My trip to the most boring place in Texas

Okay, I can't say for sure that this is the most boring place in all of Texas. Texas is a big place, and so I have not really been to all of it yet. In fact, I have there are whole big chunks of it east and south of here that I am totally unfamiliar with.

But this particular boring place is where my grandparents used to live, and where my dad lived fifty years ago. So I went there often until I became a teenager. Since my husband had to work there for the day, I thought that I would go with him and see if I recognized anything. And it was only the one day, so no matter how boring it was and how bad the motel was, I figured that I could put up with it for this one day.

As I said in the previous post, my husband decided that it was just far enough away that we needed to go ahead and go there the day before. So we headed out, and about halfway there we stopped and ate at The Green Frog in Jacksboro. This is a place that we traveled past many times in my childhood, but rarely ate at. We must have eaten there at some point, cause we were always asking if we were going to eat there this time, but I don't remember actually stopping there. Contrary to the opinions of ten year old children, people do not starve to death during three hour road trips. But people do have to make other stops, so if we did not stop at The Green Frog we at least went to the gas station down the street and got soda and candy.

My husband had decided to try to make this a really nice trip for me, early present or some such thing, so we ate at this restaurant of my childhood memory before going to some historical fort that he wanted to take pictures of. We got there about an hour before it was starting to get dark, and lots of deer came out to look at us. We were not to their liking, and they went back to wherever they came from, and we went back to taking pictures of old buildings built by people who were smaller than us and used up a lot less space. The jail wasn't much bigger than my bedroom, but it used to house twelve prisoners in four cells.

Then we got back into the car, and while we did not go to any of those places suggested by Bulletholes, one of them was a very good guess, as it was in the general neighborhood. The motel was small and not new, but it seemed clean enough and had lots of cable channels. It was too dark to do much of anything other than find the motel. So we watched The Librarian and some historical drama on PBS, and then we went to bed.

The next day we went to lunch at Subway. Nothing really looked familiar. The cafeteria that my grandparents took me to was gone, and I did not find The Dairy Mart or anything else much that looked familiar. I did not even find the park. I think that I did find the house, but it was hard to tell. The place was an odd mix of newer houses built right next to old falling down things and rusty trailers.

After driving around a bit more, my husband had to go to work, and I tried to knit a baby's hat. I had almost finished the thing, but then I did something wrong. I tried to unravel a bit of it to fix it, and ended up unraveling almost the whole thing instead. But I've started a new one and am halfway through with it.

I have some odd memories of this place. Like only old people live here. Not in the sense that a lot of old people move to Florida and Arizona. But just that there seem to be a lot of stubborn old people who stay in places like this after all the other people move away. I often went there for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the occasional trip after church on a Sunday. And we would stay for a week or two in the summer. And there mostly seemed to be a lot of old people. There were a lot of people my grandparent's age, and some people my parents age, but hardly anyone who was younger than my parents. Most of the people we knew in town seemed to be related to us somehow. There were four others who were about my age, and two younger cousins. One girl my age was visiting her grandmother, and the rest of the time she lived in Denton. The others lived there all year.

And it just never seemed to get through to me that they really did live there and that they did almost everything in this little town. Like, I thought that they must go to school somewhere else. I mean, they talked about school a lot, but where was it? I really didn't see a lot of other kids, and when I did I just assumed that they were also visiting grandparents and didn't live there either. Surely there were not enough kids in this little place for this little place to have a school? But apparently they did in fact have a school, and they even had a football team, and my cousins were in band.

But all I ever saw were old people wearing cowboy hats.

Yesterday we meant to take pictures of more falling down things and look for the park, but we decided that it was too cold and headed back home, taking a different road this time. We were going to another of those restaurants of my childhood memories, but after several people told my husband that two of the three Pioneer restaurants weren't worth going to anymore, we went to McBride's instead. I might have been there once or twice, but I don't remember it if I did. Steak isn't really my thing now, and I'm sure my parents did not often waste good money taking me out to have steak much when I was a kid. But once in a while it isn't a bad thing. And the wait staff brought me enough baked potato toppings to feed five people. A nice enough place. Not my favorite now, but when I was a kid, this was the place that all the adults liked to go. We spent too much money, but since we were planning to go out anyway, I figure that this place only costs a few dollars more and was a lot nicer.

We didn't do much after that. It was too cold for my liking, so we just headed home. We were a week or two too early for my favorite surviving memory of childhood anyway.

Going to what might be the most boring place in Texas

This was supposed to be a one day trip, no big deal, but I was going to go anyway. Tomorrow. A couple of hours ago, my husband tells me that we're going to go ahead and leave a bit early. So I won't be here again until Tuesday, and I might not have the Internet while I'm gone. And I suspect that I will be a bit busy when I get back, so I might not be on the computer again until Wednesday.

So please forgive me if I didn't visit your blogs, response to comments, reply to your emails, etc.... I didn't forget about you, I'm just gone for a few days and I'll get back to that stuff as soon as I can.

And I'm off to an exciting time of knitting and watching cable TV, etc....

I wasted a lot of time these past few months

Okay, I like ceramics class. No one forced me to sign up for ceramics class. In fact, my mom is quite annoyed with me that I'm still taking art classes. I'm in a ceramics class because I like ceramics, and it's my own fault if I've wasted time that I should have spent doing something else.

But I really did not plan to spend this much time on it this semester. It was only going to be a six-week Saturday only class. It was only supposed to take up twelve hours, maybe sixteen or so with the driving and such.

First problem, at the beginning of class I was very disorganized, and I was so low on cash that I didn't have an extra twenty dollars to buy clay. We had clay that we could recycle, but I resented having to spend half an hour or so of class time getting the clay ready. So I had the brilliant idea of coming to school during the week to recycle some clay. And then I had the brilliant idea of recycling all the clay in the recycle bin, so that I wouldn't have to do that again for the rest of the semester, and then that would also leave a lot of extra clay for the other students to use.

I think that I wasted three or four extra days going to school to recycle clay, which I would not have done if I had just had an extra twenty dollars or so to buy new clay.

And then I wasn't going to the last class because of the Halloween party, so I was going to come back on one other day. Really, I was just planning the one other day to make up for the time I missed that day and another hour or so that I missed when I had to leave early twice. Only the on the next to last class the teacher said that we could come back to school to finish up stuff that we threw on those Saturdays. We couldn't throw any new stuff, but we could go to the school later to finish and sand and glaze and stuff like that. So I came a couple more days to do that.

And then there was the whole thing with making a new leaf vase so that I could try to sell the first one. Turns out that the potential buyer is having financial problems and won't be buying any art for a while, so that was sort of a waste of time. It isn't that I regret making the piece, just that it didn't need to be done right now if I don't have a paying customer waiting. So I've spent fifteen hours so far on the new vase, which meant I was in the lab for another five days that I hadn't originally planned to do.

Then there was some time last week that I just wasn't organized. I spent half of a class glazing four bowls. I shouldn't have done that. I should have waited until all the bowls were fired and glazed them all at the same time. And I should have waited to do that until I bought a drill attachment to mix the glazes. Right now the glazes are rather lumpy. So that was some wasted time, plus some wasted time later cleaning up the mess. I'll have to do the rest of it tomorrow, but if I had planned better, I could have just waited and glazed everything tomorrow.

And then I've spent a couple of class periods trying to fix a couple of bowls that have problems. They don't look even, and they are starting to crack, so I'm trying to repair them by sticking more clay on them like leaf shapes and such. And now that I've done all I can do about that, it has occurred to me that after the wheel work was done I could have brought these particular bowls home to add the leaves and such. So that would have saved me a couple of days time right there.

The other thing that has occurred to be is that I don't even particular like these two bowls to start with, so why did I feel like I had to salvage the pieces. I'm not getting a grade. If I don't like something I can just toss it.

So I think that I went to school two or three days that I didn't really have to for a few pieces that I either could have worked on at home or just given up on entirely because I didn't like them that much, another day that I spent glazing stuff that should have waited until tomorrow, five days working on a leaf vase that I didn't need to be doing this semester anyway, and three or four days that I wouldn't have spent recycling clay if I had an extra twenty bucks to buy new clay.

I've spent about three weeks at the school for stuff that I really didn't need to do. I could have been cleaning or looking for a job or knitting stuff that I plan to give as Christmas presents.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda....

Whatever.

Visiting with Mom and Dad

My mom wanted me to get some stuff for her and grandma at Micheal's, if I was going to Micheal's anyway. I wasn't going anyway, or at least, I probably wouldn't be going there anyway on Friday or Saturday. Assuming that she was wanting something in the after-Thanksgiving sales ad, I probably wouldn't be going there anyway. If it was something that she really needed and she couldn't go get it herself, maybe I could be convinced to go there anyway, but it had better be something that she really wanted very badly to get me to go over by the mall the weekend after Thanksgiving if I wasn't planning to go that direction anyway, which I was not.

If it wasn't something on the sale ad, and it could wait til Monday or Tuesday, I would be happy to do it.

But of course it was something that she wanted in the ad, and she just really didn't get it that I wasn't going to be going there anyway. I have no money to spend at Micheal's at the moment, so why would I be going there anyway. It isn't too far away from school, so I could go there after school one day, but there is no school Friday or Saturday this week, so I wouldn't be just in the area for that either. And my plans for Black Friday were in the opposite direction.

