What happened to that nice Spring weather that we had all week. As soon as the weekend gets here it turns ugly. Sigh...

Hiatus

Wow! I have not posted to this blog in an amazing amount of time. And I'm not sure if I'm back or just easing back into it slowly.

Last April, my husband and I separated and we filed for divorce. I've been trying to get my life back on track in another direction and emotionally.. I just was not into blogging anymore. I slowly but surely start to feel like myself more and more each day and hopefully I'll have things to blog about and get back into reading all those blogs that I always enjoyed. Bear with me.

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do

I finally tackled an item on my to-do list that I've been avoiding. I have an old computer that I've been holding onto until I had time to dismantle it so that I could remove the hard drive and destroy it. You don't want anyone getting a hold of your personal stuff, you know. The hard drive is the small silver box laying to the right of my dismantled computer.

Apparently, erasing your hard drive does not actually erase the hard drive. Formatting your hard drive only makes it so that your computer loses the directions to your information and therefore isn't able to retrieve it. In both of these cases, your information is still there and retrievable by hackers.

Here is the hard drive after being opened and that round silver disk is what I'm trying remove and destroy. I drilled about 7 holes in the hard disk and then beat it up with the claw side of a hammer. During this process, I found out why it's called a hard disk. I had to bang on it with all my strength just to make a dent. Hopefully I've done enough damage to keep any potential hackers from getting a hold of my goodies. We wouldn't want that.

A favorite spot

You can't open a drawer around here without someone jumping in and getting comfortable.

I love Oklahoma in the Springtime

Isn't Spring the greatest? Its new and fresh and everything comes to life with a renewed sense of being. No, it's not the plants I'm actually talking about, it's me. I've been in a winter funk for the past month with no motivation to do much of anything that took any effort.









Then Spring comes along and changes everything. A few of my plants that are coming up are my Hosta, Elephant Ears and the Stonecrop. The Clematis has new leaves and its flowers will soon follow. I'm worried about my Passion Vine but since it seems to be partial to warmer weather, I think I'll just not worry about it too much just yet and see how things play out.








All of this new growth has caused me to feel energized and ready to take on a new project. But I need a project and since Spring is what gets me moving my groove thing, I'll dedicate this project to the outdoors. I have most of this week off so I've purchased a few new plants to replace the ones that I lost last year. I'll get them planted and then I'll sit outside and admire my work, because that's what I like to do... admire...my...work.

We have issues

I'm here to confess a moment that is directly related to me inheritating a family gene that I like to call "white trashicus". This gene has not been proven to be in Ray's family history but it must be there somewhere, or else I'm contagious.

We moved into this house ten plus years ago and shortly after, a storage building was built onto our property to protect our garden equipment. Ray bought paint for the shed that was suppose to match our house, but since he is color blind, it wasn't exactly a matching color. We had a blue storage building to go with our gray house. I will say that our gray house does have an ever-so-slight blue tint to the color, but it is still clearly gray.

This big blue eyesore sat to the back of our property but that didn't keep it from being in plain site of all our neighbors no matter where they live. Our poor neighbors. As for my family, we were immune to how ugly this looked because genetics made it possible for us to look the other way and forget. Much like one might see in one of those trashy type yards, it was our rusty car on blocks of cement.

But finally, after 10 long years and some available time during Spring Break, Ray and Cody repainted our little shed a beautiful, perfectly-matched-to-our-house, gray paint. And now when I come up the driveway, I can be proud when I see the little gray shed.

Everything just seems right in the world now. It's very healing.

Dog jail

It's jail for dogs. At least it looks that way. This is where the girls usually go for refuge when they need it. As you can see, the door is open but it looks like they should have metal mugs in their paws, banging on the bars.

Skelly Lodge

I had a wedding reception to go to this past weekend for the daughter of a close friend. I didn't get any pictures of wedding guests or the wedding couple for that matter because I was too busy visiting and eating. My, oh my, did I eat. I think this amount of eating has recently been featured on the news and referred to as "binge eating". I did NOT however partake in purging, although I probably would have slept better and felt better if I had.







Aside from eating, I did make time to get pictures of the scenery around Skelly Lodge where this reception was held. The view was amazing and you could see for miles, literally. The huge boulders pictured here were a photo opportunity waiting to happen, and many of the guests and wedding party took full advantage. Even though the trees had no leaves it was still a very picturesque place.

Inspector Clouseau

Since the weather had warmed up some and since Mojo was standing at the backdoor, I decided to let him go out and investigate the back porch.










He didn't waste anytime checking things out and making sure that things were as they should be in this outdoor space. He did a close inspection of the soil quality in one of my pots. I'm pretty sure I heard him say it was good to go.

Geocache first-timers

Cody and I ventured out on Sunday to look for geocaches in the area. This was something that I've been curious about for the last couple of years after reading about it on an online news site. The appeal for me is that it takes place outdoors and I love to be outdoors if the weather is nice.








