how do i fit it all in?

let's see. the bridal shower/bachelorette bash went really well. wonderful fun and great pictures abounded. i took emily's son to a bday party sat morning. he was very well behaved and i had a lot of fun. he's finally at an age where you can carry on a conversation with him and he's hilarious. then off to dad's to work. i did dishes, vaccuumed the whole place, and cleaned the area outside the front door. you can actually see the green indoor/outdoor carpet now instead of just dirt. then dad had me take apart a cpu. it was really dusty, but cool. i learned the names of stuff and what they actually do. i've used a computer since 1984 but never looked inside one. it was fun. and he finally gave me a laptop. unfortunately when i got it home, i couldn't get the wireless to work. but i had fun changing the desktop picture and all the colors to make it mine.

sunday i went to church, where my uncle spoke and of course my aunt came up. i had to go to the bathroom and have a good cry. but we sat next to each other in sunday school and talked about his kids and i felt better. then home to the very deep sleep of a long and much needed nap.

tuesday a daycare called and asked for a program the next morning. their fieldtrip to the zoo was cancelled, so i went wednesday morning and did a zoo program. it went really well, the kids participated a lot, which always makes it more fun. wednesday night i had dinner with debra and sam and then hit some sales at joanne's.

i took thursday off to catch up on my web class and work for dad. i learned tables, which was something i was interested in doing to help a web site look way more organized. i did it in the wee hours of the morning, so i made a lot of little mistakes, but finally got it right. at dad's i cleaned 4 of the 8 windows inside and out. lots o cobwebs, spiders, dirt and dust. i did dishes and worked on, or more like watched, him work on his wireless and getting my laptop to connect to it. it finally did, but when i got it home, i still couldn't get it to work. grrr. but i got money and dinner, so it was a successful day.

i worked the weekend. it was busy in spurts. the rain around 3pm saturday cleared the place out which was nice. we got pretty slammed sunday, so much checkin. but the real bummer was that the blood mobile was supposed to come. lots of people showed up for it, but it didn't arrive until 4pm, an hour before we close. i'm not sure they got anybody. when i got home jodi and i did some rearranging. the desk i use belonged to my last roommate, but jodi bought it from her. it didn't fit in her room, so i put it in the dining room for me to use. she needs more space to spread out her textbooks and study, so she rearranged her room and we switched desks. emily gave me her old flat screen, so i was able to get rid of that monsterous monitor. i also finally opened my all in one printer, scanner, fax, copier that i got for christmas. it is small and works great! i just have to figure out where to put all the stuff that was in the big desk. i'm also thinking of rearranging my room too, we'll see.

today i slept until 1pm. 12 hours of sleep. i guess i was tired. now just catching up on facebook, email, and blogging. gotta go to my sister's to help give her cat a shot. she needs them everyday, cause her kidney's are failing, and karen's in st pete on her last rotation! and justin's gone to new mexico cause his mom's having back surgery today. sam is staying with the animals, but needs help giving the shot. hard to hold a cat still and slowly stick a needle in. then we're gonna see a movie. the proposal if my roommate is free or harry potter if she's not. oh and i need to work on my class too. it ends august 7th and i'll be knee deep in wedding prep, so i have to finish this week.

playing catch up, again.

yikes its been over two weeks. i was waiting to do this at home so i could add some pics, but at home i find other things to occupy my time. the fourth of july party at cat and bill's was a great success. we played a new game, cornholing (don't know about that spelling) its like bean bag toss. i crushed my roommate and then my brother and i were a team against my brother-in-law justin and sister cat. the first game brian and i devastated them, the second game was neck in neck tying with 100 pts. cat and justin won the tie breaker, but i want a thrid game to prove who is the bestest! swimming in their pool was lovely. we had races, everybody joining in. i was the big loser of that game. i can't swim in a straight line, so i'm blaming my losing to everyone, including my mom, on that defect (she can't swim a straight line either, so it must be her fault). the fireworks were awesome and no one lost any body parts, although my mom stayed on her feet to run if need be. they were pretty big to be exploding right over our heads.

