Mellow Weekend

Why not start the weekend off with some new shoes???  I didn't really buy these, but they did make me laugh.  They are flame sandals by Prada.  Uhhhh....Interesting??  They only cost $495!  On sale from about $1200!:

I had my annual check up (also called the "appointment at the Y".  Get it? Get it? HAHA) and everything went as normal.  We talked about my cramping and bleeding and if I wanted to start birth control again.  I said that i didn't want to make our fertility issues any worse if we decided to try meds again down the road.  She said it wouldn't make it any worse and could actually help it if I'm having endometriosis or bleeding issues that are hindering us.  I told her I would think about it; at this point I don't plan on going back on the pill or anything.  I told her about my pelvic cramps that didn't go away after my period went away and I told her that my breasts were still really sore although my period was done over a week and a half ago.  She said, "That could be a pregnancy...those are symptoms. You might want to take an at-home pregnancy test if it doesn't go away."  Although I knew it was very unlikely that I was pregnant, that burning thought sat in my mind that I COULD be pregnant.  I stewed on it for a couple days.  Peed on a stick.  Nope.  But my boobs still hurt and I have no idea why.  I told Doug, "Maybe they're growing!!"  Even though I knew it was very unlikely, it still took a little piece of my heart when I saw this single line:

Our house was egged over the weekend.  Lovely.  Little A-holes!!:

We took my truck back to the auto fair this weekend.  No luck again.  Oh well.  We'll find a good home for that truck sooner or later.  We didn't have people waiting for us to get out of the truck so they could talk to us this time.  We took Ruger with us to pick up the truck.  We usually put him in his crate, but we let him roam around the back of my Rav this time.  He was very unbalanced and eventually decided to lay down.  He did really well without his crate:

Mixed Emotions

Bear down....I haven't gone on a long rant for quite a while and this is a long one....

I don’t know how to share this story or how to even begin my story.  I’ll begin by saying that I’m a person that carries guilt around.  Guilt.  It’s a nasty word.  I have guilt about many things in my life and things that have stuck with me for many years (even since childhood).  I have home guilt, family guilt, church guilt, friendship guilt, etc.  Sad huh?  I don’t understand my own guilt sometimes because I really don’t give a crap about how people react or what they say, but it really sits inside my mind for a long time.  Here’s a quick example story:  We have dinner with friends or family and I’m my normal, oddball self.  After dinner ends and the friends or family go home, I start reliving everything I said throughout the evening and worrying about how people felt.  Not that I say awful things, but I still go through all of it over and over again.  Guilt.  Lovely.

I have marriage guilt.  We have trouble getting pregnant.  Guilt that it’s my fault.  Guilt that Doug will never be a dad.  Guilt that I’m glad we don’t have kids sometimes.  We have a puppy who takes up tons of our time right now.  Guilt that I really hate our puppy sometimes.  We don’t have much romance because we are going through daily routines that only give us a couple hours together during the weekdays and weekends we play catch up on chores, dealing with the puppy, spending time with family/friends, etc.  Guilt that I don’t try harder.  Guilt that I don’t feel good about my body, but I’m apparently too lazy to do anything about it except complain.

I have friendship guilt.  Guilt that I may have said something stupid.  Guilt that I’m callous when it comes to excuses or stories most of the time.  Guilt that I don’t believe the excuses.  Guilt that I feel like being by myself (just Doug and me) sometimes.  Guilt that we need to see our friends more often.  Yes that one is counterproductive to the sentence before.  Guilt about a broken and seemingly repaired friendship.  Guilt that I just used the word seemingly.  Haha

I have church guilt.  Guilt that I think if I don’t go to church, I won’t have to feel guilty.  Guilt that I don’t want to drive to the new building they stuck us in because it’s a 20 minute drive when there is a building a couple miles away.  Guilt that I don’t follow ordinances and guilt that I don’t want to.  Guilt that I hate G’s and I don’t want to like them.  Yes, I understand them and the reason for them, but I don’t care.  Guilt.  Guilt that we have auto debt and are told to get out of debt immediately.  Guilt that we still buy what we want while paying off that debt.  Guilt that I don’t want to pay tithing while getting out of debt.  Guilt that Doug deals with the repercussions of my decisions.

