A moment of Silence.

Today is a sad day in Florida, Hillsborough county more specifically Hillsborough county. When I turned on the TV this morning and flipped it to BayNews 9 the headlines were rolling that 2 officers from Tampa Police Dept had been shot; one was killed, and the other was on life support. Around 9am I received a phone call from Chris saying that they had just announced that the other officer had died.

My heart goes out to these families, I shed tears for these two families, and for all the officers at Tampa Police Department. This tragedy is senseless.

Officer Jeffrey Kocab , and David Curtis lost their lives today.  Both men had families, Kocabs wife was 9mth pregnant, a recent update in the above linked article says that she has gone into labor. Curtis has a wife, and 4 sons.

Please take a moment to pray for these families, if you pray. Or just send thoughts to these families. I can not imagine the pain and devastation they are going through.

Pray that they find the people that murdered these two officers.

I am editing this blog:

        There is a fallen officer fund for Officers Kocab & Curtis. I know money is tight, the economy sucks, and we are all struggling. I can’t help but think if these families. Officer Kocab’s widow is having a baby today, and Officer Curtis leaves behind 4 boys. Obviously some of us are just not able to contribute. But please, if you are able to contribute I promise it will be appreciated by these families, and by the Tampa Police Dept.

I am not one for solicitation, and I wouldn’t post asking for people to help if I really didn’t believe in the cause.  The way I feel about this tragedy is undescribable. I, myself, am wondering why is this affecting me so deeply? I do not know these families, and I do not know anyone that does know them.

Life is precious, and that’s a fact. I think with everything that is going on in Chris’ family right now, the deaths of Officer Kocab & Officer Curtis hit a little closer to home. Like I said yesterday, I’m not going to go into details about the sadness that is in Chris’ family. We are praying for a miracle.

Please keep the families of these Officers in your hearts, and minds.

Thanks everyone! I’m sorry my blog is so sad today.

Later today I will try to post something a little more cheery!

a day of mixed emotions.

Today was supposed to be a happy day! We were going to be closing on our house at 3pm today!

Then we got a phone call; One of Chris’ cousins is in the hospital. It’s not looking good. We will know more tomorrow morning. Honestly, that is not a phone call I’m looking forward to. I’m scared and nervous for what’s to come.

So today was a day of mixed emotions. I am devastated by what is going on in Chris’ family. Sometimes life just seems so unfair. Life is so short, and it can end just as quickly as it began.

We did close on our house. We were able to go to the attorney’s office @ noon and sign our papers. It took about 25 minutes and was painless. After we got back to Hernando Beach I went back to work & Chris laid sod.

We went to dinner tonight to ‘celebrate’ our closing. We went to Chili’s nothing to fancy. They have 2-4-1’s and I needed some drinks. Today was so overwhelming. I’m so thankful that days like today are few & far between. I don’t think I handle days like today very well. I get all emotional and kind of a basket case.

Sometimes you just gotta be klassy, yah, klassy with a K-I’ll be honest. It tastes better coming straight out of the bottle. Hmm. I think I’ll drink it straight out of the bottle from now on =/  I kid, I kid!

I am still on the prowl for some curtains & a new bedding set, since Diva & Wyatt so graciously ate the corners off of our current comforter.

Speaking of Wyatt, why on earth has he been whining and making as much noise as possible for the last 45 minutes? I took him out before we went to bed, I think he just wants attention.

I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. G’nite.

Humble beginnings.

We went to our old house today to finish cleaning. Can I just say that cleaning with no a/c really sucks, I mean not just a little bit , but it sucks A-LOT!

