I’m Beautiful Like Me.

My apologies for a long absence. The truth is that I’ve been otherwise occupied and trying to limit my online time. I will try to catch you up without dragging on.

I was offered a job with a starting date of January 5th. So after the latest incident at my job, I quit on New Year’s Eve. The family spent the day running about town on errands, just being together. After, we headed out to P’s place for another ringing in with their family. Last year was a great success and I’m rather fond of building traditions. I told P that she was forever stuck with us celebrating transformation - the end of one year and the beginning of another.

We had a great time. We paid for it dearly the next day, but it was worth it. We spent most of the night outside in the gazebo with candles, space heaters and a small firepit, drinking and being belligerent. Big Rob had to have a photo of P’s “eyebrows” made by shadow cast from candle and eyeglasses. P’s sister H joined us, as well. When P’s husband B arrived sometime after midnight still very sober, I managed to catch this picture of him in the unfortunate position of being in front of our empty bottles. It’s my favorite picture.

P and I; L and Joy; me and Buddha (still sober)

P’s “eyebrows”; Husband and I; L, Joy and C

P, P’s sister H and Big Rob; classic Big Rob; P’s husband B’s unfortunate position

Suffice it to say that New Year’s Day was spent in a haze of frequent bathroom trips and fitful sleep.

On the 5th of January, I started my new job, also waiting tables. It’s a great job: the hours are awesome as the restaurant only operates 11-3 M-F and closes on all major holidays. The pay rate is slightly higher than average ($2.85 vs. the usual $2.13 per hour), the guests are mostly regulars and I’ve made pretty decent tips every day that I’ve worked.

There are some down sides, though and they mostly center around the restaurant owners (a married couple). They are unfriendly, rigid and absolute control freaks. The man tends to follow me around in front of the patrons and nitpick every.little.thing I do that isn’t to par with his standards, as though I have never waited tables and he thinks I’m an idiot or has little faith in me or both. I’ve tried to convince myself that the trade-off is worth it. Nonetheless, I have started searching for new work. I’m happy to report that I had a job interview yesterday that went pretty well. Hopefully, I’ll hear something very soon.

In the meantime, I’ve been knitting and reading a lot. I made 3/4 of a purse for my niece for Christmas (I got to the hand-sewing part and just stopped), started and frogged a sock, and finished a leg warmer. I’ve enjoyed reading so much that it’s been over a week since I’ve even thought about knitting! I’ve finished both Odd Hours by Dean Koontz and Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I’m eager to start another book. Last year (or was it the year before? Wow, time is flying!), I purchased the last book in the Harry Potter series and never read it. Same story with Dean Koontz’s The Darkest Evening of the Year. Of course now, I’m eager to continue to New Moon, as well.

Buddha is as obnoxious as he is cute and Joy had her first pep-rally and basketball game last week. I took video, but it wasn’t very good. I’ll try my best to get better video to share when we go tonight. The Step Team was so good, they received louder cheers than the basketball players and the cheerleaders! Naturally, Joy is very excited to be a part of all this and I’m thrilled, too.

Things have been very, very emotional around here. The past few weeks, I have been scrounging for cash to pay our bills. Husband has gotten his business license and we’ve done some low-budget advertising with not much luck. I’ve been working on some online projects to make some money, including starting a new blog,. The Natal Astrology blog feels promising - it’s a niche that isn’t terribly crowded, I love the subject matter and won’t be running out of material to blog about in the foreseeable future. In the last 11 days of October, I made $9.75 - not a gob of cash, but at this point, every little bit counts!

I spent a lot of hard labor hours working on my mom’s shop, too, with Husband’s help. We got rid of a lot of garbage and donated a lot of practical (but useless to mom) stuff to the Goodwill. I’m very grateful that she helped us out - we wouldn’t have made the rent this month without this job.

Ginger, my beloved Hemingway cat, started urinating in weird places. Then we noticed blood in his urine. I did some online research and discovered that an older male cat with a UTI could die of renal failure if not treated. I cried a lot. Do I dip into my already scarce rent funds to help my cat?

Damn right I do.

I ended up calling into work last Thursday to take him to the vet. I opted for the antibiotics only, the cheapest route. If they don’t work, we’ll hafta go back for x-rays to see if he has bladder stones. So far, he is passing urine still and while it isn’t much, it’s no longer bloody. My fingers are crossed.

I managed to get Joy in to her doctor on Thursday, as well. Her ’script was running low and I was worried that she’d be off her meds for a long time, as it is often difficult to get in with her doctor right away.

Not sure exactly how we managed, but rent was paid, the cat and kid were dealt with, and all is okay. Not great, but okay.

My dad called on Thursday, but we didn’t talk until Friday. He told me that my gramma is having surgery on Monday to have a lung removed. Given her age and overall health, he said she has about a 20% chance of surviving the surgery. I’m stunned by this news. She is my only living grandparent. While we aren’t close, I fully expected that one day, I’d take my kids and Husband to spend Thanksgiving with her. That may not happen now.

We took the kids trick-or-treating with P and her girls on Friday.

Yesterday, they came over to our place for a bit, we ate a delicious dinner and just hung out. It was good for me. I have been spending my free time working on some knitted gifts for P and was able to give some of it to her. I finished up the scarf yesterday after she left.

I work this afternoon. I hate working Sundays, but we need the money. I asked for extra shifts, too. Hopefully it won’t suck to work some nights and I will actually earn some decent income from this place. In the meantime, we’ll still do what we can on the side to make it.

• Added a star-rating feature so you can vote on each post. It also includes recommendations for other content that might interest the reader.
• Deleted the Recent Viewers widget.
• Deleted the Crochet & Knit widget.
• Moved the Wish List widget to its own page.
• Replaced the social bookmark icons bar with a single ShareThis button.
• Added a blogroll. There are 20-ish, but only the 10 most recently updated show.
• Updated the Buzzworthy Posts widget to reflect my new domain name and shortened the list to 5 instead of 12.
• Changed from 7 posts on the main page to 5 posts.

I hope you enjoy the changes. I’d love to hear any feedback on it or improving the layout in general. And, as always, if you enjoy this blog, I’d be very grateful if you share it! Thanks!