A Double Standard is a Double Standard...is it not?

I have always been on the thin side my entire life (well except for when I was born, I weighed 10lbs 6 oz) and all my life people have made unwanted comments about my weight. I take issue with this for many reasons.

One, I do not think anyone should ever comment on any one's weight period. I have been told numerous times "you are so skinny it is disgusting." I am sorry but the last time I checked being told you look disgusting is NOT a compliment. I do not want to hear any one's opinion on my weight.

Secondly, if I told some one "oh my gosh you are so fat you look disgusting" I would be fired from any job, and/or killed by the person I said that too. Yet when you are thin people think that your weight is up for conversation, well they are wrong.

Please do not tell me that I should take these comments as a compliment, or that when people say things to you it is because they are jealous. I do not care, I find it just as rude as if some one was to comment on an overweight persons weight issues. I had an incident at work recently where a coworker said "you are so skinny it is disgusting."
Well I went to my boss because I find this highly offensive and not something I should have to put up with at work. My boss told me that I need to simply tell the person that I what they are saying hurts my feelings, and that she was sure that the person meant it as a compliment. Well I think that is unacceptable. I told my boss that if the roles were reverse and I had made the same comment to an overweight coworker that I would be fired, and she AGREED, yet the punishment for the coworker that made comment to me was that my boss "would talk to her", but she would not be in trouble she just must not realize what she is saying to you is upsetting you." WHAT??? Are you kidding? If the roles were reverse the person making rude comments to an overweight person would be FIRED, but because I am not overweight, this person will only be "talked to"!
That my friend is what you call a DOUBLE STANDARD


So I did not ever confront this co-worker and over the months that comments have continued and I have said nothing. I am not one to confront people and I would feel like an idiot saying "you hurt my feelings". Well so yesterday this same co-worker made another comment. I was going to let it go but she caught me on a bad day as you can tell from yesterdays post. So I told my Husband and he said I should tell my boss, and the more I thought about it the more I thought I should too.

So I wrote my boss and email and this morning she came to talk to me. Then very shortly after that here comes the co-worker that made all the comments. She tried to sneak in my office and put a note on my desk but Bam I was sitting here and I said "Hi how are you?' and she proceeded to tell me she "was sorry and that she wishes she had my figure and (then another back hand compliment) she said I think of you as a girl, you have a girls figure." Oh so that is nice at 42 I have a girls figure! Thanks!
I do not think her apology of note was very sincere, I detected a note of anger and unhappiness that she had to be talked to by my boss not that she was actually sorry about her comments. So whatever at least she won't dare make another comment to me, but I am still upset that we have this HUGE double standard in our society.
I have another co-worker that is very thin and she has had the same issues with people at work and has been told the same thing as I by my boss, and it aggravates the both of us that we have to put up with this from our co-workers but yet overweight people here are protected more than us.

So I guess as always this is something I will just have to deal with. I remember as a kid and my entire adult life have do deal with these comments. I remember one time I had a job when I lived in California and I worked with this one woman who happened to be very over weight and she was constantly making rude comments to me. I called my mom in tears and she was so funny she made me a shirt on one side that said "why am I so skinny?" and on the other it said "because I am lucky." She wanted me to wear it to work so this co-worker of mine would see it and hopefully leave me alone. By the way, this co-worker in no way meant for her comments to me compliments she did it to just be mean.


I don't know maybe I shouldn't be so sensitive about people making comments about my weight, and actually sometimes I do take things they say as a compliment, but that being said I absolutely hate that there is a double standard when it comes to this.

Well there is my rant for the day!

The good news is my Husband and kid areout of town this weekend and I am going to have my own mini vacation ALONE! I am thrilled to be alone and have some me time. The problems is I started out not wanting to do anything this weekend but now I have a ton of things I want to do around the house I doubt I will have time to do them all much less get to be lazy like I want. I promise though I will get a couple of naps in.

Have a great weekend!

My mom always said if you don't have something nice to say then don't say anything at all!

Therefore that is why I have not posted in a while.
I haven't quite finished the 2 pieces of furniture I am repainting and working on so I am not post about that.
My Husband still hasn't found a job in this wonderful economy we have Thank you to all involved in the HORRIBLE job market, I just can't Thank you enough!
While I am at it, let me thank the oil companies for driving up gas prices for no real reason except with the unrest in the Middle East it was a great excuse for them to get greedy again. Please don't tell me it has to do with anything else but greed. Because wait until all the reports come out and I promise you the oil and gas companies will be recording record profits! Well yippee doo for them! Meanwhile our grocery prices go up, we can't afford to drive anywhere, and my Husband is still unemployed which makes filling up the car even more enjoyable.

