Broken Humor Spot

Well, every time I sit down and think of blogging, I end up going to another website. My brain has been broken for a few days now, and I am forcing myself to somewhat remedy this issue now, before it gets out of control. So, here it goes...

A young man, around 30 years-old, died in my building the other day. He was epileptic, but I really don't know if that has anything to do with his death. His father found him dead in his apartment on Friday morning. When I went home for my lunch break at 11:30 am on Friday morning, I pulled my fiance's truck into our parking lot while on the phone with my big sister. I was shocked to see a police car parked by the dumpster, and two ambulances taking up my half of the parking lot. I parked on the other side, but as I was pulling in, the four EMTs and the police officer just looked at me. They stopped talking momentarily and just stared at me. I felt weird just from the way they looked at me, but I parked the truck and got out. I walked past the EMTs and no one said a word to me. I got to the door, and a man in farm clothes was standing in the doorway with my elderly neighbor. I didn't recognize him, and they just stood in the doorway. The whole time, I never got off my phone, and I surely never asked what was going on. I just assumed if they didn't feel the need to prevent me from walking through the scene, it couldn't have been too big a deal.

It was obviously a big deal. I found out later that man standing in the doorway was the young man's father. I will never forget the way he looked at me when I said, "Excuse me." I didn't say it rudely, but in his state, I think he was shocked that I was walking anywhere near him. Again, no one felt any need to warn me about what I was walking into.

I was only home about half an hour, making sandwiches for my fiance and myself, before I left to have lunch with my fiance. When I was walking out the door, the EMTs were walking into this young man's apartment. They didn't have a stretcher; they only had small metal suitcases. I knew the young man was epileptic, and since no one seemed to be in any hurry, I just assumed he had a seizure and they were making sure he was stable again.

I went back to work after lunch and hadn't heard any different than what I had assumed until just as we were locking the doors at my job. My sister had tried to call me, but we weren't officially closed yet. I didn't answer, so she sent me a text message so I at least was aware of what was happening before I went back home. I swear the wind leaped out of my lungs. In a moment, I felt so much shock. After I caught my breath, I called my fiance to explain the situation. All he had known was what I told him over our lunch break, and he told me he had just talked to the young man the night before for about half an hour.

When I arrived back home that evening, I just started bawling. I could hardly walk through the door without being overwhelmed with the feeling that I wanted to vomit. I just couldn't handle the fact that he had died in what felt like was right under my nose. I hated that I couldn't have changed it, and I hated that he was dying in their alone as I was walking in and out the door. I still hate it, but I have had a few days to process. I had a low key weekend, which was really good. I just wasn't sure how to blog because I wasn't emotionally ready to blog about happy, funny things.

Ever since my mom died a little over a year and a half ago, my perspective on death has changed. I deal with different situations differently, but it seems as though death affects me very deeply now, no matter what situation. My heart just cries out for the families that have to deal with the death because I know how awful I felt, and sometimes still feel, after my mom died. I miss her terribly, and I hate that other families have to deal with that kind of pain.

In a few days or so, when I get some more time, I will post something more light hearted about my weekend. It was my fiance's and my two year anniversary today, and we had a wonderful peaceful time yesterday doing absolutely nothing of great significance. :0) I have also been continually planning our Ireland honeymoon, and I am finally ready to get a running budget. We are getting our passport info turned in tomorrow, and I think this is all really going to be happening. It is truly the most exciting roller coaster I have ever been on.

Books and Receptions

I just finished this book last night, and I have to say, for a first time writer, she was very good. At first, I bought the book because it was funny. A crochet-related murder mystery? How fantastic! It did turn out to be fantastic, too. This author spun a web of people that all could benefit from the victim's death. I have a very good knack for predicting books and movies, but I do have to say that I didn't have this one figured out until right before the main character figured it out. There were a few editorial mistakes throughout the book, that of course I had to pick up on, but overall, it was a fun, enjoyable, easy read. It was not gory, but it definitely had the air of mystery. Not to mention, it came with a free granny square washcloth pattern as well as a recipe for made from scratch bunt cake and butter cream icing! I can't wait to try all three out. The book was also relatively cheap because it is paper back and because she is a newer author.

