Holly’s Happenings

After work today I drove up to see my sister in law and take her some sweet bagel goodness from where I work! I knew that she liked our bagels, but when I heard that she hadn’t tried this months special bagel, the Pink Ribbon bagel in honor of breast cancer awareness month, I knew that I had to take her a few to try. I also ended up grabbing her a couple of the Cinnamon Crunch and Dutch Apple Raisin bagels as well.

I sat and talked to her for a little while, it just breaks my heart every time I see her! The loss of her oldest son has left her with a huge void in her life and an even bigger hole in her heart. As a parent, I can’t even fathom the pain she is feeling right now. Even though both of my kids are REALLY testing my patience tonight, to lose one of them would be devastating! My sister in law was telling me that she doesn’t know what to do most of the time, and she doesn’t feel like she’s helping anyone else deal with Eric’s death. I looked at her and told her that helping other people deal with this is not anywhere near the top of her priority list right now and as far as not knowing what to do, the only thing that she needed to do is what would get her through the moment she’s in, because that’s the only thing that matters at that specific time.

Like I said, it just breaks my heart, I want so much to be able to do something, ANYTHING, to help her deal with the pain she is feeling. But I also know that there is not a single thing on the face of this earth that would take her pain away. So the only thing I can do right now is just be there for her when I can and let her talk if she feels the need to talk.

Anyway, after I left her house, I drove into town to meet my mom. I had put the pictures of my nephew on an SD memory card that she could then either put into her own camera to look at the pictures, or she could put it into her printer to print them or take them somewhere and have some of them printed. I also took mom a few bagels because she likes them too. She and I walked around Walmart while waiting for the pictures to be printed, looking for some picture frames and a few other things she needed to pick up. My mom isn’t doing well with my nephew’s death either, it’s really taking it’s toll on her! She said she sits at night looking at his pictures and just cries, begging him to please come back. She said she even told him that she’d gladly take his place because she has lived a long and wonderful life and he still had things left to do.

It’s hard to hear my mother say things like that, and it brought tears to my eyes, not because she said it, but because I know she meant it. She’s spent nearly 30 years being a grandmother, and for every moment of those years, her grandchildren have been her life. I don’t care what she’s doing or where she’s at, if she finds out one of her grandchildren needs her, she drops what she’s doing to go to them. The walls of her house are FILLED with pictures of her 16 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren, who range in age from almost 28 to just a few days past 5 months old.

I’m sorry, I got carried away talking about my family that I TOTALLY forgot to talk about the title of this post. As you probably know, I live in NW Ohio. This time of year is filled with the beauty of hundreds of colors, but it also brings change, a.k.a. cold weather. The local weather men have been talking for a few days now that we were going to see our first snow flakes today, but that we didn’t need to worry, the ground was too warm for it to stick.

On my drive home I turned off a north-south road, to an east-west road and FREAKED out when I seen the sky! I quick grabbed my cell phone and turned on the camera to snap a few pictures that I could share with you. For those of you that have never lived in snow country, this sky is when we know snow is on the way!

Then, as I turned back onto a north-south road, I got a clear view of the sky to the east of me. Although it wasn’t as “threatening” I still thought it was photo worthy…LOL!

If you’ve read this far, thanks for listening to this long winded post and I hope you enjoy the pictures!

I was emailing back and forth with my sister last week about my new job. She wanted to know if I still liked it, which I told her I really did. She then asked what types of things they were having me do so far, so I told her about the different things that I had done so far. She then wrote back and said “I could never work there, I’d end up gaining a ton of weight because I LOVE bread”. I had to chuckle after reading that, it just made it more obvious to me that she knew very little about working in the food industry.

I’ve worked a few different jobs in the food industry over the past 25 of so years. One of the things that has never been allowed in any of the food establishments that I’ve worked in is eating on the clock, and although some provided a free meal if you worked a long enough shift to take a lunch or dinner break, others only offered a discounted meal. But the fact is that you can never eat what you want, when you want to. Just about every last food item has to be accounted for, even if it’s something that is thrown away.

