Author: erinreeve

oh, this summer is not going to be fun. I figured we got a mild summer (for TN anyway) last year and were going to get payback for it this year.

did I mention that I FINALLY paid off my credit card? it was a big deal. ever since those two months of unpaid maternity leave (almost 3 years ago…), I had to use the credit card more than usual and just did not do a good job of making payments on time or paying more than the minimum. which resulted in my balance staying basically the same for the next couple of years. so Matt got me to finally start paying attention and trying to pay it off… and now it’s done!! all of it!

Matt’s going to start doing P90X again, which means that I’m going to as well, even though I may drag my feet and complain and get mad at him for making me do it. completely irrational, I know, since I told him that he has to make me do it. since he’s only working 8 hours/day again, he has energy to exercise which is practically his favorite thing to do — other than playing chess. it’s good and bad; good because I need to lose some weight and bad because I hate working out. I don’t really mind eating more healthfully (as long as we can still get Wendy’s every now and then). but working out sucks. especially as hot as it is. then again, I sure do feel better after working out.

speaking of working out and it being hot, I took a cold bath yesterday (think swimming pool temperature). it was SO AWESOME. I’m not taking a hot shower or bath again until September or maybe even October. seriously, it was amazing. I read a short story in the New Yorker (this week’s issue is the summer reading one) and felt so cool and refreshed after I got out.

I’m blogging, by the way, because I should be cleaning up the kitchen instead. I made omelets and biscuits last night and failed to clean up after myself. though really, if I’m the one who cooks, shouldn’t Matt be the one who cleans up? or at least helps clean up? that just makes sense to me. he’s never as thorough as I want him to be though… but still. hmph.

I am, however, running out of things to say. what else can be said? well… we’re going to Knoxville this weekend. we’ll probably take the Kia (btw… got the license plate in the mail today finally!) to see how she does on road trips. we’re going to leave here on Friday — either at 3, if I can get out of work on time, or after 6:30 or so. we’ll probably be leaving Knoxville on Sunday morning so that we’ll have a little time to relax before going back to work. when you never have weekends off and take a road trip when you do, it’s just not relaxing at all. which sucks.

maybe we’ll go to the Vanity Fair outlet on the way. Matt doesn’t like spending money on clothes and claims that he doesn’t need any, anyway. all of his t-shirts are too big for him, stained, and/or have holes in them. his one polo shirt has holes in it and is vastly faded from its original color, which is apparent since the collar is much darker than the rest of the shirt. Matt doesn’t like going out in public much (though I don’t think he minds it as much as he used to), and I can’t help but think that he wouldn’t mind as much if he felt like he fit in more. which he would if he wore less sloppy-looking shirts. just my opinion. heh.

okay, Matt should be home any time. when he gets home, we work out. I think we’re doing pushups today (ugh). after that, a cold shower. then, to Target and Pet Smart. we need flea medicine desperately. after that, I’m sure Matt will want dinner and then bed. maybe I’ll see if I can talk him into doing something more interesting. I’ve been feeling bored and uncharacteristically social lately, which has both of us confused. need to hang out with Katie and with Cathy soon. so. hmm.

I have been rather lazy all day so far. Granted, I did get up and go in to work from 6-8 this morning. Since I’m on salary, I have to make at least 40 hours/week and hadn’t quite gotten there yet since those closing shifts were shorter than the opening shifts that I’m used to working.

After getting home, I made some breakfast and fooled around on the computer. Eventually I got out of bed and dyed my hair. Then I got back into bed, watched a little bit of an episode of Bones, and fell asleep. After waking up about an hour later, I took a shower, dried my hair, and am now back on the bed fooling around on the computer. So lazy.

I might be hanging out with Amanda this afternoon. Haven’t heard definitively from her, but it’s the tentative plan. She’s probably still asleep right now.

I ought to do something to make myself feel less lazy. Like, maybe get dressed, make the bed, wash the dishes, put away the clean clothes — something like that. Maybe all of the above, even. Hm.

this is the statue at Cafe Coco.  wearing beads.  FYI.

I’m afraid I don’t feel like blogging any more right now.  sorry.

I suppose that a couple things of note have happened in the last few days.

My work schedule has been a little weird this past week because the manager who we just hired a few months ago came into work one morning and told me that she’d been diagnosed with a stage 3 inoperable brain tumor. So I’ve had to work a couple of closing shifts, which hasn’t been all that bad. I closed yesterday (Sunday) which turned out to be not that bad at all; we were slow, plus Matt was off so we were able to hang out all morning. And I’m off today. Clopening is no fun.

