A Halloween Moment

It is the last day of BlogFest 2012, and what a journey it has been!!  Today’s host is Angela Tjong from Journey of Life.  Today she challenged me to describe one moment in my life.

     The kids arrived home from school.  Besides homework, there was only one other thing on the agenda.  With Halloween the next day, the time had finally arrived to carve the pumpkins.  We searched the internet for free carving patterns and the kids decided which design they wanted.   After much deliberation both kids picked free designs from the Pumpkin Masters website, and I printed out the patterns.  I had saved all the pumpkin carving tools from previous years, and my daughter and I were on a mission to find them.  They had been washed and stored in a drawer since last year.  Sure enough, that is where we found them scattered between two different drawers.  The only thing I didn’t find was the tool that is used to poke holes in the pumpkin and transfer the pattern.  Being the resourceful type I grabbed a knitting needle, and we were ready to get the party started.

        I took great pleasure in using my largest butcher knife to attack the pumpkin and make a lid.  Then it was up to the kids to dig out the pumpkin guts and sort out the seeds for later.  I began the tradition of saving the pumpkin seeds and baking them for an after trick or treat snack.   Carefully and painstakingly my daughter and I took turns poking holes to transfer the patterns we had chosen and printed out.  When all the slimy guts had been disposed of and every last seed had been placed in a paper towel strainer to dry, I preceded to tackle the tedious job of carving.  While I had first assumed the designs they had chosen looked fairly easy, I soon discovered they were a lot harder than they first appeared, tedious, and time consuming.  I was tired and hungry and ready to be done with the entire project, but I persevered.  For the first time ever, I dreaded carving the second pumpkin after the first was finished and thanked sunny Je$us I hadn‘t had more than 2 kids.

          My son soon abandoned the project to watch TV.  Only my daughter stayed and started supper per my instructions.  By the time the last pumpkin was ready for the front porch, supper was well on the way to being done.  Thank G0d for that sweet girl of mine!  My son chose a “grim reaper” pattern, and my daughter chose “Icabod’s Fate”.  For the life of me I couldn’t see the grim reaper when I looked at my son’s pumpkin.  It depressed the hell out of me.  After the pumpkins were carved and the battery operated tea lights were placed inside, we donned winter coats and gloves and ventured out into the night to see how I did.  It wasn’t until I was standing in the cold night air in a freezing drizzle that the grim reaper appeared to me.  Then I was amazed and felt redeemed in my skills as a pumpkin carver!  I had done well after all!  The glowing tea lights brought the pumpkins to life.

           I have carved pumpkins for my children since their very first Halloween.  It didn’t matter that the first Halloween’s found them lying in a bouncy seat on the kitchen table, they were still there and accounted for.  Over the years they have participated more and more in this yearly ritual.  Although I was tired and hungry last night, I persevered because this moment would be one we would all store away among the most precious memories of the journey through our lives.  The laughter and chatter would fade, but the memories would remain.  It would be one we would each take out, dust off, and remember each future Halloween as we carved even more pumpkins.  After all, it’s tradition until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

Memories of Halloween

Welcome to the 25th day of BlogFest!!  Can you believe we have already made it to almost the end of the month?  Today I am your host and challenge you to write about:

 "Your favorite Halloween Memories"

     What are my favorite Halloween memories??  I have so many it is hard to pinpoint one particular favorite so I am going to touch on  many because I can!    Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays.    Every October my mom would dig out the Halloween decorations and deck the halls with pumpkins, ghosts, black cats, and witches.   When it became fashionable to string orange and purple lights to celebrate Halloween she did that too.  She always took me trick or treating and since most of my relatives lived far apart, a lot of the witching hour of trick or treat was spent on the road racing from house to house.  I could always count on a huge Hershey bar and some money at my Grandma’s house and every year looked forward to the baked Halloween cookies my aunt made which were frosted in orange and decorated with candy corn, marshmallows, and chocolate morsels. 

       One year the Oak Ridge Boys were in town for Halloween and my mom and I dressed up and went to the concert.  Although there was a costume contest, neither one of us won.  We had a great time anyways.  I dressed as a court jester and my mom was a classy witch complete with sequined black dress, black high heels, jewelry, and pointy black hat.  I will never forget when we rushed home for some reason that afternoon  what transpired.  Although I have shared this little story before, it is simply too memorable not to share again since it is one of my favorite memories.  My mom flew into the drive way like a bat out of hell, jumped out of the car, and squatted on the front lawn and took a pi$$ while I laughed myself silly.  I can only imagine what the passing traffic and the folks waiting in the drive up at the bank across the street thought about seeing a witch pissing on the lawn on Halloween.  If you got to go, you got to go.  

