to bring out the kitty claws ya know?
And she just now responded to what I did write, which was just reiteration of all of the above information for the second time in that thread.
"You are definitely being smart about it. I hope it works for you. I know that if you were in perfect health you would be working out more intensely to get the results you want."

I just really want to know what part of I can no longer do traditional core workouts due to these titanium rods in my spine, was so hard to understand?
I can go for walks, I can use my elliptical, but sit ups? Crunches? Side bends?
Um, no.
Her reply is basically, that if I were in better health, which OMG, I'm so freaking sorry I'm not, that I would not be taking this pill, that the pill is cheating.
Maybe that's true, but she knows about my back surgery, it's been discussed multiple times, it was discussed again in that thread, so why the hell even say anything to me about being in perfect health?!?!

Why?!
Why.

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Very cool!

By
Kat
on July 3, 2008 11:39 PM | | Comments (2)
I just figured out that I can trust certain commenters, and when I do that, no nofollow tag will be applied to their blog urls.
This particular feature either never worked on MSML, or it was disabled.
It probably got disabled when I deleted a whole bunch of plugins that didn't work.
OOoopsy! LOL

So all trusted commenters will have their comments publish immediately and be dofollow, and all other comments will be on moderation.
This will save me so so much time!
I love it!

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Hey there!

By
Kat
on July 3, 2008 9:45 PM | | Comments (8)
Welcome to my new blog!
This is my new home for all of the things about me.
My health, beauty, fitness, the funny stuff that's not really appropriate for a "mom blog", and all of the many other things about me, because even though I'm a single mom, I am still my own person, and I made a big mistake on my main blog, My Single Mom Life.

When I originally started blogging back in 1997, (on a hand-coded Tripod site no less) it was all about my sons and our lives together.
The ups and downs of being a single parent, their education, the money struggles of being a single parent, all of the things that involved my kids and my job as their mom, and our lives together after having just moved to Florida.

Over the next couple of years, my back started really acting up from my scoliosis, and then when I was forced to quit working in December 2001 by my orthopedic doctors, my life changed drastically.
I was still a single parent to Mark (16 now) and Sebastian (15 now), but our entire world was tossed upside down.
My health issues started becoming the 2nd major focus of my life, (after my boys of course)  and I was going in and out of various orthopedic and neurological surgeon's offices several times per week in search of a surgeon who not only was capable of performing the surgery I needed, but willing to take on the massive project.

My blog lost it's main focus, and while it always bothered me that I had done that, my life was just so chaotic and stressful that I couldn't even think of  trying to get it back on it's original focus.
I started placing all of my health entries on a private password-protected blog on a folder level of my domain for a couple of reasons, but some of the readers that had been with me from the beginning of my blog, kept losing their passwords, and all sorts of other technical difficulties kept happening, so I just started writing it all on My Single Mom Life again.
I didn't copy all those private posts over, I simply saved them as text documents and saved them to a folder on my hard drive.
About 6 months ago, I finally burned all of my archives from January 1997 to January 2004, to a disc, and a second backup copy disc in case that one gets lost or damaged.
All of the files are still on my hard drive too.
Just in case I need to look up specific dates or something.

Just recently, I got a bit of a push to get a second blog on a new domain for work reasons.
It seemed like the perfect time for me to take back control of My Single Mom Life and to restore it to what it once was, my life as a single parent and my sons who have been the rocks of my life, and my reasons to live for all of these years.
They are what keeps me going day in and day out.
I get up in the morning because of them, and I don't go to sleep at night until I know they have had their needs for the day met.

So here I am on my new blog, it doesn't have a title just yet, I haven't really given it a lot of thought.
Maybe you can all help come up with a title?!
Maybe I'll have a contest to give my blog a name. (oooh, that's a good idea! You're all so creative!)
The prize won't be anything huge, there's no way I can afford to give away a $500 gift card or a 3-in-1 printer/scanner/copier, or a camera, but I would be able to do a prize of $50, either cash through paypal, or the same amount to any on line store the winner chooses.
That sounds like a plan Stan!
But don't send anything yet!
I want to have the name my blog contest in it's own post and stuff.

Oh, and this is MT (Movable Type) version 4.12, so I'm a bit lost, it's much different than my main blog, so if the site style keeps changing while I figure out what I like best, or if there are no tags or categories etc, just bear with me while I learn this new version.
It won't take me long, but I've already changed the site style like 5 times in the last 2 hours, so I know I'll keep messing with stuff. (hahahaha)

So, welcome to my new blog, where it's all about me, I'll always be Mark and Sebastian's mom, but I am my own person, my own woman, and I have things to say!

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