I am still alive.

Ok, so, it's been a while. You think the lack of updating has been bad, you should see my mailbox. I've not managed to actually READ anything in months. At most I could sit in the chair and delete mail I knew I'd never read once I started reading my mail again (sales and other such "junk" that doesn't quite fall into the "spam" sector).

That should be changing now that my husband has bought me a shiny little laptop all of my very own. It somehow seemed easier for him to open a Best Buy credit card and charge what he did for this thing than it was for him to spend 1/4 of the amount on a decent chair and have to rearrange the living room again. The logic went something like "we could get the chair, but you'll still want a laptop and I'll end up buying both in the long run anyway. This way we'll have the Best Buy credit already established for appliance buying later when we need it and when we get a house we can buy furniture we like, not just settle for something because it's cheap now". Or something like that.

Then, lo, then there was a laptop in my hands and wee! I am a happy girl.

So. Catching up.

K.'s birthday went well. We had fun. There was mommy-made cake and home-made pizza and there were lots of presents. She made out like a bandit and was happy.

I kicked off November by having something that wanted to be the plague. After many hours of sleeping, I started feeling human again. I made the mistake, however, of thinking I was "fine" and started pushing myself to get things done again. It didn't last long. I've been on a roller coaster ever since. Right now I'm in a low spot, with a sore throat and violently swinging body temperatures. And I've not been sleeping again. Wee.

My birthday!! SURPRISE!!! I GOT A PARTY!!! It was a week early (he wanted my it to overshadow Thanksgiving, not the other way around) but there was cake (that I didn't order or bake or even know about!!) and food (ditto) and presents (that I didn't know about, let alone purchased and wrapped!). I was a happy girl. My mom scored me some of the writer's reference books I'd been hogging from the public library (you know it's time to buy the book when you've checked it out 13 times in the past 6 months), my brother got me a season of Airwolf on DVD, A. got me the entire Robin of Sherwood series on DVD, K. got me (with her own money, no less) on DVD, and K. and A. got me the original Highlander movie on DVD. This past weekend A. brought in the mail and there was a card from his dad for me. He sent me money with instructions to go buy me something for myself. He even underlined "yourself". Part of me wants to go buy a Christmas tree, part of me wants to put it towards this lap top, part of me wants to stash it in my savings account (4.5% interest! WOOHOO!!) and part of me wants to go to Bath & Body Works and the closest book store for a little retail therapy. For now, the money sits on my dresser in the card. I'll figure out what to do with it once my head clears.

Thanksgiving. It was... different. Instead of everyone in the family going to my grandparents', Mom and I shared cooking duties and had a buffet-style lunch over at her place while one of my aunts hosted dinner at her house. We hung out at Mom's all day while my grandparents went (were taken?) to a city an hour or so away to my aunt's. I still haven't heard from my grandparents. I've called a few times but no one answers the phone and I've stopped leaving messages because no one returns them.

Update on the apartment. The bathtub faucet still leaks, but at least it's a faucet and not a pipe. The bathroom no longer leaks and it drains now, too. There are still a lot of little minor things, but I'm not up to having them here to fix them, especially while I'm gearing up for Christmas.

The house hunting has been going slow. Molasses in winter slow. It's the time of year when the market is always slow, though. The real-estate agent that's been showing us houses... I don't think she understands us or our desires and/or needs. Yes, I still want to see houses, but don't send me emails telling me you hope I feel better indicating that you know I'm sick, then a few days later send me an email wishing me a blessed Thanksgiving and in that same email get all passive-aggressive with the need for reassurance. Truly. I'm not up to dealing with it at this time of year when I'm also sick. Also, I'm not looking at ANY house on a holiday weekend. Especially Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year's. Or Easter. Or Valentine's Day. Or Mother's Day or Father's Day. Those are off limits, as are birthday weekends. So, yes, send information on houses and when there's one that I want to visit, I'll let you know. But I'm not going to look at houses in an area of town I don't want to live in. There's no point. And by the way, learn my daughter's name.

And I guess that's about it for today. Or at least, for now. I'm still trying to recover from Thanksgiving and get my apartment back in order and have a lot of chores to catch up on, and it's getting close to that time when I start pulling boxes out of the closet to decorate. Decorating is going to be a challenge this year because our "Christmas tree corner" now has my desk in it and I don't know where I'm going to put the tree. I'll... think of something. Probably after a nap.

A little of this, a little of that

My eye was feeling much better today, but I decided to go to let some doctor-type person poke at it anyway.

He didn't poke at it much, but he was terribly impressed amused by my eye patch. Um... this... is my eye patch.


Yeah. If I'm gonna have to wear a patch, I'm doing it in style. Um. My style, but it's still a style.

Anyway, the diagnosis was that - for the past two, almost three, weeks - I've had a mild case of pink eye. In... just... the right eye. No trace of it in the left. Which is... really... beyond weird considering that my fingers are in both my eyes all the time. I wear contacts, take them out and put them in daily, always start with the right eye, and never ever wash my hands between eyes. How I don't have it in my left eye is just weird. And then there's the fact that it's been coming and going. Just... weird. But that's the diagnosis, and I now have some $68 antibiotic/steroid drop things to put in my eye four times a day for the next seven days. Wee.

Despite the complete and utter lack of accomplishment on anything else today (due to being on the phone most of the day with the insurance company), I have made more progress on Project: movie clearance.

Movies viewed in the past 26 hours: Chances Are, Quigley Down Under, Deceived, and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

Quigley Down Under and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle are both going on my master wish list for movies.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day. A. and I are going to a Home Buyer's Fair and Seminar tomorrow morning. It's supposed to last from 10am to 2pm. I think we have to be there around 9am. The blurb for it it reads:

You're invited to attend a FREE seminar where you'll learn all about purchasing a new home. After this 4 hour seminar, you'll be prepared and confident about buying your home from start to finish!

So... yeah. We'll see. Hopefully we'll come away from it having some idea of how to proceed in both finding and buying the house I we want. We've already done a lot of research, but still feel pretty overwhelmed. We're hoping this seminar will help clear up a few things. This last incident was just the last straw. The push is on, and on hard, to get out of this apartment (and out of apartments all together) and into a house where we can control the security a little better (like changing the locks any time I feel like it, and installing additional security measures). My home is supposed to be my safe haven, and this apartment is not that. No apartment is. I do not feel safe in apartments anymore. There's too much personal history preventing that safe feeling.

I guess that's it for me. My thoughts are a little scattered (I'm actually tired!!) and my eye is starting to bother me. Off to bed I go.