Sick again

A couple of days ago, I woke up with a sore throat and my nose was stopping up. I hate that part the most. You can’t breathe. About a week ago, we were sitting in this woman’s office, while she was trying to get me a price on her travel trailer (we didn’t get it.) She took a while doing her paper work and she would start coughing and coughing and get up and leave to go cough and then come back and keep getting up, saying “Oh I am not sick, I just have a tickle in my throat, I don’t know why I am coughing so much.”
I started thinking “Oh great, she is in this little office, coughing and coughing, and here I am sitting here breathing in the germs.”
We just go up and left and said, “See you later, we will think about it.” They wanted way to much for their trailer, plus I think that is why I am so sick today. My husband is also sick too. I now have a bad cough, gee I don’t know how I got this bad cough”. (smirking) :{ Now my son is getting sick too. He is in chorus at school and tomorrow night they have their first choral performance. I had to go get him black dress pants and black shoes and his teacher said “He has to wear black socks Only.” We didn’t have any black socks. I had a pair so I handed him a pair of mine. “MOM, I can’t wear those….yuck.”  So I had to go buy him some black socks today. Me in my sickness, coughing, can’t breathe. I could not find any socks that were black in his size. I finally found some mens adult socks, so I bought them. I handed him the socks tonight. They are tube socks and really long. “Just put them on, who cares how long they are, they are black and no one will see how far up they go.”
He put them on and they don’t have a heal in them, so the foot part is ok, they do go up to his knee, but they will have to do. He said he won’t be able to sing because when he sings, he coughs. I said “Just act like you are singing.” He has to show up, he gets graded for this.
It sucks to be sick.     I need to go plug in the humidifier and take some Nyquil and try to sleep.   Sometime I can breathe out of one side of my nose.

Rodent Hairs and bugs in Peanut Butter

Last night I was watching a show on the History Channel. It was a show about rats. They said there are so many rats that it is OK to have 2 rodent hairs in every jar of peanut butter. EUWWWW.
So I checked it out on the internet.
Actually….it is ok to have 5 rodent hairs and bugs parts in every jar of peanut butter. Double EUWWWWW.
Also roach poop and maggots are allowed in your food too. Triple Euwwwwwww.
Here is one article on it.   

Now I am going to  be checking the peanut butter all the time looking for hairs and bugs, they might be squashed up in it though, but I bet you could see the hairs…….maybe.

Broken Washing Machine

Yesterday was a bad day.  I was washing the mattress cover in the washing machine.  The washing machine started beeping, over and over and over.  It quit working, it was full of water and the mattress cover was soaked and wet and heavy.  I got a big plastic box and pulled the thing out of the washer.  Hubby hot a bucket and got the water out of the machine.  He checked it all out, put the mattress cover back in, turned on the washer and it washed, but when it came time to suck out the water and spin, it stopped working.  We got the mattress cover back in the box.  I dragged the box to the bathtub and lifted it up to pour out a lot of water.  That box was heavy.  I then put some laundry detergent and my son’s sheets in the box and loaded it into the car.  I had to go to the laundry mat to wash them.  My husband said it costs $125 just for a service person to come to the house to look at the machine to see what is wrong with it. 

I had not eaten lunch, so I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and took a water with me,  to eat while I washed the bedding.  I found a laundry mat down the street.  I have not been in a few years.  I found a machine that said 40 pounds.  It was $3.75 to do a wash.  I got some quarters and put the wet cover into the machine, along with bed sheets.  I put in the money, put in some soap and started the machine.

I ate my lunch, watching the timer on the machine count down. It didn’t take very long to finish. When it was done, I put it in the box and went home and dried it all. The matress cover took 3 hours to dry, because it is so bulky.
I have to go back tomorrow to do more laundry. I need to go get more quarters though. I checked the prices on another place and it costs $2.25 for a smaller machine. They go up and up in size and money. I might just get the biggest one and dump all the clothes in one machine. Those big machines are fast.
I got me a new book to read from the library. I will have to start that now.

