Finding Flights

It is getting more and more difficult to find cheap flights. Anytime I need to book airline tickets I check all over the place online for the best deal. Fortunately, for our upcoming trip for my little brother’s wedding, we booked our tickets well in advance! Total cost $548 round trip for the two of us. The downside, we’re flying through Hobby, which is nearly an hour away. It’s not the length of time to get there, it’s the stressful drive that takes you threw industrial Houston via insane interstate highways… literally, HIGH ways, these roads meet the sky they are so far off the ground! Hobby airport is rather nice and I love Airtran… but IAH is just so much more convenient, though Airtran doesn’t fly through there :-(

The In-Law Visit to VA

Just to clarify, Joshua's mother is the one in the floral dress with blue shirt and his father is the bald guy standing behind her. Then you've got their 6 kids (3 boys, 3 girls) their spouses (meaning Dawn, Michelle, and myself... the out-laws) and children (Glenda's kids, Joe's kids, and James' kids), plus Uncle Tommy behind Joshua. And yes, Joshua's mother was 39 years old when she had him. You know you're wondering that, especially when his nieces are the same age as him!

Okay, I've been meaning to blog about this but I've been doing my "hide from the world" thing while I process my emotions and recover from the stress. All the tensions from my fears were finally let go when we got home. The good news is that my heartburn is gone! For weeks before the trip no matter what I ate I got the worst heartburn. I pretty much never get heartburn so this was really weird. Joshua suggested it was from stress. As soon as we got back home to Kingwood I could finally eat without being in pain!!! The bad news is that all that tension caused some after math health issues with my stomach. Not fun :-(

Well, seeing Joshua's family started off with a jab. We arrived at the Stake Center on Saturday June 21st around 3pm to help set up for the party. His niece Jenny came out from the church excited to see Joshua and gave him a huge hug, as his arm was still firmly around me. She was clearly avoiding me, despite the fact I was 5 centimeters away from her, so Joshua said, "And you know my wife Sarah. Yeah, I'm a married man now!" She just gave me a snide look and sneered, "It would've been nice to be invited." I responded, "Invited to what?" She replied, "The wedding reception! I never got an invitation." I was very confused because EVERYONE was invited to our wedding reception. I told her, "Wait... you didn't get an invitation? Joshua was in charge of getting addresses for his family. Everyone was invited." She just walked off and proceeded to ignore me. Yeah, so nice of her to blame ME for her not getting an invitation, yet she holds no contention towards Joshua even though it was his fault.

We went inside and I got to meet Joshua's sister-in-law Dawn, who is married to his brother Joe. Her and I are the most hated in the family (the out-laws) so we've teamed up and are the best of friends. We've been e-mailing back and forth for months getting to know each other and determining the truth. Joshua's family told us that her and Joe hated us. Dawn and Joe were told a bunch of lies about us as well. So we got to the bottom of all of this via e-mail. Dawn was the one that reached out to me and Joshua and I were truly touched by her message. Ever since then our out-law kinship was formed.

Dawn needed to run out and buy white lights, so the 3 of us went to Michael's together. This gave us a chance to talk. I told her about what Jenny did and even she agreed, "That's silly. It wasn't a formal invitation, it was just an announcement that was sent out as a formality because it wasn't like you guys expected us to fly out for it last minute like that."

Soon enough the time approached for the parents arrival. The party remained a surprise and Joshua's parents BOTH cried when they saw that everyone was there. His mother was especially shocked to see Joshua. So there were the hellos and hugs before they discovered there was a full on party inside. They never had a wedding reception (they ran off and eloped... you would've thought they would have been more understanding about Joshua and I running off and getting married without them, but hypocrisy prevailed) so the 50th Anniversary Party was complete with an anniversary cake, a slideshow, tons of decorations, favors, food, etc. It all went well. Fortunately the topics of conversation stayed light rather than controversial.

