Good news & bad news

Well, I've got some good news and I've got some bad news.

The bad news is, I went to the doctor yesterday and I have been diagnosed with some rare disorder that will make my hair fall out and my skin turn green. But the good news is that I just saved a ton of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico.

The Tigers play Houston tonight, and hopefully attendance should be up tonight since they'll be honoring the football team. Imagine that! Basketball attendance boosted by the football team!

Actually, I was just kidding about the bad news. And I was kidding about the good news, too. The quote Geico gave me was higher than the policy we currently have. Stupid commercials.

At random

Do you believe there was once life on Mars? I don't. And I'm not yet sure what the point is of using bazillions of dollars exploring Mars, either. Why the general public need to know the mineral content of Mars' surface is beyond me. If some major breakthrough discovery, i.e. the cure for cancer, comes out of this, I'll change my mind.

I did some spring cleaning yesterday, about 2 months early. I did the formidable...cleaning out the refrigerator. Heck, forget spending $50 a pop on antibiotics. I'll just culture them myself! I also cleaned out the cabinet underneath the sink. What's funny is I filled up an entire garbage bag with empty garbage bag boxes. How long had I really been collecting those? I am such a pack rat to be female. I try not to be, but it's hard to change who you are, lol. I think it's genetic. I can remember my Grandma saving little scraps of just about anything JUST IN CASE she finds a use for it 15 years later. My Dad is just about the same way. I also cleaned off the top of the refrigerator, cleaned out the pantry, and cleaned off the top of the dryer. I was so full of energy yesterday because after I did all of that, I got a shower, then went to the grocery store, then came home and unloaded/put away the groceries to fill the bare refrigerator/pantry after having cleaned them out, then made dinner, then cleaned up the kitchen. WHEW!

Yesterday I got a CD in the mail from someone on the Tigers message board. It's a CD he burned for me of the "Mighty Sound of the South". So I popped it into my CD player. The first song was "Proud Mary". Sounded REALLY good. It got to the 1:53 mark, and skipped back to the 1:18 mark. The heck? So I tried bumping it up to the next track, and it went back to the beginning of track 1. I tried playing each of the tracks and every time it went back to the beginning of track 1. Hrmph. I want to say something to the guy who sent it to me, but I almost hate to because he was so nice to send it to me without charging me anything. Hrmph.

Michael actually has the day off tomorrow. Imagine that. I think he's taking Travis to his nephew's basketball game. And then tomorrow night we're heading to the Pyramid. Should be fun!

Welp, Jacob's waking up, so I'm outta here! Happy Friday!

Maybe we should move to Alaska

I told Michael once he gets his teaching degree, we should move to Alaska since they have the highest paid teachers, and Mississippi has the LOWEST paid teachers. If you are a teacher in Mississippi, you better either A) Have a spouse that has a good-paying job, or B) Be prepared to take on a 2nd job to help make ends meet. Seriously folks...it's ridiculous when the teachers are told they're gonna get X number of dollars more over the next 5 years, and then all of the sudden that money's gotta be spent on something else, and then the Superintendent gives himself a hefty raise every year. I dunno, it's probably like that everywhere, but MS teachers don't even have health insurance anymore. How can MS ever leave the bottom of the totem pole in education if they don't pay the teachers significantly more? This would definitely help boost their morale, meaning they'd care more about their jobs, and as a result, the kids would make the grades. I can't tell you how many teachers I've had in the past who just handed out worksheets, said "Here, do them" and sit at their desk, file their nails and drink coffee. When I had teachers that went the extra mile, gave interesting/fun assignments and activities, decorated their classroom, etc, etc, it made me WANT to do well in that class. When I had teachers that had bare walls and a personality to match, I didn't give a rat's rear about that class. Fortunately, I was a pretty good student, and many of my classes came very easy to me, but for those students who really struggled, this had to make it hard for them. My Mom, who teaches 8th grade history, just told me that a science teacher left her school to take a job in Memphis making $11,000 more a year. Mississippi is hurting for teachers, but where are the incentives to get teachers here and KEEP them here? I ask my Mom all the time why doesn't she just go back to school to get her Master's and try for a job at Northwest...she'd make more money for less stress. But she says if you go into teaching for the right reasons, you do it because you love it, and not for the money. It's sad though. Teachers should get paid more than anyone. Without teachers, there would BE no doctors or lawyers or any other well-paid professionals. Not only that, but once a child reaches kindergarten, he/she spends a heck of a lot of time at school, with a teacher, and it's up to teachers to help mold kids' lives. That's a HUGE responsibility.

