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Safe and Sound…

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

Hurricane Sandy came ripping up the Eastern Seaboard this past weekend.  Numerous homes from New York down to South Carolina were completely destroyed because of the high winds and even higher Water.  Three storm cells merged on a full moon in the Atlantic Ocean and the rest is pretty much going down in history as one of the more devastating storms in the past 100 years.  I find that outlook amusing, we so quickly forget how bad those along the Gulf got it during Katrina.  It’s the fact that it happened in the North East that’s causing it to be such a media sensation.

From where I was – this wasn’t much of anything.  We got very lucky here in Rehoboth.  Yes, there’s quite a bit of property damage throughout the entire town but the complex that Sean and I live in, the only clean-up we’re doing is the leaves that were blown off the trees with a few small twigs. Things were much different on the South Bound side of Route-1 though.  Dewey Beach down to Ocean City was pretty much one big flood zone (Note Dewey is only 1 mile south of me).  If you know this area of Delaware, you’d know that once you start going South after Rehoboth the road goes from “Damn, look at all of these stores!” to “Wow! Take a look at those two huge bodies of water that we’re driving through on this thin four lane road!”.  It’s not so awesome when that Bay and the Atlantic Ocean decide it’s time to merge and the only thing stopping it is a tiny road in the middle.  The levels rose, and the rest is history.  There was no roads in or out of this area of Delmarva and it left a pretty devastating aftermath to the numerous homes and businesses along the route whom are now pumping 4 feet of water out of their storefronts and basements.

We had no property damage here, not even a shingle taken off the roof. I almost feel guilty when I see the pictures of all of the devastation up in Long Island where my entire family is.  My father said that there’s trees down everywhere, excessive flooding and power outages pretty much across the board.  I told him, during our call, that I’m sitting here surfing the Internet because there’s been absolutely no issues down here other than the usual flooding that would occur with any substantial rain – or even a damn drizzle – in this area.  He was then amused when I told him about the only drain in the entire complex.

Bella, like any unusual dog, decided that she would prefer to be outside in the wind and the rain instead of hanging out in the window (as she would prefer on nice warm sunny days).  So I bundled us both up and took her for a walk around the complex so she could do her business. After a few hundred feet into our walk  I noticed that I wasn’t just chugging along anymore and was actually starting to walk through – what I thought – was a fairly decent sized puddle.  I didn’t think about it because I had my boots on, but as I turned to begin pulling us both towards the right side (away from said puddle) I then noticed that my dog – who hates water and has never swam a day in her life – is now doggy paddling towards the big hole in the ground.  If she wasn’t on her leash she would have been somewhere floating in the Delaware sewer system right now.  I pulled her to the street, she shook off and looked at me like “What the hell Mommy, why didn’t you warn me!”  Needless to say, she got a nice warm bath when we got home and then sat in a blanket the rest of the night to warm up (this was Sunday – before the storm by the way).

The eye approaching us on Monday actually caused the rain to stop and the winds to pick up, we then had round two outside with the dog but I went in the other direction as far away from the drain as humanly possible.  Of course this meant that every time she plopped her little butt down to squat she wound up getting blown over mid-piss but while she was frustrated I couldn’t help but laugh being as she was barking at the door to go out – making it completely her choice to deal with it! She needed a second bath to rid her of the effects of that one.

The “worst of the worse” was supposed to happen between 7pm and 12am on Monday.  Yes, it got pretty windy here but after doing a drive around town today and comparing it to what we saw on Monday when taking stroll around the complex – we got close to nothing as damaging as predicted.

Numerous people did go to shelters, and there was A LOT of flooding along the shore. I’ll bet all those million dollar homes have quite a bit damage to them and at that point all I have to say is “Was the waterfront property even worth it?”, but that’s cause I’m middle class and wouldn’t ever spend the kind of money that millionaires spend if I had that unlimited-funds-debit-card myself.

The thing that pissed me off the worse, throughout all of this, is the POLITICS going on behind everything.  I’m not someone who usually discusses them, mainly because I don’t care, but could the Republicans seriously come up with ANYONE better than Romney?  To go on record and say “States can take care of themselves, don’t send FEMA”, or “Have everyone go to their second homes, they’re safer there” thinking that anyone who lives along the coastline is a multimillionaire, is the most fucking ignorant thing anyone could say.  A few other “supporters” of him have also gone on record claiming that because of Gay Marriage – mother nature aka GOD is fighting back.  Give me a damn break you biggott bitches.   Even Honey Boo Boo isn’t that damn ignorant – and have you SEEN that show!?

I’m so over this election, I’m about to vote for Ms. Piggy and call it a day.  She may be the epitome of Vanity but at least she’s consistant!

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Before the Storm…

Monday, October 29th, 2012

Knowing that Hurricane Sandy is on her way, even though I felt as though it wasn’t going to be THAT big of a deal, I took a little ride on Saturday to see what I could pick up in lieu of supplies.  I went out for batteries – mainly cause my wireless keyboard was dying and needed them anyway.  I headed down to the Dollar Tree (because it’s a shame to spend $10 on a pack of batteries that die just as quick as the $1 ones) and saw a gentleman holding an ice pack on the side of his face while waiting in line.  The cashier was nice/curious enough to ask if he was OK and then preceeded to ask “What happened” which was on my mind being as I’m so nosey.  He went on to note that he’d just gotten in a fist-fight in Lowes over the last package of D-Batteries (apparently the last in the state of DE).  Some douche pushed this mans wife out of the way (practically throwing her across the isle) to then rip this package of batteries out of the mans hand.  That turned into a full blown fist-fight and that’s pretty much where the ice pack came from after the charges for assault were placed on the other man.  The woman, typical fucking woman, was crying about how its the most traumatic experience of her life and how the husband shouldn’t have come to blows. He simply responded “Another man placed his hands on you, what else did you want me to do?”  A few people said “Damn right!” she continued to cry about it and he said “Fine, next time I’ll let your ass hit the floor, heaven forbid I protect my wife from harm.” An older man standing in line behind me whispered to himself “If she was my wife, I would have left her on the floor”.  I laughed because he spoke what everyone else was thinking (based on body language and how everyone kind of stared at each other .  It just blows my mind how people would seriously get into a fight over batteries!

