By now, all of you know that I love a good sale, right? Did any of you know that Troy & I also make mead (it’s a wine made from honey & fruit)? I just bottled a batch a couple of weeks ago that I made with lime & cranberry, which turned out wonderfully. We have a corker & foil collars for the bottle necks, so the bottles come out looking very nice when we’re all finished. One of our main problems, is that we don’t have a lot of space to store it when we’re finished bottling it & none of those places are ideal, as far as light & temperature go. It’s pretty uncommon to have a wine cellar in a mobile home, after all. I just found some thing that would be perfect for us, though!

It’s an Oster 12 bottle wine cellar! It’s really cool, the door is partially mirrored, so you can see inside & see what you have in there, it has 6 shelves & can hold up to 12 bottles, with an electric temperature control that displays on the exterior, so you always know that your wine is being kept at the right temperature. I would love to have this & for $59.99 it’s quite a bargain. I don’t see us being able to come up with that right away, between the hospital bill & taxes that are due, but it sure makes me wish we could!

Our town got a new store this past weekend & I ended up visiting it twice yesterday. My daughter texted me and wanted to know if I wanted to go with her & look around the store, so I went & got her & we did just that. We spent quite a long time just wandering around & looking at everything. It’s one of those close-out stores, so they have a lot of really great deals in there. I came home when I was done & starting telling Troy about it, so we ended up going so that he could check it out, too.

We ended up grabbing some snack stuff that was really cheap and looked at the garden area. They had these really cool seashell wind chimes that I’d love to get, if the wind here wasn’t so crazy in the summer that it’s end up in the neighbor’s yard. There were some really gorgeous gazebo-type things too, that were about twice the size of the one I use for my faire booth & beautiful lawn furniture. I meant to look and see if they had any large tarps & some strong industrial clamps to hold them on, in case it rains at faire again this year, since there is no other way to keep weather out of my booth. We snagged up a 4gig HP flashdrive & a 4gig HP SD card for $10 each, too, since we spent the same amount not too long ago on 1gig stuff.

At any rate, I could spend a lot of money in that store & already have a few purchases planned for payday, mostly for the booth & household finances, but I am planning to go back. My dad just called to ask if we’d been in & told me they’d bought my mom a new Serta mattress & box springs for about $220. I wish we were able to get a n new one, but we’ll wait & save up to get one, the regular price is still very affordable.

My close friend is trying to get into our local university’s nursing program, and she’s managed to complete the requirements for an associates degree while she was taking care of her prerequisites for getting into the program. She also works full-time and is married with two young children, so she leads an extremely busy life, even without school to add more to it. I think it would be awesome once she finishes her bachelors in nursing, if she could get enrolled in St. Xavier’s online MS Nursing program. That way she could earn her Masters degree almost entirely online, and still get a weekend of applied campus experience while she was doing it.

If she could do that, then, not only would she bring home more money & not have to stress out so much, it would guarantee her more job security, simply because she’d be much more prepared to meet demands of the healthcare industry & the ever-changing needs of the doctors & patients she works for than someone without a Masters degree. She could keep working and still be able to spend time with her husband and children, while she’s earning her degree at home, it sounds pretty ideal to me. I just love all of the available opportunities on the internet these days. I never imagined back when I was in my late teens & early twenties, that people would someday be able to go to college from home!

I bought that wireless adapter I talked about in my last post & now we’re eagerly awaiting it’s arrival. It hasn’t shipped yet, but I know it will pretty soon, probably Monday or so. As soon as it gets here we can start talking about getting our Live subscription, which I think will be fun. We can start to play a few worldwide challenges on Rock Band, and I think that’ll be pretty cool. I just hope that when it gets here, it’ll be securely packaged, but not so much that I have to hunt down a box cutter just to get through the tape.

My grandma could use a half a roll of strapping tape on each & every package she mailed out, then she’d covered it in brown paper, more tape & string too. Open anything from her was an event, that sometimes took more than one person. I swear I’m serious, we still talk about it & laugh, all these years later. She was the kind of woman that would get angry if you tore the wrapping paper at Christmas & we had to be very careful when opening anything, peeling the tape off, and then slowly removing the paper so she could “harvest” it & fold it up for reuse. I swear that at one time, we had gifts wrapped in paper that was older than I was. I still remember the year that mom gave us permission to just open the gifts & not worry about it. We didn’t know how to act & I think grandma bit her tongue all night. She still took her time &saved paper on her last Christmas, even though she wasn’t wrapping gifts anymore & there wasn’t even a need, with an inexpensive as it is these days.

