Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Plans

Nathan and I are going to be having my sister Hannah up on the 27th of this month through the 6th of July. I am bubbling with excitement and Hannah is counting down the days. I didn't think we would be able to get this far along with plans, but so far everything is going smoothly and is all set for her to come stay with us. She will be sleeping on the sofa with sheets and her own pillow I believe. I have already sat down and written a list of our favorite things to eat for dinner and have asked her what she has thought about it. She can't wait to start helping me in my own home. Hannah and I will be making dinner every night with a possible night where we will eat out. We are leaving one night open for a movie theater and a special dinner at either the Motor Company Grill or the Sunset.

One thing that she will not be used to is getting up at the crack of dawn and dinner being later than she is used to. My family eats dinner no later than 6:00pm, and we eat somewhere around 7:00 and at the latest 8:00. If I had to wait longer for Nathan, I would. Basically, I run a very loose schedule when it comes to meal planning. It doesn't matter when I make dinner as long as it gets made and is going straight to our bellies. Dishes are usually left in the sink to sit in water until after breakfast. That is the time I get them all washed because by the time I am done with the meal and we have eaten, I am tired. Mom always made sure the kitchen was cleaned the minute everyone had eaten.

There are quite a few things around here that will take Hannah the entire visit to accustom herself to, but I am sure she won't mind the change in environment for ten days.

Friday the 27th we will be picking her up at my Dad's work in SC and from there will drive back up the mountains and show her all the waterfalls that we can see on our way back. Saturday we plan to take her to our lake: Fairfield Lake. The location where Nathan proposed. We plan on walking around the entire lake with her and then going back home for lunch. After that, we have no other plans yet except on one of the days that Nathan has a half day off the next week, we will go to see some waterfalls. I don't know if Dry Falls is opened to the public yet or not, but that was one of the places we wanted to take her.

I look forward to planning more for our week with Hannah, but I am going to make her feel comfortable, relaxed, and make it worth while. I don't get to spend a whole week with any of my siblings anymore and finally, for the first time since I was married, get to spend a week and three days with one of them. Sarah will be the next one to spend time up here with us for a week. I will have to wait until Alaina is older to be able to have her up, but Marjory would be next in line after Sarah. I would have to ask Michael if he would want to spend a week up here or not. He may prefer just coming up for a weekend one of the times the Greer's come up.

I need to get back to a few chores before I go to work for the day. I have a bed to make, a couple of dishes still in the sink, and a cluttered cork board I want to clear off and throw away.

Monday, June 16, 2008

House Centipedes!

I had found this unidentified bug in our apartment and had previously assumed that they liked moisture for as far as we knew, they were hanging around our tub and sinks. Well our assumptions weren't that far from the truth, but they don't come from the drains like we thought they did. I found out today that these bugs are called house centipedes!!!! They have 15 sets of legs that are long and have white bands on them. The centipedes get to be around 2 inches long. They are grey and love the spring! Oh and the main place where they are found are in basements, dark and damp places, and always on ground floors. Well, now I wish we lived upstairs!!!

house centipedes are now what haunts my everyday living since Saturday! I was sitting in the computer chair minding my own business and checking my email. I was also waiting for 11 o'clock to roll around so that I could go to work. I saw from the corner of my left eye a quick movement. I turned my head to look and saw my enemy from last year! I had already seen five of these insects in the apartment from the day that I first moved our stuff into this apartment. It was running across the floor and scuttled under the desk! I was in no mood for this creature! Oh how I hate these things and had hoped we had gotten rid of them. No! They are back for the spring! EW EW EW EW EW! That is all I can say about them. I shudder at the sight of the pictures of them. EW!!!!!! SO I am mortally terrified of them now and Nathan wants me to clean behind the shelves and behind all furniture so that we can get rid of them by keeping the place clean, but all I can think about is their long legs and how gross and scary they look to me. I know that my sister in law and Nathan like to pick at me and make fun of me about this new fear of mine, but they can pick on me all they want, it won't change the way I feel about them. I am in no way offended or upset by their picking on me and rather like to laugh with them both, but I shudder when I think about those legs and what they must feel like when crawling over my body.

