Everyday Randomness

Vacation Itch

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Oh yeah now I remember where I was going with that last post.  Part of our trip this weekend was going to Deal’s Gap, but when we found out that probably won’t happen we decided we’d go ahead and spend the weekend in Pigeon Forge like we’d planned.  It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen either.

Our friend’s parents own a cabin in Pigeon Forge, and they always let us use it, so hubby called and asked our friend’s dad if we could use it.  He said yep, no problem.  Well, turns out our friend’s mom already promised it to a couple that wanted to spend their anniversary in the mountains.  No big deal.  I’d rather them enjoy their anniversary, and we really can’t afford a hotel this weekend.

If I’d known this on Friday I could have planned ahead, but I didn’t, so I took all the extra cash we had this week plus a majority of our savings and dropped it on bills.  I paid a bunch of a month in advance, knocked out a nice chunk on medical bills, and made double payments for both the bike and car payments.

I’d still love to be able to go somewhere this weekend though.  I’m really seriously itching for a vacation.   I called my friend Tony Mac to see if this would be a good weekend for a trip to Tampa, but he’s off somewhere at an undisclosed location for the military this week.  It’s really hard to keep track of where he is and isn’t.  I worry about him too much.  I always know he’s got to be somewhere at least semi safe if he can still check his answering machine messages and return my calls!  He just can’t tell me where he is.

Oh well maybe I can at least convince hubby to pack up the tent and go camping somewhere.  It’s supposed to be pretty nice here on Saturday and Sunday, so maybe I can convince him to go camping at the little county park that’s on the lake one county over.

We’ve got county parks surrounding us on the lake, but none of them are as secluded or as gorgeous as the one I want to go to.  We went there with hubby’s parents on a bike ride for the first time last weekend, and now I basically am set on the fact that we have to camp there.  It’s far enough away to enjoy camping on the lake and close enough to home to take a real shower! lol

I Really Wanted To Go

I seriously doubt we’ll be making our trip to Deal’s Gap this weekend.  I’ve been watching the weather almost religiously all week hoping that by some miracle the weather man would suddenly decide there won’t be rain this Friday for the area, but the more I check the worse the weather looks.

Dang it!  I REALLY wanted to go to the Gap this weekend!  The last time we went up there was around July or August.  Dang I can’t even remember anymore.  Wait, it would have either been the end of July because Hubby had his wreck in August.  We had gone to the Gap a couple weeks before.  We almost had a crash that day…both of us…riding 2 up, but we were able to save it because we were slowed down behind a line of slower traffic.  THANK GOD.

Even worse, as we were slowly making our way back down the mountain we came up on a wreck, and it just happened to be our friend who had been riding in front of us.  He had made it around the slow pack of cars and wrecked a few curves up.  He was going way too fast and riding way outside his limits.

I know Deal’s Gap is dangerous, but then so is riding anywhere else.  The wreck we avoided was caused by a car coming over in our lane.  Sadly a lot of people in 4 wheeled vehicles don’t understand how dangerous it is to lane cross in a blind curve.  They blame the motorcycles because they say they can’t see us.  Well you know what?  NO ONE should be driving in the opposite lane in a blind curve….PERIOD.  If you can’t keep it in your lane, that should tell you to slow down!  Right?

I don’t even remember where I was going with this post anymore.  It turned into a total rant.  Sorry about that!  Oh well, maybe my sleep deprived brain will remember in a bit.

BRRRR!

I just can’t get warm today.  I’ve been sitting here freezing for the last 2 hours.  What’s worse is I’m wrapped up in a big fleece blanket and a huge sweatshirt.  It’s not that cold outside.  It’s 50 now, and that’s after the temperature started to drop a little.  I even have my floor heater right here beside me blasting away.  I keep telling hubby that if losing a little weight means I’m going to be cold all the time, I’m going to put those 15lbs back on!

This morning hubby and I decided we’d wait until next weekend to go see our movie.  Our thinking was that maybe it’ll be playing at the local theater by then.  Nope.  I called the local theater this afternoon to ask when it would start playing, and we were told it won’t.  Why?  The local Cinema 8 used to be an Amstar theater.  It was bought out last year, and the new owners won’t allow any movies with a rating over PG-13 in their theater.  That totally blows.  So either way we’re stuck driving all the way to Anderson to see the movie.

I mean I was a teenager when the South Park movie came out, and I remember we were all super pissed because the local theater refused to play it back then.  But that was because a bunch of parents stood outside the theater on the movie’s opening day basically boycotting the movie.

Instead it played in Clemson at the dollar theater, so it was kind of a win win for us.  See the awesome movie for $1, and only have to drive 10 minutes out of the way.  Plus the dollar theater is located right smack in the middle of downtown Clemson surrounded by college students and bars.  Back then you didn’t need an id to get into a bar if you were a girl.  You just had to look cute and flirt with the bouncers.  Like I said that was a per movie basis though.

I understand the people who own the theater have a right to choose what movies are played in their theater and which ones aren’t, but can you imagine the amount of business they’re losing since they made the decision to ban rated R movies?  We were having a movie discussion with my little cousin a few weeks ago.  He used to work at the local theater, and he was ranting on how it had totally gone down hill.  He pointed out that in “our day” (being maybe 10 years ago) that the parking lot was always packed.  These days you see maybe 30 cars for a Friday night show.

Ear Mites?

I really wish the vet was open on Sundays.  Bubba’s had an ear infection for a couple weeks now, and we’ve been treating it twice a day with an enzymatic wash.  When the vet saw him a couple weeks ago he told me to just keep an eye on it, and if I noticed him scratching it or it getting worse to bring him back in.

