So we looked outside around 11 and saw a floral ahop van in the parking lot. It looked like they were landscaping the front area.

I went outside at lunch and they really need to learn how to landscape. There was still grass and weeds growing in the area. They barely touched the plants.

They should have at least put mulch down to kill off the grass.  Instead it looks like someone half worked on it.

On a brighter note, there have been more donations for tornado relief – $1 mil from Kevin Durant, another $1mil from the Thunder franchise itself, $2.5mil from both Chesapeake Energy and Continental Resources. Plus I’ve heard of donations from Devon Energy and Koch Industries. The community is stepping up in a way that’s truly heartwarming.

So I may not always like the company I work for, but they do try.

We just got an internal email, they’re donating $10,000 to the Red Cross, and bringing  about 30 cases of food to Moore today. The food they’re bringing doesn’t need to be cooked, and I’m sure it’ll go fast.

They also said they’ll coordinate other food donations as-needed and have boxes in the facilities here to allow for employee donations.

Then I got a call from my daughter’s school that the NW chapter of the FFA is collecting donations for water, toiletries and canned goods at the old Wal-Mart between 2:30 and 3 today.

I started to get irritated this morning.  I reached my year at my new job, and promptly lost 12 hours of vacation time. I got my new 2 weeks, but they only rolled over 40 of the 52 hours I still had from last year.

My boss is seeing what can be done, but I’m irritated because no one told me they changed the policy on how much vacation time can roll over.  Heck, I can’t sell my time, and if I take a week off, I’ll come back to more work than I can handle.  That is, if some of the people I work with don’t have a coronary because I’m going to be gone.

It just seems like such a minor irritation now.

Two schools gone.  I still haven’t heard anything about how many kids have been found. At least fifty-one dead.

Cars piled up in front of one of the hospitals in the area.  Cars stuck on the interstate that were smashed against the retaining walls.

Kinda puts it all in perspective, doesn’t it?

I’ve been thinking of a song tonight… it goes ‘count your blessings, name them one by one’ – It helps you see the good.

My heart goes out to the families in Moore, tonight.  My heart aches, and my eyes are wanting to leak.

Laterness & g’night.

I’ve been doing some looking back with my birthday tomorrow. I was thinking last night, how I always put an emphasis on the day. I used it as a deadline for things I wanted – for someone to ask me out, for a job or to hear back from the college of my choice.

None of it was very important, though I thought it was at the time. It’s not even anything I’very done in 23 years. But it has had a profound effect on my life.

It’s because of this mindset that I first dated my ex husband. I didn’t have a date on my birthday, so I called him and asked him out.

If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have my oldest and I can’t imagine my life without him. I wouldn’t change a thing now, even though I didn’t get a chance to do much when I was younger.

So, the last few weeks I’ve been refinishing our kitchen cabinets with a heat gun and a scraper.  It’s not horrid, but it’s not the most fun thing in the world.

Hubby’s grandfather was there when I started working on Sunday and asked why I didn’t send the pieces home with him so he could take his belt sander to him.

Oops.  I guess I just hadn’t thought of it.  I have plenty of other things to do, so I sent the pieces home with him.  Let’s just hope I remember how to put it together again come time to put the cabinet back up.

Next is to decide if I want to work in the kitchen or bathroom.  Both need a ton of work.  We’re wanting to replace the bathroom sink because it takes too much space, but I’m not sure we can buy the one we want right now.  I need to look at Lowe’s on Saturday.

So, tonight I confronted someone at work who has been making my life miserable.  She’s had this attitude, and then turned around and complained that another girl and I were doing what she does— whisper, whisper, whisper.

Maybe we are, but it’s complaining about her behavior, that no one will do anything about.  My new boss doesn’t want to rock the boat, and no one else seems to think it’s an issue if we have to put an ear plug in one ear to hear on our conference calls.

Ok, maybe I’m still a bit frustrated with the situation.  Oh, and I’ve got a pounding headache tonight.

One bright spot, since hubby has a good job, and since we’re going to have the house paid off this summer, and hopefully have the van paid off soon after, and a new(er) vehicle for hubby and have that paid off… then I can stay home with the kids.

I remember wanting to do that so bad with my oldest.  I really wanted to spend more time with him when he was younger.

I’d love to be able to do it with my younger 2.

We’ll see.  Depending on how much we can get paid off, how frugal we can be, how cheaply we can replace hubby’s truck and still get one that works and I don’t have to worry about it leaving him on the side of the road like his current one has done several times in the last 6 months.  Not to mention the new rims I just had to buy because he managed to split one of the last set, and you can’t buy a single rim around here.

I honestly can’t think of a title tonight.  It’s been a rough few months, and I’m just at a loss.

It’s great that we have a house and will have it paid off by August.  That was one of my dreams, to own a house free and clear.  A dear friend of mine said it just wasn’t the way things worked.  Of course, it wasn’t in the plan that we buy a house we can’t live in.

It’s great we have a place to stay while we’re trying to get our house fixed up.  I wish I had more time to work on it.  I’ve got so much that needs done, and I find other things to do instead.  Maybe the idea would be to finish Yoga early, get my laundry done and go there and work a bit.  We have a few more king studs to do, & some major refinishing for the cupboards.

I guess I’m just discouraged because we start getting close to getting the money saved for the work we have to pay for, and then something comes up.  My car breaks down and it’s spend all our savings or buy a new one.  Hubby’s truck breaks down and it’s another chunk out of our savings.  Then we start saving again… and hubby’s truck breaks down again.  Let’s not even take into account the electrical issue with my new vehicle… lights coming on for a few minutes or a few days and going off again, issues with the power door locks, issues with the power windows.