And if you think about it, if people who worked in the food industry were allowed to eat what they wanted, when they wanted to, we’d have to use appetite suppressants or we’d probably all end up enormously over weight. And I can tell you that the vast majority of the people I work with don’t even come close to having issues with weight problems.

We have a neighbor/friend that we’ve been helping out the past few months because he lost his drivers license due to a DUI. He’s a decent guy, I honestly don’t mind him, but OMG does he drive me up a wall when he comes to our house!

For instance, he had to come here today because he needed me to fax something for him. While I don’t have a problem doing that, what I do have a problem with is his inability to have things ready “to go” when he gets here. This isn’t the first time he’s done this, it’s happened a few other times as well, and with each time it happens, it just aggravates me more and more!

This time, when he came, he didn’t even have a cover letter for the fax he needed sent, and when I asked him for it, his reply was “HAHAHA, I knew I was forgetting something, I’ll just let you type up one really quick for me”. While this really is “normally” not a major problem, he wanted me to do this within a couple of hours of an exam that included having my eyes dilated.

Now I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I have this done, it makes it nearly impossible for me to read anything. So while I was trying to fill in the “blanks” when filling out the cover letter for his fax, I obviously made a few mistakes. I knew that I would, but I wanted to get the information put in initially, then go back through and fix my mistakes. But NOOOOOOOOOOO, he wasn’t about to let that happen, and would make me go back and fix them right away. But he wouldn’t point them out as soon as I did them, no, he had to wait until I was at least two lines away. When I initially tried to explain to him that I knew there would be mistakes and that I planned on going back and fixing them all at the same time his response was “It will just be easier to fix them as I notice them” in a VERY snarky tone of voice.

If it weren’t for the fact that A). I won’t let him TOUCH my computer and B). I wanted him out of my home ASAP, I’d have walked away and told him to go “F” himself! I mean seriously, if someone is doing something nice for you, something that you can’t do that would cost you to have it done elsewhere, WHY do you have to be rude and snarky about it? And why aren’t you completely prepared to have it done when you get to their house? UGH, I know this is VERY minor and petty, but this guy REALLY gets on my nerves! I wish like heck that I could tell him to go elsewhere to have stuff like this done, but he’s a good friend of my hushands, so I feel I need to be nice to him! But UGH, I really wish I didn’t feel that way…LOL!

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been on the “outs” with some of my family members over a few things that happened within a few days of my nephew’s unexpected death. At the time it happened I felt angry and betrayed, but as time has passed, I got over it and moved on.

Then a couple of weeks ago my sister called my house telling me she had a “mission” for me. When I asked her what the mission was, she told me that I needed to search my house and find the memory card from my late nephew’s digital camera. She went on to say that she had been at my brother and sister in laws house that night and they had discovered that the memory card from his digital camera wasn’t in the camera, and that no one had touched it since I had brought the camera back to them after making his tribute video.

At first, I totally freaked out, thinking that I was a complete and total idiot for somehow losing/misplacing this. But then I sat at my desk thinking about the day I had it, when I was working on his video, and something just didn’t make any sense at all! I tore my desk apart looking for the memory card and it wasn’t anywhere to be found, so I called her back. When I called I asked her if she had went through his camera bag to make sure that it somehow hadn’t simply been taken out of the camera, then just put back in the bag. At that point she point blank said that she had torn the bag apart looking for it and that anyone that might have had access to the camera over the past two weeks was there that night and they all said that they hadn’t touched it and that I really needed to start looking or people were going to be really ticked off at me.

At this point, I completely lost it. I knew in my heart of hearts that I had nothing to do with this memory card being missing, I knew that when I had his camera, I took the card out of the camera, put it in my computer, copied the pictures from it that they wanted me to use, took the memory card out of my computer and put it back in his camera, then put the camera back into it’s bag and zipped it up. I was so meticulous that day with all of the pictures and stuff while making the video that I freaked out on my kids a couple of times for simply touching a picture or getting hear my desk. I had to be this meticulous because I knew what would happen if anything happened to any of the pictures or the memory card, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.