Well hubby noticed last night that Bubba was crawling up on the futon and rubbing that ear across the cushion.  Normally he’s good about his ear drops and lays down while I put them in.  I think it’s soothing to him.  I cleaned his ear yesterday morning and put the drops in, but last night he wouldn’t let me touch the ear.

I waited until he passed out on the bed with hubby, then I got down and inspected it.  He’s scratched it so hard he’s made it bleed, and there’s a ton of dark brown ear wax.  The second I saw it I thought uh oh, he’s got ear mites.  I’ve had experience with them before, but we haven’t had ear mites on any of our pets since moving here, especially since Bubba’s ears get an every other day cleaning when he doesn’t have an infection.

I cleaned his ear out with his wash again, and I carefully cleaned out all of the wax with a cotton ball.  So far it’s only one ear, but it’s bad.  So bad that his ear was perfectly clear yesterday morning and by night time it was covered with the icky brown wax.  Luckily it’s just the one ear, so hopefully I can get him treated before it spreads.

As soon as I finished with Bubba I checked out Alley’s ears. Yep, he’s got it, too, although not as bad.  I haven’t noticed him scratching his ears at all.  Now I just have to figure out where the mites came from.  I know ear mites are transmitted between animals, but they had to get to one of my pets somehow.

Considering both of them are indoor pets except for the hour of two Bubba spends outside when it’s warm, I have a few theories .  Bubba could have picked them up when he went to the vet two weeks ago.  His immune system is already low, and his right ear was already infected, so I wonder if he would have been more susceptible to mite from one of the other dogs in the office.

I know it’s not very often that ear mites will cause problems in humans, and even then it’s normally a skin irritation, but I humans can carry the mites from one pet to the other.  A friend of mine recently had to treat her cats for eat mites, so there’s a good possibility I could have brought them home with me.

Lastly my aunt who lives across the road from me has a ton of outdoor cats.  She has barn cats, so I’m sure there’s a good chance some of them have ear mites.  There’s a possibility Bubba got close to one of them when he was outside enjoying the sun because those cats are always coming over in our yard, getting up in the windows and driving Alley wild.    Bubba’s really good with cats.  Actually he’s better with cats than he is with other dogs.

Oh well no matter how they got them, I’ve got to get this treated.  I’m about to clean both of their ears out again with the enzymatic wash because Bubba’s already looks bad again.  Later today I guess I’ll go pick up some OTC ear mite stuff to hold me over until the vet opens up on Tuesday.  I know OTC ear mite stuff doesn’t always work well, and the vet’s office is closed Monday because our vets were going to a convention.  Yes I’m in the vet’s office so much I have a full schedule that tells me when they’re going to be closed.

It’s All Coming Together

Man when I said I was cracking down on the finances I didn’t realize how much good it would do us.  Over the past few weeks I’ve spent just about every night looking over bills, debts, and the rest of our finances trying to cut corners and pinch pennies at every angle.

We’re not hurting, but we’ve still got way more debt than I would like.  Heck I won’t be happy until we have no debt, but then again who in their right mind likes to be in debt.  I do however feel a great sense of accomplishment because we’ve been struggling with our finances since before we got married.

It seems like the second I get a hold on things something happens.  Someone loses a job, hubby has a motorcycle wreck, hubby wrecks my Saturn, hubby wrecks my Blazer, hubby wrecks something…yeah you see where this is going.  Something always happens to put us a month behind on our bills with credit cards maxed all over again.

Maybe it’s just the fact that I’m older now, and I’ve actually stepped up and told hubby he’s never touching the finances again, but things seem to finally be going my way.  When hubby is in charge of paying the bills, nothing gets paid.  When hubby’s in charge of the money, it disappears.  He finally faced the music a few months ago and admitted that he just can’t handle money.

Me on the other hand, I grew up in a household where every penny was pinched.  Hell my I can’t remember a single day of my life when my dad wasn’t wearing one of those little calculator watches.  It amazes me to see him punching away on those itty bitty little buttons, but the man makes it work!  Numbers are his thing, and he made sure his daughter’s knew how to handle their finances.  That doesn’t mean I always listened, but at least when my money was being flushed down the toilet I knew it!

Anywho, I just spent a couple hours going over all of our finances from the past year.  It has officially been 1 year since the day I decided I wasn’t going to work a normal job anymore.  I’ve had my little side business going since I was 19, but last year I finally up and decided I was making it my full time job.

Between that and the income I earn from my blogs, I still don’t make as much as I did working a full time job, but you know what?  For once in my life I’m happy with my job situation.  I’m happy with our financial situation, and I finally have a handle on things.

When I worked a full time job I was stuck in a manufacturing plant at least 6 days a week, and there were many many months where I worked 21 days straight, had 1 or 2 days off, then worked another 21 days straight.  I barely had enough time to think let alone take care of the finances.  Now I can actually devote the time to taking care of everything.  Hell I realized we spent over $1500 last year just in late fees and reconnection fees because our bills were always a month behind or things were getting disconnected.  A $15 reconnection fee when my cell gets shut off might not seem like a lot at the time, but it’s $15 per line, and I can’t tell you how many times it happened.

The truth is together hubby and I may be bringing less money into the home now, but overall we have more cash now.  We have way more in savings, and we have way less debt.  We have things to show for all the hard work we do now.  Before I was mindlessly working my days away watching every penny we earned get sucked up by this credit card company or that collection agency.

Never again will I allow us to get into that situation unless something well beyond my control happens.  At 26 years old I’m no longer sitting around looking at the houses and cars and toys my friends and family have wishing that could be me.  Now I look at those things, and I tell myself next year I’ll have that piece of land I’ve been dreaming of.  I’ll have that new bike I want.  For once things seem real.