Oh how quickly life changes...

Since my last post, just over a week ago. We sign our lease on the 13th and move into our apartment on the 14th! We are both super excited. I had successful knee surgery on the 1st to repair the damage I sustained at work back in January. I had a job interview on the 6th, that I THINK went well...now I just need to hear back from them because training would begin on the 15th!

Unemployment Sucks...

Unemployment sucks a big one. B and I have both been unemployed for a month now. We can't move until we have jobs and we can't get jobs until we move. I lost a decent opportunity at a place because we couldn't find a place to live in the area quick enough that we could afford. We are currently scraping by on my worker's compensation checks since I am unemployed, but it is barely enough to cover the two car payments, car insurance, and phone bill we currently pay on. Don't even bother asking me about one of our cars which we can't drive right now because it blows smoke from the vents. Not even retail stores have called me back.

If finding a job is hard, finding an affordable place to live for B and I and our two awesome puppies is nearly impossible. At least with out having a crap ton of fees associated with it all.

Speaking of puppies, our youngest and currently not fixed male, Skidman, loves to annoy his sister Savannah by licking her butt. We got tired of Savannah snapping at him when he would do this so we picked up two essential things, a clicker and a spray bottle. I filled the spray bottle with 1 part lemon juice and 3 parts water. Shook and voila a very fast way to get Skidman to realize that licking his sister's butt is not a good thing. He's gotten better and the amount of snapping has decreased immensely. It also helps that Savannah has learned that she gets a better response from us (B and I) when she just growls at him or comes to us with a look that says, "Mommy, Daddy, Skidman is annoying me and I want him to stop." They really are two amazing pups.

Maybe tomorrow I will sit on my butt and call places...or I could just save that for Thursday when I will be confined to sitting on my butt all day because I get my knee scoped out Wednesday.

Here's to a new life in a new town soon, before we all go crazy.

Oh wait...we already are.

When One Door Closes...it gets slammed in your Face?!

There is an old saying that goes, "When one door closes, another shall be opened." In reality it's more like "When one door closes...it gets slammed in your face." Per my last post several weeks ago. B and I both lose our jobs due to state budget cuts. We were given three weeks in order find new jobs before camp closed. Well, B's last day was Friday the 15th. So we are now both officially unemployed. What we are going to do, I have no clue, as there are currently very few jobs in the field in which we came from that enable us to go home to our dogs every night. We've narrowed down our job searches to four general areas in Virginia, however, I have not gotten a single bite from anywhere I have applied to so far. Hence the door slamming in our face. I am most certainly glad to have B home every night now, but we both feel the stress of not knowing where we are going next. Hopefully a door will open soon.

May God smile upon us some day soon,

~Fenex

The Joys of being funded by the state government

Oh the joys of working at a place funded by the state government. So, the WONDERFUL (the use of the term "wonderful" is sarcastic) state of North Carolina has made the decision to completely cut out the DJJ funding for wilderness camps. Meaning, B and I lose our job and the 2nd camp in 9 months for me is closing and the 3rd camp in three years for B. Now, originally, the plan we got from headquarters was that all camps were closing by the end of June. We were kind of excited about this, because it meant we had a good solid three to four months to find new jobs. WELL, we just got word from camp (in the form of HR visiting camp for a surprise staff meeting) that camp is NOT closing at the end of June, but April 21. Meaning we have a month before camp closes. This is not enough time to find new jobs, but we can make it...I hope.

When One Door Closes...Another is Opened.

Several doors have closed for me and B in the past few weeks. Life happens, things come up that make affording life semi hard. Our Pontiac ended up needing almost a grand of work done to it before it would pass the state inspection. That royally sucked. At the same time, his mom's car (which is our temporary back up car for when one of us has (had) our only working vehicle decided that the engine didn't want to work properly. It still runs, but we aren't comfortable driving it 5 minutes to Wal-Mart, let alone the 33 minute drive to work. So our solution, is something that we had talked about for a while, getting a second vehicle, mainly for me to drive. So we did! I found one online after looking at many many options, and we drove to Richmond Friday to look it. The beautiful blue 2005 Hyundai Tucson GLS is mine and sitting in our front yard. It drives amazing. It rides amazing.

More to come...

Epic Failure!

Apparently, I epically fail at a few things, one of them being giving directions in the dark while immersed in a very interesting conversation...hehe. OOPS. The other is keep up with writing my thoughts down on here or even on paper. I suck at it. I get so immersed in life, that I forget all about de-stressing by writing things down. A lot of "things" have happened in the past month, and all of these "things" have worn me out immensely. I was so worn out from everything that I broke down the other night after a particularly hard day at work and did something that I have also epically failed at doing...giving up my worries and stresses to God. After I gave it all up to God, I feel much better emotionally...I'm still worn out as all get out but its not affecting me emotionally. I need to get better at that. As everything I do in life, it's just one more thing for me to work on constantly.

Hazards of Wilderness Camp

There are many hazards to working at a wilderness camp, most common of those hazards is illness. Kids get sick and when they get sick, they pass it around. At wilderness camp, they pass it to other members of their group, their chiefs, kids in other groups, it goes around and around. A few weeks ago, I had the unfortunate luck of being the chief in charge of taking care of the sicklings in my group. All of them. So naturally, I get sick too. It hit on a particularly rough day at work for me. The boys were being dumb and me and my co-chief had to call the MC's down to help us out. After a particularly long huddle in the cold, it hit me. BAM! I started running a fever. The next few days until I got off for mine and B's weekend was insane. I could barely walk I ached so much. B was an amazing caretaker, getting me whatever I needed, taking care of the dogs and making me stay in bed. I ended up going to the doctor and what do you know... I had a touch of the flu that had turned into bronchitis! Thankfully, after 10 days of medicine, I feel loads better.

The next hazard of working in wilderness camp is injuries. The most common way for a chief to get injured at wilderness camp is from restraints or breaking up fights. I, unfortunately, am a casualty of such type of injury. This past weekend was chaos. That is all I can describe it as, because nothing fits it better. My group was chaos. The day I got injured, half my group decided to go out of bounds for a good 2 hours. We didn't check out of tents until after 7pm and then all hell broke loose. I won't go into the details, but while an MC and my co-chief were in a restraint the rest of the group decided they were going to fight someone. While trying to break this fight up in the dark, my right knee twists, pops, and buckles. Because of all the adrenaline in my body, I didn't realize what had happened until things had calmed down and my knee just didn't feel right at all. One trip to the emergency room the next day, and I had a tentative diagnosis of a right ACL sprain.

B has been amazing through all of this and is such a gentleman (not that he wasn't before) but I guess I recognize it more since I have to ask him to do things for me. B continues to show me every day God's love through his actions.