Red heads are the meanest......

......and it matches my personality perfectly! :-) I will have pictures later. Not sure what possessed me to do so, other than I knew I wanted a change, I didn't want to go blonde, highlights are too expensive if you get it done right, and Michael said he'd love to see me as a redhead, so I went for it. Oh yeah, and to cover up my gray. (My mom almost cried when I told her I had gray hair.) No, it's not Reba McEntire red or anything like that. The exact color is Dark Auburn, which gives it a nice reddish hue that somehow blends in with my natural color. It's just enough red to give my hair some color, but not 10th-grade-year red. This time I even did my eyebrows, which this was pretty terrifying at first, because it basically says on the box that if you get the stuff in your eye, you'll go blind. So I just squeezed a tiny dot of the dye onto a small cosmetic sponge and dabbed it carefully onto my eyebrows. Last time I went red, it was more orangish at first...I think I may have used Light Auburn, and I made the ultimate mistake of dying my hair the night before the first day of 10th grade. So on the first day of school, I was sitting there in Chemistry class and the teacher first commented on my name because he said his wife had the same name, and then he said "Nice hair," and then a few people around me said something like "Yeah, nice and fake!" But trust me, THIS doesn't look fake at all. And really THAT didn't look fake EITHER after a week's worth of shampoos. So anyway, the end result was that Michael loved it. Like I said, I'll put a picture on here later.

I guess yesterday was Michael's turn to have a bad day because he came home the most depressed I think I've seen him in a great while. See, on nights he has school, he is supposed to be able to get off work at 4:30 (remember, his Mom is his boss). So typically he would get home at 5, I have supper ready when he walks through the door, then he leaves at 6 to go to school. Well YESTERDAY just as it was time for Michael to leave work, they had a truck full of , well, I won't say what they were, to drive up and they basically wanted to test drive every single car on the lot. Well the thing is, Steve (his brother-in-law) was at a car auction, so it was just Michael and his mom there. Keep in mind this is a pretty much unsafe part of Memphis, so Michael had to stay there with his mom until the people left. What made this so bad is that he called me at like 4:40 to tell me he was still there because they had customers, and I had supper halfway finished, plus he wanted to get home on time, so he could eat on time, so he could study for his test one last time. He didn't get out of there until AFTER 5, so he got home at 5:30, ate REALLY FAST and then it was time to leave. In a nutshell, he hates having his Mom as his boss sometimes. I mean, it has its perks, but he said he'd much rather not have family for a boss because you can hate your boss then, but you can't hate your Mom, lol. He said he just doesn't want to work at the car lot for 3 more years, or however long it takes him to finish school. But he's stuck there until then. I mean, where else can he get a job making what he makes there? Nowhere. And we can't afford any more cuts in pay. Heck, we're already living paycheck to paycheck as it is. I even offered to go back to work so we could afford for him to take some other kind of job for less money, but he doesn't want me to do that, and I don't either. I guess he's just going to have to tough it out. What really gripes me about this is that anyone else that has ever worked there, whenever they needed off to take care of personal business, it's like "Sure, no problem." But if Michael asks, you can forget it. She never even believes him when he's sick. I had the flu once, and then Michael came down with it, and I overheard her telling someone on the phone, "Oh, Michael is fine, he'll be at work tomorrow." But he was really really sick for like 5 days, and he did stay home and he did not get off the couch one time. If he really wasn't sick, I promise you he would've been sitting here on the computer or playing his Playstation. And Michael's always talking about how stupid she makes him feel, and in her eyes, he can never do anything right. For example, she'll ask Michael what the price is on a car, and Michael will run outside to look on the window of whatever car, come back inside and tell her, and then she'll turn around and ask Steve the same exact question, RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF HIM! Quite honestly, Michael might not be an Einstein, but he DOES know how to read numbers on a car windshield, and I will add that I am very proud of him for working a full-time job and being a full-time student. Oh yeah, and he's getting really good at his math, too, lol.

