Poor people do not know how to spend money

Earlier I had written a post about my husband having a problem with his foot and not going to see a doctor about it. There are reasons people don't want to go to see a doctor. For some of them, fear is a major factor. They think something might be wrong, but they don't really know for sure, and they feel better not knowing. For other people there is just something about being at the doctor's office that they can't stand. The whole hurry up and wait thing is a bother. Going to the doctor should take about an hour but usually takes up half of the day. People don't want to waste all that time in a doctor's office, probably doing nothing. And for some people money is a major factor, and perhaps lack of insurance is the problem.

So part of my husband's problem is the money part, and perhaps the time part. For once in our lives, lack of insurance doesn't enter into it. But even with insurance, going to the doctor isn't actually free. There's either a twenty-five or fifty dollar co-payment at a regular doctor's office, more than that for a minor emergency place, and way more than that for the actual emergency room. If it turns out to be something that can be helped with a reasonable amount of money, you are then sent off to the drugstore and perhaps told to go on a particular diet for a while. If it isn't something simple like that, who knows how much it might end up costing you.

Now I've already said that I don't like wasting time and money going to see a doctor when I think that I already know what I am going to be told. I don't want to go if I'm just going to be told some common sense thing that I already know to do. If I'm going to be told to take some over-the-counter meds and get some rest and drink liquids, I don't need to hear that from a doctor.

But I think sometimes it is different with my husband. I think sometimes that he doesn't go to the doctor when he needs to because he doesn't have that fifty dollar co-payment.

And why doesn't he have that fifty dollar co-payment? Because he spends like a hundred dollars a week on lunch. And this, in part, has something to do with not growing up middle class.

I had noticed that his family wasted a lot of money. I thought this was an odd thing, since my family had more money to start with, and we didn't spend money like they did. But I had thought that they must be some sort of anomaly, that people who didn't have much money had better spending habits than his family.

When I was growing up and didn't get something that I wanted, I heard the dreadful stories of my parents having to walk to school in the snow, uphill, both ways. People only washed their hair once a week. And whatever thing that I didn't want to eat was something that they had to eat several times a week instead of once in a while. And maybe for a while they lived on a lake and didn't have indoor plumbing. I was being ungrateful. I didn't know what hard was. And of course, there were people starving in China.

Things that I wanted and couldn't have were clearly defined as luxuries. Soda was a luxury. Candy and other desserts were luxuries. Going to McDonald's was a luxury. Toys were luxuries. My parents bought necessities first, then put money in savings, then thought about buying some luxuries. We certainly had the luxuries, just not as much as I would have liked.

Even the luxury of going to eat at McDonald's was often ruined with the phrase "you'll have to share a drink." Sharing a drink was just awful. My little brother had germs.

I thought that a girl I went to school with was rich. She had more toys and other luxuries than I did. My parents tried to explain that they just decided to spend their money on other things, that her parents were older, and that she was the baby of the family and her older sisters had moved away. Maybe they should have just told me that the girl question was spoiled (which she was), and that probably would have made more sense to me.

So I grew up thinking that rich people bought whatever they wanted, and middle class people were like me and mostly spent their money the way that my parents did, and that poor people just didn't waste any money at all and possibly had some special knowledge of money and what things to buy to make it last longer. This must be especially true of people who had been poor for several generations, and that there was this special knowledge of how to live cheap and still have all the necessities. So I assumed that poor people never drank sodas, never went to the movies, had few toys that they only got for Christmas and birthdays, never went on vacations and trips to see grandma, etc...

Sometimes, this is true. There are people out there who buy really basic things in bulk and know how to make hundreds of things from fifty pound bags of rice and oatmeal. Fajitas were originally invented to use up an almost inedible piece of cheap meat. Some people grow their own vegetables. Some people live places where they can fish and collect other wild foods. Some people still mend socks and other clothes. Some people clip coupons and get several bags of groceries for less than a dollar a bag. Some people read the Tightwad Gazzette and find something useful to do with everything.

But I think that there's a lot less of that sort of thing now (except maybe for the coupon thing).

I had noticed that there were people (both poor and not so poor) who complained of not having enough money for something, but they always seemed to have cigarettes, beer, and/or soda. But it never seems to occur to anyone to give up those things. Soda, depending on where it is bought and how it is packaged, might be less expensive than milk. But milk is one of those necessities, while soda is not. Too much soda is bad for you. The cigarettes and beer are even more expensive and worse for your health. Sometimes people finally get it through there heads to give the stuff up for health reasons, but I've rarely heard of anyone trying to give them up to save money.

I would have thought that this sort of thing that I had noticed was a recent trend. Not so, though it is probably getting worse. The whole thing about poor people and money came up a few times in school. In British History we read George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier. Everyone, no matter how poor bought some sort of tobacco, some sort of alcohol, either coffee or tea or both, and then the things that go with coffee and tea such as sugar and cream. There were several studies done, trying to show people how they could spend less money on food that was better for them and most of it even tasted better, but very few people changed their spending habits. And fewer still gave up the tobacco and alcohol. Often, if anyone did have a bit of money leftover, it was spent on lottery tickets.

The other bit about how people spend money came up in Adolescent Development. The teacher had most people divided into nine classes, and explained how the different classes spent their money. Rich people do not save money, because there just always seems to be more money. And poor people don't save money either, because they just never have any extra money for a long enough period of time to develop that habit. If you have good spending habits and learn to save your money and such, you were probably raised middle class. She had this chart, and it all made sense. It was brilliant. Except that a couple of things were starting to mess up her chart. Rich people who got rich playing basketball often were people who used to be poor. So the spending habits of rich basketball players didn't mesh with the other people on that line of the chart. And credit cards are messing up everyone's spending habits, even if you were raised middle class.

I think that when I lived with my parents my spending habits were pretty good. I saved money. I didn't have a credit card. I didn't eat out all of the time. I didn't buy a lot of things that were really stupid. But I didn't make much money either. I had a minimum wage job that did not have benefits, and I had to pay for my health insurance and the gas and maintenance for my car, and my clothes. I didn't have to pay for all of my food, but I did end up paying for a lot of it. I made enough to take care of myself, as long as I didn't have to pay rent, and I didn't have to worry about little things like toilet paper.

Before I got married, little stuff like toilet paper and toothpaste and stuff in the medicine cabinet just magically appeared. After I got married, it took me a few months to get used to remembering to budget for such things. Aspirin and soap and shampoo all cost money, and it adds up, and it really sucks when you forget to buy something before it runs out.

And, after I got married, I discovered that one could buy a lot of luxuries with a little money, but no matter how you tried to save money, some of the necessities were aways out of your price range. It didn't matter if you totally gave up sodas and chocolate and going to McDonald's, it wouldn't make enough difference to afford a safe place to live and health insurance and a reliable car. If I gave up every luxury that I could think of and totally made myself miserable, I might could have some of those necessities, but never all of them.

This made me panic a bit. This was business as usual for my husband, and he didn't take any notice of it except when one of the cars actually needed to be repaired. Possibly he never had health insurance. He grew up in a worse neighborhood than the one we moved to. And he was used to driving older cars that might not have working air-conditioners.

I started to spend money on things that I didn't need to make me feel better about not having enough money. We bought pizza on Wednesdays, when they were half price, and often they were cheese pizzas that I added my own toppings to. The pizzas were a good deal, but not something we really needed. Other than the pizza, we probably went out at least once a week, but it was usually either a fast food place or a place that had sent us coupons. And we could mostly afford to do that, after I dropped my health insurance.

In the past fifteen or twenty years, the money required to buy pizza has almost doubled. In the same amount of time, the money required to buy health insurance has more than tripled. You can reason out that you can buy a lot of food for the same amount of money that insurance cost. You can reason out that insurance will only help you if you happen to get sick, but food is something that you need everyday. You can reason that eating pizza makes you happy, but that getting that monthly insurance bill causes a lot of stress. If you drop the insurance, you can buy pizza and still have money left over. In theory, you can even save some of that money for a doctor visit, just in case you get sick.

I had a part time job that paid for most of our food, my health insurance, and the maintenance on my car. I have very little left over after those things were paid for. After a couple of years, the insurance cost more, and the maintenance on the car cost more, and I was contributing very little towards buying food or paying other bills. At some point it was suggested since we would not be able to pay for the next major car repair, and I didn't like my job anyway, that I should just leave the job, give up the car, and not renew the health insurance. It was a dumb thing to do, but at the time it seemed to make sense.

I have since picked up a number of other bad habits, mostly involving money. And during most of that time I didn't have a job. Only two of the jobs that I've had made enough money to pay most of the bills.

We do a lot of dumb things now. When we feel bad we go out to dinner, usually with a coupon. But dinner with a coupon still costs about twenty or even thirty dollars. If we forget to pay a bill for something that is three hundred dollars, and we only have two hundred and fifty, we usually don't do anything about the forgotten bill. We ignore it until the next month and pay late charges. The two hundred and fifty dollars will probably get spent on something else, probably something that we could have done without like pizza or movie tickets. We don't put the two hundred and fifty away, knowing that we will still owe money next month. Next month there will be more money, probably.

So this is one of those months were there is more money, but not as much as we hoped for, and we are a little short because we bought pizza and such. There are a couple of credit cards that didn't get paid, I hang up on about four people a day who think that I've found some money under the bed since the last time they called, and I'm not sure that we'll have enough money for me to have my annual exam when it is normally scheduled. And I skipped seeing the dentist this year.

