Tag Archives: Family

Trying to Organizing My Life

Posted on Monday August 23rd, 2010 by | Comments Off on Trying to Organizing My Life

A lot of my updates have been through tweets most of the time.  Mainly since nothing really major normally goes on, unless it is our cats.  But I’ll try and sum up what I have been doing.

I still keep looking for Alexis, but getting better, it helps that we have her ashes back.  Weird not to have her yelling at me in the bathroom to pet her. =(  I still need to organize all of the pictures we took during the last few days that she was with us.  Drew and Sakura are great distractions, they are so young, feisty and so full of personality….not a day goes by that I’m not grateful that hubby brought them home.

Last month my extra mom lost her husband of 50+yrs  =(  And there was family drama.  I tried to call to give support to her and my sister.  With all the drama, I was hoping it would help to give them someone to vent to.  I really wish I would’ve been able to fly out and be there from them.  Even if I would just be the bad guy for them and tell the other family members off.  The rest of the family is no skin off of my back, there are only 2 that matter to me.  =)

This summer we now have 2 hummingbird feeders and 2 blooming fuchsias…finally started to get more the one hummingbird.  We have at least 3 of them hanging around.  They will hover above our heads while outside…love it!  It is really cool, didn’t know that they could be so vocal.  Last year we had at least 1 scrub blue jay, this year at least 4 and holy cow are they noisy as heck.  They are pretty, but so annoying ear wise…..ggeezzz

We brought 2 tomato plants this spring, then it rain way above normal and we thought it killed them. At the time, we thought we did something wrong or brought bad plants until they ran a story on the news and a lot of people were having the same problem.   So we brought 2 more, planted those into our planters and put the others in the ground, really not expecting them to live much less produce any tomatoes.  Well, they actually have tomatoes on them and other 2 are going nuts. We’ve already had 1 tomato off of the early girl bush and and about 5 off of the oregon spring. They have been so sweet and tasty.  They are great on french bread with tillamook extra sharp white cheddar cheese…wow.

Work wise, I’m getting more responsibility added, which is good thing.  Still working out the details to see what I can do to help out.  Looking forward to that.  I do a bit of everything at work, I really can’t even describe what I do….I guess I’m the catch all and what I don’t know or do, I know who does…..lol

Only issue that has been driving me nuts work wise is a wire that I sent out on the July 30th still has not been received!  What the heck?!?  I’ve been ordering a wire to this account info for 2yrs now and never had an issue before.

Now I do everything online or by phone, the only time I go to our local branch is make a deposit through the drive thru.  Well, due to this issue everything needs to be done at the branch…it is to the point that they now know me by my first name….ggeezz  I wouldn’t mind going in so much if it wasn’t for the same issue.  Gave up on getting the wire delivered and did a recall, fingers crossed, I will have it back in a few days and I can take care of the contractor by another and faster method.

I have finally taken the time to go through all of my stuff.  For those who don’t know me, I’m a pack rat in for sentimental stuff…..  I still have a stuffed pillow that I was given when I was about 2 in Germany, if that tells you anything, my Baltimore Orioles shirt from when I was about 9….lol.  Well, I have  bunch of pictures, every note/letter/card my parents ever gave me and nearly every card/letter/note since junior HS.  And it was all over the place, location wise….including under the bed.  I have every little note my hubby has ever given me….lol…I know nuts. =)

Now when I tweet about going under the bed, it is really a project.  This is what we have in king size : http://www.storagebedstore.com/IVG2/N/ProductID-8593.htm

So you have to move the mattress and then the plywood that the mattress sits on.  There is a big space between the drawers under there that is excellent for storage, but a pain to get to it on a regular basis and with it being king size, one person can’t do it.  So I have to pester my hubby for help….grin  But I totally love our bed set, just don’t want to have to move it….icks…

A few weeks ago I started going through everything.  I went through all the pictures I’ve ever taken (mainly from Alaska) and all the pictures that were my grandmothers’, brought some photo albums (weren’t even sure they still made those…lol)  Luckily one of my grandma’s photo album wasn’t full so I was able to put a bunch of pictures in there.

I also finally got all of hubby & my ticket stubs to rock concerts, football games and other memorabilia organized and out of our photo album.  I went through and organized every letter by who sent it and postmark date, even organized the notes that I passed in school….lol Got all my cards organized, HS grad, college grad, wedding, holidays…..ect

I went through every newspaper and magazine that I kept to see if I still wanted, even found the Daily News Miner from Fairbanks, AK that I kept from the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded when I was in 7th grade.

