Home Again, Birthday, Drama, Contractors & More Drama

Ah, home Finally!!!!!!  After what has seemed like the week from hell, the boys, Sam and I are finally back home.  Now, were to begin.............
Let's go back a bit.
Okay, so Last Tuesday, I had my doctor's appointment and then another company was supposed to come by and take a look at the porch columns.  I'll go into the Doctor's appointment later, because I'm going to classify that with the other drama.
So, Contractor shows up, on time, brownie points for that.  He and Bill walked and they talked, and the contractors said he's get with the company's engineer & get back to us.  He did.  Apparently, it can be fixed!!!!!!  And they will start Monday.  It should be done no later than Tuesday, including replacing the sidewalk they will have to rip up.  from what I understand, it will be very loud and very messy.  I don't care as long as it gets done.  The roofers will be here Tuesday.  I am not sure how much they will get done this week because it is supposed to storm all week, but at least the porch will be done.
It will cost $5000.00.  Peachy.  I am supposed to be grateful it isn't twice that, but I can't help being a bit freaked out with the price tag. That is pretty much the entire budget for the Fence and the back bathroom.  We will probably still be able to do the fence, but probably not as soon.  The bathroom????  Who knows, but probably not this summer. 
So that's that.
Next, Doctor's appointment.
It sucked.  It just really fuckin sucked.  I can't begin to express how much it sucked.  But, being the kind of person I am, I'll give it a go. 
So, we'll start small and work our way to the big stuff.  I seem to have pulled a muscle in my stomach while doing Zumba.  Not a really big deal, except when I cough.  Then I want to die.  With the allergies as bad as they are, I am coughing alot.  But, its not life threatening, which is a plus. 
During the getting felt up portion of the exam, the doctor found a,  and I'll quote here, "little, small, bump like spot"??????  Huh?  
Now, I don't tend to get freaked out about much.  But when a Doctor starts repeating himself and asking stupid questions, I get concerned.  I am really not all that worried about it.  I'll just go get the mammogram and be done with it.  But I am not looking forward to it.  I was supposed to go last Friday, but because of other drama, I wasn't able to. I am pretty sure its just scar tissue  or something like that, since I do have a talent for scar tissue and the only risk factor I have for breast cancer is that I have breasts.  I'm not really worried.  I'll just keep on saying that :)
And just because its my birthday week, there just had to be yet more crap.  Within a few hours of learning that for my birthday I had to go get the squish the boobies test, we learn that I will need to pack up and go stay in Kansas city for the remainder of my in-laws vacation.  That was a pain in my ass.  I had a considerable amount of things to do at my home.  Anyway, it was alot of Drama.  Don't really care for drama.  Eventually, I will go into why I had to, but I was asked, in order to protect the guilty, to not say anything about it.  Okay, I'll try.  Please take bets amongst yourselves, as to how long I will remain silent. 
Oh wait!  I forgot to mention that I will need to go back to the doctor because it appears that some of my permanent stitches have come undone and I may need yet another surgery to repair what has come apart.  Maybe, I'll find that out Tuesday. Again, Maybe I'll find out.  He may have to send me to a specialist.  Lovely.  Just F'ing lovely.
Apparently this is not a good thing   For the record, I didn't do anything to cause this.  He was that last person anywhere near it!!!!  Happy Birthday to me!!!!!!Happy Birthday to Meeeeeeeee!

I think that about covers it.  Nope, but wait there is more...........
We get home yesterday, and Aden pukes the second we walk in the door.  And has continued to puke every few hours since then.  He was apparently not sick enough to prevent him from running through the house like a maniac chasing his brother, but just sick enough to make a bit more work and see if he can play this off so I will wait on him. Well, it works.  I think it may be that his digestive system is all wonked up, from his vacation.  I hear that it was the best vacation a 5 year old could possibly have outside of Disneyland :)

Mama Cat was not pleased to see Sam.  Sam got a little bloody.  They seem to have worked it out though.  As long as Sam stays away from Mama, and stops trying to sniff her butt, things should be fine.

