Thing 1: Tuesday marked the 7th birthday of my Sweet Maisy. I wrote up a little something that I sent to family and posted on my Facebook:
We took the kids to Disneyland yesterday for Maisy’s birthday. They have the get in free on your birthday promotion so we took a day off and had a little fun. We got up early to miss the morning traffic, had breakfast down by the park, got great parking and waited around a 1/2 hour to get in before they opened. The weather was perfect, the crowds were minimal since it was a Tuesday and not everyone has this week off for spring break. Average time we waited to get on a ride was 15 minutes. They gave Maisy a button that said “Happy Birthday Maisy” on it, so all day all the ‘cast members’ were saying happy birthday to her. It was so fun for her.
Big Daddy took Maisyon the Matterhorn without telling her what it was all about. She survived and was none the worse for wear. Later, since they both did well on Pirates we we decided to try the Haunted Mansion. We made it through the first parlor before you get on the cars when Maisy freaked out and started crying that she wanted to go home. First time I ever had to use one of those ‘chicken out’ exits. She hated Star Tours too and freaked out during that as well.
To top it off Moose was such a great boy all day- only a couple brief tantrums. Not many 2.5 year-oldscan get up at 5AM and last until 10 PM with almost no nap and not have a volcanic meltdown. He dozed off during Pirates of the Caribbean for a power nap. Which was a blessing in disguise because the ride broke down right before the end and we were stuck in the middle of a drunken shoot-out between 4 pirates for 5-10 minutes. Sitting there waiting for the ride to resume I thought of the line from Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum’s character says “If the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down the pirates don’t eat you.”
We were going to try to have dinner at one of the nicer restaurants there (not wanting to spend $36.00 again on hockey-puck cheeseburgers), but seeing as it was 7PM already and we wouldn’t even get in the place for at least a 1/2 hour we bailed on that idea and decided to just stop somewhere on the way home. Big Daddy talked to his sister PiA while I was navigating that one huge gift shop and we met her for Pizza in Fullerton. Even though we still didn’t get dinner until after 9 pm, the pizza was amazing. Maisy wanted pizza in the first place but I didn’t want Disneyland pizza (and I KNOW BD wouldn’t have liked it), so it worked out well. We put the kids in their pajamas (Maisy even got a brand new Sleeping Beauty nightgown at the park), loaded them up and we were on the road a few minutes before 10. Home before 11.
We’re going to do California Adventure in June for Moose’s birthday. :P
We WERE going to wait until then to go, but right now Disney also has a ‘2fer’ promotion for So Cal residents where you can go back to California Adventure (ie: the other park) for free 30 days after your visit. And we realized why spend the extra money to go back in 2 months when we can go for free this month? The guy converted Maisy’s ticket in to a ‘2fer’, Moose is already still free so we’re all set. Big Daddy gets every other Tuesday off so we’re going to go the 14th.
Thing 2: Birth and Death Tuesday also marked the 18th anniversary of my Daddy’s death. Today would have been his 61st Birthday. It was also the day that we held his memorial service, since I was scheduled to fly out to Boston on the 4th to see Goochwhen she was living there and we wanted to get everything squared away before I left. In a few more years I will have lived longer without him than I did withhim. I have compartmentalized his deathin such a way that I really don’t think about him much. I don’t have that soul crushing ache others have with the loss of a parent. I miss him when I think about what he lost out on, what I lost out on, what my kids lost out on. Big Daddy and I sometimes talk of how my Dad would have liked him, and that they would have done a lot of this or that together. But the thing is, my life would be totally different had he not died. I would have taken different paths so I wouldn’t have these same babies, the same husband, this same life.
3’s company: The Foreclosure & Bankruptcy We are still living in our house. We have not made a payment since May (WOW). We have sent off a bunch of financial paperwork and forms to them, and they have just requested more. They have been reviewing and then putting things on hold while waiting to see what the Government came up with in terms of programs to help. we had an original trustee sale date (you know the auction on the courthouse steps) of Feb 11thand they extend it another montheach month they continue to dick around. We now have a May 15 sale date right now.
We are waiting to see what happens with the forclosure before filing chapter 13 bankruptcy on all our other debts. We stopped paying the credit cards in October so were severely in default with them. I went out and bought an answering machine, since we discontinued voice mail, so that I could screen our calls. How many times can I continue to tell these people we can’t pay them.
As an aside: do you know how hard it was to find and answering machine? Target only had ones connected with a phone system and Best Buy had ONE.
4’s a crowd: Our Finances in General Big Daddy’s job is going great. He’s getting paid super good. We got benefits a month after he was hired. Unfortunately the shop is not doing as well so we’re using money we should be saving to make the ‘good faith’ payment I am sure the mortgage company is going to want when the modification is made, to pay the bills at the shop. So right now we have NO money until payday.
I have a little more autonomy when it comes to being able to spend money. I am able to run errands and go shopping on my own and just re-imburse myself from the shop. He is not depositing his paychecks in our joint account with B0fA (yes, I’m STILL with them…for now) and not depositing checks from his personal account in to the joint account. We’re funneling money through the shop until the bankruptcy is over since we hold a second mortgage and a credit card through B0fA and we don’t want them to see we have money coming in. I can only claim laziness for not going down to the corner Citi.bank and opening an account there. (That’s my only close by choice. I owe $$ to Ch ase for my credit card and the fees at We lls Farg0 are too high.)
5 Alive: Blog Bidness I am not going to make excuses for why I have not been blogging other than just feeling uninspired. (No one probably even noticed either.) I have been reading blog after blog and I actually commented today and yesterday on a couple, so I have been wasting as much time if not more on the Internet. I just have not felt bloggy lately.
My domain monamildew.com expired and since I am not able to spend money without someones scrutiny and my credit cards have burst into flames I couldn’t renew it. It has been deleted from my name and is now back on the free market. So if you had that in a feed reader, it’s now Lloyd, Lloyd, all null and void. I think I still own my everybodyloves[myrealname].com domain and hopefully I can hang on to that for future use in some capacity.
As you can see (if you have been here before) I have a new theme and I am going to try to blog more regularly. Maybe do what other people do and have regular features or themes.
I dunno. No promises.
**The paragraph breaks in this thing are pissing me off. I keep editing it over and over but nothing changes so I am through. Please know I did a better job than this**