Thursday, July 31, 2008

Sometimes I forget the rules

We have spent a lot of time lately looking at the LOL cats website.....these guys make me giggle.

I know exactly what this little fellow is talking about.

Yesterday I was watching tv and looked around and thought....."I need to paint this room." So now my family room looks like this.
Right now I am waiting on my drywall patches to dry so I can sand and paint.

I forgot, in the midst of the excitement of getting a room painted, that there is a right way to paint. I have my own painting rules. I usually get started, complain or splash paint on something and SH sighs really big and finishes it for me. I didn't think before I got started that SH won't be home much until Sunday.....I'm on my own. Be afraid, be very afraid.

If no one hears from me for a few days send the paint police.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Just because

This made DD and I giggle.....and giggle...and giggle.


cat
more cat pictures

Monday, July 28, 2008

Monday Musings

We had a wonderful weekend with SH's family. They are a weird rambunctious bunch, but they are SH's family and therefore my family also.
We had a house full all weekend, including my SIL and her 3 boys that stayed here.....Koko does not normally like people other than her "people" but for some reason she enjoyed these boys and climbed right up with them on couches or chairs and enjoyed having them around. When we have company it is usually a miserable time for her and wears her completely out, but this time I think she is worn out from all the fun she had with the boys. She was snoring extremely loud when I took this picture and the flash just made her open one eye for a minute and then go right back to sleep. She would probably stay right here for a day or two if she could just get us to bring her food and water (-;

Last night after everyone left, SH and I climbed on the four wheeler and took off for my BIL's farm. We were going blackberry hunting but couldn't find any. There are thousands of vines and some red berries but someone is either picking them before we get there or they are falling off. I think my dreams of making blackberry jam and sending some to my bloggy buddies is fading fast.
While we were riding the 4wheeler through the woods and up and down cliffs hills I saw so many things I wanted to take pictures of.....indention's in the fields where mommy deer had rested with their babies, trees that were hundreds of years old and growing in odd shapes. I don't think I will make it with a camera because I spend most of my time sliding half way off the 4 wheeler seat and yelling at SH to let me off to walk....he loves it when I do that.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Just because

I absolutely have no desire to talk about politics. I do not under any circumstances like one party more that the other. I vote a very weird ticket from both sides. I still like this picture.



Just found out today that my SIL is coming in from Indianapolis this weekend and is staying with me, and I am hosting a family dinner for SH's entire family......I can't complain because she is my absolute favorite SIL (maybe tied with my brothers wife.) So she and her 3 boys will be here this weekend and I need to go get more groceries (-: I just wish I was better at the whole keeping the house clean thing. I am so bad at that. This will give me a reason to clean up DS's room a bit and I definitely will not get it done without a good reason.

One more picture I "borrowed" from an email I received months ago.


Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Misc. and other such stuff

Nothing much to talk about today so I thought I would put up a few pictures and see where they took me.
This is the Ohio River from the Ashland, Ky. bridge. I took this while not watching where I was going while I was looking straight ahead and watching traffic. I just loved the sunshine on the hills and the beautiful sky. The Ohio river is polluted and nasty so you can't eat anything you catch in it. We took our pontoon out in it a few times but no one wanted to get in the water. There are dozens of stories about the men who were building these bridges seeing catfish the size of a car. Whether those stories are true or not I have no idea and I, for one, am not going to find out.

This is the sun setting in Proctorville, Ohio. This is still right beside the river only about 5 miles downriver. Instead of Kentucky being on the other side here W.V. is. This time I stopped to take the picture.
Last years reunion picture of SH and DD. (This is for you Lanny)

This week is flying by as I'm sure every week will between now and the start of school. Since my hours got cut I can sleep in 5 days a week and only HAVE to be up before 7 AM 2 days. I do enjoy the sleeping in a bit but it makes me lazy (lazier if you ask SH or DD.)