     Once I became an adult and worked, Halloween was made even more fun  when we were encouraged to dress up and bring in treats to enjoy throughout the day.  While I dressed up when I worked at a grocery store as a cat, my favorite memories were of when I worked at the local library.  All the employees dressed up and in my department, we brought in lots of food so we could party and graze all day while we worked.  The children's department always hosted a Halloween party and then would parade all the kids throughout the library.  They were as thrilled to see our costumes as we were to see theirs.

       Since my own kids have arrived on the scene I have continued my mom’s example of making Halloween memorable.  Every year I have made sure my kids are made up in costume whether bought or hand made.   One year I made both kids pirate outfits and took them to the town Halloween party.  We played games, drank apple cider, ate doughnuts, and collected candy at the fire house.  We took a haunted hayride into the cemetery where we encountered spooks, goblins, and the headless horseman who rushed at the wagon and scared the be Je$us out of all of us.

        Every year since I have known my husband I have visited the Pumpkin Fantasy Land in Ligonier, Indiana to explore their new pumpkin creations, a hayride to the pumpkin patch, and to find my way through the straw mazes.  Before going home we picked the perfect pumpkins which I will take great delight in knifing, degutting, and carving a whimsical face.  We always save the pumpkins seeds which I bake for a snack, and this year I plan to brew some pumpkin juice to wash them down with.

         Like me, my kids favorite memories include walking through the neighborhood and loading up on tons of candy.  The best part of Halloween is dressing up, the candy, and the food until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

The Best Day of My Life

Welcome to Day 24 of BlogFest 2012!!  Today’s host is Jo from My Wandering Mind.  The challenge to day is to finish this sentence any way we wish.  

The best day in my life…. 

     I have had a lot of great days in my life to look back on.  I could easily say some of the best days of my life were spent with my parents.  They were a lot of fun and we had some great times.  

    I could also say that the best day of my life was the day I married my best friend.  

   
     I could go even farther and say the best days of my life were the days when my two children were born.   

 



     It could have been the day I graduated high school.  I wouldn’t be wrong naming any of those days.  However, while my life has been peppered with some pretty amazing days chock full of unforgettable moments I think the very best may very well be yet to come until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

Creeping Obesity

It is day 23 of BlogFest 2012!   Stuart of 4 a Better Life is our host for today’s writing prompt!

     When I was growing up I was always thin.  Even in my 20’s and early 30’s I was pretty thin.  I met the man of my dreams.  He is  my best friend and the best thing that has happened to my life before or since.  I was enjoying life.  When we first married I had three surgeries in close succession.  I said goodbye to my gallbladder, my tonsils, and then had endometriosis removed.  I also managed to sustain a concussion.  It was an eventful first year to say the least.

       As I began to feel better and I reveled in true happiness I began to gain weight.  It wasn’t so bad at first as I was too skinny from not feeling well for so long.  The weight seemed to creep on without me really noticing it.  Then I got pregnant.  Since a person is supposed to gain weight while pregnant, I paid little mind to it.  I was feeding my baby.  The only problem was once I had my baby, I still looked huge.  It was not supposed to happen that way at all.  I lost some weight, but have never seen my pre-pregnancy weight again.  All of sudden I was over weight with cow udders for b00bs and a pointed bubble butt a$$.  I woke up and discovered I was fat and had no clue what the hell to do about it.  I had never had the problem before.  I had always been too skinny, and then all of a sudden I was enormous.  Granted I still could find people on the street bigger than me but that was little consolation.

       At the time my Dad had his stroke he liked to call me Crisco.  I get the reference.  He considered me a lard a$$ and even though I know he was teasing me, the reference hurt.  While he was in the hospital I was under so much stress keeping on top of taking care of my daughter, husband, and him that I paid little never mind to me.  One day I went to see my dad in the hospital and showed him how without a belt my pants literally fell off my a$$.  He smiled his lopsided grin and told me Crisco had left the building and to pull up my pants.  I did just that.

       After my Dad died, the weight silently crept back on.  A year later, I was pregnant with my son and trying desperately not to gain any more weight than I absolutely had to.  The result was that after I had my son, it actually looked like I had given birth which was a good thing.  Seven years have passed and since then the pounds have crept back on.  One day I had a medical emergency and went to the emergency room where it was discovered I was suffering from severe hypertension.