And with everything else, work stress.  They’re dividing the department.  No, they’re not dividing the sub-department, just the bigger division.  No, they’re actually dividing the department into four sections.  Oh, we have this person over here whose job it is to be sure that all of the sections talk to each other so there aren’t any problems with the division.  Oh, well one section is moving to the plants, separated so one is at each plant.

Feelings are running high at work.  People are resenting the change and making it difficult for those of us who just want to do our jobs.  Plus, though I have someone to help me now, I’m still having to train people on the parts of my job that they took over.  And I have to train the person to help me.  And I have to participate in 10000000000000 conference calls where we discuss new projects or things that some people aren’t willing to change and are talking to the rest of us as if we’re stupid because it worked well that way for 17 years so it must be the exact way we should continue to do things, even though the other regions did things a different way for 17 years and it’s much easier and doesn’t take nearly as long to do.

And all the time I just want to be spending more time with my kids and less time dealing with the stress of the job.  More time at home and less time at work while everyone else is eating dinner because this project absolutely has to be done asap.  The project is HOT, never mind that we don’t have all of the information, and we have to scramble to track everything down.

Is it any wonder that all I’m wanting to do lately is sleep?

My blessings – yea, I need to count those.

1. I have a job.  I might hate it, but I have the income.

2. We have a place to live.  We might be dealing with a 12 year old who likes to boss my 8 year old around, but we have a roof over our heads.

3. We own a house, we owe less than $2k on it now.  If it weren’t for needing to buy new rims for hubby’s truck, we’d be able to pay it off any time we wanted.

4. We have working vehicles.

5. Hubby has a job.  He’s been working at a ‘real’ job for the last 10 months, and his boss appreciates his work ethic.

6. I get boy and girl hugs every day.  I get giggles and kisses and I have a 4 year old who reminds me of his big brother.  I never know what he’s going to say next.

7. I can talk to my family in FL.  I tend to be short on RL friends.  It’s nice to be able to call and ask advice.  I miss them like crazy, but I guess there’s a reason that I’m still in OK.

So I’m suspecting my laptop is on its last legs. It started when Chrome was installed – an occasional blue screen of death. They went from occasional to weekly to daily.

I uninstalled Chrome and went from daily occurrences of the BSOD back to occasional occurrences. But they’re slowly increasing in frequency. I’m trying to baby the computer until the house is done, so if you don’t see me online as much, that’s why. This weekend I’ll do another defrag and a virus scan. Then maybe a scan disk to see if there are any obviously bad sectors.

It’ll be a fun weekend. Jealous?

I splurged yesterday and bought two things that will make my life a whole lot easier while working on the house.

The first might be obvious.  I decided that I was making enough trips with the banana box full of leaves and branches that I’d do well to get a garden cart instead.  That will make things so much easier as I continue to clean the front yard.

The second isn’t going to be as obvious because I haven’t said a lot about the other work I’m doing.  The kitchen cabinets were all wood, and were in very good condition, though they were filthy like the rest of the house. I bought sand paper and was using a multi tool to take the paint off the cabinets.  Of course, it was taking over 3 hours for 1 square foot, so I needed something easier.

Yesterday I bought a heat gun.  I couldn’t find mine in storage.  Let me tell you, I got so much done in an hour that I really think I’m going to be able to refinish those cabinets so much faster.  Some of the parts I’m going to have to replace, but the rest I’ll be able to sand and varnish and they’ll turn out exactly like I’m wanting.  Once the wall is in, I’ll put them in and they’ll be gorgeous.

With the paint gun, I”ll be able to refinish the wood cabinets in both bathrooms as well.  My next splurge is going to be a shop vac so I can get some of the debris cleaned up before we start putting in walls.  It’s still going to be awhile before I need to do that.

Oh, and my so-called tulips?  I should have looked more closely at the leaves, they were gorgeous yellow daffodils.  I’ll have to see if I get more blooms, so I can post a good picture.  I still have a number of bunches of leaves that I can’t figure out what they are – especially since there aren’t any flowers yet, and some flowers that remind me of hyacinth, but with fewer blossoms on the stems.

My husband has been working 7 days a week since the last big snow storm came through.  That makes it hard for him to make any progress on the house, so I stepped up.  It’s not that I didn’t know what needed to be done or how to do it, I was leaving it to him because he wanted to do it, and it saved the arguments.

Saturday, I finished sawing out an area so I could put in the next king stud.   I don’t remember if I talked about these before, they’re a 2×4 that goes from the floor to the ceiling and is flush on either side of a door or window.  I think they’re for safety, like the headers, which are 2 – 2×12 pieces of board sandwiching a piece of plywood which goes above the door or window.  Since there weren’t any walls when we bought the house, we need to add these so the house will pass inspection.

I also put up the last 4′ of wall that my husband had put together but hadn’t put in.

I didn’t get that much done, but I had only 2 hours to work, since I had to do it around the rest of my normal Saturday errands.  I think this weekend, I’ll skip everything except for the laundry and bank runs so I have more time to work.  The only thing I’ll miss is yoga.  I’ll explain to the instructor tomorrow.

It’s also supposed to be in the 80’s this weekend, so I can do some outside and some inside. Or if my husband has Sunday off, I can work inside the house on Saturday and outside of it on Sunday while he’s working inside.

And as I type that, I remember the consignment sale I’m supposed to go to on Saturday as well. It’s an inexpensive way to get clothes for the kids, or at least my daughter.  Last fall, I got a couple of pretty dresses for $5 each.  You can’t beat that price.

On that note, it’s late and I’m tired.  I think that’s why I’m forgetting things like the consignment sale.

Laterness & g’nite.