So this house centipede was under our desk and I didn't know what to do. I had frozen in my place and couldn't move. I of course had my feet curled up on the desk chair and had the desk chair removed from the original location up against the computer desk. I waited a while and called for Scrabble repeatedly. Only I was afraid that this bug was able to hear me and may run out from the desk at any moment because of hearing my voice. What if it knew my plot was to destroy it by way of my kitten? Well finally ran out, and I mean ran!! And this time Scrabble saw it. I shouted for Scrabble to get it! I sounded like I do when I am watching one of the memorial day backyard baseball games. "Get it Scrabble Get it get it get it!!!!!!!!!" I was desperate! Scrabble heard me as she was crouching to get the monster and turned her head to see me and then ran up and sat in my lap. She was distracted and forgot about the centipede. It had now gone under the piano where I couldn't see it. And that is far worse than seeing it and knowing where its exact location is. I wanted it dead but was deathly afraid of killing it myself. Besides I had no idea if it could jump high like some weird insects can. Or if it would bite me. And I didn't have sock on under my crocs. There are breathing holes in my crocs that are big enough for that bug to crawl through and I didn't like that idea.

Scrabble decided she wanted to go to the couch and nap with Copper. This was no help to me. Two minutes later and I spotted the critter beside the coffee table. I didn't know how to get Scrabble to see it when I was between the cats and the monster. Thinking fast, I grabbed a piece of cat food and rolled it across the floor purposefully missing the insect but just to where I got both Copper and Scrabble's attention. It worked! After the third piece of food, they were both interested in this game and wanted to catch the cat food pebble as it skidded across the floor. Another piece and they both found the centipede and pawed at it. With no success though! It got away and was under the piano again. I am not deathly afraid of practicing the piano and using the damper pedal. I prefer playing without the pedal for now and curling my feet up under me or sitting Indian style on the piano bench.

Now anytime Scrabble is chirping at me or at something in the room, I assume that she has found my monster and haunter and I jump to the nearest piece of furniture in mortal fear. Was it caught and killed while we were gone on Saturday and Sunday? Will the cats kindly communicate? I search Scrabble for evidence that she ate it, but I have no idea whether it was found or if it is still here. They live their wholes lives in houses! I don't want them living a second in my house! Oh I hate the looks of them and can't stand to look at even pictures of them. Even now as I search for a picture to show you, I close my eyes while I right click on the pictures and copy it.

The first time I saw one I wasn't afraid of it, until I saw how fast it could move and when I used the zoom on the camera to find out that it was very creepy looking up close. No amount of looking at one or seeing a picture of one will help me be cured of this new phobia of mine. I really just picked the closest picture on a google image search to come up with this picture. I can't stand the sight of them. I will have to write a lot of blogs soon to get it so that it is farther down on the screen when I go to view my blog. That is also why it is at the bottom of my blog entry and not the top. Ok enough said, I can't bear to be reminded of this any longer. Nathan and I will definitely be getting something to spray the house with. Only my body doesn't handle pesticides well so we will be trying natural sprays that can be found until we find one that works. I have heard that MQ7 works. So we will see. Until then, I am supposed to clean the house from top to bottom but I don't want to discover one hidden in the closets or under the bed or behind and between books and bookshelves. I feel like the apartment has become my enemy! I don't want to be here any longer until I am assured that they don't live here!!! EW EW EW!!!!!!!


Saturday, June 14, 2008

Movie Theater and Bagpipes

It has been nearly two years since I have been in a movie theater with just Nathan. We went to see the Incredible Hulk last night and loved it! It was a lot better than the first one! A whole lot better. Liv Tyler played as Betty Ross, and Edward Norton played as Bruce "the Hulk." The whole plot was great! I would recommend it as a movie to see. The only thing I didn't like about the movie was that there was another scene of brief nudity of the backside of Bruce. They had that in the first movie also. Other than that it was pretty clean, some brief cussing, but a great movie to see in theater screen.

Today was the second day of the Taste of Scotland in downtown Franklin, NC, so there was a lot of people in the street. I took some pictures and even took a short video of the bagpipe players on the green platform in the middle of the gazebo square. I wished I had been able to see the Irish Dancers. That was a great show to watch, from what I have heard. I had to work soon after I took some videos and photos. It was a busy day! We had so many people come in and get ice cream and chocolates. More people came in for the chocolates than the ice cream, but there were still plenty of people that came in to get ice cream as well. It was a pretty hot day! Then it started raining around two o'clock. The show still went on and people still came in and stayed around town. I left to go home around 3:45 when the rain slowed to a drizzle. Just as I got home the rain picked up. I am tired now. Nathan kept me up by sleep walking. He thought that there were bread crumbs in the bed and he wanted to brush them off with our lent remover. Ugh. I told him to go back to bed and that I would be fine with the bread crumbs, that we will deal with it later. He went back to bed, while I struggled with falling asleep again. Then we woke up around 6 something so that I could make him breakfast, pack our bags, and make him a lunch. He ended up leaving his lunch here on accident. I think I will stop now. I am pretty sure I am rambling...

