A Photographic Update of My Life...

 Just as the title implies...

We bought a really badass camera... A Nikon D5000!

With said badass camera... I took a cute picture of my Roxy Bear.

We also visited Graceland... Elvis' house!

We went to the Peabody in Memphis, to see the famous Peabody Ducks...

...And Skip proposed to me on the rooftop!

The next evening, we saw (and took pictures of) some pretty neat fireworks...

 

And on the drive home, we were graced with this gorgeous sunset!

We went hiking one weekend... At Headquarters Mountain.

We stayed in a fancy hotel for our anniversary... With a jacuzzi tub!

We saw snakes and cool animals at the Oklahoma City Zoo!

I also got this butterfly to sit still so I could snap its picture!

Skip got a little silly in the hotel room...

But we managed to get all dressed up for a romantic night on the town to celebrate our 2 year anniversary.

The End!

(Until next time, that is!)

--Malaya

New Scenery, New Friends, and Jody.

It's been awhile since my last update... And as usual, I have no excuses. Hah! Well, things have been a bit crazy, and our access to internet is kind of unreliable. But really, not a good excuse.

For starters, we've moved! (Again.) We're now a couple hours west of Oklahoma City, in a charming little town called Elk City. I actually really like it here... There are things to do! Restaurants, bars, a dance club, pool halls, shopping, coffee shops... I could go on. The people are really friendly, and it's just a nice place to call home for now. Pryor was nice, but this is just more home-ey.

Well, I guess I could call it home-ey, if we lived in a home. Since the length of this job is unknown, we couldn't get into an apartment. We may only be here a few weeks, so we've settled into a kitchenette room at the Travel Inn... Not my first choice for lodging, but it'll do. It's nice to have a kitchenette as opposed to a room with just a microwave... But the kitchenette leaves much to be desired. Only one of our two burners works. There is no stove, although we bought a toaster oven that works like a dream. Counter and cabinet space is limited, to say the very least. And the sink is itty-bitty, and too close to the walls. My elbows get sore from banging into the wall when I do dishes. But, we have a king sized bed, so that's a plus!

Another up-side to living in a motel is being close to the other pipeliners. It's nice to have interaction with other human beings. I cook dinners, we go to the bar together, we shoot paintballs out of a slingshot... It's nice to not feel so isolated anymore. And the guys are all really nice... I don't feel like the girly-girl in a room full of dudes. I've been doing some of their laundry, so there's a little income in that.

In the time we've been here, I was introduced to the ugly side of pipelining: Jody. It's a term used mostly in the military, that mainly refers to a man or a woman (since Jody is a unisex name) that is watching your homefront while you're out defending the homefront. Pipeliners are on the road for months at a time, often not going home to see their families. The time apart strains marriages and relationships. I know Skip and I have more issues when we're apart than when we're together. One of the guys on this project has gone through some rough times with his wife... No doubt a product of the distance and distrust that this lifestyle brings. They're getting a divorce, and he took his vacation time to pack up his things, and spend time with his kids.

This whole situation kind of hit me, and put bad thoughts in my head. No one ever wants to think, "What if that happens to us?"... But it enters your mind. At least, it entered my mind. I sincerely hope Skip doesn't plan on doing this traveling job for a great portion of his life. The money is great, and it's nice to see new places... But it's really not conducive to a family. I want to have kids someday, and I want to settle down. The last 6 months have been nothing but me really wanting a stable life... To be in one spot for more than a few months. I'd love to have a home with pictures on the wall and flowers on the porch. I'd love to have furniture, I'd love to live near my friends. I couldn't imagine raising kids in hotel rooms. But then again, I couldn't imagine raising kids a thousand miles away from their father, by myself.

I hope the economy picks up, so Skip can find a job that doesn't travel so much. I don't want to think about what this lifestyle could do to us... I don't want to think of all the tough times that might lie ahead for us, should he choose to do this long-term. I honestly don't know how my grandparents did this for so long while my grandpa traveled as a lineman. I guess their success is like my inspiration. If they can do it, then I guess we can too.

My internet access is now limited to time spent in a coffee shop... And quite frankly, I've been here too long. Three lattes is my limit, I think. Until next time, my faithful readers!

--Malaya

Of Mice and Men.

