Just Simply Holly

Yes, I know that I only went three time zones away and I also know that I’ve been home almost a week now. But for some reason or another I have been SOOOOOOO exhausted! Trying to adjust back to my own time zone isn’t going as easily as I thought it would…LOL. I’ve stayed up well past midnight nearly every night since I’ve been home and although I usually wake up before my husband leaves for work in the mornings, I wasn’t able to do that a single time this week. There was actually one night that I was awake until about 45 minutes before his alarm went off…LOL!

I have so many things that I have to do and even more that I want to do, but I have spent the past few days struggling just to keep my eyes open. Even after sleeping until after 10 this morning I’m sitting here, almost 2 hours later, barely awake.

I’m pretty sure the heat wave we’re having doesn’t help much either, especially knowing that heat makes me tired. But we did manage to get the air conditioners put in before it got too bad, so the house stays at a comfortable 75 degrees, unless you’re sitting directing in front of one of the air conditioners. I’m just hoping this heat isn’t a sign of what the summer is going to be like!

Yes, I admit that I’m TOTALLY behind on this…LOL! But with as late in the year as the cold weather lasted, I also was not going to rush into getting this stuff packed up either! Personally, I’d rather dress warmer or snuggle down under extra blankets at night rather than turn the heat up!

Since my trip to California is in a week I plan on spending the bulk of this week getting things around and ready for my trip! And while I’m digging through the totes trying to find my warmer weather clothes I figured I might as well get everyone’s warm weather clothes out as well as the lighter bed spreads and quilts. That way I can get everything washed up and then pack up the heavy clothes, blankets and down comforters and get them put away before I leave!

So, if you don’t hear from me much this next week, you now know what I’ll be doing…LOL! I will be sure to stop by before I leave and let you know that I’m outta here!!!

For the past week or two, I just haven’t been feeling that good. I’m always exhausted, VERY grumpy and just plain out of it! Yesterday, when my husband and I were cutting the boards for the Dogs In Yard sign, I went to go down the steps on the back porch and blacked out for a split second. Long enough that when I came to I was completely missing the top step. If it weren’t for the fact that I had a 6 foot length of 2 by 4 in my hand to use as a brace, I’d have fell straight on my face!

The other morning I woke up at 4:00 AM in the midst of an asthma attack, what’s really strange about that is the fact that I haven’t had a problem with my asthma in at least 3 years, if not longer, other than the two times I’ve had bronchitis.

Today, I’m very shaky for some reason. I ate breakfast and I also ate lunch, which I never do, yet my hands are still really shaky. I know, rather than sitting here and blogging about it, I need to go see the doctor. But I just don’t like doctors and I think, somewhere deep inside, I worry that they’ll tell me that there’s something very wrong with me.

On a more positive note, the weather is BEAUTIFUL here today! It’s sunny and in the upper 60’s with a light breeze. I have the slider door open and can hear all the birds outside. It’s probably one of the nicest sounds in the world! And the breeze feels and smells wonderful! It’s one of the biggest reasons why I love this time of the year so much. So what are you up to today? Anything fun going on?

I’m sitting here physically exhausted tonight, and can guarantee you that I won’t have ANY problems sleeping tonight…LOL! I had to have my son downtown this morning for an appointment at 11:00, which ended up taking almost 3 hours for him, but only about 30 minutes for me. So I had to find something to pass the time while I was waiting for him. Fortunately it was sunny and semi warm, so it wasn’t that bad. I just found a parking spot in the sun and started reading the book I brought along. All went well until I dozed off and missed a call from my son on my cell phone letting me know he was done and I could come and get him (He didn’t know that I was sitting outside of the building). But the ringer for my voicemail woke me up so I tried calling back, but was immediately sent to his voicemail. Rather than play phone tag I just walked over to where he was at and went in and told the lady at the desk that he had called me to come and pick him up. She looked at me with this REALLY puzzled look on her face and said “Well I don’t know where he is at, where did he tell you he was?”. I’m not feeling very good about her answer but she sent me upstairs to where he “should” be and sure enough, there he was.

