Knock, Knock, Knocking on Families' Doors

Benjamin Franklin said, "Fish and visitors smell in three days." Good advice, but I don't think he ever said anything about how family members should act when visiting another family member's house.

I bring this up because twice in the last week I have had an aunt (two different ones) show up at my door, knock twice and immediately open the door.  No waiting, nope, not for them. 

Thursday morning was the worst. My dad's youngest sister showed up, knocked twice really quietly and then just opened the door.  I wouldn't have had time to react if I wanted to.  I was asleep in my chair in the living room because I had just taken my strong pain medication because my hand was hurting really bad.  When she opened the door, the sun came in and pierced my eyes like a dagger.  She apologized and immediately left, but I was mad.  Even if she is family, she should at least wait for me to tell her to come in.  What if I was naked or something? It is one thing if you are expected, but it is entirely different if you are popping over to someone's house unexpected.


Now I go to my parents' house and will usually just walk in the house, but I used to live there, so it is a little different.  Even so, I still usually holler that I am there. 


Am I alone in this assessment? Has anyone else had family members that insist on barging into your house? 

Boys Will Be Boys

I had an interesting conversation with my 3-year-old nephew this evening. I was squatted down trying to get gum out of my purse for him when he became fascinated with my necklace, or so I thought...

The conversation went something like this:

Nephew L: Why do you have that?

Me: What

NL: That (points to my necklace)

Me: Because it makes me look pretty.

NL: What is that long thing?

Me: My necklace (I pick it up off my shirt and show it to him).

NL: No, THAT! (Points to my cleavage...yep, that's right.)

Me: Oh...that's my cleavage. (I mean, what was I supposed to say?)

I look down and realize that my squatting stance has squished my boobs together and now I have massive cleavage (and since I always have a lot of cleavage, that's saying something). I look at my sister-in-law and she just shrugs and says "That's my son." in a resigned way.

I think back to my response of "To make me look pretty" and start to laugh. My brother wanted to know what was so funny and we had to tell him. He just looked at NL and said something to the fact that NL had learned something today. It was quite the family moment.

"My Drink Tastes Funny"

We all have those time when we are just going through the motions. I really hate it when it happens while I'm driving, however, that's pretty common. They actually have a name for it, "highway hypnosis". It's kind of freaky because you don't even remember the drive. I wonder how many accidents happen while people are in this auto-pilot mode?

Anyway, I was getting myself some tea this afternoon out of my mom's fridge. I'd spent most of the day hanging out with the kids and didn't really pay much attention to my 3 year-old nephew when he asked for his red cup out of the fridge. I just handed it to him and went on pouring my tea.

This red cup is actually one of those large coffee thermal cups with a lid that you get at a convenience store. He loves to drink out of it, and it is like a big sippy-cup to him.

Nephew L takes the cup and happily walks away. I finish pouring my tea and happily walk away.

Fast forward to about 3 or 4 minutes later.

"My drink tastes funny" says Nephew L, tugging at my shirt and looking up at me. I immediately begin to dismiss this and decide to ignore him. In my defense, he had been exceptionally whiny today as well as asking each question at least four times.

As Nephew L begins to turn to walk away, my brain clicks in. You know the moment. The one where everything clicks and your brain starts really working again?

I began to think to myself:
"I don't remember him drinking out of that cup all day today"
"Wasn't he drinking out of a blue cup?"
"Mom and dad often leave cups of wine in the fridge."

Yep... I quickly grabbed the red cup out of Nephew L's hands. I yanked off the lid and took a big sniff. WINE!!! I turned to my SiL and started laughing. I told her what had happened, and she started laughing. Really, it was pretty hilarious. My SiL said she'd have to add that to the baby book: First Taste of Wine.

I'm guessing my dad had been drinking it and didn't finish, so put the cup back in the fridge. (at this point you may be asking why my dad would be drinking wine out of a red coffee mug. It's better that you don't ask, but if you must know, he tends to have a big glass of wine several nights a week, and sometimes he likes to carry it around with him. The red cup is spill-proof. There's no looking sophisticated with wine glasses around that house.)

I am not sure how much wine Nephew L had drank; enough that he had a big purple mustache. Is this how alcoholism begins? Will it be my fault if he turns out that he has a drinking problem at the age of 22? He's already pretty addicted to sweat tea. Where does it end?

Of course, this is nothing compared to my brother drinking out of my dad's spit cut when he was little (a story which my mother had to recount when I told her what had happened with the wine). Luckily, no one around the house chews anymore. Luckily.

Gran Day

Today was a "Gran Day". That's what we call Saturdays in my family because my brother and his family, along with myself, spend the day at my Mom's (aka: Gran).

