So...

Since I call this thing "Who Knew", thought I'd post things I say "Who Knew" about.

"Who Knew" thy was a pronoun?!?!? (Thank you Soap Opera Digest crossword puzzle)

To my heathens with love ... Mom

I 'borrowed' this from a site a friend sent me. ;-)


J

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This little 'rant' was sent to me by a good friend and at the end of reading it, I was laughing so hard, tears were streaming down my face. It is a long one, but worth the read. Enjoy.
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When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning, uphill BOTH ways... yadda, yadda, yadda.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

BUT NOW THAT I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damned Utopia! And I hate to say, it but you kids today, you don't know just how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!! There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter... With a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3's or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and screw it all up!

And talk about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11! Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

Don't get me started on the cell phone for kids issue. We have all fallen into the trap of "it's for their safety". But it is amazing that we came and went and never had a phone on us and we all lived. A cell phone, hell, back then phones at home still had cords on them. Imagine being tied to one spot. Roaming charges... yeah, we had those... when we strayed too far from home we got charged with it and got our butts beat... there are some roaming charges for you!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "asteroids" and the graphics sucked a$$! Your guy was a little square! Youactually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever, and you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE !

Nowadays kids have a million activities after school and on the weekends that they need to be taken to. When we were young, our Mom's didn't take us anywhere, except to the grocery store (and back then they didn't even have to take us in, they could just leave us in the car!). Heck they didn't even drive us to school... Your transportation was your stinking little feet.

Not to mention they would never have paid money for al of those activities. We were told, "What do you think? We are just made of money?" The answer was no, and we walked to where we wanted to go.

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no on screen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your a$$ and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards!

And now there are DVD players in the cars! God forbid they just stare out the window like we did. Now Mom's can't say, "If you don't behave, " I am going to come across this seat and beat your butt". No, because they would hit their heads on the damn DVD player! And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire... Imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that Stupid Jiffy Pop thing and shake
it over the stove forever like an idiot. That's exactly what I'm talking about!'

You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!

Worth passing around...

I got this email tonight and I thought it kind of ironic that there is a can of this stuff currently on my desk, within reach of all my kids. Who knew?!?!?


Verified at snopes.com - http://www.snopes.com/toxins/dustoff.asp


Subject: Dust Off - Please Read to the End

First I'm going to tell you a little about me and my family. My name is Jeff. I am a Police Officer for a city which is known nationwide for its crime rate. We have a lot of gangs and drugs. At one point we were # 2 in the nation in homicides per capita. I also have a police K-9 named Thor. He was certified in drugs and general duty. He retired at 3 years old because he was shot in the line of duty. He lives with us now and I still train with him because he likes it.

I always liked the fact that there was no way to bring drugs into my house. Thor wouldn't allow it. He would tell on you. The reason I say this is so you understand that I know about drugs. I have taught in schools about drugs. My wife asks all our kids at least once a week if they used any drugs. Makes them promise they wont.

I like building computers occasionally and started building a new one in February 2005. I also was working on some of my older computers. They were full of dust so on one of my trips to the computer store I bought a 3 pack of DUST OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer. A few weeks later when I went to use one of them they were all used. I talked to my kids and my two sons both said they had used them on their computer and messing around with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them. On February 28 I went back to the computer store. They didn't have the 3 pack which I had bought on sale so I bought a single jumbo can of Dust Off. I went home and set it down beside my computer.

On March 1st, I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my wife went down and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 5:30 am the next morning Kathy went downstairs to wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He was propped up in bed with his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She called to him a few times to get up. He didn't move. He would sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell back asleep. He was never easy to get up. She went in and shook his arm. He fell over. He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was dead.

I am a police officer and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse and she had never heard of this. We later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy, that only the propellant from the can of Dust off was in his system. No other drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1 AM. I found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kids ages 9 through 15. They even have a name for it. It's called dusting. A take off from the Dust Off name. It gives them a slight high for about 10 seconds. It makes them dizzy. A boy who lives down the street from us showed Kyle how to do this about a month before. Kyle showed his best friend. Told him it was cool and it couldn't hurt you. Its just compressed air. It can't hurt you. His best friend said no.

