Vacation

My parents decided to do something different for Christmas this year. Normally they spend a lot of money on presents for their 5 kids, 2 in-laws, 1 girlfriend, and 7 grandkids. This year they decided to take us all on a vacation instead.
We were originally going to a cabin in Kamas, Utah. Things fell through with the cabin so we ended up at a house in Highland. The family is out of town for a month and are renting out their house while they are gone. We were only staying for 4 days and 3 nights and someone else is coming after we leave. The house is nice - 5 bedrooms, large kitchen, foosball table, large backyard, but my dad was freaked out the entire time that one of the grandkids was going to ruin something.
We have had so much fun and unfortunately Steve, Hunter and I have to leave tomorrow night to take Hunter home. Hunter has to go to school this week until the 22nd. My nieces and nephews are out of school already, but Hunter has to go until Thursday. It sucks that he has to go to school for most of the week before Christmas when all of his cousins (on my side) are already done with school until January.

Weirdness

I'm not sure why I buy long sleeved shirts anymore. I will wear a long-sleeved shirt for about 5 minutes before I can't stand it anymore and roll up the sleeves and push them out of my way. I don't mind the three-quarter sleeve shirts, it's just the long sleeves that bother me. I try and try to leave the sleeves down for as long as possible, but it's usually not very long before I give up.
I don't know what it is, but maybe I don't like having my lower arms and wrist covered. Maybe it makes me too hot. Maybe I am just weird. Yeah, that's it. I'm weird.

Pampered Chef

I am now officially a Pampered Chef consultant! I am so excited, Steve and I can work together and have fun cooking (Steve) and meeting new people (Raegan and Steve). Wish us luck!

Breakdown

I'm pretty good at hiding my true feelings. Most of the time people don't know I'm sick, in physical pain or even emotional pain. I usually hide it so well that sometime I believe that the emotional part isn't hurting me that bad, until I have a breakdown. I haven't had many breakdowns, maybe one or two, until earlier this week.

My husband was admitted to a Psychiatric facility on September 21st, the morning after our 5th wedding anniversary. We spent our anniversary in the ER waiting for him to be admitted to the Psych facility.  It's been a tough time since he was admitted last Wednesday.

This past Tuesday I spoke with the Social Worker for Steve and it was a difficult conversation. When I got home I called Steve's sister, Lisa (also a Social Worker) and told her what I had discussed with the Social Worker. The conversation with the Social Worker made me feel anxious for the rest of my day and reliving it with Lisa made it doubly anxious. 

Someone from my ward was supposed to bring me dinner that night and Thursday night (tonight) too. No one showed up on Tuesday and I ended up eating a bowl of cereal. I was on the brink of a breakdown. 

I posted on Facebook that my "dinner fairy" hadn't shown up and one of my brother's friends had written something about having Steve make me dinner (he also swore so I deleted the comment). That just made me miss Steve even more.

Everything had piled up on me and I couldn't hold it together any longer and I cried, actually sobbed. I posted on Facebook that I was taking a break from Facebook and then shortly after that I temporarily deactivated my account (I reactivated it tonight). When I was deactivating my account it had a few pictures of different people saying So-and-So will miss you and one of those "So-and-So"s was Steve.

I started having dark thoughts go through my mind. I actually thought about harming myself.....ok that's not right. I was thinking of suicide. I was thinking of different ways I could do it, I was praying to God that he could let me die in my sleep. Then I realized that I couldn't go through with it because it would DESTROY Steve and that would be one of the worst things to happen to him while he's trying to recover. I just wanted the pain to stop and all the confusion to go away.

My sister texted me to see how I was doing and I texted her back without caring how I spelled things. It was difficult to see what I was typing through my tears. Both my mom and sister wanted me to call in sick to work the next day and come over to their house, or one of them would come over to my house. My mom asked me to promise to call her if I started having bad thoughts, but by that time I had already decided that I wouldn't do anything to hurt myself.

I convinced them to stay home and fell asleep around 11:30.