I was amazed at how clean the house was when we got home.  That lasted about 3 minutes.  And there was toilet paper on the dispenser!!!  it was almost out we we left.  I think Bill may have actually changed it himself!  Or maybe he had someone else come over and do it, I didn't ask. 
The boys and I have a few little things to do outside today to make sure we are ready for the guys to come tomorrow.  I am not sure what I am going to do with my wind chimes.  I will probably just put them on the pear tree out back.  I don't think the tree will look too stupid with 8 wind chimes on it :) 

It finally looks like we are going to get the outside finished!!!!  I can't wait.  The historical society has requested pictures of ever stage of the of the process which, will be a bit of a pain, but not too bad.  It's for a good cause :)

Bill want to start taking my e-cig to work with him.  I think I'll be okay without it after today.  I think I just need a day or so to calm down a bit.  But, it did end up working pretty good for me.  I am now down to using the 11mg cartridges and I don't use it that much.  I mostly just carry it around like a pacifier :)

The weather is at least beautiful, if I ignore the the pollen.  The claritin is at least working pretty good now.  Now if I can only convince Evan to stop trying to pick up mama, we should be okay.  Although, he would only have to do it once and I bet she'll convince him it wasn't a smart move :)  She is at least alot more gentle with the boys.

Zumba is calling....I'd better go answer :)

Monday, Masons, Evan's Iris Issue & Contractors

Did you know that contractors make so much money, they don't have to return calls?  Or show up for scheduled appointments?  I need a career change.  Out of 6 contractors I made appointments with to come and look at the porch, one showed up.  That's right one.  And he stayed for all of 30 seconds.  I am getting very tempted to just call the Vo-tech and see if the Masonry teacher needs a project for his students.  I am betting they would show up.  It would probably take 2 years to get the job done, but at least they would show up!
I'll call more Masons today and see what I can do.  I'll stop complaining about that, for now.
Evan picked out some Midnight blue Irises.  They came in the mail Saturday.  He really wants to plant them.  Problem is, where can we plant them???  I wanted to put them in the front, along the front porch, but that isn't going to work.  I guess we are going to have to pot them for now, that way we can at least keep them from being trampled.
Today, Evan and I will attempt to transplant some of the yarrow, just to insure some of it survives.  But, we'll wait till this afternoon.  This morning we have inside chores to do.  He was so helpful yesterday!  Helped me with the laundry, dusting & even picked up his room without me asking! 

Tomorrow I have my last followup from the surgery, hopefully! I still haven't completely regained feeling in my right thigh, but its not a big area so I imagine its not life threatening lol.  I am feeling pretty good overall, rarely any pain around in incision and the pain up where my gallbladder was is pretty much gone, only a twinge now and then.  So we'll see what he says tomorrow.
The smoking thing is pretty much the same.  I still occasionally cheat with a real cigarette, but that seems to be only when Bill is around and then only a puff or two.  But I am really not using the e-cig all that much, which is pretty weird I think.  I use it more in the evening after Evan goes to bed.  Bill ordered more cartridges.  I am not sure why.  I still have 3  1/2 left. Maybe he got them for himself.  I hope so :)
Anyway, sitting here on my ass isn't getting anything done and I do need to get to the post office this morning and do some Zumba!
See ya.

Stop Smoking Day 4 and Gravy

I have Decided that Bill is a very bad influence!!!!!  I did horribly yesterday.  I smoked 3 real cigarettes and only used the e-cig twice.  Wait, maybe that isn't such a bad thing...3 is less than 5, or it used to be, so maybe I did pretty well and I just didn't realize it.
So, much for Bill spending the day with us.  After the boys got back from speech we did the Wal-Mart run, the cover charge was more than usual. After that, Bill had to go to work, four and a half hours early. 
I actually got the entire downstairs vacuumed, mopped and dusted.  I was pretty proud of myself.  But it was a complete waste of time.  Within 15 minutes Evan dumped a cup of juice on the floor.  Then while I was upstairs with the boys cleaning their room, Sam decides to use the dining room as her own personal toilet.  Nice, Just Lovely.  She doesn't have accidents in the house.  So why did she just have to right after I mopped?  I have a theory.  She hates the smell of pine sol.  That has to be it.  Ha HA. I got her, I had to re- mop everything, so I used pine sol again!  That will teach her.
I was very surprised that I actually got to mop in the first place.  Trying to keep the boys still for more than 30 seconds is practically impossible.
I still ended up with foot prints & paw prints on the floors, but at least they were clean for a minute or two.
Moving right along, Gracie has decided to follow in her mother's footsteps.  When we got Mama fixed, she was about 8 years old, right after we brought her back home, within 3 days she had brought home some stray kitten she found, Dart.  Dart has his own little story somewhere else on the blog and I'm not going to get into that now.  Anyway, we noticed a small gray, very adorable kitten hanging around the porch about 3 days ago.  Normally, Gracie and Monkey won't allow another cat on there porch so it seemed a bit odd.  The kitten looks to be about 3 or 4 months old , maybe.  Yesterday evening, I looked out the window and there was Gracie, bathing this kitten.  Then I watched her scoot it over to the food dish.  Dammit! We do not need anything else that eats! Or needs Shots, or medications of any kind!.  I didn't say anything, I didn't chase it off.  I was kind of hoping that she would get bored with playing mommy and the kitten would wander to someone else's house.  No such luck.  Aden & Evan saw Sam sniffing like crazy at the door, so they had to investigate.  They saw the kitten.  Dammit Again! For about 1 hour, it was referred to as Gracie's baby.  They wanted to know if it was a boy or a girl and when Gracie had the baby.  After explaining that I have no idea if it is a boy or girl, because I haven't tried to check, they insisted on knowing when Gracie had the baby.  They do understand that babies come from the mother's belly. But I can't seem to make them understand "fixed" lol.  I kept trying to explain that Gracie can't have babies and she probably found the kitten and brought it home, or the kitten wandered over and she kept it, or she might have even stole the kitten.  Wrong choice of words.  Aden said we should call the Animal police, right then, Gracie should go to kitty jail. That took about 20 minutes to explain why that wasn't going to happen.  But, it was decided that the kitten's name is Gravy.  I have no idea why, that's just what they came up with.  We will have to see if it sticks around.

