Stress Management

Well, Lewiston has a population of about 31,000, which makes it a big city by Idaho's standards.

I finally sat down and figured out my budget for next year and it's going to cost me between $400-$500 a month for gas to drive back & forth to school. The pizza place is definitely going to close when I go back to school, which is a $300 hit and then in March, when The Boy turns 16, my income will go down drastically because I'll no longer get Social Security benefits. Which means there is no way I can afford to drive 150 miles to school & back. Even though my rent will be $200-$350 more a month, I'll save on gas & be able to find another job if necessary.

The Boy took it pretty good, although that could be because his best friend spends his summers with his out-of-state grandparents. He's been occupying himself by playing X-Box live all night and sleeping all day. This morning I got up at 4:30 AM to get ready for work and he was still up. Since the only air conditioner we have is in my bedroom and the average temp. of the apartment is 80*F, this kind of works out for him. He sleeps in my room and gets up when about the time I either get home from work or am ready to reclaim my room to watch TV.

He has come up with a new plan for his future that is pretty laughable. He first wanted me to homeschool him again, but I refused on the basis of a) no time and b) he needs the social interaction. So his next plan was to go to school next year, then drop out, get his GED, and work at Albertson's. He has an on-line friend who is making $600 a month working at a grocery store and to my poor naive child this seems like an enormous amount of money. Especially if he's living at home, where I pay all the bills, and all he has to spend it on is video games and X-Box points. I told him that we would talk about it next year.

If he really truly cannot deal with public school, I'll probably enroll him in I-Succeed, which is a charter on-line school. I'd rather have him in public school and I'm hoping in a larger school district, with more than 2-3 teachers, his quirks will be diluted enough that they won't get so tired of him.

The more they assume you're going to do for them. When I started working at the pizza place last year I met one of my late husband's third cousins, an 82 year old man named Carl. Carl has been such an asshole to his family that none of them will have anything to do with him, although for the most part he's no better or worse than any other old man I've met and I didn't object when he started telling people I was his cousin. I should have.

Last winter he had heart surgery and spent a month in the hospital. When he came home I picked up groceries for him when I was shopping and brought him meals a couple of times. Then he had his hip replaced and while he was in the hospital he moved across the hall into a wheel-chair accessible apartment. He paid me to clean the apartment & arrange his things, plus I paid his bills while he was gone. When he got home I came around every other week & vacuumed, mopped and did his laundry.

Last month he went in and had his knee replaced. I'm currently paying his bills, visiting him twice a week, and I deep cleaned his apt. & steam-cleaned his rugs (the previous renters had untrained animals). I told him Monday that I wasn't going to be doing anymore cleaning after this, that he would need to check into home health care. Which he did, and while medicaid/medicare will pay for most of it, he'll half to cough up a percentage of the cost & he says he can't afford it. So he's telling everyone that when he comes home next week I'll be helping him with his bathing and other shit.

Like hell I will. I don't like old people. I don't like sick people. And I don't like men. And while I totally hate confrontation, Saturday I'm going to let him know in very plain English that I am NOT going to be his caretaker, ever.

[X] the dark - if I'm alone
[ ] staying single forever
[ ] being a parent
[ ] giving birth
[ ] being myself in front of others
[ ] open spaces
[X] closed spaces
[ ] heights
[X] dogs
[ ] birds
[ ] fish
[X] spiders
[ ] flowers or other plants
[ ] being touched
[ ] fire
[ ] deep water
[ ] snakes
[ ] silk
[ ] the ocean
[X] failure
[ ] success
[ ] thunder/lightning
[ ] frogs/toads
[ ] my significant others's dad
[ ] my significant other's mom
[X] rats
[X] jumping from high places
[ ] snow
[ ] rain
[ ] wind
[ ] crossing hanging bridges
[ ] death
[ ] heaven
[ ] being robbed
[X] falling
[ ] clowns
[ ] dolls
[X] large crowds of people
[X] men
[ ] women
[ ] having great responsibilities
[ ] doctors, including dentists
[ ] tornadoes
[ ] hurricanes
[ ] incurable diseases
[ ] sharks
[ ] Friday the 13th
[ ] ghosts
[ ] poverty
[ ] Halloween
[ ] school
[ ] trains
[ ] odd numbers
[ ] even numbers
[ ] being alone
[ ] becoming blind
[ ] becoming deaf
[ ] growing up
[X] creepy noises in the night
[ ] bee stings
[ ] not accomplishing my dreams/goals
[ ] needles
[ ] blood
[ ] dinosaurs
[ ] the welcome mat
[ ] high speed
[ ] throwing up
[ ] falling in love
[ ] super secrets

TOTAL: 11

If you wish to post this in your journal, it's been requested that you title it "I'm afraid of __ out of 72 common fears".

