This describes exactly how I feel about Mondays…
R and I had a good weekend… Saturday we packed, cleaned, and he moved furniture… we worked and worked and worked… the house looks so much different… I just hope something happens soon… the new furniture arrangement in the living room isn’t near as comfortable as the old arrangement was… but now we have a better “flow” thru the living room… the open house was a success… our realtor said we had 4 different groups of people show up and each group had at least 3 or more people in it… so that’s always good!! One guy wanted to make an offer but he hadn’t been pre-approved at the bank yet so our realtor took him a loan app from the bank… I’ve got my fingers crossed… at least R and I know that we have done all we can and we did the best we could… we de-cluttered, moved furniture, and cleaned up… maybe something will happen soon…
Daylight savings time… I love it when we “fall back” an hour… it’s much easier for me to get out of bed when the sun’s up… and I love it getting dark earlier… especially when it’s really cold… but man, when the time first changes it takes me a while to get used to it… the kitties too… now I’m hungry at the “wrong times”… my sleep pattern is all crazy… and the kitties, besides them always being crazy, they’re crazier and now their meal times have changed… which only adds to the craziness!!! But we’ll get it all worked out!!
Yesterday was the race at TMS- Texas Motor Speedway… km, her husband, her sister and her husband, and others all go down and camp out… that has to be awesome!!! But the stands hold right around 200,000 people and that’s a whole lot of people!!! They said yesterday that you could fit 52 Texas Stadiums (where the Cowboys play) inside just the infield of the track!!!! Woah!!! That is huge and that is a lot of people… anyways, Carl sucked it up… bad… he had a problem from almost the beginning of the race and they didn’t get it fixed until it was too late for him to recover… there are only 2 races left and it doesn’t really look good for Carl winning the Cup Championship… although he did clench the Busch series Championship this weekend… very nice!!! Way to go Carl!!!
I’m starting to have second thoughts about going to Port Aransas this weekend… things have been pretty good between R and I lately… we had a really good weekend… and as corny as this sounds, I already miss him and I’m not even gone… the only time we’ve spent nights apart (since we met) was the night of our bachelor/ette parties and then when I was in Plano for my back surgery… plus I’ll miss the kitties like crazy!!! I’m not a big being-away-from-home person… I’m very much a homebody (read: more like a socio-phobe)… anyways, right now I’m really not wanting to go… I know it would be really good for me to go and get away but we’ll see what happens… plus, I feel bad leaving R here by himself… I know, I know… what is wrong with me?!?!
The price increase at the restaurant really seems to have helped, so far anyways… now it seems like our main problem is finding a waitress to work from 11-4… I thought that would be one of the easiest slots to fill… apparently I was wrong… last week we didn’t have an 11-4 waitress and right now we’re not sure if we’re going to have one today or what… it seems like it’s always something…
I suppose we’ll just have to see what happens and what this week brings… (hopefully this week is better than last)…

Stopping By

i'm still here... things are going, some days better than others... the middle of the week was better than monday and better than friday has been so far... i'm not sure if it's my bipolar-ness acting up or if it's just because i'm letting myself get so stressed... but then i wonder, does everyone feel this way or is it just me? do i just not have good coping skills? (well, i know i do need help in that area)... how do other people stay so calm? or at least come across as being calm?
the open house is sunday... r and i have been packing up some of the clutter at the house... he's been moving some furniture around to make the rooms look bigger... tomorrow i'm cleaning the house like there's no tomorrow... the restaurant seems to be doing better since the price increase... things between r and i seem to be getting better for the most part... we still have our days but at least we're working on it...
my back is still doing great!! no pain!!! it's been 3 months since my surgery and my back couldn't be better!!! it was a total success!! and i have realized that it is worth every penny to be pain free!!!
on a better note though, november 9th thru 12th i'll be in port aransas with the girls... there are 6 of us going total... let's just say that there is the potential for drama there... i'm excited though, it'll be really good to get out of town and get away for a few days... and it will give r and i some time and space... which i think we need... i don't consider me going to plano time away really... so i've got my fingers crossed that the open house will go good and that next week will fly by... keep your fingers crossed too...

...

