Anything But Gray

~We've been too strong for too long and I can't be without you babe.~

That's from a song I've been listening to lately by Mary J. Blige. And it is perfectly fitting for today.

March 4th.
Zak and I have been together for 16 years today.
In 10 more months I'll be with him longer than I was with my mom.
Wow. Just wow.

We have been through so much and seen so many ups and downs.
Good thing we are both stubborn.
Good thing we are both madly in love.
Good thing we are each other's best friend.

He is an amazing man, a noble provider, a caring husband, a hysterical comedian, a patient man and a devoted husband and father. A man like him is a rare find. I am so proud of him and so proud of us.

I am lucky. I am blessed. I am so very grateful.
I don't know what I'd do without him.

and we march on…

Ceci posted!!! Yay! Ceci read my blog! Yay!!
She posted a comment on my anti–fat campaign post.
She's "Joannamademe". Cause you know, you might confuse her with Butterfly Baby. ha!
I like her name, that's a fun name. 🙂
And her post is a friggin' crack up.

I hereby announce that at my blog party there will always be a rum and diet coke waiting for Ceci.

How many times did I just mention her name? I have to beat her, she mentioned me 3 times AND has my name in her name…
Let's see…1, 2, 3…oops, need one more.
I love you Ceci.

There. 4 times.
I win.

The only solution Zachary has been able to think of for our vcr problem is to find the head cleaner and try that.
Now, I know I'm pretty stupid when it comes to media stuff. About as much as I can manage is knowing what cords to plug into what spots on my computer to get 1. my songs onto my ipod. and 2. get my pictures off my camera. That's about it. But even I think cleaning the heads is so not going to solve this problem. I tell Zak that I don't think that's going to work. Beyond that, I think it makes no sense. In my mind that's like him saying "The house is on fire" And me suggesting "Let's do jumping jacks" to put it out… You know?? It just makes no sense to me.

So I called my brother today to see if he can fix it because I'm pretty sure a head cleaner nor jumping jacks is going to fix the problem.
Plus I've barely seen him in 3 weeks.
Oh and the Juneau Police Department called my house and left a message, looking for him.
I thought it was for a job or something, but turns out it was something else.
No big deal.

When I told him about my vcr problem he asks me "Why do you need the vcr anyway?"
And I start to tell him and he says "Oh yeah…for your anti-fat campaign."
I love it.
That boy cracks me up.
He fixed it. So I did my cardio today AND my toning.
I feel good…dah nah, nah, nah…Like I knew that I would now….
ha!

I had a dream about Cierra over the weekend.  I told Zak about it the next morning. I told him that I really needed to get a hold of Shannon or Travis and get Cierra over for a visit. Well yesterday I go into the post office to get the mail and there is Cierra! She was in the there with Shannon. Keep in mind I have never just bumped into Shannon at the post office. Never. A little weird, huh? Sometimes you just gotta wonder. I'm so glad I told someone about my dream! lol.
So Shannon and I talk and we arrange for me to pick Cierra up after school today so she can come for a visit. What a nice visit the girls had. Ben too, for that matter, he adores Cierra. I have got to keep her coming over. They all love getting together and I enjoy having her over. It's just a win, win. So I'm going to get a hold of Travis and see if she can come over next week too. I'd like to make it a weekly thing. Oh and then later Cierra called Jaime. How cute is that?

I'm feeling pretty happy today. With having Cierra over I did not have a single spare minute. I really wanted to call J. She left a really cool message, she made me feel good. I didn't write on the blog and she missed reading it. That feels good and I know exactly what she's feeling because when she doesn't update hers, I feel the same way! lol.
Plus she has something going on that she wanted to talk to me about and that makes me feel good too, when I feel like she "needs" me. I miss you J and I'll call tomorrow for sure.
AND (yes, there's more…) Danielle emailed and she asked for some advice. That made me feel needed too.
AND (oh yeah….there's even more!) I got to visit Ceci for a little bit. Twice, even. lol.
Nice friend day. I feel good.

Oooh!! And our new work folders showed up today and they look AWESOME! I don't care for the folders that are provided to us at the office and I wanted to design some for Zak and I. So I did and they look so nice. I'll have to take a pic and post. I'm pretty proud of little old me…lol.

And with that, I am done with my epic post…lol

Nighty, night!

We got a new phone tonight.
The old one can no longer be used, thanks to me.

So Zachary is going to the bathroom and I was calling the courthouse to check on his jury duty.
The recording was still the old recording, so I'm thinking oooh…someone's in troooouble tomorrow. Somebody forgot to make a new recording. So I'm finding this mildly amusing and I go back to the bathroom to tell Zachary about it. Well he's facing the toilet (obviously….duh.) and I'm standing behind him telling him about the lack of a new recording and I'm talking with my hands the way I always do. All of a sudden the phone goes flying out of my hand into the toilet that he's still peeing in.
Way. Frickin'. Gross.
Yup….swear to God. Of all the places this stupid phone could land, it goes in the toilet. True story.
This is the kind of crap (no pun intended) that happens to me that makes me think
"yeah, we could be a sitcom. One hell of a sitcom."

I stare at the toilet, he stares down at the toilet, we are both like..I can't believe that just happened!
We are both dying laughing just staring.
 The phone is in the toilet.
The phone is in the toilet.
Now there's a sentence you never think you'll say in this lifetime.

