My Birthday Approacheth.

My 40th birthday is rapidly approaching..... I only have 9 days left of being 39. I am fighting against this with my whole emotional being. I really don't wish to be 40. When I was the little kid on that stump, I never believed 40 would come. Back then being 40 was OLD!!!!!!! Of course now that I am so much closer to that age, I know that it isn't old at all. And yet.....

I don't suppose it helps much that I will be facing this milestone alone. My children will be with me but my husband, who I was counting on to make fun of this day, will be away. I am being an ADULT and facing my day without him. He is taking the opportunity to visit with his family on a suprise trip to PA. He will be gone for the entire week around my birthday. He nonchalantly announced the legnth and time of his trip to me during lunch on New Years Day. This was the perfect time to announce it since we were in public and it was a day I was bound not to have anger at him since I refuse to let my year be spent in anger at him. I am still not angry at him for this. I know that a trip to his parents is important. He needs it and so does his father. I just regret that it will be without the rest of us there.

The picture of the little girl on the stump is appropriate for this post. It was liberated (stolen) from my mother's stash of pictures while my sisters and I were trying to get a suprise video made for my mother's 60th birthday. How appropriate that it be used here when another milestone birthday approaches. I am the one at the top, my brother is in the middle and my middle sister is at the bottom. There are 2 more sisters who came along after this picture was taken.

Am I getting old???? NEVER

I don't know if yall have noticed or not but I sure have. There are GREY hairs on my head now!!!!!! I have had some for a long time but now I can REALLY see them. I have tried pretending that they are just high lights but that didn't really work. It can't work at all when the almost (but will never reach it) 13 year old says "haha Mom has grey hair" or adds "let's count them.... one.... twoo..... ouch mom don't do that" as I shoot him the drop-dead-now look.
I will be 40 in just a few months. Sometimes I think it won't be any worse than turning 30 was. Other times I realize that I made my mother a grandmother when she was in her 40s. I don't usually feel 40. Most of the time I can't believe I almost have two teenagers in the house.
Then along comes son, daughter and daughter's boyfriend to make even more grey hair for my curly locks. They can be such terrors sometimes but so much fun at others.
I have tried over the years to hide the few grey hairs with dye. That doesn't work because they are always more when the dye wears off. I have tried brushing my hair other ways to hide it. That doesn't work anymore either since so many of them are near the front. Oh well.... guess I will just have to give in and grow old gracefully......... NEVER I WILL FIGHT TIL I DIE!!!!!!!!
I am not ready to be middle aged =(

Some Days are like that

This day has totally been a royal witch. I hae wanted to walk out on just about everything that I know I can't walk out on. Some days are just like that. I am angry and hurting and confused and just wanting to crawl in a hole and leave the world and everyone in it to themselves. It isn't an option really but some days are like that. I wonder sometimes if I disappeared how things would fare? Paperwork would pile up on my desk and while they might notice that was happening would they notice that I wasn't there to complete it? Would anyone care that I wasn't there? If I walked away from home and didnt return would they notice that the meals weren't being cooked or would they just find something to eat? Would they do the chores without me reminding them every hour that they need to be done? Would life change for them or would they just go on? Some days are just like that.

Prejudice!

If there is one thing I HATE in life it is prejudice. There is so much out there that people can find wrong with other people. Maybe these people need to look into themselves before they judge others to be wrong. People make choices in their lives that may not go along with what society deems to be correct or acceptable. These are choices those people need to live with. HOWEVER, it is not up to me or anyone else to judge those choices or make jokes about those choices. I believe that some of the jokes and judging come about because some of the "jokers" are actually wishing they had the guts to have made those same choices.... i.e. the guts to stand up and say they are gay.

Manipulation

There are a lot of people out there that have figured out how to manipulate others into doing as they wish them to behave. Personally I tend to stand firm on my decisions and not let people try to force my hand. I get so annoyed when I see people that really shouldn't give in, do so. I just want to shake them and tell them to stand up for themselves. It makes me even madder when a child is the one that has learned to manipulate. Guilt is an awful thing to have to contend with whether it is an adult or a child that is causing it, but some times you have to say ENOUGH!

Appliances

Well this morning I went to the refridgerator for the first time in about a week(no kids or husband around don't you know so I was eating out a lot) and discovered that it was no longer cooling anything. I checked the freezer and everything in there had thawed and was cold but thawed. SOOOOOOOOOOO I called hubby at work and we met for lunch to go to the local thrift store to purchase a new fridge. I spent a good portion of the morning cleaning out the old fridge and disposing of the rotten food. I wonder sometimes it is that these things happen the way they do. I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it but if I had checked the fridge on a more regular basis maybe we wouldn't have had to throw away a lot of food.
I am just thankful this has happened when we had money to replace it and actually we got a really nice side by side refridgerator for less then we would have paid for a brand new one that had less storage space and had a top load freezer. I like the fridge we got.... now just to get in there and get the old one moved out so I can move the new one into place. Hubby is going grocery shopping after work so I have about 3 hours to get things in order and moved around..... Hey Karen have you found Consuela yet? I really need you to airmail her to me.

Mountain of paperwork

Somewhere amidst all the paperwork there really is a person working as hard as she can to get out from below the mountain. That is what I am feeling lately. There is a lot of stress in what I do at work even though you wouldn't think it for having a desk job. Each day I go through a series of items that need to be done.... I work on the health insurance papers (reading quotes, working up financials based on the quotes, handling new enrollees, terminating old employees, handling the bills so they get coded properly), I then work on wrecked vehicle accounts (taking claims information, calling adjustors to get claims paid, letting our salesmen know when a customer will be back in for a new car, talking to customers to tell them calmly how to handle a claim and what we need from them), then I start the insurance verification processes (a 12 page report with about 500 people without valid insurance at any given point in the week) where I call and confirm that yes "June" did actually have her policy cancelled last week and then I have to call her about it wherein she acts like I don't know what I am talking about. Add to all that I have at least one filing cabinet drawer full of alphabetized documentation that needs to be filed into the customer insurance files that I just never seem to get around to.

Up until January I also handled all the insurance mail data entry, telephones for 15 hours a week, all new customer insurance verification and all business insurance issues. Finally after about 6 months into my 7th year with the company they allowed me an assistant. I bless her soul and heart because now she does the all day data entry, handles the phones, and the new customer verifications. She also deals with a lot of the phone calls from customers saying that yes they do too have insurance and we are just all idiots who don't know what we are talking about.

You would think with all this stress I wouldn't have time to gain weight and would actually lose it.... not the case at all. So now I stress further trying to determine whether I really want to take my happy big self off to the gym to work off some of this extra padding I am carrying around. Whoopie.... the gym is on the way home BUTTTTT (oops I am showing what a big bottom I have), I can never seem to get there and be able to work on the machines because, bless their hearts, everyone else has the same pea pickin idea! SOooooo no gym workouts on the way home and once I am home I don't have the energy to head back out again......

Oh well... maybe one day the mountain will just collapse on me and flatten me enough no one will ever know how "padded" I became.