(Let me take the time here to throw out there that my Husband is unemployed but at no fault of his. He was blind sided with a lay off, and he spends a lot of his day filling out resumes and if I know him in the last couple weeks he has been unemployed he has probably send out a 100 resumes. So I just want to throw this out there so no one think he is a slacker and doesn't desperately want a job)

So as you can see I am in just a peachy mood. I will say this I do not recommend giving up smoking and a Starbucks habit all in the same week, things tend to get a little rocky when you take these things away from people.

Right now this Country is looking pretty sad. We have beyond record number house foreclosures, gas and food prices are soaring faster that we can keep up with, unemployment is threw the roof, and worst of all a certain male celebrity with or with our mental and drug issues is captivating this Country. It is all so sad and upsetting and I wish I could just tune it all out and it would simply go away.

The sad thing is I am not sure what if anything cant change things around for this Country. It certainly isn't Obama, and I am sure it won't likely be any other yahoo out there that thinks they can run this Country. I guess we can only be the Top Country for so long, you can't always be the top dog and the best at everything. Eventually you have to slip and be 2nd or 3rd or worse.

Do you want to know what is the saddest thing of all is?
I am sitting here thinking, naively I might add, that all I need is a weekend home alone with no one around and things will get better. LOLOLOL!
Well I am seeing this now, but whatever, I want to stay up late and sleep in late, watch hours and hours of HGTV, no shower, not eat, and work on my furniture items I am redoing. That is what I want to do this weekend, and the only way any of that will happen is if I am home alone. If anyone else is home with me then it will be impossible because there wil be cooking and cleaning and mothering and always something to be done.
When I was a kid my Mother was a single Mom to us from the time I was 10yr old up. She used to threaten to go on strike all the time and we never could figure out why, we didn't think we ever did anything wrong.
Well guess what Mom I now understand why you wanted to go on strike, and some times I do too.

I know I am a wimp and I will be the first one to admit it and I don't care. I am not a single Mom, I have a Husband, I only have 1 very good sweet loving child that is 10yrs old, and I have 3 dogs, and I work a full time job. BIG DEAL! My Mom raised 7 of us, with no money and no man around. I should be able to do what I do without wanting to go on strike.
So I am simply going to blame this entire blog on my lack of Starbucks and Cigarettes!




I will try and be better tomorrow but no promises with no cigarettes or Starbucks.

Megan's Honors Band Concert - March 2, 2011

Well with all the negatives in the world and in our life right now I need to write about something positive and that something positive is my kid, my loving beautiful, big hearted, amazingly smart, and talented Daughter Megan.

She plays the flute and only started at the beginning of this school year. They actually only started playing their actual instruments in October and she already had one concert and last night was her second concert.

She was asked to be in Honors band by her band teacher Ms Shaeffer. So this has meant us getting her to school 30 minutes to an hour early for the last week and a half so they can practice for the concert she had last night.

Megan practices every night so I can hear how well she is improving but I was absolutely blown away last night when I heard the entire Scottsdale South District 5th grade Honor Band play! WOW!
There was 3 different age group playing last night. The 5th graders did 2 songs, the 6th graders did 2 songs, and then the 7th and 8th graders did 2 songs. I was absolutely blown away by all of the bands because they all did an amazing job and played some pretty tough music.

Megan's first band concert was entirely different, as parents we think our kids are perfect, and it was all parents and proud family members at the last concert and I have to be honest it was not the best sounding band. I thought it was good because of how short of time they had all been playing but it in no way could compare to last night.

Then we found something last night that was extraordinary and really touched me and impressed me.....All the band teachers that have been practicing at their many different school spent the entire day yesterday and evening preparing and helping the kids for this concert did it all on their own personal time without ANY pay. They all took the day off with no pay to put on this concert.

This is very amazing and touching to me. In this economy and day and time I am shocked that there are teachers and people out there that are willing to do such a thing so a bunch of school kids can play their band instruments for their parents. That is true dedication and frankly I wish more people were committed to kids and their educations.

We have plenty of politicians that have no problem cutting our school budgets. When are people in this Country going to realize that our kids and their educations are #1 priority and we need to make some serious education reforms and make cutting education budgets unacceptable. I could go on and on about this but I will save it for another time.

So anyways back to the concert here is a picture of the entire 5th grade band but you can't even see my kid.

The concert was held at Coronado High School in South Scottsdale.

The place was packed with a lot of very proud family members.

Megans' Aunt Karen and her Cousin Daniel came to see her performance. Cousin Daniel plays percussion in his high school band and has played percussion probably since the 5th grade. I am hoping that Megan will continue to play all through High School as well.

 Here is my Sister and Megan's Aunt Karen with Megan after the concert.

This is Megan Band teacher Ms. Shaeffer. She is a very dedicated and awesome teacher. She does very well with the kids and took the entire day off without pay yesterday to make this amazing concert happen.

