Friday, July 13, 2012

Middle of the night snackers.

At work this week, there were a few people talking about middle of the night eating.  Stories were about middle of the night trips to the fridge, full glasses of milk, bites of cupcakes and so forth.  It all just struck me as odd.  Color me surprised when I found out that it is of regular occurrence for people to be up snacking instead of what I do-- sleep.

My brother Billy can give stories of his late night hunger.  Once, he decided that he was hungry for bacon.  He started making the bacon and then fell back to sleep.  I think that he awoke some crazy 5 hours later and found that he could have burned the house down since the bacon was still on and cooking. 

My brother Dumpy ate nearly all of a sheet cake one evening.  I can't recall if he is a sleep eater, though.  Still, nearly an entire sheet cake.  That's a lot of cake, people!

LeAnne reports that she started having middle of the night snacks when she was breast feeding and just never ditched the habit. 

Is my house in the minority for sleeping and not stopping to eat sometime in the middle of the night?  It strikes me as odd, but we may be the oddballs of the group.

Switching subjects-- And now for this episode of Snap, Crackle and POP!  You'll see that J-, sister to K- who has lived out of state for a year, was visiting with her Ohio mom when the horse that she was riding got spooked, flipped her, she bounced on one hip, bounced on the other and now may have to have a sliver of her hip screwed back into place.  Oh yes, you'll see that she's the same kid who rides horses competitively and will be turning 13 at the end of the month.  Georgia mom is on her way up in case surgery is to take place on Monday. 

Speaking of surgery, we have our beloved friend to all internets-- Rachael-- who will be having her snapped ankle surgically stabilized on Monday evening.  Girlfriend had an incident on stairs, with a toy, a box of clothes and something in her post about a cat thinking that "hoomins are filled with jelly beans" and wanted to see if they broke open like pinatas.  She didn't break open, but she did send me an awesome photo of her swollen ankle.  This is the same ankle that she boofed when she was 16 and my understanding is that the doctor is going to clean up a bit of that damage while he is in there toolin' around.  She has a VERY active 2 year old who can have the tendency of getting into things when Rach is mobile and quick-to-move.  Needless to say, she is a bit concerned about Ellie and her adventurous ways while she is on the mend.

Keep these two ladies in your prayers, please? 

Smiles in my day:
-  K- was able to hang with her sibs yesterday at a local swimming hole.  (Truly a hole since it is an old quarry filled with water.)  J- wasn't able to swim, but it was fun and interesting to get to talk to her.  She is a kid with her head squarely on her shoulders and who says what she means and stands by it.  It was interesting to learn that she has the same dip-dobbly skin on her upper arms that K- has and also suffers from-- tada!-- reflux in exactly the same way.  We got on to talking about changes in a young woman's life, er, you know-- and though K-'s sisters were both in the age of 9 when all that came about, J- assured me that she is barely phased by it and that gives me hope that K- will be on the lighter end of things with that.  Breaking away from the gene pool isn't such a bad thing sometimes.
-  K- has muffins in the oven and we have declared it pajama day for at least the first half of the day.  We run so often that sometimes, it is good to just have time where we sit and just are.  At first, she was distressed that the time slots weren't completely full, but when pajama day was declared, all that sadness went away.  Girlfriend loves herself a good pajama day.
-  Rain!  We got rain yesterday.  When K- and I were up north with the family, Hubs said that the southern part of our county was doused in an hour long rain shower.  It even watered the tomato plants!  (Hubs reported that it was sideways rain.)  It was nice to skip watering.  My water bill came in the other day.  I am not lavish with watering, but I am doing what I need to do to keep the plants alive.  I have not watered the lawn, but only once and that was 4th of July for hopes not to burn the place down with residual firework sky garbage.  The bill was about $40.00 more than usual.  No doubt.  We're in a drought and the rain barrel couldn't carry me through.  :(  102 F calls for a bit deeper watering than just a swig. 
-  When fence neighbor was putting up the fence, we were so thrilled that we weren't going to have to fill that hole with an expensive fence ourselves that Hubs loaned off some tools to help motivate fence guy to get the job done.  The tools were returned and Hubs just went to recharge the drill.  The charger said that the pack was defective and it couldn't charge it.  Hubs was so upset and like a good man who has a tool that has gone wrong, he wanted to run out and buy a new tool set.  Unfortunately, this set wasn't just a drill, but a light and saw came with it.  It was Craftsman, so Hubs didn't go cheap, but he did loan fence guy the older set he had.  Turns out that Hubs was frustrated and left the battery in the charger anyhow.  Thank goodness, the pack charged overnight and now Hubs is no longer harboring ill feelings towards fence guy.  I told Hubs that we could have purchased a new set, as I would much rather buy a drill than to have to go through the work and money of replacing fence.  So happy that all worked out.  My man is happy that his tool works again.  It's the simple things.