Meanwhile, we got out new trailer.  I have been spending the last couple of days cleaning it all inside.  It was dusty all over.  I bought some windshield covers, the kind you put in your car windshield to stop the heat.  I spent all day measuring the windows and then cutting out paper to make a pattern for each window and then I put it on the foil window covers and cut them out.  I then put on velcro dots and attached them to the inside of the windows.  That way when we sleep at night, it will be nice and dark.  The blinds that come in the trailer, do not block the light very well.  I still have to go buy something big enough to go over the big window over the table. 

A new TT

We have been thinking about getting a new travel trailer.  We have a “pop up” tent trailer.  We went camping a lot this year.  We like to go all the time in the summer.  This year has been a really wet year.  Every time we would go, it would pour buckets, sometimes we would have to leave a day or two early because it was raining so much.  When it rains and you are in a tent trailer, the canvas gets wet and then your sleeping bags get wet.  Sometimes I lay in bed, when it is pouring and lightening and I just hope that the lightening does not strike me.  I have read that people have gotten struck by lightening in a tent and they die.  Plus, then trailers have holes, they are not air tight because the beds slide out, so there are little openings all over it.  In the summer, bugs get in and crawl around, lots of spiders and ants, the ants go marching one by one, by one, by one, you get the idea.  Anyway we wanted a regular travel trailer.  I looked and looked on the internet and got a pretty good price on what they cost, all over the  United States.  I told my husband that I would even travel to another state, if I got a great price.  I went to a RV place on Saturday to a place we found on the internet.  We want a trailer that is pretty basic and does not weigh too much, one built to be pulled by our vehicle, a SUV.  I saw this trailer and the ad said “Make an offer, any offer.”  I called them and said “I would like to know how much this trailer is.”  The guy said  “Well, you make me an offer and I will present it to my boss.”  Now I have checked out all the prices,  so I said “I would say I would give you  an offer of $13,000 to $15,000.”  He said “Well, ok, can we do the deal?”  

I said I had to look at it first, so we drove to see it the next day.  It was light weight, for a travel trailer.  It has a bed, a couch and a dinette  and a stove and a bathroom.  I wanted a stove with an oven, it only had a cooktop.  We sat down with the salesman and the “manager”.  The offer just seemed to vanish in the wind, like there was no “Make us any offer and we will deal.”  They told us what they would give us for our tent trailer, which we figured that is what they would say.  The manager came back with his magic numbers.  The sticker price on the trailer was $18,000……but with our trade in,  we would pay $22,000 for this trailer…..something about it had to be written like this because of the bank….it was such a deal.  SAY  WHAT?  We said  “No, we will think about it.”  (Not really.)  The manager said  “Oh, the offer is only good today, not tomorrow.”   We got up and left.    He friggin marked up the trailer $4,000 over the sticker price on the door tag.  The thing is they said they had “Blow out prices”.  Yeah blow it out your butt prices. 

The Jayco dealer did the same thing.  “This trailer is $20,000, but I have to jiggle around the numbers….for the bank, so it will end up being $22,000.”    I said Good bye to them too. 

We happened to be driving to Alcoa, to go get more cabinets for our kitchen (remodeling the kitchen).  We saw this RV sales place so we stopped to look at the trailers.  We saw one that was perfect.  Front queen bed, a sofa, a dinette, a kitchen area, with a stove, microwave and the stove has an oven.  It is a Layton Joey 209.  (You can go to the link to see pictures of it and of the inside to see what I am talking about.)  There was actually a sign inside with the price.  A great price.  I went up to the salesman and said I will buy that trailer if you give me “x” for my travel trailer and I pay exactly the price in the trailer.  He said “OK” .  He wrote it up.  I brought in my trailer.  They liked it.  I called my credit union and they said “Sure, you are approved.”  I went there and got the check, signed the contract and I pick up my new trailer on Thursday.  We want to go to Yellowstone next summer.  There are some campgrounds there where you are not allowed to take tent trailers because of bears.  We can now go camping there.  It will be so nice.  No more putting down a tent trailer in the rain, pushing the wet canvas in over the bed and getting the beds all wet.  No more going home and opening up the wet tent trailer to dry out the canvas and the beds and the sleeping bags.  No more washing the canvas because it was covered with tree sap.  No more buying lots of bottles of seam sealer to cover the entire canvas, so it would not leak.  We had to do that several times.   We had that tent trailer for 2 years.  It was on warranty for 2 years.  In that time, it seems what could go wrong, did go wrong and the dealer fixed it.  The fridge stopped working.  The lift system stopped working the first month we had it.  They had to fix it.  The air conditioner kept leaking.  They worked on that.  The sink leaked and ruined the cabinet.  They fixed that and put in a new cabinet.  The battery died like the second time we ever used it.  They replaced that.  The list goes on and on.   It was a Rockwood.  Don’t ever buy a Rockwood tent trailer.  That is why I just traded it off.  I didn’t want to wait and see what I had to fix, now that it is out of warranty.

