More Rain & Our Trip to Jefferson, TX

Hey my lovelies - over the last two days we've gotten about 10 inches of rain. Can you believe it? We caught up on our rainfall totals for East Texas all in two days! Some places around here are having problems with flooding, bridges washed out and roads washed out, and even a few homes flooded. I personally didn't have any problems. You oughta see my pastures and my garden! WOW - what a little natural rainwater can do!!!

Guess I must apologize for my crudity on my last post. Most of you avoided acknowledging my crass-ness when I called our torrential rains a gully-washer, a frog-strangler, and a t*rd-floater. Ya'll made me feel bad, so I deleted that. However, I did have one blogger buddy comment AFTER I'd already deleted it that a t*rd-floater is exactly what they called it, too. Yea! Somebody understands where I come from! But, to those of you who were offended I apologize.

OK, on to other matters! If you follow Debbie Wisdom at her blog, Wisdom, then you'll know that she, Tara from New Day, New Seasons and I had a blogger buddy get-together and we all met up in Jefferson, Texas, on Tuesday! We had the BEST TIME EVER!!! We visited this very cool Confederate cemetery first...
This was the Scottsville cemetery just outside of Marshall... Beautiful monuments of old, lots of stories that we'll never know, babies, soldiers, husbands, wives... I always wonder what their lives were like... This was the family chapel...


Here is one of the monuments - the cemetery was very well cared for...

Here's Debbie checking out some of the headstones. A bunch of the gravesites had little wrought-iron fences around them, and alot also had footstones...


This beautiful monument was called the weeping angel - it was gorgeous & I'd love to paint it someday!

And I don't wanna bore you with too much cemetery stuff, but here were my two buddies having way too much fun in such a  somber place!

In Marshall, we visited the old rennovated Weisman Building - a used-to-be a department store downtown. It's now been converted into a lovely antique place with a WONDERFUL eatery where we had lunch. I forgot to take a picture of my lunch but it was DELISH - chicken salad, tuna salad, spinach quiche, banana nut bread, fruit - YUM!

We then pedaled our way on up to Jefferson and spent the rest of the day cruising 'round the place, checking out all the bed/breakfasts (wow - they're were way more than I remembered!) and they were SO beautiful.  We visited a few shops, visited the old restored Excelsior Hotel (where I heard there were ghosts, but we didn't see any), and ate our way through the afternoon.  We had coconut pie at one eatery and a root beer float for me at another place.  Huge hydrangeas in the garden at the Hotel in this photo - they were in the fountain area...

I guess you could say this little guy could be a ghost from the Excelsior Hotel - he appeared each spring and disappeared each winter.

At the end of the afternoon, we sat outside and enjoyed some cloudy weather and scooted inside quickly as a storm hit.  We got to sit inside for an HOUR and visit and laugh and cut up!

Look who we ran into at the General Store???  Why, John Wayne!!!  Tara here had to take her turn giving the Duke a big hug!  But he kept his stoic face.  Matter of fact, he never changed his expression when each of us hugged him and posed with him!  Come on Duke - lighten up!!!

Well, I had 50 pictures I could show you, but maybe in another post.  All I know is that these two girls are precious and special to me.  I had gotten to know them via their blogs and so just meeting them in person was the icing on the cake!  We all learned so much more about each other and it seems like I've known them forever.  Our personalities just clicked and I have never laughed so much as I did Tuesday!  At least not in a long long time.  I can't remember when I've had such a fun getaway.  We missed a couple of gals that were supposed to come, so I'm hopin' we can repeat this blog buddy meetin' and just have a big ole blogger convention!!!  Thanks for Tuesday, Debbie & Tara - love you two, too!!!

The Jerry Springer Show

Hello my friends - Sorry I've been away. Things have been so busy around our household and I've not been able to do any posts. I've visited a few of you, but it's been very brief.

I think I've mentioned before that I manage two self-storage facilities along with helping out in a commercial construction office.  My main office is at the storage facility, and when you come in I am sitting in my office behind my desk.  I have a window with bars in it so I can talk to my customers in a bit of safety. They may not can reach me, but they sure could shoot me. I just try not to think about that. Well, I've been there nearly 8 years now, and I'm still okay.

Picture me, working at my computer, and in comes a customer.  Now, I'm not going to make fun of this lady, but I'm just going to tell you  exactly what happened on Friday afternoon. I'm just statin' facts and descriptions and my reactions here, K?  I felt like I was on the Jerry Springer Show!

