I desparately need your help.

As you already know, I had an “accident” two weeks ago and ruined my brand new laptop ( scroll down and read the previous post– you’ll get a good laugh).

Fortunately, Family Eden is having a contest to win a new Toshiba!

Please help me replace my other laptop and end this bad luck streak I got goin’ on.   I will love you forever and vote in any contest you happen to enter.

To vote for me, click here , then click on the little house that says “contest” (should say thanksgiving contest when you mouse over).  When you get into the little room, click the camera.

You’ll see the “Amber” album, and you have to physically click on the picture of me and baby in our berets.  Once you are inside, rate my album (5 stars please– I am still adding pics though), and that’s it!

I will be forever indebted to you and promise to vote for any contest you may enter for here on out!

Thank you my loves

Amber

I attempted to get away this weekend for BOSup 2008, but ended up embarrassing myself and destroying my brand new laptop instead.

Let me explain.

Hubs and I drove from Jersey to Boston as soon as he got done work at 6 pm.  We got to the tweet-up around 11 and attempted to catch up on our drinks (because everyone was 4 hours into the party at this point and we were clearly behind).

I had two of my usual vodka and cranberries and spent the remainder of the time catching up with @pprlisa, @jamimiami, @akamonty, @lizwebpage, @jayhmt, @thronkus and the rest of those crazy kats.

It was fun while it lasted, but everyone started to head out around 1am for some post-gaming at the Sheraton.

After driving 5 hours though, we were pretty much toast and decided to get a cab back to our room.

When we got there, I opened my laptop and attempted to put on a movie to help me fall asleep (I like background noise and nothing was on TV).

However, my DVD player wasn’t working so I just put it on the nightstand and gave up.

Next thing you know, I roll over at 6:30 am to check the clock and I discover the entire nightstand covered in liquid!

I woke my husband up in a panic thinking there was a leak in the ceiling from the straight day of rain that went down in Boston.

Joe checked the ceiling and the walls– no leak.

He then got up to check the bathroom for leaky pipes, when he noticed instead that the door to the room was ajar.

He gave me that Ricky Ricardo look and wanted to know if I had been outside the hotel room (In case you didn’t know, my husband refers to me as Lucy on a daily basis).

Of course I didn’t remember going anywhere, but upon seeing the door I decided to investigate the strange liquid a bit further.

After a half hour of CSI like investigating, hubby and I were both convinced that I had slept walked during the night (which I have a history of), came back and peed on my laptop!

And here’s the kicker- I even closed the lid to the screen as though it were a toilet seat (polite huh?).

My husband couldn’t even look me in the face without laughing and I absolutely hung my head in shame over the fact that I just peed on my brand new $1000 laptop!

We immediately tried to wipe it off and blow it out with a hair dryer, but it was completely fried.

We then contemplated staging a robbery and claiming it on our homeowners insurance, but my husband works for the Hyatt so we knew that wouldn’t work either.

So here I was, stuck with a peed on laptop and no budget for a new one.

This ordeal forced me to dig out my old laptop from college that was plagued with viruses and I paid a family friend to get it working again.

I have NO microphone, NO webcam and the mousepad drives me up a wall….all because I PEED on my laptop!

Ugh, my life.  Now if I could only get my hands on the security tapes from the Hyatt to make sure I didn’t do anything too crazy in their hotel.

I’m sure by now you are laughing or embarrassed for me, but this completely devastated my week!  After all, I am a blogger and writer that works from home.  That was my life that I literally peed away!

So if you are reading this post and know anyone at say, HP, Dell, Sony, etc., please do me a favor and put in a good word for me.  Maybe after reading about my humiliation and continuous bad luck this year, someone will feel bad for me and donate a nice new computer to miss Jerseymomma

In the meantime, I hope my bladder control problems brightened your day and you were able to take some pleasure in my misery.

If you follow me on Twitter or frequent my blog, you know October was a long month here in Jerseymomma land.

Shortly after loosing the baby, I had 3 monster panic attacks that left me home-bound for almost the entire month.  If you’ve never had a panic attack, the concept of agoraphobia (or the fear to leave your house) probably sounds totally irrational.