I love cranberries.

This is the way I like to eat an egg.  I crack it in the pan and then break the yolk and cook both sides.  I put it on toast with Strawberry jelly on the toast.  The right toast has this stuff I bought called Cranberry Celebration.  That stuff tastes soooooooo good.  It is sweet like jelly and has nuts in it, I think Walnuts. 

Lately I have been having this for dinner.  For instance tonight.  I cooked some ham and then made a box of Halloween shaped Mac and cheese.  I took one bite….maybe two and I stopped eating it.  I din’t like the ham or mac and cheese.  I cooked me an egg and had it on toast with a toast with the cranberry jelly stuff. 

It was Kraft Mac N cheese, to be exact.  The shapes were supposted to be ghosts and bats and pumpkins.  It didn’t taste very good. 

So sleepy, time for bed.

A chill is in the air.

A chill is in the air.  Cold and crisp.  The leaves are turning red and gold.  They turned, it seemed, in a day, but it was more like a week.  It froze last week, then warmed up for a few days.  Last night it was back to 37 degrees.  Chilly.

I kept piling on the blankets in my bed.  We didn’t have the heat on, but it only got to 65 degrees in the house.  I get cold at 65 degrees, so I turned on my electric blanket….on high.  then I drift off to sleep.  I wake up, hot, kicking off the covers, turning off the blanket.  Laying there in the dark, thinking, “Why am I so hot…then I remember that I turned on the blanket and fell asleep.  I lay there letting the cool air in the room, cool me down enough to cover back up and fall asleep.  I went to sleep around 2 am.  Hubby opened the door and told me to get up and make pancakes.  He said it was cold in my room.  I didn’t want to get up, but I got up and went downstairs and got out the big electric griddle and made some pancakes.  I warmed the plates in the oven.  They were cold and I didn’t want to put a hot pancake onto a cold plate.  I went over to make a pot of coffee.  My son said “Mom, please make me some coffee.”  He loves my coffee, so I just added a little more coffee and made him 6 ounces.  I never do that, but I did today.  I always add a splash of vanilla syrup and powdered coffee  creamer and sugar.  He drank it all. 

We went to Target to get my son a Halloween costume.  He wanted this one that looked like a skeleton chest with blood in it.  You strap it on and fill this pump thing with the fake blood and pump it through the clear bones.  It has a foam mask that looks like a skeleton face and it comes with a big black robe with a hood. 

My son and I have been watching this scary reality show called Estate of  Panic.   I recorded them off the Chiller network.  I just watched 4 shows. (That is all I could find.)   I see that they are on the link above.  They really put these people through some chilling events to win some money.  One show, they wired the room all over so that the people got shocked all the time, trying to get to money.  Then they turned the lights real low and you could see the sparks when they got shocked.  They have to grab as much money as they can and get out of the room, but if you get out too fast you could go home if you have the least amount of money, but if you stay and are the last to get out, you get locked in and lose anyway.  They have rooms that have snakes and shoot out water that gets deep.  One room was icy cold.  I am going to have to watch the rest of them.  The host is really a creepy, scary kind of guy.  If the people say they were scared, he laughs and says  “Oh good, I like that.” 

When I put my son to bed tonight, he said he was scared.  I said “Why?”    “Because that show scared me.”   I said, “Then why did you want to watch it?”     He said “Because I thought it was neat, but it scares me.” 

He will want to watch the rest of the shows on the internet, when I tell him they are on here.  It is frightening good.