I have family guilt.  Guilt that we don’t see our families as much as we should.  Guilt that my mom is taking care of her mom all by herself.  Guilt that I don’t see either of my grandmas very often; they are 86 and 91 years old now and won’t be on this earth for much longer.  Guilt that I avoid helping plan family events because the lack of decisions drives me crazy.  Guilt about aspects of my childhood that I can’t let go of sometimes.  Guilt that I have trouble telling my mom, “I Love You” all the time.  Guilt that I don’t see my brothers very often (both live out of state) and guilt that Doug doesn’t see his out-of-state siblings very often either.  My little brother totaled his truck a few nights ago and although we chatted just hours before the accident, what if that was the last time I talked to him??  I haven’t SEEN him in years.  Guilt.  Guilt that my dad didn’t and doesn’t seem to want to be my dad or part of my life.  (That’s the story that sparked this whole thing…more to follow...)  Guilt that I’ve only seen my paternal and/or maternal sides of the family a few times that I can remember.  Guilt that I can’t even remember some of their names!!

All of these things sit in my mind.  Not all at once thank goodness, but they’re all there.  After reading this over and over again it’s pretty depressing, but I’m not a depressed person.  I think blogging/journaling about all of this will help me let go of most of it.  If all else fails, it helps me put it onto paper so I don’t have to think about it so much.  It’s kind of like a tip I read years ago to help people sleep better when they think too much at bedtime:  keep a note pad by your bed and write down all the things you think about so you won’t worry about not remembering them when you fall asleep or wake up.

The reason I said the relationship with my dad sparked this whole tirade is because of a conversation I had with my mom and then the conversation I had with Doug about the phone call with my mom.  The gist of the call was my dad and older brother took a trip together.  Let me back up a bit and attempt to explain the relationship I have with my dad:  I send him 3 cards a year (xmas, birthday, father’s day) and maybe a couple random emails throughout the year.  He doesn’t call me, he doesn’t write me, and he doesn’t email me, nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  I haven’t heard his voice in years… not since Doug and I flew to MN for my grandmother’s funeral and he was there.  When we first saw each other I wasn’t sure how to react, but he gave me a long hug – Doug thought for sure I would be in tears when I turned around.  I was very stoic when I turned back around.  I think I didn’t want him to see me cry over him.  I’ve spent most of my life wanting him to love me, wanting him to accept me, wanting him to be my dad.  Not going to happen.  I’m 35 years old and still have trouble accepting that.  I spent my childhood summers with him and my first step-mom Loretta (I really think we spent every summer there thanks to my step-mom.  I’m still in contact with her.)  I don’t know if he would have cared enough to have us out by his own planning and doing.  My mom used to drive us halfway and meet my dad to drop us off.  On the way to the drop-off location I would envision running to my dad and jumping into his arms and, like in movies, I would be scooped up, twirled around, hugged and kissed.  It never happened.  As I’ve gotten older I’ve decided that’s who he is, he’ll never change, so why keep beating myself up over it??  No matter how many times I tell myself that I continue to wonder “what if”.

I remember a lot of fun summers with him though.  I remember driving like crazy around Arizona trying to find Santa in the sky on his sleigh.  I remember being in a tent in the front room and he would act like a bear and scare us.  I remember sewing a pillow with my step-mom.  I remember he used to not let us drink our milk until we finished dinner.  I remember swimming across the pool with a plum in my mouth because I didn’t want to walk around the pool.  I remember him teaching me card tricks.  I remember him calling me his sweet-a-heart; he wanted me to put it on a license plate when I got older.  I remember him telling me I had to bring my boyfriends to meet him so he could approve or not; it was a running silly thing we would talk about.  I remember him putting all his fingers on the table (as if he were demonstrating a spider crawling around), but he would keep his middle finger off the table and act like it was the nose of an animal sniffing around and tease us with his sniffling-animal-hand.  I remember poking my finger into his palm and trying to pull my hand back before he could close his hand.  I remember him teaching me how to dive.  I remember the Arizona dust storms and monsoons – we never wanted to get out of the pool although we were told to; we didn’t care that the corn husks were blowing in from the field next door or that lightning was overhead.  I remember hunting for frogs in the pool filters.  I remember my dad catching scorpions and keeping them in a jar; one had babies once.  I remember my dad always checking the pool chemical levels.  I remember the random desert plant, tumble-weed-looking tree thing we went to the desert to get as a Christmas tree one year.  I remember puking all over my dad’s car because I ate a Styrofoam cup while helping at a kid’s donation carwash – I was hungry and the cup tasted like the punch I filled it with. HAHHA  I was a goat-child.  I ate staples once too, my mom rushed me to the hospital because I had a stomachache and thought my appendix may have burst or something.  The doctor came to the bedside with my x-rays and said, “What are those?!?!” and I calmly said, “Oh, those are staples!” HAHAH.  Because I chewed the staples into a ball before I swallowed them, they just let me pass them.