She just almost seemed to get mad. Like I go to Micheal's everyday except when she asks me to go, and then I make up other plans that prevent me from going to Micheal's. I had been to school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday that week, and if she wanted something enough to pay full price for it, she could have asked me before school on any of those days and I would have gone. But she didn't ask me until Wednesday evening, and she did want a sale item, and I just didn't think that I could fit that into my schedule.

By Thursday she had calmed down, and after lunch on Thanksgiving she showed me the ad and want she wanted from it. And there on the ad it said that they would be open on Thanksgiving from 6pm-9pm, and there were even coupons to use only at that time. So my mom decided that she could drive there herself on Thanksgiving, and that if I would meet her at her house we could go together and I could help her pick out some things.

Okay, so far as I know, the only places open to shop on Thanksgiving were a few drugstores and Garden Ridge, and now Micheal's was going to be open for three hours. So I figured that Garden Ridge would be crowded off and on throughout the day, and that during the 6pm-9pm sale that Micheal's would be really crowded. So if I needed something from this sale I would have been there well before 6pm and in line before the store opened.

My mom calls a bit before 5:30 to see if I'm ready to go. I am. This is just about perfect timing for me to drive to her house and then for us to get to Micheal's just before 6pm. Only when I get to her house she isn't quite ready to go, and she's on the phone for a little bit, and then she's looking at her hair and such, and she wants to ask me a few things that have nothing to do with going to Micheal's. Can't this stuff wait?

My mom doesn't see why we should be in a rush. It is Thanksgiving, and she doesn't think that many people will be out shopping, especially this late in the day. So we don't leave her house until 6pm, and then she doesn't want to get on the freeway, so we don't get to the place until about 6:30.

By that time most of the people have what they came to get and are already in line for the checkout. The lines are really long. The best that I can hope for is that either my mom will totally change her mind and decide that some of the stuff can wait, and maybe one of the drugstores will have something similar to the little Christmas tree that she wanted and we'll just leave, or else maybe she has a lot of shopping to do and maybe the lines won't be so long by the time she's done.

So she looks for the little Christmas trees that she came after, but she doesn't find them. Well, if they were that great of a deal, then maybe they are sold out already. All these other people got here at six if not sooner. Maybe all the good stuff is just gone.

My mom tries again to look for the Christmas trees while I go off to look at yarn. I have a coupon, but I don't think that it is worth standing in that line to use it. But I look anyway.

My mom finds the advertised trees, but they look nothing like the picture. She doesn't want them. I put the yarn back on the shelf.

But we don't leave yet, because my mom wants to look at something else. Someone made some jewelry for my sister, and my mom wants something like it. But my mom really can't describe what is it that we are looking for, and there's like three aisles of that stuff to look through. She keeps saying that we should look at my sister's stuff (which we cannot do right then because she did not borrow my sister's stuff to bring for comparison), so that should be the end of it but somehow we keep looking. And my mom has trouble with the most basic of descriptions, so we get nowhere.

So neither of us buys anything, and I get home about three hours after I left.

I have now seen my sister's jewelry, which looks almost nothing like the stuff that my mom was looking at.

A few nights ago I had a dream about my dad. My dad was going on a business trip, and he had one of those free companion flight tickets, so I was going to go with him. I was getting to go instead of my mom, because in the dream my siblings were still kids and couldn't be left at home without her. This made perfect since in the dream, but it doesn't quite add up in real life logic. If this were happening in real life at a time when we were younger and the kids couldn't be left home alone, then there would have been several live and healthy grandparents to look after them for a week or so.

So my dad and I are at the airport and are going to get our bags checked and all of that, and the rest of the family is there to see us off. And then something bad happens, and I'm not really clear on what it was, only that in the dream I was very scared so it was like a serious accident or terrorism or something like that. And then my dad calls someone at work, and his plans totally change, and we're going to be on a different flight and maybe even we are now going to a different place. And with all of this stuff happening I get very upset and start thinking that maybe I don't want to go. And I think I say something about not having packed the right clothes for where we are going, but what I'm really thinking is something more like I want my mommy. And my dad says that we can buy a few things once we get there if I still want to go. And he's saying how that he doesn't like to waste money, but we aren't poor, and that just this once we can spend a bit of money on things that we really don't need.

And then he has this idea that we really do have money, and that just this once, we should spend some. We are all at the airport, and we should all go, even though most of us haven't even packed to go on a trip. Dad has decided to buy the extra tickets and to even buy everyone some new clothes once we get to where we are going. We could all just get on the plane and go.

Even in the dream it isn't quite that easy. Mom didn't park the car in a space for people who are going to away for the week. Stuff like that. There's a lot of rushing around and such. I think I woke up before we got on the plane.

In real life my dad has been dead for almost five years now. So when I woke up I had one of those days that I really missed having my dad around.

My dad had cancer. For almost a year I got used to the idea that he had cancer and that he might die. He had some treatments, which didn't do as much for him as the doctors hoped, but they did make him a bit better. The doctors told him he needed an operation, which my dad really did not want, but he wasn't ready to give up and die either. And whenever someone has an operation, there's always the chance that something will go wrong and the patient will die on the table, or that the doctor can't finish the operation, or that the operation itself goes well but that there's more cancer and the patient ends up dying anyway. That sort of thing. For many months I got used to the idea that he might die because of that sort of thing.

What I did not imagine is that the operation would be a success and that the cancer would all be removed, but that the stress of the whole cancer thing would cause heart problems and that he would end up dying two months later. So even after all that time of thinking that my dad might die, it was still a bit of a shock. He wasn't supposed to die then, after the doctors had all said that he was cured.

A few months after that we went to see The Butterfly Effect, which I really think is a great movie. And I'm one of those people who might cry just a little bit at a movie theater, but not like a cry out loud cry that would disturb the people sitting next to me, but more of a quiet cry or mostly just my eyes tearing up a bit. So The Butterfly Effect has a lot of moments where your eyes get wet. It also has very disturbing moments and violence and all of that, and there are moments when you might actually feel a bit sick. But at the end of the movie my eyes were a bit wet again. And we didn't just jump up and run for the door. And while the credits roll by I wait for my eyes to dry. And I think I'd like to tell my dad about this movie, and then I realize that I can't do that, cause he's dead. So then I just become a blubbering idiot right there in the theater while everyone else walks past us.

I didn't break down like that too much when he died, and I think that time in the theater was probably the worst of it, maybe even worse than at the hospital or the funeral. I know he's in a better place and all of that, and I even think that he was ready to go. But sometimes it is damned annoying that I cannot ask him stuff, and that I can't talk to him about the "Hobbit" fossils and hear what he thinks about it.

It was kind of nice to see him at the airport, even if it was just a dream.

After I wrote about my last post

I heard the awful story about that guy getting trampled to death at the Walmart. Not my Walmart, just some Walmart in New York or something. And they said that was the first Black Friday fatality. As bad as that is, it does rather surprise me if that was really the first. Things get ugly out there sometimes.

I'm not sure how I would make it better. At the place I went at 6am, you had to wait to get a coupon. I personally didn't wait, cause they decided to open fifteen minutes early, so I walked right up to the door. But maybe if they did something like that. Not a coupon exactly, but sort of a voucher, and if you don't wait your turn in line and behave yourself, you won't get a voucher, and if you get inside without a voucher they won't sell you the good sale stuff. Maybe if you knew that pushing your way inside wasn't going to get you anything, you wouldn't do it.

Like I said before, I didn't do much actual Christmas shopping that day, because we were waiting to draw names or something, and I didn't know what to buy. But I did need a few things for myself, so I went to a few sales. The first place was Anna's Linens, which was having sheets on sale for half off, and if you were the first 100 costumers you got a $10 off coupon. Well, I didn't want to deal with 5am at Walmart, but maybe there wouldn't be such a crowd at the lesser known Anna's. And I didn't want anything bad enough to set the alarm and get up really early, but if I woke up on time anyway I would go. And I woke up at the perfect time to get to Anna's before 6am, and I got a coupon.

Two people did cut in line right in front of me. And I am usually the type of person to do something about it. Not start a physical fight do something about it, but complain about it and ask to see the manager do something about it. That's part of her job, and I don't doubt that she would have asked them to move, but right when that happened, I didn't see her, and I figured that it would take longer to go and get her than to just put up with it. Besides, I was right there at the front of the line, and if I had gone to get the manager I might have been told that I'd lost my place in line, or someone might have taken something that I meant to buy or something like that. I just decided to wait.

So I had my sheets by a little bit after 6:30, and I decided to have a look at Walmarts since they were in the same shopping center. And I decided to leave my car where it was and walk. I was looking for a crockpot and some jeans and some movies. I had trouble finding what I was looking for. I figured that the really hot sale items might be in a big display instead of on the normal shelves, but I couldn't find them anyway. I just figured that the crock pots were got already. I scanned lots of jeans, but none of them seemed to be the eight dollar ones. I asked an employee about the crockpots and the movies. The crockpot display had been moved across from the toys, and I didn't see any left, so I figured that they were all gone and that the jeans were all gone too. The two dollar movies were moved to the grocery area, and I bought ten of them. By the time I found the movies I wanted and gave up on the other stuff, the lines were not too bad and I bought my movies and went on to Best Buy.

