Seasons of our lives

OK, I was wrong. I misjudged Lindsey...those werent her drugs! How dumb of me to assume they were her's. (WHATEVER!)

I forgot to tell yall some good news! Hubby got a new job. He turned in his two week notice at his job now on Monday. He really likes where he is now and likes the people he works with, but he doesnt like the pay or exactly what it is that he is doing. His present job is the first job he has ever had since we havebeen married (17 years) that he has been paid by the hour. He has always been salaried. We are struggling and he doesnt like not being able to support his family. His new job is, of course, more money and also a company vehicle, cell phone and credit card, plus a week's vacation when he starts. He says it is almost too good to be true. I just told him it was a reward for surviving the test we endured of him being unemployed and then taking a lower paying job. Not once did we get discouraged, argue and back-bite each other. I know that we are tested in our lives. We were. It wont be the last time, but this is the first time in a long time that he and I held together and didnt turn on each other. It felt good.

During this time, one of the lessons at church in our Sunday morning class was on "Weathering the Seasons of Life". Have you ever thought about that? About how we go through seasons in our lives?

Winter ~ Time to grow strong
Learn how to handle winters: economic, physical and personal.

• Use the winter to gear up for the spring, which always comes after the winter.

Spring ~ Time to take advantage
Expansion follows recession.

• Either we become good at planting in the Spring or we learn how to beg in the Fall.

Summer ~ Time to take care
Learn to protect what you have created. All good will be attacked.

• Every garden will be invaded. All values must be defended. Unless you defend what you believe in, come fall you will have nothing left.

Fall ~ Time to take responsibility

• Maturity can be defined by our ability to take full responsibility for the crops we have tended, either bountiful or meager. Accepting responsibility is the day you pass from childhood to adulthood. Disappointments are not special gifts reserved for you. The question is, what are you going to do about them? Every discipline, or lack of one, affects every other discipline. Build on this foundation to become all you are capable of being.

I guess I think about seasons being applied to my husband and I's finances. We havent always been good with our money. I admit that. We got in to a LOT ofcredit card debt. We could have opted and filed bankruptcy, but we didnt. Instead, we have been paying a big lump sum every month to a credit managing company and they make our payments for us. When one credit card paid off, we just took the money from that payment and rolled it in to the next card payment and continued knocking down credit card after credit card. We started at $25,000 and at least 8 credit cards. We are now down to two cards and less than $4,000. In about 9 months we will be credit card free! I feel that we will be passing from one season of our life to another when that debt is relieved. I am sure that is more about me than most of you care to know, but I wanted to share it. That is my free advice to any young couple getting married, do NOT fall in to the credit card trap! There are usually two main reasons given for divorce...sex and money. I know that money put a huge strain on my marriage and maybe now we are recovering we will have more sex! LOL

Ugh...yesterday daughter and I went to the dentist for our checkups and cleanings. Ok, so you may find this hard to believe, but I have a small mouth...very small. I get told that EVERY time I go to the dentist. If I got adollar yesterday for every time I heard, "You have got the smallest mouth!" Iwould have had lunch paid for. I have even had permanent teeth removed in order to make room for te teeth that I do have. My daughter was cursed with my small mouth. But thankfully, the size of mouths doesnt have anything to do with the amount of volume that can come from them! :-)

Two of life's little mysteries

#1
Driving fast
Down a 6-lane interstate
You are in the fast lane
You are behind another car
They are going slow
You change lanesAccelerate to pass
Then they decide to speed up!


#2
Driving on a four lane road
You are the only car
Another car appears
Turning out of a parking lot
Directly in front of you
In your lane
The lane beside you is clear
Not a car behind you
But they have to be in front of you
Only to then put on their brakes
So they can turn at the next corner
You then have to slam on your brakes
To keep from rear ending them

No way

Say it aint so! Lindsey Lohan arrested. Again? And this time charged with cocaine possession. Who would have ever guessed?! Hmmm, how about the 90% of the free world! DUH! I guess that rehab worked real well for her huh? About as good as it worked for Nicole, Paris and Britney? Seems like the only rehab that may work for the rich, famous and spoiled is one called j-a-i-l.

It just kills me how we are supposed to turn our heads for the rich and elite in this country and let them slide by doing things that the rest of us would pay for the rest of our lives. A drug arrest is something that could keep the common person from getting a job, but yet in Hollywood it is more like a job pre-requisite. Is that what we call equality in the US? I dont think so. If you have money you can get away with anything. Pisses me OFF!

Did you read or hear about the first base coach that was hit by a foul ball and died? It happened where I live. And I was just there at the game the night before, sitting down the first base line. It scares me that death has seemed to be close and around me so much the past week.

