That’s what I’ve been told…

• You have exceeded the maximum number of payments allowed on this account.

And which fine company do you think has shared this lovely information with me? The electric company, perchance? Yes - the electric company. You know, Alabama Power Company - the ones that want me to pay them extra money for not having enough money - now won’t let me give them any money! WTH??

Nutters, I tell you, it’s just plain nutters. See, I’ve been paying them bits and pieces here and there as I can, and it just so happens that in the last two weeks, I’ve been able to send them four or five different payments.

And I had $200 I could send them on Friday, but, it was on two separate cards - which would mean two separate payments. I paid the first one, no problem. The software then asked me if I’d like to make another payment. Why, yes - I would. How did you guess?

So I head back in to do just that and that is when I received the lovely message above.

And yet, it is due to be cut off on Wednesday. Just lover-ly.

One more chapter in the ongoing saga of Lisa VS. Alabama Power. Heh.

“….so then we’ll have money, and Aunt Tracy can come here.” You know, like - we could send her money to travel here.

There are some moments when I regret with every fiber of my me-ness, moving out here. There are some moments when I just ask myself, “what in the hell were you thinking?!” And I physically ache to go home.

My brother and his wife, Tracy - were so involved in these kids’ lives. They were so much a part of their existence.

Am I nothing but pure evil to take them away - to separate them?

Oh gawd, I gotta think about something else - this hurts too much.

…’cause those two nieces of mine are just SO SWEET!!! Unbelievably sweet! I may have to hop a train and commit a niece-napping!

They are the two sweetest Spidey Girls that I’ve ever known!

See what I mean? See what my brother sent me last night:

Aren’t they adorable? And let me tell you - in ‘The Book of Aunt Lisa’ - these girls are scoring big time! Just check it out:

• See their little precious ‘tomboy’ ways, liking Spidey the way they do - SCORE!
• They love the computer - SCORE!
• One of the little monsters looks just like me - MAJOR SCORE!

It’s true, I’m not kidding - check her out:

That right there’s a ‘Little Lisa’ face, if I ever saw one - and I have, just this morning in my bathroom mirror! Well, it wasn’t exactly ‘little’, the one I saw, but….oh here, watch this - then you’ll really see what I mean!

And shhh! Don’t tell Miss Red Spidey, but, I’m going to reveal her true identity - shhhh! Top secret, classified information this is! I’m serious! Here she is:

Isn’t she completely gorgeous? Awww….I’m seriously gonna start crying again. Must talk about something else. Blog the weather. Blog a ball game. Yeah, that’s it. Blog the stock market - nah, scratch that, stocks can make ya cry, too, right?

Ugh - anyone got five tickets from BHM to DEN lying around? Purdy please?

Storing information off of my hard drive has been on my mind a lot lately, having recently upgraded to a new hard drive after my crash. I know that I want to organize all of my photos and get them on CD’s. There is also the matter of documents, though. My son is a class at school that utilized thumb drives to take their information with them wherever they go. I think I would like something with a little more storage capacity, though. I’ve been reading about micro sd cards, and I’m thinking that might be just what I need. The only problem that I can see is that they are so small, I’d be afraid that I might lose mine. I’m always thinking that with the kids’ Nintendo DS games. Those things are tiny, and I just know they’re going to lose them - but, they don’t. Hmm…interesting. How on earth does that work? That a kid can keep track of an itty bitty thing like that, and yet, they often can’t find their shoes? Haha! Well, so maybe I wouldn’t lose it. I do need to do something - I need to prepared for another crash. I don’t ever want to go through that again! It was awful!

I just received the coolest dog tag for Shawn in the mail! Check it out:

I know, I know, my picture sucks. As luck would have it, though, just when I want to show you something, my camera battery dies. And apparently, my scanner needs to retire to greener pastures. Gah! It is just all of a sudden, giving me the worst possible scans. It is definitely time to upgrade in that department, but, this post is not about scanners, it is about wicked cool dog tags!

I was so excited when I opened the package, because, I had thought that the dog tags were plastic and on key chain-length chains. However, it is metal and on a necklace-length chain. It is so nice. I was trying to save it for Shawn to give to him on Christmas, but, I just could not help myself! I had to give it to him! He was so excited! He totally loves it! He wears it every single day!

