Monday, November 14, 2011

Its going to be a great day!

Could it be that things have turned around once again for us? Lets keep our fingers crossed that this is the case.. Thursday morning Derek woke up, dressed for the day, hit the off button on the bedroom TV remote and as it was turning off, the last thing he heard was "It's going to be a great day" and he thought to himself.. "ya know what, Today IS going to be a great day!"

He went off to an interview that morning, didnt hear anything the rest of the day but the interview went well and he was impressed with the company. Friday as he was out in the blustery rainy weather attempting to find ducks to hunt, he finally got the call that the job was being offered to him! When he got home, he checked his email and he had a formal job offer in writing. This company seems like a great company with really good benefits, better than any other shop he has worked for. He would be the main painter at PCM, which manufactures and paints latches, doors and windows for boats, anything from tug boats to 500' luxury yachts!! We are both really happy about this job and we hope it is as good as it seems to be. And they offered him only $1 less per hour than he was making in Seattle (oh this job is in Everett, close to Boeing). Since Thanksgiving is next week, they would like him to start the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Derek is really excited to get back to work, being an at-home couch potatoe is not his gig and he's going stir crazy! Plus, he's not a good house-wife substitute and I will be a much happier person when he is back to work! :) Because when he is home and the house is dirty, I can tend to get a bit irritated that the chores are not being done, however when we both are working and the house is messy, I place more blame on myself! lol.. crazy logic but I am looking forward to being less irritated at my messy house. :)

... and most important, his awesome streak continues! I am proud when I can tell people that Derek STILL has never been to an interview that he did not get an offer for the job!! That is amazing... he's been offered probably 6 jobs since his layoff 3 months ago, but only one was worth accepting. I must be married to a really great person with a lot of self confidence & exceptional people skills! ;)

Our focus and theme for the weekend included a lot of discussion on making positive changes for ourselves and moving forward to the next chapter of our life. We have some new goals and thoughts on where we are headed and I surely am hoping I can stick to it.. I'm not a good goal setter as I rarely finish what I start, but maybe I can change too.

Our happy weekend came to a halt on Sunday morning when we received a phone call. My cousin Sean is married to Sophy, well Sophy's mother was crossing Hwy 99 in Everett Saturday night as a pedestrian and was struck by a vehicle, she died at the scene. No drugs or alcohol were involved by the driver, it appears to be a very tragic accident from an error in judgement. Sean & Sophy had just moved to NC a month ago, of course they flew in last night. I am just very sad for Sophy and her family, seems unreal and once again reminds us that life sometimes doesnt give us tomorrow.

On a positive note, the 4-letter word has been potentially forcast for the lowlands this coming weekend... S N O W ! ! ! Yep, I said it.. snow snow, beautiful snow... well lumpy rain is most likely what we will get, but I cant help but smile and get excited for the white stuff.. I love it!!

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Of Course...

Of course Unemployment had to find a small way to screw some money out of us! We got the lump check finally in our account this week, but it was much smaller than I anticipated. Derek called the unemployment office today; come to find out that because he opened a "work share" claim in January with his 2nd to last employer from Snohomish, that he has to finish out the year with that old claim and cannot start a new regular unemployment claim until January. The difference you ask? Well $117 per week is the loss we have to endure for 4 months, equating to $2000!!! GRRRR.. sons-sa-bitches

Friday, November 4, 2011

Lets lighten this up

After that last post and holding back a few tears, I'll lighten up the blog a minute with some other updates! :)

The GREAT news of the week is that we FINALLY got the legal notice in the mail yesterday regarding the hearing from a week ago.. and the judge did find in favor of Derek basically, so he now qualifies for unemployment benefits! His employer has 30 days to appeal if they choose, but we dont think they will. Considering they did not even call in for the initial hearing, there is no reason to believe they would try to appeal the decision. I keep checking our bank account, we could really use that fat check about now to get caught up on things..

This is a HUGE HUGE relief! Derek now will focus on working with the unemployment office to get some retraining.. not exactly sure what direction yet he will go, but they have counselors he can talk with and pick a field that is growing and not a field that is on the major decline such as his which has experienced a 152% loss in work according to the unemployment office. It feels great after almost 3 months of stress and bullshit worry, to finally be able to have a sigh of relief and know we will be okay.

