Is Halloween cancelled this year?!

Is Halloween cancelled this year? It might be!, at our house at least.
I am struggling with payments to car and home insurance (have to have), health insurance, (have to have), electric bill, (have to have), food, (have to have)! Etc............
I am trying to buy some Christmas a little at a time (a little has become normal lately since Ronnie's lay off!)
Sometimes I wonder how we'll get by week to week. When we use to be able to look ahead a little, it's hard to do right now.
The company that my husband worked for is so greedy that they don't even worry about their employees, at all! It's all about the all mighty dollar, the owners, the CEO, the managers, are all greedy.
When they laid 150 people off permanently in November 08, they took away so much from all of those people who worked there! No retirement, a poor severance , and not much of a future to look forward to anymore.
Commerical, life's become so commerical.
The stores have the Thanksgiving items sitting right inside the swinging doors, waiting for the Halloween products to be pulled the day after. Some are already putting Christmas decorations out because the Halloween decorations are almost sold out, @ our local Dollar Tree anyway.
The holidays seem to just all run together, not giving you a chance to recover before you feel the need to buy for the next holiday, the day after one has just ended. $$$$$$$
Don't get me wrong, I love all the holidays! I don't celebrate Thanksgiving for the reason it came to be, I celebrate it as a time for family and being thankful for them and what we have.
I love Christmas, I believe it's my favorite holiday. But, why does everything cost so much? Do you have to spend all that money for all those decorations, gifts, wrapping paper, a tree, decorations for the tree, food for the big dinner, plates, napkins etc,,,,,,, Is it all necessary?
When we had the extra money it was a little easier to do, but, not to understand how we got where we are now.
Why can't we go back to the simple life, making our own Valentines cards and those little boxes to put them in. Why can't we go to the woods and cut down a tree for Christmas instead of going to a store and spending $30 to $100 for a tree??
Where'd all these kids come from @ Halloween? Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love seeing all of the little trick or treaters coming to get candy. But use to we could buy 2 or 3 bags of candy and at the end of the night, we would have candy left to eat. And that was on a busy Halloween night. But now I can buy 4 of the big bags of candy and I end up having to turn my porch light out because I ran out of candy!
I am always generous but, I bet we have 100 or more kids who come to our house at Halloween. That's a lot of kids!
I hope things one day get back to being simple. Let's try to make it simple again. Stop driving everyday just to be going somewhere. Grow some tomatoes, and some okra, a few things to cut your food bill.
Eat at home more often. Instead of going and buying a steak dinner, an appetizer and drinks, Cook a steak on the grill, make a salad(go all out), and nuke or bake a potato(especially in the summer, I nuke mine :})
If you have a deck, or even just a dinning room table, light a candle, have your steak dinner and a beverage. Yummy!
Eating @ Home=3 times compared to going out.
And if you decide to have some Arbor Mist with dinner, you don't have to have a DD.



Talking Bird? Who ever thought!

Roxie, that's our feathered friend's name. Actually she's a part of our extended family.

Do you have animals? Do they think they're people?

Well we do have animals, many, and a lot of different ones.

And yes, they think they are people! Shhhhhh! Don't tell them that they aren't, it'll hurt their feelings.

4 dogs, 4 fish, 3 cats, 1 bird, and another animal that I won't disclose what she is. :}

Roxie is an African Grey that my husband bought a little over 5 years ago. She was an ugly little featherless wrinkled little baby when he first got her. Her cage was small, baby birds don't move much so they don't need a lot of room. And like a baby, you have to get up and fix their food and feed them in the middle of the night.

Roxie

She is grown now and talks and whistles and dances! Yes, she dances. I always try to leave the tv or radio on in her room so she doesn't get lonely, when we aren't in the room with her.

I taught her to dance (which to her is flapping or spreading , her wings, and bobbing her head up and down).

One day, I walked up to her cage and said, Dance, she said it back to me! Wow, up until now she was a closet talker. (She would never talk if you were looking at her, only if she thought you couldn't see her).

She can be very loud at times, especially when no one is in the room with her and she wants attention.

When I open the back door to let our dog, Madison, out, Roxie says "Come on Madison", same thing when the dog's comming in. She doesn't say everybodys names. Only a few. She says Madison, Ronnie (my husband), Amber, (my middle daughter) and Riley (our youngest daughters cat's name).

I have taught her how to say a lot of things, one is "yummy". She gets a vanilla wafer 1 or 2 times a day and I always say Yummy when I give her a cookie. Now she says it.

She's beautiful and smart. Oh yeah, she loves watching an african grey on the internet named Einstien. He or she is one of the smartest birds with the largest vocabulary I have ever heard! Look for it on Youtube.

The clip Roxie likes is , Einstien's word pratice, check it out. This bird is so amazing, someone has spend a lot of time with it.

And that's the key to getting a talking bird to talk, time. Someone told me that normally an african grey doesn't talk very much until they reach age 5. That's how old Roxie is and she has began to talk much better and a lot more than she use to.

You can tell she's a mans bird. My son hadn't been here in months, maybe 6 months. Mind you I am around Roxie everyday, talking to her, feeding her and cleaning after her.

