The beginning of the end?

I’m a little sad tonight. This might be one of my last few blog entries. I received my internet bill the other day and almost fainted. It appears that my promotional period is over and the full price billing has kicked in. I just cannot afford it any longer. Things are so tight for me financially, I need to cut back and make sure that the necessities are covered. The cable and internet are being turned off, I have reduced the cost of my cell phone plan. I found out that my wireless provider gives me a 17% discount because of the company I work for. That is a pretty decent discount. I’ll have to see next month how much that actually reduces my bill. Also, I have not turned the heat on at all this winter. That has enabled my electric bill has been between $31-35 a month. I live paycheck to paycheck, and it should end up being even smaller come the beginning of January as the premiums for my medical benefits are going up. I’m really trying to cut back where I can, but I tell you, it makes me depressed to know that I work 40 hours a week just to survive. It’s scary to think that my whole life might be like this!

On 11/27 the state of TN had sent a garnishment notice to Mike’s employer. I think I mentioned previously that Mike has only been able to secure temporary employment through Express Personnel in Rochester, MN. I called on 12/21 as I still had not received any support and found out that EP had ignored the request. The state sent another letter out on 12/19, and if they ignore that, there will be legal action taken against them for interference with the collection of child support. I called Mike tonight to check on the status of his job as he mentioned it was only going to be seasonal work. He said they let him know today that his employment had been extended. For how long? He has no clue, or so he says. I asked him if he talked to anyone at EP about them ignoring the wage assignment, he said that they need to be sent to the corporate office in OK. Gave me a phone # for them, so I’ll call about that tomorrow. I don’t know why the local office didn’t just shoot off the letter to corporate and let them take care of it. Goodness, I feel like I’m living on the verge of the movie Deliverance. Bunch of back water hicks I seem to be dealing with here.

I was extremely surprised that Mike sent Hailey a Christmas present. He sent her nothing for her birthday and when I questioned it, he said “Gifts just really aren’t my thing.” Yes ladies and gentlemen, that is the lovely winner that I married. What was I thinking??

 Work is ridiculously slow right now. I think I took the first phone call in our department today, at 10:00 maybe 10:15. The majority of us spent the day cruising the internet and chatting to each other. I’m leaving at 2pm tomorrow for the beginning of another 4 day weekend, WOOT! I will be heading to Gatlinburg to meet my mother and Hailey who have been there all week shopping and sight seeing. I think the plan is to meet up with some close friends of my mothers and explore Dollywood. Yes, I have been there many times before, we bought season passes with my tax return last year, but I still haven’t visited all the little nooks & crannies. Hailey gets so excited when we go, that’s what will make it worthwhile for me.

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. I know I sure did. I guess I’ll need to find time to blog about that too.

Why do I even own a phone?

Geeze, it’s been a little quiet on the comment front in here lately. *checks breath* I wonder if maybe a comment I’ve left somewhere has offended someone. If that’s the case, someone please enlighten me so I can apologize profusely. A lot of my main commenter’s are conspicuously absent. Hope everything is alright.

So this whole “dating” thing, I must just suck big time at this. Adam from the plane has met someone, apparently just after he asked for my email address. So we’re conversing via email on a strictly platonic basis, when I remember to write back…which is like once every two weeks. Uh, my bad. I’m happy for him, I think. John, the one who keeps forgetting our dates emailed today to let me know that he’s met someone. Hmm, I’m noticing a theme here. Is it possible that these people are lying to me? Is there something wrong with me? Seriously? I’m not hideously ugly, I speak English well enough, I’m polite and kind. So what is the problem?

I talked on the phone last night with Tony, the one with the moving company. He kept interrupting me, and cut off our conversation abruptly. He also kept mentioning that he wanted to get on with the Nascar circuit moving the film equipment. I think he mentioned 3 times that he did Bristol this year and made $2000 in 6 days. Now, don’t get me wrong cause I like money. I’m very fond of money. I don’t have a lot, but I wish I did. I come from a background that raised me to believe that money isn’t important, people are. Family is important. Friends are important. Being a good citizen is important. We never went without growing up, but we knew the difference between want & need. Most people today, don’t understand that concept. I married someone who put his job and the money he made before everything else. I spent 18 months in a pretty heavy relationship with someone who owned his own business. It was the only thing he thought of, and the majority of what he talked about. At this stage in my life, do I really want someone who will be that focused on their career and only cares about the $$’s they see? I’m trying to be open minded, so I will at least meet with Tony before I pass judgement. I want to give these men a chance. It just seems they’re not giving me one.

