Another Post! One Day Later!

Yay me!

Well, not really. The only reason I'm posting is because I'm home alone sick as a dog. Happens every time the kids get sick. I take care of them, don't take care of me and next thing you know my immune system takes a nosedive and what do you have? Me, stuffy, fevered, achy and congested and just ugh.

But, I have cute pictures of my babies from yesterday. They both had their check-ups, Trinity's 8 months (!) and Jaalyn's 6 year check up. Oh happy day because THANK YOU GOD no one received any shots. Which means I left the doctor's office with two very happy kids who probably missed it when the doctor said that when Trinity turns 18 months they both will get the same shot that day (Hep A??). But hey, that's ten whole months away so why worry now?

Trinity is still on the smaller end of the pool when it comes to weight and length. She lost a few ounces since her last visit and weighed in at a very cute, naked 16.5 lbs and measured something like 26 inches long putting her in the 25th percentile for both categories. Her head, however, ranks in the 75th percentile so, um, she's real smart y'all. Yeah, we'll go with that. But really, look at those yummy leg rolls of hers. Does she look like she's missing meals? I didn't think so either but the doctor handed me a prescription for vitamins anyway.

But Chunkin Munchin is right were she should be developmentally. She showed off her knowledge when the doctor asked has she started her mama/dada babbling yet and Trin looked up and said "dada?" *looks at the door* Dada?? *Looks at me* DADA!!!

God has a wonderful sense of humor. Trinity will sometimes call me mama; her first time she called me meh-meh and if you ask her where meh-meh is she will indeed start looking for me. But for the most part, especially when I'm trying to get her to say mama she will look me in the eye, extend her arms out and cry: DADA!

Now, Jaalyn on the other hand is off the charts in everything. She's totally healthy though but she's measuring the height/weight of the average 9 year old instead of a 6 year old. That doesn't really concern me except for this one bomb the doctor dropped on me:

Jaalyn needs a bra.

Dude, my fucking 6 year old girl needs a bra. My kindergartner needs a BRA people. What I thought was baby fat is actually breast tissue. Thank God for chairs in those small ass examining rooms. Might've cracked my head on the sink or something. Jesus, Mary and St. Joseph... didn't see that one coming. However, that's the only thing on her that's developing super fast so I don't have to worry about periods or any of that puberty stuff until later.

You know, like when she's 7. Oh my God. This is what I get for gloating about the fact that I have beautiful daughters. I'm telling you our God has a wicked sense of humor doesn't He?

The rest of the visit was pretty uneventful. I was told that I have to change Jaa's diet up so that her weight is under control. We've got diabetes running through our family (both sides on mine and her dad's) so I get the importance of nutrition. My pitiful excuse of packing chips and junk because I ran out of creative ideas for snacks just ain't gonna cut it so to the internet I go for creative ideas for her snacks and lunches for school. I'm open to ideas people. Girl cannot live on PBJs alone.

Self Portrait

Hoppy was in attendance at the doctor's as well. Hoppy is Jaalyn's animal clutch of the moment that she chose herself from one of those build-a-beast joints in the mall. One damned expensive bunny. And yes, I did give Jaalyn the camera to take pictures with, can you tell?

What's in a month?

A day, a week, eh, so a month went by without me posting anything. I'm sure no one will notice. Right? Even more importantly, nothing happened anyway, right? So I'll just pick up at the present.

Wrong. Oh so very wrong.

Well, I'm not sure if anyone noticed that I didn't post in over a month but my GOD what a month it has been. Anything and everything that could possibly go wrong did.

Where should I begin? The children getting sick with viruses back to back to back (to back)? How about the children getting sick with viruses AND dangerously high fevers AND Comcast intentionally turns my phone off without warning and refuses to restore it for 3 days? And of course i'm one of the 3 people on this planet that does not have a cell phone. So I was stuck with a feverish infant and a vomiting 6 year old and no phone. Couldn't call the doctor, 911, the pharmacy, nothing. And true to form, when I finally did manage to have my phone service restored... 2 days later they turned it off again. Their reasoning? They felt they'd turned it back on too quickly, thus they turned it off again.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Comcast? I seem to recall mentioning it once before.

Anyway, once they restored my phone, Comcast wiped out my cable and upon restoring my cable, they killed my internet and upon restoring the internet they took out the phone and when they re-restored the phone they once again killed the internet which they said would take another 7 days to restore.

Got all that?

I won't even go into detail about the wild range of emotions I experience just through what will now be known as CableGate (read: extreme fucking anger). Instead let's chat about the other fuck-ups in the month of January.