Then heading over to Walgreens I witnessed a younger man screw over a 90 year old woman who just asked for help getting a case of water into her shopping cart.  She said to him “Would you mind putting those cases in the cart for me?” He said “Sure, no problem.” put one in the cart and then picked up the remaining two and rushed to the register. She said “Hey, my carts over here”, he said ‘Fuck off, I need water too” and continued to attempt checkout. Thank god the cashier saw everything and refused to ring him up. The kid got frustrated and left the store. (I saw this guy get out of his truck, he’s stocked up on water for the next ten years!)

The thing that’s most shocking to me, throughout all of this, is the fact that I’m in Delaware – not New York. In NY you can expect to be treated like shit and walk away from it unscathed.   Delaware is supposed to be nice caring people, and for the most part it has been. Apparently though, when a storms a-brewing, that’s not the case. It breaks my heart to know that some guy needed to get into a fist fight and then to witness a poor old woman getting screwed over by some dumb 17 year old piece of shit with two fucking teeth in his mouth – is where the world goes during times of ‘chaos’.

The more amusing aspect to my afternoon outing was in Kmart.  I knew that with the potential for no power, it was time to pick up a few things to keep me busy. I’d already gotten coloring books and a word-find from the dollar store but you can’t find any puzzles in the dollar store that contain more than 10 pieces.  Kmart always has a stock of puzzles so I figured that would be the best place to go. That and the fact that I love walking through toy isles.  So I walk into the isle and there’s a lady standing there with her two screaming children.  They don’t understand why they aren’t in the electronics department picking up a new video game. She explains “If there’s no power, you can’t play a game – you’re gonna learn what a puzzle looks like!”  I’ve never seen a child hit the floor in a tantrum that fast IN MY LIFE.  You’d think their puppy was being taken away from them with this tantrum.

This is proof that how I intend to raise my kids is going to be the lesser of the evils.  I don’t believe in spoiling a child, primarily because I wasn’t. I didn’t have every brand new game console or toy as soon as it came out. Hell, I had to beg for a furby and I was 18! They came out when I was 12! I wound up buying one for myself in a second-hand store just cause there was one that kind-of-worked on the shelf!

I’m just dumb-founded on how things happen the way they do.

For those looking to ride out the storm, just know that I’m doing the same thing and my little candle and word finder are at my side to keep me company!

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Absolutely No Inspiration!

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

I wish I knew what was wrong with me, I have no inspiration to do ANYTHING.  I’ve got sites coming at me from all angles but can’t mentally envision how anything is going to look when its completed.  When 80% of your pending work is from-scratch Framework – it really sucks.

I figured that it had a lot to do with the fact that I haven’t really gone down to the beach.  For some reason, sitting in the sand and staring at the ocean gives me more inspiration than Adobe can handle. I was hoping that today would help because Karen’s been itching to get out of the house so we headed down to Rehoboth Ave for a little while.  We browsed through a few different little stores and made our way to the boardwalk. Sat for a little while cause she was a little windy (rightly so considering she’s only got one lung and is still healing from surgery).  We ventured down the sand dunes to the water line and saw a huge family of Dolphins jumping in and out of the water. Of course by the time I got my camera to focus on them they were back under water. I did manage to get a fin, I loaded it to my Instagram account.  I wish I could have gotten a nice shot of them jumping but they’re in and out of the water so quick, the shutter speed on my cellphone just wasn’t going to pick it up.  Either way, I at least got to witness it for myself. It may not seem like some major event to most, but for someone who’s life-long dream has been to PET a dolphin, let alone SEE a dolphin – it certainly made my day.

Even with that experience, and the jolt of energy I still have absolutely no inspiration for ANYTHING.  I know I have at least 7 sites to build/rebuild and trying to get to the “Alright, lets go” mindset is proving to be more difficult than anticipated.  I’m not sure if I’m just exhausted and can’t focus or if there’s some mental shit going on behind it.  All I know is even with extra cups of coffee today, all I wanna do is curl back into bed and fall asleep.  I’m, for some unknown reason, not getting any type of a good nights sleep and wish I could figure out why.

I caught a glimpse of Dr. Oz today, they were talking about sleeping patterns and tips/techniques you can use to help you achieve a proper nights sleep.  The problem is there’s absolutely no way for that to happen in this house.  They tell you that you’re supposed to go through 4-5 rem sleep cycles per night. I thought the list was pretty interesting.

  • No alcohol/caffeine up three hours before bedtime.
  • Keep notepad near bed to jot down the ‘daily worries’, creating a problems/solutions list so you can clear your head to help you fall asleep.
  • No Lights.  Try to keep the room as dark as possible for no visual distraction.
  • No TV. The flickering lights, and sound omitted (even when on mute) can interrupt your sleep cycle.  If you like to have the TV on while falling asleep its recommended to have the “Sleep Timer” set so it shuts off soon after you fall asleep.
  • Limit pets to their own beds (if possible). The constant up and down or general movement of a dog (large or small) is enough to keep someone from properly falling into a deep sleep.  (Lord knows Bella is constantly on and off the bed all night long).
  • Silence is Golden – The quieter the room, the better the rest. Turn off cellphone, no laptops or books and figure out a way to keep your spouse/significant other as quiet as possible. (Unless Sean and I switch our office setups – this will NEVER happen).

 

It seems like a mighty long list of overall-changes, but with a few minor changes to my own life I actually see it as being 100% possible. (As strange as that sounds). Sean and I have been talking lately and figured that since I have so much trouble falling asleep while he sits there typing away – it would be easier if we changed rooms so that he could be in the spare room and I can be in complete and total silence when I need to get some rest. At the same time, I’m realizing that I did have a much better ‘rest’ when I actually kept a journal. Not a blog, a real handwritten journal because it worked to my advantage to get all of my woes out before I went to bed. Of course I’d figure out some kind of a way to make up a digital one, for ease of use and the ability to get all of my thoughts out without my hand cramping up. I found that the more I type, the less I’m able to physically write something legible. I left my Netbook up in NY, I figured after seeing Dr. Oz today that it was a mistake on my part because it would be the perfect companion to my non-existent bedside table.

The biggest thing for both Sean and I that would help EVERYTHING would be to finally upgrade our current bed to a larger one. I’ve found a few down here that are pretty comfy, and not that expensive. I’m trying to figure out if (space wise) it would be possible to get out of our Full Size and upgrade to a Queen Size. I know that we’d be really limited on space if we decided to go all the way up to a King, and while I would absolutely adore that kind of roomy sleep, I highly doubt it would happen without removing furniture from the room all together. Obviously it means that the dog would have less of a chance of sleeping on top of one of us if she’s got her own designated area, so that solves the “No Pets” rule.

