Rain Rain

Today is a windy rainy day, and it sure doesn't seem like the holidays are upon us, although my coffee creamer is pumpkin pie spice, so it does help to make it feel like thanksgiving time. Dody and I went to her Dr appointment yesterday and then went to look for pajama pants for Cleve, we left at noon and got home after 7:30pm, but Dody was looking for some new jeans so we went to Target, Old Navy, Macy's discount, Steve and Barry's and Ross. She found a pair and a couple of shirts, it was a long day, and I was glad I had made a crockpot dinner, because it was ready when we got home. Today begins a new workweek for me, oh joy!!!! It always seems to go fast, so before I know it, Tuesday will be here again. Jared will be 25 on the 28th, I'm hoping to get the day off, to celebrate his birthday, it's the day after thanksgiving this year.

How Did November Get Here?

Can you believe it's November? We had a good Halloween, even though I had to work, Amber and the girls dressed like smurfs, Dody was a go go girl, and Jasmine was a snow princess, and I was an Oompa Loompa, and Tori was a car crash victim and Ya ya a horsey. The store had a costume contest, $100 for first place, $50 for second and $30 for third, employees voted and John M, Ashley and Donna were the winners. Alls I can say is there's always next year!!

November 4th has brought us change. We have a new president, hopefully the change will be for the good. Also, on the 4th I ended up taking Tori and Yecenia to the emergency room at Mercy. Yecenia had a sore on her bottom, and she was running a fever which ended up being 104 at the hospital, we got there at 11pm, the Dr was concerned that it could be MRSA staph, which they started antibiotics right away and done a culture on it, and lanced it, then at 3am they admitted her to the hospital, it did turn out to be MRSA, and I left the hospital at 5am. Yecenia was there until Sunday, she has to be on antibiotics for 6 weeks.

Jasmine's 4th birthday was Saturday the 8th, and we had it at Amber's she had lots of fun, and it was a good time.

I have more pics to add, but my computer isn't letting me at this time, so maybe later. Things are slowly looking up for us, so maybe the new year will be better.

October is here

Well, the final quarter of the year is here. Summer is over, My garden is winding down. My tomatoes didn't do well at all this year, I have lots of small green tomatoes, so I have to bring them in and put them in the window to ripen. My yellow summer squash done real good, I have some in the freezer, and my beets were good too, I needed to plant more to have more in the freezer, but that's ok. My kolrabi turned out good too. My winter delacotta (sp) squash didn't get as big as I had hoped, but I did get about 18, so I'm happy. I always hate to see summer go. Now is the season of dying. Everything starts dying and getting colder. Today is a gloomy day. It's supposed to start raining, possibly tonight and through the weekend and get into the low 60's. My days off are over and my workweek is about to start. It's the first of the month so it will be busy.
Amber and Jaime moved into their new house on labor day weekend, and my in-laws moved into Amber and Jaime's old house in Nampa to rent from them. They moved from Parma!! A big step up! Are we next???? Everyone is doing well so to speak. I thought that I should at least blog something since it's been a couple of months. We did go camping this year up to Goose lake, just above Brundage, out of McCall, it was really fun. We haven't been camping since I started working 13 years ago. Next year, I hope we can go a few more times. Well, it's almost time to head out the door for work, so maybe next week I can post more. Dody has taken some pictures for me, so if she sends me them, I can post those also!! Bye for now.

July Birthdays

This week has been a week full of birthdays. Our grand daughter Ashlynn's turned 7 on the 25th, her dad Jamie turned 27 on the 27th, my dad's is today, the 30th, and he's 70. My niece, Lyndell will be 16 on August 3rd. That starts the August birthdays. Actually, the 2nd is Dad and Mary's 11th anniversary. Then my brother Jay's is on the 7th he will be 37, my mom would've been 67 on the 11th, my nephew Mike 37 on the 12th, my youngest sister Marla will be 40 on the 17th, and my niece Naomi will be 22 on the 20th. Then starts the September and October birthdays. When my Dad was around 62, he said that life goes downhill at 70. He doesn't want to be like his Uncle Fred, in a wheelchair for years and so he said he doesn't want to live much past 70. I asked him last week how much longer did he think he had, he just laughed.

Amber and Jaime had a BBQ on Sunday for the birthdays, it was fun. Ashlynn lost her two top front teeth last week, so now she's singing, All's I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.

