Category: Friendship

I’ve decided to give this Spring Cleaning thing a serious try. I loved the two Rubbermaid storage boxes Mary got me at Walmart on Sunday, so on Monday after we’d picked up Jaylen from school Mom, Jaylen, Alaethia and I made a quick trip to Walmart and got the other two I’d seen. The ones I’d gotten the previous day were brown and orange and the ones left were just brown ones. At $2 a pop, beggars can’t be choosers, so I quickly tossed them into the cart, as if someone were waiting around the corner just waiting to snatch them out of my grasp.

I slowly scanned the clearance isle just in case I saw anymore storage boxes and lo-and-behold, there were two canvas totes–a purple and beige one–but they didn’t have UPCs.

I walked around looking for an employee and I found a man in the garden isle. I told him about the boxes I wanted, but that they didn’t have UPCs. He said, “Oh…man, I don’t think we’ll be able to sell them to you then.” I sort of pout and say, “Darn. Okay,” and start walking away. He says, “What would you pay for them?” I turn on my heel and look at my mom for help and I get an idea.

I point to the baskets in the cart and say, “Those are on clearance too, and are for $2 each.”

The man nods and says, “$2 then. Let them know at the front and tell them I gave you the price.” Woo!

We looked around in the kitchen isle to find cereal canisters, perferably thin, rectangular ones to save space. I like to buy the huge generic bags of cereal (instead of, say, 3 boxes for double the price) and we have them all over the place since everyone likes different cereals and they don’t fit in the cabinets. They were sort of expensive, so I decided to wait.

On the way home Mom suggests checking at Joy Dollar. I’d never checked there, so we stopped. As we’re walking in I notice a little girl’s just staring at me. She looks really familiar and then it hits me; she looks just like Ricci’s oldest daughter, Belinda. I wasn’t completely sure, but we smiled at eachother anyway and she ran off so I continued to look for the plastics isle.

Mom had wandered off, so I began to look for her and when I go into one of the isles I notice Ricci’s standing there with a baby girl in her arms and another baby girl in a cart. She turns and I say, “Hi, Ricci.” and she says hello, too. I ask her if the infant is her new baby and she says yes, that she’s 6 months old now. She looks just like Goyo. She notices the bundle wrapped up in my arms and says, “Who’s is she?” and I say, “Mine!” We get into a half-hour conversation about what’s been up in our lives, how we parted on bad terms, and she invited me to Rachelle’s birthday party this weekend. She’s turning 2 and she’s standing and walking around. The last time I remember seeing her she had short hair, was barely pulling herself up and taking a few steps. I can’t believe the luck that Ricci has. Granted, it’s still the situation she’d been in before that’s caused all her misfortune, but it’s still horrible that she has to go through all that crap. Especially horrible for her girls.

Everyone I’ve told about getting back in touch with her keeps warning me to keep my distance. I appreciate the concern from everyone, but there’s no way I’d let myself get into the situation we were in last year. Never again.

Getting back to the boxes I was looking for, I didn’t find them LOL. Which is weird ’cause I used to see those around all the time. I’ll have to go back for the ones at Walmart later.

I’m hoping to get started on going through my closet and the boys closet sometime this weekend. Mario’s off on Sunday, so hopefully he’ll help me move the furniture around in the bedroom. I started going through the stuff in the living room closet, but there’s so much crap in there it’s going to take me forever to finish!

I’d love to get a small corner desk for the computer since our 6 year old desk from Walmart takes up so much darn space. I’d also like to get a smaller, less obtrusive entertainment center or TV table, since the one we have doesn’t have much in it anyway besides the TV. We’ll have to find a new place for the turtle tank, since that’s where we have it right now =\.

I was watching Oprah on…Tuesday, was it? It was about organizing small spaces and they made over a 250 sq. ft. house! The drapes and patterns weren’t exactly my taste but I do love how everything had it’s place. Even the cat’s litterbox was nicely concealed in the bathroom! I have to say the kitchen was my favorite.

Before:

After:

Isn’t that amazing? Our place is much bigger than that (okay, not by much probably) and I can’t organize it for crap! But then again, it takes money to become organized and I don’t have that much money, heh. Here’s the link if you’d like to see the before and afters. I love what Nate, the designer, did to his own small apartment, too.

