Rhi & I got in to talk to her doctor about her medication & had no problems getting it changed to something we can easily afford (and that she’ll hopefully be able to afford on her own, as well). She started taking her new stuff this morning & we’re supposed to go back & see him in a month to see how she’s doing on it. She is experiencing a little bit of a weight gain, but I think if she starts paying attention to what she’s eating & makes sure she stays active that should be okay.

Erin went to trial today for a paraphenalia charge today. We were pretty nervous about it & really hoping that he wasn’t going to go to jail. The prosecutor had added an anhancement to the charge because it was within 1000 feet of a golf course, but the judge wasn’t buying that as a “sports facility” and dropped that. In the end he was found not guilty & we went home happy.

Now I can enjoy my holiday – so Happy Halloween & a Blessed Samhain to my Pagan readers.

We’ve spent several weeks trying to get Rhi’s doctor to change her medication to one that she’ll be able to afford when she falls off of our insurance in May. He changed it from Symbyax, to Prozac & Zyprexa (it’s the same thing she was on, just two different scrips), which would cost her $4 for the generic prozac & $441 for the Zyprexa, every month. Yeah. That’s affordable for a kid just getting started on her own. That’s not even something I can afford, you know? It just aggravates me that he can’t seem to see that.

It’d not like we’re living the high life here, with a pop up tv, a brand new convertible, or a bunch of expensive toys, you know? We live a pretty modest life & most weeks we’re satisfied when we can pay all of our bills, buy groceries & put gas in both vehicles. There just isn’t room for a lot of extras these days, and a prescription like that is just more than we can take on. We have an appointment in the morning, hopefully it’ll get resolved.

I know I haven’t been posting a lot these days, there’s nothing wrong or anything, other than most of us are mildly ill, here at my house. I’ve just become obsessed with making books. Cute, little handbound blank books, with pretty endpapers & beautiful covers. I’ve made four so far,from start to finish & am getting two more ready to be put together (these are for Rhi & I). They seem to be all I can think about these days: which one I want to make net, what the end papers will look like & how I’ll make the covers match. I’ve been putting little bookmarks in the binding and a long string in the cover to wrap around them to hold them closed & I’m having so much fun with it.

I know that I’ll eventually burn out, like one of those old, used tape drives, but until then, I’ll ride the train until it crashes. After than, I’ll let myself get obsessed with painting signs again for awhile & switch back & forth. I love making things, both for myself & to sell, but I have an extremely short attention span when it comes to projects, so I’ll make a bunch of an item (none of them are ever the same) and then I’ll stop before I hate doing them, if I don’t, I’ll never make that sort of thing again.

So sorry I cut my post off in what felt like the middle of it yesterday. I wasn’t expecting to go to the salon with Rhi, but she decided she wanted me there for company. Her hair turned out really cute, I hope she’ll keep it this way for awhile. She probably will as long as no one who’s close to her decides to dye theirs a funky color or anything like that. It took us about 2 hours to get it done & it honestly seemed like the only thing anyone in that salon was talking about was pregnancy, decorating nurseries or scrapbooking baby announcements. I understand that the salon owner is due any day now, but surely there are other things going on in the world. I don’t remember talking that much about any of my pregnancies, ever. It just wasn’t that exciting to me, and I never really wanted to bore everyone around with the details of what I was feeling every day.

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous the past week or two. It’s hard to believe that a couple of weeks ago, everyone was pulling out their outdoor furniture covers & getting everything ready for winter & now they all seem to be out in their yards enjoying the weather again. It’s not even supposed to snow or rain on Halloween, which is really unusual for us. Kids are almost never comfortable outside while they’re trick-or-treating here, but it’s looking like they’ll get lucky this year. I’m not sure what kind of mood I’ll be in that night or what I’m going to feel like doing, Erin has court that day & I don’t know if he’ll be going to jail or not. If he does, I’m not sure that I’ll feel like doing anything with anyone that night, so we’ll have to see. We’re supposed to take all of the children of our troth out that night, but I may decide to stay home.

