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Hi there,

The Funky Olive here, reporting for blogging duty. I opened this Blogger account on May 1st, and since it's now May 28th, I thought I had best post something and let you all know I exist. I'm new to blogging, in that this is my first ever blog post. Yep, a blogging virgin. So please go gentle on me. I'm quite sure I probably no friggin idea what I'm doing here, so I'll just ramble on a bit, and let the world know a bit about me, my life and shit like that.

Hmmm, well, I'm a married female, older. (not really feeling comfortable about revealing my age with this first post -- I mean, come on, it's my virginal post!) We have no children. After many years of testing and trying different techniques (both medical and well, you know, sexual) it just never happened. We could never afford a surrogate, or a private adoption, and by the time we could admit it wasn't going to happen, neither of us wanted to wait a bunch more years to go with a traditional adoption, so we opted out completely. They say things happen, or in our case, don't happen for a reason. I don't know what the reason could possibly be for us to be chastised from creating our own offspring. We're good people, with lots of love to share. Anyway, we have substituted our void of children with pets instead. Hey, wanna see a picture?

That's my baby JRT. Her name is Bizzy, and believe me, I did right by naming her! She's almost 8 now, and the poor thing is almost blind. She was born with what the vet referred to as junior cataracts, and apparently many puppies that are born with this condition grow out of it. Bizzy never did, but apart from the odd bash into the odd wall when she's on "go fast", she's managed to get along quite well with her disability. However, as she's getting older, the cataracts are increasing, and she's completely blind in the one eye now. The other one will deteriorate with time as well, I'm assuming. She still gets around pretty good for the most part, but her odd wall bashing incidents are a little more frequent. Unfortunately, we didn't have the $3000. the vet quoted us for cataract surgery when she was little, and I'm not so sure we would have put it out if we did have it, as there was a chance she would grow out of her condition. Like Bizzy's collar? It's covered in swarovski crystals and it's so sparkly! A friend of mine in California made it for her. She sells them on eBay, and will soon be selling them on her own website too, whenever I finish making her website for her! If you'd like to see them, check them out here.

So this is Brutus, our black lab. He's a wee bit camera shy, and I can see by this picture, that I should have vacuumed before I took it. I have to vacuum every day with these pets. Anyway, Brutus, or "Bru" as we call him is about 6 years old. We got him a few years ago, when he was about 2 or so. He was a rescue dog, in that we rescued him from being put down. His previous owner was to the point of having him destroyed, as he could no longer look after him properly. I guess his wife had left him, and Brutus, and this guy was away from home for 14 hours or so a day working construction, so in fairness to Bru, he figured he'd give him up to a home where he would get a little more attention. Anyway, long story short, by the time my husband heard Bru's story, the guy was getting ready to have him put down, as he couldn't find a home for him. Hello!! Have you never heard of your local Humane Society? So my husband ended up bring Bru home to our house, and he's been with us ever since. He was full of bad habits when we first got him, and considering he was left to fend for himself for much of every day, I suppose it was to be expected. Well, after many pairs of my shoes being destroyed, and any and all of anything that was remotely edible being left on the counter finding it's way to Bru's belly, we did manage to train him into a great dog. Here's a little tip if you have a dog that likes chewing your shoes... catch him or her in the act of chewing, (dog's have a very short attention span, and don't remember things they did an hour ago) take the shoe and scold the dog, then proceed to attach the shoe to the dog's collar. I left my shoe on Bru's collar for a couple days. Yeah, he looked like an idiot with a shoe hanging from his collar, but every time it got in the way of what he was wanting to do, he'd look at us like WTF, and we'd remind him that he was a bad dog. Worked like a charm. He never chewed another shoe, or anything that he wasn't supposed to ever since then, and I'm famous for leaving my shoes laying out, so the enticements have been there for him, but he's refrained.