I am afraid I started something when I was at my parents house yesterday. My mom was telling me when she got up yesterday morning there was a tiny puppy on her porch that looked like a yellow lab. She took it down the street to a neighbors house that had a fence and was going to look for the puppies owner. DD and I walked over to see it and it was the most ADORABLE puppy I have seen for a long time so.....I told the lady if no one came to get it she could call me. Why those words came out of my mouth I have no idea. Puppies are as bad as babies, every time I see one I wish I had one.....but puppies don't cause their owners to go into labor and panic over college costs, but then again you don't get to have nearly as much fun getting a puppy.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Time marches on.....

It has been a week since I updated. I can not believe that school starts in less than a month. The summer has flown by. Soon my baby girl will start her senior year of high school. Life is great!
This past weekend my Aunt hosted our annual family reunion. I don't have her permission to show her house but I think I am safe because you could not find it if you tried. You start out on a state 4 lane road....turn off on a state 2 lane road and go about 9 miles, turn onto another smaller 2 lane county road for about 4 miles then turn onto a dirt road that looks like it goes nowhere and go about half a mile to this house...which my dad, my husband and my Uncle built a few years ago in the middle of a hay field. It is beautiful, quiet and relaxing there and we all love to visit. Tonight ends the reunion festivities with a pizza night at my moms to say good bye to some out of town travelers that are leaving in the morning.
I hope everyone had as great a weekend as I did. I still can not believe no one wants to class up their formal dining rooms with a copy of my hubcap picture from the last post. I guess I need to see if SH can make a real hubcap into a frame for it, now that's class(-;

Monday, July 14, 2008

I love the summer nights...

Today SH and I went hunting for car parts. The car I bought last year for SH to fix up for me is finally in the process of getting worked on so today I spent a lot of time looking at things like this.


I know you all want a copy of this to hang in your good living room to make it a little more classy, I'll get some 8x10's ready for you. Every good living room should have hubcaps or at least a picture of them.



When we got home SH, DD and my niece went berry picking while I made home made ice cream. I also spent a little bit of time watching my hummingbirds, which is a favorite past time for me on summer evenings. Tonight when the birds go to sleep I am going to scrub and refill the feeder. They are emptying it every day.

Notice the two fighting in the background? These birds spend as much time keeping the other birds away from the feeder as they do eating.

Now I must go, I think a second bowl of ice cream is waiting on me.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Changes

I'm making a few changes to my site because as of the 14th I will not be a mom to two teens anymore.....(read last post.)
Have a great weekend!

Thursday, July 10, 2008

The one where I don't even pretend to have any sanity left

My son.....has grown up to be his own person. He is an adult now, though to me he never will be. He has his own life, his own home and his own job. He has a girlfriend who loves him and took over for mom, making him watch his money and wash his laundry. He will be 20 years old next week. Where did the time go, he was just a baby dancing around the house in a diaper playing his plastic guitar and singing songs for me. Just a few weeks ago he was 3 and we crawled into my bed after his bath and read Green eggs and Ham and Goodnight moon for the 500th time. We read I'll love you forever dozens of times but I found the book sad and odd. It seemed that the mother needed to let go a little and not climb into his bedroom of the house he shared with his wife. I am doing a pretty good job at letting go. I visit him and he visits me every week and we call each other a couple times a week. We meet up on messenger every few days to catch up and talk a few minutes, always ending with "I love you mom" and " I love you buddy."
He calls me whenever anything happens in his life....a raise, his puppy learning to fetch, his girlfriends mother coming to visit. He calls for my advice on grilling, cooking, bills and banks. He calls when he is at Wal Mart and finds a bargain. Sometimes he just calls when he sees something that makes him think of me. I know I am lucky to have a son like him and I will never take it for granted.
Today my dear daughter got a letter from a college that offered her the Presidential scholarship. Full tuition for 4 years. She has been getting letters from colleges for a couple of years but now they are getting serious. She will be a senior this year. She is smart, she is beautiful and she is responsible. She keeps her grades up because she WANTS to. Next year she will start college and be on her way to her own life. She says she will not go far away to college because she can't leave her mommy. I love to hear that but I don't want her to pass up something special just for me. I know she is independent enough to make it at college on her own so if she decides to go away I will not make her feel bad for leaving me, it has to happen at some point. If she decided to go away I will do what mothers have done for a long time and fight back the tears until I am alone.
For now I am trying to enjoy the time I have with my children. They are my heart and my life. It is still amazing to me after all of these years how much you can love another human being. Now I just have to figure out how to love them enough to let them go..................