Miracle alert: Joshua's other niece (they're twins both 25 years old) Chrissy talked with me and actually admitted that she now understands why Joshua and I did things the way we did. She said, "I don't agree with how you did it, but I understand WHY you did it. I've been living with my mom and grandma for the last year and I'm having to drink a beer and a shot everyday just to deal with them. I'm going crazy!" I NEVER thought she'd understand... but now that she's getting a taste of the overbearing, life controlling, guilt tripping ways of her grandmother she's now realizing the strain Joshua was under and the desperate attempts it would take to get out from it.

On another note, Joshua's best friend Robert and his girlfriend came to the party which served as a good buffer between Joshua and his family. Then after the party we ditched the family and went to TGIFridays just the 4 of us. It was great hanging out like that and Robert's girlfriend Deb fits in great! Needless to say, we got home to Gloucester really late.

The next day was photos and then hanging out with the family. Since there were SO MANY people around it was easy to keep conversation topics at surface level. Then we left that night and got on a plane the next day so we were in and out in the right amount of time. Dawn and Joe (plus their two kids) stayed another day and apparently that led to some drama. I still need to call Dawn to find out what happened (and to be her shoulder, her and I validate each other's sanity when dealing with these insane people). But both Joshua and I agree that we left at the right time.

So overall, the visit with the in-laws went fairly well. They're still controlling, manipulative, lying, backstabbers, but we didn't stay long enough for them to take their "nice masks" off. Oddly enough, even my father-in-law was nice to me... and yet he boycotted our wedding reception!

Funny enough, the other day Joshua got an e-mail from his dad saying, "The economy is bad so if you need to move back home you can. No one will think you're a failure." Which was then followed up by, "Your mother pointed out to me that the last e-mail made it sound like that invitation was only extended to you. It includes both you and Sarah." I can just here Marjorie yelling at her husband, "Great! You made it sound like only he is invited to move back! He'll never come back if you don't include Sarah. You did that e-mail all wrong and now our plan will never work!" Lol! Okay, I don't know if she ever said that, but I'm willing to bet she did ;-P

We laughed it off. I don't know what those two have been drinking but it doesn't make sense to spend all that money to move to VA for Joshua to have even worse job prospects than he has here, when he and I just have to tough out 2 more months before substitute teaching is back in session. And then just another year of subbing with biology classes as night (He's going back to school to get more science credits so he can switch his teaching field to biology since there's an insane amount of competition for history teachers but a severe lack of science teachers, and he loves science more anyway, he just didn't major in it because someone gave him the stupid advice of "Don't major in biology. There's no money in it." HA! The reason there are so few science teachers is because there are tons of other jobs that pay twice as much as teaching in that field. Whereas with history there's a couple of research positions, museum and tourist jobs, and then the rest IS teaching. There's really NO money in history.) and then the following fall he should begin as a teacher making $40,000 a year to start. And after that first year he will become fully certified. And then from there Texas will pay for his further education. He plans to get a masters in school administration so he can become a principal. Which that job averages 80K! Granted he's years from that, but it's really not that far from now when you think about it. Anyway, that's my long rant about his silly parents trying to get him to ditch his well-thought-out-plan here just to move home and mow their lawn for them.

Do you have any weird inside jokes?

Are you in a relationship, single, dating, complicated, married, or engaged?
Married :-)

Do you have a flip or slide phone?
Slide, love it. LG Cherry Chocolate

Have you ever played hard to get?
Not really. I made myself very approachable for Joshua, but I left "making the move" from friendship to romance completely to him. It took him about a year, but he did finally take me out on a date :-)

Who is the last person you hugged?
My husband

Do you love anyone?
My husband more than anything, and of course my friends, family, and cats!

Have you ever had your heart broken?
Yeah, but it was a lesson learned which is why I cherish Joshua so much!

Who do you hate?
I don't hate anyone, but severely dislike is another story.

How do you feel about the last person that called you?
Actually I'm very concerned about my brother right now. He's facing some tough stuff and he doesn't want to talk about it.
However, we're all very happy about his new baby boy Ty!!!

Do you have any weird inside jokes?
Yes, but most of them are with my husband.

Who are your favorite people to talk to when you’re down?
My husband, my Mom, or Christina. There's also Jenny, Dawn, Tricia, and Dorie that are good at boosting my mood or understanding my blues.