Just so happens, it was a very nice day and we had nothing better to do anyway. So with my camera and GPS in tow, we headed out and begin our day of discovery. The inside of trees make good hiding spots, especially when it is surrounded by broken limbs. Cody loved it and didn't seem as apprehensive about walking into certain wooded areas as I was.










Our first cache contained tattoos and other miscellaneous and very small items. We exchanged a tattoo but on the next few caches, we only left our name and the date of our discovery. I'll be going online to visit the geocache site to leave a comment about each place that I visited and to let others know that there is a geocache still to be found.

Viva Las Vegas...hopefully!

So Caitlin and I are leaving for Las Vegas and we have checked in at the airport, go through security and are waiting at the gate when an announcement comes over the speakers that our plane has arrived but it's at the end of the runway where it sits because the pilot noticed when he touched down that he couldn't control the steering of the plane. It takes them about 30 minutes to tow the plane up to the gate so that they can assess the problem and let us know when our flight would be leaving. The end result is that our flight was cancelled and they found a plane in Dallas to take us to our destination, but not until the next morning.

Caitlin will miss her first game in this tournament along with one other teammate who was also on that flight and since our team had a couple of other players that were unable to go on this trip, her team now doesn't have enough players for that game.

I hope things go better once we get to the airport this morning.

WTF???!!!

I received my Social Security statement in the mail this past week because it's that time of year when I get this reminder that my birthday is coming up in a couple of months.

Anyhoo...did anyone else receive their statement recently and compare it to last year's statement, only to find out that if you retire at the age of 67 you are now eligible for a lower amount of income than what the previous year statement indicated? Even though you have now contributed a whole year more of social security taxes? RaggleFaggleFrickinFruck?!!

I won a moisturizing kit!

Yesterday, I received a wonderful package in the mail from Jessica at A Moxie Mom. I entered a drawing on her blog and won!

It's a Dermalogica Skin Kit for that troublesome dry skin that many of us suffer from daily and especially during the winter months. I can't wait to use this kit. Thanks Jessica!!

New books

I just finished reading "Outlander" by Diana Gabaldon and I'm now starting on her second book in the series called "Dragonfly in Amber". I can't wait to find out what happens next with the two main characters, Claire and Jamie.

I also purchased an audiobook to add to my Ipod so that I'll have something to listen to on the airplane ride to Las Vegas that I'll be taking next week. There is a showcase soccer tournament there that Caitlin's team is attending.

Why does shopping feel so good?

Hayden's birthday is tomorrow and this past week I went shopping for the clothes that he asked for and I also ordered a few items online. Shopping for him is like shopping for a daughter. He likes clothes and likes the latest styles with a variety of color.

I wasn't able to do this for my oldest son, Dylan, because he wore athletic shorts and t-shirts to school every day all year round, no matter how warm or cold. And the only colors that Dylan would wear were white, gray or something dark. On one hand, this was a good thing because his clothes weren't costing us an arm and a leg; but it was also soooooo boring.

Update on my gold quest

Remember when I sent in my gold jewelry to see how much it was worth? Well, it wasn't as much as I would have liked but then again, I know nothing about the value of gold. The day after I received my check there was a news segment on tv talking about how the value of gold is down these days and to wait until it rises again before selling. Too late!

I have the option to return the check and have my gold returned if I'm not ready to sell or to deposit the check and consider it a done deal. I'm considering my options.

I heard a banging noise

Cody left one of his Christmas presents in the pocket of jeans and I washed it in the washing machine this past weekend. Dried it too. Ipods aren't meant to be washed.

Nap

I was sitting on the couch doing some work on my laptop when I looked up and took notice of my cats. One was to my left and one was to my right.










I just thought it was funny that they were both covering their eyes. They were almost perfect bookends of each other.

Where do I sign?

This is one of those things you don't see everyday so of course I had to try and get a shot of it. You know a person really supports our troops when he lets anyone and everyone sign their name to his truck with a sharpie.

Selling some gold

I was watching Rachael Ray the other day and she had a segment about a company that buys gold jewelry called Red Swan. You send in your jewelry and they mail you a check. If you aren't satisfied, you contact them and send the check back and they return your jewelry.

So I've decided to try it. I have a couple of pieces of old jewelry that probably aren't worth much but I'm curious to see what I can get. Plus I'm not attached to the jewelry that I've chosen to send in. I haven't worn any of it in over 20 years. One piece is a necklace that an old boyfriend gave to me and then I have a ring that had the tiniest diamond in it once but the diamond came loose and I lost it. Those two pieces along with a gold chain is what I've chosen to send in and see what happens. The people at Red Swan will probably open up my box and laugh when they assess the value or they'll be mad that they paid the postage to have me waste their time. Ha!

I have a nice pair of earrings that I considered sending in but I'm too attached, even though I don't like to wear gold jewelry. Afterall, silver is "da bomb" these days. I also can't part with my "add-a-bead" gold and lapis bead necklace because it was such a popular trend when I was in high school and I remember returning to the store often to purchase more beads everytime I had enough money. Do you remember doing this? Anyway, this necklace stays. What if I need this piece of jewelry as proof that certains things in my life really did occur when I'm old and reflecting on my past.