I cleaned out my cedar hope chest and got as many of the photo albums stored in there.  Made sure that older the pictures got in there, ones that are from my grandparents and are about 50-100yrs old.

So now instead of everything all over, everything has it’s one or two container and is in one area.  I put so much stuff into the recycling and trash…..I’m hoping that if we do move from this house in 2012, that it’ll make our lives a bit easier for packing and such.

Been trying to attack my closet, especially since I lost weight there is a lot that doesn’t fit.  Some of that I’ve been shipping off to family members who may be able to use it.  The stuff is perfectly good and I normally donate it, but I like to try and help out my loved ones before anyone else.  You have to take care of family when you can, even when it is not much.  =)

We are having issues with my truck……ggrrr…  I went to do errands last Thursday and it wouldn’t start after I got out of the post office.  I had to call hubby for a jump.  We weren’t sure if it was the battery or the alternator.   I kind of was hoping for the battery, much easier to switch out and a little bit cheaper.  But as I laid in bed at night this weekend, I remembered that we just got a new one before we left FL in ’07 and it was a diehard.  (I’m a big believer in diehard batteries, once I have one I rarely worry about it.)  And the fact that we rarely drive the truck, may be 3k miles a year now….. I just felt in my gut it wasn’t the battery…plus our lives are never that easy.

We took the battery in for testing today and confirmed it wasn’t the battery….good that our diehard purchase was a good one and bad for it being more complicated.  Hubby took the alternator out of it today and we’ll take it in to get it tested tomorrow.  I’m hoping that is the issue, because for a ’97 I really don’t want to spend a ton of money….at least the truck is paid for.  But I’m really thinking that it is the alternator, we’ve had the truck since 2000 and haven’t had an alternator issue and it is over 100k mile, so it sounds about right.

Doesn’t seem like we got much of a summer…feel cheated, it was rainy and chilly through June and even at the beginning of July.  And that was after having an unusual warm winter and spring like weather that we went hiking in mid March to Smith Rock….weird.  We had a few hot days and stayed downstairs during those (no central air).  Only used the portable ac in the bedroom for one night and that was only due to someone throwing a beeping fire detector out…..that continued to beep…icks  We are suppose to get 2 more days of 90s this week and we our high Sunday was 68….lol  We did have a beautiful day today, after being chilly yesterday.

We are planning on heading to Crater Lake sometime next month.  Only the real good time to do so for us, school will be back in, less crowds and before it starts to snow (Oct).  Hubby found a bunch a little hikes, 2-5miles, but they will be steep.  Because it is about 6hrs away, we’ll be spending 2 nights camping.  And it is going to have some cold nights….extra blankets are in order.  Just going to take our MREs and some snickers, oatmeal and such…maybe some hotdogs, but no where the amount of food we took last time for camping.  Need to do a reminder practice on setting up our tent before we go….been a while and practice makes it much easier and faster when you need it and if it is raining.  =)

Been seeing some preseason football games on, nothing but a tease.  So looking forward to the kick off to the college season.  Even if a boring game is on, I’m so use to having it playing in the background that it always feels weird when the season is over.  That is from years of conditioning from my dad and my hubby….grin  I tell hubby that he needs to thank dad for his wife’s enjoyment of sports.  I know he couldn’t handle it if he had a wife that didn’t enjoy sports with him…..grin

Well, when I started this I was in the bedroom, moved myself out on the porch off of the bedroom to get some fresh air.  It is now about 2130 hours, dark with a few bugs….lol  This ended up longer then I expected.  But I think I’m going to go in, have me some wine with some extra sharp white tillamook cheese, crackers and some of our home grown tomatoes…..tasty.  =)

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Posted in Everyday Stuff, Family Stuff, Hiking/Camping, Sports, Travels, Tweets

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Losing Alexis Post

Posted on Saturday August 21st, 2010 by | Comments Off on Losing Alexis Post

I know I tweeted about Alexis, but when I look back at my entries, I’ve written for each of our babies on the day we lost them.  So I feel as if I cheated her if I don’t write something. This one is a week late, but I was really trying to get through it last week.

