Wash Day Blues

Darn the bad luck, my washer went out this week. It's back to the laundry mat for me until I can replace it. I hate the laundry mat. It just takes so much darn time to get things washed, dried, and folded. I'm not sure if I have mentioned it before but it takes me between 35 minutes and eternity to get home each day. I say eternity because I have to come across the Hampton Roads Bridge and tunnel which has a very bad habit of having traffic jams. I am not sure why. It just seems that people don't like tunnels and slow down WAY DOWN when driving in one. Then of course there is the idiot who will slam on there brakes, causing a fender bender and tying traffic up for hours. Those are BAD days. Anyway my point is when I get home I'm already tired. I still have dinner to prepare and just don't have time to go to the laundry mat. I don't have money for a new washer so it isn't like I can just call Sears to deliver. I do have a lead on a used one that I can get on Saturday IF it hasn't sold, so cross your fingers.

Catching up

It seems every time I sit down at this blog it is to only catch up with what has been happening since the last time I blogged. BORING. I really need to find my muse again and write. When I had my other blog I found myself writing about things. Not just gibberish. So lets see the boring stuff is. I haven't done anything but work and sleep.
The somewhat interesting stuff is:
Hurricane Irene blew though our area about three weeks ago, leaving a mess. Being in a mobile home we were smart enough to GET OUT. We had several days warning so we packed an over night bag, grabbed our cats and went to stay with my mom. Thankfully she is only a few miles away and in a much sturdier home. We settled in to what we hoped would only be an over night stay Not to be. FIVE days later we finally got to go home.
The wind from the storm had knocked a branch down from the tree in the empty lot behind us. It hit both the electric wires and the roof of our trailer. The transformer blew and so did power.

While we were waiting for the power company to come out, we cleaned both our yard and my moms.

She had also lost a huge tree branch, but thankfully hers did not hit anything.
Once we got the yards cleaned it was just a sit back and wait. We enjoyed time with mom and she really enjoyed spoiling our kitten. Really spoiling our kitten!! She fed him constantly PEOPLE FOOD. We do not feed our cat people food. It got to be funny after a few days because she babied this cat.
He quickly learned people food taste good and followed her around meowing. She would talk to him and announce that he must be hungry because he was meowing, so she would find him some type of tidbit to eat. I am not kidding I know that cat must have gained at lest two pounds that week.

(enjoying the last bite of dip from the jar)
Needless to say when we got home we were tired and the kitten was missing his 'grandma' because it was back to dry food..

To blog or not

When I sat down a few months ago to start this blog I really intended to write in it. I am sorry to say I haven't. No excuse, just life in general I guess that keeps me from opening up. To be honest it is a trust issue. We have  had such problems with my boyfriends (soon to be ex) wife that I just don't want to give out much information for her to use in any type of mental or financial attack. I hate giving her this power over my life. It makes me angry and I resent that I feel limited in what use to be a fun thing to do (blog). I guess I need to rethink this whole put it on paper thing.

I will be back

Flying By

Can you believe it is August already? Where is the summer going? I don't feel like we have done a thing. I wanted to travel to Richmond VA yesterday but mother nature spoiled my plans and let it rain, so we just stuck around the area and did a bit of Geocaching. We always have fun with that. We were on a  what we call quick park and grab day. This is where you only go after the caches that are hidden in easy to find places like light post skirts or metal utility boxes that hold little magnetic ones. We managed to add 22 finds to our day and now have over 300 total. Small numbers by geocaching standards but a lot for newbies like us. I personally like the caches that are hidden along the trails in parks or the edge of the tree line somewhere, but the ticks are so bad this year along with the chiggers (see previous post for what happened to me with them) that even using OFF we try to avoid them until fall. We did manage to see this guy yesterday.

Some one told me it is a weaver spider but I'm not sure what that is. I just liked the web. He/she spun it down instead of around.
Saturday my daughter had been by with the grand kids and my new grand dog. They got an American Eskimo  Spitz pup. It seems the dog was lost and after searching for the owner for more than a week with no luck decided he will make a good pet for the boys. I think every kid needs a dog (even though I am more a cat person) and this is a nice size for the family.
Today is my third day in a row off which only happens once a month so I am taking advantage of it by doing a bit of cleaning and laundry. My next Sunday off will be two weeks from now so maybe we can get up to Richmond then. I really want to make another visit to  Hollywood Cemetery http://hollywoodcemetery.org/
 The old tombstones are amazing and there are lots of Civil War graves there including the dead from the battle of Gettysburg.
Anyway that is about it around here. I hope everyone is having a great summer.

Two Words

Only two words for today's post. IT'S HOT...I hope everyone is staying inside and staying cool.

Mid July update

I have been so bad about updating this blog that I do believe I am talking to myself since I noticed no one commented on my last post ha ha. I can't believe the summer is flying by this fast. It seems all I do is work and sleep. We did have a nice July 4th long weekend. My daughter and the boys came and we cooked out, and my sweeite and I snuck in a bit of geocaching. Other than that life is nice and peaceful. I'm working on Saturday but plan to check out a new campground on Sunday. If we like it we will leave a deposit and go back in two weeks.  We don't get many weekends off together and want to take advantage of the few we have together. We both love to camp but due to the tight schedule thought we would look for one close to home. I hope this one works out.  More later

Summer is flying

Can you believe this weekend is the fourth of July weekend? The summer is flying by. Other than the trip to Gettysburg nothing much is happening around here except work and sleep. We do find time to do some geocaching, but after what happened last weekend we are putting certain area's on hold until winter when the bugs die. Unfortunately we managed to find a nest of Chiggers, or I should say they found me. Just look at my back and under arms. I am eat up with bump. I have bites where I shouldn't have bites and won't talk about in polite company.