Kyle was wrong. It's not just compressed air. It also contains a propellant called R2. Its a refrigerant like what is used in your refrigerator. It is a heavy gas. Heavier than air. When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out. That's why you feel dizzy, buzzed. It decreases the oxygen to your brain, to your heart.

Kyle was right. It can't hurt you. IT KILLS YOU. The horrible part about this is there is no warning. There is no level that kills you. It's not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go randomly, terribly wrong. Roll the dice and if your number comes up you die. IT'S NOT AN OVERDOSE. It's Russian Roulette. You don't die later. Or not feel good and say I've had too much. You usually die as you're breathing it in. If not, you die within 2 seconds of finishing "the hit." That's why the straw was still in Kyle's mouth when he died. Why his eyes were still open.

The experts want to call this huffing. The kids don't believe it's huffing. As adults we tend to lump many things together. But it doesn't fit here. And that's why it's more accepted. There is no chemical reaction. no strong odor. It doesn't follow the huffing signals. Kyle complained a few days before he died of his tongue hurting. It probably did. The propellant causes frostbite. If I had only known.

It's easy to say hey, it's my life and I'll do what I want. But it isn't. Others are always effected. This has forever changed our family's life. I have a hole in my heart and soul that can never be fixed. The pain is so immense I can't describe it. There's nowhere to run from it. I cry all the time and I don't ever cry. I do what I'm supposed to do but I don't really care. My kids are messed up. One won't talk about it. The other will only sleep in our room at night. And my wife, I can't even describe how bad she is taking this. I thought we were safe because of Thor. I thought we were safe because we knew about drugs and talked to our kids about them.

After Kyle died another story came out. A Probation Officer went to the school system next to ours to speak with a student. While there he found a student using Dust Off in the bathroom. This student told him about another student who also had some in his locker. This is a rather affluent school system. They will tell you they don't have a drug problem there. They don't even have a dare or plus program there. So rather than tell everyone about this "new" way of getting high they found, they hid it. The probation officer told the media after Kyle's death and they, the school, then admitted to it. I know that if they would have told the media and I had heard, it wouldn't have been in my house.

We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs. Using Dust Off isn't new and some "professionals" do know about. It just isn't talked about much, except by the kids. They all seem to know about it.

April 2nd was 1 month since Kyle died. April 5th would have been his 15th birthday. And every weekday I catch myself sitting on the living room couch at 2:30 in the afternoon and waiting to see him get off the bus. I know Kyle is in heaven but I can't help but wonder If I died and went to Hell.

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This Officer is asking for everyone who receives this email to forward it to everyone in their address book, even Law Enforcement Officers.

The Week From Hell!!!

It all started Monday night when my 12 year old daughter came home from a 3 week visit at her father’s house. She called me from Atlanta crying…she had a headache, her throat hurt and she was cold and shaking. I wanted to hurt someone!!! My kid calls me sick and there’s nothing I can do about it because she’s hours away from me. I was NOT happy.

Any the way, she gets off the plane and I could tell right away that she had a fever. She was really pale and her checks were red. I also looked down her throat and one of her tonsils was covered in white. Mom diagnosed her with strep throat. We got back to the hotel and she had a fever of 102.4. When I gave her Tylenol, she didn’t even make it back to the couch before she threw up. Lovely!

Now it’s Tuesday and I’ve taken her to an urgent care clinic. Doc says strep throat and gives her a shot of penicillin in the arse. She was not happy. lol Even today, Sunday, she still has a bruise at the injection shit. So we go back to hotel and all is well.

Until Wednesday that is. It’s about 4:00 AM and she starts throwing up. I called the clinic and asked if there was anything over-the-counter that I could give her. Nurse said no and that I needed to bring her back in. Back to the clinic we go. This time they draw blood and diagnosis her with an ear infection and say her WBC is leveled. They give her Zithromax and Phenergen for the nausea, and send us on our way. Wednesday night wasn’t that bad, only she started complaining that her stomach hurt.

