Today's Fashions Really Suck

Today I thought would be a good day to buy some new clothes. Most everything I have is worn out and almost threadbare. It might be because I really don't like to shop for clothes. The plan was to go to JC Penny and check things out there. I did not set my expectations too high on finding anything I really liked. Just maybe a couple tops, a pair of jeans, or shorts.
With me and my low expectations, I start wandering around the store looking at this and that. There were several tops I liked but every size they had was small or medium. In today's world a women' s size small would probably fit my 8 year old granddaughter's.
Ok, so this is starting to tick me off a bit. "Leave the store now!" said one of the voices in my head. Ignoring the warning, I continue on my quest. It seemed like every they had was in bright pink, lemon lime, orange orange and so on. I don't think I want to look like an Easter egg this spring. I just want something simple in normal colors. I don't like the empire waist type shirts either. Anyone who has big boobs knows that seam is suppose to be under your boobs, not smack dab through the middle. Oh and since we're on the subject of boobs, I prefer mine to be inside my shirt. It's hard to find anything that keeps the girls from showing off. No luck finding tops here. Then I went over to check out the jeans. Bad idea. The good part was that most of them were on sale at a decent price. The bad part is that some fashion genius decided that women should wear low rider jeans now. Only a small percentage of young girls and women actually look good in them. The rest of us end up with muffin tops and the crack of our ass's exposed. I prefer the crack of my ass to be covered up. I could go on and on about low rider jeans but I won't. (in my day they were called hip huggers)
The thought of trying on a million pair of jeans to find one pair that would fit was not what I wanted to do at this point. Now I knew I wasn't going to find anything today. It was time to leave the store now.

You Know You're Getting Old........

When the highlight of your day is going to the post office to mail letters.



When you put on your jammies at 6:00 in the evening.



When you'd rather stay home on a Friday or Saturday evening to crochet.

When you say something to you kids or grandkids and hear your mother's voice blurting out of your mouth

Hurricane Ike in Ohio?

Last Sunday started out to be a nice, warm sunny day. There was a wind advisory out, but that's not unusual around here, especially after a hurricane from the south. Later that afternoon the wind really picked up. I mean really picked up. As in trees, awnings, patio furniture and anything that wasn't literally nailed down. Later I found out we had wind gusts up to 70-78 mph. in surrounding areas.

Earlier that day I put a roast in the crock pot and decided to take a little cat-nap. Not long after I laid down, I woke up to the sound of what I thought was rain pelting against the window. I got up, looked outside and this is what I saw.

This is our neighbors house across the street. Thank God it didn't fall on her house. When that happened everyone came out of their houses to check things out. Then we heard the sirens and soon the ambulance
arrived on our street. It passed by us to the other end of the street and this is what was going on there.

If you look past the truck, you can barely see the ambulance.

What happened here, a woman was getting a tree limb out of the road when another one fell on her. Later we found out that she suffered a broken leg or ankle.

In the meantime, we were out in the neighborhood walking around looking at all the damage. I might add that it wasn't a smart thing to do because the wind was blowing so hard that at times it was almost knocking us off our feet. Like the weather guys and gals reporting in hurricanes.

We lost power for about 2 hours. We were lucky. By Sunday evening more than 200,000 homes and businesses in the Miami Valley were without power. Traffic signals have been out for days,causing many accidents. As of this posting the number of outages are down to 60,000. This as been one Dayton, Ohio's worst natural disasters in many years. Crews have been called back from Galveston, Texas and neighboring states have sent crews to our state to help restore power. One of the main problems of restoring the power is, trees have fallen and tangled throughout the power lines. They have to remove the tree debris before they can repair the electrical lines. They're slowly gettin er done.

What disappoints me is, there hasn't been any national news coverage of this that I know of. I guess political news is more important than all of the people who are suffering from Hurricane Ike's wrath.Thankfully the temperatures here have been comfortable. It would've been awful if there had been a heat wave or freezing rain and snow.
The pictures I posted are nothing compared to some of the damages that are in other parts of town.

This is my nephew's house. At least it was a small tree.

One block over from us.

Clean up begins on our street.

