Any Takers?

What's bad, is when people start referring to their bad days..as "Erin Days". For instance, I was talking to my friend Rebekah, and she starts the conversation out: "So I had an Erin day today..." I knew instantly it was either bizarre, or had something to do with money. Story of my 2010. 


I knew at the beginning of this year,I stated that this would be a "year to remember" but..I'd really held out hope that it would be a GOOD year. So far...I'm just starting to become paranoid about leaving my home! 


So what's happened now? Well I'm driving to work its 7:55AM I have 5 minutes to get through three stop lights and too work. Only the Lord knows why I decided to take this particular route to get too work. Anyway The first light I come to is at the top of a hill, and is green, I slow down since its been green for a while, but am making it through. All of the sudden, I see this black car, which had been sitting at the light, start making a right turn...directly into me! There was nothing I could do but pray she saw me and stopped moving! 


She didn't. 


Nope ran right into the back passenger door, causing a nice little dent. Truthfully, my gut reaction was just to keep going. But since the car is not mine, I knew I had to stop. So I pulled onto the sidewalk and got out too see the damage. The car that hit me pulled into the parking lot and another car stopped in front of me. The first woman got out, handed me her card and told me to contact her if we needed a witness, as she saw the whole thing. *THANK YOU MA'AM!!* 


I then called my father quickly to tell him what happened, being an insurance agent he told me to file a police report, especially if Party B turns anything in too their insurance company; that way we know clearly who was at fault. After getting off the phone with him, the woman turned to me and started babbling about how she didn't know what happened, what to do, she had a court date and was just a tizzy. 


I will admit I really could have cared less, but that wouldn't be very Christ-like , so I allowed her to use my phone, despite really feeling I should just call the police at that point.  15 calls later, I take my phone back call the police, and then let her try her family one more time. Apparently they aren't early risers.


She finally reaches them, and gets their insurance information. At this point I realize the police will probably want my registration and proof of insurance. 


*cue panic* 


*girl dives into car and hauls all of junk out of glove compartment* 


Nothing. Nada.ZILCH. Citation here we come.


Ok, now what. I call my father just as the police officer arrives. Random Thought: I didn't know woman were on the Motorcylce "troup" cool. Anyway thankfully she was nice, and took what information I had, my insurance info, and my license.....After coming to the conclusion that I didn't have the information I needed. I hung up and just waited for the other shoe to drop. 


Police Officer to Party B: Ok ma'am this is a citation for failure to yield at a stop light, blah, blah, blah
Police Officer to Me: Ok this is for your expired tag and no proof of insurance. 
Me: Man.


After that I left and went on to work, were my co-workers we happy to see I was well, and happy to hear it wasn't my fault. I love them. :)


Then I come home. I walk in and I hear a tapping sound at my window, thinking it was one of my siblings being funny, I walk to the window and open it quickly and reveal...........a BIRD!!!!! 


Completely freaked me out of course. Seriously HOW in the WORLD does a bird get into my house?! So after while of ......snap bird is still in  the house...brb... 


7:00pm - Ok so I had to leave for class before I was able to finish this, but as you may have guessed, the bird reappeared.....however I've been home for approximently two hours and no sign of said bird. Hope springs eternal, but I know its waiting for the exact moment to fly out and scare me to death. Probably literally. 


Class Day 1 (English 1010)  - So that was an interesting experience, one my teacher is very young...30ish, and has annoying way of sound interested yet bored at the same time. But I think I'm going to like him..I don't just yet. He made us tell something interesting about ourselves, and halfway through, one young lady pipes up and says "I'm was home-schooled and this is my first day at real school."


*HEAD DESK*


Here's a tip homeschoolers. Never.ever. announce this. It just makes you sounds like you've been holed away in your home, with no socialization. People already assume stupid stuff about homeschoolers....pretty much like they do with every probably. Blonds, Blacks, Mexicans....you get the point but if you walk right in and fulfill what they are thinking...then you will just have to...."deal with it".  


