Vacation Friday

Woohoo! It's vacation Friday. The Friday before vacation begins. We've got a busy weekend ahead of us prepping and packing for our trip. We'll be leaving about 3:00 am Monday morning. While I'm super excited about the trip, I'm bummed that I didn't get my Durango back in time.

I called the dealership yesterday to find out if by some miracle I'd have my car today. I was informed that they had gotten the instrument cluster panel in, however the part was bad. So now they are waiting on a new part to come in. Hopefully one that works! I have no clue as to when they might receive the part, because once again the payment for the part must be approved for by the government.

Another vacation bummer - I didn't lose the 10 pounds I had hoped for. I did however lose enough weight to be back where I was before Ruben's mom came, so that's the bright side of it all. In truth it's all my own fault. My friend Arlene, whom I was walking regularly with had surgery on the 10th and has been on rest orders. I should have pushed myself to go alone, but it's just not the same. Hopefully when I return on the 8th we will begin our walks again. God knows that after Disney I will need to do something, cause they just have way too many yummy treats there to be good and stick to a "diet".

Was yesterday not a completely devastating day? The mass coverage of Michael Jackson's death practically took down the web. The whole ordeal completely overshadowed the death of Farrah Faucet! It was madness. I was waiting at the pharmacy when I read reports of his cardiac arrest on Twitter. Before TMZ confirmed his death, I was on the phone telling Ruben I thought he was dead. The fact that he wasn't breathing when the ambulance was called, and that a photog was threatened when trying to get a picture of him being rolled into the hospital, told me that things were real bad.
If you're on Twitter, did you catch all the RT's of the shameful post Perez Hilton made about Jackson before he found out the entertainer had died? Once it was official, Perez had removed the post. You can see a screen shot of it here. I swear Perez is a douce bag. There is a petition going around to remove Perez Hilton as Teen Choice 2009 Nominee. You can sign it here. Nobody who posts the content he does, nor uses the hateful words he spews, should be considered for an award at a show aimed at kids. HE IS NOT A ROLE MODEL! There are a few other petitions going around calling for his site to be shut down and such. Check out the article from Hollyscoop.

Right now I'm waiting for the press conference from the coroner's office to begin. E! News has a live feed going, but it looks like it might be awhile before we get the results of his autopsy, as the conference has been delayed again for another 2 hours.
I've been paying bills and taking care of other business online while I waited. While on vacation, I don't want to have to get online cause I have to. I'll only do it if I want to, and have the down time to do so. Likely, I will be posting pictures from my phone - maybe making a blog entry or two, as well. I love having a phone that is capable of doing so much! Sometimes I wonder how I ever lived without it. LOL.

It looks like Ruben may be returning to school this fall. That is IF everything works out. He's gotten some info, applied to a couple schools, and submitted his app for a Federal student loan. We gotta wait and see if his loan is approved. Otherwise he'll have to take one class at a time, as money permits. Right now the loan isn't even our biggest concern, it's the fact that ITT cannot locate his transcripts. The campus he attended in Vegas closed awhile back, and for some reason ITT cannot locate the transcripts in their system. He has a copy somewhere around here, but the transcripts must come directly from the school in order to be accepted. So it doesn't much matter that we can't find his copy. We did find his actual degree, which he is going to have to fax over to ITT as proof. We'll just have to see whether it helps any or not. Cross your fingers!

Where did May go?

I can't believe it is Memorial Day already, and just around the bend is the end of the school year! Come Saturday my mother-in-law will be here visiting from Las Vegas for 3 whole weeks.
It's going to be super hard having her here while I'm dieting, the woman cooks like no one else - and nothing she makes can be classified as "healthy", it's all Mexican food high in calories and fat. Sure I'll indulge a bit, but mostly I will be trying my damnedest to eat sensibly. It seems that my weight loss progress has slowed a bit. Which is to be expected. After all losing 13lbs in two weeks is a bit much. I guess at this point I need to focus on exercising more while I continue to eat right. For about the last week I've been using the new EA Sports Active for the Wii. I'll tell you that there is no doubt that it works. My legs burned so bad after just one use.
Here it has been nearly a week since I had an allergic reaction to eating a mango and my face is still flared up. I had to call the dermatologists office today cause my hives had gotten worse. He called me in a script for an oral steroid. I guess the shot I was given on Thursday had begun to wear off. I woke up this morning to my eyes all swollen and my face red and itchy. This whole experience has not been fun, that's for sure!
This weekend Natalie and I went shopping to get her clothes for summer. We spent the majority of the day at the mall going from store to store. It was tiring! While we were there we stopped into the salon and got her eyebrows waxed. I'm telling you a little bit of wax makes a world of difference.
Only a few more weeks and we'll be getting ready for our trip to Disney. I'm so excited. I swear it can't get here soon enough. It's been too damn long since we had a real vacation. While Ruben is out of town this week, I need to spend some time online finding the best prices on tickets to all the parks we want to go to. I still think we're nuts for going on the 4th of July, cause I'm sure the parks will be absolutely packed! I need to find out what the park hours are, and get information about them closing the park once it reaches capacity. I also need to figure out what reservations I need to make. Still so much planning to do - plus lots of cleaning before my mother-in-law arrives, and I need to find out when our new windows will be ready to be installed - not to mention all the work that needs to be done before hand like moving the furniture and blinds. Yup, with all that needs to be done vacation will be here in a blink of an eye!

