How did I end up with Rats?

This is Romi, our first rat. Although she died quite a while ago she will always be remembered in all the photos we took of her.

We had several hamsters at the time we adopted Romi, in fact I wasn't even looking to adopt a rat. I had never even had a rat or considered adopting a rat. I have always been a hamster or mouse girl.

But that all changed when my neighbor moved in a few doors away from us and because really good friends with us. His girlfriend at the time had bought two rats and gave one to him. He really liked Romi and when she was smaller she would ride around in his large pants pockets. You know the kind that are all the rage these days on those huge baggie pants. Pockets large enough to fit a small trailer into...lol

She would poke her little head out, he would give her a sunflower seed and she would burrow back down in the pocket. He let Romi roam the couch and she never jumped ontot he floor. But he worked alot and she wasn't getting enough attention.

Ken told me that she would run over to the front of the cage whenever they came into the apartment and she wanted human company and one day while Ken was playing with Romi his friend asked him if he wanted to take her home. He thought about for a minute and said yeah, Mary will love her.

He gave us Romi, the cage, food and bedding. I'd never had a rat and I thought her tail was really going to ick me out, but it's alot softer than it looks and she was so sweet, and loved to be held played with, petted and loved our company.

After a couple of years though she started getting sick and I read everything I could on the internet and asked several vet's what I could do for her. It was then that I learned that rats live about as long as hamsters do. Only about 4-5 years, hamster living about 3-4 years.

Romi was already 3 years old and could not eat the hard seeds anymore. She didn't have the strength to crack them open. So I started feeding her the human foods that I read were alright to feed her. Scrambled eggs, cooked chicken, fruits vegies and of all things canned dog and cat food. She didn't care for the cat foods but she loved the Mighty Dog canned dog food. She also loved the jars of baby food.

She lived another 18 months eating those foods, but in the picture you can see how she was so old she started losing the hair on her nose and head.

In the last few months she just wanted to be held all the time. So we would all take turns holding her on a small towel and wrapping her in it so just her little head was peeking out and she would sleep in our arms until she was wanting something to eat or a drink of water and we would put her in her cage to do that and go to the bathroom. Most times she would just right back up on top of her house and start nudging the top of the cage open telling us she wanted to come back out and we would let her out

She was so spoiled but loved alot. She died one day while I was holding her in my arms. I had every intention of taking her to the vet's office and having her put to sleep but they said as long as she was eating, drinking and didn't seem like she was in pain, there was no need to euthanize her yet.

Then one day she had a seizure while sleeping in my arms and she died.

It's strange how some animals will go so fast while others will have a long lingering illness, and have to be euthanized but you just don't want to see them suffer. I'm glad she went as fast as she did.

But soon after she died we decided that we wanted more rats. She had been our first and we didn't want her to be our last, she showed us how loving and great a pet rat really was.

We can here you...on your cell phone

I wonder sometimes about the human race....because if the people I keep running into are anything to go by, we are all doomed. Seriously.

Last week I was in the grocery store, going about my own shopping..not talking on any cell phones where anyone could hear me...Because I don't have a cell phone.

Anyway, this woman was slowly meandering up and down the isles with her cart, all the time talking on her cell phone. Loudly. First, there's no need for everyone in a 3 mile radius to hear what you are talking about. Frankly Norma, we don't care what you had for dinner or what your best friend yelled out during sex last night. We really don't.

*From here on out I'll call dumbshit on the cell phone, Norma.*

So Norma is walking up and down the isles not really even putting much into her cart, but talking very loudly about how she and her husband like to 'experiment' with different positions in bed.
*I can't make this stuff up people*

Norma tells her friend on the phone that her husband is so 'big', *Yes, she said 'Big' louder than anything else in that sentence. She really wanted us to know her husband wasn't a pencil dick*
that he actually hurt her when he started going to town.

"ponders whether "going to town" is a euphemism for rough sex" I think it is...

Norma then laughed at something her friend on the phone said and as I walked past her I noticed a man behind her staring at her ass.

"I believe he was thinking about going to town." But I could be wrong. *shruggs*

I made my way out of the store, went home and tried to clear that conversation from my mind. But I don't believe there's a way to take back somethings that's already been introduced to your ears...unless you use a sharp pencil to dig it out...But I wasn't quite at that point...yet!