olive's bday party in orlando was sooo much fun. the drive to and from orlando was mostly terrifying and slow. rain is bad on the interstate. lots o accidents and with all the construction in o town water just sits on the road and you go through puddles and just know you're gonna crash into one of those cement barriers and kill yourself. however, the party was a success. the kids loved the pool and cupcakes. the adults loved the food, the cuteness of olive, and pummeling ishu with water balloons (thanks to me!) i'm going down again at the end of the month for a craft fair that should be way fun. and we're gonna eat at our new place bocca de beppo (spelling again) this family style italian place that is awesome! oh and of course i like spending time with the martinez family :)

carrie's bridal shower is tomorrow! filmed the groom answering questions last night and it was hilarious!! i have a lot of cooking to do tonight though. plus the missionaries are coming over and my sister and dinner must be cooked. i'm making meatloaf. oh how i love it, its making my mouth water. i've been making lists today for all the things i still need to do for tomorrow. i will not be getting to sleep anytime soon. i have to finish her present, i finished the big part last night and i think sam can help with the rest while i cook. that would be oh so wonderful. i really hope all goes well tomorrow night. that people show and carrie has fun and the bachelorette part downtown works like a want. we'll see.

i am getting behind on my web class. i had to do two lessons fast this week before they disappeared. gotta catch up this weekend. i worked for dad last friday. i scrubbed the fridge, it looks really good. we also worked on my hand me down laptop, which im way excited about. hopefully we finish it when i go out this saturday. i'm taking emily's son aaron to a bday party saturday morning (hopefully he behaves, the little rascal) and then i'm going out to dad's and hopefully free movie, transformers, with sam and the roommate. work has been good this week. i don't have any programs for two weeks and finished the booklists i've been working on, so i'm being kinda lazy at work since i'm so busy in the personal life. i did go to the gym three times last week and three times this week. i lost 3 lbs. last week, so we'll see if that continues this week. i hope to get to the gym sat night, but usually cleaning dad's shop is a workout in itself.

i think that's everything. i'm sure it's not, but enough for now. hopefully some pics next time!

keeping busy

lots to do. dishes and laundry and taking out the trash and watering plants (thank you rain for coming!) and grocery shopping and decorating for the 4th and spending time with various friends and family (made it to the art museum) and doing my web page class and going to the beach and scrapbooking and handing out and mailing bridal shower invites and buying tickets for a play (peter pan!) and going to church and work and prepping programs (dinosaurs) and dealing with a hundred questions a day from staff and patrons and being annoyed with annoying people and trying to count calories (calorie count you rock!) and exercise and trying to find a day to see a movie (i get in free!) and realizing i'm throwing a bridal shower in 2 1/2 weeks and haven't planned a thing (oh crap!) and going to the bank and the pharmacy and unpacking my sister and making food for the 4th and working overtime (thank you extra money!) and cleaning my dad's shop and remembering to take my meds and posting and editing pics and keeping up with this blog. whew. i'm tired. but happy to be busy and productive and to have people that need me and people that want me. life is good and i have good people to share it with.

work and the family

been too long again since the last post. i worked a weekend and had a great program about the beach. we made these super cute octopus creatures and had lots of fun. the picture above is like it, but i just used folded cardstock instead of a paper towel roll. sandy got the idea off the interent and they turned out even better than this. tomorrow i'm going to a preschool to do a program for 35, 3 & 4 year olds. just doing my favorites, like don't let the pigeon stay up late and bark george and the songs rags and wheels on the bus. i've never been to this school before, so hopefully all goes well. work itself has become harder. there are just so many people, with so many questions, that check out and return sooo many books. now on our phone hour we check in and my wrist is bothering me, but that probably has something to do with the 50 bridal shower invitations i made last week. all that cutting and folding and pasting and punching, wears a wrist out. but at least they are done.
i still need to finish her present for the shower and that's gonna hurt my wrist too. but i've got 3/4 of it done and 3 weeks to do it. unfortunately i slept thru church sunday and didn't get the invitations handed out. i was so exhausted from moving my sister the day before that i slept until 3pm.

yes cat and bill finally got their house!!! they signed the papers wedensday and i rushed over right after work. it is so big and the layout is good and they have lots of land and a pool. i'm soo excited for them. most of the fam came over and helped with the move on saturday. dad was in charge of ceiling fans and putting up things in the bathroom that mom kept going out to buy. mom was in charge of the bathroom and bought lunch and dinner for everybody. brian and bill did all the heavy lifting. they worked like dogs and it was 102 outside, so they were pretty beat. cat and i packed and unpacked the kitchens. we got their bed all set up and they spent their first night on saturday. cat went to the old apartment sunday and cleaned for hours, then turned the keys in. so long dinky apartment with the tiniest kitchen i've ever been in, hello big 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house for only 2 people. bill had to leave monday morning for a business trip, so cat has to spend the first week in the new house alone. but that will give her lots of time to organize things. plus this is the break between summer a and b, so she has a little extra time. i'm going over a few nights after work to help and keep her company. we are hoping to have 4th of july there, with their new pool and all that land to play frisbee and throw the football on.

