Results tagged “internet” from KatScan

As I posted on my other blog, I'm looking at ways to get rid of my belly pudge, so I'm doing a lot of reading on the internet about all of the different methods to try and help me get rid of it.
I've been reading about fat burners, different exercises, and all kinds of different medicines that may help me lose my belly pudge like phentermine.
It works to suppress the appetite just like the name brand prescription one does.

I don't really need something to suppress my appetite, I'm already doing very well losing weight, I've lost 38 pounds over the course of a year, down from 196 pounds, and I've managed to keep it off for a whole year.
Soo yeah, I really don't need an appetite suppressant, I need a way to decrease my belly pudge.
And believe me, it is pudge.
It's like a little bit of fat mixed in with flabby, hanging skin because I've lost a lot of weight.
If I could exercise, do sit-ups or crunches, I would probably be able to reduce it, tighten and tone it, but I can't because of the rods, I can't bend at the waist.
I just really need to find a way to get rid of the pudge without having to exercise which I can't.

I was told by some technically inclined friends on the local forums, that if I had a  vga cable with audio cord, that I would be able to connect the tv to the internet, and then I'd be able to watch stuff like youtube videos, on the tv,  and do other stuff on it too.
I know that we have widgets on the fios that allow us to use things like Twitter, although I haven't quite figured out how to use it yet.
I admit that it totally confuses me, but I would like to hook up the tv to the internet and be able to do stuff on it, Ive seen it hooked up at friend's houses, and it looks awesome.

Did any one else Mom or parents call rain or snow boots, galoshes?
I was just thinking about that when I was searching for some slip in
women's rain boots.

It is officially the rainy season here, it started on June 1st, (Sebastian's birthday) and goes through until November 30th.
All I have to wear are sandals, open-toed sandals, not exactly good shoes for rain, so I was doing some window/internet shopping to see if I can find some slip-on rain boots.
I need slip-ons because I cannot bend over to lace up or tie any shoes.
The only other pair of shoes that I own are a pair of fur indoor/outdoor slip-on slippers.
Those are not exactly good for rain either.
I wore my sandals all last year, all through the rainy season, and it really sucked.
Massive puddles everywhere, no matter where I needed to go, puddles everywhere and no semi-dry spots to walk on, so my feet got absolutely soaked in the nasty, muddy, and sometimes garbage and debris strewn puddles.
I do not want to go through any puddles this year, so if you find a pair of women's size 10 slip-on rain boots, (galoshes) let me know OK?
Thanks!

I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but this is a very serious product review of a medical device that claims it can completely relieve pain, "remind the body to heal itself", and strengthen the body's immunity, and many, many other medical claims.

About two months ago, I was contacted by a woman named Cheryl who said she had an amazing product that would help me, help me with my back pain, blood pressure, all kinds of things, and she would love it if I would try it out and review it on my blogs.
I agreed to test it out and I have been using it as she told me to ever since receiving it in the mail.
It's called the Amega Amwand, and it claims to use "zero point energy" to help the body heal itself.
I HATE giving these people a link, but I feel that I need to so that people WILL NOT fall for this scam, I need to warn people that this thing is a total scam and costs hundreds of dollars ($304.00) to buy, and all it is is the body of a ball point pen minus the ink and ink chamber.
It is one solid piece of metal shaped like a pen, it looks exactly like the image above.
You can pretty much tell that this thing is a scam by the url of the website where they sell it.
The url to purchase this thing has the words "CASHRICHES" in it!
Another of their sites is just one big page all about positioning yourself to get in on this amazing money making scheme!

Cheryl told me that in order to get the most benefits from it, to use it properly, all that I needed to do was to simply "wave" the Amwand over my body, the areas that are in pain, in a clockwise circular motion for 30 minutes, 5 times per day.
"It's vital" she said.
She even told me to "wand" my son Mark with it as well because he is having bad back pain too.
Mark laughed at the idea, but he let me use it on him for the entire two months that I've had it and have been testing it out.
Below are the claims that this "wand" can supposedly do to help people.

