Exceedingly Mundane

Well, I’ve been absent from my blog for another long period of time, like maybe 3 weeks? Things are just so busy and as much as I want to document them and capture them for my future sketchy memory, I just don’t seem to find the time to stop and blog. Sigh.

Let’s see… since the last time I blogged, we had a celebration for my niece’s birthday (Elizabeth), my sister Suzanne and we had a big crowd here for Halloween. Then the time changed and it became November and I thought I would have lots of time to get caught up on some stuff. Wrong.

Halloween was fun, but a bit disappointing to me in that even though we had a lot of friends and family here to hang out with and for Tim to take trick or treating, I stayed home and only had 2 or 3 trick or treaters. Even less than our old neighborhood 🙁 I know we’re in a construction zone and in the back of the new subdivision, with no street lights, so I know why, but it was still disappointing to buy a half ton of candy and only have the doorbell ring 3 times 🙂 Gail came the day before, and we went shopping and then cooked stuff on Halloween afternoon. She also helped me order curtains for the dining room windows that morning. Gail made Halloween bark and I made taco soup, mummy dogs, Boo biscuits and we had chips, drinks (witches brew and vampire juice) and hopefully everyone had as much fun as we did and enjoyed it. I think next year will be a lot better, most if not all of the houses should be built and we will hopefully be lit with street lights. Kathryn and Jeremy came with the kids, Katelyn was a Zombie and Sam was a star trooper (homemade costumes, they looked GREAT!). Suzanne and Elizabeth came too, and then Tony and Stephanie came and brought Rylan and Leila, and Jackie and Linda came too. This was the first time Linda had seen the house, since she didn’t get to come on moving day. It was great to see everyone and visit, and we hope that next years Halloween is even better 😀

November started out cold, it was cold Halloween night and we had to turn the heat on, really early for us. We’ve had some cold patches and are just coming out of a really cold spell for the last week. Highs in the 40’s a couple of days and lows in the mid 20’s for mid November are really cold for us, and the rest of the country too.. I lost my geranium, basil and pepper plants to the frost, and am trying to keep the rest of my herbs alive on my screened in back porch. We FINALLY, FINALLY, got the starter keys to our two fireplaces on Friday 11/14, so we were able to make a fire. These fireplaces are very warm and efficient, nothing at all like the one in our old house, where it was vented and all the heat just went up the chimney. These are not vented and put out a ton of heat into the room, so we’ve really been enjoying the fireplaces on cold days and evenings. We bought a fire pit at Home Depot and Tim put it together, but we haven’t used it yet. I need to get a cover for it soon.

The weekend of November 8, Suzanne ran her first 10K and Tim and I went to cheer her over the finish line. A pretty cold morning, but she did great. It was Mistletoe Marketplace weekend, but I didn’t get to to go. Don and Gail came after the race so that Don could go with Tim to the PGA tourney, Sanderson Farms, at the Jackson Country Club (Zack got free passes and came to bring them to Tim, great to visit with him, he’s in his first semester of college). Gail and I went shopping and I got some boots, leggings and tunics at Steinmart. I still need a lot of new clothes, especially church clothes, which I went to look for but struck out on. Monday 11/10, I helped Suzanne all day, with her selling the Lexus and cleaning out her storage unit and moving everything to her apartment. Tuesday was Veterans Day and I hated that we still don’t have an American flag hanging at the new house. Still so much we want to do. Wednesday 11/13, I got my haircut and had an “incident”. The color started melting or something weird while I was under the dryer, and it dripped down all over my face and got in both my eyes. My eyes were burning so bad I really couldn’t see. They had to flush both my eyes for several minutes and try to stop the burning and stinging. I had problems with my vision for the next few hours, but thankfully it cleared up after a few more dousings of saline that I got Tim to help me with.

The weekend of 11/15 was fun but quiet for us. Tim finished putting up gutter guards on the house and raked leaves on Saturday, then we went shopping for bar stools. Got three black leather saddle back ones that look great under our new island. Sunday we went to church and Sunday School, but it was sparse, when we woke up it was about 36 degrees and raining steadily. It rained virtually all day Sunday and into the evening, a good soaking rain. We have turned the irrigation system off for the winter, so hopefully the grass and plants are established and make it through the winter.

