I’m in bed while this posts, because the cold and my health mean that I’m not going to be staying up to see in the new year itself. I am wishing everyone the best for the year of 2008.

We’ve taken our licks in this past year, but we’re starting the new year on a positive note. We’re home owners. We have a positive outlook for the next year. My husband and I are committed to working together to improve our health, to exercise together, to eat healthier so that we can lose weight and show a good face and good attitude to our son. We’re both battling through things together, helping to make our house hold the best that it can be for the new year by fixing things, finding things that we need, and sorting out trades. He’s been finding clients for me, I’ve been managing the books and things like that.

I hope that everyone else can face the New Year with a positive outlook. It seems to me that there have been a lot of hideous things in the year past. I thought 2006 had it’s rough spots, but 2007 seems to have been rougher still. In 2006 we had the joyous event of our son’s birth to hold things to light, and while he’s a treasure to us, we had the loss of my mother-in-law this year, and some horrendous happenstances with both my husband’s health and my own, and having to move twice in the same year. All big causes of stress.

The only way is up!

I actually took a picture to post last week for Self Portrait Sunday but didn’t get chance to do so because I got wrapped up in other things which are still going on at the house trying to get everything unpacked and found a place.

This one I took this morning:

If you’re wondering what distracted me right when I took the photo it was this:
We still have decorations up, the few that I found and put out. We have a chibi-tree and a garland of tinsel on the stair rail. I’ve been taking it fairly easy today because I’ve got a cold, and feel pretty miserable. I think the munchkin might be catching it too because he’s been very grumpy and upset since he woke up from his nap.

To see how others are dealing with the post holiday check out this week’s Self Portrait Sunday

Right now I’m working on recopying the “Spread the Word” list directory into the post from my site. I was trying to do an update on the list this morning because it’s been several months since I checked on it, and the entire content of my post wound up disappearing instead. I’m not sure what caused it.

I’m taking a break from unpacking boxes. We seem to have a never-ending supply. I’m trying to find a couple of things that we have to turn into the old apartment complex in order to be done with them; but they seem to have disappeared completely. It’s very frustrating. I want to be done with them. I’m mentally done with them already…but this is hanging over our head at the minute.

Other things are going well. Hubbie and I are trying to decide which upgrade we’re going to do to the new home first. We lack a washer and dryer at the minute, but we also want to do work in the back yard so that we can fence portions off and let the munchkin play out there without so much risk of him running out into the street. I think the washer and dryer are winning at the minute though. I think the people who have the house next door to us are doing some major renovations. The place was for sale when we bought this one, and had been on the market for a bit as well, but looked in pretty grungy condition. I’m not sure if they’re new owners who are just bustling away to do real estate flipping or if it’s the original owners who were waiting to do all the work for whatever reasons. The house is a lot cleaner now, and they’ve painted it bright orange. I feel bad for them right now because this place is now looking a bit dingy given the yard is completely over grown as we haven’t had chance to tackle that yet. I didn’t think it looked so bad and then I went for a walk down the street and it looks like someone dropped a jungle over our house.

…it’ll be a miracle.
Those were the words my hubbie just told me when I called him up to ask him to get band-aids on the way back from the doctor.

I was trying to cook breakfast this morning and the munchkin kept breaking into the new pantry and bringing me food items to indicate his gross displeasure that food wasn’t just miraculously appearing in front of him and I expected him to wait OMGFIVEMOREMINUTES until the eggs and croissants were cooked.

On the third trip of his into the pantry I hauled him out and put the cable on in the hopes that “Curious George” would distract him from his pursuit of food so I could check on the croissants that were cooking without him burning himself on the oven.

After I checked and found out they needed a little more time he left “Curious George” and came back to investigate the pantry again. I told him, “No! Mummy’s told you before don’t go in there!” the response was THUNK! SCREAM!!! as he dropped a can of soup and came running to me crying. I took him back into the living room and put him on the couch and then realized there was blood on my pants and on the tile floor. So apparently rather than me just scaring him into dropping the can by shouting it was that he actually dropped the can of soup on his foot and it gained first blood. Well, second blood his previous messy bloody injury was cutting his lip when he decided to see if he could knock the dining table chair over with his face and lost. Fun escapades of his first starting to walk.

He is now petrified of the pantry though, and any of the other closets which open the same way, as I went to the hall closet looking for band-aids and he freaked out and went and hid under his crib.

Hubbie should be here soon with band aids though, and the munchkin is happily eating his breakfast not too much the worse for wear.