Build a Lego car (from 12-2)

The other day, we were at Toy’s R Us.  They have this promotion with Lego.  Every week you get a special brick if you buy a Lego.  We have been buying Christmas toys, so we go in each week to get the special brick.  Tomorrow is brick #4, we will go buy something on Monday so we can get #4.  They sell for $4.99 each on the Toy’s R Us website.  I can’t find them to show you, maybe they don’t sell them anymore.   I will take a picture of them when I get the last one.

Anyway, when we were they, they had a sign up saying it was Bricktober and today they were having a Lego event from 12 to 2pm to build a Lego car to race.  You got to keep it too.  My son loves Lego, so he wanted to go.  We took him.  They had bags of Lego bricks and the guy gave him 4 wheels and the base and an instruction sheet and he got to build his car any way he wanted.  He built a big yellow one.  When we got into the car he said he wanted to go to the other Toy R Us store so he could build another one.   I didn’t care, it was free, so we went.  This store had a big box of bricks and my son asked the guy there if there was a limit on how big you could build it.  He said “No build it any way you want and as big as you want.”  A few kids there was building big ones.  My son built the biggest one, see photo at the top.  Those bricks online cost 30 cents each and up.  My son made it long and was building and building.  I got tired of waiting so I told him it was big enough.  If I had not stopped him, it would have been even bigger.  They even had some ramps to race them.  He raced it with other kids “cars”.  He won.  Of course he won, that thing is heavy, it went all the way to the wall.  He just loves it.  “Mom, that is like a $100 Lego.”    When he got home, he tore the first one apart and has built a lot of things with it.  He love the big one, he does not want to take it apart yet.

Playing with Picnik

Sometimes I like to go to Picnik.com and play with their photo editing.  Today I noticed they have Halloween effects.  Flicker has Picnik, but it does not do as much as going straight to Picnik.com.  You can make red eyes or green glowing eyes and ghoul effects and blood.  Too fun.   Since green is my favorite color, I had to have green glowing eyes and lips.

They have even better effects if you go professional, but that costs money and I don’t want to upgrade and spend the money.  Everytime I go there to edit, I really do want to upgrade, but I don’t.  I really should go buy me a Photoshop program.  I had one, but it was for XP and now that I have stupid Vista, my old photoshop does not work. 

I noticed that Gimp does a lot of stuff that Photoshop does and I might get enough nerve to download it, but I don’t really want to download it because I heard it is loaded with pop up ads and I don’t want to see ads even though the program is free. 

I bought a big bag of candy bars to give out for Halloween.  It is bite size candy bars and I opened the bag and ate a few of the candy pieces.  They taste so good.  I sit on the couch and that bag is calling to me. 

“Pssttttt…..Connie……I am full of Snickers, Twix, Milky Way bars.  Try me….NOW.”    Ok, so I go over and cut the bag open and decide to try one, so I get a Twix, and then maybe a Milky Way. 

They taste so good, I get a few more.  They are really small pieces, but I decided the small pieces taste much better than a giant bar.  They are just the right size to just melt on your tongue and feel the chocolate go all over your tongue and then taste the caramel.  It also has 3 Musketeers.  I don’t like those as much, no caramel, and the center is this strange texture stuff, like a blob of goo. 

Tonight was pizza night and movie night.  I bought the DVD Transformers 2, the new one that just came out.  I really liked watching this movie.  I think it is better than the first one. 

I made the pizza.  You can see my pizza video here.   Sometimes I just don’t want to go out to get a pizza.  Especially on Friday.  The restaurants are all packed and you have to wait to get seated. 

James sent me a post card from Chicago.  Thanks for thinking of me James.  I didn’t even know you were going to Chicago.  I would like to go there someday.  I would love to go visit their aquarium.  I just went to Stone Mountain, in Georgia.  It is beside Atlanta.  We went and saw the Georgia Aquarium.  It was wonder.  I took lots of pictures and videos.

I loved watching this big tank full of sharks, they had a huge whale shark.  I think the fish I was most amazed to see were the cuttlefish.  They  have big eyes and change colors.  The jelly fish were so pretty to watch too.

It was wonderful looking at all the fish.  I could just sit there and watch them all day.

My painting is done.