Remember I said I was moving right? To sum up, the rent office lost my notice stating that I did not want to renew my lease. This wouldn't have been much of a problem but the thing was that I was supposed to do a lease transfer from my 2 bdrm to a 3 bdrm located on another street within the same complex. By doing a transfer I wouldn't have to pay anything to get out of the old lease and all I'd be responsible for was the rent on the new place. Simple enough. Well I turned in my notice in December, my lease was up in February and in January I get two letters from the rent office, one stating Hey, sorry to see you go! Be sure to leave a forwarding address! and the other saying since you're breaking your lease you need to buy it out entirely and payment is due, um, NOW.

So in talking with numerous people at the rent office, all of whom hadn't been there for more than 30 days, I discovered that they'd lost my notice and were charging me rent on both my current apartment and the one I was about to move to in addition to the fact that they were going to charge me $200 more per month on my new apartment than previously agreed on. Great. Fucking great. So, rather than argue I said fine, I'll resubmit my notice & go ahead and charge me for the prorated rent on the new place. I produced my signed paperwork stating the agreed upon rent on the new place and figured everything was cool. And it was, until I had to go and sign the lease on my new place... faced a little drama in the office and over the phone which had to do with major unprofessionalism on their part... I got my keys to the new place and went to inspect it and oh my GOD. I've been with this same rental company for 6 years and never in all my days had I seen a place with so many obvious problems. I mean we're talking light fixtures dangling off the walls, poor paint jobs, dirty floors and well the entire place was filthy. There were holes in the walls, missing thresholds and we won't even go into the fact that there was a pile of dog shit on the porch when we arrived.

So I called the service dept and complained. This was a Wednesday. The chick said she'd have the manager call me back after he'd seen it himself and had things corrected.

Thursday, no call.

Friday, no call.

I was due to move that Sunday. I walked through again on Saturday... and not one thing had been done. I was in tears. The service dept is closed on the weekends, the property manager doesn't work on weekends so I couldn't complain to her. All I got was a "hmm, that's too bad" from the boy (and yes, boy because I'd be surprised if he was even 18) in the office. I had lost one of my keys to the apartment earlier that morning and it was the same morning that Comcast had decided to turn my phone off again for turning it on too soon earlier in the week. Both kids were sick as hell and I just broke down. I called off the move and waited till Monday to call the rent office. Hm, seemed again the property manager was unavailable. Fine, I called the corporate office and spoke for 2 hours with her boss. Within 30 minutes the property manager called me back with the service manager on the line too. She made insinuations that I was being picky and obviously was mistaken and I blew a gasket. I reamed her out and then spoke with her boss again and let her have it too. And guess what? Days later my apartment STILL had things wrong and to top it off, the person that had to return to my apartment obviously didn't appreciate having to redo things because he drove a nail into the middle of the banister. I mean we're talking a freshly hammered, still sitting a quarter inch above the surface rusty nail. When I again called back to the service dept they sent the same dude who by this time must've been pretty pissed because he slammed his hammer on the nail sending it through the banister and through the sheetrock of the wall. End result was that I could stand at the bottom of the staircase and pull the banister clean away from the wall because dude had shattered the support.

Yeah, I was ticked off about that but on a whim, I decided to go into the attic since I'm one of the few people out here that utilize theirs to the max and I'm climbing the ladder thinking I'll probably find a body or severed head at this point and instead I find... a trap.

A rodent trap. Only it's big enough to trap a golden retriever. What the fuck? I had zero choice but to push on with the move (nevermind the fact that I hadn't even packed because I'd been so busy with both girls being sick) and I went in person to the property manager's office on Monday morning so I could blast her. This fool had the nerve to try and tell me it was a squirrel trap. What?! When's the last time you saw a squirrel the size of a 10 year old? I think the entire office heard me. But you know what?

My banister was fixed that morning. The trap was removed. And that prorated rent I was to pay on both apartment? Paid in full by the corporate office.

And did I mention that on moving day my mother called me and told me my oldest had thrown up not once but three times and was scalding hot with fever?

Did I mention that Comcast hooked up my new service in the new apartment and it worked all of 2 hours before the phone went dead? And I had to argue via chat with tech support because they wouldn't believe me when I said the phone was dead? And that it took three days to get it fixed only to have the son of a motherfucker go dead AGAIN?! And when it was fixed of course it knocked out my internet service for another week and somehow deleted my entire account from Comcast's system and...

I'm tired. I am worn the fuck out for real.

But at least someone's smiling around here.