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

OH NO SHE DIDN'T


Some people are rude. Some people are beyond rude. I met one of those people yesterday.
Superhubby wanted to go to Harbor Freight last night. If any of you haven't had the harbor freight experience then...don't bother. Taking a woman to H.F. is like taking a man to the salon with you when you get your hair and nails done. The first 10 minutes are fine and then its time to get OUT. Since I had my niece with me we decided to run away go to a few different stores and give him some peace and quiet while he was shopping the aisles and aisles of tools. We wondered through Hallmark reading cards and smelling candles for awhile and then went to Pizza Hut for a couple personal pan pizza's. We walked into Pizza hut and was instantly surrounded by air conditioning and the smell of pizza. We were the only customers so we were shown to the table by a very nice young man who went over and turned the tv over to a channel for my niece to watch and then proceeded to take very good care of us. While we were waiting on our pizza's to finish other customers started coming in. There were 2 other fairly large families that came in and a few older couples. I was still happy with this particular P.H. because even though there was one waiter working he was working hard. I'm sure he didn't get paid enough to run around as much as he did. This was a particularly large P.H. and he seated everyone as far away from other people as he could so no one had anyone sitting near them.
Across the restaurant there was a large family that came in . I think it was Grandma, Grandpa, 2Sons, daughter in law, 3 year old grandson and about 10 month grandson. They were a nice family and they talked and watched tv, just enjoying each others company. Finally our pizza's were served and my niece and I dug in. About the same time mommy decided her 10 month old had dirtied his diaper. That stuff happens and doesn't bother me a bit usually. She decided to change the babies diaper by BRINGING HIM TO THE BOOTH BESIDE US, way away from her family. She took off his diaper which promptly spilled baby poop all over the seat. She tried to clean it up by finding clean spots on the dirty diaper and scrubbing the seat. When that didn't work she used napkins her MIL went to get her. By this time my niece and I were on about our 3rd bite of pizza.....and our last because that was when the smell hit our booth. Not to mention that poor babies butt was stuck right up where we could see it. She started putting a clean diaper on him but she had baby poop on her hands, the seat, her pants and the babies clothes. She never once looked up to see if it was bothering us. Her family was 4 or 5 booths away. We got a box and loaded up our pizza and by the time we left the entire restaurant smelled like baby poop. When we were leaving she had went to the bathroom to wash her hands which, in my opinion is where she should have taken the baby to change his diaper.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

There goes the neighborhood

I think I have new neighbors, but more about that later. First here are a few pictures from our July 4th celebration.



This morning when I woke up and stepped outside I heard them. My new neighbors were noisy and annoying that early in the morning. The house above me has been for sale for a long time and I have been waiting for someone to buy it so I could have new neighbors. I guess I will have to wait a little longer because these new neighbors didn't buy the house. They prefer the wild, living in the woods in large groups. I don't have to worry about these neighbors partying all night and keeping us awake. They seem to prefer their parties early in the morning. I'm not sure what the reason was behind the party this morning but my first guess would be an orgy. My new neighbors, who we shall call the turkey family, spent the morning cluck cluck clucking around behind my house. Every few minutes the cluck of one or two of them would get more excited, more of a cluck, cluck, clucluck, cluckkkk,cluckkcluckkcluckk! Then all would calm down a few minutes and soon would start again. Either someone in the turkey family was getting lucky or they were having a contest to see who could tell the biggest lie. This afternoon they are quiet again, probably enjoying their post orgy cigarettes and nap.