Erik (my son), walks in to the room and puts his hand up to pet her and she just loves it! He can rub her belly, head, back and you can tell she's loving it!

I do good to get to pet her or rub her on the head! Now when I get her out, she's sweet and talks up a storm.

We love her. I believe the african greys usually live 75 years. Seeing that I am 51 and Ronnie's 55, Audrey (our granddaughter), will inherit her :}

Fried green tomatoes and randomness

Who, from the south doesn't like fried green tomatoes? I know we do.
For a week, my youngest daughter has been searching for green tomatoes, so her daddy can fry some for her. She works at Bi Lo, they didn't have them, Wal~mart didn't, it seemed that nobody had them.
Then yesterday when we went to Linda's produce in East Ridge, guess what we found? Yep, green tomatoes! Ya.
So Ronnie is cooking for us tonight and along with our steak, potatoes (sweet potatoes for me), we are having fried green tomatoes, yummy.
Along the line of veggies, Brooke, our oldest daughter, said she still hates brussel sprouts. Ha Ha!
And she remembers I use to make all our kids eat brussel sprouts when they were at home. And of course she hated them then. Is it my fault she doesn't like them now?, probably.
 The one thing Ronnie and I disagreed on as far as feeding our kids was, he wanted them to eat everything on their plates. I told them to eat good but they didn't have to clean their plates. How do you know how much food a small child's stomach holds? If it's the size of their fist, not as much as most parents put on the plate for them.
Peas, yum! I think all of my adult life I have loved peas. When I was small I didn't though......yuck!
I would always save my peas for last so that I could stuff them all in my mouth, get out the back door fast and , yes, spit them out.
I believe that was the only vegetable I didn't like, peas
Fried green tomatoes

Jumping ahead a bit

As with a lot of other people, we have been making it by the skin of our teeth lately.
Money's tight, and times are hard, all over!
Like I wrote in another part of another blog, my husband Ronnie worked for a company named Arcade Marketing Inc. for 23 years before he was laid off permanently in November 2008. So, our life was all of a sudden going in a different direction! But not a good direction.

Thank God, I still had my job at Wal~mart. But our life is totally changed now. From a combined income of $150,000 to maybe $30,000.
 Big difference, but we will make it.
Everybody says God will take care of us. I believe this, especially now. We are going on 2 years with Ronnie on unemployment, but right as his next to the last check, he gets hired @ Wal~mart!
Since June 15th, 2010, I have been out of work due to having surgery on my ankle that I broke a while back. I am on short term disability. Thank goodness for insurance and the FMLA. Also, Wal~mart has been great working with me about the surgery and my time off from work. From what people have told me, my spot is still open.
There's times that I wonder, how are we going to make it? I'm not sure how, but I know we will.
I've gotten to spend some quality time with my kids and granddaughter while I have been out. I have just began to be able to do things around the house though. I can walk without crutches now for the past week, I don't even have to get an electric cart when I go to shop anymore. Yay!

Life as I know it: Life as I know it

Life as I know it: Life as I know it

When I met Ronnie

Alpine Baptist is the church we attended starting when I was 9, I believe.
Before that we were members at Calvary Baptist in North Chattanooga on Bell Ave.
Ronnie and his family went to Alpine too. He's 4 years older than me so @ age 9, I didn't even notice him.
When I was 12,after church, Ronnie was in the hallway leading out of the church.
He told me I was pretty. I remember kicking him in the shin. I guess I was embarrassed.
For about a year, as I remember, I went home with Ronnie's younger sister Karen, after church service in the morning and came back with her in the evening to meet my parents @ church and go home after.
I always thought Ronnie was so cute. But I was 12, the age a lot of girls start to pay more attention to boys.
Needless to say, I never told him I thought he was cute!
When I was 14, Ronnie ask my parents if I could go to a movie with him. They let me go! I couldn't hardly believe it. He had a nice car, it was a 64 or 65 Mustang. Red with black interior and a black vinyl top.
We came to Brainerd to a movie theatre that was where Harbor Frieght is now. I was so excited!
When I was 15, I attended Ronnie's wedding to Nancy Smith. Now @ 15 I wasn't visiting his sister anymore after church, and I was a bit older so, I definitely thought Ronnie was cute!
You know the part of the ceremony where the preacher says, speak now or forever hold your peace? I wanted to stand up and say , "Please don't marry her! Wait for me!" But, I kept quiet. I would have looked like an idiot. Now, I wished I had of stood up and spoke! :}

Red Bank Living

We moved into a house @ 3609  Lamar Ave when I was 4. This house  we rented.
 When I was 6, mama got pregnant . May 21st 1966 when I was 7, my brother Bruce was born.
When I was 9, we moved 2 houses up, but, this time, we were buying :}This house was @ 3615 Lamar Ave.
.My mama walked me to school all through elementary school. :} We walked to the big town of Red Bank on the weekends when I was small. Then there were a lot of pharmacies with a counter where you could sit and have a soda, a burger, a sundae etc.

