All week, I thought that I was going to have to spend tomorrow in the freezer again at work. Today, my boss informed me that she’s had people doing the work all week so we don’t have to do it at the last minute. Well gee, it would have been nice if I had known that. I guess I can’t complain too much, I was freezing and sore by the time I finished last week, so I’m just as glad I’m not going to be there this week.

I really should be sleeping, but I’m not tired. I guess I have too much on my mind, even though it’ll mean getting scolded next time I see my dear friend. I need to make my son get a job so he can help pay to go to his prom. Especially since he’s now saying I can’t drive him there, he needs a limo. Umm yea, ok, you can pay for that kid. Plus the $100 for the tux. Oh yea, kids are so fun some days.

I’m supposed to be writing, but I guess I’ll just have to focus on getting it done as quickly as possible tomorrow so I can do what I want the rest of the night. At least as quickly as I can and still do a good job. I’ve got a number of things I want to do, and oddly only a few of them have to do with the MUD tomorrow. I’ve been on an exploring kick lately. I just wish I hadn’t lost my book with the directions on how to get places. Of course, some of what I want to do is window shopping or something. Oh yea, and get a computer set up to get my son off my back. Of course he’s not going to have the password because I need some sort of way to control his computer time to coerce him into doing chores around the house. ;0

I realized tonight when I was doing my freelance writing assignment, I’m making it much harder than it needs to be. I really don’t need to stress about anything other than staying on topic, getting the keywords in and hitting the word count. I don’t know why I put it off over and over. Friday I’ll work on the next one I signed up for and I’m just going to relax about this one. I definitely think too much.

In some cases, that’s a good thing though. I read an article today that made me think of something a teacher friend of mine had complained about. She said that she spent so much time teaching to the standardized tests that the government makes the kids take to make sure that the kids learn everything the government thinks they need to learn.

I looked into what the testing is for… reading, math and science. What about art? If I didn’t have art, my writing, my web design.. I wouldn’t feel whole. Reading is great, but if you want to write historical fiction, you need to have a knowledge of history. Without learning about economics, it’s no wonder that more than half of Americans are having problems with their money. They’ve overspent because they haven’t been taught how to budget, either by their parents or the school. Isn’t that what Home-Ec is for? Oh, that’s right, they call it FACS class now (Family and Consumer Science).

What about the sad fact that a lot of Americans (I think the last count was 60%) cannot find Germany (I arbitrarily chose that country) on a map. Let alone cannot list all 50 states. Yet, this plan is supposed to be helping the kids? I don’t see it.

We really need to insist that the government re-evaluate how they are handling this. More money to the schools, positive reinforcement, that’ll go a long way toward helping our kids learn more.

If they want to complain about how the kids who live below the poverty line do not do very well at school, give these kids families money so they don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. Forcing the schools to teach these kids like this is not helping at all.

You’d think that growing up in Vermont, I’d be used to the cold. Yesterday, I worked in the freezer at work, and by the end of the day I was cold. No, more than that, I was COLD.

Which means I didn’t get to read the news yesterday until I got home. I had read on Thursday that the CDC was going to strongly suggest all children under a certain age get the flu vaccine. Umm what if their parents don’t want them to??

One, the flu vaccine is only the version(s) they think is going to be going around this year. Two, people get sick FROM the flu vaccine. Three, with the flu epidemic across the country, there have only been 22 deaths. That is a very small percentage, and most likely those were complications due to the flu.

My heart aches for the family of those who have died, however I feel that there are better ways we can keep our families healthy without resorting to injecting harmful substances in our body. There has been no proof that vaccines do not cause autism, though the federal government would like us to believe otherwise. Even without thimerisol in our vaccines, there are other harmful preservatives in the vaccines. To me, the whole flu vaccination thing is a hoax created to keep the income coming in for the big pharmaceutical companies. Like it isn’t enough that the state of Maryland has forced parents who object to vaccinations to either get their kids vaccinated or go to jail. Umm what about freedom of religeon? What about any other freedoms? What about proving the vaccines actually do what the government says it does BEFORE we inject our kids with this crap? All this is because of money.

That’s like the proposal for Ms. Clinton’s healthcare plan. We have to pay for insurance whether or not we can afford it. Oh yea, that’ll really help… NOT! So if we can’t afford insurance, we get our checks garnished so the big healthcare companies can get their money. Only to have them turn around and say what they will and will not pay for. Yea, ok. I see where this is going, and I do not like it one bit.

I should learn to back my own information up on my local hard drive at work. It’s not like both my laptop and the network hard drive will crash at the same time. Today I had the joy of trying to redo about a week’s worth of work. I have no clue what happened other than a mostly full hard drive crashed last night. Today when I went in to figure out what was missing, I found files from Feb 18 were there, but there were some files missing that I did on Feb 15! Grr! All of this is very frustrating because I’ve worked on this information for this customer for a full year. In the last 2 weeks, I’ve been updating all of the files with the new information. Only to have some of it lost, and some not. I am having to go through everything with a fine tooth comb. The manager of my department says not to worry about it, the IT department is trying to find the rest of the lost data. Yea, like I can chance the wrong information being used in the meantime. I worked on this for a FULL YEAR.