Cleve told me on the way to the BBQ that the septic was backed up again, so Perry Sevy came out on Monday and pumped 1500 gallons out of our 1000 gallon tank. Last time in January he pumped 1400. It's pretty bad when you know the septic guy so well. This time it cost $255 and you could hear the water from the drainfield pouring back in pretty fast. He pumped it at 6pm and around 11 you could still hear the water. We had a plug of some babywipes stuck, so our neighbor, Joey and Cleve worked on it until they got it unplugged after 10:30. So, today, two days later, the toilets are gurgling again, and water is backing up in the tub again, but going down. I think we are going to need it pumped out sooner than 2 weeks.

Greetings

Well, I'll start from today and go back to last week. My morning started with going to a mandatory checker meeting at 7am, it was the usual meeting, letting us know that we needed to watch the WIC checks and make sure they are the right amounts, signed and so on, then Butch talked about how we need to be greeting customers and be nice to them. The nerve!! Actually, if you've ever been checked out by a cashier that isn't friendly, then you know how it is to not be greeted and such. Anyway, I have had interesting answers through the years when I ask people how they are. About 12 years ago, I had an older woman, about 80's-90's that when I asked her how she was doing, she said "Oh, I'm mildewing." I just laughed and thought it was a good and funny answer. Then a couple of years ago, I had a young guy in his early 20's that I asked, "How's your day been?" He looked at me like I was weird and said "I'm not Ben." So I said, "No, how has your day been?" Again, he gave me that perplexed looked and said, My name's not Ben." I can only begin to guess what he was thinking. "Is this lady crazy or what. I already told her once that my name isn't Ben, but she keeps calling me Ben. Who's Ben?" I just gave up, and finished his order and didn't call him Ben any more. Ok, so the Monday after the 4th of July, since it was kinda on the weekend, I was asking people how their weekend was. I had this guy that was maybe in his 70's and I said "Hi, how was your weekend?" He laughed and said "Well, I do have two weak ends, but one is better than the other." So now when I ask people how they're doing, or how their days been, or their weekend, I'm prepared. I'm so prepared.

Another thing that Butch talked about is not trying to outwit the customers. But what if we can't help but outwit them? You know, when you get ready to open your checkstand and the customers are watching you grab your sign, turn on your light, and then get in the checkstand, and they say..."Are you open?" I know what I'd like to say(here's your sign), but I can't outwit them so I smile and say yes. Amber says I have polite rudeness. Here's an example: A customer says I have a case of corn. A case is 24, she only has 12, which is a flat, so I say, "You have 24?" The answer is no, only 12, so with a smile, I say "Next time, you can just say you have 12, since we don't enter in cases, ok?" It confuses people when you do that too.

Ok, now onto last week. On wednesday, I had all the girls over. Amber came over with Ashlynn and Gabbo, and Tori was here with Yecenia. We roasted hotdogs and had a picnic, and the little girls played in Jasmine's new pool. My camera was dead, I forgot to recharge, but I later took pictures of Yecenia with my phone.