There, I lived all my teenage years and grew up.
Red Bank was a good school. I didn't ever like school though, I liked to go so I could see my friends!
I spent summers @ the Red Bank pool, riding my 10 speed and  hanging out with my friends.
I played softball for the Red Bank Gals from age 9 til age 15. I was hind catcher.
Mama was @ every game and walked with me to my practices on Saturday. And was @ every game we played. My daddy worked 3rd, so he didn't come to many practices or games.

Growing up as me :}

Sometimes do you sit and try to think , what age was my first memory? Was I 2? I believe I was actually.
 I remember a house we lived in that an older lady named Mrs. Gault rented out part of of her house.
I remember  kind of what the inside of some of the house looked like, and there was a drop off from the back porch.
 I had a teddy bear named Mamie. Of anything and everything I have ever lost, when I lost this bear in a storage I had and couldn't pay on, it hurt me more than you could imagine! :{
I was inside of a little store in North Chattanooga looking over 3 feet above me to see the man behind the counter,with 3 pennies giving them to him @ age 3 (from what my mama told me). Apparently I had walked out of the house and down the block to the corner store!
 We lived on Coeval St and Albany St, both in N. Chatt.  When we lived on Albany we had a live Nativity at church and they used one of my baby dolls. :}. I remember that my uncle Julius lived with us for a while and he always stomped and made loud noises when it stormed, because, it scared me and I always ran and jumped in his lap. He thought it was funny! He was playing and was always nice to me.
  We had a cake for my daddy  once and we hid in the kitchen and mama came out and lit his cake for him. Aw sweet <3
 We lived in North Chattanooga, in a 2 story little house on Barton Ave. We had 2 dogs and a cat. I remember giving the cat a bath, he took off running and never came back. Never to be seen again! There was a house across from us and the people who lived there had a housekeeper. I decided to just take off and go to visit my friend who lived there. I was talking to the house keeper and turned around and there mama was! Uh oh! Needless to say, I got my butt busted. And had to stay in the rest of the day. I knew not to walk across the street. 
I had my own bedroom, I think there was a curtain over my closet door.I use to dream that little green men came out of my closet.
 I could look out of my window and down to the driveway and wave bye to daddy when he was leaving for work.
If I was upstairs and he came home I always knew, because, our cocker spaniels would run down the stairs to meet him.
And then when I was 4, we moved to Red Bank on Lamar Ave...

Life as I know it: Life as I know it

Life as I know it: Life as I know it: "I was born in North Chattanooga, February 5th 1959 I believe we lived in North Chattanooga until I was 4, then we moved to Red Bank. I grew ..."

Life as I know it

I was born in North Chattanooga, February 5th 1959
I believe we lived in North Chattanooga until I was 4, then we moved to Red Bank.
I grew up on Lamar Ave, went to Red Bank all through school.
The 1st job I had was @ Shoney's in Red Bank. For 2 years I stayed at that job. I was a server and sometimes a hostess.
After Shoney's, I worked @ a grocery store called Shop Rite as a cashier.
The next job I had was @ a gas station called Kayo in Red Bank.
This is where I met Darryl, who I married and had my son Erik by. We stayed together a little over 3 years.
Later, I married again. Stayed married for a couple of years.
In 1985, Ronnie (my husband, who I have known since I was 9 from Alpine church) came by my parents where I was staying . He had a son named Nathan, and , a daughter named Brooke. He had been married to Nancy Smith from school. They divorced and he had custody of the children.
About a week or 2 later, I went to see him at his place he had on Basswood Dr., I never left, that was February 16th 1985.
March 2, of that year, we got married. Now together we had 3 children.
In 1987 we had a dughter together, we named her Amber :}. When Amber was 11 months old, I got pregnant with our second daughter. We named her Candice :}
In 1991 we found a house in Brainerd. Later we purchased this house.
In 2000, for reasons I am not disclosing, I took Amber and Candice to Florida, where we lived until 2004.
I worked as a housekeeper and desk clerk @ Manatee Suites from May 2000 until February 2004. The hotel was a small property and was on the beach.
We started out in a room, moved to an apartment on the property. Later we moved to a nice townhouse on Palmetto Ave. We loved this place!
All the time we were in Florida Ronnie came down every 2 or 3 months, sometimes more often.
In 2001, Ronnie divorced me, later telling me this in an email.
On September 23rd 2003 Brooke had a son, Evan :}
In 2003 Amber got pregnant and on December 30th 2003, had my wonderful granddaughter..Audrey.
In February 2004, we moved back to Chattanooga. In 2006 Candice and I got an apartment in Red Bank.
I had the impression that Ronnie and I would remarry. This didn't happen until 2007. March 2nd 2007 we got remarried at the Chapel in Ringgold Ga. Finally a church wedding with a preacher! Needless to say, Candice and I moved back to the house :} <3 Home Sweet Home <3
I have worked for over 5 years now for Walmart. A few jobs in between the first 2 years @ the Brained Walmart and 3 @ the Hixson Walmart.
Ronnie had a job for over 22 years @ Arcade printing. In November 2008 he and all his co workers were permanently laid off from Arcade.
Now comes the part of Life as I know it..........