Holly’s Happenings

I’m sure you’ve heard me talk here about the problems that we’ve had with our phone company. Since we live out in the country having cable TV and/or internet is not an option. I tried to convince the cable company to bring service to our old house, even going to the extent of drawing up a petiton and taking it to the neighbors and asking them to sign it if they would be willing to switch to cable if it were offered. Amazingly better than 75% of the neighbors were more than happy to sign, they all agreed with me in the fact that they were tired of the monopoly that the phone company held over the area and wanted other options! Unfortunately, the cable company didn’t “bite” and said it just would not be financially feesible for them to bring service any further.

Since moving to the new house, we’ve been faced with problem after problem when it comes to the phone and internet service. Once again our only option is the same phone company we had at the old house. But we also found out that lightning had gone through the lines at this house sometime after the last people lived here, and we also found out that the current lines would only support a lower speed DSL connection than what we had at the old house. But a recent letter from the phone company talked about changes and upgrades that they plan to start implementing to their customers starting this spring. One of the upgrades is supposed to include replacing the current phone lines with better fiber optic cables that are supposedly going to give us better phone service as well as the option to upgrade to a faster DSL speed. They’ve replaced the lines once since last October with very little improvment, so lets hope the upgrades they plan on doing this Spring are an improvement because I’m really NOT liking their services and I don’t like not having options!

I was outside with the dogs a little while ago, well, two of them anyway, we have one that doesn’t like snow and cold! While I was outside I also walked to the mailbox and was just astounded as to how well last night snow packs! It’s not a wet snow, if anything it feels like a dry snow. But it packs really well! There have been two vehicles in and out of my driveway today, one being my husband and the other being the trash company to empty my dumpster. The tracks from just those tow vehicles are packed down like ice, making a very smooth and slick surface!

This is the type of snow I remember sledding and skiing on as a kid! There was this one country club that we would go sledding at every year! It had the HUGEST hill I have ever seen in my life, but I was always too scared to go down it, I honestly thought that if I went down that hill I would get hurt bad! But the year that I was 15 the friends that I was with somehow managed to convince me that I was wrong, that nothing would happen to me if I went down that hill. There were six of us and we had 3 big inner tubes among us and would take turns flying down this huge hill, then walking back up, passing along the inner tube and anxiously awaiting our next trip down the hill. Everything was going fine when one of my friends suggested that we all pile onto one of the inner tubes and go down together. I was reluctant, but didn’t want to look like a baby, so I gave in. I should have followed my feelings that day and I shouldn’t have gave in to my friends! As we went down the hill, all piled on top of each other, we hit a bump and we all came off the inner tube a few inches then came back down on it. Had I have been the top person, I probably would have been fine, but since I was in the middle, there were a couple of people above me and when they came back down after being momentarily airborne, the weight of those above me managed to snap BOTH of my collar bones!

The pain was HORRIBLE! I honestly would rather go through child birth again than have to go through what I went through that day! I knew what had happened to me because I had broken my collar bones before. But my friends wouldn’t believe me and insisted on “checking me out” so they started grabbing at me trying to get me to move my arms away from my body so that they could get my coat off. I don’t remember much from that point other than somehow getting into the back of a pick up and laying down for the drive home, then my mom being upset about the fact that she was going to have to drive me all the way back into town to the hospital (where we were sledding/tubing at was about a mile down the road from the hospital and my house was almost half an hour from the hospital). I was right though, both of my collar bones were broken and the healing process was a HUGE pain!

Yes, it’s not the best of memories, but I can look back on it now and laugh, kind of! And in case you’re wondering, I haven’t been snow tubing since! I’d love to go again, but I don’t foresee it happening…LOL!

OK, I’m not sure what’s with my recent influx of strange dreams, but if you’d like to read on I’ll tell you about my most recent one. It’s not bad, but it is semi funny!

Last week a couple down south won several hundred million dollars in the Mega Millions lottery. I seen an interview that they did on one of the national morning news shows and it just kind of made me chuckle! I can’t help but think that if I’d have just won that much money, I’d be a tad excited about it, ya know? But this couple was just totally not coming across as being excited in their interview. I know that it was early morning and all, but getting them to talk was almost like trying to take money out of an empty bank account….LOL!

Anyway, back to the dream. In my dream it was my husband and I that actually had the winning lottery ticket and we found our lives suddenly in a whirlwind. After the initial “media circus” calmed down we went about deciding what we were going to do with our lives. We immediately decided that we wanted to build a new house. First we searched for land that could be built on that suited our requirments, then we sat down and started figuring out exacty what kind of house we wanted to build. We’ve talked on and off over the years about what we would want if we could buy or build our dream house, but the reality of it was, we honestly didn’t know what we wanted when it came down to it!

We ended up settling on a house that resembled the southern plantation homes that I’ve seen many times in the movies. It was two stories tall with beautiful fiberglass columns across the front of the home. Both the first and second stories had porches that went across the entire width of the house with the one on the second story being completely screened in. As you walked into the front entrance you were greeted by a gorgeous grand staircase that led to a large open foyer area at the top of the steps.

