Dreams, Glitter and Tears

OMGRLY?

2008-12-11T10:35:24Z

I suck so bad.

So ok, updates and stuff... cliffnotes version:

Darling and I met in October on 2 occasions, more to come on that, orlly just logs of what i downloaded in channel.

Holy shit. He's amazing. What don't I love? pfft.

I got a promotion and raise at work, FINALLY. GAH.

James and I are doing pretty good, although he gets jealous at times. I dunno how to soothe his ego any more than I am, yet anything i do gets shot down instantly. Sunuvabeech.

Darling's Roommate, Eskimo started talking to me during his visit and she and I have become closer than I have come to any other woman, ever. I love her dearly. I've been waiting so long to really connect to another woman the way I do with her. It was totally worth the wait.

Winter has come and along with it the deepest depression I have felt in a long time. wish i had a street pharmacist available to get prozac from. or something. anything. I have turned to old habits and curse myself daily for them.

I have lost a substantial amount of weight, at Darlings encouragement. I don't know how to begin thanking him for that.

I learned just today that I lost a neighbor, and I am reminded that only a few days ago was the 1 year mark of losing my Great Grandfather, the one man that truly loved me, yet abused me horribly. *sigh* A couple of beloved pets have passed as well.

Day to day life is a struggle, but the benefits of surviving is debatable yet overwhelmingly joyous.

Shit happens.

Hello again...

2008-09-24T18:55:56Z

Writing from the library again. They block messaging and chat sites, otherwise I would have gotten on IRC or AIM by now to let people know that we are ok, just are dealing with a dark house at night.

Life without power is BORING. I feel highly UNDERstimulated and agitated. It sucks.

Today, I went to a POD and got more ration boxes, they didn't give me nearly as many as they did when I had the kids with me, they seem to be less understanding to the fact that the kids are in school, even though I showed them my last tax return, drivers lisence and a picture of the 5 kids. We did get more water and ice though, which was good. I stopped by the store and purchased an extra cooler to put more of our food in. I got some canned goods and a few pork chops to cook tonight for James' birthday.

I got home and cleaned out the freezer, which was leaking all over the kitchen floor. I got a call from the school and picked a sick Laura up early. shit- that reminds me, I need to text Emily to tell her where Laura is. doing so now...

I am trying to find someone that will let me borrow their oven for a couple of hours, I'd like to surprise James with the brownies I promised him, with 40 candles on them, just like he wanted. Hopefully, things will work out.

To my friends reading this, I miss chatting with you and just being silly having fun with you. I am guessing it might be a week or so before I am back online, but when I do, we will celebrate!
To Darling, thank you for the phone calls and texts, when life is so still and silent, the phone ringing is a gift from above.

Until I can steal away to the library again...

PS. For those keeping track of when Darling and I meet, the dates have changed a little- he is coming through TWICE, on the 16th AND on the 18th. I plan to meet with him both times. I am on the countdown and have already started to save towards the car rental. (even though it is only across Houston, it's too far to take the Duster, which is literally being held together in places with baling wire and duct tape) EXCITED isn't the word for it!! :D

Hooray for FEMA!

2008-09-19T17:58:58Z

We found a Point Of Distribution today that had MRE's!

We are enjoying them immensely

One thing I found entertaining:

Epic.

The first day of work post-Ike

2008-09-15T04:27:03Z

Working at a grocery store has it's perks. One one hand, we get to feel important because the community needs us. On the other, they go absolutely crazy and clean out the shelves of food and water after a hurricane. At least we can stash a few things in the back for ourselves to buy before the customers get it all.

Still running out of some water and a lot of soda

We seem to be missing some toilet paper

and noone can bbq, although some dumb people are getting themselves sick by doing so with fireplace starter logs tonight...

still not much in the way of bread

and they got all of the canned meat too

After a hurricane, who doesn't need chips?

And don't even think about eggs...

or milk...

we still have some stuffin the front cooler

But not much in the meat department

Or produce...

There wasn't any ramen either but i didn't manage to get a picture of that empty shelf... I work tomorrow, I wonder how fun it will be. I'm glad to report that almost everyone stuck with the limits we had set with the few exceptions trying to take off with half of the store's stock. Greedy bastards.