We went to Target yesterday to get Alaethia some diapers and saw the sweater I wanted to get her last week on the clearance rack. John made me put it back because I told him to help me refrain from buying anything I didn’t “need”. (Noticing a trend with me and clearance items LOL?) Well, I found it there again yesterday and saw it as a sign that I must get it since nobody else had bought it yet. I also found another little cream-colored blouse and bought it for her. The sweater was $4.98 down from $9.99 and the blouse was $6.38 down from $9.99 as well. I LOVE bargains. She won’t fit into these till she’s 9-12 months, but that’s pretty cool. I’ve gotten her lots of things (mostly on clearance that are super cute) that she’ll use as she gets older.

We stopped by Mary’s work as well to pick up a gift that Irene had bought Alaethia. It’s a super cute dress that I can’t wait for her to fit into!

I’ve had all week to get around to doing everything but haven’t had the chance since Alaethia’s been requiring lots of attention now that she’s spending hours awake at a time during the day and on Wednesday we got sad news that Mario’s aunt, Alicia, passed away :(. She’d suffered a heart attack since before the holidays and never recovered. Jorge is down from California for a few days. We’ll be attending the funeral tomorrow afternoon.

I’ve also caught yet another cold. Or it could be the one I already had, getting worse. I felt achy and gross all day Wednesday and now I’ve got the runny nose and dry cough. Alaethia’s been waking up every two hours at night since I try and go to sleep with her by 11:30, the latest. Last night though, I tried putting her to bed in her bassinet because I didn’t want to get her sick and we were up till 1am. I was so exhausted I just put her on my chest like she usually sleeps and the little booger fell asleep right away! I’ve noticed that when she goes to sleep late, around 12:30 or 1am, she’ll sleep for 3 to 4 hours straight. I wish it were like that when she falls asleep early, too :(.

Thank goodness Elda offered to drop the boys off for me every morning. I don’t have to risk getting into an accident for driving around while I’m sleepy and I get to get Mario’s stuff together. Well, most of the time. I didn’t get to put his lunch bag together this morning since Alaethia was screaming her little head off. I can’t wait to feel better–I miss smooching her already!

She’ll be 1 month old tommorrow! How time flies!

Not that I have anything against old people, not at all. I’ve been driving around like a mad woman since last week and the handful of old people who should not be allowed a license all happen to be on the road at the same time as I am. John said that phrase this afternoon and I thought it was hilarious (and so true. I even said, “That’s SO going to be my blog entry title!” I was supposed to change the title on my entry about Anna Nicole to “The Day John’s Penis Died” but I never did LOL.) We were on a McDonald’s run when TWO cars full of Winter Texans almost slammed into us from each side. That’s been the norm since last Thursday it seems.

I’m at my desktop computer in the living room right now, with Alaethia’s bassinet at my side just in case she spits up like she did a few hours ago. Scared the crap out of me. Thank goodness I was passing right by her bassinet when she started screaming.

I didn’t get to enjoy the fruits of my laptop and wireless internet for too long since Mario got tired of how slow the laptop was and sold it today to one of his co-workers. So now we’re saving the $600 we bought and sold it for until we can save a little more to buy a better laptop. I had no problem with it; I loved it. Mario, on the other hand, is impatient and the poor little processor in the laptop was too slow for him. He also likes to mess around with the inards of operating systems and hates that Windows Vista doesn’t really let him get into all the folders and such. I just want to update from my bed again :(.

Anyway, I didn’t drop Noelia off at work on Thursday. It was nice to get some extra sleep in the morning. After I picked Jaylen up from school, Jaylen, Mom, Alaethia and I headed to the hospital to get Alaethia’s PKU done. It thankfully didn’t take super long to get called in since we had to make it back on time to pick Sammy (Yazmin was admitted into the hospital since she had a bad throat infection that needed intravenous antibiotics to clear it and nobody was around to pick up Sammy) and Eenan and Brandon up from school.

I braced myself for some tears (not just hers, but my own as well) when I put Alaethia up on the table and removed her sock. The nurse pricked her heel and it took her about 5 seconds to realize what had happened and she screamed her little Kitty scream. I picked her up and consoled her and she calmed down. Poor baby. I only got a little teary eyed this time, but I’m nervous about her immunizations next month!

We looked around the gift shop for a little bit, where mom got me a cute, soft little teddy bear that has “Special Daughter” embroidered on the tummy, aww :). We made it back with more than enough time to pick Sammy up, so we wasted some time at Joy Dollar. Jaylen of course went straight to the toys and picked out some swords with shields for him and Eenan. Can’t beat quieting the children down for $1! Well, quieting them down while we’re at the store. Once they have those swords out at home and are dueling with eachother, that’s another story.

