I can handle anything

I'm an Army wife. My husband is deployed. I have a very curious, inquisitive, rambunctious, and obnoxious two and a half year old. I have a wonderful Mommy's-girl, 7 month old {{when the heck did that happen?!}} who only wants to be near me. And I am currently baking another, that is sure to be the worlds next soccer star. I've dealt with a number of household emergencies since my husband left, even managed some on little to no sleep with sick children. I'm pretty awesome and I can handle anything...

However, nothing will turn me into a screaming, running 9 year old faster than a spider. Any spider. Yes, even daddy long legs. It's pretty sad. I've been known to vacate a room for hours waiting on J to get home. When that isn't an option I try any means possible to kill it without getting anywhere close to them {{did you know sliding a phone book across a laminate floor will kill a bug?}} Lets not even discuss the amount of time it takes for me to build my courage up to actually go through with killing them. It's also very sad. Through out this deployment I've been working on the length of time it takes to kill them. It totally freaks me out {{especially when they drag their dead bodies around by one working leg - EW!!}} But, after all, I don't have a choice {{besides when I lose sight of them and they are running free in my house, it just creeps me out that much more}}.

A few weeks ago, after killing the sixth disgusting, hugemongous, gross, brown house spider, my nerves had enough. I called an exterminator. The sweetest older woman answered the phone. I told her why I was calling and though she couldn't give me a guarantee I wouldn't see more, she told me I would see a lot less than I had been seeing {{Good enough for me!!}} I also asked her if they would knock down all the webs and kill the spiders on my porches. I thought nothing of her answer, "I'm sure we can do that." Then she said they'd be out the next day and we got off the phone.

I know this is totally sexist, but I was expecting a big burly man with his butt crack hanging out to show up at my door the next day {{aka John Goodman ala arachnophobia}}. So, imagine my surprise when my doorbell rang the next day and who stood before me was NOT a big burly man ready to take on and rid me of my house spiders. No, it was a five foot tall, seventy year old great grandma of three... Apparently, I didn't need a man...

I needed Betty White...



{{BTW, before I get hate mail for being an ageist, she did a GREAT job! She even knocked down all the webs on my porches. I merely find it quite humorous that I was out-womaned by a seventy year old woman.}}

The Blue Screen of Death

I have always been overly attached to my cell phone. An attachment that got to a whole new level during J's last deployment. If I was ever without my phone it most surely ended in a panic attack {{what if he called?!}} This deployment has been a little different. I'm still attached to my phone {{it even has a name}} but this time around, most of our conversing has been done on FB or through Google phone. I have both the apps on my phone but it's just soooo much easier to chat on a full size keyboard and so much easier to protect the camera from a two year old when it's able to sit flat on something, so I like to use the laptop more than my phone.

I have been having some issues with it lately and even told J recently that I need to back up the data so we didn't lose it all when it died for good. It's been crashing a LOT. It would freeze up and restart or the screen would go to a crazy, hot mess and all I could do was take the battery out, unplug it, and try again. I feel like I'm a relatively smart individual and for most things I am really good at figuring it out when I don't know how to do something. However, the thought of downloading something that could make it worse, resetting the system and losing everything unintentionally or doing worse harm to the computer kept me from Googling how to solve this issue. There are just some things you leave to professionals.

Yesterday, as I knew it eventually would, the computer got worse. It was doing the crazy-screen thing and randomly restarting when I asked too much of it, but it was also showing the Blue Screen of Death {{doomiest voice possible}}. Ok, that's a little dramatic. But it happened a good eight times. It would flash to this blue screen full of computer gibberish and at the bottom it said, "Crash Dump," Then it would restart and go to the crazy, hot mess screen {{these are computer terms, I checked}}. Let's talk about how frustrating it is to be in the middle of doing something INSANELY important {{like shopping}} and having your computer Blue Screen of Death you. Not only did it happen while I was online window shopping, but it also happened while I was blogging {{*gasp!*}} and it didn't even save. Things were serious. When the laptop restarted after that {{maybe the 9th time of the day}} I quickly Googled the number for Toshiba Support and made the phone call.

A woman named "Brenda Williams" answered the phone, catching me quite off guard as I had expected to spend at *least* twenty minutes on the phone with a machine before getting to speak to a live person {{the nerve of these companies having LIVE people answer their phones!}}. I'm fairly certain her name wasn't Brenda Williams. I'm actually fairly certain she's never even met anyone named Brenda Williams. Brenda Williams might have had the job at one time, before it was outsourced, but the lady I spoke with was most definitely NOT a Brenda Williams. She had very thick accent. I had to ask her to repeat things several times but she was very nice and very helpful. She assured me they could fix my laptop, that they could do it remotely so I wouldn't have to wait. She even gave me a {{small}} discount when I choked on my dinner when she told me how much it would cost to fix. After deciding I didn't really have a choice, I paid the nearly $200 {{I couldn't blog!! It was an emergency!!}} and she connected me to a technician remotely who spent the next three hours solving all of my computer problems.

I have been really concerned about taking it somewhere and having people go through all of the stuff on our computer... namely certain pictures I sent to my husband from the last deployment... So being able to watch Creepy "Tom" {{hey come on! It's creepy to watch your computer being controlled by someone who no doubt spent the rest of the night watching me through the camera!!}} was kind of... nice?

Then as he finished solving my Blue Screen of Death, I thought about those pictures. They were taken a while ago. Before kids and breast feeding...

Maybe we could have traded...