Saturday was a busy day — for me. I hate busy days and try to avoid them. But sometimes you just gotta make sacrifices. I had to open, of course; when I got off work, I came home, showered, and got ready to go to Brittany and Austin’s new house in East Nashville for Story (their 2-year-old daughter)’s birthday party. Matt picked out a present for her at Target that morning since I’d forgotten all about it on Friday evening. There were maybe 20 or so people at the party; half were grandparents/greatgrandparents/aunts/uncles/etc, and the other half were friends who had young children themselves. I think there were about 6 or 7 little kids there. One guest of note was Nicole Kidman, who showed up with her 2-year-old and the nanny. Keith Urban dropped by later. We did not speak with them; we are not suck-ups. I know that if I was a celebrity, I would never go out in public because I don’t like talking to people. But then, I have no aspirations to be a celebrity. Whatever.

After the birthday party (we left a little early, heh), we drove my new car to Murfreesboro to hang out with Dawn and Kyla; Dawn just got back from a trip out West and we hadn’t seen either of them in a while. So that was fun, though we were both pretty tired and didn’t hang out too long.

And I’m off today. Then I’m off again on Wednesday and Thursday. What should I do? I need to do laundry, for one thing. Why is there always so much laundry to do? I might dye my hair… if not today, one of the other days. It’s supposed to be nice outside today, so I may end up driving to Cafe Coco to read or something….

Bitey’s playing with a spider on the floor. Poor spider. It doesn’t have a hope.

On that note, I think I’ll go make some breakfast.

First of all, I’m sorry for the ranting blogs. I don’t like being upset and I don’t like writing angry blogs. Sometimes people just make you mad, though, and venting about it is good.

Now then. I’m off today and it’s a little after 6am and I am very awake. Matt left about 10 minutes ago and will probably be gone for 12 or 13 hours again. At least he had yesterday off and was able to sleep all day. He sure likes to sleep.

So here’s what I’m going to do today.
1. Clean up the house
a. Make the bed and straighten the bedroom
b. Clean the litter boxes
c. Most of the rest of the house is clean, but maybe I’ll wash some dishes

2. Do some laundry

3. Go to B&C to do the Sysco order and maybe some other miscellaneous cleaning — just as long as I’m there about 30-45 minutes. Have to make up some time to get to 40 hours this week….

4. Start new crochet project. Helen (Matt’s mom) showed me Ravelry.com, which is a knit/crochet community and has a ton of free patterns. I’m going to try to make a cardigan next. It’s a big move, but I think I’m ready. The capelet I made last time turned out nicely (except that it’s a little too small for me, but whatever).

5. This might be all I need to do. Oh yeah. I forgot. I need to exercise. This will either be yoga or cardio; I much prefer the yoga but the cardio is very good for me. And always seems to go by faster. We’ll see.

6. After working out, there will be showering.

And now that I know what I need to do today, I’m going to go back to not doing it; possibly go back to sleep, possibly see what’s on Netflix.

today started off on the wrong foot when my sandwich opener called at 2am to say that he was sick and unable to work. so I planned accordingly and went in about 45 minutes early to get my stuff done and his stuff set up and call someone in early. everything was running fine. we had an early sandwich phone-in order for 7 sandwiches which I made perfectly, labeled even though it hadn’t been requested, and neatly put away. when the lady comes to pick up the order, i break away from calling orders to fetch it and the invoice for her to sign. I had a feeling she wasn’t going to be very nice when she made a comment about having to check it and started pulling everything out of the bag and putting it on the counter.

after she empties the bag, she muttered something about how it would be a whole lot easier if I would help her. now, first of all, you didn’t ask for any help. secondofly, you have SEVEN sandwiches, AND I labeled them. can you count and/or read? do you know how to count to seven? can you read the words “san franciscan”? however, being that I am a manager and am not allowed to be a bitch back, I asked her how she wanted me to help her. I mean, I really didn’t know. she had all the sandwiches literally laid out in front of her with names on them.

apparently, she wanted me to say, “okay, here’s your 1 BLT. and here’s the jambon et fromage. and here’s the fresh mozzarella. and over here are the two san franciscans. and the last two are the steeplechases.” she literally held onto her list and asked me to point out each of the sandwiches because she could neither read the labels nor count the number of sandwiches.

and then she angrily tells me, after confirming that indeed I did not screw up her sandwiches, that she ordered all regular chips. I told her that the order had said assorted chips, which is why I put assorted chips in there, to which she tells me in an inexplicably pissed off voice that no, the order didn’t say assorted chips because she placed the order and she said regular chips.