That's just my opinion of course. 


So of course I had to break the stereotype a little, not that I have to try hard to do so...as far as I know there aren't too many black people being home-schooled, that and I'm not exactly whatcha call shy (anymore) and we were very very very involved with our community  through 4-H and the Guide Dog Foundation and our church, other homeschool groups..you name it we were probably in it. 


I typically don't volunteer that I'm a ex-homeschooler right off the bat, I'll let people get used to me, before I "break it too them" then its just "Oh ok" verses..Oooohh......ooookkk. See the difference?
Yeah.
I did feel bad for the girl, as there were some snickers and giggles to that statement, but she'll learn. The hard way unfortunately. *sigh*


Anyway I think I'm all out of words now. 


BTW- If you need me, I'll be in my  bed, with the covers over my head. I don't plan on coming out anytime soon. 


TA TA!

Busy Busyness

Since I've feeling lazy I'll just copy and paste the posts from Midnight's blog....

July 17, 2008
This week coming up is going to be absolutely insane; Tomorrow I work from 11-7 and then we hit the road to Raleigh NC for 4-H Congress(4hr trip); we'll spend the night get up Tuesday morning for that, and then head back home...where I will go to work at 7AM the next morning then leave for church in Knoxville around 4PM that evening (1.5 hr trip); coming back and working from 2-7 on Thursday; Friday I go back in from 11-7 and then head downtown for our puppy meeting at 7:15PM. Saturday I work from 7-12 and then get the rest of the day off. (HALLELUJAH);
And Sunday back to work from 7-12/3-6.

July 22, 2008

Monday:
Started out ok, then went from bad to worse VERY quickly. I got up early so that I could have my things ready, so we could leave for Raleigh as soon as we got home; but being the procrastinator that I am, I was scrambling up until the very last minute before i absolutely had to leave for work. And then I couldn't find my keys. It took us about 20 minutes to find them ...sitting in my purse! I jump in the car with only 5 minutes to make the 17 minute trip to work, and I find out my cell phone is dead!! I knew I was going to be in trouble for that....but that was not all! I won't go into details...but lets just say my day was NOT going well; my only salvation was the fact that we were leaving for Congress later on and I knew that, that would be fun.
I got off at 7:00PM and headed home...gave my mom the news grabbed my bags, found a sitter for Bubbles, grabbed some food for Midnight and piled into the rental car. ( I loved that car btw). We left at 8:01 PM and arrived at the Hotel at 1:00AM.
Our GPS system gives us an arrival time to our destination; and NORMALLY, with my mom driving the time goes, down, down, down...and for the first our it did.
Until we stopped for gas. Driving a 15 passenger van we are used to a big gas tank as well as a LARGE gas bill (now).
We start pumping gas into the car and my mom and were standing there making predictions about how much this car could hold. We got to nine gallons; and the pump was still going, and going, and in fact it didn't stop until gas was spilling onto the ground!
We were of course shocked and nervous, that we had somehow gotten a car with a problem! Yikes!!
Thankfully there was a police officer near by who knew what was happening....apparently the gas pump didn't cut off when it was supposed to, and the car had and over flow tank for just such and occasion which is why the gas leaked out! Greatly relieved and thankful we proceeded on our way. That basically zapped all the time we had saved. *sigh*
*At the Hotel*

Midnight on Tie-Down

Autumn is knocked out
Tuesday
We needed to be at Athens High School at 8:30AM to get signed up for Kristen's Category.
In all truthfulness, presentations can be kind of boring; and its a good thing they have a time limit..but as it turns out, someone had the "Bright" idea to move those in the Wheels and Engines category to another room...thus cramming; thus creating a mad house in this tiny class room. But we all squeezed in and began. Unfortunately the move also mad our wait about 2 hours longer; because those doing presentations on Electricity were in there also.
So first they did Electricity ages 14-18, then Wheels and Engines ages 14-18; and breaked so the judges could confer and then give out awards. That probably took a good 2 hours right there..because in that age range you are expected to give a longer speech. (Mine was 18 minutes or soo but I had a interesting topic if I do say so myself :-)). During this time Midnight and I walked the halls and met up with people we had met earlier in the year at Teen Retreat and people who recognized me from last years Congress.

