Life By Lindsey Rae

I haven't much to say recently. The past few days seemed to have slipped away in a daze, as my sleep has been considerably more messed up than usual this week. I struggle with insomnia every night, of course, but sometimes I go through periods where it is worse than others. I have very intense dreams that make me so restless that even the sleep I do get, does not leave me feeling rested. Hence feeling the need to sleep 12 hours a day on a regular basis. (And no, I don't enjoy sleeping this much. It does make it surprisingly difficult to accomplish anything, thanks for asking.)

I wonder what must be going on in my mind while I am trying to sleep. Not much resting, I think. And this, is the problem.
I keep wondering if maybe I should go to a sleep study and if they could help me at all...

Ok, this may not seem like a big deal to anyone reading this, but it is a big deal to me, so I'm going to tell you anyway!
It is my one year anniversary of getting allergy shots. Doesn't seem exciting? Well, this means that for exactly one year I have been faithfully getting one shot, sometimes 2 shots per week. One needle in each arm. I have probably got 200+ needles in this past year. That's quite a lot when I probably only had 30 in my life previous to this. I am just proud of myself that I stuck with it, because it's not fun. You have to go there, wait, get poked...twice...and wait 20 minutes before you can leave. It's just a pain. But, I made it through a full year of it, hardly ever missing.
I'm not sure how many more years I will have, but it seems to have helped some, so I will keep doing it if it will clear up these terrible allergies I have developed. It may take awhile, but I've got a year behind me and some improvement, so I have some hope about it now.

Today was a little warmer, finally. Not that you can expect much in January. Even in Tennessee it gets chilly in the winter. But, today was alright for January weather. I have been waiting for a day when I could spray around my house for bugs and took the opportunity to do so today.
You may think that there would not be bugs this time of year, but in Tennessee, there is. As soon as there gets a semi-warm day, they are out and about and coming to find me. As I have mentioned before, I have a deep and intense fear and hatred of most insects, so I have to prevent them from coming near me and my house whenever possible.
I have some pretty good bug spray that I got at Wal-Mart a few couple ago. It was only about $7 for a huge jug of it and I used to drench the outside of my apartment with it. It seemed to help more than when I would get the apartment to send their pest control people over. I put it around the doors, windows, baseboards and pretty much anywhere else that the instructions say to and I could think of. Hopefully this will keep them away. It took awhile to do the entire house inside and out, but it will be worth it if I don't have to see them...especially the ones that I am really terrified of. Hopefully those ones only live in Nashville and not Mt. Juliet.

Jerrod and I also went for a walk around the neighborhood. There is still a lot of construction around here and we like to see what everyone else is doing to their houses and what options they are choosing. I'm still convinced that we got one of best lots and that we made some of the best choices we could have for options.
When I look at some of these houses and at the colors some people choose, I realize a lot of people just don't have an eye for these things. It kind of baffles my mind a little bit how they can mess these things up when all the choices are just neutral, but sometimes, they just do. Just the way I need help with technical and logical things as an artistic person, people who are not artistic need artistic help with these sorts of things.
It pains my soul to see it happen. They just need someone with an eye to tell them, "No!"

Oh, another funny thing: we just had a neighbor move in behind us and one of the first things they did when they got here was install an outdoor ceiling fan on the patio. It's so funny because they keep turning it on when the temperature was practically freezing. (It is January). I guess they're really trying to cool it down outside!

Last week, my sister, Shara, sent me an audio clip of a live broadcast of a game that our brother, Darcy, played in on January 18th. This clip features a goal that Darcy got for the Olds Grizzlys, who he was playing as a guest with this night. Closer to the end there is a short interview with the team's assistant coach, who talks about Darcy after the goal. I thought I would add some pictures to the audio and make it into a video and put it on youtube so that it would be easier to listen to without having to download the file she sent. The pictures are just a few random shots of Darcy playing, not from this game in particular. The rotate rather slowly, because I only had a limited number of pictures to use, as Darcy said he didn't know how to upload pictures to the computer to give me more. (I think we might need to get him into some computer classes in his spare time).

So, unfortunately, our co-pay for prescriptions went up at the beginning of this year. We used to pay $10 for generic, $20 for preferred brands, and $30 for non-preferred brands. We thought the prices were going to be increasing $10 each, but as it turns out, each has doubled. I didn't realize this until I ordered a refill for my migraine medicine the other day and saw it came to $60, instead of the usual $30.
This is for a 3 month supply, however, so at least you get a decent amount. The crazy part is, although I pay $60 for my migraine medicine, on top of that my insurance still pays $446.00! So, thats over $500 for 90 little pills. Which means, they cost approximately $5.62 each. Now that is crazy. This is the cost of preventing daily headaches. I am very upset that my co-pay has doubled, but thank goodness we have decent insurance. How would someone possibly afford it other wise? The average person couldn't. You just live with your migraines or whatever else is wrong with you I guess...If you can live with them, without your $500 medicine.