Sunday evening I made dinner for daughter's boyfriend and a family friend of ours. The friend was leaving at the same time I was leaving to take daughter's bf home. I was the last one out the carport door. It was dark and the carport light was on. We have a recycle tub underour carport and something caught my eye around the corner of the tub. Something moved. Then I realized and yelled, "There's a snake!" Oh yeah, they all came running. Daughter was shrieking of course. Hubby moved the tub and there was a small garden snake. It seemed a little slow and dazed. I figure that our male cat brought it up and it crawled under the bucket to escape and the cat left it. Thanks! We got a broom and swept it off the carport and it crawled in to the backyard. I didnt want to kill it. It is a 'good' snake; it eats other bad snakes and mice. Of course now I wont go bopping out the backdoor with out shoes on or looking down before I step!

Daughter leaves Sunday to go to church camp for a week. This will be her 5th year to go. If you cant tell, I am very proud of my daughter. She is the light of my life. I get sad sometimes thinking about how old she is and that I dont have that much time left with her in my immediate life. Soon she will be branching out on her own and I wont be there. I hope that I have some how made a positive impact and influence on her life. I think I have, I just hope that she will always be able to pull that out and remember it. I know she did last night. I have ever been so proud of her. As a 13 year old, there are certain movies that her dad and I dont allow her to see. Call us strict or call us prudes, whatever, its a choice that we make. She had gone swimming with some friends yesterday, then over to a friends house to get ready and go to a movie. The phone rang about the time they were supposed to be leaving for a movie. It was my daughter. She asked me to come pick her up at the friends house. Apparently her friend and some others had all decided to go see the movie that we had told her that she couldnt. Her friends had tried to convince her to go ahead, knowing that there was no way that we would know for sure what movie she saw. My daughter told me later that she couldnt have done that. That her conscience would have eaten at her. I was so proud of her and the way she stood up and did what wasr ight, not saying it is wrong to see that movie, but it was right to do what her parents told her to.

Oh goody~ five months from today will be Christmas Eve...

2 4 1

Tuesday 7/17/07
Two hours before the visitation of my daughter's friend's dad'sfuneral, the deceased's father passed away. So in the span of four days this 13-year-old girl has lost her father and her grandfather. I think the grandfather's health was failing already and the strain of losing his son was just too much. I know that doesnt make it any easier for my daughter's friend to handle, plannning and attending two funerals in one week.

The funeral was today. It was sad. It was tender to see so many children reaching out to their friend. They looked so much like mini adults, as I know they are, but it was reassuring to see these kids growing up right in front of my eyes it seemed.

One thing that the funeral brought to light to me today, that is share with my dad now the memories and the times of him and I that are special to me. I am going to sit down and write out those out and mail them to him. It is so sad that we wait until death to express to our friends and loved ones the special place that they hold in heart or the memories that we cherish with them. I encourage you to find the time and the strength today or within the next few, to tell a loved one or a friend what they mean to you, that your life is better because of them and maybe a memory of them that you treasure.

Here is an update on my wildlife sightings, last night about 8:30 my daughter and I were on our way home and there was a snake crossing the road. I went over the top of him, I thought I hit him, but I looked in my rearview mirror and I saw him crawling off. And then we were just a few blocks from our house and see a commotion in the street. It looks like a pack of dogs or something in the middle of the road, so of course I slow down. Right as we get up to them, they are scurrying up the embankment...it is a family of 5 or 6 raccoons! Now I don' t mind them, but I don't want them to get around my house and get in to my trash or pester my cat.

Speaking of which, we had to get our outside male cat a new collar this weekend. He had lost the bell, then he lost his name tag and his collar was all frayed and old. His new collar is black and has reflective stars and moons all over it. It has a little bell that dings so that the poor little birds will stay away and he got a nice, new shiny red, heart tag with his name, address and phone number on it. There is also a rubber guard around the tag so that it wont clang, but it also is reflective. He looks quite stylish now. But I have this vision of him walking up in his circle of friends and all of them pointing at him,laughing, making fun of him. "Awww, did your momma get you a new collar? (sarcastic tone) Oh and look it has a nice, shiny, girly sounding bell on it." Then of course after they make fun of him, he jumps on them and beats the daylights out of them.

Wednesday 7/18
I think I might function better today if I just intravenously hooked up a coffee pot to me. I am soooo tired. The funeral yesterday mentally drained me and thus I was physically exhausted by the time I got home. I had to peel my contacts off my eyes. I was proud of myself though; I was able to stay awake for Big Brother. I had thought to myself earlier in the night that I would never be able to stay awake till 9pm.

