Posts Tagged ‘Life’

Keepin’ it movin…

Thursday, October 10th, 2013

Even though I have these overwhelming moments of “I haven’t gotten a damn thing done…” I’m still movin, movin, movin. I’m cranking things out as fast as I can, and bouncing from site to site and email to email on a regular basis. I still don’t feel like I’ve actually fulfilled anything I set out to do though. Clearly I’m accomplishing something being as all of the bills are paid and there’s still money left to do what I please… it just doesn’t seem like it’s enough anymore.

I’ve been exhausted lately, it doesn’t matter how much I actually sleep – I just never feel like it was a restful one. I don’t know if it’s the change in weather (constant Hot to Cold extremes) or the fact that the sun hasn’t come out in a few days but my eyelids are insistent on just closing completely and forgetting about the tasks at hand right now.

I’m completely 100% overbooked, the workload has got me shaking in my fuzzy slippers and there’s all kinds of pressure from every direction to just get it done where quality and speed are heavily utilized.  For just one client there’s 4 major sites to work on, each bigger than the last and of course there’s tight deadlines on every single one of them.  With another client, she was MIA for the past year and a half and all of a sudden I’m now supposed to RUSH to cater to her because she’s finally on the ball.  She still owes me like $2,500 from the last chunk of work done for her, but swears she’ll have everything paid in full upon completion. I just wish that “End” was closer.  I did just finish up on Adam’s halloween site – Oct31st.org.  I wish it could have been completed sooner, but with everything going on and the fact that I’m over-scheduled, it really took my time away from it. I feel bad for the delays, but there’s nothing I could have done about it.

Right now I’m looking down at my Thunderbird icon on the dock and it’s showing over 135 emails. Knowing that I already did the usual daily spam clean-out, I’m scared to see the requests I have waiting for me.  I need to put in about 8 hours to complete one site today, and then there’s another site that should take me about 15-20 hours that needs be done by Saturday – I just hope I have the strength to get it all done.  In theory it’s just 3 8-hour days and everything is fine, but when you’ve got other things to take care of as well, those 8 hours turn into 16 and then your brain fries and it’s time to crash.  There isn’t enough coffee to keep my eyelids open anymore.

Excitement Note:  We’re looking to buy a house!
Tomorrow (Friday 11th) is going to be beyond hectic, I’ll be on the phone all morning to get appointments setup, and get some banking needs taken care of and then at 2pm I have an appointment with a realtor to do a walk-thru on a house that I’ve been eyeing for a little while that only recently (like three days ago – recently) went back on the market.  Sean and I went to TD Bank to try to get a mortgage on our own, but since it’s a manufactured home and not on it’s own land TD didn’t approve us for the mortgage. The lady was very surprised that the pre-approval didn’t come right up considering she saw our proof of income and said “If someone who’s making $30,000 every 5 months can’t get a mortgage – something’s seriously wrong with our systems!”  So we’ll get that “This is why you weren’t approved” letter in the mail in a few weeks, in the meantime I called around to numerous banks in the area to find out who actually would provide the funding on a pre-fab home, and I found ONE bank, out of fucking 12!!  Since I just took an 11 point hit on my credit for even applying for a loan (which is something TD should figure out how to reinstate since they should properly train their employees prior to them completing an entire application knowing that this house isn’t on its own land), I now am well into the “Poor” rating for credit scores.  Sean took the same 11 point hit on his credit, but his was in the higher 690’s, so he still falls under the “You’re OK” mark.  His father, very graciously, has offered to co-sign for Sean, and since his score is in the high 800’s, there should be absolutely no doubt that the loan will be approved.  He recently sold a house, and when they ask about ‘savings accounts’ he can say that he’s got a few hundred grand in his, and even though Sean doesn’t have anything in his – I’m sure the numbers will balance out.

Now the rush is that we’re trying to bring as much money together as we possibly can.  Between closing costs, downpayment, and the initial “Get it all hooked up and turned on so we can LIVE in the house” aspect of things – we’re gonna need about 15 grand.  We’ve only got 3700 right now, so needless to say the next two months are going to be a hectic dance of “Work, Deal with Broker, Work more… keep working, working, working, working and working!”.

I’m just crossing my fingers that we can actually accomplish it.  We’ve spent so long living under someone else’s roof during the entire length of our relationship (to date) that it’s time to just start the next chapter. It’s a jump that we absolutely need to take, we’re both scared about it (obviously) but we’re going to do it together and no matter what happens we’ll always have each other to lean on.

In any event… time to get back to work. :: head desk ::

Can’t concentrate for shit…

Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

Even though I’ve already put in 5 hours (on ONE damn site) today, I still feel like I haven’t accomplished ANYTHING.  I still have an urge to put in another 3 hours but it’s after 2:30am and all I want to do is go to sleep.  I’m not sure why I’m having trouble concentrating, I just keep getting this feeling like I need to be doing something else.  Typically “pay the bills” is on the back of my mind.  Today, however, it’s been “I feel the urge to Google random shit, just ’cause”.  It’s not even anything good.  Hell, someone posted on Facebook about how they have a random itch (down there) and can’t figure out what it is.  I, for some reason, spent a half hour researching it while over a PM with her.   What the hell is wrong with me?  Her oonie should be none of my concern, but she posted it on FB and it was a distraction for me so I veered off course.

I know that up to this point I’ve accomplished everything I’ve set out to do today.  I got another 10 or so pages completed on the eCommerce backend, the kitchen’s clean and the chicken was taken out of the freezer to thaw for tomorrows dinner.  I watched my Monday night shows, and spent some quality time with a very fidgety dog who’s terrified from the one crack of thunder we experienced with the random storm that passed through Delmarva this evening.  There’s really nothing left to do, my To-Do list is empty.  So why do I feel like I haven’t completed a damn thing?

