Just Simply Jennifer!

Oh, it was so exciting.  Kyra’s first time…woo hoo!  I think we got 10 lbs of candy, so  good take.

Here she is…the backside.  She was a ladybug of course….aaawww!

We went with Asheley, her mom drives bus with me.  We are good friends. She was a dead cheerleader…she doesn’t look very dead though only maimed.  LOL..  I loved her hair though, her natural hair is jet black, so seeing it what and lighter was interesting.  She is such a cutie.

We went with Tori, Ashanica, and Haley as well.  It was a pile of candy that was given up when we showed up.  Here is the group photo…  Tori and Ashanica ride my bus, while Haley is a friend of them whom I had never met.  Nice girl though.  Tori is the girl that took Kyra to school today.  They also occasionally babysit her, but not to often…. I generally don’t do anything much as you know if you read this site.  ha ha.. 

Anyways, it was so much fun.  I have never been trick or treating in this sense of walking up to a complete strangers door.  It was very interesting, fun, exciting…all that wrapped up into one.  I went trick or treating only a family houses when I was a kid and many years well my parents bought us off instead of going.  I guess it was okay though.

Tonight though, Kyra was so cute.  She would walk up to the door with the big girls and say “Hi”, she is having a hard time getting out trick or treat, so just gave up.  Almost everyone would say “hi” back to her.  She would also say “Thank You” on her own when they gave her candy.  It is amazing how fast she learns because after about 3 houses she was on a role.

It was fun though.  We will do it again next year surely.  Oh, and I left the candy in the car for tonight we ate enough, so tomorrow I will have some fun sorting out the goodies.

Have a wonderful night.  Happy Halloween…

Oh yeah and the Heads or Tails theme this week was Halloween, so I am going to lazy out and make this one count.  Hope that okay Skittles…lazy me.  Aaahhh!  Night….

My first thoughts at this weeks theme was dog training, my second was Thomas the Train, my 3rd was all the railroad crossings that I have to stop at in town. So here is my rather messy train posting because I can’t decide.

1. Deuce is training good. He hasn’t went on the the floor in the house for over a week. He can sit, shake, and lay on command, but doesn’t listen very good when you don’t have food obvious. He also comes to his name very well. He hates being tied outside which I find sort of odd for a dog. He just sits at the end of the chain and wines until he is untied.
2. Thomas the Train – I don’t like him at all. How can he be popular with kids?? People say bad things about Barney, but praise dumb Thomas. I would rather watch Barney any day of the week.
3. Did you know it is federal law for school busses to stop at railroad crossings. We have to stop, turn off all noise (we have a button for this), put bus out of gear, set brake, open door, put the bus back in gear, and then unset the brake all while our flashers are going at each railroad crossings. The whole process is supposed to be for safety, but I think it sort of hinders safety, as I can’t keep my face above the dash when I am putting on and taking off the brake and anything can happen. I totally believe in stopping though and looking and listening. I think the whole procedure is a bit of overkill though.

There you go, I did it and quite the variety of a post while I am at it. I finally participated again…see Skittles I told you I would be back.

I am sad that I missed last weeks project.  I would have written about stacking wood, I think.  Last week the theme was the word Stack.  I just got so busy that I didn’t get a chance to do it.  I think I slept instead.

Anyways…on with this week.  Skittles has the topic of Explore…which I love.  She has it in honor of her Birthday, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY and just be glad you have a holiday at all. What is there around April 25th???  Besides the fact it always rains???  Yes, in 30 years of my life.  I can remember 2 birthday’s without rain.

I am an explorer at heart.  Do you think there is any unclaimed pieces of land left??  I should go hunting huh??  I sometimes really miss driving cross country though, that was exploring in it’s own way.  You get to go to towns unknown to you and eat at places you never even seen before.  It is like each day a new adventure. 

If I were to drive again like that though, I would go by myself.  Yeah, I would go solo.  Each day taking an hour or so to visit around whatever town I happen to land it.  I think when it was me and Adam we always rushed too much.  Yes, our jobs were to rush. 

We only once in awhile took the time to go the other road through a town or stop to see some crazy tourist trap.  I love tourist traps by the way.

Except through Ohio…. Yes, I think I have traveled all the back roads in Ohio.  The interstate speed limit is 55 for trucks and they are walled with cops, so that is no incentive to stay on the interstates, I think I went through all the small towns.  We would look at the map, and figure the actual straightest line to where we were going on the small roads.