The bumps are slowly getting better, but now I have scabs and bad bruising from the intense itching especially around the top of my thighs and tummy area. If you saw my there you would swear someone had beat me. Needless to say we won't get around any more bushes, woods or pine needles for a long time. And no we were not naked in the woods ha ha. I had just failed to spray myself down with bug killer. I laid down on the pine straw to search for a container in some thick bushes..
Ok enough on that. I am sure everyone is itching by now..ewwww

Did I tell you we got a kitten? I think I might have mentioned it in a previous post. His name is Smokey and he is about three months old. The people across the street from us have the mommy and they were/are living outside.He has adjusted well to being an inside cat as you can see from the photo below.

Him and our other cat Bella have finally become friends and sleep and play well together. Speaking of sleeping my daughter and I talked last night about my youngest grandson. It seems he is going through a very bad stage. He is throwing temper tantrums every evening and she is really having a hard time settling him down for bed. He is 16 months now and has had a real problem adjusting to day care this last few months since she went back to work. I feel so helpless not living close to her now. It takes me about an hour to get to her so I can't just pop in and help with the kids.  On the bright side she plans on bringing the kids out to see me this weekend. We will probably have a early 4th of July bbq and just relax and hang out. I hope all of you will have a great weekend too, and I will try and update again soon.

Yes, it's me!

Hello blog world. I can't believe I have let another month pass without blogging. I told you I am bad *giggle*. Actually things are going ok. My sweetie and I just got home from.....you guessed it. My favorite place. Gettysburg PA.  We only had time for a quick weekend camping trip, but really enjoyed the time we were there. We had bought a new tent and thankfully it didn't leak, because we got a little afternoon rain both days.

Here we are putting it up

 

All moved in (notice a smart woman never goes anywhere without her purse)

While in town we got a chance to do a little geocaching http://www.geocaching.com. We had read about this one ahead of time and I was very excited to be able to visit this old cemetery. Some of the graves there went back to the Revolutionary war. We also found a cache at this old barn. It was used as a hospital for the southern soldiers after the battle.

Of course we also took time to visit the battlefield and on this trip we decided to stop by the monument that is dedicated to the brave men from Alabama. I recently learned that an ancestor of mine fought in Gettysburg with the 13th Alabama (read more about this unit here) http://history-sites.com/civilwar/units/5albn/Beginning%20Gettysburg.htm

He was a great great (how ever many greats) Uncle of mine, so that answers a lot of questions as to why I feel so drawn to Gettysburg. Thankfully did survive the war.

The weekend went to quick and unfortunately we did not have time for a ghost walk this year, but maybe next time..

I promise to try and update more often and will try read some of your blogs soon

No Excuses

I am really really bad about this blog. When I started it a few months ago I thought I would update more often. The only excuse I have is I really am not in a place in my life *YET* where I can talk a lot about my personal life. As you may or may not know I am going through a divorce as is my sweetie. To be perfectly honest I can't trust that his soon to be ex-wife won't get access to this blog like she did my former one and raise all kinds of havoc. For a while she was stalking me, copying everything I said on the Internet and mailed it to me under stupid names for return addresses. She admited to the letters and actually my sweetie had her arrested at one point. So far she is being good, but being good only means she is being silent. It doesn't mean she isn't plotting. I will be back to update, but have to find time to sit down and find something to blog about that won't set off the wicked witch if she reads it..Be patient..I'm around

Playing catch up

Wow am I behind on my blogging. I swear every time I sit down at the computer I find a thousand other things to do besides write in this poor neglected blog. Not a lot to update but here is what I've been doing.

Don't you love the little fish! I had not been fishing in years so my boyfriend and I took a day off to relax. This was my "big cactch"
Not much else in that lake so we took off to Newport News to my daughter's home and grabbed my grandkids and went to a different area.
As you can see the lake here is quite nice.

My oldest grandson Cody managed to catch several fish while Noah watched from the comfort of his stroller. All in all we had a great day

I think I have mentioned before that my boyfriend and I are avid http://www.geocaching.com geocachers. We go out to find the little hidden treasures every chance we get so last weekend we went to our local downtown area. i was so thrilled when I realized the cache was hidden in of all places an old cemetery. Now you followed me on my older blogs you know that I LOVE old cemeteries.

Saint Paul's Episcopal Church also known as (Borough Church) is a historic church in Norfolk, Virginia. Built in 1739, it is the sole colonial-era building which survived the various wars that Norfolk has witnessed. The church has played host to several different denominations throughout its history. Originally an Anglican church, the building was home to a Baptist parish in the early nineteenth century and was finally converted back into an Episcopal church.

 Just take a look at some of the old grave markers

In wartime

Cannonball in the wall of Saint Paul's Episcopal Church

Following his defeat at the Battle of Great Bridge, Lord Dunmore attacked Norfolk from the sea as he fled Virginia on January 1, 1776. In retaliation, patriots set fire to the homes of loyalists; however, the fire became unmanageable, and nearly the entire town was destroyed by the flames. The church was the only major building in the city to escape substantial damage in the assault,though a cannonball (purportedly fired by the Liverpool)did strike its wall.^[By the 1830s, the cannonball was no longer embedded in the wall. However, it was discovered buried in the yard of the church, and returned to its original resting place in the 1840s, and remains there today.During the Civil War, the building acted as a chapel for the Union army, and was returned after the surrender of Robert E. Lee, though it required extensive repairs.
Visiting the church while in Norfolk during World War II, Lord Louis Mountbatten is reputed to have said that Dunmore's cannonball "damn near missed" its target.

All in I really enjoyed the visit.

In my next post I will tell you about the rest of the day