On the home front things are OK. Karen’s having some post-surgery issues that we’re working on fixing.  It’s my hope that we can fix everything with over-the-counter based products before it turns into a trip to a specialist, but we’ll see where things stand on Wednesday morning and go from there.  I don’t want to venture over to Maryland but for the sake of her health we’ve got no choice. I don’t trust a single damn doctor in Delaware and if I need to cross state lines to get in with someone who actually knows what they’re doing… so be it.

I decided, this past weekend, that Comcast/Xfinity is the absolute worst company in the world (and I’m an Optimum/Cablevision hater too).  With the move to my new “office”, Sean went out and picked up a cable box from Comcast that was supposed to have been activated within an hour of getting off the phone with tech support.  Of course after four phone calls and constantly being told “wait another hour” (over the course of three days), I decided to take out my frustration on Twitter with a #comcastsucks hashtag, PLUS tagging with @comcast to prove my point.  I get a message from a Comcast employee offering to assist me and within 10 minutes of providing him with my account # and the serial number on the box in question – everything was fixed.  I still don’t understand how it was possible for him to fix something in a matter of minutes via Twitter when FOUR phone calls did absolutely nothing!  There was only ONE phone call that showed any level of being “productive” and that’s when they somehow conned Sean into signing up for a triple-play when we have absolutely no need or use for a home phone. We’re not getting any kind of an upgrade with channels, we’re only getting Encore for six months free.  Who the hell watches Encore? At least offer Showtime so I can watch Shameless in January for crying out loud!  It did wind up costing us like $25 less than we were set to pay, but the point is we didn’t call to alter the plan – we called for the damn box to work so I’m not sitting here in silence when I’m not in the mood for music.

I have found that my concentration level goes up with a TV in the background, mainly because I find TV to be so boring that I’d rather be in Dreamweaver.  That’s not even working for me though.  I’m extremely sound sensitive and wanting to just fly far far away and get away from it all.  I’m halfway tempted to head down to the beach since the storm is now off shore and I’m sure the surf on the Atlantic’s gone up quite a bit.

In any event… gonna try to knock out another hour and go to bed.  My major goals for tomorrow are to get some clothes folded, put in at least 6 hours and hopefully remember to watch “Extreme Cheapskates” on TLC because the show just looks that interesting.  Not to mention the fact that after NCIS (the original, fuck LA) there’s really nothing on TV accept the news.j

I’m a Delaware Resident…again.

Friday, October 12th, 2012

As previously (and briefly noted), things haven’t been going too well medically for Karen (Sean’s Mom).   The upper lobe couldn’t survive on its own and she wound up having to go in for the section surgery to have it removed.  She’s fully lost her left lung.  Originally we were all set to believe that this was a Carcinoid tumor and was something that could be removed and wouldn’t require anything further than the healing time from the surgery.  Unfortunately… it’s not the kind of cancer we were all originally informed of.  Karen is in stage 3 lung cancer, it was found in the lymph nodes and at this point in time the only option for her survival is to begin Chemo.  The doctors want to wait until she’s reached the 6-12 weeks recovery mark.  They’re factoring in that she went in for two major surgeries 8 days apart, also factored in that she had a heart episode after each surgery.  The first one being a possible heart attack that they’re referring to as an “Episode” (crock of shit there Hopkins, crock of shit).  The second episode (following the second surgery) was a complete fuck-up by an ICU tech where she was basically overdosed on a pain killer and wound up having her heart rate at a dangerously low level.  The biggest thing to piss me off about this second “episode” (as they’re calling it) is the fact that NO ONE was called to say that she was flat-lining. The secretary is sitting there on Facebook making plans for the night – what the fuck else do you have to do??!?!!?

So we spent a total 12 days in Baltimore, basically living at the Best Western on o’Donnel Street (They are more than accommodating to Hopkins patients/families in case you’d ever need it! They truly go above and beyond expectations.)  We were informed by her doctor that she was going to be released earlier than expected so Sean and I pretty much high-tailed it out of Baltimore to get the house prepped for her arrival home.  We gutted the living room, cleared paths for her to get around, and I scrubbed/sanitized the bathroom like it’s never been scrubbed before.  We when loaded ourselves into the car and drove up to NY (the following afternoon) so that we could begin the daunting task of packing up all of our clothes Bella (who’d been in NY for almost 3 months without us), and necessary belongings to head back down to DE indefinitely. We hopped back into the car the following afternoon and met Karen and George (Sean’s father), at the house.   So figure in the course of 2 1/2 days – we were on the road for 16 hours.

We’re now slowly settling into life back in Delaware.  Originally I had everything setup in the corner of the living room but it’s proving difficult to concentrate when there’s constant activity in and out of the living room and the house itself.  There’s been absolutely no smoking in the house for the past two months and I’ve done everything I can to try to void/mask the smell but there are still some areas that it’s just so soaked into I’m unsure how to go about clearing it out anyway.  The activity increase is the fact that the dog is constantly running around the house finding bones that she forgot she hid 10 minutes before (attention span of a damn gold fish), plus there’s George and I going in and out for cigs (he more than me, but I’m no stranger to my seat on the porch either).  Plus it doesn’t help that when you get a whiff of it, you wind up wanting one yourself. SO, to solve all problems, we’ve reorganized the spare bedroom and I went out and purchased a $37 folding table from Kmart that I’m now using as a desk.  It’s larger than the table I was previously setup on and the table itself is a lot more sturdy so it makes me feel better about having a 40lb iMac permanently resting on it.

My sleep schedule was under control for a little while, but now I’m finding myself having trouble accomplishing just about everything work related.  I’m up earlier in the day (which is nice, I enjoy the sunlight for a change), but I’m back and forth running errands and going to doctors appointments.  We actually just got back from Baltimore not too long ago for a post-up follow up.  It was the “Let’s discuss our course of action” day with the Oncologist.  From there it lead to blood work and a scan.  Woke up at 6am, was out of the house by 7am, home by 4pm and now (after reorganizing and dealing with a horrible headache), I’ve finally be able to sit down and get something accomplished – Blogging.  I’m supposed to be working.  I just needed to vent and having the same conversation with people inside the house just wasn’t doing it for me.  I need to talk to the World and we all know that Twitter limits your character count… I’m already on 860 words hah.

