It really tis the season!

Just to add a little to my last post I went outside and took a picture into my family room after dark. This is what it looks like to the hunters in the woods, only I am a little closer than they should be. The quilt in the chair is the quilt SH and I fight over at night, because the family room is the coldest room in the house. There are plenty of other blankets in that room but we both like the quilt.

I put some lights up on the porch last week but didn't turn them on until the weekend. I thought they were fine until I took this picture and then I figured out that they needed something else.

I went outside in the 34 degree windy night and added some to make it feel more balanced to me. I know it looks like some are out but that is just a picnic table sitting in front of the porch. I would like to move it but I do not have the energyto move a 250 lb. table and my toes were frozen because being the smart person I am I wore sandals.
Now if I could just get SH to get the lights to dance to some cool music.....then it would be Christmas.

Stay tuned on Saturday for a special post! A little hint? Do you like sharing recipes?

Tis the season

No not the Christmas season, in Ohio it is now hunting season, which is much more important to quite a few people, including those of us who have had to replace windshields, bumpers and hoods from the deer. Why, you may ask, am I underlining every word of this post? Because I can not figure out how the underlining got started and I have no idea how to stop it. I'm sure if I spent 3 minutes looking around in this little blog world I would figure it out but it took me 30 minutes to upload these pictures and I really have more important things to do, like eat more hot tamales and snickers bars clean my bathroom and do laundry.
Back to my original reason for this post. It is hunting season in Ohio. To give you an idea how this affects me let me show you around my little slice of Ohio.
If you walk out my front door and look straight ahead this is what you will see.



If you look to the right (what happened to my underlining now, and my color, this thing is crazy!) Anyway if you look to the right this is what you will see. Do you see the house on the top of the hill?


If you look to the left, you will see this. There is a nice little spot up there I used to love to go to and just sit and watch deer and squirrels.

If you walk out my back door this is what you will see. Is anyone sensing a theme here?

No matter where you are if you look down you will see this, which is yet another dropped off animal. I think this is about the 8th one this year. This has absolutely nothing to do with this post but since the kitten tripped me 3 times while I was trying to take pictures I thought I would include her, she must be feeling left out.

This week no matter where you look, no matter which way you turn when you walk out any door you will see something that looks like this.

I have nothing against the hunters. Superhubby used to hunt back when he had the time and energy to get up at 4AM and walk into the freezing woods with a backpack full of coffee, gun ammunition and dry gloves. I actually appreciate the hunters thinning down the herds around here because they have gotten completely out of hand. I do, however, cringe each and every one of the 27 times a day that someone shoots at a deer. It echo's off of these hills and every shot within a couple of miles sounds like someone is shooting right outside your door. I also have no curtains on my family room windows. My family room looks straight out into the woods behind the house. No one is ever back there other than during hunting season so I never felt the need to put up curtains over my pretty arched windows. This time of year I find myself wondering who is out there, can they see me, does this mean I have to wear clean underwear AND a bra? Could a hunter see if I had a bra on from out in the woods? They do use binoculars to hunt but frankly I am not binocular material so I am just going with the idea that they will keep looking for the 4 legged deer. There have been many times in my life when I look out and see hunters, uhh, relieving themselves in the woods, but I don't use binoculars....well not for that I'm looking for squirrels.

Because I am too lazy to make up a title

The day after Thanksgiving we woke up to this. After a summer of mostly 90 degree + days we weren't too upset to see this. Then today we had a 60 degree rainy day. Now the wind is starting to roar over the hills and the cold is coming back. I hope we don't have more of this when we wake up.

Today we went shopping and got a big bunch of our Christmas shopping out of the way. Thank goodness for Steve and Barry's. If you have never been to a Steve and Barry's store I recommend you find one. The prices are amazing.

I have decided since DS is living on his own I am using his bed as a gift wrapping center. My Grandma always used a spare bed to wrap gifts and I am finding it much better than spreading stuff all over the house. This is mostly todays haul.

When DD was docenting at the Lawrence county historical museum Saturday one of her "friends" Dave surprised her by stopping by with a dozen of her favorite color roses. Dave made a few brownie points with her on that one.Gun season for deer hunters started today. There is something weird about looking out your window into the woods and seeing people out there with guns and orange hats.

I'm thankful for.....

Just like 3rd grade......

I'm thankful for my family, I know I am one of the lucky ones.

This is SH and my DD.....both of whom mean the world to me....

This is DS and my mom on her 70th birthday..... both are near and dear to my heart.

Here is my dad and a couple of my dozens of Aunts and Uncles.....

I'm also thankful that I can see things like this and take a picture of it.....just because I want to.

This is the mighty Ohio River from a bridge going into Ashland Ky.

This is a church near my house...I just loved the sky behind it though I wish the electric lines
weren't there....

So now I am going to go finish hanging my Christmas wreaths and start on those pumpkin logs...I'm thankful I can make this stuff and enjoy it, though my thighs are not quite so happy with me.

Shame on me.....