As the years went on he contacted us less and less.  He would remarry and divorce.  I could tell when he was married because he wouldn’t contact me at all.  Out of the blue he would start contacting me again and I would jokingly think, “Oh he must be getting a divorce.”  Then he would divorce.  I talked to him in my mid 20’s to clear up some drama that my ex-fiancé caused because he didn’t pay my dad back for a trip we took with him.  I paid him back for the both of us little by little as I could.  I also wanted to talk to him about a life insurance policy he had on me; I wanted to cash the policy out because I was struggling financially.  I was also bitter with him at the time and never told him I wanted the policy terminated because I didn’t want him to financially gain if I died.  He cashed out the policy for me.  I talked to my dad once and he blamed me for our lack of contact and I very crassly said, “The phone goes both ways.”   I felt like I was the one putting in any type of effort and I get blamed for his lack of effort?  I didn’t hear from my dad for years before I got married, but I sent him a wedding invitation.  He didn’t acknowledge my wedding at all; no card, no call, nothing.  I found out much later that he was resentful that I didn’t ask him to walk me down the aisle.  How would I ever have known he cared??  Because we talked about it when I was 6 years old??  After my grandma passed away he gave her jewelry to my sister-in-law.  Um, hello???  She then sent it to my mom which is how I even found out about it.  Thank goodness for my uncle who saved a couple pieces for me (I posted about them a few months back).

My older brother has 2 sons and I wondered, “If I had a little girl, would he come back into my life?”  I thought that because my brother and I were born about a year apart and then my little brother came along the following year and it was as if he wasn’t needed because my dad already had his precious little boy and girl.  My brother had his grandson and maybe I would have his granddaughter and THAT would bring him back into my life??  I’ve wonder these things many times.

When I was in my early-ish 20’s, I found out he almost died in a car accident years earlier.  About a year ago I found out months afterward that my dad was riding motorcycles with friends when a corvette took a corner to quickly and hit their group, killing my dad’s best friend and I believe 2 other people.  He went into a deep depression and drank more and more, passing out and almost burning his house down.  I was told he had an eye opening experience when that happened and he decided to get his life in order. Still never heard from him.  His health is failing now and has been for the last couple years or so.  Doctors drained liters of fluid from his bladder.  I don’t know if his kidneys and/or liver are failing, but he has medical problems that he doesn’t tend to because he says he can’t afford it.  All this is what I’ve heard through the grapevine.   To this day, as I mentioned earlier, I still send him 3 cards a year and a random email here and there.   I don’t think he cares, but I still do it.

This long explanation is because of the conversation I had with Doug and he said he doesn’t even understand the relationship.  Maybe putting it all out there will help both of us understand.  Back to the story I started quite a while back:  my older brother and dad took a motorcycle trip to Minnesota very recently.  I’m told the trip was sparked because there was wonder if my dad will still be alive in 6 months.  Really?!??!?!!  He went to visit family in Minnesota although he spent most of these years avoiding them; it’s assumed his health is worse off than he leads on about.  Maybe he’s reaching out knowing he’s nearing the end of his life??  Maybe it’s part of his eye opening experience??  This is going to sound very selfish if the answer to both those questions is “YES”….WHY DOESN’T HE CARE ABOUT ME??  WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO GET HIM TO LOVE ME??  WHY DOESN’T HE CONTACT ME??  Why do I keep trying after all these years?  Do I really care that much?  Will the tears stop?  I don’t know the answers to any of those questions and I don’t know how to stop thinking that I want the answers to them.  GUILT.  Guilt about what I could have done, what I can do and what I should or shouldn’t do or even care about anymore.  I can only hope writing them down, getting them on “paper” and out of my head will ease the portion of my mind where he still resides after all these years.

