Category: On The News

(OOH, it’s the 4th now! HAPPY 4TH OF JULY, EVERYONE! Have a great one!)

Since Alaethia didn’t fall asleep till 2am and I stayed up finishing the layout/uploading the blog till 2:30am, I was having a hard time falling asleep. Didn’t help that there was thunder rumbling outside. By the time I did fall asleep I was so exhausted I slept like a rock till 6:00, when I heard Alaethia coughing and eventually choking. After making sure she was okay I got back into bed and, once again, had a hard time going to sleep. The alarm went off an hour and a half later so I unwillingly rolled out of bed and groggily ironed.

I stayed awake even after Mario left to work because Jaylen and Alaethia woke up as soon as Mario walked out the door. He wanted cheesy eggs and apple juice, so I obliged. I knew, from the night before, that Eenan wanted Cocoa Pebbles for breakfast so I got all that ready for him and made to go back to bed. Mary knocks on the door and asks if I wanted to go to the movies after all. Shoot. I’d totally forgotten she’d invited us yesterday. I decided not to go since I wasn’t going to get a chance to shower and there was no way I was leaving the house without one. Plus, Alaethia was still awake and quickly getting moody since she’s usually asleep at that time. There was no way she’d let me watch the movie in peace. So I gave the boys quick showers and they left with Mary to watch Ratatouille (sp?). Another movie I miss!

I tried going to sleep after Alaethia went to sleep. I was quickly getting tired of tossing and turning so I was about to give up and just make some coffee. Next thing I remember is my heart trying to escape my chest and springing out of bed after having a horrible dream that a big, huge man was trying to force himself on me in his truck. Ugly, ugly dream.

I just chilled out with Alaethia and then Mom once she was back from her doctor’s appointment. I mentioned how she’d been throwing up and I was pointing the finger at her pills? Well, turns out she was taking 4 more pills A DAY than she should have been. I wrote a note for her to give to her doctor, asking her to please write down her medications and dosages and that’s when I realized she’d been doubling up on some. My Mother. She spent a whole month feeling like crap when she could have prevented it by just reading some labels. Now she’s going to have to go in for more lab work and she was referred to a gastrointestinal specialist, just in case. They’re only taking precautions, but I’m a bit worried about that since stomach cancer runs in our family. I’m just glad she lives next door or who knows what shape she’d be in.

Mary and the kids got back a little later and Mom stayed with the kids while I accompanied Mary to find a gift for Natalie. It was still a bit overcast since it’d rained the whole night before, but there were no signs of it raining at the time. When we’re getting into Palmview we can see lightning streaking down and thunder crashing every few seconds and it was pouring. It was scary–I’m so not used to that during broad daylight. We get into Mission and are shocked to see just how flooded it is over there. The frontage roads were flooded going East and West. The water reached the bottom of the doors of cars and as we got further into the street (Conway), it was even worse. When we got to the shop and just sat there contemplating when it would be a good time to get down. The water would come and go, almost as if someone was tossing huge buckets of water on the car. At one point it got really silent so we hurried out just to be hit with a huge splash of water!

We didn’t find anything at the shop, unfortunately, so we went off to McAllen. Big mistake. It was awful. There were people stranded, just waiting at the Big Tex juice factory because they couldn’t get out of the parking lot because of how flooded it was. There was cops everywhere. We found something for her at the next shop (whose roof had broken a few inches and half the store was flooded!) and it wasn’t too bad over there, but coming back East it was awful. There was even an SUV that turned on it’s side near a Kmart, which later came out on the news. It was chaos–I’d never expected it to flood like that over here! I can’t even imagine how it’s like for the people in Kansas and North Texas.

I’d called Mario to work to see how it was over there, because that area (which is where I used to live) floods even when there aren’t Flash Flood warnings. Sure enough, he said he’d had to put on rain boots and rain coat just to walk outside.

I still can’t believe I forgot my camera, though. Darnit. The ONE TIME I take it out of my bag!

I was too glad to be home. While Alaethia napped I fixed a few things here and there on the layout and I almost died when Frontpage got an error and SHUT DOWN on me. I’d lost all my new work. THEN, to my absolute horror, I realize the file size is ‘0’. I open the file again and sure enough, it’s gone. After counting to 10 about 5 times I noticed the .css had made a copy of itself in my server. THANK GOD. So if you were on here at that time and everything was all wonky, that was why, heh.

I made tacos for dinner, then banana bread. I just finished up with that about half an hour ago. Mary gave me all these bananas that would definitely go bad if they weren’t eaten by today, so what better way to use extremely ripe bananas than make banana bread? I made a batch and a half. YUM! The boys will be thrilled in the morning (they’re sleeping over at their Nana’s).

I’m going to bed. Alaethia’s super moody. We had a scare earlier today where Ricky, Big Mario’s friend, called in a panic to tell us he’d been diagnosed with Shingles and he’d carried Alaethia yesterday. GULP. I hope she’ll be alright. She hasn’t had the Varicella or Measles shots yet, because she’s not of age yet, so help us pray that she’ll be alright!

Alaethia didn’t fall asleep till 2am last night (but that’s not why it sucks to be an adult LOL), just as I suspected. I would have slept a glorious 8 hours straight because she didn’t wake up for her first bottle till 10am, but my dear husband decided to wake me up at 4am to, um, bother me.

So, as I mentioned in my last post, Mario and I spent most of the day going through our bills (namely credit cards) to see which ones we could consolidate with the new, low interest rate credit card Mario got. We decided we’d pay off Home Depot, JC Penny, our JC Penny personal plan, which is how we got our wedding rings last year; Sears and the dreaded Capital One card. The only cards we’d have left would be Target and the new Visa.