All this is going on when on paper we are making more money than ever. Last year my husband made twice as much as the year before that. Partially, the money is going towards paying for cars. We both had ten year old cars that needed to be replaced, so he bought one last year, and I got a new one this year. And then he was in a wreck, and had to get another car, and he still had to pay for the wrecked one because no one would sell him gap insurance. So that is part of the problem. But a lot of it is credit card debt from the previous five years, and a lot of it is going out to lunch. Going out to lunch is about the only time that my husband acts like a normal person. I realize that the going out to lunch is a luxury that we cannot afford, but I usually don't even suggest not going. At lunch, away from the house, he is normal, and we have to eat something for lunch anyway.

So we are still poor, even though we are not, and my husband still has not seen a doctor about his foot.

Remembering Valentine's Day

Now I know that I said that I was going to post about people who don't know how to spend money, but I think that I might put that off yet again. Maybe I'll post that instead of doing Freaky Friday tomorrow, or maybe it can just wait until next week. Anyway, I have this idea that I should post something else, since it's Valentine's Day.

I used to really like Valentine's Day when I was a kid. When you're in grade school you buy these silly cartoon Valentines and give them to other kids. Not that you just go up and give them stuff. Everyone had a decorated box, and you put the Valentines in the boxes. We had a contest to see who could make the prettiest box. I never actually got first place in that, which I didn't think was fair. It was obvious that either the other kid's parents had done most of the work, or else it was mostly a store bought thing to begin with. My box was my own work, except for when my dad had to glue something for me, since the project often required some toxic chemical that I wasn't allowed to use by myself.

So that was fun, and it lasted three or four years. I don't remember the school after that making a big deal of the day. By sixth grade, I hardly did anything fun with the holiday at all. Funny that the day meant less as I got closer to the age that it was supposed to mean something. In seventh grade I had a boyfriend, but I don't remember him getting me anything special that year. After breaking up for about a year and a half, we were together again, and it seems like that year we tried to make a big deal of it. But he didn't have any money and I think I was grounded for something anyway.

There were a few years when the holiday just seemed to remind me that I didn't have anybody. When I was seventeen I had someone, but he didn't have any money. I think maybe he made me some fudge or something.

When I was nineteen, finally, this was the year that I expected to get a pretty red box of candy and so forth. My fiance presented me with a stuffed animal, which he assumed that I would like better than candy. And normally, he would have been right, but I'd had just been wanting one of these silly heart shaped boxes for so long I was a bit disappointed. He saw that, and later he went and got me chocolate too.

The next year, the fiance was still around, though the actual engagement had been put on hold. He supposedly didn't have time for me, so I didn't think that I should sit around and wait for him. I didn't want to be engaged anyway. I wanted to get married. Being engaged is just this stressful period of time when you are waiting to get married. I was in college, and I was supposed to be having fun and dating, not waiting around for this guy who I might or might not get married to later. So I went back to dating, and it seems like there were about four guys in the picture, and they all seemed to disappear for a week or two right around the middle of February.

When I was twenty-one I finally broke it off with the college fiance, and found myself back with the guy I was with when I was seventeen. I'm sure that there were the traditional gifts and and nice dinner and such, but I don't remember that stuff. What I remember was that I had gone through a bit of a crisis in December, and he was really there for me. But after the crisis was over, we were talking about getting married, and I realized that I couldn't marry him. I was very much in love, but he wasn't a Christian. Since I knew that I wasn't going to marry him, and the purpose of dating was to figure out who I would marry, I really shouldn't date him anymore. Having come to this conclusion, I thought that I would leave it to him how we should deal the break-up. Should we just immediately stop all contact? Should we try to stay friends? Should we just gradually see less and less of each other? Should we still date sometimes but also see other people? He didn't get it, and he had to hear again. We weren't going to get married, so we were eventually going to break up, so we should do it sooner than later so we didn't get hurt any more than absolutely necessary. He could choose how to handle that, but if he didn't choose then I would. At that point he lied to me and told me that he was a Christian but that he just didn't feel comfortable in church. And then he lied to me about some other really important things.

And then we were engaged. Not anything official, since we hadn't picked out rings or set a date or anything. But we would be getting married sometime, whenever we had the money. And I was in college and there didn't seem to be any rush, but I did expect to be married in a year or two.

So I don't think that we really ever made a big deal of the holiday. Until these past two years, I was very much in love and always happy to see him. Even with the financial problems and figuring out that he'd lied to get me to marry him, I was still very happy. I was a happily married woman and didn't need a special day for it.

So Valentine's Day itself was no big deal. The following week was somewhat special due to buying a lot of clearance sale chocolate. But except for that it was really just life as usual.

The thing that I really associate with February and Valentine's Day is buying stuff for my dad. His birthday was less than a week away from the holiday, so he was often presented with heart-shaped Mylar balloons that were on sale, or heart-shaped cake, or red tins of popcorn. If I took him to lunch or dinner, there were hearts and flowers decorating the restaurant. Stuff like that.

Dad would have been 66 this year. I miss him. I know that he was in pain and probably ready to go, and I know that he is in a better place now. I have totally gotten used to the fact that he isn't here, but there are times when it is especially irritating. I can't tell him about some movie I've seen or some thing that happened at school. I can't ask him if he likes the new Terminator series. I can't ask him what he thinks is wrong with the car. I can't ask him to tell me again about the giant checker-playing computer that one of his rivals entered into a high-school science fair.

Happy Valentines Day. And Happy Birthday Dad.

Sometimes I really wonder what is wrong with his brain

Yesterday I went on a bit about my husband not seeing a doctor. I meant to go into something else, but an hour later I had already written a long enough post without even getting into the money part of the situation.

So I was going to blog about that part today, only I think I'll save that for maybe tomorrow. I want to write about something I noticed last night. Another side of, what's the matter with him anyway?

Yesterday I notice that my husband mentions in his blog something about it being National Pancake Day. If you had gone to IHOP yesterday, between like 7 and 10, you would have been offered three pancakes for free. The idea is that you get free pancakes, and then you donate the money that you would have spent on the pancakes to some charity the Shriners are involved with. So far as I know, only the pancakes are free. It doesn't come with free coffee or milk, and you might want to buy some eggs to go with those pancakes, etc... So the charity makes money, and probably IHOP still makes some money, and everybody's happy.

We learned about this last Friday. It was one of those times last week that we ate out somewhere when I didn't plan to. My husband skipped lunch, waiting for me to come home, which didn't happen until after 4pm. We had no plans to go to lunch, but he thought we did, so he just sat at the computer and skipped lunch, waiting for me. So by the time I come home he doesn't feel so good, and he doesn't feel like eating whatever was in the fridge that he was supposed to eat. So we had this coupon, and we went to IHOP.

So we knew about National Pancake Day, and I thought about it, but didn't actually make any plans. I just sort of thought if we remember and we're out, we'll think about it. But I didn't remember yesterday morning when I was getting ready for school. And he didn't exactly get up early. We did talk for a bit, mostly to confirm that he would probably have to leave for work before I got done with school, so he shouldn't be waiting for me to eat lunch, and I should go run some errands instead of rushing home to see him. While I was out, I remembered, but I didn't want to go by myself. And he got home too late to go that evening.

I'd assumed he'd forgotten about it too, only there it was in his blog. So when he came home I said something like, we missed National Pancake Day. And he said something like, I didn't know anything about it until this morning.

Now, that's not right. We knew about it Friday. We went to IHOP on Friday. But after I mentioned it, he still didn't remember.

My husband will go on about this nonsense of having photographic memory. He can't remember anything real, he can't remember anything important, but he remembers some dumb things in movies and some stuff he's read. And then he thinks he has really good memory.

But even after I remind him about Friday, he still doesn't remember. He should remember after I tell him that we were there Friday. He doesn't. He remembers that we went there Friday, but he doesn't remember seeing anything about National Pancake Day.

I could understand if this was last month we were talking about, but this was less than a week ago. We saw the ad. We talked about it. We noticed that the Shriners were involved, cause we used to have a job where we worked with a lot of Shriners.

And while we are in IHOP talking about National Pancake Day, I reach over and pick up the ad so that I could see what hours the free pancakes were available and stuff like that. And then I dropped the ad in my soup.

I was sort of funny. It was not hilarious. Years from now, we will not be telling our friends about the time that a dropped the National Pancake Day ad in my soup. But at the time, it was funny.

And it was less than a week ago, and he doesn't remember. After I tell him all of that, he sort of vaguely remembers.

Sometimes I really wonder what is wrong with his brain.

My husband is lame

Seriously, he's lame today. Not in the sense that he's been a lame husband for the past several years and I didn't really notice. Not lame in the sense that when I ask him to do something to make me feel better his response is to do the exact opposite. Lame in the sense that he can't walk very well. He's been limping along for about a week.

He complains about his feet hurting and his back hurting, etc.... He does that a lot. What he doesn't do is actually go see a doctor about it.

I know that there's this whole thing about men not going to the doctor. I wouldn't think that this would apply to my husband. He's a big baby. I'd think that he'd want to go to the doctor, if he thought the doctor could actually do anything.

I don't go to the doctor that much either. If I feel bad, I stay home and do common sense stuff. There's no reason to go to the doctor and waste time and money to have him tell me something that I already knew I was supposed to do. Your foot hurts? Wrap it and try not to walk for a while. You don't feel well? You probably have a cold. Go home and have some chicken soup and some orange juice. Get some rest.

So I don't go to the doctor that much unless there is something wrong, and I don't know what it is. Or there is something wrong, and I know exactly what it is and need antibiotics. Or I've fallen or had some sort of accident and need X-rays. Or I feel really bad and need to be told that my appendix isn't about to burst.

But there are times when even though you're pretty sure that you know what is wrong and you know that you're going to be sent home with some common sense instructions, you just can't take it anymore and you go to the doctor anyway.

