I haven't posted anything to my blog in years.  I don't even know why I'm posting anything at all. 

The last year of my life has been a living nightmare, and even now, as I type this, it doesn't seem real.  I keep thinking that I'll wake up and everything will be normal, that I'll be in the kitchen of my old apartment and he'll come walking through the door, complaining about work and all the jerks he has to deal with on a daily basis.  But that won't happen.  I'll never stand in that kitchen again.  And he'll never come walking through that, or any door, again.

I'll never see his smile.  I'll never hear his laugh.  I'll never feel his arms around me, holding me tight.

The last year of my life has been a living nightmare. 

I'm not even done unpacking yet.  I don't know when I will finish, if I ever will.  There are boxes of things that I just can't bring myself to go through.  I know what's in them.  I don't want to have to look at the things that fill these boxes.  I don't want to cry.  I don't want to hurt.  I don't want to remember.  But I don't want to forget, either.  I never want to forget.

People say that things will get easier.  People say that they're here if you need them.  These are just things people say when they don't know what to say.  And they lie when they say these things.  Not on purpose, but it just happens.  People mean well, but they are so wrapped up in their own lives.  They can't even begin to understand what it's like.  There is no way to describe this hell.  There is nothing anyone can say that will help, or make things better or easier.  It's just the way it is.

People say that time will heal all wounds.  I don't believe them.  Nothing can heal these wounds, because no matter how many years go by, there will always be a hole.  There will always be something missing.  There will always be a void that even the most special memories will never be able to fill.

I'm absolutely broken.

Last night my husband and I got into a bit of an argument. My mother had called and mentioned that my great aunt is in a nursing and, unfortunately, will not be able to return to her home that she has lived in for 60 years. She and my great uncle (who passed away quite some time ago) bought the home when it was brand new and she has lived there ever since. Her son and his wife have decided to sell the house and use the money to pay for her care in the nursing home. From what my mother says they should be selling it rather cheap to get it off their hands. It's a beautiful home on a dead end street just around the corner and would perfect for us. However, i can't seem to convince my husband that owning a home, paying a mortgage and having equity is better than paying what we would be paying for a mortgage in rent and having NOTHING! He's so thickheaded sometimes. I mean really...he could get not only a first-time homeowners mortgage, but a veterans to boot! He's nuts...and I married him! I still love him although I'd like to smack him in the back of the head sometimes!!!

In other news...This new game I'm playing has become quite addicting! I've been raiding neighboring villages since yesterday morning and my own little village has experienced quite the growth spurt because of it. I know have a population of 139, which includes 20 legionnaires and 1 Equites Lagati. I'm growing faster than anyone around me! Raiding people is so much fun!!!

My husband told me last night that he had no more work shirts to wear because all of his were dirty. Fine time to tell me at 11:00 at night! I guess he had 1 left which he would be wearing today. This morning I decided to run downstairs and do a load of laundry so that he would have clean work shirts for tomorrow. I figured that in between loads I could play my new game. Well, I went down at 11:00 this morning and threw his shirts in the washer. Someone was occupying the drying, no big deal. After an hour I would be able to run back downstairs to switch my laundry over, right? WRONG! Someone never took their clothes out of the dryer. Not so big of a deal. I could have simply taken them out and put mine in the dryer, right? WRONG AGAIN!!! Their clothes aren't even dry and they've been in the dryer for 2 hours!!!! They don't have a big load in there, they are obviously just too darn cheap to pay the $1.25 for 60 minutes of dryer time. My guess is that they only spent about 50 cents for 20 minutes!!! So..here it is 2 hours later and I STILL haven't been able to put my clothes in the dryer. They've been sitting in the washer for over an hour and a half because someone is too lazy to go get their laundry!!! If they sit in there too long and I have rewash them (because we all know what happens to clothes that sit in a washer for too long) I'm going to flip out and make a report at the office. What annoys me most is that when I do laundry, since there is only 1 washer and 1 dryer for an 11 apartment complex, I have the common decency to keep an eye on the time so that I can get my clothes out of the way and make room for someone else to do their dirty laundry!!! I've just gone out the front door and I can hear that the dryer is going, so apparently they finally got off their behind and went back to the laundry room to finish drying their clothes. Guaranteed their clothes will sit in that dryer for another 2 hours! Correction, it WOULD sit in that dryer for two hours, but as soon as i hear that the dryer has stopped I will be taking their clothes out and putting mine in! And I will be making a report at the office...this is ridiculous. By the time my clothes are dry it will have taken me well over 4 hours to do one load of laundry!

