Dear Fate.....

Dear Fate,

I've got a few questions for you. First of all, why do you give me a sinus infection every time I have a three day weekend? And why do you make it worse by making it the three day weekend that was on Andrew's birhday and the three day weekend for my birthday? It just doesn't seem fair. Don't I put up with enough crap while at work? Why should I be miserable when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself?

Secondly, I realize it's kind of funny that both my dogs are wearing cones but it's really starting to bug. Have you ever been plowed into by a dog wearing a cone? I didn't think so. It hurts. Also, I'm having company today and I don't appreciate that I have to set my garbage can on the counter because the cone heads knock it over every 5 mins along with the dining room chairs. I find it especially upsetting that the medication I'm supposed to be giving Cocoa is making her barf and giving her the shits. I refuse to give it to her any longer. And if I wake up a million times tonight to the sound of Cocoa scratching at her cone I'm going to lose it.

And lastly, why did you throw $850 in vet bills at me when you KNOW that overtime money was supposed to help pay for the wedding? Now my parents have to pay for table and chair rentals after we promised we'd pay for it. That's just not nice - not only to me but to my parents. I mean really, what have they done? They're good people, they pay their taxes.

So seriously, lets make this next week a little better ok? Maybe I could win the lottery or something? It would really help. Or if you could just lower gas prices I'd be happy. Everything little thing helps.

Yours Truly,
Sarah

Birthday Recap

Ok listen up 'cause you're only going to here me say this once in my life:

I'm glad my birthday is over.

Not because it was a bad birthday and not because I'm a year older but because I feel like crap and it's been a struggle to get through the day. I don't know if it's massive allergies or a vicious cold but I've had one runny nostril all day, plugged ears, watery eyes, and a head that feels like exploding. And on top of all that my stomach hurts from sniffling while searching for a tissue. I didn't let on that I felt as bad as I do though because alot of wonderful people did alot of special things for me and I didn't want their efforts to be a waste.

To begin, my boss decorated my desk this morning with 3 banners and a shit load of confetti which you know I left on my desk all day long. One of my coworkers, Sue, gave me the cutest wooden angel I've ever seen in my life and brought a massive cake. My counter buddy, Karina, gave me a card and a gift card to Walmart which really surpised me and then I got the usual card that everybody signed.

My mom picked me up for lunch and took me to Judy's where we eat every year on her birthday and mine although she's dieting for my wedding this year so she skipped the greasy burger and fries. I'm not dieting for my wedding. I know this should be a problem but my theory is that I've been fat since I was 8. Andrew met me when I was fat. Andrew loves me even though I'm fat. I'll be fat after I get married so why stress over trying to not be fat for the wedding? As if I don't have enough stuff to stress about?! Anyway....

My two friends took me out to a deliciously expensive dinner at Tazzina Bistro tonight where I had Gnocchi and cobbler. So yummy! We skipped the after party on account of my health.

Andrew gave me a cd and a movie last night and a beautiful card this morning. He works swing shift so I didn't get to see him for lunch or dinner but he's going to take me out tomorrow. Sunday we're having the big dinner at Chevy's with my parents for my birthday and my brother's birthday. Hopefully I'll feel better by then. I plan on vegging out all day tomorrow.

Cocoa AND Gidget are staying over night at the vet. I swear those bastards know when we have extra money 'cause every time we do they end up in the vet. Cocoa is going to be fine. Her swelling has decreased greatly and her sores are from having the wrap on too long. Apparently we were only suppossed to keep her foot wrapped for 5 days but we both heard 10-15. What she has is like bed sores - her foot wasn't getting any air and bacteria was growing in there and all we have to do to fix her up is put neosporin on her foot every night and keep her head in a cone for about 2 weeks. Much better than the $500 tests the emergency vet here in town was going to do. I do thank them for the new antibiotics though because I really think that's why her swelling went down so much so quick. In the midst of all of this we noticed that Gidget kept licking the shit out of one of her back feet so we took her in too. She sliced her foot between the toes along the nail. How she did this I have no idea. I don't even know how the vet found it because Andrew and I both examined her foot and found nothing. That's why they are vets and we are not I guess. So Gidgie had to go under to have her foot sewn up and she too has to wear a cone for 2 weeks. Plus neither one of them can play outside while we're at work until they're all healed up so the poor babies will have to live in their kennels while we're at work. I feel bad 'cause the weather is so nice right now. So I'm going to have two cone heads running around for the next two weeks. Ought to be fun....