Is anyone else watching Big Brother 8? Does anyone else want to kick Jen out TODAY?!? If I were Kail I would be kicking myself in the butt for not putting her last week when she had the opportunity and every one suggested it to her. I am glad that Danielle got the POV! I love watching her and Nick together! So do you think Nick really likes her or is it all a strategy move? Do you think she will eventually fall for him too even though she has a boyfriend? Who WOULDN'T fall for him?!?! I like Danielle, but seriously, they need to feed her. She cant go another week on slop. She looks way too skinny. When Amber went to hug her last night I was afraid she was going to break a few bones if she squeezed her too tight. And if Amber cries ONE MORE TIME I am going to PUKE! That girl cries if she is happy, sad, mad, tired, hungry, has to go the bathroom! I think she must cry 24/7!

Friday the 13th

Well there were no turtles or squirrels on the way to work this morning to tell about. I appreciate all of your sweet words about the turtle yesterday. I almost stopped this morning in the spot I thought I put him, but I decided not to. I would rather believe that he was fine, crawled off happy and is healing. You know, kind of the bury-your-head-in-the-sand type of mentality. I have a big heart for animals and for people. How someone could hurt a defenseless animal is beyond my realm of thinking. I am a big believer in the Golden Rule, pay-it-forward philosophy and karma: what goes around comes around.

Hubby and I were talking this morning and I told him that I had been having a lot of dreams lately about snakes. He said he had too. In my dreams, I keep dreaming that they are around our deck in our backyard. I will be taking a step and suddenly look up and there will be snakes all around where I just stepped. Or the one I had last night was when I went outside to feed the dog, which is weird, because our dog lives and eats inside the house, but there was like a pile of snakes around her food dish, some were dead and some were alive. But its weird, I dont see them, suddenly I realize they are everywhere and I dont know where to step or how to get. Can anyone decode these? Of course hubby and I just imagine it is because we have seen a few baby snakes in our backyard this summer, well and the cat brought a few home that he has killed, baby ones, but that means there is a momma somewhere. Prior to this summer, we had never seen any in our yard. Oh! I just remembered we were watching one of those home makeover shows last weekend and they found a snake in the yard. Maybe that is the reason too.

I really hate hubbys work schedule. He is working from 11am to 8pm now. I am always late for work now since I get to talking to him and dont pay attention to the time. By the time he gets home at night, Iam usually ready to go to bed within an hour. Hopefully it will change soon. We keep hoping and praying.

Daughter and I are going out to eat tonight with her boyfriend, his mom and his little sister. He is 14, but due to a second marriage he has a 2-year old sister. She is a cutie. My daughter and I have babysat her a few times and when she sees me, she will yell my name. I think after we eat we are going to go to the pet store and bookstore that are close. I think that it will be fun. I am looking forward to it. I really like his mom and I like watching my daughter and him interact together. They are cute together. He even takes her shopping. He likes to buy her things. I told him at one time that I didnt like him spending all his money on her. He was on the phone with my daughter and he told her to tell me that he didnt mean any disrespect, but it wasnt really any of my business what he did with his money and he wanted to buy her something, he would. I kind of laughed and thought to myself, he's right.

I just realized today is Friday the 13th! But it is Friday, so TGIF. It is also payday, so thats good, even though it is already spent.Now that I think about it, you know, in a way, payday is kind of depressing. I guess it would be even more depressing though if Ididnt get a payday though! So there I go, be thankful for what you have and stop thinking about what you dont have.

Update on my Friday the 13th...

My boss took out of the office like a lunatic earlier. Her son and his wife are expecting their first baby. They are having a home birth in the bathtub with a midwife. They are in another state, so my boss has to try and get her airline ticket, fly there and hopefully make it in time for the birth.

An hour late I got a call from my daughter, her best friend's dad died this morning. He had a stroke at home and died this morning.

The circle of life...

Good Deeds Day

During the summers when I was growing up, we would collect box turtles. If we saw one on the road when we were going somewhere, we would pick it up and bring it home. We would often return from somewhere to find boxes on our front porch with turtles in them and notes attached from friends and family. We had a big coop made out of chicken wire that my dad had made us. It was covered on all sides, even the bottom, so that nothing could dig under or out and the top was covered. It had a little door for us to open and latch so we could get them in and out. With it being outside, the grass grew up through the bottom and the bugs were pentiful for food. As summer ended, we would load up the turtles and drive off to the woods to release them all.

Remembering back on those summers and the turtles we had, if I see a turtle on the road I will pull over to the side of the road and rescue a turtle from the middle of the road. I cant stand to think that if I dont help the poor little thing, that the next time I come by it will be smushed and then I will bad knowing that I could have done something to save it. This morning I pulled over to move one and as I got up to him I could see drops of blood under his shell. Now he was right in the middle of the lane, so the cars would pass directly over him. For him to have been hit where he was, someone would have had to dilerately TRY to hit him. That's sad. Anyway, he was closed up and there wasnt a lot of blood, so I picked him up and moved him to the grassy side of the road. I hope he is okay and makes it.