i worked for my dad again on wednesday. i had monday and wednesday off last week from working the weekend. i washed dishes, made him lunch, and we went through everything on one of the shelving units in his workshop. it was very dusty and i killed a bunch of roaches. we threw away like 6 big garbage bags of computer junk. then he napped and brian helped me flip over the recliners and vaccuum and dust. i got to one corner of the huge L shaped desk. still a long way to go. i definitely need to clean the fridge, some gross things in there. i haven't done much on my class. i haven't been in school for a long time and then i did a lot of homework on the reference desk. one day last week it took like three hours on the desk to make it through a 12 question pre-course quiz. too many people bothering me :) i tried to logic the answers out since most of it was about html and i don't know anything about that. i got 7 right, not to bad. we take the quiz again at the end to see what we've learned. lessons 1 and 2 are out and i've read 2 pages of chapter 1 in lesson one. there are 4 chapters and i'm afraid to find out how many pages per chapter. the first two lessons are more history of the web and then we get to do hands on things to start building web pages.

father's day was good. we all went to karen and justin's. bill stayed home to get ready for his trip. we had hot dogs, brats, corn on the cob, potato salad, coleslaw, deviled eggs, and bbq potato chips. it was so yummy. i finally got mom on facebook. all her siblings and nieces are on there and with ruth gone, she needed a new way to stay in touch. however, she spelled her password wrong and now can't get in. oh mother. hopefully she figures it out. karen made two new things, coconut chiffon pie and coconut marble cake. the chiffon was good, but i could taste the lemon zest, and i don't like lemon. the cake was a little dry, but good too. then cat went home to sleep and we watched bedtime stories. its a family friendly adam sandler movie that is way cute.

a day of much needed fun

went to the river with my 5 cousins and their children, plus my family, minus one brotherinlaw. we wanted to spend a day of fun together away from the house and the sadness from the day before. my uncle brought his boat and people waterskied, wake boarded and rafted behind it. karen wake boarded for the first time and got up on her second try. she loved it. i lay on a chair with a footrest, munching the yummy boiled peanuts i made that everyone loved. i watched, videoed, and photographed the older boys and young at heart men, do the rope swing or do flips off a tree and dock. but mostly i was in the water in a place next to the dock that we could stand in and roped off so the kids wouldn't float down the river.

i got to know my cousins kids better, especially the young ones. it gave the parents a break to relax while we watched out for them. flung them in the air, helped them swim, made sure they were all accounted for, splashed them and shook the raft they floated on. so much laughter to help ease the pain of the day before. it was adorable to see my brotherinlaw justin playing with the kids, hoping for some of his own soon. plus my brother, always watching out for them, helping them on and off the dock, up and down the hill, over and over. always patient, always kind.

my oldest cousin julie and her husband ivan are so much fun. ivan kept us rolling in laughter for most of the day. the man ate an orea off the ground that ants had been feasting on. he threw peanut shells at us. he squirted ice cold water on us. julie reigned him in when he needed it. on our trip in august/september to stay in a cabin in the ga mountains we'll get to see them again. they only live 45 minutes away. we are going to try to spend more time together even though we are spread out through florida and georgia. its really not that far and its really important to be with each other. my uncle wants to sell the house and get a place on the river. he loves boating and fishing. he wants a place we can all go to and have fun. he was out there wakeboarding and waterskiing, doing tricks like a man half his age. he kids say know one has told him how old he is, so he keeps on going like he's a teenager. it was good to see him laugh and have some fun today. its good to know i'll like the people i'm going to be spending eternity with :)

tears

today was hard. i finally cried. a lot. the sisters at church had a nice lunch for the family. then the viewing. my aunt didn't like people staring at her, even in death, so it was a closed casket. my mom helped her daughters dress her, that was the beginning of her crying. my mom has been pretty strong through this, but today she looked rough. her eyes and nose were red and swollen. she looked her 57 years. and yet she was beautiful. no black for her. she was in pink and green and looked like spring. i set next to her during the first part of the viewing when it was just mostly family and we watched the slideshow. my mom in the early pictures with her pointy glasses and blond pig tails. ruth was a beautiful woman. i cried through the pictures. her and bob and their teenage love that blossomed into a wonderful marriage with 5 children and 8 grandchildren. she really lived. lots of pictures of all the places she's been. hawaii and jamaica, the bahamas and all over the us. by her side her children and her beloved husband. always a smile on her face and a laugh in her eyes. as i cried i remembered how vibrant and loud and loving she was. i'm going to miss that.