It was SO hot. We shut the power off to the house right after we moved out.I’m not trying to pay two power bills. The power bill at our new house is going to be big enough, thanks.  So I took some pictures of our old house.. We moved from Clermont to  Davenport, the rent was super cheap. My mom has told me several times that the first time she came to our house she thought “Oh my, Jena must really love him”  She saw it before we even moved it. It was a mess, the landlords were uhm, redecorating? Cleaning it up. I don’t think it had been lived in for a year. A tree fell on the 2nd bedroom during hurricane Charlie in 2004. The house had a slight tilt to it. If something spilled on the floor it rolled towards the back of the house. So weird. Nothing was level in the kitchen or the back bedroom.  We lived there from November of 2005 until May of 2010.. Long enough. It was a good start for us, I guess. It made me appreciate what I have now. I seriously thank God every day for this house, and all the opportunities we’ve been given in the 6mth. I have an amazing job. Chris is SO much happier since he’s been transferred over here, which makes me happy. He was really hating his job before he started working over here. We have this amazing house, and we live 2 minutes from the water. I took some pictures, so you can see why we were so excited to get into our new house.

Living room- You know you love the wood paneling.

standing @ the front door looking into the bedroom.

lovely pink striped wall paper, and the bathroom that has no door.

bathroom- obviously.

kitchen. bleh.

So that’s it. That was our humble abode.

It’s a 2 hr drive from our old house to our new house. After cleaning all day we were ready to be home, and then it happened; we got stuck in traffic. Something happened and they had the road shut down. They detoured us, we went down this ridiculous road. It was super narrow, it was a country road, clearly not maintained. They had traffic from both sides of the shut down road routed to this one little road, it was the stupidest thing ever. It took probably 45 min to an hour to get back to the main road.. I’m sure Pasco county will be getting a lot of phone calls about this. The road will be really jacked up after all that traffic was driving on, there were HUGE pot holes, I saw several cars bottom out, heard some scraping. Oh, it was ugly. I mean really, they routed all that traffic down the smallest road they could find. I took pictures, it was unbelievable.

Ruts in someones grass, I don't think they are going to be very happy about that.

sitting in traffic sure is fun.

I think that is plenty of ridiculous pictures for one day! Good Night.

Tomorrow we close on our house! YAY!

Decorating is hard work.

I’m so clueless when it comes to actually decorating. I mean really, really clueless. Decorating our house is going to be harder then I thought.

I want our home to be beachy, and comfortable. Not beachy and tacky, and I’m worried I’m going to fall into the tacky realm by going WAY overboard on some things.

I was looking on the Bed Bath & Beyond website. I found some, what I thought, were cute valances & a bed set. I asked around on one of the boards on the Nest. I was wrong, I was going overboard.

So now I’m stalking decorating blogs, and searching google like mad for beach inspired decor.

It’s going to become a sickness. Just a warning.

It’s late. I should go to bed. We have to leave here @ 730am to go back to our old house to finish cleaning. Not how I want to spend my Sunday.

wake up call.

Our fire alarm when off at 5am this morning. I should name her (the fire alarm), because she talks. It makes this awful noise, not a normal fire alarm noise, this one is crazy. Then after the noise she says FIRE!, or she might say Warning, FIRE. I don’t remember exactly, it was 5am, and it scared the heebeejeebies out of me.  I guess it’s kind of a good thing it went off because I forgot to turn the alarm on for Chris to get up, and he needed to get up @ 5. God was messing with us, he set the fire alarm off so we would get up. It worked. Neither one of us could have gone back to sleep after that. I got up to check for any smoke… We couldn’t smell anything, and I didn’t see anything, so I’d say we were safe.

I keep having these totally random, bizarre dreams. Just straight weirdness. Last nights was so bizarre, doesn’t even make sense. I was somewhere in a coastal town, maybe here , I dunno. Any way, I was standing on a sea wall watching the boats go by & a big yellow boat full of guys I went to high school with went by. Im not going to name names in case anyone I know in real life reads this. So they were going by, and none of them were paying attention to where they were going, they were hollerin’ at me. Then all of the sudden they just ran in to this seawall. It was a whole big scene. Then in the same dream I was swimming in the ocean some where and there were tons of people around. I don’t know, so weird.