For those of you not completely wired into my life via Facebook and Twitter (because like, you 3 people who read this might be anonymous strangers)... I have a mouse problem.

It started somewhere in the time period when I was in Fort Myers... Roxy kept barking and sniffing at a cabinet/area in our kitchen. Skip figured she was just crazy, so we let it go. Upon my return home, I also noticed her weird behavior... So I kept monitoring it. And eventually... Saw it.

IT was a mouse. A little-bitty, cutesy-wootsy, gray mouse. Said mouse was seen stealing food from my puppydogs' bowl, and then scurrying up under the cabinets with the bounty. This, of course, happened on the weekend, so I was unable to talk to our landlord about it. So, Skipper and I went about our regularly scheduled weekend fun... And came home to a dead mouse on the living room floor. Way to go, Roxy and Milo!

Or not.

Come Tuesday morning (this occured over Memorial Day weekend), I marched to the management office and told them the news: Our Apartment Has A Mouse Problem. I had spoken to the other people who live in my building, and they too had seen mice in their kitchens. This was, indeed, a Problem. The manager's husband agreed to take a look around my apartment, mostly just to appease me... Because once he surveyed the situation, he pretty much told me, "Oh well. It's just mice." Uh... Thanks, pal.

After this encounter (and an encounter with a mouse who was trapped in the pots and pans drawer under my stove), Skip and I decided to put out sticky glue paper traps. I was not thrilled with this idea... These mice are small and adorable, and I like animals a lot. So I made Skip agree to take every necessary precaution to save any surviving mice... If you pour cooking oil on them, they un-stick. And I also made him swear to set the traps at night, pick them up in the morning, and never speak of dead mice to me.

So the first night... We caught three. THREE. And two survived. (I made him tell me.) So, this brings our found mouse total to 5. (There was a dead baby one on the floor the day the man told me mice were inevitable.) Five! FIVE FREAKIN' MICE! In less than a week. This can't be normal, or acceptable... We're very clean people. So what the hell is going on?!

A few days after the three were caught, I was cleaning the kitchen... Putting away dishes that had been sitting in the dish drainer thing overnight... When I saw it... Well, them. MOUSE TURDS. Poop. Little tiny mouse droppings ON MY CLEAN DISHES. [Insert hysteria here.]

I went on a Google-ing rampage for things that repel mice... Armed with a new wealth of knowledge, and Skip's debit card, I went to Wal-Mart. Twenty-two dollars later, I had a sack full of homemade mouse repelling stuff. Mint extract, moth balls, and Bounce dryer sheets. Odd, yes, but hopefully effective. So I assembled little "sachets" of smelly stuff... Hoping that something would turn away our little houseguests. I tossed them under the cabinets, behind the fridge, and on the countertops... Anywhere the little buggers had been spotted.

My house now stunk like nothing I'd ever smelled before... But for several days, no mice. We had one little baby one that showed up on a sticky trap. (#6) So, we call it a success, yes? Not so fast. These scents are not permanent... They actually wear off in a few days, which is a blessing and a curse. My house no longer smells weird, but now the mice have returned.

And this brings me to Lucky #7... The mouse that made its way onto a sticky trap at about 8:30 this morning. I heard the all to familliar crash and squeak that signals a stuck rodent. The dogs ran to the kitchen, the mouse screamed at them, and they retreated. Fantastic. I texted Skip before I got out of the bed... "Did you pick up the sticky traps this morning before you left?" His response: "I'm sorry."

Ugh. So now there's a sticky, squirmey, squeaking mouse in my kitchen. I can hear it thrashing and moving, and the plastic scraping across the floor. I do not want to enter the kitchen, but I try to gather courage... I make it around the corner, and the thing screams at me. I didn't even see it. I retreated to the bedroom, and texted Skip again. "COME HOME NOW. I'm trapped in the bedroom." But of course... He can't come home. He's working out on the right-of-way, about 30 miles away from where I am. FML.

I called the office, and explained to the manager my predicament... I'm terrified of this screaming squirming thing on my floor... The mouse problem is really their problem, so I'm gonna need someone to remove this thing from my premises pronto. Her response was less than sympathetic... She said that everyone was out working on the property, but she'd see what she could do. FABULOUS.