Touring the neighborhood

2008-09-15T03:26:28Z

Here are some pics of damage in the neighborhood we didn't get to go far because we are still under curfew:

My friends' house. The tree did go into her roof some.

Our daughters' best friends' house

Downed fences by the elementary school

More fences down

These people lost their carport

A view of the mess people were dealing with

broken trees and more mess

More mess and broken trees

a lot of fences looked like this

another lost fence

a view down my street

another fence

our neighbors tree

That's all I have for now.

Seeing everyone working together in harmony, sweating and bleeding and crying together is one of the most awe inspiring things I've ever seen. To describe it in words truly does it no justice. I am so proud of our community right now and know we will continue to help eachother as we all slowly recover from Ike.

Aftermath

2008-09-15T02:25:47Z

We got power back last night but did not get internet until today. We are lucky, as many people in our are are still without power right now. In all we weathered the storm pretty well. We lost half of the maple tree:

And our neighbors tree fell onto our shared fence:

Their side of the fence:

It buried our baby Oak tree but after some cutting, we found it:

It made it but seems to have a little lean...

The house seems to have come through it pretty good but the yard is quite littered:

And work lost a couple of trees but is doing pretty well too:

PUBLISHED!

2008-09-02T21:50:55Z

Many of my regular readers know that a while back I submitted a picture to Cute Overload and it was published there

mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2007/08/full-bodied-wit.html

Well, the owner of the site asked me if I would be ok with her publishing the photo in her 2009 calendar and of course I said yes.

Today I got a box

In the box was

November 29 is my picture!!

My Deviant Art page shows the original

pogovina.deviantart.com/art/Have-a-cup-of-cuteness-12589063

Y Halo Thar!

2008-08-14T11:55:52Z

Ok, so I decided I've fucked off enough and want to get back to journalling regularly. Honestly I missed doing it but between work, home and pure laziness I've managed to stop writing all together. At first I had a good excuse though- I had sketchy internet connections and writing days of private and friends-only entries from scratch was a real bitch. I couldn't leave them on text documents on my computer because of suspicions of snooping. BLAH. Life.

So the short of what's been going on since I wrote regularly? I'm certain I will forget a lot and some will be out of order but here goes a checklist:

One of my female rats, Juliette (my first in this house and my first female) has a tumor. It's on her left shoulder and over the past 8 months it has grown to be almost 2/3 her body size. The vet says that it would have been more dangerous to put her under anesthesia to remove it than to just let it stay, and that she may just get another one where she removed the alst. As long as it doesnt impede her eating and breathing and take away from her quality of life, it's ok to leave. I hate to do so but Juliette is getting old and she still to this day frolicks and plays, gives tons of kisses and enjoys being held.... There's just more of her to love. I do feel sorry for the poor girl though. And angry at the breeder that assured me that tumors did not run in her bloodline.

My big boy, Donnie, passed away the day of Emily's surgery. I came to the conclusion that James was right once again (he's always right, damnit) and Donnie was much older than I guessed him to be. He slowed down in his last few days and lost some weight so we saw it coming and most of us were able to say our goodbyes. Donnie now resides in a large pot of daffodils on our front porch, his name painted on the pot.

So Emily had her surgery, that was an aventure. I talked a lot about it in my last entry though so I won't get too into it. The highlight for me was her waking up from anesthesia, pointing to me with a dopey smile and saying "Rita!" She repeated with James and Laura. Poor Laura thought that they fucked her brain up and cried, scared for her big sis. I explained that she was just really really high and we wanted her that way. Kids, don't do drugs, it scares the shit out of your loved ones. Emily is prescribed truth.

What else? Emily's recovery was longer than she'd like and she still can't do everything she wants to physically but she can breathe better and the pressure is off her heart and lungs. That's all that really matters. Oh and she's taller. She loves that.

About a month ago, my other original female rattie, Annika started growing a tumor on her right hind leg. It's growing quickly but again the vet says she should be fine without surgery. Annika is Juliette's sister and is mother to Balthier, Jacob, Duck and Ophelia, along with other babies that found new homes last year. I now worry for the babies. I am trying to contact everyone that took one, but i have deleted most of their information unfortunately. If any of you read this, please email me.

I got a fish tank this summer, something I picked up off Freecycle.org. It seems we saved the one fish that was living in it, the conditions were just awful. We now have a few happy swimmers in the living room.