Earlier this week I had a dream/nightmare so awful it jacked my whole day up. Do you ever have dreams/nightmares like that? It was traumatizing. I’m not even going to tell you what it was, it was awful. I don’t want to think about it anymore. — That night I took some tylenol PM because I’m having trouble sleeping. ..which is a whole other topic in it self.

At our old house we had noise. We had a window unit and it was a constant noise in our bedroom. It ran practically 365. Maybe sometimes in the winter when it wasn’t hot or cold it didn’t run. So for 4 years I slept w/ that window unit on. Plus the fan in our room was noisy. Now we come to this new house & its peace & quiet. I can’t handle it. I can’t sleep. The fan is silent, there is no window unit, and the AC unit is not on our side of the house. I have no noise. I hear all the trucks that drive by, and so do the dogs, and they bark like crazy some nights.  I finally found our clock that has noise on it. It has a rain forest, ocean, thunder, and one or two other things. Awww, yay! I turn on the thunder and pass out. I just need some something harmonic, or some continuous noise. What a freak.

Today I am going to Clearwater beach for Hands Across the Sand. I am meeting up with some West Coast Nesties there. It should be a fun time! I’m excited!!

Have a great weekend!

Hot with a side of holy humidity.

according to weather.com , it was 75 degrees with 90% humidity here this morning at 7am. Isn’t that lovely. Therefore my run was less then stellar.   so Run #4 went like this: 2mi, 19:27 time, and 9:42 pace.  I have this feeling that long runs are not going to happen any time soon. It SO hot. I got up early this morning to get my run done, plus I didn’t go last night and I was feeling kinda guilty.

that is all for now. Gotta get ready for work.

I went for a bike ride….

and this is what I saw…. Welcome to my new ‘hood!

Fake birds planted in the marsh. They were in the same spot yesterday.

It's low tide

Perfection!

Palm tree + American Flag = Perfection!

Rain clouds across the stick marsh

New phone # = telemarketers galore.

Since we moved to a new county we had to get a new phone number. It is unreal how many telemarketer calls we get a day. I mean seriously? The St. Pete times called twice a day for a week until we finally answered the phone and said NO we don’t want the paper, STOP calling. Twice a day, can they do that? Alarm system people are calling, everyone and their brother has this phone number and they are blowing it up. Half of our families don’t even have our new house number. 99% of the time its a darn telemarketer. STOP IT!!!!!

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Yesterday I posted about how I took Wyatt on his first run. I also posted about this on a health & fitness board that I go on. The responses there were:  Most vet’s recommend waiting 2 yrs before starting to run a dog.–Wyatt is 15 months. Well this never occurred to me that he wasn’t old enough to run. So I started doing some research myself about what people/vets recommend for running with a dog.

I found this site- It is pretty informative, at least it was for me.  This site says that your dog should have be a “couple” of years old before you take them running.  It also says that some breeds are better for jogging then others. Dogs with shorter snouts have a harder time breathing & cooling down because their nasal passages are shorter. Bully Breeds, which would be Wyatt, are one of the breeds that don’t make for great runners because of the short snout.

So, I decided that we will go on longer walks, and maybe a few short runs here and there. I don’t want to injure him, and I don’t want to do any permanent damage just because I want a running partner. He’s such a sweet boy, we would like to keep him around for a while!

We will continue to take Diva on shorter walks because her little legs can’t handle much more then around the block. She is so over it by time we get back to the house.