About an hour later, her daughter shows up to extract the stuck mouse. I look like a complete wuss, but I really can't handle this. I want to kill my boyfriend. I want to GTFO of this apartment. I don't care where these mice go, as long as they leave me the hell alone. I've never lived somewhere that mice were common... Where people just go, "Eh, it's just a mouse," and expect you to just deal. I've caught 7. SEVEN. That's a lot of mice for a week. And several of them were babies. Eeeeech.

I've also recently noticed that they chewed a hole in the dog food bag... Which means I need to keep it out of their reach, and get the dogs off their free-feeding schedule. I've moved the bowls into our bedroom, but the last thing I need is a damn mouse in my bed.

Did I mention I want to kill my boyfriend?!

--Malaya

Endings and Beginnings

This blog has been left unattended for far too long... I've known for several weeks that an update was much needed, but I honestly haven't had the motivation. Call it laziness, call it craziness, call it what you like... It just hasn't been there.

I guess the most pressing piece of news is that my grandpa lost his battle with cancer.

...That's a lot harder to type than I thought it would be.

Moving on... What began with a diagnosis some eight months ago resulted in his very abrupt passing. He spent September through January trying all kinds of at-home treatments... Major changes in his diet and lifestyle, drinking "swamp water" from a guy in Port Charlotte, sitting in a "magic chair" with some other local guy, along with just thinking positively. This in itself was a major battle... About 3% of the people who are diagnosed with his cancer live past 10 months. Of that 3%, very few make it to the 11th month. So when conventional treatments mixed with home remedies failed, he came to Tulsa. The Cancer Treatment Center of America hospital combined cutting edge technology with old school homeopathic remedies. He did really well out here... Until about Easter, when I visited him and discovered he was having some major hallucinations. And between Easter and May 3rd, he slid fast downhill.

He came back to Tulsa a week before he died, and they told him that the cancer had progressed, and spread to his liver. I sat in the room with him, my mom, and his doctor as he relayed the news. The doctor said that if Pap was his dad, he wouldn't continue treatment. Pap's response was that he was going to see his wife; my grandma who lost her battle with this cancer four years ago. He told everyone this as he shared the news... "But I get to go see my wife."

I cried. A lot. Mom and Pap flew back to Fort Myers, and I got a flight out shortly after they returned home. I ended up getting a flight sooner than I would have liked, but it worked out for the better. My flight was scheduled to land at about 6:20pm Monday night. Pap passed at about 5:28pm.

I remember walking down the hall at hospice... A long, wide, empty hall. Hospice is made to look like a comforting place, but I felt everything but comfortable. I came around the corner, and there stood my mom, uncle, aunt, and a close friend of my aunt's (Allison). I was carrying my backpack, still in a daze from almost 12 hours of airports and airplanes. My stepdad (Butch) picked me up at the airport, and said very little about Pap or his condition... I think my brain knew the chances of him hanging on until I got home were slim, but my heart had to remain optimistic to just get me there.

Mom told me he had passed, and I felt my knees buckle. I hugged her, and fell apart. I felt so defeated; like I tried so hard to get home, and I was too late. I had things I wanted to tell him... That I loved him, and admired his will to fight. He faced cancer and was so optimistic that he was going to beat it. I wanted to tell him to meet my grandma in heaven, and tell her I love her and I miss her. I wanted to tell him I looked up to him, and that I was so glad we spent time together in Tulsa, laughing and talking.

I guess when I look at the big picture, he knew most of these things. He must've known that I was on my way home, and that it was okay to just stop fighting. The last thing I told him before I left him and mom in Tulsa was, "Love ya!" The last thing he asked me was when he'd see me again. I told him very soon, and I think he knew. I don't think he wanted me to see him at Hospice. And I didn't. I didn't go back into his room to say goodbye. I knew if he wanted me to see him, he would've waited until I got there. I knew he was headed to see my grandma... And I know he told her how much we miss her, and how much we love her. I know he was at peace when he left this world, and that's what matters most.

This whole journey has been tough. I look back at six years of dealing with cancer. My grandma's first diagnosis, with breast cancer, was in 2004.  She battled breast cancer and won, only to be diagnosed with small cell lung cancer (and later brain cancer) shortly after. My stepdad battled throat cancer twice, and ended up having a complete laryngectomy. And then there was Pap, and his battle with cancer. Throw in friends and friends of friends with cancer, and you get six years of being tired of this disease.

