Holly’s Neighborhood

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I think I honestly spent about 2 hours this morning/afternoon just filling out medical release and patient information forms...  Even though I have been saying I would do it for a couple of years now, I have just finally gotten around to switching our general practitioner to a well-recommended doctor in the town where we now live...  As much as I liked the former doctor on a personal level, I am so happy to be done with her snotty/stupid staff, the 25 minute drive to get to her office, and the unreasonably-long wait times (even when I arrive 15 minutes early for an appointment, it's not uncommon to be in the waiting room for at least an hour and then to wait another 15-20 minutes in the room before being seen)...  This doctor's office has a great reputation -- according to some neighbors and our former physician's assistant -- and is only a 1-2 minute drive from our house...  I suppose we could walk if we really wanted/needed to, but we'd have to go down a busy main road on a winding hill...  Boogie and I have our first appointment there in the morning, and I can't wait to meet the new doctors...  I also filled out paperwork so that I could switch over to the home-birth midwife!  Clark told me, Friday morning, that he was ok with the switch, so we are going to start meeting with the new midwife and planning for a home-birth...  Yay!  I felt kinda bad switching from the midwives at the OB/GYN office I have been going to for almost 6 years, since they are still awesome...  But, I am much happier with my choice for this baby's birth...  I will just go back to that office next fall when I need my "well care" visit...  So, yeah...  After filling out forms, I called to schedule and cancel necessary prenatal appointments and then ran around delivering the paperwork to all of the offices that needed them...  I could have waited until tomorrow's appointments to drop off forms with the new doctor, but they were super happy to see that they could get our charts ready ahead of time, and I was happy to make a nice first impression!  And since the old doctor's office has such incompetent staff, I figured I would hand-deliver the release forms and give them no excuse but to get started...  Let's hope they don't eff it up...  Later days...

O HIGH!

 

As I sit here with my coffee, I'm thinking ahead to the upcoming Christmas season.  It brings about a certain feeling of both frustration and makes me feel just a little bit crazy.  It seems that for the past several years I've struggled a lot with finding my Christmas Spirit.

I remember clearly last year when we finally arrived home Christmas evening after all of the family gatherings and gift exchanging thinking..."Wow it's finally over." Then I was suddenly filled with a slight feeling of joy inside that I had come through yet another Christmas alive.  I actually joked with Bart all Christmas Season last year that all I wanted for Christmas was January 1st. For that year to just be over, fast forward through the holidays straight to the new year.

I wonder when it happened....

I wonder when I stopped getting excited about Christmas and instead started feeling a sense of dread and drudgery about the whole season.

Don't get me wrong, I love the whole food aspect of the holiday season,(Just take one look at my ass and you can TELL that.), but what I despise is the whole sense of consumerism in it. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, whatever you call it....people trampling each other for cheap plastic crap from china...I just don't get it!

You know when I do my Chritsmas Shopping? Generally between December 18th and Christmas Day. Payday is the 1st and the 20th for me so that's when I have money.

I always tell myself every year, "I'm going to get it all done before Thanksgiving.." and it never happens that way..EVER.

I don't use credit cards, I hate them, I think they are evil and get you into trouble. We're pretty much a cash only family, if you can't pay cash for it then you don't need it.  The exception to the rule on this is cars and really big items like our house. 

I know some people who spend literally THOUSANDS of dollars on Christmas on credit cards, and  struggle all year to pay it back. Sorry but that kind of takes all the joy out of it.  We buy what we can afford to buy and move on. It's Christmas, it's not worth going into debt or going hungry for.

I love giving gifts, but hate feeling like I didn't spend quite enough on people, and maybe they didn't like what I got them.  It's almost as if some people feel like the dollar amount you spent is equal to how much you care about them.

I generally make up HUGE batches of homemade fudge and other treats and package them up for gift giving. I'll give those to friends and family either alone as a gift or with something else as an add-on gift.

Getting gifts is great, but still makes me feel a little uncomfortable, especially if what I get from someone obviously cost more than what I spent on them. It's a vicious cycle.

