Friday Rants & Wrap Up.

Do you ever have one of those days where you just want to get back in the covers and wait to get out of bed until it's tomorrow? Imagine waking up to find your paycheck has suddenly decreased by 32.9%. Yes, by one-third. This happened to us this morning. The Army has changed the way they pay out retirement benefits to retirees who did not serve the full 20 years (medically retired veterans). I didn't talk to the person so I don't know exactly how it works but from what Jake said it sounds like his retirement is now fed to the VA but he already receives VA benefits greater than his retirement so it's like his retirement funds his VA benefits. However it works, they didn't inform us, they admitted they were supposed to but somehow they never did. Some warning would've been nice. So I went through our budget to make sure we'd be okay, then went through about two thousand papers trying to find a specific one so Jake can apply for other benefits tomorrow through a different program (finding the elusive paper felt totally awesome, by the way). Even though this was unexpected and awful news we still managed to have a fun day. We have a friend visiting from out of town so we played some Rock Band and cooked lots of yummy food.

We live across from a Middle School. I like it because there is a nice big park nearby and the block always looks great because the school keeps up on maintenance. I dislike it because at 7:30 am there are hundreds of kids across from my house yelling and screaming and sometimes the band likes to play outside bright and early. I'm so happy school is out this week. Then after school, when the kids are walking home, they leave their trash in my front yard and open the gate to my backyard. Luckily we have the world's best dog and she never leaves the yard but it still makes me really angry.

Wal-Mart. I try really hard to avoid that place but I just needed some deli cheese and Excedrin and was in a hurry. I didn't realize it was the first of the month. Stopping there on the first was probably one of the worst decisions I've ever made. It was craziness. Their EBT machines (EBT is a debit style card for food stamps) weren't working so they had giant carts filled with food just left in the aisles when the lady came over the loud speaker announcing that you could only use cash/credit. There were people everywhere and they weren't looking after their children and one little boy fell from the side of a grocery cart and smacked his head on the concrete floor in the produce section. Poor little guy. I just got my stuff and got out of there as fast as I could, which wasn't fast at all.

Now for some happy things:

Jo-Anns is having a buy one, get one 50% off sale on all Lion Brand yarn.

Jake got me a sweet toy lightsaber that was full of m&ms. It is pretty much the coolest gift ever and yes, I went around the house getting into lightsaber wars with Jake, the dog, the cats, whoever got too close and needed some Jedi action.

I got my acceptance letter from the local community college. It kind of cracked me up since I've been going to a University for the last zillion years. The community college app took less than 3 minutes to complete online. This fall I'm going to start classes for an Associate's in Medical Transcription. I figured, since we live out of the way and there aren't a lot of jobs here, I'd like to have a source of income that I can earn from anywhere. I can't wait to go talk to my advisor because I'm pretty sure I won't have to take very many classes to complete this degree since I've already taken all of the basics at my previous University.

Jake's birthday is tomorrow!! We're going to his hometown to see a concert where one of his old friends is playing. It should be really fun. I'm hoping for some nice weather.

Have a happy weekend!

I'm linked up at For the Love of Blogs for Coffee Talk.