No matter what those stupid “What’s In YOUR Wallet?” commercials tell you, DON’T GET A CAPITAL ONE CREDIT CARD! We got it about 5 years ago, just to build up credit. We didn’t use it for a good two years, then we used $250. They raised our credit limit to $500 at one point and after all the payment protection bull and our yearly “fee” it’s been at $480 the past two years. We even send double our payment amount and it still never went under $450. I hate that thing.

So around noon after we’re all showered and ready, we leave to pick up Mario’s paycheck. He’s taking longer than usual, so I get to read a whole chapter of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. There’s a discrepancy with the paychecks; apparently the program they use to remove all the federal taxes and stuff didn’t remove anything this time. They tell Mario not to cash his check until they figure out how the state’s going to fix the problem. They say they’ll most likely have to withdraw the money from his check on his next paycheck. I tell him that’s bull–it’s against the darn law!

We got eat at House of China and the boys are thrilled. It’s one of their favorite places. Mario wants to eat at New Wave, which is another Asian buffet place but more expensive. I don’t know if it was Mario being a drama queen or if he was already ill but he said the food was gross and he felt nauseous. The boys and I ate just fine and we’re all okay. Mario still has a stomach ache.

The boys were super well behaved; they really surprised me. They even ate really well, too. Well, Jaylen always does, which people sometimes don’t believe since he’s so skinny–just like his daddy! Eenan’s my pickier one, but he even tried some Teriyaki chicken today!

Alaethia was a total doll, too. She quietly played with her toys and then drank a bottle and continued to play with her toys after that. I’m so glad she’s good at restaurants! I hope she stays that way LOL.

We go home, and while passing through Peñitas I notice they’re putting up a small fence of black plastic around the perimeter of the future site of the new Wal-Mart. Finally! I’m so thrilled. They’ve bordered-off both sides of the Joy Dollar plaza, so I’m dying to know what else they’re going to build there! I’d love a Target but that would be asking too much :(. You never know, though…they usually build Targets near Wal-Marts…so…?

Anyway, we got home and rested for a bit before taking off to the bank to get the Equinox payment moved later in the month. Since we’ve, thankfully, been either right on time or early with out payments since we got it, they were really cool about it and made the changes right away. So now that one’s due at the end of the month and Mario’s truck’s due on the 12th. Whew.

Mario ended up cashing his check because he got the okay to. I hope they don’t give him shit about the Medicare and Federal Withholding crap.

We got back home and started calling all the credit cards (which was a headache on it’s own) and called the new Visa to start with the balance transfers. It ended up being an even bigger headache and supposedly it would take much longer to process with Capital One than we had time for so Mario got frustrated and wanted to scrap the whole thing. This of course makes me almost hyperventilate because if we didn’t consolidate all the bills like we wanted to, then we’d be screwed! Well, not really, but we’d be really tight on money and these next few months we can’t afford to be since business at Mario’s workplace is slow.

Mary comes over and sees how frustrated we are. She tells us the credit card should have come with a check and sure enough, we find one. She said instead of having them pay the cards off, for us to deposit the check in our bank account and pay everything off on our own, in person to avoid any conflicts. Genius! The bad thing is I’m going to have to leave to town super early and get everything done. I was supposed to have my dress for Noey’s wedding altered, but I don’t think I’ll get to make it to that. It’ll have to wait till Monday or Tuesday.

Mario needs new shoes for work, so Mom (who’d been sick with a cold all week and hadn’t really come over) offered to watch the kiddos while we went. Eenan ended up going to Yadira’s with Mary so Mom only watched Jaylen and Alaethia.

Mario, poor thing with his wide feet, didn’t find a thing, as always. He hates shoe shopping because he can never find anything in Wide that’s nice looking. When he was looking at the last isle, his last hope, I saw sparkly things on the wall and scuttled over there. I ended up finding some really cute heels for my dress, so I shall be returning the ones I bought at Payless (which are the 2nd ones I’ve gotten LOL). Hopefully, this third pair of shoes will be the charm and they’ll stay.

Unless I find them in silver. THOSE were really cute.

Mario was in a foul mood the rest of the afternoon, well, until we got home. We’d stopped at H-E-B to pick up the ingredients for Chili. We ended up spending $53! That’s HALF of what I spend every two weeks on groceries. I’m never letting that man go to the groceries with me again.

We get home and I’m basically fuming thanks to Mario’s awful attitude. He notices I’m quickly losing my patience so he starts playing around with me trying to make me laugh. He always does that: pisses me off then expects me to be happy with him once he decides he wants to be in a good mood. He kept complimenting my cooking after he noticed joking around wasn’t working. Then he offered to help me wash the few dishes that were in the sink and obligingly brought me things I needed after I finished bathing Alaethia.

Needless to say, he’s forgiven :). Doesn’t take much to make me happy :P.

I think it’s time to go to sleep. I was going to do a Meme Sylvia tagged me with but I’ll wait till tomorrow. I’m going to take full advantage of Alaethia falling sleep before 1am for once!

I hope tomorrow’s less stressful than today!

P.S. I’m so glad they sent Paris Hilton back to the Slammer. I’d of, just like many other people, would have been so pissed if they’d succumb to her requests. She’s just like any other person when it comes to the law, and I’m glad the judge saw it that way!

That’s so strange. She collapsed at a casino hotel, was taken to a hospital and was pronounced dead. They’re not mentioning any details because I don’t think they have them yet. I’m betting it was something having to do with drugs or alcohol, sadly. John thinks it has something to do with TrimSpa. That’s so sad. She loses her son, and now is leaving an infant daughter without a mother :(. They’re saying on CNN that her daughter’s believed to have been born addicted to drugs Anna was on. And the cincher? Who the heck will get custody of her since they’re not even sure who her father is?!

It’s totally uncalled for but John just said, “Aww. We’ll never see those big boobies again…” LOL