We had 2 hours until his next appointment and considering the fact that we live about 45 minutes from downtown, it would have been a complete waste of gas to drive all the way home, then come right back to the same area for his next appointment, so we decided to drive around downtown to see if we could find somewhere that we could grab a bite to eat. The only thing(s) that I TOTALLY dislike about downtown are the CRAZY drivers and the lack of non paid parking spots. As we were driving I had some dude in an SUV completely cut me off and I had to lock up the brakes to keep from slamming into the back of him. My son happened to notice that he wasn’t from Ohio, his tags were from Pennsylvania. I was flipping pissed because he pulled out right in front of me cutting me off and there was not a single car behind me, how difficult would it have been for him to have waited a few seconds for me to pass by so that he could pull out safely? He’s REALLY lucky I was in a good mood because I’d have loved to have completely and totally kicked his butt. Then he could have went crying all the way back home and hired himself a Pennsylvania personal injury lawyer to try and come after me for whopping his butt! Then I’d just have to sick my 15 year old son, who likes to think he’s a Ninja, on him, maybe that would teach him a lesson…LOL!

By the time we got finished up with my son’s afternoon appointment it was already after 4:00 and I had to stop at the drug store and pick up some prescriptions, so I didn’t get home until after 5:30. My poor puppies had been home alone for 7 HOURS and they welcomed me with one HECK of a mess! They destroyed a shoe, a spatula and a piece of wood that I have NO clue where they found. One of them also had gotten sick and there was a nice pile of puppy puke that needed to be cleaned up. But, it could have, and has been, MUCH worse.

The worst part about today is that I missed my daughters first track meet. It started at 4:00 and got over about 6:30. But my husband was able to get to it and they are on their way home right now. Although my daughter didn’t do so great personally, her team did win the meet, so she’s happy! She’s got some work to do, she knows that, but since this is her first year running track, it’s still a learning experience for her!

OK, gotta wrap this up and finish dinner!

As you probably know, the house that I’m living in is surrounded by about 60 acres of protected woodland. This means that we have fairly significant peace and quiet out here. The house hadn’t been lived in or taken care of for a couple of years when we moved in and the yard is a HUGE mess! I was considering going outside today and working on some of the leaves, but as I walked around the yard after taking the trash out, I became totally overwhelmed!

Although living in the woods like we do has many good points, I’m really trying to figure out how in the world we’re going to clean up ALL these leaves! I mean, there is honestly not a single part of the lawn (which is about 3/4 of an acre on a 2.5 acre lot) that isn’t covered in at least a couple of inches of leaves, and some areas have leaves that are several inches deep. My first thought was to either rake or blow them out into the woods, but the reality is that if I were to do that, I’d probably end up with a 2 foot high wall of leaves surrounding the yard…LOL!

I’m sure that my husband has some better thoughts or ideas than I do about what to do with all these leaves, so I think I’m just going to let him deal with it…LOL! I know that I can rent a commercial walk behind blower from my boss for next to nothing, so that might be a pretty good idea too! I’ve been trying to convince the dogs that we need to take a family nap, but they’re not being very cooperative with me….LOL!

So, I guess I might as well get back to that mountain of laundry I was talking about earlier!

Well, the latest snow storm has come and gone, thankfully! My area ended up getting nearly 8 inches of snow, bringing our total snow fall amount for this season to 49.7 inches. I have no doubt we have at least one more decent snow storm left this season, if not more. In 1994 my step daughter was living with us and over her spring break from school we had beautiful weather. But the Sunday before she was to go back to school we had a major snow storm come through and she ended up going back to school two days later than she was supposed to. But if we lived a couple of hours south of here, we’d be in even worse shape! The Columbus area got over 20 inches of snow yesterday, which was a record breaker for their area. So I guess I shouldn’t complain, because we could have it much worse, snow wise!

All I know is that I am VERY tired of snow and cold weather! Spring cannot get here soon enough as far as I’m concerned! And after all of the snow that we’ve gotten this winter, I swear if we get anymore I’m going to borrow my mom’s Johnston and Murphy luggage, pack everything I can grab and run away to somewhere warm and tropical and never return! And yes, don’t worry, although my PC won’t fit well into a suitcase, I can leave it for my hubby and pack his laptop instead…LOL!

In the mean time, I’d better get busy, I have a TON of stuff to do today and no one seems to be interested in helping me. Any volunteers?

The area that I live in is currently under a Winter Weather Warning! We’ve gotten about 3 inches of snow already and can get anywhere from another 3-6 inches, depending on which TV station you check…LOL! I know that isn’t much snow for this area, we have gotten more, but it’s falling very quickly and it’s also a very wet snow, so the roads STINK! On top of that we have freezing rain coming in tonight which will make the road conditions in the morning horrible! Hopefully that kids schools will be delayed and/or cancelled, but I’m also not going to hold my breath…LOL!

