What's another $15,000?

Good news! We finally got an offer on the house! Yay!

Bad news! They want us to knock off ANOTHER $15,000 AND pay $2,000 in closing costs. Ummm... wtf?!?

We listed the house with a $15,000 loss... meaning that, at closing time, we are going to have to bring a minimum of $15,000 with us (plus whatever commission ends up being). This woman who made the offer wants us to take yet another $15k off the price, so that we'd end up bringing $30,000+ to closing. Uhh, yeah freaking right! We're desperate to sell but not THAT desperate... even if we could come up with $30k (which just isn't realistic). We countered and told them we'd do the $2,000 in closing costs but we wouldn't lower the price of the house. I doubt it'll go anywhere, but still... *rolls eyes*

At least we got SOME interest - even if it sucked. It's a good sign... right?

101 Paper Cuts

Note to self: Do not, under ANY circumstances, have Tiger Balm applied to you when in the middle of a flare that includes hypersensitive skin. *CRY*

I was thinking to myself "Massages always hurt like hell but help in the long run so, if DH is willing, I'll have him massage my back some and use a bit of Tiger Balm." Made perfect sense to me, right? Yeah... notsomuch when there's hypersensitive skin involved. It seriously felt like I had 101 paper cuts all across my back. Add that to the pain of him massaging - even a very gentle massage - and I was sobbing into my pillow. God, I feel like such a freakin' wimp!

So here I am in bed, curled up with my awesome NAP blanket, and typing on the computer while trying to forget that pain doesn't just exist, but is trying to swallow me whole.

Here goes everything........

You would think I'd know better by now...

but no, of course not. *sigh*

So this week I had to fly to Fresno for work. One of my bestestestest friends lives in Lemoore (about a 40 minute drive from Fresno) where her DH is stationed with the Navy, so I chose to take a couple of personal days to hang out with her for a bit. She's a very... earthy... girl. Loves to be outside, walk around, etc. She has an orchard on her property - pomegranates, oranges, lemons and grapes.

We took walks around her groves where she showed me stuff and the entire time I was in the sun but I didn't think anything of it. Then, the next day we went walking around an outdoor mall and had lunch outside on the patio at a restaurant, also in the sun. I was wearing my sunscreen (as I always do - it's second nature now to put it on) but I KNOW that anything more than 15-20 minutes in the sun, even with sunscreen, is too much.

That night I started breaking out in hives. I took some Benadryl to help calm the itching and put some lotion on them before heading to bed. Around 3am I woke up in so much pain that it took everything I had to not lie there sobbing. I forced myself to get up and get into a hot bath to see if it would help, but no go. I had to work that day (yesterday) and it was seriously horrible. The "lupus mask" was so prevalent, despite all of the make-up I was wearing, that I received several comments from people asking if I had a fever, that I looked flushed, etc. *sigh* Of course, the only med I had with me was Advil... which, of course, does nothing in a flare like this.

I'm currently at the airport and I know sitting on the plane is going to kill me, being cramped into that small space. But at least I'm going home and I already called my doctor and he called in a prescription for prednisone and Vicodin (I finally used up my 15 pills he prescribed 2 years ago). I'm already contemplating taking Monday off.

Oh yeah, and my skin was hurting so bad (uber-sensitive) yesterday afternoon and the sheets in the hotel were KILLING me, so I went out and bought a blanket. I bought a NAP blanket - this is seriously the softest thing I've ever felt and it's guaranteed against pilling and that it will keep its softness. It was a life saver last night.

*hides behind the couch*

I've been SUCH a slacker! Uggh! In my defense, it's been a crazy couple of weeks. Let's take a quick look here, shall we?

So, I get a letter from our daycare director about boy-child. He has been having these "fits" lately, for lack of a better term, where he will scream/cry and nothing will stop it. He's done this for over a year, at home at least, and the only thing that we've been able to do for him is have him go to his room until he can calm himself down. No hugging, attention, etc. works when gets like that. Heck, even giving in to what he originally wanted doesn't work once he gets all worked up. He just has to go off on his own until he can figure out how to calm himself. It's not a punishment - and I think he knows that. Unfortunately, they don't really have the ability to put him in a separate room alone when he's at school.

