My laptop is broken so I may not be online as much as usual because I have to use my hubby’s laptop while he is at work. I have a Toshiba laptop and for the last 2 1/2 months it has been shutting off on me randomly without any warning what so ever. I thought it was overheating, but when I was using it just yesterday, I had my laptop sitting on the window sill which is cool because it is cold out and my laptop shut off on me again. I had already called Toshiba several times beforehand and today I had to call them a total of 4 times.

My laptop wouldn’t do a System Restore or a System Recovery. After speaking to the tech the second to last time she advised me to do a System Recovery and I had her walk me through it. When I got off the phone with her my laptop was in the process of doing it until I checked on it a few minutes later and saw an error message on the screen. I then called Toshiba again and I was told it was something to do with the hardware and my computer needed to be sent in for repair – DUH! Thank God, my warranty doesn’t expire until February, but it really sucks that my computer is acting like that and I haven’t had it for a year. I’ve already made plans to purchase a desktop once February hits. To make matters worse I tried to restart my computer and my computer now fails to start. Instead I get this message

BOOTMGR Missing

Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to Restart

When I did that my computer failed to load Windows and would go back to a black screen displaying that message again. Now I can’t even use my computer at all. This really sucks because I just started a new project called: Mermaidiaries.com.

I decided to create a SecondLife role play saga in my spare time and my hubby and I already played out the prologue just the other night. If you’re interested in reading it visit my newest addition to the network: Mermaidiaries.com.

Last, but not least, if you noticed my site was down earlier, it was because I asked Hostgator to switch eternally-me.com to my primary domain name. I still have over 200 days left for Sweetvanillasugar.com, but I plan on letting that domain expire and moving our wedding website to a sub-domain under eternally-me.com.

I am so tired right now, but I really wanted to update my site so as I site here listening to John Legend’s “Everybody Knows” and sipping on warm rooibos and honeybush tea I wonder what to write about…

For starters I have only one week left at my job . Hopefully I can get through this week without any crazy mishaps coming from Diane’s drug addict husband. Each day I become more and more irritated with just being there and I already made up my mind that if her husband drops by during my final weeks there I will promptly make it my business to leave.

In other news, Brian and I purchased our wedding bands in white gold this week. We are going to try to get them engraved next week if not this weekend. It should only be about $50 to get them engraved at the jeweler we decided to take them to. Speaking of our wedding. If I haven’t mentioned already, our wedding website is located at sweetvanillasugar.COM.

Today I took the boys to see a movie called “Ponyo” by Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki has done it again! That movie was the cutest little kid’s movie I’ve ever seen. I thought “Spirited Away” was good, but this movie was simply adorable. If you have small children you should take them to see this movie my 7 year-old, 3 year-old, and almost 2 year-old loved it!

Thinking about my future plans (yes I know I’m all over the place today), I was thinking about some goals I will be able to accomplish now knowing that I won’t have my current job depriving me anymore; meaning I can start focusing more on Growblackhair.NET. I’ll be able to promote my site more, by writing more articles, adding content, and blogging on a regular basis. I know my site has a lot of potential and with more time and effort put into it, I know my site can bring in a decent income. I never received a Google check until I actually launched this site and I’m not going to give up on it just yet. I’ve made money already from my site, and things can only get better.

…honeybush rooibos tea is so calming and relaxing. Time to get whined down and get some sleep.

I have so much to write about, but now that it is almost 4am in the morning, I’d rather wait until tomorrow.

I decided to create a new theme for my blog yesterday in my favorite colors: Pink & Green. I call this theme “Simple Eternal Pleasure”, because I’m going for that simple clean look. Not quite there yet, but I’m well on my way.

I would like to rant about my stupid job before going to bed though…

As you may already know if your a regular reader of my blog, I busted my ass looking for a job. I came back to Ohio in July 2008, and didn’t find a job until April 2009. My job only paid me $8/hour and I was supposed to be part-time. I never really applied for this job. I actually applied for a full-time third shift position, but the woman that interviewed me hired me for her company instead working for chump change. My last check was only $325!

