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.