I guess that's why they call it the blues...

So, through the neighborhood grapevine I have heard that the fire at the house behind us (which on the backside looks like it was started on the ground outside) was not an act of arson, but a meth lab gone bad.
I thank heaven above that the house didn't blow up instead because our kids bedrooms are only yards away from where the fire was.
However, it has me feeling huge amounts of sadness for the two little children that lived there. Teja and Logan were my kids friends. Teja was in Josh's 1st grade class and Logan started Kindergarten in Jaeden's class but then got moved downstairs to another teacher's class when a fourth teacher was hired. These two kids were at our house all the time, and if the doorbell rang, it was usually them. Teja with her red hair and freckled face and large toothy grin would usually be the one to ask if Josh could come out and play.
Just last week she was talking to me telling me, "I haven't quite decided if I'm going to invite your family for my birthday". I asked her what day it was. It was supposed to be this coming weekend (and I'd told her we would be camping). I guess that party is on hold.
So is the end of Kindergarten and first grade. They will be missing the last two days of school. Gathering their things. Saying goodbye to friends they made this year and to the teachers that taught them.
I don't know where they've been taken to. I only know that after the fire a drug raid was done on the home and the children were removed and have been gone since.
Out on my drive this morning I was thinking that I don't think they'll ever be back. Insurance won't cover that damage, even if they had it. The doors are all smokey, windows busted out on the other side. Fire tape has been wound around the home. I think the home will have to be destroyed unless they have money to fix it, and that money probably came from selling meth. I think we'll probably see a backhoe there someday soon.
I feel sad for the children's innocence lost. Theirs and mine. My children have been told what happened. They don't understand what it means to be "cooking drugs", but they know that drugs are bad, and now they know that drugs can burn up homes and make kids be taken away from their parents. And they know that sometimes other little kids parents don't make the best choices or protect their kids from that kind of thing.
My heart is just so full of sadness, for those kids, for my kids, for the whole earth and all the crap that goes on in it.

Good grief!

Ok, so not only is the gray sweat shirted guy scum, but he's also an idiot.

He had my husband putting in the floor the wrong way. UGH! Now we have to take apart much of it and now try to do it right. No wonder several pieces were breaking! I was getting a little worried when I saw how many were breaking from trying to tap these pieces together. Turns out we are supposed to do a whole row at a time. Hook them up end by end and then tap the sides into the last row... duh! Instead "bone head" had dh tapping them in one piece at a time both sides.

Since the fridge is already on some of it, we will keep those rows as is and put a transition piece in the doorway on that wall, but the rest of the rows we can do right. So glad I got involved and read the details on the back of the box! Dh did too, but he listened to the idiot and decided to do it that way.

This is the last time I have remodeling done in my home without my complete supervision, lol!

Now I have to run over to the hardware store and get a transition (or two just in case). I'm hoping the floors might be mostly done by Saturday afternoon.

Please Do Not Touch

I'm just a little miffed. Today I brought in the felt fortune cookies and put them on the table in the hall to display with all our other Enrichment stuff. Well, at least 3 times that I passed them I had to fix cookies that someone played with and opened and couldn't get back together and someone even stole one! RUDE!

When you pass a display, please keep your hands to yourself. Look with your eyes, not your hands.

Grrrrrr

Ok, vent time.
My last DVD/CD burner went out after only having it for a few months. So last month I bought a new one with Lightscribe so I can label my CD for my clients with a sreen print on the CD it's self.... if you haven't seen it, look here, it's really cool. I like it much better than a sticker.
Anyway, I got a sample one with the burner and so today I had time to tackle trying to figure out how to use the thing for a client I have who's waiting for their CD. So I get an image together and put pictures on it and burned it onto the DVD, the only problem is that the words that are overlapping pictures aren't showing up really well. So I would like to do one without words and just the pictures.
So I ran over to Best Buy today and bought a bunch of cd's. A package of 30 for $30. I get home and finally figure out how to burn data to a DVD, because my regular burning software doesn't recognize the DVD as burnable. Then I try to burn the image on the new one, I follow the directions I followed last time... but guess what????
It says it burned it, but it DIDN'T!!!

