Mistress of my Domain

We survived the hurricane! Thank God! :) My luck with hurricanes thankfully continues. *knock on wood* Though reading the news it seems like it was luck all around that it wasn't worse (for us anyway) than it could have been.

By Saturday night, I was calmer than I'd been - drinking sangria probably helped. I still could barely sleep but I felt better on Sunday and I was starting to make my peace with us riding out the storm at home. Of course, that's when Jean texts me. She asked when we were coming. That surprised me because as far as I knew Mike hadn't changed his mind about staying home. I asked him about it and he said he had no idea which is right when she called him.

She basically did everything she could to get him to come over, including guilting him about making his mother worry. A lot of times when she does that it annoys me. Mike's a bit of a pushover at times and laid back and tries to avoid confrontation so usually when she nags him about things he'll give in just to get her to stop or because he doesn't really care either way.

He didn't give in but he told her that as long as wherever he was had beer he really didn't care where he waited out the storm. So he said the decision was 100% mine. He does that a lot. When we were deciding to move, he said the final decision was mine. He's basically said I have the final word on whether we have kids or not. While having that kind of say so can be kind of nice, I'm not one who makes decisions very easily, so it annoys me a little when he does that.

I had no idea what I wanted to do. I thought about it for ages but knew a decision had to be made soon before the weather worsened. Finally, I told him I couldn't decide by myself and he had to give me something. He said that he wasn't scared about the storm at all and part of him would like to stay at home. But he said another part of him knew that I would sit there and worry all night about whether we should have gone over there. I laughed and said I'd probably still worry even if we did go over there, but I said we should go. So we packed up as quickly as we could. We unplugged most of the electronics and turned off the A/C and left.

I felt a little better when we got to the house because they had boarded up the front windows. Unfortunately, when we got inside I saw that most of the rest of the windows were completely uncovered including the window in the room we were supposed to sleep in. My worry increased when I went online and we started watching more hurricane coverage. There was a Senator being interviewed and he said the wind didn't really concern him much, but it was the potential storm surge. On Twitter, people were posting pictures of areas in Tampa at the beach where the water had completely receded. They said when it came back it could be like a tsunami. I saw The Impossible and the thought of that freaked me out for the rest of the day.

While I was freaked out, Mike was the complete opposite. He was not kidding when he said he wasn't scared at all. He was having fun with it. He loves the rain and he said he would be outside if he could and he was excited. On Saturday he had me take a picture of him with two cases of beer in hand while he was wearing a life jacket and posted on Facebook that it was his preparation for the storm. On Sunday, he changed his Facebook profile picture to a shot of Bill Paxton from Twister and his cover photo to a tornado from the movie. I suggested that maybe a perfect job for him would be as one of those crazy hurricane chasers.

As the night wore on I got less and less panicked. The lights only flickered and the electricity turned off a couple of times very briefly. The news got a bit more encouraging. The hurricane was moving away from the gulf so that decreased the potential storm surge significantly. Plus, by the time it got to our area, it was "just" a category one storm. As much as I had been dreading it and as much as Mike had been looking forward to it, we both slept through the "worst" of it - though that made sense since the highest winds didn't really start until 2AM.

When I woke up, my phone wasn't working properly. My mom said she had called me and Mike a couple of times and we didn't get any calls and we couldn't make any. We had to turn them off to get them working. I wasn't sure if we could use the water but forgot and accidentally started to brush my teeth with water from the sink and then once I started watching tv I saw there was a boil water advisory for the east part of my county because a tree fell on a water main, but I wasn't sure if we were in the east or not. When we went outside, there were a lot of branches and leaves all over the back. We helped them clean up and then went home.

We also had very minimal damage at our house, just some leaves and a few branches. It's a good thing that the storm was not worse because Mike's idea to put cardboard on some of the windows wasn't a great idea. All of the cardboard was on the ground in a wet clump and the wind wasn't even as bad as it could have been.

A neighbor came over and she said that she had stayed through the storm and other than the lights flickering a couple of times, we didn't lose power. That was something that Jean mentioned, and I'd read about on Pinterest, that the closer you live to a hospital the faster your power comes back after an outage. We didn't live directly next to a hospital, but we're about five minutes away from one - plus the electric company is across the street.