So Thursday morning I called the clinic…AGAIN! Nurse says doc wants an ultrasound and an x-ray. We head to St. John’s hospital and the diarrhea kicks in. It’s almost like it’s involuntary. She stands up, she goes. She sits down, she goes. This is not good. Both the ultrasound and the x-ray came back with ‘insignificant findings’…meaning all is well, but I had to go back to the hotel to find that out because no one at the hospital would tell me. I talked to the doc and he said that since stomach pain wasn’t the reason I took her to the clinic yesterday, he wanted to see her again. Ok fine. Back to the clinic we go. Doc examines her stomach and he looks me right in the eye and says, “I don’t like this. Go to the emergency room.” So I’m thinking I have enough time to track down Tony and drop the other 3 kids off. Did I mention that they were also with me this whole day?!?!? Anyway, doc says he’s calling the emergency room and letting the doc there know what’s going on. I said, “I have to go now?” He said, “Right now.” Lovely!

We get to the ER…Did I mention that at this point she’s in so much pain that we’re going by wheelchair everywhere? Not fun…So the ER doc wants to do a CAT scan. I know that this means an IV and such. My poor baby! She’s been such a trooper for days. Didn’t cry over the penicillin shot, didn’t cry over having her blood drawn, and now she has to have her blood drawn again , get an IV and get a CAT scan. To make it worse, she had to drink two HUGE cups of Berium for the scan, but again, like a trooper, not a peep out of her. She actually had to have her blood drawn twice. The first time was just a blood draw. The second time had to be done a specific way because they were checking for bacteria in her blood. During the scan the tech told me that her appendix looked inflamed to him, but that he wasn’t a doctor that was just his opinion. He also said her bowel looked enlarged.

Here comes the doc. He said and I quote, “We’re seeing things here that we shouldn’t be seeing in a 12 year old.” Ok, now I’m freaking out. He said her appendix was inflamed; there was an abscess close to her appendix that may or may not be the cause for her appendix being inflamed. He also said she had fluid in the stomach which led him to believe that the abscess was leaking and that she had an intestinal/bowel blockage. He was calling in for a surgical consult. Have I mentioned lately that I’m SO NOT happy?!?!?

Surgeon comes and he’s just as concerned. Says she’ll have an emergency appendectomy as soon as his team arrives. It’s about 11 PM now and everyone had to be called in. At this point I lost it. (Thank you JoAnn and Summer for the last night calls and talking with me throughout this whole process!) Her WBC count was 16,000+, the normal is 10,000. Her WBC bands were 23%, the normal is 7%. He said that she was a very sick little girl and we’d know just how sick once he got in there. I was calm again by the time we took her up to surgery. He said a normal appendectomy could take anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour. The waiting began.

About 2 ½ hours later and me freaking out! The doc comes out and says that her appendix had ruptured and that from her chest to her pelvis had been full of puss (probably was the abscess they saw). He said she was sicker than they first thought and that she’d likely be in the hospital for 5 to 6 days on IV antibiotics. We could only hope now that she didn’t develop another abscess and that’d have to go back in and drain it.

Then I proceeded to get into a fight with the nurse. She told us that one of us had to be in the room with her at all times. We tried to explain for the millionth time to these people that WE DON’T LIVE HERE!!! We have 3 other kids and are currently staying in a hotel. This was not her problem. Then she had the audacity to try and guilt me. My child just had surgery; didn’t I want to be there for her? Didn’t I want her to wake up and see me? OH HELL NO!!! I seem to recall being at that same hospital not 5 hours before her surgery and they told me I could go home. After I told her that she needed to get off her lazy ass and take responsibility for her patients, she went and got the head nurse. Of course I want to be there for my daughter. Of course I don’t want her to wake up and be scared after coming out of surgery, but I also have 3 other kids and NO HOME!!! So I said to the head nurse, for every policy there is an exception to policy and that there had to be some sort of middle ground. She said she’d have someone come up from social services in the morning. I’ve had a REALLY long day and it’s 3 in the morning! Obviously I was not at my best. They weren’t kidding about someone having to be IN THE ROOM at all times. I couldn’t go get something to eat unless Tony was there so forget about a smoke break. An absolute nightmare!!!

