2 Facebook posts, texting and ended with a phone call to mom yesterday on her birthday plus got her a magazine subscription that she said she wanted and that hopefully was enough.  She gave me news of my cousin in Australia attempting to find out info on another extended family member and then said this individual was dissing her about her sons - my 2 brothers and I and how her family is "much better".  How do you tell a mother crap like that?  And her family is hardly much better with one that committed suicide and another that apparently wrote the entire family off and will have nothing to do with the whole lot of them. 

There aren't too many people walking the face of this earth, I think, that have the "perfect family". I certainly have never met any of them. Even people that put on their best face in church with their families there? Yea.  You find out everything isn't hunky dory behind the scenes.  That doesn't in any way  mean that I wish that upon everyone, it's just human nature.  Even Christ alluded to it in the Scriptures.  It just seemed appalling to me that this person took it upon herself to say that junk to my mom, they don't have a relationship and she really had no business.

Then she apparently said she was trying the reunion thing again.  I won't be going.  It's become obvious that my relatives aren't the greatest people on earth and I am not going to dump that kind of money on a trip to have a miserable time.  The best airfare is a bit over a grand round trip. That's with the searcher inputting the dates for you.  Specific dates? Go way up.  I could afford it but why?  I'd LOVE to go to Australia, but not to meet up with some miserable family that doesn't want to get along with each other.  I have internet friends that live over there that I'm sure I'd have more fun with - really complete strangers - than my own relatives. 

Anyway, I really wanted to spend more on my mom but she is very frugal and just doesn't think that way.  She just doesn't like to spend money.  So, for $39 bucks I got her a package deal of 3 subscriptions.  She wanted Better Homes and Gardens, so I got that along with a couple of other home type magazines replete with recipes and home fashion ideas and gardening tips.  It's a recurring annual subscription so if she likes it, I'll just let it go indefinitely.  I'd actually like to get her on some sort of wifi that would get her on the internet as much as she wants versus her limited data that doesn't get her much time on it at all. Perhaps it's best lol, but she does like getting on Facebook and looking around the internet. 

Well whatever. I'm on day 4 off.  I didn't ask for today off, I know my manager told me last week that she knows she has been working me hard, I guess she figured I'd like another day off? Yes and no.  4 days is 4 days of no pay.  Still, the paycheck coming tonight should be very good, next paycheck after that should be okay.  But I'm going to need to get back to work in order to work on 3 paychecks from now.  That pay period starts tomorrow and goes 2 weeks.  I can say that 2 days definitely wasn't enough so I'm happy for that.  It's really going to be hard to get up at whatever time to go back to work, lol.

Meanwhile probably alot of us are watching the progress of this hurricane.  They're predicting a potential stall and that, of course, would be devastating.  I hope these people have flood insurance and not "acts of God" provisions that leave them hanging.  I was looking at a map, whoever is going to Charleston may be in for a time, tho I would suspect just heavy raining. I think they're talking sometime today for a landfall or tomorrow morning.  I don't necessarily understand people staying in the zone where they believe it's going to hit tho.  I mean perhaps some of them don't have the means to get out, but some of them are just stubborn. I hope it doesn't end up with them losing life and limb.

So what to do today? 2 days in a row I was babysitting, that wasn't really that much fun because you're both responsible for a very young child and you don't get to get out and do anything at all. I mean, you aren't going to take a sick child all over the place.  I dunno if I want to go anywhere. Probably means I'll spend money and that isn't really that appealing right now.  The local theater is cheap, but they aren't having any showings until after 6:00 pm.  Weekday, small town, yea you probably are taking a loss opening up any earlier before kids can also show up with family. 

I might go to Walmart and see if I can actually get them to get me some fish.  Maybe stop at my favorite local restaurant and have a bit to eat and attempt to get my mind back into working phase. 

3rd full day off. Wouldn't have had it if I hadn't asked.  I always get this "we'll see what we can do" as a reply.  As if it's evil to want some time off once in a while.  Really, that's what it is.  There's a lot of work, there's not enough drivers apparently, but that will change.  At the end of the year, there will not be enough work and then, you either get shipped off somewhere like I was last year or you sit around and don't make any money I guess.  I'm not really in love with the idea of doing another blizzard stint, but I'll do it if I'm pushed hard enough.  Just that this time, perhaps another driver can go up there that didn't do it last time and is a new driver.

Lord only knows where I'll be sent off to tomorrow.

Today is my mom's birthday.  It's always a bit strange to have a family member having a birthday on what is the anniversary of one of the worst attacks on our own soil that has ever occurred.  And then there's this Cat-4 Hurricane barreling down on the Carolinas. If I were any of those people in the path of that thing? I would be getting the heyday out of there, in a fast hurry.

Some of that huge storm system seemingly hovering around Houston right now has come up this way and it's been raining all night long.  I'm watching a time line of the attack on the World Trade Centers on Fox News.  Some footage I've never seen before of the planes crashing into the buildings.  It's still just as sickening to watch today as it was to watch the events unfold before all of us in 2001.  But I'm not going to spend the day watching footage of it like I have every other year.  I've seen all of it enough times, I don't need to see it anymore.  It's a sad day in American History, the perpetrator has been killed, the nation moved on, took a while but it did. It was eerie to not see any airplanes flying in the sky for however long it was, months?  And the worst part was seeing those people jumping out of the building faced with either burning up alive or ending their own lives.  I certainly can't blame them for not wanting to have their flesh burned off of their bodies, I would like to hope that on impact, they didn't feel anything.

Moving on from that and honestly having had forgotten about mom's birthday until today, I am going to see about sending her some flowers at least and whatever she may want for her birthday.  My mind has been a bit cluttered with thoughts of what to do next, if anything in terms of this job and just life in general.