martharichardson.me

Just read this article thanks to  my LOCI forum friends. 

The Utah Meth Cops Project exists to treat law enforcement officers who have been repeatedly exposed to toxins in methamphetamine labs on the job. At its national conference this May, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA) invited project spokesperson Vincent D’Onofrio and FLEOA members who’ve gone through the treatment program to speak at the conference and raise awareness.  To read more, click the link.

http://www.thereelblog.com/

 I bought  a new book the other day with rewards I had earned from a survey site I belonged to.  The book is The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson.  I found out about this book from a business friend and so far I’m enjoying it.  There are 3 books in this series.

Last Friday my Guy had  an interview in Carmel and with it being a holiday weekend he decided that we should stay overnight considering what the traffic would be like.  After his interview we went to Point Lobos National Reserve.  It is really a beautiful place to see so if you are in the Monterey area I would recommend going there.  I tooksome really good pictures as my picture taking skills are improving.  On Saturday before we headed back home we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.   I had been there before, years ago when I had come up to visit my sister and all our kids were little.  There was a lot I didn’t remember about the place so it was good to be able to see it again.

Life together is going ok so far as we are still adjusting to being around each other all the time now.  With all the baseball games we go to, I’m learning more terminology of the sport.  The team he scores for is the Oakland A’s triple A affiliate and it is cool to be able to see them play.  I saw Coco Crisp play while they had him rehabbing from an injury and was able to get his autograph a few times as well as some good pictures of him.  The ballpark is down the street from the capital building and there is a river, which I don’t remember the name of, that we walk across to get to the ballpark.

I’ve been doing some walking around the apt building a couple of times a day and it takes about 8 times around to equal a mile.  There is also a pool here and we’ve gone swimming a few times as it is starting to heat up here now. 

View from where he had an interview.

Well I wasn’t able to leave on the 8th as I had planned,  there was complications thanks to my son being difficult.  So I left Columbia, MO around 1:30pm on the 9th and made it to Lincoln, Nebraska that night around 9pm.  The I-29 interchange to I-80 in Nebraska was just nuts but I got through it. 

This morning I left Lincoln around 8am got through the rest of Nebraska and into Wyoming today.  But the weather in Wyoming was not very cooperative today.  I went through Medicine Bow National Park  and in the distance I could see the clouds were getting darker and not very friendly looking but after you pass Laramie, WY there is nothing around until Rawlings so there was no choice but to keep going.  It had started to rain as I was coming down out of Medicine Bow National Park and when I got down it really got bad.  The radio kept giving out National Services Advisory which was Sever Thunder Storms Warnings and Tornado Watch and I’m thinking great I spent 10 years in Missouri without seeing a tornado and now I will probably see on in Wyoming out in the middle of nowhere lol.  But at least I didn’t see one of those today but the storm was bad enough, I could barely see the tail lights of the car in front of me.

After that storm passed and I was able to pick up speed again I could make up some time as I wanted to get as close to Utah as possible but Mother Nature had other plans as the closer I got to Rawlings, WY another storm was brewing and it was after 6pm and I thought this is a good place to stop for the night.  So tomorrow I will have a lot of driving to do as I really need to get to Reno tomorrow.

I just wanted to let you all know that I’ve got the uhaul truck to day and will finish loading it up tomorrow morning.  I meet with the middleman at 2pm to go through the house and if every looks good I give him the keys and he gives me the money agreed upon for me clearing out in 21 days.  Then I will be heading on my journey to meet my boyfriend in Reno. 

I will be going through Nebraska, Wyoming, down through Utah then Nevada.  I’m hoping to get at least through Nebraska tomorrow before I stop for the night.  I will post again tomorrow night to let you all know where I”m at in my journey.

Sorry I haven’t posted before now, been busy still selling things and packing things and what I can’t sell and my son can’t use I will be donating them so that will be good.

On Monday, my son will finish moving out and I also pick up the moving truck on that day.  I will be leaving on Tues, hopefully early afternoon, just depends on when the “middleman” can meet me.  I left him a message but haven’t heard back from him as of yet.

I’ve printed out the driving directions already and have them in my laptop bag.  I want to be able to get to Wyoming on that first day and then get to Reno by the 10th to meet my BF as he is working baseball games that weekend.  I’m giving myself plenty of time to get there even though the directions say approx. 27 hours and once I get through Missouri and into Nebraska it is basically driving straight though Nebraska, Wyoming, and then down through Utah, and then on to Reno.  At least I will get to see some new states that I haven’t been through before and will get to add to my state shot glasses collection. 

I’m not so worried about driving alone anymore after reading the directions and looking at the map.  It seems easy enough and I’ve never been or drove anywhere alone so this will be different and I keep telling myself it will be fine.  I will be posting on here during my trip as to how things are going.

Since I started my new Twitter account which is mostly sports and music interests, a new band started following me a couple of weeks ago and I in turn followed them and I’ve very glad I did.  The other day they sent me a message with a link to their MySpace page so I could hear their new song.  I really like what I heard and tweeted the link to my followers!  I also bookmarked their page. 

There songs are in the Rock genre and fits great with what I already listen to such as Foo Fighters, My Chemical Romance, Sick Puppies and Shinedown just to name a few.  If you like those bands then I would check out Throwing Gravity at  http://www.myspace.com/throwinggravity

When I get settled after my move, I will look into getting some of their songs to add to my MP3 player.

