FedEx...oh how I hate them

I just want to say that if I could I would pooh on FedEx. When Michael worked there it was the worst. To start off he would barely have time to come home right after leaving school and driving through traffic, to stop by home to have me drive him to work so that I could go to my crappy job and pick Michael up after he was done. He was scheduled to be done at 10:00 (I think) but I would fall asleep in the parking lot and he would usually get in the car by midnight. The poor boy was under worked and under paid. He was told he would be getting paid more than he actually was. He was so worn out and I was working two jobs so that we could get in a place where he could actually quit. He worked there for about two or three months and it was the worst. I had never seen someone so worn out and so tired....ever.
Well, Michael got the sweet relief when we moved to Emeryville. After a couple of weeks of waiting we traveled all the way to Benicia to get his paycheck. "Oh we are sorry we just put your paycheck in the mail. Even though today is pay day we didn't know if you were coming." Ok, so that is kind of valid but because of the stupid post office we didn't actually receive this MUCH needed check until about a month later.
Now, it's almost the end of March and guess what...we still have yet to receive his W-2. They sent us some lame thing about a small settlement to our right address but can't seem to send our W-2 to the right address. We have tried calling number after number. It took a long time, but we finally reached the right person. We called her several times and left messages. When Michael finally, actually, talked to her all she could say was, "oh I was planning on calling you back. Your W-2 should be to you in 7-10 business days."
GRRRR.....Michael is supposed to have his FAFSA done by April 3rd but it's hard to do it without taxes finished. a;sdfkha;sdkfjadsi;ohga;woeighaw;eiogh is the only way I can describe my frustration with FedEx.
Oh, and next time you think about sending a package with them let me tell you this...Michael said that pretty much everyone he worked with enjoyed throwing and stacking the packages extra hard that said fragile.

Going on a Trip

I recently was able to take a flight to SLC, Utah to see family and celebrate the new marriage of my cousin, Beka. I always get really anxious when I am flying. I'm always sitting there and imagining the worst. This time, though, I was able to look at flying as something to laugh about.
I start with the time we "have to" arrive at the airport. They suggest two hours before your flight so you can check-in luggage and go through security. I'm 100% convinced that in reality this is a giant scam to get people to buy their expensive food and magazines. We will return to this later. So now that you're at the airport, super early, you must go through security. Here, you are forced to strip down to socks and underwear. They then make you go through the scanner to make sure there is nothing hiding under your skin. They will even pull you aside if you "look suspicious" to go through your bag. I will have you know that at the age of 13 I was pulled aside.
So, after clothing yourself you set off for your terminal. As you walk you hear the annoying sounds of everyone's wheels as they roll across the floor. For some strange reason you are anxious to get to your terminal, even though you will be sitting there for at least a hour and a half, so you hurry through the crowd to get there. When you find your terminal you frantically look for a seat. If you are traveling with someone you might as well forget about sitting next to them. For some reason all the lone riders have beat you there and are each sitting every other seat so there are no two seats together.
Now that you are seated you pull out the three books and two magazines that you brought to keep you entertained. You always start with the book in hopes that you'll get wrapped in it and the time will fly by. But you are interrupted about every two minutes by the clam voice reminding you not to smoke in your terminal. After enough interruptions you decide to go for the magazine. It's easier to get interrupted while reading one of those. It doesn't seem to take long, though, that your magazine is wildly uninteresting and that you are starting to feel restless. You want to go wonder around but there's a pretty good chance that you will loose your seat and you have to haul all of your luggage around with you. But the restlessness gets to be too much and you stand up and head off.
As you're walking through the airport you get the thrill of people watching. You can see hundreds of people in hundreds of different situations. You see the young family with mom clearly pushed to her edge as her son is saying for the nine hundredth time, "Which plane is ours?" Then there's Dad digging his nose deeper in the newspaper in hopes to avoid the "please help me" look from his wife. Then we have the traveling business man. He's there on his laptop doing work while on his iPhone taking an obviously important call. Then, my favorite, the people heading to Hawaii. No matter where you are there is always a bunch seeming to head there. They're all sitting in flip flops and the most Hawaii-ingy shirt they own. They seem to mention that they're going to Hawaii every other ten minutes-as if it's not obvious enough.
So , after people watching you start to notice some shops up ahead. Inside you see everything you could possibly want. They have every magazine in the world, along side big bags of candy, peanuts, and a lot of books. They also have bottles and bottles of water, soda, juice, and gatorade. You remember the boring magazine you have and are suddenly thirsty and in the mood for something sweet. So, you make your way over to the candy and such but your sudden cravings are covered by shock....every thing costs more than your plane ticket. Ok, slight exaggeration, but slight. I can't believe they can charge $5.00 for a bottled water. Are people really that desperate to get water that the stores can jack up the price that much? I guess so, considering they don't let you bring any type of liquid into the place. It really just blows my mind!!!
Well, after a lot of wondering and a little bit of shock therapy you realize it's getting close to your "take off" time, so you head back to your terminal. Every flight is different of how they load people on and how you get a seat. Southwest gives you a letter and number based on what time you checked in. You then have open seating and are free to sit where ever you please. On my flight home I was the 9th to last person to board. I was forced to sit in the very back of the airplane because every row was sat...person next to window, open seat, person next to aisle. It's really inconvenient to ask someone to move over one seat when all their crap is already spread out in the "in between" seat. Don't these people know that it's an airplane packed with people....just sit next to the stranger they are not going to bite!
So, you are seated and buckled in. The flight attendants start to show you the safety precautions as the plane is moving. I noticed, yesterday, that I was the only person paying attention. So, if there was an accident, I guess I would be the only one to know what to do. You are now forced to sit next to a stranger for at least an hour and a half, if not more, while the plane, for all I understand, magically flies through the air. You try your book again or attempt to sleep on the most uncomfortable seats you have ever slept on. For some strange reason, you impatiently wait for the smallest bag of peanuts you have ever seen in your life. Someone sneezes and you think how gross it is that their snot is just floating around waiting to find someone else to enter into. Kids are starting to get restless and run up and down the aisle or start to ask if we are there yet. Pretty much, it's the worst experience of your life.
The plane starts to land and there is always turbulence. You also wonder why the flight attendants don't have to sit in their seat belts if we do. Once you've landed and pulled up to the gate you take off your seat belt in relief. Then everyone stands up at the exact same time to try and exit at the exact same time and everyone is congested for a good ten minutes. Finally, you are able to exit. As your walking back through the airport waiting to find whoever it is you are meeting, you, for some crazy strange reason, think to yourself...man, I love to fly.