Oh, by the way. The roast I had in the crock pot was still cooking even though our power was out. Mike was worried that he wouldn't have any supper that night but that's whole other story right there. Anyhow the roast was very good and Mike went to sleep with a full belly.

You Might Be a Dumb Ass If.....

Today started out like most days, I got up ,drank my coffee, got caught up the news and so my day began. Like most multi-taskers I usually manage doing several different things at once with no problem. Except for today. I had laundry going, I was doing dishes, sweeping the floor, watching a program on T.V., and in between all of that I would get on the computer to check stuff out. So you're thinking what's the big deal about that? OK I'll tell you. I looked out the back door at the humming bird feeder and figured I might as well make some fresh food for them.
I boiled the water, added the sugar and let it cool. A little later when I put in a couple drops of red food coloring it turned a rusty - yellowish color. Yuk! I thought maybe the pan I boiled the water in was dirty or something so I washed it out and made another batch. Now it was time to add the food coloring. What the f#%k!... It happened again. I know the food coloring hadn't gone bad, so I looked at the label on the bottle and it said Pure Vanilla Extract. Duhhhh! Well now I have batch number 3 made up and in the feeder. Now I'm just waiting for the humming birds to get here. I also put the vanilla extract far away from the red food coloring.

Computer Nerd Blues

Last Wednesday My new computer arrived. Wohoo! I didn't get to hook it all up until Friday though. It took most of the day to take down the old computer, get the new one set up, and get online. It just sounds a lot easier than it was. The next day was spent getting the printer installed and transferring files which didn't take too long. The main thing was getting all my pictures moved over. So next was getting the printer going. That's where all the fun began. It's a multi-function printer (scanner, copier, fax, blah blah blah) and even though it's five years old it still works great. When I put the CD in to set up everything the stupid Vista message comes on to say that this program is not compatible with this system. What the f#%^! It better be compatible because I've just spent two days bent over inside a small closet hooking up wires, plugging shit in, unplugging , now every thing's good to go and they say it won't work on Vista. Huh! we'll see about that. At least it sent me to the Canon website where I found a patch to make the printer work. With that done , it was time to get Mike's Lawn Service stuff transferred over. The program I have is QuickBooks Invoice Manager, which is all I really need for Mike's Business stuff. I did what the destruction's said to do for making a back-up copy. Then when it came to restoring the files on the new computer, it just wouldn't work. Damn!
OK, now I have to go to the website and try and figure out how to do this. Of course it takes another hour to find out what to do. All the information they had there was for QuickBooks and most of what they said wouldn't work with the Invoice Manager. Now I'm really getting really pissed. By around 10 o'clock Saturday night, I was burnt out and I quit messing with it.
Sunday after lunch I spent about 3 more hours trying to get it to work and still didn't get anywhere. Now I'm extremely pissed. So the only thing I can do for now is to just forget about it until I figure it out, or get someone to help me with it. In the meantime I guess I'll have to do the invoices on the old computer. It still pisses me off. UGH!

OK So I Can't Crochet

My friend Doris had a brainstorm awhile back. Oh yeah she really did! She had been talking about maybe starting a knitting and crocheting group together at our Eagles club. The idea was that anyone who knew how or wanted to learn how to crochet and knit to meet once a week to do that. So now we're meeting on Tuesday nights to make baby hats and booties to donate to one of our charities which is Touching Little Lives.
Before we started doing this I was telling Doris that I use to crochet all the time but it's been over 25 years since I've done it. Oh I use to make hats, afghans, scaves, doll clothes and all kinds of stuff. So I'm thinking to myself that I could probably whip out a bunch of baby hats and booties in no time.

WRONG!

My first attempt at crocheting. Keep in mind that I haven't done this in over 25 years. This is suppose to be a baby hat. I tried to follow the pattern but had a little trouble. (obviously) What's up with that knobby-thing on top? I have no idea how I did that. Well if you turn it sideways it could be a bra cup.

This is my second hat. It's still not right or maybe I'm not right. Notice that the knobby-thing isn't as bad. I think it'll go to the grandkids doll named Naked Baby. The girls haven't put clothes on the doll in 2 years and they just like calling her Naked Baby. Go figure.

