Well I have not been here in quite a while...

I got a job writing for a magazine, which is even better than I ever hoped it would be. It's a local entertainment montly,, but my boss is AWESOME (love him to pieces) and he takes me everywhere. He's a cancer like me so he gets me. I'm an oddball so having someone that I can work with that closely and not have them find me annoying is a huge help.
Then around the same time I took the job with the magazine I decided I was going to find someone to spend my life with. Time to get over B and his bs. (I'll write a whole separate piece about all that craziness) So I put an ad on Plenty of Fish. Well there certainly is plenty of fish but when I say nobody appealed to me I mean NOBODY. My kids were telling me to stop being so fussy, sitting home for 2 years is enough, time to get out in the world.

So there was Chris. Exact polar opposite of everything I find attractive in a guy. He was bald. Completely, he shaved it. And he had this weird beard thing. I went out with him and he was an Aries. That was new also. They can't sit still I found out. He was completely harmless, he was just lonely. He was on some kind of antidepressants that made him not pursue anything in the bedroom (great) and he was goofy. I laughed, usually at him but I can honestly say it was much better than crying so I kept going out with him. He was a musician and introduced me to alot of people, who turns out I wound up knowing through the magazine eventually. It all worked out. We never did any of the stuff that I like to do in my free time though. That started to get on my nerves. So the magazine wanted me to go to the John Levique Pirate Days thing. It was 3 days, the first being a night time Pirates Ball. Chris hung on me like a little kid who was having one of those 'stranger danger' moments. Not okay. So I ended it with him as soon as he brought me home that night.
I went back the next day and spent the day with boss man. We went and had some drinks, ate and hung out with the bands who were all going to be performing in an upcoming event for the magazine.
I felt like a giant weight was taken off my back not having to deal with Chris out there. He of course blew up my phone the whole day, guess it's a good thing I turned the ringer off.

So let me get to Daniel and Tonya from the Craic. I had just done a story on their band in the magazine, they were doing the next event with the magazine and they were performing at the show that weekend. I hung out with them here and there but we kept running into them while the boss and I were roaming around. Every time I saw him he was chewing on a piece of jerky. He had one in his hand, in his mouth and a bag of it in his pouch. He made stupid jokes about how he can't live with out the jerky man's meat etc. Well the next day I went back and went to get a drink at the bar. (hair of the dog) and was so sunburned that I only managed to put on half of my costume. I was in heavy duty fuck it mode. The first thing when I sat down that morning Jen and April from For  Love or Money came over and kept me company and the Craic was about to get up and play.  In case you've never heard a celtic bagpipe and drum band, do NOT go listen to it with a hangover. Daniel comes over and says "Hello! Have you gotten to try the jerky man's meat yet?"
Perfect out for me "I was just about to go do that!"  So I walked around and found a few of my friends and eventually there was the jerky booth. They were pretty much out of everything. The jerky guy was talking to someone but he was big and very handsome and in a kilt no less. YUM.

So fast forward about 2 hours and 3 drinks later. Hangover gone. I'd eaten and spent time visiting with all my friends and now I was just sitting with the bands and relaxing. In walks the jerky guy. He came over and sat next to me (there were over 100 seats with 3/4's of them empty) Okay I think, I'm buzzed, no makeup, hair's a wreck and I'm so sunburned I can't think straight. Perfect, first guy I find attractive in 3 years and I look and feel like death. Well fast forward a few hours, drinks and alot of talking and his partner (another blonde chick) walks up to him and says she has to talk to him. He introduces me and tells her he'll see her later. Hmm I thought, blew her off to sit with me...okay. Then another hour goes by and his stepfather comes over same thing. Introduces me shoos the guy away. Step dad stays and does a bit of polite chit chat with me for a minute and I thought.  Every guy I've ever been with has done the compliment someone else to see if it pisses me off thing to find out if I liked them. (they always fess up later and say that's how they knew it was a green light) So I complimented his father.
WELL guess what jerky man does? He gets up and storms off. Step father walks over to the bar. I follow him. I tell him "If you could, let him know I really like him." And I left. I got about 20 ft.
I hear "LISA!"
I stopped and turned around smiling "Yes?"
He walked up to me and said "Did you tell my Dad that you liked me?"
I said "Yep."
And let the games begin.
We stood around there flirting for another 20 minutes and then I said goodbye and went to leave.
I got another 20 ft away and I hear... "LISA!"
"Yes?" I was loving this new game BTW
"I need your phone number."
I gave him my card. We walked together a little bit and then I started to leave again.
I got another 20 ft..."LISA!" I walked back and got closer to him that time.
"Yes." I don't know HOW it happened he swears I did it but I really don't remember the how of it, but we kissed. It wasn't just a peck on the cheek kiss it was a nice one for a drunken I just met you but come here, kiss.
He stopped me one more time to 'ask me out' I said yes.
I tell you more next time but suffice it to say that I have never felt that comfortable or been that forward with a guy in my entire life.
SWOON...