Update routines for work are finally done, so I should be able to get some sleep now. Instead, I think a hot bath and a book sounds like a good plan. I had been counting on a business trip in April to give me some time away, but I found out today that wasn’t going to happen. Yet another reason that I had a crappy day.

I promised my son that I would try to find a time we could take a “weekend” trip to Branson since I can’t send him to his dad’s for spring break. Actually, it’s a good thing I didn’t buy the tickets, he has tennis practice all during spring break. Maybe I should just take myself and the 2 yo? Nah, I promised the older one. He’s the one that’ll enjoy it more. We lived there long enough that it’ll seem nice to be able to visit old friends.

This morning when I was getting her dressed, my daughter told me “I tinkle in my pull-up.” 

 Me: “Where are you supposed to go potty?”

Her: “In my pull-up.”

Me: “No, you’re supposed to go in your big girl potty.  Where are you supposed to go potty?”

 Her: “In my pull up”

And I wonder why potty training her is a losing battle.  Everyone tells me she’ll figure it out eventually.  She’s definitely got my stubborn streak, her brother was trained by the time he was 2.

I promised a dear friend I would try to get to sleep early tonight.  I don’t know what it is, I just can’t relax.  I’m tired, exhausted even.  I really should be asleep.  Instead I’m here with my mind going in circles.

I know that some of my posts have seemed truncated lately.  That’s because I’ve said some not very flattering things about a member of my husband’s family and I decided that I would just delete everything after I posted it.  It makes for a disjointed account of what’s going on. 

I think every family has one person that just doesn’t pull their own weight.  In my family, it’s my uncle.  It was fine when my grandparents had their farm, he helped my grandfather with chores.  After they sold their farm, he just lived off my grandparents even after he turned 40.  He hated the idea of getting a job paying what is starting out pay in northeastern Vermont.  Now that my grandmother has Alzheimer’s and is living with my mom, he’s glad he got a job.  Oddly enough, he got a girlfriend not long after that.

In my husband’s family, there’s 2.  One is his cousin, who is in jail for stealing, then trying to escape.  If you go by his letters, jail time has agreed with him and he’s trying to straighten his life out for once he gets released.  Exactly like this cousin is my sister-in-law.  She hasn’t been caught by the law for much more than child neglect, so she hasn’t had to face the music for her bad choices and refuses to see anything as her fault. Instead, I see her daughter (my neice) suffering.  It breaks my heart. 

Then there’s me.  Some days when I get so bogged down with how much I have to do at work, I long for the simpler days of living with my mom and working part time after I left my ex.  Or maybe I’m just longing for a vacation.  It has been over a year since I took any time off.

Now I’m tired enough to sleep.

Why is it that when my son doesn’t get his own way he just goes in and does what he wants anyway.  He managed to break my cd-r/rw drive.  It makes me mad that he messed with my computer while I was at work today, and he just brushed it off.  He knows what he did, but he keeps saying he doesn’t know what he did to break it. 

 Must not strangle the 16 year old.  I am the type of person that doesn’t like someone else working on my computer.  I have to do everything.  So he goes in and frells it up.  Must not strangle the 16 year old…

 I can’t get the door to go back on the track, so I guess I get to go buy myself another one Friday.  It just makes me so angry at him.  Not that he cares.  I need to find something to ground him from that’ll make an impression on him.

I’ll admit, I’ve been a member of eDiets for about 7 years now.  It was doing me some good for awhile, then I had some personal issues.  Lately, I’ve been getting back into it and getting some major use out of the site.  At least until this week.

 They updated the site, and now it’s hit or miss if I can log in or post.  When I need the support to watch what I’m eating, I get so frustrated with not being able to log in. 

I know there are free sites out there for weight loss.  All of my friends are at eDiets though, so I want to continue to post there.  I guess all I can do is keep trying to log in.

Lately I’ve been reading several blogs by self-proclaimed geeks. 

 So how do you decide if you’re a geek?  I’ve always jokingly referred to myself as a computer geek, but if I go by others’ definitions, I’m not a geek because I don’t work with computers or program with vi (or emacs, depending on which school of thought you belong to).

 I don’t have my A+ or Network+ certs, but I do watch How It’s Made and Mythbusters.  I get most computer jokes.

So am I a geek?  Yes.  I don’t care what anyone else says, I think I am.  That has to count for something.

Lately, my heart has been breaking for my niece.  She adores her mom, yet SIL maybe goes to see her for 30 minutes a day and most of that time is spent on the phone with others.

Now that I’ve said that, I feel more at peace and better able to move on to more important things than the drama in my life.