Either way we’ll have to make some kind of change, but I’m sure it’ll be possible.

Funny how I have inspiration to redecorate but absolutely none to work on the sites pending on my to-do list LOL.

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Well that was uneventful…

Saturday, October 13th, 2012

Sean and I decided it was time to venture out on our own for a little while in an effort to clear our heads and just get out of the house in general. We made our way down to Cape Henlopen State Park with the anticipation of comfortably relaxing and catching some fish. Typically just going down to the water helps us to clear our head anyway… it wasn’t the case tonight.  We caught absolutely NOTHING and were freezing our asses off the entire time.  Typically on a Saturday night the place is packed and you can’t get anywhere near the end of the pier where the waters a little deeper considering we’re in the bay and not on the ocean.  Tonight was a completely different story, it looked more like an abandoned beach than a year round fisherman’s paradise.  There was one car in the parking lot and I’m almost positive it belonged to the gentleman who runs the bait shop in the parking lot anyway.  So we chocked that up as a complete and total bust.

After we attempted to warm ourselves up by curling into balls on our chairs, and saw that there wasn’t even a nibble on our lines – let alone a catch – we said “eff-this” and left.  Knowing that we were only out on the pier for about an hour we mutually decided that it wasn’t time to go home just yet and ventured over to Applebee’s to fuel ourselves up for the night ahead being as we both have tight deadlines to meet. We filled ourselves up on the appetizers so we barely touched the meal, damn the 2 for $20 menu!

Now we’re home, the dogs being annoying and I’m still cold.  I don’t get cold very often and sat outside long enough to get the typical “ehh, just a chill” straight down to the bone. My fingers are still blue, my stomach is killing me from crappy food and I just want to curl under a blanket and watch TV.  BUT – There’s an entire eCommerce backend to create (fuck you Zend Framework), a WordPress site to completely transfer to a new server AND recode, and lets not mention the crackhead client who’s been dragging me along for the past few months because she can’t make up her fucking mind.

I thought the saving grace to today would be that Sean ran out earlier this morning and picked up an adaptor for the TV in my office so I could actually have some kind of background noise.  The TV was on for almost 8 hours for the “45 Minute” window Comcast needed to activate the box.  It’s still not working, and calling them 3 times was pretty much pointless cause they did absolutely nothing for us.  On Tuesday we can expect a tech out for an upgrade, hopefully he’ll crawl under the house and explain why there’s no feed coming into this room and things will be back to normal.

For now I’ll stick with Project Free TV, or Netflix and have it running in the lower corner while I work.  I would prefer to not eat up the bandwidth so that Sean and I can actually get something done but at this point there’s nothing that can get me to concentrate.  I need to have something going on in the background for when I need to take a break from coding and music just isn’t doing it anymore.  I wish the TV worked, but I guess I’ll just have to hold off for a few more days.

Either way…as stated… it’s been uneventful.

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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.

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Yup…

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

I have no interest in a really long detailed update, but need to vent.

We’re still not in New York. We’re also not in Delaware right now either.  We’re up in Baltimore in a hotel while Sean’s mom is sitting in the ICU at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She had her lower left lung removed. It was supposed to be a simple robotic surgery but it turned into her having to be cut open so a vein could be created to lead to her heart (causing them to have to stop her heart to attach said vein).  The 5 hour surgery turned into a 7-8 hour surgery where tensions were running high amongst just about everyone.  The next day she had an ‘episode’ that we’ve dubbed a panic attack but I (and a few doctors) believe it was a very mild heart attack.  Things were touchy for the first few days but she’s so heavily medicated to help with pain tolerance that she thankfully doesn’t remember very much. They had to give her a heavy blood thinner so a few of her tubes can’t be removed due to a heavy risk of bleeding – that instantly put a 7 day delay on recovery time.

The bad news we got today was the fact that the vein they created for her is too small (rightfully so, everything about her anatomy is too small) and there’s not enough bloodflow to the upper lobe and now she’s at a 50/50 chance of losing her entire left lung and having to go back in for another surgery, where they’ll have to stop her heart again to remove the vein they’d previously attached. My head is running a thousand miles a minute and even though I’m making it a point to stay awake to get some work done – all I want to do is curl into a ball and get some rest because I know that there’s a extremely long road ahead of us and I feel like Sean and I are going to need our strength more than she will just so we can mentally get through it.  She’s a tough lady but no matter how strong you are mentally – the physical will catch up to you.

We’re basically playing the next week by ear. She’s getting the Epidural tube taken out on Friday, by then the blood thinners given to her this past Saturday will have filtered themselves out of her system so she’s not at too high of a risk for bleeding out.  It’s not the same type of Epidural one would get if they were having a baby, this one is higher up on the back and targeted to her chest cavity for pain relief. I just think she needs to be heavily sedated for the next month (at least).  I saw her back today, I was avoiding it for a while but curiosity got the best of me. The poor thing is purple on her left side and the area where they cut her open just about killed me. I’ve seen stiches before but I’ve never seen anything like that. If they actually did need to go back in to remove the upper lobe I just see her being in three times as much pain as she’s already in.  If she goes to adjust herself in bed she’s just about screaming in pain.

It kills me when there’s nothing that you can physically do to help someone, and I think that’s pretty much how things are going to go for quite a few months during her recovery.  Almost makes me wish I was some kind of pill popping idiot, just so I’d have a stock of something to give to her so she’s numb for the recovery.

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Still kickin’….

Monday, August 27th, 2012

I’ve wanted to sit down and blog for quite some time now, but things have been so hectic I just haven’t been able to get around to it. I remember there was a time when I’d be logged into WordPress all day just to post whatever popped into my head, this is probably why I was able to reach my max of over 150 posts in one month. Times have definetly changed, real live has trumped internet ‘life’ ten fold.