What's new here...

My mother in law passed away two weeks ago, since then alot has happened and I honestly haven't been able to get on here and post so a a quick recap. My in-laws have never accepted Anastasia as a 'real' grandchild. she's adopted, and so does not count. I can live with the fact that my four from my previous relationships are not Bob's and the exclusion from the grandchildrens trips and grandparent time is fine, doesn't really bother me much. But Anastasia is Bob's. Period, we adopted her she is by law our child. We raised her, loved her and continue to adore everything about her. My father in law gets up at the fucking funeral and does this speech where he talks about how grateful he is that he and Judy had 7 beautiful grandchildren to brighten their lives. Anastasia is sitting there. She is not retarded and can count. Jennifer, Erika, Samantha, Haley, Corey, Angela, John-Monte. Wait that's 7 already. First she gets upset because John, Jason, Katie and Kevin are omitted before she realizes that she herself doesn't exist in the list. WTF. I have to explain to my 10 year old, who knows she's adopted that her grandparents don't consider her their grandchild. I hate this man for doing this, but then he tops it! Yes there's more. I fly up to NY the day after the funeral and get an email notifying me that there is a new post on my mother-in-law's memorial blog. From my father-in-law. In THAT little poetic piece the jackass names Bob the sensitive one, Michelle the strong one, Greg the angel, Haley the love of their lives and Corey the mischievous one. I'm not there, Anastasia is not there. Fuck him, I know you can't choose your family but as the world is my witness here, I will never ever have another thing to do with this man. I don't exist so I won't be missed. He can eat shit and bark at the moon, I am DONE with this crap.
So I'm up in NY and I spent a wonderful week with my Aunt Suzy and got to visit with Aunt Kathy, Kevin, Brittney and the boys and my cousins John and Tara and her family. I can't even express how I felt getting off that plane in NY. I was home though and I needed to be. Now that my mother is gone, I miss NY so much. I gave Florida the old college try, I did. 17 years of this crap. But after living in NY, California and here as well as visiting all the other states during my year long trip across country, I can speak with confidence that Florida is the worst place to live in the country. PERIOD. The food sucks, the people FROM Florida sucks (it's important you stress that when referring to Florida because 90% of the population are from other states and those people are all walking around saying the same thing "This sucks!"
I went online to look at NY equestrian properties, guess what...yep way cheaper than here. In fact I would say considering I can get a place there for 300k with 3 acres a house and a barn on Long Island vs the 1/2 acre with a trailer you get here in Tampa Bay for 500k I am better off going home. My kid can get a better education. I can be happy and make money, everything is there, I should be too.
Now I just have to get Bob on board. This may be the end of us because I'm pretty sure he is going to want to go to TN to live near his father, so WWIII may be on the horizon. Today I have to clean the house up and get ready for his return. He's off rebuilding an old Navy airplane up in Georgia with his dad. I need the house to be clean when I start my pitch. If there is any sign of a mess it will lessen my argument with him. I know how he thinks and he will  hone in on something and that will be the end of it.
ttyl

