A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

I used to enjoy Christmas very much. Now, I kind of dread it. I still like decorating and having fun with the family, but the whole gift giving thing just stresses me out. I keep telling myself that I’m going to start knitting or something so that I can make gifts instead of buying them for most of the people on my list, but it hasn’t happened yet.

We had planned to go Christmas shopping today, but I’m pretty sick and Hubby is tired and has a pulled muscle in his leg. So instead, we’re sitting around the house all day. I was sort of looking forward to going, since Hubby and I both just got paid and we might actually have a little money to spend, but in a way I’m relieved. Still, I know that if we don’t do it now, we’ll just have to do it later.

Hubby insists that he’s going to buy me something this year. I keep telling him not to, but he keeps insisting. So I guess I’ll have to buy him something too. It’s not that I don’t want to get him a gift – he deserves the most awesome gift in the world. But we really can’t afford to buy much, and I’d rather just spend what little we do have on Pumpkin and a little something for everyone else.

Oh well. At least I’m reasonably sure that he’s not going to spend a lot of money on me. I don’t think I’ll have to run out and buy mounts for that Plasma TV I keep telling him I’d like to have. I just wish I knew what he had in mind. Maybe there’s still time to talk him out of it.

Things are looking a bit better than they were when I wrote my last post. Far from perfect, but better. I still don’t feel comfortable writing about what happened, and I don’t know if I ever will. Maybe someday.

I’m still under a great deal of stress. Maybe not quite as much as I was a few days ago – I guess instead of feeling like the weight of the world is on my shoulders, it feels more like a giant kettlebell now. At least it’s an improvement. And at least I’ve been able to get some writing done. I’m still behind, though.

I just hope things can get back to normal for my family now. Or better than normal. Whatever, as long as it’s not like it has been lately.

My husband is a great guy, but sometimes he drives me nuts. Especially when he gets fed up with his job and won’t listen to me when I tell him to look for something else.

We’ve been down this road enough times that I know what to expect. A job starts getting on his nerves, and he says he’s going to quit. I remind him that he needs to find another job first, and he says he will. Then he doesn’t even bother looking for anything else.

The problems keep building and building, until it’s so bad he can’t take it any more. Yet again I remind him that he needs to find another job before he quits the one he’s at, and yet again he says he will. Then he finally starts looking, and settles for the first thing he finds, even if it’s really not much of anything at all. This is how he ended up working for a guy who offered him a full-time job, worked insane amounts of overtime for a couple of weeks, and then disappeared and wouldn’t return Hubby’s calls.

It makes me so nervous when this kind of thing happens. I know that he means well, and that he wouldn’t intentionally do anything to put us in a bind, but he needs to start thinking ahead. If he would, he could find a decent job instead of ending up grasping at straws.

It’s hard enough for him to find a job that suits him. He doesn’t have any licensing or certifications that would help him find anything that pays really well. And besides that, he is really picky about what kinds of jobs he will tolerate. He worked in a factory for a while, but I know that he would go stir crazy if he had to stare at a rackmount LCD screen for a living again.

I’ve gotten mad and told him that he needs to just do whatever it takes to support his family, but I also know what it’s like to be stuck in a job you hate. It makes life miserable, and in most cases it ends up badly. All I can do is just keep after him to look for something else and hope it sinks in. Because the way the job market is right now, he won’t be able to find a job at a moment’s notice.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I was already starting on my Christmas shopping, thanks to some free stuff I’ve scored. The only problem is that I’m running out of people to give it to!

My mom’s gift is already taken care of. The only other adults on my list are Hubby and his parents and brothers. He said he was just going to buy everyone in his family cigarettes, because they’re always bumming for them. Now, I’ve got a free photo book offer that I need to redeem, and I can’t figure out who to give it to. Hubby wouldn’t appreciate it, and I doubt my siblings and I will be exchanging gifts. We quit doing that a couple of years ago, when they stopped taking frequent Orlando vacations due to budget concerns. So I’m thinking about just getting one made for myself.

It’s not like I haven’t done it before. The one year when Hubby and I did pretty well for ourselves, I bought myself a stereo for Christmas. I wanted one, and he wasn’t going to shell out for it, so I decided I might as well go for it. I think I at least deserve a photo book this year, especially if it’s free.

I’ve also got some gift certificates for photo canvases that I need to distribute. I think I might have found one taker, but there are still four more left. Hmm, maybe I’ll have a giveaway. Stay tuned if you’re interested!

Over the weekend, I installed Windows 7 on my computer. I received my copy two weeks ago through House Party, but I hadn’t gotten up the nerve to install it until this past Saturday evening. I wanted to do a clean install, because I was running 32-bit Vista but wanted to use the 64-bit version of 7. I was very concerned about doing that, though, because (1) I wasn’t sure whether or not my computer was equipped for it, and (2) I was afraid that I wouldn’t get all of my data backed up.

Well, I finally found out that my computer is perfectly capable of handling a 64-bit operating system. So all that was left to do was take a deep breath and start backing up those files. I dug out some blank DVDs and got to work. I saved all of my writing files, my Firefox bookmarks, my MP3s, and (I thought) my photos. And there were a few other things. I ended up with two DVDs full of files, so I figured I couldn’t have needed much more than that.

I crossed my fingers and started the installation, and it was quick and painless. I started playing around with the new OS to see what it could do, both out of curiosity and a desire to get prepared for my party. I was happy. That is, until I went to retrieve my photos from the DVD… and found that only about 20 of them were there!

