Look at me updating 2 days in a row!!

What an interesting day, weather wise. We’ve gotten quite a bit of snow as of late. And had some cold-ass temps for much longer than usual. Now, we’ve got a storm system moving thru that has our overnight lows, above freezing. And comes with 30-35 mph winds with gusts into the 40+ mph. Oh, and rain. I’ve watched our beautiful snow blanket shrink right before my eyes. How sad. I took the daughter to work tonight & the parking lot was a sheet of ice with puddles of water. Yuck. This weather stuff is gonna bring some crap to various areas too. With rapid melt like this, & mountains & rivers, it’s not a good mix. I already heard one of the mountain passes was closed tonight due to an avalanche.

And to think I was sooo enjoying the beautiful big flakes of snow this morning as I ran a couple errands. Sigh . . . I know it sounds silly, but I want my winter back. This wind crap can stop anytime.

Oh, & we lost power this evening too. Just long enough to get everything situated. Hubby went & turned things off & grabbed the monster flashlight. I grabbed the 2 oil lamps & lit them, along with a couple well placed jar type candles. Then I went & grabbed the phone with a cord (!) in case the power stayed out or any cell towers got knocked out too. Hubby grabbed the wind up alarm clock in case he needed it in the morning. Yup, we know what to do, where it’s stashed & all that. After all, we lived in FL long enough. Ya get the hang of t after an outage or two. The daughter & I were talking to one of the ladies in the deli at Safeway when we stopped by there to grab the recycle stuff. She was amazed at the thought of a corded phone & wind up clock, with a “oh, I didn’t think of that” kind of comment. When you are without technology, you have to go back. Some forget how to go back. My family doesn’t.

Of course, it all came back on just as we had everything together & got ready to settle in for the evening. Figures.

I spent some time today organizing little things. In the big picture here, it doesn’t look like I did much, yet I was busy all day. You can’t exactly tell by walking thru the door that I worked on organizing pictures on the hard drive, or began to clean out my email. You can see that my desk is looking a lot less cluttered. You can see that I picked up here & there. The place is nowhere near where it should be, but give me another week or so & it’ll be MUCH better.

The hubby started his what sounds like pointless coughing again tonight. The bronchitis. Not again. So I told him to go use the dang inhaler. And he took some of the codeine laced cough syrup before bed too. I don’t hear him coughing. That’s a good thing. Neither of us needs him being sick again.

Christmas Day the hubby, the daughter & I went out tromping in the snow a bit & explored along a river. Of course the camera came along. I had her take a couple pix of me & the man so we could get a holiday card done finally. Well, they are ok but I don’t like them. And what sucks more, is I don’t see a timer option on my Canon 40D. Yes, my costly new upgraded camera. WTF? Totally pissed me off. I’ve “kinda” looked in the past. Never really looked hard for it. I figured it should not be hard to find. But no. I totally don’t see one. So, we had to have someone else take the pictures if we both want to be in them. I think we’ll have to do it again maybe over this weekend if the weather cooperates. Dangit!

So, whenever we get a photo I am happy with of the two of us, I’ll get some Winter / New Year cards out. And with that, I really should get to bed. I could sit here for another hour or more, but I’m trying to slowly shift my sleeping schedule so maybe I can go to bed with & get up with, my hubby.

And so it begins again in a new year

So the hum-drum of daily life is back. Hubby went back to work. Daughter spent most of the day sleeping since she works nights now. I spent most of my day … in front of this thing. I wrote out the final checks for everyone from the mall. I also wrote out nice little thank you notes to go with them. They’ll all get mailed Tuesday. Exciting huh?

We got dumped on big time with snow last night. Probably the biggest one time snowfall so far. No idea how much we technically got. It was about as deep as my hand if not a bit more. With all the snow, I figured the roads & people would be a mess. So, I stayed home. I should have gone to the store & post office. Guess they’ll both wait till morning.

I began going thru some of my digital picture files today too. I know there are tons I can just delete because they are almost identical. So I started. Felt good to clean out more of my life. Really good. Clearing out the various areas of my life of clutter & unneeded things is going slow, but well. I love the feeling of being able to let go of more & more material things. It’s one small step in the bigger quest to simplify my life.

One of my things has been to remove chemicals from my life. Chemicals are bad. Yet we put them into & onto our body’s everyday in so many forms. My big step? I went thru most of my toiletries. Lotions. Makeup. Facial cleansers. They are full of stuff that seeps into our pores, into our skin & blood stream. Well, not so much into mine anymore. I gathered up quite the pile of stuff & posted it on Freecycle last week. Even tho it was money, it felt so good to know I was taking a step towards something that means a lot to me. I didn’t let go of everything, but about 80% or more. I’ll have to find suitable replacements for things like body wash/shower gel. And shampoo. I kept the pencil eyeliners, but let go of the lipsticks. I let go of all the lotions except for 2. I want to make changes in my feminine stuff, but that’s expensive so it’ll have to be in baby steps as things get used.