I'm still in the process of cleaning my spare room...I DO get distracted. But it's getting there, slowly. I've spent a couple of hours each day just going through paperwork and filing stuff. I never realized how much paperwork I actually had. But with all the moves in the past few years, I'm not surprised at how unorganized I am. My computer desk in now clean...well, my side of it is anyway. My husband's side, not so much.

Almost all of my wedding pictures are in. We realized we were missing two prints so my photographer went ahead and ordered them. That's not bad considering we got well over 125 prints. I have to order the albums and get them put together for my parents and his mother. I'm also doing one for my grandmother. I had originally decided that I'd do them in a scrapbook form, but then figured I'd never do it, and I'm not that crafty anyway. So I've gone back to the album idea.

I found a new game to play online. It looks pretty good even though it's a war simulator and I'll probably get my butt kicked. It's called Travian. I'm a Roman tribe and so far I've got a decent sized village with a population of 66, which includes 2 legionnaires. I've just returned from raiding a neighboring village (which is my first raid) and I managed to score a total of 80 units of wood, clay, iron and wheat. Not much of a score, but better than nothing. We'll see how things go in the next few days!

When my husband came home from Church he looked absolutely drained. I suppose it could be because he stayed up until 3:30 this morning playing a video game and then got up at 6:30 this morning to finish his lesson for today. He doesn't function well with little sleep. But if he had finished his lesson yesterday he could have slept later. But he wanted to play video games yesterday and so now he has to pay the price. Anyway, I was on the phone with Mother Mitchell when he came in and I wasn't about to ask him why he left so early this morning. At any rate, I found my answer. Seems like I'm out of touch lately and I didn't realize that we set the clocks ahead an hour last night. He left on time this morning and I didn't get out of bed quite as early as I thought I had.

I've been working on the computer room though not as diligently as I wish I had. I've had a terrible headache since Wednesday. OK, OK...so that's not the real reason...I have a bad habit of diverting my attention all the time. I'd take a guess and say that I'm somewhat ADD, but I think that would be pushing it. I just don't focus well and become very easily distracted. For example, I was dusting and organizing the bookshelf when I heard a commercial on the radio about "Riverdance." Normally I wouldn't have paid much attention but they did say that this would be the last tour for "Riverdance" as they would no longer be performing. So I immediately hopped on the computer and attempted to order tickets. I say attempted because I had no luck online, so I called the place and ordered them over the phone. Bad thing - I stopped cleaning to do something else. Good thing - We'll be going to see "Riverdance" on March 29th. So I guess being easily distracted is not always a bad thing.

Anyway, I just finished eating some lasagna, so I guess I'll get back to cleaning. I did take some before pictures and I'll probably take some after pictures. I'll post when I'm all done...but it could be days at the rate I'm going!

I'm not even sure what to blog anymore. My life is just so not that interesting since I've been out of work. And it's a stretch to say it was interesting before I became unemployed. I spend most of days cleaning, watching TV, playing computer/PS2 games, reading, painting, and occasionally getting my ass outside and doing something...anything. I don't find any of that blog worthy. I have managed to catch up on some other blogs that I find interesting, but some don't update as much as they used to, and I'm wondering if maybe I'm not the only one not finding much to blog about lately.