To remind you of some of the bullshit I’ve been going through with this job, when I first got hired 2 girls were leaving. They hired another girl, whom never showed up and I ended up working 6 days a week, but never achieved 40 hours a week! I hated going to work everyday like that and not even being paid for it! My highest check amount was a little over $400. I kept asking them to hire someone else because the constant work and low pay was burning me out. I ended up referring my frined Tenisha, when they failed to hire someone, just to find out they hired her on with no experience at a quarter more than me. I then later found out that another new girl got hired in at .75 more than me. I was furious and threatened to quit. The supervisor got mad at Tenisha for telling me how much she made, but I just understand how they can make me work 6 days a week, and when they hired more people they still have me working more than anyone, but I get paid less! The owner called and offered me a .50 pay raise to stay. I accepted it for now, just to find out that she only gave me a quarter raise. How fucking dishonest is that? Not to mention they then changed my hours without notice to accommodate this new girl. I have to pick my children up from day-camp at 3:30pm, but my idiot supervisor puts me on the schedule to work until 4pm after I told her this! When I talked to her about it, she refused to fix it and told me I’d just have to work it out with my sitter, because I have no set schedule and that my schedule is based on the needs of the house! She even had the nerve to say I need to give back. I basically saved their asses when 2 people didn’t show for work and I had to work 6-day shifts for a month because both the supervisor and owner went on vacation at the same time!

I’ve been working from 8:30am-2:30pm since the beginning of the summer, my daycare vouchers are based on these hours and now they just change up on me like that? Sounds to me like your not accomodating the needs of the house, but of new people!  That was the last straw. I’ve already decided on the day I’m going to give them 2 weeks notice!

Well I had to do my ranting for the day. Now I’m about to go shower and get a few hours of sleep.

Yes, I am not dead yet. Just busy as hell…LOL!

I know I haven’t updated in weeks. School, work, my boys, Brian, and GrowBlackHair.net have been my main focus the last couple of weeks. I’m doing well in school and I’m in the second to last week of my first session of classes. My session actually ends on June 17th! Go figure!

I’ve been working in the morning now, but after discussing my future with Brian, he wants me to quit my job in the next few months and just focus on the boys and school. So this is when GrowBlackHair.net comes into play. Over the course of the next few months before I do quit I want GrowBlackHair.net to be bringing in my income than what I’ve been making. Currently my site only makes a little over $100 every 3 months. I need that to increase. Every three months is not good enough. My ultimate goal is atleast $2000 per month. I know that this can be achieved with time and patience. As of last month I received 3312 unique visitors. I can’t wait to start averaging 10,000 unique visitors. I’ve come along way though. My unique visitors have increased since January which was only 1769. I’ve noticed that my number of visitors increase each month so at this rate the money will start accumulating and my goal will finally be reached.

I know I haven’t updated in a while, but I have been really busy at work. The last few weeks I’ve been working 5, even 6 day weeks at times. I’ve been so wrapped up with work, starting school, and trying to get things settled here in our new place.

I started the Art Institute of Pittsburg Online Division on Friday. I am really excited about starting school and I can’t wait to learn some new web-design skills so I can put them to use on my current sites and start on building my online portfolio. I am planning to finish school in 4 years with my BA in Interactive Media/Web-design and I can’t wait. One thing for certain I am not planning on staying in dried up Ohio after I finish school.

I am planning on moving again to a state that will allow me to find a job in this field and Ohio is not the place for it. I really regret moving back here and I wish things didn’t work out the way they did because it sucks here. It took me over 9 months to find a crappy ass job getting paid $8/hour. I’ve been working 5 and 6 days a week with no more than 28-34 hours per week. I don’t even bring home enough to get a car. I can’t keep doing this. Something’s got to give. I’ve also found out that there’s a hiring freeze with the city so I may not ever get that city job. Cleveland is not the place to be right now. It’s all dried up like a sponge left out in the sun. Speaking of sun when are we going to get some? It’s the middle of May and today it was 57 degrees. WTF?! I’m really missing Florida right now…

Yesterday Brian and I took the boys to T.G.I. Fridays for dinner. It was really nice to have dinner together. This was a really nice weekend. I didn’t have to work so I was able to spend all my time with the boys and Brian without any interruptions. Everything was great until I read some ignorant shit on my website which I won’t even give much attention to. I’m tired of people acting younger than their age. Hell I live with a bunch of immature grown people which is highly irritating.