I was still a little frustrated for the rest of the day for a couple of reasons. I was worried about the boiled water advisory and wanted to know if it was for our area. I called several different places and they were either closed entirely for the day or closed by the time I called and I couldn't find out anything specific online. This morning, I finally got a hold of somebody and they said my area probably wasn't included in the advisory, but if I was close to any of the other areas it was probably better to be safe than sorry.

Also when we got home, I turned on the A/C but it didn't come back on. We already had issues with it a couple of months ago and I was worried that it died completely because it was off for so long. I couldn't get it to work all day. Then finally at night, I put it way down to about 70 to see if it might start working, but when I went to bed the temperature was still at 81. When I woke up though it was freezing and, I have no idea, but now it's working thankfully.

Ugh, and there's still at least a couple more months of hurricane season to go. Hopefully there will be no next time this year, but hopefully, if there is we'll be slightly better prepared.

Stacey

I'm in Florida (around West-Central FL) and waiting around for Hurricane Irma. I've definitely spent many parts of the last couple of days in a near panic and close to tears. I barely slept last night. We don't have cable, but I've been watching some coverage on YouTube and reading about it. At certain points, I just want to stop and bury my head in the sand because all of the news is freaking me out more. But I can't do that because have to know what's going on. I've taken a lot of breaks though.

( Hurricane preparations )

Stacey

Mike and I have been in the new house for close to two months now. I feel like I'm finally starting to get settled in the house like I don't feel strange in the house and I'm getting used to being here. Of course, I still have brain fart moments where I reach for something where it used to be, like toilet paper for example, and suddenly "Oh, yeah it's not there anymore. Different house."

When we were first moving in, Mike joked that the house was a fixer upper - though not as bad as his friends, Tom and Sean's house. They bought a house a couple of years ago. We stayed there the last time we were in Maryland. There's a huge area in front of the house that is completely gutted and it's basically a ditch. Their basement's a mess. They told us nightmare stories about lighting issues and having to replace the wiring and other problems. Our house is definitely not that bad, but we definitely have our own issues to deal with here.

( Bug issues and other problems... )

Stacey

This happened a couple of months ago, and I even wrote a post about it at the time, but didn't get around to posting it until now.

Mike's a big fan of heavy metal and I'm not. I've pretty much known that from the start about his interest in it. Heavy metal is one of those types of music, like jazz and classical, that you'd be hard pressed to find a song that I'd enjoy - though it's not impossible every once in awhile. But we like a lot of the same kind of music, too so it's not really a big deal.

Mike heard about this concert with Insane Clown Posse and other metal bands. He wasn't sure if it'd be something he could do. He had always complained that he couldn't get to do fun things like concerts because most of them take place on the weekends, and he's always working then. The concert was on a Tuesday.

The timing sucked because he used to have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, for years but a few months ago his days off changed to Mondays and Thursdays. So he still wasn't sure if we could go. But I told him if he really wanted to, he could just take some time off. It wasn't really great timing with the wedding coming up, and needing as many days off as possible, but he hardly ever gets to do enjoyable things so I thought he deserved it. So he decided to take the day of the concert and the day after off because it would be a long drive and he knew he wouldn't get much sleep for work the next day.

( Impatient Concertgoer )

I'm starting to wonder if I should just binge watch shows from now on - at least dramas. The last few dramas that I've binge watched - Teen Wolf, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries- I really, really loved when I was binge watching them on Netflix, but when I started watching the shows on a week to week basis I've found myself beyond frustrated with them. I think with TWD and PLL the frustrations did start before I finished binge watching them. With TW it didn't really start until late into season 3A.

( Rant about TV death and Crappy Writing )

Stacey

quichey asked me to discuss anything I wanted for December 19th.

So I guess have some work musings. I've worked in retail on and off for over ten years, and I've been shopping for much longer than that and I've never figured out the habit of people all coming to check out en masse at the same time. I mean, I get it at a crowded supermarket when there's so many people, so there are always people at the registers. It happens when I'm a customer. But at Cracker Barrel, even though there can be a lot of people there, it still confuses me how we can have customers come to the register one at a time, or have these long lulls, with no one around, and then bam, all of a sudden there's a line a half mile long.