And this is Megan and I from last night.

After the concert we took Megan to her favorite place to celebrate we went to http://www.yogurt-land.com/

Megan absolutely loves to go Yogurt-land and get a couple different flavors of Frozen Yogurt and put on a bunch of the strangest topping combinations.

When I was a kid any time we had a play or something at school  or church my mom would always take us out for dinner or ice cream after to celebrate and I wanted to carry on the tradition with Megan.

They announced last night that there is going to be a 3 week Band Camp this summer and that the kids will learn as much in that 3 weeks as they would in an entire year of band at school so I am really going to see what I can do to encourage Megan to go and make it so she can go.

I would love for Megan to continue playing the flute forever. She does a great job at everything she tries and wants to do, and I think it teaches kids great discipline and they say that kids that play a musical instrument do better in school and score higher on the SAT's and a ton of other benefits so why would you not want your kid to play an instrument!

Good Job Megan!! Mommy and Lloyd are VERY proud of you!!!

Life is sucking hard! My Husband needs a job NOW!

So my husband lost a job of over 2 years back in May 2010, and was unemployed for 5 months. Then he got a new job that was a nightmare. Crazy boss and it was impossible to make any commission because of that crazy company policies and they tracked every phone call, and every email, and even had GPS in the Blackberry so they could track their employees out of the office. Well luckily Lloyd was able to leave that job for what we hoped was a better job with a better chance of making a decent commission...... WELL.

This boss was absolutely crazier than the last, and when I say crazy I mean absolutely certifiably CRAZY.
And just when Lloyd was about to land a job that was going to be double what the whole office had done for the entire last year he was fired. That's right fired! He had just had his final meeting with the company that was potentially going to give his office a nice chunk of work and Lloyd a very nice commission. And this guy comes into my husbands office at 4pm and tells him that the company is going in a different directions and how it was nothing Lloyd did wrong but that he was being let go right that minute and they handed Lloyd his final check.

Both Lloyd and I are in absolute SHOCK. How the heck can a company do this to people? How do they justify in their heads letting go of a man that single handily just increased their revenue to over double what the entire office did in the entire time it had been open?
THE only good thing that came out of it was that the insanely crazy boss got fired too, but that does not good to us now that Lloyd is unemployed now.

I have absolutely no idea how we are going to survive until Lloyd finds a new job. I am praying hard he can get back on unemployment but they cut out the extra $25 a week they were giving to prior military, and I am just hoping we can still get the max $250 a week of unemployment, if we can't get it or do not get the max we are for sure going to be in HUGE trouble.
I am also praying that it does not take Lloyd another 5 months to get a job because I am sure we will be homeless long before then.

Right now I am so angry at the world you have no idea. How and why does this keep happening to us? Why can't we catch any kind of a break? Why can't Lloyd find a decent job?
I am not asking to be rich, I just want us to be able to pay our bills and maybe even get out of some debt.
If we didn't have 3 dogs we could go live in a small apartment and be in pretty good shape. But how the heck do you get rid of 3 members of your family to do that?

I am so angry and upset all I know is  that I have to turn this whole situation over to God because I know that I can not handle this with out him. I keep telling myself that God has to have a plan for us and we just can't see it yet, because I don't know why else this could possibly keep happening to us.

I know that Lloyd is a hard worker and this can't be anything he has done or hasn't done, but we have to find him a job and one fast.

So if anyone knows of a outside sales position or any other job that pays over $30,000 I don't care if it is digging ditches please let us know.

Lloyd email address is lloydstites@yahoo.com

This weekends plans

Tomorrow I am going in search of buying this....

I found an ad for it on Craigslist and I am going to go look at it.
I want to buy and redo it and see if I can't resell it for some nice cash.
There are a couple of issues though
1. I don't know if I should paint it or leave it a wood color

2. What if when I am done with it I fall in love with it and don't want to sell it?
I am afraid if that happen that my Husband will be made and not let me buy more of these to re-purpose.

Well cross your fingers that it is worth buying to re-purpose as I am very excited at the prospect of having this as my pet project.
I have another small table at home that I purchased at a Goodwill that I also want to re-purpose and sell and I need to get started on it soon.

I am looking for more cabinets like this, small tables, bookcases, cabinets without glass fronts, and bed side cabinets to re-purpose.
I am also looking to buy an old solid wood door and/or one that has some stain glass in it as I have a friend that turns doors into benches. So if you know of such a door for $25 or less please let me know.


As for the rest of my weekend...Megan has a sleep over at  Friends house Saturday night, Sunday we have church and I took Monday off to hang out with my Daughter and my Husband. So it should be a good weekend. I am for sure looking forward to it despite the project rain and cold weather.