The depression has crept back in (pretty bad)… it’s been back for a while which somewhat explains my absence from here… I’m just so tired of being down and being sad (well, if I’m not sad I’m extremely happy- the perks of being bipolar)… it seems that there’s a lot going on right now and most of it makes me sad… it seems the good things are few and far between… the restaurant isn’t making any money, it’s not even paying for itself… we’re still having to borrow money to keep the restaurant open… and we can’t keep borrowing money much longer…we are about tapped out… but we did have another price increase over the weekend which should help… R and I have talked about the restaurant and that we can’t keep borrowing money so I kinda feel like this might be our last big push or effort to keep the restaurant going… I hate to even say this… it makes me feel like a failure… and I know R would feel that way… I just keep thinking, what were we thinking? Before we opened the restaurant things were so good… we were almost debt free (except for our house) and now we’ve gone right back to where we were in the beginning with all our debt… he’s really trying hard to make the restaurant work since we’ve had our talks and it breaks my heart because I’m so scared it’s not going to work… on the good side though, not owning our own business would be so much more stress free… I wouldn’t have to work all weekend long… R wouldn’t be as stressed as he is now… and he would be bringing home a paycheck which means we wouldn’t just be living on mine… I miss him, the old him, I miss doing stuff on the weekends, not being so tired and stressed all the time, I miss the way things were…
Which leads me to moving… I would really like to move to iowa park but I’m not sure if that’s going to happen… right now we’re still waiting on an offer on our house… we’re in contract on one in iowa park but it’s contingent with us selling our house… I’ve read that home sells slow way down before Thanksgiving and don’t usually pick back up again until closer to Spring… I’m stressing that… our realtor is having an open house on Sunday so maybe that will generate some interest… I’m stressing that because there is so much stuff that we want to do to the house before the open house but I feel like we have no time… and a lot of it is stuff that I can’t do… moving furniture and stuff like that… I am going to try to get some stuff packed up in boxes so maybe that will help…
As you’ve probably picked up from earlier, our finances are super tight… living on just my income is extremely hard… to be honest, I have no idea how we’ve made it as long as we have… last week I opened the mail up and discovered that even though my back surgery was in network apparently some of the doctors in the operating room were out of network (which I didn’t know, I assumed that since the hospital and my dr. were in network everything/everyone else would be) and now I owe the back institute a little over $8,000 on top of the other medical bills I’m trying to get paid off… I’ve got a little over $11,000 to pay off, just for my back… and I am stressed!!!
And to top it all off, R and I aren’t getting along so good… ok, things have actually been really stressful and we haven’t been getting along good at all… Sometimes things will be ok but for the most part it’s been hectic… we’ve talked… he’s not happy, I’m not happy and I’m not sure what we need to do to make us happy… I said I just want things to go back to the way they were before and he said that he doesn’t think that’s possible… so I have no idea where that leaves us or what to do…
All I know is that lately I feel like a failure, like I can do nothing right and my whole life is crumbling down around me… I know it’s not and that things can always be worse but right now I’m having a hard time really embracing that… so here’s all my “dirty laundry”… keeping it in wasn’t helping so maybe getting it out will help…

Hhhhmmm.....

Drats!!! I had a really good blog going until I hit some random combo of keys and it deleted it all!!! And oh-so-smart me hasn’t figured out how to “recover” a lost blog, if that’s even possible… so now I’m starting over…
I seems like it’s been forever since I’ve blogged about anything other than my back… my back has pretty much been consuming the majority of my thoughts… I just keep thinking, am I really doing the right thing? It’s hard for me to not question myself when so many people say things along the lines of, you’re having BACK surgery??? I don’t think I could ever do that… I have no response for that… I’m just thinking, you know, I don’t think I would ever say something like that to someone who is having the procedure done, or is at least seriously considering it… (right now that would be like me saying, you want to have KIDS??? to someone who’s already pregnant… right now my motto is: cats not kids)… I’m already scared to death and nervous as hell about it… Mom and I go down to Plano again on Monday for our “teach and learn” on the surgery, to get fitted for my back brace, and then to have all my pre-op tests done… I’m going to have the surgery done though… considering my only other choice is to live with it… having the surgery is the best choice I have…
On other lines though… I only have 4 days of work left… I’ve been training J since he’s going to be me while I’m out… I’ve been working on a “list” of everything I do and it seems like I’ll think of one more thing to add which then just leads to four more things… I just hope I’m doing a good job training him… I’m worried about that but it’s not like he can’t just call me… I just don’t want T thinking I did a horrible job training him…

A Positive Note: Tuesday, July 31st is our 1 Year Anniversary (of being open) at the Cedar Tree!!!! I think something like 90% of most businesses don’t survive the first year, YEAH!!! We made it!!! Granted, we still have a long way to go but that’s ok!! We are changing prices today though… our prices now are way old… we’re not going up on everything though… one of our competitors had a price increase this last week but it was a major increase and we were slammed this week… it was insane!! But like I said, we’re not raising prices much…

I suppose I should go shower now so that I can start laundry as well as my ten mile long list of things to-do this weekend… in addition to the normal stuff, I have the menu changes to do as well as two tax reports to get together and get ready to mail Tuesday… if I was working Monday I’d just do them then but I’m not and I’m not sure what Monday’s going to bring so I figure doing them this weekend is probably the safest bet… so I’m off to get this party started…