Usage of AmWand Can:

* Discharge blockages in the body
* Clear distortions in our bio energetic field
* Facilitate the body in healing
* Energize food and drink increasing potency of the minerals & vitamins within them
* Use it on our pets and plants to supplement any energy deficiencies that they have
* Balance and energize imbalances your body may be experiencing
* Help to remove aches, pains and other discomforts
* Lift the face...tightens the skin
* Energize our environment in which we live

Amega AmWand Benefits Can:

* Help the body obtain homeostasis condition
* Help the body's bio-energetic field to source Zero Point Energy
* Relieve aches and pain
* Neutralize harmful elements (energetically) from the liquid we drink, & food we eat
* Energize the skin providing a "face lift" with noticeable improvement
* Energize creams and oils for better absorption of nutrients
* Facilitate and strengthen the flow of energy in our body
* Stimulate bodily functions and strengthens immunity
* Help the body to look and feel younger

You also can have quicker and stronger nail and hair growth, and a greater resistance to tooth decay that is visibly seen. The lifting of the face with noticeable improvement has also brought forth an additional and extremely high interest.

When water is treated with the Zero Point Energy Wand and then used in conjunction with any supplements, they can be absorbed much more quickly and efficiently, and effectively by the body's cells.

I have used the Amega Amwand every single day, five times per day for 30 minutes each session as I was told to do.
I even "wanded" my water with it as I was told to do.
I am here to tell you that the Amega Amwand did absolutely nothing at all for me.
It did not relieve any aches, pains, or other discomforts, it has not helped reduce my blood pressure, and I saw no noticeable improvement in my hair, nails, or face.
It has not helped me to look or feel younger.
It has not helped or strengthened my immunity, as a matter of fact, I've been really sick several times during the last 2 months, and it did not help me get better faster, or at all.
It did not do a single thing that it claims it can do.
The Amega Amwand is a total scam and I feel the need to tell people the truth before they fall for this scam and waste hundreds of dollars on it.

Every day, millions of people live in pain and are desperate to be free from that pain, and would take any kind of supplement or other types of self care items to try and relieve that pain.
If you live with chronic pain or know someone who lives with chronic pain, then you know how desperate you can feel to get any kind of relief, and there are very unscrupulous people and companies out there who know that desperation and are ready and poised to take full advantage of those people who live in pain.
There are thousands of products on the market already that make thousands of claims that their product can help you be free from pain, and people buy them because they are so desperate.
This product, the Amega Amwand, is one of those products that claims so many amazing things that it can do for you, but it does absolutely nothing.
NOTHING.

The existence of zero point energy is not controversial although the ability to harness it is.
No device claimed to operate using zero point energy has been demonstrated to operate as claimed. No plausible description of a device drawing useful power from a source of zero point energy has been given. Thus, current claims to zero point energy-based power generation systems currently have the status of pseudoscience.
That means that this Amega Amwand is a total scam.
It is pseudoscience, fake, not what it claims to be.

Amega Global makes all kinds of products that claim to use zero point energy to help the body heal itself.
They make the Amwand for $304.00, the AmPendant in silver for $394.00, another AmPendant in Rose Gold for $404.00, and another AmPendant in bronze for $409.00.
They also make "food" that ranges in price from $52.00 up to $270.00.

They make all kinds of other products that claim to use this zero point energy, and they are selling them to people that are desperate to be free from pain, there are testimonials out there that claim this thing really works, but I can tell you after testing it on both myself and Mark for almost two full months, that it DOES NOT work.
I really feel the need to warn people about this new self care, help the body heal itself, scam.
I do not want to see anyone at all fall for this, and that's why I have used the name of it, Amega Amwand, as many times as possible so that it will get indexed in Google and other search engines, and be in the search results for it so that people will find this post (cross posted to My Single Mom Life as well) and learn that it is a total scam.
I feel very strongly the need to warn people so that they do not fall for this scam and waste hundreds of dollars on any of these Amega Global products that will do absolutely nothing for them except remove hundreds of dollars from their bank accounts.