At Best Buy I bought another movie, and then realized that I should have bought another movie at Walmart. Rather than go back to Walmart, I just thought that I would pay an extra dollar and buy it at Best Buy. Only Best Buy was sold out, and I knew that Walmart still had plenty of them. So I bought one movie from Best Buy and took it back to the car. And then I remembered that I needed computer paper and orange juice, so I might as well go back to Walmart and buy those and that other movie. Again, I lucked out and the lines weren't long.

Time to head home. I wanted to stop at the bank and make a car payment, only I was too early and the bank wasn't open yet. It was only about 8:30. I had made purchases in three stores and even gone into Walmart twice, and I had been gone less than three hours.

I had something to eat and then headed out again, cause I had to drop off something at the library and I still had to make that car payment. And I thought that as long as I was out that I'd check out another Walmart. Walmart supposedly had 50 different movies on sale for two bucks, and I don't think that I saw 50 movies, so I was wondering if the other Walmarts stocked different movies. Which it turned out that they had a few that the other one didn't, but also that they didn't have a few that the other one did, which was too bad because it had occurred to me that I should have bought multiple copies of a children's film to give to charity stuff.

I was about to give up and go home, but I stumbled upon one of those on sale crockpots. Lucky me. So I decided to look for those eight dollar jeans again. I asked someone this time. She said that the jeans were moved, so that they were still in clothing, just not in the women's area. And at first I didn't see anything that I wanted, but then I found two that might be it. I went to the scanner, and they came up eight dollars.

Now I see that the sale jeans look identical to the other jeans I looked at earlier, but that the barcode on the tag is at the bottom of the size tag, and the regular priced jeans had the barcode up at the waist. So this defeated my plan of just grabbing some jeans and not trying them on and trying to exchange them later, cause I would have to exchange them for other jeans with this same barcode, and they wouldn't have any of those to exchange later. But I did find two pair that I thought might work, one that might have been a bit loose, or one that might have been a bit tight, but I figured that with my weight going up and down that was the way to go. And it turns out that one fits pretty good, and the other still fits but is a bit loose. So that was good, except now I'm regretting that I didn't buy a couple that I put back cause they were longs. For eight dollar jeans it might be worth it to buy some long and hem them. But I guess it doesn't matter that much, as they were the new jeans that I have complained of before, though these are at the mid-rise and not the really low-rise things that leave your butt crack hanging out. Just at some point you have to buy some new jeans, even if you do not like the current style that much, or else you will end up having worn out all your jeans and have none to wear at all.

So that was my Black Friday success story. Two pair of jeans, a crockpot, three sheet sets, eight movies, computer paper, and orange juice.

The reason it is called Black Friday...

...is because they didn't turn on the damned street lights. So when we are up at 6am trying to get to the sales (or 5am or 4am in some cases, and I even heard on the news of midnight sales), we can barely see where we are going. The little reflective things on the road and on the freeway exit signs kept me from totally losing my way, but I would still prefer that the lights be on until it is reasonably light.

The only thing that I can think of is that the lights were on timers, and that a month or two ago before the time change there must have been a lot of sunlight by 6am, and they didn't need to turn on the lights, and maybe someone just forgot to change the timer. But now it stays very dark until much later. And Friday in particular it stayed dark even later as there were clouds and it has rained on and off all morning.

I don't do a lot of Christmas shopping on Black Friday, usually I have most of it done by now. But there's still other shopping that I do on Black Friday, just because that is when things are on sale. You run out of things or need new things, and if it is something that I really need it probably isn't something that someone would think to get me for Christmas. So on Black Friday I am often out buying the odd thing for us like a new crock pot, sheets, towels, jeans, socks, underwear, etc.... Today I also bought six movies, but half of them were for me. And today I just happened to also be out of computer paper and orange juice, so as long as I was going to Walmart I thought I might as well pick up those too.

So I still have Christmas shopping to do, but I can't really do much of it right now. I have a bit of money, but not a lot, so I'm trying to be careful with what is left of it. I have most of a scarf done for a friend, and I have another art project going to another friend. I haven't really done much about K's present, except that I've decided that she probably don't need tons of Bath & Body Works stuff like last year. And I still don't have a clue what I should get for S.

And then I can't do the rest of the Christmas shopping until I figure out who I'm going to be shopping for. I think that my family is going to draw names, but we haven't done that yet. And my husband really isn't into the whole thing, so when we draw names I'll probably end up doing the shopping for whomever he is supposed to get a gift for.

So that's probably four people that I still have to get things for. That's not too bad, but I would have rather have gotten all of the shopping done by now.

And I would rather not be driving around in the dark without streetlights.

Sort of bad news

Sleepless near Seattle came back once after the previous post but did not leave a comment. I think I have scared my new reader away.

Okay, that's not the sort of bad news.

The sort of bad news is that I was hoping to make an art sale before Christmas, but yesterday I learned that the person I was hoping to sell the art to is declaring bankruptcy or something. So I guess that I won't be selling anything to her.

I have written about trying to sell my art before. It just doesn't seem to work out. Not that I really want to sell most of it. Most of it I made for me (or specifically as a gift for a friend) and if I like it I want to keep it. If something went wrong with it and I don't like it, then probably no one else would want it either.

Once in a while someone will ask about buying something, and if it is something that I wouldn't mind parting with or something that I think I can mostly duplicate, I tell them how much I want for it. (That is, if I've kept up with time and expense and such to even answer the question I tell them how much I want for it. Otherwise, I have to do some math and get back to them.) I have to figure how much I spent on supplies, and then I have to figure how many hours I actually spent working on the thing, etc.... So if I've spent twenty dollars on supplies on something that it took me twelve hours to make, then I'm going to say maybe a hundred and fifty dollars. And that's only if I'm sure that I can make another one, or if it is something I can live without. If it is something that I really like and I don't think I can make another one, I won't sell it. But at this point I probably won't sell it anyway, because the person wanting to buy was probably thinking less than fifty. Less than fifty is not going to happen unless I really don't like the piece, and I can't picture anyone offering to buy a piece that I really don't like.

The hundred and fifty dollar price tag tends to shock some people. So either that person has never bought from an artist before, or else the person bought from an art student who just had to sell stuff either to get back the money for the supplies to pay for the next semester's supplies, or else the student has accumulated so much artwork that he has to start selling stuff at a huge discount just to get rid of it to make room for the next semester's stuff.

Non-artists just have no concept of what goes into making art. Either they don't have a clue how much art supplies cost, or they think that you make the art really fast and won't charge that much more than the cost of the art supplies. Or they think that since you are an artist that you enjoy making the art and that you shouldn't charge that much for your time.

This is a bit baffling. I don't think that they expect this of people doing other kinds of work. I'm sure that mechanics like cars, but most people don't expect mechanics to work all day to fix a car and then just charge ten or twenty dollars above the cost of the parts.

If someone is taking an art class and spending 150 hours a semester working on art projects, that's 150 hours that they didn't have to do other things, like getting a job. But, still, people wanting to by art don't get it that the art student would rather give all that hard work to his mother or donate it to charity rather than sell it at a price that would work out to a dollar an hour.

Anyway, it looks like I won't be selling that vase before Christmas. Which means that I've been working on the new leaf vase for no reason. And now the professor seems a bit unhappy that I am in the lab working on the thing anyway. The class I'm officially in ended a month ago, and all that we are supposed to be doing now is drying, firing, and glazing. Except for that, we're supposed to be done, and here I had started a new piece.

So, I wasted about fifteen hours on a piece that I really didn't need to make right now. And I didn't get it done in time for this semester's high fire anyway. And that and a few other things were distracting me when I maybe could have been out looking for a temp job or something.

It kind of sucks.

Sleepless near Seattle

I just had a look at the tracker thing, and someone in Washington is reading my blog. Like, someone must have been up all night reading my blog.

Someone must be really bored.

Next time you stop by, say hello.

In case you were wondering about Thanksgiving

Okay, today is Tuesday. I remembered enough about what is supposed to be going on to get out of bed and such because I know that I'm supposed to be going to school today. But then I remembered that today is Tuesday, and on Tuesday (Tuesdays for this semester anyway) I don't go to school until lunch time or just a bit after. So there's no hurry to get up and such, but since I'm wide awake now I might as well get up and such anyway.

I was remembering what day it is on Thursday, and I was remembering that some of my regular readers aren't from this country. I don't think that they have Thanksgiving. Or, at least, I don't hear about it being a big deal in England. And they have Thanksgiving as a big deal in Canada, only that in Canada they have it on a different day, and if fact they have it in a different month and celebrate it before Halloween. I guess that they didn't want to risk everyone getting snowed in if they waited until November.

Anyway, maybe I should explain the tradition to the foreigners.

While it is called Thanksgiving dinner, my family and everyone else that I can think of really has Thanksgiving lunch. And the morning before the Thanksgiving lunch, you watch parades on TV, and possibly you don't eat much breakfast. You don't eat much breakfast to leave lots of room for turkey and stuffing and pie and such that you'll be having for lunch, which you hope will be around eleven or twelve or so, cause that is when you normally like to have lunch, and on this day of all days you don't want late lunch. But then not everyone you are having lunch with likes lunch that early, so they were maybe thinking twelve or twelve-thirty, and then of course things don't quite go as they planned either, and lunch ends up being at one or even a bit later.