Just A typical Workday

I guess you could say that it was a typical work day, or was it a full moon? It all started Friday the 20th, on my way to work...I was driving along the interstate, just getting to Caldwell's first exit, the one to Simplot's, when this pickup I was driving by lost a couch out of the back (he was in the left lane) and the two cars behind him immediately stopped. I figured that he was going to go to the main Caldwell exit and turn around and go back. He didn't, so I caught up to him and stayed at the same speed, he looked over and I motioned to him and mouthed that he lost the couch, so he slowed down, so I slowed down and rolled my window down and yelled "You lost your couch", several times, so he got to the side and stopped. I should have pulled over with him, but I didn't think of it at the time, because when I looked at the speedomoter I was going about 15 and so was he and the cars were backing up behind us. I hope he found it!! Then I had been working about an hour, when I had a woman about in her 60's give me a $50, and ask if I needed to see ID with that. I looked at her kinda confused and said "For the $50?" She said, "I have my ID right here." I told her I didn't need it, then the guy behind her said, "You guys ask for ID for cash now?" I said no, and the woman looked at him and said "Oh, I from out of state." As she handed me her California drivers license. I handed it right back to her and told her it was ok, that we do take out of state cash. Just when you think you've seen and heard it all...
Next, I was checking along, when Deena came to the checkstand behind me to get Marilyn out for break, and then Kelsi(she was in front of me) turned to me with a bag of Laffy Taffy from bulk foods and asked me what the bin number was, a customer in my line asked if I knew where to find the canned chicken, and Deena asked me if I knew what code was for the old fasioned donuts, and the customer on side B handed me two $100 bills. I thought jeez, who do I help first? So I looked at Kelsi and said 3308, the chicken is on aisle 6A, then I took the bag of donuts to see if there was cake donuts also, when Deen's customer shouted "Don't touch my donuts! Now they are all broken and ruined! That's why I didn't want anyone to handle them!! I don't want them now!" I quickly handed them back to Deena, took the $200 and tendered it and gave the change to my customer. Deena tried to calm down the guy, she called bakery, done alot of explaining, and the next thing I knew, he was calm and laughing and ok. Then Marilyn came back from break after he had gone, and we teased her about going to break just to get out of that situation. Then about 15 minutes later, I heard a loud thump and felt splatters on the back of my pants. I turned around, and a bottle of juice had fallen from the belt in Marilyn's line and got all over. I also noticed that with Kelsi's hair being black on top and blonde on the bottom, that she maybe shouldn't wear a pony tail. She has short hair, but with the color black and tan, it reminded me of my black and tan terrier I used to have and how he looked from behind...
Then came after lunch. When I went to lunch, I was running out of receipt tape, but I forgot to change it. I was in checkstand 12, which is the checstand that if you run out, it doesn't stop printing and tells you that you need to change the tape, it continues to print on nothing, and gives you no receipt. Well, during this particular order, first of all the customer tried to slide his debit card while I was checking out the groceries, so I told him that he would need to wait until I was done with his order. I finished, and hit the sale suspend key to flip it over to side A to start the next order. Oh yeah, and checkstand 12 is also real slow at going from side to side, I scanned two packages of meat, then the guy came back to side his card, and when I had switched it over, I had no balance, so I knew I had put the meat on his order, so I voided the meat off, had Connie key the override, had him pay and gave him the receipt, not seeing that it was only half a receipt, his wife showed it to me, and Ruth was getting an override that Kelsi had at the time, so I told Ruth what happened, and she said, Oh did you know that you forgot to give a customer her $40 about an hour ago? I said anything is possible today. So she got the transaction number off my next order and went up to print out the receipt, and the woman said, I want to make sure that I didn't pay for the meat that she added onto our order. I felt like saying, "Hello!!! Didn't you see the PIC come over and key the override that I told you about????"
Oh the things that we deal with day after day!!

My Little Helper

I was going to post this last week, but the computer wasn't co-operating with me.If I could figure out how to get the pictures from Kodak onto the computer, it would help also. Jasmine helped me to wash down the inside of the fridge, I took some cute pictures of her helping, but I just can't get them to download from the Kodak easyshare. Then later helped me in the garden. She had peeked through the fence at the neighbor's backyard and saw their swingset, and wanted to go over and play on it, but they have never been friendly, so we don't know them. Then their grand kids came out and started playing, and Jasmine asked to play with them. I told her that we don't know them. She said she knew them, I said what are their names, then? She said she could find out. I told her no. Pretty soon, while I was pulling weeds, I heard her voice over at the neighbor's saying "What's your names?" She had gone around to the back of their fence and was talking to the girls. I called her name and she came running back. She said "Grammy! I know their names! They are Abby and Austin! Can I go play now?" I said no and she cried. How do you tell little kids that sometimes people aren't friendly enough to just go over and play? They probably are nice people, but in 10 years, we haven't spoken except for when there are "issues".
A couple of days ago, Jasmine and I went to the garden, and we found some pea pods! I had bought some green bean seeds to plant in the bare spots where the birds got my pea seeds, so Dody came out and Jasmine, Dody and I planted them. Hopefully we willl get some green beans this year!! My bell pappers are no where to be seen. I don't know if I dare try planting again, or just keep the seeds for next year. I have one flower on one of my tomato plants!!! There's hope!!! I also planted my blueberry bush up by the house, it has lots of green buds. I'll need to get a second one to get any fruit, but I do want to plant the fruit plants down along the bank. I have strawberries there now, and the blackberry bush didn't make it and the currant bush looks dead also, so I'll need to go back to Marla's and Grandma Miller's place and get more. I want to plant some raspberries and get a fence up so I can plant some grapes also. I need to get a start of rhubarb from Amber's mother-in-law's and then get some asparagus from Autumn's. I've been wanting to do it for the last 10 years, but I just didn't know exactly where I wanted to plant. I would also like to get a peach tree, and maybe an apple tree. Once it's all done, it will be nice!!