I would open an Internet cafe that served 7" pizzas, 7" flatbread wraps, soups, and salads. It would look open and inviting, but professional, catering mostly to single diners, so most of the tables would be for 1-2 people. I would have 3-4 desktop stations, rentable laptops, and a nook with comfortable chairs and endtables. I think I would name it Mindwire Weippe (wee-ipe).

I actually want to do this when I graduate. I think if I combined it with a computer repair shop I would make enough to hire kitchen help and make a profit. I wouldn't get rich, but I would be able to stay in Weippe and make a comfortable and enjoyable living. Which is more important than being rich.

How do people keep from getting speeding tickets without cruise control? I'm running errands after work for a friend, so I took his car. Not only does it not have cruise control, it's a stick shift. UGH. I spent the entire 2 hours trying to keep the car at the same speed and remembering to shift.

Like all good churches, ours is infested with Church Ladies who forward every stupid feel-good story and moronic urban legend they find. And, like all good rural, redneck Idaho churches, these Ladies are hard-core Republicans who think God consults Bush on a regular basis.

For the last couple of years I have made it my mission to reply to any urban legend forwards with a link to Snopes. I use to hit reply to all, so that everyone who got the e-mail originally would get the corrected version. However, my pastor taught the Church Ladies how to blind carbon copy, and now I can just reply to the sender.

A couple of weeks ago I was hit with some anti-Obama shit and sent the Snopes links along with a few words of my own. I no longer get e-mails from three of the Ladies who were forwarding stuff to me. Tonight I got one from a couple others about the founder of Conocco sending out an e-mail blaming the Democrats for the high gas prices and warning that if we elect Barack Hussein Obama it will just get worse. Since Snopes had it listed as undetermined, I looked up the 2008 profits for ConoccoPhillips and sent that link, with a reply that I thought his argument was bs and if the Republicans had wanted to do something about the gas prices it would have been done. Only longer and a bit harsher.

By November I will probably be dropped from all the Church Lady e-mail lists. So Sad.

I made a Spicy Hawaiian pizza today. I added pepper jack cheese, green peppers, and a teaspoon of finely diced jalepeno peppers to a regular Hawaiian and it was really good. I think I'll put it on the menu tomorrow as our Pizza Special. Probably won't get very many takers, but who knows, maybe someone will have a hankering for a sweet & spicy pizza.

I went to see Prince Caspian today and was pretty disappointed. The movie does not follow the book very much. I wondered when the actor playing the prince was a young adult instead of the boy depicted in the book. If I hadn't spent my childhood reading the Chronicles of Narnia over & over, I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more. I kind of hate seeing movies based on books I love. It's one thing when the movie doesn't match the pictures that play in my head while I'm reading, but it totally sucks when it doesn't even play the same story.

I just watched Mario Batali make rice-crusted scallops and I want them sooooo bad. I love scallops, but if they're not cooked right, they totally suck. I was gifted with a bag of frozen scallops that keep turning into rubber every time I saute them in garlic butter. This week's Top Chef episode clued me into the fact that frozen scallops are not a good thing. One of the posters in the "Baked it, Burned it, Boiled it" thread at TWoP sent me to a scallop recipe by Ina from The Food Network that she says is very good. I'm going to try it and if it's not that good, I'm making soup out of the rest of them. I'm thinking that frozen isn't going to be a problem for soup.

Of course, tonight for dinner I had a bowl of Cheerios, air-popped popcorn with real butter, and a can of store brand creme soda. But yesterday I had vegetarian taco soup using dried black beans, pinto beans, white (?) beans, 2 kinds of lentils and long grain rice cooked in the crock-pot. I love my crock-pot.