I emailed Doug, the one who’s worried about age difference, a week ago and have heard nothing back. He did warn me that this is a very busy time of year for him. It might be better to try and do this all sometime in early 2008 as the holidays aren’t conducive to people having a lot of free time.

I haven’t talked to Jeff in almost 2 weeks. That’s a whole ‘nother post just on it’s own. I wonder if part of why I’ve felt so unsettled lately has to do with my “relationship” with him and where I feel/see that going. Maybe it’s just that time of year. I’m not getting outside much because it’s darned cold, it’s depressing being at home without Hailey, and I work my @ss off every day just to send every damn dime I make to bills, groceries, day care, rent, etc. Mike is getting off scott free right now, not paying any child support. As near as I can tell, his temp job will end come January, so I might get just 1 child support payment before then.

 Cute guy has been exceptionally nice to me. Not sure what’s up with that. He’s helped me several times in the past week to carry things to and from my car. I guess he’s just trying to be a nice, Cute Guy. I have to say, it does make me feel good to know that there still men out there in the world who want to be a gentleman. I guess I’m a little old fashioned. I don’t mind being treated like a lady every once in awhile.

I was wondering today why I even bother owning a phone. I have a cell phone, but never got a land line turned on when I moved to the apartment. No one calls me. Seriously. Ok, mom does. But she doesn’t count. I was thrilled on Sunday to receive 2…yes T-W-O calls back to back. That’s almost unheard of people. I think the last time that happened to me, my brother was calling to say Grandpa had had a heart attack and then mom called to see if I could pick her up and take her to the hospital. I thought I had friends, but maybe I need to re-evaluate that part of my life. Maybe I’m a bad friend?!? Hmm. I know I have trouble responding to emails in a timely manner. Maybe I just am bad at remembering to call people too? I need to ruminate on that tid bit for a while.

Oh, here’s my random irritation for today. I received a Christmas card from my father. Dad remarried ohhh, 12 years ago now, I think. Vicki’s ok, I’ve not spent much time with her so I really can’t have much of an opinion. They are huge cat people. They are really into cats. Their bathroom has a distinct cat motif. The knick-knacks have to be of a black cat with white paws. Why? Because Dad & V have a cat, named Gilbert of all things who is fat as hell and is black with…you guessed it, white paws. Anyway, for as long as I can remember my cards have always been signed “Love, Dad, Vicki and *stamped paw print* (Gilbert)” This year though, the card came signed “Love, Dennis, Vicki & *stamped paw print* (Gilbert)” My father signed my card with his first name. I don’t know why, but that irritated the heck out of me. It was like instead of my card being personal they had a little assembly line set up, signed all the cards the same way and then jammed them into their pre-addressed envelope. They didn’t have to worry about which card went where as they were all the same!! Oh the simplicity of it.

As I said on Junkmel’ssite: “Gah! ‘Tis the season to BITE ME. Ooh maybe I need that printed up on a T-shirt.”

Bah Humbug, Y’all!

Protected: I got nothing.

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Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling “Yoo-hoo”.

It snowed today. It was magnificent. There was no accumulation, as the ground is too warm. All the better since I had a nice long drive home from dropping Hailey off at my mother’s house this weekend. She is on break from school until Jan 2, so during the week, I will be sans kid-let. I am torn between emotions. On one hand, I LOVE the peace and quiet. No 10,000 questions, no arguing, no whining, and best of all…no crying. On the other hand, I LOATHE the peace and quiet. It gives me much too much time to think. I hate sitting in my apartment with the stupid Christmas lights going, and the stupid tree rotating, and not having Hailey here to enjoy it with me. I’ll miss asking her how her day was, and getting plenty of hugs and kisses. I think I’m more bummed than I’m excited. The evenings will seem much longer without her.

