Indy

After thinking about places I miss back home I was trying to come up with things that I like out here, but since I have only been here a little over a year I can’t come up with much. I also have other things that stand in my way, like the fact that nothing is in walking distance and I love walking to places.

All I could come up with out here that I like is Borders and a comic book store that we go to, I think it is called Comic Carnival (not sure). Both places are right near each other in a shopping center. Hanging out at Borders is something I have always liked so that one is obvious. I always go to their cafe, get a caramel latte and read some magazines or a book and just relax. The comic book store is awesome because it has some cool stuff and, well, it’s just so geeky. And I love geeky.

I also like going out to eat at places like Steak and Shake, Skyline Chili, Panda Express or Fazolis (all cheap places)…Though I never really get to go out and eat much but on the rare occasion that we do I like to hit the cheap places because I try to save some money. But I would love to go out for a really nice steak mmm. And even though I don’t get to do it much, I love going to the movies. Which reminds me…a good movie needs to come out because I want us all (me, Ken and Amanda) to go out grab something to eat and go to a movie together. We haven’t done that since, I think since Hancock came out?

So yeah, that’s all I’ve got. For now. Oh…The mall we go to is OK, not really a big fan of malls but I do like having the ability to go to different stores without driving all over the place. Speaking of, we are all going to the mall tomorrow because I have to get my ring inspected. It’s best to hit the mall on a weird day, like Tuesday, and avoid the weekend crowds (I hate crowds). Amanda has a little money she wants to spend so of course we will be hitting all the usual places, Hot Topic, FYE and Borders…But I don’t like Borders in the mall (too small) maybe we should hit Barnes and Nobles instead, there is one attached to the mall (can’t reach it from inside of the mall though).

Now I am babbling (do I ever do anything else?) so I think I am done.

Frustrating

I haven’t worked at my part-time job for about a month and I have no clue when they will need me again. And stupidly I let myself get carried away with getting gifts for Christmas when I could/should have just gotten a couple of things instead…Granted at the time I thought at the worst I’d have no work for a couple of weeks and figured it would be OK. Stupid. I should have known better. I am usually so careful, it’s how the money I had saved (after putting money on the house) lasted me for a year.

As usual I am still looking for a more steady job but it seems even harder to find one now. I can’t seem to find any place that is hiring and it seems the only ones accepting applications are the same places over and over, they just put them on file and are not really looking for anyone. I hate this! I haven’t been this worried over money in a long, long, long time. I can’t take this… if I hadn’t moved I would have been stuck in a place I didn’t want to be in but at least I would have had a job and not have been worried about money. But here I am with a home and bills that I can’t pay anymore. And I have my daughter to take care of and let’s not forget about the dog. I keep thinking that my daughter can get a part-time job next year then I realize there are no jobs! Maybe because she is a teenager she can find one easier? I see a lot of teens working at fast food places and grocery stores so maybe she can get something at a place like that? I just don’t know.

Also I want to get my daughter into the Boys and Girls club (ASAP), I’ve been meaning to for awhile now. It’s should be a safe place for her to met kids her own age, all the kids in the neighborhood are a lot younger. And since she is home-schooled, for a few reasons, she has no friends out here because we have no way to meet anyone. Back home we knew people and she had friends…but here…forget it. Whenever she is out she is like a social butterfly, even though she doesn’t seem it when she is around family or older people. Actually it’s one of the things that makes me laugh. Kens family is always saying something about how quite she is and things like that, but she really isn’t. She just acts like that around adults, I was the same when I was her age (sometimes I am still like that lol). She is 16 and adults are just not cool. You know how it is. But oddly enough she actually still wants to do things with me, sometimes. Like go to the movies or the mall. She wanted to go see Twilight but because I’m broke I haven’t been able to take her and I was looking forward to doing something like that together again. So it makes me kind of sad. Maybe I can get her the book, I am sure she will like that and it shouldn’t be too much money.

So yeah. Broke. I have about $400+ a month in bills, groceries and such, it used to be more but Ken took over the electric bill recently… So yeah…$400 in bills etc and I only have $200 left in my checking. I am scared and really freaking out over my situation. I don’t know what to do. Oh…Our mortgage, after having gone down a few months back has gone back up again. Crap.

A simple thing like having to go grocery shopping tomorrow is freaking me out because of my financial problems. Thankfully his grandparents gave me some cash for Christmas so I will use that to get the groceries this week and use the money in my checking for my credit cards. But that only solves my problem for this week. It has also come down to me digging for change. I rolled about $40 in change, every little bit helps.

I should stop with the pity party. I just needed to get it out a little.

I think tomorrow I will make some snickerdoodle cookies. Again. I made some the other day but everyone eats them too fast. And right now I could use a cookie.

I miss…

I did a post like this some months back, but I am doing it again. Basically it is about things I miss back home in Massachusetts. This is brought to you by the fact that I have been up all night and am bored…

The Loop A Shopping Center in Methuen, MA. I went almost every weekend with my daughter and we would make a day of it. We would mostly hang out at Borders and do some reading and get something at their cafe. Sometimes we would also go see a movie if anything we wanted to see was out (like Harry Potter movies, Pirates of the Caribbean etc) And we would always grab a bite to eat at either Not Your Average Joes, Quiznos or sometimes Wendys. My daughter loved shopping at Claires and buying manga at Borders. Then after that we would head over to Walmart so she could buy trading cards then we would do the boring stuff, grocery shopping at Market Basket. Heck, I even miss Market Basket.

Not Your Average Joes I used to love going out to eat there when I would go to the Loop. I loved the bread and oil they served and whenever we went my daughter would stuff herself on the bread, one time our waiter gave us some to take home because she liked it so much. One of my favorite meals to get there was the mustard crusted chicken.