For the past two weeks I have totally avoided my brother and sister in law, as well as their two remaining children. Although I KNEW I wasn’t responsible for the card being missing, I had no way of proving this, and with everything they were going through, I just felt that it was best for right now if I didn’t bother them. At one point during the past two weeks I received a phone call from my mother, during which she proceeded to accuse my daughter of taking the memory card. I was totally blown away and hung the phone up after telling her I couldn’t believe she had said that and told her I had gone through enough and wished her a good life.

Anyway, to shorten this up a little bit, I heard from my sister in law and nephew yesterday. Although several people checked my late nephew’s camera and had torn the bag apart, never finding the memory card in question, out of the middle of nowhere, “A” memory card turned up yesterday. I quoted “A” because it’s not the memory card that I used from his camera, but it does, however, contain all of the pictures that the original card had on it, many of which I never copied to my own computer.

While we are all very relieved that a card did show up with his pictures, we’re all also very confused! As I said, it’s definitely not the one that I used, and my nephew agrees with me that the original memory card was blue, while this one is black. I also clearly remember the original one being 512 mb, but the one that showed up is only 256 mb.

I’m now waiting to find out if either my sister or my mother are going to contact me to apologize, thankfully I’m not holding my breath, or I’d be the next family member that was 6 foot under!

It goes without saying that Autumn is my favorite season! First you have the beautiful colors from the trees, add to that the cooler temps during the days and the chilly overnight temps that make for excellent sleeping!

There is, however, one small thing about Autumn that I don’t like, and that is the fact that it is always followed by winter. See, winter and I just don’t get along and we rarely see eye to eye…LOL! I dislike the cold, snow and ice that comes with winter and can easily foresee myself becoming a “Snow Bird” at a later point in my life!

I’m hoping to be able get out and about at some point today and get some good pictures and video’s of the beautiful fall colors around my area! Last Autumn I was kind of busy getting things moved in and unpacked, so I was only able to take a few pictures of our property, and although they were very pretty, there are places that aren’t too far from here that have some even prettier colors!

If I do get to head out, I’ll be sure to post some pictures for you, so stop back to see them!

WOW, talk about an INSANE and busy day! I didn’t have to go into work today until 11, so my hope was to spend a couple of hours after the kids left for school getting some stuff done around the house and doing some much needed blogging. That feel apart REALLY quickly!

Since last night we had been experiencing some really crappy connection problems with our DSL. We tried several things in hopes of helping it, but none of them worked. See, our DSL is ran through a wireless router so that we can have 4 computers connected at the same time. My hubby’s laptop is connected through the wireless, but mine and the kids’ computers are hard wired. His laptop actually wasn’t experiencing anywhere near the problems that the other 3 computers were, but we still couldn’t figure out what was going on.

So, for the umpteenth time since last night we rebooted the modem and the router and amazingly, it seemed to do the trick. What was funny was that right in the midst of that reboot our DSL provider called to see if they could help figure out what was going on. Just to let you know exactly how bad the connection was, my download speeds were averaging less than 300 kbps and my upload speeds were below 50 kbps. After that reboot, the download speed jumped up to 3200 kpbs and the upload speed was near 700 kbps. All was well in internet land again, for a few minutes anyway!

Within 10 minutes, my download speed was down to right around 1100 kbps, and the upload speed tanked out at a whopping 27kbps. It was then that we finally realized that the problem had to be router related. Since the router is roughly 6 months old, we decided to contact the company it was made by. I decided to try and contact them via online chat and was very quickly connected to a customer rep. They asked how they could help me, I explained the problem and they came back asking me for model and serial numbers for my modem. I explained that I’d have to walk out to the other room to get those numbers, they said that was fine and I went and got the numbers. When I came back I gave her the numbers and sat and waited for a few minutes with no answer back. I had to get ready, so I explained that and told them that my husband would have to take over. I went and got showered and dressed for work and came back out to see how things were going only to have my husband say they still had not came back. I understand people get busy and stuff happens, but GOOD GRIEF, totally dropping someone in a customer service chat is totally rude!

By that time, I had no choice, I had to leave for work or I was going to be late! I got to work, put my stuff in my locker, grabbed my apron and clocked in, at 11:00 on the nose! Work went well today, but WOW, the weather was so strange, one minute it was raining, the next it was sunny, and in the midst of it, it got REALLY humid and muggy! So much so that it was really warm in the store and I was sweating my toosh off! I tell you, many more days like today where I’m sweating like that, and there will be NO need for me to take any type of diet pills or any other weight loss aids because the pounds will literally be melting off!