The devil is real, unfortunately

Now before I get started on the main part of this post, I will say that last night's game against Tulane was excellent. It was probably the most entertaining game I've seen the Tigers play so far this season. We beat Tulane by 14 points, which was much better than last year's 1 point win. I am looking forward to Saturday night's game against Houston at the Pyramid. We'll be there, dressed in blue. I think we're gonna go to Huey's downtown before the game, which will be great as it always is. I still say it's the best Huey's location.

Have you ever caught yourself doing something, and right in the middle, you actually feel like good and evil are battling it out, both perched on each of your shoulders? You know the scene...you've seen it in cartoons and sitcoms. It's a miniature devil in a red suit, complete with horns, pointed tail and pitch fork, laughing into the character's ear, "Sure, go ahead, do it." And then there's the "good" one, dressed in white, with wings and a halo, trying to talk the character's self-conscience out of whatever he/she is wanting to do. Believe it or not, this is actually quite real. It's called spiritual warefare. The devil really does come at us at all angles. The bad thing is, the more you give into what Satin wants you to do, the harder it becomes to resist. And what is even WORSE is that the devil is so super smart, he can make things appear so innocent. I mean, sure there are some obvious traps he can lead you into, but what I'm talking about are little tiny things that don't seem like a big deal. But these little tiny, seemingly innocent things can and will turn into big things if you allow him to take hold. Just as an example, say you are 22 years old. You've never had a drop of alcohol in your life. You chose this because for one, you've just never had any interest in trying it, much less getting drunk or doing something stupid. Well, that's pretty rare for a 22-year-old, although I know a few people a little older than 22 who've never drank OR smoked anything in their life, including myself. But anyway, let's say you are that 22 year-old who never has drank, and a friend whom aren't THAT close to, but have known for awhile, invites you to somewhere like Applebee's for dinner. Well you get there, and it's pretty packed, and the hostess asks the both of you if you'd like to sit at the bar. So you give it a thought, and at first, the thought of it makes you kind of uncomfortable, but then you're like, "Sure, why not? I'm not sitting there to drink...I'm just sitting there to eat dinner, and I don't want to have to wait for a table." So there you are at the bar, waiting on your food. Everyone around you is drinking, and even your "friend" just ordered a beer. Suddenly you feel out of place, but you can't help but almost wonder what the big deal is about, and you are almost tempted to order something yourself. But you don't. So you eat, you leave, no big deal. But in the back of your mind, you hope no one saw you sitting at the bar. A week or so later, you go out to eat somewhere else that has a bar, and you don't even give it a thought before sitting at the bar to avoid a wait. Then the next time you ASK for the bar to avoid a wait for a table. Then the next time you sit at the bar, and look over the drink menu and order something harmless-looking like a strawberry daquiri. Then the next time and then next and the next you try different drinks, and before you know it, you are buying a 6-pack of beer at the grocery store...first only to have on hand for when friends come over for special occassions, but then start keeping your fridge stocked with the stuff so you can pop one open any time you feel like it. And then you find yourself drinking it with almost every meal, going through a 6-pack a night in front of the TV, and drinking whatever you can get every time you go out to eat, every time you go to a party, to a friend's house, on holidays, sporting events...you'll use almost any event as an excuse to drink. So you went from never having touched it in your life to you're now a full-blown social drinker/borderline alchoholic.