Bat Crazy

I laughed a whole heck of a lot yesterday.  There was a bat in the office at work and the screaming, yelling and running around that came along with it was hysterical.  The bat flew around and climbed up into a ceiling vent.  The bat hanging onto the wall (tiny black blob along the window):

Becky held a box over the vent until another building tenant taped the bat into the vent.  Eventually the tape released from a corner of the vent and the bat was stuck to the corner of the tape.  Hard to see it because it’s black tape:

I was going to pull the tape off the vent and take the bat outside, but I realized gloves were a great idea, so we called the other tenant back over (he had gloves).  He took the bat away while people were yelling and jumping out of his walking path.  Bye bye Dracula!  (Becky named him):

I wish I would have gotten the craziness on video!!  I still giggle when I think about it.  I know I would have been yelling, screaming and running if it was a spider!

Another Day, Another Ruger Picture

A foot and a half of string hanging from his mouth; he walked around for a while like this:

Shoved his face in the couch; I have no idea why, but afterwards I shoved a toy in there to provoke him even more!:

Ruger’s way of telling me I’m done in the bathroom and need to play with him and/or feed him breakfast.  Little weirdo – I say “little” loosely since he’s over 56 pounds now:

Fires

There are a number of fires in our area, nothing that is close enough for us to worry about, but one fire got WAY too close to Becky.  On our way home from the gun show we drove back into the smoke.  Here is one of the fires – the fire is on the left, but the smoke is traveling to the right of the picture: 

More pictures of the cloud of smoke overhead:

As awful as fires can be, it made for some really neat pictures and the sunrises and sunsets have been beautiful with all the smoke in the air.  Yes, I realize how disturbing that sounds, but it’s true.

(I'm bummed the flash went off in the picture above and I couldn't zoom in to get a better shot without the picture coming out blurry)

 Pretty!

Gun Show

I’ve never been to a gun show.  If Doug goes to a gun show, he usually goes with other guys.  They can chat about all things guns and bond over their love of guns – we call it gun porn in our house.  The gun show we went to over the weekend was out of town, so we made a day of it.  Well, not quite a day since we had a puppy in a crate and he can only hold his pee for so long.  We had to go through the different booths quickly since there was SO much to see.  I got a couple pictures while we were there –the pictures are blurry because I was trying to be nonchalant: 

 The wall of ammo:

We bought a few things for Doug while we were there.  I got a couple things too:  new ear protection because I hate putting the foam earplugs in my ears and I got a new handbag/purse.  I almost bought this sweatshirt, but I didn’t want a pullover sweatshirt:

“Babe, can I get a new tool??!!”  HAHAH

One of the vendors made the gun Doug is holding and added the DeWalt sticker to it when he was done.

Chipotle

I really like Chipotle.  My girlfriend, Tammy, and I used to eat it way too often when we worked together.  Chipotle has a phone app. that I can log into, press “last order” and pick it up on the way home – so it’s just too easy to eat there.  I also drive by 2 of them each day and I work near one too.  Surprisingly, I don’t eat there all that often.  I know that will change when I get my year of free Chipotle.  I won the free burrito every week for a year, then I played another Chipotle game and got 2 more free burritos AND they gave me a buy one, get one free coupon a couple weeks ago.  That’s 55 free meals people!!!   Here are our first 2 free meals!  Mmmmmm Chipotle!!!

Dog Treats

If you know Ruger at all, or read these posts, then you know Ruger is always battling diarrhea.  Anytime we try a new treat or something different than his regular food, he gets a sick stomach.  He loves sweet potatoes and they help keep him regular, but he still has tummy issues.  I found a recipe online for sweet potato rawhides….they aren’t rawhides…just baked sweet potatoes. 