We’ve been going round and round on issues with a Christmas tree. Long story short, we bought a new 7 1/2 foot one last year for the old house. We put it up early this year to see, as we were afraid, with the really high ceilings in the new house, it looks pretty puny. So we went and got a 9′ tree at Sam’s Club and brought it home. Unpacked it and it had 2 of the same section in it, which means it did NOT look good! Dealt with the customer service, who finally told me to take it back to Sam’s and exchange it, which we did. Thankfully, the new tree has all the right pieces and looks good. We’ve got the new one up in the keeping room (not decorated yet) and the old one in my craft room, one of the front windows (also not decorated, I won’t have enough decorations for both, so this one will stay empty, just lit for the front window effect). I have NEVER put up a Christmas tree before Thanksgiving and feel sort of bad, like we are robbing Thanksgiving or something. But we have so much else going on and I know it’s going to take me longer to decorate and figure out where to put things in the new house, so I’m getting a head start. Or so I tell myself!

This week has been busy, but nothing too spectacular. My mom’s 90’th birthday would have been on Monday. She’s been gone over 12 years and I still miss her every day, as I do my dad. This is going to be my first Thanksgiving and Christmas without my daddy, and it’s going to be hard. We’ll stay busy though, so that will help. I’ve tried to go birthday shopping for Tim but didn’t have a lot of luck. He is pretty hard to buy for 🙂 I’m trying to get food and stuff for next week. We have another busy week coming up. My nephew Kirk, his wife Nicole and their kids are supposed to come visit Tuesday night, and then everyone will be here on Thanksgiving day. Gail and Don will hopefully come and stay at least one night with us, if not more. We love having company! We are really enjoying the new house and having people over, it’s great to have more room for everyone and not be as crowded as we were in the old house.

Lots going on and I didn’t get any photos uploaded and sized for the blog. I need to get better at that. I’ll try to blog more soon 🙂

Well, it turned out to be a busy week for me, with jury duty and other stuff going on. I haven’t had a chance to blog, or to stop by and visit most of my favorite blogs. And it doesn’t look like I will have time today or this weekend, either, as we have a lot planned.

I ended up going 3 days for jury duty. I was never actually selected and impaneled on a jury, and I was very glad. This was apparently criminal week at our local circuit court, and no civil cases were on the docket. There were at least two murder trials going on. One was a man who, with two other men, allegedly robbed, shot and killed an elderly couple, then set fire to their home. The other two men had already pleaded guilty. We actually went through the entire “voir dire” process and heard opening statements on this case. I had to raise my hand when they asked if gruesome or gory photographs or evidence that would be introduced would bother us. Yes, it would. I was not selected for this jury, and I believe they ended up with a plea bargain before the jury actually had to hand down a verdict. The other murder case reached an agreement before we began the voir dire process. It was another murder, a father who shot his wife repeatedly with a bolt-action rifle, in front of their two small children. I’m so glad I didn’t have to be on either jury. It was an interesting process though. I just didn’t really like the hour to hour, day to day nature of not knowing if I’d be serving, was being released, etc. I like to plan my days and my week, and not knowing always throws a little kink in things 🙂

This weekend is going to be busy also. For some reason, I had it in my head until a few days ago that Halloween was on Saturday night, and not Friday night. Duh. So, a week ago, we made plans with Tim’s family for a bunch of them to come up Friday, for us to eat dinner, go to a movie (Fireproof), then they’d all spend the night (well, we’re having to send his parents to a new hotel near our house, since we only have one guest room!) and the guys would work on some stuff around here on Saturday. We have a window that Tim wants to replace, and so he’s been busy with getting together a new window, shims, screws, caulk, and some other stuff, as well as a new blind for that window.

So, anyway, it clicked a few days ago that Halloween is tonight, Friday, and not Saturday. So, we won’t be here to hand out the mound of candy I’ve bought to all of the trick or treaters. I will hate not seeing our neighbor kids dressed up and giving them some candy. But, I guess there’s always next year!