This is our Chewy, sitting outside sunning herself, and though she looks like she's incoherent to what's going on around her, don't think for a second that she isn't on guard! She's a runty little thing underneath all that fur, but she can be a real bitch when another cat comes in her yard! She's the first cat either my husband or myself have ever had in our lives. Neither of our parents were fond of cats. He brought her home to me on our 7th wedding anniversary, which means she's almost, well, she's older! (again, I don't want to say, cuz it would help show my own age!) She's a little dirty looking in this picture. She loves to go under the cars and get all dirty, so I always end up shaving her down for the summer. I took her to the vet to have her done the first time, and have done it myself ever since. She loves it, and why wouldn't she; it's bonding time for her and myself, and it gets very hot and humid here in the summer, so it's much cooler for her to strut around looking like a poodle cat than a furball!

I work outside of the home in a bank, and my husband doesn't work. He's going through the bullshit red tape of fighting with the government for a disability pension. So my life is somewhat miserable and pretty stressful, as you can probably imagine. I have bills up the whazoo, and I don't know if I'll ever be out of debt again. What a friggin way to live, huh? Especially when I work in a bank. You'd think that I could just get a loan to pay off all my debts, but it's not that easy when you only have one income, and it's a measly income at that. Be nice to your banker, and know that they are underpaid! And to answer the question that most people ask when they find out I work in a bank, yes, I have been robbed -- twice! The first time was shortly after started with the bank, 3 short weeks in fact, and that one was at gunpoint. Little fucker that got us too. I was pissed! I wanted to beat him to a pulp, and I think I could have done it too, but the gun gave my head a reality check and I forked over the money. That little creep got caught within 20 minutes of the robbery. The second time, I actually wasn't there at the time. I was on lunch, and came back just after the maniac robber had left. He didn't have a gun, but he had some sort of pepper spray or something that he kept spraying and choking everyone out with, and he had come in to the bank screaming! Even though I wasn't there with my co-workers when it happened, I still felt violated by this jerk. He was apprehended about a week later. You know, the thing is, these idiots figure if they rob a bank they're going to get a big huge crapload of money, but the fact of the matter is, they don't get much at all. I mean, we aren't stupid. We have limits of readily available cash on hand at any given moment. It's all about security!

Anyway, I know -- I'm not the only one with a hard luck story. There are millions of us out here, and I know there are probably millions of others that are in far worse shape than me. I'm thankful that I do have a roof over my head, as many are without that. So I just do the best I can to get by in life. For my financial situation, I sell things on eBay, however I don't have anything listed at the moment, but I will be posting here when I get something listed. I've also found a site called Heliumknowledge, where you ask and answer questions for cash. It's not a big paying thing, but the more traffic that you get to your answers, the more you get paid. My account is currently sitting at a big whopping $7.70 at the moment, so -- a shameful plug here -- if you'd care to help boost my account by a dime or two, you can check out my profile here and click on my answers for a little more reading pleasure! :-) Oh, and a p.s. here -- my name is InquiringMind there. I thought it was a suitable name for the site. Gotta be site savvy afterall! Anyway, why not answer a few questions yourself and make yourself a few dimes in the process too. Be sure to leave me a message if you do, so I can click on your answers to pay it forward.

Another thing I'm trying is Cafepress. If you haven't heard of Cafepress, you should click on that link and check it out! It's a great site for both buyers and sellers. If you're good with graphics, and the like, you can make up your own designs to sell at Cafepress yourself, and if you're not, it's a wonderful site to get some cool things such as t-shirts, buttons, art prints, mugs, pillows, and loads of other things for yourself or your loved ones. I have my own shop there, called The Funky Olive. I don't have too much in it at the time, as I've just recently started it, but here are a few samples if you want a sneak preview...

Wow, I just did a preview of what I've rambled on here about so far, and I guess it wasn't that hard to get a few words out on a blog. Like I said though, this blogging stuff is all new to me, so if I've written too much, and made this long and boring to read (if you've made it down to this point), then I do apologize. I'm not up on the blogging ettiquette at this point. :-)

I'll sign off here for the night, since I have to get some sleep for that day job of mine tomorrow, and it's going to be a busy week with it being the end of the month. Oh yippee, and I say that with total enthusiasm...not! I'll be back tomorrow to tell you more.

So goodnight to you, my new found friends.

Pleasant fairie dreams! :-)

Olivia