Tomorrow may be my birthday... but today it's Things on the Road Thursday!

It's been awhile since I've done Things on the Road Thursday (brought to us by Barnmouse) but this week I have a real treat for y'all. Now bear with me 'cause my camera phone takes shitty pictures and blogger always puts a big white box next to them.....

First off we have the completely saran wrapped car I spotted outside of a Red Robin in Yuba City. Apparently it's this guy's birthday or something because they wrote all kinds of stuff on it in ketchup but I didn't get close enough for a good picture. We actually saw the culprits in action while going into the Red Robin and we got to see the final project when we left. Now if only we had seen the guy's face when he found it.....

Second, we have ourselves a 3 door car. Yes, a car. Not a limo. Not an SUV. Just a ghetto 3 door car. Damn those Yuba City people are creative. Unfortunately I did not get a picture of the flames that were painted on the hood or of the 2 trashy looking ladies sporting this fine peice of machinery but you get the point. Someone put alot thought and effort and probably money into this pile of crap.

In other unrelated news my birthday is tomorrow. I'll be 27 in case y'all were wondering. Nothing horribly special planned. My mom is taking me to lunch, my friends are taking me to dinner. Andrew works swing so we'll probably do something on Saturday. Then my folks are taking us all out to Chevy's on the river to celebrate my birthday and my brothers 'cause they are only 2 weeks apart.

Cocoa chewed the wrap off of her foot from her toe nail removal today. All I can say is HOLY MOTHER OF GOD. I couldn't take pictures because someone might have eaten before reading this and they would certainly have lost it. Needless to say we took a $200 trip to the vet down the street because her foot was twice as big as it should have been and had 2 open wounds that weren't anywhere near the stitches. The bastards at the vet made me feel like I abused the poor baby so I choose to just get a new wrap and a new cone and take her to our normal vet. They don't understand that she never once showed signs that it hurt her or bothered her at all. In fact everyone kept commenting on how well she was doing. She hated that place which made me hate it because she normally loves going to our regular vet. So she's going back to our regular vet tomorrow for probably $200 more in work. I have no idea how it got that bad!!! I wish she had just once limped or walked without it or something so I would have known! Poor baby :(

PlanetPluto.com

This nice, lazy eyed fellow just came to my window and told me that he went to the planet Pluto and there was a bunch of women there that were having hot flashes and they went to Pluto to cool off. He asked them how they got there and they said they went to PlanetPluto.com but the trick is that you have to put the .com on it. If you don't you'll fall into the black hole. He thinks they went there because Pluto has recently been recognized as not a planet at all, but just a big ball of ice.

I much prefer the dillusional customers over the mean ones.

Happy Easter!!!

Easter is so ridiculously early this year! But it's a beautiful day here in sunny California and I'm baking a banana cake so I guess it's all alright with me :)

My amazing friend Rashell came over last night to help me finish up my invitations. They are so cute!

The detail on the map and the response card is super cute too but I'm too lazy to take it all apart. Today I have to repo my envelopes from Andrew's mom and tomorrow (hopefully) they go in the mail! Andrew's mom was supposed to calligraphy the envelopes for me so I gave them to her a month ago and as of like Monday she hadn't even started so I'm pretty sure we're going with regular ol' address labels. Oh well, you can't have everything perfect :-)

If dogs could talk....

I would ask mine how in the HELL she managed to get the inside of her cone so filthy in a matter of hours......