However, for people with panic disorder, its an unfortunate way of life.  You become so fearful that another panic attack will happen in a place where you’ll either make a fool out of yourself or can’t get help, that you simply don’t leave the house until it passes.

The best way to describe it is 24/7 stage fright.  The minute you step out the front door, your knees go weak, your head spins, you get a knot in your stomach and feel as though you will physically drop dead if you go one step further.

Not only is this inconvenient, but its extremely frustrating and depressing as your reminded of all the stuff you could be/do if you weren’t dealing with panic disorder and the stigma of “mental illness”.

Thank God I have a wonderful husband and family that pampered the crap out of me until I was somewhat back on my feet.  I treated myself as though I had the flu all month long, getting plenty of rest and not pushing myself beyond what I was capable of for that day.

I also tried to be patient with myself, as I was dealing with a lethal combination of post-pregnancy hormones and grief- which probably made things 100 times worse than normal.

Likewise, I decided to give anxiety medication another shot,  which i’m sure is helping too.  I’m trying Lexapro for the first time ever and there’s always my good friend and confidant, Xanax.

I’ve gotten pretty serious with the spiritual side of this too, as I have refused to let fear stop me this past week and pressed through even on my worst days.  If the Bible is true (as I like to believe it is), then I have authority over this thing and fear has to get under my feet.  Its up to me, however, start walking in that authority and “do it afraid” until I’m able to finally beat this thing all together.

So at least things are looking up this week and I’ve been out-and-about,  but its been one rough month.  The pain of the miscarriage is finally starting to subside, but the experience took such a toll on my mind and emotions that i’ll be cleaning up the after effects for quite some time.

After witnessing two separate incidents of credit card/account theft this week, I decided it was time to visit Equifax and give my credit score a look.  It costs $40 bucks, but its money well spent to me.

Thank god everything checked out, but in times like this, you can’t be too careful with your credit score.  People are desperate and people are slick.  It only takes a second for a clerk to keep an imprint of your card or have your information compromised by a company not practicing good security standards.

In the case of my friend this week, her credit card was charged 7 times for $100’s worth of make-up she bought at the mall.  Apparently the clerk gave her a receipt for one transaction and kept the extra merchandise for herself.

When she finally saw her statement and called the store, the manager said store policy was only to reverse 2/7 of the transactions.  She is still fighting this ridiculous battle thanks to an adult that wanted “stuff” and didn’t have the money to buy it herself.

So while I was in the process of checking out my credit report, I was motivated to encourage everyone else to do the same.  I highly suggest you click here to go to the Equifax website and keep tabs for yourself.  You can never be too careful when it comes to your credit!

Don’t worry- I am too.

I only have a self-hosted and customized blog for one reason and one reason alone, Bluehost (and a little help from my girl Amy at Taste Like Crazy Design on the Logo).

I don’t know a lick of CSS and can barely get my way through basic HTML- let alone navigate an FTP client, but Bluehost is a wordpress blog making machine for dummies.

Follow these easy steps and you’ll be on your way to having a cool, self-hosted blog (where you can use all the plugins in the world) in no time!

Step One: Register

The hardest part is signing up (but its only $6.95 a month- so well worth filling out the forms).  You’ll then have access to your control panel login.  Click here to go to the Bluehost site.

Step Two: Register or Transfer your Domain

You’ll need an address for the blog your’re about to make.  If you already own a URL, scroll down to “Transfer Domain” on your control panel and follow the prompts to complete the transfer.

If you don’t have a domain name yet, Click on “Register Domain” and pick the URL of your choice.

Step 3: Create a Wordpress Blog using Fantastico De Luxe

Scroll down to the button that says “Fantastico De Luxe”.  After you click on it, you’ll come to a page with a list of platforms on the left hand side.  Choose “wordpress,” then click “new installation” from the next screen.

The following screen will give you a drop down box to choose which domain to use.  Pick your domain, designate a username and password and hit the “install wordpress button.”

Step 4: Make It Pretty

Now that your wordpress blog is installed, you can go back to Google and find a wordpress theme of your choice.  Download the theme, unzip the file and save it on your computer.