We started out the day going to a local discount grocery store. I love going there because you never know what you will find there. It's like an adventure to find great buys. Today, I bought more Tide and also found some Pantene shampoo in bulk. I'm not sure where they get this stuff, but they put it in their own generic jugs and then put a tag next to the jugs telling you what brand the product is. I also buy Downy there in large quantities, but didn't need any today. I have regular detergent and softener containers that I then fill up with what I buy at the discount store. I plan on doing the same with the Pantene. Here's a picture of what I am talking about.

Good Buys

I also got some good buys on Kashi cereal and TGIFriday eggrolls. I usually buy my Starbucks coffee beans there (less than $4 a bag!). They are usually just going out of date, but I put them in the freezer and all is good! You really have to check dates (I never by mayo or salad dressing there), but on some things you can push the use by date (the Kashi cereal was a month out of date, but will be fine) and lots of things are just getting close to the date. Some products have slight damage, and that is why they're there.

I spent the rest of the morning hanging out with the kids and relaxing. The kids were especially relaxed today (no running around screaming), and spent some time just sitting on the couch watching "kids shows" as the Niece calls them. They don't have TV at their house (only videos), so they enjoy getting to watch TV at Gran's.

Nephew J is really starting to chatter a lot, but it is funny because he only has a few real words, but you can tell that he really thinks he's saying something. He was needing to be entertained a lot today, but it was cute.

We still have some sleet that hasn't melted, but it sure is doing so fast. Today was another 60 degree day, and the ground was turning to mud pretty fast. My road is practically a quagmire. There's not that much gravel left on it, and there are a lot of low spots that collect all the run-off from the sleet melting.

Muddy Roads

Hope that everyone had a great weekend. Let me know what fun things you did this weekend.

Babies and Dog Doors

Nephew J discovered the dog door at my Mom's house today. I guess he got impatient waiting on everyone to finish bundling up to go outside and go sledding. I just thought this was so hilarious that I had to post the pictures.

NJ poked his head out the dog door.

Success!! He made it.

Actually, NJ got stuck at about this point in the process. Part of it was probably due to how big the snow pants he was wearing were...they were huge! Anyway, I had to rescue him shortly after taking this picture.

Shopping Trips, Crazy Drivers and End Tables

I made the 100 mile trek to the “big city” with Mom and the sister-in-law today. Mom is getting ready to start a kitchen remodel and needed to go to Lowe’s and Home Depot to look for stuff (yes...it's a 100 miles to Lowe's and HD). This was the most boring trip ever. I’m glad I went and really needed to get out of the house, but this was not my idea of a fun shopping trip (of course, I don't really like to shop, but I could have used some Starbucks). I’m glad my SiL was there, because I would never have been able to feign that much interest. I did help out with the lighting choices and came up with a new idea for what to use to replace the old fluorescent light in the kitchen, but mostly I helped push the cart while the two of them went over every little reason why an item was good or not. Mom did take the SiL and I out to eat at Chili’s, so that was fun.

Here's Mom and SiL looking through sink drain insterts for the new sink. This took at least 15 minutes and Mom decided to wait and buy one later.

Saw this in Home Depot. Apparently a bird had gotten in the store and pooped on this bag of gloves. I might be talking about my blog too much, because my SiL knew exactly what I was going to do with this picture.

While driving to Chili’s, Mom pointed out a car that was driving down the road with almost the entire windshield covered in snow/sleet. I just had to take a picture. The lady has the window down, presumably so she can see. We were talking about how crazy she was, and then my SiL realized that she probably had cleaned off her windshield, but not the top of her vehicle and it had slid down onto her windshield while driving. We figured that was probably the case, but it was still stupid of her to be driving around with four inches of sleet on the roof of her vehicle in 40 degree weather. It was bound to come off at some point. I’m supposing it slid down when she came to a stop at the last stop light. Right after seeing this vehicle, we saw another one that was almost as bad.

Here's the crazy driver. This was the best I could do and had to do a little tweaking on the picture to get it this good. I think you can see how much of her window was covered in sleet and that she has her window down. This is NOT in a parking lot!

On another note, I have inherited a very interesting end table. This thing has been in the family for about 40 years. I think my CG’ma bought it to display a Japanese doll she brought back from a trip to Japan. Anyway, that’s my first memory of the table. At some point my mom took it and I believe it became a display case for a stuffed owl (a real one, not a toy). Well, it needed a home because Mom is also remodeling the basement, and she called all around and no one in the family wanted it. I told her I had no room for it or I would take it. Today, when we got back from shopping, I saw this table sitting out in Mom’s backyard in the middle of all the sleet. I guess she didn’t know what to do with it, so stuck it in the backyard until it could be carried off somewhere (BTW: this is not like her; she NEVER just sticks stuff in the back yard). It just looked so sad out there that I decided to take it home. Now I have to figure out what to do with it. Any suggestions? It is the size of an end table, but is really a glass display case. I am in the middle of cleaning it up, but really have NO room for it and nothing to put in it. Let me know if you have any grand suggestions. When I was in high school, I wanted to turn it into an aquarium, but I’m pretty sure that’s not very feasible.