So I come home from school yesterday, to find as usual my husband is glued to the computer. And usually he says hello and other things of that nature before asking about lunch (or dinner, or breakfast, or midnight snack, or whatever is appropriate for that time of day). But this time he says something like "I think I need to go see the doctor about my foot."

Okay, so when I go to the doctor (except for stuff like my annual exam) I feel so bad that I can't drive. So I would have to wait for him to get home to drive me to the doctor if I decided that I needed one. Or if it was something sudden and I didn't think I could wait for him, maybe I'd call my mom or someone else for help. But he wasn't sick, and he didn't need me to drive him. He's been driving around just fine. And it isn't that he needs me to walk him to the car either. The last time he was complaining about his foot, I bought him a cane just to be on the safe side.

So he's apparently decided that he is in such pain that he can't take it anymore, and he's going to go to a doctor just in case there's something that can be done, or maybe some better pain meds that can be prescribed. But then he decides to sit there and wait three hours for me to get home from school.

And, although he's spent three hours sitting in front of the computer, he doesn't bother to look for the doctor's phone number or office hours or do anything else that one might do if one wanted to see a doctor.

I don't like our doctor. Our insurance company randomly selected one close to our home when we didn't know which one to write down. I should like to change doctors, but I have no better idea what name to write down now than I did before, except that it wouldn't be this one. So I saw her two or three times almost a year ago, decided she didn't have a lot of sense, and didn't go back for the six month follow-up. My husband also skipped his six-month follow-up and his three month follow-up, etc....

About the only good thing I have to say about her is that she has some walk-in hours, which we had a vague idea was after one on Monday-Thursday. So at about 12:30 we went over there and notice that there weren't many cars in the parking lot. Well, most of them are at lunch, but I'd have thought that there still would have been a few more people around. Maybe we were just lucky, but I didn't think so. I decided to go have a look around.

I couldn't remember the doctor's name, but I was pretty sure that I would recognize it on the board, and I pretty much knew where I was going anyway. It was the office just past the lab. The office just past the lab was very dark. I know that they turn out a lot of the lights when they go to lunch, but this seemed too dark for that. I think that office was empty.

My husband then decides that what will make him feel better is a new larger pair of shoes. So we go to Payless and buy him some big shoes with Velcro. He's still in pain, but he says that now he doesn't sweat every time he takes a step.

He's in such pain that he sweats every time he takes a step? And he just yesterday decides that he should see a doctor?

He decided that he needed to see a specialist instead. But, after being home for four hours on the computer, he only manages to look up the names and numbers of three foot specialists in the area. He still didn't actually call any of the numbers. He still doesn't have an appointment.

I had this whole other thing that I was going to get into, about how some people just don't know how to spend money. But this is getting long already, and I have to go to school in an hour, so I think that I'll save that for tomorrow.

Monday Morons--Why am I wasting my valuable class time?

So it is Monday, and what I would really like to do is stay home and do nothing. Not literally do nothing; that is what I did yesterday. I'm afraid that Sunday is just like any other day now, but out of habit I usually sit around and do nothing and wait for my husband to tell me how he'd like to spend his day off. Yesterday neither of us felt up to doing anything, so we mostly did nothing.

So today I should stay home and maybe do a bit of work around here that I should have done yesterday, and then think about the mess, though it is unlikely that I would actually get anything done about it. But I would like to stay home today and not waste my gas driving anywhere except maybe the grocery store, since yesterday I forgot a few things like cough drops and tissue paper. I don't have a cough or sore throat at the moment, but I just have this feeling I should be prepared for one or both of us to get one.

I have to go to class today, even though this isn't my scheduled day to be there and I don't really feel like going. It's only a two hour class, and I don't feel like wasting my time and my gas. By the time I get into it, class is nearly over and I have to start cleaning up and putting things away. It's annoying that I can't just go in and stay all day or come back after lunch if I want to.

Friday was one of those rare days that I almost got to stay as long as I wanted. Professor was there for the two hour morning class, had office hours for half an hour after that, and then stayed almost another half hour after that. Then he had three more hours after lunch, and I had sketches to work on during lunch, so that all worked out rather well.

Having finally decided on a second project, I got started on a vase after lunch. And I thought that I'd use a turntable. And then I did something stupid and started to build up my vase directly on the turntable. So now the vase is stuck to the turntable. So now the turntable is sitting on my shelf and no one else can use it, and the professor isn't happy about that. So I'm going to class today and will either find a way to get the vase unstuck from the turntable, or else go to class every time so that I'm at least actively working on the project while other people are unable to use the turntable. He can't really complain that other people can use the turntable when I'm actually in class making use of it myself.

I should have put something between the vase and the turntable. And I did briefly think about a couple of things, one was two small and one was two large, and then instead of finding something that would work, I just shrugged and started working. The last time used the turntable I put the clay directly on the turntable and had no problem getting the vase unstuck. But now that I'm thinking back on that project, it tapered to the bottom and was only two and a half inches at the base. The bottom quickly dried enough to be removed, and if it hadn't it could have been cut off of the turntable. The bottom of this vase is more like seven or eight inches wide, and there's delicate stuff at the bottom that I would not want to try and cut. I'm not very good with the wire anyway.

Okay, so I might go in today and find that it has dried enough to be removed. Or I might get it off with this other tool that I left at home Friday. Or I may have to leave it on the turntable until it is completely finished and dries, and then it will mostly come off by itself. But that will mean going to about four more classes this week than I meant to attend, wasting a lot of time and gas, etc....

The really bad thing is that a bit of newspaper and masking tape would have fixed this problem. And it's not like I didn't have the paper and masking tape, since I'd already wrapped the thing that I used to brace the inside of the vase while I work on the outside. So that's all a bit annoying.

The other annoying thing is that I'm now about two weeks behind where I hoped I would be. The first day of class, nothing gets done. It is a time honored tradition that nothing gets done on the first day of a college level class. You sit around and talk, and that's about it. The second day of class, I rolled out some slabs and smoothed them out. There's really not much to do after that, unless you've got another project ready to work on, which I didn't. The third day of class I was still waiting for the slabs to be at a workable stage. Other people get out paint dryers to speed things along, but I'm always afraid that will cause cracks, so I usually avoid that. I wanted to skip ahead to the third and fourth projects, except that they also involved slabs, and I had no space for them. The fourth day of class put the slabs together and mostly finished that stage of my first project, which then needs to dry, be fired, glazed, and fired again. The project cracked a tiny bit, but I hope that has been repaired well enough. I don't want to fire the vase just yet, until after I buy the glaze, in case I might also need to underglaze.

Fifth day of class I skipped. I figured that I could either roll out a slab, or I could go to Shreveport. I decided that I would rather go to Shreveport. Sixth day of class was cancelled after the professor called in sick.

Here's the dumb part. I spent the seventh and eighth days of class dealing with recycled clay. I didn't do any art at all. I'm guessing that I've spend about eight hours on this recycling clay business. There are several reasons I am trying to deal with recycled clay. For one, I just like the idea of not wasting anything and getting something for free. Another thing is that I commented last semester that some of the kiln room could use some straightening up, hoping that he would give me some of the leftover clay, which he did. So now that he gave me all this clay I'd feel bad about not using it. The third thing is that I took all this clay home over the break and should have done most of the work then, but I didn't, so the clay was just in the way. I needed to get it out of the house so I could have my kitchen back and not trip over stuff left in the hallway. And the fourth thing was when I started to think about financial problems and such I said that I wouldn't buy any new clay until it was absolutely necessary, so I said that I would use this stuff first.

So, while I am trying to deal with recycled clay so that I don't unnecessarily spend ten dollars here and there on bags of clay, last week we spent about a hundred dollars going out to lunch. Going to Arby's was entirely my fault. I don't even remember now why we went to Humperdinks. We didn't really need to go to Burger King before we went to the dollar theater; we could have just had a couple of dollar hotdogs at the theater, or we could have just skipped the movie and gone home to eat. Thursday we ate out at a Chinese buffet, but that was something that we actually planned to do, and we sold some stuff to Half-Price Books to get the money. Friday I had planned to eat lunch at Jack-In-The-Box so that I could stay close to school, and that only costs three dollars. But I did not plan on the twenty dollars we spent at IHOP after I went home. Saturday we did not eat out, and Sunday I was supposed to go out with my friends, but I didn't. Mainly I just didn't want to spend the money cause I felt guilty about the other times we ate out that week that I didn't plan to.

Here's another thing that sucks about the recycled clay. I'm almost done with it, or at least I'm almost done with about half of it that I started on. So the white modeling clay that I will use on the third and maybe fourth projects is almost ready to use. I have some mud still in a bucket under the kitchen table, and I'm told that it's probably white stoneware and I'll find something to do with that later. And then I had half a bag of red stoneware left from last year that I mixed with a bag of the stuff I was given to recycle. And I'm almost done with that, only the professor then says something like, "You did know that was terra cotta, right?"

No, I did not know that was terra cotta. Whatever it is, it's exactly the same color as red stoneware. The terra cotta we use is a grey-brown color, with an almost greenish tint. After it's fired, it's terra cotta orange, but when it's wet it doesn't look anything like red stoneware. There are other companies that sell terrra cotta that's red when it's wet, but we rarely buy any of it.

So I have about thirty pounds of either red stoneware, or something that's about half red stoneware and half terra cotta, or something that's mostly red stoneware with a bit of terra cotta stuck in it. So, whatever it is, I'm going to have to make sure that it is really well mixed. And then I won't be using it for most of the projects I was thinking about. I'll make a vase or something that can be burnished instead of glazed, and then I'll make some little test pieces to find out if it can be glazed fired to cone 6, or if it needs low-fire stuff for terra cotta.