I don’t remember a lot of other details of the house other than it seemed like it went on forever. There were rooms everywhere and the rooms were filled with the largest windows I think I’ve ever seen in my life. It was a gorgeous house but definitely a bit more house than I’d ever really want to own! But I guess that’s why they call them dreams, as nice as they are, they’re not real.

OK, I’m sure my regular readers know that I do not normally blog about the types of things that I’m about to write about, but this time I simply can’t help myself. Partially because when I told my kids I was going to blog about this they said “NO YOU WON’T”, and partially because, well, I’m sorry, it’s just TOOOOOOO funny! (and somewhat gross)

The kids are off school on a snow day today and the morning was a nightmare! The kids were fighting all morning long about anything and everything you can imagine and were completely driving me up a wall! Fortunately, they seem to have calmed down some this afternoon! Sometime after 12, I decided that I REALLY needed to get a shower! We have 2 full bathrooms here in the house, the one up front has a tub/shower combo and the one back here just has a shower stall. For some reason the shower back here just does not get good water pressure. We’ve checked everything to make sure there are no water leaks or anything like that that could cause the lack of water pressure, but found nothing. When we first moved in, the kids actually preferred the shower back here because the one up front has a window in it that has that bumpy opaque glass in it and it freaked them out to think about showering in front of a window even though we proved to them that NOTHING is seen outside! In time, however, their fears of using the shower with the window passed and eventually it ended up that no one was using this shower back here, so we actually turned it into our indoor storage area for wood for the wood burner…LOL! But the commode in both bathrooms are regularly used, which is VERY handy in a house with four people!

So, back to my decision that I REALLY needed to take a shower…LOL! (See, us old people tend to get off track now and then…LOL) As I went to take my shower I went to use the commode and upon lifting the seat was greeted by the smiling face of a near 6 foot long Mr. Hanky! Yes, I am drastically over exaggerating when I say 6 foot, but I’m not over exaggerating when I say that the size of said Mr. Hanky is something that should NOT come out of a human! The worst part is that I have what could probably qualify for the weakest stomache on the face of the earth! I can see something or smell something and sometimes even hear something and will IMMEDIATELY start gagging! So when I seen the version of Mr. Hanky that was greeting me, yup, you guessed it, it made me gag!

Since I knew it did not come from myself or my husband I went out to where the kids were and informed them that one of them needed to take care of the situation ASAP! This led to an argument consisting of the two “perpetrators” insisting that said Mr. Hanky did NOT come from them. OK, let’s be amateur detectives here for a moment. The inhabitants of this house consist of myself, my husband, my two children and three dogs. Neither my husband or myself use said bathroom except just before showering and none of the three dogs are trained to use the toilet, and even if they were, well, I won’t go into that here…LOL! That being said, the ONLY other people that have been in this house today are my darling children, both of which almost exclusively use the front bathroom.

Eventually my darling daughter volunteered to make sure that Mr. Hanky was properly disposed of, all the while giving us plunge by plunge details about what was going on…LOL! It was one of those priceless moments in life, if you have the state of mind to find things like this funny! And it totally turned our day around, at least for now. So, yes, it is a bit gross, and yes, it’s definitely not someting that I write about here regularly, and for anyone that was offended, I’m sorry! But I just couldn’t help myself!

As I talked about in this post, we have three dogs. Most of the time the dogs don’t even bother me, they’re pretty well behaved and completely house broken. As long as they have food, water, their toys and a comfy place to lay down they’re happy! Every once in a while we’ll have problems with them because they’ve chewed up something that was NOT meant to be a chew toy. Like last week. For some reason the baby of the pack seen my daughters digital camera on her desk and decided it would be a good thing to chew on and totally ruined the camera! It’s times like these that “almost” make me reconsider our decision to take on the third dog.

If my daughter had things her way, we’d not only have the three dogs, but we’d also have kitties as well! When she was a toddler we had a cat that we rescued from the local animal shelter. He was a big, fat black cat whose name was Homie. Homie ROCKED as far as cats go! He was lovable, he would sit on your lap and let you play with him and pet him, and he never once had an accident outside of the litter box. But we discovered that my daughter was severely allergic to cats and had to find a new home for Homie. We were all bummed about this, but we know that the family we gave him to gave him a wonderful home, so that did make things a little easier.

Over the years, however, my daughters allergy to cats has vanished and we have had many arguments with her over the fact that she has decided since she is no longer allergic to cats that she just HAS to have one for a pet. She has even gone to the extent of showing me all of the cute cat products that are now available and how fun it would be to “have a cute little kitty around the house”. Yes, I will admit, it is tempting because I do love cats! But I don’t like cleaning litter boxes and I do worry that the dogs will view the pretty little kitten as a morning snack…LOL.

So for now, I’ll let her keep bugging me with all the cute little cat toys, collars, clothes and accessories she finds online and in the stores. Three dogs are more than enough for this family and even though kitties are cute and cuddly, we just don’t need another pet right now! Maybe I can hold her off long enough until she’s out and on her own, then the choice of having a cat will be completely up to her!