So where do we go from here?  Sean and I have basically taken over the house.  It’s not that we wanted to, by any means, we just had no real choice in the matter – for our own conscience and moral well-being.  Karen is heavily medicated to deal with the pain, she has no left lung, she’s slowly losing her eyesight and she’s dealing with high blood pressure.  She’s only fricken 54 years old, she’s not someone who’s in her 90’s where this was a “Welp, you lived a good life, right?” situation.  She should be able to go on at least another 15-20 years!  Every time I’ve pictured my life 10-20-30 years from now, she was in the bulk of the pictures.  Why? Because she’s a second Mom, and a woman I hold dear to my heart.  Yes, like any ‘mother-in-law’ she’s a pain in my ass, but I wouldn’t change a thing because regardless of the quirks (that we both have) we get along really well.  Not many people can say that.  There’s always this ‘aura’ of the Demon mother-in-law… I personally don’t believe it and Karen’s living proof of that.

With our moving in we’ve done more than taken over the house, obviously.  We’ve been working our asses off to get all of her debt paid off.  Thankfully she doesn’t have any credit cards, so it’s really utilities/cable that we’re taking care of but she had disconnect notices for just about everything.  She did have a job prior to all of this crap going on, but she was spending her entire paycheck to put gas in the car to get to work when you crunch the numbers.  She worked 25 miles away and drives a 2006 Dodge Caravan.  It’s a gas guzzler in its own right.  PLUS, when we started with the frequent trips to Baltimore it was more gas in the tank and tolls, but less coming into the account because she obviously wasn’t able to go to work when she was 3 hours away in a different state.

So we added a good 1,000 a month to our outgoing expenses.  Thankfully by changing the billing address with Verizon our cellphones dropped like $20, that puts money back in our pocket.  We’d like to drop the car insurance down but we’re having some trouble (with the stacks of our paperwork) locating the loan information for the truck and Delaware makes you pay sales tax on a car while there’s a lein on it.  I find that absurd considering the sales tax in NY is a hell of a lot higher than DE will ever be.  I bought the truck on Long Island, we’re on the top 10 highest counties in America for crying out loud.  In order to get everything shifted down here it’s going to cost either 10% of the car, or 10% of what’s left on the loan (not sure which, honestly), but based on the balance left on the loan and the Blue Book – we’re screwed for about $1,200. So obviously the priority (before attempting to save $100 a month) we’re going to insure we’re doing it for the cost of registration – not 10% of the truck.

So yea, I didn’t want to sit here for a half hour but I couldn’t really stop myself from typing so I went with it.  Minus the medical stuff, I guess we’re all doing OK. Mentally we’re fucked but that’s because we’ve been hit with news that no one wants to hear.  It’s scared me to the point that I’m actually working on quitting smoking all together.  I’ve been a pack-a-day smoker for at least 10 years and the time has come to put it down and walk away.  I’ve got myself a pile if Mint Nicorette that I’ve been dabbing into whenever the urge is there, the training factor is whenever I’m in the car with Karen because we’re obviously not smoking anywhere near her.  So the 3+ hour car rides are gradually helping me to increase my self-control.  Since I’m technically on “Step 1”, I’m allowed one piece per hour.  I’m actually content with one piece for the entire ride.  Which is odd considering when we’re driving up (and smoking), I’m doing one every 20 minutes or so.

Sean’s taking things as best as he can… he’s not one to voice personal matters (even to me) very often so when he brings something up we discuss it and move on.  He’d prefer to be inside of his own head for things and while that’s typically very damaging to ones psyche, he actually does well with it.  He’s a special case with his mom though, she really was the primary while he was growing up (her and his Grandmother, who passed from the exact same Cancer and other issues that Karen’s experiencing – it’s scary to read her Autopsy report and compare it to Karen’s current charts, let me tell you).   He loves his father, don’t get me wrong, but there’s that “Mommy’s baby boy” type of bond there – so I think if something were to happen to her in the near future it would hit him pretty hard.  This is where we’re concerned for Chemo and the “5 year outlook” as the Oncologist described.

Either way, we’re back in Baltimore on November 6th for another follow-up appointment.  This time is for the talk of which method of Chemo are we going towards, the one that can be administered down here where she’s going once a week for sixteen weeks, or the new trial treatments that they’re doing in Hopkins where we’d be going up to Baltimore once every three weeks for upwards of a year based on the treatments themselves AND all of the follow-ups there after.  In the long run it would probably be cheaper to shut the house down in DE and rent an apartment in Baltimore for a year, honestly.  But we’re not taking that route, for all we know (knock on wood), they pulled out all of the infected Lymph Nodes and we’ll be able to say “Cancer Free” in the near future.  The reality of that is very slim, and obviously we’re not getting our hopes up.  Unfortunately this string of cancer is a death sentence…the question really is just how long is she going to be around?

Sean and I have a lot of plans… the biggest one being children.  Obviously I would love for her to be around to hopefully get a chance to help raise the little girl she always wanted.  Her and Sean are both only children, she stopped at a boy and then got herself a dog when Sean was old enough to no longer need as much attention.  I know she wanted a girl, she likes the hair/makeup/clothes thing – I don’t.  You’re lucky I even brush my hair before I throw it up into a messy bun anyway lol.  She’d be a good role model for that, and it would give her something to strive for.

I guess only time will tell.

In Honor of HUMP day

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

So here’s the thing, I dont like to complain and I don’t think I ask too much……I just want five freakin minutes of peace!!