Jerrod's Birthday was this week. (He's 33 now...seems old to someone as young as me. haha. Just kidding.) He has had it in his head that he wanted a new drill, a DeWalt drill, for awhile now. They aren't cheap, and they don't go on sale very often. I wanted to get one for him either for Christmas of for his birthday, but I couldn't find one that was less than retail...and I can't pay full price for anything. After weeks and weeks of searching and watching DeWalt Drills on eBay, I finally bid on and won one a brand new drill for $60 less than retail. This was pretty good, because most of them, even on eBay, were going for close to what you would pay for them new at Lowe's or Home Depot.
The only problem was that the seller, who had promised to ship it within 2 days, "forgot" or for whatever reason decided not to do so. So, it did not arrive on time and I felt bad that I had no present to give him on his actual birthday. I sent the seller a little bit of a reprimand and told him that he messed up my plans for my husband's birthday present and as a seller myself, I know it is not fair to promise something to a buyer and then not come through with that thing. He apologized, blah, blah, blah.
But, the Drill did arrive, although 3 days late, and it was new and works. So, that was good. And I got a good deal, other than waiting too long. Jerrod was happy to finally have his new drill. He has almost bought one for himself a few times, but I'm glad he waited. It's very hard to buy presents for him because he is so particular about his things, so other than the fact that I had to put a lot of effort into finding the actual thing I wanted (and there is enough different types of drills out there to start to get confusing for someone like me), at least this time I knew what to get and that he would like it without question.

Look at this: One of those little online quizzes asks whether you are a morning or night person. It tells me I am a night person and it's officially not my fault.

You Are a Night Person

For you, there's nothing worse than having to get up and moving early. In fact, you probably don't hit your peak until well after the sun has set. So if your struggling to make it on a normal schedule, realize it's not your fault. You just weren't meant to do anything during the day!

Today we went to our new branch for the first time. (For anyone who might not know what a branch is, within our church, we divide up our congregations according to where we live. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is exactly the same everywhere around the world, but obviously with almost 13,000,000 members world wide, we can't all fit in one place. So, we are divided up where we attend church into smaller groups, according to where we live. Usually we go to something called a ward, but if there are not enough people in an area to make a ward, it's called a branch. Which means, it's pretty small group of people, comparatively speaking.) There is one ward in Mt. Juliet, which Jerrod used to go to before we were married, but now we are living in the area of the Hermitage Branch. The Hermitage Branch covers quite a large area, land wise, in fact, it almost looks bigger than the Mt. Juliet Ward area. But, there is just not enough members of the church living here yet, so it remains small in numbers. However, we have heard it will probably become a ward in the not too distant future as the Providence area (where our house is) grows.

Anyway, because Jerrod used to go to church in Mt. Juliet and some of the people from our branch also did, he knew some people there already. They announced us and since it was the first time many of them had seen him back there, they kept calling me Jerrod's "new wife," which I thought was funny, since we have been married 2.5 years. It made me feel like we were just going to church for the first time after being newly wed.

Look! I finally got someone to take a picture with me! Unfortunately, I just woke up and wasn't wearing any makeup, at least I finally got some pictures with some actual people in them. (As I have mentioned before, my husband rarely allows his picture to be taken, unless I catch him off guard, but fortunately my dad was a more willing participant, allowing me to get some pictures for my scrapbooks.)
My dad went back to Canada today. He was here for 4 nights and it was nice to have him visit. So, hopefully he can come back sometime in the not too distant future.


Tomorrow is going to be our first Sunday going to our new church building in Mt. Juliet, which should be interesting. What should be even more interesting is if I can actually get out of bed for 9:00am church. We were going at 1:00pm last year, which is much more to my schedule.

Today we made a trip down to the historical town of Lynchburg, about an hour and 20 minutes south, and visited the historical Jack Daniel Distillery site. It is a good little tour to go on, because it's pretty interesting and it's also free. It was my third time going there, but of course, my Dad's first. I like driving down to those more country areas, because it's nice to see a little more of things that aren't completely city. It's a little nicer when it's greener out, but it's January...so what can you do?
After, we went in some of the little shops on the square, met Jerrod and went to Red Robin for supper (Jerrod's favorite) and stopped in at Best Buy to get our first land line phone....We didn't want one, because we just use cell phones, but the internet service provider said we had to get a land line now, so we got a phone to go with it.

My Dad is here now, visiting from Canada.
This is the first time that my Dad has been able to come to Tennessee, so it's nice that he can be here right now. I wish that I was able to think of more great and wonderful and exciting things to do while he is here....I had a couple things I thought of, but some depended on the weather. Recent weather = downpour. But hopefully tomorrow will be a little nicer.