Anyway, so we got this letter and all it said was that we needed to discuss him because he is severely disrupting the classroom dynamics. The way it was worded, I was terrified that they were going to ask us to find somewhere else for him to go. I was all paranoid and didn't sleep the entire weekend (we got the letter on Friday and had our appointment to discuss matters with her the following Monday).

Here's the thing with him: he is delayed in a few areas, most likely because of the circumstances surrounding his birth (I ruptured and he went without oxygen for a short time). We were warned about this possibility and I've kept a very keen eye out for symptoms and such. His main area of delay right now is speech. I know that the majority of his "fits" are caused by the fact that he can't communicate what he wants. I was told that he couldn't be evaluated by the school district with an IEP until he was 3 (they never told me that there were other state-funded programs that I could have used for him under 3, but I digress) and when I brought our concerns to our pediatrician, he rather blew me off. I let it slide more than I should have because of our commute, so I will own that responsibility.

At any rate, we had our meeting and it went completely differently than I'd expected. The thought had apparently never crossed her mind to have us find another school for him - in fact, it was the opposite. She wanted to know what they could do to help us out and get the needed services for him! She recommended a pediatrician down in the Denver area (since we're planning on moving down there soon, we figured that would be the best bet) and gave us a bunch of resource numbers for things. The pedi that we saw specializes in special needs children and therapy and we were able to get in with him the same day I called. I was shocked, given that we were new patients. He was awesome! He agreed that Matthew's speech is the first thing we should be looking into and I've set up an appointment with our local school district for the 31st of March for his initial evaluation. Now that he's 3 we can go through them (and we're forced to go through our local school district which is 2 hours away from his school and our places of employment, but ya do what ya gotta do). The pedi office also did a quick hearing test thing on him and one ear showed fine and the other suggested a referral to an audiologist, so there's a possibility that there's something with his hearing that is off and that could be contributing to his speech issues. We have an audiologist appointment set up, also through the school district, for this coming Tuesday, so hopefully we'll have a few answers on that front.

One thing that is a possibility where boy-child is concerned is a diagnosis of Tourette Syndrome (TS). He has a majority of the symptoms, including all of the symptoms that are considered symptoms but not diagnostic criteria. He doesn't have any vocal tics, but he does have what appear to be occasional tics. I'd been very concerned about Aspergers or other autism spectrum disorders, but he didn't match one of the main criteria for those - the lack of emotional response. He's extremely lovey-dovey, loves to snuggle, has no problems making eye contact, etc. But what we're now seeing as a possible tic I had thought was a kind of stimming. The pedi is pretty much 100% sure that he is not on the autism spectrum and that, if anything, it is TS. He won't run any real diagnostics or anything until he is older - closer to 5 or so. I guess we'll see what happens. For now we're focusing on getting him some speech therapy and possibly a little occupational therapy and then go from there.

Ok, so, enough about boy-child. Let's talk about girl-child for a few minutes. I swear this child is 5 going on 16. I know I had an attitude as a child but good hell, this child gets a bit cuh-razy! We are very adamant anti-spankers but she likes to push those boundaries! *twitch* Just last week DH asked her to do something and she said "No! And you can't make me!" all snotty-like. *faint* He looked at me and I was torn between cracking up at the absurdity and wanting to yell at her for the sheer disrespect. DH responded pretty well, though, he said "I'm sorry... WHAT did you say?" She responded in a much more meek tone with "Umm, I said no?" To which he responded, "Oh, well in that case I say no to dessert for tonight and no to you being able to stay down here and be civil with your family. I suggest you go to your room before I carry you there." It was classic!

Other than some of the attitude issues, she's doing very well and I'm quite proud of her. Kindergarten agrees with her quite well! She's actually interested in reading now! Ever since she was a baby she's hated books - she never allowed me to read to her no matter how much I tried. She'd either grab the book and throw it on the floor or try to eat it (you should see all the literally half-eaten books we have... oy vey!). Now she's finally getting interested in it! Yay! She can sound out most of the words, though she has some trouble with "th" and "sh" and "wr." Those compound consonants are tricky! But she's at least trying and that's the good thing. Her math skills are, as always, bloody amazing. In fact, she's currently in the other room playing one of her math skills computer games.

