In helping a family member I found these ads in a free paper:

From Li:

Mom that buttercream chicken is mean.

How so?

He won’t leave the other chickens alone.

What’s he do?

He keeps hopping on them & pecking the back of their heads.

Yeah, he sure is mean…

99% of all the large furniture is moved.

My bedroom is empty for the second time. Forgot about the hidden cupboard and tried my best to forget it again but just could not. It is now emptied and the room vacuumed.

Bathroom is emptied – excetion the cat’s supplies. She is one of the last things to go to the new place.

Middleroom – all our stuff is out. Perhaps there are a few small oddments under Fyah’s bed but that will wait until they move their belongings. I am not 4 inches high while laying down – not even after exhaling.

Hall – full of the stuff from the above rooms.

Am going to be going this afternoon to transfer phone & computer to new place. If you should try to call & get a bad message…well it is the phone company after all.

Gee we have a lot of stuff.

Grits…

Can we use the dog kennels to move chickens?

Please…

Why would anyone try to earn the mother-in-law from hell title?

especially before the marriage?

After all these months the count down has begun. The grand plan is to begin moving furniture & stuff this Friday. First load up here, drive to new place, go to Grits, load up, drive here, unload her stuff, begin again. It is one big circle so it should work At least that’s the plan. Thank goodness gas prices have gone down.

For the next few days…

New Place: To Do

• Clean those carpets. Tomorrow after kids speech therapy we will pack the vacuum, rent a carpet cleaner, and drive over. Cleaning the carpet is high priority.
• Scrub down the kitchen. Grits started but there is still a lot to do. Too much cat hair too many places.
• Paint the main bathroom.
• Wash several walls. We might not get everything painted that is on the list but it simply must be washed.
• Move phone service.
• Decide if we want trash service or will haul our own.
• Chickens need a home.
• Dh finish the pantry. Its almost there…right at the spot things get left undone…

New Place: Finished

• Installed new hot water heater.
• Installed two ventless heaters. Now if we get a lengthy outage we won’t freeze. The last one we had cut our gas usage in half hopefully it will be the same at this place.
• Painted second bathroom, girls room, boys room, laundry room and pantry.
• Cleaned our bedroom carpet and girls room carpet before fil’s scrubber quit. I would too if I weren’t the momma.
• Dh & fil laid new tile in kitchen & back hall with extra in the two bathrooms.
• Reused old tiles from kitchen in laundry room and pantry.
• Gagged alot.

Here at Home:

• Packed our room, bathroom, girls room, dining room (family room in reality) and half frontroom.
• Left to pack: boys room, frontroom, pantry, back porch, breezeway, and chickens.
• Basement is Nikos & Fyah’s when they are home for the wedding.
• Clean so Grits won’t think her momma is slipping. No painting though – she gets to choose her own colors. (Sounds nice doesn’t it?)

We are all ready to be finished with this project. 

Both of my Air Force boys will be home for Christmas – most likely for the last time in a good while. Unpacking, decorating and cooking coming up. Oh and a little thing called a rehearsal dinner…

Fyah

Fyah, Mrs, and Son

“Why Me?”

“At last, all mine!”

When momma is sick plans get changed.

Last week I had stopped by the local Dollar General to buy more cleaning supplies. Waiting to pay, I over heard the cashier and another customer discussing the latest ‘bug’ going around.  It begins as a bad cold/sinus infection, seems to get better, then WHAM!! Staight into bed for a day & hobble about the next. That’s nice…thank goodness we don’t live over here…

My cold wasn’t the worst. Some musinex & lots of water helped.

WHAM!! Spinning room and staight to staying in bed. Horrible.

We are well thought out for sick children. Plenty of ‘buckets’, frozen juice, tissues, asprin, and nearly anything else a sick child needs. What we are not ready for is sick momma.

“Bring a bucket! Quick!!” They did. Eventually. Because momma knows where the buckets are kept not the kiddos. It was a nice, white food storage bucket. Afterward, in the odd trails a sick brain likes to travel, floated the thought well at least the FDA won’t ticket this food storage. urmm….