I’ve also found some new sites that offer products geared towards caring for natural hair. It’s really excited going natural and discovering new products that are made for my hair. Yesterday I tried two strand twists for the first time (not the weave ones), instead of the usual TWA I’ve been wearing and it  looks nice. Very Afrocentric, but nice.

I decided to name this post Auricular because this word isn’t used very often. This post has nothing to do with the meaning of this word so it’s a more of a random title (More about this word later in the post).

I really hate the weather here. It is so cold today. It was 24 degrees today and that really sucks when you have to catch the bus. I had on 2 shirts, 2 hoodies, my wool coat, a pair of gloves, and a scarf and I was still cold! My hands were so cold that they hurt. I really feel sorry for anyone that is homeless in Ohio because the weather is absolutely dreadful. If I was homeless I would make it my business to move to warmer much more bearable climate even if I had to walk the whole way. I always find myself looking forward to the summer when I am in Ohio because that’s the only time the weather is actually bearable and won’t cause me to get ill. Any other time of the year the temperature is up and down like crazy and everyone is contracting Influenza. Luckily I’ve managed to avoid getting really sick which I have to credit my evasion of getting ill to taking vitamin C tablets daily.

In other news I spent today with Brian just as planned. I basically slept in his arms the whole time. All those nights where I only got 4 hours of sleep has finally caught up with me and I’ve been doing nothing, but sleeping  every time we’re together because that’s my only opportunity to actually get some sleep. I am still tired even now and of course Jeremiah is still up right now. *Sigh*

I decided to give Sweetvanillasugar a rest and focus on GrowBlackHair.NET more. That’s the site that has been making me money. My goal for the next 6 months is to get enough clicks to earn at least $100+ a month instead of every 2-3 months. My site comes up on the first page when the key words “grow black hair” are Googled, but I need to add more information and write more articles. At least 4 articles a month if not more. Sometimes I run out of ideas, but when I do I review a hair product until another idea comes to mind. Right now I’m currently in the process of reviewing Carol’s Daughter Hair Milk. I’ve gotten a lot of requests about this product so I went to Sephora and purchased a bottle to test it out on both natural and relaxed hair. If you want to read the review check out my site in a few weeks.

Last but not least, I deleted and edited my categories today. I had the category “Personal” and “Private” which are literary the same thing. I mean those are actually synonyms to each other so I decided to combine those entries and rename the category to “Auricular“, but who really uses that word or knows what it means? So I ended up changing it to “Confidential” instead. I also changed “Writings” to “Literary Works”  — a little more unique I must say.

I haven’t done much today, but look after the boys and sleep and work on SweetVanillaSugar.COM a little. Today was very boring. I was so tired and I slept all the way to 2pm because Jeremiah kept me up all night. I don’t know why that little boy won’t go to sleep on time. I have to practically force him to go to sleep at night. I finally deleted my old blog on the 28th so it is officially no more. I also deleted my email address associated with that blog as well. It’s nice to have peace again. I was actually thinking about making a whole new layout for SweetVanillaSugar, but I’ve decided against it for now.

I spent the weekend with Brian. It was nice to be able to spend some time with him. I have been so wrapped up in everything here I found that I didn’t have much time for him and I had to squeeze in time to see him even for a few hours during the week. We didn’t do much, but cuddle and watch TV and talk. It’s amazing how much we love each other. I never loved any man as much as I love him.

I have to go to school tomorrow and I have so much math to catch up on it’s ridiculous. I really hope I can get all caught up over the spring break.