Please, if you or someone that you know suffers from chronic pain and have either been told about the Amega Amwand, or they read about it, and are thinking of buying the Amega Amwand, please, direct them to this post.
I would not ever lie to my readers, this product, the Amega Amwand, is a total scam, it does not work as it claims to.
I tried and tested the product 5 times per day for 30 minutes each time, for two months, and saw no noticeable improvement in pain relief or energy, or any signs of looking and feeling younger either.
The Amega Amwand is a total scam.

Back when I first received the Amega Amwand, I brought it with me to one of my pain management appointments so that I could get my doctor's opinion of it. I took out the box and explained to him what the distributor Cheryl was selling to people at a cost of $304.00 and a promise that it could heal people's ailments and completely relieve pain. He read the little pamphlet, looked at the wand very closely, and then he asked me if I had actually paid for this thing. I told him no, of course not, and explained to him how I received it and what my plan to review it was. He told me, and I quote,

"Kat, you have to use your websites to tell people about this. This is probably the single biggest medical scam that I've seen in the last five years, and believe me, I've seen a lot of them. If you have your blogs (he looked kinda confused on what a blog really is) and the power to reach as many people as possible, you absolutely must tell people the truth. And Kat, the truth is that this thing is 100% garbage. It is a lie packaged and sold to desperate people, people who are so desperate to be free from pain that they will do just about anything they can to get relief. You have the ability to help people not waste their time and their money. Use the power you have to do something good. If you just spare even one person from wasting their money and their time, then you've done something great. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I am going to go to the website and then email this to as many of my colleagues as I can, they need to know about this too and try to stop their patients from getting scammed if any of their patients happen to mention it or ask their doctors if they've heard of being healed by zero point energy."

He then laughed and repeated the phrase "zero point energy" as he jotted down the website urls for both of the websites that Cheryl gave me.
When I got back home and was going back over the pamphlet and stuff that came in the box with the wand, I found the certificate of authenticity, and one thing that I noticed on this "Certificate of Authenticity" that comes in the beautifully padded and silk lined box, is the ultra fine print typed so freaking small that I had to get my jewelry making magnifying glass out in order to be able to read it.
On the very, very bottom of the back of the certificate of authenticity, it reads in super tiny fine print exactly as follows:

DISCLAIMER: These statements have not been evaluated by The Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or physical condition.

These lying scammers know full well that this freaking magical "Amega Amwand" absolutely cannot treat, cure, or heal any ailment of physical condition.
They know that it cannot relieve pain, the number one claim that they use in their selling techniques!
The FDA won't approve this damn thing because they know that it's a total fraud, and these scammers admit, right there in super fine print, that this thing cannot do any of the things that they claim that it can!!

I will be updating this post on both of my blogs with new information or links to other articles about the Amega Amwand and what a total fraud it is, as I find or come across them.
If I find other reviews, I will link them, if I find video reviews, I will link to them as well, and when I see my doctor on Tuesday at 11am, I will be updating him about my "progress" after using it for two months.

**EDIT**
Added 2 links on 6/22/2010

Here is a link to a Youtube video and a post about the Amega Amwand scam.
I am not a hamster, Boob product: Amega Amwand.

Amega Amwand: Medical Scam, at the blog I Am Not A Hamster.


Amega Amwand Is a Scam at Blahvert.

The comments on this post at a money making blog are quite interesting, especially one by someone named Chadi.

FTC disclosure;
I was not compensated in any way for this post.
I received the Amega Amwand for free to test it and review it, and I have to send it back.
It is not mine to keep.
There is absolutely no free product to keep, or compensation received for reviewing this product.
The opinions expressed here are my own, but some of the wording has been taken directly from the Amega Global websites where they either sell the product or hype the product to get people to become distributors of these products.