Since you maybe haven't eaten much breakfast, and maybe breakfast was a long time ago anyway, you start eating crackers and nuts to keep from getting sick and fainting. If no one in your family cooks, or if you decided to try something different, you might be spending an hour or so in line at Luby's. If that is the case, you really need to plan ahead to keep from fainting.

Sometimes, you are still having lunch til about three in the afternoon. This is a bit weird if you normally eat dinner at five or six. Are you still supposed to eat dinner at five or six if you're having dessert from lunch at three? Or should you just talk for a bit and have another dessert and skip dinner?

Between all of this eating, if you're a man, you watch football.

Anyway, at some point you have a bit of leftovers and call it dinner. And all this eating makes one sleepy, so you either have a nap or you go to bed early. And that is a good thing, because the real reason for all if this eating is to give you stamina for the next day's Christmas shopping. The stores open at five am this year.

I can't seem to keep it all straight

I seem to have trouble remembering how much time has gone by and what the date is and all of that. Not that I literally don't know what the date is, as I see it all the time on the computer. But I keep thinking that I should do something by a certain time, after I get something else done, and the getting stuff done takes longer than I thought. And then I realize that it is probably too late to do whatever it was I was going to do, so I probably end up not doing it. I'm not planning very well, or at least, I don't seem able to focus and do whatever it is that I have planned to do.

Like I had thought that I should get a job for Christmas. And Christmas itself seems still a ways off. But if you want a Christmas job, you need to get it in November. And it's November now, but I still wasn't getting it that if I wanted a job I needed to drop what I was doing and go get one. I think that most places that hire holiday help would like to have the new people trained and ready to go at least a week before Thanksgiving, so that they can work on Black Friday without any major problems.

So I just realized Wednesday that I'd missed it. Unless I went out on Wednesday and got a job and got all trained and such on Thursday, it was really too late to do that. Thanksgiving is next week, so there isn't a week left. So I was thinking that on Wednesday, and of course on Wednesday I was sneezing and coughing and such, and even if I had a plan for getting a job it just wasn't the day to go and do anything about it.

It just somehow hadn't occurred to me before then that Thanksgiving was next week. But I was looking at the grocery ads, and I went out to buy a cheap turkey. And then I realized that I should have skipped the whole Tulsa thing and done something about it then, if not a lot sooner.

The more rational part of my brain tells me that it wouldn't have made that much difference, since most of the week I was at Tulsa I had a cold, and I'm sure that I didn't look like someone that a potential employer would want to hire anyway. And if I had gotten a job before that week, I might have lost it when I either called in sick or showed up for work on several days that I really wasn't up to doing anything.

So I realize that even with better planning, I would probably still have gotten sick and probably still not have a job. On the other hand I should have tried, and I might have gotten lucky and had a boss who would have told me to go home and get some rest, that they really didn't need me that much until after Thanksgiving anyway.

It's not a done deal that I cannot get a temp job, since other temp people do not work out or quit or whatever, or they might need more people than they had first thought they should hire.

And of course there are still jobs out there that are not really supposed to be seasonal, and they are hiring all the time. But after Christmas there will not be as much to do and you either get laid off or you work one day a week or something like that.

And then there is always McDonald's.

So it isn't like getting a job before Christmas is totally out, just that I think my chances of getting a job at any place that I would have preferred to work for the season are slim now. Anyway, I still have a few days of stuff left to do at school, so I had better get on with that and quit worrying about jobs that I don't have.

Anyway, there's other stuff that seems to get away from me. So in an attempt to sort of get rid of things in my life that I really don't need and such, I have this plan of the tuned down holidays. Last month I did not go all out for Halloween, and that seemed to go okay. Not my favorite year, but not a year that I spent months of my time planning for one or two evenings either, so I think that it was for the best. So now we will have a rather small Thanksgiving, and after that I will try to cut back on all the Christmas spending and such.

But trying to cut back on Christmas stuff isn't the same as skipping it altogether, and here again it hasn't quite gotten through my head what that means and that I should already be doing stuff. I finished most of a scarf that will go to a friend when we exchange gifts about a week before Christmas. But that is about all that I have done yet, and originally the plan was to get almost everything done before this week, so that all that I have to do after Thanksgiving is buy one or two gifts and then think if I'm going to participate in the charity stuff. I probably won't this year, but we will see. My plan is that this year is probably the last year I will exchange gifts with one particular group of friends. Either that, or maybe we will draw names instead of buying everyone in the group a gift, or else we will set a very low price limit on the gifts, or something like that. Of the other main group of people that I exchange gifts with, we have already decided to draw names and set a price limit. Except that it is now the week before Thanksgiving, and we haven't drawn names yet, and I don't yet know what the price limit is.

Anyway, this year is sort of take it down a notch Christmas part one, and then if that goes well next year I'll try to take it down another notch. I'm sure that it will not be as great as before, and it will take some getting used to, but hopefully in a few years this will lead to me being a happier person.

And hopefully this will also lead to me having less stuff, and being about spend more time enjoying the stuff that I do have.

So that is all very good to plan, except that actually getting up and doing what I plan is somehow different. My brain seems all fuzzy. I get up and don't really know what day it is. Okay, I know what day it is, but I don't know right away what it is that I'm supposed to be doing in order to get on with any of my plans. But after sitting here for a while I've figured out that it is Monday, and that I should go to school in about an hour. After that, I'm not sure. It is still a bit fuzzy. But at least it is a school day, and I have that much of it figured out.

I think that I have had it with school for a while

I went to school twice this week. I went once on Tuesday, and after a break of more than a week my brain was fried, and I couldn't seem to get anything done. So I left early to run some errands, which turned out to be a really lucky thing since I needed to run those errands and I got a bit sick and didn't feel like doing them later.

So I went to school again on Friday, and except for having a bit of trouble actually getting into the building, that went a lot better. That is, everything went better with the clay. I'm almost done with the green work on the second leaf vase, and I'm thinking that I should go in on Monday and finish up. The main purpose of this project is just to see how long that it takes, so that I'll know how much I should charge for the other one. So far I've spent about nine hours on it.

The bowls and such that I threw still need some touch up work. But, some of them are too dry, and they will just have to do as they are. I'll try to finish the rest Monday or Tuesday.

I really should have done all of this before Tulsa. I don't even really remember what I was doing before Tulsa. I didn't have a cold yet, so that wasn't it. And it obviously did not have anything to do with making the house spotless. Anyway, if I had put in another nine hours or so two weeks ago, then I would have been done with it all by now, and the teacher would have enough stuff to high fire and everybody would be happier now.

I'm not happy. I was thinking at school how this stuff isn't making me happy anymore. I have felt like that before, when a project wasn't going well, but this one is just fine and it still isn't making me happy. I had thought that I would like taking a non-credit class better, that it would be less stressful without having to think about grades and such. And I has been less stressful for the most part. But I do sort of have to think about deadlines if I don't want this semester's work to have been a total waste of time. Right now this just feels like another chore that I have to get through.

Things not quite going as planned

For one thing, I had hoped to clean up the house and then start looking for a job soon. And I was thinking that even if I didn't find a good job that I should at least try to find a temporary Christmas season type job, and then I could get back to the other stuff after the temp job was over. So then we heard that we were going to Tulsa, and I had planned to go, and then we heard that the schedule changed and we weren't going to go, and then the schedule changed back the way it was and he was still supposed to go to Tulsa. Since I had originally planned to go, I decided that I would still go to Tulsa, and that I would relax for that week and then when I got back I would square things away and start looking for that job. At the beginning of the trip I had a cold and didn't feel well, but after a week of nothing to do other than watch cable TV and enjoy the hot tub and doing a bit of knitting, I felt all rested and thought I was done with this cold.

The day after the trip, I was a bit tired, but I'm almost always tired the day after a trip and I didn't think that it was any big deal. The second day after the trip I felt really good and went to school, but I didn't get much done at school because I usually don't get much done at school after I've been away for a week cause I can't remember what I'm supposed to be doing and such.

So I left school early to run a few errands and I bought some groceries and even bought a turkey. Part of the plan was to start cooking regular stuff and not eat out so much. I copied recipes and everything. I felt great, and I just knew that I was going to cook all this food and then start looking for a job and even finish up with school this week.

Only then I got home and ate dinner and watched some TV, and I started sneezing a bit. Then I was sneezing a lot and coughing a bit, and now I have a bit of a sore throat. So yesterday there was another trip to the grocery store, only instead of buying cool stuff to cook I bought stuff that you buy when you have a cold like fruit juice and soup and tissue paper and such.

So now I don't feel well, and I didn't go back to school and such, and I hadn't gotten much of the cleaning before I started feeling sick again and I'm not up for doing much of it now. While I was sneezing and coughing and such, I knocked over a coke or something, and I didn't notice, and I went back to bed. So now the kitchen floor is covered in this sticky mess, and I will have to scrub the floor and such before I can use the kitchen again.

Maybe I can go to school tomorrow.

Stuff that I missed while I was in Tulsa

In the real world I missed out on a few things, besides the usual I should have been at home sorting through the junk and I should have gone to school a couple of days, etc....