I spent a lot of time in Fort Myers thinking... And growing up. The thinking was mainly about my own lifestyle, and the future. I need to make changes in my life to make sure cancer isn't something I have to battle. If Pap could battle the disease, surely I can battle the prevention. Little by little, I've been trying to change my diet and lifestyle. I need to eat better and lose weight. I'm already a step ahead, because I'm not a smoker. The growing up part came from realizing that as the "baby" of the family, I'll likely have a lot of responsibilities ahead of me. I'm my mother's only child... I'll be the one who has to make the important decisions when she gets older. Neither my aunt nor my uncle are married yet, or have children... If they never marry or have kids, I'll probably be left to make decisions for them, too. I don't talk to my dad, and I'm not close with anyone on his side of the family... So that whittles my family down to Mom, Uncle Frank, and Aunt Danie. Mom and Frank are smokers... Which is a whole new can of worms, but we won't get into that.

So... There it is. A very big, very long, very emotional update. I hate these kinds of blog posts... But sometimes, they're necessary. I promise there are good things happening in my life... But for now, this is what I need to get off my chest. I still don't feel like I have a good sense of closure... I didn't feel that way when my grandma passed, either. Neither one of them wanted a funeral or a service, so we didn't have one. On the day that I flew out of Fort Myers, mom went and picked up Pap's ashes... Which I guess was like closure, but it didn't feel like it. It felt abrupt. I'm still waiting for that closure... For Pap and for Nan. I have a feeling it's something I'm going to keep searching for until I find it.

Apparently, life is about searching... Soul searching, searching for closure, searching for the truth, searching for meaning... I hope I find whatever it is I'm looking for.

--Malaya

Here, birdie birdie birdie...

My spiffy new bird feeder has been up for 2 whole days... And not a single bird has visited it. There are birds near it, in the tree... And some under it, since I scattered some seeds around... But not one single bird has perched upon the feeder to get seeds. What gives??

A Google search of "how to attract birds to bird feeder" really didn't bring any useful results. The only advice I found that may apply would be to install a bird bath... Or some other source of fresh water. But... I'm really pushing my luck by getting the feeder, so I'm not sure how Skip would react to a fancy bird bath showing up at the apartment. Heh. But perhaps I'll try a shallow dish of water?

I'm also trying to pick out a new blog theme, since the one I'm currently using bores me to tears. But sifting through these "free theme" sites is really not my idea of a good time. None of the ones I have found seem to fit my blog. They're either too cutesy or too professional, and some just don't make sense. (Aliens? Ninjas?) I typically have zero patience for this kind of thing, so this is really killing me. Would any of my faithful readers (all four of you!) like to redesign my blog for me? Pretty please??

...I won't hold my breath.

In other news... The scrapbook is coming along quite nicely. I did several pages yesterday, and I'm relatively pleased with them. Well, except for the page on zebras, because I really had no decent pictures to use. Zebras are hard to photograph. The entire living room floor is covered in paper and pictures and other little embellishments... Which is fine, because we don't actually have living room furniture. It's nice to see something other than just empty space. I think I tell Skip at least twice a day that I can't wait for the day when we don't have to move, and we can have a house or apartment full of furniture and belongings... Rather than furniture made of stacked plastic totes and bare walls.

On that note... I really need to get something accomplished today.

--Malaya

"Wild Pets"

So, I bought this today:

...Because I really want a small pet. Yeah, I know... Makes no sense, right? Well, because of this inconveniently crazy pipelining lifestyle, it's super hard to have pets. I'm really pushing my luck with the dogs, so a fish or a bird or a hamster would be a logistical nightmare. (I envision thousands of miles of highway and me with a fish bowl in my lap. Hah.) Enter the birdfeeder. Portable, removable, packable. It attracts birds wherever it is located, and I get the pleasure of watching them from my window. Not quite the cute little beta fishie of my dreams... But maybe it'll keep me occupied for a little while.