so I gave her all regular chips. I then pleasantly asked her to sign the invoice, thanked her, and said “have a nice day!” — smiling — in a very non-bitchy voice.

so she goes over to a register and orders a drink, and apparently COMPLAINS about me.

it just really made me mad. I didn’t do anything!!!! I’m sorry she can’t read and needed everything spelled out for her, but if she had let me know that up front then I gladly would have helped her! seriously!!! I mean, I’m GREAT at customer service!

think about it. the last time you placed a take-out order in a restaurant, did you expect the person giving you the order to take everything out of the bag and point it all out to you so that you could verify that it was there?

okay. the rest of the day went fine. everyone else was nice to me because I’m so damned nice to everyone there!!! it’s very cultivated, people, and every day that I work there I pretty much like those belle meade bitches less and less, but that sure doesn’t stop me from being overly friendly to them, and not in a fake way.  (disclaimer: some of the customers I like very, very much.  several of them, in fact.)

alright, just needed to get that off my chest. at least I don’t complain about work too much here.

btw, if anyone wanted to read that last blog, just ask me for the password. I’m not volunteering to give it to anyone and made the blog password-protected because I didn’t want to offend anyone. so ask at your own risk. it could be somewhat offensive, if you chose to take it that way….

Picture of the new car.

Picture of Calliope.

Update: I drove the Kia to work yesterday and today, and am definitely getting the hang of it. Didn’t stall it once driving home today, though I think I did this morning (but only one time). At any rate, I’ll be an expert by this time next week, I’m sure. It’s nice to have a car that I care about keeping clean… and a little foreign too….

Matt’s taking the opportunity to work overtime at his new job this week. He likes it a lot better than McCullough so far, though he did tell me what one of his coworkers said yesterday — that if being an electrician was easy, they’d hire women. Also that he’s noticed that women seem to be getting tougher and men weaker, thus the downfall of American society. (Oh, shudder.)

But, what do you expect? My expectations are continually being lowered (or at least reaffirmed). Matt exceeds them by a long shot in this case. (And in most.)

So he probably won’t be home until around 6:30, which will be 12.5 hours after he left this morning. At least if one of us has to be working overtime, it’s the one who gets paid extra for it.

This means that I have another 3 hours by myself though. I need to clean up the kitchen (made dinner last night but didn’t exactly get around to cleaning it up), do yoga (did some cardio yesterday and keep reminding myself that if I want to see any results, I have to keep doing it, ugh)… mail the rent check and electric bill, um, what else? I bought a file organizer at Target last night and still need to organize it.

We watched the first hour-and-a-half of Milk last night. Would have watched the whole thing except that we were both about to fall asleep. I’ll watch the rest of that today and then send it back to Netflix. Netflix, by the way, is totally awesome if you have high speed internet. There’s SO much that you can watch online, no commercials or limit! I’m a fan (except when my internet won’t stream fast enough).

For the first time in my life, I have a car that cost more than $400 and was made more recently than 1994. This is a good thing. We went to CarMax yesterday and ended up getting a 2007 Kia Spectra. It was a good price and we were able to put $1000 down, which isn’t a huge amount but did help with the monthly payments. I’ll post a picture as soon as Matt gets home with it, though there’s nothing too special about the way it looks. Just a regular-looking white car. It IS a manual though, which is why I have to wait for Matt to get home with it since I drove his to work this morning and he drove mine. We took it to an empty parking lot yesterday and I practiced a bit and then drove home (it was a close parking lot)… and it wasn’t too hard, but I’ll need a bit more practice before I’m comfortable. Especially on hills.

So yeah, finally finally finally bought another car. I’m thinking I might list the Buick on Craigslist to see if I can sell it. I did get Carla’s approval last night, as she was in town for a day or two.

So we went to the bank… I guess almost 3 weeks ago to try to do the joint account thing. The BoA that’s closest to our house was just rebuilt and reopened and had a $100 bonus special if you open a new checking account. As a new customer. So, since Matt was banking with Regions, he opened a new account and won’t be able to add me to it until the end of July, which is also when we’ll get the bonus. But anyway, at least we’re at the same bank now, which is very convenient.

Now… we need to get car insurance together and have both names on the policy. This will be way more expensive than I’m used to car insurance being, since I’ve always driven pretty shitty cars. I’m bracing myself. Plus I don’t know if car insurance is like health insurance and you have to wait for their open enrollment or whatever to cancel. Matt’s policy is with his dad, I think, and he doesn’t seem to know much about how to change it.

Oh, money is so annoying, but I guess it’s a good feeling to be responsible with it and reap those benefits. Like being able to buy a new car because you have good credit. But then there are always more bills to pay.