For years and years we had a local movie theater, and then the movie theater got old and went out of business, and then the building was used for various other things. That is something that rather makes me just a little bit sad, that old movie theaters are not movie theaters anymore and are often used as other things that don't really need to be in old movie theaters. I hate that old theaters became places to play bingo and such. If an old movie theater has to become something other than a movie theater, I wish that they didn't leave it looking like it used to be a movie theater, and I wish that it would be something that the people using it really like using an old theater and have use for the chairs being set up that way and everything like that, and not that it was just cheaper to use the old theater than to get some other more regular building.

I suppose that the best use of an old movie theater is to make it into a live theater. I have seen other places where an old movie theater is repaired and people go there to see live plays or magic acts or talent shows. So that is what has finally been done with our old movie theater here. Not that I plan to see a bunch of plays, or even that I plan to see any plays, but it's good that the local people who want to watch plays can now watch them in a building that is set up for lots of people to watch something. And it is a much better use of the building than converting it into a bank or a place to play bingo.

While I was away they had a bit of a re-opening ceremony, and the public was invited in for free to look at the renovations and to see a film about the history of the building and what they plan to do with it in the near future. So I would have liked have seen that, but I wasn't here. And I hadn't heard that it was going to happen, so I don't know for sure that I would have heard about it in time to go anyway. But some other people went, and maybe they would have thought to give me a call, except that they already knew that I was in Tulsa.

I missed a club meeting. I guess that I didn't realize that I was going to miss a meeting until the night before I left. I was somehow thinking that it was the next weekend. Oh well, that's okay. I don't guess that I've cancelled other trips because of club meetings and if I'd have had more time to think I probably wouldn't have cancelled this trip for this meeting either. Still, it is annoying that I've missed the November meeting. The November meeting is the last chance that I would have of casually mentioning such things as what I plan to get K for Christmas do you think that she'll like that and I don't have a clue what to get S does anyone have an idea? Not that I can't just call other people and ask, but I would rather have done that at the meeting and not make a big deal out of it. Also, at the November meeting we usually remind everyone of the official gift exchange and work out what some of the rules are, and then there is usually a bit of talk about the Adopt-A-Family project, though unfortunately we never seem to actually have a specific family until much later. So that stuff would have been nice to hear about, and I missed it.

And I missed watching a friend demonstrate chemical glass etching such as you can do with stuff you buy from Hobby Lobby. Not that I plan to do any such thing myself for a while, and not that the friend really needed me to be in attendance for moral support as there were plenty of others there for that. But I would have liked to have seen it anyway.

Interesting things happened in the blog world as well.

People have lost jobs. Now, one or two of these people were people who don't deserve to have nice jobs anyway, but unfortunately this sort of thing happens to good people too, one in particular that I can think of. I'm sure that will happen to a lot of people that I like before things get better.

Other bloggers live in California and are watching fire get closer to their homes. I'm sure that is a lot of fun.

There used to be this idiot blogger that I read for fun anyway, and she was into weird sex and all sorts of things of that nature. Anyway, I figured if she was dumb enough to write the details of this stuff, then it's her own fault if some of us read and make fun of her. She would write about having sex with someone that she hadn't known very long, and she would write about worrying about STDs, and she would write about having threesomes and such. But the baffling thing about all this is that she would then cry about how she could never find that one special person who would love her and only her. Like she's going to find someone special who loves only her while she's out f***ing everyone else who smiles at her. At some point, she deleted her blog, and we couldn't read about this stuff anymore. However, she is friends with another blogger, and we occasionally read something about her in the other blog. So a few years ago, this girl went to a party were everyone has sex with everyone else, right there at the party with an audience. And she thought it was just a party were everyone makes out with everyone else, not actually has sex. So after a while, she's a bit uncomfortable, cause people are having fun having sex and she doesn't want to have sex with anyone in front of everyone. And the other people at the party convince her that having sex isn't required and that she should stay anyway, which she does, but she's still a bit uncomfortable. So this silly girl now invites the other blogger to this same kind of party. Not that this other blogger wants to have sex in front of other people either. But what was the point of inviting someone to that kind of party if the first time you went you were uncomfortable? This doesn't seem the best place to meet people, if they are into things that you are not comfortable with. Anyway, the other blogger was okay with it and didn't have sex with anyone, but at most I think this was a waste of an evening, just to go and be able to say that you've been to this kind of party but decided it wasn't your kind of thing.

There's another blogger whom I actually care about who posted something about her sex life. And I thought that it was just awful, and I'm probably going to do a whole post about such things and won't go into it much here. But it just makes me wonder why people keep doing that sort of thing when it doesn't make them happy. Now I know that there are other bloggers who have written about that same thing, but those people were quite happy with what they had done. Now I don't see how you can be a decent human being and be happy like that, but some people are. But I don't understand why the people who aren't happy just keep doing the same thing.

And one other thing happened on my blog. Someone left me a comment on a post I wrote last year, talking a little bit about the question of what is art? Unfortunately, the woman was a blogless blogger, so that was kind of the end of it. It would have been interesting to see what she might have written about similar things.

Not doing much today

I'm just a bit out of it today. I don't feel well. I don't feel particularly bad, but I don't feel like doing much of anything. Just tired and a bit down in general. Like writing this morning's post took all the energy I had, and now I'm just going to watch TV and look at stuff on the Internet.

The thing is that I used to feel like this a lot, as I used to feel like this most days after I had been away for a week, which for about a year and a half happened maybe three out of every four weeks. There was all of this travel, which I mostly did not care for, mostly to places that were not that interesting.

And I didn't even knit then, so I was trying to make a quilt or something.

So my husband had another traveling job, and we had this routine, though it was at different places. So the first thing was to see how far away the job was, and compare that distance to what was on the chart. If the distance between home and the job was some number of miles or less, then that wasn't far enough away for the company to pay for motel rooms, so I stayed home that week and my husband drove back and forth from wherever the job was. Now that happened about once a month or so, and that was the only time that I might see my family or any of my friends. If the job was more miles away than that, but still under a certain other number, then you were supposed to drive to the place where the job was on the first day of the job, which was almost always a Thursday morning, and then stay at a motel that night and all of the nights after work, except for the last night of the assignment which was almost always a Monday. So if that happened we were driving at least an hour and probably more in the dark in the middle of nowhere usually Texas in someplace that we were not familiar with, after he had already worked at least nine and a half hours at the actual job. So that happened a lot, except for a few times that we found cheap places to stay that cost the same amount of money to stay for a whole week as the company had agreed to pay for the four nights. And then there were times that the place was a few more miles away, and the company paid for a motel room the night before the job, so that he wasn't late for work Thursday morning, but they did not pay for a room the last night, as they did not care if he fell asleep at the wheel and died Monday night after the assignment was finished. There was some magic number that got them to pay for both a room the night before on a Wednesday and the night of the last day of work on Monday, so that he could sleep before driving home on Tuesday. I don't remember for certain what the magic numbers were, but it seems like it was divided up between jobs that were less than 60 miles away, jobs that were between 60-100 miles away, jobs there were between 100-200 miles away, and jobs that were more than 200 miles away. So if you worked someplace that was almost 200 miles away, almost didn't count, and you had this really long drive home some time after eight in the evening. And if the map and/or the odometer said that it was just over 200 miles away, but the company computer said that it was just under 200 miles away, then your request for Monday night's motel room to be reimbursed was declined, and we just had to pay for that ourselves, and the job just didn't pay enough to begin with.

So I was quite in the habit of having a long drive either on Wednesday or Thursday morning, and spending most or all of Thursday in a motel room not feeling quite right, But then, being in a motel room there was not much else to do but watch TV anyway, or perhaps read a book that I had brought or else work on some craft project that I had. Then while I was there I had to figure out how to make the 10 dollar a day meal allowance for one person feed the two of us. Then a few days later I had to pack everything. Sometimes I spent Monday in the motel room and we had a really long drive home on Tuesday. But most of the time we didn't have the motel room on Monday and I had to spend Monday in a store or something, or maybe trying to find a place to read, and then we had a long drive home that night. So after that I usually didn't feel so great the next day, usually Tuesday, or sometimes on a Wednesday.

He had that job for a year and a half. At first it was kind of exciting to go places, but it was not usually anyplace interesting, and I quickly grew tired of the schedule. Either Monday night we would drive home late and be tired the next Tuesday, or maybe Tuesday morning/afternoon we would drive home and then be tired from that on Wednesday. And then either Wednesday or early Thursday we would have to drive someplace else, which would make me tired too. Some weeks we drove home on Tuesday and just to had to rush about and wash clothes and such so we could turn around and drive someplace else on Wednesday. Sometimes this was a trip to the Houston area, and then maybe we got to spend Wednesday afternoon or Tuesday morning in Galveston, or maybe we went to San Antonio a few times. But mostly we went to boring places in Texas and Oklahoma, where the only things that we did besides the job was maybe find a nice Mexican restaurant, watch cable TV in the motel, maybe find someplace to do the laundry, do a bit of shopping at Walmart, and then once in a great while find a place to watch a movie.

Just thinking about back then makes me tired.

Maybe I'm tired today out of habit. But that should be all of it. He doesn't have that job anymore, and we're not off to someplace else today or tomorrow. In fact, there is no travel scheduled for this week, and right now there is no travel scheduled for next week, and we'll just have to see what happens after that. But there's no travel for me for a while, and even after there is travel scheduled, I don't have to go with him.