Another time I was in the doctors office waiting for my name to be called and this guy started talking to his friend on his cell phone. Now I was under the belief that people were suppossed to take their phones outside to talk, but he didn't.

He started telling his friend on the phone that yeah, he had a big one that the doc was gonna have to clean out because he couldn't reach it this time...it was on his ass. Oh and it really hurts when the nasty smelling pus comes shooting out of it.

*gag*
I looked at him, gave him the "if you don't shut the hell up I'm going to stuff my purse so far down your throat you'll have to sh*t it out in order to remove it...look" But he just kept talking.

If you find yourself in a social situation with any of these people...run! Run as fast and as far away as you can before you hear what they have to say to the person on the other end of their iphone. Because if you don't you might just regret it, like I did.

Pigeons and Doves...

For about a month now my hubby has been seeing a black pigeon in our courtyard and he or she is always with three Doves. So I started putting out bread for them and sure enough everyday, they have been coming and sitting in our courtyard and eating the bread.

That black pigeon and the three doves are always together. i wonder if the pigeon found the doves and raised them or vice versa. It's strange how they are always together.

The School System having to cut things out

Today on the news the Clark County school district said they have to cut millions of dollars out of the budget and have devised a surey that parents, students and residents can take to tell them where they would like to see the cuts taken from.

I just took the survey and some of the things they were thinking of doing are just a little nuts.
One of the questions asked if they should make the school walk zone 3 miles instead of two miles. Now let me tell you what this means.

Right now any child from kindergarten on up to 12th grade who lives less than 2 miles and right up to the 2 mile mark, has to either get a ride with their parents to school or walk. If the parents don't have transportation, they walk.

Kids who live more than 2 miles from school can sign up to get the school bus but the bus stop might be more than a few blocks from their home, so they would ahve to do some walking anyway.

Now let me tell you, when my daughter was in the 1st grade we lived exactly 2.1 miles from the school and we didn't have a car so I walked her to school every day and home every day. Even in the 116F temperatures. A few times she would get so over heated that she stopped and vomited on the way home and we would stop under a tree so she could cool down a little, but in temps as hot as that, there is no cooling down. So when it was really hot, I sometimes would keep her home so she didn't have a heat stroke on the way home in the middle of the afternoon.

Now they want 6 and 7 year olds to walk 3 miles in the 116 F temps of the summer? That's jsut not right and it's not healthy...a kid could die.

It would take us about an hour to walk home because she was so small and couldn't walk fast and it was hot as hell.

Eliminate high paying school board jobs, sports, and make it a 9 month school year again. But don't make it harder to get to and from school for those who don't have a car to get their kids to and from school.

Almost summer

The temperature has gone from 60 to 80F in a matter of days here. That's one of the things I hate about Las vegas, we don't have cool temps for more than a few days and we don't have really cold temps but we get the really hot temps.

I fully expect 90F by next month and in May it'll be ever hotter until June It'll be 116F. Oh joy.

We don't even get the nice changing of the leaves or anything ebcause we don't ahve those types of tree's. We have a bucket load of olive tree's that drop black olives all over the ground and we have cactus. I even have an alor vera plant out side that I've managed to keep from dying, mostly because it looks so much like a sort of cactus anyway. I don't even have to water it all that much.

Telephone by Lady Gaga and Beyonce

I just saw the music video for this song and all I can say is wth?
If you haven't seen it here it is...
http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/Lady+GaGa/Telephone+f%2F+Beyonce--218656764

I like some of Lady Gaga's music and I like some of Beyonce's music...I don't however like most of the music videos because they are weird. But when i saw this one I was thinking to myself...wth?

There is a huge double standard because these two women can make this type of video and you don't hear a damn thing about it but Adam Lambert kisses a guy on stage when he's singing or rubs his crotch in the face of one of the back up singers/musician's that were on stage and the shit hit's the fan all over the web, news and radio.

Frankly I think This music video is waaay more obscene than what Adam Lambert did on stage.

In this video they make it look like all guards in women's prison are butch lesbians and all women in prison are crazy lesbian's.

The music video is nuts and all the way through it I was thinking wth?

Neighbors

It's inevitable when you live in an apartment that some things are going to happen. People are going to make too much noise, someone is going to have a party, there are going to be shouting matches from other apartments and someone is going to be found dead, either from natural causes or from other....

Well that last one happened at my apartment complex today. He was my neighbor and lived just 2 doors away from me. His name was Ron and he was in his early 50's. He'd only been living here for about a year but he was a nice guy.