I also received 2 out of 3 packages of scrapbooking supplies today... To compile our scrapbook of the Tulsa Zoo! EEEEEE! So excited. I've really missed scrapbooking. It's nice to have a creative outlet that doesn't necessarily require a lot of artistic skill. If you can use a glue stick and peel off stickers, you can scrapbook. Not to mention the awesomeness of the pictures we took... Seriously, the prints stunned me. I had no idea my little camera was capable of such greatness. So between birds and scrapbooking and FarmVille, I should be kept busy through the end of this project. Which is probably coming up sometime in May. :-/

BUT. We're not gonna think about that. Because I don't wanna.

Not much else has happened... Pap has gone back to Fort Myers for about 10 days before he has to come back for another scan and some tests. So, for now, his treatments are done. Just waiting for some side affects to wear off before we really determine what the outcome is. My mom is being Super Pessimist Lady, which is kind of annoying... But I guess I can't blame her. Not like we're strangers to this whole cancer thing. I feel like I could write a frickin' book on it. Ugh.

Anyways... That's all the news that is news for now. Gonna make Skip put up my bird feeder when he gets home and hopefully watch the birds flock to it. Fingers crossed!!

--Malaya

Spring!

Ah, the changing of the seasons. Who would've known I'd fall in love so quickly? Florida's ever-green state will never be so appealing to me as a place where Winter turns to Spring, Spring to Summer, Summer to Fall, and Fall to Winter.

The trees here in Oklahoma are getting their leaves back... And the grass is green and full of all kinds of little flowers. Neighborhoods are full of yards in bloom... Tulips, daylillies, daffodils, crocuses... It's all so wonderful. Spring might just be my second most favorite season, after Fall, that is.

Not much has been going on here... Had an Easter dinner at our place, which was just shy of bittersweet. My grandpa was supposed to come out for the day, but he hasn't been feeling up to it. Actually, he's been hallucinating a bit... We're not sure what's causing it, but it's definitely cause for some concern. He should be finished with treatments by the 14th, and will hopefully be heading back to Florida soon. So we'll see how all that goes.

Wait... Easter! Easter dinner was interesting. I've never cooked for that many people before, so it was definitely a learning experience. Skip helped out with everything, which made it all that much easier. He actually saved the day, when a leaky tinfoil pan tried to ruin my ham... I was on the verge of tears, and all he could say was, "BAAAAAABBBBYYYYY! It's gonna be OOOOOKKKAAAAAYYY!" He did ruin two of my kitchen towels trying to get the mess out of the oven... But I seriously couldn't get mad about it. He saved the day! Towels are replaceable.

I've spent much of this morning researching tanning... Tanning beds, tanning salons, effects of tanning, types of tanning, tips for tanning... And some of the information and advice I was given was sort of startling. The risks associated with conventional tanning beds are really kind of frightening. Skin cancer? No thanks. But yet, so many people I polled on facebook were all for it. I am constantly amazed at how people can willingly do something to their body that will ultimately kill them or cause them great harm. (Smoking? Indoor tanning?) After doing my homework, I've decided to try a spray-on tan. A place in town does them for a pretty reasonable amount, so I'm going to give it a try. I'll risk turning orange rather than getting melanoma. I think there's enough cancer in my family history... Why increase my odds?

I also discovered that the tree outside our apartment is a Sycamore... Which I know isn't headline news, but it's puzzled us since we moved here. The seed pods are really unusual, and it's pretty much the last tree in the complex to start getting its leaves back. I'm thinking about getting a bird/squirrell feeder to hang in it, once it gets some more leaves.

Time to start working on dinner... Dijon Chicken? Sounds good to me. :)

--Malaya

First Day of Spring, First Snowman Ever.

You read that correctly, folks! It's the first day of Spring, and I, at age 23, have just constructed my first snowman... EVER. I know! Epic.

Here he is! His name is Earl:


Other than snow and snowmen... Nothing is going on. LOL Pryor is more or less the most boring place on the planet, and I live an equally boring day-to-day life. Hence the reason I don't post new entries very often. Ok, I can't say that with a straight face. The truth is, I really procrastinate with these entries. I start one, wait about a week, then come back and delete the draft and try to start over. I love writing, but these blog entries are like those stupid 5 paragraph essays from school. It's monotonous.

And I really don't have anything interesting to write about. HAH.

Making muffins is still happening... I guess that's kind of exciting? I've come across some really tasty recipes, and they've been a hit with the guys at work. I love baking... It's really a theraputic type of thing for me. I like making the things I cook look really appetizing... Like decorating my muffins with just the right amount of chopped/sliced nuts, and a sprinkle of coarsely ground sugar. I like how they look when they're all done. Maybe I should be a food stylist when I grow up?