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How attached are you to your e-mail? Since I started my new job my e-mail is almost like my lifeline. It’s taken the place of my cell phone. I use my e-mail to communicate with a lot of different people, more then I ever did at my last job. I currently don’t have e-mail access on my cell phone; I am still trying to convince Chris that I need my blackberry back. I left work a little after 4, by time I got home I had 2 new e-mails from the doctor, and one from a vendor. I just feel like I need to respond to the e-mails when I get them, not let them sit till I get to work the next day.  I communicate mostly through e-mail with the Dr. I work for. He forwards me things that he gets that I need. I e-mail him with questions that don’t need immediate responses. We meet daily, then after that , it’s e-mail city. What did we do before e-mail? I have no idea. I never had a job where I needed access to e-mail so much prior to this job.  If I can e-mail someone I’d rather do that. I find that people will answer their e-mails faster then they will answer a phone message; which if you think about it, is kind of sad. That is what a lot of our society has come to. We don’t communicate in person much any more, everything is web-based. We even have web-based conference calling.

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Gotta go do some homework =/

Run # 3..

Whew! Run # 3 was much more successful then Runs # 1 & 2. Or at least I felt like it was.

Run # 1  2.72mi  28min, 10:26 pace

Run # 2  3 mi 30:01, 10:02 pace

Run # 3  2.41  23 min, 9:42 pace

So, that is better, right? It felt better. I couldn’t get in a longer run because a thunder storm was starting to roll in. Not long after I got in did it start raining. I did .3 of that run with Wyatt. That was our first run together, he did surprisingly well. I thought he would try to run way ahead of me and end up dragging me. He ran next to me and he did SO good. I was really proud of him. We only went around the block once. He isn’t used to running, so maybe tomorrow we can go a little further.

Wyatt

You can check out my run here MapMyRun – Hernando Beach Run in Hernando Beach, FL. I figured out how to work Mapmyrun.com .. I run with my Garmin, but it’s kinda nice to know where I’m going to have to run ahead of time. Since most of the streets are dead end it requires a lot of back tracking, and going up & dwon several streets.  On my run tonight I got to see a lot of stick marsh. I’ll try to remember to take my camera next time.

WOW! I just have to talk about this right now. We just took the dogs out .. it is SOOOOO nice out. I mean SO nice. No humidity, it’s actually cool right now. I got goose bumps, WOW. It rained for a few minutes & it really cooled it off. I wish I could go run right now, it’s PERFECT weather for it. I wish it would be like that tomorrow night about 8.

Goodnight. I haven’t been sleeping well.. Shamefully I am going to take some tylenol PM & try to get some good sleep. This tossing & turning crap all night has got to go.

Shrimp & Grits, ya’ll!

Yum! That’s what we had for dinner last night. It was very yummy!! Chris had some beer & I had a glass of wine. delish.

Yum! Grits!

Steamed Shrimps!

Dinner was a success. We had ice cream for desert & attempted to watch a movie. Fail! I always fall asleep during movies & Chris fell asleep too.

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I finished reading Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham. I read it in a matter of 2 or 3 hours. Chris worked late Friday night so I cuddled up on the couch with one of my Dad’s old quilts and went to reading. It is another Young Adult book. I really enjoyed it. The story is told by the Shark Girl, Jane. She was attacked by a shark while at the beach with her family. She loses her right arm and the story is about her recovery, and how she copes. I cried a few tears a couple of times. I’m not literary genius, and I’m not terrific at writing book reviews, but I really enjoyed this book. I would recommend it if you want a quick easy read.

Next up to read is Sweetgrass Basket, by Marlene Carvell.

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I took Saturday & Sunday off from running. My legs were SO sore Saturday walking up and down the stairs sucked. Thursday & Friday’s runs were pretty rough for me, and I’m sure the fact that I wear heels at work every day contributed to the soreness.

Saturday I went to some garage sales, which was big fat FAIL! I spent a whopping $3 dollars. I bought a little wicker shelf, which I was planning on painting and hanging somewhere. Chris said he doesn’t like it, so I might just take it to GoodWill. I already have 4 boxes of stuff that need to go. … I also got 2 vases that I plan on putting shells in and setting somewhere.

I also went to GoodWill yesterday and got a huge vase. ___

I’ll leave you with that. It’s bed time. I don’t do late nights.