Creeping into Terminator territory.

I love the Terminator movies (yes, I love them all, but we all know T2 is the best one in existence). There's just something about them that makes you go, "oh.... maybe we should be aware of machines and their capabilities.... are we really safe with AI?!"

But most of the time you watch one and after a few hours or even the rest of the day (or night, depending on when you like to watch movies, I don't judge) you let those thoughts fall by the wayside. It makes sense.

Afterall, technology is everywhere in our lives and advancing every single day. In fact, I had the idea for this post and started it on my Iphone.... and finished it on a computer. I love old-fashioned ways (i.e. letter writing, visiting, etc.), but to say that technology hasn't made life easier and more convenient would be a lie.

But when is technology too much? Well.... I say it's too much when you literally can't function at anything all day simply because your technology has a "glitch."

Think about it.... how does your day go and how much do you really "accomplish" if your internet crashes?

Granted, these days we have to have some form of technology, whether it be for work or personal (I know that Netflix doesn't seem like a "must" but trust me, in my life it is), but I think maybe people are taking it a little bit too far.

Like, I realize that everybody seems to have cellphones these days (myself included), but do you really need a function on it to talk to, because you're too damn lazy to just look something up (Siri)? And yes, that kind of thing is handy for someone who has a form of disability and needs assistance.... but everybody does not need to be able to look at their phone and say shit like, "hey Siri, how many noodles can a dude fit into his nose before he suffocates and dies?" (And yes, I heard that exact thing at the grocery store between a man and his phone in the spaghetti aisle last week).

Do we really need for our things to talk to each other from ACROSS THE ROOM even though one of them ISN'T EVEN TURNED ON at the time? Is this really where we want to take it? Technology is so far advanced that it surpassed us a long time ago. In fact, it's so advanced that I don't know if we could ever even catch up.

Did we learn NOTHING from John Connor?! Afterall in the first movie he said, "The machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire. Their war to exterminate mankind had raged on for decades. But the final battle will not be fought in the future. It would be fought in our present.... tonight." I mean, I know y'all think I'm crazy and that my paranoia and conspiracy theories are leaking over into Randy Quaid territory, BUT is it really so crazy to think that our technology that is so far advanced already would be able to "think for itself" and decide that mankind was a threat unto itself? I know it sounds crazy, but I don't think it's that far fetched.

Let's just all hope that there are some John Connor's and Kyle Reese's walking around out there. And that I'm 100% crazy.... which let's be honest, isn't that far fetched considering that this will probably be posted tomorrow, but I'm writing it tonight and I've had ALOT of wine. You can thank my family and their Christmas gifts to me for that. Speaking of which.... I totally need to watch Terminator: Salvation tomorrow night. I love that damn movie (because Anton Yelchin, Sam Worthington, and Christian Bale make fabulous movies separated let alone together).

What was my point again?!

Christmas 2017: a company party, a three-day weekend, and lots of wine.

Remember on Friday when I was contemplating running away to join the circus? Well, you'll be happy (or incredibly sad) to know that I didn't join the circus, but it's still an option that I'm keeping open.

Friday was our annual Company Christmas Party and they decided to do it a little differently this year. Usually we have the party in our warehouse (we rent heaters and tables), but this year they (and by "they" I mean UR and Dani) decided to have it elsewhere.... so we rented the back room of a brewery in downtown Indy.

There were some other changes made too, but mostly we're sticking with location and food on this one.

I would like to go on the record of saying that usually we freeze our asses off at these parties. Yes, we rent heaters, but it's the end of December in Indiana, heaters or not.... WAREHOUSES ARE F*CKING COLD. And then we usually end up ordering and picking up wings, pizza, etc. There's a whole lot of setup and teardown involved and it usually ends up being alot of trouble.

But this year the only thing we had to do was rent the room, choose the food, buy the drink tickets and show up. (And we did minimal raffles like usual). Aside from the little snafu of them not realizing that our party was scheduled from noon to three (they had us down from three to six), it went smoothly. And no worries, they quickly set things in motion for our original party time.

