Farewell February

 Here we are the last day of February already. It will be spring time before you know it. While we're working through these last days of winter, how about a cup of tea?

The above picture was in my OneDrive  dated February 25, 2012. It was followed by the edit I did on it. I always liked texture.

Just stuff

Pardon my absence yesterday. Friday night after I got home from work, I made myself some dinner and then it was nap time. Needless to say napping trumps blogging.

We're back to cold weather again. Saturday we started out with some sunshine but ended up with snow. At least it was better than Friday morning. When I went to leave for work I had to chip through a very thick layer of ice on my windshield.

I turned on my fake fireplace for a bit. No heat coming off of it but it looks kind of nice

Late morning I headed to Walmart to pick up a few things. Feeling lazy and not like cooking I decided to buy myself a pizza. I thought I would try this Philly steak Pizza

It was okay but nothing to write home about. Hopefully my day at work goes quick today

oh my stars

I snapped a quick picture of a customer in the store the other day. Outfits like this are typical for this man. He always wears something with a wild and crazy print on it

Text message

Shortly before the end of my day yesterday I got a text message from the boss

w

So what did I do with the flowers? I found 5 random female customers and handed them to them and said this is for you, have a nice day. Not one single lady looked the least bit offended. As a matter of fact I got a smile and a thank you out of each one of them.

Monday

 The weather was gorgeous and I wasted the majority of the day doing nothing inside. Gibbs was quite disgusted with me and not at all interested in what was on the tv.

I did pop out into the front yard for a bit to see what I could see. There's still snow left on the ground but a whole lot less than what we had.

You can actually see grass now. 

If you ventured into my back yard you would also see a whole lot of mud.

I like the hydrangea even when they are just all dried up like this. I never know if you are supposed to leave them go or cut them off.

The nose knows

 

But he promises me that he's not talking.

It's not much, but I did pull my camera out and start taking some pictures.

Archive dive

 Some oldies but goodies.

The first one is with a slight edit and the second is the same picture with an extreme edit.

And one final one that show the same picture done 6 different ways. Can you tell that I used to spend a LOT of time playing with pictures?

Reading

 I came across a list of suggested titles and thought I would share the book list here with you.

yep thats me

Ordinary things

 It seems like ages ago, I was very interested in improving my photography skills. I took pictures of anything and everything. After the pictures were taken I spent hours on editing. Sometimes just tweaking lighting and other times doing wild crazy things. 

I was in search blog material so I dug through the archives. I often took pictures of very ordinary things. 

I took pictures of buttons

I took pictures of pens

I took pictures of a glass dish and a bracelet

I don't know how or why I got away from taking pictures so often. I really need to start picking up the camera again and looking at the world through the lens.

Free to good home

 That's exactly what the headline will read if Gibbs doesn't straighten up and fly right. He woke me up at 3:00am Wednesday morning with the whining and barking. I yelled for him to go lay down and go to sleep. I just fell back asleep and he started up again at 3:30. Then one more time at 4:00. I could have gotten out of bed to see what his problem was but it was 3:00am. When I finally got out of bed and went downstairs to let him outside I discovered that he had pushed the gate out and went over to the other side of the basement (the Ann cave). That wouldn't be a problem except he left a pile of poop on the rug and peed on the couch in 4 different places. 

Go ahead and tell me just how cute he is. At this moment I'm just not seeing it. He's really trying my patience.

winging it

 My week is screwed up, my mojo is gone so in order to have a post up today I'm just going to wing it.

Sunday morning the week got off to a bad start. The dog woke me up whining and barking before the alarm went off. When I went to my car the low tire pressure light came on and it was only 7 degrees out. When I got to work there was a truck parked in my parking spot. When the deli girl came in she said she couldn't work Monday because she had a funeral to go to. I couldn't find anyone to work it so that meant I had to work on my day off so that the deli manager who covers bakery on Monday could do the deli. 