This is the sequel to Summer Jobs http://nysha63.livejournal.com/64291.html
( Ryan’s First Day )

I was reading the NY Times on-line and came across an article about at tech-centric cartoon, so I clicked on the link and have spent the last 7 hours reading every cartoon. All 428 of them. I'm such a geek.

http://xkcd.com/428/#

Just not this week. Schools out for the summer (imagine The Boy playing Guitar Hero and screwing up b/c his weird mom is rocking out in the doorway.) After going to school 4 days a week and working the other three for the last 6 months, I decided I was due some time off. I'm working 2 days a week in the computer lab at school & 2 days a week at the restaurant so at some point I'll have 4 days off in a row. Just not this week. This week I'm subbing for 2 people who are on vacation, so I'm working Mon-Thur at school & Fri-Sun at the pizza place. Daughter #2 is coming down this weekend & my house is totally trashed. It's 80*F in here and I'm finding it impossible to rustle up the energy to clean. This morning I woke up at 3 AM and played on the computer, but I think tomorrow I'll get up and do some cleaning. As long as I don't run the vacuum cleaner it shouldn't wake The Boy, who has school for another 3 weeks.

I think there is something wrong with my router. My wireless internet connection keeps crapping out on both my laptop & The Boy's desktop, but only in the bedroom. If I'm in the living room (next to the router) I don't have any problems. I thought maybe I was getting interference from the cordless phone (since the base is in my room) and/or the wireless XBox controller, but we've had these things for several months and the problem started a couple of weeks ago. Technically, I should know what the problem is, but my brain is on strike until it gets a break, so it'll be next week before I try troubleshoot and hopefully fix things.

I ended up doing my power point presentation on form factors and managed to have 34 slides, out of a min. of 30. I think I did a pretty good job and I've gotten some good feedback from the other students.

Some of the other presentations were really interesting. One student grew up in a port city in Russia and posted some very beautiful pictures. There was one on Pepsi deliveries, darts, and alternative fuels. The things people are interested in are just plain facinating.

I did both my persuasive speech (sucked!) and my entertainment speech (rocked!) last night. I figured it would be easier to get people in the door just once and give them both speeches than to give them one night last week & one night this week. General consensus was the persuasive speech was much better than my informative speech; I was more relaxed and used a bullet point outline instead of detailed notes, so I wasn't reading the speech or losing my place. The entertainment speech was a hit, though. I did a tongue-in-check speech about how the key to a great life was to live it on the internet. I had a power point presentation and a couple of other visual aids and since nothing I said was important, if I lost my train of thought I could just make something up until I found my spot on the outline. Plus it was 4:53 minutes long, which is the closest I've come to the 5 minute cutoff.

My next 'speech' is actually a power point presentation that will be presented on-line for peer review. Since I won't be able to talk, every thing will have to be spelled out in the slide show. The only guidelines are in the min/max number of slides I have to use. I'm thinking about using the general outline of the term paper I wrote for English last year on foster care and update the statistics and stuff. It's hard to believe there's only 3 weeks of school left.

AND, my house is rented, to someone who is moving here from Iowa and didn't bat an eye at the $600 rent (plus $200 to hold it until May 1st, $600 deposit, & $250 for propane). He told the rental manager that if his wife likes it when she comes, they'll probably make an offer. Even if they don't, by June I'll have the repair bills paid off, so the rent can be applied toward my house payment, plus I won't be forking out $350 a month for gas to go to school, which will certainly help the finances.

Insomnia struck at 3 AM last night, so when class got out early I came home and took a 2 hour nap. Now I'm not really tired, but if I don't go to bed, I won't want to get up at 5:30 AM. Actually, I never want to get up at 5:30 AM, but Mon-Thur it's kind of mandatory.

I've had two people friend me in the last 2 weeks & when I went to click on their journals to find out who they are, they've been suspended.

I had to give my speech twice. Appparently the 5 minute rule was unbreakable because the video had to be uploaded to Photobucket and there's a 5 minute limit. The second speech was probably better in some ways. I did note cards, so there was no reading from my script. But I also only got through about half of it. 4 1/2 minutes is not a very long time to talk about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.

FYI: If you're pregnant or trying to get pregnant DON'T DRINK ALCOHOL.

No safe time. No safe amount. No safe alcohol during pregnancy. PERIOD

Well, I typed a long lecture about this, but I hit the wrong key and accidently deleted it all. Lucky you. I'll get off my soapbox and go to bed. But, this is really important to me because the birth mother of 3 of my children drank and the mother to the other 2 is schizophrenic and took prescribed anti-psychotic meds. It's a life sentence for kids with no cure, but it's 100% preventable. Ah hell, you got the lecture anyway. Sorry.