The manager placed a 30 day notice on his apartment door on the 3rd of this month because he hadn't come in to pay the rent. Then today my hubby, Ken went to his door and knocked on it because we hadn't seen him in a few days and the 30 days notice was still on his door. Today being the 12th, it was a little strange for him not to have taken it down by now.

When there was no answer to the door, Ken got a bad feeling and sniffed the door....sure enough there was a really bad,,, really bad odor coming from the apartment. This isn't the first time Ken has found a dead person in their apartment here, since he is the maintenance man here he has alot to do with the residents and routinely talks with many of them and when he doesn't see them he gets worried.

He went to get the manager and they unlocked th edoor, sure enough Ron was dead in his living room. The police and then the coroner came out and said it looks like he probably had a heart attack and he's been there for 7-10 days. very sad.

This is the 4th person Ken has found deceased in their apartment. It's stands to reason it's going to happen since we are all going to die at some time or another.

Drugs and Alcohol

Ever since hearing about Corey Haim's death, I've been seeing how people feel about drug addicts, drunks, ect...It truly pisses me off when an addict will get a free pass because someone thinks they have a disease, they can't help the way they act. They deserved better than what they got, or the real problem is they had an awful childhood and drugs were a way of dealing with their awful childhood or life.

Bullshit! Double bullshit!

They choose to pick up the pipe, the cocaine, the bottle of booze or whatever pill they are high on. They choose to keep doing it, they choose to lose control and they choose to do all the things that they did to keep getting the drugs in the first place.

It irritates me to no end when I hear people say, Oh he's drunk, he doesn't know what he's doing. Or He deserves a better life than the one he has now because of the drugs. Bullshit. They choose to do the drugs and I won't feel sorry for them. They choose to steal, rob people, sell their bodies, sell drugs and whatever else they are doing in order to support their habit.

I had a bad childhood, really bad. But I didn't turn to drugs or booze or blame my childhood on every bad decision I've made since becoming an adult. You're an adult now, act like one and stop sniveling over what has happened to you. What are you going to do with the rest of your life?

Only you can make it better and only you can make the decision to do the wrong thing by using drugs or alcohol. It's not like someone who gets a brain tumor and starts making bad decisions. They can't help having a brain tumor, but people can stop drinking or doing drugs.

After more than 40 years of heavy drinking my dad one day decided to stop...and that was it for him. He stopped.

My mom did the same thing a few years ago, although I think she drinks a beer now and then but I don't have to be around it, so I can't say much to her. It's her life.

I refuse to be around someone who drinks so much they can't control themselves. I'd leave a family member if they ever got that way and not be around them at all until they got their shit together. if they never did then that's their problem and I wouldn't have it around me or in my life.

There's only so much you can do for a family member who won't stop the drugs, alcohol, pills. If they want to ruin their own lives and they will, have no doubt they will. You have to let them and not help them at all. Don't be an enabler, don't help them until they stop the drugs, alcohol, pills. If that meant never tlaking to one of my family members again...I'm ready to do that. That's how strongly against it I am.

No kid deserves to be put through having to live with alcoholic parents. I don't think parents who drink on a regular basis should ever get their kids back. If you want to screw up your own life, go ahead and do it, but don't screw up your kids life in the process.

Yeah, it's a touchy subject for me....very touchy. And it pisses me off to no end.

MySpace sucks

I just tried to post a link to this blog from my blog on MySpace and the link keeps getting blocked because they said this site is full of adware...is a phishing site or has been reported for spam. Then at the bottom is says oh but there might not be anything wrong with the site, if you are trying to reach a blog they domain may not be working with MySpace to combat security problems so Myspace has decided to block the entire domain.

That means anyone posting a link to Blogger...from MySpace will have their link blocked. How stupid is that?

The airlines and why they need to be boycotted

I was looking at some articles and found this one about how this large passenger got thrown off a southwest airline by the pilot because the pilot thought he was so big he would be a safety risk.




http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2701617/director_kevin_smith_tossed_from_southwest.html?cat=9

Frankly, I think that kind of nonsense is insulting, degrading and legally wrong. If they want to start doing idiotic stuff like this they need to have it in writing beforehand. If on the website or in writing somewhere it said that passengers weighing more than xxx amount could not fly, then I wouldn't have as much of a problem as I do right now. But they don't have that in writing.