By Friday morning, she was doing a lot better than they had thought she would. She was already sitting up and drinking. The nurse said we had to get her walking so she would recover faster. I understand the medical reasoning for this, but it still baffles the mind that less than 12 hours after an operation you’d want someone up and walking! The surgeon came and said that if she kept doing that well she might be able to get out of the hospital Saturday. The weekend on-call doctor had other plans. He wanted her to have another round of antibiotics, so no going home Saturday. I wanted to cry.

Now it’s Sunday. The doctor comes in and says, “I’m going to let you go today.” I said, “Can I hug you?” lol She’s feeling a lot better but still on the mend. She’s still in pain and moving at a snails pace. Once she left the recovery room, they never gave her any pain medication. Not even Tylenol…bastards!!! She’s not at all happy about the frequent walks she has to take and gets pissy if we try to make her eat, lol, but at least she’s home and on her was to being healthy again.

This has been a week from hell! I’ve never been so scared and worried in my life. Even in the 21st century, people still die from a ruptured appendix. I’ve already told her that she’s grounded for life for scaring the hell out of me. lol

Next up…the actual move to Houston. God help me!!!

Who Knew!?!?!?

Today is mine and Tony's 10 year wedding anniversary. 10 years man! Who knew!!! lol

I know people had their doubts about us. I'd even go so far as to say that they didn't think we'd make it 6 months. Yet here it is 10 years later and I still get that butterfly feeling in my stomach when he looks at me.

10 years...Who Knew!?!? lol

Houston...We have a problem! ;-)

So, it's official, we're moving to Houston. Let the panic attacks begin!!! lol

I know that at the very heart of the matter, this is a good thing. Never again will we have to worry about Tony being sent to Iraq. That alone makes the move worth while.

But while we're getting to the heart of the matter, I'm FREAKING OUT!!!! lol

We have lived in this area for 10 years. The last time we made a major move, was when the Army sent us from Ft. Huachuca to Ft. Hood. That's here...10 YEARS AGO!!! We moved out here because the Army told us to. There was no choice in the matter. Now we have a choice, and we choose to move to Houston!

It's Houston for crying out loud! Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the city itself. In fact the Clear Lake area is BEAUTIFUL! But fear is what's keeping me up at night. We're settled here. The kids, well most of them, are doing really well in school. ;-) The two older girls are trying to make a go of junior high, and they're doing pretty good. Now to take away the security they've always known, is FREAKING ME OUT!!! Yeah, yeah, yeah...I know, they'll adjust, they'll be fine. We all will, I know this. But in the mean time, panic attack city. lol

So far we've accomplished some house hunting in Houston and yesterday we put our house here on the market. My house is on the FOR SALE market...MY HOUSE!!! For the love of Mike! I can feel my chest tighting! lol This was the very first house we bought, OUR first home. We choose the color of the carpet, and the ceramic tile for the floor, which kids would have what rooms. Now in a few weeks, someone else will be living here. Quite honestly, it breaks my heart.

BUT (Tony is so thankful there is a BUT, lol) it's HOUSTON! The city is so much bigger. The possibilities are endless. The Clear Lake are schools are supposed to be one of the best in the state. The boardwalk is great, I hear Houston has some great shopping outlets, and there's water everywhere and the kids love to fish (DO NOT bring up hurricane season. I'm currently ignoring that. LOL).

Plus we get a new house. Maybe the new one will be big enough and I can have an office/library. That'd be great. Tony said we could look into opening that bookstore I'vde always wanted. Now that's something worth looking forward to. Boeing has great benefits and a lot more growth opportunities for Tony.

So yes, I know all the positives for the move, but I'm still FREAKING OUT!!! lol

So back to the stealing thing...

If you've created something and someone takes it without your permission, is that stealing. Say you've created a website, and it's been bought and paid for. Later you see the graphics and site you've created elsewhere. Same exact pages, only different links. Is that stealing? At the very least shouldn't you be notified?

In any case, if it's not considered stealing, it should be!

Theft or not theft???

You know it’s a really crappy feeling when you realize someone has stolen your work.

Maybe stolen isn’t the exact word, but it’s what I think happened. There are adamant feelings about graphic theft on both sides of the fence, but I’ve never really heard about stealing content. Doesn’t seem any different to me. Whether it’s graphics or a setup, it still makes me mad and kind of hurts my feelings.

Oh well, there’s nothing to be done about it.