Doing that made me think about one of the turtles we had one of those summers while I was growing up. He had been hit apparently and he lived. His shell was all cracked and in pieces, but it had stayed together and it was just a pile on the top of his back. We appropriately named him "Crash". So if he lived through having his shell broke, hopefully the poor little guy from this morning will be just fine.

That was actually my second good deed of the day and it wasnt even 8AM yet! My first good deed was slowing down and then stopping for a poor crazy squirrel to cross the street. Of course I made sure no one was behind me when I stopped. The poor little guy couldnt decided where he wanted to go and that included running down the middle of the street. Once he decided which side he wanted to go to, I went on down the road. That was the first good deed of my day.

A lot of nothing

You know what has been the hardest part about coming back to work this week after being on vacation last week?

Its not the getting up early.
Its not the drive.
Its not the getting dressed up.
Its not the actual work.

It is how MUCH I miss my cat!

I wish he could come to work with me. I love curling up with him and loving on him during the day. If I go home at lunch, when its time for me to go back to work, he will sit at the door and just look at me like "Where ya goin mom?" My daughter says about 5pm, he will start sitting in the window, looking at the driveway, waiting for me to pull in. If I am late, she says he gets down out of the window and sits by the backdoor and starts meowing and crying. It is so nice to be unconditionally loved. To him, it doesn't matter if I am fat or skinny, rich or poor, if I don't have makeup on or if I haven't brushed my teeth or my hair that day, he still loves me and wants to be close to me. But then again, after all, I AM his mother. I did raise him.

We have had a lot of rain lately and that is good for July in the South. Our tomato plant is growing so tall. It has 5 or 6 little greentomatoes on it. I am so proud. We had to put wiring around it though because the birds pecked holes in the last two ripening tomatoes we had. I told the cats that the birds were fair game now! I am sure because we have had so much rain lately that means we wont have any rain at all in the next few months and we will be in a drought come September and October.

Don't you just love how clean every thing looks after a good rain? We as people clean the brick and the siding of our houses and wash our cars, so I like to think of rain as God's way of cleaning His house off. Everything looks so green. So alive. All the dirt that has collected has been washed away and the sun seems to shine a little brighter after a good rain.

We have two windows in our bedroom and one is right above the head of our bed. When I went to get in bed Monday night, I started to pull back the covers, the top of the mattress was wet! Not soaking wet, but damp, really damp. It had rained that day, really hard and fast for a long time. I could see a faint water stain coming from the bottom of the window down the wall. So I raised the blinds to check and make sure the window was closed all the way. It was and so was the storm window on the outer most side. All I can assume is that it rained so hard and fast that it must have puddled up on the windowsill, overflowed and came in? Or maybe the rain can in sideways, hurricane force, and squeezed in the seams around the window? Hell. Idon't know. All I know is it wasn't from the ceiling and in ten years it has never done it before. I hope it never does it again.

At VI's request

I am standing in the doorway to the kitchen, looking in the living room.

(notice the cat in the background...that is my baby!) I am standing at the backdoor taking this picture, coming in from the carport, it is also the second doorway to the kitchen.

I think he's mad. He wanted to play Monopoly, but they wanted to play Life! Poor baby.


I have been on vacation this week. I needed a vacation SO bad. I was about to explode if I didnt get out of there. Since Hubby just started a new job, he doesnt have any time to take off, so going somewhere was out of the question. So I have just been at home. Relaxing with the kid and the new furniture.

That is my daughter and her boyfriend, the same one that has been around since December. They are playing a game and the cat is observing.

Our house is very small by American standards. It is only about 900 sq ft, but every space is utlized well, with lots of closets and storage. It is 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths. We have lived here ten years. This is our first house we have bought. We rented up until we bought. I love owning my own home, regardless of how small or old it is. It's mine! (and the bank's ~ lol)

There used to be dark paneling in the living room and hallway, but we painted it. There used to be old, cheap, stained carpet, but we pulled a corner back one and discovered hardwoods underneath. We pulled up all the carpets after that. I will never have carpet in a house again. I love the hardwood, especially with pets!

We went last night to see our newest nephew who was born yesterday. His name is Sam. He is the 13th neice/nephew from my hubby's family. There is another nephew due in October.

Accepting the Truth

Some things are envitable.
We knew it was coming.
Some things can't be ignored.
We had talked about it before.
We even tried to plan for it.
We knew we couldn't go on like we had been.
It had to be done.
We accepted the truth.
It was ugly.
It was nasty.



We got new furniture.