I probably have a few friends that read this that drink on a regular basis, and I'd say "that's fine" but I can't say "that's fine". I don't see the point of drinking at all. I worked with someone who wouldn't come to something another co-worker had at her house BECAUSE she knew she couldn't drink at her house!! I didn't even have an invitation for my baby shower with Jacob sent to this same woman because I knew she wouldn't come if she couldn't drink. Isn't that pathetic? Everyone at my old job, short of two other people, drank like fish, and they knew I didn't drink, and they made a point of leaving me out of certain office gatherings for that very reason, I'm sure. I think the office manager even despised me because I wasn't one of her "drinking buddies". I've been to office parties and watched co-workers drink themselves stupid (literally...and then drive themselves home afterwards). If they knew how stupid they were acting, I wonder if they would still consume alchohol. Not only that, but it's expensive to have a drinking habit. I mean, heck, if we'd served alcohol at our wedding reception it would have doubled, if not tripled, our wedding expenses, no joke! I don't know about you, but every time me and Michael go out to eat at somewhere like Chili's, we spend around $30 for the 2 of us. If we drank, we could add at the very LEAST $10 to the check. Oh and what REALLY is sad is to watch adults drinking in front of their kids...LITTLE kids. These kids are brought up to believe it's okay, that it's part of life. My parents never, ever drank, and I can remember going to a friend's house one time, when I was in elementary school, and I opened up their refrigerator door and saw beer in there, and I can remember feeling so shocked!!! And then of course when I went home, I told my mom about it, and she never let me go to that friend's house again. The very first word that comes to mind when I see someone with a beer in their hand is IRRESPONSIBILITY. Some may argue that there's nothing wrong with having a good time by having a beer with some friends, but you know what? I have learned you can have a great time with friends without the beer. I've been to a bazillion sporting events where everyone around me was drinking, but I can honestly say I had a royal blast and never drank anything other than a Coke at a ball game.

Okay, I kind of wandered away from my point slightly, but another example would be the casinos. If you've ever gone down there just for dinner or just for a concert, you are putting yourself within shooting range of the devil. Especially if you're going for a concert, because you have to walk right past the slot machines to get to where the concerts are. How tempting would it be just to stick a quarter in and see what happens? And then keep doing it over and over and over? And the casinos have this all strategically planned out this way, too. They WANT this to happen.

ANYWAY, please no hate-shout-outs for my bashing alchohol consumers. I hope you have a good liver and someone to drive you home.

So disorganized

That's right. Me. Mother of two. No organizational skills. No matter how hard I try to set myself and my kids on a normal routine, I fail miserably. And I have no excuse, do I? I'm a stay-at-home mom with nothing else in the world to do. I'll do really good one week, and then the next week I slump back into laziness. Of course, it seems like every other week someone in the family, if not everyone in the family, is sick, and that really gets me off track BIG time, then I get waaay behind on cleaning, everything piles up, overwhelming me, and then I sink into a state of depression, not wanting to do anything but forget that there's a million things I desperately need to get done, and then I have to wait until I am in the mood to clean things, and then by the time such mood strikes my fancy, someone gets sick again, and the viscious cycle never ends. My question is, do all mothers feel this way to a certain extent? I hope so and I don't hope so all at the same time. If I know I'm not the only mother that's screaming to herself, then at least I know there's a club to belong to. But if there ARE other mothers screaming to themselves, that means there are mothers out there that feel as miserable as I do.

