I’m hoping the craziness it just about finished, along with the month. This month started out with one of best friends having a tragedy in his family. They were all on their annual summer vacation at Lake Powell & his four year old nephew ran out into the lake while the adults were trying to get everything situated after a freak wind storm & drowned. On his way back home to Las Vegas after the funeral & everything, his truck broke down & he had to have it towed into the Dodge dealership he works at, which cost him over $300. He had his neighbor come & get him, stayed & visited with them a few minutes & went home (he was in the process of moving out) and found out his apartment had been broken into & his computer was stolen. He lost all of his pictures from Iraq when he was there & everything else like that, plus his backup CDs were in the same box.

Then Jason & Davy’s mom was diagnosed with uterine cancer & had to have surgery. She isn’t doing well, and having a terrible time with recovery and while we were all worrying about her, Davy had what we think was a heart attack & a severe bacterial infection in his feet, which require surgery to clean it out & keep from having to amputate. During all of this, Troy’s grandmother went back into the hospital & isn’t doing well at all and they change our medical benefits with Troy’s employer.

Rhi asked to move back in yesterday, so again our lives will change & adjust to three people in the house & another cat, just as we were getting ready to give the kittens away & rehome Buster, so that we’d only have Kaji & a kitten. I seems to be an always swirling vat of change around here, sometimes I feel like I need to look into Branson vacations just to relax. Sheesh.

Some of you probably know that Troy & I have been on a quest for better health since he got out of the hospital last November. We fully realized that there was nothing that we could have done to prevent his gall bladder from going bad, dying & then that strange bacteria from going nuts & trying to kill him, but we did decide to take control of what we can change.

Troy swears up one side & down the other that he hasn’t lost any weight at all, but everyone who sees him knows that he has. I didn’t even recognize him across the park when we were setting up for our renaissance faire & I wasn’t the only one. My parents have commented many times that he’s lost weight & he’s down 2 pants sizes, too.

I had decided in April or May that I wanted weight loss surgery, after our insurance announced that they would be covering it. When we found out how much it was going to cost us just to even try to qualify, I changed my mind. There were things they wanted me to prove that would be impossible for me & things I would have had to do that our insurance doesn’t cover, but I didn’t give up. I looked into weight loss pills, but didn’t find anything that worked for me or that I felt comfortable using. I’m not down on the idea, they work wonderfully for many people, my sister-in-law included, but they weren’t for me.

I decided to join the program that helped me lose 75 pounds in 2000 again, because I knew it worked & that the reason I gained it all (and another 25 pounds or more) back was because I stopped doing what was working for me, believing I wasn’t worth the money it was costing me every month. I was never able to see that I was losing weight, in my mind, I was still a fat chick & I was never going to be smaller or more healthy, even though I know I was a lot smaller, because I have pictures from then. I signed up on May 24 & as of this morning, I’ve lost 32 pounds, I see it in my body & have since I lost the first 10. I’m down almost 3 sizes in pants, one in shirts, a full bra size (almost ready to go down again) and a size in my panties. I feel great, I’m looking better & loving how I look & am just ready to keep eating right & losing.

This was the best gift I could ever give myself & I am so worth it. I know I’ll have to do this for the rest of my life & I’m very okay with that. Finally.

I’m ready to not be sick already. Today I’m running a fever & have an upset stomach. I hate being sick & after having spent the entire winter feeling horrible, I just really wasn’t looking forward to ever being sick again. I’m sure you’re all tired of hearing me gripe about my health by now, though.

So, I’ll switch to something else. I’m having a terrible time finding a simple, but beautiful ritual to do on Mabon. Everything I have found is long, drawn out & fairly complicated. We just aren’t complicated people & neither is the way we worship & celebrate Sabbats. Why do people have to make everything so complicated? Paganism isn’t supposed to mimic organized religion & it isn’t the way it started out, we are an Earth based religion, to me that just screams “simple,” or am I missing something?

I found it! I love this one! Now I can feel happy & go to bed, goodnight bloggerland!!

This is going to have to do for now, my head is killing me & uploading is incredibly slow the way I’m having to do it. My good ftp program is on the desktop, which won’t stay connected to the internet. Very frustrating. Anyway, I like it, I’m just not sure it really represents the image I want to put out there about who I am & what a Witch is to me, you know? I will eventually find one that I think is perfect & when I do I’ll change it, until then, this will stay.

I just upgraded this blog to the latest Word Press & I was worried for a few minutes. I’ve never had any problems upgrading from one version to the nxt, but it had been a long, long time since I had on this one, so I upgraded to a newer version & then to the newest one. I like this version, so far, especially the word count feature.

I’m still sick, in case anyone was wondering, but it seems to have moved on to my gastrointestinal tract now.  So, yeah, I think I’ll be taking it easy this weekend & trying to recuperate more than trying to have fun, you know?