Baby girl could not understand why momma was not up and about. She kept checking & checking & checking. Off the bed, on the bed, off the bed…ad nauseum. Eventually we set up a baby gate for a few hours, see momma but no rocking the bed.

Sixteen can cook but his specialty is desserts. I think they fed Little Missey cookies all day long. or mini doughnuts. or lunch cakes. Because she wouldn’t eat the jello Sixteen had made. Nobody thought about the baby food jars in the cupboard because she only eats that when we are out & about but we were not out & about were we?

So now that I am at the hobble stage there are a few things that need to be done:

First:  disinfect the food storage bucket so the proper food can be stored.

Second: teach the kids where the sick supplies are & what they are for esp those sick buckets. One of my brain-trails was that we needed to wipe down door knobs & such so nobody else would catch this.

Third: Have a simple menu ready ahead of time. One that everyone can make, is reasonably healthy, and covers a few days. Include foods that baby girl can eat so she won’t be eating cookies all day long. (Did keep her happy though).

Fourth: Have some activities ready. Sixteen did do some house tidying. It looked great while it lasted. Saw his good work when I had to get up and check if the squeals were happy playing ones or being picked on. They were happy but it would have been nice not to have had to get up and check. Vertigo made moving an awful experience.

Lastly: Practice ‘Sick Manners’. It may sound as if the kids were awful but that would be a lie. They were great but some sounds are just hard on a sick person’s head. Some of this would go with activities – these are things you may do & these are things you may not. This could include the ‘wiping things down’ that spun in my head.

Thankfully it was just a one day hit hard bug. When flu season arrives I would like to be better prepared. In the best case none of us would have the flu, but sooner or later…it’s better to be ready.

The past summer an older member of our congregation gave us a deep freeze. His wife had died about a year before and he had no use for one. When dh arrived to load it up he gave the background, it ran well, and had some food that we could do with as we pleased.

Trying to keep up with a new baby left just enough time for a quick peek. Yes there was frozen food. Yes it did not seem to take up much room. Yes it could wait until later to sort out – 2006 in 2007 was not out-of-date.

We did use some of the frozen food. One package of breaded okra turned out to be a package of breaded cheese bites. Still tasted fine and the kids hoped to find more among the mystery packages.

We also added to the collection. Then there was no room. Or seemed to be no room. A hasty rearranging found much space under the hanging baskets. Not ideal but at least the new additions could be kept in the manner to which they  had become accustomed.

The day came when the kids desire for breaded something and time to search where both *right now*. The packages were studied.  There were those 2006 packages but only 3 or 4. Look a few 2002 and 2001. Is that a 1997?

Why do most of these begin with 19? Why did I not notice this before?

Today was the big clean out the freezer day. One large trash can and two large trashbags later the job is finished. Corn on the cob went to the chickens. Green beans are for tomorrow.

Now the freezer is somewhat organized with my milk crates (taken back from being bookcases in Nikos room). Items that were waiting to go in (rice, beans, powdered milk, flour) are safely stashed away. I have a corner of the kitchen back.

Please fellow deep freeze users – rotate your foods!! Why use your effort, time and money to create fancy trash? Why not enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of your efforts? Your family will thank you. And so will your trashman.

I have a cold. Cleaning up after a rude cat – the hair & the smell doesn’t help.

When I was a child I would see my mother walk around the house with a tissue hanging out of her nose. Her poor, red, sore, runny nose. “That is too weird” and  ”please God don’t let anyone stop by” were my  youngself thoughts.

Now I am older than my mother. I am the one with the poor, red, sore, runny nose. I am the one with the stealth nose leak. The nose that is so stuffed up no air can get through then suddenly,  when least expected, a silent trickle is coursing down my lip. 

I need white…

I need cotton…

I need highly absorbent….

I need invisible…

I need….

A nose tampon.

Think it would sell?

Tell me three things you do not like about the candidate you voted to be president.

Do not tell me the name of the candidate. For now the name is inconsequential.

It is my firm belief that if you cannot name at least three things that you disagree with your candidate on or about then you have not looked at your candidate hard enough.