Well, this lady came in - I say lady loosely - you know the emails that go around with the pictures of the Walmart people in them?  Well, this lady had to be an escapee from the video.  Probably about my age, but with long stringy dyed dark brown hair, very strange make-up, tight britches that looked like she had two pigs in a poke, lunch spilled all down the front of her shirt and chattering away on her cell phone.  Anyway, she wanted to check on an account that her live-in boyfriend had taken up with us about 3 years ago.  It was way past due and she wanted to make sure that we hadn't sold their stuff yet. I told her no, but that she'd have to get it all paid up before the next foreclosure sale or it would go into the sale. 

Then she freaked.  She started ranting and raving and telling me that all she owned was in the storage unit. That she was now living with her uncle and renting a room from him, cuz she was on Social Security and so was her boyfriend in Kansas.  I got a long drawn out sob story about how their account had gotten so far behind.  She was having a hard time talking and she kept putting her hand up to her mouth. Going on and on about her boyfriend had moved to Kansas to be near his kids cuz his ex-wife had moved up there to live with her l*sbian l*ver and she had custody of the kids, blah, blah, blah.

She's still messin' with her mouth.  All of a sudden, she shoves several fingers with dirty nails in her mouth and whoops her bottom dentures out and slams 'em down on my window sill above my desk!!!!!  Complete with spit string from her gums!!!  On the window sill where every body and their dog puts their hands, their keys, their purses, wallets, and money is passed over that sill many times a day!!!

"I hope that don't gross you out - I just got this new teeth and they don't fit right and I cain't hardly talk with 'em in", she said.  I didn't know what to say.  I just sat there like a complete goose while she kept rattling on and on.  In my 8 years there, I cannot believe what I'm seeing.   That's the weirdest and grossest thing that's ever happened up there at my office.  I'm flabbergasted.  Gross! Yuck! EEEWWWWWW!  I just don't have the words for it.

When she quit yappin', she picked up those nasty teeth and shoved 'em back into her mouth, germs and all.  I cain't tell you what all she said - it ain't fittin', it just ain't fittin'.  As soon as her tail was out the door, I jumped up and ran to the bathroom for my Lysol bleach cleaner and scrubbed the little pool of slobber off my windowsill BUT good.  Now, aren't you glad you stopped by my blog today?

Adam will be home in a few days for a few days. I'll be so glad to see him. He's been gone since Christmas and it's been way too long for this mama not to see her boy. My husband and a friend of his are going to take my 2 boys and the other guy's son to Arkansas on a fishin' trip next week.  I know they'll have fun. I plan on working on my garden, OR I may go see my seester for a couple of days.  We need to catch up! And bug my brother in law.  He's so fun to bug and embarrass!

I'm leaving you with a couple of pictures that have absolutely nothing to do with this post. But people like to look at pictures - I know I do - so here's a couple of big fellas that live down the road from the farm. I hope to have a couple of these guys on my place sometime. They're so... so... so TEXAS!

Keep that gown down!  See ya later ---

I WON A GIVEAWAY!

Lookie-lookie! See what I got in the mail last week???  I won a wonderful GIVEAWAY from Miss Sandy at Quill Cottage!  If you know her, you'll know that it's a fabulous prize!

What do you think it is?  You'll have to guess! You'll NEVER guess!

It's very foo-foo! Now do you know what it is???

Still don't know, do you?  Whatever it is, it's PINK - very PINK!

SEE WHAT I WON FROM MISS SANDY'S GIVEAWAY?  One of her wonderful, outstanding, amazingly beautiful and sassy High Heeled Shoes!!!  All decked out in wonderful hot pink and black doo-dads, lovely old photograph, some vintage-y gift tags, decorator crepe ribbons and trims, a little black bird (just cuz) and everything cutesy and girly-girly!

Are you just so jealous?  And I know the perfect place for all this lusciousness!

In the PINK room at the farmhouse!!!

Isn't it absolutely perfect here on this vanity??? I think so, too!

Thank you SO much Miss Sandy, at Quill Cottage!  You MUST go check out her blog!  She does all this beautiful paper art - she is multi-talented. She writes inspirationally, too, and most of all she is a dear Christian lady.  I feel so lucky to win her giveaway, but more importantly to be her friend!!!