On the 4th hubby gave Alexis her meds and felt a a very hard lump under her chin.  We made an appt and took her into the vet on the 7th, a Sat.  It was one of either 2 things….an infected tooth (with her history a good possiblity) or a tumor.  The vet said he never felt an infected tooth that hard, but it still could be.  Said we can do an antibiotic and if it is an infected tooth the swelling would go down and then we can have it removed. If a tumor, there was no way we would put her through that.  It would not improve her quality or quantity of life.

We tried that, but it quickly became clear that it wasn’t working.  =(  She started to issues with drooling and the whites that cover her eyes when sleeping weren’t moving back in place when she opened them from sleeping.  Hubby tried to put a bowl of small pieces of food to the side for her to eat, but she would refuse to eat.  She stubbornly would eat the big pieces and, of course, we knew she won’t eat soft food….tried that many times.  The swelling never went down.  =(

Hubby called the vet Tues and gave him an update….and made the appt for Sat the 14th….I totally lost it when he told me.

We got Alexis in Dec of ’94 when hubby gave her to me when I came home from failing my German final.  She was officially a holiday present for me, but actually she was a present for his cat Randi….lol  Randi was lonely, she was in town, so not allowed out for hunting, no dogs to pick on, and my cat Aurora would have nothing to do with her….lol  She was the 1st cat that we got while together.  She was the last connection to Randi, Aurora and Reggie.

She has gone through hell with medical issues the last few years.  She always had an issue with puking up her food over the years, but since the other cats tossed something (usually furballs) we just thought it was her.  She was a chunky cat, about 11pounds….so not small at all.  When I went to IN to visit family in Dec ’08, hubby had to take her in when she meowed in a very scary way at him.  She had an urinary tract infection that could’ve killed her, in tests for that they discovered that she had a hyperthyroid.

Which answered the question of her weight lost over the last year and why for the 1st time in her life she would meow at for things in the kitchen.  This is a cat that didn’t like milk, would maybe lick tuna juice, won’t eat any human food and refuse soft food….would only really eat meow mix.

What the vet told us, the hyperthyroid is like an engine running at full throttle and the gas not keeping up.  So even if she didn’t like, she would actually try the meat we offered her.  If we didn’t get her on meds or get her treated, she would be dead very quickly at that point.

Here is the link to that post : Kitty Update & Life : http://www.paulineantoinette.com/2009/01/03/kitty-update-life/

Then we discovered that half of her teeth were rotten and needed replacing in June ’09 : http://www.paulineantoinette.com/2009/06/12/alexis-the-rest/

Ever since she had to deal with us giving her meds to keep her regular.  During all of this, she has stubbornly carried on.  Barely complaining, which made it is easier for us to miss things.  =(  But I really miss her quiet determination and her demand for my attention.

The Sunday after we took her to the vet to ask about the lump, she was stubbornly trying to open the sliding closet door (which she had, unfortunately, taught the wonder twins how to open….lol) with what remained of her teeth. Hubby thinks she was the most stubborn of all of our cats.  =)

I picked up her ashes and feel much better that she is backed home.  She is up on the bookshelf with our other 3 and their pictures.

Love and miss you Alexis.  I hope that you knew how much we loved you.

Alexis Memorial

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Summer Time

Posted on Saturday July 3rd, 2010 by | Comments Off on Summer Time

I hope everyone has had a good summer beginning.  Ours has been below average on temps and way over on rain…icks….still waiting for summer weather…dry and comfortable.  We were in the 60s this pass Wed/Thurs and we are suppose to be hitting the 90s this upcoming Wed/Thurs.  Lets just say I’ll believe it when I see it.  I really don’t want it to hit the 90s…I want mid 80s, that is perfect.  Then our house doesn’t have that chill and we can wear shorts and tank tops.  =)

I did finally vacuum out my poor truck in about a year today.  Those spiders get into everything and left cobwebs everywhere….lol

We haven’t been up to much other then work and the normal.  We do need to get a hike in, that I would like.  Not sure where, at this time of the year the mountains and Crater Lake still have a bit of snow.  If it melting you have higher rivers/creeks to deal with when crossing.  So we have to balance that.

We will be heading up to Canada sometime this month for a bbq with our sister-in-law  Eliza and our nephews.  It will be to in remembrance of Diesel, since it has been a year that we lost him.  But it will be great to see how our nephews have grown, they are so young that they grow so fast.  I miss seeing them.

