Oxycontin mixed with Jack D. Put it in a cup, it looks like ice tea.

Seriously. It's been a bitch of a week. A brief overview for your perusal.

Saturday
Chaperoned a band trip to a competition. I was pleased with how well those little flag brigade girls behaved. When one parent found out I was chaperoning the brigade bus, she patted me on the shoulder and said, "Good luck." That leaves one a little apprehensive about how matters may go.

Maybe the lady was confused because they behaved well. No one was knifed. I never saw any brass knuckles or people bent over mirrors sucking up mysterious powders with a straw. It wasn't anything like the Dangerous Minds idea I had going on.

We finally made it home around 1 A.M.

Sunday
I don't remember much of Sunday very well. It turns out that hanging out in busses until 1 A.M. is not good for me.

Maybe I went over and cleaned my mom's house. Like I said, my people do a lot for me and I try to do for them. I don't think I did very much, though.

Also, an older gentleman  I used to "sit" with last year died. He was 94 years old and he hadn't been doing well for a while. I've never had any really nursing assistant experience, but I was in desperate need of a job since my last employer up and died on me and my gentleman needed someone to heat up his coffee and help him bathe. He was also a special friend to my eight-year-old DMan.

I spent half the day trying to decide whether to tell him then or wait until closer to the funeral because I didn't want him to be upset all week at school. I finally opted to tell him on Sunday  because I didn't want him to find out from someone else or realize that I'd withheld information from him.

DMan experienced a good bit of dying the summer of 2008. Death is not something you ever want your family to experience, but it happens and we have to deal with it the best we can. I lost two uncles (one of them being my employer), a great uncle, a cousin, and a chiropractor. While I didn't take my children to all of the funerals, they did attend a couple of wakes at their request.

DMan was upset about his special friend and it took a good while for him to work through the initial sadness. I emailed his teacher to let her know what was going on with him so he didn't have to try to explain it on Monday.

Monday
My daughter magically developed a staph infection on her leg that required an after work trip to the doctor and antibiotics. This is my second kid this year to develop this shit so I asked the doctor if I was doing something wrong.

I bleach all the sheets, bleach the tub, bleach towels, bandaids and bandaids and bandaids,  think about bleaching out my brains, tell them not to stick their fingers up their nose and flick their boogers, yet I don't seem to have achieved very much. He said there wasn't very much I could do. Basically, he said "shit happens" but put it in nice medical terms. I'm still thinking about giving them a can of clorox wipes to use at school.

All four of us actually went through a round of this about three of four years ago. It started off with Dman who developed some weird, disgusting, greeny black puss thing one summer after being bitten by some kind of insect on a Friday. By Saturday evening, it was really freaking me the hell out because I'd never seen anything like it in my life. Fearing that he'd been bitten some necrotizing mosquito and his leg was going to rot off before Monday, I took him to the emergency room.

The doctors and nurses all agreed it was some sort of spider bite and they'd been seeing a lot of these "spider bites."

Then Tuba Girl was bitten by some flesh eating fucker a couple of months later and the doctor said it was a spider bite.

I spent months beating the hell out of necrotizing spiders. Previously, I was a sort of live and let live chick. Stay out of my line of vision and you were safe. Now I was Arachno Hunter.

Months later, I developed some weird pimple in my nose after a snotty cold. When it started to eat my face, I realized that either these were very tiny, sneaky spiders or there was an entirely different problem at hand.

After having my children treated by one emergency room doctor and a couple of pediatricians, I finally had someone tell me all about cellulitis. It was a wonderfully enlightening experience and I now I want to run around shouting, "UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!" So that was Monday.

Tuesday
Tuesday was looking good until the flat tire incident so that put me off. After I changed the tire, I splurged and took the kids to Wendy's. I was damned tired and I can't afford to drink to cover the stress of weeks like this. Besides, it was for a good cause. Sort of. The local area schools routinely partner with restaurants and name it "KAR's Elementary School Night!"

(Okay, well the school is not named KAR Elementary, but the real name is not something I'm going to share with strangers who may turn out to be freakier than the people I know in real life. Besides, I've been a KAR Elementary parent for over ten years so it's my school.)

A share of the proceeds go to whichever school is being sponsored by the restaurant. I was tired. I was starting to get really pissed off about how long this week was shaping up to be and I sure as hell didn't feel like cooking. So I tossed $14 into a vat of greasy fries and called it an evening. The boy heathens also recieved homework passes. It was worth it to me.