I hated Ohio while we were driving, but now looking back on driving.  Ohio is what I miss the most.  It was the slow days going in unfamiliar areas and all the dirty looks of the people walking the streets. 

You know some people don’t really appreciate all that driver’s do for them.  Some show this by being very rude.  I don’t think the driver’s mind this though for the most part except when they see that “No Truck Parking sign”.  There needs to be less of those…

Anyways, back to Exploring…I should do some here again.  I think I am going to take the back roads into the Baltimore Aquarium which is a place I really need to go visit.

   Today over at Skittles, she is asking us to write about either Pets or Pet Peeves for our Heads or Tails Tuesday posting.  Well, as you all know I have the cutest pig and the cutest cat ever as pets.  I am though choosing pet peeves because I don’t think I ever have talked about that.

Pet Peeves

Well, my pet peeve is cracking knuckles.  Oh, I hate it.  It gives me the creepy crawly’s.  How can anyone do that to themselves and think that it feels good. 

Here is a good quote from Providence Health.

Nature did not intend us to repeatedly stretch the ligaments of the finger joints. I found two medical articles that talked about patients who had injured their hands from knuckle cracking. One over-stretched his ligaments and dislocated his fingers. Another partially tore the ligament in her thumb.

To be fair, it also says that it isn’t bad for you either.  There is no definitive research on the good or bad of this habit.

This I do know though, don’t do it in front of me.

My last few days have been very dull.  I have just worked basically.  I today had a long install, so I drove my bus, came home, went to that, came home, drove my bus.  This evening I have just waited for Kyra.  I love getting her back.

Anyways…I am going to just make this my weekly meme from Skittles.

This week the topic is:

KEYS

I however when I think of keys I smile because I really don’t have any keys except my vehicle keys that I need.  I love my combination door lock.  I can get in and out of my house without keys.  I could live an almost key free life.

When I used to drive truck though boy did we have keys and combinations and a whole lot of other things to get into doors.  I used to deliver flowers, yes fresh cut ones.  We would go from floral shop to floral shop 24 hours a day.  We would get there usually when they were closed and have to attempt to get into all these places without bells and sirens going off on us.

You see we had this key that fit this box that was over the door.  We unlocked that box and got the key to the door.  We than got the door unlocked and had to find the alarm.  This is in a place we generally had never been and we had like 2 minutes to do that in or the police would come with guns drawn wondering what we were up to.  Thinking we were crooks, when in fact we were quite the opposite, we were leaving stuff.

After all those keys, we usually had to unload like at least 50 boxes.  That is why I was so thin back then.  My job was to take them from the inside of the truck to the back end, so we called it tailgating them.  I am not sure if that is an official term.  I would sometimes have to tailgate hundreds of boxes though. 

It was worst when we didn’t have a dock to do this from because I would have to tailgate them and then get them in a standard door and then into a cooler somewhere in the florist shop.  Florist shops are not the neatest places on earth and those coolers aren’t in the most convenient of locations many a time.

Anyways, that is my experience with KEYS.  I am sure glad I am not driving flowers anymore.  Kids are much easier.  They unload themselves and the door is never locked.  LOL…

Good Night…

9/11 – Where were you??

I was in the worst position ever.  You see I had a female exam appointment at 9:00 that day.  I was somewhere within this exam when the World Trade Center was struck by the first plane.  I left my appointment completely unaware that the world was changing. 

I go to my car and my cell phone was beeping (very strange for me, nobody calls me).  I had missed 19 calls.  They were all Adam even stranger.

Apparently something awful had happened to him.  I called expecting to hear that he was in an accident, but everything was okay.  You see at this time he was over the road and I didn’t see him but only on the weekends.  I think that is how our marriage survived for so long…anyways. 

That is when I learned what was going on in New York, but he was safe and headed for Virginia.

I watched the news for a few hours and cried some especially at watching the video of the second plane hit.  I tried to keep it off after that though and concentrated on other things.  I think I actually cleaned. 

I am not sentimental though about too many things.  It is one of my bad traits.  Sometimes I appear not to care about tragedy.  I do care… I just don’t get all caught up in it a lot of times and this is one of those times even at the mass scale.  I knew 3 people in the building, and all 3 of them survived. 

My life sort of immediately moved on even while so many were in such distraught conditions emotionally. 

This is my heads or tails Tuesday presented by Skittles.

 Today the heads or tails topic is school, so I didn’t figure I would bore you with some of my school stories.  Aaaahhhh!  I have a Mennonite school though to share with you.  This is a school that I pass on my bus route everyday and is very close to my house.