Once its saved, return to your control panel and click on “unlimited FTP”.  The left side of the FTP contains documents from your computer.  Browse through your files until you find the saved theme (you may have to click the theme folder to access the file you want to upload).

Once you’ve got it, click on the “public html” folder on the right side to select your domain name.  After you click on your domain name, click on the “wp-content” folder.  You should then see a folder that says “themes.”  Leave your browser over that selection so its highlighted.

Go back to the left side to your theme of choice.  Right click your mouse and choose “upload”.

Step 5: Activate Your Theme in Wordpress and Blog Away!

By now you should have received an email with a link to your wordpress admin section and login details.  Follow the link and sign into wordpress.

At top of the menu, select “Design”, choose “Theme” and if you did it correctly, the your customized theme should be right there waiting for you.

Click on it, hit activate and you’re good to go!

All I can say is Thank God for Bluehost!

What can I say….i’m quite crafty when I want to be

The following is the work of my mother-in-law and her friends.  They call it ‘warfare’.  I’m calling it voodoo.  Thoughts?

I wanted to write in response to an article from Salon.com today posted on Twitter by @taxgirl . While the article was meant to be a sarcastic take on “Joe the Plumber” and his socialist rantings, the premise of the article absolutely broke my heart.

The focus was on taxes and the claim that Obama wants to take the money out of the hand of working Americans and redistribute it to the ’slobs’ and ‘losers’ in this country.  But the best part was the satirical analysis of actually how much a person making over $250,000 would be giving up to help take some pressure off struggling Americans.

Ready for this?  $257 bucks.

All of that griping and cries of socialism for $257 bucks!

And that’s in the case of a person that just crosses the tax bracket.  I’m even more disgusted with the big corporations out there crying socialism and issuing public threats such as “Under Obama’s tax plan, we will have to reduce our spending which will eventually cost jobs for American workers”.

Really?!

Under John McCain, the largest corporations would recieve $45 Million in tax breaks.  And you know what these companies will do with their tax breaks?  They’ll open new factories in Taiwan and Indonesia because they can employ 15 workers at $5 a day as opposed to one American at $75 a day.

And with this same money that they used to take away our jobs, they will produce cheap products using cheap materials that eventually make us sick or put us in danger (Case in point: lead paint toys, toxic dog food, tainted baby formula, contaminated heparin).

And when your baby drinks toxic formula or you are injected with contaminated heparin in the hosptial, who is gonna foot the bill?  Certainly not the ‘poor’ corporation that put their profit ahead of your livelyhood.

I say these companies shouldn’t get one red cent in the form of a tax break becuase clearly they are doing a wonderful job saving on labor and manufacturing costs and really don’t need additional help from me.

Beyond that, if you are blessed to make more than 95% of the rest of us in this country, how could you be so selfish as to not wanting a small portion of your money going to a single mother of 3 that came down with cancer, is sick to death from chemo and relies on government assistance just to survive?

How can you turn a blind eye to the millions of people facing foreclosure and homelessness,  yet you are the first one to rally for a bailout when you see a dip in your 401(k)?

All I can say is this.  Your money could be gone tomorrow.  All it takes is a few unfortunate turn of events to find yourself homeless and begging for state aid– and one day the policies of greed and selfishness that you advocated may very well come back and bite you when you least expect it.

Ok- not really, but God sure has socialist tendencies.

I wanted to share the following email that I sent to my mother-in-law.

She spent all day trying to convince me that Obama is Robin Hood and plans to “steal from the rich and give to the poor” and that he needs to be stopped from doing such things.  And this wasn’t a “nice” talk either– it got pretty heated towards the end.

Mainly because as a so called Christian, I can’t really understand her opposition to this?  After all, isn’t the whole premise of the Bible justice and caring for the needs of the oppressed, widows, orphans, etc.?

But hey, she didn’t need to take my word for it.  I found scripture to back it up like a good church girl.

So this email went to my mother-in-law, but I would also like to use it as a wakeup call for all of you so called Christians that cry “socialism” everytime you hear Obama speak and care more about your taxes than you do the poor.

Enjoy.