Everything went pretty smoothly that night until it was time to make dinner. I decided on spaghetti and meatballs since I had a brain fart and thought, “It’s easy to make and I don’t really have to do much.” Right. Completely flew over my head that I actually have to prepare the meatballs. Alaethia started crying unconsolably just as I was defrosting the ground beef and would not let me put her down. Luckily, I still got it: I made meatballs with ONE HAND. Mashed all the ingredients and made perfect little balls and everything. *pops collar*

I finally gave her her first “full bath” that night. Her belly button stump had fallen off at the beginning of the week, but she still had a huge scab across her belly button and it was a little red and would bleed a little on her diaper. I was concerned, but they’d told me at her doctor’s appointment that she was healing well. I still couldn’t wet it though. I got tired of mopping her down with damp washcloths so I gave her a bath as carefully as I could without getting her bellybutton wet. It was a success and of course we took pictures :).

John and I went to Target earlier that day to see if they had the stuff he wanted and we made a quick stop at Michael’s, where I bought $3 worth of scrapbooking papers (they were on sale for a quarter each) and some embellishments. I bought one of the papers especially for documenting her first bath :).

I had to drop Noelia off on Friday morning and Mario had to work so I had to rush and get the kids to school then get Noelia to work on time. I got everything ready as quickly as I could that morning and then Noelia, Mom, Alaethia and I got into the truck. Got her to work with a few minutes to spare.

On the way back home Mom and I are looking for an old thrift store we used to go to. I’m so intently paying attention to all the shops on each side of us and trying not to get into a car accident that I’m stunned when I see something fly across the windshield and CRACK!! I frantically look around to see what happened and notice a circular crack on the top right side of my windshield. Looks like a baseball hit it. A darn trailer that was going in the opposite direction somehow managed to toss a huge rock at my window diagonally. How the hell does that happen?!

I call Mario to let him know what happened. We already had 3 small “stars”, one that had been repaired and now that huge one. I was pissed. Mario was annoyed. I called Mary and she tells me to put in a claim and get it taken care of with the insurance. So I do that as soon as I get home. I speak to a guy from the claims department at the company I’m getting the windshield repaired at. I ask him about the crack: it’s 2-2 1/2 inches long, can it be repaired? He says yes, as long as it’s less than 6 inches long it can be fixed. Awesome. I give him all my details and he says he’ll call the insurance company. I have an appointment at 9:30 at the windshield/glass place on Saturday morning. Lovely.

After picking Jaylen up I start getting ready to leave to my optometrist appointment. It’s about damn time I get new glasses; the ones I currently have I’ve had for 6 years. I’ve had the exact same frames two different times but the lenses have been the same for 6 years. I’m beginning to have problems seeing letters from far away again and have so much trouble seeing at night so I’m way overdue. I leave the house with enough time to find the place; I wanted to be early since I had to be there 5 minutes earlier than my appointment at 1.

I’m driving down the street looking for the place. It just so happens to be on the same street Mario works on. After frantically looking for it and pissing everyone around me off for driving 15 MPH, I decide to stop at Mario’s and ask him where the darn office is. We can’t find a phonebook anywhere and when we finally do, I’m already 5 minutes late, which means I’m 10 minutes late if you count the 5 minutes I was supposed to be there early. Turns out they moved the one that was near Mario’s work and it’s all the way on the other side of the expressway. Nice.

I finally get there and customer service SUCKS. One guy finally pays attention to me and directs me to the back of the place, which is so odd because nobody really knows they’re allowed to go back there O_o. Once they call me in it’s cake; everything was done really quickly. I’m only slightly more blind than I was before, so I guess that’s good. I got some brownish frames this time, sort of square and they’re Transitions lenses with anti-glare, which I’ve always wanted. Came out to $135. I almost died, but the lady who was attending me painted such a pretty picture, and after telling her how long I had my current frames she said I deserved some spiffy new glasses. I told myself, “You know what? You DO deserve some new glasses!” so I got just about everything they “recommended” I get. Mario was a little upset with how much I spent, but like I told him: this is the first time I go all out with my glasses and I’ll probably keep them for another 6 years. Not like him, who spent $170 on Tommy Hilfiger glasses that broke in a few months. Grr.

I picked up some McDonald’s for the both of us and I dropped it off to him. I was starving. All the weight I lost is going to come right back if McDonald’s keeps taunting me with it’s big golden arches :(. They’re everywhere! And I don’t usually like McDonald’s!