A couple of years ago I said to hell with it all and just started buying Master Card Gift Cards from my bank for all of the people on my list 12 and over. It took a lot of stress out of my holiday shopping and I felt it was a great gift because then the recipient could go and pick out whatever they needed or wanted. (Our local bank offers Master Card Gift Cards with no hidden fees and no expiration dates. They make great gifts and you get them directly from the teller and they take the money directly out of your bank account when you purchase them. I think they make GREAT gifts, and it's a really great service.)

If you needed a tank of gas, or a haircut, or a lunch out, or a new sweater you could make the choice yourself what to spend the money on. I personally LOVE gift cards for anything.

As a matter of fact I have let it be known to all that might be shopping for me this year that I want gift cards for Lowes for Christmas. Why? Because for the past year I have been without a working dishwasher, and it would thrill my heart to no end to be able to put all of my Christmas Gift Cards together and purchase one.

Hand washing dishes for 5 people has become a nightmare chore for me, and my hands, and my nails. I can't even imagine how joyful it would be to be able to just load all the dirty dishes into a machine and close the door and walk away.  I think it would be downright heavenly.

Of course if I don't wind up getting a dishwasher for Christmas it won't be the end of the world. We'll just save our pennies and other change for awhile and get one ourselves.

And on that note I'm going to hit publish on this post and go and try to find something productive to do....there's plenty of dishes in the sink that need washin'!

In an effort to consolidate all things bloggy and potty (euw)...I'm moving most of my blogging activity, posting of items and all general stuff to:

But that doesn't mean I'm abandoning this space. At least...not entirely. I'll try to crosslink updates and of course, I need to keep this account active to keep an eye on you hooligans.

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Trouble has have moved into our house, and I need to know how to get it to move out!

Things you do not want a telephoning child to say - We have a problem. How do we turn off the water?

Things you do not want to find when you arrive home - Water pouring from the light fittings, the ceilings in general, flooding on the floor, discovering some of this water is hot.

Things it is quite nice to find when you get home - your three male children have managed to deal with a crisis without making it worse. And the dinner wasn't ruined either.

The boys were cooking dinner and went into the garden for a cigarette (as they are not allowed to smoke in the house). They took Heidi out, smoked their ciggies and chatted. 10 minutes, 15 max. When they got in, it was raining. Inside. 

The massive leak was caused by a joint going in the piping from our hot water tank (middle floor bathroom) to our shower (top floor bathroom). Unfortunately for us, that water gets from A to B using a substantial pump. So it pumped and it pumped and it pumped.

The lads got the water turned off, having to move all Husband's quite heavy diving cylinders out of the way, they got towels and receptacles under leaks, they turned the dinner down so it didn't burn and they turned the lights off.

So, right now these are the things we do not have:

No lights downstairs - somehow, the light fittings did not appreciate water dripping flooding rushing over them.
No hot water to our lovely en-suite shower - but we do have cold, so the toilet flushes and we can clean our teeth (and sleep commando!)
No Internet - our hub was in the under-stairs cupboard, directly under the leak.

We need to decorate quite intensively - the stairwells, the under-stairs cupboard, downstairs toilet, computer room, hall, and dining room all suffered varying degrees of dampness, resulting in varying degrees of paper falling off and damage to the plaster.

Ah well, on Friday we find out how much of this our insurance will cover. Fingers crossed for us, please.

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• 06:58 Solar activity & climate: is the sun causing global warming? post.ly/Dr2m #
• 10:24 Contrary thought of the day: Notice how reporters / pundits all think Tiger needs to quickly answer questions? Sounds self-serving to me. #
• 11:18 After all that Thanksgiving goodness, it's back to the Hot-Pocket and Kettle chips lunch for me. #
• 12:36 Is Hipster Runoff ceasing to be a great, uniquely voiced blog in favor of becoming a college newspaper? Unfortunate. bit.ly/5j3Q3b #
• 18:24 I guess everyone agrees that cable news is awful and a waste of time. Because no one is watchi ng it. bit.ly/4sbk97 #fb #

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