Poor baby has allergies really bad on top of her wrapped leg and her cone :(

100 posts and a new Hemi

So this is my 100th post!!!! And just to think that I never thought I had a future in blogging. I never cease to amaze myself. Originally I had planned to have a Happy Spring 100th post and give you some awesome pictures of Woodland in the Spring time but then I had some vehicular drama in the meantime. I'll get to that but I'm going to start with my spring pictures.

Almond trees are HUGE around here. My hometown is home of the Almond Festival

The Trees in the parking lot at work. So pretty but cause so many headaches....

Some random honeysuckles growng wild in my unkept yard
My iris peeking out

Looking out my front door.....

Ok, now on to my vehicular drama. It all begin in the fall when I started noticing a funky smell in our Kia. I kept telling Andrew that it smelt like ass in there and we needed to clean it out really well. I even shampooed the seats thinking that the smell was from having the dogs in there. I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned to no avail. It still reeked. Fast foward to the end of February. Andrew and I make the hour drive in pouring rain to have dinner with his folks for his birthday. Dinner is delicious, I have creme brulee (my favorite!!!!) and we drive home in the pouring rain. The next day I go to the grocery store and while I'm packing groceries into my back seat I notice that there's STANDING WATER on the floor boards in the back seat. I immediatly look around to see if there's a water bottle that might have spilt or something but common sense is telling me that a water bottle couldn't possibly have made that much of a puddle. It was the whole back floor board and most of the way under the front seats but there's a raised spot that held the water and stopped it from going into the front where we would have noticed it. I smelt it just to make sure it was water and as far as I could tell it was. Like I said, the whole car smelt like ass so it was hard to say. I got home and alerted Andrew who checked out the situation. He was equally as baffled and while rummaging under the seat he found an old receipt that was 90% black with MOLD. Suddenly the smell of ass makes sense. We then came to the conclusion that there was a leak on the floorboard and that when we drove though the rain our back seat filled up. Since there's only two of us we never really noticed the back seat floor board. So we dry it out the best we can and sure enough the carpet reeks like ass. Now at this point this has been going on for about 5 months and God only know how much mold/mildew has been growing under the carpet between the floor board and the actual carpet. Andrew shows the mold to the mold abaitment guy at work and he says that it's bad mold and it could make us sick and/or kill us. Nice! We don't fret though because we have a Kia and the only good thing about a Kia is the 100,000 mile warranty. So we take it to the Kia dealership and explain the problem. They say no problem, we'll call you in a couple weeks. A couple weeks go by, we get the call, we go to pick the car up. Kia tells us that they could not get the authorization to take out the carpet but they did discover that the door seals were leaking and they changed those. The car now smells like orange flavored ass. So here's the dilema: nobody has pulled the carpet up to dry it out or bleach it out or anything else. The water had been leaking for quite some time and since it was standing when I noticed it it's safe to say it soaked down to the floor board. Mold/mildew thrives in dark, damp environments which the spot between the carpet and the floor is. It still reeks which tells us that there's probably quite a bit of it growing down there since you can smell it through the carpet and it's not exactly a subtle odor. So we talked. And talked. And talked some more. I wanted to keep the Kia and get someone else to change the carpet. Andrew wanted a brand new car. We talked some more. We visited dealerships. The sales people got sick of us because we only looked and never bought. We talked some more. I don't want to eat shit on the Kia which we would do if we traded it in. We talked some more about what kind of vehicle we'd like for our future. We talked about our finances. We talked about how we're paying $700 in car payments right now for two cars (one of which always sits). We talked about how nobody would buy my mistsubishi. Finally we came to this conclusion: Give the dealer both our cars which gets us out of the mitsi with no hassle and no money lost (I owe almost exactly trade in value) and take home a pickup or SUV with at least 4 doors and a tow package. We ended up with this:

