Grumblings....

This post is nothing but a place for me to vent because even my mom is sick of hearing about my bad afternoon...so feel free to skip it.

Here are the things that pissed me off (my day was fine until about 3:15)!

*On the way to the chiropractor (running late of course) it was the beginning of the torrential rain; I had to follow an old man driving 17 in a 40 for about 5 miles.
*Leaving chiropractor--ran into train crossing...no train ever came. Went around train--took a total of 13 minutes to go one block.
*More torrential rain, making me 15 min. late to the vet.
*Charlie's vet visit cost $178...and he has to go back in two weeks.
*Said visit could have cost $25 less if the damn new girl didn't have to give me the wrong size bottle of insulin.
*Kitty has to switch to different food...old cans cost $.48 each, new cans cost $.78 each (he eats 2.5 cans a day)
*Took me over 30 minutes to get home from vet (normal time--about 11 min.) particularly due to sitting through college & quivira stop light for about 6 cycles.
*More fucking rain.
*Got home, my lamp (the only source of light) in my living room is broken.
*Still leftover from last week--but very angry about it--have to get a $1260 crown on my tooth--and I don't even have a cavity.

There. I think I'm done.

Uh oh...

...I might be working forever! Piggybacking off my last post about worry for my mom and step-dad who will be working well into their 60's and most likely 70's (yikes!!), I looked at my retirement fund today since the stock market crashed a bit. (I always look at the fluctuation when I read about those things.) At this point, it doesn't make much of a difference--I plan on having that $ in there for a long time, but it still is neat to look at (particularly when it goes up by a bunch!). So that got me thinking, I'm about 1.5 years from 30 which seems like a pretty grown up age. So I googled "how much should I have in retirement accounts by 30." There were many different answers, but the most common would be that you should have about a year's salary saved by 30. Holy shit! One place said something like a person who makes $48,000 (more than me, but the only ball park I could find) should be saving about $700 a month. Who the hell can afford that! Also, the big trend was to take advantage of company matching. Well, fuck. Teachers have no such thing as matching. Any penny in my accounts has come from me--no matching or anything like that. So basically, I would say I'm not even a quarter to that goal they mentioned-I don't want to work until I'm 60 or 70!! I think the only choice I have is to win the lottery.

Worry

I had a conversation with a co-worker today about how much we worry about our parents. This is what got us started. My mom told me that my step-dad will start having to pay $1000 a month additional into KPERS (public retirement fund--you have to do it as a teacher) as a penalty for retiring and going back to work. i.e. he worked long enough in the Wichita school district to retire, worked in another district, tried another job, now works in Olathe schools. This money is not something they will every see again. They just owe it as a kind of "fuck you for trying to retire." My mom is obviously devestated. She went back to work this year to help them try to dig out of debt; she makes about $1000 a month. So now, instead of working to help pay for stuff, her whole salary will go to this magical KPERS account--she might as well throw it out the window. I don't even know how that's legal, but what a fucking crock of shit.

My dad and my step-mom are retired. They literally retired about a month before the bottom dropped out of the economy and I know they lost tens of thousands of dollars. Hopefully with the economy recovering their accounts are doing better; but still. I also found out when I visited that they are paying over $1000 a month for insurance. You don't have an "income" yet owe $1000 a month for just one bill. Plus, I am hoping my dad's cancer stuff is all covered by this very expensive insurance. Now I'm not as worried about my dad and Connie, but still.

Anyway--it just makes me sad. I want my mom and Don to get to retire some day--it doesn't look like that will ever happen!

Missing :(

Someone stole him from my front porch. Mother fucker--I hope the gnome is cursed. I loved him! I got him for Christmas, and now he is gone. :(

Un-datable

Well, that is the conclusion I've drawn. There is something fundamentally un-datable about me. I did a free trial of match.com (thank God I didn't actually pay for it!) this weekend. I thought, I'm going to not be so nitpicky and email some people that I may or may not be that interested in. I emailed (not winked at or any of that shit) 15 guys this weekend. 15--I feel like that is a good number. Yesterday, no response--I figure I'll give people the benefit of the doubt because maybe they get online more at work. Today--1 response--a hell no (or something like that). I hear from certain friends who go on date after date after date, and I can't get one fucking guy to email me back. Anyway, no wonder I don't give a shit about it. If I cared more, I would probably feel even worse about myself. Screw it, I'll marry Charlie.

Lazy

Well, I have always known this, but I am lazy! How did I get to be so lazy? I don't know. For instance, I should be cleaning but instead am writing a blog post. Sigh. Who knows if I'll ever change my ways.

In other news, I was slightly not lazy because I didn't sleep past 9:30 either day this weekend! Yesterday I did the CF walk, and this morning I went to church. Maybe my lazy ways can be mended.

Well, I promised myself I wouldn't write boring blog posts like this one I'm currently writing, however I haven't updated in a long time and can't think of anything interesting to blog about. So how about a bit of a rant?

I am always on a quest to make more money; isn't everyone though? Since getting my masters, I am making more than a beginning teacher, but as a teacher you can continue to move over on the pay scale by going to school more. So, I am taking random classes here and there so this fall I'll be at masters +12. It's a puny amount of money, but I'll take what I can get. So anyway, I just finished up my latest online class (hey--maybe not so lazy after all--it doesn't end until Friday!). I was working on my final project in the posting box for the class website. I was about done--had maybe 2 more sentences to type. Suddenly, my internet explorer freezes, shuts down, then pops back up saying "don't worry, we've recovered your session"! Yeah assholes, except you recovered my session with an empty box and none of the work I'd just been typing for the last 20 or 30 minutes. So, needless to say I retyped the whole thing in a word document. Ugh.

Okay, well, now that I have posted perhaps the world's most boring blog ever, I'll go back to being lazy for awhile--maybe in an hour or so I'll get something done.

Grill master (mistress?)

So, I got a grill from the Easter bunny. Yay! I was going to buy one off of craigslist, but the Easter bunny made me cancel my order. Here is how my first grilling experience went down:

*buy meat
*start grill (success!)
*place meat on grill (hamburgers)
*place frantic phone call to mom--it's flaming and there's lots of fire!
*step-dad calls after mom knows no answer...well it's flaming from the grease dripping. why did you decide to start with hamburgers? You're mom told you they were the easiest? She knows nothing about grilling
*stop worrying about flames, they probably won't catch my neighbors balcony on fire
*cut into it--looks great
*turn off grill
*bring it inside--sure looks different (RED) in the light inside
*go back out, turn on grill, more fire, cook some more. cut into it, looks great
*bring inside--still looks red in the inside light--I need a lamp or something out there!
*fuck it--stick it in the microwave to finish cooking
*shit--forgot to put salt and pepper on it whilst cooking
*oh well, eat it anyway.

Was it the best burger I've ever had? Probably not. Will I become a better griller after each attempt? Hopefully.