thankful thursday/weekend countdown edition, subtitled "whiny wednesday a day late"

I’m taking a day off tomorrow. It’s a 12 day pay period and so I decided to bite the bullet and sacrifice a day’s pay in order to have two 3 day weekends in a row. I need it in a bad way. It’s a major suckfest to have worked in the same industry, for the same company for 8 years and have the benefits afforded to a short term employee. Thank you, “he who won’t be named” for interrupting my career in that way.

Gonna head down into civilization to visit with Ryan (who will be visiting for Cody's birthday) and Cody and Marquee and my parents. It's sort of a stay-cation.

I’m slightly grouchy today but I’m not sure why.

Maybe it’s just further evidence that I need a break. I’m majorly burned out. Tired. Weary. Leery.

Sooooo… remember my trailer that “he who won’t be named” insisted that I must get rid of before he would marry me? (I should have kept the trailer and ditched the guy… live and learn) (Because my little trailer debt was a drop in the bucket compared to his unsecured, high interest credit card debt and unpaid taxes, but I digress)… well, anyways… the trailer was moved to a consignment lot and I pretty much didn’t think about it again, what with my whole fight to maintain my sanity and struggle to recover from the 2 ½ years of mental and physical torment I suffered at the hands of “it”… and so part of my “back to reality” effort has included figuring out what the heck happened to my old home (that my dad has continued paying the mortgage on in the interim)… and I found out that it’s been involved in a bit of a trailer ponzi scheme of sorts. See… this lady… was taking trailers to sell on consignment… selling them, pocketing the money, never telling the real owner and trying to bide her time until the buyers realized they couldn’t get a clear title (because someone else owned it) and therefore couldn’t get it hooked up, couldn’t get loans secured and that sort of thing and until the seller said, “hey… what’s up with my house? Sold it yet?” . Ultimately, her scam came crashing down, Bernie Madoff style, and her business foreclosed. She’s had several judgments against her for these crooked deals.
I contacted her to find out what happened to our home when the lot foreclosed and she’s doing a little “so glad to hear from you… we’ll make everything right” dance with us, playing that she had no idea how to get in touch with my parents (who have lived at the same address for 34 years) or the mortgage company with whom she demanded extensive paperwork before moving the trailer to her lot. It’s either been sold or demolished. We don’t know which yet. We also don’t know what compensation, if any, she’s going to offer, nor do we know all the legal ramifications involved. It’s a tangled mess, for sure.

Church last night was awesome. Back with my hen party…. Love my girls… and we’re going into a study on Ruth, who I also love. There is just something about being with my girls – the big ones, my peers, I mean – that grounds me and makes me feel like I’m a participant in life instead of just a voyeur.

Dinner was. Eh. Tacos. I made a taco salad using the taco meat, black beans and the salad bar with salsa instead of dressing so I did fine point wise but that taco meat was talking to me all night. Wednesday night dinners will be an adventure. Having the salad bar, albeit limited, will help.

Tonight I’m taking my red-headed little girls to their PTA Open House. Their mom and dad have a reception of sorts at their house and can’t do the PTA thing. I, of course, love to do anything and everything with the girls so I was more than happy to sign up for Open House duty. Especially since today is my Friday. I also like being involved in the local community for business reasons. Yes, it’s Aunt duty… but in a small town like this… it’s also “networking”. A lot of our clients have kids at their school.

My cuticles are a mess and I keep picking at them.

I’ve lost enough weight that last night in bed the ring I wear on my thumb flew off. It’s sort of a “lucky”/symbolic ring for me. I bought it at the Marietta Greek Festival with my friend Amy (who I adore) – the same Greek Festival where Cody won tickets to Greece that he exchanged for $2000. It’s also a sort of thumb ring sorority that I share with Purple Michael and my friend Jen. So this one ring ties me emotionally to 3 or 4 special people in my life. Especially since I’m not much of a jewelry girl. Just a few sentimental pieces… but I am planning on attending a jewelry show next week. A very sweet young lady in our church sells Premier Jewelry and she’s trying to adopt a baby from Russia. This sale is part of her fundraising effort… and most items will be $5, $10 or $20. I can’t spend much but I do want to support her. They have a lot of sterling silver, which is all that I wear.

I’m going to miss my official weigh in this week while I'm down in Atlanta visiting with my parents and kids. I thought about going to a different Weight Watchers location but I always retain fluid when I travel so it would be falsely inflated. Plus... my other systems are a bit sluggish when I'm not at home base and I don't want to have extra weight. It's too discouraging, even though I know that it's not the real deal.

My mom is in the hospital... intestinal blockage... don't have a lot of info on it. Pop called and started to fill me in and then got another call. Hopefully they're keeping her comfortable. I'll be down tomorrow... if it seemed critical, I'd head on down today but it's fortunate that I had already planned to have tomorrow off.

Lunch is over... the day is half over and I'm on the downhill slide into the weekend! Happy Thursday, y'all!