Saturday, July 05, 2008

Ramblings of a semi-sane person...part 2

Over the years my dad has told me many secrets. I guess they aren't exactly secrets but more like tidbits that I listened to and then promptly forgot. I know my dad was from a big family. I remember his parents from when I was small. I remember when they got older and couldn't take care of themselves my father bought a trailer and put it in our backyard for his parents so he and my mom could take care of them. I don't remember much about them but I do remember that my Grandma was diabetic and she would go to the store and buy pepsi and candy and tell mom it was for her....when it was really for me. I don't remember when my Grandmother died, but I do remember when my Grandpa died. I remember my dad had just had to put Grandpa in a nursing home because he was too much for my mom to take care of when he was at work. My mom had just given birth to my sister and it had been a hard pregnancy. My Grandpa wanted my sister named after his late wife and they did name her middle name after her, but Grandpa wanted her first name to be his late wife's name. I do remember going to the nursing home and calling my baby sister by her middle name because my parents told me to. I remember when I became a volunteer at that nursing home 10 years later some of the nurses remembered my Grandpa....because he was always feeling them up when they leaned over his bed.
I also remember some of dad's brothers and sisters. I'm not sure how many he had because I never met them all. I remember a couple of brothers that were alcoholics that dad tried to help until they died but couldn't keep them straight. I also remember one of those brothers staying at our house on Easter one year and he spent the day flipping lit matches at me. I remember being very young and dad and I going to find brothers who were living in bad conditions and taking them food for their families. Dad did have some sisters who did ok with their lives. I see one of them every 5 or 6 years. When one of my dads brothers died a few years ago I got to see a couple of his sisters I hadn't seen since I was in grade school. When we were young I do have memories of playing with cousins and getting together with groups of dads family. I haven't seen those cousins for probably 25 years.
My dad's family has a small cemetery in a cow pasture, out what used to be a dirt road before it grew over. My dad mows it all summer just to keep it looking nice. Many years ago when I was helping dad mow I remember him pointing at the ground in places just inside the fence of the cemetery and telling me that he had baby brothers and sisters buried there. There were no markers at all, just his memory of burying them when they died as babies. I really need to make him tell me again where they are because I can not remember now and someone should remember.
During our 11 hours in a car the other day he started talking about a brother and a sister I never knew. Both had left home very early and he only saw them a few times. His sister called him in the middle of the night many times after she moved out but she was always drunk and he finally asked her to not call him again until she was sober. She never did and died soon after, it was obvious he regrets asking her not to call. His brother left when he was 15 and dad only heard from him twice before his death. When he died dad drove 3 hours to where he was and helped pay for his funeral. His brothers girlfriend found dads number in an address book his brother kept and called dad. She told him that the brother had always told her that he didn't have any family. There was one other brother I never met and I found out about him when I read the obituary in the paper that mentioned my dad as his brother.
One thing my father doesn't talk about much is his life when he was young. I asked him during our car ride why his brothers and sisters left home early and he said he didn't know, but a lot of kids did that back then. I do know that my dad was the only one in his family that graduated from high school.
My brother, who is 7 years older than I am and can remember my Grandparents pretty well told me once that he heard rumors when he was small that my Grandpa was a hard man. He was a blacksmith and was very strong and my brother heard rumors that he was very hard on his kids. I have no idea if that is true and I know my dad would never say anything bad about his father. I have a couple of pictures of my Grandparents sitting on the porch of their farmhouse with me and my cousins. I don't remember anything about their farmhouse, but my grandpa died soon after my sister was born and I would have just been 7.
It seems weird to me that I know so little about my family. My mothers side of the family are all close and we get together as often as we can. I know their history back quite a few generations and can name people who died way before I was born. One day soon I am going to sit down with dad and work on his family history. He is 71 years old now and someone needs to be able to keep those memories alive. I guess maybe I could do like I talked about in my last post and just go to the cemetery and talk to them.....wonder if they would talk back?