Tennis Elbow aka Lateral Epicondylitis

This is what I have in my left elbow. This has been going on for just 1 month shy of a year. Not sure if you all know this but it is a very painful condition. So much so that I realized something was wrong whenever I would go to reach for something and pick it up with my left arm it was followed by excruciating pain and it could be something as light and small as a pen would cause the horrible pain.

This first started to cause me pain in March of 2010. I had no idea why my left elbow hurt, and burned. In May I was at my primary care Doctor for another issue and mentioned that my elbow hurt. He examined it and said I had Tennis Elbow, and that he could fix it real fast by injecting it with a steroid and some numbing medicine. Well all was fine and dandy for 3 month, well except for where the injection turned my elbow white, and ate away some of my muscle in my elbow.
So jump to September my elbow starts really hurting me again, and not at home, at work. I realize that the job I do was causing my elbow pain. So I told my boss and I went to Occupational Health and started the Workman's Comp process.
Sept 13, 2010 I start at the Doctor for Occ Health, I am told to wear a Tennis Elbow brace and start PT. I go 3 days a week for 2 months, no improvement.
Then Occupational Health Doctor sends me to a Surgeon. Surgeon says continue PT for another month, take and anti-inflammatory and rub some arthritis cream on my elbow 4 times a day. I go back 1 month later and still no improvement. So then the Surgeon sends me for MRI on the elbow.
When I get back the results it says I have "severe lateral epicondylitis" and blah blah blah

This is kind of what my elbow looks like, only mine is worse than this patients.
The Surgeon says that I have 2 choices that I can do.
1. a PRP injection- now this is not FDA approved and is considered experimental on the elbow.
It involves the following. They draw out my own blood, then spin it down until they can get to just the platelets. They suck up the platelets into a syringes and inject them into my elbow is 5 different spaces.
Now I know you all are thinking "big deal", well you would be right, and here is why I do not want this procedure done.
They do not numb up your elbow, or sedate you this is done without anything for pain. They don't just inject the platelets into your elbow, they put it in the tendon in question by scraping the tendon with the needle all the while injecting the platelets AND they do this 5 times in 5 different spots.
Now I don't know about you but this sounds pretty painful to me.
The Doctor never told me anything about the procedure AND he left his MA to tell me all about it and the pain part.
I said well how painful is this, and she said "some people scream, some curse, some yell, and some do nothing."
Well I am the one doing nothing because I am not going for the procedure. PLUS I have been told by a few people that it doesn't do a darn thing so NO.

and the
2nd opinion is Surgery

Where they go in and some how fix the tendon.
The down side is the it takes a long time for it to heal but it is more likely to fix the problem.

Well because this is Workman's Comp related I have to go threw a Case Manager. I called him and told him what the Doc said and told him I did not want the PRP, and I would like a 2nd opinion.

6 weeks later after waiting for the approval and actually getting an appointment I FINALLY go my 2nd opinion TODAY.
This Doctor tells me that I could do the PRP, the surgery, OR another experimental procedure where they use shock wave therapy to fix the tendon.
The same shock wave thing they use to break up large kidney stones, they would use on my elbow. I have no idea how in the heck they think  that will fix the tendon.

Soooo I call back my Case Manger and tell him what this Doctors says, and now my Case Manager wants to send me to a THIRD Doctor for another opinion.
My CM called it a Independent Medical advice. So I am supposed to hear from some one by the middle of next week to find out where I go next with this elbow thing. And if it is anything like last time I was waiting to get into see this last Doctor it was 2 weeks NOT a couple of days/
I have hear that Arizona is one of the worst States to have a work related injury and I completely believe it now.

So I don't know what this new Doctor is going to say, all I know is that I want my elbow fixed and I want it fixed right and fast.
This is a very painful deal, and I am tired of my elbow burning and hurting all the time.

So I guess all that is left to do is pray that God will help me threw this and that he will give the Doctors the knowledge and the skills to fix my elbow.

BTW typing in one of the things that cause Lateral Epicondylitis.

Our Foster Dog Emma did find a new home

This is the couple that adopted Emma this weekend.
We were very sad to see Emma go. Of all the dogs we have fostered she was by far the best, and if we didn't already have 3 dogs we would have for sure kept her.
Unfortunately this couple changed her name to Zia, they had her no more than a hour and said she wasn't answering to her name so they changed it to Zia. Well I promise you Emma knew her name, she is 4 years old and came to us with that name and she knew it very well. We didn't care for her name but we wouldn't have changed it because of the fact it was the name Emma knew.
But whatever people do the strangest things, and as long as they are a good loving family to Emma I guess it doesn't matter what they call her.
Emma we miss you very much and it feels like our home is empty without you. If you ever need to come back to us we will gladly take you whether it is today, tomorrow, or 10 years from now we will gladly take you back.
Good luck Emma! and much love to you!