TV...the instant life changer arounder

I was watching MTV today (I know, God forbid!) and 16 and Pregnant was on. I had heard a lot of chatter about it and I was kind of annoyed that they were sensationalizing teen pregnancy so I figured I would watch it. Let me tell you. I. Got. Hooked. These girls are crazy. Some of them are stupid and, even though they live with their parents, they still go out and party and let their moms take care of their kids but say how much they love the babies. Then there are a few who take care of their business. One of the girls that I felt so sorry for was Nikkole. She got pregnant by her ex-boyfriend who dumped her when she told him she was going to keep the baby. He decided that he would come back to her but then was especially stupid and rude to her mother. Then after the baby came and he was banned from her house he decided he wanted to go back to his ex-girlfriend. Real classy guy. And even though she was really good with her baby (from what we saw) and did a lot of the stuff herself at the end of the show she was talking about how she hopes her and Josh would be together in the end. Yuck. But that's how you feel at 16. I just felt bad for her. But, it was her own fault for not taking the necessary precautions.

Then I was watching taped (I really mean DVR'd) episodes of Celebrity Rehab. Again, Oh. My. God. These people are nuts. Especially Kari Anne Peniche (Sp?). She is a spoiled little girl that apparently decided that the world revolves around her. It is disgusting. And the people whose lives have been ruined because of these peoples behaviors (including their own lives) just kills me. Here are these rich and famous people and they decide that they want to do drugs and drink a whole lot and they don't care about anyone else. It is nice to see that some of these people seem to be learning from their mistakes but some of these people it seems too little, too late.

So between the 2 shows I probably spent (wasted) 4 hours of my time. I was emotionally drained after watching them. It kills me how these people treat themselves and others. I hope that I can set a good example for my monkey that he sees that that is not the right way to live his life. In this day and age it can be incredibly difficult but I will do my best.

Dirty Little Secret

Shhh…come closer if you want to hear my secret. You sure you want to know? It’s a dirty secret. I actually like my job

Ok, so maybe that isn’t much of a confession but it is probably not the norm. Especially when there aren’t very many jobs going around and no one is leaving the one they have in fear of never finding another one. But I actually do. I may complain about the people I work with and the stupid customers that come in but I enjoy helping customers. I also (mainly) like the people I work with. I definitely enjoy my boss and sometimes even my boss’s boss.

Just for those of you out there that haven’t read me from the beginning, I am an assistant branch manager at two local bank branches. We have many branches in the area so I am not completely special but I am a little special! I oversee about 12 employees and pretty much run the location inside of a grocery store. My manager is usually at our location directly across the street that is a free-standing branch. I am able to open accounts, process loans and refer customers to other parts of the bank that I think they could use help with. The customers are good about 50% of the time and the employees are good about the other 50! I don’t mind retail (which is basically what we are) and the hours aren’t terrible. I only have to close 1 night a week and that is until 8pm and work 2 Saturdays a month which is from 9-6. That is actually the worst part of the job probably. I HATE working Saturdays.

And even in this economy where our raises (if we get them) will be minimal and they are cutting “non-performers” left and right I still feel pretty stable in this job. Knock. On. Wood. We have good benefits and since I have been at the bank for over 5 years I get 3 weeks of vacation. The only benefit we don’t have that I would really enjoy is maternity leave! But for right now I can definitely see myself working for this company until I retire. I think that would be pretty amazing. If I can retire when I am 60 that would put me working for the bank for 40 years. That would be a miracle. And hopefully there will be actual banks in 35 years! So there’s my confession. What’s yours? And to see others check out www.spriteskeeper.com

RTT

It's Tuesday again so here's some random for you

• I went to the dr. last night and apparentl I have the intestinal flu. I've had it for 2 weeks. That's pretty crazy! I also got some medicine for the headaches I've been having. One of them cost $35 for 3 pills. Oh. My. God. That is ridiculous! I'm supposed to take them at the onset of a migraine but I couldn't believe the expense of it!
• I'm also supposed to keep track of them. I will try to keep a diary of them but it's probably going to sound a lot like this: Left work, got in car, got killer headache. Brilliant! I am also trying to abstain from the foods that are "triggers". They include doughnuts, bacon, sausage, caffeine, hot dogs, peanut butter, cheese, etc. There goes my diet! :)
• This weekend was the monkey's birthday party. There were only a couple mini-meltdowns but other than that no big deal. I was just really tired at the end of the day! Pictures to be posted soon.
• Work has been causing a lot of stress lately (see above). Between dealing with the people leaving and all the idiots I deal with on a regular basis it is grating on my nerves. I have a 4-day weekend in a few weeks and I am in dire need of it!
• Alice in Wonderland comes out next week and me and my mom (and maybe some others) are going to make a trek to Tulsa to view it in Imax. I am so freaking excited! I love Johnny Depp and I like most of Tim Burton's movies so I'm sure I will love it!