I should have called in sick. I should have let my mom come over and hold me while I cried. I should have called and made an appointment with a counselor the next day - I still haven't.

I just deactivated my Facebook account. Who knows if it will be just temporary or if I am just sick of everything right now and the only thing I can do is deactivate my account.

September 11, 2001

On March 21, 2001 I took half a day off of work to surprise my mom for her birthday. I came home and the first thing she said was "Did you get fired?" I laughed and told her that I was surprising her and taking her out to lunch for her birthday.

One week later, they turned off our phones at work (Health Insurance Call Center) and gathered the entire floor together. They then informed us that the company would be closing our location and moving the jobs to other locations. They said the last day would be the end of September and that they would start laying people off that July. They asked us to stay and to keep us from leaving after the announcement they told us we would all get a very nice severance package if we stayed. They also arranged for us to take Resume writing classes and even hosted a job fair.  After the announcement they let us all go home for the rest of the day with pay (this was before lunch). I went home and told my mom that "I got fired" then I explained the situation. 

I was still working there on September 11, 2001. I had been told that they actually wanted me to stay until the middle of October since they weren't ready to transfer all our calls to the other call center locations.

At that time I had a really cool 19 inch tv in my bedroom. It had a setting where you could have the tv turn on automatically at a certain time. I chose to have it turn on about 15-20 minutes before my alarm was set to go off. That way I could wake up to Channel 5 (Local NBC station) News and not the annoying alarm clock. 

It was 6 AM. The tv turned on and I slowly woke up. I was confused at what was on tv. It should have been the local news and instead there was the Today Show showing a burning building. That woke me up fast. I left my room and went upstairs to find my mom watching the news in her office. We both went downstairs and watched the news, discussing what could have happened with my dad - who was also awake and watching the news. We all were thinking that it was a horrible accident........then the second plane hit the second tower. I knew at that moment that the world was changing. 

I went to work (had to) and since it was so slow, we got a tv/vcr that was used for training and brought it out to the front of the call center room. Myself and about 10-20 other employees (the only ones left) watched the news all day in between calls. We had a few calls, but not many since most of the people who normally would be calling were either watching the news, not at work, or even living in New York and didn't have cell phone service. 

I will always remember that day as a really scary, sad (thinking of the people who had died), confusing (not sure who was responsible for the attack), and kind of pissed off. How dare someone(some people) attack us on our land? They didn't care about the people that were killed and injured. They didn't care about the fear their attack created. They were just fundamentalist who thought that their religion would reward them for the terror they created (which the religion they claimed to be members of would never approve of).

One good thing that came from this day, 10 years ago, was that it created much more patriotism. It helped some people become closer to friends and family. But still.....I wish it hadn't happened. I wish we could get back to the pre-9/11 days where you could walk to the gate with your loved one and watch the plane take off. Days where people of the Muslim faith were not looked at being terrorists. Days where if there was a proposed Mosque to be build near the Twin Towers it wouldn't have made a ripple in the news. Not many people would have cared. Days when life was just more simple and no one thought of the horrors of that day.

Fun day in Huntsville

Steve, Hunter and I went with Steve's mom up to Eden this morning for the Farmer's Market. After we left there we went to Huntsville to get Subway for lunch. We took our sandwiches to a park in Huntsville where we ate our lunch and then watched Hunter (and Steve) play on the playground. We had a lot of fun.

Hunter climbing the slide at the park

Steve and Hunter posing on one of the HUGE tires partly buried in the ground

It looks like Steve was photo bombing this picture of Hunter, but this was how it was planned

Now it's Steve's turn to be on top of the tire. Hunter did ask if the tire was going to fall on him when Steve got on top of it. I explained that it was okay.

Right before we left we had a family picture, thanks to my mother-in-law Barbara who took this picture.