The mixed up red stoneware/terra cotta aside, if I've spent eight hours dealing with recycled clay, and I think that my time is worth ten dollars an hour, this recycled clay has so far cost me eighty dollars. So not only did I spend two thirds of my valuable class time recycling, I feel like I'm in the hole about sixty dollars.

Now I know that isn't really true. I know that when I get my projects done that I will not only have art that I'm proud of, but I can also feel good about having cleared away some of the clutter in the kiln room. But this week, I'm just not feeling it. This week I'm just frustrated about being behind schedule.

Freaky Friday

Sorry it was late. I left for school before I finished this post, and I stayed out most of the day.

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

sex (12x) hell (6x) slut (5x) sluts (4x) dick (3x) crack (2x) penis (1x)

Well, as you can see I received credit for both slut singular and sluts plural. But I did not get credit for Homewrecking-Sluts, either singular or plural. I don't think that the blog rating thing can read that word. Oh, well. Earlier in the week I was number one in the Google search for Homewrecking-Sluts and various forms of the same, but now it seems that I have slipped to second place.

I think that I should take a moment to explain to my new reader that I do this post about Google searches on Fridays, maybe every week, but lately only once or twice a month. I was inspired by a post Killer wrote called Welcome Confused Gyno Patients. Before reading that I didn't even have a tracker on my blog. But his post was just so damned funny that I had to get one. Now I share the joy. Sometimes people leave comments on what their most interesting recent Google search was.

The big thing for the past few weeks has been Cloverfield. I wrote a review of cloverfield. People come here after Googling cloverfield truth and cloverfield marlene and cloverfield spaceship and so many other things about Cloverfield that I'm not going to list them this time. One search in particular caught my attention, not from the way it was phrased, but because of where it came from--Cardiff, UK. I'm sure that most of you don't even get why that would be funny. I really know nothing about Cardiff, except that's where the TV series Torchwood is set. Now, if you're not from the UK, and you're not an evil person who downloads TV shows, let me explain. It's a spin-off of Doctor Who, and it's sort of like Men in Black, only not as funny. So now we all know where the monster came from. It fell through the rift in Cardiff, found it's way to the ocean, and then swam to New York.

As usual, there were a lot of Google searches involving Rudy's BBQ. Again, there were just so many variations on that I won't list them today. I still have very little info on that. The sauce is between 30 and 35 calories per serving. Now remember that a serving is only like a tablespoon, not half a bottle. If I ever get any more info I promise to post it. Here a post about Rudy's.

Next we have some Google searches for sluts. We have fat freaky sluts, extreme freaky sluts, sluts in footless tights, freaky sluts, sluts corsets, slut husband, and russian sluts 4 sale. Until recently, most of the slut search traffic came to my blog because of a post I wrote about buying nylons at a place I called the Sluts R Us store. That really isn't the name of the place. Electrique Boutique is in Arlington, in Lincoln Square, between the Half-Price Books and Olenjacks Grill.

On a related note, someone was looking for "dumb things said by bimbos." I know a lot of dumb things said by one in particular. But we're not going to talk about her today.

Someone found my blog by Googling build men restroom. I have a post about vandalism at the school's men's restroom. Gross.

Here's one I haven't seen for a while--Marie Callender semi-annual pie sale. They probably should have gone here instead, but it's nice that they stopped by. We don't have a Marie Callender's here, but there are two in Oklahoma, and we just happened to be near one last October, and also the year before that. I doubt that we have any trips to Norman before the 29th when the sale ends, and I probably should spend the money on pies anyway. If you happen to be near one this month, you can get a whole pie for 5.99 (plus tin deposit), unless you are in Washington or Oregon and you have to pay a dollar more.

Again this week we have some interest in popcorn. Popcorn at the movies calories, popcorn diet, can you eat popcorn while dieting, and what food is better to eat at the movies popcorn or ice cream. The searchers were directed here, because I described the one time that I lost weight (on purpose) and it did involve eating a lot of popcorn. I still do not know the calories for movie popcorn, just that it must be a lot more than the air popped stuff with butter flavored spray that I had.

Here is someone looking for a bucket of dirt. I'm not sure if they wanted a bucket of dirt for making clay, or a bucket of dirt one buys looking for gems at a tourist place. I have done both.

There's still more interest in the Terminator this week. Can a future like terminator happen? Yes. Another search was terminator story line John Connor father. The third was how does Reese get a photo of sarah terminator? John gave it to him. Maybe John was doing a little matching making, but I've also read some excellent T2 books by S. M. Stirling suggesting that all the resistance fighters were given that same picture of Saint Sarah. The forth search was who got sarah connor pregnant? I thought that everyone knew that. But then I saw that there's also a singer named Sarah Connor, so that person might have been looking for something else entirely. Odd that someone was also looking for terminator series refrigerator. And I had two other refrigerator searches, 31 inch refrigerator, and why does white refrigerator cost more than black? I would have thought it was the other way around, as in my case, but the answer is just because some of us will pay the extra money. Here's a post about time travel theories and Terminator, and here's a post about buying a refrigerator.

People reading my review of diet drinks came looking for truth diet pepsi, how many calories in glass dr pepper, diet big red good for you, and minute maid light lemonade 2 liter bottle. Also, someone was looking for beer in a tree. But beer in a tree is not a diet drink, but a Christmas song.

Perverts stopped by to look for giant dick costume, homemade penis mold, make mold of penis at home, how to make a homemade penis mold, penis molds, and freaky penis. Here's an odd one--pottery mold for penis. Okay, I still don't remember where I saw this, but a kit for making a mold of your penis will cost you about ninety dollars. And I still haven't tried it, so I can't really give you any advice.

Not sure how this came to my blog, but here's a search for dmarks applebees. Also, a search for kelloggs factory tour came here, but that was because of dmarks leaving me a comment.

Art related searches include homemade coil vase, buy cheap vase plaster molds, "mosaic" "stargate design", paper-cast relief sculpture, plaster tile molds, mosaic sea turtle tile mold, how much do I charge to knit someone a scarf? I charge at least eighty dollars, which is probably why I have only sold the one. Also, there was a search for insidious clip art. I am thinking that they were disappointed.

Here's a search for sex list pictures. You can read the list if you want to, but there are no pictures. I'm thinking that they were disappointed too.

Fellow shoppers were looking for f.e. bathandbodyworks.com body butter and half price bathandbodyworks stuff. I look for that myself. But I'm taking a break since I have no money at the moment. But I still have plenty of stuff I haven't used yet.

I also had searches for diamond arkansas getting there, fun stuff to do in Joplin, decline in family traditions, and "international wildlife park". I used to work for International Wildlife Park in Grand Prairie, but it's been closed for almost twenty years. There were other parks, but I'm not sure if they are still around. I have been to the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, and I did find some fun stuff to do in Joplin. I shouldn't get into the decline in family traditions.

Fellow sci-fi fans were looking for "vorlon" "costume", vorlon costume, "star trek" "o'riley", and neville chase me. Neville can chase me if he wants too; all three versions of him. I don't have a vorlon costume, but I did meet the guy who wore it in the show. And if you don't know, Keven O'Riley is the man who sang "I'll take you home again Kathleen..." on Star Trek. We were voting on who was the most hated man on Star Trek, so I voted for Kevin.

Someone was looking for the tribulation and was directed to a post a made after a blogger made the remark that people shouldn't be praying for her. She was being prayed for (not by me) because she's going to hell, just like almost everyone else. In the discussion that followed, I accidentally wrote Post-Tribulation when I meant to write Pre-Tribulation. My obvious error pops right up on the Google search. I wish I could fix that.

Fellow fans of eating out were looking for Jimmy Dip's Chinese Fort Worth and olenjack's grille review. I have gone to Olenjack's a few times and I like it, but really I shouldn't spend that much money. We have a gift card for the place, so we'll be going at least one more time. Jimmy Dip's was a great place, but it's been closed for like ten years.

Other searches include buy superbowl tickets for 2011, "Susan_25", blogspot.com january 2008 "my kid" "until march" london, and freaky fridays. Freaky fridays makes perfect sense. Super bowl tickets for 2011 leads to a post I wrote about them being dumb enough to schedule the Superbowl in a place that isn't even built yet. I have a friend named Susan, but she isn't 25. Not even close. I have no idea what blogspot.com january 2008 "my kid" "until march" london is for. We are on blogspot, and it was January, but I can't make much sense of the rest of it. Unfortunately it led to a post where I was venting a bit, about when my husband was talking nonsense about Maine and London, and how I have to wait until March to do something.

Okay, here's this week's count:

Cloverfield--84

Rudy's--43

Penis--7

People going to hell--0

Sluts--8

Buckets--1

Diet Drinks--3

Refrigerators--3

Vasectomies--0

Popcorn--5

Bath & Body Works--2

Terminator/Sarah Connor--5

Alcoholics--0

And the top twelve keyword are now: cloverfield, costume, rudys, penis, bbq, the, marlene, dick, going, giant, hell, diet

Most of this week sucks

Okay, so the don't spend money bit isn't going very well.

So the plan was to buy some groceries on Saturday and Sunday, and then not spend any more money on food. We were supposed to eat at home and not go out to lunch and spend money, stay home and clean house, etc.... So Saturday, with list in hand, I went to the grocery store and did not buy anything that wasn't on the list. In fact, several things that were not on the list I didn't buy cause I thought that I could get a better deal somewhere else. Sunday, we went to another store, mainly intending to buy potatoes and pork chops, and maybe a few vegetables that I forgot to get at the other store. I thought that would would spend less than ten dollars.