Sick of the Student Life

If any of you read Michael's HILARIOUS blog you would have read that we never eat out. The thing is we never eat out, never go out, never buy new stuff, buy crappy food (chicken and rice only) at the grocery store, and never rent movies (unless they are free On Demand). The thing that sucks most about all of this is it's all stuff I LOVE to do. Eating out is just about my favorite thing in the whole wide world. I would seriously eat out every single day for every single meal if I could. I just love the idea of picking an item off a menu and having it served to you while you enjoy your time with who ever you are with. I wouldn't even mind sitting by myself and reading a book or pondering my own thoughts while I was out.
As for the grocery store, I try to buy stuff that is cheap but it really always is chicken and rice. Poor Michael is forced to force feed himself chicken made 100 different ways. I try to throw in some pork chops every once in a while but I try to make them few and far between so that we can enjoy them for a longer amount of time. I also try to make them on days when I feel really culinaryific (it's a word) so that they come out really good. But as for inbetween dinner...and next day's dinner there is never anything to eat. We have managed to buy a butt load (sorry about the swear ;)) of ramen noodles and tuna fish but as you can imagine this gets old. I also bought one of those big boxes of Honey Nut Cherrios from Costco but Michael doesn't really like them and we ran out of milk. Every once in a while I buy Hot Pockets from Costco. They are only $10 for like 20 but as you can imagine we go through them quite quickly. I do have lunch meat and PB and even J but it's getting hard to eat this things for about 3 meals a day. Michael is lucky, as am I, I guess, to receive a sandwhich or soup from Panera Tues-Sat. I do get a free meal from work and split it in two so that Michael can enjoy it, not just me.
As for buying new stuff. I have one pair of jeans that fits, another pair that are kind of tight, and a couple of pairs of pants that are odd colors and don't go with anything else I own. Most of my stuff was bought from a thrift store...which I'm not complaining about, I love thrift store clothes....but they wear out faster than I would like. Poor Michael has one good pair of jeans that he wears until they can stand up on their own. He then has one day to do laundry and has to either sit in his G's while he waits or wear his shorts...which are also normally dirty. All of his clothes, except for this pair of jeans, he has had since high school. They are luckily holding up and he does like them but I can't even remember the last time he got a new shirt. Ok, scratch that...he bought one when he saved up his pennies and often gets some from school. As for shoes; my one "nice" black pair has a hole in the bottom of them and it makes things interesting for when I have to walk in the rain. My tennis shoes I've had for 6 years now. They hurt to run or walk long distances in (which is what I use them for) and are slowly falling apart. I have one pair of church shoes, which is I guess all you really need, but they don't match some of my dresses. I pretty much go through three outfits at church. Luckily, no one notices but me. There is only one piece of furniture in our place that wasn't put in our hands used. Our bed has a dip in the middle, considering it belonged to someone who was single, and the "bed frame" that it sits upon is broken.
We turned on our heat for about 1 1/2 months since we moved in here (almost 1 year). The only reason we even did it at this time was because our poor iguana was freezing his tail off. Our TV is becoming so bad that we can't see a lot of writing that is on the screen. This may be pish posh to some but we LOVE sports and like to see the score of the game we are watching. The stand that it sits upon is so lame and I swear it makes our dvds look messier.
To top it all off houses are at an ALL TIME LOW. You can buy a house here for only $200,000 (sometimes even less) more than what it is in Idaho. For those of you who don't understand that, it is totally amazing. But since we are living the lovely student life we don't know where we are going to end up. Michael has no idea where he is going to get a job. So, we can't buy a house because that would be stupid.
Now that I've complained to all end I do want to say that I'm greatful for the opportunity Michael and I have and have had to go to school. We have been very blessed to go to school exactly where we want to go and have the student loans to get there. I'm glad that we are knocking it all out now so that it's not drug out even longer or when we have little chicklets making it a little bit tougher to live on such a low income. To those of you who are living the student life and have kids...bravo....I have no idea how you do it. Also, there is only a little teeny tiny bit over a year left. Then Michael and I will both have degrees and career to do. I will finally be able to be the thing I want to be more than even a cake decorator; a mom. Michael will be able to consume himself into something that he loves and feel good about the fact that he is supporting the most beautiful family in the world. I know we don't have kids yet but I already know they are going to be the cutest/ most beautiful. Sorry to those that are disappointed. Finally, just because we don't have the money we want right now we still manage to have a good time. We do go to Taco Bell to eat out and I'm a chef so can make pretty rockin restaurant quality food. Sometimes even better. I'm lucky enough to have a husband that doesn't ever complain about anything I make. He graciously eats it even if it's not his favorite. He is also really good about making poor people food. He will mix whatever there is in the fridge, throw some Taco Bell hot sauce (which is what we use to save money on salsa) on top, and call it a meal. I also realize that no matter how much money we make I will always want more to buy more crap that I don't need. But still the day that Michael is hired on for is first REAL job I will be smiling from ear to ear from excitement. And, to celebrate, we are going out to eat.

