Flower Bed Makeover

When we first moved into our house the flowerbed out front looked nice. It had small shrubs and red mulch. Over time the mulch started getting dull looking and we noticed there was carpet around the shrubs. :( Yes...who ever lived here before us, put the old carpet in the flowerbed. So we took up the shrubs and gave them to my parents. We replaced the red mulch with more red mulch. About $100 worth!

Over a year or so we started having these mushrooms to come up. So, after doing some research online, we decided to replace the mulch with pea gravel. This past weekend we started cleaning out the flower bed and getting it ready. I think we picked the hottest weekend of the year to do it, but we got it ready to put down poison. Here are some before pictures.

We are nowhere to being done. After the poison, we have to figure out the lighting we want to go in there. Saturday evening we went to Lowe's to price accent lights. We are still deciding if we want Electrical or Solar Lights. I think we are leaning more towards electrical lights, because they are brighter.

Clay County High School

Since they have started removing my old high school today. I thought I would list some of my memories. To be fair I am not going to list my high school boyfriend by his name just going to put "Hangman". These are in no order.

1.Trying to make sure I was not tardy for class. I spent the whole summer before 7th grade rehearsing unlocking my locker and getting my books out. DORK!!!
2.Eating Sugar Cookies that Hangman brought me a break time. They were warm and just fell apart when I would try and eat them. We always stood outside with several other friends during this time.
3.Friends: Amy, Kim, Pam, Hangman, Chris, Robert.
4. Yes we made fun of the smart people! We would scream Dork Alert when they would walk in a room.
5. Drivers Ed Fred. KILL, KILL, KILL!!!
6.Trying out for danceline and making it. Two years in a row. I wish I would have tried out my senior year, but I thought getting a job was more important.
7.Mr. Calabro (sp??). He was a fun principal. We had a club called "Explorers Club" and we would go camping. Hangman was the president. We went to Cheaha State Park and Gatlinburg. The camping trip to Cheaha was a true adventure. My friends Amy and Kim and I stayed in a tent and of course we had no idea how to put a tent up, so Hangman and Chris had to do it for us. Kim and I froze that night, due to Amy stealing all of our covers. No we didn't have sleeping bags.
The trip to Gatlinburg was fun from the start. It was pouring down rain when we got there and I had a brown paper sack full of food from Piggly Wiggly. Well it got wet and food was everywhere on the street.
8.Being an aide for Mr. Mitchell.
9.Getting sick while taking my math final exam.
10.Going to both proms with Hangman. My senior year I wanted one rose. He got me half a dozen!
11.My worst memory was my mom volunteered me to go to the prom with a other guy at another school. I was in the 8th grade and he was a senior. Ohhhh, I hated that night! We went to Hardee's after the prom.
12. Mr. Hattaway standing on his desk making a weird noise that everyone could hear in the junior high wing.
13. Mr. Tucker's class was the easiest. I don't know who said this in his class but someone said, "Goat cheese is good".
14.Dissecting a frog in Biology and finding a beetle in its intestines.
15.Skip days! I only went on one and it was a disaster.
16.Traveling with the band during championship games.
17.Trying to learn to sew and cook.
18. Going out to eat after our senior prom and my cousin Adam telling the waitress that he was racist because he wanted white ranch on his salad. She was confused!
19.Getting in an argument with Pam and crying at lunch.
20.Getting in an argument with Daphne and called her "Daffy Duck"
21.Rolling yards with Kim. We rolled our coaches yard every Friday night.
22.The cheer, "I bought me a rooster..."
23.Mrs. Thompson and her point that "The wheels have fell off the wagon..."
24.Getting to see my grandmother everyday at lunch.
25.Sitting in Hangman's truck before school. Even though we were not supposed to, teachers let us.
26. Hangman bringing his stepdads old truck to school. It was not even street legal.
27.Carrying a rocking chair to the band room on a truck with no breaks.
28.Singing our Alma Mater after each pep rally.
29.Doing nothing in PE
30.Trying out for cheerleader. That was a bad mistake.
31.Forgetting my shoes one day for band practice. Marching in rocks is not fun!
32.Eating lunch outside on the tables.
33.Pam coming to my house on Fridays to get ready for the ballgames.
34.Having a boyfriend (Hangman). All of our fun times together.
35.My dad coming to the school with a walking cane. I was so embarrassed.
36.Coming to school after seeing a man die the night before.
37.Getting all the books that Hangman had the year before me.
38.Getting voted Class Cutie and my picture looking horrible.
39.On Friday nights my friends and I would hang out at Hardees. One side was for the country folks the other was for the non country folks!
40.My friend Amy having a CB in her car and between her and Hangman and Robert we all could talk away from school. This was before we had cell phones.

I am sure there are more and I will try an add to this list as I can.

The Hunger Games

I am going to try and give my view on The Hunger Games. I can't do a review from the beginning until the end, so I am going to randomly post my thoughts.
First let me say I never would have read these if a friend had not asked me to read them, but I am glad she did.

Here we go...


The Hunger Games
•What first drew me in was just the anticipation of what was going to happen next. I never wanted to put the book down. I spent every minute I could reading.
•First you had a story about a young girl (Katniss), who lived with her sister and mother. She would sneak out and crawl under an electric fence that was sometimes charged and sometimes not.
•Katniss' relationship with Gale was something that I loved from the beginning. I was just waiting for their relationship to take off and maybe get a kiss out of them. The stuff they ate was just gross! But you have to think that they are hunting for their food. They are not just going to eat a McDonald's hamburger!
•Then you had this crazy idea of the annual Hunger Games come up. It just seemed crazy to make the people pay for what they did years ago, by this type of game. I was glad when Katniss stepped up for Prim. I could not imagine Prim, so young going into those games. She would have never made it.
•I hated to see Rue being killed.
•This Peeta dude, just never sat well with me. I wanted Katniss to love and be with Gale.
•Their prep teams reminded me of something that you would see in Hollywood on awards night.
•I kept relating the actual games to a camping trip. Except for someone trying to kill you.
•I was glad Katniss and Peeta both made it back home safe. Well Peeta only had one leg, but he was alive never the less.