I have plans to change the layout in here tonight, at some point, so be on the lookout & ignore any wonkiness or random elements!

That’s how I feel today. Blech. I didn’t feel like walking today, even though I did. We didn’t go on our full walk, mostly because Dawn had an appointment to do her son’s schedule this morning, but I couldn’t have made it anyway. All I really want to do is sleep, even though I have a nice dinner planned to cook tonight & am looking forward to it, I just wish it would make itself. I don’t have much of an appetite today which isn’t the best weight loss supplement, but it’ll work for the short term, anyway.

I think I’m just worn down we’ve been very busy, I haven’t been able to sleep in, even when I want to & so I think I may just be tired & getting a cold. I hate getting sick in the summer, I hate it any time, but I feel cheated in the summer, you know?

Anyhow, I need to try to get motivated to shower & go get Rhi, she needs a ride to the store & her friend needs a ride to work, so I guess I’ll try to do that now.

Blech.

Booger had 5 kittens in all, today I let two of them go to their new homes. It’s a little early, with them being only 6 weeks, but she’s so worn out, she isn’t eating enough & she’s so skinny, she needed a break. The two that left today were very healthy & fat & were eating solid food & I know they’ll be fine. I miss them already, though & wish I could have kept them all. Since I can’t, I have to make sure they all get good homes.

I had a weird dream last night, it doesn’t make very much sense, since I haven’t been to NYC since I was about 3 & remember very little about, but I dreamed we were living there & trying to move away. I was looking through a huge phone book, trying to find a company to move us, but it took over a hundred pages to cover all of the moving companies New York had to offer, that I gave up & said we’d just pack the car full and leave the rest. Then the dream switched to a completely different area, theme & people, it was like I blinked & I was back at Skateland with my old friends, trying to get the boys to pay attention to us & that was our only care in the world.

I need to go out & buy some ice, but I think the neighborhood hellions are still playing with their RC cars & running them up & down my street, so I’m afraid we’ll hit a kid if we try to get out. I’m wondering if it would just be better to wait until tomorrow morning. Man, I’ll be happy when school starts next week.

A week ago, we brewed our first batch of beer & I tested it this morning to see if it was ready to be bottled. It tasted like flat beer, which told me it was ready to go. It took us a little while, but we got into the flow & I put the right amount of sugar ( the beer uses the sugar to ferment a bit more & that’s what carbonates it) into the bottles, Troy filled them & capped them & I put them back in the box. I’m excited to try it out in a couple of weeks!

After we finished that, we ran to the store to buy sugar & then we cleaned out our fermenting keg, sanitized everything & I made a batch of hard cider, since Dawn doesn’t like beer. I really enjoy making out own mead, beer & hard cider & I’m just about ready to venture into other types of wine, mostly because I love knowing what goes into making it & knowing that we did it ourselves.

I’m thinking of when we send out our cards & holiday invitations, that I want them to be wine or beer themed, since that’s is what we’re becoming known as these days – brewers & vintners & I like that. I had wanted to make mead for years & years, and people made it sound so complicated & even dangerous, so it scared me away until we bit the bullet & just did it, now people come to us for advice. We’re by no means experts, just hobbyists who really love what we do. I love sharing our homemade stuff with our friends & family & we haven’t heard any of them complaining!

I’m glad we had such a great day yesterday, because even though we’ve managed to get the beer we brewed bottled & started on it’s carbonation, I’ve managed to get into an argument with Rhi & didn’t even realize it was happening until it was too late. I’m on my third cell phone through our provider & we’ve been with them for about 5 years, I think, so I had my first one, waited two years, got a new one & did it one more time back in January. Erin had one, it lasted until he got into an argument with his ex & threw it on the ground, destroying it.

Rhi has been though 5 or 6 in the same amount of time, including my old Kyocera that I just gave to her. The one that lasted me two years with no problems. I dropped it many times & it survived now she’s saying it was on the charger, fell & shattered. Unlikely. It had a rubberized coating on it & I dropped it on the asphalt several times with no damage. She called me,I think expecting that we’d bail her out with another one tomorrow, but we can’t, she isn’t due for an upgrade right now & I have no extra money to buy another one with. She said she was “gonna give them hell” until they let her upgrade & I told her she really couldn’t, since she doesn’t own the contract on it, we do. Well, that did it, she got angry &upset & started crying & hung up on me. I feel about as loved as a Frisco Dentist right now.

There isn’t anything I can do, I just don’t have it to give anymore, we’re all tapped out. I can’t afford to pay for her temper anymore, she has to learn to control it or she’ll never have anything worth having. It’s a hard lesson, but she needs it. I love her more than anything, and I have to do this because of that love, even though it makes me feel like crap.