So here I sit on Tuesday, in my pajamas when I'm normally at work, wondering what the heck day this really is. I'm likely to forget to put the garbage out tonight for pick up tomorrow.

Happy Valentine's Day

Because I love each and every one of you who visit me here each day I got you some flowers for Valentine's Day.

I'll let you decide which color you like best.

 

Not only is today Valentines Day but it also would have been my dads 99th birthday. Maybe that's what made me go down the cookie aisle the other day and see those cookies. 

To answer a few questions from yesterdays post:

Ginny asked where he bought his cookies. Back then the big grocery store chain in our area was Loblaws and that's where he always shopped.

Several of you asked if I bought those cookies. The answer is no I did not. Although back in the day I did eat my fair share of them, they really aren't my favorite. Not to mention I do not need to be eating any cookies. at all. I'm trying to get back on track with my eating. Buying cookies wouldn't have helped that effort.

Grandpa cookies

Years ago, when my father was still alive he used to buy the cheap generic duplex sandwich cookies. Since one package was too much for him to eat by himself, he would split them up. He would put a third of the package in a bread bag (He saved bread bags rather than buying storage bags) a second third of the package in another bread bag and the last third he would save for himself. Those bags were then delivered to my house and my brother's house for our kids. They were always known as Grandpa cookies. For some reason I decided to walk down the cookie aisle at Walmart yesterday and there on the shelf were grandpa cookies.

Back then these did not come from Walmart. As a matter of fact Walmart wasn't even around in our area then.

So sweet

It's almost Valentine's Day. It's not necessarily one of my most favorite days. Being a single person on Valentines day is really the pits. Of course when Wade was still alive we never really did much of anything. There was always a card and maybe some candy. 

The other day one of our regular customers was in the store. He's an older man. He asked if I was working alone and I said no, Kelly is on lunch right now. So he asks if it's just the two of us. I told him yes and he said he had something out in the car for us. He finished his shopping and then came back a while later with two of these.

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I confess there are already a few less pieces in the box.

Ann line one please

I heard that page so many times yesterday that I was ready to change my name. There were the typical calls for milk order, lottery order, one from the bank regarding a discrepancy in our deposit. Then there was the call from the state trooper regarding a stolen vehicle that was recovered in our parking lot a few weeks ago. He wanted a copy of the tape from our security cameras. Unfortunately the boss had left for the day so I could only take a message. 

Then there was the strange. First was the call regarding our listing on google maps. The girl kept saying she needed to update our information because not everything for our business was showing. She went on to say that if the information wasn't updated then it wouldn't show certain things such as when our store is open. I told her to send him something in the mail. She tried explaining something else and I told her that I had seen our listing on google maps before and it looked just fine.

Next strange call, when I answered the phone a girl with a heavy accent said "we would like to purchase your used cooking equipment" I told her we didn't have any cooking equipment for sale. She asked if we were a restaurant and I said no, a grocery store. 

Now I can't help wondering if our google maps information was all up to date if this last caller would have known we weren't a restaurant. Thankfully today I won't have to take all the phone calls. It can be someone elses headache today.

You're all awesome.

First of all I want to thank all of you for your sweet comments yesterday. You guys are just the best.

Now how about some funny stories.

Let's start with spelling. Kelly in the deli is an intelligent woman but she can't spell to save her life. She'll be the first one to tell you that she just cannot spell. The other day she was writing the soup of the day on the chalkboard. She asked me how to spell noodle. I spelled it for her and she said "I was thinking it was with a u but  that didn't sound right." I started laughing and I told her that if she spelled it with a u then it would be a naked piece of pasta.

Now that I've picked on Kelly how about I tell you a funny story about me. I rarely wear my glasses while I'm at work because they just bother me. I often take them off and set them on the shelf. Yesterday I had had them up on top of my hat. A little later on I was looking for them they weren't on my head, they weren't on the shelf and I said to Kelly I can't find my glasses anywhere. She looked at me and said they're on your face. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. I'm still laughing as I type this.