One more thing before I go, Michael was on his way out the door, and he was looking for his cell phone. I have this basket sitting on the end of the counter just to throw junk like keys, phones, whatever, mainly because I got sick of seeing this stuff pile up and clutter the counter. Well, sitting next to this basket, I have one of those small water fountains with the pretty rocks that you just plug in for hours of enjoyment. This is bad...this is really bad...his phone was in the fountain, completely submerged in water!!! Of course neither of us have any idea how it got there, but I do know that Michael has developed the habit of missing the basket every time he sits anything down on the end of the counter, soooo....but then again, maybe it was just a freak accident. Either way, his phone will not work now, and his final words to me before walking out the door were, "I guess this is an indication as to how my day is going to be."

Well what do ya know?

I guess I am worth something after all! Michael told me that he appreciates me for helping him so much with his math. He said that when he was in class the other night, the teacher went back over the stuff they did the class before because there were a lot of students in the class that were completely lost. Well, I feel very proud because Michael said that in the midst of these stumped students, he sat there, at ease, because he knew how to do it! He said I explained it all to him a lot better than his teacher. Heck, I'd become a math teacher, except I don't think I'd ever make it through like however many calculus classes they make you take. If I COULD get through it, I'd have no trouble finding a job. I've been told that there is a great need for good math teachers. Maybe once Michael finishes school, I can go away to college, pretend I don't have a family, and do calculus for the next however many years it would take me to pass it, lol. Who am I kidding? I guess for now I'll just pat myself on the back and forget about it.

My tears taste saltier than fried chicken.

I attempted fried chicken for the first time in my life tonight. I'm a bad, bad wife for not making it sooner, or am I? This is Michael's favorite meal that his mother makes, and you've always heard the saying "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach." So I found a recipe, bought some chicken, and went to work, and dang, that was a messy, messy production. Well, after 15 minutes of bubbling in the deep fryer, it was nice and crispy on the outside, and the pieces I checked looked nice and done on the inside. Michael came home, complimented the fried chicken aroma floating through the house, and sat down to the table. Apparently one of the pieces, somehow or another, didn't get as "done" as the others, and it was the first piece I picked up, and all I could say was "I'm sorry, but I can't eat this. I won't tell you what I saw, but I can't eat this." I started crying, ran to the bedroom, and plopped down face-first onto the bed. Michael was hollering "What's wrong?!?!!" and he came into the bedroom and he was like "Um, is it safe to eat?" I honestly didn't know after THAT, so he got me back into the kitchen, we sat down again, and all I could do was talk about what a failure I am. I can't even make friggin' fried chicken. The other pieces of chicken seemed fine, and he ate 3 pieces of it, so I guess it was okay. He kept telling me over and over how good it was, but I still feel like he was saying it just because I'd had such a crappy day. Sometimes I hate being a woman because PMS can truly make you feel worthless, lousy, fat, poor, pathetic, stupid, forgetful, retarded, oh yeah, and did I mention worthless? I mean, if it weren't for Travis & Jacob being here all day to be my little rays of sunshine, what would I do? Travis always finds a way to make me laugh, and Jacob is always smiling and doing new things. Travis always loves me, no matter what I do, no matter how many spankings he gets, no matter how many times I tell him "NO". It just seems like the whole world is against me at times. My mom did come by to see me today after school, and she brought me a new shirt she had bought me over the weekend, and we talked for a little while, and I told her how bummed out I was feeling, and she said we'd go do something together soon, with or without the kids, and she even told me I could come clean her house and make $50 a week. At least that way I'll have money to buy "me" stuff, like makeup, clothes, etc. And then my mom even told me that she admired what I did in my house (the painting), and how she never would have the nerve to do anything near that magnitude in her own house, simply because she could never do anything in her house to please my dad. So that made me feel good, I guess. Sometimes I wonder if my mom thinks I live in a state of depression. Seems like every time I see her, she's asking me if I'm okay. I used to think I was depressed BECAUSE I HAD to work and wanted nothing more than to stay home. But now I'm really beginning to come to the conclusion that I am depressed because I am just depressed. People that are truly depressed aren't depressed because of ANYTHING...they just are...it's a chemical thing in the body. And sometimes I think EVERYONE is depressed. I only know of 2 or 3 people who are bubbly and happy and smiling every single time I see them, and those are the people that make everyone else want to vomit. I'm so glad I have friends with problems, lol.