Can you tell I’m trying to go more natural? Not just in food, but all areas of my life. And as long as you read, you’ll be along for the journey.

For the first time in months I popped back into the natural living community on LJ. Found a post about facial cleansing & using oil to clean your face. Sounds odd, but I’ll be looking into it. I will be enjoying getting into all the fun stuff of going organic & natural. Besides, it’ll give me something to blog about besides boring everyday life.

Busy

I found enough to keep me busy yesterday at the mall. It was pretty boring, but the time went by. Our daily sales totals are increasing which is nice. My personal sales are still crap compared to last year tho.

I made a post earlier about giving away free stuff. Well, they came & got it. I’m glad to have it out of the garage. If it weren’t so danged cold, I’d try to organize out there a bit. Who knows what else I might find to unload.

I’m wondering if we’ll even get to do photo cards this year. It finally snowed last week, but we have yet to have time to go out & take a fun picture of us. I’m hoping for this weekend. So, they might be late, but nothing wrong with that huh? I guess they could be Happy New Year cards instead. Since I can’t afford to send gifts to people, I really would like to send cards. We’ll see if it all comes together.
What else is new? Remember all the crap with hubby’s mom & step dad over vacation? (I don’t remember if I wrote it all out or not) Well, it goes to show things have not healed for the holidays. His mom made a comment when she called to say she was sorry. She said nothing would ever come between him & her. Never mind his wife. Or family. So she asked what he wanted for Christmas. Not a word about me or Connie, just him. He told her he’d love a Lowe’s gift card. Easy for her. Cheap shipping. So it came the other day. Addressed to only him. But inside were Wal-Mart cards for me and Connie in the amount of $25 each. His Lowe’s card? $200. He was so pissed at the 25 for me. Not so much Connie, but his wife. He said he almost felt like sending them all back. It’s not like they hurt for money at all. It’s just another knife in the wound. Just another confirmation that the words that were spoken during the argument were true.

On a different note, I’ve been wondering what the New Year has in store for me. For my family. For my business. Lots of thoughts so far, but not too many answers. It depends so much on money. Unfortunately. There are some possibilities of things that could happen. Things that might make for a bit of relief for us financially. Things that might change our way of life for a bit. Nothing concrete tho. Just talk right now.

Well, since I can’t shower, do laundry or dishes, I guess I should go run a couple errands. One of them I can’t do tho, until I have a last name. I was part of the Secret Santa we did with our Etsy group. But the lady I got, only gave her first name. And within her shop, there is no evidence of her last name anywhere. So why can’t I do stuff? Because of the frigid temps, our pipes froze. I totally did not think to leave the faucets dripping. We have water in the front bathroom sink & our bathroom sink (cold only). Front shower has no water. Our shower has only cold water. Kitchen has no water. Lovely huh? Let’s hope they unfreeze soon. Sometime today would be nice. At least we can flush the toilet. And we can heat water to take a wash cloth bath. LOL that should be fun for the hubby.

Well, off I go for now.

Friday evening & I’m sitting here enjoying a beer

My honey is on the laptop playing pool with Joe. He’ll have his new to him computer whenever we have the space ready. Joe is even giving him a desk. Tim is really blown away with all Joe is doing for him. So am I.

The car is packed for the market in the morning. I’m going lighter than normal. My heart may not be in the market anymore, but I’ll give it my all to sell what I do bring.

I took a few shots of the full moon tonite too. Joe had mentioned that he was reading up on shooting the moon last month. Said the first thing to do with a camera like mine is to turn off the auto focus. So I did. I still had to play with my settings, but hand held, they did come out better. I was impressed. I’ll have to try tomorrow nite with the longer lens & the tripod.

Now I’m sitting here taking a break form making a few more magnets for tomorrow. I have several of my “Celebrate Life … it has an expiration date” fireworks pictures. I made them wallet sized some time ago to use as keychain pictures. Well, that didn’t go so well; so I had pix left. Now I’m adding some matstock backing to them along with a magnet strip. Poof! A nifty fridge magnet.

Earlier Tim got the dryer control panel thing taken apart & put back together. The dryer works now!!! Woo Hoo … I get to do more laundry now. Yay? Yes… yay. I’m gonna play with the panel guts tho. Maybe take a few close up pix of it or something. Might be fun.

I found out that Sunday afternoon there is a big send off thing for some of our Guard troops. We were told by one of the photo group ladies, whose son is one of the ones leaving. She said it might be a cool photo opp for anyone who wanted to come. I think I might like to go. I know I’ll get all emotional, but too bad. It’s not like in Pensacola where we lived in a military town & cool things like this were happening all the time. Not that our troops leaving is a cool thing mind you … but you know what I mean.