Wednesday
Wild Boy had his follow up appointment with his pediatrician at 9AM. Thankfully, it wasn't a long appointment and I had plenty of time to take him to school and get to work on time.


Things were clicking along pretty well so I stopped at the Family Dollar to pick up some toilet paper, tooth brushes,and shit since it was on the way to work. The thing I discovered about that Wal-Mart brand of toilet paper is that one pack only lasts a week. If hadn't bought more on Wednesday, we'd have been wiping our asses with the stray dogs out in the yard.

When I got back in the car, I realized I couldn't find my phone. After a very long and gas-wasting trip around the county to retrace my steps, I was forced to go work phoneless.

I found it later. Apparently I dropped it in my front yard when I was in a hurry and it spent the day being rained upon by the forces of my life. However, much like myself, it came through a little damaged but still serviceable.

Thursday

Picked up some Honeycrisp apples. Honeycrisp apples are the frigging bomb diggity, yo. If you've never had a Honeycrisp apple, then you need to pick one up today. These apples only hit the stores in the fall and then you don't get anymore until the next year.  The name says it all. Honey. Crisp. Apple.

These aren't those mealy mouthed McIntoshes or piss ant little Granny Smiths. These are apples. Real apples. I wish I had a Honeycrisp apple tree. If I rubbed a lamp and a big blue genie popped out and told me I could have anything I wanted, I'd wish for a huge orchard of ever-bearing Honeycrisp apples trees.

Where was I? Oh, my boring blog about my boring week.

Leroy the Lover showed up at work today. Leroy is a fucking 65-year-old nutbag who seems to have taken some sort of "special shine" to me. The last time he was at the library, he left me with a very special religious tract about how there are real angels (good ones and bad ones!) right here on Earth! I wouldn't mind the religious tract so much, but Leroy is a sort of . . . prophet of the Binny Hinn-TBN network type. Also, Leroy just over shares his particular world view. It's a world view deeply in need of Thorazine. I am ever so pleased.

After hearing about Leroy's life for ten minutes or so and catching a definite whiff of the special ass funk/dog shit breath aroma of Sun laundry detergent, I abandoned him to Matt the Library Assistant while I went and alphabetized all the books. Again.

After work, I took my Tuba Girl back to the doctor to check up on her leprosy. Cellulitis. Staph. Whatever. It's all starting to feel the same in terms of UNCLEAN.

I was ever so happy to discover that Stinky Motherfucker takes his children to the same doctor. I do not have time to explain Stinky Motherfucker. To give a brief overview, Stinky Motherfucker is that one damned dude that seems to randomly show up from nowhere and have no fucking concept of boundaries and personal space. One day, I may devote an entire post to Stinky Motherfucker, but not today. I spend a lot of time wondering what I've done in a past life to warrant having this person popping up in all the places I go.

Stinky Motherfucker finally left after hinting at needing a ride home. I'm sorry. Stinky Motherfucker and his strep throat filled children must take the Stinky Motherfucker cab. I do not want to be in the doctor's office next week for strep throat.

Finally, we were the last ones left in the lobby when the nurse noticed us. It turns out no one pulled our file, put us down as having come in, and seemingly lost our initial sign in sheet. There was nothing to indicate we were there other than our very tired presence in the lobby. Yaaaaay.

Tuba Girl is healing nicely. Tuba Girl also needs to come back in Saturday morning for a real check up and the Hep A shot. We're late on that one.

As we didn't leave the doctor's office until 7:30 PM, I did not have time to cook dinner so I picked up sandwich shit for dinner from Wal-Hell since it's right across the ever loving street from the doctor's office and went home.

My cellphone calendar sounded a little reminder around 8 PM. I am due to start my period tomorrow which inevitably explains how the world has ceased to rotate on it's normal axis.

Plans for the Weekend
I will be manning the concession stand at the high school football game until sometime around 11PM tomorrow evening.

Saturday, we will have to pick up the Angel Food by 8:30 AM, bring it home and have Tuba Girl at her doctor's appoint by 10 AM. The children's paternal side of the family has scheduled a family reunion for later in the evening. I still have not gone grocery shopping at all this week. I've been snatching random shit like apples and sandwich ingredients.