This is what I'm hiding behind my kitchen garbage can. To be fair (and to give myself an excuse) we burn our garbage and its been windy and the yard is full of dry leaves so I have been burning things a little at a time and saving things like boxes for a couple of weeks.
I have been thinking about our eating habits lately and realized that we eat few veggies anymore. The ones we do eat are covered in cheese or butter borderline healthy. If we could count tomato sauce I would be listed as one of America's top health experts. I have heard that tomato products are good for your prostate so if I had one of those I would be able to stand up and pee like a 20 year old after a keg party. Since I don't have one of those and my doctor just put me on a water pill because my blood pressure is creeping up, I need to work on my food selection. Most evenings it is just me here or me and DD so cooking a meal seems silly. I need to find fast, healthy things that won't be so annoying to cook.
A week or so ago I was having a chocolate craving and went and opened DD's snack drawer. She has a drawer in her room she keeps snacks in so her father and I will leave them alone she and her friends will have them if they want them. In her drawer I found her chocolate Easter bunnies from the last two years and her giant Hershey's kiss and chocolate Santa's from last Christmas. If I wouldn't have fallen in love with that beautiful face right at birth I would swear she was switched with someone Else's child in the hospital. The self control and the fact that she is so smart makes me sure she got only the best from both sides of our family. Have I mentioned that she took her ACT's a month or so ago? She is a junior so I wanted her to take them once early this school year just to get the testing nervousness out of the way. That way she would be able to take it 2 or 3 more times and not have to be so scared of the test. She scored a 27....on her first try. A 27 along with a 4.0 average gets her a full scholarship to a couple of colleges around here. She will have an ACT prep class after Christmas at school that should help her raise it a few points which will help her gain access to a wonderful education at very little cost to her poor parents. Think of what she could accomplish if her mother made her eat her veggies. We did order from a pizza place tonight, but we ordered a salad....with cheese, ham and pepperoni. IT HAD LETTUCE AND TOMATOES TOO, I swear it did.

Monday misgivings

SH has a toothache. A bad toothache. He has been asleep since about 9:30 this morning which is the first time he has really slept for the last couple of nights. He paced the floor all night but did his best to be quiet and I slept quite well. This is a complete turnaround from our norm....I am the one with the bad teeth. I have spent countless hours and dollars trying to save my teeth but a couple of years ago, after having 4 abcessed teeth in 6 months I cried uncle and gave up. Root canals seldom work for me and my dad (who's side of the family I take after) lost all of his teeth by the age of 32. My parents worked hard to keep mine healthy when I was young and I spent way more time in the dentist chair than my friends, but even my baby teeth broke off and decayed. My poor kids spent so much time in the dentist chair they thought it was home away from home. I spent so much money at the dentist I think I paid for his sons college tuition. The day I made the last payment on DS's braces he looked at DD's teeth and said "here we go again." He excused himself to his office and I'm sure he called his wife and told her to go ahead and book that cruise she had been wanting to take.
I hope everyone has a great day. SH just woke up to get ready and is a little grumpy....the keyboard noise is bugging him.

Friday randomness......again

Try not to get too excited over this picture......this is my chimney. This chimney is attached to a woodburner in the basement that is our main heat for the winter. We also have a heat pump but we are on a rural electric co-op. Being on a rural electric co-op only means that heating your home with electric is equal to winning a reverse lottery where you give all your money away.

The tree in the middle of this picture is not an over achiever that shed all of it's leaves before every other tree. This tree is my fire wood for the winter because this beautiful black oak in my front yard died last year.

Do you see my problem? The wood burner is not big enough for me to get this entire tree in at one time and I have a problem using a chain saw. My main problem with the chain saw is that I can't start it....which means I can't use it for anything but juggling, which is something I would kill myself trying do in my spare time.

(notice my neighbors new house and garage in the background)

This is not my chimney. This is a smoke stack from a power plant we drove by when we were traveling recently and I just put my camera up in the windshield and snapped pictures to see what I would end up with. I like this picture for some reason but have no idea what to do with it.

DD and one of her very best friends love to hang out together. I can't figure out how they hang out, talk to their boyfriends on the phone and still carry on full conversations. They can do this for hours on end and it would definitely give me a headache. This is why we still have 2 land lines. We got them when DS lived at home but never had it removed for just such an occasion. We also have 4 cell phones which gives us a total of 6 phone numbers.

My last random thought for the evening.....DS called to tell me he was coming here to stay all night. I love when he does that but I am a little confused as to why he is coming tonight. I asked if his girlfriend was gone to her parents for the weekend and he said no she was next door in her apartment. My thought process is probably a little screwy on this but I am trying to figure out why before he gets here. My guesses are 1. all of his underwear is dirty. 2. He and g/f are fighting. 3. He is out of money (which has never happened since he moved and I'm pretty sure he is doing well financially.) 4. Is there something he wants to tell me face to face? (which could lead to an entire post all its own.)

Guess I will just sit around and think it to death until he gets here and probably just wants to visit, which I will enjoy.

Edit- I hit publish and the doorbell rang. It was DS with so much laundry he couldn't open the door..... I love that boy.