But I'm still sitting here wasting the day, and I still feel a bit bad just about that. I keep meaning to post this other thing about the headaches of business travel, but I haven't finished it yet. Business travel can really have a lot of headaches, so it will be a long post.

I'm home

The beginning of the trip was spent in a nice motel that had an indoor pool and a hot tub and served hot breakfast every morning. After six times in the hot tub and eating bacon and eggs and waffles and such that I probably shouldn't have, I think that I got my money's worth from that motel, even if it had cable that sucked and no Sci Fi Channel.

Thursday was a beautiful day and made me wish that we could go out and do something. I'm afraid that all we did was good to lunch at Speedy Gonzalez. So that is my main regret about the first few days of the trip, that we went out to eat so much and spent too much money on restaurants. I expected to either eat really cheap stuff, or that I would be so sick that I would just stay in the room and eat soup. But we went out for a bit everyday, and then at some point convinced ourselves that we would feel better if we ate at some restaurant that we wandered by. A Chinese buffet, Goldies hamburgers, Mexican food, Pizza Hut, and on the way back a Watsonburger. Also there was several stops at Burger King and McDonald's while we were on the road and just needed to stop for a bit.

So we spent too much, even though my shopping was limited to a couple of things of yarn. And after one pretty good day, the rest of the week's sales sucked. So we really spent too much money.

While Thursday was beautiful, Friday was cold and wet and gray. It was not got picture taking weather at all. And then we got a motel that wasn't great. There might have been something a bit better ten miles up the road, but we decided that the driving conditions in the area were not worth it, and if the town's one motel looked okay that we would take it.

So we were driving along in middle of nowhere Oklahoma, and suddenly the road just sort of does this roller coaster bit. I realize that when I was a kid that we looked for places just such as this and asked the adults to drive really fast, but now that I'm the grown up driving really fast on such roads is the last thing that I want. There should be a really big sign warning people to slow down because the road just does this downhill thing that seems really too steep for normal driving. But neither of us remember such a sign, and nothing bad happened except to really scare me. Just really wasn't expecting it.

So we got to the motel and we asked for a king size bed, but I guess that the guy only heard one bed and not the size. Compared to what we've become used to, this bed was tiny. But it was a non-smoking room anyway, and there was nothing really wrong with the room, so we decided not to complain and kept it. This place had no breakfast, so it was off to McDonald's again. The cable was a bit better, but there was still no Sci Fi Channel.

And I got a scarf done, or at least, I got a scarf done except for the fringe. I've misplaced some yarn and will have to find some more sunflower before I can do the fringe. But it was good to at least do that, since the scarf will be someone's Christmas present, and I had let the time get away from me. I should have done this months ago.

So except for having no Sci Fi Channel and not liking other motel room that much, the trip wasn't too bad considering that we were both not feeling well to start with. We bought gas that was 1.72, so that made us feel all warm and fuzzy. On the drive home we saw a bald eagle, other birds of prey, a building that looked like a giant Dalek, a bunch of pelicans, a stack of bicycles that was maybe being made into a sculpture or a Christmas decoration, and some nice views of a lake.

So we're home, and it is good to be home. But I can't believe that I left the place in such a mess. Maybe I should have stayed. I know I was sick and wouldn't have felt like doing much work, but this just looks really bad. So now I'm debating should I get off my lazy butt and go to school, or should I stay here and try to get some work done and maybe go to school tomorrow?

Now I think that I will have a soak in my own bathtub and wash my hair.

We're in Tulsa

This might have been a mistake, but we're here. The business with the credit card and waiting on a check to clear and all of that is resolved now, but it was a bit annoying earlier this week. We're in the motel that we like with the hot tub and the bacon for breakfast and all of that. But I forgot that the cable here sucks. There's only about twenty channels, and none of them are the Sci Fi Channel. But we do have HBO, so we watched True Blood last night.

I'm afraid that I spent most of yesterday asleep, or at least I was nearly asleep. But it is nice to have the hot tub when I wake up. Later we'll probably do a bit of shopping and go to lunch. Tomorrow we might go to lunch with some people my husband works with.

We've been to Tulsa a number of times, and we used to go up I-35 to Oklahoma City and then on to Tulsa on 1-44. But on the map that looks out of the way, and you could just go up 75 which is more like going straight there. Except that 75 is not a freeway all the way there, and somehow we always seem to miss a turn off near McAllister. Seriously, we seem to get lost at the same place every time that we go to Tulsa on 75, even when we are talking about how we got lost there last time, and then we get lost again.

So we're going to McAllister, and that's a good place to stop and get out for a bit, so we go to Walmart or something and pick up a few things. And then we get back on the road, and we notice that we're still on 69, and 69 and 75 are the same road for a while, but now we don't seem to be on 75 anymore. So we've missed it again, at about the same place that we always do. Except that this time we've noticed it sooner than usual, so we just turn around and head back to the Walmart. And then we notice that that part of 75 that we're going to get on is a toll road. I hate that there are toll roads all over Oklahoma and Kansas, even some on Interstates, and Interstates really should not be toll roads. So we're going to have to go back to the Walmart and get some money out to pay the toll.

Only then we remember that we don't have enough money in any of the accounts to take out twenty dollars. This is a bit annoying. We don't use cash money for much of anything anymore, except that we have to remember to take out cash for the occasional thing like lotto tickets and toll roads. I would think that toll roads would be taking cards by now, but I don't know that they are, so I'd rather just avoid them for now.

So then we turn around and go back the way we were and make our usual forty mile detour that we usually make when we get lost, only this time we're making it cause we don't know if toll booths take credit cards.

So Mapquest says that you should be able to get from home to Tulsa in a bit over four hours, but we never get there in anything close to four hours. Part of that is stopping for lunch, and part of that is stopping other places for gas and coffee and such. Forty miles of that is getting lost in the same place every time we make the trip. And a hour and a half of that is just trying to get out of twenty miles or so of DFW, depending on time of day and how bad the traffic is.

I'm not having a bad time, and I have a cold but I don't feel terrible most of the time. But I probably should have stayed home. It is wet and grey here, and the main thing that we wanted to do this trip was take pictures of a dam north of here on Friday, and it doesn't look like the weather is going to be good for sightseeing on Friday.

It's not a bad trip at all, just nothing special about it if the weather is bad on Friday. I'm not getting much knitting done, and at this rate I would have gotten just as much done if I had stayed home.

I just really don't understand how we have gotten lost at the same place on the same drive three times in a row. We should just give up and go the long way around, which somehow ends up being faster.

Of course, we still wouldn't have had any cash for the toll booth....

Should I go to Tulsa?

So we decided that if we borrowed about a hundred dollars from my mom that we'd be able to use a credit card that we've be trying not to use for a while to pay for stuff on the Tulsa trip. That didn't seem so bad as borrowing enough money to pay for the whole trip. And we'll be able to pay her back on Friday, so that isn't a big deal either.

My husband came home Saturday with a cold and didn't feel up to doing anything yesterday. So I brought him soup and all of that and tried to make him feel better. So I didn't do anything yesterday except for washing a huge pile of laundry and watching a couple of hours of TV that I had recorded, and then last night I went to my brother's place to watch the last episodes of Stargate and Sanctuary that he'd recorded. I said something about the creatures looking like Furbies, and my brother didn't know what a Furby was. Who has not heard of Furbies?

You wouldn't think that doing laundry and running a few errands would make a person so tired, but I almost fell asleep at my brother's place while we were watching Stargate. And then right before I went home, I started to sneeze a bit.

Great.

Okay, I'm not a total baby, and I can handle a bit of sneezing. Now my throat hurts a bit. It is nothing serious yet, but yesterday my husband looked pretty bad. I'm guessing that I've caught a cold from him, and that in a few days I'm going to feel as bad as he did yesterday.

So now I'm trying to decide if I want to go to Tulsa as planned. I'm all packed. I've decided not to take the knitting machine, but I've got a bit of hand knitting to do that needs done before Christmas, and I can do that if I can just find a couple of skeins of claret, which should be at any Walmart between here and Tulsa. But if I'm getting a bad cold, and I'm going to spend a lot of time in bed being miserable, do I want to be in a motel room in Tulsa, or do I want to be in my own bed?

There are pros and cons to both. I would be more comfortable in my own bed, but motel beds come with cable TV. If I stay home, I'll have the place to myself, which means if I wake up in the middle of the night I can watch DVDs till I fall asleep again, but if I'm in Tulsa and not by myself, I'll have to try to be quiet and not wake my husband, who usually sleeps two or three hours later than me even when I'm not sick. The motel that we usually stay at in Tulsa has a hot tub, which would be nice, but there's no guaranty that we'd end up staying there. And then we have to pack up and move somewhere else on Friday.

My main concern is that if I'm going to get really sick from this I don't know when that would be, and I'm afraid that it will be on Friday when we need to move, or worse that it would be on Sunday when we drive back. The drive to Tulsa is not an unusually long or unpleasant one, but if I'm sick on Sunday it will really seem that way.

So I may not be here when you read this, as I have to take a bath now and have only about an hour to decide whether or not to go to Tulsa or just stay home.