Excuse

 I skipped posting yesterday because the only thing I had in my head was something very whiney and  would have just been a big old pity party for me. I just didn't want to go there. 

I suppose today isn't going to much better. I found this on Facebook yesterday.

I read this and thought, sometimes? For me it's more like most times. The pictures I see fade before they ever fully develop. I'm not looking for sympathy, just stating fact. In some cases, I know that it's been a matter of me not putting enough effort in to achieve what I wanted. When pictures include other people though, there are things that are beyond my control.

Don't worry, I'm not a total lost cause. I do try and find joy. I think it's easier on days when I go to work though. Then, I'm surrounded by people. On my days off, I'm totally alone and have way too much time to think. 

Have you had enough?

I know I have. And yet here I am still talking about the snow. I started Saturday off rather lazy however I did manage to get my laundry done. All morning long I kept watching snow coming down. I tried to get a picture of it but it didn't really show up. The Sun was shining the snow was falling and since I had nowhere to go it was really rather pretty . 

By early afternoon I realized that I needed to head outside and do some shoveling. My sidewalk was really deep and I needed to shovel around the car. Before I headed outside I took a few pictures through the basement window

And here's just one more picture to show you just how deep it is out on the deck.

So happy it's Saturday

 I'm pretty sure that the majority of the day will be spent....

We got hit again with snow Thursday night. When I woke up Friday morning my first indication that it was going to be a rough day was when I went to open the door to let Gibbs out. I was pushing snow with the door and he didn't want to go out.

I got dressed for work, sat and drank a cup of coffee then headed outside to see how bad it was. The bottom of the driveway was way too full and I knew if I tried to drive through it I would get stuck. I pulled on my boots, bundled up and walked to work. It's only about a half mile so it's not that bad of a walk. Walking sounded like a much better plan than shoveling.

Fast forward through my morning and I was almost done with all my baking for the day when the oven decided that it was not going to work any more. I put in a call to the guy who takes care of fixing that stuff . He was supposed to stop by Friday night to look at it. As of right now I don't know what it's status is. I could be a baker without an oven.

At the end of the day, I bundled back up and walked back home. It's always a much less pleasant walk. By then I'm tired and it's up hill. It's not a steep incline but it's enough to make a difference. 

At least when I got home the driveway had been plowed. I still need to go out and do a little shoveling because the car was in the driveway so they couldn't plow all the way up.

I really do hate winter.

A new sitcom

 Where I work, the deli and bakery are one area with two managers. Kelly is the deli manager and I am the bakery manager. We've worked together for 25 years. We have some crazy conversations sometimes and we've waited on a lot of crazy customers. We were talking yesterday and we said that they should come out with a sitcom about our departments. I suggested they call it Kelly in the deli. I think it has a nice ring to it. Aside from the customers we have plenty of employee craziness too.

Maybe I should do a weekly crazy customer/employee of the week post. 

For now I'm just going to huddle under a blanket though. It's cold and snowy and I want to go into hibernation. At least it's Friday.

Ready for this week to be over

 Yesterday was one of those days that just tried my patience. Customers and employees alike were getting on my nerves. On top of that we have a forecast for extreme winter weather coming. They are calling for freezing rain and then up to 12" of snow. I'm ready to crawl under a blanket and stay there till spring.

Ground hogs day

 Since today is ground hogs day, I thought this might be apropriate.

This is Punxsutawney Phil's ex-wife, Phyllis, who now lives in Florida and said that Phil is a compulsive liar.

It came to me through Facebook

 I was wondering what I would use for a post today. I had no idea. I was hoping that maybe I would get crafty and I could show pictures of something I made. In the meantime I was scrolling through Facebook and started watching a video. The video ended and I scrolled on. Apparently I hadn't watched till the very end because the little window came up down in the right hand corner. Then the next video came up and it was a song I'd never heard before. I listened and then I listened again. Then I decided this had to be my post for the day.

A comforting thought for anyone who has ever lost a loved one.