The other major thing going on has been getting the house ready to put on the market. We've been so lackadaisical about keeping the clutter at bay that it's been a lot more work than we'd originally anticipated. *paranoid look* We've packed up a bunch of stuff that we're not using and we've rented a storage unit to get it out of the house, along with some small furniture items, so that we can open it up a bit more. My good friend Linda is going to be borrowing my treadmill for a few months (really, I didn't want to put it in some storage unit and she's been thinking about buying one so I figured, the best thing would be to let her try one out for a few months and if she still wants one, she can buy one - best of both worlds, really, I get free storage and good care and she gets the use of a treadmill for a few months). We sign the paperwork with our realtor on Monday - it was supposed to be today but all sorts of crap came up. It's all good, though. The house is looking great, though, almost as good as when it was finished being built - with the exception of the carpet. We may just have to rip it out and put some new stuff in if the shampooing doesn't work. I hope it doesn't come to that, though... it's so bloody expensive.

Ok, so there's my novel of a post for today. Hope all is well in your worlds. Wish us luck with the house selling so we can finally get rid of this horrid commute!

It feels great to be appreciated!

If you've read anything of my blog (what, all 3 posts of it? LOL) you'll see that my last two posts were about work. Really, in many ways, my job rules my life. Not completely, but quite a bit. Anyway, this week was annual review week... it's where our managers give us our annual performance appraisal, go over our accomplishments, set goals, etc. In the 4.5 years I've been with the company, I've always had good reviews. I was a bit nervous this year, however, because this job is completely new to me - something I've never done before. In fact, it is so new to me that I'm still learning and thankfully the company has been willing to pay for me to get training in it. (I'm still a bit surprised that I was hired for the job - apparently my manager and her manager both saw my potential. Hey, I'm not complaining!)

Ok, ok... moving on to the good stuff. So, I had my review and it went a hell of a lot better than I had anticipated. Last I had heard from my manager, I would be "promoted" (really more of a title change, supposedly) to a Salaried-Exempt position at this review time, as opposed to the Salaried-Non-Exempt position. (If you don't know the difference between Sal-E and Sal-NE, I'll try to explain: Basically the word "exempt" pertains to overtime. If you're Sal-E, you are no longer eligible for any overtime pay, regardless of the hours you put in. The Department of Labor oversees what job positions should be considered Sal-E or not. Sal-NE has pretty much all of the benefits of a full salaried employee but is also eligible for overtime pay - though at my company the overtime pay isn't the standard "time-and-a-half." It's actually a pro-rated amount of your salary, rather a pittance, actually, and in my case it worked out to something like $8/hr. That's not on top of my regular salary - just a flat $8-ish/hr for every hour over 40 worked in a work-week. Because of the overtime part, a Sal-NE employee has to fill out a time card every two weeks. It's such a pain in the butt and really a hassle.)

So now that that little explanation is out of the way, let me really get to the meat of things. So, with all of the OT I've been putting in with this new job, my DH and I were concerned that maybe it wouldn't be a benefit to go to a Sal-E position. We calculated, approximately, how much money I'm pulling in with OT, etc., and we came to an amount that I felt would be appropriate as compensation if they did switch me to a Sal-E position, thus negating my OT pay. When we got to the monetary compensation portion of my review, I was honestly shocked. Not only did they meet what DH and I felt would be a good raise, they exceeded it by QUITE A BIT. *faint* AND I was given a true promotion. And here's the best part: I'm not a Sal-E employee (yet)! So it's the best of both worlds! Not only did my salary increase exponentially, I'm still eligible for OT pay (even if it isn't the greatest of pay, it's still more than I was making and some compensation for my time being put in). It's freaking awesome!

Of course, to put a damper on this, boy-child has been sick for the last two days and I've had to stay home with him. It's nothing major - likely a viral URI - but with a fever over 100.5 he's not allowed at school. Both of the kiddos stayed home with me yesterday but today girl-child insisted on going to school. Poor DH... I don't envy his commute with the loverly sinkhole on I-25!