I've spoken about my friend Mindy here many, many times, about how her and her family are just really great people, any time that I've needed help, a ride, or to be taken to the hospital, there they are, ready and willing to help me.
Well now Mindy and her family need my help, your help, our help.
Her post explains in detail what is happening, but if they don't get some help, Mindy and her family, husband, son Jeff, and daughter Katie, they will be homeless.

Things have not been good recently around here. Chris and I just recently found out that our landlords must sell the house that we have been renting since October of 2008. It wouldn't be such a big deal because normally tenants are allowed to stay until the house does sell. Not in this case. They have asked us to leave by the end of this month. They are in the midst of a foreclosure and are wanting to sell asap and the easiest way to do that is get rid of the occupants so that it will be a smoother transaction for all parties involved. Except of course, US.

We may have first months rent but nothing more. We have been looking and most renters now are required to pay security deposit, first and last months rent up front. That is a lot of money to come up with in just a few weeks. A goal that we will not be able to make on our own. Our parents are all retired. They receive their social security and are budgeted to that alone. They are willing to help as much as they can but the reality is, it will not be enough. My biggest fear is that if we do not come up with enough funds that we need, we will be homeless.

Mindy and her family need our help, whatever you can spare, even if it's just $1, they need our help to come up with a security deposit, first, and last.
Mindy has always been there for me, they never ask anyone for help, they are always the ones helping others, but this time, they really need help.
If you can help, please, please, please, go to Mindy's blog and click on the PayPal donate button and give whatever you can.
And please, spread the word, link to her post on your blogs, Twitter, Facebook, wherever.
Mindy and her family need our help, I am begging for help for them.
They are really great people, so kind, loving, and generous, always helping everyone else.

Jenn at Blogging Girl is asking bloggers to help spread the word about what a bunch of scammers Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post are.

You can read Jenn's post for all of the details, but basically, Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post, get bloggers to do work and then they don't pay for it.
Basically, Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post are a bunch of scammers.
To quote some of Jenn's post,

Well over a year ago I signed up for Blog Advertising Store, though at that time they were calling themselves Paying Post. Between then and this past February I have written $109.00 worth of opportunities. I followed the instructions on each opportunity, included the required links, wrote relevant, high quality content, and submitted each opportunity on time. Every opportunity that I did was approved, and as of April 2010 I was eligible to receive payment, as my balance had rolled over $100 (that is Blog Advertising Store's / Paying Post's minimum payout amount). Only...I didn't receive a payment in April. I didn't receive one in May, either, despite Blog Advertising Store's / Paying Post's dashboard stating that I would be paid $109 on May 1st, 2010.

She followed all of their directions on how to receive her payment, and has sent them emails requesting her payment, and they still haven't done it.
She even sent them an email about how she had heard from other bloggers about their business practices and their handling of payouts, and they still did not reply to her or pay her.

I have been a bit wary completing posts for your company, as in the past I have read some unsavory things about your business practices and the handling of payouts. Please ease my anxieties and compensate me with the money I am rightfully owed. Again, the balance due is $109.00, and my PayPal account is x@jenn.nu.

She has sent them an email every single day requesting her payment of $109.00 for the work she completed and was approved to be paid for.

I forwarded the May 11th email to them on May 12th, May 13th, May 14th, May 15th, May 16th, and May 17th.

The situation has now gotten even worse.
Not only have they still not paid her, but they have now locked her out of her account on Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post, they have blocked her emails, and they have banned her home ip address so she cannot access the site at all.

Seriously, y'all need to go read Jenn's post about how Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post are scammers, and help spread the word.
If you are a blogger who is working for them, you may want to seriously reconsider that, and if you have a blogging friend who said they were thinking about signing up to work for them, send them the link to Jenn's post.
Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post are scammers, plain and simple.
DO NOT work for them.
Blog about this, post about this to Twitter, (to make it simple, you can use this to Twitter it; Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post is a scam! http://bit.ly/basppscam #paidblogging #scam) and post it to Facebook, everywhere.
Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post are scammers and they need to pay bloggers for the work completed.