But seriously, I REALLY like this job! My co-workers all seem really nice, well, I’m still on the fence about one of them, but that’s OK! The managers are also very nice and very helpful! When I have questions, no matter who I’ve asked, they’ve all been very helpful! But, it is a lot of hard work right now since I’m out in the dining room! I have to make fresh coffee every hour, I have to make sure the dishes are bussed back to the dishwasher, I have to make sure the tables are all wiped down and the chairs are in place, I have to make sure the trash is emptied when it needs to be. There’s more, there’s much more, but honestly, I’m too tired to keep writing….LOL!

I’ll be back in the morning, I have a few more things to tell you about, some work, some family stuff and some just about life in general. But for tonight, it’s time for SLEEP! G’night!

I am, without a doubt, a frugal shopper! Before I do any type of shopping, I go online and look at the sales ads for the stores in my area to see who is going to have the lowest price for what I’m shopping for! This is especially important right now because I have to make every penny count!

Later this week I have to do some serious grocery shopping, my cabinets, fridge and freezer are really looking bad! So I hopped online earlier to see what’s on sale at my local grocery stores. I was able to grab a few AMAZING deals last weekend at a store I normally don’t shop at, so I made sure to head over and check their sales ad for this week. All I can say is WOW, am I ever glad I did that! They’re having a HUGE sale this week on tons of the stock up type items that I need the most! By huge sale I mean that they are offering OODLES of items 10 for $10 and you get an 11th item free. The really cool thing is that you can mix or match the items, so you don’t have to buy 10 of a certain item if you really don’t need 10 of them!

So I went through their sales ad, as well as the sales ads of the other stores I like to grocery shop at and made myself a list! I about choked when my printer finished printing it out and I seen that I had almost 5 pages of stuff that I wanted to pick up…LOL! I doubt I’ll be able to get all of the items I want, but at least I know where I’m going to be able to get the items I want and need the most at the best possible price!

With the stress that has gone on in the past 24 hours, I’ve spent the better part of this evening chilling out and watching some TV with my husband and daughter. I don’t know if it’s just something they’re doing this weekend or if it’s something that they’ve done for a while since it’s not a channel I watch frequently, but TNT has been showing movies all day today with the least amount of commercials I have ever seen! Normally a TV station shows about 44 minutes of programming per hour with about 16 minutes of commercials, I’d have to say TNT has cut it back to about 10 minutes worth of advertising per every hour of broadcast, and let me tell you, it’s a WONDERFUL change!

Today we’ve managed to catch a couple of the Fast and Furious movies and tonight I’ve been chilling out with my daughter watching Titanic, one of my all time favorite movies! I used to have Titanic on DVD, but sometime over the past few years I’ve apparently lost it, so it’s nice to watch it tonight with very minimal commercial interruptions!

I’m happy to report also that my daughter is much happier with her “new to me” computer now that we’ve been able to give it a little extra computer memory late this afternoon to help it run a little faster! It’s not that it wasn’t running well before that, it’s just that it was a little laggier than it needed to be in order to run some of the games and programs she uses.

I haven’t received any more phone calls today from family members, and right now I need it to stay that way! Most of the sickness I felt earlier has passed and I was actually able to keep the few bites of mashed potatoes that I ate at dinner time down, which is a HUGE plus!

Anyway, I need to get back to the movie and my daughter, she’s getting a bit impatient with me…LOL! This is one of her favorite movies too!

I know that the products I had for my children when they were small were much better and far more advanced than the products that were available when I was in the first few years of my life. For instance, when I was a baby, car seats weren’t used, let alone mandatory. My mom has told me stories about how she would hold me in her arms when we were in the car (She didn’t have a drivers license, so she didn’t drive when I was a baby). My point is that technology had advanced in a big way from the time I was born until my children were born, and it has only gotten better since!

My children are a little more than 2 years apart in age, and one of the things that made my life the easiest when they were small was a good stroller! One of the worst things about strollers, even 13 years ago, was the fact that they were heavy and awkward! On top of that, if you wanted to take it anywhere that didn’t offer paved walks or smooth floors, you played heck trying to push it!