I understand it, I get that she was a young woman during the Great Depression, and they saved everything they weren’t sure they could replace & reused it all. I know that it was a hard thing to move past, but I also know that many people did & didn’t save every rubber band, piece of string & plastic bag that came into their house for the rest of their lives. It affected my mom & I in the opposite way, where we really don’t save much of anything. Once we get tired of something, it gets given away, donated or tossed.  My grandma actually regifted something to me that I gave her for Christmas 20 years earlier. I’d have preferred that she just throw it away, rather than bring up a bunch of memories I didn’t want to relive, honestly.

When Troy got his year-end bonus from work back in December, we spent a lot of time thinking about what we wanted to get with it. We finally decided on an XBox 360 & Rock Band 2 (with all of the various controllers). We were only able to afford the Arcade version, which doesn’t include the hard drive or anything else, really. So far, we’ve bought several normal controllers for it, added a small hard drive & have been trying to save up for the other things we need.

Well, since it’s a new week, I decided to check up on the weekly sale over at Buy.com. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, I just really love to pop over there & see what great deals they have from week to week. They have some great stuff this week, and I was thrilled to find this:

It’s the XBox 360 Wireless Adapter we’ve been trying to save up for! The best part of it is, it’s $30 cheaper than everywhere else we’ve seen it & the shipping is free!Everywhere we’ve looked is offering this for $99.99 plus shipping & handling, even the auction sites. Buy.com has it this week for $69.99 with the free shipping deal. I can’t beat that anywhere & will definitely be talking to Troy about it when he gets home, just to make sure he still wants it, then I’m getting it. I’m so excited & know he will be, too, because the cost is the only reason we’ve been putting it off. We’ll finally be on the way to getting our XBox Live subscription! Yay!!

Back in January, I read a post on Christine’s blog about a couple of giveaways she was hosting. The first one was great, but it was for a coupon to TGI Fridays, which we don’t have anywhere around here. I read further & noticed she was also giving away a 3 DVD set from the Food Network series “Good Eats with Alton Brown.”  Well, I got pretty excited about it, because I’m a huge fan of the show & of Alton Brown himself, plus this set was “Whet Your Appetite,” which is full of great appetizers drinks. (including his wonderful eggnog recipe). I love giveaways, especially when it’s something that I’ll actually use, so I entered & pretty much forgot about it.

About a week ago, I got an email from Christine telling me I had won & that her hubby would be mailing it in the next few days. I was so excited to hear that & couldn’t wait to get it. It was sitting out there in my box today when we went to check the mail today. She even included an awesome handcrafted card (she makes great cards & I always save them!) that was my favorite color. I can’t wait to watch these, there’s even an episode with sushi rice & California rolls!! Thank you so much, Christine!

One day, back in the fall of 1998 (it was about 2-3 days before Thanksgiving) , Rhi came home from playing at the school playground with a tiny, fluffy gray kitten that she claimed “followed her home.” We already had a cat & I felt that we just couldn’t take on another one without getting into trouble with our landlord & so she made a little brick house for him out in the yard & made him a warm bed. I heard him crying out there at about 11pm & caved in. I went out, brought him in & put him in bed with me.

His tail was twice as long as he was and he didn’t know how to purr or play or even act much like a cat, but he was loving & sweet & we ended up keeping him. He put up with unbelievable things when he was a kitten, things we didn’t know about until years later, but he never lost his sweet nature. Every evening, he’d come to me, and utter his funny “Meh!” at me, wanting to jump on my lap & have his “baby boy time,” when I’d love him & talk to him in baby talk for as long as he wanted. He never jumped up until he was given permission, and he would lie down on my chest, with one paw extended while he got his love.

