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!!

Weird Looking People

This last work week of mine, I've had weird looking people come through my line. Not that it's a bad thing, I'm just a people watcher. It's things that make you say hmmm. First of all, it must have been friday, I had this older couple come through, probably late fifties or sixties, and the guy had straberry blonde hair and a bushy mustache like the african safari guy on Jumanji. If he had been wearing one of those hats, I would've been scared! Anyway, he had weird bottm teeth, kinda like Dody's dog, sweets. They jutted out like a bulldog. Her dog is part sheitzu. Anyway, then he wrote his check and his name is Charles Brown. I wondered if his nickname was Charlie. Then on Sunday, I had a few come through. The first one that day was a guy whose eyes were bulgy and looked like a frog. When he wrote his check, his name was Michael Brown. I wondered if he was Charlie's brother and good looks DON'T run through the family. Then later that day, I had switched to the other side of the store after lunch, and I had this woman and boy, he was about 9 or 10, at first I thought he might have been hit with a baseball or something on his right side of his face because his eye and cheek was all swollen and his eye look bruised, but when he turned, I noticed the left side looked perfectly normal. I think it was a birth defect. His right side looked like it was sliding off his face almost. I felt bad for him because you know people stare at him or ask what happened. Then shortly after him, I had the mexican family(they don't speak any English that's why I say mexican instead of hispanic) that has a little boy around 6 that has to wear a hearing aid that is attached on the outside of head. I feel bad that he has to go through not hearing like us, but glad that there is help available. Then about 10 minutes later was another mexican family that has teenagers, and the girl that's about 17, has long hair that she never brings forward. Anyway in the last 2 or 3 years that I have seen her. She parts it down the middle and walks without really turning her head so that her hair never swings or is never hanging in the front. All of it is always hanging down the back. It just looks weird, because she turns her whole body and not her head so that her hair stays in the back. Then about 5 minutes later, I had another couple come through, and the woman, about young 20's was an albino. Of course she had white hair and pinkish white skin, and her eyes were a dark red with white circles around her pupils. I've seen an albino mexican before. He and his buddies had shoplifted, and I had seen him being taken upstairs, and then I had seen him back in the store a few months later, so I told the PIC's and security took him out. I know he's mexican, because the security guy at the time of the shoplifting had said that the guy couldn't speak english, and was surprised that he (the security guy) could. Any way, that's my story about my weird day.

It's Junuary!!!

Can you believe this crazy weather? I'm wearing one of my warmest sweaters because of how chilly it is. Yesterday was only 60 and the weather said that the blue's got about 6-8 inches of snow, and McCall got a couple of inches. My garden is doing ok. I would like to see the peppers I planted come up, but I was told that since I planted them by seed, it will have to wait for warmer weather. I'll keep that in mind the next time I decide to plant peppers. If I had started them in the house, I would have them growing already. My peas are looking good with the cold weather. My beets are up a couple of inches, so are the kolrabi. My cucumbers are still pretty small, and the squash is slowly growing. It's supposed to warm up this week, so they should start doing better. Amber got me some tomato plants, I need to get them planted.

We are in limbo with our house. If we don't get a house payment in this week, we could lose it. Cleve and I have mixed feelings about it. We have been here for 10 years, so we don't want to leave, but then again, with all the septic problems we have had in the last 5 years, and the central air going out 3 years ago, we wouldn't miss that. We would probably get a 1 bedroom apartment close to work, which would save on gas, and the payment would be about $300 less and no property taxes. The place would be alot quieter with only 2 people instead of 8.

On another note, we went with Amber and Jaime to look at a new house they are thinking of buying. It's really nice, but there are a few things that they aren't sure about. Amber would like to go again and look at it. Since some of the people's things were still in the house, it made her feel uncomfortable to look in the closets and drawers. The living room is tiny, kinda a spot in the corner when you first come in, but the rest seems nice sized. The bathroom in the master is small and simple, without alot of counterspace. So now they are trying to decide if this is what they want.