In other news, and this really isn't blog worthy either, but it's something...The other night I was playing God of War on the Playstation, which by the way, is an awesome game. My husband wanted to play his game, Black (another really great game) so I decided to go to bed. But before that, I figured I should check my email first, so off to the computer room I went. Normally, I would have just gone straight to bed. But this night, I diverted to the computer room and sat down to open Outlook Express. I hadn't been there but maybe two minutes, tops, when all of a sudden I heard water splash and felt a drop on my head. I looked up to the top of the computer desk and noticed that my Betta wasn't in her fish bowl. Did a double check and sure as shit, she had jumped out of the bowl and onto the shelf. I had to move the bowl to find her but I scooped her back up and put her back in her bowl. I can't quite understand why she want to attempt suicide, but I'm thinking it could be several things. she used to be in a 10 gallon tank, but having only one fish in a tank that size is more of a pain than anything. Cleaning it was such a chore, not to mention that it grew more algae than one could imagine in such a short period of time. So I put her back in her bowl, well, more like a vase, and placed a book on top to keep her from another suicide attempt. And if it's not that, it could be that she's lonely. In her old home, the 10 gallon tank, she had a friend, a male Betta. He died about a year ago, at the tender age of just over a year. I don't dare get her another male companion...she's two years old and much larger than a young male. I fear that she would kill any new male. Besides, I would have to set up the 10 gallon tank again. I don't know what to do...I'll have to think on that one for a bit.

I don't have paint class for the whole month of March. As I posted earlier, my paint teacher is in Florida for a month. And I have started on a new painting while she is away. I think I can get a good deal of it done before she returns. I've been working on it little by little, but waiting for it to dry in between is another pain. The good thing is, I can post pictures of the work in progress.

My husband left for Church this morning while I was still sleeping. I can't figure out why he left before 8:30 when Church doesn't start until 10:00. He's only 30 minutes away...??? Maybe I should ask him when he comes home.

Friday I went to my parent's house in the afternoon. My mother had called on Thursday night and told me I had a package that was to be delivered but it needed a signature. So, I headed over there to wait for it. My cousin Robert is currently remodeling their bathroom so I figured I'd run into him. I haven't seen him since the wedding, and it was quite a while before that since I had seen him last. we used to be a tight family, but when my grandmother passed away, well, it was difficult for all of us to get together anymore, since my grandmother's birthday was the one reason the whole family got together in the first place. Anyway, when I walked onto the back deck, Robert was outside cutting some sheet rock. I stood silently until he looked up, I didn't want to startle him, for fear he might chop off a finger or something. It would have been nice if I could have said hello to him, but he wouldn't have heard me anyway. So I waited until he was done and looked up. It was nice to see him again. he asked how I was and I asked how he was. Chit chatty sort of stuff, and then I went into the house to wait for my package. I wasn't there 30 minutes before the UPS driver showed up and I ran down stairs to sign for the thing. The UPS driver told me had been there the day before but there was no one to sign. He then asked me about the guy he saw on the roof. I guess Robert was working on the bathroom exhaust when the driver saw him. The guy told me he was calling to Robert and yelling but Robert never acknowledged him. I laughed and said, "Yeah. I'm sure he didn't hear you." The UPS guy then said he figured that he was a contractor and couldn't sign for the package anyway. I then said "No, he could have. That's my cousin. But he couldn't hear you. He's deaf." So we laughed for a minute before I finished signing and the UPS guy left. I didn't hang around my parents' long after that. just long enough to finally spray my finished paintings. Robert noticed them as I was on the deck spraying them and asked if I had painted them. When I told that yes, in fact, I had, he was impressed and said "You're good." I just smiled and said thank you. It's always nice to have a compliment on your artwork. I left shortly after 3:30, right after Robert, and right after my brother came home. I was hoping that my husband and I would be able to sit down together and watch our wedding DVD (That was the package) but he had to go to Church. So I haven't watched it yet. maybe we can find the time to watch it when he's not so busy with Church.

Well, since I posted the picture of my fish, I realize how incredibly unorganized my computer room is, not to mention how in need of a serious dusting it is. I think I'll spend my day cleaning and organizing this big mess. We tend to just throw stuff in here when we can't find a better place for it. Sheesh, that's got to stop!!!