Now I'm getting the hang of it. Using a different pattern helped. Thanks to a little internet research I can understand the crochet lingo. Sort of.

Now I'm on a roll. Getting better all the time. I learned how to make a pom-pom (again)

These were suppose to be booties. Some of the patterns I had, I couldn't figure out what the destructions (instructions) were, so I made some mitts instead. They're so cute.

So I try to crochet booties again and it just didn't turn out. Then I found this baby sock pattern which I like better than booties. Eat your heart out Heather, you're not the only one in the family that can make socks now. Not bad for making one for the first time. One is all I made because I ran out of yarn. My next challenge is to make a pair of socks.........both the same size.

Sad & Happy New Year

Hello 2008. I don't know what's in store for this new year, but I have a feeling it will be a good one. This past holiday season seemed to be pretty hectic for some reason, but it was still a good one. Then again it was a sad one because we lost a couple good friends. Right before Thanksgiving a good friend and neighbor, Ronnie passed away on November 11th. It wasn't really unexpected since he suffered from dementia and his health went down hill after that. Poor Ronnie, he hated being in the condition he was and it was just as hard for Jean and Barb. Now he's in a better place and life goes on. We'll miss you Ronnie.

On the Friday right before Christmas our dear friend Larry died unexpectedly. What a shock! We last saw him on Wednesday at the Eagles Christmas party, alive and well. He was suppose to stop by our house the next day for a care package after he was done at Angela's. When he didn't show up at his daughters house on Thursday, she went to his house and found him on the floor. He was rushed to the hospital where they found out he was in pretty bad shape. By Friday they were going to do surgery on him, but I guess it was too late, he didn't want to hang on for that. He had a lot of health issues in the last few years, but never thought it was life threatening. Well that was Larry. He would tell you when the doctors said he was doing good,yet he would never tell you when he was feeling poorly. Shame on you Larry!

At least I know one thing for sure. The last hours of Larry's Life were happy ones. That Wednesday at the Eagles Christmas party, Mike and I won an Ohio State Buckeyes leather jacket. Mike is not a football fan and I'm not either. We didn't even discuss anything about who would wear the jacket. We both knew that we would give it to Larry. Oh, he was sooo happy! He almost started to leak*. You see, Larry was the one who use to give and do nice things for his friends all the time. Though in recent years because of his health and financial situation he hasn't been able to do those kind of things anymore.

Larry was so proud to have that jacket not because it was one of his favorite football teams but because his two good friends that knew he should have it. One of the last words to his daughter was "Look what the Boy** and Caroline give me"
Larry, I'm sure up in Heaven there with Little Mommy proudly strutting around your new coat. I believe my last words to you were and to this post are:

LUV

My dear friend Larry

October 15, 1942 - December 21, 2007

* Larry's term for sheddin a tear or two
** Larry always called Mike "the Boy"

I Hate When That Happens

I think it was Saturday when Mike said that he thought the waterbed had a small leak in it. Something else must have come up because the subject was soon forgotten. So Monday evening Mike was in the bedroom changing into his fat boy pants when he mentioned the waterbed leak again. It was a leak alright. The carpet was soaked almost up to the door. Oh Great!
Mike said that he would drain it in the morning before he left for work. Then a little later he goes to bed....... in the leaky waterbed! Well there was no way I was gonna sleep in that bed. Flashbacks of my drunk late brother in law slashing his friends waterbed with a knife went racing through my mind. Water everywhere. (true story) Since I didn't have any scuba gear or a snorkel I slept on the couch.
Now we have to re-do the whole bedroom. The carpet has to be removed, the walls painted, the waterbed must be destroyed. I want to get a real bed. He's had this bed since the late 1970's and I think it's time to move forward to the 21st century.
Now I have to clean out the other bedroom so we can sleep in there until we get the other room fixed up. Which means I better get busy and wrap all these Christmas presents, coz that room is full of them.
This was a bad time for this to happen but I'll be glad to have a real bed to sleep on when this project is done.

