Listia

well im a freebie lover and do pretty well for myself in the freebie world, at least i would like to think so *lol*
and im not talking the little shampoo samples because well them just annoy me, no my freebies that i love are like.. free skecher shape-ups (still waiting for them to come in the mail), free jockey key chain undies (okay nothing major to brag about but oh so cute), free $50 sandals from Key West Sandal Factory, free queen size sheet set, free shirts, free $200 Double D ranchwear jacket, free $200 to spend on hotels.com (love this one, i mean who dont want a free hotel stay?), free earrings, etc etc etc
yep these are the ones that i like to be amazed at and oh so happy to receive in the mail.
most of the time i get friends say *wow how do you do that* well you would be totally surprised at the companies that want to give this stuff away.. sometimes you have to be quick on the buttons but sometimes you dont, all depends on where your trying to get the good stuff at and what your needing to do.
just last night i won a pair of silver earrings and that was just from referring friends to a site .. once i had my 10, well than ALL 10 of us won a pair of earrings (easy huh?)
now i would lie if i said like 99% of these werent facebook related.. because in all honesty they are, but every so often we find one that dont require facebook..
hence Listia comes into play. I learned about it yesterday and its a free auction site that you just join up for, you join up you get $450 credits for free :) credits are their version of cash.. link it to your fb account and get another 50 credits, do a few other things and more credits.. see? easy :)
now lets say you want to bid on a pair of earrings with free shipping.. you bid 100 credits (of your free credits that you got for signing up) and walla, you win that auction.. congratulations :) free shipping, free credits means.. FREE item!
curious about Listia? check out the button to the right of my blog up top and you can check it out for yourself!

Monday

wow what a weekend!
we had all these plans for the weekend.. saturday we had planned to do our normal walmart which we tend to do late at night only to wake up to snow.. yes SNOW again! argh i so am tired of the cold and the snow! and sense when do we have lots of snow on the coast? hello .. this is not normal *lol*
it started sometime around 10:30am and just wouldnt go away *lol* after it finally decided to stop snowing we had between 5 and 6 inches in our backyard. this meant that heading to wash rons Budweiser truck was out, at least for saturday. which was our other plan and thing we needed to get done this weekend.
so saturday was spent for the most part just us hanging out in the house watching the white crap fall from the sky. the roads were a mess big time. ron did venture out to the store up the road and said he couldnt see where the road started and the road ended. thankfully he took it slow and only slid once along the way.
Sunday we got up and hoped for the best because we knew we had to venture out. so we took our time and got ready before leaving.
the roads werent so bad, at least not the main roads but the back roads were ugly still. thankfully the only back roads we had to go on were in our own neighborhood.
we headed up towards new bern and not even 15 minutes from the house we had pretty much completely driven out of the snow! how crazy is that?
i mean not even one little bit on the side of the road even, it was just *clear* and all the snow was just .. no where to be seen. apparently the only ones slammed by the snow itself were us here on the coast itself.
we got to new bern, headed to the walmart and got the stuff to clean the truck etc. and than headed over to wash the truck itself.
OMG i cant tell you how much of a disgusting PIG the last driver of this truck was. Rons only had it for about a week now and hasnt been able to get it cleaned up which is why we decided we would do it on the weekend. but OMG it was so so nasty. i swear we should have taken before and after pictures.. trash, food all over the floor, etc it was seriously just *gross*
rons gonna keep on working on it little by little threw out the week but from how it looked before to how it looks now, it looks to be at least 90% better than it did before which is really good.
after we got home, we decided to call on a rental that i found in the paper. im not trying to get my hopes up. while the location is good (correct school district) and while the price is great for our area, etc.. im really on the fence over it because i know if i get my hopes up to high, it wont work out in the end. considering that we are still waiting on one W2 in order to have the first month and deposits and our other option is to use rons check that comes on the 4th, its just really really pushing things. the one good part is the current renter is in it until the 1st so that gives us a bit of time.. now if only that last W2 would pop up online so i could get taxes filed we would be good to go. grant it im not expecting much from taxes this year so it would eat up a good portion of it, but at least its a home of our own and outta here *woohoo*
ah well one day at a time. were supposed to do a drive by tonight so i guess we will see what we see, heres to hoping its not a trashy place *lol*