I haven't blogged in awhile. Shame on me! I spent last Monday and Tuesday doing laundry. Fun, fun! Since we moved in July we haven't quite finished unpacking. I finally opened a couple of bins and found the majority of my clothes neatly packed away where they have been since last winter. Once I opulled them all out I realized that I have far too many clothes. In fact, they wouldn't even fit in my closet and bureaus. That, of course, got me to going through my huge wardrobe and getting rid of some things that I barely wore or that were so old they needed to be discarded. Naturally, since the clothes had been packed for a year, they needed to be washed, and that's why I spent the majority of Monday and Tuesday doing laundry.

Wednesday morning my husband wasn't feeling well and decided to stay home form work and rest. He said he had a fever, but his temperature was quite normal. He stayed home again on Thurday and Friday. Thursday his temerature was up to 101, so I know he wasn't pulling my leg about being sick. I often wonder if he truly is ill when he says he is. And I only question the validity of his being sick because I know how he loathes work. His exact words are "Hate, hate, hate! Loathe entirely." He was feeling much better on Saturday, thankfully.

On Thursday I started my new painting. Paint class is over for the month of March because my paint teacher is away in Florida for the month. Must be nice to take a month long vacation. (I should talk, I've been on a permanent vacation from work since the first week of January!!!) So, since I wouldn't be at class for awhile, I decided to bring all my supplies home and work from here. I see no sense in wasting the month of March when I have nothing else to do. Of course, I haven't picked up my brush since Thursday, but only because the paint isn't dry yet. But I have a feeling that I'll pull the canvas down and get to work some more on my painting.

Thursday night Tray, Mother Mitchell and I went to the tattoo parlour and added two more paw prints to the one that we got back in July of 2005. Originally there were 5 of us that got a single paw print, to signify that no matter where we were in life, the 5 of us would always have the dog pound experience to bond us. Since we no longer speak to 2 of the girls, we decided to get an additional 2 paw prints because, quite frankly, I don't think that the friendship between the 3 of us will ever end. We're like the Ya-ya sisterhood!

Friday morning my phone rang at 7:41 am. My mother has a hbit of calling early in the morning because she thinks that I should be awake and my husband should be at work so she won't bother him. Nice, Ma! Anyway, she wanted to ask me if I could bring my Nana to the nursing home to visit her sister. I guess my great-aunt has dimentia and can no longer care for herself. Apperently, her husband is alos not caring for her and her son decided it best to put her in a home. It's quite sad really. I remember my great-aunt always being so vibrant and full of life. I called my Nana at 10:30 to see if she was ready to go and she asked that I pick her up at 11:00. That's a first, me being ready to go before someone else. I'm usually always late. So I picked her up at 11:00 and we headed for the nursing home. My grandmother is quite able to drive herself, but she wasn't sure how to get there. I told her that if she needed or wanted to go anywhere she could always call, since I'm home all day. I spent the day with my Nana and it was wonderful. We visited her sister, for half of an hour because she kept falling asleep. then we went to my mother's to pick up a couple of my wedding phots that had arrived. I have to say they are brilliant. Then we went to Michael's so I could buy a frame for the one wedding photo. She helped me pick it out since I couldn't decide on the one I wanted. We stopped by the locksmith to have some car keys made for me and some house keys made for her. the bank was right next door so I popped in an inquired about my ATM card. After we were through I mentioned that I wanted to stop and grab something to eat on the way and my Nana decided we should stop by Gregg's and get a bite to eat. So, we did, and I bought. I've never actually spent a whole day with Nana, but again, it was great!!

I loathe grocery shopping, but that's what my husband and I did on Saturday. He always goes without me and it bugs me because he buys the same stuff all the time. So I picked out all the food and he paid! It was a different experience and one that I don't know if I'll be repeating anytime soon. But we shall see!

Well, I'm off to paint! I'm cooking dinner tonight, which is a switch, so I'll paint until about 2:00pm, take a shower, and then start dinner! He better like it!!!