Name your favorite thing about your boyfriend/girlfriend?
You mean my husband? So many favorite things about him, but if I have to pick one it'd be the fact that him and I are on the same mental plane. We can be such nerds together yet we totally get it and are even crazier about each other because of it.

Could you go the rest of your life without smoking a cigarette?
Absolutely, I've gone all of my life so far.

Is there anybody you're really disappointed in right now?
Disappointment requires unmet expectations. I know better than to have unrealistic expectations of people. Once they let me down the first time I adjust my expectations accordingly in order to avoid future disappointments. So I may be sad at their behavior but not disappointed.

In 2 days will you be in a relationship?
YES! I'm married. Him and I have our whole lives and all eternity together. Yay!

Thanks for Understanding

Sorry for the pop up ad, but I'm getting $1 a day for it. It's only for the next couple of weeks. And trust me, I need the money.

Shoes

“In Her Shoes” is a movie I borrowed from the library a few months ago. Terrible movie overall, but it ended fairly well. However, they did make one particularly good point. When rewarding yourself clothes can be unflattering, food can make you fat, but shoes always fit! (Okay, not always… but at least you don’t need weight loss pills to get them to fit.)

Anyway, I’ve been eyeing shoes lately, especially after wearing my pink bikers to Virginia only to discover that they are too tight on my pinky toes! In the Atlanta airport the pinch really started to set in. I ended up leaving them with my Mom (we wear almost the same shoe size) as they fit her just fine. I wore my sandals back to Texas. I’ve got my eye on some replacement shoes from Payless; some super cute silver sport mary janes.

Fashion on AOL

I’ve been surfing AOL (you know, one headline story leads to another interesting article and then to a photo montage, etc., it’s very addictive) and came across a fashion plethora! I found photo essays on the latest trends and fashion show favorites! Oh, the joys! Sure these models are all on wieght loss pills wearing a size 0, but that’s besides the point. High Fashion is art. It is up to the manufacturers to interpret these styles into wearable art for people like me. It sure makes me want to go shopping!

Possum Post And Tag

This is the baby possum that came to eat Luna's cat food. Cute isn't it? It'll be a big ugly fellow when it grows up though.

Furthermore, Kathleen tagged her entire blog roll for a survey. Here goes:

Question 1:
What are the 5 things on your To Do List?
1. Write my talk for church on Sunday.
2. Call Christina, Jenny, Dawn, and Tricia
3. Make a pearl commercial for work.
4. Write a review on a website for which I write.
5. Stop being annoyed with my husband.

Question 2:
Name 5 Snacks You Love
1. Frozen Yogurt
2. Nachos
3. Chocolate, especially if it has nuts
4. Nuts or trailmix (yeah, I'm a squirrel)
5. Popcorn

Question 3:
Name 5 Things You Would Do if you Suddenly Became a Millionaire
1. Buy a house
2. Move most of my 18 cats out here to be with me... or start over and adopt a bunch of kitties
3. Start my retirement fund
4. Go to San Diego Zoo with my hubby (our dream vacation)
5. Take a trip back to Niagara Falls with my hubby... which he owes me anyway since the last trip there got ruined by his mother leaving an angry phone message and we ended up fighting most of the weekend, thank goodness we weren't fighting yet when we were at the falls.

Question 4:
Name 5 Places You Have Lived
1. Fort Eustis, VA
2. Gloucester, VA
3. Kingwood, TX
4. I pretty much lived with Joshua's family in Newport News every weekend for about 6 months. You know, until they decided they hated me :-/
5. Catsitting in Williamsburg

Question 5:
Name 5 Jobs You Have Had
1. Jewelry Designer
2. Writer
3. Foot Model
4. Pet Sitter
5. Market Research Panelist

Question 6:
5 Things People Don't Know About Me
1. I'm a closet musician. I sing, play guitar and piano (plus a little trumpet, flute, and drums), and I write songs. Even my husband barely knows this about me.
2. I hate having dirty feet but I love sandals, flip flops, or going barefoot. Ironic, I know.
3. I didn't plan on becoming a writer. I just needed the money and I was disabled with a terrible illness so I had to find something I could do from home on a flexible schedule.
4. I have a guilty pleasure of reading celebrity gossip.
5. I suffer from a mild form of social anxiety. No one would guess it because I hide it well.