I haven’t been to see my nephew yet and a lot of it has to do with the issues with my sister. Her constantly creating unnecessary drama for me by lying on me in various cases and reading my blog just to create issues at home when I had my blog hosted at SweetVanillaSugar. The last time she did it she sent me a text message threatening to “whoop my ass”. I know she’s my sister and all, but being how I am I’m not going to take an ass beating off of no one. I haven’t spoke to her since she came back because I always find myself being the humble one even when she’s the one that’s wrong. That girl does not believe in apologizing if it was to save her life! I’m also tired of her only wanting me around as her last resort or using me for what little I do have. Quite frankly the way I feel right now, I wouldn’t care if we never spoke again.

I can not stand the weather in Ohio. I left out this morning around 10:20am on my way to school and the weather was quite nice for Ohio around this time. It was in the 40s, but when I left school around 1:30pm I felt the chill through the double doors. The weather went from 40 something to low 30s in a matter of hours. It will be in the low 20s tomorrow and back to the 40s by the end of the week. The weather in Ohio is never consistent. You never know what to expect. I can’t wait until I am able to move from here again and stay gone for good. I really hate cold weather.

Today I started on the new site design for sweetvanillasugar. It’s starting to look really nice. The base is a nice vanilla color and I created a colorful, simple, candy theme. I really don’t want anything super elaborate. I’ll leave that to the free designs I create. I know sooner or later I’m going to have to purchase Adobe photoshop though because I only have 23 days left to use it. Well I gotta go to bed it’s really late and I plan on spending time with Brian tomorrow. An empress has to get her beauty sleep.

Today I spent the day with Brian. I was really tired and I decided to do most of my work at home and email it to my teacher. I am still very behind in my math. Today I spent the day with Brian. I was really tired and I decided to do most of my work at home and email it to my teacher. I am still very behind in my math.I wish we didn’t have to take math courses to get a degree for learning web-design and digital graphics. The whole class is online and they want you to do so much in a small amount of time. With everything that’s been going on including my sister having her baby early and all I’ve been losing focus on my studies for the last 2 weeks. I find myself tired all the time because I’ve been up late with Jeremiah and I’ve been doing even more around the house than before. I actually ended up going to Brian’s house and just sleeping the whole entire time!

I cleaned up my blog some more today and changed a few things. I ended up deleting my FAQ page because most of the questions are answered on my credits page so it served no purpose. I deleted my pages page and replaced it with a page called sites where my other sites will be located along with sites that I really admire. I also also decided to change my favicon (clear your cache to see it) and the calendar icon from the emerald to my original idea…a planet with rings. I just had to find a good tutorial on how to make a planet with rings. The emerald just took away from the layout completely, but now I am really happy with the way my site looks now.

Eternally-me.com is going to be launched officially on March 1st. The same day I will be deleting SweetVanillaSugar.com and making a temporary page until I make up my mind what i want to do with the domain. I’ve also added a ban plugin to my new blog so I won’t have to go through all the harassment I went through on sweetvanillasugar.com.

I started to school today and I’ve identified what classes are going to be an issue and what classes aren’t. I also dropped my Macintosh class because it requires me to be at school after 7pm which is something I’d rather not do because of the weather. I’ve also changed my speech class to one that starts at a later time so I won’t have to be at school until 10am. This is the last time I’m taking classes during the Spring semester while not having a car. They should call it the winter semester instead because it’s a blizzard outside right now and in Ohio you can expect cold weather from November until April or even May (When the semester ends!). I will be only taking Summer and Fall classes for now on.

My financial aid hasn’t come through yet either so I can’t even do any of my math assignments or purchase any of my books that I need for school. If I had a job I could do at least buy some of my books. I really wish I could get hired somewhere… Depending on how long it takes I will be behind unless I can borrow some money from someone to pay for the disk that goes with the class. I hope I am approved for financial assistance.

I have to wait on my sister to get off of work so I can get a ride home because it is too dangerous and cold to be catching the bus. While I’m waiting I’m going to make some more changes to my blog and start on the new natural hair care section on growblackhair.net.