Of all the things for him to inherit from me…accident prone-ness. Although I survived…so there is hope for him. But my Mum used to hate to get calls from my school, “Oh, God what’s she done now??” I have a vast collection of scars from broken finger bones to knees which had to be taped back together. I have only broken bones twice though and one of those was just two years ago. I chipped a bone in my finger when I was around eight or nine, and did the occult fracture of my elbow in September of 2005. Everything else was usually just bloody and messy but not broken. I can lay claim to having had six stitches in my mouth but not breaking my nose when I decided to argue with a gate and lost, much the same way the munchkin argued with the chair last year.

Television…we’ve survived without it for almost three years now, already it’s causing us tons of problems. Wondrous thing that it is.

Apparently our cable install guy was a lazy putz. He activated the internet, which is nice, but he didn’t actually hook up the cable. I told him when he came in that we wanted the internet installed for the computer and showed him where it was, and the cable installed for the television which is on the ground floor across from the computer and has a jack RIGHT BEHIND IT.

While he was doing the install we had to leave to take the UHaul back and we left my Mum watching the munchkin. When we came back we found that he was just leaving, and that the internet was up, but not active on the computer because I then had to go and install the wireless router to the internet and activate it. That’s fine. I’m used to having to re-establish a network I’ve done it countless times. Yet the install was done…in the loft; that’s nowhere near either the TV I showed him or the computer.

I figure we’ll survive the loft is where my husband plans on putting up the XBox and the Wii and everything and those will need internet too because he likes to prop his feet up on the plasma tv stands and play Halo 3 tournaments against people all over.

I turned on the television downstairs figuring perhaps he did both anyway: snow. I look at it and there’s no actual cable from the wall to the television. I wasn’t sure if we should get a cable box because we’re just getting the basic-basic cable; essentially the local channels. But he didn’t even put a wire in.

I called the cable company today given I knew I wasn’t going to get any answer over Christmas itself and they’re going, “Well, you have cable on your account.” Well, that’s nice, but your computer telling you that I have cable is not putting a wire in. I looked through as many boxes as I could figuring that we would have a co-ax cable somewhere, but so far haven’t found one. Today we found that he’d apparently installed a cable in the loft that wasn’t hooked up to the router, but the end of it was hooked under the baseboard so we hadn’t realized it was a free co-ax, but it’s IN THE LOFT. Which is MILES away from the TV that I told him we were going to be using for the cable.

A friend just stopped by to see us and happened to have a co-ax cable with him and has donated it to us, but I just find it hilarious that the guy didn’t actually do what I asked. He did nicely donate us a wireless USB thingy which made it easier to use the internet but he didn’t hook up the cable and he spelled my name wrong on the email set up.

I just spent twenty minutes trying to figure out why Thunderbird wasn’t accepting the password I was using to access the server. I was still using the default password because I hadn’t gone in and changed it yet. I’m going how can I be confusing 12345? So, I went and tried to log in to the account to change the password wondering if I’d taken too long to reset things and the guy or someone else had decided to screw around…those things that go through your brain and make no sense, right? So I try logging in and it won’t accept that either through the site. So now I’m going WTH?? I know I can spell my name. It’s just firstname.lastname@cableco.net how can I have that wrong? Then I take another look at the printout he gave and realize that they’ve spelled our last name incorrectly. Our last name ends in ling and they’ve put lind.

Urgh.

It’s not unheard of for people to spell the name wrong given it’s a silent g, but I’m used to just being lin. This is the first time I’ve been lind. Ah, well, it’s not like I ever use the @isp emails for anything other than catching spam…

I’m triply glad now that we wound up having to get internet from the cable company because the phone was supposed to be activated at 10 a.m. I was up at the butt crack of dawn this morning getting ready to hare down two cities over to return toilet seats to Home Depot, pick some more stuff up at the apartment, busting ass so that I would be back here for 9:30 a.m. so that I wouldn’t miss the phone company guy, but it’s now almost eleven and I haven’t even heard from them let alone seen them on the property.

I wound up having to call them. The woman got pretty snippy with me because she couldn’t hear what I was saying in answer to all the confirmation questions until I snapped back, “Well, I’m SORRY. I’m having to use my cell phone because your people haven’t turned my phone on yet!” Then she became nicer all of a sudden. Although still pretty unhelpful.