the funeral was wonderful and long. the church was packed with the people who loved her. her youngest daughter and oldest granddaughter just 2 years apart, sung nearer my god to thee. that song always makes me cry. then robyn her daughter spoke. she's closest to me in age and 7 months pregnant. she cried through a lot of it and recounted among other things, the romance of her parents. then her son jason spoke. he recounted ruth's penchant for losing her keys and wallet and glasses. her nicknames for all her children and siblings. she was mama bear. his wife is pregnant with their first child. they just found out it was a boy. someone to carry on the family name. ruth was at the birth of all her grandchildren. he cried when he said how much she had been looking forward to being at the birth of his son. talk about tears flowing. then all her grandchildren sang the song love is spoken here. my mom spoke after that. her siblings said they couldn't do it. she's the rock, the big sister now, so she got the things they each wanted to say and weaved them into a lovely and funny tribute to their sister.

then one of her tuesday night painting sisters spoke. ruth and 3 girlfriends had gotten together every tuesday for 12 years to work on projects, share their trials and triumphs and girl talk. it was nice to hear a friend talk, to share another part of my aunt. during this talk, tiffany's daughter scared us by chocking on a spree. then she threw up on her mother. pregnant, sick, at her mother's funeral, her child scaring her and then puking on her and tiffany's bday is tomorrow. she looked pretty miserable. another speaker - a bit long winded and a operatic singing of the lord's prayer by dr kesling and then the bishop read what my uncle bob couldn't get up there and say. it was to everyone there about how much he appreciated their help these two months. and it was to his ruthie. many tears. to be loved like that. to share your life with your best friend. i want that someday.

needless to say by the end karen, cat and i had a mountain of tissues setting on the pew between us. the gravesite ceremony was short and hot. i stopped at my nana and great grandpa's graves and swept the freshly mown grass of them. poor tiff. after the drama with her daughter she fell when putting the rose on her mother's casket. luckily her dad caught her. we hugged my mom goodbye, she looked ready to collapse, and brian drove her home (he finally got his real driver's license!) the rest of us kids went to my place, just next door to the cemetery and got bbq and talked and laughed about things that didn't matter. when needed a break from all the heavy stuff. then to bed i went. my leg and back hurt from all the sitting and my head hurt from all the crying.

tomorrow the family wants to get together before they leave. we're going to fanning springs. that was always the place they went to cool off at when they were growing up. bob gives boat rides on the river and we lay in the shade and float in the springs. last time i went with them was 20 years ago. i'm looking forward to being with them all. to remember ruth. to get to know each other better. to enjoy each other while we're here. to have fun with the people i love.

things to do

my aunt ruth passed away at 5am this morning. she's been in a coma for over a week. this gave the family a lot of time to get together and talk about her, hold her hand, and get to know each other better. but now her pain is gone and she has gone back home. the funeral will probably be thursday. well see how it goes.

this weekend i started working for my dad. i started by cleaning his work shop. i spent five hours scrubbing that place. i killed a lot of spiders. and sucked up a lot of sand and spider webs with the shop vac (i so want one). surfaces are now white and the carpet is pink. next time i go out there we will work on organization and throwing crap out. the other part of working for him will be to do web pages. my dad owns his own computer business Computer Aide (http://www.the-computer-aide.com/) and my sister Cat has done the web pages for a few places for him. the town of Ft White, Advent Glassworks, and the Computer Aide site. i hope to improve these sites and do more for the small, rural businesses he does computers and networking for.

i signed up for a class through santa fe's continuing education on creating web pages. its a 6 week course that starts next week. dad's paying for it and i'm excited to learn something new. i really need the money. it was either work for dad with a flexible schedule or go get a part time job. even though this means listening to dad talk computers (he spent 30 minutes saturday showing me a bit about computer programming) i'll make better money and have hours that totally work around my real job as an awesome librarian.

i also need to get started on the invitations for the bridal shower i'm throwing next month. her colors are red and yellow and orange. sunflowers and daisies. i really want to make them by hand. we'll see how that goes too.

i have to work this weekend, which means a program. the last one was on frogs and it was way cool. a coworker brought in tadpoles and frogs and the kids really liked it. i'm not sure what to do this one on.

i just talked to my sister cat and she thinks she is closing on her house this friday. she and her husband bill have been working on getting this house forever. the original closing was april 20th. a very long time ago. but the place is awesome, so i guess its worth it. we want to do fourth of july there, since they have a pool and plenty of room to run around.

i think that's all. thanks to you have been checking up on me and making me feel loved.