Our friend, Melissa is from North & South Carolina and she’s lived here in Utah for maybe 7 months. She has never been here through the coldest parts of winter, yet & I’m worried about how she’ll handle it, especially since she’s already cold all the time. Most, if not all, of the rest of us, have lived in the western part of the USA all of our lives, mostly in Utah & Colorado, honestly, so we’re used to the cold winters, snow & ice. Melissa is more used to Outer Banks rentals, the ocean and hurricanes, which of course, most of us have no experience with.

We all have a lot of fun teasing each other about our somewhat limited experiences in living on this side of the country or that one, even though some of us, like Troy, Jason & I, have been all over the country a few times & at least have a working understanding of how things are elsewhere, that’s just how we are, we like to tease.

Okay, gotta go with Rhi to get her hair colored.

My plans for yesterday didn’t work out quite like I had wanted them to. I had wanted to just stay home & relax all day & then watch Dexter & True Blood last night. We did stay home all day, for the most part, but we had to go to the store for some honey & stuff like that, then I made a couple of hand-bound books and watched TV. Dawn called at about 4:30 to tell us that Jason would be home soon & Davy was in town & they both wanted to game. So, as much as I didn’t want to game last, we’d have gone over there anyway, because we don’t get to see Jason very much . We had a really great time & the gaming session was really good. Melissa & Brad came, too, and we always have a good time with them. There was so much laughing at the beginning, but when we got into the game, we were all really into what we were doing & very serious, which always makes for a nice contrast

Anyway, we got home at after 2am this morning & Troy had a doctor’s appointment at 9:10 (that he was late for), so there was a lot of hurrying this morning. Troy did make it to the appointment & found out his doctor had a mass removed from his throat & may be retiring, so I guess it’s a good thing we were already thinking about a new doctor.

When we were at our gathering on Saturday night, Dawn & I were standing outside the yurt talking to Melissa, when her phone rang. It was Blake (who she’s separated from), and we figured he was calling at that time because he knew she’d be out there & he wanted to ruin her evening. He calls her late at night when he knows she’s in bed, too, hoping to keep her from resting & all of that. He’s the kind of guy that buys & installs a keylogger hoping to catch their spouse misbehaving on the internet & then gets all pissed off when they aren’t doing anything wrong. He wanted the divorce, after all, and now that she wants it, too, he’s miserable & is trying everything he can think of to get her back. What he doesn’t get is that there are too many years of hurt for her to just get over & want it to start all over again.

I need to go take Rhi to get her check, so I’d better go.

The other day, I wrote on here that I thought I might be addicted to ice cubes & I’m pretty convinced that it’s true. I was sitting in here, playing a game the other night, drinking a Diet Dr. Pepper from a bottle. Every time I wanted a drink, I’d first reach to my glass on the other table, that was empty, because I wanted the ice that had been in in previously. I wasn’t wanting a drink, I wanted to eat an ice cube, I was literally craving the taste of the ice.

I looked up & Troy at one point & said, “I’m pretty sure I’m addicted to ice.” He stopped what he was doing, got very quiet & answered, “Um, what’s ice?” I laughed & told him, “You know, frozen water? It’s used to cool drinks?” He looked pretty embarrassed over the whole thing, but it’s true, I really do think I am. I guess there are worse things to be addicted to, at least I can make ice here at home, pretty much for free.

I’m still in the process of trying to get the house cleaned up & uncluttered, it’s a slow & tiring process that I just haven’t felt like doing much the past week or so. I realize I have a bunch of stuff around here that I just don’t use, like all of these votive candle holders. I never burn that size, why do I have so many holders for them? Do I need two tart warmers & 4 incense burners? I’m thinking one warmer & an incense burner that works for sticks &cones should be plenty. Blech, too much junk in my house makes me grumpy. Come to think of it, do I really NEED 5 cats?