Incompetance makes me have hot-flashes

So the baby is on her 3rd week at the new school. And I get a letter from the school district about her old school stating that 60% of the school is illiterate and they are going to restructure the school because they've tested at this level for 7 years straight. They told me last year (after the fact) that Anastasia scored a perfect score on her FCAT and they had the news crews out to fuss over her. So before she switched schools they sent her home with the FCAT report. I read the report and it shows her as having a score of of 1707 in Reading and 1727 in Math. The grade level 'perfect' is 1456 in Reading and 1444 in Math. So I figure they got 'perfect' from her surpassing the grade level 'perfect'. Well last night I go to the school district website to find out more about the school she's in and THEIR grades. They score fine, but I came across this whole FCAT thing. So I pick up the report she brought home and give it another look see. It wasn't adding up, they said she scored perfect, and the score you need for graduation is 1926 in Reading and 1889 in Math. Which by the way is STILL not a perfect score. The highest score you can get is 2638 in Reading and 2330 in Math. So I start reading the report from top to bottom to see where the incompetance came into play. Are they just so retarded they were just calling the kid perfect because she was one of the 5 kids in the school that passed? NOPE I look up at the top left-hand corner of the report (it's a 2 page folded dealy) and there is my daughter Katie's co-worker's kids name. It's NOT my kid's report!!!
I immediately have the hot flash from hell. Are you kidding me? You imbeciles are so freaking incompetant that you can't even send the reports home with the corresponding child? Are the teachers there illiterate too?
So I call the school this morning first thing and ask for her scores. You guessed it folks. Miss A got a 2638 in Reading and a 1800 in Math. Not too shabby! So she is, according to the state of Florida and what the ignoramous tells me on the phone, about Sophmore in college level, give or take a month and some brush ups in the Math. She also informs me that had she NOT been at that school she'd probably have scored way better. Thanks, that helps.
So BACK to the school district for info on what we can do to make sure my kid doesn't end up losing all interest in school because she's on whole nother plane of existance than the rest of these rocket scientists. I find out that as long as she passes the entrance exam and continues in her regular school, she is entitled to attend college for half the day at NO CHARGE through the end of 11th grade. THEN she can go the full day to college at NO CHARGE getting her BA simultaneously with her High School Diploma. (because a person with a freaking BA needs a High School Diploma?) anyway, because she's adopted, she gets 4 years fully paid including books, living expenses and tuition at any school in the state. So if she gets the bachelors degree while attending high school on the counties dime, she can actually attend graduate school straight after her high school/college graduations (which will be within days of each other) and have her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at no charge by the time the kid is 21.

Hot...then sweaty...then freezing~ awesome

I went probably 2 months without having a hotflash. I thought, no problem that wasn't bad a few months of severe discomfort and now I'm fine. Then I went to Diane's house to sleep over with the baby 2 weeks ago. You know what, she gave me a hormone boost or something because for 1 day I got my friend (after 4 months of not having it) and then the flashes started again. I could smash Bob's face in with a frying pan he keeps it SO COLD in this house. He is inhumane, seriously. The man sees me shivering, hears me complaining and then says things like "God it's freaking hot, can you turn the air down a few degrees?"

On a happy note, I got the website up for my Avon account. here's the link. They have some awesome stuff for the holidays coming up and I'll be making up some gift baskets too for anyone that likes having things done for them.
http://ldoherty.avonrepresentative.com/

I also got my etsy shop open! Which if you look there should be some of my stuff listed right here!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Jhendiah


Baby steps! (fly lady mantra...I love that woman)

I'm getting better at this...

About 2 weeks ago I had invited our friend Vinnie over to stay with us. I figured he could spend some time talking to me about working with the charity and doing some shows. He was going to have a meeting with Chris on Saturday and spend time with friends on Sunday (his bday). I told Bob that he was coming and this prompted a 2 week long anxiety attack where Bob nagged incessantly for me to clean the house. To which I responded "and where would you like me to put everything?"

Vinnie's visit was this weekend so my hoarder hubby allowed me to tackle the massive pile of videos that he had piled up on the diningroom table. Now when I say massive I mean ridiculous. I have been buying movies since 1981. I have about 1000 vhs movies and about 600 dvd's. Give or take 1 or 2, it was a big pile. I wanted to sell the vhs tapes on amazon because I could at least get 2-3 bucks a piece and then we wouldn't have the massive pile any more. Bob the crazy person told me I could sell them (these are mine, bought most of them prior to even meeting him) if I waited and let him catalog them so he could replace whatever I sold. Now the logical thing comes to mind right? If we are selling them WHY would we want to replace them? Now if that did pop into your head let me make it even more confusing. Bob is a computer geek. He set up a special server in the livingroom that has a 4 terrabyte harddrive that he has downloaded all these movies onto. So you can just browse through the list, which is alphabetical, click on what you want to see and it plays on the tv! So logical types like yourself would say, why Bob? I'll tell you why, because Bob is crazy. So I didn't get to sell them, I had to fill up 5 big rubbermaid tubs with movies and squeeze them into the den. The den now is officially to full (five foot high piles of stuff) to the point where you can't take more than 1 step into the room. But at least we can eat in the diningroom again.
Vinnie came over and I was going to cook.
Bob: "Did you invite Chris?"
Me:  "No, I wanted to discuss business with Vinnie and he will be seeing Chris this weekend so he need to be here butting into whatever we're talking about."
Bob: "Well Chris is going to wind up coming over because I told him Vinnie was coming."
Me:  "WHY?"
Bob: "We can go to Mugs with Chris and then take off with Vinnie right after dinner. That way Chris won't come by the house and trap us for the whole night."
Me:  "FINE"

