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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

It's Time to Get Out

The temperatures are creeping up and I'm slinking away. Soon the heat will envelope the south and I'll be wishing I were in the mountains of Colorado.

While out and about yesterday, I spied some nice big fifth wheel trailors for sale. Friends just bought a huge 50,000.00 one and it's beautiful. I'm not interested in anything that huge or in that price range. A simple used one will be fine for what I want.

Parked beneath some tall pines in Durango Colorado for 4 months this summer is my goal. I've just surfed Craigslist and for a mere 11000.00 I can get a nice size trailor that would be perfect for 4 months use. Purchasing it would be the easy part; convincing the husband of the worthiness of this idea might be a bit more difficult.

Maybe I should profess to a sudden onset of a desire to camp?  Maybe I should make a list of the reasons to own a camper. I'm working on it. I don't want to see another August here in Louisiana.



Sunday, March 25, 2012

A Little Update

What has kept me too busy to post lately?  I've just been lazy I think. I did have a two week visitor so I indulged in doing nothing related to work. We took the roadster when the temperatures and the weather allowed and we went site seeing. We ate the local foods and observed the locals and on a few occasions we stayed home and relaxed.

Blogging for me is much like dieting and exercising. Once I break the chain of doing either of these things it's hard for me to get back into the routine of blogging.

The February birthdays (both the husbands and mine) were noted, the daughters came along in March. We had a cook out here for her and a cheesecake for desert and all this done the day before her birthday as we had to head for New Orleans on the actual date of her birth to take Wanda to the airport to catch her flight.

We stayed on the West Bank in Gretna at a Best Western Plus. Somewhere in my photo collection is a picture of their outdoor area filled with plants, chairs and tables. The picture is for inspiration should we ever get to the point of adding on to our existing patio.

This weekend I have been catching up on all those little tasks that have been postponed for months. Yesterday I finally removed all the caulking around the tub and replaced with new. Just that little job improved the appearance of that tub. Today I'll try to get the window blind cut to size at Home Depot and hung in the bedroom. The light fixture beneath the kitchen cupboard needs replaced and that was purchased yesterday from my list of "needs to be done".

Interlaced with the house chores, the roadster had it's oil change and the tires rotated. While I took it "in" to have this  done, the husband was changing the oil in his truck and rotating his own tires.  It's been a busy weekend here.

A pork roast is thawing in the sink. I have dinner planned. That roast will be slathered in olive oil and seasoned with garlic, onion and thyme and placed in a crock pot to simmer most of this day. Pork and gravy over rice, dressing and petit pois and maybe a salad is on the menu.

It's time for me to get dressed and pull a flat iron through the curls on my head. I want to be ready to get out of here and finish that list before I lose steam on getting it completed. I'm done here!


Sunday, March 18, 2012

First Cuppa

This cup of coffee is my first of the day and usually the best one of the day. My brain is in it's fog of sleep when I sit down with this cup. I'm not willing to engage in any conversation. Sitting quietly in the darkened living room alone and with the television tuned to CNN is all the stimulation I can handle. I sip from my cup and peek over the rim, eyes foggy from the Ambien of last night. I sip slowly waiting for the caffeine to slog along to my brain. Once stimulated, I'll be ready to stand up again and make my way to the kitchen for a refill. I remain as quiet and unobstrussive as possible to prevent waking anyone else in this house. This is my quiet time.

Today is Sunday. Wanda, the sister in law will only be here today. Tomorrow we will travel to New Orleans for one last day of site seeing before she boards her plane on Tuesday afternoon. She has been here two weeks and we have toured the area, ate the local food and generally been the typical tourists. From the shrimp boats in the bay to the alligators in the swamps we have criss crossed back and forth across the southwest portion of this state. With camera in hand, I've tried to capture much of her trip digitally which will be burned onto a CD and gifted to her before she goes home.

I'm going to miss having someone to explore with and hopefully she will miss being here a little.

It's time to make that second trip to the coffee pot. It must be time to end this little post.....here.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Wanda's Vacation

It has been a busy week and a half..
I collected my house guest from the airport in Metairie which is a few miles west of New Orleans. We headed into town and found a place to park the car and hit the streets to do some walking. Soon we ended up at the Cafe Du Monde for beignets and cafe lait. Covered with powdered sugar, we dusted outselves off and walked through the French Market. The must sees we did. The cathedral, the museum and the square, we spent the afternoon in tourist mode. Later we drove lost through the streets of the Quarters to look at the gaily painted shotgun houses that line the streets.

Eventually we ramped onto I-10 West and pointed the car towards Baton Rouge. We didn't stop in Baton Rouge but continued on west into Lafayette.

For the next few days we did the tourist trip around this area. From the quaint little town of Breaux Bridge, throught the swamps at Lake Martin and touring the Tabasco factory and the shrimping village, we spent the next days busy and on the go.

There comes a time in every vacation when work intrudes. The lawn needed mowed; the sidewalks needed edging and the flower bed borders needed trimmed and that's what we did on Wednesday and Thursday.