Five years ago

It's been five years since The Station Nightclub Fire claimed the lives of 100 Great White fans in Rhode Island. It was the 4th largest nightclub tragedy in U.S. History. On April 23, 1940 a fire killed 198 people at the Rhythm Night Club dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi. 492 were killed in a fire at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston, Massachusetts on November 28, 1942. The Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky was where 165 people lost their lives in a fire on May 28, 1977. And right here in our backyards, five years ago today, 100 people were killed in a blaze that ripped through The Station Nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island in under three minutes flat.

I don't much care for dragging up the past, as it just the that...the past. And nothing anyone can ever do or say will change it. It's horrible. It's a tragedy. It shouldn't have happened. But it's a fact. And it could have been avoided.

So who do we blame? The courts told us to blame the nightclub owners. They told us to blame Great White's road manager. Some people claim we should blame the manufacturers who made the sound-proofing that caught fire. Others blame the fire marshall, who passed the nightclub's fire safety inspection just a couple months before. Some of the victims' families tell us to blame the band. Some people say we should blame God. The answer isn't clear.

I don't think it will ever be clear, because there is no answer. We can continue to place blame on people all we want. It still won't make this tragedy go away. It will not take back all the pain and suffering. It won't bring back those that lost their lives. Nor will it undo the injuries done to those that survived. The scars will be there forever. And as we all know, scars are daily reminders of the past.

The only reason I'm even mentioning this is because I came across an article on The Station Nightclub Fire somewhere on the internet this morning. I don't remember where or how, but I do know that it was about the five year anniversary of the tragedy. I read the article, and quite frankly, I was appalled. And it was one little paragraph that totally ticked me off. Apparently one woman who lost her daughter in the fire desecrated the cross of another victim.

Let me explain. A makeshift "memorial" was erected on the site of The Station. There were (and may still be) 100 crosses. One for each of the victims that died that night. One of the vctims was Ty Longley, the guitarist for Great White. This woman decided that Ty Longley killed her daughter because it was his bands fault that the fire occurred in the first place. So what did she do? She took down his cross and threw it in the woods. I'm sure this woman's daughter is rolling over in her grave.

So again, who do we blame for this tragedy? I still say that there's no answer. It was an accident, not an on-purpose. This is one of the reasons that the world has gone to shit. Because everyone is looking for a scapegoat. People need to blame someone. Hell, my family and I could do the same. We could blame The President for killing my cousin in Iraq. Sure, if it wasn't for The President, my cousin may still be alive. It is his fault that we went to Iraq in the first place. But, then again, my cousin is the one who decided to join the Marines post 9/11. So sure, it may be the bands/tour manager/club owners fault that the pyrotechnics were ignited. But, those people chose to go to the club that night. And believe me, I'm not blaming the victims in ANY WAY. I'm just saying....there is no one to blame. It was an accident. A terrible tragedy that should never have happened, for many reasons.

And why the hell does it take this kind of horror to set people straight? Why is it that people only change their ways after some one loses their life? Shouldn't we be taking care of the one thing that means the most right from the get go...our life? We only have one to live, so why not live it to the best of our ability? Live it the way it's meant to be lived. Know that your life effects so many people. The choices we make our not just for our own personal benefit. Like the saying goes....

To the world you may be one person. But to one person you may be the world.

Happy Valentine's Day...

What a commercial holiday...if you can even consider it a holiday. I certainly don't. I usually dread Valentine's Day for the simple fact that I've spent so many of them without anyone to share it with. This year is different, of course. Last year I didn't get anything from Ron ON Valentine's day...but I did get my engagement ring two days later. I'm eager to see hwta he got me this year. He's a terrible gift giver I must admit. He just comes up with the corniest gifts. and I guess it really shouldn't matter as it's the thought that counts.

Anyway, I bought him a bunch of stuff. I'd list it all, but there's too much too list. So I took a picture instead. If you can figure out what everything is, power to ya! Now all I have to do is put it all together and let him open it later when he gets home. Hopefully he'll like everyhting.