Wash and then slice the sweet potatoes (skin and all) 1/4 inch thick or thinner and put them in a 250 degree oven for 3 hours.

Flip them halfway through. 

I over cooked the batch I made last night, so they are darker than they should be. (no picture).  The slices I did were pretty thin; probably an eighth of an inch.  I took them out at two and a half hours, so next time I might lower the temperature to 200 degrees for 3 hours or bake them for 2 hours at 250. 

I recommend using a mandolin to cut the slices; it’s so much easier than trying to do it by hand especially because sweet potatoes can be hard to slice. 

I made chips this time, but I’ll probably go back to strips next time since they shrink up super small.  I haven’t tried do make them in a dehydrator yet because I haven’t made the time to try it – it takes longer, but I’m sure it’s easier.

(A happy puppy over his diarrhea for now, enjoying being a weirdo in his towel.)

Poor Poinsettia

I’ve never been able to keep a poinsettia alive more than a couple months, but this one has been alive and well since November last year.  I thought I was going to keep it going until Christmas.  No luck!  It died quickly over the last week.  Poor plant. 

Oh well, onto my next victim!!

Train

What you don't want to see while running late for work:

A super long train and you can't see the end of it.  Stupid train, run on my schedule why don't you??!!  heehee  (This concludes my random pictures for the week LOL)

Shooting Fieldtrip

We took a fieldtrip to Breanna's parent's property and did some target shooting:

Sorting through the brass to find shells for reloading:

It's hard to see, but this mound of dirt looks like a dead body; they have a couple like this on their property - hmmmmm I wonder WHO they're hiding under there!:

They have a beautiful view:

We walked around the property for a while and found a lot of animal tracks.  This print was the most impressive though!  That mountain lion paw is huge!

They have a bear that roams through their property too, he chewed up some of their picnic bench too.  I didn't get a picture of it though.

It was a nice morning away from the real world for a while.

Bathtub Obsession

This silly puppy is obsessed lately:

How do you fix a dog bed when it's beyond repair??  Buy a child's sleeping bag (the are over 2 feet wide, so it's perfect!) and shove the bed inside!!  Ruger loves sleeping bags as much as I do:

We went to the pet store the other day and Ruger didn't pee all over the floor!!  That's a first!  He met numerous dogs and people, but the best was a tiny, 10 week old bulldog.  SO CUTE!

The hilarious moment in the store was when the guy behind us was telling a story (not about that cute bulldog):

"So that little white dog was barking at everyone and everything and this black dog (pointing at Ruger) walked over to the white dog and said, 'OH YEAH!', in its face and the little white dog ran away and stopped barking!"

We bought lots of new toys for Ruger to destroy.  One is a 5 foot long, super thick rope.  I'm sure he'll shred it in no time unless we keep it away from him.  His cartoon eyes crack me up (he's looking up at Doug):

We also bought the Furminator brush - the brush is NOT cheap, but holy crap it removes a lot of dog hair!  I had no clue that Ruger had this much hair to brush out:

WINNER!!!!

Holy crap people!!  I won Chipotle for a YEAR!!!!!!!!!!  I’ve been playing their Adventurrito game and won!!  I get a free burrito every week for 52 weeks.  I’m SO EXCITED!  I felt like I won the lottery yesterday! 

To top of that excitement, I got a super cute Minion in the McDonald’s Happy Meal:

I don’t know where I’ve been because they’ve had the Minions in the Happy Meals all month!  Yesterday was the last day so Becky and I had to get one.  I don’t eat fast food very often, so I missed out on the cute toys this month.  Oh well.

Carpets

If you are coming to our house, this is what our carpets look like before you get there.... Ruger demolishes his rope toys and leaves pieces everywhere: 

He had diarrhea and dry heaving for almost 2 weeks and thank goodness he finally puked out what was bothering him!  I was getting pretty worried and planned to take him to the vet.  I think this is part of an antler he was destroying – it’s about 2 inches by 2 inches.