When we got down to Seattle yesterday, we parked in the garage and were walking down the street, looking for the main entrance... Not an easy thing to find! :) As we were walking, I saw a guy in a wheelchair with a chick, they were outside smoking. What was the harm in looking at the guy?? Well apparently me drifting my eyes his direction prompted him to blurt out "I broke my tweeker!!" WTF!! I just turned my head and kept on walking.. Derek says "this is why you keep your eyes forward and dont make any eye contact Piper!" As we left the hospital, I was sure to keep my damn eyes on nothin but getting the hell out of downtown! I'm such a country girl...

Derek had a minor setback with Cooper a week ago. He took Cooper out to a little more public hunting area and it seemed that Cooper was just determined to have a bad day.. he wasnt listening like he should and it was a lot more battle of heads than expected. Which is OK. Cooper is still a pup after all and Derek realized he's not quite ready for full board hunting trips. Cooper didnt listen as Derek attempted to call him back from an encounter with another dog, and the other dog was not so happy to have this young thing come bouncing up in his face, Cooper almost got his ass in a fight of his own, but as soon as the other dog started to fight him, Cooper cowered and ran like a chicken! Derek was very apologetic to the guy, and the guy was apologetic as well, even though it was not his fault his dog got protective. Cooper was in the wrong!

Cooper also had no interest in picking up birds that day so Derek clipped the wings off some birds he had shot a few days prior, and tied the feathers to his training dummies. He'll now get worked with those until he is comfortable picking them up. He just needs more positive reinforcement to be associated with live birds.. It definately can get frustrating to have a dog that used to love birds to a dog that now is so timid about picking them up but it teaches you to remember patience and understanding when working with Cooper because it's not his fault he has this negative association and if we do this right, we will build a stronger dog that will learn that this is a good thing!!

My Brother.. Eric

This has been a week of worry and stress. This past Saturday I got a call from my dad, he told me that Eric was jumped late Friday night by 6 guys and had a skull fracture, he was okay and on his way home from Harborview. I immediately was sick to my stomach, I was really upset and angry, scared and confused. I knew Eric would not be up for much company that day and since we had a planned horse club Movie Night at our house that evening, we worked on cleaning the house throughout the day and planned to go visit Eric on Sunday.

A few hours later dad called back and told me it was not six guys that jumped him, just one. He had misunderstood what Andrea had said, which was that there were maybe 6 guys standing around as one of them hit Eric. On Sunday, we got a little better idea from Andrea and Eric what happened, although Eric doesnt even remember being at the bar/restaurant that night, he only recalls waking up in the hospital.

According to Eric's friend, Eric and this guy were arguing/debating about political issues between Eric's fire district and Stanwood's. For some reason which is not clear, they went outside and at some point Eric got punched in the face hard enough that immediately knocked him out, he hit the ground and Eric's buddy jumped on top of him to protect him and his buddy is pretty certain that atleast the one guy, if not others, kicked them when they were on the ground. The guy took off of course and they are still trying to track him down and find out who he is, as he will be charged!!

Eric is NOT at all the type of guy to instigate violence or put himself in a position to get in a fight. Andrea was dancing, so she did not see any of this happen but I just know that NO WORDS are EVER worth hitting someone like that. This guy was probably looking for a reason to fight someone that night and unfortunately, my brother was the victim.

My brother did suffer a skull fracture, he had a pretty good indent on his forehead above his eyebrow, I guess they call that the orbital socket. On Wednesday, the doctor at Harborview told him they wanted to get him in the next day for surgery. So yesterday, they cut my brothers head open from ear to ear, he has a shaved headband basically where they cut him, and then they pealed his skin/face back far enough to get access to his eye area so they could install some small metal plates and screws. :(

It all sounds so scary... I was very upset yesterday at work, knowing what was going to happen to my pour brother and worried that there is always the chance of complications. We are not talking about a minor surgery here, this is a pretty big deal, I think anyways! He came through very well though, we were finally able to see him last night around 8pm. He was tired and groggy, so we only stayed a few minutes with him. I did not like seeing him lying there, but it really made me think about the what-ifs and how thankful I was that it was not any worse.

The criminal case has been turned over to Everett, which is a good thing! Apparently since they realized this was not just a simple punch to a guys face, that my brother suffered such major damage that they would put in the bigger effort to find this guy and prosecute his ass!!!! This surgery is a minimum $30,000 surgery plus Eric has to take a month off work... I am hopeful they will find him and he will go to jail.

I was pretty emotional yesterday, I was thinking a lot about my sister and how I never imagined my life would be so unlucky as to loose her and that if something that tragic could happen to me, then it could happen again some day and I should not take anything for granted. I love my family more than I tell them and just the thought of loosing any of them will bring me to tears, but it also gives me a little more strength in realizing I should try harder at making positive changes to myself so that one day they are not crying over me.