I think back to my mother when I was a small child. She stayed home with me, my dad worked. She always got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen from breakfast, made the beds, did some laundry, ironed, made lunch, cleaned up the kitchen from lunch, then it was nap time, then it was time to clean something like a bathroom or maybe dust a room, then by that time it was time to start supper, time for my dad to come home, then we ate, then the kitchen was cleaned up after supper, and then she would then sit down and rest and watch TV, read, sew something, maybe do her nails. Okay. So why can't I adopt a nice routine like that? MY problem is that I feel compelled to do EVERYTHING all at ONCE. I can't seem to feel like I've accomplished anything if I've just cleaned one room in a day, because that makes all the other rooms all the more dirty looking. I also feel like I have to have EVERYTHING clean and tidy before I can even begin on a routine. I mean, when I get up each morning, I feel like I don't have TIME to get dressed or eat breakfast. Half the time my bed stays unmade all day and I don't get out of whatever clothes I slept in until almost time for Michael to come home from work. I don't see the point of getting a shower when I'm just going to get all dirty cleaning the house. I am so aggravated with MYSELF because I am having the hardest time finding a good routine that works with 2 small kids and STICKING with it! Who knows, maybe I was BETTER at being a working mom? That's not saying I don't ENJOY getting to be with my kids all day, because I DO. I LOVE being here with them and the thoughts of being away from them, especially NOW, and someone else taking care of them during the day while I work, makes me sick. I'm just saying that I used my time more wisely when I worked because I HAD to. I just want a good routine to stick with. I think part of my problem is that my entire household (besides Jacob) goes to bed too late. And then when Jacob wakes up at 7:30 in the morning, I can't even make myself get out of bed right away, and then when I finally do, I am still half asleep and it takes me hours to wake up and do anything productive, and by then, it's lunch time. I am just sooo disorganized!!!

Let's say I'm going to start some laundry first thing one morning. Well, I'll walk into the bathroom to get the laundry hamper, drag it into the kitchen, sort the laundry, get the first load going, take the empty hamper back into the bathroom and start picking up and putting away things that are on the bathroom counter and putting them in the drawer, etc., and then I'll find something that belongs in the kitchen, i.e. a pair of scissors, and so before I even finish picking up in the bathroom, I'll go to the kitchen to put the scissors away and start loading the dishwasher before I even finished the last thing I was working on! Then the phone will ring, so I run to the bedroom to answer the phone and after I get off the phone, I'll make up the bed before going back to the dishes!!! I'll be in the middle of making up the bed, Travis will call me into his room for something, and I'll straighten/organize his videos on his shelf before I get back to finishing my bed!!!! AHHH! Do you SEE my problem here?!?!?! I am so easily distracted and I end up not getting anything finished! So basically, after I spent all morning doing those things, I'm still left with only one load of laundry washed, the bathroom only halfway picked up, the bed isn't finished getting made, and I still have a sink half full of dishes.

I start so many things before I finish them and it drives me crazy!!!! Most of the time I wind up feeling like a dog chasing its tail. I never quite seem to catch up with it.

White stuff

Oh yeah, what do ya know? It's snowing. Barely. Everyone else I've talked to this morning said it's coming down pretty good where they are. Figures. I love to watch the snow. It's weird because the snow that's coming down is so small that the light breeze kind of catches it before it hits the ground, and there's a break in the clouds, so the sun is shining, and it makes the snow look more like glitter. Kind of cool.

Blehhhh

I am sick of being sick, or someone in my household being sick. We've had the flu, we've had strep, we've had plain 'ol colds, but we had not yet been stricken with the dreaded stomach bug until this weekend. I would rather have a cold and be unable to breathe than THIS! So far, Michael has been the fortunate one, but he's inevitably doomed as long as he walks through the door. It's only a matter of time. It's funny, too, well, not really FUNNY...I think the word is PECULIAR...that he is ALWAYS the LAST to get it and almost ALWAYS has more intense symptoms than the rest of us. But it's been noooo fun, to say the least, and I was starting to get dehydrated and the reason I know this is because I could actually get my wedding ring off, lol. I THINK I am at the end of it, but today I just feel so WEAK. I should probably eat something, but I'm pretty scared to. I got the house looking all nice this past week, and over the weekend it got transformed into looking like a tornado hit it. I don't understand why I'm the only one in the house who can pick up after myself?? I mean, Travis picks up his toys when I tell him to, and of course Jacob can't pick up stuff (not that he makes a mess anyway), but Michael...I love him dearly, but dang! I honestly wonder how long he could survive in a house with two kids if there was no one to pick up after him. I've actually thought about making a test run to see how long he can really go without picking up stuff that he deposits on the floor. How long would he let it build up? But my only problem is that *I* would go nutty. Granted, I'm not the most tidy person on the planet, but I do try to keep things picked up and put away when I'm not sick as a dog.