The band teacher was even impressed! And just as I suspected, Sammie wants one and Patrick isn’t really interested. Oh! I’d love to send my nieces and nephew one, too!

….are kids who are dealing with, or who have dealth with, catastrophic illness. We have a little girl at our elementary school who is going through cancer treatment, and the last time I saw her, she was in a wheelchair. Today at the Christmas concert, not only was she not in a wheelchair, she was not wearing a hat or scarf or a wig, her beautiful bald head glowing in the fluorescent lighting. She reminded me of Melissa Etheridge - fighting against her illness, loud and proud! This sweet little girl in our school is in the fifth grade, just on the verge of appearance really mattering to these kids. And yet, here she was, proudly carrying this gorgeously white head of hers, like it was all the rage. And yet, it was more than that, really. She really had that attitude of not caring what people thought. And that, to me, is the best place to be. I love kids (and adults, too!) that can wander through their days, not so obsessed with ‘oh no, am I wearing the right brand of jeans, and oh no, did I curl them up just so - just like everybody else?’ (Yeah, I know - curling up your jeans was from the 50’s, the 80’s, and for a short time a couple years ago - definitely not now! Hey - it was just an example!)

Seeing this girl today really made me feel good. It is like, just being in the presence of such beauty and strength, we are ourselves uplifted, some little bit.

I don’t know what all kind of treatments she had, if it was mesothelioma treatment or what, but, I know she is on the road to recovery. And I’ll just bet that a good part of the reason for that is the strength of her spirit!

It’s driving me absolutely nutty having my living room in the basement, and having my living room half torn up and empty! I’m just getting so sick of it. It wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t have to go through the garage to get to the basement hangout room. I totally understand the reasoning for it - keeping it empty until we do the renovations so we don’t have a whole ton of furniture to move when it’s time to do the renovations. And so we don’t put off doing the renovations, because, we don’t feel like moving a ton of furniture. It’s just starting to really get to me. It would be nice to shop for some discount furniture and just get a couple of pieces, like maybe two soft chairs, so that we’d have someplace comfortable to sit up here, besides on our beds. We had a new thrift shop open up in town and it is huge. I’m keeping my eyes out there for some decent chairs. I’ll just be so glad when we can make this house our home. It sure would make this whole transition easier!

My mom and I both are so addicted to coffee, and buying mochas and espressos at that starry place! We both keep attempting to cut down, but, it is so hard! I know we’d both just love to have our own espresso machines! Even though we wouldn’t really be cutting back on the caffeine, at least we could cut down on the cost! And you know, owning our own might just make us cut back our consumption, too. I had a friend growing up who always had all the best junk at her house. I’m talking candy, chips, Strawberry Quik, biscuits, all the sugary cereals, soda - you name it, they usually had it! And you know what? She could totally take or leave all that stuff. I, on the other hand, went into sugarphoria every time I walked into her house! Haha! So maybe having something around all the time helps you not need/want it so much. Who knows - with my darn luck, I’d drink way more caffeine! Sheesh!

Oh my goodness - is it ever loud in our basement! We’ve got a couple of extra kids tonight and the whole crew of them are downstairs doing gosh knows what, but, it sure is loud! We do have several gaming systems down there…and it gets really loud when they play Dance Dance Revolution, that is for sure. It doesn’t sound like that is what they are up to right now, though. Who knows - they could be killing each other on some other lovely video game…ugh! We have so much equipment down there, including two different TV’s, that some HDMI splitters could probably really help us out, to keep everything organized. It’s strange how we went from a family with no gaming consoles to a family with too many! Thank goodness our kids are all still major bookworms, or we’d really have to rethink this whole setup!

There is a new triple cocktail of pharmaceuticals that doctors are giving to alcoholics and drug addicts to sober them up for good. Huh. I’m pretty much totally not convinced. There is an article, however, about a man who was in and out of drug rehab and just was not getting off of the meth and ‘doing his life’. He goes in for these drugs and now he’s living life on life’s terms, he says. There are three drugs in the cocktail, and the addicts go in for three days in a row to get them administered. One doctor even said that the patients come in agitated and irritable, and get up twenty minutes later just feeling great. I must remain skeptical about this one.