I have been battling this new crazy schedule of cranky baby in the day, getting absolutely nothing accomplished except making baba and finding the binkie (pacafier) my son loves to throw under the couch all day. Once my husband gets home from work all I can think is WHERE DO I START! Not only do I have my work that I get paid for to catch up on, before anyone figures out I haven’t completed it all day…..but my house is a freakin disaster. I finally got to the dishes and laundry yesterday. The livingroom and bedroom were glowing on Monday. What goes on in this house that I can not keep it clean for one freakin full day?

So today, my husband was kind enough to remind me that he couldn’t remember the last time I took a shower. I of course thanked him, cause REALLY, I can’t figure out that I stink, duh!! Anywho, I decide I am going to clean tub and take a bubble bath and read my book (maybe even finish it)……Lets see how this went down.

Wash the tub – check

Sweep the floor so its nice when I step out – check

Run HOT water – check

Find stopper – check

Find a old favorite bath salt – check

Hot water is nice and hot, bath salts have been poured in, book ready to be read. I undress, take first step into bath and wonder why there is a weird smell….combination of moth balls and amonia.  Whatever, it will go away, I just need to relax. I get all comfy in the water, reading my book by page two the tub is half empty…..seriously! No worries, I can work with it….I notice the door start to open, here comes the eefing cat. She needs to see what I am doing and use her litter box. Now, I don’t know if anyone elses cat does this, but she goes in there and scratches at all the walls, wtf. So I yell at her to get out…..and in comes the weird smell again, so the combination was that freakin cats toilet and my bath salts that were way too old to enjoy ever again. But the bottle is pretty so I might keep for bathroom prop.

Then my water gets even lower, the cat left door open so draft is making room perfectly chilly. The cat is now in the bedroom, scratching on everything, and knocking stuff over. All I here is “scratch, scratch, crash” I yell at her to get out, and she defiantly meow’s back at me! It just keeps going, finally four pages into my book, a qaurter filled cold bubble bath and amonia/moth ball filled room later, I get out of tub, kick cat out of room. Put on same old house pants I started with, and will go make dinner.

I just want five freakin minutes! I guess when I take my SHOWER, after dinner I can count it as a rest from my house.

I apologize

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

I was having some trouble locating my theme archives on my external and since I’ve changed to two new computers since the last time I was really blogging/working online I started to think I was never getting ANYTHING back.  I then remembered the wonderful little website known as archive.org and hit up their way back machine to actually FIND everyone I was looking for.  So with a major thanks to that free service I was able to come back to the blogs I used to read all the time.  With that I’ve gone ahead and started to slowly add things back to the sidebar.  There are still a few to add, but I was clicking through things so fast that I got myself all kinds of screwed up and forgot where I’d gone.

It’s kind of weird, honestly.  Going back and skimming through updates make me wish that, to a degree, things didn’t turn out the way they did.  It got to a point where I’d stopped talking to people for no real reason at all and even 6 years later I have a sense of regret about it.  There were some good net/friendships that I just walked away from because ‘real life’ took the front seat for a change.  I’m not saying I want to go back 6 years ago and stop the clock to before things changed.  I’m also not saying that the conversations/fun I had with everyone wasn’t ‘real’ either.  I know a lot of my issues back then were due to the fact that I was dealing with the loss of Joe, and then the addition of Sean into my life.  I know that both instances had some sense of drama/awkward moments behind them.  I feel the need to say I’m Sorry to anyone whom I offended or pissed off in the process.

There was also a time where my day was fueled by Internet drama via blog or hiding out on message boards with ‘spies’.  I see that as a low point as well.  It had a lot to do with the fact that I spent a lot of time cooped up in my room bouncing from design job to design job and never really got to see the light of day.  I continued to go back and forth with people who, looking at it now, really didn’t deserve any of it.  If you really think about it – no one is better than anyone else, we all have our own lives which are more important than anything that could possibly be going on online.  While they’re guilty of doing the same things that I did, it doesn’t mean that either one is the bad guy and those ‘hard feelings’ should remain.

Basically stating, while I know it’s completely random and probably way too late to say it.   I’m Sorry.  

To any and everyone over the years whom I crossed paths with in a good way (that led to bad) OR bad way (that stayed that way) – I apologize.

The last few years have given me a lot of insight into who I am, and who I’m going to be. It really does take the loss of very, very important people for someone to wake up and realize that things need to change and you need to live every day as though it’s your last.  In the last year my life has done a complete 180 and I feel that, while it’s been hectic, it’s been for the better.  I’m in a better place, job wise.  I’ve made it a point to write-off those whom were not worthy of being in my life, and I’ve embraced the friendships/relationships that I currently have because being surrounded by good people is all that matters in life.

Drama is drama, it’s what makes the world go round (real or viral) and there’s no escaping it.  How it’s dealt with shows who you are as a person and that’s what matters most.

Again, to anyone swinging by that hasn’t been here in a while (for one reason or another).  I whole-heartedly apologize.

 

I finally did it!

Sunday, April 8th, 2012

After almost a year of “I need to buckle down” mentality, I finally sat down this week and began the next chapter of Krissy.nu.  Not only is there finally a nifty new theme, but I’m also bringing on a guest blogger to keep things moving forward.  There will be no more months-on-end of absolutely no posting on my part.

So what’s been going on since NOVEMBER?! Not much really, life has been it’s usual constant up and down, things have been pretty busy – work wise – and my personal life in general isn’t really bad at all.  I’ve purged a lot of excess baggage and drama out of my life and am now moving forward with a more positive attitude, and much left aggravation in my life as well.

It’s my goal for the next couple of weeks to go full force into regular blog entries and updates, plus I’m bringing Muir on for some interesting news for all you ladies out there interested in properly taking care of your skin.  She’s not only a dear friend of mine, but a consultant for Rodan & Fields – the creators of Proactive.   I also recently hired her as a lead consultant and manager for AGn Designs.