Papa Ginos A local chain back home and my favorite pizza place. I just love their cheese pizza and the cinnamon sticks!

Bertuccis An Italian restaurant, I love Italian food but for some reason I only ever had their brick oven pizza. It was so good. I used to get sun-dried tomatoes on it. mmm

Margaritas A great Mexican restaurant I really enjoyed. The last time I went there is was my friend Alanas birthday, seemed every time we went out to eat together it was for Mexican food. And yes, I had them sing Happy Birthday to her. lol

Pizza Depot I had not been there for a long time, mainly because it was kind of out of the way, but I used to love the place. They had great pizza and one of my favorite things to get there was the sirloin tip meal which came with fries and a salad (looking at the menu seems they don’t have it anymore). they also had this really good baklava I would get.

Lawton’s A neat little, and I mean little, place in Lawrence, MA that are famous for their hot dogs.

Andover High School, as in where I used to work. The kitchen was a fun place to work and I loved everyone I worked with. You might think that being a lunch lady was easy, but we were not the stereotypical lunch ladies you may remember from when you were in school (and I think a lot of schools are still like that). believe it or not we actually cooked and prepared fresh foods. We worked our butts off and in less hours than most lunch ladies do. But that was fine because there was a great staff and we joked around all day and got along great. The students and faculty even liked coming to the cafeteria and we got to know quite a few of them. I know being a lunch lady sounds like a lame job but it was my favorite out of all the jobs I have had and I doubt I will find something that I like that much again.

And one thing I miss in New Hampshire…

The Mall at Rockingham Park I actually don’t like malls, but for some reason when I think about places I miss I also thought about this mall. The times when the weather was really bad making it hard to walk around The Loop we would go here instead. It was funny too because the employees in Borders, Hot Topic and Suncoast (when they still had one) all knew us. This would sometimes score my daughter a free item, or get me an occasional discount. I really liked that the employees got to know us and would talk with us. It was nice. So yeah, our regular places in the mall were Borders, Hot Topic and Suncoast. We would also hit Claires, FYE and GameStop and look around those places too. But I think Amandas favorite place was Suncoast because they had a lot of anime and she was always finding anime soundtracks and Japanese snacks. At the time Suncoast was the only place you could find some of that stuff. We’d go to the food court and get something to eat from places like Cinnabon, Roman Delight Pizza, D’Angelos, Famous Franks and sometimes we would just get some ice cream from Brigham’s or maybe go to Pretzel Time.

Can you tell I was hungry as I wrote all this stuff? There is a lot of stuff about food. lol

Everything is different now and I am having trouble finding a place where I “belong” out here. It kind of makes me sad.

My Boyfriend’s Birthday.

Kens 25th birthday was on Dec. 30th. I am pretty much poor so there was not a whole heck of a lot I could do for him. So I decided to make a cake (of course)…But the night before (about 11:30pm) as I was making it were were goofing around I wasn’t paying attention and the cake mix became unusable. That made me feel miserable so Ken hugged me and told me he was going to go out and get a box of cake mix, he should have been trying to relax so he could go to sleep since he, unlike me, had to work the next day. Not only did he come home with cake mix but he also had a bottle of Baileys for me (it’s my favorite)! So… Take 2: This time I get it mixed no problem get it in the cake pans and put them in the oven…When I went to take them out I found out that the cakes some how baked so they turned out all lopsided. Later when they cooled I frosted them. And of course the frosting was working against me. For some reason it just would not spread right. I took my time frosting the cake and writing “Happy Birthday” on it and it turned out looking like something a little kid made. I tried my hardest but in the end the cake was just all lopsided and messy looking. *sigh* But he said it looked fine. Silly boy.

But the cake was not the only thing out to get me. Nope. Pizza was too. The next day his grandparents took him out for lunch for his birthday and since I didn’t have a whole lot to eat at home, at least nothing easy…Normally I would have made a sandwich for myself, but I didn’t have any sandwich meat and I ended up only eating some cheerios and an orange. By the time he got home I was starving and feeling really sick (which makes me cranky…poor Ken) so I had no desire to cook anything as I had planned to because I felt so sick and dizzy. Ken decided to order pizza from Papa John’s. I said something about how I didn’t want pizza, then told him to order it anyway if he wanted to (he could eat pizza everyday and be happy lol). It wasn’t that I didn’t want pizza, I just did not want Papa John’s pizza. For the past year I have not had the heart to tell him that I hate their pizza. But after we got the order I finally had to let him know because this was the worst it had ever been…He didn’t even like it. We had ordered this thin crust pizza they make, I thought it was OK the first time I tried it (but still “blah” about it). We get the pizza and I swear there was no crust because I could not see it under the 50 pounds of cheese that was on it. So I go to pick up a slice of pizza…Now normally the thin crust pizza should be crispy But this was soggy and all the cheese just glomped off the pizza and fell into the box, it was really gross…But I decided to give it a try. I took a bite…and thought I would throw up. The crust (if you can call it that) tasted like wet cardboard and the cheese tasted like…now that I think about it…puke. I admit I have never liked the taste of their cheese, I have no idea what they use or what they do to it but it is nasty. This time though they somehow made it worse than ever. I totally lost my appetite for actual food and reached for the pastry things he also ordered from them…They were burned black. Eww. I ended up calling to complaining and they gave us a credit for the whole order. I wish he could get his money back instead because we have no desire to order from them again. I decided that we will just use the credit to get things like breadsticks and chicken wings and such.

Oh, and I wasn’t even able to get him a present. I basically ran out of money because of Christmas and the fact that there has been no work for me the past few weeks. Next year I will have to make it all up to him.

So yeah…Kens birthday did not go as I had planned but he never once complained. Just hugged me and kissed me. So I ended up not feeling as miserable about it as I could have.