Category Archives: Uncategorized

I got my Nikon D90 today! Yeah! I have been fooling around with it and I must say I love it! A big thank you to my husband for talking me into getting it! Sorry for the short post but I’m off to play with my new toy!

Busy, busy this weekend has been. Raven had a doctors appointment Friday. She was a new patient so she had to have a first visit just to get established. The doc did the routine exam and said she seemed over all healthy. That is until he had her bend down and touch her toes so he could examine her back. He felt along her spine and said that he may be seeing something there that isn’t but he wanted to make sure. He thinks she may have a mild case of scoliosis (people who suffer from scoliosis have a spine that is curved like an S) and he gave me an order for a spine x-ray which we will do sometime this coming week. Raven has said on a regular basis that her back hurt. Sometimes I blew it off (which I shouldn’t of) cause she would always complain about it when she was told to do some type of chore. So I just thought she was using it as an excuse. That was a bad parenting move on my part. But that’s not the first one and will not be the last. The doctor also told Raven that she should only drink 3 to 4 cans of pop a week (instead of the 3 to 4 cans of pepsi or sprite that she usually drinks a day). She wasn’t to happy about that but she has been keeping up with what the doc said and hasn’t had any pop since Friday morning.

Friday night, Raven and I took M out to eat for his birthday (which isn’t until today). We drove up to Chili’s cause they just rock so much.

Saturday I went and picked up M’s birthday cake. It was a Sugar Cookie Cookie Cake from The Great American Cookie Company.

Today I fixed him his birthday breakfast and we stayed in bed and watch Role Models, which was pretty good actually.

All in all it was a decent weekend.

When I got Raven up this morning it was like any other school day. She did her normal routine. Bathroom, wash face, brush teeth, scrub fingernails, get dressed, say good morning to hamtaro . . . that’s were the routine stopped short and she came running to tell me with tears filling her eyes that she thinks Hamtaro is dead. Sure enough, there he was laying on his back at the bottom of his hamster slide looking as if he took one finale ride down the slide before he bit the dust. Raven was understandably upset. I picked up Hamtaro’s little dead body and placed him in a little jewelry gift box and told Raven that I would bury him while she was in school. She did some more crying, wiped her tears away and got on the school bus.

When she came home she was feeling much better. Not upset. Still sad but able to make jokes and move on with her life. She told me that she told some of her friends what had happened. That’s when our conversation turned more then a little odd.

Raven: I told some friends about Hamtaro.
Me: What did they say?
Raven: Not much.

(Pause)

Raven: Are you upset about Hamtaro, Mommy
Me: No.
Raven: He’s going to come back from the dead and bite you for not being upset.
Me: Well, if I get bit by a zombie hamster then I will turn into either a zombie or a hamster. Possibly both, I’m not sure.
Raven: That would freakin’ cool!

Yep, she acts more like me every day (poor kid).

Anywho, Rest In Piece Hamtaro. You where a good dwarf hamster.

Well, it looks as if we will not be getting our own place anytime soon. Ugh. It sucks but what can I do. So the whole search for a house is on hold. Blah. I’ll just have to continue to try to make the best of it.

On a better note, I did our taxes the other day and it looks as if we will be getting a nice chunk of change back which M is telling me I should use some of it to buy a new digital SLR camera. My Olympus E20 has been an extremely faithful SLR to me but has been acting wonky the past year and seeing how it is almost 7 years old it probably is about time to retire my old friend.

As most of you know I have been participating in many paid to blog sites for 2 years. Well, in all honesty it has been 1 year and 11 months. My true 2 year anniversary won’t happen until March. Anywho, I never dreamed that I could make money blogging, let alone clear more then I ever brought home when I worked part time at Walmart. That’s right, at the height of my paid to blog career I was pulling in more the a minimum wage full time job. Of course, my blogging slacked and then became nonexistent because of some family / life issues that I am hoping will never happen again and I am wanting to get back into the groove of blogging and making a little extra spending money. I don’t have as much time now as I did before because of I am now working part time as a medical receptionist but I should be able to balance everything out ok. At least I hope so.

Anyway, I have been looking into some of my old favorites and some new ones. I want to thank Jenn over at Jenn.nu who told us all about the new kid on the paid to blog block called PayingPost.

PayingPost is pretty similar to the other paid to blog sites. You submit your blog, once your blog is approved you are able to reserve opportunities (or opps). You write a post about the item, product, service, site, whatever and, as long as it meets the requirements, it gets approved.

One thing that sets PayingPost apart from the competitors is that instead of having to wait the obligatory 30 days like those other guys, you get paid once your balance hits $25 or more. That alone should intrigue you enough to want to learn more about their site and how to submit your blog for approval.