Somehow we spent almost twenty. I told him what I'd already bought, but I don't think he was listening cause he bought several of those things again. He bought three bunches of cilantro. I don't think that I've ever used more than one or two in the same month, and I'd already bought one, so now we have four. Same thing with onions and avocados and peppers, though I suppose a few more of those things never hurt anybody.

Still, that's only about forty dollars on groceries. I thought that I did pretty good with that.

Sunday was the Superbowl. We were just supposed to eat stuff we'd bought from the store, but it was the Superbowl and my brother invited us over. We ate some pizza, which we did not pay for. I think that all we brought was some sodas. My brother's nice like that. "I'm going to buy food. Do you want some?" He does that a lot. So we didn't eat what we were supposed to eat, but we didn't spend any money either.

Monday, I didn't feel so good. Normally to feel better, I go and eat Chinese food, and then maybe eat a whole bag of cookies. I don't think that doing either thing is particularly good for me, but I do it anyway. And this week I'm not supposed to spend any money, so doing either of those things wasn't a good idea. But I still didn't feel so good that afternoon, so we went to Arby's. Not as bad as eating a whole bag of cookies, and not as expensive as Chinese food. I still felt bad, but a little better. But that was another ten bucks that we weren't supposed to spend.

Tuesday, my husband got a bonus at work. It's supposed to be two hundred and fifty dollars, but by the time everything is taken out the check is only for like a hundred and sixty something. And I don't know why they sent a check, since everything else is direct deposit. So we had to go out to deposit this check, and we decided that one nice lunch wasn't going to kill anybody, and we had a coupon. So we went to Humperdinks. Some of their food is really good, and some of their food is really boring. I still wasn't feeling too good, so I decided not to buy anything that sounded spicy. So I got one of their create your own pasta things. Very boring. It did make me feel a little better, but I could have gotten better boring food for a lot less money. Like I could have bought something just as good or better at the frozen food section of the grocery store. So now I'm kicking myself for spending twenty-five bucks on boring food.

So I bought all this food, and I think that the main thing that we've eaten is a few pork chops and some hotdogs. Yesterday, I still didn't feel so good. Not that I felt bad enough to justify spending most of the day in bed, but somehow that's what I ended up doing. I got up, did some blogging, had a bath, did a few more things, and then was mostly in bed watching TV. At some point I realized it was lunch time. I thought it was a lot earlier than that. So I've mostly wasted half a day, and I don't know why. I get up to do stuff, mostly forget what I was going to do, and go back to bed. So it's time for lunch, and I should fix lunch, but I'm not really hungry and fix more of a snack. Then my husband suggests going to the library, and then maybe we can see a movie. Movies are not part of the don't spend money plan, unless maybe they are at a dollar theater. But there is one in Irving, so that's okay. And there's a library and other stuff that we want to do in Irving, so off we go. Only by the time the movie is about to start, we both suddenly get very hungry. So go to Burger King. Again, no one will die if we go to Burger King once in a while, but it was another ten dollars or so that I didn't plan to spend.

Okay, so after eating at Burger King and watching vampires kill everyone is Smallville Alaska, I feel better. But now it seems like it's too late to really do anything. So like an hour later I am back in bed again, watching TV.

Lottery Tickets

Yesterday I stopped by a gas station to buy some lottery tickets. This is something that I have to do every week. I spend at least eight dollars. I'm guessing that I spend about five hundred or so a year.

My big mistake was picking my own numbers. I picked some numbers several years ago when we first got the lottery. I think that first year I won a hundred dollars. At the time I was really happy to have an extra hundred dollars. We were so excited that we had won something. We barely got to sleep that night. We just couldn't wait for it to be morning so we could go and cash in that ticket.

So the that was one set of numbers that were played twice a week. That came to one hundred and four dollars a year, plus maybe the occasional extra quick-picks if there was a really high jackpot. That's not so bad. I figured that if we had a state income tax it would cost us that much, and the lottery was way more fun.

Then I got a second set of numbers. So now that's two dollars twice a week so that's two hundred and eight dollars played on Lotto Texas. Plus we occasionally bought extra quick-picks if there was a really high jackpot, and if we went out of state for the week we bought our state lottery tickets before we left plus we bought tickets for the week in whatever state we were visiting.

And then Texas got Mega Millions. So I played that game too, with the same two sets of numbers that I played Lotto Texas. So now that's four dollars twice a week, and that adds up to four hundred and sixteen dollars. Plus those occasional extra quick-picks and other state lotteries and Powerball tickets if we go out of the state for the week.

I hardly win anything anymore. It seemed like I used to get three numbers once in a while and win between two and ten dollars. Nothing to get excited about, but once in a while it paid for the next week's tickets. And I think I've won a hundred dollars maybe five or six times. Which is nice when it happens, but a hundred dollars just doesn't seem like much now. I spend more than that a week when I'm "not spending any money." A tank of gas, some stuff at the grocery store, and maybe a bag of clay, and there goes a hundred dollars.

So it doesn't seem like much fun anymore, though I still think a state income tax might cost that much, and this is still more fun than a state income tax.

But I still have to spend this eight dollars a week on these two games with these two sets of numbers. Because I have these numbers. If I didn't have these numbers, if I just got quick-picks and I missed a week or so, everything would be just fine. But I have these numbers that I picked out, and if I ever stopped playing them, then those numbers would win, and I'd be just miserable.

So yesterday I went to the gas station to buy lotto tickets. And I have these numbers, and I already have a form filled out. One of the forms didn't seem to work, and I had to fill out another one to get it work right. Now there's a bit of dilemma for me when they actually print out the wrong ticket. If it has the right numbers but something else is wrong, like it's cash option instead of annual payments, then I go ahead a buy the ticket. Or if I wanted it for two weeks but it's only for one week, if I'm not going out of town I can just come back the next week. If it comes up for more than a week or two then I probably don't have that much cash on me and they have to print me another ticket.

But once in a while they print out a ticket with one of the numbers wrong, and then I wonder about that. What if these are the winning numbers, and I don't buy the ticket? But I usually don't buy the ticket, cause I don't have enough money to buy that ticket and the ticket that I meant to buy, so if I only have money for one it needs to be the one with my regular numbers.

So I'm buying my tickets, and I have to fill out an extra Mega Millions form because there was some problem with the one I had first. That ticket wasn't even printed out, but the lady told me that it couldn't read one of the numbers and was suggesting that the unreadable number might be 56. 56 isn't one of my regular numbers, so I filled out the form a second time. 56 wasn't one of the numbers called last night, but what if it's called on Friday?

So while that was going on, an older guy in the other line is also trying to buy tickets. Only he's just getting quick-picks, so he decided to just say how many he wanted instead of filling out the form. He wanted five of Lotto Texas and five of Mega Millions, both cash option. But the tickets never seemed to print out correctly. I think that there was a new guy trying to work the machine. I think first he got five of Lotto Texas and then five of Mega Millions, but the Mega Millions were the annual payment option. I would have just bought the tickets, but he said that he didn't want them, cause he was too old to wait for payments. So the guy tried again, but I think that he printed off another Lotto Texas ticket by mistake. So he asked for help from another employee, and the other employee didn't know that the guy wanted five quick-picks, so he just printed one. And then he printed another four, but again he forgot the cash option thing. So he had to print those four again.

So now the older guy has the five Texas Lotto he wanted and the five Mega Million that he wanted, and there's another fourteen dollars worth of tickets that were printed off by mistake that the guy didn't buy. And you don't want to spend twenty four dollars on lottery tickets when you only meant to spend ten dollars, but if you heard later that the winning ticket came from that store, but you didn't have it, wouldn't you always wonder if it was one of those tickets that you didn't buy? Wouldn't it have been better to just go ahead an buy the annual payment option ticket?

A few annoyances

Ha, ha! Everybody missed the 300th post.

Just kidding. It's still there. You can scroll down and read it now. You can even still leave comments.

The first week of last month I read a couple of messages of interest. First, a message board that I used to frequent that has been offline is supposed to be back up and running on the 6th of January. And second, a blog that I had been reading purely because it was like reading a soap opera script would end as of the 7th of January.
It is now the first week of February. The message board is still not back up. And the soap opera-like blog is back, but only to invited guests, and I am not one of the invited guests.

Now, I can't really be upset at either development. I pay nothing to use the still missing message board. The person who runs it does not get paid for his services, and I don't think that he makes much of anything from the website itself. He is a volunteer. He gives his time because this is something he enjoys doing, and if sometimes something comes about in his real life that interferes with what he normally does on the Internet, I have no business complaining about it.

As for the soap opera blog not being public anymore, well, I am the one who suggested that she make the blog private rather than give up writing it. I can hardly get upset when she actually takes my advice. It's a bit annoying that she chooses now to take my advice, rather than say many months ago when I warned her about one of the many men in her life, but so be it. I very rarely left her any comments, and when I did I did so anonymously. For all I know she would have invited me to be one of those still allowed to read the blog, if only I had left her a way to get in touch with me. So I have no business complaining about that either.

I am now a week behind in ceramics class. I only meant to skip the one day. I had thought that all I had to do that day anyway was roll out a slab, and I wasn't about to give up a day out of town just to roll out a slab. Still, it's just as well that I didn't go to class that day, since that slab would probably now be too dry to work with.

I haven't felt good for about a week now. Nothing major most of the time, but at the very least I feel a bit queasy. Not a good feeling when I'm trying not to spend money and can't attempt to fix it by eating at certain restaurants and gobbling down whole bags of cookies. Last night I thought I'd go halfway and eat at Arby's. I thought that would make me feel better and not be as expensive as a Chinese buffet and not as bad for me as a whole bag of cookies. That worked for maybe an hour. But I had to try something. I hate the way the house is and I just had to get some work done, even if just for an hour.