School is due to start August 25th. Almost everyone is mentall ready although we have yet to scramble for school supplies at the last minute... it costs a lot to get stuff for 5 kids. Laura will be joining Emily in HS this year and is going to be in ROTC. I worry that she will not stick with it long but we will see. I hope for the best, I think the structure would do her some good. Either way, it should be interesting.

So yeah, Em and Laura have gone to and come back from TN. It was rather uneventful from what I hear. To be expected. Emily and James texted eachother a lot during the time they were gone so we didn't talk on the phone as much as I would have liked. And I wrote them a letter but neither of them wrote back. Poo. Emily did mention that her mother, who claimed "Don't get baptised, I'll spend the summer reading the Book of Mormon with you and discussing it with you, then you can decide whether or not to get baptised." did absolutely dick with Emily on that subject. Emily said that every time it even began to possibly come up, her mom would tense up and get a look in her eye, obviously angered by the subject being even thought of. So they didn't talk about it. They didn't read. And Em didn't tell her mom she already did get baptised. I knew this was going to be the outcome of that situation, and I am ashamed for her mother, who calls herself and open minded person acting the way she has about this. It's not as though Emily was going to be a porn star or wanted a baby, or does drugs. It's religion! Something a 16 year old should have the right to choose for themselves. Heaven forbid Emily or Laura have something that is really worth getting upset over come up in their lives, they have no reason to believe that their own mother would support them and their right to decide for themselves. I am so happy that I am so supportive of them growing into lovely young ladies, making wise choices for themselves. Even James, who is totally not into "this church thing" is silently supportive, rather than blatantly opposed. According to James, Kristen (their mom, his ex) gave him the evil eye when he picked them up. So much for being civil. Aparently Mike (stepdad) was friendlier than Kristen, which is saying a lot since he hates us with a firey passion.

In work news, I am about to hit my one year anniversary at my job. Woo! On the bad side of the coin, due to a fuckup by one of James' coworkers, he has lost 65%+ of his workload permenantly. Sometimes they couldn't keep him busy anyway so this royally sucks. We are re-budgeting currently.

In my personal life, things have gotten a bit complicated but are really good. More about that in another entry.

I can't think of anything else right now but I hope that I stick with this a little better this time.

I'm SOOO behind on everything!!!

2007-12-13T06:51:34Z

So much has been going on lately. I've been keeping a cliff-notes version journal on my computer and I plan to back-post as soon as I possibly can.

Here at home, things are going well. Emilys surgery on 12/4 was successful.
She is recovering very quickly and has impressed the doctors. She was supposed to be in the "Step-Down" unit (Shriners version of an ICU) for 3 days but she only needed to be there for 18 hours. She was walking 1 day after surgery with assistance, and was even playing her violin again by day 4 post-surgically. She even did a little dance for the doctors when they came to see how she was doing. They were quite amused. She was supposed to stay in the hospital until the 14th
but got out on Monday evening. She is adjusting to living at home pretty well, sleeping on the couch and her mattress on the floor since her bed is a "loft" style, kind of like a bunk bed with the top bunk only. (Her and Laura's computer and desk are underneath the bed. She still wakes every 3.5 to 4 hours for more pain medication but is sleeping less fitfully when she does sleep, meaning that James and I can as well. We have been sleeping on the floor in the living room next to her in case she needs anything. Today I had to leave her at home alone for a few hours while I was
working and I was relieved to return home to find her sleeping comfortably. She will have a tutor assigned by the school come to our home twice a week to help her with her school work but we have to the rest of the time. It won't be too terribly hard with the exception of her Japanese class. James and I speak very very little Japanese. Hopefully her tutor will specialize in Japanese. We expect Emily to return to school mid January. The timing of the surgery really couldn't have been better. Her classes are doing a lot of review right now in preparation for mid-terms. She also has the holiday break during her recovery time so she will be missing less school. We are so happy with her recovery, she has been so very strong through all of this.

In other news, Donnie, my original male rat passed away on the day of Emilys surgery. He was apparently older than I had originally thought. I hate it when James is right. Darnit. My Great Grandfather, Leslie, also passed away, on the 8th. He was 94. His health had been deteriorating and in the last few days, the family that was with him said that he really didn't look good. From what I know, he went peacefully though, so that's all that really matters. He was a great influence in my life.

here is a link to his obituary: http://legacy.com/cjonline/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=99248299

He was a really great man.