mean girls

there i said it *mean girls* but its the truth thats all they are.. plain and simple *mean girls*
how do i come to that conclusion well for one second put yourself in someone elses shoes, your early on into your first pregnancy and these *mean girls* decide as you are trying to figure out whats going on with your body to seek the help from other girls to find out what they think it could be.. so you ask questions and they decide to start calling you a very rude and immature nickname because of this and three yes THREE years later they are still doing it.
this same girl goes on and months later has marital problems. she is newly married and just dont know what to do .. so she again reaches out for support and opinions on what to do..
and the result are again mean girls who tell her that she is dumb for not loosing her new husband.
now you tell me one person who is married to her husband a man she married because she loves him and wants to grow old with him that will just up and walk out .. ignoring his pleas, his apologies, his promises (empty or not) and just give up and say *fuck you im done*
no one that i know of drops the ball that quick, what makes a marriage is hard work and while everyone has their limits of what they will take, you always try your hardest first without just *giving up*
years later when the marriage unfortunately falls apart, you have this tossed in your face and these same mean girls attacking you at one of the lowest times in your life.

do they not have an ounce of compassion? understanding? feelings? what about a simple heart? that would help wouldnt it?

a YEAR after the final blow up occurs and people part ways, it is still brought up. did this girl leave that much of a lasting impression?
when i decided to walk out of the situation completely.. take my bow and walk away from the cliques, the drama and most of all the mean girls.. i knew i would be their next target.. its a trend, a habit of theirs .. and so i took care of what i needed to.. deleted, blocked, walked away etc..

and yet still this year later, names are trashed.. tongues thrash the rude comments, the names are called..

i did not ever ask for an apology .. neither did my friend .. i did not seek anyone out .. neither did my friend, my friend however was sought out.. and while i will say it *i think an apology should come from the heart not from reading a book* my friend is more forgiving i suppose than i am.
but i have no room in my life for drama and bullshit and i know the cliques and the mean girls only bring that.
and as much as i would love to say what sounds like a bunch of mean kids picking on one that they see as *weaker* even if this person has more heart, more soul, more strength than all of them combined.. they attack because they see this person as weak because she isnt backed up by the clique... i would love to say these are mere children ..
but than i think about my own kids and i wonder.. at what age would i expect my child to act like that and the answer is never.. never in a million years would i allow my child to think that they are better than anyone else, more deserving of anything than anyone else..
in life we are all equal.. we bleed the same color blood, we all feel pain, hurt, joy, laughter etc..

but sadly these mean girls are adults, yes ADULTS .. women .. women who have children, women who all came together seeking the same exact thing, a place where they could chat, meet new people, find understanding, compassion, build friendships, etc

my hope for them is they never face walking in the same shoes as the girl who they have torn down time and time again. the girl who as much as THREE YEARS later they still feel the need to hurt.

i wish they could answer me one question.. *what joys do you feel by doing the things you do to people? does this make you feel like a bigger better person? honestly does it? to hurt someone, to tear them down, to kick them when their life is falling apart around them? what joy does this bring you?*

thankfully my friend is a survivor, her life is full .. she has jumped every hurdle tossed in front of her and while her roller coaster is far from over she takes each day as they come.

Nemesis

I have a nemesis and this is who it is, yes .. im serious! the dreaded alarm clock that wakes me up every morning. now grant it mine might not be so fancy as the one pictured but trust the annoying *beep beep beep* sound is just as bad.
I would lie if i said i didnt miss the days of being woken up by ron in the mornings, because honestly i miss them. but i know that the decision for him to go back to budweiser when they came hunting him down and asked him to come back was one that will benefit our family more so than him waking me up each morning.
It was a hard decision to make, bouncing the good and the bad between both companies, one providing us with the hours we wanted and loved while the other lacked the hours however provided the cash side of things..
needless to say his long long days are back and well for me, this means my nemesis has returned into my life.
i cant tell you how much i am beginning to love weekends again.. how much i look forward to weekends again.. just to get 2 mornings of peace!
i had the worst night monday night.. couldnt sleep which lets face it is never fun to deal with alone.. but finally just as the clock was going past 2am i felt myself starting to doze off.. only to be immediately startled awake by owen who was coughing. by this time ron is already up and out of the bedroom so owen came and climbed in bed with me to snuggle *love my bed bug*
i lay'd there rubbing his head and making sure he was comfortable, just after 3am i heard ron leave for work (a bud mans day starts long before the sun comes up) .. and than the next thing i know it was *cough cough cough puke!* ack.. just what i wanted to play in at 3 something in the morning.. got owen all cleaned up and the bed taken care of, washer loaded for the next morning so it could be ran as soon as i woke up, than it was back in bed we went. and this is when clyde decided to pace back and forth unable to get comfortable i assume, from his puppy bed, to the floor between the beds, to owens youth bed (a HUGE no no but hell it was some ugly hour in the morning and i wasnt gonna argue with his furry butt, i was tired), and back again.
the last time i looked at the clock it was after 4am and i knew that my night would consist of one short nap before a long day.. and sure enough at 6am my nemesis was screaming for me to get out of bed and start a new day.
needless to say sleep was NOT an issue last night at all .. but as always my nemesis was screaming me awake this morning and as much as i want to crawl back into bed even 3 hours after i woke up, i now thats not a good idea. soon a cute lil man will be bouncing his way out of the bedroom all smiles, ready for morning snuggles and to start his day.