My husband is home for another week. So that was several weeks off with no pay, and then two weeks in Shreveport with almost no pay. Then someone got sick and they were going to send him someplace better last week, only they couldn't send him because he'd left all of his stuff in Shreveport to work there. So then it was one more day in Shreveport, and then a day off, and then three days around here that weren't very good but not as bad as Shreveport. And now another week off.

I'm never quite comfortable when he is out of town for a week. But having him home for a whole week is somehow not quite right either. When he has a day off we either go out and spend money, which we are trying not to do, or he sits here all day blogging and such. This is annoying on so many levels, besides the obvious that if he is on the computer all of the time then I can't use it when I want.

Whatever.

Post 300--Monday Morons--A message for homewrecking sluts

This post isn't for the Homewrecking-slut in particular, just homewrecking sluts in general. If I were to write something specifically for her, I'd have to write something even longer, because she did even more stupid things that what I've addressed here.

First, a few points

If a man says that his wife doesn't understand him
A. He is not making himself understood,
B. Misunderstood of not, he is still married and off-limits, and
C. It is none of your damn business.

If a man says that he and his wife just don't have the relationship that they used to
A. There's at least a fifty percent chance that it's his fault,
B. Regardless of how their relationship has changed, he is still married and off-limits, and
C. It is none of your damn business.


If a man says that he and his wife are only staying together for the children and/or financial reasons, and that they have an understanding
A. You have only his word for it, and his wife may be totally unaware that this is even being suggested,
B. Regardless of why they are staying together, he is still married and off-limits, and
C. It is none of your damn business.


If a man says that he and his wife will be getting a divorce anyway
A. Unless you heard it from both of them, you have no reason to believe that is true,
B. Even if they do get a divorce later they are not divorced now, he is still married and off-limits, and
C. It is none of your damn business.


Next, a few questions

If you convince a man to cheat on his wife, or even leave his wife, what is in it for you? If after you are done with him he is the type of person who will abandon the person he promised to love and be with forever, why would you want him? If he will leave his wife for a slut, what makes you think he would honor any commitment he makes to the slut? After he's left his wife, what's the big deal about leaving you?

Now that you have gotten this man to leave his wife (or given her a good reason to leave him), do you realize that a.) there is now one less "good one" out there who isn't gay, and b.) you now have now increased the number of "the competition" by one? And do you realize that the added competition is probably a better person than you?

What is the point of saying "he would have cheated anyway"? You don't know that. And who else would he have cheated with? For the most part they can only cheat with people who are stupid and immoral enough to go along with it because "he would have cheated anyway". There are some cheaters who lie and say that they are not married, but that sort of thing can usually be avoided by taking the time to get to know a person first. People get all kinds of nonsense in their heads, but this particular bit of nonsense needs a partner, so this wouldn't happen if you were a decent person.

What part of he's married do you not understand? He's married. He has an exclusive contract with another person. What difference does it make that you have might have "feelings" for him? Why do you get it into your head that your feelings matter? The wife has feelings too. And she also has that exclusive contract.

And it's not just a regular contract, they're a family. They're not roommates, they're not just a couple of people who decided to hang out together until something better came along, they're a family. You've decided to do something to break up a family. What makes you think that you have the right to do that?


And one final thought.

This is forcing an unwanted sex act on someone else. If you do this you're no better than a rapist, and you should get the same treatment as the other rapists. If you have any sense, you wouldn't do this. Otherwise you'll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, wondering if this is the day that you'll get what you deserve.

That's about it.

Have a nice day.

Post 299

I didn't forget that it's Friday. Freaky Friday will take a break this week. I will just have to do a longer one next week. Again, there's been too much activity this week to keep up with all of it. Mostly, that's due to a lot of people looking for Cloverfield stuff. And then some of it was due to my taking a few days off.

Anyway, I can't do both Freaky Friday and a catch up post. I only have this one post left before the long awaited 300th. And I want the 300th to be on a Monday. It would have been this past Monday, but I was getting some stuff done so that I could go to Shreveport. And I didn't want to post the 300th right before I was going to be in Shreveport.

So I went to Shreveport for a bit. My husband worked there Tuesday. I had thought about going with him earlier, but decided I didn't want to be gone unless it was only a day or two. When the schedule was changed so that he only worked Tuesday, I just couldn't get the idea out of my head. Maybe if I just get away from here for a day or so I'll feel better.

I can't say that I really feel much better. But I can say that if I'd have stayed here instead of going I'd have felt worse. I was spending too much time in bed doing nothing. Spending a day in a motel bed watching cable TV is a different thing entirely. I get a bit of knitting done, and I relax some. I can't relax here, cause there's always something else I really should be doing that never seems to get done.

The house is an even bigger mess than it was. I emptied the storage unit. I had only meant to have it for two or three months, and I think now it has been more than six. I decided that if I hadn't missed the stuff in six months, it was probably safe to throw most of it away. And that's what I meant to do, throw most of it away. Saturday I got out most of the stuff I wanted, and Sunday he picked up his bike. I thought the rest of it could be left behind.

Not that I'd really just leave it there for someone else to deal with. I'm not that kind of person. I went back Monday to start throwing the stuff out. Only I found a few more things that I meant to keep.

Wednesday I found a few more things. And then it gets to the point where you reach into a box just to get this one thing, and then you see all this other stuff in the box. Oh, I forgot about that. So then it's a lot of trouble to stand there and sort through the box, so I ended up taking the whole box to sort out at home. So if I meant to pick up just four little things, I end up taking home four boxes of little things. And then I had to make like four more trips, cause there was still stuff to throw away. And each time I ended up bringing home a few more boxes of stuff to sort through.

That last trip I really did have to just throw stuff away. Only the dumpster wasn't really in a good place near my unit. After dragging that stuff to the dumpster, I felt a twinge in my neck, and I didn't go back for that last box of stuff that needed to be taken out. But it was just that one last box, and it wasn't even a heavy box, so maybe they will forgive me.

I found all sorts of weird things in the unit. How did that get there?

I found a six pack of Dublin Dr. Pepper. I can't imagine why I would have put that in storage. I think that I was going to give it to a friend and had to hide it from my husband, and then I took the box to the unit by mistake.

I found a lot of books. The funny thing was finding a condom in with a box of books. Last year there was so much make-up sex, and we bought more condoms last year than we have in our almost twenty year relationship. We would go to the grocery store and buy condoms while we were there, and then later we would try to remember if we'd bought condoms earlier, so we'd buy some more at another place just to be on the safe side. There were packages of condoms in nearly every room, condoms in my makeup case, condoms in every piece of luggage, etc.... So there are condoms that turn up in weird places. The really funny thing about this one was that it was unwrapped. All sorts of odd images pop into my mind. Surely we didn't pack half a box of books, suddenly decide to have sex, unwrap a condom, and then change our minds and go back to packing books and stuff. Maybe one time we were in such a hurry to have sex that the condom went flying out of our hands and was lost? Were we playing around one day and deliberately started flinging condoms across the room?

There were about a dozen things of soup in the little microwaveable containers, but they were hidden under a couple of pairs of shoes. We always have stuff like that in the van, in case my husband has to go out of town suddenly he'll have soup and maybe peanut butter and crackers. If he doesn't feel like going out, he won't starve. But this stuff had been in the storage unit so long it had gone out of date.

I found a bunch of school stuff from about 2003. I realize that I don't need most of that, but I would have liked to keep some of it anyway, if I could have gotten it organized. So now I've finally thrown most of it away. I'm still hanging on to a bit of it. And some of it is notes on stories that I wrote for class. I can't find the completed stories now, so I'd better keep the notes just in case I have to rewrite them.

I took Russian classes. I can't speak Russian, but for about six months I could type Russian. I finally tossed that out. I couldn't read any of it.

There are more books. Some of these books are going to be sold to Half Price Books. It's too bad there isn't a Half Price Stuff that would pay you a little bit for all the stuff you end up not wanting. I could box up the odd pieces of Tupperware that I don't even use anymore cause it doesn't store well with the Rubbermaid stuff. And they could have some Christmas decorations that I ended up not using. And I have this toaster oven that's just in my way now. And I bought an ice tea maker at a garage sale and then didn't even use it. I haven't made waffles since we've been in this house. There's all this stuff that I don't want to actually throw away, and I suppose I should give it to Goodwill, but I don't want to. But selling it, even for just a little bit, that would be different somehow. I can't have a garage sale myself, and I'm trying to decide how much of this stuff should stay here until the club has their sale.

Yesterday, I went to art class, only it was cancelled. My teacher was sick. For so reason, the school refuses to put on sign on the door. So you just wait around until you see someone else coming to class, and one of you waits by the door while the other goes to get someone to officially say that there's no class today. So the teacher is usually there at nine, and the class officially starts at ten. I got there at about 9:30. Another student got there just as I did and found that the door was locked. She announced that it was freezing, which it wasn't really, and ran off, leaving me with her stuff. She didn't say where she was going or please watch my stuff or anything. She just left. So I'm just standing by the door with my stuff and her stuff. I should just take my stuff back to my car and then go to the other building and try to find out what's going on. But I don't feel like I can do that with the other student's stuff still next to the door. At about 9:45 another student comes, and she says she'll stay with the stuff until 10 if I want to leave. While we are discussing the situation, someone comes with a key to let us in, but tells us not to get our stuff out. Class is cancelled, she's just there for a few minutes to pass around a sign-in sheet. We're not allowed to stay in the lab without the teacher, unless they hire a babysitter, which they did not.