Catching Fire
•I almost stopped reading, because it was getting boring.
•I wanted the visits to each district to be exciting, but the only people excited were the individuals who lived there. They loved seeing "The Girl On Fire".
•I hated that Katniss and Peeta had to act like they were in love. Peeta loved Katniss, but she had a while to go. She kept thinking about Gale and their days in the woods hunting.
•For some reason Haymitch reminded me of my pawpaws brothers. They were always drunk! So I pictured him to be a talk, slinder, dark tanned man.
•Effie would have gotten on my nerves with her "Big, big, big day" talking.
•President Snow was just evil!
•Then you have the "Quarter Quell". I was like...what the heck....They just got done going through war and now you want them to go back and fight until death AGAIN! But this time it would be Peeta or Haymitch going. Peeta volunteered for Haymitch, so he and Katniss were going again.
•This time it was like who cares, we done this once we can do it again.
•The arena was awesome! I loved the tick, tock quote. And the way each disaster would come like a clock was pretty good. Glad they figured it out.
•You know I was not upset when Peeta was not breathing. All I could think of was that it was one less person for her to kill and that she could finally be with Gale.
•I love the force field. I would be fun to throw things at.
•I am so glad that someone on the inside was trying to over throw the Capital.
•There is no District 12! But the important people are alive

Mockingjay
•Mainly this book is about payback.
•Everyone from the districts now lived in District 13. Which they said earlier was not there.
•Hated to see Prim die. I wish we could have known a little more about her.
•Katniss should have shot an arrow through Snow's head when she had the chance in the rose garden. Then when she gets the chance, she kills Coin.
•NOOOOO!!!! I wanted Katniss to be with Gale!
•The last part was really sweet. When Katniss was talking about her kids with Peeta. Something she never wanted.

Real or Not Real? These books are good?
................................Real

Meeting an old co-worker

A couple of my girl friends and I had lunch at Mill Street Deli today. We try and go out once a month to just get away from all the work craziness. Oh...and to gossip!

While on our way out a lady came up and was about to ask a question, when I was like...I know her. I rudely interrupted her and told her, her name (like she didn't know it) and mentioned that I worked with her at Houston Cole Library in Jacksonville while I was a student there. She said that I looked familiar and we chatted for a couple of minutes to get caught up. She was doing some shopping...at what stores we have left.

The reason I post this is because I have thought about her a lot over the past years. She was an older lady, so I always wondered how she was doing. She was always nice and someone that was easy to talk with. Her nephew was into the civil war reenactment stuff. I believe they played music and actually won an Emmy. She once thought I should go out on a date with this guy that I really didn't think was cute. I got up the nerve and did it, but I hated the whole date! She retired my last semester at JSU and another lady was brought in. Thank goodness I had my internship to do and didn't work much, because she was not nice.

I am just thankful to God that I got to meet her again.

Ain't it weird how things like this happen. It's God doing what he does best!

Cold Water & Redneck Island

Do you remember when you were young and cold creek water never bothered you?
I remember going to a couple of creeks with my dad and cousin during the summer months. We would slide down rocks into ice cold water. Probably had critters that I never knew about in it. Never did it bother me, but man does it now. It is torture!
No, I haven't been in creek water, but this past weekend we had a family birthday party to attend. There was also a pool! Something I had been looking forward to for a couple of weeks. The whole day was nice and sunny...until we got in the pool. Clouds were heavy and the water was cool. We were praying for the sun to shine through the clouds, but no luck there. The more we moved around the better the water felt. :)

Sunday we watched a new reality show on CMT called, Redneck Island! Of course there has to be a guy from Alabama on there.

It is similar to Survivor, but with a bunch of rednecks! 

We didn't do much Sunday, but our normal laundry and NASCAR race. It has been a rainy couple of days.

The weekend

Look what I found!

Yes, that is a baby raccoon. I found it Saturday morning while outside doing some yard work. It kept following the lawn mower, which made it difficult to cut the grass. It must not have been very old, because it was not walking good. I called my dad to see what I needed to do with it and he said just to put in back in the woods and leave it alone. It probably got away from its mother or she got killed. I went back out a few hours later and it had moved a couple of feet. I don't think it survived because it was not in the best of shape. (Not going to give nasty details)

I had plans to call the wildlife people, but Chris said by the time they got here it might have been gone. I would have loved to have taken it in the house and cared for it, but they have too many diseases and other things, for me to do that. Plus everything I found online said to put it back in its natural habitat.

I would like to send out a big THANK YOU to the Walgreens in East Gadsden. They are awesome. I had a small issue Friday night and they fixed it for me. For later reference (to me) Walgreens in Boaz closes at 8:00 p.m.

Chris and I watched the 3 part special about the Hatfield & McCoy feud. It was good, just a lot of bad words. They said a little at the end about each person but it went so fast I couldn't keep up. I felt so bad for Johnse Hatfield. He really loved Roseanna McCoy. They sure didn't mind killing anyone - young or old. The part where the Hatfields killed the McCoy boys by the trees was just awfull. Also at the end when they hung the young boy who was mental ill, was awful. He didn't have much of an idea about what was happening to him.