We’re still in Delaware. It’s been confirmed that Karen does have lung cancer, and it’s a very rare type of cancer that isn’t smoking based. She’s been back and forth to Baltimore (John’s Hopkins) to discuss every aspect of treatment. She was told, before all tests were final, that she’d need a lower lobectabmy in order to remove the tumor. She was hoping to be able to have a wedge taken out so that there was no major surgery involved, but she was informed today that she’s going to need the full lower lobectamy which means that a little more than a quarter of her lung will actually be removed. The way they’re going to do it is with a “VATS” type of surgery, instead of having to open up her chest and bend/cut her ribs they’ll go in through three small incisions on her side and slice the lower lobe, corterize the bleed and after deflating the lung they can bring it out through the holes. This means it’s invasive, but not as invasive as the alternative PLUS there will be less of a recovery time on her part as well. They claim she’ll only be in the hospital for 3 days and from there they want her up and moving around right after to begin rebuilding her lung function. So it’s going to be a long road ahead, but essentially the tumor should be completely removed and she will need no further treatments with Kemo or Radiation so that’s the upside.

As far as Work is concerned, things have been absolutely crazy. I don’t like having to constantly complain about it, but there hasn’t really been a day where I can say that there wasn’t a stack of things to complete. Right now I’m working on a major family farm/orchard located on Long Island, and I’ve unfortunately had to put a few clients on the backburner – which is nothing I enjoy doing because I hate to prolong things for longer than they need to. There’s some unhappy people and I’m stretched so thin I can’t even cater to it. Absolutely horrible in the business sense, let me tell you.

On top of everything else going on, my back is still completely shot. I’ve had a few days where it was OK, but from there things have just been a downward spiral. Every morning I’m waking up with more pain than the day before, and no matter what I do to try to ease the pain, things just get worse. I’ve found that the only way to maintain any ounce of comfort is to lay down for 15 minute intervals throughout the course of the day, some days its more frequently than others. Right now I’m fighting through the pain just to get this entry written, the sheer act of sitting in an upright position is putting so much pressure onto my sciatic nerve that I don’t even know how I’m not crying in pain. Sean just ran out to pick up dinner so I’m going to continue fighting through it until I can shift to the bedroom with the laptop and hopefully be able to get things done before the 10am deadline.

My sleep schedule is still completely fucked up. There have been some days when I’ve been up and going around 9am, and other days where I’m unconcious until 6pm. The biggest issue is the fact that I can’t get a restful sleep, I’m constantly moving and having random instances of a shooting pain going down my leg that feels as though I’m being struck by lightening. I know it has to do with the sciatic nerve, but would really like to know why the nerve is acting up so much to begin with.

I’m assuming, to a degree, that the bed we’re sleeping in has something to do with it. It was given to Karen by a friend who was redoing their home and it’s obviously just a guest bed but we’ve turned it into ‘our bed’ based soley on how long we’ve been here (2 months as of 8/29). We are heading home at some point in the next week to pick up some warmer clothes, the computers and Bella. I think we’re staying for a few days just to get everything in order, but then we’re back down here for the surgery, and from there we’re not sure as to how long we’re staying. The biggest point is to just be prepared.

It hasn’t been ‘work work work’ the entire time… Sean and I have taken a liking to heading down to Cape Henlopen Park at night to go fishing. We’ve gone just about once a week, got our licenses for down here so we can pretty much go whenever we please. We bought some poles and have a little tackle box and we just head down there with our chairs and if we catch something – great – if not oh well. We’re there for the ability to just clear our heads for a little while, and there are so many stars in the sky you can’t help but relax. No major ambient lights messing with the view, everything is peaceful and calm.

In any event, Sean just walked in the door. I’m starving, and in more pain than I really need to be. I think I’m going to eat some food and head to the bedroom so I can get some work done.

Gonna be a long night.

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Malware and Masses BE GONE!!

Saturday, July 14th, 2012

I received a couple of emails informing me of Malware on the site, unfortunately with everything going on I wasn’t able to actually login to work on things more than just upgrading WordPress via my phone. Turns out the Malware was no where near as bad as some of the sites that I’ve been working on. One of the Malware hits was so severe I had to completely recode the website because every template file was infected and beyond repair. “Why not just upload your copy of the theme?” simple – I’m in Delaware – not New York and don’t have access to the original files. Redoing the entire site from scratch was the only way to go.

In reference to the attack here, however, the only effected file was index.php which is two lines of code pulling the blog header file from the WordPress directory. Once I went through all of the template files to confirm there was nothing else to worry about and did a fresh reinstall of the current WP version I now no longer need to worry about anything. I submitted my site through the Webmaster tools with Google so it stopped kicking the error back to me and hopefully there won’t be any problems moving forward. I don’t understand how it happens, but at this point all I can say is “Whatever, it’s gone now” and move along.

So, as I noted, we’re in Delaware. Typically it would be our usual work during the day and head down to the beach at night, being as that’s what we always did when we actually lived down here during the summer months. However, it’s been much different this time around and now instead of “Go to Beach” it’s “Catch the hell up!”.

Unfortunately Sean’s mom has been having medical issues and instead of going to any of the doctors down here (since they suck balls) we made the trip up to Baltimore to spend some time floating around the numerous departments in Johns Hopkins main hospital so she could actually get proper care. After having some chest pain, shortness of breath and elevated heart rate the choice to walk right into the E.R. was pretty much manditory. From there, she was admitted and wound up in the hospital for about 5 days (in total). We went up on a Friday, wound up waiting until very early Saturday morning before she actually made it into a room. I attempted to get some sleep in the car but it was during the middle of the heat wave and we were in a parking garage so that just didn’t happen. Sean wound up crashing in his mothers room a little after 7am and got a few hours of sleep while everyone was trying to make heads or tails of things.

After he woke up we decided to head back to Rehoboth because on top of needing to take a shower and get some proper sleep – we also needed to do some light laundry and get everything together for Sean’s mom due to the fact that none of us had any idea that she would be admitted to the hospital and had absolutely no clothes or any kind of ‘overnight’ supplies with us. We wound up driving two cars back up, which was not fun AT ALL being as we got stuck in the middle of a monsoon on Sunday night. It wound up turning the 2 1/2 hour trip into a 3 hour trip just because we had no choice but to pull over. If I can’t even see the tail lights of the car in front of me there’s absolutely no way in hell I’m going to keep moving. My choice for stopping was warrented, and confirmed when we got back on the road after things had let up and saw a pretty major accident on the south bound lane that was more than likely due to the lack of visability.

So Sean and I stayed at the Tremonth Plaza in Baltimore for a few nights. The hotel in its own right was really nice, the people were friendly and having the car locked away in a parking garage made me feel very safe knowing that nothing was going to randomly disappear. They offer a shuttle service to the Hopkins hospitals so that you don’t have to worry about navigating your way around Baltimore AND paying additional money for parking.  They offered parking for free at their facility, so that cut down on expenses quite a bit.  It also helped that they offer their rooms at a discounted rate if you’re family of someone who’s currently admitted.