Why do some people think it's okay to throw their bills at you? It hasn't happened to often at CB because the customers are generally nice, but it still happens. I know sometimes it's an accident but when it's not it just ticks me off. It doesn't take much effort to just hand it to me.

I'm not sure why people insist that smiling only counts when you display some teeth. I suppose some people only consider it a grin if you don't smile with all of your pearly whites on display. I've even looked up the definition of "smile" and the usage of teeth is not involved, but according to many at work, apparently that's their definition because I've been told that I never smile. I'm not a big toothy grin person, not unless I'm really happy. I get self-conscious because when I smile big, there's a lot of my gums on display and I don't like how it looks and my mom's even told me that it looks odd, so I get self-conscious and I don't usually smile that big. But I am polite and do smile at work. But it seems unless I'm smiling a loon, at all times, it doesn't count. People are constantly asking me what's wrong. I guess I just have one of those faces, that unless I'm smiling I look like I want to murder people.

I'm a pretty quiet talker, so a lot of people don't hear me when I talk, but there are also a lot of older customers at our store, so this doesn't just happen to me - but I love it when I ask someone how there day was and there response is "yep." Sometimes they just haven't heard yeah, and sometimes they have and that's still there response. I don't know why, but that makes me laugh.

I'm really sick of the music at our store. I'm not a big fan of country music in the first place, but the songs we have aren't just especially annoying because they're country, but they're played on an incessant loop. I'm starting to hear some of the songs in my dreams, which...grrr.

Sometimes I don't get how I'm, basically anyway, a writer and love to come up with words for stories, and yet somehow words escape me when I'm on the phone. I've had some awkward times at work when I've answered calls, and simple words like "employee" and "soup" seem to escape the grasp of my brain.

On the good side, I am starting to get the hang of being on the register and dealing with things like returns and upselling certain items.

So I guess those are all my work gripes for now. It could be worse. Not my favorite job ever, but it'll do for now.

Stacey

Now it's almost a year until my wedding. Now we're going to have to start really making plans. For the last month or so I've pretty much put wedding stuff on the backburner. I still think about it most days. I've gotten accounts on both Loverly and Pinterest now to get wedding ideas. And singed up on this website The Knot. I think because of that we've started to get a lot of postcards in the mail from hotels and different venues for weddings.

( More wedding dress pics and some freak outs )

I'm going to try not to be too pessimistic, but I don't have high hopes of getting the job.

I tried to do what my boyfriend suggested and project some confidence, but that sort of deflated as soon as I walked into the store and they directed me to the back with the other people set to be interviewed. I knew that there were going to be other people being interviewed. When they called, they indicated that they would be interviewing several people. One of the things I was worried about was how long I would be there, depending on how many people there were to be interviewed, because Mike was waiting for me.

The lady at the front said I could look at the dresses or wait in the back with the other girls, since it was ten minutes before the interviews would start. I started looking at dresses, but then decided to just sit in the back and wait, just in case the interviewer got there early. When I got in the back, there were three other women there and they were chatting it up like the best of friends, even though they'd just met. The chairs were kind of placed around haphazardly. There were two chairs that were kind of far away from the other girls, and I didn't want to appear like the anti-social girl that I am, but that's where I choose to sit. I could have moved the chair, but I felt awakward enough as it was.

I mostly sat there quietly, listened to their conversations. I have to say I never feel fatter than when I'm trying on clothes or around a group of skinny women. It didn't help that there were mirrors all over the place. I looked down at my pants, and it looked like I was the Hulk, practically busting out of them. To my horror, I noticed that there was a huge rip in a seam in the thigh area of my pants. I spent the rest of the interview covering up the area either with my hands or pulling my shirt down, even though you really couldn't see it, unless you were looking.

I was kind of in a rush before I left for the interview and wasn't sure which shoes to wear. I don't have many shoes, and especially not more business-like, appropriate for an interview shoes. I wore these really thin socks and put on some flats. While waiting for the interviewer I looked down at my shoes and regretted the decision. It just looked really weird, especially since the socks were a way darker black than the shoes. One of the girls made some small talk with me, said she thought she knew me from somewhere, but I didn't contribute much to the "conversation." Thankfully, the interviewer got there then. It was a woman named Andrea, she was one of the women who helped me with dresses when I had been trying on wedding dresses a couple of months ago. She was really nice. She recognized.