A Visit From My Brother

My Dad told me on the 25th that my brother, Jay and his wife Angie were going to be here on Thursday the 29th from Bismarck, North Dakota. We haven't seen them for three years, so we were really looking forward to their visit. Jay showed up at my house at 8am on the 31st, and I had to leave by 8:15, so it was a very short hello. We planned to go to the Caldwell park on Wednesday evening for a picnic with everyone, but it was so windy and chilly that we had it at Autumn's house in Parma instead. It was a nice visit. I'll edit pictures in when I get them from Amber. My camera was dead. I didn't know that the dock for the camera wasn't plugged in so it wasn't charged. Thank goodness that Amber had a camera. They headed back home that friday. We got a picture of all of kids. Amy, Mona, Me, Marla and Jay. Dad had to work and got there a little later, but Mona had to go because of getting up so early in the morning for work.

May 20

On May 20th, I went over to Amber's house around 8:45am, Cleve dropped me off before work, and then Amber took me to my eye appointment in Meridian, and the Eye Dr said that the blood that was close to my macula was not new blood, so there is no danger of me losing my sight in my left eye. I don't have any new abnormal blood vessels growing, but he wants to see me back in September. I was glad that she took me because they have to dialate my eyes so much so that they can see inside, and I knew I wouldn't be able to drive. Then we hurried back to Ashlynn's school because she was having a spelling bee that day. She done real well, I think Amber said that she was 8th out of 30 or 40 first and second grader's that were picked for the Bee. She came in third I believe out of the 5 first graders. We are all so proud of our little speller.

Our New Granddaughter

Mother's Day started early for us. Through the night, Tori came in a couple of times, pretty sure she was going to have the baby sometime soon. Then around 5am, she came in to say that Ken and her were going to head to the hospital. Ken had worked that night and hadn't slept yet so he was pretty exhausted. I had Dody go with them so that if Ken went to sleep, at least Tori had someone there. We got up at 6am I called into work to let them know that I was going to be at the hospital with my daughter and then we headed to the hospital around 8 or 9am. When we got there, Tori was in the bathtub relaxing with the jets going that's like a hottub. Dody had already left with Amber to go to Amber's so Cleve went over there and got her and took her home because she was exhausted. Ken went out to his car to try and catch some sleep. I helped Tori wash her hair and take a bath so that she wouls feel refreshed since I knew it was going to be a long day. Amber had planned a Mother's Day BBQ, so around 6pm Cleve and I headed over to her house for that, and while there, we got a call from Ken that the Dr broke her water, so we finished eating, then headed back to the hospital. Later, Amber let me know that I didn't even say goodbye to her before I left. Sorry. Tori had her friends, Donielle and Nicole there, and they stayed until 9pm, then left. Finally, around 10pm, the nurse came in to check on her and the baby's head had crowned. She guessed it had been like that for over an hour. They had just delivered two other babies, just one after the other, so they had been quite busy.We shooed Ken and Granpa Cleve and Dad Cleve out of the room since we didn't want any fainting going on, and Grandma Betty and I stayed in the room. Betty on the left and me on the right to help hold her feet in the stirrups because of the epideral, she had no feeling and couldn't keep them in herself. She had to be coaxed to push since she couldn't feel the contractions, so I had her lean up and try to see the babys head and that made her push harder and she finally popped out cone head and all!! So she finally had the baby a little after 10pm, I had already called in for Monday, because I knew that by the time I got home, I wouldn't feel like coming in a few hours later. Yecenia Kay Eubanks was born at 10:07pm I believe, on May 11th and she weighed 7lbs. 1oz. and was 19 inches. At last weigh in, she weighed 8lbs. 10 ozs. She is almost too big for the newborn jammies she has. She came home with thrush, and it took awhile to finally clear it up plus the diaper rash it gave her. Two medications later, and it looks almost gone. It made Tori feel like she wasn't a good mom, but I told her to look at how well she is gaining. Dody has been very helpful like a second mom for Tori. Tori just needs to be more confident in taking care of Ya Ya,(that's what I call her), and she will do fine. Today she is one month old!!!!