The Glass End Table (Display Case?)

Just a thought… Have you thanked your mail carrier lately? I was surprised when my mail lady came during the winter sleet storm. She wasn’t even more than an hour later than usual. I was struck with the thought of her out there on all these country roads by herself, making sure that we all got our mail. I left her a kind note with a few of my freshly made frozen cream cheese balls. I just wanted her to know that she was appreciated. She left me a note in my mailbox saying, “Thanks for the kind words. Sometimes I think I need it! Candy was delicious! Thanks.” When I saw that note, I was glad that I had gone to the trouble to say thank you to someone who probably doesn’t get thanked very often. I remember what it was like to be out in that weather…and I was in a giant snow plow!

The Nephews

Nephew L spent some time today "helping" his father and grandfather on the basement rebuild. I think he spent most of the time playing in the sack of nails, which is why his hands got so black. I just thought these would make the cutest picture.

NL is getting so big. He's almost 3 and is just about as tall as his sister who is four and a half. He is really talking and most of the time I can understand what he is saying. Mom thought he was looking for a "shrew" today, but then we figured out he meant "screw". Apparently he had dropped a nail or screw outside and had been looking for it. His mom and I were talking about how much growning there has been in the last year and how hard it is to think about how much he as changed in the last year.

Newphew J is also growing up fast. He's 15 months old and just starting to want to feed himself. Today was a very messy experiment in his endeavor of growing up. I started feeding him as normal, then decided to put the food on the fork and give it to him. He really liked that, but would always want to touch the fork to the plate, so I put the food on the fork and then let him pick it up himself. He was so proud of himself. Eventually I just put the plate, fork and spoon down and let NJ go at it. This picture was the end result. Boy did it take some time to clean him up.

Now I know I just had a post called Maybe This Is Why I Don't Read Your Blog, where I talked about people who have blogs dedicated to their kids. However, you will note that not all my posts are about The Niece and Nephews. I don't care if people talk about their kids as long as there is some variety in there somewhere!

Old People and Technology

I really didn't think that I had anything to blog about today, and then the last twenty minutes of my life happened.

Let me set this up... Earlier today I went over to my great aunt and uncle's (both over the age of 80) to hook up their new digital signal box...you know, the converter box that people have to get if they are still using an analog television signal? No one was home, but I hooked it up and left a note for them to call me if they had any problems... Well, they had problems.

I live right across the road from my aunt and uncle and (because of that) have become the person who hooks up and/or fixes all of their technological problems. I am pretty sure they are the only people around who had to buy one of those converter boxes. They sure are the only people I know who do not have cable or satellite. All that to say, I had to go hook the thing up.

Fast forward to about twenty minutes ago... I get a call from across the road.

One word: "Help!"

I asked what was wrong. Apparently they couldn't change channels. Now, I had made sure the TV was working, but didn't go through the channels or anything. I told my aunt that I didn't read the directions on how to run it, I just hooked it up. (I was hoping she would take the hint and read the directions herself)

Silence (imagine crickets chirping over the phone line) I asked her if she wanted me to come over and read the directions.

Her response: "Yeah, We're old. We don't read directions very well."

Seriously?

I wasn't aware you could use excuses like that. Must be an old people thing.

So I go over to the house, pick up the remote and hit the channel up button. Nothing. I think about it for...oh...about 5 seconds and realize what is wrong.

All their extra equipment (VCR, DVD, and the new converter I just hooked up) is stored under the TV, in the entertainment center...behind a drop down door. Can you figure out the problem?

That's right. I had to drop the door down so the remote signal could actually reach the box.

I am still shaking my head in disbelief.

My uncle was mad and wanted to know how I had managed to change the channel because he had been "hitting that button until he thought he would break it." I told him I had dropped down the door on the entertainment center so the signal could reach the box.

See...before "the box" they had used the TV remote to change the channels and the TV sensor was not behind that door (obviously). They assumed they still needed to change channels through the television. I didn't read the directions, so I didn't know to tell them any different.

Ahhh...old people.

PS - If I can sneak over there soon, I will try to take a picture of the entertainment center with the drop down door.

