A few laughs to start the week

More blog help

 This time help with a blog post comes from my daughter Amanda. She sent me a text saying I could blog about Presley's birthday party. It was last Sunday. I work on Sunday till 3:00 and they had the party at 2:00. Yeah I could have gone after work but I had been gone since 4:30am, I would have had to go home and let Gibbs out, change my clothes and by then it's probably close to 4:00. That day I was dead tired to and I was just not about to do it. It was mostly Presley's moms family anyway. Any way, Amanda says "noone needs to know they aren't you're pictures and that you didn't go because of work." 

I said I could use the pictures but I wasn't going to pretend I was actually there. 

So without further ado, here's Ms. 4 year old Presley

I'm sure some of you will wonder if I  made the cake. No, I didn't. Amanda said that Presley's other grandmother made it. For her first and second birthday I was asked to make a cake but this time I wasn't. I suppose it was even a miracle that I got the Facebook invitation to the party. (Oh my, did that sound a bit snarky?) Well it is what it is and I won't pretend that it's something else.

And a final one that I stole off of Amanda's Facebook page of her and Presley

I get by with a Little Help from My Friends

Yesterday I mentioned that I didn't have anything new to post about. Sandra suggested that I stand in the middle of my kitchen, turn around twice, take a picture of what I see, and explain.

I followed her advice. I stood in the kitchen and turned around twice. This is where I varied from her instructions. After turning around twice I got dizzy and fell down. While I was on the floor I figured I might as well take a picture.

 I guess my explanation for this is that I was laying on the floor and that's my kitchen light on the ceiling. 

For those concerned, no blogger was hurt in the making of this post. Parts of this post may be fictional.

January blues

 I'm tired of snow. I'm tired of the cold. I'm tired of no sunshine. I've got the January blues. What I don't have is anything new to blog about. I searched the archives for "blue" pictures.

#$%@

As I was leaving work I noticed the icicles hanging off the back of the building. They get pretty big every year.

I cleaned the snow off my car and hoped that when I got home I would find that they had plowed again. No such luck. I parked in the road because there was quite a bit of heavy looking snow at the end of the driveway from the plows. With my luck I would have gotten stuck in it. 

I went inside and sent a text to the guy who plows asking if he could hit my driveway. I waited two hours and didn't hear anything. It was now 5:00 and for me that's getting late. I didn't want to leave my car in the street all night. I put on my big girl panties and went out and shoveled the driveway. It wasn't too bad until I got to the end where it was REALLY heavy. I put the car back in the driveway, went in the house and sent a text to the plow guy to never mind and then sat down and had a good cry. Then I went and got a shower and when I came back down there was a response from the plow guy saying "Thanks for messaging us. We try to be as responsive as possible. We'll get back to you soon." Really? @#$%&.

Speaking of @#$%&, did you know that's called a Grawlix? Yep, I read it at this link https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/grawlix-symbols-swearing-comic-strips

Things aren't always as they seem

One of the things that I had bought myself for Christmas was a pair of leggings. I love the colors in them and I liked the design. They just looked really pretty to me.

 

It wasn't until after I had worn them that I realized what the design was. It was actually skulls. I can't believe I didn't notice it when I bought them. Oh well, I still like them.

Pardon my absence.

 I had no intentions of doing a disappearing act like that. Life is what it is sometimes and I guess I just needed a break. I've been feeling very uninspired and very tired, both physically and mentally. I can blame three things for my present condition.

One is the weather. The cold and snow make me sluggish. 

Two is work. I'm getting old and I forget that I'm not wonder woman. 

Three is Gibbs. Because of his extreme bad habits, I'm forced to spend the majority of my time in the basement with him. He tends to lift his leg wherever and whenever he feels like. When we are in the basement he's done quite well and I'm able to keep a close eye on him. If I go upstairs and try to do something I'm distracted and he does bad things. I could confine him to the basement where he stays while I'm at work but I feel guilty doing that. I was using the belly bands but discovered that I'm a bad dog mom. When I took him for grooming they discovered a sore on his male dog parts which were caused by the belly bands. He would pee in them and they would stay on him too long and he developed a sore. We've adapted our routine to avoid having to wear the belly band.

So there you have it. My excuse. Here's a little video to show what we did while we weren't blogging. You might want to turn the sound down since the tv is probably really loud. I didn't have my hearing aids in while I was watching.

No stranger to snow.

I've lived my entire life right here in snow country. I'm definitely no stranger to snow. I thought I would take a look back and see just how snowy it was in past years.