It’s been yet another busy day for me. I got the family room all cleaned up, transferred my hubbys info from his old laptop to his new one, finished transferring my stuff from my old computer to my new one, tore my old computer apart, put together the desk we bought for our daughter, set my old computer up at her new desk and hauled fire wood into the house. I REALLY could take a nap right now…LOL! Getting up so early yesterday morning really threw me off!

I’ve had the chance a few times today to sit and watch the birds outside at the feeders, OMG are they ever beautiful! At one point today I seen a total of 6 Cardinals between the 4 feeders. I’ve managed to get a few really good shots of the birds lately, I’ll have to get them uploaded to the computer so that I can share them with you!

Allright, enough play time, I need to get busy!

This won’t be a long post, but I wanted to apologize for my absence over the past couple of days. I woke up yesterday morning with the worst migraine I’ve ever had that decided to hang on and rear it’s ugly head for almost 15 hours! I was on the verge of going to the ER when it finally gave in and started to go away! So I spent the bulk of the day yesterday between doses of medication and sleeping.

Today was kind of an R&R day after yesterday, but I also had some homework to finish up before my Algebra class tonight. I also got the results back from my first Algebra test that I took last week. I scored a 95%!!! YAY!!!!!! This instructor is SOOOOOOOOOO much better than the one I had last semester! He breaks things down so much better, I actually feel like I’m understanding Algebra, which is scary on so many levels….LOL! But I do enjoy it this year, I don’t feel so stressed out about it!

Tomorrow morning I have my 6 month follow up appointment at the eye doctors. There was a “problem” at my last exam and he wanted me to come back in six months for a recheck, rather than a year. I know that there i something wrong with my eyes, I’m hoping it’s nothing more than the fact that it’s basically become necessary for me to get bifocals. If I’m doing something here at the computer I absolutely cannot have my glasses on or I can’t read, but if I don’t have them on when I look over to the TV, I can’t see that either…LOL! Getting older SUCKS! At the rate I’m falling apart, I probably should check into a decent life insurance policy….LOL!

I’ll do some catching up tomorrow, but for now I need to get some sleep!

I tell you, at first the thought of using the wood burner scared the CRAP out of me!  I guess after living next door to and working for a fire fighter for almost 3 years, and listening to the horror stories of some of the fires, purposely making a fire inside my home terrified me!  But after this morning, I totally LOVE it!  It was REALLY REALLY cold this morning, like the coldest it’s been this winter!  When I first got up the temp on the news was reading 1 degree, but I think that might have been a mistake because a few minutes later the weather lady said it was like 6 or 7 degrees.  But either way, THAT’S COLD!  And even with the furnace running and a couple of small space heaters to help out, the house was FREEZING!

So my hubby started a fire in the wood burner that I’ve kept going all day…LOL!  It’s not a roaring fire now, just some good hot coals!  And with the fan on the wood burner on, it REALLY helps keep the house feeling decent!  We don’t mind the chilly nights, but when it’s day time and it’s STILL chilly, no thank you!  And I’d rather burn a few pieces of wood than kick up the thermostat!  The price of bulk LP is through the roof and with the minimum amount for a delivery, it’s just not something we can do right now.  So we keep the thermostat set at 64 and supplement!

My son went back to school today.  Amazingly, he was up and had eaten before I woke up…LOL!  I guess he must have been excited about the thought of going back to school?  SCARY!  I’m trying to get some housework finished up around here so that I can go tomorrow and get the bills paid and do the shopping I need to do.  I also want to take my daughter out to lunch before she goes back to school on Monday!  So I’d better stop typing and get busy!  TTFN!

Have you ever had one of those moments in life where you see something happen and you think to yourself, “Did I REALLY see what I think I just seen?”. I’ve had a few of them, but one that happened a few years ago sticks out to me more than any other.

We used to live in a large mobile home community. Rather than everyone having a mailbox on their own property, we had those large community cbu mailboxes, the ones that you pull up to and each person has a key to their own box. The ones in our community were located in these circle cul-de-sacs at the end of each street.

Anyway, I didn’t live far from the mailboxes, so I would usually just walk down to check my mail. One day, as I was walking down to the mailboxes, I seen a large delivery type truck going around the circle where the mailboxes were. The next thing I knew, I heard this loud scraping type noise, then I heard the sound of metal breaking. As I got closer to the mailboxes I realized that the delivery truck had literally torn the mailboxes right off their pedestal. It seems that there was a car parked in the circle and the truck was trying to squeeze between the car and the mailboxes. If the driver would have had any common sense, he’d have realized that there was no way his truck was small enough to do that.