We are still doing the gym.  I know it sounds annoyingly repetitive, but considering it is so easy to fall into bad habits the fact that we are still doing a good one….I’m grateful and proud of.  It has been over 2yrs and I’ll take it.  I will say that I didn’t end the week on a good note.  I did good Mon-Wed, but Thurs and Fri I was not mentally in it at all.  I did get my cardio and weights in, but didn’t get my 20mins on abs.  It didn’t help that I didn’t do very well on my eating habits this past week.  Went over my normal daily 2k a day, so I need to do better this week. My sweet tooth and munch urges just kicked in big time….drove me nuts.

I spent the week doing my normal….working, what else?  LOL  Which is partly why I died at the gym Thurs and Fri, my brain was on that and won’t stop.

Last weekend I couldn’t get a hold of my extra sister, Sandi.  Her dad isn’t doing very well at all and is in hospice and I knew that she would be visiting and dealing with the drama that is her siblings.  I knew that they would be totally, totally stressing her out and a few of siblings are good for tearing her down……and totally negate the ones that are supportive of her..ggrrr  So I was totally stressing about getting a hold of her and checking in.  Anything to make her feel better and let her vent.

Well, that didn’t happen, so I sent her encouraging texts and my sister Melinda actually got lucky and got a hold of her.  Since I wasn’t doing to good on making contact to her, I googled her parents and got their number and made a call.  She wasn’t there, but I was able to find out what was going on and let Ma vent some.  Between me trying to get a hold of her, texting and Melinda actually making contact, it was a help to her and made her feel better.

I was not happy to hear what her siblings was putting Ma though and I knew if Ma was going through hell, then Sandi wasn’t doing too well.  =(  I let mom know that I was in her corner and whenever she needed to talk, she can vent at me.

Sandi’s siblings were totally surprised to hear that I even called Ma just to make contact, that I wasn’t too happy about what Ma was going through and then turn around and my little sister called her.  Sad, that we give her more emotional support then her some of own drama selfish siblings.  If her husband Ed wasn’t there for support, she would’ve totally lost it…no idea how he puts up with her family sometimes.  Tries and keeps peace just for her and her parents sake.

Sandi is finally back home (a state away…which is a good thing when dealing with them) and eating, trying to get a sense of her self back, I spent 3 hours on the phone with her last night.  She couldn’t hold anything down while dealing with them.  I’m going to try and give Ma a call tomorrow to check in.  I just suck at it due to the 3hr difference.  I wish I could be there to help Ma and her, those are the 2 that I really care and worry about.

My god daughter Cassie has made me feel old.  She graduated from HS, turned 19 and is now expecting her baby in Dec….wow.  I remember when Sandi was pregnant with her at my HS graduation.  I was so totally afraid that she was going to have her right there…..lol  Ended up having her a few weeks later.  I was looking at some pictures that were just taken barely 10yrs ago….damn, she has grown.

I found some paper where I can make my own postcards.  If you didn’t know, when we travel I love getting postcards and sending it to my family.  =)  So now, unless we are doing a bunch of traveling and I want to get them postmarked from that location, I can just use the pictures that we take for them.  I totally love that.  Especially when we are doing hiking around here in OR.  I spent time figuring out how to the line up everything and even printing out the addresses and messages on the back.  With my horrible handwriting I’m doing the post office a favor…..lol  I already sent out postcards from our visit to the coast in May…..grin

Our kitties are doing good. Drew and Sakura are now 2yrs old.  Drew is such a long cat and is still in the over energetic teen stage that drives his sister Sakura nuts.  Sakura has become a chunk bugger that is addicted to brushing…..grin  She is such a spoiled daddy’s girl and Drew is very much a momma boy when it comes to bedtime.  Alexis is going to be 16 this coming Oct and tries her best to ignore Drew and Sakura….lol

I’m currently half way through President Bill Clinton autobiography, My Life.  It is huge with a lot of policy thoughts and stories on where they came from.  You can tell that he likes to show where an idea came from.  It is interesting.  I have Audition by Barbara Walters and My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House by Lillian Rogers Parks that I would love to get into next.

It is amazing how long it takes to right just a few things…..lol….but that is what is going on so far around here.  =)

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Posted in Everyday Stuff, Family Stuff, Weather Happenings

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New Picture Gallery

Posted on Sunday May 23rd, 2010 by | Comments Off on New Picture Gallery

In the last few weeks I discovered that our scanner can deduct separate items instead of forcing things into 1 sheet.  So I can now scan 2-6 pictures at a time and not have to go back and crop them from each other.  Which is a huge help.