It's a HEMI!!! I'd like to say I'm thrilled but I have mixed feelings. On one hand it's an awesome truck. It's used but it has low mileage (it was a lease trade in) and it's fully loaded. It has leather seats that heat up, different air controls for the passenger side and the driver side which I love, a 6 disc cd player, an infinity stereo system with controls on the wheel, cruise control, power everything, a digital thingy that tells you the temp, how many miles you have left on your case tank, what your gas mileage is, what direction you're going, etc. Even the pedals have a control to move them closer or farther away. Dodge's are known for transmission problems so we got a 5 year warranty. It's got a tow package too so we can tow any boats or trailers or anything we might accumulate in the future. And it's fun to drive. My biggest problem is that while it's fun to drive, it's not so much fun for me to park and this is now my everyday vehicle. I'm sure I'll get used to it but for the time being I'll be parking in the south forty and hiking it to the store. I'm content because it will fit the kids that are hopefully in our future and the dogs and all our junk. Andrew's happy 'cause he's a country boy and all country boys need a truck. So we'll see how I feel about it in the future. I'm hoping I come to love it. I already love the amenities :)

March Madness

Feels like I haven't posted in forever. Last week was my new counter partner and good friend Celina's last week at work :(. She didn't work for the court like I do but for the California Traffic School Institution and she got paid waaaay less than us and got shitty benefits and she moved on to work for UC Davis where she starts out at $17 and gets benefits up the wazoo. I'm so sad to see her go but she was making $10 an hour here after 2 years so it's a huge step for her. Plus she has two sons so she's gotta think about them. She was sad to go, we were sad to see her go, it was a depressing week. Friday night we all went out for drinks to celebrate though and that was a blast! I wish I could have continued to party with them but I had to make an hours drive to Roseville to pick up my alterted wedding dress. What a nightmare that was.

First of all, I think they sucked in the boobs a leeettle too much but it's doable. Then the lady helping me tells me that I need a bigger bra because this one is too tight around me. Now the bra they make you buy is a strectchy, girdle like thing that goes from your boobs to your waist. I don't think it's supposed to be loose but whatever, I go exchange the girdle bra and try the dress on AGAIN. For those of you who have gotten married in a traditional wedding gown (or helped anyone with one) you know that getting in and out of that thing is no small feat. My dress is the all white version of this one. Anyway, so I try it on with the new bra and it's so big that it's popping out of my dress everywhere. The lady keeps saying "oh much better, much better" and I'm like hell no! I'm not wearing this $80 girdle bra thing if it's going to hang out the top of my dress. Ain't gonna happen. She she gets mad at me and goes and finds a 3rd bra which we both agree on but I'm still thinking that the boobs are too tight. I'm just going to have squished boobies all night though 'cause there's NO WAY IN HELL I'm paying them another $100 to take them back out.

Bah! She after that I need some relaxing time so Andrew and I went to Armstrong woods in Guerneville, near Santa Rosa. It was so peaceful there! I love me some redwoods and those are the closest coastal redwoods to us even though it's nothing compared to the real redwoods up north. I love it up there! Andrew has never been to the redwoods anywhere so it was a nice teaser for him. We even found a great campground up there that's way out in the boonies by a little pond. It was so cute and quiet up there, I loved it. I don't particularly love camping but I think if it was just me and Andrew I would like it more. That way I have someone to snuggle with at night when it's 20 below outside and I'm buried up to my eyeballs in a sleeping bag and blankets. I'll only camp if we get the 7ft tall tent and the 2 foot tall air mattress I want though because I hate nothing more than trying to get dressed in a tent that is itty bitty and you have to bend over to walk around and it's hotter than hell in there and the sides of the tent are sticking to you. HATE IT. I also hate bugs. But I think if we went in the spring it wouldn't be so bad. Here's some pictures.

Prank Call!

I was sitting on my couch a few moments ago minding my own business when my house phone rang. Now my house phone almost never rings unless it's Dish Network trying to get me to upgrade my service or something but seeings how it was 5:30 I thought maybe it was mom trying to call before she left work or something. Who knows? Luckily for me I have caller ID and I saw that it was a private caller and I got scared because we didn't put the alimony check in the mail until the 29th of Feb and I thought it was Andrew's ex - wife getting ready to rip us a new one.