After two nights in the hotel, and countless hours floating around the hospital she was released and we’ve been back down here ever since. Unfortunately it’s taken me forever to catch up on everything when considering I was on some pretty serious deadlines that I had to post-pone for clients. It also didn’t help that my backs been bothering me from all of the excessive walking with horrible unsupportive sneakers.

We’ve been down here for a few weeks, it’s not like we just showed up and instantly went up to the hospital. I just know that his Mom wasn’t feeling too hot the night we came down and things have just kind of spiraled from there. Thankfully everything appears under control now, there are still more appointments to get through but I think after this coming Monday things should be OK. We’re heading back up to Baltimore so she can have the mass on her lung looked into. There are also issues with her heart that need to be looked after, but I highly doubt we’ll be able to get into any offices for that while we’re up there.

Needless to say, this one-two week trip has turned into a longer than anticipated stay. It’s just my hope that everything begins to work itself out, and I’m able to get through the weeks worth of work that I’m backed up with. I’m seriously considering hiring other hands but haven’t seen anyone floating around that can really be trusted with “hush-hush” type of clients. Everyone wants to put something into their portfolio and don’t seem to understand what NDA actually means. It drives me crazy, but that’s the caliber of people floating around these days I guess. I think I’m better off just pushing through exhaustion and trying to get as much done as humanly possible over the course of the next few days.

I just know that I some how need to force myself to sleep by 10pm on Sunday so I can be ready to leave the house by 6:30 on Monday morning. Not looking forward to dealing with Baltimore traffic on a Monday so we’ll see how well this goes. :crosses fingers:

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Whoopsie!

Thursday, June 28th, 2012

My back is finally starting to feel better.  I’m able to get around a bit more, and standing up isn’t as much of a chore as it’s been for the past few weeks.  There are still a few instances of where I step wrong and feel a twinge but I’m able to breath through it and keep moving.  So that gets one issue out of my way.  I figure it’s going to take a few more days before I’m 100%, but I’m on definitely on track!

As far as work is concerned, things have been completely off the fucking wall.  Emails coming in and out all day long – which is typical – but the rise in clients means I need to stay on top of things that much more.  On top of working for my own clients, I still have a standing contract with a design firm in Manhattan that’s been bringing in a lot of work for Sean and I over the course of the past few months.  I feel that this month has blown up to the point that my head is spinning.  I think I’ve worked on 4 major wordpress sites in the past week and all of them, somehow, got done.  There’s one left that I need to PSD->HTML and then wait on client approval, after that it’s going into WooCommerce, which is one if the biggest pains in the ass I’ve ever had to code for.  There aren’t enough tutorials to get me through but I do have a copy of one of their premium themes for the script that a client provided to me to edit to their liking and I’m referring back to it so I can figure out what template files handle what – this way everything runs seamlessly with their main theme.

I was completely surprised this past week when I received a notification from Sponsored Reviews saying that there was a pending advertiser looking for a post on krissy.nu, I almost instantly accepted and saw that I had a few days to complete the write-up so I pushed it aside to finish up more pressing matters and then completely forgot about it, like a moron I lost out on a $200 post ($400 sponsor – I get 50%).  So I’ll cut my losses there, and hope that something else comes through.  I did want to get back into sponsored posts because there was a time when I was earning over $3500 a month through all of the different sources – but those sources have since expired (minus a few) and it doesn’t really seem to be worth it anymore.  Unless I can get myself a position as a content writer somewhere, I’ll worry about it some other time.

So it’s creeping up on Independance Day and thankfully Sean and I will be down in Delaware for a much needed vacation.  I’m looking forward to seeing the fireworks, and need to figure out if we’re going via Trolly or driving down earlier in the day in hopes to get a parking space.  After that we’re hoping to hit up the beach, and spend a day in Maryland (both Ocean City AND Salisbury), maybe even head over to Assateague Beach to take a look at the wild horses everyones always raving about.  Basically the stuff we never really did while we actually LIVED in DE, heh.  I know we’re heading up to Dover for a day to get in some light shopping at Best Buy (gotta love tax free!) and then hopefully hitting up Dover Downs cause I’m itching to get into a Casino.  I do know that on the 9th we’re possibly heading to Baltimore with Sean’s mom cause she has things to take care of there and I’ve never been to Baltimore before so I’m looking forward to that too.

Before heading down there’s a lot to take care of.  I still have one site to completely code, and a PSD to start. I also need to pack and go through our toiletries bag to double check for what we do and don’t have prior to heading down. PLUS it’s the 29th so that means it’s my sisters birthday. I promised I’d take her out to do some shopping because I know how much she needs clothes but with the way my back has been feeling I haven’t been able to get up and round to do it. Plus with the overload of work that hasn’t really helped my productivity out of the house either – proof is on the bare shelves of the kitchen.   So at some point tomorrow (well… today after i wake up), I’ll be heading out to do some minor shopping for basically everything so there’s food in the house for while we’re gone, a bag of treats for my sister, two weeks (at least) worth of Dog Food so Bella doesn’t starve to death and whatever else I need to get us down to DE with no problems.  On top of that I believe Muir is coming over with her hubby so he can get the new fixtures up in our main bathroom so the shower is usable and we can stop using my dads. I’m not 100% on that though, I’m sure I’ll wake up to a text message telling me yay or nay heh.

We’re hoping to leave early on Saturday morning in hopes to beat the excessive traffic heading down to the beaches but we’ll have to see how that goes.  We’re planning on taking the parkway down to Cape May so we can take the ferry into Lewes and cut down on an hour and a half of driving time but we’ll have to see how that goes, we don’t even know when we’re leaving.  I wanted to leave about 3am tomorrow night (saturday morning) but now I think we’re waiting until early Sunday morning.  The actual day is up in the air but we know for sure that we’re leaving this weekend.

I just can’t wait to get out of here.

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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.

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It was.. my dream home.

