Photos from my walk

As my sister likes to tell me and I have probably mentioned before, everything happens for a reason.  I think this is true in a number of different ways.  I am meant to be here in this place.  I spent my high school years here and came home when I didn't have any other options.  There are many things about Eastern Kentucky that I like and the proximity to nature is one of them.  Whereever I go next, I hope the scenery is just as pretty.
Today was a beautiful day.  It was much warmer than expected for mid January so I grabbed my camera and went for a walk.  I thought I would share some with you.

 Check out the tiny moon in the middle of the photo.  This was at around 3:30 this afternoon.

 This is a trailer that Mother Nature has not been nice to.  I think it's a sad comment on life here but still visually compelling.



















Rusted Gate- also visually compelling.

We've had a lot of rain lately, so these little waterfalls are everywhere.

Some dried reeds

My turn around point-headed for home

I don't think that goes there.

The creek

Another photo of the moon

Sunset

This tree looked kind of like it was glowing.

The road home

The ridge over home.

Happy Thanksgiving from the stranded

On this very special Thanksgiving Blog, I want to tell you the thing I am most thankful for-you (because you’re full of awesome sauce and don’t you forget it) … and everyone else who has ever interacted with me.  You are all important because as I’ve heard “people come into and go out of your lives for a reason; some don’t stay long enough some stay longer than we’d like.”  I think it’s part of the “everything happens for a reason” gambit.

You have come into my life for a specific purpose… I’m hoping it’s a good one.  Maybe you called my work and got to talk to me and maybe I fixed your problem and brightened your day with my cheerful attitude and quick laugh.  Maybe that conversation I had with you lightened my spirit and reminded me that not everyone is going to yell at me and I can stay at that job a little longer.   Maybe it was the other kind of call… where you immediately start with aggressiveness and name calling (A little tip, consider it a side benni…if you are a bitch to customer service you are not going to get what you want.)

Maybe you’re my sister-who has to stay in my life forever- she called earlier to see if we could get together tomorrow… she was bummed that she had to work today and I completely understand that.  Her family, my Mom and I will meet up to grab some food and maybe shop.

You could be the friend I fell out of touch with-I can be really bad about that or the person I decided I didn’t want in my life anymore.  You could be the manager who fired me.  You might be the person I want back in my life-watch out, I’m coming for you.

The person I am most thankful for is my Mom… No matter how much I get irritated or annoyed with her; I love her bunches.  She puts up with my moods and bitchiness and she let me move home bringing all my baggage (emotional and literal.)

Today, I am thankful I have a place to live, a job and hope for the future.  And I am thankful for you-Thank you to all the people who have come, stayed a while and left or are still here.  I am me because of you and I wouldn’t want it any other way.  I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

What would you do?

Stranded in Hazard-but only for a little while

So let me start by saying that today was a monumentally crappy day…  I got up- a little earlier because my bladder was yelling at me.  Got ready for work, had my coffee and walked out to my car.  I climb in and
Nothing. Nothing . Nothing. It wouldn’t start.  No click, no wheezing-nothing.

No big deal, we took Joe’s truck (I drove because I am a terrible passenger-white knuckles the whole bit-I blame my Dad but that is a story for another time.)  Joe noticed one of his tires was a little low and we were going to stop for air on the way to work but the one place was too busy and the other was inconvenient-we’ll stop on the way home.

We got to Hardee’s for breakfast-they took a little longer than usual, no big deal we can make up the time… Then we discovered that they forgot my straw… And I knew the universe was screwing with me.  I had about 50% crazy customers all day-there were some really good customers too.  The day seemed to fly till my last customer of the day… trying to authenticate him (we have to ask security questions) was like pulling teeth.  What should have been a 3 minute call was 20 minutes and I left work frustrated.

We got in the truck to head to Food City for air and PowerBall tickets.  I better go the speed limit with the way my day has gone.    

10 minutes from work… fwump fwump fwump fwump.  It wasn’t just flat, the tire was shredded.  So we pulled into the lot of this little auto body shop.  A police Officer pulled in right behind us to make sure we were okay-“thank you Sir, just a flat.  I’m going to call Mom for help.”  I had to walk up the road a little to get cell service (thank Heavens I didn’t forget it.)  We wait-it took Mom about 45 minutes to get to us… we listened to my iPod. I mentioned that I was thinking just yesterday that I need to find a way to spend more time outside and Joe said “just not this way.”  We stood and waited… the gentleman who owns the lot was nice enough to let us leave the truck there overnight.