Onto more wedding news, I cannot use the original location I had hoped to use for my reception. Being the control freak I am, it sent me into a momentary relapse of panic mode. However, I am beyond that now. I am still aggravated because I just want to set my date and move on with other planning. The church is set, but I can't move on with buying decorations or basically anything I need to do until I know where the reception will be, what size it will be, and what I need to supply. I hate waiting to have this stuff figured out!

As far as my actual reception is concerned, I want to have one, obviously. I want there to be a bar, but it won't be an open bar. I feel like people should have the opportunity to buy their own drinks if they don't want the soda that I supply. I also don't want to have to supply enough soda for lots of people to drink in a few hours. I want people to be able to bring their children if they choose. I want a traditional "first dance," and I want my big brother to sing for our first dance. I have already asked him to sing the song "Forever and Ever, Amen" as Randy Travis sang it. I heard that song when I was very little, and I always knew that I would play that song at my wedding for my first dance. I also want the cheesy dollar dance because I want to be able to interact with the people that choose to come to my reception. I want to decorate tables with a floating candle centerpiece and leaves. I want to have a fall theme, and I want it to be beautiful on a budget.

I don't want to just have cake after my wedding at the church. The ceremony itself is only about twenty minutes, and if we just had cake afterwards, it would be about forty minutes and be over. I just can't handle that idea. I want a celebration. I want to remember my wedding night for how fun and beautiful it was, not something that was just cheap and easy.

Anyway, if you have any suggestions or advice, I would love to read them. Thanks!

Broke Down

Well, it is a darn good thing I had learned how to make those lattes at home. I officially can't afford anything. Why? You ask. I believe my car is officially broken down. Somewhere between the ten miles from my job, the oil change yesterday, and the ten miles back to my job, my car decided it had had enough. Here is the breakdown of my evening.

I walk out of my job, sit in my car. I dump out my leftover coffee on the black top. I check my text messages, and I turn my car on. It sounds alright, still recovering from the ticking lifters in the engine. It was desperate for an oil change. Big T had just returned it to my job after changing the oil and successfully driving it the ten miles back to town. He, of course, had no problems with it.

I put my car in reverse, and all is well. I took my foot off the brake, and my car didn't move at all. Normally, it would start to scoot a little on its own before I pressed the gas. It didn't, so I pressed the gas and it scooted just the littlest bit. However, it made this awful, terrible scraping noise. My first reaction was that it was caught on the cement block in front of it, like when you drive into a parking spot and get too close to the cement stopper. Well, it wasn't that. It proceeded to loudly scream at me, with that awful grinding scraping noise, so I quickly put my foot back on the brake and shoved it into park. After my heart slowed a little, I tried reverse again, and this time, the grinding, scraping was immediate.

I called Big T to come check it out, and he honestly asked me if I could just drive it home!! Explain to me what happens in a man's head when you tell them you cannot even move the car and they want to know if you can at least drive it home so, God forbid, they wouldn't have to get out of the house and away from the stupid video game and his buddy to help his soon to be WIFE!! So, you can guarantee he got to be on the $h*t list for the rest of the night. Plus, I had to blame someone for my bad luck, so he got that, too.

We figured out that we could put the car in neutral and push it backwards. It would also go into drive with no grinding issues. So, I slowly drove out of the parking lot of my job and onto the road. I eased up to about 20 miles an hour, and it starts to rapidly tick, as if the oil had never been changed. Then, it makes another loud, awful, indescribable noise and yet another in succession, and I swear I heard all the fluids drain out of my car. It was just a sloshing liquid sound and some more grinding. From there, I proceeded to throw my hands up in the air, put the car in park, turn on my hazard lights, all in the middle of the road. Of course, people proceed to drive around me as if I had completely inconvenienced their day. For crying out loud! I am so sorry to have ruined your day by requiring you to pay an iota of attention to the the damned road and drive your a$$ around me!

From there, we pushed the car into a nearby parking lot, about forty feet from my job and leave it there. I went home, changed my clothes, and had about 10 minutes before I was supposed to be heading off to my Girl's Night Out.

By the time I arrive to my GNO, I just start bawling and explaining that my car is done. I was ridiculously emotional about it, but let me explain why.

1) This is my very first car that I paid for all by myself while I was still in high school.

2) This car belonged to my mom before it belonged to me. Now that she is gone, I had this disillusion that my car would last forever.

3) I am trying, as you all may have read, to plan a freaking low budget wedding.