Needless to say…things are gonna pick up 🙂

Rest In Peace Jake

Sunday, November 20th, 2011

As previously posted, my neighbor was hospitalized after we found him in his apartment. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, he’s no longer with us. He was in he hospital for about a week, numerous different specialists came in to look at his charts, run tests, and try to figure out what they can do to help him.  The family found that the reason for his passing out was due to a major stroke on his left side, being as he was under sedation they had no real idea as to how badly this was going to effect him.

They slowly began to take him off of sedation but he was still unresponsive. After a week the doctors said that he really should show some signs of life other than the machines keeping him alive.  They’d taken him off the ventilator a few times over the course of the week but he failed miserably to breath on his own. His daughter noted that he was just lifeless and blank.  They found that his entire right side was paralyzed due to he stroke, and his heart was only functioning at 25%.  The family had to make the unfortunate choice of removing the life support due to this.

Jake wasn’t one of those guys that would be OK living on life support in a hospital / nursing home.  Knowing his personality, and who he was in general – having anyone make a fuss about him was just something he didn’t tolerate. He was surrounded with love and caring people but never wanted to bother anyone, no matter how he was feeling.  I always ran errands for him, and had to make it clear everytime that it was never an inconvenience to me.  Looking after someone is second nature for me, especially considering his closest family was a half hour away.  I believe in my heart if it wasn’t for the fact that I knew his routine, he wouldn’t have been found in his apartment until it was too late.  His family had the opportunity to say goodbye to him, and even though I didn’t, and it hurts really bad, things happening the way that they did were better for them.

I didn’t get the phone call until a week later, which was upsetting but I can’t totally be pissed because I understand that families in that situation have so much more going on.  I’ve spoken to his son and daughter since then, his daughter was up here for two days this past week to clear his apartment out. A lot was left behind for donations/trash but there’s still a few weeks left in the month to clear the rest out.  I know it was hard for her to go through everything.  She noted on Friday that she wanted to knock on the door to thank me for all I’ve done but also said that she’s fine and on auto-pilot until she actually needs to speak with someone.  That’s understandable for me, I personally don’t know where my mind is going to be if I was ever put into her shoes.  I know at some point in the future I will be, but can’t mentally comprehend or stomach that thought right now.  It actually turns my stomach to even think about that.

Either way. Jake was a wonderful man whom was a dear, dear friend of mine and he will be truly missed.  He was there for me when Lucy passed away and remained in my life for a few years there after.  His spirit was always there, unfortunately his body was holding him back.  I catch myself talking to him when I’m outside having a cig, in my head things haven’t fully set in being as the memorial service is not scheduled until the end of the month. I believe after that point, and his apartment being completely cleared out – things will finally hit me to the point that I have the breakdown that I feel coming on.  I’m not on auto-pilot by any means, I’ll admit I’ve been out of it, and weapy for the past week.  Today is really the first day I’ve sat down and got my feelings out.

I know I don’t blog very often, and when I do I tend to complain or have some major life changing event going on.  Regardless, I’ll still use this as my outlet because I tend to revert back to old habits when the shit hits the fan.

Woah there!

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

It’s been a pretty eventful couple of weeks, some good events, some bad events.

We finally got back to NY very early on Wednesday (26th), we were so busy with everything in DE that we just didn’t have the chance to come home until then. We left at like Midnight on Tuesday, and got home about 5am.  We stopped along the way because 4 1/2 hours in a car is just annoying without some kind of a release, which is probably why I’m not thrilled about the idea of going across country in an RV.

We came home and found that there was little to no work and began to worry considering we need to come up with anywhere from $35k to $50k in order to even truly consider moving forward with purchasing a home in DE.  There’s too much debt to pay off before we throw a mortgage and utilities on top of it. So we figure, just continue to work our asses off and go from there. We were at a complete and total stand still for about 4 days and now things are slowly beginning to trickle in. Today, I was finally able to write things down and I have 8 projects to work on over the course of the next 7 days, which means its great that I was finally able to get AGnDesigns.net up and running 100%. Hopefully this will help us to get closer to our goal. At this point, whether the house is still there or not, is irrelevant. Of course to me this would be a sign that it was meant to be, but if not – I’m OK with that because I know that when it does come to the right time, we’ll be 100% financially stable to do it.

After a few days of being home my neighbor, Jake, finally poked his head out. I was told that the reason I hadn’t seen him was due to the fact that he was in the hospital for 9 days and only came home on Monday night (before we got home) so he was resting until he could gain enough strength to come out for a bit to say hello. From that day forward I made it a point to check on him on a daily basis. I spoke to him on Sunday evening to make sure he was doing OK and if the house was warm enough for him (the thermostat for all of the apartments is in our apartment because its baseboard heat that just does the whole top floor. I don’t know why it was setup that way but things happen).  He noted he was fine, just a little sleepy and said he was going back to lay down, did his usual smile and told me that he’d be outside tomorrow since it was supposed to be nice out and he wanted to tell me everything that was going on. At this point I still did not know why he was in the hospital, but figured I’d leave him alone until he was ready to tell me.

So Monday comes around and there’s no sign of him.  His apartment was closed up and I personally didn’t sleep the night before because my stomach was telling me that something is terribly wrong.  About 7am or so I did hear some noise in his apartment, figuring he’d dropped the remote or something I didn’t think anything by it. I went about my day as normal, wondering when he was actually going to come out of the apartment to relax for a bit but that opportunity came and went.  At about 8pm I went outside for a cigarette and saw that his light was not on and instantly started to panic, I had this overwhelming feeling in my stomach telling me that I needed to get into that apartment to check on him. I rang the bell and knocked on the windows – no response. I waited a minute in the chance he was sleeping and tried again. With no answer I ran back into my apartment to get the keys (we have the master set as we’re acting landlords when the store is closed downstairs) and then proceeded to his door with the assistance of my father cause I’m never comfortable with going into someone elses apartment alone.  So we banged on the windows a few more times, rang the bell again and all I heard was a faint groan coming out of the apartment.  We opened the door to find Jake on the floor.  He was breathing, but he was blue.