This could get ugly

Okay, so I've probably mentioned all of this before, but here's just a bit of a summary about my husband's job so that the rest of the post will make sense.

My husband is a traveling photographer. I don't currently have a job. In fact, I've spent most of my married life not having a job, because my husband has always had some job like traveling photographer or some other job with an odd schedule that made it near impossible for me to have a job with a schedule that worked with his schedule. Sometimes I have had a job being his assistant, or I've been a sales consultant and worked with him, but he doesn't have an assistant at this job and I'm not a good sales consultant and being a bad sales consultant would cost him money. So most of the time I've just given up the idea of having my own job and I've traveled with him.

The travel lately has been rare. Either he only goes out of town for two or three days, or when he goes out of town for a whole week he doesn't travel again for months. When he first got this job he was gone every other week, and I usually went with him, unless school or something prevented it. But now he is not traveling so much, and I've been thinking that it would be okay if I didn't go with him at all and got my own job for a while. I haven't done anything about it yet, but I've been thinking that is what I should do because the price of gas has gone up and sales have been bad. So the price of gas has gone back down, but the sales are still low, so I should probably still look for a job.

My husband used to get his schedules in the mail, but now there is a website. The schedules are listed from Sunday to Saturday, though it is rare that anyone works on a Sunday, and a full schedule is usually Tuesday through Saturday, but you might work on a Monday, or you might have to drive wherever you are supposed to work on a Monday, and you might have to drive back home on a Sunday. So you can usually look on this website and see where you are supposed to work next week and probably the week after that. They also have this phone number that you call on a Friday to make sure that the next Sunday through Saturday schedule hasn't changed, as it is easier to change the phone messages than it is to change the schedules on the website. And then sometimes there are still other changes in the schedule that happen after Friday, but you don't know about them until a manager calls.

Because of the bad sales and sometimes only being scheduled to work two or three days a week, we've gotten a bit behind on the bills. Some bills just have to be paid first, even if they aren't due first, like the rent and the cars, and you have to pay the insurance on the cars or you can't drive them, and we don't want to get the phone or the gas cut off cause that would be annoying and it would be a hassle to get them turned back on if they were ever cut off. The cable for the Internet should not be a priority, but my husband seems to think that it is, so the bank sends them fifty dollars every month automatically. After all of that is done, sometimes there just isn't money left for paying the credit cards, and we don't pay them for a while and get late fees. But getting a late fee from a credit card is preferable to having the gas cut off or not being able to drive the cars and such.

So the credit card people call and complain, and I say thank you, we will get to that when we can. I've gotten pretty good at nicely brushing them off, mostly cause they first want to talk to my husband, who isn't usually here, so I take their number or something and say thank you and hang up. But once in while I get a call from someone who doesn't say the standard things, and I either have to be rude and hang up or I have to have a real conversation with them. And I have to explain that we are down to six hundred dollars or so, which we cannot spend, because my husband has to go out of town next week, so maybe we'll be able to pay when we get back. Sometimes they don't listen and think that we're going on vacation and that's why we won't pay, and then I don't feel bad about being rude and hanging up. But if they really want to go through all this stuff, I try to be nice and explain, and hopefully we can pay them something in a week or two.

Okay, so after explaining to several people that we could not pay, because my husband was going out of town next week, one of the managers told my husband that the trip to Tulsa wasn't going to happen. Now, we were a bit disappointed, cause we like to go to Tulsa once in a while, and I was thinking that we would go on this one last trip to Tulsa before I started looking for a job. But we didn't get that upset, because the trip to Tulsa was being replaced by a six day schedule around here, and we needed the extra money. And that also meant that we could go ahead and pay some of the credit card people who were calling, because we no longer had to keep any money in reserve to pay the expenses of going out of town for the week.

So we looked at the website, and it still said that he was going to Tulsa. And Friday he called the phone number, which said that there were no schedule changes. So my husband had to talk to the manager who told him he would be staying home this week, and the manager told him that someone else was going to work the schedule here, and that he would still be working in Tulsa as originally planned.

Some of these traveling photography companies have a form to fill out if you don't think that you have enough money to cover the travel expenses for the week, and then they send you an advance. My husband has worked at this particular company for about two and a half years, and I have asked him to find out how one gets an advance for travel expenses, but so far we haven't needed it and he never asked. So now he has asked, and they told him that there was no such thing as an advance, even to pay for travel expenses.

So we have no money, and not enough credit on the cards that are paid up, so there is no money to go to Tulsa.

My husband's answer to this sort of thing is to borrow money from my mother. Except that four years ago he borrowed three thousand dollars that he hasn't even started repaying. And then there was the thing about refusing to go to Judgement House with her last week, even though she offered to buy him a nice dinner afterward. So I don't think my mother would be much in the mood to loan him any money, and I don't think that I'm in the mood to ask her to do that.

So I don't know what's going to happen now. I don't know if he can borrow money somewhere else, or if he'll be really nice to my mom, or if he'll be able to switch schedules with someone else, or if he just won't work next week or what.

I'm going to spend the day mostly doing laundry and such, just in case we are still going. If we are not still going, it will be good to get the stuff done anyway so that I can get started on looking for that job.

More sales stuff

Target now has clearance Halloween stuff at 90% off, though at most of them all that is left is candy corn.

Also my nearest Walmart has Halloween stuff at 75% off, though I think that clearance sales at Walmarts are different from store to store, so it may not be 75% off at your store yet, or that might have happened at your store days ago and the stuff is all gone now. It is also 75% off Halloween stuff at Kroger's and Tom Thumb, except for candy, which is only 50% off. And Albertson's has stuff marked off, if there is any left, but again that varies from store to store, but the stuff I bought was 75% off or less.

I bought too much stuff as usual, but I only regret spending about ten dollars or so, most of which went to pirate boot covers that I'll probably never wear.

I'm about shopped out for the season. That is, I won't be going to any more sales unless I have to be in the store for something else, and the clearance stuff just jumps out in front of me.

The Husband is EVIL

No, it's not about that.

Yesterday he went off to work to middle of nowhere Texas, and unlike most times when he goes off somewhere I did not waste the first day doing nothing. No. I had actually already had a bath and everything before he even got up yesterday, and shortly after he left I was up doing things. In the afternoon, I went to school and got started on a leaf vase. I can home tired, but feeling like I had gotten a lot done.

Early this morning I woke up and thought, since there is no one else here, I'll watch TV. So after about an hour of watching stuff I recorded last night, I decided to get up and have a bath. This was earlier than I normally get up, but it was a bit cold, and a nice hot bath seemed like a good idea.

The evil husband had left the water switched to shower. Water is never supposed to be left on shower. But for some reason, it was left that way yesterday, and of course I wasn't wearing my glasses when I got in the tub to turn on the water, and I didn't see that it was still set for shower.

So what happens when you stand in the bathtub and turn on the water that hasn't been on for almost twenty-four hours and has been left set for shower? You get a lot of ice cold water dumped on your head. You have cold wet hair to deal with, because you didn't put on a shower cap, because you didn't plan to take a shower.

EVIL

Today is a good day to die...

...by eating too much candy.

Target has 75% off Halloween clearance stuff today, including lots of candy. I have bought enough chocolate to get me through Christmas.

I would go back and buy more, but I think that I'm about out of money again.

I wake up now and am totally confused and don't even know what day it is. It was feeling like Monday. I usually spend a lot of time with my husband on Sundays after he's been at work and possibly out of town Saturday and before that. So I spent a lot of time with my husband yesterday afternoon, after he had come home from working middle of nowhere Oklahoma on Monday. But since yesterday felt more like Sunday, this morning felt like Monday.

I'm pretty sure that it isn't Monday. Let's see, yesterday was election day, which is on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November. So if yesterday was Tuesday, then today must be Wednesday, regardless of what it feels like. And Wednesday is trash day, so I must remember to deal with that before I go running off anywhere to look for Halloween clearance stuff.

My mom will not be happy today. Most of my friends will be happy, since they have spent the last eight years or so complaining about or making fun of Dubya. They might have a party.

We are, in fact, having a bit of a party Sunday, but it isn't supposed to be about that. I'd forgotten about it until yesterday. Now I have to decide if I want to go, since it is a long drive and I don't like long drives anyway, and I have limited gas for at least the next week or two, and I should probably bring something if I go to this party, etc.... Decisions, decisions....

I mostly cleaned a room Monday and Tuesday. This is the last room with carpet, and while it doesn't look too bad at the moment, I hate that I did all that work, but I feel that the room isn't really clean because of the carpet. I think that I will probably have it removed at some point, but I can't deal with it right now. The mice are still a problem. I've found many dead mice while moving bookcases around and such, so I would think that they are finally all gone. But now I think that they are not all gone, and I think maybe some have moved in behind the bookcases that I moved just two weeks ago.

I hate getting rid of the carpet that still looks good, but I have heard that having no carpet is healthier anyway. Less dust, less stuff that might cause allergies stuck in the carpet, maybe less chance of mold. Certainly there would be less cleanup time if the house flooded again.

Maybe I wouldn't be so sick all of the time if there was less dust. Of course, I also have a zillion books, and books cause dust, so if I'm really worried about dust I should get rid of some more books.

Found some books that I had misplaced. I'm not getting rid of those books.

Time to go. Must go shopping now.