More Antibiotics

I went back to the Dr because my nose started to get red again. It didn't hurt but it sure was red, so I went on May 9th before work and he gave me a strong antibiotic that was to be taken for 3 weeks. So now I'm hoping that it won't come back, it didn't get as red and swollen but it was obvious. I also found out that you shouldn't wear red and shirts that have clown stripes when your nose is red, but you don't think of those things when you are getting dressed at 6am.

I had alot of people at work tell me that I should go to a real Dr instead of the nurse practitioner at a quick clinic, but I think they are ok. After all, it was a real Dr that told me I had epilepsy when I actually had hypoglycemia. It was a real Dr that caused me to hemmorage when I had Amber, thus causing Jared to be born premature. I was a real Dr. that told me Jared wasn't handicapped, that he was just slow because of being born early and that he would catch up. It wasn't even a Dr that finally told me that Jared had cerebral palsy. Even after that, the real Dr wouldn't be convinced that he had anything wrong. So, I don't see why not go to a "Doc in a box".

Dorothy

This is a tribute to my longtime friend. Dorothy Sue Harman. I first met her when I started working for Waremart, later the name changed to WinCo. When I first started though, she was on medical leave for a sprained ankle. Her son Kenny, was about 3 at the time, and she had sprained her ankle chasing him and tripped over his toys. Everyone called her old Dorothy because a new girl that was hired with me was also Dorothy. The first time I saw her I had to laugh because she was only about 20, and so was the new girl. The following summer, Doug, Dorothy, Cleve and I joined a summer bowling league with a few others from work and then we took a trip to Winnamucca at the end of the season. We had a lot of fun. Dorothy and I worked the evening shifts together so we got to know each other.
When the store moved to our big new store, Dorothy was in charge of stocking the stores bread. She had sundays and mondays off, and I worked her weekends going in at 3am on those days. I did that for about 5 years until Lorraine asked to take over that shift. Then on Dorothy's 14th anniversary, Doug proposed to her again, asking her to marry him allover again on their 15th. It was so sweet. Then in early spring of 2007, Dorothy was diagnosed with cancer. She had surgery, and they went ahead and on July 2nd on their 15th anniversary, they had their wedding. They had been married by a judge, so this was her wedding, and she rode in a horse drawn carriage, and at the end of the ceremony, they released doves. I had to work until 11pm that day, but I got to see pictures and it was so beautiful. Dorothy got cancer a couple more times. She lost alot of weight, and her hair changed from straight blonde to dark curly brown, but her smile never changed. One thing I still haven't done is, I haven't deleted her from my cell phone or my email. I'm sure that I will eventually.The cancer finally overtook her on May 3rd of this year. We will always miss her.

So Much News So Little Time

I have so much news for May but haven't been able to get the time to tell it all. I have tons of pictures but still need to download them to the computer. I guess I could put it all in a nutshell here nd post them separately later. On May 3rd, one of my co-worker friends died. Dorothy Harman, it was a hard funeral to go to. Tori had her baby on Mother's Day the 11th, and I had my eye appointment on the 20th, and now have to see a retina specialist, and possibly more surgery. This year has been a pretty hard year financially for us, but we will muddle through ok. Having 8 people in one household has been difficult, but with the economy the way it is, it's hard to just go out and be on your own.
The weather has been so crazy, On Sunday it was in the 90's and today, Wednesday, it's in the 60's. My garden is finally showing growth. Weeds are plentiful. I need to put down newspaper to kill the weeds, but its so windy today I would be fighting it.
Yesterday, I went to my sister Marla's and got a couple of her chickens. We had one die a couple of weeks ago, and it was one that laid blue eggs. She has about 9 hens setting, and one was hatching babies while we were there. I guess I'll try to get some pictures downloaded so that I can post them too. Catch ya later!!!

Feast or Famine?

