What prompted this major life change?
Probably the same thing that's behind most major changes, we weren't making it with our current lifestyle. You know the old saying about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? We knew we were at that point and neither one of us was enjoying the stress of paying all our bills and still trying to have a life where we don't turn in to hermits, never get to go on vacation, not be able to retire because just as soon as we save any money, some unemployment, medical emergency, vehicle crisis or other catastrophy heads right for our bank account.
Well, I'm tired of living that way and knew we had to make some drastic changes to our lives to improve them.
How to change our circumstances. Sean and I have always talked about going on road trips and trucking together, he wants to show me the south. I would love to show him the National Parks. Although I don't imagine we can do that in a semi truck. Lol
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Friday, June 4, 2010
Hoist & Shimmy
Well I can't really tell you the last time I hoisted or shimmied myself onto or into anything, but I can tell you the last time I needed to!
Ummm Today?!
For those that may not know already Sean is back to driving a truck and is gone from Monday night to Saturday night. No problem, except that I locked myself out of the house tonight! I couldn't even believe it, I had been in the house twice after I got home from work, even went to the store and back. But apparently after the last time my habit of always locking the door got me in trouble. I didn't even realize it until about an hour later after I had finished playing with the dogs and the chickens, I went to go take the eggs in the house and...
So here I am locked out with no cell phone, my car keys and house key is on the key ring that I distinctly remember tossing on the kitchen floor when I last opened the door. My mind starts racing to figure out what I'm going to do. Sean isn't due home until tomorrow night. I have to be to work tomorrow after noon. I knew that our bathroom window was open a bit, so I went into the dog pen, where the window is located, luckily the dog house is right under the window, so I was able to reach it. It's a pretty small window though, not sure if this is going to work... I got the screen off and got in to my waist, before deciding this was a bad idea. Not only am I going in head first to a 4ft drop, but there is no way my rear will fit through the window. I tried to get a leg up and go feet first, but visions of when I did that to retrieve my keys out of a bear proof dumpster in Flaggstaff went through my head. That didn't work out so well. I went to my only neighbors house to see If I could use their phone but of course they weren't home. I tried the two living room windows but they were locked and I couldn't really reach any of our other windows. I start to think about either walking to the next neighbors house or sleeping in the car. I didn't really want to do either of those things and was thinking of any other windows. I have a ring of bricks outside my bedrrom window and though maybe if I stood on them I could reach it. The screen was harder to get off that one but I did, and after some creative pushing on the glass managed to get that window open. Standing on the bricks though, my head was just at the bottom of the opening. Yeah right, I'm just going to do a pull up to get into the window. HA HA very funny. I remembered I had a folding chair sitting outside the garage and went to get it, after some strategic brick placement, I put the chair on the bricks and climbed up. Nope still only puts me at neck level. I'm trying to think what else I can scrounge up to get me higher into the window, if only I could get into the garage to get out my ladder...
I went to the garage, side door - locked, sliding door - latched. But - I remembered that I hadn't put the lock into the clasp I had merely put the latch over the clasp. Ah ha! I slammed the door back and forth a few times, the latch came undone and I was in! Yay Once I had the ladder what a piece of cake to get in the window. No hoisting or shimmying required just climb right on in. Of course the dogs were looking at me funny - like hey silly why don't you just use the door!
Ummm Today?!
For those that may not know already Sean is back to driving a truck and is gone from Monday night to Saturday night. No problem, except that I locked myself out of the house tonight! I couldn't even believe it, I had been in the house twice after I got home from work, even went to the store and back. But apparently after the last time my habit of always locking the door got me in trouble. I didn't even realize it until about an hour later after I had finished playing with the dogs and the chickens, I went to go take the eggs in the house and...
So here I am locked out with no cell phone, my car keys and house key is on the key ring that I distinctly remember tossing on the kitchen floor when I last opened the door. My mind starts racing to figure out what I'm going to do. Sean isn't due home until tomorrow night. I have to be to work tomorrow after noon. I knew that our bathroom window was open a bit, so I went into the dog pen, where the window is located, luckily the dog house is right under the window, so I was able to reach it. It's a pretty small window though, not sure if this is going to work... I got the screen off and got in to my waist, before deciding this was a bad idea. Not only am I going in head first to a 4ft drop, but there is no way my rear will fit through the window. I tried to get a leg up and go feet first, but visions of when I did that to retrieve my keys out of a bear proof dumpster in Flaggstaff went through my head. That didn't work out so well. I went to my only neighbors house to see If I could use their phone but of course they weren't home. I tried the two living room windows but they were locked and I couldn't really reach any of our other windows. I start to think about either walking to the next neighbors house or sleeping in the car. I didn't really want to do either of those things and was thinking of any other windows. I have a ring of bricks outside my bedrrom window and though maybe if I stood on them I could reach it. The screen was harder to get off that one but I did, and after some creative pushing on the glass managed to get that window open. Standing on the bricks though, my head was just at the bottom of the opening. Yeah right, I'm just going to do a pull up to get into the window. HA HA very funny. I remembered I had a folding chair sitting outside the garage and went to get it, after some strategic brick placement, I put the chair on the bricks and climbed up. Nope still only puts me at neck level. I'm trying to think what else I can scrounge up to get me higher into the window, if only I could get into the garage to get out my ladder...