Maybe I will go clean my mom's house on Sunday, but this week is seriously starting to get to me and I want sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

On an up note, I will try to remember to post something tomorrow that Mr. J wrote in 1978. Mr. J is the guy who volunteers to keep our library lawn nice and flowery. He also lost both of his legs to undiagnosed diabetes a few years ago. It went undiagnosed because most construction workers don't make a whole lot of money and most construction companies are small affairs that can't afford to offer insurance.There may have been resources to help him, but I'd guess they're hard for a guy from a farm in backwoods Georgia with a limited education to locate.

But you know, Mr. J is like the most awesome damned dude ever. I don't know if he ever gets depressed or wants to tell people to screw off, but that is one guy who really plugs away at making every day count. He's big on being a solid member of his community and wants to serve as inspiration and motivator to the people around him. He rocks.

Pay all these bills, feed all these damn kids, buy all the school shoes, buy all these school clothes

Okay. So none of my kids are addicted to Polo. I don't think they'd know a name brand if it bit them in arse.

I bet you people gave up on me ever posting again since it’s been two whole days. Fear not, oh Faithless Ones! I have returned for more fun and adventure in KARland.

It has been a bit busy with a mangled trip to the E/R, another visit to the E/R because someone forgot to write my child's name on the prescription, a trip the pharmacy once or twice (twice, actually, because I didn't realize this problem until I got to the pharmacy), a trip to the pediatrician for follow up. Life gets busy. Everything is cool now, though.


Today’s post, I suppose, will be a general update of my financial status since I am too blah to stick to an actual thread today.


Last Friday, I received my two weeks' pay with a net of $504.58 and have since been rather busy trying to simultaneously spend it and hoard it. I figure these numbers are already boring enough, so I’m not going over the details of my gross wages.

(I changed "horde" to "hoard" because someone pointed it out. Did I mention I'm horrible at editing my own writing and synonyms sneak up on me? But thank you for pointing it out. I promise I really do gots my English degree and all. I just don't do too good with them thar homophones sometimes. Also, punctuation basically boils down tossing in a heaping handful of commas and soupçon of dashes. I like dashes, so I try to limit my intake.)



Briefly, my actual bills paid this week:

$80.00 lot rent

This is something that really chaps my ass some times because I'm paying someone else money to squat on their land, whereas if I'd been more intuitive ten years ago, I'd have bought a trailer and a piece of land. 

$58.00 cable/internet

Two things about this. My actual bill is about $75 a month, but I'm still playing catch up from a period in between when I graduated this past spring and when I actually found a frigging job. I've tried a couple of times to downgrade to basic cable because I really just want the local channels, but apparently this is as basic as cable gets around here now!? I don't know what in the hell happened, but I have a friend who works at the cable company who said I already have the cheapest service one can get. I'm confused over that one and we're going to have a come to jesus meeting one day about what the hell happened to basic cable.

As for the interwebs, I have specifically used that for the past five years for school, several different jobs, and job searches.So until the past couple of months, it was a necessity. I'm not giving up my interwebs because it still comes in handy. But I think I actually did get this dropped down to the lowest service available. These bundling deals aggravate the shit out of me. Just give me a price. Stop trying to sell me specials.

$63.60 electric bill

This is only part of my electric bill. The rest comes out of the next check. My house is rather badly insulated and that was something I was hoping to remedy with my mad tax refund, but it seems I'll be replacing subflooring and flooring instead. 

$75.00 band trip fees

Yeah. We discussed that one. 

$50.00 water/garbage collection

My water bill used to run between $20 and $35 a month and I was okay with that. But then the county decided it needed more revenue and came up with this crazy plot to require everyone in the county to pay for residential pick up. I was really sort of pissed about it there for a while because I somehow managed to take it as the majority of the county citizens, including myself, were too damned stupid to figure out how to dump trash and I've been dumping my own trash for an inordinate number of years.

So they tacked on a $13.50 waste disposal charge on to my water bill and you don't have the ability to option out. Well. You could, but then they'd tack it on to property taxes. I've come to terms with it more or less. Actually, I kind of sort of like it because as long as remember to lug my hurby curbie down to the road, I don't have to lug trash to the dump in my car. I'm also preasantly surprised they haven't been taken out by errant cars and four-wheelers considering we have no sidewalks. 

Plus, I also realized my paycheck is partially funded by county taxes. I'd rather not lose it because I balked at paying an extra $13.50 a month.