Mom came to get us and I drove us to Wal-Mart to get a tire iron… There are few things that can make me feel better when I’m having a rough time of things… one of those is chocolate but I’m trying to cut back, one is alcohol and I try not to indulge too often because I have an addictive personality and the other is PJs.  PJs, jommies, jammys, pajamas whatever you call them, them make me happy.  I like nice soft ones with fun prints or pretty shiny stuff.  I’ve haven’t bought any lately because I haven’t needed them.  When we got to Wal-Mart I made a bee-line to the PJs.  I considered the cotton night shirts with the Halloween themes, the flowered flannel nightgowns and fuzzy sleep pants but I decided to go with the soft pink pajamas with the darker pink bows and the little black scotty dogs.  They make me smile.

We went back to get Joe’s tire and then home.  Unloaded Mom’s car and went to see if we could get my car to start. The *bleep* *bleep* started on the first try…  Grrrr. While we were putting the tire in the trunk of my car we talked about how everything happens for a reason… better for this to happen while Joe could have help and not while he was on the way to visit his kids, in a spot with no cell signal.  And I would not have gotten the new jommies.

I am wearing the scotty dog jommies right now… I know that when I go to bed I’ll wake up and tomorrow will be another day and it is bound to be better than today.

Thanks again for coming to rescue us, Mom.

As seen on television

The US has a great history of ordering stuff through the mail.  It started with the local mercantile or General Stores.  If there was something you needed, they would order it for you.  And, of course, you would have to wait forever for it to arrive and it was really expensive.

Then the catalog came along… One of the most famous and longest running was Sears and Roebuck.   We had a reproduction Sears & Roebuck catalog when I was growing up… I loved to look through at all the interesting things that could be ordered.   Sears started with watches.  Then he partnered with Roebuck and they added bicycles, farm equipment, cars, dolls, clothes, indoor toilets and eventually houses.  When I looked it up, I learned that Ben Franklin had a catalog order business selling science and academic books.

Around the 1930s, people could order stuff from the ads in the back of comic books and magazines.  In the 70s it was things like Sea Monkeys.  You can still order stuff from the back of comic books-mostly back issues.  Mail order this way was tricky.  Some of the ads were honest- some made the product sound much more exciting than it really was.  You may not have seen it but what springs to mind is an episode of The Waltons.  John Boy wants to build muscle so he orders the body building kit from a mail-order ad featuring a strong man type illustration.  When the ‘kit’ arrives, it’s just a booklet about resistance training.  When he is discovered, John Boy gets the “if it seems too good to be true-it probably is” talk from Daddy. 

Now we can order from tv, catalog, magazine and internet.  We can order just about anything… We would never have to leave our homes again.  I order fun shirts and electronics from Woot.com, books from Amazon and craft stuff (including yarn) from Crafty.com

But Wait-There’s More!

In the 1990s the Infomercial took over.  Exercise videos, diet systems, gadgets to make our lives easier and better.  Not that the infomercial is bad-it brought us some awesome products: Bare Minerals, Oxi-Clean and others.   You’ve seen them and probably thought about buying one or ten… sandwich maker, pajama jeans, pocket fisherman, stompies, and the Old Brooklyn Lantern.

As I’ve told you in the past- Mom watches a lot of Hallmark Movie Channel.  I have been convincing her that there are better things on TV than watching those movies all day.  So now most of what she sees on HMC is Murder She Wrote and other mystery shows on the weekends (This weekend is Perry Mason.)  The result of watching all this HMC is that we see all the short infomercials all the time.

Because of these infomercials, I visit the “As seen on TV” section of Wal-Mart and Magic Mart.  I have an alumawallet, Magic Mesh, Salon Express and the Genie Bra.  And Mom got herself and Orgreenic Skillet.  The infomercial for each of these is true… but there is always that little extra that they leave out.
My Genie bras are great, comfortable and supporting-kind of like a sports bra that lifts and separates.  What you don’t know is that they come with these triangle panels that you have to remove before washing and reinsert after.  The bras would work without the panels but they would not lift or separate.  Plus, you have to pull it up to get it positioned right.  I tried to pull it on over my head to my waist then pull it up from there, it rolled up and I had to take it off to get it unrolled.  My only problem with my Alumawallet is that it isn’t big enough.  We have used the Magic Mesh so well that it is falling apart.  The Orgreenic isn’t better than any other non-stick skillet.  The Salon Express needs a steady hand, room to spread out and special nail polish.