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

So yesterday we looked at the house. The realtor was right, it does show nicely. From what we saw, there are anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 worth of things that need to be done on top of the initial purchase price of the home. It’s primarily cosmetic, there’s a few cracks in the ceiling from the house settling, and some issues with having to remove a lot of tacky wallpaper, possibly purchase a new water heater, and almost definitely purchase an AC/Heat unit being as I was unable to locate one on the parameter of the house. It’s 2500 square feet, and the rooms in it are beyond huge, with this we’d need some kind of a high powered air unit to make sure each room is properly heated/cooled during the course of the year. I see that costing somewhere in the $3,000 range. While the carpets LOOK clean, the previous owner had pets and there’s a few very dark spots throughout the house so I would personally prefer to just remove them all together and have new ones put down. This would be after all of the wallpaper was removed from the walls, everything was painted and fixtures around the house that were missing would be purchased. The remainder of the money would be to furnish the home, obviously you can’t live someplace with nothing.

The setup of the house is as follows:

Living Room – When entering the house there’s a small living room, large enough for maybe an L-shape couch and a TV, possibly coffee table – nothing extreme. There’s a large gas fireplace in the living room as well, and a large 3-window picture window for plenty of light.

Master Bedroom – Right off of the living room is the master bathroom to complete the ‘split floor-plan living’. The room itself is 13×18. However, the walk-in closet it 10×10 – this would instantly void the need for us to have excess dressers/bookcases in the room. The closet houses pull down access #1 to the storage space above. We could honestly get away with one dresser and maybe a small entertainment unit for the TV, that doubles as storage for under garments and what not. Per the realtor, the closet could be used as a nursery in the future based solely on the size. I personally wouldn’t want the baby sleeping in the closet so that’s a hell no right there, heh. The bathroom has a nice size soaking tub, double sinks and a decent size glass-sliding door shower with two sections for shelving.

First Bedroom and Second Bedroom – There’s a blue room (first bedroom) off of the living room at the beginning of the hallway that’s 13×11. We originally were going to use this as either Sean’s office or Mine, however the room next to it is much larger and can be utilized as a very large office for the two of us. The first and second rooms are merged together with a Jack & Jill bathroom. It’s a decent sized bathroom to be utilized as the private bath for the two rooms, basic shower, toilet and sink area with some storage underneath. The two bedrooms offer decent sized closets for storage/clothing as well. The second bedroom, however, is a whopping 13×21. I shit you not when I say this room is HUGE, go measure a 13×21 area and tell me it’s not big? I could park my freaking truck in there and still have room for two desks and a couch!

Bathroom #3 & Laundry – Off of the very large room all the way at the end of the hall there’s a relatively small ‘public’ bathroom which is at the back end of the original structure of the home. Very basic , but obviously was an external wall because there’s a cut-out for a window that used to look to the outside. It’s a basic room, not much to talk about – directly across is a nice sized laundry room that has a pull down access point for the storage space. It’s not a stand-up attic on this end either, it’s a good height for boxes but the realtor noted she’s never personally gone up there being as there’s currently no electric in the home and she didn’t want to bump her head with no lights. (perfectly understandable). Either way these two rooms were the original “end point” of the home, however they’ve added extensions.

Den / Garage / In-Law Suite – A decent sized den with a gas fireplace, this would be utilized as “Lep’s Lair” as I’ve been calling it. More of a media/game room than a living room, this way if he’s playing games at night, I’ll be on the other side of the house in the master bedroom and it wouldn’t really bother me. This has a lead-out sliding door to the backyard. Off of the den there’s access to the two car garage, which shares access to the In-Law suite that was also built in this 3-part extension. The in-law suite offers a small kitchen, stack-able washer/dryer, and a private full bath. The room itself is about 13×15 so it’s relatively small but could be used as a small studio apartment if we ever chose to rent it out in the future.

Kitchen / Dining Room – These were the two that really blew my mind.  The kitchen is HUGE, and houses a nice corner wood burning fireplace, above it has a small cabinet to hide the TV (the hookups are already there).  There’s a large fridge,  nice stove, dishwasher, plenty of storage, and even room for a nice eat-in area.  From there there’s also a lead off into the backyard.  Moving forward (in the direction of the living room), there’s a nice sized dining room, it could fit a 10 person table and a hutch and there’s another lead off to the backyard.

Backyard – The yard is the size of the house, at least.  More than half of the yard is the in-ground pool and while its a little dirty, it could be absolutely gorgeous when cleaned out.  There’s also a small ‘pond’ area that has a pump and lights but since the power is off its just freestanding water filled with frogs.  There’s a separate small area that’s fenced off for the in-law suite so they have a private yard as well.  Every aspect of the fenced area is cement block so it doesn’t require any maintenance whatsoever. On the outside of the fence towards the side of the house there’s a lot of grassy area that includes a decent sized shed, it would require some clean-out work but its a decent enough size where we could extend the existing fence and give Bella, or any other dog we get room to play in the grass. There aren’t many trees in the backyard, so there’s A LOT of sunlight for tanning and enjoying the backyard in general.

Front – The front of the house has a large wrap around drive-way.  The side has a 6 car driveway past the two car garage. There’s a small island with some shrubbery and a nice sized porch on the front of the house that I can utilize as my usual relaxing area for a cig or even just relaxing outside for the fresh air.

All in all I would personally LOVE to own the home, it’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a home and even exceeds my expectations of everything.  Unfortunately it’s just not within our grasp right now as we’re already $30k in debt, we need to get another $10k on top of that to get the closing costs, PLUS we would need a co-signer to even get the loan.  The next few months (if this house is even still on the market) will require us to work our asses off to bring as much money in as possible to get our debts paid down. I look at it this way.  If the house is still available when we actually are able to do this, it was meant to be.  If not? It was something to walk into where we would know what our expectations are, and where we know we wish to be.

I guess, at this point, the future will tell.

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House Hunting Begins

Monday, October 24th, 2011

Sean and I (plus Karen!) are seeing a house tomorrow. We’ve been looking at it for a little while now and finally got ourselves hooked up with a realtor and made the appointment to take a look from the inside. The over-head views and photos listed online have sparked our interest enough to want to walk inside. There’s a pretty big in-ground pool so that’s a major plus for us – we’re like fish in the summer time if there’s a pool around! There’s also a MASSIVE kitchen that offers tons of storage and natural light. I’m excited to get in there to look around. It’s four bedrooms, four bathrooms PLUS an in-law suite, so if we actually do purchase the home, we’ll have someplace to stick people when they come to visit so they can have some privacy as well.