Understanding Myself

Ever since I can remember I have always tried to figure out other people. I try to figure it out instantly so that I can know whether or not I'm going to get along with them. I hate wasting my time of hanging out with someone that I don't even like or have nothing in common with. I would rather have fun and be able to laugh.
Michael was someone that I didn't have figured out all the way at first and, surprise surprise, I'm still figuring him out! But there was something inside of me that made me want to spend every minute of my life with him. I've always had fun when I am with him. He always manages to make me laugh harder than any other person I know and seems to understand me in a way that only a husband can. Even though that second part has come later the making me laugh thing always kept me interested.
Lately I've been trying extra hard to figure Michael out. I've managed to find out, over the last almost 3 years, what makes him tick...for the most part. I know his likes and dislikes. I know what makes him laugh, cry, get angry, get frustrated, all that junk of stuff. But I'm still trying to really get to know him. I think I want to know him like a couple knows each other after 50 years of marriage. But I've realized that I won't know him like that until another 48 years from now. Through all of this figuring of Michael out I've been able to stop and realize that I don't know much about myself. What is Luanne like? What kind of music does Luanne like? What is her favorite movie. Also, I've always wondered what makes me mad or sad. Then the reality of all this hit me, I didn't know. It seemed like every thing just made me mad and the only other emotion was happy. The happy part hardly ever showed itself and is still trying to call for some more time on the field. But I've learned that there are other emotions out there. For instance there is sad, embarrassed, hurt, frustrated, content, and some other ones that I'm still discovering.
Through this discovery of new emotions I've learned to use them. So even though I'm not always happy I'm sometimes sad or hurt or even frustrated. Because I'm recognizing this in myself I'm becoming a better person. Now I don't lash out in anger about everything that makes me not happy. When I'm feeling feelings of sorrow or empathy I just feel those and no thoughts of anger even cross my mind. Now, poor Michael, can actual joke around with me about the weird things that I do with out me getting upset at him. I can say to myself, "hey Michael is making fun of me to have a laugh. It's ok to be embarrassed but laugh along with him."
Another thing that has benefited from understanding myself is it helps me understand Michael better. So when something happens to Michael and I, I can recognize that I'm feeling upset and understand more of what Michael is feeling.
It's so exhilerating (wow the computer says I spelt that right) to know this new side of me. I hope that those around me can see that I am getting to know myself better and it's making me more CONTENT..yes new emotion.
So maybe I still can't say what my favorite movie or favorite type of music is. But what I can say is that I know where my emotions are coming from and how to react to them.