My dad did do some cooking for us tonight, which was nice. We generally get our food from a box. Today we had kind of "Sunday dinner" cooking, I would call it, because on Sundays, when we were growing up, we always have roast beef, which he made tonight. With the roast, we made mashed potatoes(I pealed all by myself. haha), fresh vegetables, stuffed pears, and ceasar salad. I was supposed to make some bread to go with it...but I forgot.
With all the cooking gone on today we pulled out pans and utensils I never even knew we had. Shows how much this chef is in the kitchen! If you any doubts about my cooking skills and before you judge me for trying to cook more, please read my post on Aug.6th, and that will bring full understanding as to why I would not attempt to do this often.

It's taken a few weeks, but I've finally taken a few minutes to get some pictures of the finished house. These are from December 19th, which was 2 days before closing. So, it's completely empty. Now that I've seen it with stuff in it, I'm realizing how empty it really does look in these pictures!
When I get everything put up and things looking cute, I have to post more. But, for now, here is our finished and very empty house!

Exterior


Living Room Areas


Dining Room Area

Kitchen

Guest Bath

Master Bath and Closet

Master Bedroom

Lindsey's Office

Jerrod's Office

Upstairs Bonus Room


We still have a few smaller things we will be changing, such as putting in different taps, doing some tile in the kitchen and bathrooms and maybe a little painting...planting a few more trees next year I hope.
Jerrod got a lawn mower today. He is extremely ambitious about mowing the lawn.

Ok, so this is a little late, but I since I did not have any internet and no ability to write or post any pictures about Christmas, it just so happens that it finally makes in here in January. But, I am always late with everything, so this just fits in with me, I guess. Although, this time, it really wasn't my fault I was late!

This is what Christmas looks like when you are living and settled in one place (a.k.a. Our house 2005...we were in Canada in 2006, so we had no tree that year...2005 is as close as it gets):



This is a picture of what Christmas looks like when you have just moved into your house 4 days before (a.k.a. Our house in 2007):



Notice all my presents are in a black garbage bag. I just closed my eyes and Jerrod put them in my hands for the surprise. I kind-of-sort-of wrapped his, by putting them in gift bags. The only wrapped gifts we had came from my mom. After all that packing and having boxes everywhere, the last thing we felt like doing was finding wrapping paper to wrap presents. So, into the garbage bags they went!
We definitely didn't want to bother setting up a Christmas tree. Where would we have put it among all those boxes cluttering the floor? Luckily, Jerrod in all his creativity had made this little tree out of hangers and garland in past years, so we did have a tree...kind-of-sort-of.

So, that is the late breaking news of Christmas at the new house.

Exciting news! We finally have internet access again! I have felt completely disconnected from the world in the last while, so this is very good for me right now. It has been so difficult to get so much done that I've needed to.

We had to wait until January 2nd get an appointment to get service, but on top of that, there was problems. As it turns out, it seems that apparently the wiring needed for this street is either all, or at least partially, under our driveway. We think that what happened was that the builder asked the service provider to come out several times to move it, but they never did. So, since there was such a time crunch getting our house done, finally, they just poured concrete over top of it and figured that they would just have to come back and fix it later. Now there is a big hole beside our driveway with some newly laid sod all dug up. It's lovely.

We knew there would be some difficulty because of our past discussions with people not knowing what was going on,and of course, if you call and try to find out what's happening, you end up talking to someone in a call center in California, who has no idea.
Needless to say, they did not show up when they were supposed to on the 2nd and after being without the internet for 2 weeks I was already in no mood for delay. So, yesterday morning(and yes, I was desperate enough to actually wake up and get out of bed for this), on the 3rd, I got on the phone with some lady in customer service after being on hold for about 40 minutes, who told me that she would just go and reschedule my appointment for January 9th.
I promptly had to get into my fighting stance by this point and told her that January 9th would not work for me, because I needed internet, like, yesterday, and not a week from now. (Actually, I would have preferred to have it about 2 weeks ago...but, at least by yesterday). She gave me to her supervisor who got on to tell me that the lady was just saying what she was supposed to say, but now the supervisor would handle it and call me back later and let me know what was going on. The supervisor never did call back, but a few hours later 2 vans with internet service installers showed up and connected me back to the world.

Now I have to go research prices and sales again. I am so cheap...(did I mention that I used a 10% off coupon to save $0.04 cents at Jo-Ann a few weeks ago? I know...that's a little extreme, but at first I didn't know they were only going to take 10% off that one thing...the cashier told me I should save it and use it for something more expensive, but I always have a lot of coupons so I used it anyway.I'd only have to do that 25 times and I'd save a dollar. haha. Just kidding. I thought it was funny to save $0.04 cents afterwards!)Anyway, I like to research stuff before I buy it to see where the best sales and prices are, but I couldn't without being online! And when you get a new house and move there are inevitably so many things you have to end up buying....you have to know where the sales are....