I kept hoping upon hope that it wouldn't be an actual group interview. I thought they'd just call us into some room in the back, one by one. Unfortunately, Andrea said they were supposed to conduct the interview with all of us right there where we were seated, which I wasn't too keen on, because there was a bridal party nearby trying on bridesmaid dresses. Andrea then announced that we'd do the interview in the back, so we followed her to their tiny break room. On the one hand, a group interview has some advantages. With some of the questions, some of the others answers gave me something to think about and made me up my game a little. But being around the others made me more nervous and I kept comparing myself to the other women and that does not lead to good things for me. I would be intimidated enough one on one, but to be right there with the other applicants was not something I wanted.

( Interview )

Okay, that's kind of a rhetorical question, since I know that I very much can be selfish. But sometimes I can't take Michael's mother. And I feel horrible for saying that. She's perfectly nice to me, and I like her, but are personalities are totally opposite. And I probably should learn to set some kind of boundaries before Mike and I get married, but it's hard since we live with her.

Like holidays need to be worked out. For the first two years I was with Mike, I spent most of my holidays with them. But, ever since my dad died, I usually spend Thanksgiving with that side of my family. I skipped it the year before last because I fight that I had with my family. But I decided to go last year and Mike came with me. His mom whined about it a lot, but I took it in stride and thought it was no big deal. But then when it came time for Christmas, she very passively aggressively kept making comments about how Mike better spend Christmas with them, and how the only reason she tolerated Mike dating a Jehovah's Witness (which my mom is and I'm not anymore) was because she thought it guaranteed Mike would spend the holidays with her. The tolerate thing was mostly a joke, but the fact that she said it more than once started to rub me the wrong way.

Mike and I have spent the last two Valentine's going out to dinner. So we wanted to do that this year. Jean asked us about it a few days ago and said that she had thought we would all have dinner together at home. But we said we wanted to go out. I thought that would be the end of it. But then yesterday she asked again about our plans and acted kind of put out because she had wanted us all to have dinner together. So tonight, I'm getting ready to go out with Mike and she calls him and asks if her husband and her can come along. I know it's not that big of a deal; Mike and I spend all kinds of time alone together. And Mike asked, and I could have said "no, I just want it to be the two of us", but I just knew if I did, that she would not take it well. So I said okay.

Not really a big deal, and I really shouldn't complain, but I just felt like venting.

Stacey

I've basically been trying to lose weight for four years. I'd exercised and "dieted" before but that was when I got serious about it and kept up with exercising. I haven't had complete success with it. When I first started, I did lose 20 pounds but then gained it back. And there was another time when I lost about ten pounds, but again I gained it back. Part of my problem, is that I'm not good at dieting. I've learned to cut some stuff out, like I rarely drink soda anymore, but I have other vices I can't stop(I have a horrible Keebler Soft Batch cookie addiction.) I think if I had to choose one to do, I should probably do it the other way around and diet without exercise. My boyfriend's mother has been dieting for awhile, and she's been losing weight even though she really doesn't exercise at all.

When I moved in with my boyfriend, they had a Wii, so I would do Wii fitness all the time, but I got kind of down because the results fluctuated wildly. Sometimes I'd lose a pound or two, but more often than not I'd either gain a few pounds or stay exactly the same. My boyfriend was struggling with his weight as well so we decided to try going vegetarian. But that still doesn't necessarily mean eating the healthiest of foods. But we've done that, we're taking vitamins and we joined a gym. My boyfriend has been telling me that he's een noticing some changes. And I've definitely noticed it in him. But we hadn't really weighed ourself. So I told my boyfriend that the other night, and he said we should go to the supermarket, where they had a scale. I was very nervous and then was disappointed that I hadn't lost anything. My boyfriend says that your actual weight number isn't that important and we've only been doing this for a little less than a month. But still, I thought I'd have at least lost a little something instead gaining weight. But Mike still says he's seeing changes, and like I said he's definitely changing (his butt is in danger of being displaced by his biceps, as my favorite body part of his) so we'll just keep doing what we're doing, with a few tweaks.

Stacey