Ok, so you might all have been asking yourself: “Webmiss, the other day we came to your blog and found it locked! What gives?” Well, we had a little scare the other weekend at Casa Webmiss. Jeff flew in to spend the weekend with me on November 30th. At some point (the details are a little fuzzy now) we were laying in bed talking. I happened to make an off hand comment about how I should “write this down”. It was either in reference to something he said, or something he had done. Jeff got this panicked look on his face and started quizzing me about having a blog. I lied through my teeth fibbed that I did not have a public online blog, I just had a good old fashioned paper journal. I abhor liars, and damnit I just made one of myself. When Jeff left the following Monday (December 3) I was sitting at home on my computer and literally started to panic. I could just imagine him sitting at home, googling place names and email phrases and coming across my blog. I hopped online and started password protecting any of the posts that mentioned his name. Then I realized that a lot of the day to day stuff that I post could give me away too. I’ve tried to be careful with names of the people I know, and I don’t think I’ve ever actually named the company I work for, but details like my trip to Michigan, etc would give me away in a heartbeat. I decided that the best thing to do would be to make the entire blog private. I know that if he searches via google, it will still show up as a cached page, but there is nothing I can do about that. I probably shouldn’t have been blogging about Jeff in the first place, I’m sure he would see it as an invasion of privacy that I wrote specific details here in my blogosphere. I received several emails asking me what was going on. I lamented to Yankeechick that I didn’t know how to allow access to the site. Bless the woman as she sent me an email with detailed instructions on how to allow people to see my blog. Unfortunately, you have to have a wordpress account in order to see my site. That part kinda stinks. I tried to add everyone I can think of, but if someone has been forgotten please email me at webmiss1981@yahoo.comand I’ll see what I can do. So far Jeff hasn’t confronted me with the knowledge that he has possibly found my diary/journal/blog/etc and I hope that he doesn’t. I NEED this outlet. There are people in my life, people that I call friends who cannot shut up about themselves for 15 minutes just to listen to what I have to say. I am supposed to be there for them, to listen and be supportive, but I find I lack people in my life willing to reciprocate those qualities for me. This blog is my place. It’s the only way that I feel that I can truly empty my head and my heart of everything that I am thinking and feeling. I have been so incredibly confused lately, but I have not made the time to write about it. Maybe if I did, things would be a little clearer and I might actually be able to work through some things.

I just feel like crying right now. I’m sure more out of frustration than anything else. I just don’t know what steps I want to take next. Do I go back to school? Do I move somewhere else? Do I just stay stuck here in TN always?

Things on the dating front are pissing me off big time. There are two men that I have been corresponding with via email since I originally posted my ad. Tony is 41 and owns his own small moving business. John is 33 and works for a company here in TN that basically sells boys toys (jet ski’s, motorcycles, boats, and the like). Just prior to Thanksgiving I made back to back dates with both of these guys, and on the days that we were supposed to meet for lunch, both of them called to cancel. I emailed them both again to see if they were still interested and wanted to reschedule. Tony never replied, John did. I asked John if he wanted to arrange something for Friday night 12/7 after work. He said that would be great. I found out that I would be working some overtime that Friday/Saturday so I asked if we could switch to this Thursday 12/13 as I had the day off and could travel to meet him for lunch. He said that would be great, he’d pick a place and a time. Come the Tuesday of that week and I haven’t heard from him, so I email him to confirm plans. He never emailed back. I absolutely hate unreliable people. Mike was an unreliable person and we all know how well that’s worked out. So I figure that John’s had his 2 chances and I’ll need to just chalk that one up as a no-go.