I decided yesterday that I would do Pilate's.  Another poor choice.  Today I'll just a little yoga. Tomorrow, I am not doing anything other than walking.  The boys and I will probably make a library run:)
Okay the natives are getting restless, I'm off to play referee.

Day One...The Stop Smoking Saga Begins

Yesterday, the United States Postal service was kind enough to deliver the electronic cigarette kit I ordered, on Tuesday.  Outstanding.  Because I am female, immediately after opening the package, I read the instruction manual, all of it, word for word, cover to cover.  I am mentioning this, because if I was male , I would have just winged it, without reading anything. Anyway, So I read it, and plugged in the battery part to the wall charger and figured I had about 2 1/2 to 3 hours to wait until the battery was fully charged.  Surprise, it took about 1 1/2 hours to fully charge.

Step two.  I unplugged the battery thing and tried to decide which flavor pack I was going to try first.  I decided on Vanilla. So I put that part where it was supposed to go and it appeared that I was ready to go.
For some reason, I just put it back in the holder part of the package.  And looked at it.
I just wasn't sure if I really wanted to put that thing in my mouth.  It has a battery, I have always been told you don't put batteries in your mouth.  It it plastic and metal, with a microchip and then a little plastic thing filled with poison (the nicotine, glycol, water stuff).  None which sound like things that you should put in your mouth.  So I took the dog outside to pee and I lit up a real cigarette while I contemplated this electronic thingy and any possible consequences of putting it in my mouth.

After much contemplation, well okay it was about 3 minutes worth, I decided that I would actually use the thingy and see. 
But, not right that minute, I just had 1/2 of a cigarette.

About 2 hours later, I needed to get dinner started so, I picked up the e-cig and gave it a quick, little pull.  Hmmm not too shabby.  It didn't really taste like vanilla.  It tasted more like a swisher sweet. Which I have been known to enjoy on occasion.  The little red light lit up like it was supposed to, and there was just a little bit of the smoke stuff, which isn't smoke at all, its a water vapor.  It was like your breath, outside on a chilly morning, not much at all. In fact if you aren't watching closely you will miss it.  But, I noticed the hit of nicotine immediately and after one hit, not 1/2 a cigarette.  I can see how this would work. Well for some people.  I am not now , nor have I ever been a heavy smoker.  Maybe 5 cigarettes a day, that's why I chose to go with the lowest dose they carried, that still contained nicotine.  They have flavor cartridges that are just flavor and no nicotine. 
So I tried to do just use the e-cig for the rest of the day.  And I did do pretty well, except I did have the rest of my real cigarette about 8:30 when I took Sam out. 
This morning, I didn't use it I had a real cigarette.  The e-cig is still in its little holder.  I will try to use it most of the day.
There are couple of things I don't like about it.  Its @$#%ing heavy. I can't hold it like a regular cigarette, my hand aren't big enough.  When I say heavy, I am not joking, it is also  a bit bigger than a regular cigarette. 

Real Cig on Left- E-cig on the right

As you can see the electronic one is alot bigger.  I am not saying I don't like it.  I just have to use it more than I am.  I still haven't just sat down and smoked it like a real cigarette yet.  Maybe that is my problem.  I rarely can just set down and smoke.  I stand outside, take 2 or 3 hits and come back in.  But I also don't want to use the e-cig in front of the boys.  Maybe I should start doing it in the laundry room :)

So that is the update for today.  I would like to switch over completely by Monday.  But of course I would also have to use the thing more than once or twice. 
In case I haven't mentioned it,  I am using the South Beach Smoke Premium Starter kit. 
Let's see how today goes.