This made me mad, but I've gotten used to this sort thing from them, and it didn't cause me any particular problems, so I didn't make a scene this time. Another student is quite convinced that this will ruin the piece she's working on. A couple of weeks work and almost fifty pounds of clay, all probably for nothing. By next Tuesday the piece will have dried too much and start to crack. If you've planned to do something on Thursday, sometimes you absolutely have to do whatever it is on Thursday, or the whole thing is ruined. But they still won't hire anyone to keep the lab open when the teacher is ill.

So I am debating whether or not I should drive over there today. He said that he was going to be there, but if he was sick on Thursday and sick on Wednesday, might he still be sick on Friday. And even if he comes in for class, he might not stay for "office hours", and I don't think I want to waste my time and gas for maybe getting to work two hours. Maybe I should just accept that this week has been a waste of time and not worry about it.

Back to trying to sort through the junk. Here's some stuff from when I first learned that I was going to get a divorce. Emails from him. Emails from the Homewrecking-Slut. Me asking her to stay away while we deal with our business, and her refusing. We're considering getting a divorce for no other reason than she is a slut who won't go away and mind her own business. She knows we're still in love and that we never stopped being in love and that before her we weren't even fighting much less talking of divorce, she knows he's only even talking to her because he's mentally ill, and she doesn't care. I need to see a doctor, but I don't have any money. She's determined to make the worst time of our lives into a vacation. I can't see a doctor, but they're going to take a tour of Texas.

That's all stuff that I would like to be rid of, but I have to keep it. And here's stuff from the lesbian he was going to leave me for years before that. But I didn't know at the time. At the time I had a job and money in the bank and no debt, and while it would have upset me to learn what he was planning, I would have gladly shown him the door and been done with him. I'm not sure what he thought was going to happen with a lesbian. Did he think that her girlfriend was going to let him move in with them? Did he think that they were just pretending to be lesbians? Anyway, if I had known back then he would have been out of my life a lot sooner and with a lot less pain. And accept for getting him to sign over the apartment, I wouldn't have had to ask him for anything. But now everything is different.

Here are a bunch of old Christmas cards from people I don't even remember. That's not so strange. A lot of other people go overboard with the whole Christmas card thing. I usually don't. But here are cards that I meant to send, signed and sealed and ready to go, but no postage. Only I don't recognize some of these names either. Who did I care enough about to buy Christmas cards for, but now I can't even remember who they were?

Here are a zillion little things like postcards. We were very happy together. I don't want this stuff anymore, but it's hard to get rid of it. If it's damaged I throw it away, otherwise it goes back into a box. Here's a book he bought for me back when I was seventeen. It's damaged. I shouldn't keep it anyway.

I hate this house. It's home, but right now I hate it. I loved the apartment, but I couldn't take him whining about moving. So, we moved here, and he wasn't willing to do the work that needed to be done. Less than a year later, he's whining about moving again, but we're not moving. We took my mother's money cause he just had to move here. I'm never moving again unless he pays back my mother's money. I told him once we moved that was it, so he shouldn't be in such a hurry. But he didn't listen and was surprised that I was trying to make long term plans for the place. He kept talking nonsense about Maine and London. The Homewrecking-Slut lives near London.

I hate this house when I am by myself. When he is here he does things that upset me about 75% of the time he is awake. I am in limbo again, and I hate it, and I can't really decide anything until March. Either way, I'll still live here. And I hate it.

Since I managed to get the stuff out of the storage unit, we have money to pay the rent this month. My husband had been out of work for more than two weeks, and since he has been back to work he hasn't made any commission to speak of. That's pretty much all of the money that we'll have for about two weeks. After that we will have to pay both car payments, so we won't have much money to spare then either. This is really starting to suck. I can't waste gas. I can't buy more clay or any other art supplies. I can't go out to dinner with my friends tomorrow. I'm not even going to drive over to the bookstore to see them. They'll try to talk me into going with them, just have a sandwich or a salad or something. Or someone will offer to loan me some money. But really, I shouldn't even drive over there. It will take too much gas.

I can't think of anything that I want to make for the sixth project in ceramics class. We're supposed to find some common object in the house and copy it. People copy lamps and shoes and such. I'm trying to get rid of stuff in the house, and I'm really not in the mood to make useless copies.

My husband will be gone today and tomorrow. It shouldn't bother me. Somehow it does. We briefly toyed with the idea of my going with him again. Today could have been spent on another motel bed watching cable TV while knitting. But tomorrow I wouldn't have the motel room, so what would I do? Spend the day at the mall? Not a good way to save money. I'm stuck here instead.

I could ramble on like this for a long time. But I really need to stop now. I should sort through some more of those boxes before the trash collection tomorrow.

Freaky Friday

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
sex (8x) kill (7x) hell (4x) dick (3x) shoot (2x) death (1x)

I'm not sure where all that sex came from. Hell and dick sure, but sex? Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese had sex. And I've complained of not having sex, and quite a while back there was the sex list post, but that's about it. I think the rest of that stuff came from the Cloverfield review.

It has been all about Cloverfield this week. I'm going to switch things around a bit today and put the Cloverfield searches at the end of this post after the top twelve keywords. I hate spoilers, and I think that discussing the Cloverfield searches would count as a spoiler. If you want to read my review, click here.

We had a lot of Rudy's BBQ fans this week. Searches include calories in Rudy's barbeque, rudy's bbq nutritional, rudy's bbq coupons, rudy's bbq nutritional facts, rudy's bbq nutritional info, rudy's barbeque, rudy's barbeque calories, rudy's bbq nutritional value, and rudy's bbq nutritional facts. There are 30 to 35 calories in two tablespoons of sauce, and that's all the info I've found so far. Okay, I'm not going to get all serious like last week, but for the most part bbq still isn't diet food. It just isn't. If you want to lose weight you'll need to eat a lot of stuff like broccoli. But if you happen to be near a Rudy's, maybe you should try the turkey. If you don't drown it in sauce, and you don't eat too much of it, turkey is good for you. So while you're at Rudy's ordering a sandwich, maybe get some extra turkey to go. And maybe eat it with a side of broccoli.

Somebody was looking for an Enik costume. I made an Enik costume for Halloween 2006. I think that I wore it for about twenty minutes. It was just too hot and uncomfortable.

Other people were searching for 31 inch wide refrigerator, 31 inch wide refrigerator in stainless steel, and clean outside of black refrigerator. I thought that last one was odd. Are black refrigerators supposed to be cleaned in a different way than white ones? I know that there's now special laundry detergent for black clothes, but surely you don't need special cleaners for black refrigerators.

Someone Googled I don't feel like I'm an alcoholic, to be followed by I'm an alcoholic too. Well, I'm not an alcoholic. I'm about as anti-alcoholic as you can get. And I said so, here. Probably not what they wanted to read.

Someone Googled central market olive salad. I think the olive salad I bought was Boscoli, which they do have at Central Market. But I lucked out and bought mine at the surplus store.

A fellow fan of the knitting machine was looking for bond-america.com discount coupon. I don't have any such coupon. But Micheal's and Hobby Lobby often have coupons, and I once used one to buy the knitting machine.

Now we come to the beverage searches. I usually have a lot of those, but these week there's only diet drinks the truth and calories for glass of ginger ale. Unless you want to count beer in a tree. That's a Christmas song. "On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a beer...."

There were a couple of Google searches for selling my artwork on a blog, how much money made selling art, and how much do I charge for my art and craft. I don't actually sell much of my art, cause I have so much trouble figuring this stuff out. I think that many years ago I sold a couple of painted eggs and copies of a few sketches, and now I've sold a ceramic tile and a Harry Potter scarf. Mostly, I like my art and want to keep it. If you want to buy something, you have to give me enough money that I don't feel bad having to part with it.

Someone Googled truth in Star Trek Show. I'm not sure what that's about. I'm not even sure how someone would find me with that search. There's going to be a new Star Trek movie with all of the original crew recast with younger actors. Maybe someone was trying to find if that's true. It is.

There were three searches for freaky sluts blog, a search for slut husband blog, and two searches for freak friday party. Okay. The freaky sluts who blog are in England. Or, at least, the ones I had problems with are there. There are others in other places, like New York, but I don't know anything about them personally, I just read the blogs. As for slut husband blog, well, I don't know if that's what I'd call him, but he does blog. And I may know some freaks, and it is Friday, but I'm not going to a party.

There were a lot of searches involving popcorn. Two searches for eating out calories in popcorn, two for calories in movie popcorn, and air popped popcorn diet. This isn't much of a diet, but you're welcome to it anyway. And I don't know the calories in movie popcorn, but it's probably a lot. The other odd search was t.o. eating popcorn. That's a reference to one of the Dallas Cowboys, but I didn't write about him, and I don't even like football.

Someone was searching for eBay posting not listed. Should I be relieved that I'm not the only one with this problem?

There were searches for bath and body works wallflowers and sick dogs, and wallflower bath and body works isn't working. Poor dogs. I hope that they didn't swallow some fragrance oil.

Someone Googled truth of inlaws. I don't like my inlaws, and that's the truth. There's only two that I have contact with now, neither lives in town, and one doesn't even live in Texas.

There were a lot of searches that found this post I wrote after I heard that other people didn't like the new Terminator series as much as I do. Sarah Connor to meet Reese in series--well, the way the show is going, she might. Other searches were Sarah Connor Chronicles theories, Sarah Connor chronicles computer class, grandfather theory, and Terminator theories. They all got to read a bit about time travel theories in general, and about theories used in Terminator movies specifically. Unfortunately, only my regular readers left comments.