There's a ton more to write about but I'm afraid I need some sleep as I have to work in the early morning. I'll try to update soon.

The dumbo babies in their first movie

2007-10-28T02:44:36Z

I took this yesterday when I was taking pics of the babies, it's so darn cute!

bellies!

2007-10-27T01:36:28Z

Today I took lots of pics! I got great shots of the babies and some cute belly shots for Gina. The pictures totally show how teeny they are compared to my hands! They are so much smaller than the other litter.

Moe

Alf

Eugene

Laurens little boy, isn't he pretty?! Don't mind the dark streak on his back, someone got excited and peed on him a little :o

Rose

ok, Gina, the girls and the belly pics:

girl 1, the smooth haired baby

She is the only self female

girl 2, the smaller of the 2 runts

girl 3, one of the bigger girls

girl 4, the other runt and lighter colored baby

girl 5, also small

Baby pics :)

2007-10-15T03:48:10Z

Here are todays baby pics. They are growing so very fast, and are so cute.

Larra's rats, Eugene and Alf. The way I tell them apart is that Eugene has more white on his paws than Alf.

Laurens boy, yet unnamed

Moe, Rachelles little boy.

Rose, Kays baby

The rest of the girls, the 2nd baby from the left is a little bit lighter than the rest and the baby on the far right is straight-furred.

Tuesday-Saturday!

2007-10-09T18:48:59Z

Today is my Saturday! whew!! I'm sooooo tired, I'm not doing anything today! HA! This is my designated "Lazy Day". Suck it if you don't like it, lol!

I played with the rats today, as I try to as often as possible. I also took some pics of the babies.

Kays baby girl, Rose

The rest of the girls. The straight-furred baby is seperate, the rest have curly hair and whiskers. I tell them apart by their sizes and paw/tail markings. Gina, take your time picking out your 2 girls. Everyone else that's interested can just wait in line! Hehe!

Lauren's little unnamed boy. Such a pretty color! I'm guessing he will either be powder blue or lilac. Lauren is Aurora and Nicholas' (Mommy and Daddy ratties) original owner.

Rachelle's little rex boy, Moe

The other 2 boys. A nice lady named Larra is possibly interested in them. Hopefully I will get a confirmation on that today.

1 week

2007-10-09T18:34:10Z

The babies are a week old today. Here's the whole gang with a ruler to show their size!

http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb248/Pogovina/1weeklg.jpg

ATTENTION ASHLEY CHISSIT:

2007-10-08T04:22:44Z

Please take notice, chissit, that you FORMALLY have 14 DAYS (until 11:59pm October 21st) to contact me in ANY way:
AIM pogovina1, pogovina@yahoo.com, hifibellybabe@yahoo.com, togethertrue@hotmail.com, pogovina@hotmail.com, pogovina@gmail.com <--preferrably the gmail account

OR I will be discontinuing my current reservation of the 8 week old rat currently known as "Duck" and will be rehoming her with another interested party. This means she will be going to a different home than yours.

I have left a note on your livejournal account- on the only public entry, that states that I was interested in establishing contact with you regarding the arrangements for adoption/pickup of "Duck" and have not heard anything back in more than a week since leaving said note. I have also E-Mailed you to the account linked on your journal. You have left me no other way to contact you, so this formal warning is the ONLY way that I currently have to make my deadline for contact. I will not be held responsible for disappointment, hurt feelings or negative outlook upon my decision. I have added you to my friends list- I cannot guarantee that this means you will see this message in your "friends" link. I have done all I can to contact you!!

I have been looking forward to meeting you and getting "Duck" into your awaiting arms. Please contact me immediately so that we can arrange this.

Thank you.

Rita Lawrence AKA Pogovina

work and stuff

2007-10-08T03:30:31Z

Work has been going well, I have been working full time hours so far, so much for a part time job. This next week, they have me scheduled for 37.5 hours, so I guess they are trying to give me part time hours, or something.