Well things are good between me and my guy, we talked about things the other night and he said it was just frustration at not knowing what was going on since the “middle man” wasn’t given much info from the person that bought my house.  He also said he could tell I was getting frustrated so thought it might be best to just give me some space.  Told him that him not talking much to me didn’t help the stress level any.   I’m glad things are good between us because we really are good together in so many ways and it really feels wonderful to be with him.

It is Interleague play in MLB so that means that the Mets and Yanks are playing this week and so far they have each won 1 game, tonight I even get to watch the game on ESPN instead of having to follow the game online with Gameday.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs are also getting very exciting as they are down to 4 teams.  The Sharks have one more chance tonight as they are behind 3 – 0 against the Blackhawks and it is the best of 7 so if the Sharks lose tonight, it will be over for them.  There is no NASCAR race today as yesterday was the All-Star Race which Kurt Busch won which was good considering he early problems.

I finally got a date from the middleman that the person who bought my house is using, I signed papers today for something called keys for cash, which mean I have 21 days to be moved out of the house, since I agreed to this on Wed, I have to be out on or before June 9th.

I also might have to drive to California alone because if he has a temp job or a game to work since at the moment that is his only steady job, then he will not be able to come here and drive with me.  But then he told me if I can get to Reno on the 10th then we will have a day together before he has to work games for that weekend.  Then we will drive to California from there.

Well I found out yesterday that my house was foreclosed on and I have roughly 30 days to find a new place to live.  It is the last remaining thing that I have from my last marriage but considering everything that has happened and that I’ve learned about his online activity since his death I don’t really care, it is hard but I will be ok, more than ok.  So I’m selling what I can or won’t need and  I will store the rest and then come back for them later.  Things were a little tight last month and one of my utilities was turned off today.  When it rains it pours

Since I was planning to go see my Guy on the 19th anyway, we talked about what to do about my current situation.  And we decided since we were going to live together anyway before the year was over it makes sense to just move now instead of me looking for a place here and then moving a few months later.

So my Son will get his wish and find a place of his own and I will move out of state.  Which will be different not seeing him or talking to him every day, even though his attitude sucks sometimes, he is still my kid.  But distance will be good for him because he won’t have me to rely anymore.  It will also be good for me to not be a “Mom” for awhile and enjoy being a “couple” with someone who really cares and wants to be with me.   It is a little scary for me because people sometimes get tired of me it seems but as my Guy told me today with us having so much in common which makes it easy to have plenty to talk about and do together that isn’t likely to happen.  It will be a little different because now we spend more time on the phone and talking online than we do in person but it will be a good change to be together all the time and getting to spend our days and nights together.  So it looks like the next phase of my life will be starting soon and I’m really looking forward to see how things are going to go.

Last week weather wise it was stormy and raining for about 3 or 4 days.  We got a 2 to 3 day break where the days were just beautiful.  But today it is back to storming and I’m trying to hurry up and write this just in case the power goes.

On Tuesday my guy is texting me off and on during the day which is not unusual.  But then he calls around 3:30 pm asking me what is for dinner and when I told him, he said sounds good I will be right over and starts laughing.  Of course I thought he was joking since we don’t live in the same state.  And there were a few other things he said that didn’t quite sound right which made me wonder what he was up to.

Well what he was up to was that he was coming for dinner, he pulled into my driveway about 30 – 45 min. later and I was a little surprised.  He was in the state to work a minor league baseball game in Springfield, MO the next day.  It was a wonderful surprise.  And we spent a nice evening with each other.

The next morning about 7am we were heading out the door to go to the baseball game which was about 3 hours away.  The weather was perfect for a drive and a game.  This was my first minor league game, I’ve been to a few major league baseball games, the only difference was that the Mascot and the promotions group really spend a lot of time keeping the crowd entertained and this made the game and experience that much better.

On the way over we stopped at a rest stop on Route 66 and we had seen quite a few Corvette’s along the way traveling together, Corvette’s are my favorite car though I prefer the older ones to the newer ones they were still very cool to see.  We missed taking pictures of them though but it didn’t matter because at the game it turned out that they were part of the entertainment so to speak.  They had Louie, the Mascot riding in the first Corvette and the rest followed driving around the baseball field and I got some really good pictures while my guy was getting ready to score the game.  Louie was very entertaining and he kept me laughing.  We got some autographs of some of the hometown players, they are the AA affiliate team for the St. Louis Cardinals major league team and I believe the team they were playing is the AA affiliate for the Kansas City Royals team.  I’ve been working on my picture taking skills and I got some good pictures during the game. 

Last night after dinner we spent some time outside on my porch enjoying the evening until around 11 pm.  It was a clear night sky with a nice breeze that help keep things cool as things between us got warmed up.

He had to leave today as he has a game to do tomorrow and of course we have a storm rolling in today and when I checked the weather online, it was moving pretty fast so just to be safe he finished getting his things together and I packed him some food to take and he hit the road before the storm got here, of course that means he gets to spend about 4 hours in the airport once he gets there but it was better then trying to drive in Missouri storms, which can be pretty intense at times.

I will be going out there May 19th so this short very sweet visit was great as now it won’t be so long since the next time we see each other.  We will be doing more minor league games, some in SacTown, a couple in Fresno and I might even get to see my oldest son if he can find a way to Fresno which will be nice since I haven’t seen him in about 3 years.  I will also meet his Aunt while in Fresno as that is where we will be staying for that weekend.  I’ve talked to her once on the phone, she seems very nice and calls me “Missouri” cause she has trouble remembering my name but it doesn’t matter I kind of like being called “Missouri”