We all proceeded to drink, talk, laugh, play darts, and find Where's Waldo? It lasted for a couple of hours and once everybody was ready to get out of there.... we just left. Because we didn't have to clean or put away ANYTHING. We just left. Which is probably my favorite part of it all (aside from getting lost on my way home.... don't ask).

And yes, my family had a nice Christmas. We went down to Aunt Poot's and Uncle D's for Christmas dinner (that we eat between noon and one) and exchanged a couple of presents and Momma and I came home. It was a three day weekend (with another one on the horizon!) and it was mostly just me, Momma, and Tayder chillin' at the house and getting alot accomplished in the way of settling in. That was my favorite part.... the "chilling" part. It was a good weekend. A cold one (it's about eleven degrees outside this morning), but a good one. (I forgot to take pictures of Christmas itself).

Merry Christmas and all that jazz that most people say at this time of year.

The horrifying moment when you're looking for an adult.

And then you realize that you're technically an adult.... but you don't feel like playing today, so you want to invoke the "I'm an adult, I can stay in bed and watch tv and eat junk and not get dressed all day, BECAUSE I'M AN ADULT THAT'S WHY" clause in your contract. Speaking of which, does anyone have a copy of this "being an adult" contract?

Lately work has been.... stressful.

Yeah, we'll go with stressful. And it's the kind of stressful that feels never-ending and you're pretty sure that if you crawled into the fetal position and drank your weight in cheap wine that you would feel better. (Plus, it probably doesn't help that we're all sick and feel like death either?)

I'm sure everybody has these moments. And I'm not saying that I don't like my job or that it's terrible or anything, but lately it's just a tid-bit.... overwhelming.

And I'm not the only one feeling like this by any means.

Literally every single person here is on edge and none of us seem to be dealing with it all too well. I would love to be one of those people that are all, "it's the stress of the holiday season.... once the holidays pass everything will calm down and go back to normal."

But.... this isn't a "holiday" thing. It's a "we're all on edge and our heads are gonna spin off at any given moment" kind of thing. None of us know who is going to snap first.... but we have a betting pool that is really anybody's game at this point.

This morning was no different (nor is the entire day for that matter), so to alleviate a little bit of stress and hopefully push us a little bit backwards from the edge, Danielle's husband Chris started a NERF war.... that she and I promptly won (then Tony came up, because he thought the ceiling was coming down from all of our running) and we all had a little talk and laughed a bit.

And that lasted about ten minutes. Now? We're back on the precipice. Send good vibes.... and liquor.... our way.

I wore elf ears upside down and pretended to be Spock.

A few years ago a couple of my aunts (and maybe Momma?) decided to start having our annual get together. The women in my family used to do it once every year around Christmas time, but back then they called it the "Sister Thing." 

It was called that, because out of Momma and her siblings, there are ten of them (if you count the oldest/craziest one that I've only met like twice in my life) with seven of them beings sisters. It's not called the "Sister Thing" anymore (because we're not all sisters and they thought it was weird.... even though more than just the "sisters" have always come), but they instead made the group name "The Girls."

And I know this, because Danielle was forced to make a FB group so that we could all "keep up" and post pictures, and communicate.... and we all use it about once a year.

When it first started they decided they wanted it to be once every couple of months, maybe meeting up for lunch sometimes and at a house another.... and that lasted about half of the first year. Then it went to twice a year for a couple of years (or maybe just one year?), and now it's at once a year. We all say that we're going to have lunch together or something like that and then the next thing we know a year has gone by.

Because we have no follow through and we're tired.

With the "once a year" way, we usually meet up at one of my aunts house and have lunch/snacks, do a "Dirty Santa" and maybe exchange holiday cookies, ornaments, and treats.... and sometimes participate in a craft.

There are always people that don't come (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND IT'S YOUR LOSS, BECAUSE WE'RE DAMN HILARIOUS), but we usually have a good time, some laughs, and it lasts a couple of hours. And then we go about our merry way and say shit like, "we're gonna have to do this more often" and we don't not do it, because we don't like each other (even though some of us like more people than others), but because once again that whole follow through thing.

