Horrible/Wonderful/Horrible Week

Remember the future sister-in-law that I blogged about here? Well, let's just say I had a change of heart. (The only constant is change, remember?) I thought, if she's going to be in my life, especially if she's going to be the mother of my niece or nephew, I am going to try my hardest to like her. My grandma was feeling the same way, and had even talked to her about their upcoming wedding and baby names. Heck, I even offered to take their wedding pictures!

Well, I got the news from my sister and grandma Monday that Future SIL had lost the baby. And honestly, I was really sad. I was looking forward to a niece or nephew to spoil rotten. And I know they were excited, too. But, I guess everything happens for a reason, and right now just wasn't the right time for them to have a child. That doesn't make it any easier, though.

Last week, we found out one of my good friends from work is also pregnant. She and her husband have been trying since January, and girl had a full-blown case of baby fever. Then she started having really bad cramps. A trip to the doctor yielded the possibility that it's either normal or a miscarriage. They're tracking the levels of pregnancy hormone in her blood in hopes of finding out something. She's still feeling sick, which I take to be a good sign, but what do I know about pregnancy? I just keep praying that her baby's OK.

On to the better part of the week. Friday, my wonderful boyfriend, my BFF, and I went to see Three Days Grace, Chevelle, and Adelitas Way at the BancorpSouth Center in Tupelo. It was an all-around great performance by all three bands. None of us had ever heard of Adelitas Way before, but after Friday night my BFF and I were in love. The lead singer was signing autographs after the show, so of course we bought a copy of their CD and got it signed. My BFF complemented them on their great show, the lead singer winked at her, and she said, "Ahhh," in a lovesick fashion. And he heard it. And chuckled. Plus, my WB ran smack-dab into him coming out of the bathroom. Jealous.

My BFF came home with me afterwards to help out with the Surprise 70th Birthday Party I've been planning for my Mamaw S for almost a year. We had told her our family was having an Easter get-together on Saturday so we would have an excuse to bring her to the party spot. For some reason, my mamaw kept getting the times mixed up and almost giving me a heart attack. We invited all her brothers and sisters, my grandpa's brothers and sisters, and everyone's kids and grandkids. My BFF, Mom, and I went to decorate the place, and we got everything put up pretty fast. We had a cake made with a dachshund on it since my mamaw has a weenie dog named Skeeter. It was adorable. Everyone arrived around 1 p.m., and we had my brother and his fiancée bring our mamaw at 1:30. She was so surprised when she walked in and everyone started singing "Happy Birthday" to her. I can't believe our huge family managed to keep it a secret for almost a year!

We even had a family picture made--the first one ever, I believe--of my mamaw, my dad, and all of us kids. And I made sure my WB and Future SIL were included. (My sister's boyfriend was at work, or he would have been in it, too.)

The only bad part about the day was, of course, my father. He made my sister text me on Friday to find out if my mom was invited to the party. He "didn't want to hurt my feelings, but he doesn't feel comfortable around her." Well, duh. Generally when you screw somebody over you don't feel comfortable around them anymore. My whole family wanted my mom to stay, but she wouldn't because she didn't want to create a scene. Then my dad proceeded not to speak to me the whole day. Can we nominate him for Father of the Year or what?

Around the end of the party, my stomach started feeling rumbly, like something wasn't settling well. I started to think that bacon and cheese covered jalapeños + strawberry cake was not a good combination. Still, after we cleaned up, the BFF and I went and spent a little time with Mamaw S at her house and talked about the party. Seth wanted us to stop by so my BFF could see his mom's puppy, so we did that. Stomach still feeling not so good. Starting to feel a little pukey but trying to hold off on losing my lunch until I got home.

Now we get to the really bad part. One of my cousins has been really sick for a long time. He's a hemophiliac, so he's had a lot of problems all his life. He doesn't have a spleen, and around Christmas he fell and broke his hip and had to have surgery (which was a really big ordeal because of the hemophilia). Anyway, he had been having some other problems and they discovered that he had a virus called toxoplasmosis attacking his brain. They started treating it, but nothing they did helped. They couldn't do surgery because they were afraid he would bleed to death. So basically they just had to let it be. Two weeks ago, around my birthday, he went into the hospital again and found out the virus was spreading. They told us he wouldn't live much longer and sent him home on hospice. So basically we have been waiting for two weeks for the inevitable to happen. And on Saturday, they told us it wouldn't be long at all.