They need to pay Jenn the $109.00 she rightfully earned and was approved to be paid.
They are being totally unprofessional by blocking her emails, banning her ip address, and refusing to acknowledge that they owe her this money.
Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post are scammers and they need to pay Jenn and all of the bloggers who work for them, the money they have earned.

I have updated my contact page with new and important information regarding my contact information, since learning of fraudulent activity taking place with another blogger who also does product reviews on her blog.

Emily at Busy Mom, and her blog, were used to obtain free products from a  popular baby store and website.
Emily was able to track down the person(s) responsible for this thanks to the baby store and some of her friends, but this story has shown us all the lengths that people will go to to try and get something for free by any means necessary, including fraud and impersonation.

My contact page has been updated to inform everyone of the ways that I can be contacted, and how I would contact you.
I, Kat Cooper, am the ONLY person who writes on My Single Mom Life and KatScan.
I will ONLY ever contact you, or reply to you, from the email address mysinglemomlife-AT-gmail.com
If you should ever receive any type of advertising request, product request, or a PayPal invoice, from ANY OTHER email address, it is NOT me.
If you should receive any of those types of emails, or any email, from someone claiming to be me, or someone claiming to work for/with me, please forward the email to me at mysinglemomlife-AT-gmail.com so that I may investigate and prosecute the impersonation and fraud attempt.

Thank you.

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.

 

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Verizon was here all afternoon installing the Fios, and so a lot of my things had to be moved around to install the new router and stuff.
I tried to break in and move my stuff before the guy did, but he just swooped in and did it, not giving me the chance to do any of it.
This caused my OCD to go crazy, I can't handle people touching my stuff, moving things out of place, and my whole living room was basically turned upside down while the guy worked.
In the process of him moving things around, some stuff got knocked down but it wasn't noticed until after he left and I was putting my desk back in order.
I found one of my micro sd cards on the floor, along with one of my favorite pens.
This was really difficult for me, I can't explain it, if you don't have any thing like this, it's hard to understand.
The boys knew I was having a rough time with someone, a stranger, touching all of the things on my desk, I was pacing around the other rooms of the house, I couldn't watch, and if I did, I started to panic and stuff.
I know this sounds all crazy, and it is all crazy, but I really don't do well with people touching my things, strangers or family, they are my things, and I do not like other people touching them.

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.
 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.


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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!?!

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.

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.

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.

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.

 














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.

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.

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. 
 




















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. 

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.

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.

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.





















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!!





















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




















Thanks so much MomLogic and Jessica Elliot!!

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.

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"




















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.




















Thank you so so much Katy and GemAffair.com, I love it!

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!

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.

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.
 

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!

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.

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!

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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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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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. 
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!

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.

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!

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.

It's been an incredibly long day for me already.
I barely slept last night, not going to bed until almost 7am this morning, and was back awake by 10am.
I just couldn't sleep at all, far too many things on my mind.

My own health issues for one, I was just thinking about it all far too much, driving myself nuts.
And then my sister called me and told me that our Dad was in the hospital, he had what is called a transient ischemic attack , which is a transient stroke that lasts only a few minutes. It occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is briefly interrupted.
He had 3 (three) of those this week!
I've been worried about my Dad all night and all day now too.

My Mom emailed me and gave me the hospital phone number and his room number, so I called him and he sounds ok, just very tired.
He told me not to worry, he's fine and he'll be going home tonight, just waiting for them to cross the t's and dot the i's.
He's hoping to be released by tonight, and he's being very stubborn.
He refused to take the blood thinner Heparin , he wants to see his primary care physician and his cardiac physician, he doesn't trust Southern Maine Medical Center at all, and Heparin is the drug that has been in the news (link above) a lot lately for possible recalls, and it's the drug that was given to Dennis Quaid's twin babies in an extremely high dose which almost ended their lives.

I was upset about this because my parents did not call any of us kids, my sister had to beg our Mom to tell her where Dad was, and Mom said that's what Dad wanted, he didn't want any of us to know and worry until they knew for sure what had happened to him.
But he's our Daddy ya know?
We love him and worry about him, and not being told how our parents really are, is just as upsetting as hearing how they really are.
We kids need to know this stuff.
I know I live too far away and can't fly back home right now, but I still want to know this stuff, they are my parents.