I went to the garage, side door - locked, sliding door - latched. But - I remembered that I hadn't put the lock into the clasp I had merely put the latch over the clasp. Ah ha! I slammed the door back and forth a few times, the latch came undone and I was in! Yay Once I had the ladder what a piece of cake to get in the window. No hoisting or shimmying required just climb right on in. Of course the dogs were looking at me funny - like hey silly why don't you just use the door!
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Chicken Chronicles
So, I've been telling Diane that 2, maybe 3 of the five chickens are looking like roosters. One of those being the Brown Leghorn that Aric named Julie.
I told her that he may have to re-name it Julio or we could just call it dinner! Any way I took them outside last night while I was planting my two berry bushes. I made them a little makeshift cage and stuck them in. At first they didn't seem to know what to do. I went and got them some food and tossed on the ground to get them to start scratching in the dirt. After they recovered from thinking that the sky was falling and all ran away, they sort of got the hang of the whole dirt thing. The area I was cleaning out for the berries has become a sprout garden. I was raking out 4" thick sections of nothing but sprouts. Dang those tumble weeds. I started uncovering not only a plethora of worms but some grubs or caterpillars too. I was throwing the sprouts in to the chickens so they could dig through them and look for bugs. They mostly just ran away scared (the whole sky is falling thing again). Then I tossed in a couple of the grubs. Again they ran. Julie (Julio) was the first to discover that it was food. (s)he would pick it up and then run around (litteraly like a chicken with it's head cut off) trying to keep her prize away from the other chickens. She would finally get to a 'safe' spot and gobble it up. (no pun intended) After throwing a couple more in, Julie caught on fast. She realized that when I came over I usually had something good and while the other chickens cowered in the corner she would run up and snatch the treat almost as soon as it hit the ground. It was very cute - darn it now I don't want to eat a smart chicken for dinner. I'll try to get video of it to share. I've got to work my butt off over the weekend to get the coop ready. The chickies need to go out! They are very cramped and starting to get very smelly.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Tripod comes home
Of course Shar'rai would get to come home in the middle of the biggest storm of the year. The nurse called and said she did well in surgery and was doing good today and that she could go home at 10:00 this morning.
I went to the admissions desk (first one that you get to when you go in) and asked to pick up my dog. They said I had to go to the billing office for all discharges. Of course. That's how you can't skip out on the bill. You can't even see your dog until billing calls back that you are here. The girl started tallying up the bill. It was only $200 something for the surgery but we still had $100 something from last week that wasn't covered by the credit. She told me the total due and I just stood there. I told her that I could pay her in two weeks when I get my next check. She said no, that wasn't their policy, blah, blah, blah. I told her my story, blah, blah, blah. We went back and forth,
"the dog can't be discharged without payment in full",
"I can't pay in full".
She said she would check with her supervisor, which she did, still, no. I asked her, so what, you're going to keep my dog for two weeks until I can pay? She seemed a bit surprised by that and said no that had never happened. She suggested that we try to up the credit that I had gotten last week. I refused telling her that I hadn't qualified, my sister had and there was no way I was going to try to get more on that. I told her about our conversations with the Dr's on the first day and was really getting confrontational by then. She asked me to sit down while she called the Dr. I told her that was a good idea and she should do that. I went outside to call Sean. told him what was going on and then proceeded to cry in the snow for the next five min. By the time I went back in, the surgeon and the student assigned to her for the stay were at the billing office talking to the girl. I sat down and cried some more. The student saw me and came over. She said she would go get Shar'rai. I told her I didn't want to see Shar'rai if i couldn't take her home, it would just be that much harder. She was surprised by what I had said. The Dr came over and was trying to find out what was wrong. I was crying too much to say anything. They finally got me into an exam room and after a few minutes I told them the whole story. Our first good impressions, conversations, and the subsequent lack of communication regarding the billing practices. The fact that if I couldn't take her home they might as well not bring her out to see me because that would be too difficult to see her and not have her go with me. He too seemed confused when I said that and asked why I would think she wasn't going home today. I told him that's what the girl in the billing office had told me. There was no way I could finish paying the bil today so she said she couldn't discharge Shar'rai. The Dr said there was no way she wasn't going home today and that he would take care of the billing office. I don't know if that means that he got them to go ahead and bill us or if he got the account cleared. I guess we'll see if a bill show up in the next couple of weeks.