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

First Day of Work

Today I went to work at 10:45 and ended up stepping onto a thorn on our path from the complex to the side road. It went through my right Croc shoe and into my toe. That took me ten minutes to get out of my shoe so that it wouldn't hurt my feet while I walked. My big toe was bleeding from the puncture, but I didn't care about that, I was fretting that I would be late to work for my first day! Finally I was on the road and walking again. I just had to stop by the pottery store to say thanks for my tea cup that is oh so cute! And happened to be there when the pottery man was taking a mug off the shelf to take home because the rim of it was uneven and he didn't want to sell it to a customer so he handed it to me and said "you want it, we're tossing it!" I said, "sure, you better not toss that, I'll keep it." So for now I am going to use it to keep loose change in it. It will make me feel rich.

After those five minutes of talking I ran across the street and was at work right before the town bell rang 11 times. She showed me around the store and showed me the cash drawer and how to use it. I followed her around for a bit until we had customers. I made some waffle cones!
Just like old times! They smell wonderful! It reminded me of all the times that Jack and I would be making the waffle cones and would have three of the waffle cone makers going at one time! Sharon took this picture and told me I should post it. I will have her take more pictures and I hope to takes some myself.

The store has to have pictures for some advertisement and for their website that they will have to develop for the down town Franklin advertising. All of the shops in downtown Franklin get together once a month and discuss things for further development of the old town look. This is a historical location and a tourist town. They are all trying to promote downtown shopping.

Anyway, I had so much fun! All of the work I experienced today brought back wonderful memories of the days when I worked at Bruster's Real Ice Cream store. We are both putting together our ideas from our past experience of working at ice cream stores (she worked at Baskin Robbins once) and coming up with new things we could make and sell to help the store's business.
gotta go eat dinner! I'll update later. I will be working every day except Saturday and Sundays.

I have a job

So Friday, I went to pay our Dnet bill and came back home with a possible job. I ran into a dear friend of mine who owns a shop in town and was chatting with her when the owner from the Chocolate Obsessions store came up to us and chatted. I found out that she needed help, so I spoke up and said that I used to work at an ice cream store and since she sells ice cream also I had experience in that field of work. She got excited and straight out asked for my number. I gave it to her and then went over to her shop just to talk. Yesterday I was in her shop to get a smoothie and then today she called. She wants me to work at 11. That is in 20 minutes. It takes me two minutes to walk there. I better start getting ready early though. I will keep you all posted on how things go today!

Monday, June 9, 2008

Shortbread recipe (This one is for you, Zanna!)

This is an easy recipe. After familiarizing yourself with this recipe, it will become faster to make. Cleanup is faster if you form the dough shapes on a cutting mat rather than on a cutting board or just your counter top. Cutting mats can be bought at Wal-mart cheap and are easier to pull out and put away for when you are baking and cutting. They are found in the kitchen aisle with the other cutting boards and chopping blocks.


Ingredients:
1 1/4 C flour
3 T. Sugar
1/2 Cup butter (softened)

Preheat oven to 325 F.
Mix the flour and sugar in a bowl and cut in butter. Knead the mixture with your hands until the dough starts to cling and form into a dough substance. You may have to play with it a bit ;). Form into a 10x6 inch rectangle and cut into whatever shapes you like. I prefer cutting them into smaller and equal size rectangles. Place them an inch apart on a cookie sheet and bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Place the pan on a rack and let cool for 10 minutes before transferring the shortbread from the pan to a plate. Enjoy with your hot tea or with a glass of milk!

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Spring Cleaning

I am doing spring cleaning this week and the next. I recently bought a book called Mary Emmerling's Quick Decorating Book and was inspired to redecorate a bit and organize. So that has lead me to do spring cleaning as well. I am enjoying it and looking forward to acquiring some more baskets to help my clutter control (as Mrs. Emmerling calls it). Clutter control is just another term for collecting together junk, putting it in some sort of pretty or old container or basket and therefore transforming that junk into a whole new form of decorative flare. This will be fun. I will be taking pictures when I get to the point where I am satisfied with my accomplishments.

Here's to the beginning of a new form of clutter control and redecorating...