By the way...

I think Kelly Clarkson and I have some similar issues:





One for each of the two most important people in terms of my childhood. Let me just say thank you for my dearest friend--and whom I consider family--who 'raised' me in my 20s, taught me to love others and myself, and whom I can always count on. I've got your back.

Listening to

Looking forward to having a day off

Listening to: 'Because of You' by Kelly Clarkson



and celebrating the 4th, barring rain at least. I plan to go to the downtown festival from about 12-2:30 (the parade runs at 2;I have to be somewhere from 3 until 4 or 5, so I'm hoping the parade doesn't run too over--it seems longer every year). Then it's back home to do what I can with the house until about 8:30, when it's time to go to watch the fireworks.

Objectives:

• funnel cake (yes, I'm diabetic; but it's once a year)
  
• wend through vendors
  
• find some inexpensive earrings (say $12 or less), but otherwise not spend any money
  
• parade
  

Happy Independence Day! (also one of my favourite songs)

PS The cat marching band was too bizarre to resist, but I found them at a site called Webweaver:

Free Clipart and Web Graphics
A huge collection of totally free clipart! No pop ups, trick links or registration required. Just high quality images!

Yay, I'm back online

I've had a couple of days offline because my cable modem decided to stop speaking to the Vonage router. Resetting the modem didn't help. I finally had some time to call Insight and they suggested unplugging the router and the ethernet cable between the two, then plugging the router back in and letting it cycle. So yay, I have cable again, and also my phone, which piggybacks onto it.

So what has been happening, you ask? Well, you probably didn't but I'm going to tell you. My days of free time for painting ended with most of it done, so I'm back at work, both jobs. But tomorrow afternoon I need to paint one room for the second time and another for the fifth, if you include the primer. Burgundy is very hard to get coverage for on a light wall. Trim will be finished on Saturday and Sunday. Then there's books to be put up on the new shelves, and then begins my doom.

The strange thing of the week was that my door panel on the inside of the driver's door in my car fell off the other day. I've gotten relatively adept at getting it back on long enough to shut the door, but at first I really worked up a sweat in the heat and said a few choice words in the parking lot of the gas station. I'd picked up my paycheque and needed to put it in the bank and grab my shirt from home within 20 minutes, and it was not fun trying to put a door back together. But I managed and even made it to work within about three minutes of time. Fortunately I priced the fix and it looks like it'll run about $45, not too bad. Now it's just a matter of when I can get it done.

What else? They're increasing the pressure in my CPAP machine. Tomorrow I need to take it into the medical equipment place for them to reprogram it. I see the doctor next week.

I gave blood today at a blood drive at the hospital. I got a $10 fuel card for my efforts plus a nifty etched glass for completing my third gallon. That sounds really impressive, but that's over 23 years. I average once or twice a year, whereas you can donate much more often than that. I have O+ blood, so I constantly get pleas when the supply gets low.

One last thing, a video I haven't included here before, but really the song could be the anthem of my life, partly due to my issues with my parents, partly for my need to grow beyond the little girl I was. I can't embed it (the musician provided it to YouTube on the condition they disable that feature), but here it is.

Kelly Clarkson's 'Because of You'