Have I mentioned I am happy the dryer is fixed? I’m so thankful that replacing that part worked. If only everything were that easy to fix. I should go toss in a load & get it in the dryer before bed.

Ok, done.

I guess I should go back to making those magnets. I’m just relaxed …. Yeah .. we got some together time earlier tonite. I’d rather just go to sleep afterwards … but sometimes you gotta just go with it when it starts …

Monday Monday

Good morning. I know, it’s Monday, but it’s still a good morning as long as we all wake up on this side of the dirt right? Right. I figured I’d sit & write, then go comment a little.

I mentioned I was so ready to move furniture last Thursday. Well, I still am. Nothing has been moved yet, except in my mind. I’ve come up with a few fun ideas, but not everything has a place yet so I’ll wait. Maybe one of the days this week that Connie has to go in later, we can work on it. Or not. I have something else to spend some time getting ready for this week. Then it’ll be next week some time. Who knows. I’m telling ya tho, I bet once I get everything moved around, we’ll get a call that we can move in a month. Just seems to be how it goes.

So I went & picked up Tim’s motorcycle parts on Friday, along with running some errands. You know how big a snack size sandwich baggie is? Well, half that. That’s how big the baggie was, which cost $94 plus tax for the parts inside it. Then … times two. But we think it’s fixed, so that’s cool. The car is running again too. YAY!!

I had taken the hubby to work on Friday so I had to go pick him up too, obviously. Well, I got a call that I needed to come get him from … the new shop! Too cool. I brought my camera & took some pix now that there is actually stuff in there. He got Saturday off (which is when he worked on the car & bike) & went in on Sunday to help get more things into place so everyone can come into work on Monday & be pretty much ready to go.

I went up there on Sunday & brought him lunch. Hey, it’s a Sunday & we usually get to spend it together. So, I brought him lunch & we sat & ate some together. I was back up there about 430 to take pix of the new sign after he called me & asked me to come up. Got to hang out for a few with Marv & Russ too, so that was cool. Marv is Tim’s direct boss & lead man of the weld shop, when he’s able to be there. Russ is the big boss, the owner.

Oh this was cool. Just as I pulled up there in the afternoon & stopped the car, a commercial that Russ had done came on the radio. It was too weird!! What are the odds that right as I pull up to take pix of their newly finished sign… their commercial comes on? Weird & cool. It was just a blurb about how the company is moving to their new location, with a bigger shop & all that. Gave directions on how to find them & said effective today they’d be there. The company has been in this town for a long long time. His dad started the company when Russ was just a wee kid, if not before. So that’s about 30 years or more.

Because it was ‘our weekend’ that work was cutting into, I also got up with him, sat & had coffee, & made him breakfast. I told him if he got his hours changed, I’d do this for him allot more often. Instead of having to be there at 6, he didn’t have to be there till 7. So we were up at just after 5 & he was out the door at 630. It was really nice to spend that time with him.

So on Saturday, I went to the market. It was a nice day. No real wind, just a slight breeze, & mostly overcast so it didn’t get hot either. I ended up having my first decent day sales wise. I was happy indeed about that. I did a real “feel good” thing too. This lady & what looked like her mom, were browsing. I have this pic,

which I love & it gets lots of attention. Well, the younger lady was interested in it, but not for herself. She works for the Hospice Care at our hospital. They felt it was just the most perfect thing to hang up there. But, she could not afford the price, just to donate it to them. So, I took about 40% off. It felt like the right thing to do, so I did. But then it got even better. She wanted to know if I would be interested in letting them use that image for their Hospice flyer. I told her that I would like that, just give me photo credit. She was so excited. She told me she’d have the lady in charge contact me. I also got her info in case I don’t hear from her. For an organization like that, I’d love to help.

Then I had another lady, that because I told her I would not be there next weekend, bought something. She saw a couple small things, but had no cash. She asked if I took checks. I told her yes, as well as credit cards. Oh cool. So, she bought something & wrote a check. Another lady got 4 bookmarks to give as gifts to friends. I ended up with a just under $100 day. I was a happy camper indeed.

My market newsletter went over a big hit. I’m so glad. It feels good to know people like what I created. I’ll be mailing out a few today to those members who do not have email. I spent time on Saturday going around to all the vendors there making sure they got their email newsletter. Picked up a few new emails, corrected a couple, & handed out hard copies to several as well. Now we’re (or rather I’m) gonna work on one geared to the public. It’ll come out at the beginning of each month. I think they just want it to have things like what produce should be available this month, what the market entertainment is, any promotions, & things like that. Should be fun to put together.

Well, I’ve been at this almost an hour. I’ve finished my second cup of coffee. I guess it’s time to have some breakfast & get started on my day. I’m sure I could ramble on & on about other things, but I’ll stop for now.