Total last minute change of plans

We should be used to this by now. We should always have two bags packed and yarn and such bought and books on tape selected and just be ready to go. And for the most part, we do have a lot of the important stuff ready. Like I keep medications in my bag, though sometimes I forget to refill them. And I have all the daily cosmetic stuff in my bag. And he has a bunch of stuff that he just never unpacks, so really all we're supposed to do for him to be ready is do the laundry.

Did we do the laundry?

No.

Okay, so I could have done some laundry three days ago. But I didn't. And I couldn't have done all the laundry, cause he still had a lot of it in his bag. But I could have at least done my laundry while he was away, and I didn't even get that done. So when he came home Saturday night we could have started sorting the laundry then, but we never do that unless we know that he's going to get sent right out again.

We didn't know that.

So we could have done laundry on Sunday. That isn't unusual. Sunday would be a good day to do laundry. Except that he wasn't supposed to work again until Thursday, and I had in my head that we didn't need to do the laundry until Tuesday or Wednesday. I had even convinced myself that there was a good reason to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday. On Tuesday or Wednesday I will probably go out and buy some more Halloween clearance stuff, and I usually buy several T-shirts, so Tuesday or Wednesday after I buy these T-shirts would be a good day to sort through stuff and decide if I really want to keep this or that and some of this stuff is going to get thrown out anyway and we do wear these anymore and this doesn't fit anymore, etc....

Really, I was planning to do some of that Tuesday or Wednesday. Not a big plan, not a written in stone plan, not an important plan, but I was just thinking that it would have been a good idea, and since he was going to be home Tuesday and Wednesday, he might want to do that sort of thing himself. So I'd convinced myself that the laundry didn't need to be done until then, and I had a good reason not to do the laundry before then. So Sunday we did not do laundry, but we went to lunch, and we did just a bit of shopping. Basically, we were trying to enjoy the day, and we were being lazy.

So Monday morning his boss calls. Being the first Monday of November and right after the time change, he happened to be awake. Last Monday at that time, he was not awake. Still, he hadn't been awake very long and had not taken a shower or brushed his teeth or had breakfast or any of that stuff.

Can you work today in middle of nowhere Oklahoma?

Uh...sure. Where is it?

So he gets the address and directions, and it's more than four hours away if the traffic is good, and he has to leave right away. He's going to be late as it is, cause he'll still have to stop for lunch and get gas and find the place and find a motel room, etc....

We don't even know if he's coming home tomorrow, or if he'll work there tomorrow too, or if there's a whole new schedule or what. They haven't figured all of that out yet. Depends on some other stuff, like if the other employee who got sick is still sick and that sort of thing.

So it was supposed to be a three day week, which we really didn't want, cause we need the money. This could now be a four day week, or a five day week, or even a six day week, and so that's probably a good thing. Or it could still be a three day week, just with a lot of stuff moved around. So we really don't want to complain too much about getting an extra day of work when we need money, it's just that all the schedule changes get annoying, and this was so last minute.

Other changes have cancelled a trip to Tulsa that we were kind of looking forward to.

So my husband takes the laundry that hasn't been washed yet and puts some of it back in the bag. If he stays there tomorrow, he'll have to do some laundry himself. And we're running around looking for things that he should take with him, and I get him some cookies to eat in the car since he hasn't had breakfast yet, but I forget to give him the Cheetos I bought for his lunch.

Last year we went to this area of middle of nowhere Oklahoma and did some tourist stuff that I used to do as a kid. So he looks at me and says that if I want to I can throw some stuff in a bag and go with him. We've gone on other trips even less prepared, and we can do that today too if we want. So that was kind of sweet that he said that, and also a bit sad. I wasn't really thinking of missing out on tourist stuff that we did last year. I was just a bit upset about the change in schedule, and about not being ready to deal with it, even though we should know better by now. I was just a bit upset, and jumping in a car without much in the way of clean clothes wasn't going to fix much.

I actually did get a little work done today, so maybe it wasn't all bad. I still haven't gotten around to the laundry yet, but I'm still planning to buy those T-shirts tomorrow or the next day, and I'm still planning this major bit of sort through clothes that I might not want to keep anymore. Maybe I'll have a week to myself, and maybe that will be a good thing. Or maybe he'll be home tomorrow and the rest of the week will go as planned. I'm just really surprised that this sort of thing still bothers me, and I'm surprised that I still haven't managed to be prepared for it whenever it happens.

Monday Morons--My Husband

No, we're not going to talk about that yet. Not quite.

Anyway, I've already mentioned that my mom's church is doing Judgement House and that my mom is working in it this year. Judgement House is sort of the same idea as Hell House, to do some scary thing to watch around Halloween instead of a traditional haunted house, only Judgement House is more of a play. I can't say for sure, cause I've never been to Hell House, I've just seen stuff about them on TV, but Judgement House seems to have more class, and Judgement House has a lot less gore than Hell House.

So this year Judgement House is called 59 minutes. We meet four people on a Sunday morning, and 59 minutes later they are dead. At the end of the play we see which ones go to heaven and which ones go to hell. I'm guessing that in all of the scripts that we end up with the same three scenes of Judgement, Hell, and Heaven. And I'm guessing that in most of the scripts, someone ends up in Hell for being just a good person and not an actual Christian.

I can't say how good any other Judgement House is, but the one at my mom's church is good, though I think that I liked last year's Collision a little bit better. The only part that really fits in with the whole idea of it being something to do on Halloween is the Hell scene. The music director turns out to be an excellent Satan.

So I had already gone to see it this year, and that must have been two weeks ago. I thought that they were done with it. I thought that either Halloween or the night after that was the last day, but they decided that they'd have it last night too. Seems like last year that they didn't have it that last Sunday. In fact, it seems like last year that they were so tired that there was a Sunday night that they didn't even have Judgement House or regular services either.

But anyway, last night they were still having Judgement House, and my brother called to invite me and my husband. Now, I had already seen it, so the point was to get my husband to go. My husband is not a Christian; he lied about that to get me to marry him, and until all this other stuff happened I really didn't want to get divorced over it. So we were out the first time my brother called and I did not notice that there was a message on the machine. I went out again, and wasn't there when my brother called again. When I came back, my husband tells me to call my brother, that he and my mom want us all to go to to Judgement House and then they were going to buy us dinner afterwards.

Great. Do you want to go?

No.

So I had already gone, and I didn't want to go again without my husband. That was the whole point. So I call my brother and tell him that we aren't going. My brother offers to buy my husband dinner at any place that he wants to go. They weren't just going to buy him an hamburger, they were going to buy him an expensive dinner. So I go and repeat the offer, to make sure he understands. He still doesn't want to go.

My husband isn't even supposed to be living in this house. My husband and I were supposed to get a divorce more than a year ago, and he wanted me to drop it and I wanted to go ahead with it, but I ended up cancelling the divorce because he was acting like he was going to kill himself. So he isn't supposed to be here. I was never supposed to hear from him again, but I made an exception and said that he could call me if he wanted to talk to someone at church. That didn't mean that I would take him back and that we would stay married, just that I would want to try after he became a Christian. If he didn't want that, if he wasn't willing to talk to someone at church, then there was no reason for him to even call me. Calling me that day was just cruel. But I let him come back, because I just couldn't imagine that he would do that to me, that he would call and come back here and not even talk to anyone at church.

So here it is two and a half years later, he has not talked to anyone at church, we have not had counseling, and he has not done anything to make me feel better. And my mom and my brother bribe him with a nice dinner to go to Judgement House, and he still won't go. He's not even supposed to be here if he doesn't want to go to church and such, and we can't even get him to go to special stuff like Judgement House even if they offer to buy him an expensive dinner afterwards.

I just don't get why he wanted to be with me in the first place. This is who we are. He lied to get here in the first place, he's lied several times to stay here, and he acts like we are bothering him. All we have ever done is try to help him, and all he ever does is lie and hurt me. I get that some people don't believe in original sin and all of that, but I really don't get how someone this bad doesn't even get that he has a problem and people are just trying to help him. And if he didn't want to live the life of a Christian and be around other Christians, why lie to be with one?

Review of Northwood University Haunted Forest

This is mostly a note to myself. The only thing that was good about this Haunted Forest was that it was cheap and close-by. Wonder if there was something more to my liking at the rec center, or the Boy Scouts thing off of Shiloh. Maybe next year.

Anyway, if I'd have had the time and money, I would have just gone to The Boneyard.

The Haunted Forest is not for older people who can't see well and don't like walking up and down hills, and there is very much the possibly of falling downhill or just slipping elsewhere on wet leaves. It was mostly about five guys with chainsaws, and really, I hate chainsaws. So if you are short on money, but it just isn't Halloween until after someone has chased you with a chainsaw, this is the place for you.

But the real disappointment was that they didn't do anything with the haunted forest theme. There were strobe lights and such, but no real decorations to speak of. There was a roped off trail marked somewhat by spiderwebs and such, but sometimes marked with a line of laundry. A line of laundry? And then I wasn't sure where to go from the laundry area.

So it was only five bucks, but even for only five bucks I would have expected a few fake pumpkins, fake candles, fake skulls, etc.... And maybe a haunted forest should be haunted by wolves, or werewolves, or the headless horseman, and not just guys with chainsaws over and over again.

Did a mention that I hate chainsaws?