Why do I even bother?

Okay, folks, I've brought this subject up before, but this is getting ridiculous. Why do I even bother having a commenting system up anymore? It's like, besides one person, NO ONE comments anymore, and I happen to know for a fact that MORE than just that one person reads this. I can think of :::counting on fingers::: 10 people right off the top of my head that read this regularly, because I'll start to tell one of those 10 people about something, and they'll say "Yeah, I know, I read that in your blog." Okay, so you folks that want to know my deepest darkest secrets and fly under the radar like that, that's just creepy. And once again, I don't expect people to have something to say about every single thing I write, but geez!! When I see "1 comment" at the end of an entry, it's always the same person. Nothing against her AT ALL! It'd just be more fun, and sometimes even helpful, if I could get more than just one persons' input.

And just to get a little discussion going, here is my question 'o the day:

Do you think President Bush will become President for the 2nd time? and do you plan to vote for Bush this time around? I'd like more than a "yes" or "no" answer, if possible.

Maybe today will be better

I felt really yucky last night. I started feeling this tightness in my chest, and coughing, and light headed. So after I put Jacob to bed around 8 last night, I got in bed with the remote and made Travis get in the bed with me and watch TV. I hope I'm not getting bronchitis. That is ALL I need! How the heck am I supposed to take care of my kids and stay in bed and get well? It's not like Michael can just take a couple days off work, and even if he did, the house would just get more and more trashed than if he just stayed gone, and then I'd have to look at it all, get depressed, and it would take me 2 weeks to clean the house thoroughly again. I am just going to have to tell myself "I'm not getting sick, I'm not getting sick, I'm not getting sick." Once I got up and stirred around for a little bit, I didn't feel as bad as I felt last night, but I'm definiltey not at 100% either. And last night while I was walking beside the bed, about the crawl in, this SHARP OBJECT freaking went through my sock AND MY FOOT!!! The first thing that came to mind was "WTF?!?!?!" and I looked down and it was a freaking sewing needle!!!!!!!!!! How did THAT get there, and more importantly, I had to get it OUT OF MY FOOT!!!!!! It went in like on the under side of my toe right next to my big toe, and came out on the other side right next to my big toe. It went in at this funky angle and after I pulled the needle out, I nearly fainted on the bed. After a minute, I pulled my sock off, scared as to what I might see or that my sock might be full of blood, but what was weird is that it only left a tiny hole on the underside of my foot where it went in, it didn't bleed or anything. What's really scary is that Travis had been standing there beside the bed, the whole time, jumping up and down while watching TV. So I'm glad I stepped on it, and not Travis, but OWWW!! I don't even like thinking about it!!!

The Memphis v. UAB game is Saturday at 6 p.m., and if I'm not hacking up lungs, I'll be there. We are able to get student guest tickets for $10 each from someone we know on the message board, so it's all good. We've got 2 other people going with us, so it should be fun. What's funny is that it's all guys that are going, so Michael says I can "be one of the guys", and I'm not sure if I want to "be one of the guys", lol. I asked Michael, "You sure you want me to go?" and he was like "OF COURSE I want you to go! You can't miss this!" So that's good. I don't know, I guess I was worried that he might be thinking I should stay home so it could be a "guy thing", but apparently not ALL guys have that mindset. He is happy that I'm going and I'm happy that he wants me to go. Besides, I'm a bigger fan than those other guys that will be going, so they can either GET OVER IT that I'm going or they can keep their butts at home and watch the game on TV!!!!!!