I've discovered an irritation I have with people on welfare. I've found that a lot of people on food stamps buy a lot of junk food. Damnit. I can't even buy genuine meals for my family let alone 20 pounds of ding dongs, twinkies and chocolate bars. Urgh! I don't even want to buy premium cuts of meat like a lot of the other people on welfare do, I just want regular old hamburger, hot dogs and sammich bread, maybe some 10 for a dollar ramen noodles. sheesh. Is that too much to ask for? tell the government, they keep saying that my family isn't eligible for such things because James has a job and we are married. What kind of backwards thinking is that? If someone has a "baby daddy" and is otherwise legally single, and sits on their ass watching soaps all day instead of bettering themselves and getting at least a minimum wage job and trying to support themselves, they can get money for food and bills, free medical care and the government is FINE with this!? UGH!! This is not all of the US that is this way, in Kansas, if you proved that you were at least trying to find work and that you had a genuine need for assistance, you were helped regardless of your marital situation. Denial based on legal marriage is retarded. If anyone out there in Texas is married and has welfare, please for gods sake tell me how you did it, or at least that the lazy bitch at the welfare office just lied to me or something because I've had it up to *here* with my snooty next door neighbor getting welfare, driving a brand new SUV and sending her brats to PRIVATE school just because her loser of a husband beat her and ended up in jail so she divorced his lame ass. fuck. I couldn't even get help for my family when I had hip surgery, couldn't walk, let alone care for myself or my kids, James had to take off of weeks of work to care for them and we racked up thousands and thousands of dollars in medical bills, and credit cards just to pay for living while he was taking care of the kids instead of working.

Why am I ranting about this here? I should make this my next Franky Rita entry. I might just do that tonight...

anyway, people on welfare that don't try to take care of their families themselves fucking suck. more later on that. :)

So work is great, I'm learning buttloads of produce codes and didn't realize that my fingers could move so fast on a 10-key. I only have to remember the right sequence of numbers in addition to remembering the right numbers themselves. One thing at a time. My bosses are impressed with me, except Michael, who couldn't be impressed with anything in his godawful excuse for a life if it depended on it- he is OBVIOUSLY depressed that he didn't make more of his life, hates his job and it shows on his face every painful waking moment of his day.
When I applied for the job and interviewed, I wanted daytime hours, from before school to when school gets out- 3:00. So I could be with my family at night, of course. Working sucks if you're alone all day at home while everyone is gone and then you work when they're all home. Since I covered a dayshift for someone at the last minute and do such and fantastic job of keeping my till even (is that really hard? Making sure I have the right amount of money in my till at the end of my shift is super easy. tonight I was .01 short because I accidentally dropped a penny into the check printing machine- oops!), I got great hours this next week. I work 5 days, which is more than I really wanted, and have 37.5 hours scheduled, which may as well be full time, but 4 of the 5 days are early morning to early afternoon shifts, even on the weekend- which is great because most of the heavy shopping is done in the mid afternoon to evening. I wish I was getting off of work a smidge earlier than 3:00 so I could meet the kids at school at 3:00 instead of risking being a few minutes late (which the school will NOT tolerate, the snobby fuckers) but overall, I'm overjoyed with the schedule. I get Tuesday and Wednesday off, which is cool because I can get appointments and stuff done then, which normal working peeps don't have the luxury of doing! Ha!

I got some Dr scholls insoles for my shoes, not the gel kind, which were kinda cool but a kind with arch support and a really padded heel, which was what was hurting me so badly by the end of my shifts. They even state that they help with lower back pain, which I have because of holding my body in a new and weird way to work the turntable system that brings the groceries to me. Between the insoles and 600mg of ibuprofen midway throughout my shift, I am in signifigantly less pain than I was before.

I still haven't lost any weight due to my continued muscle gain from biking all over hell and creation. But I have fantastically stronger, firmer, shaplier legs! If only James was a leg man, right? Haha! I wish I could train that into him, I've always had pretty great legs if I should toot my own horn. Specially in 5" or taller heels! HA!

Anywho, I feel better than I have in weeks, I'm making a decent income to suppliment James' and soon we will be able to do nice things like take the family out to a buffet or go on a date, or just buy myself something while I'm out running errands! Freedom! Now just to get my old credit issues taken care of so I can get my credit score up high enough to get myself a bank account again. It's been so long, people take those things for granted! I want to have my own checking account so badly so I can write my own checks for bills and can balance my own checkbook and do my own debit card purchases!! Such little things that please me!