Anyway...not much else going on, other than an update on Michael decision to ditch the Tigers. Michael has decided to stay a Tiger fan, which I must say, I'm quite proud of him for sticking to his roots. He sent me this e-mail last night about it, and though somewhat personal, I wanted to put it on here:

Subj: What can I say? Born a Tiger, I'll die a Tiger...
Date: 1/18/2004 11:23:06 PM Central America Standard Ti

Man, man, man.....what a week it's been. I attempted to convince myself that I was absolutely sick of the Tigers, and sick of the politics and the seemingly neverending hoops you had to jump through to get a decent seat at a basketball game. I attempted to convince myself that if I was gonna continue to be as huge of a fan of college sports as I was, I had better jump on the bandwagon of an SEC team, and since I hated Ole Miss with every fiber of my being, then Mississippi State was THE team to cheer.

But the problem is.......well, what can I say.....I've got the heart of a Tiger, and my blood runs reflex blue and medium gray...(lol)...no matter how much I tried or how hard I could try in the future, I can't change what I am.....and that is a Memphis Tiger. I can't think of anything else that screws with my emotions and makes me love them so much when they win, and hate them so much when they come up just a little short, the way the University of Memphis does to me. I guess that's what being a true, diehard fan is all about.......you love 'em and you hate 'em......but you can't imagine life without 'em.

How in the world am I gonna throw away all the memories me and you have got with the Tigers? Outside of God and church, they've been the biggest thing in our marriage.. (almost sounds pathetic, don't it...LOL) ...they're one of the very few hobbies we share, and I ain't about to get rid of all that now.

Sure, I get so aggravated at the sight of ALL those empty seats, and the absolute lack of student attendance at the games.....but what am I gonna do to change that? I can't do a friggin' thing except be my painted up, beaded up, absolutely insane self at every game I get to go to. :) As far as those tickets we just bought for the MSU game.....apparently, those things will EASILY sell on their message board. That's no problem.....the shirt and hat I bought...I'll definitely hold onto 'em....I got nothing against Mississippi State.....heck, I even like them, and probably always will. I'll cheer for them every chance I get. I'll still wear that stuff......I might even consider myself somewhat of a Bulldog fan......but I AM a Memphis Tiger, and there ain't a thing I can do to change that.

Something you said to me the other day on the phone really stuck with me.....you told me how Travis associates the Tigers with Daddy. Man, that hit me hard........there ain't no way I'm gonna change my son's path now. He's on the way to becoming a huge Tiger fan, and me and you are gonna take our two boys to many, MANY, MANY Tiger football and basketball games over the years, regardless of who they're playing or what conference they're in. I don't care if they're playing the Miami Hurricanes or the SMU Mustangs.....like I said to begin with, I was born a Tiger...I'll die a Tiger.

Oh, and by the way, I noticed that on all three of my next Saturdays off....the Tigers have a home game.....starting with this Saturday against Houston......let's do whatever we gotta do to get to that game. :)

Love you SO much, babygirl
Michael

GO TIGERS GO!!!!

So there ya go! I must say I was feeling uneasy/losing sleep over it all, as crazy as that might sound. And like Michael, I have nothing against State whatsoever...it's just that we're Tiger fans and I can't just turn it off like a switch.