Kristen getting a pep talk from my mother....or something.....::grins::

Midnight during a presentation -- She got lots of compliments :-)

All of us crammed in the room waiting for the presentations to start.

During one of our treks; I recognized Brax & Frankie's raisers sister..."J".. Some of you might remember that we met them last year when they had Brax and I had Rei.
If you don't well you can click on the links for the "rrrrreest of the story!"
She recognized me as well and we went to find her family who was keeping Frankie while her raiser was out of town....well out of the country really! lol Frankie was in the room sleeping and a presentation was in progress so I couldn't go and say Hi, right then. So "J" and I stayed outside and talked for a while.

Frankie posing for the camera

Midnight looking Frankie from across the hall
When the door finally opened, I gave "J" Midnight's leash and went to say hi to Frankie and her raisers Dad by myself. We still had a long day ahead and I didn't want to disturb either dogs right off the bat. I then got caught up talking to someone else about Midnight of course, and had to sprint back to Kristen's room to make sure I hadn't missed anything.
I hadn't, and so was forced to sit outside of the room with my sisters and some other 4-Her's from our county.

Sitting in the Hallway waiting for someone to finish their presentation; You couldn't go in during one.

Autumn and Midnight are best friends.

I had long given up denying people petting rights; and so Midnight was laying in the floor getting stroked by some kids; who were loving it almost as much as she did. She acted pretty silly most of the time there ...sit?!?! How can you sit still while someone is petting you!?
Of course I got the normal (HOW CAN YOU GIVE THEM BACK!?!?) question, but I was also getting asked if we were allowed to love on the dogs ourselves, which was a bit odd in my opinion.... I personally don't do a lot of petting and such of my puppies while we are out "working", as its very distracting to Midnight for me to be touching her...but I guess people were translating that too mean that I couldn't love on them at all...I made sure to correct that theory!
We basically spent the next hour or so, alternating between listening to presentations and walking the halls; FINALLY it was time for Kristen's presentation.
Don't tell her I said this, but she did really really well. Her competition was in about two people...the other 4 were.....just ok, but they were young so they have many opportunities to try again; and work on their material. Apparently the judges agreed with my assessment and awarded Kristen the Gold Medal ....first place in case you didn't know.
We were all very excited for her;

Waiting in the Hallway for the judges to finish up - (Autumn, Mom, Robyn, Kristen, Midnight)

This is all very boring to Midnight
After she got her Gold Winner picture taken, we spotted the Frankie Raisers and so after we were finished with the pictures, my mom wanted to go speak with them so we walked down.
This time Frankie and Midnight defiantly saw each other.
It seems that this time around we have "switched" dogs in a way! Last year I had the hyper bouncy puppy; and they had the calm laid back one, and This I had the calm laid back pup and they got the hyper bouncy one!
I do admit that it was nice to have a dog that was calmer this year :-)) We decided to take the pups outside to let them greet each other after having been so good all day; Now THAT was a struggle since Midnight kept spinning around trying to see Frankie; But we finally made it outside, and let them play.
Midnight's reaction to Frankie was a bit surprising; Frankie was being a normal bouncy 7-month old and Midnight (only two months older) Felt that she was too good for a young one like that and kept growling at her to "back away" ....which I've never seen her do; so that was unusual.
**Side Note** If I had felt that Midnight was going to attack or get aggressive with Frankie I would have immediately put distance between the two. Midnight seemed to be telling Frankie not be so pushy.
After getting some energy out of her system I love on Frankie some before getting a couple of pictures of the two; back inside Frankie immediately plopped down on the floor and did not move. :-))

After saying good bye to them we got on the road back to Asheville; and thus ended another 4-H Congress for the Thames Family.