Ok, so those of you who are familiar with the End times in the Bible, this is my take on it.
This last week at work I have seen lots of people buying staple items for storage. One woman bought 17 of the 25 pound bags of flour. She bought lots of jello also, but she was buying things like honey, vinegar, vegetable oil (24 bottles) and rice, not much because it had already been bought up. Where does one store that much flour without the mealy bugs getting into it? Freezing is fine, but you would have to have an empty freezer, maybe two big chest freezers at least just for the flour. Anyway, in the Bible it states that at the end times, a loaf of bread will cost a man a days wages. I believe that when it talks about bread, it means groceries. That certainly is a fact. Also, when I was younger and the preacher talked about Armageddon, and people riding on horses, we wondered why anyone would ride horses when we had cars. Well, look at gas prices. Of course there were no cars back then anyway, but still. I look at it this way, God promises to take care of us, and I think that these people are either so afraid to trust God, or smart to stock up, but guess what. If it comes down to a famine, people are going to raid their stockholds, and they won't have any of their food. We can hope for world peace and lower prices, but we can't prevent the inevitable from happening. So, by putting your faith in God and letting him take care of your needs, is all he asks.
Ok, I'm done preaching.
Can you beieve how cold it is again? Monday was 80 and today is supposed to be a high of 47. I have strawberries to plant, but I'm not sure if I want to put them out yet.
Oh yeah, and Dody started getting this little sore just on the outside of her right nostril yesterday. I just put my hands over my mouth to stifle the laugh. Then said "Hope it doesn't get like mine." She worried, and I don't blame her. Mine still has a sore, but it doesn't hurt any more. It still looks red, but I did get a sunburn on my nose on Monday also.

The BBQ

The BBQ went well. We had about 25 people here according to Dody's count. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. We invited our new neighbor's Joey and Jackie over. Joey graduated with Ken and Jackie graduated with Jared. Jackie is real quiet and she was doing yardwork, so she didn't come over, but Joey is very sociable. He used to be a truckdriver, and he has a racecar and had a race on sunday, so after the race he came over. He's quite the redneck, but is nice. He's originally from Arkansas, loves to drink like a fish and tell jokes.

Last week, on Cleve's days off, Cleve had patched the hole in the tire on his tractor lawnmower, and needed to air it up, well, they both decided that using the can of carburator cleaner and a lighter would do the trick. Mind you, both had been drinking quite a bit before, so they used the aerosol can to fill the tire, and when Joey put the lighter up to it, the tire swelled up like they wanted, but the flame caught his hair on his hand and arm on fire, so he's swatting the flames and getting it out, if that's not a redneck neck thing, I don't know what is. I can only imagine what the rest of the summer is going to be like. Joey likes to sit by the firepit and drink and talk. His wife goes to bed and he says he can party all night, as he puts another log on the fire, and cracks open another beer, staggering the whole time.

We had Friends that Cleve works with at Home Depot over, Mark and Mindy and their three boys, Amber, Jaime, Ashlynn and Gabbo, Dad and Mary, Jared and Clint, Barb and Don and their three kids, Dody, Cody, Jasmine, Tori and Ken. We had pork riblets, about 20lbs, and they were slicked up pretty fast, along with potato salad, coleslaw and baked beans and veggie tray.
Lots of drinks, Mindy made a 5 gallon jug full of punch and I made 2 gallons of tea and 1 gallon of lemonade, besides the beer that different ones brought. Afterwards, we had a delisious cake, smores cake that Amber brought, and at dusk we started the firepit and roasted marshmallows.
Tori still hasn't had the baby, but still having the contractions, so maybe this week!!

It's Our Anniversary

Well, today is Cleve's and my 26th anniversary. He went to work at 9a.m. and I start at 12:15p.m., so that how life is. We hope to have a BBQ with family and friends on Sunday, if everything works out.