4) I have been trying my hardest to plan a dream honeymoon for us, also on a freaking low budget.

We have half of the money we need saved for the wedding. We are taking a loan out to pay for the honeymoon, and we have one vehicle, a 1989 Ford truck, now between the two of us. We are already trying to find ways to scrimp and cut things out so we can save more money for our wedding and honeymoon, so there is no way we can afford another car until maybe, MAYBE, January of next year. That means that Big T and I have to share that run down truck until next year!

I know I am being awfully pessimistic, but besides the fact that that is how I am, I had this feeling of doom for the past two weeks that my car was going to crap out right now, just when we absolutely could not handle another expense. Somehow, my intuition was screaming at me that this would happen. I called my mechanic this morning. I explained all of the noises and actions of my car to him, and he said it sounds like a problem with the transmission. I told him I agreed, and I let him know that if my transmission is shot, I will be junking the car. It is a 1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra, and it has 165,000 miles on it. I am lucky it lasted this long. However, it is obviously not worth the amount of money it would take to fix the transmission. My alternator has been on the brink of going out for the past two years as well, so I do believe it is just time to say goodbye, though I am not at all ready for that.

Last night, all I wanted was to call my mom and tell her how upset and frustrated I was. I wanted nothing more than to hear her give me crap about how old the car is and how I had to have done something to it to make it crap out. Ignore the fact that it is old. She would have said everything I didn't want to hear and completely grated on my nerves, and yet I wanted that, only that. I ended up sobbing myself to sleep last night, feeling the utter despair, once again, at the fact that my mom would never be here for me to call again, never be here to grate at my nerves and never be able to tell me, "I told you so." She can't be here to tell me how ridiculous it is that I am trying to get married so young or tell me to suck my belly in when I am trying on wedding dresses. She can't criticize my plans and make me crazy, and she can't come to my bachelorette party and have everyone rolling on the floor in hysterics.

I know, and I have heard it a million times. I am not trying to be mean, but please don't leave me a comment explaining to me that my mom is here in spirit. I don't want to hear it right now. Her spirit can not do all those things she did when she was alive. Most of all, her spirit can not scoop me up in the best hug ever, and her spirit can not give me her shoulder to cry on. So, please, spare me the bit about her being in a better place and the business about her always being in my heart. Right now, it is just not good enough.

Homemade Cinnamon Latte

I was getting bored sitting here at home, and normally when that happens, I Google. It is a terrible habit, I know. ;-) Anyway, I did find a recipe, and it turned out fantastic. I even used skim milk. It is amazing. I just saved myself four dollars and a load of extra fat! It is even frothy and wonderful!

If you are interested, here is the recipe:

Materials: 1/2 cup of strong coffee*

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp sugar**

1 1/3 cups of 1% lowfat milk

Instructions:1.Warm milk to near boiling in the microwave. In my microwave, this was about 2.5-3 minutes.

2. *To make strong coffee, I used 2 tablespoons of coffee per 6oz of water instead of 1 tablespoon. Adjust strength as desired.

3. Mix milk, coffee, cinnamon and sugar in a blender and blend for 30 seconds. This creates the foam. If you do not prefer foam, you could combine the milk, coffee, cinnamon and sugar in a 12-16 oz cup and stir.

**Instead of 1 1/2 tsp of sugar, I used three packets of Splenda. It came out to a little less than a tsp, but it is still plenty sweet.

If anyone tries it, I hope you love it as much as I do. If you would like to try a vanilla latte, replace the ground cinnamon with one tsp of vanilla extract. Enjoy!

Question

Ok, one of my contacts was able to give me a suggestion, and I need all of your help. She asked if I had ever heard of honeymoon registries instead of gift registries. I have never heard of this, but it sounds like an ok idea. See, Big T and I already live together and have lived together for the past year and a half. We have all the necessities, and while it would be nice to have shiny new appliances or a set of china that we may never use, or have a place to store for that matter, we would prefer to take our once in a lifetime trip to Ireland. Is that selfish? Would people really pay for a honeymoon registry? I don't want to give the impression that I just want people to give me money. However, I know that people want to get gifts for weddings, and if they are going to spend the money, it should go to something the newlyweds are really going to enjoy and use, right?

I don't know whether to feel guilty about this or if it is really a better option for us. Please give me your opinions. Is this selfish to ask? Thanks!

