Hello Interneters. I bet you all thought I had fallen off the face of the planet, never to be heard from again. Maybe some of you even breathed a sigh of relief because of it. Well eff off because I'm back, bitches. Adam and I have been performing a little experiment this month and it turns out, yes, if you don't pay your phone/Internet bill, they WILL shut both of them off. Make sure you write that down kids. May be handy later. We did this for you, Internet. Oh, same thing with the Dish People. Don't pay=no Dish. Hope you have a lot of interesting stuff stored on your DVR.

So, that being said, what has been going on with little ol' me? Well, not a lot, really. It's April. I hate April. No, I LOATHE April. April makes me cringe every time I see it coming up on the calendar. April is notoriously not a good month for my family. Been that way for many, many years. Let me just give you some examples:

April 27, 1983: My brother drowns 10 days after his 23rd birthday.

April 27, 1995: My mom is taken to the hospital by ambulance due to congestive heart failure. She eventually gets better and is able to return to work a few weeks later.

April 26, 1996: My mom is taken to the hospital by ambulance due to congestive heart failure. A few days later she suffers a mild stroke while in the hospital. They take another couple of days to believe us that she's had a stroke. She recovered from the stroke but not too well from the congestive heart failure. She couldn't work anymore and went on disability.

April 6, 1999: My mother passes away two days after Easter, the last time I had seen her. She had been hospitalized in Peoria for around a week. They were getting her stronger so she could eventually have a heart transplant. They were putting in an internal IV on that morning so that she could go home and still receive her meds. She developed an irregular heartbeat and passed away during the procedure.

This month: My sister has been battling some kind of pinched nerve in her neck and/or arm. During all of her doctor visits with all of that they've found she has high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. Boo!

Anyway, I'm just waiting for April to be over so I can move onto May. I always breathe a little sigh of relief when May 1st rolls around. It can't come too soon!

Our Easter went well. My sister ACTUALLY didn't buy a truckload of candy for the kids, so that was awesome. Usually she buys so much we sock most of it away and end up forgetting about it until Halloween rolls around when we sock away most of that candy, thus finding the forgotten Easter candy.

Adam was called back to work last Wednesday. This is early for him as usually doesn't go back until the end of May/first part of June. We were excited at first until we realized it was probably just a fluke. He worked 9.5 hours the first day and only 6 the next with no work on Friday. He's supposed to call the office today but considering all the rain we got on Sunday, I don't think ANYONE will really be working. I think he'll end up working very sporadically until his normal callback time. Whatever can be done to screw up unemployment, right? Irregardless, I look at it as somewhat of a compliment. To me it says a lot, especially with this particular company, that they've called him back so soon. Even if it's for a short amount of time, or for just that one job. Adam is only a laborer and they are typically the last called back, the last needed. Seems like they know he's a dependable, hard-worker and, just guessing, maybe he was called before other guys who are perhaps less dependable and hard-working but who should have been called before him due to tenure or title. Of course that's just my opinion because I think my man kicks ass!

I also spent a couple of hours on his second day back to work redoing our budget. Figuring out what to pay and when with our soon-to-be higher income. I'm planning on paying off our old balance on the electric bill so we can stop paying the extra $85 or so each month and paying off our car early. AT the old house the electric company under-estimated our budget billing and we racked up a hefty balance. Now we're paying that crap off. Once it's done then I'm done with budget billing. Just let me pay what we owe. I love making our home budgets, though. I just have a hard time sticking to them. It's also a lot more fun to make the budget when you actually have some money to work with. All my fun was dashed, however, when Adam walked in the door that day at 2:30 in the afternoon when I shouldn't have seen him until around 6. I knew then my shiny new budget was probably going to end up in the toilet. We'll see what this week brings.

Adam stopped smoking this month. The government's higher taxes on ciggies starting on April 1st served as inspiration. At first he was going to go with the patch. I can get a discount on it at work and that was our plan. Then a girl at work suggested Chantix. She said it's the best way to stop smoking because it fixes the neurons in your brain that make you crave ciggies. You take it twice a day for three months. It's not cheap. Adam's insurance doesn't cover it so it costs $143 each month, but in the end it's so worth it. For the first week the pills are a lower milligram and you can also still smoke during that week. Starting with the second week is when you actually quit. Adam's last ciggie was on April 7th. He's replaced cigarettes with toothpicks. So far he's doing really well and I think it's only going to get easier for him. Like I said, my man kicks ass!

Well, that's my life up to this point. I'm working tonight and tomorrow covering for our full-time gal who has some family in town. I don't really feel like working, but that's typical of me. Update me on what's going on with you? I hope you are surviving this horrible month!