That's pretty much all the random I have today. To see more check out Keely over at www.theunmom.com

A case of the gotta-have'ems

This weeks spin is about something I can’t live without. I don’t know that there are many things I can’t live without. There are a lot of things that I appreciate…such as a dishwasher, and oven and a microwave. And I would definitely have to figure out a new way to do things if I didn’t have access to an oven and a microwave but if I never had them then I would know what to do. And I would definitely not be very happy without a hot water heater for my steaming hot showers and our central heat and air during the freezing winters and the simmering summers but again…if I had to I could find ways to live without them. The thing that I definitely could NOT live without is my family. From my hubby and the monkey to my parents and brother and his fiancée and their little girl to my hubby’s family I would not be a happy camper. I talk to my mom on almost a daily basis and even though my brother and I don’t talk all the time we fall in when we are together. We have family dinners every Tuesday at my parent’s house and just the feeling of having my family close together makes my life so much better!

I didn’t go to a college outside of my hometown because I didn’t want to leave my family. Distance made the heart fonder when my brother went to college but I didn’t need to put more distance between the rest of us. I have recently gotten closer to more members of my family like my aunts. I have spent more quality time with them and we have been able to have “grown up” conversations and it is nice. I have been able to learn more about them and their lives. And since having a kid I have been able to have a sounding board when I have questions about raising him, what kind of birthday parties to have, etc. So the only thing I can’t really live without is my family!

To see what other people can’t live without check out Jen over at http://www.spriteskeeper.com/

My Sacrifice

Happy Ash Wednesday everyone! I am not an every week practicing Catholic. I am trying to get better because I do want the monkey to grow up with the traditions me and the hubby had. But anyways…today is Ash Wednesday. I will not be going to church because I am going to see Gone with the Wind with my mom but I am passing on the meats today and I have decided on what I want my sacrifice to be for Lent. For those of you not familiar with Lent…it is the time Jesus spent in the desert before he was tempted by Satan and it is also the time leading up to Holy week before Easter. Anyways…Catholics give up something for Lent to symbolize the sacrifice Jesus made for us. I usually try to give up something every year. This year I have decided to give up eating out in the evenings unless it was a previously planned engagement. This is a big sacrifice for me because on the nights that I don’t want to cook dinner or I am getting home late I will just tell the hubby to pick something up, or I will go out and grab something. This will force me to cook or have the family eat leftovers every evening. The only days I am allowing us (or me, because I can’t force the hubby) to eat out are days that are pre-planned. For instance, next week is the monkey’s birthday. I will let him choose where he would like us to go for dinner. And next Saturday we have plans to go to a murder-mystery dinner party at a local restaurant. So those days I will let it slide, but no on the days I just don’t want to cook. I will make myself be a big girl and do what I have my mind set on! Also, this will help monetarily since to go out to eat anymore is super expensive. So, do you celebrate Lent? If so, what are you planning on sacrificing this year?

Random Thoughts Tuesday

Here’s another episode of random thoughts Tuesday hosted by the gracious Keely over at www.theunmom.com.

I am horribly ugly when I work out. I have been lifting heavier (8 pound) weights during my exercise class and last night I caught my lip curling as I was doing a bicep curl. I tried to stop but then not only was I struggling against the weight I was struggling against curling my lip. Sick. That’s all I have to say.

I have joined a health site that can track calories. It has a lot of different foods that I can choose from when I’m picking the foods that I have eaten that day. That is super cool. What is not super cool is that I have to decipher how much an ounce of anything is. Also, I’m a little sicked out by the amount of calories in the foods I eat, thus in the amount of calories I consume in a day. That was the point of me doing this so I could realize how much I eat, and how much I don’t need to be eating.

This weekend is the monkey’s birthday party. He will turn 3 in a week and it makes me a little sad. But I am trying to get finishing details finished and I think that this party will be pretty cool. We are going to a children’s theater to culture the small children. Then back to give them sugar highs! I will give the highlights after the weekend! Then on his actual birthday I am taking off and freeing him from his school prison and we are going to have a fun day! I’m pretty excited about that. As long as he doesn’t have a crazy bad attitude. Ha ha, that’s funny seeing that he has a crazy bad attitude every day lately it seems!

Work has been crazy annoying lately. Not only has my friend up and decided to leave but the hours are continuously being cut, so staffing is terrible. Causing morale to be even more terrible. No one wants to be at work but when their hours are cut they are crappy about it. Make up your mind people. At least we still have jobs.