*Insert picture of me pulling my hair out!*

Ok, I don't know what the sam hill is going on, but I am getting so frustrated with this whole CD/DVD stuff.
I was burning this DVD with data in replacement of a DVD I put together for them with music and their wedding day images that I can't seem to get off my computer because I can't get it converted to an AVI, so I offered them a CD with all of their images with printing rights (I NEVER give away my images now days as a company policy), which thankfully they saw as a very generous offer in replacement of their musical DVD. I was wanting to avoid buying new DVD movie making software. I'm still working on it, haven't given up because I have a wedding in July booked where a DVD is part of their package.

Anyway to make a long story short trying to get a DVD or CD burned for this client is ending up being a huge headache!!! Remind me again why am I in this business????

What is this world coming to???

So if you don't know who Glenn Beck is... have you been living under a rock???

This Christmas season he had something unimaginable happen to him at the hospital. You can read about it here.
We had a similar experience when my husband was having kidney failure and he was in so much pain he was vomiting, and his doctor was trying to treat him through a new kind of treatment. We ended up at the emergency room 3 times. One time was especially horrible... a super long wait, where people who were not even as bad off as he was were being admitted first. It was a nightmare. He was in pain. He needed medications. We had to wait in a stupid waiting room for hours on end just waiting to be admitted. Finally he was admitted and then it took forever to get him drugs to ease the pain.

This weekend one of our friends at church shared his testimony, and in the process mentioned he'd been in the hospital over the holidays. Last night I saw his wife at Enrichment and asked her about what happened. Apparently he had appendicitis and had to be rushed to the hospital where they had to wait in the waiting room for over 2 hours as well!!!

It's no wonder people die at alarming rates at hospitals. It's not because of what they are dying from, it's because of the lack of care, and quick care that they receive, or don't receive in this case! This is appalling that this should be happening in America. This is something I would expect to hear happening in a third world country. Not here, in my home country.

And if you think this is bad? It could get worse, a lot worse. Imagine if we had socialized health care? Horrors. If we ever turn to that, I'm out of here. Can't our politicians see how it's failing in other countries???

Yes, our health CARE system needs to be overhauled, but socializing it, pouring tax money into it, punishing the pharmaceutical companies are not the answer. Let's begin with the people who use the system... hows about paying for it, instead of ditching your bill onto the hospital or tax payers??? Then move onto the workers... if you can't be compassionate, quick or patient, then it's time for another job, perhaps something behind a desk pushing numbers instead of people!? And how about the health care employers... oh man, where do I begin with them?

/rant.

Ahhhh yes!

I can post about my religious stuff over here too without having to worry about offending or getting wierd comments :)
So today I have a vent about our missionaries. I rarely invite them for dinner, mostly because I'm tired of getting the drill about who I know that I can share the gospel with. I'm a hermit. I'm a crab. I'm a hermit crab, I've found my shell and I'm not coming out until my babies are grown!

Anyway, I had gotten up the nerves to invite them again for dinner... tonight. I signed the calendar a couple of weeks ago. Today in Relief Society, the last hour of church, someone announces at the end that if you signed up for missionary dinners to be aware that they had a third companion from the neighboring ward and that he either might be with them, or they get double booked and eat with the other ward. Well, I thought it was strange that they didn't call me last night like they usually do. But we have new missionaries... new meaning greeeeen.
So after getting my family into the van I asked my dh if maybe I shouldn't go back in and find them and see what's up.
SO GLAD I DID!
Because not only did I find out that I am thawing out 7 pounds of chicken leggs for my family. (Good grief!) But I also found out that the ward has decided to just assign people weekends to clean, and apparently next weekend is our weekend, and NOBODY told us. I found out because the Bishop's wife asked me if it was going to work for us, because they are scheduled to clean with us.
Let me see.... Jacob's going to be gone next weekend on a tubing trip with the YM and my husband is moving around the house in crutches, and I have three other kids 6 and under and I'd be chasing them more than they'd clean. Ummmm.... "NO!". Now I have to track someone down and give them a big fat no.
Joy.

However I have to say it's so nice to have a place to get it all off my chest!