When we were leaving the park Steve realized that his wallet was gone. I suggested going to check at Subway first (since we were closer to Subway) and then check the park. Barbara suggested we check the park first and then Subway on the way home. We went back to the park and searched EVERYWHERE that we could think of and it was not there. I googled the phone number for the Huntsville Subway and called them to see if someone had turned in a wallet. They said they did have a wallet and were waiting for us to come back. I asked if it was Steven Schultz's wallet and the guy said it was. I knew I was right! We should have gone to the restaurant first so we could have gotten home faster.
Later on, we had dinner with Steve's brother, Brad, and his wife, Camille (Mille) and all of Camille's sisters (Michaella, Elise and Hannah), her parents (Mike and Cindy) and her Grandma (Grandma, sorry, that's all I know her as). We had delicious hamburgers, coleslaw, fresh corn on the cob, potato salad and frog eyed salad. For dessert we had a "deluxe chocolate pie" that Hunter and Grammy (Barbara) made and a Berry Cheesecake that Barbara had made.
As Mille's parents, siblings, and grandma were getting ready to leave, Hunter, Brad, Mille, Steve and Grammy decided to have their water fight and Mille's sisters joined in. It was a lot of fun to watch everyone throwing water balloons at each other, but next time I'm watching from inside. As soon as I came outside (with my camera to take pictures of the fight) Steve hit me with a water balloon. He is so lucky that he didn't hit my camera and that by hitting me with the balloon I didn't drop my camera.

Overall, it was a fun day.....but now I'm ready for bed.

Not your "normal" name dropping.....

I used to watch "Seinfeld" back in the day. I'm not a huge fan of the show anymore. There are only a few shows that I can watch over and over again, and "Seinfeld" is not one of them. But, there is one thing I like about "Seinfeld" and that is the nicknames he gives people. "Soup Nazi", "Close Talker", etc. In honor of Seinfeld I have chosen a nickname for a type of person I have come into contact with recently.

"Name Dropper"

This is not a person who drops the name of a celebrity they allegedly know, but the person who drops names of people you don't know. For instance:

A "Name Dropper" may tell a story like this: "So, Suzanne just had her third child and Robert was upset that he and Jessica were not invited to the blessing. Kent and Robert had a falling out recently so Suzanne didn't invite Robert to the blessing. Gerald is trying to smooth things over between Kent and Robert but Liza keeps trying to get him to leave things alone." or "Heath was recently diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. Trent and Clark don't believe in mental illness so they treat him badly. Amanda has been with Heath since the beginning and is very supportive. I told Trent and Clark that they really need to take the NAMI "Family to Family" class so they could learn more about mental illness. Hopefully I can get them to come to the class with me next week. I may even convince Melanie to come too!"

Now, normally a story like this wouldn't bother me, but in the case of a "Name Dropper" I have no clue who Suzanne, Robert, Kent, Jessica, Gerald, Liza, Heath, Trent, Clark or Melanie are and the person talking to me gives no information on how they relate to them.

Unfortunately, I'm too shy and embarrassed to call them out on the fact that I HAVE NO CLUE WHO THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT!!!

Sometimes life can SUCK!!

I recently found out that Steve's cousin is pregnant with her second child. She and her husband already have a one year old son and are having another boy in September! 

My first cousin once removed is also pregnant. I am so excited for Emalee since she lost her son almost two and a half years ago. If anyone deserves to be pregnant - it's her.

Missee's really close friend, Stacey, who is also my adopted younger sister is also expecting. 

My friend Beth is due in June with a little girl. 

My friend Sam and her husband are having their third child sometime soon. 

Another one of Steve's cousins, who I became REALLY close to after Steve and I were married and she and her husband moved to Ogden (then they moved to the "P" swear word). She just posted on Facebook that she is having a girl. 

That is a total of 6 people I know of that are expecting - not even counting all my facebook friends (more like acquaintances) that are expecting. 

It's making me depressed and then when I realize that I'm depressed when I should be happy and excited for my friends and family - it makes me even more depressed.

Neither Steve nor I have been checked for fertility issues, but we haven't been able to consistently try to get pregnant for over a year (with Steve's hospitalizations and other reasons). If we did have fertility issues, I don't know what we would do. We cannot afford fertility treatments and my insurance doesn't cover it. 

Sometimes life sucks.