Mario got out early but I didn’t see much of him anyway. He was outside bonding with his dad by the fire of the bar-b-q. I left them alone and chilled out inside with my little lady and my littlest man (Eenan was sleeping over at Mary’s), since the day’s beautiful weather was quickly turning chilly and damp.

I actually got online to check my Myspace that night and to my surprise I had a friend request from an old friend from Middle School: Carmen! When I first saw her name I thought, “Could it be? No…” But it was! We exchanged messages for a while then had a nice, long talk on the phone catching up on eachother’s lives. We made plans to meet the next day for lunch somewhere.

In the time I’d left Alaethia with Mom for the few hours that I was at my eye appointment and then picked up the kids, she managed to screw up her routine. She gave me so much trouble that afternoon; she’d cry and cry, drink about an ounce of milk, go to sleep, wake up screaming and would drink another ounce. It took a few hours to get her back on track and I was fearful that she wouldn’t let me sleep that night and that her almost perfect patterns were gone for good. Although Alaethia did pretty good that night, and did pretty good every other night before, I felt so exhausted on Saturday morning. I overslept by a few minutes and it threw off my whole morning. I didn’t even get a chance to iron Mario’s clothes. I ate some breakfast real quick and got all of Alaethia’s stuff together. I was taking her with me; there was NO WAY I was leaving her with Mom again for that long! The boys, on the other hand, weren’t making much of an effort to get ready and since I was already running late I left them with Mother.

I was nervous driving to the glass place that morning since it was cold and rainy. She did great on the way over there and was an angel the entire time we were there. It took a while to get done this time and I was starting to get worried. It didn’t take but half an hour the first time we went there to get a chip fixed. The receptionist was just appologizing for how long it was taking when one of the installers came in to tell her it was done being replaced. I laugh and say, “Oh, you mean repaired.” The guy chuckles and says, “No, it was replaced.” My heart starts racing and I slap my hands over my eyes. I say, “It wasn’t supposed to be replaced! It was only a crack!” He says he looked over the work order and it was put down as a replacement; there’s no way they’d be able to repair that type of crack. I tell him I specifically asked the guy if a crack of that size could be fixed and that he’d said as long as it was under 6 inches, it could be. We stand around pondering what to do and then the guys tell me not to worry about it, to go home. I say, “What? I just…leave? Just like that? What happens then?” The same guy chuckles and says, “We just won’t get paid our comission.” Just dig the dagger deeper in why don’t you? Like I didn’t feel guilty about everything that was happening already, and that’s because I didn’t even do anything wrong! So we decide I’d just leave and we’d resolve it on Monday. Yippee.

I drove to Mario’s to show him our new windshield and told him the horror story behind it. He sort of just laughed it off, which annoyed me a little. I parked and called Carmen up to get my mind off the darn thing. We made plans to meet at the mall and have lunch there. She was going to have her kiddos with her and I had Alaethia.

It was so good seeing her! We held eachother in a hug for a few minutes when we first saw eachother. I remember that at the end of 8th grade we weren’t as close as we were in 7th. You know how all that middle/high school drama goes. Sadly I can’t even remember what happened that came between our friendship. She moved away after 8th grade and we lost touch completely, but I’m so glad that it’s like we never stopped talking!

Her kids went to this little mall event they were having for the kids’ club. I signed up for Sephora.com and got some free makeup, yay! We walked around and just chattered on and on and then we had lunch at the food court. I had spinach and mushroom stuffed pizza from Villa Pizza. *drool* That was delicious and oh, so sinful.

We peeked into a few of our favorite stores. She has a wedding to go to, so we went into Macy’s to look for dresses. I saw red clearance flags in this one section of the store, and I quickly skidadled over there. I found a cute tee (Just Jimmy’s one of my current favorite brands) for $4.99. I just noticed how much the shirts actually cost. I’ve got 5 of them and I’ve never paid full price for them. I usually get them at ross for under $7. That’s why I LOVE Ross!

John called telling me he wanted to go to the mall, too, so as soon as Carmen and I were done walking around the mall I went home and we made plans to go right back. The boys didn’t want to go, again, so it would just be John, Alaethia and me. Well, Alaethia decides she needs a bottle at the last minute (and she’d just eaten right when we got home) and then Mary asks us to drop her off at Noelia’s work. Everything took an additional hour and 15 minutes to get done, so we didn’t end up going to the mall. John wanted to get Alaethia a cute blanket from Hot Topic. I hope there’ll still be some left for when we finally decide to go back.

I started feeling sick with a sore throat that morning so after stopping by Game Stop, where John bought some game thing, we went to H-E-B to get medications, honey and chamomille tea, cereal and ice cream :P.