This year we met up at Aunt Susi's (it's usually at her house.... always has been), and ate, did the "Dirty Santa" thing (and I'm still not 100% sure that we all know how that game works), and talked for a couple of hours. We didn't do a craft this year, but Dani made her stuffed mushrooms so I think we can all agree to chalk that up to a win.

Here's to next time.... probably.

The amount of pride was overwhelming.... and I may have teared up.

As most people know, this past July things were drastically changed in our lives. While I didn't go into in depth detail, the fact that everything was going to be different moving forward was a given.

There were alot of sleepless nights and anxiety attacks (if I'm being perfectly honest, there still are), but I've always known that my mother was a strong lady. She's shown me her strength my entire life. The fact that she's dealt with my brother for thirty-one years is just a testament to that (because my brother has always been a terror).

These past six months have been hard. And at times.... overwhelming.

From her being sick, to her surgery and readjusting to a different life, to moving in with her sister for two months and then moving into a new home, things have just been.... "on edge" putting.

But no matter what, we have continued to love, and hope, and learn.... and just be there.

And days like today make all of the other stuff fall to the wayside and truly put into perspective the amazing things that you have in your life.

Today.... Momma took the first steps that she's taken in over five months. She doesn't have her prosthetic yet, they're still fitting it and making sure that it's all correct, but they used a "sample" prosthetic to get the dimensions right and he let her walk.

(And yes, I totally took the day off of work to go with her, because I 100% didn't want to miss this moment).

She did amazing and her doctor/prosthetist is so incredible and nice (and brave, because he and his wife have five little girls all under the age of nine!). She was excited and for a minute I thought she was going to try to take off running! I may or may not have teared up a little watching her take those steps.... and I may have taken like fourteen videos of the three minute ordeal, but I assume this is what an enormous amount of pride feels like. And to say that I have pride in her is not even the beginning of it.

It's going to be a long road ahead, as it has been this whole time, but like I always say, we got this.

Moving: a tale of the girl who's LAN cable & curling iron got thrown away.

I've been talking about this whole moving process for around two (two and a half?) months now. Well, Saturday was the big day. Uncle D woke me up at what felt like the unGodliest hour imaginable, but what was really 7:45 am. We all got up, got ready (against our will.... I guess that's what Aunt Poot and I get for drinking two bottles of wine while watching MacGyver and Hawaii Five-0 the night before?), and headed out.

Momma and Poot stayed at the new house (that has wood floors and I never knew how much wood floors made everything echo, but I still love them.... I might actually get to hear in my own house now, because everything is amplified!) to wait for the cable (really internet, but whatever) guy and hang curtains and such and Uncle D, Greg and I headed over to our big storage unit to start moving our stuff.

Oh, and we have a couch now.

My cousin, J, was helping us and said that he would meet us over at the storage unit (we had two, one big one and one small and now we only have one condensed one which I'm good with, because we don't have a lot of storage space at the new house.... yet!), so we waited for him outside the gate. We figured that with Uncle D's truck and trailer and my cousins truck that it would take us about three trips/loads to get everything.... and that's when he pulled up in a 24 foot box truck.

Where did he get it? Well.... he got it from our work. (Did I mention we work at the same place? If not, we do.) My other uncle that runs the place said that we could use it to make the move easier and to say that it made me extremely happy wouldn't even be the half of it! We got it all in one load.... except for about four big pieces of furniture that we wanted moved to our other unit, because we don't have a place for it right now. You have never seen anyone be as happy as I was that even though no matter what moving sucks, but it was easier this time around. And hopefully, I'll never have to move again.

Now we have a million things to unpack and organize, we have to figure out what we want to keep and what we want to get rid of (we got rid of Grammy's chair.... we didn't want to, but it's kind of old and it's been in and out of storage for years and we would never have gotten that smell out of it), and you wouldn't believe the amounts of laundry that we have. We may or may not take it to the laundromat so we can whack it out in one fell swoop.... or I may just start laundry this evening and not stop until it's done. It really just all depends. It would be easier to go to the laundromat, but I kind of just don't want to leave our house since we're in it now. *insert laughter but also seriousness here*

The house is very nice and it's great having our own place again.... so just wish us luck for all of our future endeavors. And a little luck on this whole finding effort to actually unpack and organize everything wouldn't hurt either.