So we called the police, the ambulance showed up and brought him out of the apartment to the hospital. I noticed while he was on the stretcher that his arm was sitting in a weird direction and instantly knew that he’d had either a stroke or a heart attack.  I went digging around his apartment in search of his phone only to find it in the garbage can with two numbers recently dialed – both of which were to his son.  I don’t know if he’d tried to call for help, or they were just the last numbers he spoke on, but either way I knew that I needed to call his son right away.

The ambulance was here for a while, they were working on him in the back. The second they put the tube down his throat I saw that it just became more severe than originally thought and scrambled to get in touch with his son. I called the house twice, the cellphone like four times. I didn’t get a response until a half hour later.  I went to the hospital to try to get in to see him but they wouldn’t allow me in since they were working on him. His son showed up an hour or so later and we all just sat there feeling helpless until the doctors could come out to see us.  They said that there’s a lot of fluid on his lungs, and around his heart. I learned from his son that the reason he was previously hospitalized was due to congestive heart failure, my stomach knotted up knowing full well that based on all of this I’d probably never see him again.

Over the course of the past week we’ve learned that he was borderline pneumonia when he was released from the previous hospital, and all they did was provide him with a water pill and antibiotic. I then learned about all of the excess fluids that they’re draining from him as his lung was almost collapsed.  After numerous catscans and blood workups they noted that he suffered a major stroke to his left side, they’re unsure if when he comes to if he’ll be paralyzed on that side of his body or not.  We noted to the son, and the doctors, that before the EMT’s showed up he was in and out of consciousness and he was trying to pick himself up off of the floor, so the only reasoning behind him being paralyzed is the reaction to him being a medically induced coma for as long as he has.

As it stands, right now, his condition is stable. They still have him under being as he needs the breathing tube, they’ve also put him on a feeding tube on top of all of the other tubes to keep him somewhat healthy.  Either way I don’t personally think I’m ever going to see him again. I’m not permitted in the ICU to look in on him, and being as I’m not the official form of “Family”, they won’t permit me anywhere near his room.

My father, being a hospital employee and knowing quite a few people, did take one of the nurses aside and just asked if they could give him any information.  The only response is that he’s in really bad shape and will be in the hospital for a very long time.  I haven’t heard from his son in a while either, but I’m taking it as no news is good news for this moment in time.

It’s breaking my heart, honestly. Not only is he a dear friend of mine, I’ve considered him family for quite some time as well.  He’s always included in holidays, I always make sure that he has a plate whenever I cook something big (which, as an Italian, is frequently).  He’s always outside for BBQ’s with us, I’ve always gotten him something for his birthday or Christmas because to me that’s what you do with Family.  It’s upsetting that I can’t get into the hospital just to see him, and equally upsetting to know that I could have checked in on him sooner and maybe the result wouldn’t be so bad.

The hospital ran some tests on him and informed his son that he wasn’t on the ground for very long when he suffered the stroke. If we didn’t check on him until the next morning he unfortunately wouldn’t be with us anymore, but we’re to find some peace with the fact that he wasn’t by himself for very long.  This makes me feel a little better only because I can’t help but think to myself that I could have found him sooner.

We’ve had quite a few people in the apartments up here over the years. I can honestly say that only two have really touched my life. This one is hitting me the hardest though, it’s not like he’s moving out just because he found some place better.  He’s leaving because of medical reasons.  It’s just hard to look at his truck every day and his ashtray on the table next to his seat and not want to break down and cry.  When it comes down to it though, as I haven’t heard from his son I’m treating it as no news is good news (for the time being).  I’m going to continue pushing until I can get some kind of answers.  It’s heart breaking, and very, very hard to deal with but hopefully over the course of time things will work themselves out. I hate the thought of him laying in the bed in a coma, but I guess that’s just what happens to numerous people.  He’s only 66-67 years old, he’s got a lot of time left. I just hope he gets to see it.

Minus all of that, there’s really not a lot going on other than having to keep up with work.  I’ve taken a bit of a break just to clear my head as I haven’t yet been able to type everything out. I’m just hoping to get some kind of news soon. This whole situation is distracting me from productivity and the only way I know how to clear my head is to go full force into things – but I literally do not have the heart to do it right now.

I’m free!!

Saturday, May 28th, 2011

As of 6pm on 5/27 I am a free woman. The last almost three years with that company completely sucked the life out of me and now I’m doing everything I can to scrub their evil scent off of me. Unfortunately my energy bursts are limited thanks to the uber nasty cold that I picked up over the course of the past week. I’m patiently waiting for my nose to unclog itself, and the meds to kick in so that this fever can go away. It’s the worst feeling in the world to even have a fever when it’s freaking 90° outside. Hopefully something will kick in soon. I’m hoping it’s after I eat some dinner though, I don’t want to spend another night going to sleep without something to eat simply because I can’t TASTE anything right now. I HATE IT.

I spent a few hours on Thursday getting my laptop in order. I’ve got Microsoft Office Suite setup… one benefit for working where I did for the past few years is Microsoft Outlook. I know that not many people use it, but when it comes to scheduling, organizing and keeping tabs on EVERYTHING, it really is just a necessity. The customization is much nicer than Thunderbird, and I’m sorry but the options that Outlook 2007 comes with are just mind blowing. Different colors for everything, inserts up the wazoo and for some reason the line spacing on the emails is always perfect no matter what fonts you use. My default font of course is a black century gothic 10pt, it blends nicely with the logo I setup for my signature. There’s no way that I’m going back into everything without having all of my shit in order, outlook is part of that shit.

