Carrie Bartkowiak v. 5.0

So some of my friends contacted me with a slight chuckle and informed me they’d been to see my site… and could tell I hadn’t updated it since I hit level 70 on my World of Warcraft character.

Ack.

Well, ya know, running a raiding guild is rather like herding cats - it takes a lot of time and patience. Recently though I gave that up, moved my raiding toon into a separate guild where other folks can deal with the headaches, and have found I’m enjoying the game a lot more without the administrative headaches. Yes, I still have the guild my friends and I made, but we’ve let go of the pressures of raiding and now just have our friends hanging out in there. Almost zero administration. It’s been nice. I’ve also gotten to see lots of content in the game I’d never have seen with my own guild (at least, not before the expansion came out), so that’s been cool too.

Kelsey turned 10 just a couple of weeks ago. Ten years! Where did they go? He wasalmost asexcited about being “double digits”as he was aboutgetting gifts. We spent the evening over at Grandma and Papap’s and had sloppy joes for dinner - his choice.

Mike’s been thinking about getting a new job, since the promotion they’ve been promising him keeps getting put off until their current project is finished - and it keeps getting delayed indefinitely. Our health insurance costs jumped up so much at the first of the year that there’s no way, without the promotion, we’d be able to pay it and still have money for the house, utility bills, and groceries. Luckily we were able to get a decent interest rate on a refinance, bringing our mortgage payment down and locking us in for a 30-year fixed. No more worrying about payments bouncing around (we were on an ARM). We still wish we had more options on the insurance front, though. We rarely visit the doctor and when we do, we end up paying through the nose between co-pay and the leftover “uncovered” cost; what we’re paying each week dwarfs the amount that the company spends on our entire family of 5 each year. Don’t get me into a rant about how our money is going to pay for illegal immigrants’ health care and frivilous medical lawsuits, and how our family could benefit from having that money back. I might not shut up.

On the decluttering front, I have to admit that the fantastic headway I’ve made has been swallowed up over time, and now you can’t tell anything was ever decluttered. No, we haven’t bought more stuff (are you kidding? With whose money?), and the only thing we’ve “adopted” from someone else is the kitchen island my parents were getting rid of. (It’s sitting in our library waiting for things to get moved around so it can be used.) The christmas stuff certainly helped (too much incoming stuff, again).

No, actually, come to think of it, there was more “adopted” stuff. This woman that Mike and my parents work with regularly cleans out her childrens’ closets, and sends everything through my mother to Mike, to us. We’ve told my Mom not to accept it anymore, yet she does. I’ve told Mike that if it gets put into his car at work, he should drive straight over to the dumpster in the parking lot and can it, yet he doesn’t. SoI’vehad to deal withboxes and boxes of clothes suddenly showing up on my couch when I get up in the morning (Mike sneaks it in from the car before he leaves for work). I have no excuse there - *I* should walk it out to the trash right when I see it; but usually I think to myself “well, I’ll see if there’s something in there that they could really use”. Before I know it, the entire box has been dumped all over the living room by my 3yr old (who wants to play in the box), kicked down the hall, and we end up not knowing what’s new and what isn’t. As a result, we are absolutely *buried* in clothes again.

Oh, and when I went through my big decluttering spree, Mike looked at all of the room in the closet and decided that there was room there for him to pull out his old, bagged-clothes. You know, the ones you bag up and say “If I don’t wear what’s in here in the next 6 months, I’ll get rid of them”? Well, he refuses to get rid of them. If I put them in the trash, he digs them out and adds them to the laundry pile. He doesn’t need them, doesn’t wear them… yet he absolutely REFUSES to get rid of them. Yeah, those clothes are in our closet now, and once again you can’t even move the clothes on his side and they’re pushing over into my side.

So, like I said… we’re buried in clothes, literally. I can’t keep up with them. It’s time for another”give it to Goodwill” session.Ugh.

My high school class is gearing up for our 20th reunion this fall. Still haven’t decided if I’m going. There’s only 3 or 4 people I’d be interested in seeing - the rest I’d be content to just look at pictures, if I even bothered doing that. I honestly don’t care what these people have done with their lives. They made mine hell… why would I want to spend money and travel to watch them all beingcatty and fake to each other? Here’s a hint: if you ever find yourself saying “wow, I haven’t seen you in 17 years!”… there’s probably a good reason for that.

On the personal front, I finally acquiesced to getting rid of all of my dental problems in one fell swoop. Yep - they’re gone. I traded daily pain in my mouth for a daily pain in my ass. Take care of your teeth, folks. I can’t say it enough. On the other hand, I’ve got a quick and easy way to fix America’s obesity problem: yank all of their teeth. Eating is a completely different story when you have to actually go get your teeth, wash and brush them off, put goo on them, press them in place for 30 seconds, and then hope they’ll actually chew what you’re going to eat rather than just squeeze it to death. That’s not even counting the time it takes to cut everything into miniscule pieces that you can swallow whole just in case the dentures can’t chew it… if you even bother to eat at all when considering the whole process you’ll have to go through just to be *able* to eat.America will be the thinnest nation again in just 3 short months.And think of all the money the insurance companies will save on dental bills! Maybe our payments can go down. Win-win.

Political view at the moment: disgusted.
Hope that anon-socialist candidate will end up being even close to the front-runner: no hope at all.
Interest in the election activities? None, other than educational value to show the kids the election process, and even that has taken a back seat as we can’t watch a news show reporting on the process that isn’t filled with what comes out of the end of a bull. “Let’s gush over this candidate that we like and completely ignore these other candidates until they pull out of the race! Giving people all of the information they need to make an informed decision? Good god, no - they might vote for that other guy!” Spare me.

Bah, enough ranting for now. I’m still here, the family is still here, we’re surviving… just not poking our heads out too much. It’s depressing out there and only looks like it’s going to get worse. On a good note, I’m looking forward to spring and being able to plant again.

Hopefully I’ll check in more often than every six months.

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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