Mario was home on Sunday and since Target was finally going to have some DS’s in stock John asked if we’d be kind enough to do him the favor of getting up at the crack of dawn and getting one for him. We left the house at 9 and we expected them to be sold out. We get to Target and there’s 6 whole shoppers in the entire store. Better for us. I’m so glad we have a Target “over here”. The ones in McAllen are always sold out of the good stuff because of the people who come shopping over here from Mexico.

We had some breakfast afterwards at Burger King and then Paul called us to go over to his house so we could work on networking their computers. I just sat with Alaethia on their bed and talked with Norma while Mario figured out the computer stuff (with Paul watching LOL). It was nice seeing them after so long. Their kiddos are all so big!

Mario dropped Noelia off at work today, so I got the kids to school extra early and got home with enough time to do everything I needed to do. I tried taking a nap with Alaethia after everyone left, but everybody and their mama kept calling. Including the lady from the glass place. After a whole bunch of BS, I still won’t find out what happens for another week. My deductible is $100 now, but they were saying it was still $500, which isn’t true. If they do accept it as $100, I won’t have to pay anything at all. It better happen that way; I don’t plan to pay anything since it wasn’t my mistake.

I got a call from a guy at I.R.R.A. asking me to pick up my darn high school diploma (that I’d ordered since 2005) already, so after I picked Jaylen up from school John and I went to Edinburg to pick up the darn thing. It looks nice and un-cheap, unlike my first diploma. I called Sally while we were over there and we made plans to meet after 3:30 at my house.

We met Mario for lunch (after we’d picked up the McDonald’s I mentioned at the beginning of the entry) and ate at the park we’d eaten at on Thursday. It was so nice out today. I wish I could see my Babe more often, but I guess since I don’t get to it makes the time we do spend together more special :).

I was to help Sally figure out what to make for dinner and then we’d go buy the groceries we needed. So fun! We wrote down recipes and talked for a good while and when we were about to leave she realizes she doesn’t have her wallet. She calls Pete and they realize they threw her wallet in the trash at the park they were having lunch at this afternoon by accident! Thankfully, Pete goes and checks and to everyone’s relief the wallet was still in the trash! Sally’s going on a hiking/road trip this weekend, which I’m so jealous of! Hopefully, after she comes back all the girls will be able to get together like the old days :). I can’t wait!

So I guess you can say I’ve had a pretty awesome, albeit hectic, week. I’m on Cloud 9 in life right now. I’m so grateful to be surrounded by loving family who’s more than willing to help me out when I need it and friends who I can count on and distract myself with. I was so afraid I’d have Post Partum Depression again for the 3rd time, but I’m so incredibly thrilled to say I don’t feel the baby blues at all!

(Edit @ 12:35pm) Just went through this entry and realized the insane amount of typos and things I left out since I was writing this with one eye open last night. I was that sleepy. I also realized just how long this entry is. I salute you if you actually read through the whole thing! (End Edit)

Still here, waiting, although D-Day (Delivery!) may be here soon. Mario and I went to a birthday bar-b-que on Saturday night, where we stayed till 1:30am. Pete and Sally (they’re a couple now! YAY!) came over on Sunday and picked me up for a super fun day in Weslaco, and then later Mario and I went to Pete’s house for a bar-b-que–two events that I will remember always :). (Will maybe elaborate later if I get the chance.) I realized last night just how much I love my family and friends and just living life right now. I’m exactly where I want to be, and it feels so good to say that.

I’ve been having contractions every 4-6 minutes for the past hour or so, and before that had them every 10 minutes. I haven’t felt one in a while (like 8 minutes maybe?) so I’m not sure if this is true labor or not. Either way, I have until Wednesday–Wednesday will be the day Dr. C. induces if Alaethia hasn’t come on her own. I’m so nervous, but SO excited! I need to finish eating dinner and re-pack my bags, just in case!

(Totally forgot to mention: You’ve probably already caught a glimpse of it; I’ve added a new theme, Early Spring (might change the theme name, too). Just something simple to better organize my side bars. It took FOREVER to fix everything up; hardest theme I’ve worked with so far. I still can’t think of a decent banner, so I have that ugly, plain one for now till I get inspired. Also, if you’d like, you can sign up to get an e-mail when I update the blog. I feel a little…accomplished having installed all these cool new things. Had to do it before I didn’t get the chance to once Alaethia’s here. Contractions are now farther apart, so tonight may not be the night, but it sure was a reality check. We were all running around like crazies!)