There are a lot of good songs on the radio lately. I have been spending more time in the back at work and I can listen to the radio. I am in love with the Black Eyed Peas song “I’ma Be” It’s fun and I like to dance to it. There are a lot of other good ones but that is definitely my favorite as of now. The only problem I have with the radio is that they replay the same songs almost every hour. So I can only listen for a little bit or I get annoyed.

I really want to go on a vacation. Not just take a vacation and not go to work, but go somewhere. And preferably tropical. It has been ridiculously cold lately, and while I don’t mind it a change of pace would be nice. And I am hearing about a lot of people going totally awesome places. Apparently the new car has taken away from our vacation fund! ;)

All right…that’s enough random for now. I hope everyone has a great Fat Tuesday and an even better Ash Wednesday tomorrow. I will be celebrating by going to see Gone with the Wind with my mom at a local theater. Totally awesome!

Crime spree in Dillons

So I was at the grocery store today getting some stuff to make rice krispie treats. I am standing there looking to see what the better deal on marshmallows are and a creeper walks up. Here is the situation that ensues…

Him: Do you work here?

Me: No

Him (still standing staring at me): I have a proposition for you.

Me: (in my head) is this dude gonna ask me for sex?! To him: Uh what?

Him: I’ll buy your groceries for you on my food stamp card and then you can pay me. I’ll even let you give me half price.

Me: Ummm, no thank you.


I could not believe this happened. I have heard about this happening but never imagined people actually did this. I’m sorry sir…as much as the government annoys me, I’m not going to defraud them just so you can use the cash that I give you for God knows what. I didn’t even know if I should tell the grocery store. I’m sure that they don’t like it but I probably couldn’t have picked the dude out again either. I was just creeped out. Can’t a girl just buy some marshmallows without being harassed? Sheesh!

New month...new car!

So this week has been another blur. Saturday (I know…technically that was last week) my mom and I took the monkey to the local children’s museum and stayed there for about an hour and a half. We then met the hubby for lunch at McDonalds and my mom said she would watch the monkey if we wanted to go test drive a new car. We took her up on her offer and really liked the car we had been looking at in the last weeks. We got our credit ran and ran some numbers. It fit our budget but then they told us they would only give us $1000 for the hubby’s car. We thought this was ridiculous and that we could sell it ourselves for more money. So we went home with the numbers in our head and we put his car on craigslist. We posted it on Saturday night at 5:30 and we had a buyer by 4:30 the next afternoon. That was amazing! And for $3500. Score! We were even able to upgrade to an automatic instead of a 5 speed. That way I can drive it too! So we called the dealer Monday morning and said we would take it. Then yesterday (Tuesday) they called us and said they had it ready and could we come and pick it up. So we did. It is an amazing feeling to be driving a brand new car. Neither one of us has ever had a brand new vehicle. My car that I currently drive, I have driven since I was 17 and I still really like it. I will drive it until the wheels fall off. And because we actually sold our other car we were able to pay off a credit card instead of using it as a down payment since the interest rates were vastly different! We are taking control of our financial future and it is looking pretty good. I know I was sad last week but I figured there was no need to be cranky because it is our own fault for the things that we have done in the past and the only thing we can do now is to make steps to correct those behaviors. I have already talked to hubby and he has even said that he would take his lunch every day. So now I just need to get stuff for him to be happy with to eat every day! If any of you have ideas for lunches that would be awesome because that will be what we are eating! But it is totally awesome! Oh yeah…we bought a 2010 Suzuki Grand Vitara. It only had 12 miles on it! Totally awesome. And we decided to buy brand new because if we paid a little more now it would be worth it because used small SUV’s run for $12-14k anyways and they have 20-50 thousand miles. And since this is our primary vehicle we wanted low mileage. So yay for us!

Roses are red violets are blue

I'll go ahead and play along with a Valentine's Day spin. I love Valentines day. The reason...I work next to a floral department in a grocery store and I see all the suckers swarming in to buy a crap-ton of...well crap. Flowers are probably the second worst gift to give on Valentines Day. I'll give a first place finish to chocolate because honestly what says I love you than something that makes my butt look big! But flowers die. Very quickly. And while I do love flowers I think shelling out ridiculous amounts of money for said flowers just because of a "Hallmark holiday" is ridiculous. On my hubby and my 1st Valentine as a married couple our present to each other was a new dishwasher. Let me tell you the romantic meter was high up there. And then about 2 years later the hubby was off on Valentines Day and he called me at work to tell me we had about 2 inches of standing water in our kitchen because our washing machine messed up. We had a guy out at our house until probably 8 that night trying to get the tree root problem (which caused our water problem) fixed. I had a roast in the crock pot since it was a Thursday night so we didn't have spectacular plans but still...a roast that sits there for 12 hours in a crockpot gets a little dry. Oh well. This year on Saturday my sister in law and I are taking the kiddos to Playhouse Disney so neither of us have big plans for our significant others. No biggie since we each have better things to spend our money on. Maybe we will rent a movie and have a nice dinner in. Something that doesn't cost a lot of money because we don't need to fork dollar over dollar to show how much we love each other!