Photoshop is where my problem is, I’ve spent so damn long looking at estimating software that I’m having trouble getting myself back into the swing of things. Of course since this is a new laptop I don’t have the luxury of all of my old brushes/fonts. It’s hard to start completely fresh but it’s a “Challenge Accepted” situation at this moment in time. After a few days I’m sure I’ll be back up to speed, it’s just the ability to unlearn everything I’ve learned in the past few years to open the file deep in my brain where my ultimate creativity is.

There’s a few ways of triggering it, unfortunately it’s not going to happen overnight. I always had much, much more going on in my head when I was living down in Delaware, and with the addition of the new truck, Sean and I will be taking frequent trips down to Delaware, especially the boardwalk where all of my inspiration came from. Jersey is turning into an inspiration point for me too. I honestly don’t know why, could be all of the interesting people, cool looking diners, and the fact that every job offer I’ve been getting lately is IN Jersey. I will not be moving there, however. It would be the halfway point between my family and Sean’s, but if I go anywhere it’s out to Suffolk County. I love the Centereach/Ronkonkoma area – no idea as to why – but I will be looking into it more seriously when money gets to where it’s supposed to be.

Sean and I have been discussing financials a lot lately. We know exactly how much needs to come in, in order to handle all of the bills, and how much additional would need to come in, in order to be comfortable. It’s our ultimate goal to bring in about $6,000 a month, which is doable considering the industries we’re in, it’s just the matter of scheduling and contacts. I’m starting off small this time, I’ll start local and then work my way to the corporate accounts that I used to have. Those were the ones that paid the bills and god damn were they great to have. I thankfully have all of my old mailing lists so I can send out a blast to get the ball rolling, it should be smooth sailing from there. :crosses fingers:

In any event… I was able to locate the template I’ve been looking for and need to do some major tweaking to get it to where I want it. I’m also loading in some new aps/plugins that will make things easier for me. You can’t be a member of the DROID community and NOT utilize all of its benefits. I’m giving myself a week off from “work” and getting myself back up to speed. I’m taking it easy this weekend only due to the fact that I am nursing myself back to health at this immediate moment in time. I just popped a few more NyQuil Gelcaps, hopefully I’ll be sound asleep in the next half hour… if it actually works the way it’s supposed to.

In the meantime I’ll be watching the rest of “Scott Pilgram vs. The world” Let me tell you this movie is dumb as shit.

Slowly but surely….

Friday, May 13th, 2011

In just a few weeks I will be closing the book on a major part of the past 3 years of my life. Today I sat down with my manager and informed him that I will be leaving the company. I’m no longer capable of working for a company where having a conscience is considered a handicap, where employees and vendors are used up and then spit out. I’ve been blessed with friendships that I hope will last for years to come, but I can no longer physically have anything to do with the company. The corporate office can go fuck themselves as far as I care, the ladies in the east coast office… I’ll miss them deeply.

So where do I go from here? This should really be titled “Guess Who’s Back?” I’m going full force back into the world that I left so abruptly. There will be no begging for money, no bull shit internet dramas. I will be solidly working in the code/design world and am spending the evening, and the next few weeks getting myself back into the swing of things. Unfortunately the position I was previously in required the ability for me to retain as much information as humanly possible. With this, I’ve lost a lot of the key skills to be successful elsewhere. I’m doing everything I possibly can to get back into things and hope that with just a few weeks of a refresher course, and a lot of reading (HTML 5?) I’ll be able to get myself back into it with absolutely no problems at all.

This will not just be a personal domain, I will be working with sponsors and frequently updating for just about everything. Twitter will more than likely overload, projects are in the works (in my head) that have yet to be put on paper (err… Photoshop). I purchased a new laptop in September that I haven’t used more than twice. It’s fully loaded and capable of handling everything I could possibly need. I just need to get my hands on a copy of Microsoft Office Outlook. I’ve been using it for the past three years and the functionality really fits where I’m looking to go in reference to mailing lists, contact storage, calendar dates, etc. If there are two things that I picked up in the past few years it’s my love of Outlook and the ability to bite my tongue.

Obviously with my personality the ‘bite my tongue’ will go out the window the second I punch out for the last time. Thankfully I will be leaving on good terms with just about everyone, if there’s a big ‘ol fuck you coming out of my mouth it’s primarily targeted to the corporate office.

In any event, it’s going to be a few weeks but a new template is coming up (well, recycled old one that I was in love with) that will be compliant for whatever standard is the norm these days. Alternate sites (AGN Designs, Health Blog and other stuff in the works) will be popping up as well. I’ve got a lot of space just sitting here and little time to fill it up, but bet your ass I’ll get it done.

Unreal

Monday, January 17th, 2011

I woke up this morning in a relatively good mood. It was instantly shot to shit with bad news. An old friend of mine from high school was killed this weekend for no apparent reason whatsoever and its caught everyone off guard. I’m taken back considering he wasn’t the type to get himself involved in anything like this.  He was a great guy with a very large heart and never had any trouble with anyone. Its strange to even hear that he, of all people, was taken so quickly and violently.  He will certainly be missed by all.

In other news. I’m still actively searching for a new job.  I’m doing as best as I can at my current one to stay on my toes and get everything done. Thankfully with a drop in inventory I’m able to keep things moving with plenty of time to spare during the day.  With this I’m actuallt getting out at a reasonable hour too so that’s always an upside. I was getting sick of eating dinner after nine at night.  Tonight my goal is to get out of here by six thirty (half hour late today) and then ill get some grocery shopping done so I can go home and enjoy the usual Monday night line up for cbs with the addition of a special epsidoe of jersey shore tonight. I have no idea why that stupid show is my new addiction but I’m definitely hooked and its scaring the crap out of me lol.

In any event. Almost time to punch back in from lunch. Time to suck down two cigs and get my ass back in gear.