Tax Time

it amazes me honestly how many people end up intimidated by taxes, maybe its the fear of doing something wrong on your taxes? i have no clue. since as far back as i can remember i have been doing my own taxes and over the years doing family members taxes and friends as well.. always eager to help those who need it!
it wasnt until about oh geesh 3 or 4 years ago that i started e-file'n them. now i admit that even though i sat down and did my own taxes i would still rush out the door to H&R block and take our taxes there to get the refund quicker.. but as time went on i learned that when i e-file and even better yet, free file, i can not only get the same refund i always have .. but i get all of it, no more spending a few hundred to h&r block for merely just typing in a few numbers on a computer and agreeing with what i already had written down.
if you havent heard of free file i HIGHLY recommend it to everyone. my personal favorite is to use turbo tax freedom edition. of course to free file there are some restrictions, income, age, etc.. but to get the best list of the free file'n sites simply head over to the irs web site and on the right of your screen you will see where it says *free file* and from there you can find not only sites where you can E-file your returns (getting your return back to you in about 2 weeks time if direct deposited) but you can also see that they are all the IRS trusted and suggested sites.
From using the Turbo Tax one, i also get to do my state for free (how awesome is that) and although your state has to be a qualifying one to get it for free, if you have to pay to have the state side of it done, the amount you pay for that is far less than you would pay to have say H&R block do it for you.
Ive used a few of their different sites, mainly because someone might not have qualified for the same one that i use, and they are all for the most part pretty easy and self explainable as you go along filing each different section.
while im an odd one and actually look forward to tax time and crunching the numbers in my favor and seeing how it comes out in the end, even someone who isnt such a goober can easily do it. so my suggestion before your dropping a few hundred of your return in H&R blocks pocket or some other tax persons pocket, give it a try and see what you think, you might be surprised.
and for those of you that think *well H&H block does so great at getting me all they can in a return* um not really, they do the same thing that you yourself can do, they dont have a magic wand that says *well since you came here, i can take and give you an additional $500 from the IRS hows that sound?* they do the same things that anyone else does, the same things that you yourself can do. and with the free file stuff, you dont even need to know all the new tax changes, just go threw each part and answer all the questions and your good to go!

Capricorn no more???

For the past, well ever, i have been a Capricorn, at least until yesterday that is, yesterday it was all over the web that horoscopes have now changed. now honestly seriously how can they do that? change something that has been what it is for well since forever and a day? well i read somewhere that it all stems back to the Babylonian times and how there were 13 signs but they wanted to use only 12 and so they dropped one and made the others to be the horoscopes most of us have known our whole lives.
but how do you just *swap* them out so many years after you have been what you have been? i mean seriously how does one do that? now if your not into the horoscope thing, i suppose its rather easy. and while i will admit i rarely read mine or anything else, its just weird to think that after so many years as a Capricorn im supposed to *love* the idea of being a Sagittarius. no offense to any Sagittarius folks out there ..
I also learned that all my kids horoscopes changed as well and that Wyatt went from being a Capricorn like me.. to being the new one .. oh geesh what is it called? Ophiuchus .. dont even ask me what that one is because other than being the supposed 13th sign that was dropped by Babylonians long ago, i know nothing about it.

Im not sure what i will do, i have read up a bit on Sagittarius but yeah im kinda always gonna be a Capricorn by heart.. maybe they will grandfather me in? or the Capricorns will adopt me *haha* I will admit that for some reason i have this strong feeling that the more we dive into this whole *whose what in the horoscope side of things, we will find not much more than a highly over paid scientist who is making not only way to much money but has far to much time on his hands. cant we think of something better for him/her to spend their time on?
curious if your horoscope changed? heres the new list..

Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16.
Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11.
Pisces: March 11-April 18.
Aries: April 18-May 13.
Taurus: May 13-June 21.
Gemini: June 21-July 20.
Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10.
Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16.
Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30.
Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23.
Scorpio: Nov. 23-29.
Ophiuchus: Nov. 29-Dec. 17. 
Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20.