Giving Thanks

I'll have to say that this Thanksgiving was one of the best I've had in a long time. Heather, the girls and I took a road trip to Virginia to Yvonne and Keith's new house for Thanksgiving. The drive there was not too bad considering that we have a 6 year old and a 5 year old along with us. Within about 15 minutes on the road it started,

" Are we at Leah's house yet?"

"I'm hungry"

"Can we go to McDonald's?"

"Shut up Bryanna"

"Are we at Leah's house yet"

"I want to watch Strawberry Shortcake"

Ok so we stop at McDonalds and after we ate I told Heather to set the DVD player up and put that damn Strawberry shortcake movie in. Bryanna could watch that movie all day and everyday if you let her. I am so glad I bought that DVD player because it was a life saver. After that the trip was smooth thanks to my nag-igator, Heather. who needs a Tom-Tom anyhow

We arrived at their house right before dark which is good coz I don't like driving in the dark in unfamiliar places. It was great to see Yvonne, Keith, and girls. I haven't seen my granddaughters since June and it seems they've grown a foot since then. Must be that good ol Virginia fresh air.

The new house is really cool, big but not too big. The kitchen-family room area is to die for. It's open, airy, with lots of windows to let in the morning light. aaahhh! The fireplace is adds a touch of coziness to the family room too. I think the finished basement started out to be Keith's "Man Cave" with the wide screen TV and the big comfy chair. It looks more like giant Princess play room if you ask me. Which is where all the girls spent most of their time when they weren't outside playing in the dirt pile in the backyard.

Yvonne prepared a wonderful feast of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, and so many other tasty treats. They invited some friends of theirs who brought some kind of garlic mozzarella salad, mmmm garlic. Oh, I can't forget the cranberry sauce. It was the best I've ever tasted. my mouth is watering just thinking about it

Best of all, I am very thankful that God has blessed me with my two daughters who gave me four precious grandaughters and also blessed me with loving family and lots good friends.

You Might Be A Dumb Ass If............

We all do stupid or funny things unintentionally now and then. What I did hasn't happened in a long time. Just about every night I'm on the computer playing online games and sometimes I stay up too late. Monday night, I knew I had to get up early Tuesday, so I set my alarm for 6 AM. I go to bed around 12:30 knowing I'm not going to get much sleep. It seemed like a few minutes later that stupid alarm goes off, ugh, bad memories of getting up for work flash through my mind. So I get my ass out of bed, go in the kitchen,turn the TV on and try to collect my thoughts. I don't know why, because, there were no thoughts at that time.

Mike gets up, which is not unusual since he always goes to bed real early. He looks at me with a funny look on his face, which is not unusual since he always has a funny look on his face and he says "You're up awful early this morning"

I say "Well yeah, I gotta take Granny shopping for windows in a couple hours"

Duh, everyone knows I have to sit and drink my coffee before I can even function for the day.



He still has that look on his face.



Finally he says "You know it's 3 o'clock in the morning?"



"What?!"



I turn around to look at the clock. Yup, he's right, it's 3 o'clock in the morning. Alrighty then maybe I'll go back to bed. Who in their right mind wants to be up earlier than you have to except Mike.

What happened was Mike has a new alarm clock and I'm not use to the sound of the new alarm. I use the alarm on my cell phone which I'm not use to either. So there you go. I don't plan on this ever happening again.

Things I Love

I love my Salad Spinner! One of my favorite dishes is my taco salad dip. It's something I've been making for well over 20 years now and everyone seems to love it. It's great for cookouts, holiday get togethers or whatever. The only thing I didn't like about making it was the lettuce. I would wash the lettuce in the colander and then pat it dry on paper towels. That was not only time consuming, but a real pain in the ass. You see if the lettuce is wet it makes the dip runny and we don't like that. A couple years ago I bought a salad spinner. Yay! Now when I make the taco salad dip I don't dread washing the lettuce. So here's to you Mr. or Ms. Salad Spinner Inventor for making my life in the kitchen easier.

Taco Salad Dip
This recipe I make in a 9x13 inch pan. If you want to make a smaller batch, you can cut the recipe in half.