In the meantime, Doug has responded to my ad. Doug started things off on the wrong foot by spelling my name wrong. I have to say, if it says my name in the header of my email, and I sign my email with my name…there shouldn’t be a problem in addressing an email to me correctly. I am proud of my name, and I feel that it is a sign of disrespect when someone misspells or incorrectly pronounces my name. Perhaps that’s anal retentive of me, but what can I say? A persons ability to portray theirself in written word holds great weight with me. So I emailed Doug a brief email back, and then he replied. This time though, my name was spelt correctly. He told me a little about himself, and asked me a few questions. He ended the email with “We have a large age difference, Candice. How do you feel about that?” Doug is 51. I kind of felt like saying something smart assed, but decided against it. I tried to explain that I am an old woman trapped in a young woman’s body, without sounding preachy or like I was making it up. It’s true, I’m 26 but don’t act/talk or present myself in a manner that would suggest so. Most people think I’m in my late 30’s. I ended my email with “I suppose I should throw that question back at you. We have a large age difference, Doug. How do you feel about that?” I’ve not heard from him since LOL.

Tony emailed me back, just today. “hey girl whats up? call me today if you can and we will talk about meeting. i’ve lost the e-mail with your # sorry. i’ve been pretty busy the past couple of weeks. hope to hear from you.” He included two phone numbers with which to reach him. I will probably call him tomorrow as I have an intense headache right now, and really wanted to spend the evening blogging and reading blogs. So far, I’d say that my adventures in dating have turned out to be rather disastrous. I’ve not mentioned to anyone in my real life that I’ve posted an ad on craigslist. I didn’t even mention it to Jeff, although he’s been encouraging me to date *rolls eyes*

Oh, and remember Adam from the plane? I never heard back from the last email that I sent him back in October, so I shot him off one more to see what the status of things was. Here’s the reply: “Hey! Sorry about that. It has been crazy since the last time I talked to you…..well typed to you that is. I did have a really good Thanksgiving. The best I’ve ever had. How was yours? Are you ready for Christmas? I’ve got most of my shopping complete except for a couple of people. I met someone back in October and we’ve hit it off really well. So of course I’m going to buy her all kinds of gifts for Christmas. She deserves it. How’s work going? Still enjoying your position? Have you done any more traveling? Well, I’m at work so I better get off here before I get my ears chewed off. Great to hear from you agian. I’ll talk to you later.” So while I thought that we had made a little connection there, I guess I wasn’t as unforgettable as I thought. I wonder if this has anything to do with all those lucky chain letters that I’ve never passed on, or that mirror I broke last year?

Hopefully I’ll blog again before oh New Year’s perhaps I still have much to update on.

Damn you Maxxy!

I came across a post that Maxx wrote the other day, issuing a challenge to his readers. Maxx has a list of song titles that he wants people to try and write lyrics for. I am not a song writer, but one of the titles jumped out at me and stuck in my head. I have spent the last few hours toiling like a slave with a tablet and pen trying to make sense of the random thoughts in my head, and pull them down into some sort of cohesive form that I could call a song.So, without further ado I present to you, my crappy attempt at songwriting:

I know you better

The day you walked out was the hardest of my life.
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to survive.
All of our dreams, so easily thrown away.
That door is closed now, it’s time to move on.

[chorus]
I know you better than I know myself.
I know you better than I know anybody else.
But now you’ve gone and thrown it all away.
How will I live without you for another day?

I still think of you. Sometimes you’re in my dreams.
I don’t want you back, I just miss what we had.
I hope one day that I can let go,
to heal myself so I can be whole

[chorus]
I know you better than I know myself.
I know you better than I know anybody else.
But now you’ve gone and thrown it all away.
How will I live without you for another day?

The years have passed now, they’ve been good to me.
I’m stronger and wiser. I’ve learned from my mistakes.
The memories are bittersweet, they no longer cause me pain.
Go in peace sweet lover, I’ve finally let you go.

[chorus]
I know you better than I know myself.
I know you better than I know anybody else.
But now you’ve gone and thrown it all away.
I will live without you, for another day!
By Webmiss 12-11-2007

So there you have it folks, it’s not terrific, but I had to get that out of my system. Maybe now I can go to sleep tonight. Anyone else up for Maxx’s challenge? Tomorrow I will try and post about what caused my blog to be locked, and maybe some of the other stuff that’s going on.