I now tag Christina, Jenny, Amanda, Caitlin, Torri, and Becca.

Simple Gratitude

My Mom has a car known as “The Whale.” Visiting Virginia included a couple of trips in the whale which reminded me how grateful I am for auto air conditioning. My Mom’s poor beat up hunk of junk had air conditioning the first year of her owning it, but it failed soon after. To fix it is costly, hence why the whale no longer has air conditioning. I’m just grateful living in Texas that my husband’s car (technically our family car, but it was just his first) has functioning and effective air conditioning.

Survey Update

If you're single, why?
Nah... I'm married :-)

When was the last time you talked to your number 1?
Last night

Have you ever kissed anyone whose name started with a J?
EVERY SINGLE DAY :-D

Do you prefer warm or cold weather?
Warm... good thing considering I live in Texas!

What did you last eat?
A chocolate cream puff... mmm, yum!


Why is the last reason you cried?
Um... I don't remember.

What was the worst mistake of your life?
Hard to say because at those times it's not like I knew I was making a mistake. Like Cassie said, they were just lessons to be learned.

What time did you go to sleep last night?
11ish

What/who woke you up today?
My alarm clock

Are you excited for the future?
Yes and no. I'm excited for more of what I have right now. I'm in no hurry to change things. I'm finally married and I'm happy it being just him and I enjoying our newlywed life. If I could make time slow down so I could savor these days longer I would!!!

What is a common thing that happens to you on the weekends?
Happens to me? Um... I get kissed a lot :-)

When was the last time you talked to one of your best friends?
I live with my best friend, my husband, whom I talked with just a few minutes ago.

Have you done anything you regret in 2008 so far?
Not really. I'm sure I've made some mistakes here and there but none of it was significant enough to remember or more importantly was resolved to the point there is no need to remember the incident.

Do you think you can last in a relationship for 6 months without cheating?
Considering I've been married for 7 months and Joshua and I dated for a year and a half before that, then yes, I'm very capable of being faithful.

Who was the last person to make you laugh?
My husband is a riot and he's been particularly funny today :-)

Anything annoying you right now?
No not really... I'd like the stove fixed though.

Is there any emotion you're trying to avoid right now?
I'm trying to not miss my cats much.

Have you done anything embarrassing lately?
I was eating with my husband and burped. He bust up laughing! I never burp!

Things you did today?
Slept, ran errands with my hubby, caught up on e-mails, the usual back from a trip kind of stuff.

Last time you showered?
Last night

Do you own a polo shirt?
One or two

Are you excited for winter?
Oh yes! Winter in Texas is a great since it's in the 70's most of the time!

Have you ever been called Princess/Prince?
My name Sarah means Princess.

Do you wear makeup every day?
Most days, but not much makeup.

How old do you look?
I look about 16 to 18, maybe 20. I don't look my 23 years.

Are you waiting for something?
My stove to get fixed.

Does anyone hate you?
Yes. They're good at pretending they don't but I know they do!

Are you happy with your life?
Oh yes!

How many children do you want?
I don't want any children right now. That'll come later.

Favorite place to eat?
Cheesecake Factory

Did you have a dream last night?
Yes. I dreamt I got an eviction notice because Joshua and I were too noisy at night. HAHAHA!!!!

Kitchen Explosion

Last night the stove blew up. No joke. I went to make dinner, turned the knob to the large burner, and out shot sparks and a flame from the back of the stove behind the knob. Fortunately the curcuit braker shut the power off immediately which stopped the flame. Even more fortunately, I am fine and completely unharmed, just a little shooken up.