Travis is almost potty trained!!!!! I am so EXCITED! It just happened like overnight or something. He used his potty ALL DAY yesterday and didn't have any accidents until last night before bedtime, and that was only because he didn't make it to his potty in time, lol. He is really super smart because he moved his little stepping stool in the bathroom over to near the light switch. Every time he had to go yesterday, he walked to the bathroom, stepped on his stool, turned the light on himself, stepped off the stool, sat on his potty, did his business, and said "Mama, come look!" every time, lol, and then he'd pull up his underwear (TRY to anyways, I had to help him a little) and then he'd step back onto the stool and turn the light out!! Completely amazing!!! Sometimes he MAKES himself go just so he can get a cookie. He cracks me up! Such a big boy!!!

Michael is coming home early today to work on his algebra. He missed class last week, so we had to get caught up on the homework from the week before to make sure he understood that before moving on to chapter 3. Section 1 and 2 of Ch. 3 was covered in the class he missed, so I started showing him Sunday afternoon how to do it, and then he worked some of the problems at work yesterday and got through 3.1. Now today before he goes to class, I have to make sure he understands 3.2 because if he can't get it, he will be lost from here on out. Michael is having trouble understanding that you have to be sure you know what you just learned in order to go onto the next thing to know what the heck you are doing, and he gets easily frustrated. One thing he did point out though is that I explain it a lot better than his teacher, but I have a tendency to go a little too fast. And he keeps asking "WHY" on different steps, and I have to tell him "You can't ask WHY you do that, this is just the rule and you just do it." That is one thing I learned when taking math...don't ask why, just do it, lol. He's doing equations right now, and I can understand why it's confusing at first...Lord only knows I didn't totally get it at first, either. But he keeps forgetting that when you take one number and move it to the other side of the equals sign, you have to change the sign in front of the number, and he's like "That will make me get the whole problem wrong?" and I'm like "Um, yeah?" I think he will get it eventually, but I hope sooner than later.

Another crappy Monday

While some people may think of me as being a postive, uplifting, funny, cheerful person, you sure as heck couldn't tell by reading this. I guess Monday is my day, not only to do a mountain of laundry, but also to feel depressed. I am depressed about having no money left over after the bills are paid, IF we even have enough TO pay the bills, and I am depressed about being fat. Everyone has something to be depressed about, it seems, and it's really easy to compare my level of depression with everyone else's, so that I can say to myself, "Oh, well my situation isn't nearly as bad as YOURS, so cool, I'm okay." Who doesn't do THAT sometimes? I always find myself saying "Things COULD be worse." Not sure if it's healthy to think that way or not. I think about our bills and our money situation, and then I talk to a friend and listen to her financial problems, and I'm like "Dang, we're not so bad off afterall." Or I see an extremely obese woman in the grocery store who weighs like 400 lbs and because she can barely walk since she's so overweight, she has to squeeze herself onto one of those motorized things with the basket on the front just to pick up a few small items. She must look at me and think I'm skinny. I would just hate to get to that point in life where you know you're at the bottom and things could not get even worse. Heck, even being dead would be better than being at that lowest point. And the thing is, I know a few people that are pretty dang close to that, or have been recently, and it's scary.

In other recent events, I have a friend whose husband got arrested for DUI over the weekend. He was driving down Stateline Rd. going 65 to 70 mph, nearly hit somebody waiting in the turn lane to turn left into K-mart, and then almost hit someone near Airways. He passed the person on the right, in the gravel, apparently because the driver just wasn't moving fast enough for him. All I can say is THANK GOD there was a police officer that witnessed this and did something about it, and more importantly, thank God no one was hurt. My sister and my parents both live near that area and are up and down the stretch of road all the time. It gave me chills to think about. I just have no sympathy for someone who gets thrown in the slammer for being that irresponsible. None whatsoever. I just hope he isn't a repeat offender because next time, someone could really get killed.