This school less than 2 weeks ago was a field of grass that hay was harvested from this summer from this field.

In this school though, I find it interesting.  Classes started today. 

There is one teacher and students from all the grades.  There will be the standard classes that are in the public school that I drive for.  There are absolutely no money issues here…these students get new text books each and every year.  

They will be learning 3 languages Dutch, German, and lastly English in this school.  All the students that attend this school live within 3 miles of it.  They all ride there bikes to school (all year) and yet have energy for some of the most intense football and kickball games I have ever seen.  They play kickball all winter long even the coldest of days.  The girls do so wearing cotton dresses.

I personally would love for my daughter to be enrolled in a Mennonite school here.

Oh yeah back to this building.  It was built in about a week and a half by the parents of and the students that are attending today.  They built all of the desks and furniture as well. 

How would you like to have to build your own desk before you could go to class??

Anyways…I find this whole process completely fascinating, so thought I would share through Skittles Heads or Tails day.

I have just had a crazy two days.  I have been hardly home which is ironic because I am envisioning my Monday’s and Tuesday’s as being semi-boring days in the future.  Anyways, here is my Heads or Tails Tuesday brought over from Skittles.

Hobby

This week we are to choose to write about a hobby or something that rhymes with hobby.  I can only think of two things that rhyme with hobby though, Bobby and Lobby.  I haven’t invested a lot of time in this though, so I am sure there are others.  I am just going to write about a hobby though and that is you know… rock collecting.

  My favorite part of my collection is obviously my kitchen wall.  Here is my porch collection though.  I am going to turn the top shelf in my basement into a rock display area though eventually.  I still have a lot of work to do before that happens though.

More of the fun of this collection comes from being part of the rock club and going hunting for the rocks.  I most frequently don’t leave with virtually anything, but I really enjoy visiting and associating with the people involved with geology.  They are some very interesting, but sometimes a boring crowd.  That is exactly what I am though very interesting, yet boring at the same time.  I fit right in.  LOL…

It is a fairly cheap hobby though and ultra fun.  You should try finding that prize specimen too.

Heads or Tails is hosted weekly at Skittles Place.

I am not so sure that I believe in luck beyond card games.  I have been pretty lucky with card games and gambling when I have given it a go.  When we drove truck, I used to save my dimes.  Yeah, I hear you how pathetic.  DIMES!  I am obviously not a big gambler.  I would stop at the casinos in Nevada though almost everytime we went through.  I only used these dimes mostly.

Adam would get impatient with me because we had a load to deliver and this always made us rush after we would leave.  Isn’t that a sign of addiction??

I almost always would come out with more dimes than I went in with.  I would start with a single roll and bet every one in it, but leave when I was done with that single roll.  I would hit the cash out button everytime I won even a single dime back.  It took about 45 minutes to go through a roll on the dime machine.  I never left with less than 1/4 of a roll when I left.  Most of the time though, I had slightly more than what I went in with. 

One time though….I came out with $250. I glowed for the rest of that truck route.  It is so easy to make me happy. 

Could I be an addict after all??

My friend Skittles is starting to do this new Meme.  She is having a weekly topic to write post on. I will probably play along every week because I like meme’s and it is pretty cool to start out from the very first one.  I also don’t do one regularly on Tuesdays, so it does fit in. 

This first one is sort of easy for me. My whole life is in a beginning stage.  I am just starting my whole new life being single again.  I never really ever have done this before. 

Yeah….I was single before, but never really on my own. 

I was in the Army single.  I did date a lot in there (There are guys everywhere when you are in the Army!), but you can imagine.  It wasn’t like I took care of myself.  I went to a cafeteria for food everyday and it was included with my job.  My housing was included in my job.  There was nothing about this that said I am taking care of myself.  My whole life was a schedule that I didn’t create.

Otherwise, I lived with my parents or lived with Adam.  I never had my own place, so this is a total beginning for me. 

I sort of look forward to in a strange way all the new things that life has to bring to me while I am:

• being on my own
• in my own place
• with my own rules
• with my own set schedule
• responsible for myself completely

It is really hard even now though for me to imagine this even happening in my life.  I was so set that my life would be stable and my marriage would last and all that good stuff that you do.  It at this point even though it has been over a month this way is still sort of a fairy tale feeling.

So…here is to new exciting BEGINNINGS in my life and in the life of this brand new Tuesday meme.  I hope both do great.