*It only takes one day for mail to get from our house to hers anyway but knowing our luck it didn't get delivered on Saturday the 1st and godforbid she get it on the 3rd.

I let it go to the answering machine and some dude starting leaving a message saying he "liked how I gave it to him last night"!!!!!!! Then he passed it off to another dude who said some more of the same shit. Now mind you I don't have much of a social life. I have a few friends that I've had for ages and my work. Period. I haven't run amuck since like 2004 when my best friend and partner in crime got pregnant.

Normally I would assume that Andrew's ex has something to do with it (yes, 2 years later she still occassionally decides to be a pain in the neck) and I would laugh it off but this time I'm kinda... I don't know... I guess a little scared? A few months back two dudes left a prank call on my voicemail at work that was similar in nature. It was a teeny bit unnerving but I'm not one that gets upset easily so I mostly just laughed at it. Most likely they were idiots and I had to get an attitude and they were pissed (they did mention in the voicemail that they thought I hated my job). I was a little bit curious how they got my direct line but my first initial and last name do pop out on receipts and I believe our phone system allows you to look people up by name so I just laughed at it and passed it on to my boss who tried to have the number tracked with no luck. No biggie. Now a very similar incident at home? Am I being crazy or should I be a little bit worried? IF it's the same guys and IF they looked up my home phone why would they still be after me months later? I mean that would take some thought and work on their part. Thank god I don't have my address listed anymore (thanks to Andrew's ex!).

Or could it just be Andrew's ex getting bored with her lastest beau and deciding to stir the pot a bit? I haven't been prank called since she stopped calling a year or so ago and before that I hadn't been pranked called for like 5+ years! As I said before - that only thing that disturbs me is how similar in nature it was to my work prank call and if someone is really that angry what will they do next? Do y'all think I'm jumping to conclusions????

Spring Cleaning!

Since Andrew had to work out of town this weekend and I'm broke I've been doing allll kinds of cleaning today. Stuff I don't normally do like clean the floor boards (you know that trim between the carpet and the wall?), clean the oven, wipe the dust off all my picture frames and stuff (usually I just dust under and around things but let the actually things collect dust like crazy), move my bedroom around and dust everything, clean out drawers, etc. It sure seems to take alot longer than I anticipate. Of course it doesn't help that the bastard dogs have to be under my feet everywhere I go. Today I pulled a chair into the kitchen so that I could throw away some old plastic containers that Andrew had been harboring on the top cabinet and Cocoa decided to join me.

Oh! I got my order of stuff from Cupcakes N Kisses today and I'm sooo excited to use it. Cupcakes N Kisses is a bath and beauty type thing that my good friend Michelle owns and operates. Don't ask me how she finds time to make all her stuff with 3 kids but she makes it all herself. I'm seriously impressed as I don't have any kids and that seems waaaay too overwelming for me. I got some lavendar/camomile bath salts, some foaming sugar scrub and bath tea bags! They are filled with stuff that makes you bath aromatherapeutic. She even makes those damn things! I thought for sure she bought them. She used to make this wooden sign things that I LOVED. They're so cute and I was getting them for free instead of having to buy them in the store. It's good to have friends. Now I just need to find someone more local that sells Gold Canyon Candles 'cause I'm ADDICTED. Oh so if you like bath and body stuff check her out. She has all kinds of goodies for kids too. She has a cupcake soap that that seriously smells like cupcakes. Ok, I'm not trying to promote here - promise. I'm just a proud friend :).

I bought more girl scout cookies today. I need to be stopped. Andrew wanted some of those nasty coconut ones so I accidentally got another box of the lemon shortbread ones too. I don't even feel guilty. Am I horrible? I just paid $200 to have my wedding dress altered too. I better stop before I grow out of it! Good thing it laces up the back. The only good news about being fat is that it generally takes a major gain or loss before you actually don't fit into your clothes anymore. Skinny people clothes have like a 3 lb difference between sizes. Fat people clothes tend to have more like a 20-30 lbs difference and that's not because there's elastic involved just for the record. I don't 'do' elastic. Period.