So..much..pain..

Today was my 5th saline fill. I'm now at 950cc's and have only about 200 more to go before surgery. Each week is more painful than the last - the pain continues through the weekend and ends shortly before the next fill. The pain is so bad I've been maxed out on my pain meds, which makes me pretty drowsy. It's not just the pain of my skin and muscle stretching, the pain radiates from front to back as the expanders are crushing downwards and pushing on a rib. So I've got lots of pain in my upper back region. I've been pretty freaken miserable, and I'm just so anxious to get it over with. The pain is exhausting! I haven't been sleeping well. It's cutting into my blogging time. I'm very uncomfortable with sitting upright or laying back....and the pain is even making it hard to walk on the treadmill, at least during the first few days - which really sucks because I've been wanting to walk around the neighborhood with my friend from around the corner. We walked last night - got a nice blister on my foot to show for it, but today I'm just in too much pain. I swear I can feel my chest wall on my right side ripping.
So that's where things are right now. Next week is Mardi Gras. Natalie's school parade is this Friday - so I'll have some pictures from that to post. She's out of school for Mardi Gras, so she'll be accompanying me to my fill next week. I hope the experience won't be too scaring for her. Knowing her interests, she'll probably be fascinated by it. Next week we're also getting our eyes checked, and I have a dentist appointment cause a pita crisp damaged one of my fillings - fun, fun! I just hope that my prescription for my glasses didn't change cause I don't want to have to get new ones - oh and I hope Natalie's vision is ok. Please let her have Ruben's eyes. She has his teeth, which is a good thing! Ok, well time to take more meds now. I'm really uncomfortable and can't stand leaning forward anymore. Just a few more weeks till it's all over!

Day One

We went ahead and left today although we really hadn't planned to. The deciding factor in it all was that Lexie either needed to be dropped off at the kennel today between 9 - 11 or tomorrow from 3 - 5, and we really didn't want to leave that late. So we decided on taking a nice leisurely trip. Tonight we stopped in Mobile, AL - about a whole whopping 3 hours from home. No we didn't stop from being tired of driving or anything, we actually stopped so that tomorrow we can visit the USS Alabama Battleship. The memorial grounds are quite spectacular with tons of planes, tanks, guns, and the USS Drum submarine as well. I can't wait to get aboard it and take some pictures. For now I hope this will tide you over, as I must get off this unsecured network. I believe the next stop may be in Destin, FL.USS Alabama began her combat service augmenting the British Fleet protecting convoys on the "Murmansk Run" from England through the North Sea to Russia against German warships and aircraft. The ship transferred to the Pacific Fleet in August 1943, and earned 9 battle stars providing gunfire support for amphibious assaults on Japanese-held islands and protecting carrier task forces from air and surface attack. Alabama was credited with shooting down 22 Japanese planes. Her radar was the first to detect enemy bombers in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, at the unprecedented range of 190 miles. This warning enabled U.S. fighters and anti-aircraft gunners to destroy over 400 Japanese planes. Decommissioned in 1947, Alabama was "mothballed" in Bremerton, Washington until 1964, when she was transferred to the State of Alabama and towed 5,600 miles to become a memorial in Mobile.

The Park's artifact collection contains representative Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and Coast Guard aircraft from before World War II through the Persian Gulf War. Included are a Mach 3+ A-12 Blackbird, the submarine Drum, tanks and artillery. Alabama conducts youth group overnight encampments.

USS Alabama is a National Historic Landmark.