I have some pictures collected during this visit which will make their way to my digital albums saved to view at a later date.

Right now I'm tired from all the unfun stuff these last two days. I'm looking forward to the next hot shower and my soft bed. I'm done and done for!

Sunday, March 4, 2012

About Nothing

Greetings from the chilly south. Someone turned the sun off again. It's shorts one day and jeans the next. The A/C has already been cranked on and we are only into the first week of March. Today I held myself back from turning on the heat.

My day was spent indoors; my eyes are square from watching too much television between the times when I wasn't sprawled on the sofa beneath a blanket napping. I should have been up doing some housework. I'll start tomorrow. I'm getting very good at procrastinating. A disorderly house was a source of anxiety for me. I do believe learning to be a slob might be a goal I'm aspiring to now.

I'm ready to get in the recline position and continue doing what I've done all day. Nothing.

I don't think anyone notices. No one has stopped by to see my laziness. If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there...............
Ok, so maybe that doesn't apply to unobserved laziness?

Since I've practiced it all this day, I think I'll continue to apply it to the remainder of this day. G'night.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Tornadoes

I can still remember those storms. The old timers could be seen standing beneath the clouds that were moving quickly across the sky. They waited and they watched and they watched for the clouds to begin rotating.

This was my early warning that something was "up" or about to happen. The tornadoes  were gathering and soon we would be looking for a storm cellar.

Hollis Oklahoma was right smack dab in the path of what was called Tornado Alley. From Wichita Falls, Texas the winds began and moved quickly toward Hollis. I never cared where they went after they decimated Hollis. We were too busy picking up the pieces left behind.

The sirens in the middle of the night and the sound of metal flung through the air as the winds whipped with a long tail what was even remotely close to it's center was something that stays with me some 30 years later. I need more warning then that siren.

Here we have hurricanes which are kind enough to give us a two week warning.

We pack our valuables and leave...or stay. It's a choice we get to make.

Living in Hollis that year found me in a storm cellar with dirt floors and and a naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling at least twice a week. Benches surround the walls and I usually didn't know anyone there except April (the daughter). The hatch door led to steep steps that got us beneath ground. I don't remember ever going into a basement there. Maybe I just didn't know anyone with a basement. I did make it a point to know where the many storm cellars were located around town.

When the siren went off, we would bail out of the car and dash for the nearest one. Fun times in Oklahoma. There are five reasons I have for never living there again. The tarantulas were huge, black widow spiders everywhere, huge rattlesnakes, scorpions and of course those huge gusts of wind we called tornadoes.

A year passes and we move from Hollis and as I did many times while there, I wondered how the natives could keep rebuilding their homes and keep replanting their crops knowing that it all could be wiped out in a matter of minutes. Tenacious. Hopeful. They never entertained the thought of moving away. I didn't feel the same way and I was gone when the job there ended.

I've watched today as more then 50 tornadoes moved across Alabama, Kentucky, Illinois and Tennessee. One after another they marched along destroying everything in their path. The storms continue tonight moving into Ohio and West Virginia. I don't envy these people their evening of unrest.

Find a basement and sleep there tonight. Be safe. I'm going to turn off the weather channel. It's time for me to take a break too.

Homage to Ms Verret

I have a few minutes before I have to wake Carrie and start our daily ritual of school preparation.  I don't have to pack a lunch. Chicken nuggets and mac and cheese are on the menu at school so my biggest stressor this morning will be getting that waist length hair of Carrie's up into a ponytail.

She read to me last night a book her grandfather had given her for Christmas. It's all about withstanding peer pressure. The message was subtle but it was there; a story about a ponytail and the child's decision to adhere to that style regardless of the teasing she endured from her friends. Cute story but the part that impressed me was that this little kindergarten child was reading this book on her own! This was not a kindergarten age book. Many words were difficult and she slowed down to sound them out and I could hear her whispering the sounds a few times until they meshed together into a word in her mind. Amazing!

Carrie has wanted to be able to read for years now and at six years of age, that is about half her life. We have been practicing for a long time with her alphabet and then phonetically sounding out the words. I wasn't taught phonics when I was in school so my instructions hit a plateau at which time her mother picked up the slack. She was in the phonics decade of learning.

Carrie started kindergarten and Ms. Verret filled in all kinds of blank spaces for Carrie. This is her kindergarten teachers' first teaching position as a full fledged teacher. She is wonderful with her class and for this I am grateful. I realized this year how important that first year is for these students and for what they are expected to learn.
 I was fearful that Carrie would get a harsh teacher instead of the soft Ms. Verret. I wanted Carrie's first experience in the classroom to be positive as she will be doing this for 12 more years. We couldn't have been assigned a better instructor for Carrie's first year. She loves going to school; she loves Ms. Verret.

 A week of a stomach virus left her sitting at home. She missed her teacher and her class; a good sign indeed.

I'm watching the clock and it's time to start Carrie's day. ... and I'm done.