1 large can refried beans
1-2 Tbsp taco seasoning
1 large container of sour cream
1 envelope Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing
1 cup of salsa or picante sauce
shredded lettuce
cheddar cheese
chopped green onions
shopped tomatoes
sliced black olives

tortilla chips (Tostito Scoops are really good to use)

Mix beans and taco seasoning. If the beans are too thick, add a little bit of salsa. Spread onto bottom of pan. Next spread the salsa over the bean layer. In a medium bowl, mix together sour cream and ranch dressing. Dollop the sour cream mixture evenly over bean and salsa layer and spread carefully so you don't have pink sour cream. If you don't care then go for it. Layer remaining ingredients except for the tortilla chips ( those are for scooping the dip.......duh) Refrigerate for several hours or until chilled. Then dig in.

Socks

I Love these socks! Heather made them for me back in the summer but I haven't worn them until it started to get chilly outside. The other day I thought I should take a picture of them to post so I could tell Heather how much I liked them. After several pictures trying to get evetything right it dawned on me that this would be a good subject for my photo assignment. I've been taking a digital photo class for SLR cameras since last june and I love it. Last weeks class was about depth of field, motion control, etc. One of the pictures for the depth of field was to have the foreground in focus and the background blurred and the other with the background in focus and the foreground blurred. I had to take at least 50 or so pictures just to get a few that turned out half way decent. That's the great thing about digital, no film to waste, and if you don't like the shot you can delete it.

Back to the socks. Today I'm wearing the pink and white ones she made for me. Very comfy. I'm thinking I might have to put in a few more sock orders since I threw out all my old work socks. Hmmm might be a good Christmas present for ol Mom, ya think?

Pretty Flowers

The garden is lookin pretty good now. Some of this stuff will come up next year, I hope. Eventually it'll have mostly perennials there.

About Time to Update

I know I haven't kept up on this blog, but here's my excuse: It's summer, it's nice out and I haven't spent much time on the computer. So here's the update. Of course there's the flowers and stuff we've been doing in the yard. Since we haven't had much rain around here, I have to water everyday. Yeah, like that takes up a lot of time. I like sitting out on the back porch in the morning and drink my coffee. That usually starts my day off well.
The cool thing that I'm doing now is taking a digital photography course so I can learn how to to use and shoot some decent pictures with this new stinkin camera I bought. There is so much for me to learn, but eventually it'll all come together and I'll get it right. Well one of my assignments was to shoot a picture of someone or something and stop the motion. All morning I was trying to figure out a subject for these pictures. Anyhow, Heather and the girls came over to visit. It was soo hot that I let them play with the garden hose to water my plants. After a while I hooked up the sprinkler so they could run through it. That's when it hit me. There's my subject. So I ran in the house, got my camera and fiddled around with some of the settings. Makayla is such a camera hog, she was more than willing to jump through the sprinkler so I could get a picture of her in mid-air. The pictures turned out better than I thought they would. So I guess I'm learning something after all.

Cookbook

It's been another busy week. Most of he week I've spent at the Eagles, oh no! A few months ago, Doris, a friend of mine, asked if I wanted to be on a cookbook committee. Hell why not? It sounded like a good idea. Besides that, it would be a good project to work on to raise money for the Ladies Auxiliary.
About 10 years ago I joined the Eagles and they had just come out with a cookbook with favorite recipe's from the members. Well I never got one.
A lot of times we'll be sitting around the bar and it seems like we're always talking about food. It's always who makes the best such and such. Where the best this and that is. Then there's "Oh,man you gotta try this". You know how that goes,it always ends up being just talk. So Doris thought it would be cool if we had another cookbook out. She went to one of the Auxiliary meetings to see about getting the cookbook started,but nobody seemed to be interested in it. They said the last one didn't do too well.(not too many people go to the meetings) Doris brought the subject up again and ended up being in charge of getting it going. Then she asked me if I would help out with getting this thing together. You know the best time to ask me to volunteer for something is after I've had a few drinks in me. Which is how I got involved in this. She also got Weezy,who still has all recipes and programs on her computer from the last book,to help out too.
We have a box set out in the club for people to turn in their recipes and so far we have good response. Way more than we thought we would get and they're still turning them in. Hopefully we can have everything done so the books will be available around Christmas time.