2021

2020

2019 That pile of snow was what I shoveled off of the deck.

I couldn't find anything from January 2018 so this is December 2017

Friends

I saw this on Facebook and thought it was so fitting for all the blog friends I've made

I keep forgetting

 I've been meaning to post about a blog friend I never knew I had. I got a Christmas card and didn't recognize the name or return address. Inside was a letter from Bobi who's been reading my blog for a few years but can't comment because she doesn't have a google account. She was kind enough to include a disposable bag for cake decorating after reading one of my posts complaining about the customer who orders cakes with multiple colors. She wondered why my boss didn't spring for disposable bags. Truth is I can order things like that and we do have a box of the disposable bags. I don't often use them because they are extra large and not my favorite bag to use. 

Any way, I got to wondering if there are other blog friends out there that I don't know about. Just a reminder to anyone who reads my blog and can't comment, Under the about tab you'll find my email address and can contact me any time. 

So a great big hi to Bobi and thank you for the Christmas card.

buried

Yesterday morning my phone rang at 5:45 a.m.. it was the store calling wanting to know if I could come into work because no one else could get there because of the snow. I told him I would try and let him know. When I attempted to let Gibbs out the snow was so deep that I was pushing it with the door. I called back and said sorry there's no way I'm going to get out of my driveway. When all was said and done I think there was probably at least three feet of snow piled up at the end of my driveway. The search was on for someone to plow

These are not very good pictures, they were all taken through the window.

One of the deli girls who managed to make it to work said that the manager that was there was having her fry donuts. They weren't even open and at 8:00 the store still wasn't open.

First attempts to find someone to plow were not going well. Then all of a sudden I had two call backs at once.

My son in law was actually on his way over to shovel for me because he didn't want me to be out there trying to shovel. 

Around 3:00 someone showed up to plow. I'm pretty sure it was the guy who mows for me. He was the first one I contacted but I didn't think he was going to make it because he said he would try but that they were pretty overwhelmed. When he got done plowing he drove off without coming and asking to get paid so I'm sure it was him since he always billed me for mowing.

We haven't had a snowfall like this in a long time and I hope it will be a long time before we have another one. This was just too much.

Happy Little Camper and other thoughts.

 Yesterday morning as I was heading to work the temperature was 10 degrees. I wished that I could stay home and curl up under a blanket. Today could be just as cold if not colder and I am so happy to be able to do exactly what I wished for yesterday. We are under a winter storm warning until Tuesday morning and could end up with over a foot of snow again.

Lately my email is loaded with spam. I used to go in and unsubscribe to try and get rid of them. Then I read somewhere that you should just ignore them because by unsubscribing you are verifying that it is an active email. So I stopped that but it doesn't get rid of the boat load I get in my inbox every day. I'm really finding them annoying.

Speaking of things I find annoying. I really hate it when I'm on the wrong side of the tracks.

My day off

Saturday was a half ambitious day. I spent part of the day working on getting things back in order around the house. The other half was spent playing on the computer, watching TV, and just being lazy. 

I really want this year to include more crafting. My other goal for the year is to at least make more progress on decluttering my house. Whether or not I'll accomplish any of this, I have no idea, but I will try. 

But first I take a break.

Ding dong

This is the kind of post you get when I have absolutely nothing else to talk about. Lately, when I'm watching TV in the evenings there's a commercial that will come on that has a ringing doorbell. Every single time that commercial comes on Gibbs hears the doorbell and starts barking

Yes ding dong, I'm talking about you.

He may look like he's napping here but if that commercial comes on again he'll be up and barking.

The big reveal

On my post yesterday Ginny asked if the items in the picture we're all I was using. The truth is there were a couple more things that I used for this project that didn't make it into the picture. A lot of you guessed that it was a Valentine's projects and you were right. And what Valentine's project would be complete without a little bit of chocolate . 

If you have kisses, why not have a kissing booth

The pictures aren't the best since it was getting late when I took these pictures but they show you the project well enough. The felt hearts are red and pink but the pink ones look kind of white in the picture. My paint pen was drying out fast when I was trying to draw the white lines around the edge of the black heart so I ended up going over the lines with a silver paint pen. The word kisses and the 5¢ are vinyl cut on my cricut.

Craft Time

I've got a little project in the works that I started on Monday. This is what I'm working with. It's a small wood craft from Dollar Tree, some of the jumbo craft sticks and red paint. 

Any guesses on what it will be?