That said-I still buy this stuff… and what I’m really waiting for is Tag-Away, a supposedly natural way to remove skin tags.  2 bottles for $19.99 plus shipping and handling…

Odd little car

I love cars.  I especially love old and uncommon cars.  I daydream about going to car shows and interviewing car owners and taking photos of the owners with their cars for a classic car blog.

 A couple weeks ago, Mom and I were headed to Jenny Wiley Theater in Prestonsburg, KY. To see Grease-it was great, by the way.   We drove past this little car lot.  At the back of the lot I saw a little tan car that looked like an old Volvo or VW station wagon-but I knew it was neither.    I’ve been bothered by it since…What is it?  Where was it made? How much do they want for this odd little car?

Today I went back to Prestonsburg after spending my time at the library.  Aptly enough, the little car lot is called Little Auto Sales.  I parked and walked straight to this odd tan car.  Walked around it, opened the door and looked in.  And I took photos…

When the lot owner came over, I asked questions.  This is a 1967 Trabant- Manual 4 on the column-yes I said on the column, 2-cylinder.  He has done a bunch of work on it: new rubber around the doors, new seat covers and he has a tail light cover for the left side that he’s replacing this week.  He is asking $3995 for it.  I didn’t ask to look under the hood but I should have-I’ve never seen the innards of a 2-cylinder.

After getting home, and showing the photos seen above, I Googled Trabant.  They were made in East Germany… and they were very economical for the time.  It would not be a very good every day car.  It’s a collector’s car.  I imagine it’s slow (being a 2-cylinder,) loud and hard on gas.  It is cool looking though.  And getting to see it up close was totally worth the trip.

If you want to know more about these, Wikipedia has a page for the Trabant

I feel so old

I’m almost 40-Will be on Dec 30^th if you want to send gifts (I like gifts.)  I rarely feel or think of myself as my age; most of the time, in my head, I’m closer to 28 and apparently I look like I could claim it.  There are times when I’ll be talking to someone and think that they are within 5 years of my age, only to find later that they are 25!  Then there are times when I’ll be talking to someone and think they are way older…he was 35 but I think it may have been the bad mustache!

For most of my life I have felt younger; I think it had something to do with being younger in grade school.  I was right at the end of the cutoff date for starting kindergarten.  In grade school all but one of my classmates was older than me.  Then when I got to High School, I was the youngest in my graduating class-I think this may be a contributing factor in my inferiority complex.  It’s my own fault- when registration time came, my parents let me decide.  I sometimes wonder how differently I would have been had I chosen to wait.

There are a few things that make me feel my age:

finding out someone I used to babysit for is married with teenage children.

Seeing how grown the children of my family and friends are-especially if I haven’t seen the child in years.

Trying to go without sleep-I love to sleep and the thought of an all-nighter now scares the crap out of me.  I was a teen librarian for over 5 years and teens LOVE Lock-Ins-they get all hyper and sugar loaded.  The last one I worked was as a favor for a friend (I had already been fired and wanted to feel connected to the library field again)-it took about 4 cups of coffee, lots of candy and hyper teens to keep me going all night… I had fun then I went home and slept for 8 straight.

And now I can add road trips-not all road trips… just ones that include my Mom and shopping.  Last weekend we went to Dayton, OH for my Cousin Susie’s wedding reception.  The drive there was fine, we spent the night before in Lexington at Paul and Lori’s house (older brother and his wife-who puts up with us a lot.) The reception was great, laid back and very casual.  The hotel -Hampton Inn and Suites- was wonderful… mmm squishy bed with squishy pillows…if only there had been a hot tub. Nice helpful staff and hot breakfast included.  Sunday was the shopping day-I knew this going into the trip-I was the one using Google Maps.  I knew as soon as I had both Jungle Jim’s International Market and Sam’s Club on the same day I was in trouble.  I made Mom agree that we weren't going through ALL of Ikea this time.  There were a few other stops in there too… mostly places at least 2 hours from home.  We finally finished at Sam’s at around 6PM and headed toward home.  My back hurt from walking at Mom’s slower pace and I was glad that I had worn sneakers and had flip-flops to change into.

We pulled unto Food City in Hazard to “get the last few things on my list” (-Mom) at around 11:30. I fell asleep in the car while Mom went in to get bread and OJ.  I was completely wiped out the next day and I’m not sure I’ve completely recovered yet.  Today I feel about 35, so I’m almost there.