And I also spent most of the morning dealing with Verizon again.
My phone line last night was all static, my DSL kept going in and out, and when I called tech and repair, they kept telling me the problem was inside my house, my equipment.
Well a repair tech came out here this morning and guess what?
The problem was not on my end, it was in the line up the street, a major telephone line had gotten fried, he repaired it, but I am so sick and tired of Verizon's crappy customer service, they always blame it on my end before they even investigate the problems.
I'm just sick of it.
I pay my bills in full and on time every month, except last month because I was in surgery, but I always pay in full and sometimes Verizon forces me to pay more than my actual bill.
So why the hell do they treat me like crap all the time?!
It's just crappy customer service no matter what the issue is.

I'm tired and worried, and not feeling so well.
I either caught the stomach thing the boys have or I'm just exhausted.
I'm going to go lay down on the couch and watch Iron Man, get some rest, and I'll be back around later on. 

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.

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!

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.

*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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.


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.

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.

Last night after getting home from Chuck E. Cheese for my niece Susan, my insomnia from the night before started to catch up to me.
I found myself sitting here in my chair dozing off several times.
I had been sitting here at like 6:15pm, and when I woke up, it was 8:30pm.
I was supposed to go in to the boy's room and fix the video card settings to show more detail on their games, and get some papers ready for today's medical phone calls.
But I was so tired, I laid down on the couch at like 10-10:30, and that was it, out and down for the count.

The teens slept over my sister's house, so at like 8:20 this morning, I hear this knocking on the door.
It was them, my alarm I had set for 8am never went off, so ooopsy.
They said they had just knocked that one time, so at least they hadn't been out there banging on the door for an hour.
Then as soon as I let them in, fixed the door caterpillar, I then laid back down on the couch and fell asleep again.
I hadn't slept for like 38 hours, so I was way tired, and just needed all that sleep to catch up.
Then when I woke up at 11am, I ran to the corner store for some soda, and then came back to get myself ready for the medical phone calls at 1pm.
I spent about 2 hours on the phone answering questions with the surgical intake nurse, she wasn't able to give me any information on how long I'd be in the hospital, but Doc Moreno or Cindy would be able to answer all of those questions for me later.

Then I tried to catch up some emails and gave up.
I'm not answering any questions for anybody about things that happened a long time ago.
It's over for me, so move on folks, the show's over.
A year ago when I laid out what I was doing, was the time for people to ask questions and get answers, and yanno, maybe even help me, but no one did, so I took care of it, it's done.
I am ok with being called a disgusting human being for not helping others now, it's fine with me, no one helped me when I needed it or asked for it. Call me selfish, call me mean or a moron, and yes, I do know who I emailed recently about something to do with work, so um, yeah, nice try hiding behind the name "anonymous".
Hello! I wasn't born yesterday people.
It's done, over, don't bother emailing me about it now.

I made the call to the lawyer to schedule a time to get the DNR and WILL verified, asked a quick question about something else, he said we can talk about that at the appointment, told me to bring the papers and stuff with me, so I will have all my medical stuff and my other stuff taken care of by next week, or answers at least.

Right now I'm making dinner, some yummy BBQ'd boneless/skinless chicken breast, and some broccoli with cheese, and then I have the dishes to finish up, and a load of laundry to start.
I don't think I have much on the agenda for tomorrow, haven't looked yet, and Google calendar hasn't emailed the daily summary for tomorrow yet, I should get that around midnight.

I know that I do have some work to catch up on.
Due to passing out cold last night, I didn't get all of my work finished, but I did get most of it done.
I only have about 5 or so left, so yeah, I got almost all of them done before going out yesterday.
It's ok with me, I am not late on anything, it's all actually not due until next week, so I'll get it all done by tomorrow, and then take on whatever else they need done.
Ok, time to go check the dinner, later days!

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.

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.

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.

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*

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.