       I followed up with my doctor and was prescribed blood pressure medication and put on a strict diet.  It was a wake up call and I have followed the diet religiously since.  The weight loss has been slow going but sure.  As of today I am down 28 pounds and wonders of wonders, for the first time in over 12 years I can look down and actually see my toes!!!  Hello toes!  It has been a long time!  I am so glad to see you!  I will continue to follow my diet hell come high water, and hopefully I will convince this thing called obesity to creep away.  I was hoping that if I didn’t eat as much while pregnant the baby would eat up my a$$ and I would be amazingly thin when all was said and done.  Things just didn’t work out that way.  That’s life until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

Hot and Cold

Welcome to day 22 of BlogFest 2012!!  Today’s writing prompt is brought to us today by Betty at Today’s Baker.  

    What can be hot and cold?  Well let’s see, men, women, the weather, food, women who are hormonal, and all the above.   Why do I feel like dancing and singing the heat and snow miser song and kicking up my heels??  Living in the heart of the Midwest I get my fill of one day hot and  the next day cold every fall.  This week in particular has been a great example of that.  Today it reached 75 degrees.  Tomorrow the forecast is on the opposite end of the spectrum with the high only expected to reach 51 degrees tops and a low temperature plummeting to 34 degrees.  It is quite the drastic difference, but fairly normal for this time of year.   You aren’t quite sure whether to run the air conditioner or the heat.  Course half the time I am not sure whether to wind my a$$ or my watch anyways so I wing it.   It is just enough temperature change to insure that most people will be sick as hell and death warmed over by Monday after a weekend of rollercoaster temperatures and living life to the max.  If they aren’t sick, they will be calling in to proclaim they are sick simply because if they didn’t catch the latest bug their kids have and they are sure to have it SOON.

 

     As far as the hormonal tidal waves of hot and cold go, I am approaching the golden age when I can expect to be hotter than the blazes of hell even if I am standing half naked in a$$ deep snow in sub zero temperatures.  On second thought, maybe I am already there!  I am the nut who has to have it cold in the bedroom to sleep and pay absolutely no never mind to traipsing out barefooted in the snow to dig up a dog leash in my nightgown.  A lot of that is because I am simply to lazy to be bothered with shoes, after all it isn’t that far to go and not that long I will be out in the elements so WHY waste my time with shoes and a coat?  Yeah, I am different that way.  Usually I am half asleep and half past give a $hit when I let the dogs out to whiz in the center of the night anyway.  A person can’t be expected to dress appropriately then, right?    Besides I can count the minutes until I will be snug as a bug and warm in my little bed once again.  My husband is paranoid about being seen, but I really don’t care.  With half the world women and the other half men, chances are you are one or the other so what’s the big deal?  Most people have seen it before.  Every now and then you will see someone that has all the parts, which is different and definitely a reason to stare, but if you are normal there really is no big deal.  Maybe you just got to air it out.

      I am going to go off on a tangent, so bear with me.  If I have to drink water it has got to be ice cold.  No other kind of water will do.  I don’t want to just wet my whistle.   I want to be refreshed.  In my world, soup was meant to be HOT.  It should always be hot, end of story.  One time I was staying at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island and they served cold cucumber soup for dinner in the dining room as a precursor to prime rib.  I remember it well.  When you stay at the Grand Hotel, they expect you to dress for dinner.  You can’t just waltz in wearing a t shirt and jeans.  They expect women in a dress and men to be in dress pants and a dinner jacket.  Seriously, I kid you not.  I waltzed in hungry enough to eat the a$$hole out of a skunk and they served me cold green soup.  Ewwww!!!  I thought they had FORGOT to cook it, then realized they MEANT to serve it that way.  Needless to say, after our expensive dinner we went back to the room, changed into normal vacation clothes (casual shirt and jeans) and walked to town and ate our fill of burgers and fries at a local bar.

      Considering I had absolutely no clue what I would write for this prompt letting my mind ramble has got me a blog written which is good enough for me until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

What I Value Most

Welcome to another day of BlogFest.  Today’s host is Emily Rose Thrasher of Mommy of an Angel.  

The prompt for today asks 

“What do I value?”

  

    I thought about this long and hard all day and I kept coming back to the same answer.  First and foremost I value my husband and kids.  

    Without them life wouldn’t be worth drawing another breath.  I value my memories and my pictures.  They are all I have left of my parents.  I value truth and honesty.  I value loyalty.  I value kindness and being polite.  I value God’s path for me and trust in Him to guide me.  I value my blog.  Yes I do.  I must, or I wouldn’t be as dedicated to maintaining it.   I value my dear dogs and cat.  At the end of the day, nothing else would really matter if I did not have my husband and kids.  At this point I have come full circle in my thinking and am back to start until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

Vacation

Today is Day 20 of BlogFest 2012.  Today’s host is Toni from Renee Ashley Williams.  The topic question for today is:

Have you ever returned home from a family vacation and felt more exhausted than when you left?