Check out www.spriteskeeper.com to see other spins about Valentines Day. And whatever you all do I hope you get to spend time with your loved ones! That's the true meaning of the season!

Sad day

So I am going to make this quick because I am typing through tears but my best work friend who has become my best friend outside of work has been offered a (really great) job in her hometown. I am devastated. She is my confidante and my bestie. We spend time together outside of work and she has even come to some of my family functions. I really don't know what i am going to do if she accepts it...which I told her she should. I'm sure she could hear the disappointment in my voice but it was the most I could do not to cry while on the phone. So I am venting to you all. And that is all I am going to say on that until more concrete stuff happens. And if you are my friend on facebook please don't make mention of this because I was the first person she told and she doesn't want others to know...I would much appreciate that!

Not so stressed today

So yesterday we took hubby's car to the closest Autozone and they have a check engine diagnostics dealy-ma-bobber and turns out that it is the spark plugs and/or wires connected (or not really) to the spark plugs. So easy enough fix and we aren't going to have to rush into buying a new vehicle. I told the hubby that if we really want a new car that we should put part of what we were talking about spending on a car payment away for a few months so we build up a reserve so when we do buy a new car then we will have something in savings if something bad did happen. I also talked to the daycare about having another baby and how they worked with payments and she even told me that on my maternity leave I could bring Leo as often or not as we wanted and only would pay for the days he would be there. So that would be another financial burden (for at least a few months) so we could save the almost $500 a month that we would be spending to send him to daycare for those 2 or 3 months and save it when the payments would almost double if we had another one. And to go on a tangent...she also told me about how her first 2 kids were 2 years apart, then the next one 9 and then the next one 5 years apart and the best distance between them was the 5 years because the older of the 2 got along fine because they were starting school so there was something special going on in their life as well. So I am much less stressed then i was on Monday. So yeah...life is better!

Does money actually grow on trees?

So as I have talked about before we are not blessed to come from a family that left either of us trust funds nor are we people that decide that even though we don't have a ton of extra money that that money should be set aside for savings...God bless people who do but that is not us. It would definitely come in handy in situations like the one that is currently forming in our household. The hubby's car has been acting up for quite some time now. We have put a little bit of money into upkeep just so that it will keep running but nothing extravagant. Well today he calls me about 5 miles from the house letting me know that it is messing up big time. I know nothing about cars so I asked him if he was still driving or if he had to pull over somewhere. He said he was still driving but he didn't know if he would make it home. I told him to go as far as he could because we have free towing on his car with our insurance. He was able to make it home but now we are left to decide what to do. We were hoping to trade in his vehicle to get at least $2000 for it but now that it isn't hardly running I don't figure we can do that. And I don't really want to spend the amount of money needed to buy a car. We are going to have to pay our student loans on top of a car payment next year and if I am wanting to have another baby (which I DO!) then how will we ever afford anything. And with the lack of raises going on around the workplace it's not like I can expect anything on that front. I know that they always say that God will provide but I really don't see how that will pan out. So if I can get some good feelings coming this way that would be awesome! And maybe the next time I get on we will have a new car. Or at least new to us! :)

Oh yeah...and the reason I have 2 posts today is because the last one was supposed to go up on Saturday but that didn't happen! So enjoy the double dose of me!

To have and to hold

So this weekend is my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. Or at least their party is this weekend. I am a great grand-daughter for knowing the exact date! J Anyways…I think it is amazing that two people can be together for so long and still love each other so much. And I know they do because there have been a lot of hardships for the family, like heart surgery for my grandpa, my grandma now not being able to remember a lot of things and just not always being “there.” And there was the whole raising 9 kids, 7 of them boys. I’m sure that wasn’t always the easiest task as parents. And yet when they are walking together they hold hands. The monkey saw them coming in from church one day and said why are they holding hands? It was so cute to see them like that. Just the sweet things that they do just for themselves, not just showing off for the others. I hope my hubby and I make it for 60 years. It’s been 5 ½ so far, and I think that we can make it another 55! We may have our differences and our fights but we agreed in the beginning that we were in it for the long haul, so I guess it is just us making it 55 more years! So happy diamond anniversary grandma and grandpa!