Well, I can say that my life has hit a new low. I have now been out of official employment for one year and one month. My car was repossessed last week due to the fact that I can no longer make the payments and my husband refused to take it on. My marriage is in the toilet and seems to be getting worse every day. On top of all of that, my 41st birthday is next month and I am terribly unhappy about it. I feel a big life change coming. It may be time to move on from my current situation and start over completely from scratch. Kind of like a new birth, if you will. I need to cast off all negative factors in my life, and that includes my husband. Since he and I have not spoken...even uncivilly in nearly a month, I am sure that he is aware that this marriage is nearly over. There is nothing left to repair. Fear of the unknown has been the only thing that has kept me in this situation this long. Security is a hard thing to let go of, but I prefer to keep my sanity. Enough of my youth has been wasted trying and trying to fix something that can't be fixed. Although, I realize that I will most probably never make a living from writing, it is the only thing that keeps me sane. Getting lost in the writing of a novel is as good or better than any feel good drug and I intend to keep writing. I think it is time to do some things I have been putting off, like travelling. I want to see more of the world and I intend to do just that. I have always known that I was not intended for a mundane existence. I have no idea why I let myself waste away for seven years. tied down to someone who has no appreciation for anything about me. Who doesn't get me, or my jokes. Who isn't even on the same wave length. I truly lost myself for a long time and I am finally finding my way back to me. I was lost among the muck and mire of a crappy marriage. I was styphilled and repressed and I refuse to be any longer. So, everyone, wish me luck on my new journey out of my lowest low.

God, I hate cooking

http://tinasrevolution.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/god-i-hate-cooking/

 I thought I would share this from my other blog on Wordpress.  Enjoy.

Cold spell?

Now that Vegas’ temperature has gotten down to the 90’s, my husband has decided that we are having a cold spell.  He has been turning off the air conditioning at night and opening up all the windows and doors.  My husband is from Cairo, Egypt, so for him it is a common thing to throw open the windows, even without screens.  Where I am from, if you go to bed with a window open that doesn’t have a screen, you are bound to become a midnight snack to a gang of mosquitoes.  Not to mention it being an open invitation to any whack job looking for easy prey.

Every night, I imagine bats flying into the open window of my bedroom and it really creeps me out (not that I have ever seen a bat in Vegas), so I keep the curtain closed.  I know you are wondering, "why doesn't she have screens?"  Well, we bought this house as a foreclosure and not one of the dang windows had any screens, nor did any of the sliding glass doors have a screen door.  We have not yet gotten to the point of buying screens as it wasn't the #1 item on my husband's list.  Some of the windows had solar screens, which was helpful, until a big wind storm one night blew nearly all of them off and bent the heck out of them.  They have yet to be reinstalled into their rightful places.  Things get done in their own sweet time around here.

Anyway, this morning I awoke before my husband and went downstairs for a coffee.  The first thing I noticed was that both sliding glass doors off the back of the house were wide open and had been since the night before.  I was fuming mad.  I stomped my way back up the stairs and proceeded to give my husband a piece of my mind.

“What the !@#$%^&* were you thinking leaving all the windows and doors open last night downstairs?” I yelled.  “Were you making it easy for the burglars and murders?”

“Don’t worry, honey.  I was up until 4:30 am.  I’m sure all the burglars and murders were asleep by then,” he says grinning.

I really hate it when I am mad and he tries to be funny.

“We don’t live in a village!  This is Vegas! You have to shut the doors and lock them.  If not, you allow anything crawling or flying easy entry, not to mention the freaks that come out at night.”

“Tina, the back gates are locked,” he says. “No one can get in through the back.”

“So I guess the bad guys don’t ever jump fences then, huh?” I reply sarcastically.

“I seriously doubt they would go to the trouble,” he answers smirking.

I just give him the stink eye and turn and leave the room.  I know it’s useless.  It’s like talking to a brick wall.

So now we no longer have thermostat wars, now we have window wars.  Every time he leaves a room that has a window open, I close it.  It drives him nuts.  I am hoping that eventually he will give up and see things my way.

In the meantime, if a lizard makes its way into my house and up his pants leg, I will be thrilled.

Stormy's New Do

Hi, I’m Stormy.  I am a silver-haired Lion head rabbit. I'm just sitting here munching on some fresh lettuce, that the nice tall lady brought me to eat.  She’s my favorite.  She always pets me softly and holds me close.  She whispers sweet words in in my ears before gently setting me down on the floor for the children to play with.  She always warns them to be careful with me.

Ugh oh.  Here come the children.  I need to hide.  Maybe if I thump my leg at them they will leave me in the cage.  Where is their mother, the nice tall lady?  They shouldn’t be in here.  She hasn’t come to get me as she usually does. 

The boy Omar is opening my cage.  I don’t like it when the he gets me out as he always squeezes me tight.  I know he doesn’t mean it, but it hurts all the same. I will thump to let him know I am not pleased.