Me and (and I think?? Sleepy)  1972

     Most vacations my family took revolved around one of my Dad’s loads to the same destination.  We would follow him in our family car, and after he delivered his load he left his truck at a truck stop and we went and enjoyed our vacation together.   Thinking over the past vacations that my family took over the years I can honestly say each and every one I returned home happy and energized from all the wonderful memories that were created.  I loved every minute of it.   Over the years I went to Disney World and Florida 3 times.  Because I was only 3 the first time and 4 the second, I don’t remember much about those trips.  Thanks to home movies, family stories, and photographs my memories have been helped along a bit.  The last time when I went with my parents to Disney World and Epcot were the best because I remember it in vivid detail.  We had a blast.

Me and Minnie Mouse Fall 1986

       I remember one year we followed my Dad’s truck out west.  We vacationed in Colorado visiting tourist attractions like the Denver Mint where I got to see money being made, the house of the unsinkable Molly Brown, ghost towns, Pikes Peak, and the Santa Claus Workshop that lies at the mountain’s base. I remember vividly panning for gold, feeling sick on the summit of Pike’s Peak because I wasn’t used to the elevation, and then throwing up from one end of Santa Claus village to the other.  I was scared Santa wouldn’t come that year because I covered his home with vomit.  Thankfully he did come, and I was relieved!!

       One year my family went and explored the Wisconsin Dells.  We rode the legendary ducks, went on boat tours of the Dells, and seen a futuristic house that was weird.  While we were touring a wax museum a door inside blew open and straw flew everywhere.  We ran outside to discover a tornado heading right for us from down the street.  Instead of taking cover, my mom, dad, and I stood mesmerized watching the tornado destroying everything in its path as it progressed up the street.  Before it reached us it dissipated.  The elevators down to the boat rides were all loaded with people trapped when the power went out.

Me at Kings Island about 1989

        There have been many trips to Nashville, Tennessee, Cedar Point, Kings Island, and Six Flags.  We went on a trip to Mackinac Island and countless trips all over the country where the main objective was to see the Oak Ridge Boys.  For my mom, the Oak Ridge Boys were an attraction that rivaled Mickey Mouse.  I got sunburned swimming in the Gulf of Mexico and sunbathing on the Florida beaches.  When I think back, I have been quite a few places.

On our honeymoon 1997

        When my husband and I married we honeymooned on the Lake Erie islands of Put-in-Bay and Kelley’s Island.  Since then there have been a few day trips to zoos, museums, and overnight camping but no real vacations.  Unfortunately for me, since my husband is on the road 3-5 weeks at a time, his idea of vacation is coming home until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

Don’t Judge Me

Welcome to the 4th week of BlogFest 2012.  Today’s writing prompt is brought to us from Paula at Paula Martin-Romance Writer.  Thank you Paula for the great prompt!!

     I don’t think I have ever judged a book by its cover.   I have always read the brief summery inside the book jacket or on the back cover to decide if I would find the book worth reading.  If the book happens to have the added bonus of being penned by an already favorite author, I don’t care what the cover looks like.  I am going to read that book.  Even when selecting books for my kids I delve a little deeper into the story book than the cover.  I flip through the pages and look at the illustrations to see if they are engaging.  

       Ever since an encounter in my early twenties I treat people the same way.  I never judge them by their outward appearances anymore.  I wait to see what kind of person they are first.  When I was 24 my mother went three times a week to dialysis.  She would spend 4 hours on the machine at a time surrounded by the same group of people.  After a while, it was hard not to get to know people after seeing them so much.  I remember this one man who was brought in from a nursing home.  He was half blind and both his legs had been amputated.  To look at him, you would have thought he had always been that way and never had much of a life.  You couldn’t help but feel sorry for him; he was such a sad lonely figure.

       I made a habit of saying hello to all the patients and decided one day to go over and say hello to him and see how he was doing.  He told me that because he failed to keep his diabetes under control he had to have his legs amputated and had all but lost his sight.  His kidneys were shot which is what brought him to dialysis.  Before he got sick he led a very interesting life.  He drew maps for a living and had the pleasure of drawing the official maps for the Calgary Olympic Winter games of 1988.  He had went to the games and been an integral part of them at the time.  Who would have thought the man who looked half dead most of the time could turn into such a fascinating person?  From that day on, he came to life when I walked into the dialysis center and I always made a point to visit with him when I made my rounds.  We became fast friends.  He went from sleeping most of the time he was there looking lost and alone to talking animatedly about his past adventures and laughing right out loud.

       The best things in life aren’t always in plain view.   It really doesn’t matter what people or books look like.  You must approach every one and thing with an open mind and explore the possibilities within before you can have any hope of making a fair judgment.  What matters is what lies hidden within until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.