The biggest issue for me is leaving everything in NY. My entire family and all of my friends are there. One of which is kind of giving a guilt trip cause we’re coming down here and not looking in NY. The reason being – TAXES. The property taxes for a home on Long Island are in the $10,000 a year range. This is ON TOP of the $3,000 a month it would cost to OWN the home itself, so we’re looking at about $3,700 a month in outgoing bills. Where as down here, the taxes are in the $1,000 range. This is the more financially sound option for us because it would bring our monthly payments into the $2,300 range, which means between the two of us we have to make $1,500 a month in order to not only pay all of the bills, but general house maintenance as well.

What we’re looking for, as far as a mortgage is concerned, is the ability to ask for about $30,00 more than the cost of the home. We’d utilize this extra money to pay off all of our other debts so we can then bring our ‘outgoing bills’ payment to the same amount without having to worry about whether or not its going to be the car payment or the mortgage payment.

We’re jumping into this, we know this full well. It would be more financially sound for us to try to pay off more of the bills before we even consider a home, but when you just have that feeling that everything is going to be alright… you act on it. It’s the same thing I did when I left my stupid office job. As soon as my notice went in, work came spewing out of the woodwork. And since we’ve been in DE? We haven’t really been able to breath because of the workflow. If this is the sign that everything is going to be OK, then I’ll take it – and run with it.

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I miss my dog and want to go home…

Monday, October 17th, 2011

Sean and I have been in Delaware for the past month. Every time we’ve tried to go home, some major account pops up that requires our complete attention. Due to this, there’s been no possible way for us to hop in the car and drive five hours north to get back to Long Island.

Initially it was the account for Dover Speedway, from there it’s trickled down to numerous small accounts popping up at once that all require some ridiculously short turn around time. To top that off there are still modifications to do on sites that were completed a few weeks ago so that we can launch them for the client.  Whatever the case has been, we’ve just been too damn busy.  I’ve been told (hopefully as a joke) that if I choose to stay down here any longer my dog will be shipped via FedEx so that I can then stay for as long as I absolutely want, as long as they don’t have to deal with her anymore.

Right now I’m trying to complete FOUR accounts at once.  The task would be much easier to manage if there weren’t so many other factors involved. The environment isn’t an issue at all, I actually find myself more focused down here. The issue I’m dealing with right now… EMAIL… each of the clients is kicking over a multitude of emails to follow for changes/tweaks, and to top that there’s a few new clients coming out of the wood work.  Whatever made me think that Sean and I couldn’t afford to purchase a house down here has gone completely out the window.  Now it’s just the matter of actually getting HOME so that we can continue to work and pay our bills and then eventually go for that oh-so-hefty mortgage to get the house that we’ve both decided upon.

I know they say to never put your eggs in one basket, but this is a home that’s been on the market for almost a year, it’s in beautiful condition and has absolutely everything we want, including a very, very large in-ground pool in a fully fenced in back yard. It’s my ultimate goal to have the keys to this house in my hands before summer of next year so I can literally take three straight days off work and just float in the pool. Meaning, I have no intent of getting OUT of the pool for three days. Who needs air conditioning when you have a float and a nice breeze?

The house itself is $250k, as it’s been on the market for so long I’m offering $175, the negotiations can begin from there.  There’s 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a Florida room, large kitchen, dining room, media room, living room, AND an in-law suite.  What do two people need all of this space for?  Simple really.  The master bedroom will contain absolutely NO computer equipment EVER.  Two of the four bedrooms will be offices. Mine will be fully customized with the same color tones as on this template (White, Black, Grey and pops of Pink). Sean’s will have the more masculine feel.  The other two rooms (in the main house) will be designated guest rooms as I’m sure we’ll have frequent visitors via either friends or family.  The in-law suit contains a small kitchen, large room and its own bathroom. We’ll use this as the ‘guest house’ for the guests staying for more than a few days so they have a bit of privacy.

Regardless, I’ve decorated everything in my head and don’t plan on giving up.  We have looked in NY, the property taxes are absolutely ridiculous so there’s no reason to even continue our search there. Yes, all of my friends and family are up there, but affordability wise – DE is the place to be.

Either way we’re going to continue to work and get our finances in order, the issue really is getting back to NY. We have every intent of leaving tomorrow morning and then working tomorrow night to get caught up. I really wanted to do some laundry and clean up before we leave here but I honestly don’t see the laundry aspect of things happening. I could have spent the last five minutes getting that in the washing machine instead of blogging, but considering I’m still three hours behind on my email – getting up from my computer just wasn’t happening.

I’ve got my fingers crossed in hopes to actually go home tomorrow.  Being in DE isn’t bad, I’m not unhappy in any way, and I absolutely love Karen (Sean’s mom), it’s got nothing to do with her. I just know that we don’t actually live in DE anymore and everything we own (including a more stable internet connection) is back in NY.  I whole heartedly believe that if we brought Bella down with us for this visit – we’d never go back to NY. Regardless, I miss my dog, I miss my friends and I really hope that things slow down long enough for us to pack up and hop in the car.

Meh… forget the emails – I’m doing laundry. :hmph:

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A new kind of market…

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

Sean and I have been in Delaware for almost a week now, over the course of the past week we’ve realized how carefree and relaxing it is down here, even though we’ve been working the entire time. (The joy of being a designer… you can work anywhere).  We’ve weighed our pros and cons and realized that living in an apartment in NY would not permit us to build up a savings account, where as purchasing a home in DE would.  How did we figure this? Simple math really.

In order for us to have an apartment in NY (even in Suffolk County – eastern end of Long Island), we would need $1,800 a month before utilities. In order for us to purchase a home in DE, with the mortgage and utilities, it would only come to about $1,200.  The kicker would be that we would also be asking for a mortgage $20,000 above the cost of the home. Why? Because that’s how all of our credit card and loan debts would be paid off. Our outgoing bills would still be approximately $1,800 a month, but now instead of paying credit cards and a personal loan, we’d be paying a mortgage, utilities and the remainder of my auto loan on the truck.  PLUS, being as it’s only the two of us the food bill would drop down, the insurance rates would also drop down.  So while we’d be spending exactly what we’re shelling out now, we’d have more leway with the money and less stresses for the environment being as we’ll OWN the environment and can pretty much do whatever we please.

The help in all of this is the current rush of work coming through, we’re going to assess things and see if they’re still like this six months down the road, if we can maintain our current income (by either staying where we are, or increasing it) we’ll be able to own a home sometime within the next year which then gives us the ability to really start out our lives together.