Tori went to the Dr yesterday and she has definately dropped. She is dilated to 1, and has been having contractions the last week. She said the Dr called her shortly after she got home and her dilantin (anti-seizure meds) levels were at a 9 and they need to be between 10-20. The Doc wants her to start taking 8 pills a day instead of 6. Hopefully she doesn't have a seizure. I figure she will have the baby within the next week. Hopefully on my days off!! I told her that her sisters had theirs on my days off, which was very considerate, thank you Amber and Dody.

Oh, and by the way, it was brought to my attention (thank you Nic) that I only put Jared's birthday as November 1983, and forgot to put the 28th in there. Sorry about that, Jared.
Hope everyone has a nice day and weekend.

Who Am I?

Ok, here goes. I'm not one for going to chat rooms or IMing very much, so I hope I can do this. I'm not sure how to do alot on the computer either. I kinda know how to copy and paste, that's because Dody has shown me several times! Dody? She's my third child. Well, maybe I should start from the beginning...not THE beginning like on The Goonies when Chunk is told to "Spill his guts" but just a brief overview. I was born in Broken Bow, Nebraska on my oldest sister's third birthday, and I'm the third of five children (kids are goats you know), and I have one brother and he's the youngest. I was 13 when my Mom wanted to move back to Idaho to be by her parents, go figure. That was in June of 1976. I graduated from Parma High in 1981, met my husband, Cleve, in January of 1982 and married him April 25, 1982, had my first baby, Amber January 25, 1983, second, Jared November 1983, third, Dody March 10,1986, and fourth, Tori June6, 1989. Three girls and one boy. Jared came 10 weeks early (actually a couple years early!). He's okay, at least that's what we like to think. (Just kidding with ya Jared) He does have cerebral palsy from being so early but he's okay. Now flash forward a few years. I'm a cashier at WinCo Foods in Nampa, been there for 12 years, and enjoy it. I think I'm a people watcher, and that's one reason why I like my job. They can be funny at times. It's the money they pay me that keeps me coming back week after week though.

Cleve and I have had our share of ups and downs, probably more downs than ups, but we manage. Right now, we have Dody, her husband Cody and 3 year old daughter, Jasmine with us, AND Tori her boyfriend Ken and soon to be baby (due May 12) with us also. Our little house is pretty much overcrowded, but we manage. Always looking on the bright side, eventually they WILL move out.

It seems that I always have some kind of issue going on. This past month it's been my nose. Yep that's right, my nose. It all started while Amber and Jaime went to San
Antonio, TX for an awards thing from Bank of America where Jaime was getting an award for his great job he does at the bank. Cleve and I went over to their house to babysit Ashlynn 6, and Gabrielle (Gabbo) 2, while they were on vacation. I got a little sore in my nose, but it went away, then the next week, I got one again, only this time both sides just on the inside, well, by the time my two days off were up, my nose was pretty red on the outside, I really didn't want to go to work with a rudolph nose, but calling in sick for a red nose just didn't seem right, so I went. Well, everyone couldn't help but notice it, and then even though I was putting triple antibiotic on it and peroxide, it got worse, and bigger. The thought of donning reindeer antlers was a real idea, or putting very blue eyeshadow on, arching my eyebrows and wearing red lipstick, but I did neither. Finally, and on a Sunday, I woke up with my left eye area real puffy, I knew my home remedies were not working, so on my lunch break I went to the expres care and got an antibiotic. If the Dr. had asked my why I was there, I might have socked him a good one, but he didn't. I did ask him if it was from chronic nose picking, but he said no, just a bacterial infection in the skin. At least everyone could tell by looking at me that I don't brown nose!!! Maggie at work said "yeah but what have you been doing?" No comment. I took my last antibiotic pill this morning, so hopefully it doesn't come back. Amber took pictures of my nose when it was at it's fullest. If she sends them to me I'll put them on here.

I think Tori's baby has dropped. She sees her Dr tomorrow, then we will know more, I don't think she will make it to May 12. Ultrasounds show a girl. She has the name Yesinia picked out but not the spelling yet.

I guess that's all I'll post for my first one. So how did I do?