I had saved the Pictures folder from my account, and as it turned out, most of my pictures were saved under the Public folder. I nearly fainted, and then almost cried. I had already lost two years’ worth of photos when making the transition from my old computer to the new one, and now this. I was terribly upset. I think I instantly aged about 10 years. I thought about going out and buying some wrinkle cream.

But last night, it occurred to me to poke around in the Windows.old folder. I had already discovered it, but thought it was just a backup of my program files. But as it turned out, all of my photos were right there, safe and sound. Can you say relief?

I’ve never been Microsoft’s biggest fan, but I have had Windows on every computer I’ve ever owned (except for my old Commodore 64, of course). And I’m eternally indebted to them for saving me from my stupid mistake by writing the code that created that Windows.old folder and put my prized photographs in it. I’m really enjoying Windows 7, too. I’ll post a full review very soon.

It has been a long week. I’ve been trying desperately to get caught up from when I had the flu, but it hasn’t been going well. I spent the weekend struggling to finish a report that should have taken no more than a day to complete. I was concentrating reasonably well (for me anyway), but I had the worst case of writer’s block I’ve had in a long time. I ended up in tears on several occasions, but I forced myself to keep trying.

I finally finished that up, but I’m still way behind. I don’t think the best HGH releasers in the world could give me enough energy to get this stuff done as quickly as I need to. I know they couldn’t, because I should have had it all done days ago.

Has anybody out there figured out how to turn back time? Cuz I could stand to go back about a week. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about getting all this done in time to get ready for Pumpkin’s birthday party. It’s going to be another interesting week, to say the least. So if you don’t hear from me for a few days (or longer), you know what’s up.

My brother and his wife returned from Pennsylvania a couple of days ago. My mom called me to let me know they got back, and that things went okay. They won’t know much about her prognosis until she goes back for a checkup, though.

She had to stay in her room for four days because of the radiation thingie they put on her eye. Apparently it made her rather weak, because my brother was doing the housework and helping her take care of herself. Of course he treats her like a queen anyway, so maybe she’s not feeling as bad as I imagined.

I hope everything turns out okay. It’s not like she has severe mesothelioma or anything – it’s unlikely that anything worse than losing her eye would become of it. But that would certainly be bad enough. I know I wouldn’t be happy about that possibility, even if I was thankful that it wasn’t anything more serious.

I had hoped to go up there for a festival this weekend and see how she’s doing while in the area, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. So I suppose I should at least give them a call. I know they would be checking in on me if the situation were reversed.

Now isn’t exactly a good time to be obsessed with this, but I can’t quit thinking about ways to get more light into our living room. There’s only one light fixture in there, and there’s a whole side of the room that is very poorly lit. I’ve known that I eventually wanted to do something about it since we moved in, but for the past week or so it’s been absolutely driving me nuts.

What I’d like to do is put another fixture in the ceiling over there. We’re planning on replacing the cheap tile on the ceiling with sheet rock anyway, so if we do it at the same time it shouldn’t be too hard. But that probably won’t happen until at least next year. So I’d like to come up with a temporary solution in the meantime.

My first thought was a tall floor lamp. My mom has one, and it throws out quite a bit of light. But the optimal place to put it would be in the corner next to the front door, and there’s no working outlet there. Hmm.

I wonder if wall candle sconces would put out enough light to suit our needs? Maybe if I could find a couple that took several candles and were mirrored, it would add enough light to be able to see fairly well over there. And I could get nicely scented candles to go in them and make the house smell good in the process.

I’ll have to check the yard sales for candle sconces. If I can’t find any there, maybe I’ll save my pennies and buy some nice ones later on.

I read the news this morning that Patrick Swayze was no longer with us. I know he had cancer for a couple of years, so I wasn’t really surprised, but I was sad.

When I was young, I had a mega-crush on Patrick. I think the first movie of his I saw was Dirty Dancing, and my eyes were glued to the TV. I practically wallpapered my room with posters of him. He was the first movie star that I could really call myself a fan of.

I swooned when I saw him in Ghost, and cheered him on when he was beating up the bad guys in Roadhouse. I can’t say that I’ve seen every single one of his movies, but I have watched most of them. I never watched The Beast, but I’m not sure I could have handled it anyway. It was all I could do to keep from tearing up when I saw pictures of him looking so frail in magazines at the grocery store checkout.

I applaud Patrick Swayze for living life on his own terms and continuing to do what he loved to do, even after he was diagnosed with cancer. And one of these days, I will watch his last TV show. But for now, I’m happier to remember him the way he was when I was young. Rest in peace, Patrick.

It has been a rough month for the fam on the health front, and hence the financial front. I mentioned that Hubby had to miss some work a couple of weeks ago because he was sick. Well, last week he got sick again, and I got it too. The doctor called it the flu, but gave us antibiotics “just in case.” Well, we started on those several days ago, but neither of us is well yet.

Hubby missed the last two days of last week with it. He tried to go back to work on Monday, but the boss sent him back home. It’s just as well, because he never would have made it. He wouldn’t stay in bed, though. He went and worked a little on an ongoing side job in an effort to get us a little money. He was able to get in a little over an hour, then he came home.

He went in to work today, and apparently they let him stay. As for me, I have felt like crap and been extremely unproductive since last week. And that sucks, because I’ve got lots of work to do. It’s great that I have the work, because it will help us catch back up from all of the time Hubby has been out of work. But it won’t do me any good if I can’t get it done.

So if you’ve been wondering why my blog hasn’t been updated, it isn’t because we’ve been sitting in patio chairs soaking up the sun around here. It’s because we’ve been stricken by one of the many germs that’s going around so early this year. I’m just really thankful that Pumpkin didn’t get it this time.