This past weekend, we noticed that he seemed to be in a lot of pain & was moving pretty slowly, and with a stiff-legged gait. Troy picked him up last night to give him some love & he couldn’t seem to get comfortable, shifting  his position every few seconds & we had decided that we probably needed to start thinking about his quality of life & step in if he seemed too miserable. We got up this morning to feed the pets & didn’t see him anywhere, so we looked for him & he wasn’t in his usal spots, so we figured he’d come out eventually.

At around 11 or 12, I went in the kitchen to get a drink & thought I’d probably better try to find him, when I heard a pain-filled “Meh!” followed by another one that was slightly louder. I looked behind me & he was in the litter box, unable to stand up, crying louder & louder. Troy came in & carefully took him out, but he wasn’t able to stand or even move very much. Troy laid him on the floor & told me he was dying. I started crying & went to wake up Erin. He got up in tears & went in to love on him in his last minutes. I got a hold of Rhi so she could come over & tell him goodbye & we got him moved into a cat bed & off of the floor.

A few minutes later he stopped complaining & just let Troy & Erin pet him, and a few moments later, Troy started to cry too, and I knew he was gone, after so many years with us & that he was no longer in pain. I texted Rhi to tell her that he was gone. She was already on her way & wanted a chance to hold him for awhile & so we waited to give her the chance to do that. We took him to my parents’ house, which will one day be ours & buried him, so that he will always be close to us.

Goodbye my baby boy. I will miss you & your “Meh!” so very much.

I’m not joking around when I say that I live in a trailer park, and it’s probably just about like you’re imagining it to be, except not like, in tornado alley or anything. We have our share of trailer trash who live here in the park, but there are a lot of nice, working class families here, too. There are nice trailers & not-so-nice trailers, people who’ve been here a few weeks & those who have been here for over a decade. It’s kind of like a little neighborhood in here, the houses are just a little closer together & we live a bit nearer to the street.

We’ve been here for over 5 years, and when we moved here, we had Bear, who was a Timber Shepherd that weighed about 80 pounds (that’s a Timberwolf/German Shepherd hybrid), so we had to have a fenced yard. There was only one trailer available with one at the time & it was in fairly bad shape. We were in a hurry to get moved, the price was right & they were letting us keep all f our pets, so we moved in. The advantage was that it was in the last row, so we’d have less traffic (that was before we realized that the 20somethings around here love to use the entire park as a showcase for their cars & automotive performance parts, so at times, it does get loud). At the time we moved in here, there weren’t any young children on this row, which we always have to consider, with Troy working nights half the time & it was a trailer with some unique features, too.

We’ve had times when this row has been the quietest in the park & times when it’s the loudest. There was a spring & summer where it felt like a battleground, between us & the families who let their very young children play, roam & lie in the street. We kind of resented having to sit out there & wait for the children to notice that their lives might be in danger & slowly meander out of the way. Sometimes they never did & then we’d have to honk, which made the other parents angry. We started comign in the other way, which also made them mad & I almost got into a fist fight with one of them over it.

Currently, we only have one neighbor, and they’re on the north side (the trailer to the south has been converted into storage & the one across from us has been empty for months). We rarely notice them, honestly & I think I’ve only spoken to the woman once, when she brought a piece of misdelivered mail over to me. Today, however, I was really wishing that we didn’t have any at all. I think they have a son, at the very least there a boy who’s over there quite a lot. Today, their yard was filled with preadolescent boys, all yelling in their pretend man-voices & throwing snowballs. It sounded like they were in our house, they were so loud, and then the snowballs started hitting my house. Tiny would go crazy & race down the hall, barking angrily, ready to defend her territory, followed by Troy, yelling at her.

She’s been “barky” ever since, barking at every noise she hears that sounds remotely like a knocking or something hitting the house. It’s like she’s too nervous to settle down & relax now. I’m dreading the warm months & hoping this isn’t a vision into what it’ll be like. We had boys over there before – boys who HAD to play football every day, and the ball hit the house all the time, making Tiny crazy. I don’t want to go through that again.

I love getting a good deal on things when I shop, and because of that I look forward to the weekly sale over at Buy.com, every week. If you’ve never checked out their weekly ad, you really ought to head over there & do it, they always have some really phenomenal deals & you never know if something you’ve been wanting is on sale this week if you don’t check.