I got up and put another coat of gesso on my shopping bag.  It dries and looks and feels like canvas.  I then drew the picture I wanted.  I saw this picture but I changed it up and drew it.  It is a moon in front of a planet with 2 children sitting on the moon.  I painted the sky a dark blue and put stars all around.  I used acrylic paint for the background and for the moon I used a paint pen.  I used puff paint all around on everything else. 

It is still a little wet, It will dry by tomorrow.  I really like how it turned out.  It looks better than a bag that says Kroger.  I even glued blue rhinestones on it too, but they don’t really show up in the picture.  Now I have paint all over my hand and glitter too.   I also got Gorilla Glue all over my fingers from putting on the rhinestones.  That won’t come off, if feels awful.

I need to be artistic on my non paper grocery bag.

I found a dime (10 cents) at the Coinstar today.  It was jammed in so I got out my tweezers and little nail scissors and slid it out.  Dime for the win.  It was tricky to grab it.  It kept sliding in further, but I got it.  Didn’t take a picture of it though. 

I have one of those bags that you pay $1 for at the grocery store.  It is made out of the fabric that seems like a cross between paper and material.  You are supposed to use them instead of plastic at the stores.  I bought a black Kroger bag.  Kroger is a grocery store.  The neat thing about this one is that it has a little zippered pocket inside.  I use this bag for when I go camping and have to go to the shower building.  I put my stuff in it and carry it to the shower.  I decided I didn’t like Kroger on it, so I painted over a lot of the bag with white gesso paint.  I am going to paint a picture on the white part and maybe put some rhinestones on it.  I like shiny “bling” on things.   I might paint apples….or a moon with a girl sitting on it.

Last Saturday we drove to Pidgeon Forge, the town you go thru to get to Dollywood, or The Smokey Mountains.  We wanted to go to this apple place.  It is a big place, they sell all kinds of apple stuff and have a big restaurant too.  We wanted to get the baked apple.

The apple inside the pie crust was not warm, the juice they put over it was hot, but it was not worth the drive.  It poured down rain that day.  It fact it rained 4 inches.  They said the river never the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Aquarium rose 8 feet.  Houses were sliding down the side of the mountains.  The traffic was so heavy too.  It is always heavy traffic going that way.  We also stopped at the “As seen on TV” store.  My son wanted to go in to see.  They have all the crap that they sell on TV.  I saw the snuggie.   That thing is a piece of crap.  I felt it, it is a very thin blanket felt material.  I say buy a heavier blanket to put on your lap if you want to stay warm.  It was $20.   The only thing I really like from a commercial on TV is the Buxton  purse.  I like it so much, I bought another one, so I can use it when my purse wears out. 

Once I went into one of those stores and bought a few things.  I think I was all caught up in the moment, plus I think you get brain washed by the commercials.  I got this mirror that coiled around your neck.  I tried it, and it was garbage.  It was not real glass, it was this plastic shiny stuff, like foil, that was the mirror, so it sucked big time. 

I got this pan that had  compartments or diverders.  I don’t even remember why I thought that was a good ideal.  The pan was so thin and cheap, I threw it away.  Once my husband fell for this commercial that was this cream that instantly melted hair on your body.  He wanted it for his back.  The commercial said if you ordered it, you would get a nice bathrobe, like the one in hotel rooms.  He ordered one bottle and they charged him for 3 orders, plus did not send the bathrobe.  The cream just burned his skin and did nothing.  They always say you get your money back if you do not like it.  They did give him some of the money back, not the shipping and handling stuff.  It was very hard to get ahold of them too.

SO, I guess if you want stuff from TV, then go to the As seen on TV store and you don’t have to pay the shipping and handling fees.  

I used to love watching QVC and the Home Shopping channel.  That can be addictive and brain washing.  You can turn that channel on and not even want to buy anything, and after watching them gush about how great the product is, you just want one, you want to order it, even if the shipping is like $10.  I used to buy a lot of stuff on there.  I don’t anymore, I just don’t turn it on now.  You can see it live on the internet too now, but I don’t watch it.  If I do…..I want it all…..all of it I say…….that is why I don’t watch it.

I bought a bag of Gala apples today.  I am going to bake some apples.