Sometimes it feels like our lives are more busy now that the kids are all grown than it was when we were raising them. I went over to Dawn’s on Friday and worked out all of the problems that Melissa & I were having. Then we sat around & waited for her husband to get back off the road. Rhi & I eventually got tired & came home. On Saturday, Troy & I bottled mead, then we we ate dinner & went over to Dawn’s. Jason was home for the night, so we wanted to make sure we got a little time in with him. We went out to our gathering after that & spent several hours talking, planning & enjoying the company of our friends & acquaintances and came home.

Sunday, I was pretty much set to just relax all day, we slept in, watched TV, read, played on our computers & then Melissa texted me & said her night was free & we could game, so we quickly had dinner, gathered up our stuff & went over there. It was a lot of fun to actually be gaming for a change, since it had been an extremely long time since we had.

Monday, we really didn’t do a lot, we had to run to the store & fill prescriptions & while we were there we ran into Eric & Charlie. Eric mentioned that our friend Clay was coming up & wanted to game that night, and since we hardly see him, we agreed to join them. We finished what we were doing & came home. It didn’t seem like we were here that long before Eric texted me saying that Clay was there & ready to game. Again, we quickly had dinner and left. It was okay. Charlie has 3 kids under 6, so it gets a bit chaotic over there. One of the kids stole my dice bag & dumped it out in their bedroom, so part of my dice are missing now. It’s my fault for leaving them out, but I’m not used to being around a bunch of little kids anymore.

By the time yesterday rolled around, I was wishing we had one of those popcorn machines and about 10 new movies to watch. I just wanted to turn off the phones, lock the doors and hibernate. I love my friends, but man, we really need Troy’;s weekends to just be for relaxing sometimes, you know? Sometimes I think we’re more tired on Wednesday that we were when his week ended.

When I was growing up & trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life after high school, we referred to our ideas & plans as our “dreams.” To us, they were dreams, but they weren’t unattainable, if we tried hard enough & got the training or education we needed, each of us would have been able to do what we had planned for ourselves. For the most part, we stayed focused on a single plan, trying to complete all of the preliminary requirements that we could to get a head start on our dreams & adult lives.

I’ve noticed that a lot of the kids that I know these days, seem to either have dreams that are completely out of their ability to attain, or they change them so often that there would be no way in the world they could ever finish training before they had a new one, or they get set on a path & fail to do the one thing that will assure their success. Rhi had a friend that was pretty sure he was the next Eminem, he was set on this path for a long time, and then suddenly, he was going to go to Florida for film school & then he, just as quickly, decided he would be an Orlando golf pro. Mind you, he doesn’t even know how to golf.

Another of her former friends has already signed his contracts with the Marines. All he has to do is get his diploma, so what did he do? He stopped going to school, of course. Another switches jobs more often than he buys shoes and can’t understand why it’s getting so hard for him to keep up with his bills.

So, I guess what I’m wondering is, to you, is there a difference between a dream & a pipe dream? To me a dream is attainable & the thing you strive to someday have, such as a dream house, a dream wedding & the dream job. Pipe dreams are just the  stuff you talk about like what you’d do if you won the lottery & such. Are people just confused these days or are they totally without direction & don’t know how to go about catching their dreams?

We got our two gallons of mead bottled and ready to go, but it’s still a bit harsh & will benefit from sitting awhile, I think. I’m excited to start the next two gallons & am already planning what I want to do with them. We named our little home outfit “Peata Fionnadh Meadery” which translates to “Pet Hair Meadery,” so Troy could name his mead “Hair of the Dog.” Mine was so harsh for now, that I named it “Rabid Guinea Pig!”

Anyway, we grabbed dinner and then went over to Dawn’s to see if they all wanted to go out to our weekly drum circle. They did & we all went out, including Dawn’s two kids & Rhi. By the time we got there, and we weren’t late, by any stretch of the imagination, one of our friends was already pretty drunk and it just got worse throughout the evening. He ended up being the one who was complaining the most about our reputation for being a party group & a bunch of drunks. Wow, I wonder why people think that, when he’s staggering around the circle, spouting incomprehensible crap all night? We all eventually just decided that it wasn’t going to get any better, so we we came home. It had the potential to be a really good night out there, but that’s okay, maybe someday he’ll see what he’s doing & stop.