Have a great weekend!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Measurements of distance.

I had to laugh today.  I had a lady come into the store and she was kind of bummed when someone bought something that she wanted to buy, and they did it right in front of her.

Ouch.

The item was one that I thought we had additional stock of, and she hadn't even considered that.  I was able to track it down for her and she came back to buy it from me.  She was extremely thankful since she stated on three separate occasions that she had "driven all the way down here."  All the way down here was from 10 minutes up the road.  I briefly considered telling her that I have a customer that, several times a year, travels to Japan and takes gifts from our store with her.  She said that the trip is 24 hours door to door. 

Me thinks that she wins the distance trip.

We have people say that on a fairly regular basis.  We are not on a truly regular course for anyone other than those who work there.  Well, and we're rather in the hood.  (Fine during the day, but I wouldn't walk the streets at night.) 

When I was a kid, we lived in our town.  Our town had a grocery, a post office, the corner store, a drug store and a Kmart.  We had anything you needed.  Truly, if there was a trip to go to, lets say the doctor, it was as if we were going on a trek that was further than driving to California.  I remember Mom driving me to one of the local universities for an award ceremony. 

You'd think that she drove me to India.

When I started dating Hubs, not only did he live in a different county, but he also lived in the snow belt and! it was 50 minutes door to door.  :gasp: 

You'd think that he lived on Mars. 

Because we weren't people of the biggest means :er, poor: we didn't vacation that often.  When we did, we went to the same places.  :zzz:  While that was trippin' out of the parental unit bubble comfort zone, we went. 

They made the drive feel like it lasted an eternity.  It was as if we were circumventing the globe by car and my dad had to have the window open the entire time-- rain, wind or shine.  Inevitably, I would lose the draw of who's going to sit behind Dad and I'd come back from vacation with a monster sinus infection as a result.

Good times.

This isn't to say that we didn't have good times on vacation.  It's just the drive that was, pardon me, hell.  Perhaps that is why I have a built-in travel cap on my time spent in the car and I am a home body.  I love going to new places, but I also love my own bed. 

I digress.

We've brought K- up to be a child who isn't bothered by distance.  Traveling isn't an issue and if, like a dog, you allow me to get out and stretch my legs every couple of hours, I can last a good 6 hours before I start getting to the point where I-want-to-get-out-now, please. The last bit of that drive to Chicago can occasionally be rather long.  Traffic makes it no better.

K- and Hubs started having Happy Daddy Day when she was two.  That was when Hubs started his "new job" (been there for almost 6 years) and since he had Mondays off and she did preschool only on Tuesday and Thursday at that point, they had travels.  They'd think nothing of hoping in the car and driving off to a destination in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia or some other place around Ohio for the day. 

My question is this:  Is distance driving viewed differently now than it was when I was a kid.  I mean, a mile still measures out the same.  Are people more willing to get out and get moving to places further out now than they were, or were they always willing to get out and I was just oblivious due to growing up in the town bubble? 

Smiles in my day:
-  Hubs caught a 20" bass yesterday and he said that it was the biggest fish he has ever caught.  He thought his hook was caught on a log.  :) 
-  Rev. K- is coming over tomorrow to talk and check out our gardens.  Hubs would like to have a butterfly class here in August and she wants to have a sit down with us and get the scoop. 

Have a great night!