Rock Border

Rock Border
Originally uploaded by Photofreak57.

Mike got a truckload of topsoil and filled the garden up. Now it's ready for some plants. He found the rocks on a job he was on last year,but I think a few more wouldn't hurt. This is gonna turn out pretty good after all.

Garden Update

I'm making some progress in my garden. Not much. Right now I can't upload the picture I wanted to post. The plan was to have pictures of all the phases my little garden goes thru from Spring till Fall. I've spent the last hour trying to figure out this picture thing and all I get is stupid error numbers. Well anyhow picture this: the same little garden from a previous post except now it has more topsoil and a rock border around it.

Where Does the Time Go?

I thought keeping up with this blog would be no problem. Ha! Before I retired I would be a work and daydream about all the things I wanted to do. It's amazing how many chores you can do in your mind. Too bad it doesn't get done just by thinking about it. Like cleaning and rearranging the kitchen cabinets. The basement. In my mind, I had it all fixed up for play room for the grand kids and a work area for my so called projects. It's still a hell hole for junk and treasures. One of these days it might get done,but it still looks good the way I worked on it in my head.

When I was younger,working full time and raising kids,I never thought much about getting things done.It just got done because there wasn't time to think about getting it done. Funny how that works.

A few of my friends,who are senior citizens,complain about being bored and lonely.I suggest that they find something that they enjoy doing and go for it. Then I realize that they enjoy complaining about being bored and lonely. What a waste of time. It's just hard for me to understand how people can be live that. Then there's my senior friends and family that are in their 70's and 80's constantly doing something or going somewhere. Now I can't forget to mention some people I know that hang out in the bar day after day,drink after drink. That's all they do. Sure I like to go there to have a few cocktails a couple times a week. For me it's not going to be a daily habit. Well I haven't been to the Eagles in about a week and I know next time I go in there I'm gonna hear " Where have you been" and "Haven't seen you forever". I would like to reply "Duh,I have a life and have other things to do than to get stinkin drunk everyday". Being the nice person that I am I just tell them I've been busy.

I guess what I'm trying to say is if you think everyone and everything is against you,then it's up to you to get your mind right and move on to a more positive outlook. Hmmm,I think I might have been describing my ex-husband. Maybe I should thank him for being the way he was because it taught me that there was no way in hell I wanted to live such a pessimistic and miserable life. For my sake and my kids. He was dragging us down to a dark place. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do,but I kicked myself in the ass to get me to move on with a better life. I was soo glad I did. Life is much better now.

On the lighter side,I need to get off my butt and get on with my day.
That's all I got to say about that.

My Garden

I'm going to plant flowers this year. How about that? The last couple years I haven't planted hardly anything out in the flower bed. Last year Mike was painting the house and mangled a few plants that were coming up.I had a few things planted in half whiskey barrels on the porch that looked pretty cool. The year before the whole yard was tore up because of the garage and driveway we had under construction.

Sunday,I weeded which didn't take too long.Now all that's left to do is till it up and head down to the local nursery and pick out the plants. Can't wait to get started

Busy Week

It's been a busy week for me. Last Wednesday Makayla came to spend a few days with us. I'm tellin ya this kid never stops! You gotta make sure she has something to do all the time. The weather wasn't the greatest,cold and rainy,but we managed to get a few things done. We went to the store to get stuff to make smoothies. Mmmm they sure were tasty. Oh yeah, the stawberry shortcake was yummy too. Later on she helped me fill the bird feeders since we both like to watch the birds and those old pesky squirrels. I have a bird chart by the window so she can identify the different birds that come to feed.

Thursday was one of those days when it would rain on minute and then the sun would pop out. I did manage to get a picture of a rainbow. Makayla was so excited because it was the first time she ever saw a rainbow.

Friday turned out to be a beautiful day. The sun was out and it wasn't too cold out. It was the perfect day for me to try out my new camera lens. The camera is a Canon Rebel Xti. It rocks. The only problem is ,I gotta get smarter than the camera. I'm learning though.

I packed the camera up and we headed to Carraige Hill Farm to spend the afternoon. Makayla had a lot of fun looking at the farm animals and I had fun taking a bunch of pictures.