We went to this lake near Chattanooga, TN at Thanksgiving to go camping. It was cold at night. It was 37 F degrees. We were going to go fishing so we bought some worms. We went to the wooden pier, see picture.
It was cold and windy. Too cold to fish. Our trailer worked out great. We went to Publix. It was a new grocery store about 12 miles away from the campground. We bought a pumpkin pie. We also got a pumpkin cake roll at Wal-Mart. We tasted the pumpkin cake roll. It was awful. The cake part was so dry and hard, it was hard to slice. It must have been made a few months ago and frozen and thawed out for the holiday. Took one bite and threw it in the trash. In the morning, an animal dug in the trash can outside. The pumpkin roll box was on the ground. He tore up the pumpkin cake roll, but it looked like he left it all. Even the “raccoon” unknown animal didn’t like it.  I also tried the pumpkin pie, it was awful too, threw that away too, so that was a dismal desert experience.  For dinner, I had some chicken breast, I poured a can of cream of chicken soup over the chicken and baked it in the oven.  It was good.  We just stayed for 2 days.  Oh on Friday, we went to Wal-Mart at about 9 am to see if there was anything left on Black Friday sale.  The TV we wanted was gone.  I got a $2 dvd movie.  I got a mixer for $4, I got it for the trailer.  We got two coats for $7 each.

There was no line, which was amazing.  We then went to Target.  Just one word for that place PACKED.  There were so many people.  The store was wall to wall people.  The lines went all the way back to the end of the store and curved around the isles.  People had shopping carts over flowing.  We left.  Even if I saw something I wanted, I would not stand in line for hours.  That is just nuts. 

Oh…..I got a great buy on things when I got home.  I stopped at Dollar General.  They had a MP3 player 2 Gig for $12.  I bought one for my son and put on some music for him.  It sounded great.  I went back today and it was still on sale, it is a 3 day sale on that.  I bought me one too.  I spent a few hours with all my music cd’s, putting on songs onto my MP3 player.  I love it.   I also got a micro scope for my son too.  It was on sale for $10.   I bought some Lady Gaga songs.  I love her music.

I was in Ace Hardware store. My husband was getting something in the back of the store. I was standing near the front. I started looking at all the Christmas decorations. They had these cute little buildings. Old time burger and soda shops, barns, train station and the ones in the picture. I wanted one. I told my husband “I just want one and then next year I will buy another one.” I got this one that was a tackle and bait shop. It has little chains on posts and rope and a little boat and a fishing pole. When we paid for it, it was on sale for $15, regular price was $25. Such a deal. We went back and got another one, a Bakery one. (On the left in the picture.)  We put them on the mantle and plugged them in.  They are neat to look at, all lit up.  Then I saw the Toy Shoppe at Wal-Mart, so I got that one too.  It was $15.  

Now we have 3.  I got some little trees and a bench and some people.  Home Depot had a pack of those.   I want more.

I bought some rum yesterday.  I was watching the Food Network channel and I had on the show of Sandra Lee, the semi homemade one.  She had on a lady who was making a rum cake.  I decided to make one, so I went to the store and got a yellow cake mix and one box of vanilla pudding mix.  I went to the liquor store and said “I need some rum to make a rum cake.”  He said, “Well if you make it, you have to give me a piece.”  I got a bottle of Bacardi gold rum. 

The lady on TV put in 1 cup of rum, well 1/2 cup in the mix and then made a glaze with 1/2 cup of rum and some butter.  She poked holes all over the cake and poured it all over the bottom and then turned it over and poked holes all over the top and poured the glaze all over the top.  I don’t know if I will use that much rum on my cake.  That is an awful lot of rum.  I would probably get drunk on that cake, since I don’t ever drink.  Well maybe once a year, I will have a Margarita. 

I will take pictures when I make it, maybe even make a video of it…….maybe.

Pore Hermit crab.   He died the other day, well last week.  He just died.  I thought he was molting….nope, he stunk, bad.  My son wanted to bury him.  We went out the the end of our yard and I dug a hole and put him in it.  I put dirt on top and poured a bunch of sand over that.  Then I got a big rock and put it on top. 

I went outside today to take some pictures.  I was walking around over by the tree area and I saw a crab claw and some crab legs.  I went over to where I buried crabs.  Some animal dug a hole, deep one and got crabs.  They ate him.

There were claw marks around the hole.  They or it actually dug him up.  So sad.  They must have a great nose to smell it under the ground, under a big rock.  I won’t tell my son, he would be so upset.   I wonder if it was a raccoon.  I saw one, a big one, run across the road a block down the street, a couple of days ago.  He ran in front of our car, into the bushes.  His big striped tail hanging straight out. 

Oh, I got my washer fixed.  Hubby said it was the pump so he called the manufacturer and ordered a pump.  Had it over night delivered, it came the next day.  He put it on and it works.  I am so glad it works now. 

I got a lot of neat pictures in the yard.  It was muddy from all the rain the other day, so I had to walk in the tall grass. 

There were these seeds stuck all over my slacks and shoes.

It was hard to pull them off.
I saw this white flower growing all my itself. It looked like a daisy. I took a picture of it. I am amazed it is still growing in November.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.  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.

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.