March Madness

I know why they call it "March Madness." It makes the wives go mad because their husbands are OBSESSED with NCAA basketball. WHO CARES? I really only care about professional basketball. I love watching the Jazz play (especially when they win - which they haven't been doing to much of lately). I like college football, but only when it's the University of Utah playing (and winning) against Brigham Young University. I, unfortunately, married into a VERY big BYU family. I was raised in a VERY big Ute family. So many people do not think that a Ute fan and a BYU fan can be married to each other. What they don't realize is that it can work, as long as the Ute fan converts the BYU fan to the good side. ;)

It's fun the friendly rivalry that goes on during the week leading up to the Utah/BYU game. I enjoy teasing my husband and father-in-law - especially when the Utes win!

Three years ago today.....

It's really weird for me to think that Steve and I would have had a 2 1/2 year old right now. If I had woken up three years ago today and just gone in to work I may have not lost our baby. It's weird to think about it. I can remember parts of it so vividly it is like it just happened yesterday, and other things I've forgotten about - which part of me is grateful for.

Steve and I commemorated today by having dinner at Olive Garden and just spending time together talking. Other than Steve and I, the only other person that mentioned anything about remembering the meaning of today - to Steve and I, was Steve's mom. Steve also bought me a bouquet of flowers - roses mostly.

I recently found out about a friend of mine who has had four miscarriages in the past 3 1/2 years! I went through one, I don't think I could handle that.

On a lighter note, Steve and I got our Utah State tax return yesterday, direct deposited to our account on Tuesday! It only took about 5 - 6 weeks! Then on Wednesday morning Steve noticed we had more money in our account than we should have. Utah State Tax Commission gave us another tax refund for the same amount! Two days in a row! Steve transferred the money to Savings and we gave it a day to see if they would deduct the overpayment from our account. I went to the bank this morning and they did! So, for one day we had double the tax refund from Utah! Too bad we couldn't keep it! ;)

Steve has been bugging me lately. He's bugging me about not posting on my blog for so long! I have meant to, but things just have gotten so busy lately!
Hunter just told Steve on Wednesday (March 2nd) that his mom (Brenda, Steve's ex-wife) is pregnant with a baby girl and due in June! I was a bit surprised that we are just finding out about it now. She is over halfway through her pregnancy before we find out! It's cool for Hunter though, to finally get a little sister. Steve and I haven't given him one of those yet, but hopefully we can soon.

Steve's computer has been dying a slow, painful death recently. When he would turn it on it would make a chugging sound that made me worried that someone had placed a bomb in it that was getting ready to go off. His computer is my old computer that I bought before Steve and I met. I think I got it around 2004 or 2005. It has Windows XP operating system. For the past few weeks, Steve would be on the computer when it would just shut off on him and restart. A few times it wouldn't restart but just shut down completely. I was getting tired of hearing him complain about his bad computer......so I bought him a new one! He now has a Sony VAIO laptop with over 500GB of memory! At the same time as getting his laptop (a surprise to Steve), I got myself a MacBook Pro. This is my first Mac, and so far I don't notice a difference, except in how to find programs on the computer. Hopefully I'll learn to like it more than a PC, so far...I;m not too impressed - except I didn't have to waste more money on an anti-virus system.

I also bought us a 37 inch LCD TV and BluRay player. We only have the old TVs that you could buy before the new flat screens came out. We took the OLD Magnavox TV out of our bedroom and switched it with the newer TV from Hunter's bedroom. The TV from the living room went into Hunter's room and the new TV went in the living room. It's so nice having such a nice tv! Steve even had the company that handles the Satellite Systems in our apartment complex come and install an HD DR receiver so we can now see TV shows in HD! In addition to all that, I also got us a Wii! Now we actually have a gaming system! Until this past Christmas when Santa Claus brought Hunter a Nintendo DSLite, the only "gaming" system we had (not counting computers) was Hunter's VSmile. Now I feel more advanced - technology wise.

Hopefully I can keep up more on writing on my blog. It's just hard to find time to between work, home and my Cityville and Fronteirville families ;)