So far, that leaves a grand total of $177.98 to last for the next two weeks. Which is pretty good if nothing untoward happens.


Here is the break down of the extra I've spent outside of bills:

$31.01 - gas

I always try to make a tank last me two weeks, but it never seems to actually work that way. It takes about a tank of gas every week. I’m really glad gas has gone down so much, though. Back when it reached it’s high point, it was costing me $70 bucks to fill up every week and I never went anywhere more than where I had to go. I didn’t visit my best friend for over a year and I only saw my mom once a month.

$10.00 - Generic Bactrim

Before going to much further, I'll briefly explain the E/R trip. Wildboy bumped his head rather hard last week that lead to a cut which actually managed to abscess. I couldn't get him to the doctor on the day that I wanted and he actually managed to hit the abscess in the car and it made one of the goriest messes I've ever been exposed to. This coming from a woman who once helped take care of an uncle who'd been run over by a minivan.

Due to a snafu with the Medicaid review, my case manager did not finish the review which lead to Medicaid services being dropped. I realized this a couple of weeks ago, so while she was quick to remedy the situation, it left our current cards obsolete.

Luckily, the E/R and the doctor's office have these neato little computer databases that interface with Medicaid and they were able to provide care without payment up front. The E/R would have seen him regardless of my ability to pay, but the doctor's office requires $75 up front regardless if you do not have proof of insurance. So I'm really glad the doctor's office was able to do that. The pharmacy, however, apparently could not so I had to pay for the meds out of pocket. Ten bucks isn't the end of the world though, so it's good. 

$1.27 - Great Value Brand Toilet Paper.

I'm going to see if this is more cost effective than the Scott's.

$9.50 - Motor Oil.

I’ve taken my stupid car in twice to have the stupid oil leak fixed, but the stupid oil is still leaking so I keep having to buy stupid oil. I’m thinking about getting the Hanes book and trying to repair it myself. I’m either bound to fix it or find myself without a car.

$1.88 - Candy Corn.

I bought it for the regular kids who come to the library, but I kind of sort of actually ate it. I hate candy corn. With a passion. But I'm also a sugar fiend so I horded it and ate it anyway. I'm feeling a little guilty about that.

$1.52 - Bleach.

I know I said I was going to make my own cleaning supplies this month, but my kid had some kind of funky abscess on his head. I feel a deep need to bleach things.It's one step at a time, people.

$6.97 - Tampons.

Grrrrrrr. I even asked her last week if she thought she'd like a sea sponge. That was a no go to. Something about it being gross to re-use things that you use for stuff like that. (Which tells me the flannel ass wipes would not go over well with her)

$3.74 - Bandages.

Tuba Girls’s new bandos shoes have created some blisters on her feet and I really debated buying cheap, regular band aids. But I know when I do that for my own cruddy feet, it really doesn’t improve the situation by much. So I bought these cushiony things that are supposed to be for heel blisters. Tuba Girl is on her feet a lot carrying a some monstrous instrument, so if it actually helps to cushion her blisters, then I’m good. If not, then I’ll never buy them again.

$4.95 -Ground chuck.

A family member asked me to pick up a thing of hamburger meat and they would pay me back next week. “I will gladly pay you Tuuuesday for a hamburger today.”

$1.60 -  sales tax.

112.51 What's left to last until Friday of next week. So that should definitely leave me enough for gas and other minor incidentals that come up, such as having Tuba Girl's band uniform dry cleaned for a competition and possibly adding more minutes to her phone.

Someone gave her a prepay phone and as long I keep a few dollars on it, she can text all she wants since it doesn't cost anything. It's had $2.95 on it since it was given to her a month ago and the amount hasn't changed. I think you do actually have to add money to it every so often or the service stops or something like that.

With a kid gone out of town a lot and coming home after midnight, a phone is good to have. Until this year, I'd refused to get her one because it wasn't in the budget and she wasn't really going anywhere that I felt like she needed it. At fifteen though, she's all over the place and needs to be able to contact me.

So that's this evening long post. Maybe tomorrow I'll post about free shit. Same bat time. Same bat channel.

(P.S. I'm horribly prone to typos and virtually incapable of self-editing, so just overlook me the best you can. One would think an English major would be consciouentious of these things, but I'm just not one of those English majors. I'll edit your posts for you if you like, though.)