Parents these days have the benefit of advanced technology as well as the experiences from parents like me to thank for things like the Bugaboo stroller. These are, without a doubt, one of the most awesome strollers I have ever came across and I wish like heck they had these when my kids were little! Not only are they nice to look at, they are also light weight, compact, very well built and offer parents the ability to not only use them in places that offer paved paths and finished floors, they can easily be used in areas with rough terrain like paths and grassy areas!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that strollers had advanced from what they were when I was a small child to where they were when my own children were small, but a Bugaboo stroller would have been nice to have had VS the strollers that were available when my children were small!

Sometimes I just feel like throwing my arms up in the air and yelling I’M DONE at the top of my lungs! Why is it when stressful times in my life seem to go away, new stressful things come in?

It’s been two weeks since we buried my nephew. His death and funeral provided four of the most gut wrenching, stress filled days I have experienced in a very long time. But thanks to the support of my wonderful husband and children as well as several online friends, I made it through those days. Then with the success of finding a job this past Wednesday, it finally felt like some of the drama and stress that was going on in my life was about to subside.

You know, the affects that stress have on your body are amazing! I swear stress is better than even the best fat burner when it comes to weight loss! It prevents you from being able to eat, and it causes migraines that induce nausea and vomiting, at least it does in me! This is exactly where I’ve been since around 10 PM last night, thanks to a family member.

I’m being accused of losing/misplacing the memory card from my late nephew’s digital camera. I brought the camera home 2 weeks ago when I was making his video. I took the card out of his camera, put it in my computer, copied the pictures off the card that his family wanted used, put the card back into his camera and put the camera back into it’s bag. I am 100% certain that this is what I did because I told my husband as I was putting the card back into the camera that the last thing his family would want right now would be for me to lose or damage the memory card. I had the top of my desk 100% cleaned and organized while I was working on his video so that nothing would get damaged or lost.

I’m the first person to admit to and fix what I’ve done wrong and correct my mistakes when I can. Keeping his memory card serves me absolutely no purpose or benefit. I know what I did and exactly how I did it, I also know what I didn’t do. I can’t fix this and it’s ultimately going to cost me my entire family and what pisses me off is that I didn’t do anything wrong! So, I’m throwing my hands up in the air and giving up. At this point in time I’m not sure I’ll ever do anything for anyone again because it causes nothing but stress and grief!

I’m sure you’ve all seen the newest commercials on TV with various characters explaining to people that they’ve entered “the dead zone” as for cell phone service. The funny thing is, where we live is exactly one of those areas!

We’ve been told that because our house is directly in one of the flight paths of the nearby airport, that’s the biggest reason why the cell phone signal in the area is as poor as it is! And it’s actually been suggested to us more than once that we look into a cell signal booster for our home and our vehicles. I think what amazes me the most is the fact that it’s nearly impossible to pull in a reliable signal on my cell phone in my yard, but if I go less than half a mile down the road I’ve got a full signal.

It stinks that I moved into a “dead zone” area for cell phone service, but hopefully some day I can pick up a good booster and change that! In the mean time, if you call my cell phone, don’t be surprised if it goes straight to voicemail

Apparently when I was a kid I was as obsessed with music as I am now. Why do I say this? Well, let me put it to you this way. It’s been 25 years since I graduated from high school which means it’s been about 35 years since I was in 2nd grade. The reason I’m bringing this up is because this time of year ALWAYS brings back a song from a Halloween program that we did in the 2nd grade. After a quick websearch, I’ve found out it’s actually a poem, but my music teacher back then put it to music. But here’s the poem

Trick or Treat

Witches, ghosts, and goblins.
Stealing down the street,
Knock on every door way,
Trick or treat!

When your door is opened,
This is what you meet,
Scary creatures shouting,
Trick or treat!