So I finally took time and scanned some of our wedding pictures since I didn’t have to be stuck editing them.

Here is the new gallery of our wedding pictures :

http://paulineantoinette.com/PNH/paulineharold/PNH_wedding/PNH_wedding/index.html

Those are located on our bio page of my blog : http://www.paulineantoinette.com/bio/

I also finally got around putting together the rest of our cat pictures from last year :

http://paulineantoinette.com/PNH/cats/2009_cats/2009_Cats/index.html

Those have been added to our cat page ; http://www.paulineantoinette.com/our-cats/

Now of course that means I probably won’t get back to working on our pictures for awhile…….lol

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Evening Everyone!

Posted on Saturday August 22nd, 2009 by | Comments Off on Evening Everyone!

Been a while since I’ve posted.  Never sure what to post lately.  Our routine hasn’t really changed and nothing much as been going on.  And you saw my rant over a week ago……..lol  Just our normal gym, errands,  work and enjoying our cats as they do goofy things.

I’ve been trying to chill out on the political/social commentary here and keep it on twitter.  Short, to the point and easy to skip over if not interested in it………grin  But doesn’t mean that I won’t do here on an occasion.

Well, this week was ok at the gym.  I got my treadmill and abs in everyday, but didn’t get as much in on the weights as I should.  I need to step it up next week.  My weight has flat lined, I’m not too concerned but wouldn’t mind losing about 5# of jiggle.  I’m more focused on maintaining and developing more firmness in the arms and thighs.  I’ve always been weak in the arms.  =(

This week was bad on eating…..I maintained my calories overall, but too much sugar and sweet cravings.  Forgot that the week before my cycle my sweet tooth kicks in big time.  But if I’m able to maintain my calories during that, I consider that a victory.  =)

Our neighbor’s dog got skunked a few nights ago………lol  Hubby was closing the blinds to our balcony and saw a skunk run up the street with their dog behind it.  He told our neighbor that it was skunk.  We were hoping that it hadn’t sprayed.  It was finally cooling down and turning into a perfect night and we wanted to leave our windows open.  Well that didn’t happen, a few minutes later we smelled it…….doh!  Then hubby saw that the dog did get hit….lol  They were out there washing him in the drive way.  Hubby was laughing about it, he use to do that very summer to his dogs when he was a kid.  So happy that wasn’t him out there washing the dog………grin

We are back to perfect temps, 60s at night and 70s/80s during the day.  I love it.  So happy to be out of Indiana and Florida.

Today I was in worker bee mode…..just wanted to get things done around the house.  Hubby attacked the floors and vacuumed everywhere.  I made some egg salad.  I got our towels and bedding washed along with all our other laundry, so it was an all day thing.  The hardest part about making our bed, is switching out the duvet cover on the down bedcover just because it is a king it is so huge and heavy.  That gave me a work out….lol

I finally cleaned up the mess in our office closet.  It was mainly caused by me digging for cds when I lost my external hard drive and the music on it.  So that is finally straighten up and better then it was before.  We can actually walk in there.

I also got all of our flowers outside fertilized.  I’ve been disappointed that we haven’t had more flowers on our rose bushes. I watered them everyday during the heat wave and every other day in between the heats.  Hopefully the fertilizer will help….. I love having our roses in bloom.

Not sure what I’m doing tomorrow.  I’m hoping that my motivation to get things done continues.  I won’t mind doing some lite rearranging in the garage and maybe get some oatmeal cookies made for hubby…..otherwise I would like to get a walk in,  attack some picture galleries for my family and get some company work done in the evening.

Today was a great day for playing catch up with the family, dad and Cheyanne & Charles video chatted with me as mom shouted hello.  Cheyanne had to show me her new kitten, Angel.  She was also having a blast making faces at me as Charles keep making rabbit ears behind my dad’s head.  Just had to remind dad to IM me or text me before calling on skype….lol  I’m not always by my pc or have my headphones ready….grin  I called mom later since I hadn’t talked to her and ended up on speaker with her and dad as they were heading out to the racetrack.  Then Sandi returned my call and we ended up on the phone for 2hrs.

Well, I think that it is all that I have for tonight. =)

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Posted in Everyday Stuff, Family Stuff, Pics, Reflections

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