There are a lot of gift-giving occasions coming, at least there are in my life & I’m sure it’s pretty much the same all over, with graduations coming up & spring & summer weddings and all that. I have a lot of birthdays in the coming months, too & that was kind if what I was looking for ideas for gifts for today. I always seem to be at a loss for things to get for my mom & my daughter on their birthdays, so sometimes I start looking months in advance. Anyway, I was looking for something for either of them & saw this cool photo keychain!

I think it would be perfect for my mom, because she could have pictures of her grandchildren on it & I could change them when I take new pictures on the holidays & whenever we all get together & spend time together. That way it would serve as an inspiration for me to use my camera more at family gatherings. I can’t believe the price on it, either, it’s only $9.99! I could get that for her for Mother’s Day & get her something else for her birthday with a price like that, not to mention that the shipping is absolutely free, too. There’s no way I could even come close to finding anything in this town for anywhere near that price. I’m honestly thinking of getting a couple of them & putting one away in my gift box for next Christmas, I’m sure that I’d have no problems finding someone who would want one, I have so many friends with young children & grandchildren. If nothing else, I’d be happy to have it myself.

A little more than a week ago, my best friend, Dawn came over & she was very upset & freaked out. The police had just left her house & had told her there was a warrant out for her arrest on a failure-to-appear over an insurance ticket. She had to come up with over $500 by the next day or she was going to jail for the weekend. She’s a single mother with 2 kids still at home, granted they’re 14 & 15, but there’s no way her 15 year old is trustworthy enough to be unsupervised for an entire weekend (the 14 year old is, surprisingly) & she had no way to come up with that kind of money in less than 24 hours. her cousin, Jason (and another of my best friends) was going to call his mom & see if there was any way they could help out & she just really needed a friend to talk to & calm her down. We sat & talked awhile & then Jason’s mom called & told her that another cousin, Jeremy, had just gotten his tax refund & was going to pay the fine for her.

She was calm & very relieved, we talked a few minutes longer & then she left to go home & let the kids know she was okay. That’s not really how it turned out, because partway home, she started having trouble breathing & chest pains. She got home & called me after she’d taken some aspirin. I thought it might be anxiety & told her to lie down for a few minutes & if it got worse to call me back. She called back about 30 minutes later & I went to get her & take her to the ER. The ER doctors did all of the necessary tests, tried to kill her (she’s allergic to morphine, they tried to give her some), and we did a lot of sitting & waiting.

I was sitting there thinking that modern technology was a hospital’s best friend, from the ability to have computers in every room (with a rackmount monitor you can practically have one anywhere these days), and that flat screens were a great invention, since they’re mounted right on the wall & the computer itself can be put in a rack & mounted on the wall, too, so everything is out of the way, but extremely accessible whenever the staff needs it. I usually sit there & try to figure out what the artist was thinking when they painted the artwork in the room, but the stuff in that exam room wasn’t terrible for a change.

The nurse brought her some Xanax & some acid reducer & after all of that kicked in & her pain had lessened, she was sent home with instructions to come back in the morning to have her blood tests repeated (the had tested her blood proteins to see if she’d had a heart attack), told her that everything looked okay & told her to see her own doctor the next day, too. By the time we left, Dawn had agreed that the time had come for her to quit smoking & change how she’s been living, whether it was her heart or not. She never wanted to be that scared again or to put me through that sort of thing again (she’s 5 years younger than me, for Pete’s sake!).

When she went to her doctor the next day, he told her that a lot of what had happened the night before was caused by anxiety, so to help her quit smoking, he put her on Welbutrin (it’s what I used too) & gave her some tips on exercise, eating better & managing her anxiety, too. He also told her that if I hadn’t taken her to the ER when I did, she would have had a heart attack, which put a whole new determination in her thoughts. She’s got a lot of change in front of her, she’s really excited to quit smoking & start getting healthy, and I think that’s the key to quitting. I know I was super excited & I quit over 8 years ag, so it did work for me. Her quit date is Valentine’s Day & she thought that way perfect, kind of giving her heart a gift on that day. I’ll be taking her grocery shopping & teaching her what to buy instead of what she has been buying. I feel like this is the year where we’ll all get more healthy & be on the right track, finally.I’m excited for her & can’t wait for her to see how much better she’ll feel without the cigarettes.