The power only went off in our apartment. Joshua called the apartment answering service, but they didn't pick up. So he called the power company which ran him through a list of options until they mentioned "report an outage or emergency," which he clicked, then it asked him for account information, then it took him to billing. So he called again. Another run around. He got fed up and called the police (we were concerned about this being a fire hazzard and I was afraid to get anywhere near the stove). So he looked up a non-emergency phone number for the police. "We're sorry. This number is no longer in service." Okay... he tried another non-emergency police number for the Humble - Kingwood - Atascocita area. He talked to someone and then they said, "Oh, we don't service Kingwood. You have to call Houston police." Thanks phone book. So he called the Houston police. He explained the situation so they transferred him to a specific department, who transfered him to another department, which told him to call a certain number. He called that number and got an automated list of options, none of which applied. Finally it said, "If you are calling with any other question please call back during our regular business hours." This process took about an hour. Needless to say my husband was pretty ticked off. He then tried the apartment complex number one more time but this time the answering service picked up. They called the manager who called the repair man.

The repair man (and his son who translates for him) showed up. He unplugged the stove then tried the curcuit breaker box in the closet. But the whole power was out so he went outside to the main curcuit breaker. Trouble is it was mismarked. So he had to turn the power on and off for 4 different apartments in order to determine which one was ours. He got the power up and running and told us he'd be back at 10am to take a look at the stove.

We then left the apartment to go to Wendy's for dinner. It was late so we sat in the parking lot. There's a clowder of wild cats there so we fed them french fries from the window. It helped me to calm down from the scare.

The 2 repair men came at 10am as promised. They plugged in the stove and turned the switch and sure enough they recreated the event with a flame and sparks across the kitchen floor (the stove had been pulled away from the wall). The response was, "Yeah! That's a bad stove."

The repair men replaced the electrical outlet just in case the problem was bigger than the stove. Then they investigated the stove further. It was definitely just that burner. So he took it apart and discovered that somewhere along the way the burner must have been pulled out of place which tugged the wires loose. This exposed the 2 bare wires to each other which then soldered together until they eventually blew up. The repair man took it apart and redid the wiring. He then put it a new switch. Though the switch doesn't quie match up with the stove. It says "Warm" but it's actually off. Then they put everything back and left, problem solved.

A short while later Joshua informed me there was a problem with the stove. He said, "The burner is on but the stove says it's off." I went to look at it. "Weren't you listening when the repair man explained the new switch? Warm means off. Off means HOT. Could you just not touch the stove?" Haha. That's when Joshua decided it'd be best to just unplug the stove while we're gone on our trip.

After Joshua got home from work we were both working on tidying up and packing. I was on the phone with Christina while folding laundry when the apartment suddenly went dark. Joshua had unplugged the stove but when he did so sparks and a flame shot out from the plug!!!!! Blessedly he's fine, but clearly our stove problem (more like electrical problem) is NOT FIXED!!! Joshua called the apartment complex answering service, who called the manager, who called the repair man, who showed up and turned the power back on for us. We told him what happened and he offered to come over in the morning but we told him that we're leaving and we'd prefer to take care of this when we get back. So the repair men will be back on Wednesday and the stove is completely unplugged. Let's just hope the apartment stays safe while we're gone!

12 Minutes to Romance

I love a good pizza! Who doesn’t? It’s such a versatile and commonly loved food that it’s sure to please. There’s this Ristorante Contest where you can win pizza for a year! This promotion is in celebration of the launch (ie, grand opening) of the website Ristorante.ca. Trouble is the contest is only available to those that reside in Canada. Counts me out of the running. However, this brand new website has great features available to everyone. My favorite section is 12 Minutes to Romance (not that Joshua and I need any help being romantic, but new ideas are always useful). There’s even a monthly newsletter that sends out these great tips right to your inbox. Count me in!

Writing Jobs

To give you an idea of how competitive the writing field is check out this link to Elance.com. As you can see there are multiple responders to every job posted and they often choose whomever will work the cheapest, and a lot of desperate writers will work way below making a living. Another post I was looking at clearly said they wanted people that will work for less than $10 an hour. Might as well be working at Wal-Mart instead of doing an intellectually demanding job. No offense to those that work at Wal-Mart, just that a lot of people that are writers went to college to get an English degree (and/or have worked their tails off gaining writing creditials through writing and marketing themselves) to then find themselves earning the wage of a high school worker.