Nah. I'd much rather make a living making cupcakes. Seriously. If I could figure out how to make cupcakes into a lucrative career, I'd be on that like white on rice. If I could combine my love of cupcakes, shopping, puppies, and scrapbooking into one super-mega-career, I'd be set. But I'm thinking all of those things combined might be a disaster. But the cupcakes... I need to make that happen. If anyone has a couple thousand George Washington's they'd like to loan me to get this going, that'd be super.

OH. I also entered into this NCAA bracket thing with Skip and the guys at work... Where you pick which basketball teams are gonna win and stuff. I put in two brackets at $5 apiece... And I'm doing pretty good, all things considered. (And by "all things" I mean the fact that I don't really follow college basketball AT ALL. lolz) I'm actually kind of into it... Well, not the games, per se... But just the outcome. I love checking the ESPN ScoreCenter app on my phone to see how many wins I got. It's so satisfying to highlight the teams that won, and scratch out the ones that lost. That, and I really like repeating the name, "Gonzaga." GON-ZAAAAAH-GAAAAAH. Heh.

I'll leave you now with some snow-y snapshots... Hurrah!

--Malaya

Well, hello there...

I'm really bad at blogging.

No seriously, I suck at this kind of stuff. Well, I guess it's 50% suck and neglect, and 50% we haven't had internet since moving out of the hotel and into an apartment. Heh.

For those of you following along at home, you read correctly! We're in an apartment in Oklahoma! WOO! Well, kind of. We *should* be here until June-ish, since the construction company decided to get off their ass and do some work move forward with this phase of the project. So in many ways, life is good. We got into the apartment, which has drastically slashed our cost of living. I cook meals, I clean, I do laundry, I make the boys at work muffins... And I do their laundry, too, sometimes, and they pay me for it... Which is like, freakin' awesome. I already have about 25% of the anticipated cost of the new purple netbook I want. WOOT.

In other news... For those of you who have perhaps not been in "the loop"... My grandpa has been out here in Broken Arrow/Tulsa, at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America hospital. He has lung cancer and brain cancer, and they've been doing some really cutting edge treatments for him to help get some of this under control. Once a week or so for about four weeks, I went out to the hospital to "babysit" him after his procedures. He's finished with the treatments on his lungs, gone home for a few days, and now he's back for 26 rounds of radiation for cancer in his brain. He seems to be doing really well, but our family knows cancer all too well. Especially small-cell, metastasizing lung and brain cancer. It's the same stuff my grandma had, and she's been gone almost 3 years. BUT... Optimism is easier than realism, so that's where I'll stay.

Moving right along...

I've actually become quite the chef out here in Oklahoma. With Skip and I not dieting super hardcore, I've got a little more freedom with our dinner selections. I cook about 6 nights of the week, and I have yet to repeat a recipe. So that's roughly 24 new and exciting dishes that I've mastered. Well, mostly mastered. Some things will take minor tweaking to be perfect. I've even whipped up some pretty delicious muffins from scratch that the guys at work have just loved. And I'm pretty sure my big giant pans of lasagna that I took to them will go down in history. Just sayin'. But I really have learned to love cooking... Whereas, in the past, I kind of dreaded it. I have also found a really unhealthy love of meal planning and grocery shopping... I spend about 2 hours a week getting together my recipes for the next week, and then creating a list for the store, organized by aisle and department. Neurotic as it may be, I really enjoy it. Like, really. It's often the highlight of me week.

Other than all of that, my life is rather boring. Oklahoma is an "interesting" state... Full of "interesting" people. If I'm not at Wal-Mart, I'm playing FarmTown or FarmVille on Facebook. Or maybe I'm doing laundry... Which is now pretty much an everyday kind of task. I make muffins, I cook, I play with dogs... I'm pretty much a little old lady now!

Hah. Yeah, right.

More posts will be on the way... I SWEAR. I will not fail at this blog. I will not fail at this blog. I will not fail at this... OH LOOK!

--Malaya

Just Part of the Lifestyle...