I remember all of us kids up there on the stage in our masks made from construction paper singing this song, the melody of it is still in my head almost like it was just yesterday that I sang the song…LOL! Remember how it used to be cool to cut a couple of holes in a white sheet for your eyes and go trick or treating as a ghost? And my all time FAVORITE costume, the one I wore most often as a kid, was when I’d borrow a pair of pants and flannel shirt from my grandfather. Then my mom or grandmother would cut holes and sew patches on them in various places. We’d take a handkerchief and fill it full of paper then tie the ends of it around a stick. I’d put the altered clothes on and tie a piece of twine through the belt loops so use like a belt, mom would take black shoe polish and rub it lightly into my face and I’d proclaim I was the BEST hobo ever! LOL

Last night I had to stop at the store on my way home from my orientation to pick up break and milk. It never ceases to amaze me how intricately designed Halloween costumes are these days! They had every type of Halloween costume you could imagine for sale in the store! Long gone are the days of simplicity, replaced with what seems almost like a competition judged by cost rather than the imagination! Yes, I do realize that some kids and parents still do use their imagination and make their own costumes, but judging by the amount of empty space on the costume racks when we’re still four weeks away from Halloween, I’d have to say the people that do are getting fewer and farther between those that don’t!

I have to admit that the things that have happened over the past few weeks have really gotten me to looking back at my life! I know that I do quite a bit of complaining about my life, but I honestly do feel very fortunate to have lived the life I have!

Yes, I have had some fairly traumatic things happen in my life, but I’ve also had many more wonderful things happen as well! I grew up on a farm, in the country, with a very wonderful family! Life was always very busy! If we weren’t in the fields planting, fertilizing or harvesting crops, we had livestock to take care of! During the times that those things were taken care of and I didn’t have anything to do, were the times that I had the most fun.

Growing up like I did was a completely amazing experience! I learned the lesson about how good it feels to do hard work and I learned that it’s the simple things in life that bring you the most happiness! Things like laying on a blanket in the yard on a summers day listening to CKLW and trying to figure out exactly what animal that cloud in the sky looked like. Or swinging so fast and high on a tire swing that you swore you were going to crash into a huge tree limb!

Eventually I replaced CKLW with WIOT and when my parents started becoming grandparents they replaced that old tire swing with one of those really nice wooden swing sets because it would be safer for their grandchildren. But my point is that it’s those simple things that I remember the most about my childhood, and it’s those memories that mean the most to me! Life was so different back then compared to what it is now.

At one of the forums that I frequent, someone recently posted a thread asking us to share our favorite cookie recipes. She posted one for Ginger Snaps that I’m DEFINITELY going to have to try sometime because it sounds AWESOME! So I’m going to share with you two of my all time FAVORITE cookie recipes, both of which I just made the other day…LOL! But be warned, they BOTH are very addicting and could easily make it necessary for you to have to enter a cookie drug rehabilitation center once you start eating them!

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon backing soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 package milk chocolate chips

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Line cookie sheet(s) with parchment paper or grease thoroughly.
2. Mix/sift flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.
3. In a medium sized bowl cream together butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in vanilla and eggs until creamy. Mix in the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda and salt) until well blended. Stir in milk chocolate chips by hand with a wooden spoon.
4. Drop cookie dough onto prepared cookie sheet(s) by tablespoon, making sure they are about 3 inches apart.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes or until the edges get a golden color. Remove from oven, allowing them to cool on cookie sheet(s) for a few minutes before moving them to wire racks or table to cool completely.

This batch makes approximately 4 dozen cookies if you make them on the smaller side, less if you make them larger, so if you want to make a large batch I would suggest mixing up a double batch of the ingredients. I’ve never really cared for Chocolate Chip Cookies, but I LOVE these ones! They remind me quite a bit of the soft version of Chips Ahoy cookies that you can buy in the stores!