Wishing for spring

Last week after our snowstorm it looked like this on Saturday

 Sunday it was a little warmer and we had rain. By the end of the day almost all the snow was gone. Monday morning the temperatures had dropped again and by the afternoon it was snowing again

 I'm writing this post on Monday afternoon so there's really no telling how much snow we'll end up with this time but as of right now is coming down pretty good

The B side

 So a lot of you knew the song I posted about the other day by Maureen McGovern. Well back in high school I had a a 45 with that song on it. I know, I'm showing my age by saying I had a 45. Any way, I wonder how many of you know the song that was on the B side of that record. It was called  Midnight Storm. 

While we're talking about music. I'll post another video. I've had this song stuck in my head for a couple weeks now. 

The End of the Innocence by Don Henley

A quick and simple project

Saturday I didn't get nearly as crafty as I would have liked but I did do a quick and easy project. I used my cuddle bug die cutter and some tag dies

 

I can't remember where I saw it but someone took their old Christmas cards and recycle them into tags. So that's what I set out to do. The design on the card pretty much determined how many tags I could get from one card. Some it was only one while others were two or three

 

My absolute favorite was a card that I used four different sized tag dies and was able to get five tags out of one card

These were all cards that I got two years ago. Now I'll have to see how many tags I can get out of the cards I got this past Christmas.

The morning after

There's got to be a morning after. The snow storm ended and the morning after was bright and shiny with beautiful blue skies.

 

There's got to be a morning after reminded me of an old song. This is by Maureen McGovern and was the theme song from The Poseidon Adventure.

In the meadow we can build a snowman

But seriously, who would want to. There certainly is plenty of snow out there to build one but for me it's just way too cold. When I left for work yesterday morning it was 19 degrees and just getting started. We had a nice coating on the ground at that time.

 

From there it just kept coming down all day long. By the time I left work there was at least 8 inches of snow piled up on top of my car. Now of course it felt like a whole lot more but my estimate may be off. When I drove up the road approaching my house I realized that I was not going to get into my driveway. I parked in the street and trudged up the driveway through about a foot of snow. Before I did anything else I put on my boots, grabbed my gloves, and went outside and started shoveling. Once I was done with that I headed inside for a cup of coffee and my blanket. 

 

 

TGIF

I'm happy that it's Friday but I'm not happy that we're supposed to get a boatload of snow. Yesterday morning when I left for work it was only 18 degrees

I'm pretty sure today is supposed to be more of the same but with the addition of snow. Since they are calling for up to 8" I decided that I would do a Walmart run after work yesterday. Now I can go right home from work and hibernate until Sunday morning. I'm planning on trying to get crafty this weekend. We'll see how that goes. 

Better

 So I'm much better today than I was yesterday. When I got to work I handed my letter to the boss. We had a nice long talk and I spelled it all out for him and told him how I felt. He told me I could fire her and he would back me. 

I've calmed down considerably and my original thoughts of handing in my resignation have passed. I honestly do like my job and I don't want to start over somewhere else. 

As for the other employee, she wasn't scheduled yesterday and I highly doubt that she will show up today. Will I fire her? I'm thinking that instead perhaps keeping her there and letting her know in no uncertain terms that if she ever talks to me the way she did again that it will be the end of her employment and that I do have the authority to do it.

We'll see how things go. 

Now hopefully I can move on to a better subject for tomorrow.

Beyond words

 There will be no happy post today. I just got done writing up the events that took place between myself and another employee when I was leaving work yesterday. To say I'm fuming is putting it mildly. I considered calling off for tomorrow. Instead I wrote my side of the story. I will hand it to the boss first thing in the morning and I'll tell him that if that is the kind of employee he wants then maybe I don't belong there.

I would go into detail about what happened but it's very long winded and not a nice story.

It's a start

I've been in search of my crafting mojo for quite some time now. No matter how hard I've searched it keeps one step ahead of me and out of reach. Yesterday for my day, off after thinking about crafting, procrastinating and doing other things, I finally went to the craft room and worked on a card. It's not the best I've ever done but at least it's a start. Wade's oldest son and his wife sent me a box of assorted color blank cards and some metallic markers for Christmas so I wanted to make them a thank you card.

Here's a couple of close ups just for fun. 

I hadn't taken the card blanks out of the box and I thought they were a different size. I made the snowflake panel for the size I thought the cards were. It all worked out in the end though. 

I cute the snowflakes out with my cricut in various sizes and then glued them to the light blue panel. Then I used the metallic markers to draw the lines on them.

Back up

It's always good to have a backup plan. It's even better when you have a daughter who provides you material for a back-up plan . 

It's only 3 days into the year and here I am with nothing to blog about. Lucky for me my daughter had sent me this Snoopy cartoon in a text message to use for when I needed something to blog about