You may think i’m wrong, but I know you trust the Elijah list.  Obama will be your next president and everything will be just fine– for you, for me and for the rest of the world (you didn’t trust me about Todd Bently either…).  So here you go.  A prophecy straight from Kim Clement (published on the Elijah list) that Obama will be your man.

And I hate to break it to ya- God is a liberal/socialist.  Find me one scripture that proves otherwise.  I on the other hand have put together a full email of nothing but scripture.  Here is the definition of socialism:

“Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism by nature concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital, and creates an unequal society. All socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly”

And as far as “stealing from the rich and giving to the poor”, spend a day in Proverbs or the entire New Testiment and see how God feels about people having excess while other people are going without:

Acts 4:31-35:  After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.  And all the believers were in one heart and one mind.  No one claimed any of his possesions as his own, but they had shared everything they had.  With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them.  For from time to time, those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet and it was distributed to anyone as he had a need“.

Sounds like that scary socialism stuff to me!  God’s number one priority is the poor (not to protect the bank accounts, investments or portfolios of the rich).

Heres some more to take up with God:

“If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” 1 John 3:17-18

“If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother.” Deuteronomy 15:7

“There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.” Deuteronomy 15:11

Proverbs 14:31: He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.

“If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered.” Proverbs 21:13

“If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” Isaiah 58:10

Proverbs 28:27- He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them recieves many curses.

Proberts 29:14- If a king judges the poor with fairness, his thrown will always be secure.

Proverbs 29:7- The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.

Proverbs 30:8- Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, give me only my daily bread.

Proverbs 31:8-9- Speak up for those that can not speak up for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.  Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.

Proverbs 23:4- Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint. Cat but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like eagles.

James 1:27- Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep one self from being polluted by the world.

Leviticus 23:22 -”When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.”

I don’t think God would have any problem with taking tax money from rich people to help the poor and I dont know why you should either. After all, im sure the rich people in the last scripture wanted to keep the extra crops in the field that that they worked hard for, paid labor to cultivate, etc., but God could care less what they want.  His heart is for the poor, the needy and if the rich people have to give up stuff to help them, so be it.  That is the true heart of God.

So lets wake up Christians!  Realize there is ONE candidate that cares about the poor– and that’s Barak Obama.  John McCain voted against the S-Chip program for god sakes, which would provide health insurance to low income children!

Lets put abortion aside for a minute and realize the kids already born in this country won’t be taken care of by John McCain.

His proposed spending freeze would take away million of dollars in funding to low-income and special needs students.

How can anyone with a brain, or a heart for that matter support this?

All I can say to my church friends is this: If you cared about those forced to endure the flip side of the American dream as much as you do the rights of unborn children, the world will be a much better place.

My D&C was on Thursday morning, October 2nd.  I was pretty nervous but held myself together until the doctor came in the little prep room and began to talk about the procedure.

I cried from the minute he said hello and straight into the operating room.  And apparently, it didn’t stop there.  I started crying again as soon as I opened my eyes in recovery and asked for the doctor because I wanted to know what they did with my baby.  And while it was a breeze physically, it was a lot harder than I could have ever imagined emotionally.

For the next two days I was a little crampy and out-of-sorts, but for the most part, OK.  Mentally, however, I’ve been on a roller coaster.  I have a feeling that the pregnancy hormones still in my body have something to do with this- as well as the sheer grief of loosing a baby.

For example, I’ve been waking up out of a sound sleep in a full blown panic attack- to the point I have to physically get up and take my anxiety medicine because I can’t catch my breath and feel like I’m going to die.

During the day I feel jittery- like my mind and body are racing 100 miles an hour and I can’t shut them off.  Sometimes I am numb and other times I bawl my eyes out thinking about the awful things I said when I first learned of the pregnancy.

It’s been a roller coaster to say the least. 

But I thank God that I still have my beautiful baby boy to love and can’t imagine what It feels like for mothers who deal with this for years only to find out they can’t have kids anyway.  It must be an absolute nightmare physically and emotionally.

Bottom line, I’m hangin’ in there. 

(Oh and I’m still trying to figure out what the heck I’m supposed to do with the $500 bag of beautiful maternity clothes I just bought from Destination Motherhood that had a 10 day return policy.)