I’ve taken a few drives through the southern section of DE because I really do love the communities and areas around there.  I also took a drive with Sean’s mom to do a little house hunting as well.  We’ve found two really nice homes in one community off of Route-9 in Lewes, DE. I honestly believe this is the area that I’d like to live in because of the dynamic and the fact that there was plenty of room for Bella to run around in the yard, and the home itself is 1600 sq. ft. which to me is perfect for two people and a 15lb animal.  It’s 3 bedrooms, 2 bath, there’s a 3-season porch which would essentially be my office space, and we’d keep the third bedroom as a guestroom for anyone who comes by.  The home itself is very reasonably priced, there’s a community pool and a rather large pond surrounding one section of the complex that, to me, would mean a lot of excess bugs – but the screened in porch would counteract the problem.  My only gripe about the home itself is the lack of outdoor patio area, but that can easily be accomplished with the permit to attach one to the home.

Either way we’re only looking into things, this isn’t the only home I’m even considering but the community itself has caught my eye, and its distance from the beach helps me gravitate towards it even more.  I think there’s a mortgage in my near future…heh.

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Hello Delaware!!

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

It’s been a long time coming but I’m finally back in Delaware for a few weeks. It’s been three years since I moved back to NY and I can’t tell you how much I missed it down here. The second we rolled in my eyes lit up to the point I swear they were glowing. We’re staying with Sean’s mom, it’s weird being back in the house but at the same time it feels as though I never left.

Sean’s birthday is tomorrow, I need to get myself out of the house long enough to get up to the store to pick up a few things for him. He already knows he’s getting two video games, “Gears of War 3” and “Dead Island”, I know there’s a third gift in there but I’m going to need to find it first. He knows, in the back of his mind, what it is – but has yet to figure it out so that’s good enough for me, at least there will be some kind of a surprise factor, heh.

So far we’ve hit-up the usual spots where we could be found… “The Roadhouse” in Lewes, “Casapulla’s South” in Rehoboth, and of course we trucked ourselves to the beach because neither of us has really seen one in years. I know that I live on Long ISLAND, but the beaches up there suck major, major ass. It’s not the same when you live on the North Shore. You don’t get the ISLAND feel, you get the “Oh look, there’s Connecticut and somethings floating in the LI Sound again”. So, needless to say, being able to look out and all I see is endless ocean, I’m one happy chick. I fully intend to go back a few more times before we leave.

On top of this being a change in scenery for a few weeks, there’s still some work involved.  Sean and I are both swamped with work, I’m getting mine done a bit more quickly than him, but that’s going to reverse pending a few responses from a client that’s giving us a pretty solid workflow at the moment.  I’ve got a few more sites to add to my portfolio, which is also on the agenda while I’m down here because the change in altitude and the addition of the beach has given me a whole new burst of energy and inspiration.  I’m starting to wish I never left, but circumstances back in New York made that pretty difficult for me.

I’m on the war path though, I’m looking on both Long Island and in Delaware for places to live.  My heart will always be in NY, but for some reason my soul is happier in DE.  Financially speaking, of course, DE would be the way to go but the few prospects that I’ve found don’t really thrill me too much.  One lady down the road (same complex as Sean’s mom) is offering a rental on her house for $750 a month (which is 100% doable, and a pretty good deal), but then when I showed a little interest she noted she’s actually looking to sell as soon as possible because of all of the problems with the house that her husband has been feverishly working to correct. I took a few minutes to take a walk down to the house to see if it would actually be worth it for me or Sean.  It’s a relatively decent deal but I could see exactly what she was talking about the second I walked up onto the property.  It does need a lot of work, and based on the fact that a mortgage would even be required, I’d prefer to take on a much newer model home without as many issues.  I’ll weigh the options for a little while, going back and forth between NY and DE, but for now – until we can pay the bills down quite a bit – I’m going to stay put until the opportunity to make the choice, with the financial stability, comes to the surface.

Based on how much I missed it down here, however, I do see myself coming back to visit a bit more. Yes, it will continue to be a ‘workation’ being as we do need to work in order to continue living, but having the luxury of working for yourself means you can pretty much work anywhere with a laptop and a wifi signal.  We already know that we’re coming back down in November for Punkin Chunkin but that’s something we saw advertised quite a bit while we were down here but never took advantage and actually went to enjoy it in person. It’s a three day event, I don’t see myself going all three days. But even going up to just enjoy the festivities for one day would make me pretty happy.

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Still Searching

Friday, April 11th, 2008

Trusted ToursI’m still kind of set on getting myself out of the house for a real vacation. Yes, going up to New Jersey at the end of the month doesn’t look like a possibility right now but I do hope to be able to get up there the following month depending on what’s going on with work and what not. I have been surfing around one of my numerous bookmarks, mainly Trusted Tours because you can find everything you need from them. You can basically get information on just about any major city/town of interest. I have it bookmarked as Things to do in Boston for when I actually get the chance to get up there again but my main focus is finding things to do in Orlando. I know that there are major attractions down there but I can only take so much if Disney World and Universal Studios before I get bored. It’s a goal of mine to get to know every aspect of Orlando and I think a great place to go for that info is Trusted Tours. They can even give you a few tips on basic sightseeing tours as well. They have a newsletter too.

I’m to a point now where I’m just itching to get out of here, honestly. I know that there is a lot of work to do but my stress levels are through the roof right now. I need a change of scenery, and I also have this urge to visit family. I think if I’m unable to get up to Jersey at the end of the month I may try and persuade Sean into going up to New York for a couple of days. I’ll have to base it on how my work schedule is though, I know his is filling up quite a bit as well now that he’s working for three people instead of the original one he’s been with for the last couple of years now. Jackie took him on board as a programmer, and a larger site that created a social networking script has taken him on for plugins and upgrades. Everything is working out pretty well for him right now, it’s just a shame that I’m only getting started on things. It’ll all work out in the end, I just think I’m going to have to spend a little more time down at the beach to clear my head. Right now they’re swamped because it’s a pretty warm day and since it’s a weekend all of the tourists are coming back to open up their houses and relax on the beach. I’m going to make a trip up north in hopes to find another beach that the DE residents in Sussex are sent to because of the lack of ability to get anywhere near the beaches we live by year round. It sucks having to go up to Kent county but if traveling is the only way to get an ounce of privacy while still being able to enjoy the beach then I guess it’s worth it.

Trusted Tours

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