So we went to Mugs. Had dinner with Chris and Sara and Vinnie and then took Vinnie back home. Chris followed us home and stayed until 10:30 at night. I didn't get to discuss anything with him because by the time Chris left I was annoyed, it was late and Bob was doing his usual 'we have company let me tear the house apart like I'm the clean freak.' routine.
Now let me explain the last part. Whenever someone comes over, my husband runs around like a freaking maniac scrubbing and telling people what a lazy slob I am. So while Vinnie was over Bob emptied and cleaned the refridgerator. Vinnie (just like every other guest we have) asked "Why is he doing that NOW? Does he ever sit down?" I had to explain that normally Bob lays on the couch doing nothing, he only does it when we have company. ~sigh~
Then Kiki came over to take pics of some of my handiwork to sell on etsy. I put up my first 7 items today and will 'try' to post at least 5 more every week. I'm going to give 25% of every sale to the charity (Foundation for the Historic Arts) and use the rest to buy materials and have some money to live on.
Writing everything I'm doing on here is actually more incentive to do things and helps with that realization that all those little idiosyncrasies of his are never going to change and I am going to have to want a better life for myself bad enough that I make a move.
It's really not easy though.

Well I wasn't on the news...

I went and bought paint. Misty beige. Neutral and NOT pepto bismol pink like my husband and his friend painted my living room when I was not here. So I tell Bob (not protecting his name because he is not innocent here) I sat the big guy down and explained, in english...
Me: Honey my mother died in this house, I am 47 years old and have been waiting 13 years for you to be 'ready to move' and I don't want to be 70 and have the big move be to a freaking nursing home. We have to fix the house up and sell it.
Bob: I have no problem fixing the house up and selling it, we'll put this one on the market just as soon as you sell the two houses your mother left you and get us another house. I'm not going to lose 'MY HOME'.

fade to
Me in the kitchen.

Bob and Shawn (daughter Katie's version of Bob) and Chris (the Pepto offender mentioned earlier) go into the livingroom and start putting holes in the walls we just finished painting. They mount the TV on the wall, which is fine but THEN they put two of the many BOSE speakers on the wall. On either side of the TV. (mind you there are ALOT more speakers that go with this 'set'.

I get mad. Bob wants to know why. I tell him, that in order to sell this dump we have to decorate appropriately. Did we learn NOTHING watching HGTV??? He says "These are an expensive surround sound system!"
I say "I can go spend a couple thousand dollars on a gold and diamond grill for my teeth, it will be expensive, but will anyone want to see it?"

He gets up and proceeds to finish putzing around the livingroom. In his world the conversation is over and we are stuck with these 'render the house unsellable speakers' and in my world he strokes out dies and I hire someone to come in and patch the holes in the wall I made while ripping the speakers out of it after Bob's funeral. I did not get my wish and he then proceeded to saw the back off the NEW entertainment center so his ginormous components that we never use and don't need will fit.
Of course he thinks this is my hormones kicking in and I will just learn to love it.
I hate him right now.
That's all.

I'm Baaaack

I spend the last week working on the website for Wicked Muse. I had to learn, through trial and error what the heck I was doing.
But I think it came out pretty good. go look- http://www.wix.com/Jhendiah/Wicked-Muse-Productions
Now I'm working on the one for the Foundation for the Historic Arts. This one will be much easier, so I can probably have it done with 1/10 the frustration and aggrivation than the last one.
Now for the REALLY awesome news. Anastasia got into Pinellas Prep Academy!!!!! No more 6 am bus. No more dragging a miserable child out of bed to go to a school she hates! Yay!
Life is good.