Catch y'all later!

Work is Hell.

Don't get me wrong... for the most part, I love my job, but the month of January is pure fucking hell. HELL. We have multiple deadlines throughout the month but the major deadline is 2/1. That is when the new quarter, the first quarter of the year, begins and that's when new promotions for the company roll out. It's a major time of the year for practically every department in the company. The problem? I need things from other departments but they have the same deadlines as I do. Uhhh, how is THAT supposed to work, eh? Well, as I'm sure you can imagine... it doesn't. I did, however, manage to make pretty much all of my deadlines, so that's the important thing. I don't think the quality of my work was all that great, but ya know what? It worked, and that's the most important thing in the absolute long run. It'll get better with time - I'm still in the learning curve. Now that it's February, I can actually relax for a few days. Not too long, though... I have more deadlines coming up. Wheeee!

The problems with being awesome.

I know that title seems almost... egotistical. Really, though, it'll make sense if you keep reading.

Without "tooting my own horn," so to speak, I am pretty "awesome" at my job. I don't just idly say this. I work hard to be "awesome." Two weeks ago I put in a 77 hour week - 41-ish hours of it was straight. Yes, you read that correctly; no sleep or real breaks to speak of for 41 hours. I met my deadline, though, and really I didn't complain (well, too much LOL). I tend to be the "go to" person for a variety of projects and ultimately I like the feeling it brings. The problem comes in that, once you show that kind of work ethic, it becomes expected.

I do have a very strong work ethic - I pretty much always have. Sure, I'll slack off occasionally, but if there's a deadline to be met, I meet it with a hard-faced tenacity. It's just how I am and who I am. I don't mind putting in these kinds of hours every now and then and, really, in the job I have, these kinds of deadlines only come around maybe twice a year. I can deal with that, ya know? I think the husband might be a bit annoyed, but he'll get over it, right? LOL

I love my boss, and her boss, as well. I adore my team - even though so many of them are new to the company. We all just "click" really well with each other. It's an incredible feeling to be a part of a team that really feels like a "family" - since I spend more time at work than I do at home, it's nice to have a "family" and a "home away from home."

So, this is a boring post, but figured I'd at least bring it up. It's a boring evening.

Oh, but one other thing completely unrelated - I'm working my way to a goal of all 5 stars on Guitar Hero 3 at the Hard level. I can't seem to get past the Slayer song nor the Metallica song on Hard so I've decided to work on getting 5 stars on everything up to Tier 8. Maybe with that practice it'll make those two songs a bit easier. Yes, I'm lame. LOL!

A New Year, A New You!

I swear this is the tagline for practically every weight loss or work-out company from about December 15th through February 1st of every year. Do I really need a "new me" every year? What's wrong with the "old me?" Or are we purely talking the "physical me?" Sure, I'd love to dump the old "physical me" and trade up for a newer model. Oh, if only that were even possible.

New Year's Resolutions. Isn't it strange how so many people make NYRs yet it is a very small percentage of people who actually follow through? If these NYRs were what we truly wanted so badly, why would we let ourselves sabotage us so easily? Subconsciously there must be something that's preventing or stopping us from actually meeting our supposed goals. Let's take a look at my NYR from last year.

2007's NYR was to join Weight Watchers and lose all of this weight that was gained originally from steroids (gotta love prednisone - uh, NOT!) and compounded by the fact that I have a two hour one-way commute to work in which I sit on my ass most of the day at a desk and then have the same commute home in the evening where, if I want my children to get to bed at a decent hour, we end up eating out (and so often fast food because, really, who can afford to eat at a nice sit-down restaurant five days a week?) on our way home. Add to that the fact that I can't be outside in the sun for more than about 10-15 minutes at a time without getting invariably sick and... well, you get the point.