Ingredients
3 cups sugar
2 cups Crisco oil
4 eggs
2 teaspoons baking soda (dissolve in liquid ingredients)
6 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups buttermilk (I’ve used both the fresh and the powdered, both work fine!)
6 cups flour
3 teaspoons vanilla
Colored sprinkle sugar

The MOST important things about this recipe are A). It makes a HUGE amount of batter, so you may want to cut it in half and B). dissolving the baking soda into the liquid ingredients HAS to be done or the cookies don’t turn out correctly! I’ve also found that it’s best to have at least 2 cookie sheets when baking these, but more than 2 is even better! Also, if you don’t have a stand mixer, it’s VERY helpful if you havea
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (232 Degrees C) and line cookie sheet(s), or grease thoroughly.
2. In a LARGE mixing bowl sift together the flour, sugar and baking powder and set aside.
3. In another large mixing bowl mix oil, eggs, vanilla, buttermilk and baking soda.
4. Slowly pour sifted dry ingredients into liquid ingredients mixing continuously until thoroughly mixed. It is a very “runny” mixture, with almost a paste consistency.
Baking Directions
This is where things get REALLY REALLY busy, I have made these many, many times and the one thing that I’ve learned is that when you start baking these, you absolutely cannot walk away!
Drop dough by tablespoon onto lined or greased cookie sheets, sprinkle with colored sugar if desired and bake in the oven for 6 minutes.

That six minutes they are baking gives you just enough time to get the next sheet ready to put into the oven when you take one out. The “method” that I’ve found that works well goes like this. A). Prepare first sheet and put into the oven B). Prepare next sheet to go into oven C). Pull sheet out of oven when the timer goes off, remove from sheet and place on table or counter (I usually cover a small folding table with aluminum foil or waxed paper to put the cookies on when I remove them from the cookie sheet) D). Put next cookie sheet into oven.

These cookies are VERY light and almost fluffy. I have found that I don’t like how they taste when they are frosted, so that’s why I sprinkle the tops of them with colored sugar before baking. I change the color of the sugar according to what season I’m baking them in or for the occasion I am baking them for (i.e. red and green sprinkle sugar for Christmas, pastel colored sprinkle sugar for Easter, etc.) They also freeze VERY VERY well, so I rarely cut the recipe in half, I just freeze part of them after I bake them. It’s probably one of the most time consuming cookies I have ever baked because of the fact that you cannot walk away from them, but I’ve found that they are well worth the time and they’ve become a family favorite! My other family members have come to expect a big plate of these every year for Christmas, almost to the point that I’ve thought about telling them they need to find out if there is a drug rehab program for cookie addicts…LOL!

So, there you have it, my two MUST HAVE cookie recipes! Let me know if you try them out and if you like them! HAPPY BAKING!!!!!

I know that life is never easy, I know that stress is a part of life, whether we like it or not! But I had something “happen” this morning that kind of freaked me out! So if you would, please keep reading and give me your thoughts.

The past two weeks have been extremely stressful! It was two weeks ago yesterday that my nephew passed away suddenly, two weeks ago today I spent the day with family, trying to do what I could to help out. The day after that I spent the entire day putting together the tribute video for my nephew, and ran into problems in the end stages because the program I was used to using didn’t publish DVD’s and I was totally unfamiliar with the program I ended up using, which really made me freak out!

Then there was the day that everything blew up with my family over the video, which ended up with me spending the visitation day and the day of the funeral with the vast majority of my family pissed off at me and completely avoiding me, leaving me feel completely abandoned by them.

Since then, there has been some fairly major financial stresses, my kids freaking out over really dumb things, two weeks with little to no communication with family members, a dog totally destroying a sofa, finding out that we lost our health insurance because of letters that were mailed to us that we NEVER received, and then there is the fact that I spent three days kind of stressing out over going on the first job interview I’ve been on in over 5 years.

I know that stress can mess with your mind and your health. But can it also make you completely forget something you normally do on a regular basis? I recently joined a forum and would visit it several times a day. Out of the middle of nowhere, I completely forgot about giong there and haven’t went to it in quite a few days. My brain feels like it’s complete mush right now, I’m feeling so tired all the time lately, yet when I go to bed, I can’t get my brain to shut down, so I lie there flipping channels on the TV for a while before I can finally fall asleep.

What I’m wondering is, do I need to be worried about this to the point that I should see a doctor? To me it just seems like something that will eventually pass, but the fact that I completely forgot about something I did on a daily basis kind of bothers me. I don’t have health insurance right now, so going to the doctor today, or even this week, is not at all possible! I don’t know what to do honestly. I think if I just try to chill out, it will eventually pass. And it’s not like I’m not used stress, because it’s been a part of my life for a long time. So, what do you think?