Now onto the dream I had last night. I dreamed that I was going back to college, and I was standing in line, waiting to register for classes. What's weird is that both my mom and my sister were waiting in line with me. Through the door walked a former high school teacher, which I absolutely DESPISED. Well at first I didn't recognize her...or more like, I thought she looked familiar, but for whatever reason, I couldn't place the face with the name. She glanced over at me like she recognized me, too, and then she walked up to me and said "I recognized your mother's voice and your sister's voice, but you look so familiar...what is your name?" to which I replied "Candy Yarbrough?" (Strange how in some of my dreams I'm married, and others I'm not.) And then she was like "Oh, yeah, that's right!! I'm so glad to see you!" and then I realized who she was and I was like "Ms. McCollum!" and then I asked her how teaching high school was going (like I'd really be THAT friendly?) and she replied "Oh, I don't teach high school anymore...I'm teaching at Northwest," and I replied "Oh really! Well I'm starting back to school, and I'll probably stay in school long enough so I can teach on the Jr. College level, too." and then she walked away. And then I found out she was going to be one of my teachers in college. Just great! I think if that dream had continued, I would've dropped her class, that's for sure. That woman was the ultimate source of my nightmares in 11th grade. I had taken Honors English in 10th grade, made like straight 100's in there, and then signed up to take it again in 11th grade, only to get this awful witch as a teacher. She's basically the one who kept me after class and told me that I needed to switch to regular English if I was having trouble keeping up with all the craploads of homework she assigned. But it's like, HELLO, I had a lot of tough classes that year...that was by far, the hardest year of high school for me, plus I had band practice 3 nights per week after school, plus church Wednesday nights, and for awhile, football games on Friday nights, and church twice on Sundays, plus all my other school work. She made it a point to make me feel so stupid, and even when I worked harder on projects than anyone in the whole class, I still got lower grades than anyone else. For some reason, she disliked me, but there were other students that adored her and she adored them. My mom would always tell me it was a personality clash, but I don't think that should've made my grades suffer. Teachers aren't supposed to have personal issues with students and then take it out on them the rest of the school year. I NEVER missed school because I wanted to be exempt from semester exams, and then I missed 2 days because I was sick as a dog with bronchitis, and she KNEW my attendance record, but even still, I missed a test and she gave me this awful makeup test...it was an all essay test, which I had not prepared for, and I flunked it BAD. I just don't get it because in 10th grade, the material was not any harder, and really the amount of assignments wasn't much smaller, but the teacher CARED and you could tell she loved teaching and loved her students. There were no "personality clashes" in her class, and I worked hard in everything I did, and made wonderful grades. :::SIGH::: I don't know why I am stressing about all this now, but that dream really made me hate Ms. McCollum all over again, and made me want to strive to be much better than that when I become an English teacher. THERE, NOW I FEEL BETTER!

Now one final rant before I stop witching. First of all, keep in mind that Mondays, especially Monday mornings, are the WORST for me because I have lots to do around the house to get caught up from the weekend, mainly because I've made it a point not to do much in the form of laundry or housework on Saturday or Sunday. Well, lucky for my parents, they were both off work today for Presidents Day, and so guess what they did? They showed up at my house before 10 a.m. I was still in my PJ's, the beds weren't made, the kids weren't dressed, and I had dirty laundry sorted across the kitchen floor. I had already had a not-so-great morning because for some ungodly reason, Travis decided he wanted to get up at 6:30 a.m. this morning. Great! So as they knocked on the door, I was trying to get Travis to the bathroom because he had an accident, and then in our haste, he fell on the bathroom floor, so he was crying, and I'm trying to run for the door and tell my parents to come in. So I opened the door after like 5 minutes, and I explained to them we were having a crisis, blah blah blah. And then I said "Y'all never come by when my house looks good!" and my Dad made the snide comment, "Yeah, well that's because you never clean it up." That hurt my feelings. I know my Dad has a way of saying comments that hurt people's feelings, without intentions of doing so, and God knows I inherited that nasty little trait from him, but that doesn't change the fact that it hurt my feelings. And then of course my mom was like "We don't care what your house looks like." Funny, because she ALWAYS cared what her house looked like, so I'm sure after they left, she went on a rant with my Dad about how crappy my house looked. ANYWAY, then he started to make comments about the painting I'd done in the house awhile back (they hadn't been over here since I painted), and I flat out said, "I don't care what you say about it. I did it by myself and I did the best I could. So say whatever." And then he didn't say anything more. So anyway, the main purpose for them to come over was not to depress the crap out of me, but to bring the kids their Valentine's presents since they couldn't make it over during the weekend, which was fine. But a phone call would've been nice. I don't care if you are the President of the United States, with the one exception being that if you are with Publishers Clearinghouse delivering a $10 Million check, I'll come to the door wearing almost nothing. But I HATE unexpected visitors, and what's worse is that 9 out of 10 times, my unexpected visitors come in the mornings, which is the WORST time in the world for me. ABSOLUTE WORST!!!!