Thump!

“Omar, he just thumped at you,” Farrah says.

“That’s okay, he does it all the time,” Omar says as he reaches around in my cage trying to grab me.  I dart left and right trying to avoid capture.  Finally he has me cornered. 

“I got him Farrah,” Omar tells his sister as he pulls me out of the cage and cradles me like a baby.

“Bring him to me Omee.  I want to hold him.”

“Okay, but you have to sit down and be careful, just like Mommy says,” Omar tells her.

“I know that stupid head,” Farrah replies indignantly.

“If you aren’t going to be nice, I’m going to put him back in the cage,” Omar says holding me away from her.

“No, Omee I want to snuggle him.  I’ll be nice,” she says.

Farrah sits down and Omar hands me to her.  “Okay Farrah have fun.  I’m going to go watch Martha Speaks on Netflix. 

Farrah strokes me softly and mumbles words in my face, which I don’t understand.  I know she loves me, but she scares me all the same.  I heard them talking once about how the first bunny they bought from the pet store died after seven days.  They never figured out why. I heard Nadia the oldest, tell her mother that she thinks Farrah dropped the bunny rabbit.  I don’t want to be dropped.  I am too young to die.

Farrah just sat me down and is walking away. Maybe I will get some free time today to run around the room.  I love pretending that behind the couch is a tunnel I dug underground.  Sometimes they forget I am out of the cage until the mom notices my cage open and then finds me hiding.  She always gets upset when the kids leave me out.  She says I leave little presents everywhere.  Well, what is a rabbit to do?  When you gotta go, you gotta go, right?

Ugh oh, Farrah just closed the door to the room and is coming at me with some weird looking object in her hand. 

“Come here little rabbit,” she says to me.

I try to hop away, but she picks me up and puts me on her lap.

“It’s time for a haircut bunny,” she says.

“Haircut?  I don’t want a haircut!” I start to shiver.

“Should I bite her?” I think to myself. “No.” The mom said if I bit again, I was out the door, and frankly its scary outside.  I will just hold real still and hope she doesn’t cut my ear off.

Snip, Snip.  I see my fur fall from the top of my head.

“All done bunny,” Farrah says, as she picks me up and puts me back in the cage.

I am just glad to be alive and unharmed.  I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror installed on my cage.  I look ridiculous.  In place of my beautiful mane of fur is a flat top. After inspecting my new hairdo carefully, I conclude, it’s not so bad.  At least I can see a lot better with the fur out of my face and I look sort of macho.  Too bad there aren’t any hot babes around to check me out.

Attack of the Lizards

Finally, it rained enough today in Las Vegas, that it cooled down substantially.  I thought I would take advantage of the cool weather and go outside and sit on one of my lounge chairs in the back yard.  I was about to sit, when I looked down and there were two lizards already enjoying my chair.  I started screaming bloody murder when one of them proceeded to jump from the chair to the ground in front of my right foot. The other one had stayed put.  My husband, thinking that I was being accosted by someone, comes flying out the back door to find me standing on one foot like a flamingo statue with a look of horror on my face. 

"What the heck is wrong with you?" he yelled out. 

"It's a lizard!" I screeched, pointing at the lounge chair.
"A lizard?"  he asked.
The lizard on the ground darted past my foot and I again screamed.
"Stop yelling the neighbors are going to think I am over here killing you," Yehia said.

My son, Omar, who had been inside playing joins us outside to see what the commotion is all about.  He looks down and sees the lizard on the chair.

"Cool, let me get it mommy," he said.  Omar creeps up on the lizard that is still perched on my chair and proceeds to try to scoop it up.  The lizard takes off running and jumps off the chair to the ground.  My son does not give up easily and chases it up and over and under again until he finally has the lizard by its tail.  He is looking very proud of himself, when the lizard again tries to jump out of my son's hand, thereby losing its tail.  It lands on my sons shirt front, where it then proceeds to run up and down and around him and up his back.  It at was at this point that my son starts to scream and twists around in circles.

"Awww.  Get it off," Omar yelled out.

"Get that thing off him Tina," my husband shouted standing at a distance.

"You get it Yehia.  You are the man," I replied.

"I'm not touching that nasty thing," he said making a face.

All the while my son is running around in circles trying to get the lizard off of him.  Finally, the hero of the hour steps up to help.  My four-year old, Farrah reaches out and knocks the lizard to the ground, and in his haste to get away, Omar accidentally steps on it.

You would think that would be the end of the poor lizards life....but it wasn't.  Farrah picks it up and flips it over.  The lizard is still moving.  She exams him thoroughly.

"Look mommy, I see it's penis!" Farrah announced proudly.  I nearly choked on my own tongue when she said that, but of course I had to have a look.

"That's not its penis, Farrah," I replied.  "It's part of his guts."

Upon hearing that news, Farrah wrinkles up her nose and unceremoniously chucks the lizard across the yard, tailless and squashed.