Closing the book…

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

I really don’t want to say it but higher powers have somehow worked their devious magic and Sean and I are no longer together.  Four and a half years of a relationship has now turned to “When are you coming to get your stuff, I can’t look at it anymore”.  Needless to say I’ll be doing some major packing over the course of the next couple of days, and none of it will be mine.  I’m worried about the financial aspect of everything because I’d basically given him AGn Solutions but everything is still being forwarded to my paypal account.  I don’t know if I should just give up the account or what.  My issue with that is that I fully intend to get back into working online, be it through blogging or designing – whichever I can figure out how to accomplish now that I no longer have my Mac or any programs, fonts, ANYTHING.  I’m starting from scratch completely across the board and for someone who’s been out of the loop for so long – this is just going to be one major obstacle after another.  On top of that we have a joint bank account, the cell phones are in my name.  There’s just a lot more shit involved and Sean has decided he’s “done” so now I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to make that as smooth of a transition as possible, but I highly doubt it’s going to be.  There’s no possible way to walk away from every aspect of your life and start fresh.  Especially when you’re in the same place and while he’s not, but all of his stuff is still here.

I don’t know where I’m going from here.  I’ve realized over the course of the past few days that there are a lot of aspects of my life that were never dealt with due to my jumping into things so quickly.  I realize now that the reason I have gone drastically down hill over the course of the past few months was due to the fact that my brain was telling me to ‘hold up, wait a minute, deal with your shit right now’.   I’m not over the major mistake made when I was a teenager, I’m not over Joe or Lucy for that matter either.  I never actually went through a grieving period for anything, I just kept jumping from one thing to the next to keep my mind off of things.  Now is the chance for me to 100% focus on everything without having any outside influence.  The next couple of weeks are going to be an extremely wild ride for me physically and emotionally.  And to top it all off, I have to deal with the fact that for the first time in 10 years, I’m alone for Christmas. 

Ok…

Friday, November 19th, 2010

So things between Sean and I have gone down hill and we’ve decided to take a break to figure things out. I don’t know what the next couple of weeks are going to bring. Its either going to be a situation of both of us wanting to move on with our lives individually or move ahead with eachother. Its really up in the air right now but its equally painful for both of us. Im hopeful that things will work out but who knows what the universe has in store for us.

There’s alot that I’ve needed to work on for quite some time now and I believe this is the opportunity I need to begin getting myself in order. I need to get everything figured out with finances and school. I also need to figure out what path im even on in my life and which obstacles are in my way so I conquer them.  I would have liked to do everything with Sean by my side but I also need to be on my own for a while as this is something I haven’t done for the last ten years of my life. Im 26, working a dead end job and trying my hardest to accomplish my goals interally even though I have no physical or emotional strength to deal with it all at this moment in time. I can day dream all I want but the act of accomplishing is more rewarding. So I guess its time to truly see what I’m capable of.

Goin’ Nuts!

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

I don’t like this change in weather. Its seriously got my system completely out of wack. Its hard to concentrate and stay on top of everything at work and everything outside of work is pure chaos at this moment in time. I just can’t wait for the damn weekend to start and have to wait three days to get there. So unfair!

I’m havin trouble finding another job cause trying to get onto any freelance contract these days is like pullin teeth for me being as I’ve been out of practice for so long. I don’t know what to do anymore. I just need things to start making sense again and unfortunately I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I need a major mental break. Or a really long nap!

Hrmm

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

Ok. So for the past couple of weeks I’ve found myself being trucked to work by Sean on a regular almost daily basis. Business is booming for him and im standing still in my shithole job. Its to a point where job number two is more than likely going to have to happen to get anywhere close to what he’s making so were back to being equal partners again. I’ve decided to see what I can find that will keep me busy on nights and weekends and give me the ability to at least make up another five hundred or so a month as I am now in desperate need for my own transportation.

When you factor in the cost of an auto loan plus the cost of even having your foot on the ground in new york…let alone a damn insurance policy…I figure it’ll cost about five hundred a month.  The loan itself would probably be in the three hundred range. Insurance is an easy one fifty thanks to two points on my license (fuck you nassau pd) and then the gas that goes into it. Im basically screwed.

So for the time being until something comes up ill be punching up my resume and floating around on freelance sites to see what I can bring in. I can’t possibly work out of the house seven days a week so an at home position will have to suffice for the time being.

With that being said-   how’s the paid to post industry doing these days?  I used to be able to bring in about $3g’s with no problem. Hoping to make even a percentage of that. Let me know!

Oh boy!

Friday, September 24th, 2010

Ok so its been a really, really long time since I had anything to do with this site. As you can tell I’ve let it go to shit.  I’ve not only stopped posting but I’ve stopped logging into my admin panel to even approve some of the three hundred pending comments (the bulk of which are spam I’m sure).  Hell even now I’m blogging from my droid2. I’m not even sure of where I want to go with this site. I’m considering letting it go but can’t bring myself to get rid of something that I’ve had for so long.

As far as life is concerned I’m working my ass off and getting no where (as usual).  Things at home are ok. Theres nothing bad going on but I’m ready to just be out on my own. I’ve been doing some research into moving out to suffolk county. The Coram/Selden area really lookss promising but requires finding a new job and I’m to a point with my current job where I’m really just too comfortable to go anywhere.  I’ll figure something out over time but for now I’m sure staying put would be a better idea.

Right now i’m just surfing the internet and watching ghost adventures on the travel channel.  I’ve got such a crush on Aaron its crazy. Its got me a little spooked tonight I have to say. But when you’re staying at someone elses house and not yet used to the house noises and by yourself it plays a factor.

I wont be alone for long though. I’ve got Sean coming over in a little while. And to follow him will be Colin and Hallie. So it’ll be an evenful night. For now i’ll just relax until they get here. I really need to clean up the chairs to bring em outside anyway. Oh if only there were more damn lights in the house. Ugh@freaky screams on tv lol.