She told me that they do show that we’re in queue to get turned on. Gee, thanks. I have it written that my appointment was almost an hour ago. I knew that. Can you at least tell me WHEN this ten a.m. is in Embarq-land? Because here in Florida it was 53 minutes ago. “Well, they’re running behind.” “Okay, how behind? one hour? two hours? eight hours?” “I can’t tell you that. It will be done before the end of business today.”

Oh, well, that’s great. I’m supposed to just sit around at home all day on Christmas Eve when we have relatives coming in from all over and are supposed to be at my FILs house? I can’t do that! My SIL is only here until 9 a.m. tomorrow.

Then the small pinprick of light appears at the end of the tunnel. Because we’re NOT getting internet we don’t have to be here to have the phone turned on, because all they have to do is mess with things outside on the junction box. They don’t need access to the house itself. So, once we’re done with our celebratory brunch we can mosey on out of here and there’s no problem.

I just hope they actually do get things turned on today like they said, because I’m hoping to have Mum come over here in the morning so she can call our relatives in England for Christmas as all she has right now is a cell phone and that would be a hideous phone bill for her.

I seem to make the same general resolutions ever year, to stick to my diet, to start exercising, to budget, things like that.

Last year I tried hoodia for a while. My problem with things like this is that I start out strong taking things when I’m supposed to, doing my exercise but then something will come up that messes up my routine or I’ll forget a few times, and then just drop off.

I need to make a plan and stick to it. This year that’s my resolution. To stick to all my plans and see them through, rather than flaking out. I need to finish things. It applies to stories I’m working on. It applies to everything. I’m a starter but not a finisher.

I think our things which have been left at the old apartment are multiplying while we’re not there. I swear it looked as though there wasn’t that much stuff. My husband even told me there wasn’t that much stuff…yet despite being there a few hours yesterday we only got the munchkin’s room and the main bathroom emptied. We got most of the spare bedroom cleaned out too but my husband’s weight lifting equipment had to stay because it was too heavy for my Mum and I to wrangle.

Last night I went and got some more things. I’m planning on doing a champagne breakfast this morning for hubbie and I but I had forgotten until last night when I was over at a friend’s house doing holiday get together with them that as of yet none of the cooking utensils had made it to our new house, so I had to swing by and get them and figured I may as well load up the car with other things while I was there.

We now have a tree up and a bit more holiday decorations. I wrapped some tinsel (garland) around the stair rail and hung up a couple of ornaments which are too heavy for the “chibi-tree” on the curtain rods in the front of the house. We look a bit more festive and it feels nice to have these things up, like this is really going to be our home.

Today I have to make a trip to Home Depot. I figure I will see if I can’t grab some more things from the old place while I’m in that neck of the woods. We should have the phone being connected and we’re going over to my FILs to do Christmas things there given my SIL has to fly back to NY tomorrow morning because she has work on the 26th.

We were told the cable company would be here between 4 and 7 p.m. to hook up the internet, so I figured that meant we would be waiting at almost 8 p.m. wondering where the heck he was, but he got here just before 5 p.m!

He was really thorough and even left me a USB wireless adapter so it would be easier for the computer to access the internet given one of the two cable jacks is up in the loft area, and we would have had to run a cat5 cable from the loft through the stairs and down and it would have looked ugly. That was really cool of him.

We’re all exhausted, of course, but the munchkin settled down really well considering it’s his first night in a strange house, but we made sure that the stop sign came in the first truck load so that was up in his room right away so that things would look as familiar as possible.

It’s going to be a lonely first night for me, though because hubbie’s on duty. I’m torn I want to get everything out and up and away but I’m tired and want to go to bed too…

We have to give huge thanks to our friend Jer who came over to help even though he’s suffering from a cold and got most of the truck loaded given our movers were delayed by a burst water main, and my Mum who brought breakfast and stayed until 9 p.m. so that we could get the munchkin’s crib in as it was too wide for the door into his room and had to be dismantled and reassembled.

We still have stuff to get from the other place and the whole thing to clean from top to bottom before we can turn the keys in BUT all the big stuff is in, and I put up a little bit of decorations. I’ll post some pics tomorrow.

Okay, my last post before we disconnect everything!

I’m going to be gone for Yule, Solstice, which is tomorrow, and I doubt I’ll be back on the blog until after the more traditional secular holiday which my husband, his family and my Mum celebrate, Christmas on the 25th. So, I hope that everyone has a safe and happy holiday!

So, here’s a little banner I made to spread my greetings! Stay safe! Keep warm! Be loved and blessed!