So last year I made my NYR to lose the weight using the WW program. It's a great program and I've seen plenty of people lose an amazing amount of weight on it. I thought, "Hey, I can do this!" And you know what? I did! I did a great job of following my points, registering them using WW Online, etc. I actually made it through mid-March. I didn't attend meetings because, well, none were convenient or available with my lovely schedule, but I did participate in online discussions at the WW forums and belong to a couple of other weight loss forums. Still, by mid-March, despite following the program religiously, I had not lost a lot of weight. The Points system is great, but really, it isn't designed for a person who is somewhat forced to eat fast food and the like as regularly as I do. (And no, I'm not trying to make excuses... these are just the facts.) And I also realized that, while dieting is great and all, not much is going to happen without adding exercise in on top of it.

Ah, yes, exercise. The downfall of almost every dieter. We all want that quick fix. We don't want to actually have to work at weight loss! I mean, it's not like we exactly worked to put the weight ON, why should we work to take it off?! Right? At one time I owned a membership to a gym. Of course, that was when I worked 20 minutes from home and the gym was about 10 minutes from work. I used to walk, do some mild weight training, vigorous swimming and yoga. I can't tell you how much I miss it. But now? Yeah, I couldn't afford a gym membership even if I were able to use it. So I did the next best thing (well, the next best thing that I could think of, at least) and bought a treadmill. Expensive as hell but we used part of our tax return money for it (though, in retrospect, we really shouldn't have done that and really should have put the money into some of our bills instead, but I digress...). I used it religiously - for about 6 weeks. Why only 6 weeks, you ask? The main answer is that I got a new job. Same company, but new job.

At the end of April '07 I accepted a position as a Flash developer/graphics designer. Now, other than some freelance web design, I've never done anything in the graphics world nor have I done any Flash design since before Actionscripting was even created. Quite honestly I was a bit surprised that I got the job, but I was very, very pleased (and still am). My boss, and her boss above her, are so bloody awesome it's hard to put into words. They both have faith in me to learn (and thankfully I learn very quickly) the things I need to learn and apply them as best I can. Right away I was thrown into the fray for our annual national conference. Nearly one week away from home, working 6am to midnight every day, and that sapped all of the energy I had. Then, when I returned to the office after the conference, I was bombarded both by my new job and by my old job.

See, my previous manager had had a bad run of things right around the time I was hired for my new position. There were three of us on his team - one gave notice to move to Utah, I got this new job and the third got himself fired due to continued sexual harassment. There was no way my former boss (whom I consider a friend as well as a coworker) could manage to do the work of his team by himself, so I was, in a way, commissioned to continue to help him out as much as possible. I trained the first new guy, got him up to speed as best as is possible, and partially trained the second new gal who, thankfully, was already a part of the company and new the system so it was more a matter of training specifics rather than overall. While doing that I still had my other deadlines for my new job to take into consideration and, as it was a new job, I felt I needed to really impress with my capabilities. So I worked from home, worked from the van while DH drove, worked extra hours... all just to impress. Long story short, however, is that I was so bloody exhausted by all of it that the mere thought of getting on the treadmill sent me into a major paroxysm.

Once things started to slow down at work and I was weaned away from my old job (mid-August), I'd already gotten out of the habit of using the treadmill and there it sat, in my bedroom, collecting dust. I kept trying to tell myself I needed to use it more, blah blah blah, but yeah... I didn't. Talk about your waste of money, no?

So this leads me into this year's NYR. Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with weight loss or exercise or anything of the like. Really, the aforementioned "story" is more of a way to force myself to not let what happened last year happen again. So here it is in writing. On the screen. Ha! Oh yeah, this year's NYR... is to write. Blogging, noveling, short story writing, poetry... whatever. This past November I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and it was, by far, one of the most awesome experiences of my life. Not only did I meet the goal of NaNoWriMo (to write 50,000 words in 30 days) but I doubled that goal AND completed my novel! IN THIRTY DAYS! *applause applause* Apparently there are some stories in me just waiting to get out and I never really realized it. Ha! So, here I am, my very first blog of the New Year, of 2008. Sure we're nearly two weeks in, but at least I'm doing it. My goal, written out here for the world to see, is to write at least once per week. If I write more than that, YAY! If I write less than that, well, really I have no excuse and I'm just a decrepit bit of human scum. Okay, maybe not that harsh. LOL! But really, I have no excuse for not writing at least once per week. Here goes... hey, world, I hope you're ready for me!