So I'm trying to decide what to do with BFF, because I know she wouldn't want to intrude on such a private family moment unless she knew I needed her there. We finally decided for her to go to my house so she could check on her puppy and wait. My WB was going back to Oxford that night to work on Sunday, so she was hitching a ride back with him. We get home and my Aunt N walks out from my Mamaw P's, where she had been sent to get my mamaw's medicine, so I asked if I could hitch a ride up to my Aunt K's house with her. She says yes and goes back to get the medicine. The BFF and I get everything unloaded and the pukey feeling just won't wait anymore. I leave her unloading food that needs to be refrigerated and do my thing. As I'm brushing my teeth, Aunt N comes back and says they called from Aunt K's and said to leave everything and come right now. So we jump in the car and go. My cousin is gone by the time we get there. He was my Aunt K's only child, and I felt so bad for her. The funeral home was so busy this weekend that they couldn't get him out today, so visitation is today and the funeral is Tuesday. I'm missing two days of work, but my supervisor has known about this for weeks and she knew I was going to go home (or in this case, stay home) if anything happened.

Back to Saturday. It was my other cousin's birthday, the one who is like a brother to me. And I proceeded to get sick through his whole birthday party. Mom got me home and it just didn't stop. It felt just like last summer when I got food poisoning from Taco Bell. Mom had to call Aunt K to get me a dissolvable Phenergan because I couldn't keep the liquid down. I didn't eat anything that could give me food poisoning, so I'm thinking I got some kind of stomach flu. I'm feeling some better, but still not 100%.

I know this post was totally random, but there is so much on my mind and I just had to get it all out. Thanks for listening!

Prime Time!

That's right, folks! My wonderful boyfriend and I are priming the nightstand! We decided on a fabulous color called Citrus Punch--kind of an orange creamsicle color. We're going to do the borders in this gorgeous shade of brown called Sweet Tea. Both of them can be found here. (Click on the orange palate. Citrus Punch is second row, next to last, and Sweet Tea is bottom row, second sample.)

I wanted to take a photo of the nightstand before we started painting it, but my WB got it sanded down before I could even think about it. Then I wanted to take a photo of the sanded stand, but...well...I forgot. And then we primed it today, and it kind of seems irrelevant to just take a picture of the primed stand and the finished stand. So, you will have to wait for me to post a photo of the finished product and imagine how it looked before we made it beautiful!

Home Improvement

Today, my wonderful boyfriend and I visited Home Depot, if I am not mistaken, for the first time ever. I mean, it's a little hard to do home improvement when you don't own a home to improve, right? And I think our landlord might get angry if we decided to spiff up our duplex.

Anyway, we have this little nightstand that his dad gave us when we moved into our first apartment. Back then, we were basically taking all our relatives' castoffs and hand-me-downs so we could have some semblance of furniture. Now we even own our own couch. OOOOOH.

Back to the nightstand. Well, it's never been too pretty-looking. It's kind of scuffed up, and one of the handles fell off. When we moved into our new place, we decided we would hang on to it and spruce it up: new layer of paint, new handles, and voila!

Well...that was a year ago. And it's still scuffed up and missing a handle.

UNTIL TODAY.

Originally we were going to HD to look for some buttercups to plant outside. (Do they sell buttercups? I mean I'm used to just seeing them in yards and pastures and along the roadside but we don't have any near our house and I NEED buttercups. My happiness depends on it.) My WB decided that, while there, we should also look at paint and handles for the the nightstand (!). So we did, and the HD associate was very helpful in telling us what all we would need to do to fix up our lil' stand. We ended up going home with some primer, sandpaper, two new handles (!), and a book of paint samples. Now all we have to do is pick a color and actually PAINT it.

Oh...and we've also decided to fix up this old microwave stand that we used as a TV stand and make some other use for it. Are we domestic or what?

Thankful Thursday

Saw this on Mrs. Briggs's blog and decided that I've been focusing too much on all the negative stuff in my life. Today I'm focusing on nothing but the things I'm thankful for!

First of all (and it's the first thing on my mind because I just got off the phone from setting up an interview), I'm thankful for Marianne Todd at Mississippi Weddings Magazine for giving me my shot, trusting me with so many stories and being an AMAZING boss! I can't wait to see this woman's vision in print.

On that note, I'm thankful that I've gotten almost all of my interviews for the story I'm working on. Five (possibly even six) out of seven ain't bad!

I'm thankful that tomorrow is PAYDAY!

I'm thankful that my friend B got a new job!

I'm thankful for my lovely friends and family (namely, Mom, my wonderful boyfriend, my amazing BFF and my lovely coworkers) for keeping me sane!

I'm thankful that, come May, I will have two new babies to spoil! My friend Lana's little boy, and my cousin Joey's little girl!

I'm thankful for my sweet big puppy, Buddy, and my evil little ginger cat, Tibbot!

I'm thankful that I get to go to Southaven with S and M tomorrow to eat yummy TGIFriday's and visit Target!

And finally, I'm thankful that the sun is starting to come out of hiding and that spring is almost here! I can't wait to get out of these layers and put on a skirt and a cute pair of sandals!

(Unfortunately, I don't know how to work that MckLinky thing, so if anyone could enlighten me, I'd be ever so thankful!)