What they have in writing is that if a passenger is too big and cannot fit in a seat and buckle a seatbelt even with an extender, they may have to buy an extra seat.

Boycott the airlines. I've been saying it for years. Stop letting them get away with the foolishness that they get away with everyday. stop letting them keep passengers on the tarmac for 12 and more hours. Yes, there's a new law going in effect that says the airlines have to let passnegers off the airlines if the plane is going to be on the tarmac for I think it was 5 hours, but I read today in Yahoo news that 2 airlines are allready trying to ask for more time than that ebcause the busy times for airlines are coming up and they say there are going to be delays and if they ahve to let everyone off after a certain amount of time the flights will et even more backed up.

Well maybe they have a scheduling problem and need to fix it.
Boycott the airlines.
I'll keep saying it until people start realizing that, that's what it's going to take before they will stop treating passengers like baggage.

Been a great week

I know it's only monday (looking at clock) ok, so it's now tuesday and I've won a book by Jasmine Haynes called The fortune hunter, I won a $25.00 gift card to Borders and I got picked to host a Kraft House party and they are sending me a free Velveeta cheese and maxwell house coffee to serve to my guests.

I also got a bunch of free samples the past few days:
Free sample of Biofreeze
Free sample of John Freida Shampoo and conditioner
Free sample of dried plums
Free sample of Kashi cereal
Free coupon for Halo spots stew dog food (I'm giving it to my mom for her new dog)
Free coupon for a free sample of Next to Nature
and a free sample of hand sanitizer

I love finding the free sample sites and ordering the ones I can use or the ones I can give to my family. The dog food used to come in handy when I had rats, they would eat that stuff up. I even got a free sample (a whole can) of cat food and my daughter opened it up and left it in the courtyard for the cats that are always around here. The next day it was gone, so some lucky cat got it.

Awful times? Pessimistic days?

I've been told that I'm pessimistic, negative, see the bad in everything. Yeah, well that may be true to some extent. But different people see things differently. That's just how things work out.

To some people getting a flat tire would be awful, to others it would be a minor inconvenience and to others they would just shrug their shoulds and go about getting a new one without ever thinking about it.

I think it has alot to do with how people think about different situations that come up and how they handle it when their days don't go the way they plan. it also has alot to do with finances. Let's face it, if I had the money to get a tire fixed everytime one went flat, I probably wouldn't let it bother me all that much either. But when you live from paycheck to paycheck and have to wait until you get another paycheck in order to get a new tire or even a used tire, you are going to be stressed out about it.

Yeah, I might see the bad in mos tthings and I might look for the negative in most days but I've come to the realization that bad things are going to happen and it's how we handle these situations that are going to make how we feel about them when they happen.

I like to plan ahead for disasters and when I say disasters I mean all the little annoying things that can happen in our everyday lives, like flat tired, electricity going out, a 12 lb hail stone falling through my roof, a fire happening in my car or home. Yeah, most of these things aren't going to happen but it;s ncie to have a plan for them just in case they do, right?

WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyone who has been on the internet, in chat rooms, on MySpace, Facebook or written an email knows better than to type in all caps and use a disasterous amount of exclamation points.

Yes, if you use all caps we consider it shouting and can tell you are unhappy, really mean what you are saying or are just a dumbass and don't know any better.

Allow me to introduce you to the Caps Lock Key. It can be used to make all the letters big and you can actually press it again to type the right way. Use it! You see there, that was an appropriate use of an exclamation point.

Someone that constantly writes like this: I REALLY HATE IT WHEN SHE DOES THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OR
HAHAHAHAHAHA OMG THAT'S FUNNNYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, you people that do this need to stop. Right now. Do not keep doing it because it's pissing people off and they might just stop talking to you because you are aggravating the hell out of them.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Diet Craze

I don't know one women that sometime in her life, wasn't trying to lose weight. Even if it was ajust a little bit, she was dieting. I did it and then after years of being sick and tired of dieting I finally stopped.

There are all sorts of weight loss things out there right now.
Lapband- surgery where a band is put around the top portion of your stomache so you feel full sooner. But the down side is the hole to get the food through is tiny and so anything you eat needs to be tiny or in tiny pieces or it can get stuck.

Alli- weight loss pills. We've all seen them being sold oover the counter. They are said that they will help you in that for every 2 lbs you lose on your own the pills will help you lose another 1 lb. Just by taking a pill. Wow, that's amazing. What they don't tell you is that there are extreme consequences for not sticking to their low low fat diet.