Other searches for the week were big seashell sculpture, everyone is going to hell, and pop-tart factory. I don't even know anything about the pop-tart factory, other than someone mentioned it in a comment. The big seashell sculpture was a ceramic project that spent most of November in a museum. And I just don't feel like getting into the everyone is going to hell bit today.


Thanks to everyone who played the game of please use Homewrecking-Slut in a sentence earlier this week. If you did not get a chance to play, click here, or just leave a comment below.


Okay, here's this week's count:

Cloverfield--21

Rudy's--10

Penis--0

People going to hell--1

Sluts--4

Buckets--0

Diet Drinks--3

Refrigerators--3

Vasectomies--0

Popcorn--6

Bath & Body Works--2

Terminator/Sarah Connor--4

Alcoholics--2

The top twelve keywords are: costume, penis, the, dick, rudys, going, giant, hell, bbq, texas, diet, for

SPOILER ALERT------------------------------------

Searches about the recent movie include cloverfield incident, truth cloverfield, cloverfield marlene dies, cloverfield what happened to marlene, cloverfield which building beth lives in, what happened to marlene in cloverfield, cloverfield truth government win, cloverfield end bit fly over, cloverfield marlene bite, did anyone see the spaceship in cloverfield, clovefield marlene we've got a bite, cloverfield explanation, cloverfield marlene turn to monster, what happened to the girl who was bit in clover field truth, cloverfield beth and rod at coney island, beth's apartment rich cloverfield, shutup rob cloverfield, attack hud smaller monster, was there a spaceship that crashed at the end of cloverfield, cloverfield blood out of her eyes, and cloverfield very end explanation. Here's my review about the movie. From what I've read elsewhere, what the guy whispers at the end of the movie is "It's still alive." And there might be a spaceship crashing into the ocean in that clip of Coney Island that was recorded a month earlier. And my theory about what happened to Marlene is still an alien parasite, but maybe I've just seen Alien too many times to see it as anything else. Unfortunately, no one left me any comments sharing their theories, but to be fair I don't remember leaving anyone else comments about this movie either. By the time I read a post, someone else had already left a comment that basically said the same as I would have written, so I didn't bother repeating it.

Post 297

Nearly the end of another week of getting nothing done. Well, almost nothing. My first art project looks pretty good so far. I have made a 18 inch tall pylon shape, and now I have to decide if I should leave it the way it is or cover it with leaves and vines and maybe flowers and a few lizards and frogs. I still can't make up my mind about the second project. I would like to think of something to do with the red stoneware leftover from last year, so that I don't have to buy anymore clay for a while. But I'm afraid that I'd get halfway done with something and then have to go buy more red clay, which would then just leave me with another half bag of red clay and wondering if I shouldn't do something with that. I also have most of a bag of white stoneware, which might be better, but I was thinking that I'd make some raku stuff with it later.

I hate being broke and having to give this much thought to buying a ten dollar bag of clay.

I took home a bunch of dried out clay last semester, and I was supposed to recycle it over the break. But of course I'm only just now getting to it. There's a bucket of white modeling clay, or at least what will be clay after it dries out a bit and is kneaded. And I had twenty-five pounds of what I thought was white stoneware, but now that I have it out it feels too smooth for that. I'm about halfway through that, and when I'm done with it I'll ask the professor what it might be. I also have a small bit of porcelain to recycle. I've never worked with that before. Then I have another twenty pounds or so of white modeling clay, which is what I'm probably going to need the most of, and there's still tons of red clay to recycle, which right now I'm not even sure if I have a use for.

And then there's the stuff that I got out of the backyard, which is terra cotta, but there's something wrong with it and it tends to crack a bit.

My back and legs hurt from lifting heavy clay. It isn't fair that I have all these little aches and pains. It's a lot like I used to feel after having a lot of sex, only without the sex.

Anyway, except for washing dishes and recycling clay, very little work is getting done around here. It's strange that the little errands I used to enjoy now seem like so much work and wasted time. I had to go to Irving today. That usually means I also have an excuse for going to several stores and perhaps a dollar movie. But going to the stores knowing that I can only buy what is absolutely necessary just isn't that much fun, and after that took most of the afternoon I didn't really feel like seeing a movie.

I brought home a clay relief of Anubis. I don't like it as much as I thought I did, and I don't know what to do with it. Also, the house is overrun with plaster castings of dragons, and I don't know what I'll do with them either.

My husband is going to be stuck in the same place again for a third week. Normally, staying in one place like that is relaxing, but they aren't making any money at this place. Three weeks in a row, out of town, with the extra expenses of being out of town, and no money coming in. It sucks. There's going to be ice on the roads here tomorrow morning, which won't matter that much to me since I don't have to go anywhere. The bad weather is moving east, towards where my husband is. I wonder if there will be ice on the roads Saturday night. He should probably stay over for the weekend, but then there's that whole bit about not having any money. Staying over would cost just over a hundred dollars, if he didn't eat much. We tend to like eating.

Sunday I have to go to this meeting for people who live here. We don't do much. We have to elect a dozen people for a nomination committee so that we can have the election for board members in June or July. Anyway, I really don't know any of these people, but we need a dozen or so for this committee. About fifteen people usually volunteer for the thing, so picking the twelve isn't too hard, even if you don't know anybody. Someone usually practices saying "I make a motion to close the nominations and accept the nominee by acclimation," and that makes things go a lot faster.

Anyway, to convince people to attend this boring bit of business, we have turned the meeting into a potluck lunch. BBQ is provided, and we all have to supply the veggies and desserts. I forgot about it being this weekend and haven't even decided what to bring. Again, it sucks being broke. I usually buy something instead of make something. This year I might have to make something.

I am ready for this week to be over.

Post 296

Well, next week I should be writing my 300th post. And I think that I'm finally going to do what I had threatened to do for the 100th post (and then again for the 200th). If I don't come up with something better, I think that I will write something to homewrecking sluts.

I keep saying that I'm going to post this thing, but then I don't do it. I'm just going to go ahead and post something. That way there won't be this draft that I keep thinking I should work on. I don't think that it's perfect, but I think I will feel better if I set myself a time limit and get it over with.

I should think about more pleasant things, like ceramic class. I'm pretty sure that this will be my last class for a while, unless I win the lottery or something. I'm trying to put some thought into my projects, because these might be the last I get to do. What do I really want to make? What items do I really want that I wouldn't be just as happy making later of non-ceramic materials?

Mostly what I've come up with are dishes for the Halloween party. I'll make those for the third or maybe the fourth assignment. The first assignment is 18 inches tall and will start with stiff slab construction. Which means that I will have to wait a while for the slabs to be at that stage where they are not quite dry but not soft either. I keep changing my mind on the second project. I should get started on my third or fourth project, except that they require rolling out more slabs, and I really don't have any place to put them. The fifth project is a relief sculpture in two or three pieces, and I haven't given that any thought yet, and again there's no point since again it would require rolling out another slab. The sixth project is a fool the eye sculpture, and I haven't given that much thought yet either. In the past two semesters I have copied a big seashell and a pumpkin. I can't think of much else that I would want to copy right now.

There is a seventh project group project that the professor likes to do when he has enough students, and there are eight of us and I'm afraid that's more than enough. I'd rather not participate. And what's to be done with the group project after we're finished? I mean, who gets to take it home? And the group project is usually big, so even if you wanted to take it home and the other students don't mind, where do you put it?

There's another returning student who is just taking the class for fun. And she can throw pots. I am quite jealous. She just walked unnoticed to a wheel and came back a bit later with about a 10 inch by 10 inch cylinder. She didn't quite like it for some reason, but I was impressed. I wish I could do that. And I think that whatever it is that she doesn't like can be fixed in the trimming stage.

I had all but forgotten about my second attempt at the glass sculpture. It turned out really nice. Not perfect, but I'm really happy with it. Unfortunately, I'm not going to have it fired a second time to give it a glossy finish. Two other students tried that, and their sculptures broke in half. I don't think that I'll risk it.

Today I spent a long time doing dumb stuff like smoothing out my slabs and making about a quart of slurry. Slurry or slip is water mixed with clay that is used to sort of glue pieces of leather hard clay. We have these big bins of water and clay scraps, and we usually get stuff for slurry out of these bins. Only the bins dried up over the break, and they'll take a while to soften up again. Anyway, it's a big mess, and I spent the morning playing with mud.

Yesterday my husband had to go out of town again. He spent last week at this place. And I thought that he would have been better off just staying there a bit longer rather than drive all the way here and then pretty much have to drive back where he was a day and a half later. But he wanted to come home. You'd think, isn't that sweet. But I think it has to do more with him not liking that motel and missing the computer. This week he's staying at a different motel with an Internet connection, so I'm sure he'll be much happier with that.

There's a guy on the news saying it's not to late to get a flu shot. I didn't get one this year. Not a conscious decision on my part, I just forgot to get one. I'm thinking at this late date I'll probably skip it.

Today is cold. Maybe not so cold as last Thursday, but still cold. Somehow, it didn't seem that cold when I left this morning, but it was cold at school, and it is still plenty cold now. Probably not the best day to play with mud. But there are more craps of clay here too, so I will probably spend some time trying recycle some of it. The clay at the school bookstore is cheaper than at Trinity, but free is still better. But what I would really like to do is skip that and skip all the errands and such, and just get a blanket and go back to bed. I could maybe watch last night's Sarah Connor over again, but that's not a productive way to spend the day. I have the house to myself again, and I should spend my time doing something constructive.

But I have to go run at least one errand before I get back into bed. We somehow forgot to make the December car payment. If we miss this one too, it could get ugly. So I'm off to the bank.