Let Down...

Well, Big T called the bank today to give them the exact amount we needed for our trip, and they said they could only give him half of that. I am really upset right now. I feel like the air was let out of me, and I want to melt into the floor. I won't, though. I e-mailed my contacts that were helping me plan the trip, and I am going to see if we can cut the trip in half and go for one week. I don't know if it is even going to be possible, but I am still holding onto some hope.

I'm going to take a shower to distract myself. Otherwise I will keep pressing the refresh button on my e-mail page every three seconds, as if my contacts don't have their own lives. I just hate feeling so deflated. I'll let you all know how this progresses.

Sleepy

I think I will welcome a few days off of work this week. I have had a much busier weekend than I have been used to in awhile. I went to southern Illinois on Saturday to visit my older brother. The trip was about a ten hour trip there and back, and we woke up at 4 am! Let me just say I was suffering a lot that day. I didn't get crap for sleep because I have yet another disorder. Whenever I know I have to get up really early, I get to anxious to sleep the night before. I am afraid I won't wake up, even though there are other people to wake me up, and I'm afraid of being an inconvenience to other people. Besides that, I was freezing in my sister's Tundra she calls a house. ;) I was suffering from being a woman. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I felt the cramping, and sure enough, I had to get up around 1:30 in the morning. Mind you, I had only just fallen asleep around 11 or 12 pm. Sometime after that, the dogs barked really loudly and woke me up, and after that, my alarm woke me up. I have never seen myself look more hellish. My hair was a matted mess and my eyes were absolutely blood shot. Not only did I get no sleep and have major hormone issues, but I suffer from car sickness! I tried to drink some Chi tea, but only got a few sips of it down. I had to keep turning the vent down to the cold setting, and when I tried to eat a few bites of my apple, my stomach literally churned and my mouth watered for a good thirty seconds. I really hate getting up early and being in a car. I don't even enjoy driving, but being a passenger is much worse. However, all complaints aside, seeing my brother's eyes light up at seeing my sister, her husband and I made the entire gross trip so worth it. I should have taped a MasterCard commercial, though. It might have gone something like this:

1. Early morning Chi tea and an apple: $6.00
2. Half the world's population of yarn and a few good books to keep you distracted: $70.00
3. Stopping to clean the car after you ralphed up your apple and Chi tea because you tried to use the yarn to distract yourself and got car sick: $20.00
4. The look on your brother's face as he sees you arrive with blood shot eyes, a pale, sullen face, and the aroma of misery: PRICELESS

Ok, ok. So I know it is a little wordy and dramatic, but the people live for drama.

Today, I went to Big T's parents' house for the first time since Christmas. No, they don't live miles away. No, I don't dislike them. No, they are not busy bees that are never home. Yes, I am a major slacker that has some serious selfish tendencies. :) His parents live about ten miles from us and stay home a lot. They are great people, and his mom is going to be the best mother-in-law. She is super understanding, loving, easy to talk to, and a wonderful, wise companion. His dad has lots of quirky stories about fixing engines and such, and I have to say that I love them. Oh, and I forgot to mention that his mom is probably the best baker I have ever met. I gave up chocolate for Lent (ironically I almost typed I gave up Lent for chocolate...subconscious?!). It has been slowly driving me mad, but the belief of my church is that Sundays are a celebration of Jesus dying for us and His Resurrection. So, today I was allowed chocolate, and she made some fantastic, made from scratch peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. I only ate two, but her cookies are always about the size of my hand, so we're talking probably four or five normal sized cookies. Whatever! Get off my back. I already told you I was suffering from being a woman!

Anyway, I decided to make my brides maids' gifts, and I worked on that while at their house. My first project is turning out so adorable, but I am afraid it will be a few months before I can show pictures. My sister already knows what I am making, but she doesn't know what hers looks like, so I am trying realllllly hard to keep that a surprise. I shouldn't have done hers first! I just finished an exam, too. I will most likely get an 84% on it, which is a B. It's not bad, but it could have easily been an A. It is much better than my previous semester's work, though, so I am making some progress.

I am off to bed, now. I have been feeling like I have an ulcer since Friday, and I haven't even been eating food that was bad for me or drinking soda. It must be chocolate withdrawals. Dumb...;-) Have a wonderful rest, all of you!