3 more to go. I skipped school yesterday because I hadn't finished my speech, which I gave at 7 PM last night. I skipped school today because I haven't studied for the yesterday's test, which is what I'm doing now. Sort of. I've got half my flash cards memorized, so I'm taking a break.

I'm not going to get a very good grade on my speech. I waited until the last minute to gather my visual aids, which didn't give me time if they weren't immediately available. Which several of them weren't. I also printed out the text of the speech instead of just the outline and ended up reading more than I should have. Plus, I went over by 1.36 minutes. My audience, however, liked the speech and thought I did a very good job. I fed them dinner and we spent the better part of an hour discussing Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, which was the topic of my speech, so I consider that part a success.

I made Shake 'n Bake chicken strips, Gazpacho Salad, and a citrus-heavy fruit salad with oranges, blood oranges, tangerines, honey tangerines, tangelos, and clementines, plus grapes and mangos. There wasn't as much fruit salad as I thought we needed, so I also had a cantaloupe, which was very sweet and juicy.

So the lesson for today is: If possible, always give speeches in front of people who really, really like your cooking.

nysha63 is poisonous! Induce vomitting if ingested.

N POISON

Username:

From Go-Quiz.com

And my car hates me. I have a knocking noise that could be the muffler or could be the engine, I had a flat tire a couple of weeks ago and found out that my car needed the front end aligned - which voided the warranty and I had to get 4 used tires because I haven't paid off my Les Schwab bill yet, someone backed into my car and dented the spare tire rim which ruined the tire (and rim), I got locked out twice in one day and now have to keep a window rolled down whenever it's parked, and this morning a fucking deer jumped into the side of the damn thing and ripped off the rear-view mirror and dented the shit out of the passenger side.

I have a speech due on Monday, 4 chapters on Vista this week, bills out my ears, and my car is falling apart. I'd start to panic, but I kind of remember having the same overwhelming, Oh-God-I'm-Gonna-Die feeling last year about this time. It's a combination of school stress and long winter with not enough sunshine. And of course this year, no freaking money. I keep reminding myself that this is totally self-inflicted and won't last forever. Eventually, the house will sell, I will get a real job, and I will graduate. Although, maybe not in that order.

We had a Prime Rib dinner special at the pizza place for Easter and my boss made Jello cake for dessert. This is the second time she's made it and I'm totally in love with it. Normally, I don't like cake, but this is so smooth and soft and good that it's less cake and more like heaven. The best part is that, even though we sold all 8 prime ribs, she had to make a whole cake and 8 pieces were only about a third. She took a third and gave me the rest to take home. I've had cake for breakfast every morning this week.

Last year I traded cars with Son #1. He got my 2002 Chevy Impala and I got his 1999 Suzuki Vitara/Vitari, because I knew I would need the 4-wheel drive. The car was a repo and Son #1 didn't make them give him a door key. Which, since I don't lock it has never been a problem. Until now. Last week I went to go to the laundromat and the doors were locked. The Boy had gotten groceries out of the car the night before, so I was all set to shout a bit about locking the doors, especially after I shelled out $60 for the locksmith to let me in. Except that the doors locked themselves at the laundromat and I could hear the locks clicking. After shelling out another $60, I unplugged the master lock from the driver's door and figured everything was fine. This morning as I was headed into school, the damn things locked themselves. After jumping out of my skin & wondering if my car had turned into a Stephen King villain, I decided I'd better leave a window open a bit so I could unlock it after school. Would have worked great if I were about a foot taller or brought a stool. Thank god for tall school mates who only laugh a little and then do what I ask.

01. What is your name?........ Denise
02. 4 letter word:............ Damn
03. Vehicle: ................. Dodge
04. City: .................... Denver
05. Boy Name: ................ Donovan
06. Girl Name: ............... Daria
07. Dog Name:................. Dusy
08. Occupation: .............. Dog Catcher
09. Something you wear:....... Dress
10. Celebrity: ............... Drew Carey
11. Food: .................... Doritos
12. Found in a bathroom:...... DooDoo
13. Reason for Being Late .... Drove too fast, got stopped by a cop
14. Cartoon .................. Doonesbury
15. Something you shout....... Dammit, anyway
16. Animal.................... Donkey
17. Body part................. Duodenum
18. Word to describe you...... Dorky