If you eat a meal with too much fat in it while on Alli, you will Shite your pants. Blow brown gass bubbles all down your legs, leaving a brown, greasy, stinky, sludgy trail behind you as you walk to the ladies room to change into the extra pair of clothing you brought to work, because you know this might happen.

I heard it explained that after eating a high fat content meal the diarrhea will be so bad that it just leaks right out and there's nothing you can do to stop it because it's so full of the grease and fat you were not suppossed to be eating while on Alli.

HCG diet....I'm still trying to figure out what this one is about. They tell you to gorge yourself the first few days after getting a B12 shot so that when you start injecting yourself with the HCG it recognizes the fat in your body and starts to burn it. The only thing is after the first few days of gorging yourself you have to stay on a very strict 500 calorie a day diet.

500 calories a day is not a healthy diet. I've been to enough dieticians, doctors, health professionals to know that only getting 500 calories a day can back fire and right badly. With this diet you are essentially starving your body into losing weight and that can come back to bite you. Starvation reacts with the body in a bad way...your internal organs start losing fat and protein and they are being hurt by this. Hair will start falling out, your complexion may get worst and your hormones may become low or high which can make health problems worst.

In my opinion using pills, surgery, is the easy,lazy way out. And yes, I am a large woman and I know how I got this way. It didn't take one day to get this large and it wouldn't take one night to fix it, if I wanted to. I am fine with the way i look but for those of you who are not...the only diet that really works is diet and exercise.

A real diet would be to cut you calories down to 1000 a day and do some sort of exercise for one hour a day. be it walking, biking, stepping, hiking, lifting weights...whatever.
With that you should lose 1-2 lbs per week.
Yeah, it's not as fast as getting lap band, but you also won't have a surgical scar and you'll be able to eat more than one bite at a time for the rest of your life.

Tomatoes and Gift Cards

I've been sick with the flu since the 23rd, so I've been feeling pretty bad for the past week. But I felt a little better the other day when I got a phone call from the local radio station telling me that I had won one of the $10.00 Wendy's Gift cards that I had signed up for on their contest page.

I went down to the radio station and got the card, but it took a few days before I was feeling well enough to eat Wendy's. So yesterday when we went to Wendy's to spend my gift card, the total came to $18.97. I gave the guy my card and when he handed it back to me I saw on the register side that was facing me it said, amount due 8.97. So I pulled out my ATM card and started to hand it to him, but he pushed a button on the register and told me that my gift card had covered the whole thing.

I told him that I only had $10.00 on that card and the amount due in cash had said 8.97. But he assured me that the gift card had covered the whole things and when the register came out he even went to point out that I had $10.00 left on my card...according to the way he was reading the receipt.

Again I tried to point out that he was reading it wrong and that it was telling him I only had $10.00 on the card to begin with and that on the bottom where it said total, it said gift card total and then below that it said cash 8.97.

He just shook his head and said the receipt wouldn't have come out if the gift card hadn't covered the whle thing. I just shook my head and took our food and left. My hubby was shaking his head as well. He knew what had happened too....I didn't want this teenage boy to be shortchanged on his register but he was too stupid to realize what had happened and that I was trying to help him. Oh well...

Now on to the tomato part of my story.
While at Wendy's, I read a sign on the register that read something like...
There has been a great shortage of tomatoes and until this tomato shortage is rectified, no tomatoes will be added to any foods at Wendy's unless you specifically ask for them. There will also be a .50 extra charge for any tomatoes added to food until futher notice.

So if I had wanted a slice of tomato on my chicken club... it would ahve cost me .50 extra...seriously. They can keep their .50 slice of tomato.
I'm surprised they didn't have a sign up saying the keptchup would be extra too.

ASI or Advanced Secure Issuance cards

If you haven't heard of this it's the new ID and Driver's licenses that msot states are going to be getting. My state started issuing the new ID's in febraury on this year and they will continue to. The change is suppossed to prevent ID theft and fraud.

The new ID's will have changes to them and all that have a little gold star in the upper right hand corner will be ASI cards. You have to show more paperwork here now to get your ID, like two papers to prove you are a resident, like utlility bills and credit cards statements.

When I took my daughter to get her ID she didn't automatically get it they way I used to. They mailed it to her and it took two weeks for her to get it.

Things are a changin...