Last night, Skip got news that the project may be put on hold for an indefinite amount of time. Apparently the construction crews haven't been able to get work done because of the weather, which has held up the surveying crew from getting things done. They were to have a meeting this morning to discuss the official decision, which would determine whether or not the surveying crews got laid off. We spent the whole evening more or less on edge, Skip thinking the worst and hoping for the best, and me just trying to be a positive little ray of sunshine.

Skip went into work this morning as usual... And less than an hour after he left, he came back home.

There still isn't a 'definite' answer. The guys are still employed, but spent much of today doing absolutely nothing. Skip was in the hotel with me all day. They apparently decided to push through 29 road bores, or places where the pipe has to go underneath a roadway, in the next 3 weeks or so. This leaves very little work for the survey guys, as they more or less just sit in the truck and watch them push pipe through the ground. The chances of them keeping the surveyors out here are pretty slim, as there's not much sense in paying them to do nothing. They may end up sending them home, and then bringing them back in a month or two when the ground has dried up enough for the construction company to work on the right of way. For now, though, it's mostly up in the air.

Just as quickly as we got sent here, we could be going home. My life may, for a brief time, no longer be 'On the Line.' This is very typical of pipelining. I'm really not too surprised.

This, of course, throws a wrench into a lot of things. For One, we just spent a small fortune renting a car to get me and the dogs out here. For Two, I just told Publix (my former employer) that I'd be gone for the next six months or more. Three, my grandpa will be about 45 minutes away in Tulsa receiving concentrated/pin-point chemotherapy for his cancer over a period of the next 4 weeks. Four, we really have no affordable place to stay, as the hotel is costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000 a month. But getting into a lease isn't necessarily practical, either, as he may get sent to Oregon or Texas or anywhere else in the contiguous 48 states at the drop of a hat.

For now, the tentative plan is to pack up once he gets officially laid off, and head for his mom's house in Missouri. There, we are at least centrally located in the US, so wherever he is sent next isn't a ridiculous road trip away. Hopefully I'll still be able to come to Tulsa for Pap's treatments... Really, that's one of my bigger concerns. I'm the only member of our family out this far, and he really sounds like he wants me there for after these procedures. I've already prepared my Big Girl Panties for this whole situation, because quite frankly, it terrifies me. It's not easy thinking that I'm the closest next-of-kin should anything go wrong. But... That's a story for a whole other blog post.

So, here I am. Waiting for news, good or bad. This kind of thing happens every day in this line of work, but I really wasn't anticipating it so soon. I haven't even been here one full week. Had I known it would be this soon, I would have stayed in Fort Myers a little while longer. But... We can't live in the "coulda-woulda-shoulda's", right?

All that aside... I love this kid to death. He's currently laying on the bed, and in a little voice, saying, "Baaaaabbbbbyyyyyyy, do yooou know how beautiful you aaaarrrreee?" He's such a weirdo. But he makes me laugh, and I love that. At a time when I want to worry and freak out about everything, he constantly assures me that everything is going to be okay.




"It's gonna be okay, babe. I got this."

Generic Blog Introduction Post

I’ve finally done it! I’ve been telling myself for over a year that I should blog about the crazy events of my life… And here it is! My blog! It’s real! I did it! [Insert Excited Face Here]

If you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering what you’re in for, right? Ah. Well, in short, my life has gone from safe and normal to a little unsafe and crazy. See, my boyfriend took a job in the pipeline industry about a year and a half ago. We first met two weeks before he left. We’ve been together a year and a half. (Do the math, people.) Anyhow… I’ve decided to leave my safe, normal life and come out on the road with him. I’ve done this once before, but this time I’m serious. I pretty much quit my job at Publix (although I can come back and be rehired at any time), and packed up my clothes, my dogs, and my sanity. We rented a car, and I took a 1,352 mile road trip by myself to get out here. Doesn’t get much more serious than that.

So here I am… In the fine town of Pryor, Oklahoma… Blogging in the middle of a winter storm. We’ve had ice, and now it’s snowing. For a girl from Florida, I’m a little freaked out. It’s cold and there are icicles on EVERYTHING. This just doesn’t seem normal. But alas! This is my new life. New places, new faces, new weather. And this blog will help me record every new thing I get to experience. This is my Life On The Line… The Pipe-Line, that is.

And now, to close... A very recent picture of icicles! Enjoy!



--Malaya