The Crazy Grandparents

My Dad’s parents are my Crazy Grandparents; my Mom’s parents are fairly normal. I am sure everyone has family members that are a little odd or perhaps, like mine, crazy. I am not sure my CGs are certifiable, but as time goes on, I begin to wonder.

So what, you may ask, makes them crazy… Oh, it’s the little things, the everyday things.

For instance…My CG’pa spends all of his time trying to impress those around him. The more impressive or important he thinks you are, the more he is going to try to impress you. This takes many formats. One of my favorites has to do with his garden, specifically the tomatoes.

CG’pa likes to impress people with his tomatoes. Yep, you heard me right. I’m not sure how many tomato plants he usually has in his garden, but they produce enough tomatoes to feed an army…or in this case…impress an army. I know that he thinks his tomatoes are impressive because one time he wanted Mom to take some tomatoes (I’m sure she had a bucketful already). Mom declined the offer and CG’pa told her he thought she would want to take tomatoes to work in order to impress her co-workers. Seriously.

CG’pa also likes to bug my parents on a daily basis. My CGs live through the woods from my parent’s house (on some of my Dad’s land) and so my parents’ house is a short four-wheeler ride for my CG’pa. He is either driving over, or calling, (usually both) at least once a day. Usually, he comes with advice…or unwanted vegetables.

CG’ma is equally crazy. In her defense, I think that CG’pa made her crazy, but crazy she is. CG’ma is an only child and you can definitely tell. People cannot tell a story around her without her having done it first, paid more, got it on sale, hers hurts worse, and on and on it goes. I think this is a combination of her being an only child (who was spoiled) and my CG’pa not paying any attention to her over the last 50 years. She is uber-needy. It is almost impossible to have a conversation with someone if she is around.

Case in point… years ago we were at a workshop and someone asked me about my back. I had recently had an accident in where my vehicle was hit by a semi (this is a whole other story and one day I might tell it). I had no more said that my back was getting better, blah, blah, blah… when CG’ma goes into a whole story about how bad her back is, she’s supposed to have surgery, and on and on. It was at that moment that I realized that CG’ma might be worse than CG’pa.

I am sure that the CGs will inspire the occasional post, and so I thought I should probably warn you and give just a little background into who they were.

If I Won The Lottery

What would you do if you won the lottery? Let’s say…10 million; I’m talking about clearing 10 mil, not winning 10 mil. Many lottery winners go bankrupt within a few years. I think it’s because they let the money go to their heads and just spend, spend, spend.

Here’s what I would do with 10 million:

1. Get an good lawyer, one that understands investments, etc. Do this and get advice BEFORE telling anyone about the money or contacting the lotto people. I heard this is what you should do, so…

2. Quit my job – now I wouldn’t do this if I won anything less than 2 million, but with 10 million in the bank…I think I could afford to do so.

3. Plan to live off the interest and investments. 4% interest of 10 mil is $400,000 a year… That’s a lot more than I’m making now. This would include, of course, a good money manager.

4. Build a house. Nothing too big, just with what I need/want. Amenities would include:
a. 3 bedrooms (mine in the basement without windows so there would be NO
LIGHT!!)
b. entertainment room...theater style with theater seating (this is my big
house splurge), includes a kitchenette
c. gourmet style kitchen
d. Reading room/library for all my books (that I no longer read because of
the Kindle).
e. Sun room/breakfast nook
f. great-room off the kitchen for entertaining
g. indoor swimming pool (this is the other splurge)
h. 2-3 car garage
i. possibly a craft room or outbuilding for all crafts, maybe even a kiln
* nothing huge, no gold fixtures or faucets, nothing too expensive, this isn’t a
mansion, just a really nice house.

5. Buy the truck I’ve always wanted: Brand new Chevy, short-bed, single cab, black, standard transmission, tinted windows

6. Start college funds for the kids (Niece and Nephews)

7. Spend my days doing whatever I want…hanging out with the kids and rest of the family, playing on the internet, take more college classes, maybe even get a second degree in graphic design, read, blog, watch movies, and TRAVEL THE WORD!

8. Give money to the church to help with missions and growth. Also, help support a friend who works in the mission field.

Now of course there are some things I would want, but probably wouldn’t buy because that’s how lotto winners become bankrupt… ‘64 ½ Mustang convertible and/or ’68 Blue Chevette convertible, actually that’s all I can really think of, maybe I will eventually buy the Chevette (it’s the cheaper of the two). It would be hard not to buy stuff for my family and friends. Hopefully with a good money manager, I could set up an annual amount that I could spend on people.

I love contemplating this kind of thing, but winning the lottery is probably not going to happen, especially since I don’t play. Maybe I should start… somebody has to win!