They brought Shar'rai out. She's in a t-shirt. It's to help keep her covered from the sun, with 1/2 her body shaved, she could get a nasty sun burn, although not during a blizzard! The Dr helped me load her up in the car and off we went. We picked up Sean form work on the way home and we were able to get her out of the car without too much trouble. We took her to the back stairs because they are not as steep and she managed them quite well. The rest of the day she followed me around the house which tells me that either she's feeling a lot better without her diseased leg, or that she's on some really good pain meds. She hadn't followed me around for weeks because it hurt her so bad. She was laying on her blanket later and we noticed her shirt was pretty wet. We'd been outside for a bathroom break, and while it was raining real good, the wet spot on her shirt didn't look like rain drops. I took it off her and surprise, she had felt so good today and moved around so much that she popped at least three of her staples and was oozing. yay. We bandaged it with some neosporin (never hurts right?) gauze, tape and wrapped it all up with an ace bandage - good thing for first aid kits. We'll see how it looks tomorrow and decide if we need to take her in to get re-stapled.
I went to the admissions desk (first one that you get to when you go in) and asked to pick up my dog. They said I had to go to the billing office for all discharges. Of course. That's how you can't skip out on the bill. You can't even see your dog until billing calls back that you are here. The girl started tallying up the bill. It was only $200 something for the surgery but we still had $100 something from last week that wasn't covered by the credit. She told me the total due and I just stood there. I told her that I could pay her in two weeks when I get my next check. She said no, that wasn't their policy, blah, blah, blah. I told her my story, blah, blah, blah. We went back and forth,
"the dog can't be discharged without payment in full",
"I can't pay in full".
She said she would check with her supervisor, which she did, still, no. I asked her, so what, you're going to keep my dog for two weeks until I can pay? She seemed a bit surprised by that and said no that had never happened. She suggested that we try to up the credit that I had gotten last week. I refused telling her that I hadn't qualified, my sister had and there was no way I was going to try to get more on that. I told her about our conversations with the Dr's on the first day and was really getting confrontational by then. She asked me to sit down while she called the Dr. I told her that was a good idea and she should do that. I went outside to call Sean. told him what was going on and then proceeded to cry in the snow for the next five min. By the time I went back in, the surgeon and the student assigned to her for the stay were at the billing office talking to the girl. I sat down and cried some more. The student saw me and came over. She said she would go get Shar'rai. I told her I didn't want to see Shar'rai if i couldn't take her home, it would just be that much harder. She was surprised by what I had said. The Dr came over and was trying to find out what was wrong. I was crying too much to say anything. They finally got me into an exam room and after a few minutes I told them the whole story. Our first good impressions, conversations, and the subsequent lack of communication regarding the billing practices. The fact that if I couldn't take her home they might as well not bring her out to see me because that would be too difficult to see her and not have her go with me. He too seemed confused when I said that and asked why I would think she wasn't going home today. I told him that's what the girl in the billing office had told me. There was no way I could finish paying the bil today so she said she couldn't discharge Shar'rai. The Dr said there was no way she wasn't going home today and that he would take care of the billing office. I don't know if that means that he got them to go ahead and bill us or if he got the account cleared. I guess we'll see if a bill show up in the next couple of weeks.
They brought Shar'rai out. She's in a t-shirt. It's to help keep her covered from the sun, with 1/2 her body shaved, she could get a nasty sun burn, although not during a blizzard! The Dr helped me load her up in the car and off we went. We picked up Sean form work on the way home and we were able to get her out of the car without too much trouble. We took her to the back stairs because they are not as steep and she managed them quite well. The rest of the day she followed me around the house which tells me that either she's feeling a lot better without her diseased leg, or that she's on some really good pain meds. She hadn't followed me around for weeks because it hurt her so bad. She was laying on her blanket later and we noticed her shirt was pretty wet. We'd been outside for a bathroom break, and while it was raining real good, the wet spot on her shirt didn't look like rain drops. I took it off her and surprise, she had felt so good today and moved around so much that she popped at least three of her staples and was oozing. yay. We bandaged it with some neosporin (never hurts right?) gauze, tape and wrapped it all up with an ace bandage - good thing for first aid kits. We'll see how it looks tomorrow and decide if we need to take her in to get re-stapled.
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