More about life in general later, as I'm playing with my rats as I write this and they are climbing all over the keyboard and are driving me nuts with it! They even saved my entry halfway through once!! sheesh, crazy ratties!

curly wiskers!

2007-10-07T23:06:11Z

The babies are 6 days old now, and it seems that some of them are going to be taking after their parents and will be rex. Here are the girls:

5 will be rex and 1 will have straight fur

Here are the boys:

1 will be rex and 3 will be straight furred

*edit: Rachelle has claimed the rex baby! his name is Moe! Congrats!

the jaundiced baby is better and it appears that there will be a really light colored baby of either sex. Kay is quickly falling in love with the female that is very light. There are varying shades of blue beyond that for the babies too, so it will be fairly easy to tell most of them apart... I think.

3 days old

2007-10-04T22:28:57Z

The babies are now 3 days old and during my daily check, I figured out how many females and males we have.

Here's the whole crew, notice the jaundiced baby on the end. I'm watching her carefully.

There are 6 girls, one looks like it will be light colored or albino, 2 are smaller than the rest (runts)

and 4 boys

New babies!

2007-10-03T01:55:18Z

Aurora had her babies yesterday, starting at about 5:50 pm. She had 10 in total!

New babies!!

More pics to come!

Register day

2007-09-30T18:52:49Z

Today we had more training... which was basically throwing us on a register and having us work. I did great minus those damn produce codes. I thought there was an appropriate sticker on every piece of fruit and every veggie, but that simply isnt the case. I need to memorize these things!

In other news, today is my brothers birthday. he's 21 now.
In rat news, Aurora is HUGELY pregnant. her belly drags on the ground when she walks. She will definately be having a lot of babies. Carol should be getting Rudy, Remy and Rasputin on Sunday and Ashley still hasn't contacted me about getting Duck, I'm starting to worry. I introduced Nicholas to the other boys but he is aggressive to them so I put him back in with Aurora for a few days until I get another water bottle. It looks like Nick will live alone. Shame, he's so sweet to people.

Ok, I need sleep. more tomorrow!

TABC

2007-09-30T18:37:36Z

Today was TABC certification. Texas Alcoholic Beverage Comission, for those not in Texas.
It was a breeze but took forever. It was completely computerized and on the internet, I could have done it at home. The best part was that I worked from noon to 4, so I got to be home with the fam.
I still feel sick so I rested for the evening.

I also got another letter from Jamie, 2 of them actually. He said he will be sending another letter in about a week with a check. This will be the first child support I've gotten in almost 9 years! he only makes about $70 a month though so I don't expect it to be much.

Training, day 2

2007-09-30T18:19:06Z

I had more training today. It was actually on the register, mainly just how to sign into the register, secure it for breaks and then sign out. We learned how to do WIC too.Then we had a test, which was easy. The hardest part is that we have to memorize produce codes, which totally sucks because there are a lot of them to remember. I sat next to Vanessa and I can safely say she didn't pass the test. I was the first one to finish so I went home first.
I have tomorrow off and I think I'm getting a cold, so I am not going to do an entry for tomorrow. I'm just going to sleep!

Also, today is my wedding anniversary! Happy 6 years to James and I.

Hi ho, hi ho...

2007-09-30T17:41:01Z

It's off to work I go...

I started training today at the local grocery store. It was LOOOOONG and the trainer could have the course done in a few hours but she talks and talks about all sorts of things... which is fun but I'd rather be home than chit-chatting at work about her sons fear of all things halloween. More training to come tomorrow and then we have a test, yay.
My class consists of 2 men- Curtoy and Kenneth, and 5 women- Me, Cynthia, Simone, Vanessa and Melinda. I honestly think that Kenneth and Vanessa won't make it, they aren't doing well at retaining the information being taught.

Ok, i'm tired, more tomorrow

I <3 Nerds

2007-09-24T06:00:38Z

Trimese!

2007-09-24T03:45:15Z

It's official, Ophelia really is Trimese!

She used to have a white nose but it has turned brown:

I was playing with the ratties today and noticed it, fantastic. Her butt and ears should turn brown soon.

Here are a couple of cute pics we got of her, Annika and Juliette during Kays party yesterday:

Duck is in the cage with them but prefers to sleep in the big blue tube rather than cuddle in the hammock.