So we got a new phone.
It's charging so if you call we might not answer.

The weekend just flew by! It was sunshiny Saturday and Sunday. I love it when that happens, sunshine over the weekend.

I have to call Billiejo today. Her and her family are leaving for vacation tomorrow. She must be so excited.

So I called J from my cell phone last week.
Mariah Carey was on the cover of a magazine and I was calling her about that.
She answers the phone "Hello?" and you could just hear the hesitation and confusion in her voice.
I'm like "What's up??" and now I'm confused and wondering why is she answering the phone like that??
She starts laughing and tells me that the name for my cell phone number came up as
State of Alaska on her caller id.
She said all that ran through her head was "Oh no….fat troll cow (okay, so she really thought becky, but I always refer to her as fat troll cow, it's just so perfectly descriptive.<smirk>) did something and Joanna is in jail" and she's wondering why I'm calling her. LOL
Totally cracked me up.
Could you imagine what would go through your head if I called and it came up as
The State of Alaska…
yeah, that would freak me out too.
Now I'm the whole STATE.
Makes me pretty important, huh??

Happy Monday!

It's corny, I know but I am just beyond happy.
Of course everyone knows I emailed everyone to tell them I had a blog.
Lisa emailed me tonight and she is going to check the blog out.
AND as if hearing from her wasn't awesome enough, she gave me a kick ass compliment!
I'm feeling pretty darn good right now!

For the people that don't know Lisa is a childhood friend.
My mom, my auntie and Lisa's mom Debbie were all friends and me, my cousin Billiejo and Lisa are all the same age, just months apart. I'm in January, Lisa is in March and Billiejo is in April. So us 3 would hang out and make up dances and stuff.
Remember Slow Hand by the Pointer Sister's? From the very 1st note of that song, I instantly think of Lisa.
I think we must've made a dance up to that song or something. But whenever I hear it I think of her and wonder how she is.
I have such good memories of those times.
Lisa is always a part of my childhood memories and it just made me so happy to hear from her.

Lisa was also there the very first time I drank in a bar with my mom.
I had a lot of drama going on regarding "him" at the time and her and I talked about it that night.
She really listened, it really helped me to be able to talk. She understood.
No one else did at the time. It was such a good feeling just to be understood.
I know I wasn't right (I was about as far from right as one could get) but I never was looking to be right, I just wanted to be understood. And she did.
It mattered. It helped.
And oh my gosh, I watched that girl work a room that night.  I watched her make her way around the bar, just chatting and making people light up. Hell, she made me light up. lol. She's just one of those kinds of people. Her smile makes you smile.
I miss her and I hope we keep in touch better.

Hi Lisa!!!

Whatever…

he's leaving…

He's not going to look good in any other uniform.
So there.

At least we still have Asante.

Now I'm really leaving to go get ready to go.

I added more to my first blog entry because idiot that I am screwed it up the first time.

It is absolutely beautiful outside. Totally sunshiny, snow covering everything, making it so pretty. I cannot wait to get outside. The kids have swimming lessons so we'll take them to that, go to eat after and then head out to find a Totem pole. Jaime has homework. She has to find a totem pole, dictate to us (parent people) what she thinks the story is on the totem pole, draw a picture of it and then bring it into school on Monday.

Dude…that's like real homework! WTF? It's kindergarten!

I already did my toning this morning, suhweet!! I need to do my cardio, but I couldn't do it in the living room because I can't get the tape to play on the vcr. We have a combination dvd/vcr player. Now get this…the dvd will play just fine, but when I put my tape in to work out the sound comes on, but no picture. I don't get it. Isn't that insane? I mean it's the same player, if the dvd part is getting picture why the hell wouldn't the vcr? It makes no sense to me. I just stared at the t.v. utterly dumbfounded. My consolation? When I told hubby about it he did the same exact thing. Pressed play and then just stared at the blue screen dumbfounded. Ha! We'll figure it out this afternoon, hopefully.
Oh…and why am I using a tape, you ask? Because it's a 15 year old work out tape that I still love. See? Saving everything just in case comes in handy sometimes!

Okay, off to get me and the kids ready for lessons.

Okay….
So J started a blog and she encouraged me to. I have been wanting to for awhile and just haven't gotten around to it. Plus I was worried that I wouldn't keep up on it. But I finally decided tonight that who cares if I keep up on it. lol. So I'm just going to do it. I miss writing and I don't do it nearly enough anymore, so I think this is a good start. If I blog I think it will force me to write sometimes. Hopefully it will, anyway. lol.

I'm a bit unsure of what I want this blog to be. There are so many different aspects to my life and all of them I could blog about. So it's like do I want to censor it for family? Should I be guarded because of the small town issue? Should I be guarded because of work? I just don't know. Then I realized first of all, I should just be me and don't worry about censoring or being guarded. My family knows everything anyway..lol. Then second of all, I realized…honestly, who the hell do I think is going to read this??? LOL
So that swayed me to be all wide open. All the parts….the wife, the mom, the employee, the player…everything.

So I edited this because when I came to read what J had posted, half of my post was gone!

I don't know what I did….Ben was up and down with a coughing fit and puking, so maybe I forgot to hit save at some point.

That sucks!

I'm don't know if that's a good or bad omen. I fuck up my first blog entry.
Lovely.