My Valentine’s Day was actually pretty good. When we woke up, I fixed M, me and Raven banana nut pancakes for breakfast. M and I spent the morning lounging in bed watching various tv shows until about 1pm when we got dressed and took Raven to my mom’s house so she could stay the night. After dropping her off we continued on to Morgantown so we could watch My Bloody Valentine 3D (Jensen Ackles is yummy), which was surprisingly good. We had an hour or so to kill before the movie so we looked around the mall and got us a couple of fruit smoothies. M got the pineapple, I got the raspberry. We finished up our smoothies and went on over to the theater. We got a medium popcorn to share and a drink for each of us. The 3D movie was just awesome! And the remake was no better or worse then the original. So all in all it was worth the $15.00 tickets. After the move was over we headed on up to Chili’s which had an hour wait time but we went ahead and waited (which was more like 40 minutes instead of an hour) and of course it was worth the wait cause Chili’s is just ubercool! After that we headed home. Watched some more tv and then did some censured activities and went to bed. All in all it was a wonderful Valentine’s Day. And I want to give a big Thank you to my husband for it! Thank you M, I love you!

M got me a stuffed Teddy Bear, a box of chocolates (which are delicious) and a card.

Something that we regularly try to do in our home is to have a family movie night. Yes, some may say it sounds corny but it truly is a great way to spend some time with your loved ones while watching a freakin’ awesome movie at the same time. We have been having a movie night since Raven was just a wee lass and even now at the age of 11 (she’ll be 12 in April! Where does the time go?) she still enjoys watching a movie with her ma and pa. Of course our movie night consents mostly of horror movies (a lot of them coming from Japan) but we try to throw in an occasional non scary movie or perhaps one that the hubby and I use to love when we where a child. Raven enjoys watching those so that she can mock us about how dorky we are for liking those types of movies when we where little. And no movie night is complete with out snacks! We defiantly do the traditional popcorn thing, but we also throw in some crackers and cheese, maybe a few cookies and what ever else we are craving at the time. One of these weekends we may just watch All Roads Lead Home The Movie. It’s about a 12 year old girl who’s mother is killed in an automobile accident and the struggles that her and the rest of the family go through because of their loss. Peter Boyle is in it and, correct me if I am wrong, but I think All Roads Lead Home may have been his last film before his death. He was a great actor, I still will never love him more then when he starred with Gene Wilder (another great and classic actor) in Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks is a genius!). Anywho, I have included the trailer to All Roads Lead Home for my lovely readers to view. So let me know what you think.

Early this month Jenn over a Jenn.nu was having a Win A Peek contest and I thought “hey why not enter it” even though I knew I would never win cause I never win anything except for every round of Scene It I have ever played cause my head is full of useless movie trivia. Anywho, last night I logged in to check my email and I had a message from the lovely Jenn stating that I won the Peek! Yeah, I couldn’t believe it. I was like “no way” and she was like “yes way” and I was like “NO WAY” and she was like . . . ok, you get the idea. So I am really excited about getting this cool, sleek, hip email only device and can not wait for it to arrive!

So I wanna give a big huge THANK YOU to Jenn and Peek!

Wednesday night, I had a brush with death. I was minding my own business sitting on the bed watching NCIS, fooling with my camera settings and eating ice cubes (something I do on a regular basis) when I hiccuped and the large ice cube that was currently in my mouth slid down my throat and got stuck there. I couldn’t breath! I was choking! Mike, who was just a few feet away from me playing WoW, had no idea what was going on. I set there for what seemed like minutes (but was only seconds) trying to force the ice cube to go down but it wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t breath and I was starting to panic. I jump up and started taping Mike feverishly on the shoulder. When he turned around and seen me pointing at my throat and the look of panic in my eyes he swung into action. Mike swung me around to preform the Heimlich maneuver. I thought “Oh shit, he’s going to do the Heimlich maneuver on me!” And I turned back around and shook my head “no”, I was scared and didn’t want him to cause I knew it would hurt. About that time my body finally reacted and pushed the ice cube out of my throat with a cough that actually sounded like I was getting ready to hurl. After we both calmed down, we had a good laugh about it. I told Mike that would be a pretty pathetic way for me to die by choking on an ice cube. I have informed him that if I died some stupid way like that to lie to people about my demise. Tell them that I ran into an orphanage to save the orphans, I got them all out but when I went back into to get the box of kittens the ceiling collapsed on me and killed me. So you all now know that if you hear that is the way I died, I really lost the battle with an ice cube.

Yesterday was my long day at work. I didn’t clock out until 6:30pm and got home about 10 minutes later. When I got home, I took off my coat chatted to Mike a few and asked Raven how school was. She gave her usual ho hum answer of “fine”. I was just about ready to change out of my scrubs when Raven said “Mommy, when I was in gym today I hurt my finger really bad when I was trying to catch the volley ball”. She held up her hand and her ring finger, right above the knuckle, was bruised and swollen pretty bad. She said she was in pain. When asked why she didn’t tell her gym teacher, this is how the conversation went:

Raven: “All three fingers hurt and I thought it would have to be one heck of a coincidence that I really hurt them all so I didn’t think it was a big deal. But then in 7th period this finger (holding up the blue and swollen one) was still hurting.”

Me: “Why didn’t you tell Daddy when you got home from school?”

Raven: “I thought you got home a little after I did and I was going to tell you and Daddy together then when Daddy told me you didn’t get home until later on tonight, I was playing on the computer and I forgot.”

Yep, she forgot, Anywho, I took her to medbrook and they x-rayed her finger and found that she did not break it but she did tear some ligaments And it will take about 3 to 4 weeks to heal.