Okay, I'm done now...I think.

How was your Valentine's Day?

Michael came home from work yesterday just as I was getting ready to get in the tub, and he brought me some roses and a card. How sweet! Even though we promised each other we weren't getting each other ANYTHING other than a card. I should've known better than to stick with THAT!

So we dropped the kids off at Terri's at 6:30, and downtown was a madhouse traffic-wise. They had traffic cops directing traffic at almost every intersection. What is interesting about this is that our first V-day together in 1999, this area of downtown was a ghost town, and I wouldn't have wanted to be walking around for any length of time there. But now it's a very busy, well-lit, prosperous area of town...lots of stores, restaurants, the Peabody Place mall, and pretty soon, the FedEx Forum.

Anyway, we get to the restaurant, Prime Minister's, and this place was swanky and stylin', lol. A couple folks that had been there before told me that it was "casual" dress, and I learned that Shane Battier had opened it up for a good place to go after games, the place just wasn't what I had visualized. You think "casual" and "place to go after the games", you think Huey's or something similar. Of course, we were kind of dressed up, I guess you could say, so it wasn't like we showed up in t-shirt and jeans. But when you see white table cloths, shiny wood floors, a baby grand piano, candles in the center of each table, and $165 bottles of wine on the drink menu, "casual" is the last word that comes to mind. I'm not complaining at all, though, this place was great and I'd highly recommend it if you have about $70 to spend on a meal. Of course, ours was free :-), but just thought I should forewarn you. Our appetizer, BBQ shrimp, was $10 by itself...it only included 5...yes, 5 shrimp!! We each had a New York strip with garlic mashed potatoes. The steaks were $20 each, but very large steaks. The desserts were like $7 each. The onion straws were $3. The drinks were like $3 each. Plus we left a $10 tip and paid $2 to park.

But anyway, we were seated right next to the piano, right by the window. It was raining, which made it all the more romantic. The music was all jazz. Very smooth and relaxing. The piano player must have been 90 years old, and there was this beautiful black lady in a red dress with a big red rose in her hair, and she could SING! We requested them to sing "Unforgettable" by Nat King Cole...or actually it was more like the version where Natalie Cole sang, too, since they both sang. Our waiter was kind of cocky, but for once in my life, I ignored this. There was this woman walking around handing out red roses to all the ladies, which I thought was a nice touch. Of course, after 8 o'clock came, someone changed the TV in the bar area to the Memphis game, and we were craining our necks and squinting our eyes to try and see what the heck was going on. We left the restaurant, walked around Peabody Place mall for a few minutes, then got in the car to listen to the game and then rushed into the house to turn on the TV to see most of the last half of the game. I know, I know, you're probably thinking, "Geez, what a way to end a Valentine's Day," but Memphis blew out Marquette 89 to 71, baby! At the moment, we are in 1st place in the Conference!! I'm telling you right now, if by some chance the Tigers go to the Final Four this year, we will max out a credit card to go, lol. Wouldn't it be funny though if we met up with Mississippi State in the Final Four?

OH, and it snowed during the night. We got up to around 2 inches or so on the ground and on everything else. It's pretty! I guess it's all we'll get for the year, but some is better than none, I guess. The sad part is that it's melting already. No snowman this time :-( Funny we always get the majority of our snow and ice in February.