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Ramblings of a semi-sane person

Last night, in the dark now very weedless cemetery I noticed something I do that most people would probably proclaim odd.....I talk to the umm.....residents, inhabitants, deceased or whatever you call them. I was on my knees in the pitch dark with a tiny flashlight picking up flowers around tombstones so my husband could weed eat and I realized I was having this conversation.
Hello John and dutiful wife and loving mother Anna. Did you realize, John, that you have been dead for umm... 1874, now it 2008 umm, like 134 years. Oh Anna, I see you died much earlier, you were only....umm....add, subtract...do more mathematical crap, 28 when you died. Oh and these two small headstones with babies names on them...they were born when Anna would have been 19 and crap I suck at math, 23 years old. How sad you must have been to lose 2 babies. I wonder if you had any children that lived? I wonder if 100 years ago there were grandchildren and your adult children standing here, putting flowers on your headstone and missing you? Did you die trying to add to your family or was it one of those things that happened back then when a bad cold could kill you if you weren't careful? Here are your flowers back. Well hello Amos and loving wife Sarah. Wow Amos you outlived Sarah by crap again add, subtract, etc. 30 years. Oh Amos I see now, you have another wife buried beside you....also named Sara but spelled different. She was( note to self: bring a calculator if you are going to talk to dead people) 15 when the first Sarah died so you must have married her later . I see that Sara number 2 outlived you by quite a few years. I wonder if after you died she ever dated, had an affair or if she just stayed at the farm for 25 years and fed chickens. I see that beside your tombstones there are buried rocks with no stones on them. Would those be children of yours and one of the Sarah/Sara's? Did one, or both of your wives have children that you buried here yourself?
While I have all of your attention, listen up John and Amos, we have stuff today that you never would have believed could be possible. When we want to be cool we just hit a switch and it turns on a machine that cools the air in our homes as cool as we want it. When we want new clothes, or groceries we just go to a store and buy them. When I want to know what is going on anywhere in the entire world I just turn on this box in my house we call television. It can show me the news from anywhere. Someone can be standing in China talking and I can watch it as it happens from my very cool home. When I want to go to town I jump in my car, turn on the air conditioning, radio and go. No horses, no wagons and I can get there fast....and back fast. There are so many things you would never have dreamed of but I have a question for you; what was it like when you had to rely on each other. When you worked hard together to make a life for yourself and your family. What was it like when you all set together on the porch in the evenings and just talked to each other? When being ill meant the neighbors fed your family and helped with your work and your neighbors knew if they were ill you would do that same? What were those days like John and Amos and how can I get just a little of that back?

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

My very long day

My day started early. I went to bed about 1 AM, the dog woke me up at 1:20, back to sleep about 1:45 and up at 3AM. Why was I up at a time of morning that no one but Kim-D usually sees? Today was the day I went on a quick road trip to meet my sister and get my niece for her annual summer visit. I had driven 5 hours, met my sister and got my niece and was on the way home by 9:15 AM. I was at home and ready to relax by 3PM. Then Superhubby came home....he can not just relax.


We needed to finish mowing the cemetery where SH's parents are buried. He and I drove out there and mowed until 10PM......yes at 10PM I was pulling weeds around tombstones in a cemetery out a very deserted dirt road....With a flashlight. Not only is it pitch black out, we have seen copperheads in this cemetery quite a few times. It was either that or go back out there tomorrow and finish and I did not want to do that. You would think after my run in with whatever was at the museum last week I would stay away from places where there could possibly be any weird stuff.
Leaving you now with a picture of the view from one of the rest area's we stopped at today...




Tuesday, July 01, 2008

????

This makes me so sad. What in the world were these people thinking and how can we fix things like this?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/01/hospital.death.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories