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!

I’m just totally NOT ready for cold weather to be here, I WANT AUTUMN! I don’t want the cold or the snow, I want sun and temps in the 50’s! But, that’s just not meant to be.

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

I’m not sure about where you live, but this time of the year in NW Ohio, we have frequent thunderstorms. Sometimes they’re quick with no major weather, just a few rain showers, but lately we’ve had some very strong storms pop up out of the middle of nowhere!

A couple of weeks ago we had three strong storms come through in a 12-15 hour time frame. All three storms packed some fairly heavy winds and rain which caused brief power outages for us, and all but one were in the middle of the night. I was watching the local news and keeping an eye on the radar maps I stalk online when I know storms are coming in, and I warned my son both times that it really would be in his best interest to shut his computer down before they came in. Did he listen to me? NOPE!

So rather than be safe and shut down, he stayed on his computer and over a period of about 15 minutes, our power went on and off at least 5 times. Since his computer was on when the power went out, when the power would come back on, it would try to restart. Just as it was finishing the power up cycle, the power would go out again and the whole “cycle” would start all over again. I finally took over and simply pulled his power cord from the computer because I knew if I didn’t, his computer would totally fry, and I can’t afford to replace it right now!

Unfortunately, when the power finally came back on for good and we plugged the power cord back into his computer and allowed it to fully power up, we realized we hadn’t completely avoided damage to his computer. I’m not sure if it was related to what happened from the storm or just one of those things that happens, but his computer wouldn’t recognize one of his ram sticks and he ended up with too little memory to properly run his OS. Thankfully we had other ram sticks in the house and were able to fix the problem right away!

The best thing about this is that we’re currently under a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, and when I told him, he shut his computer down without my even having to ask….LOL! Now if I can just get him to learn how to bring his dirty dishes to the kitchen sink in a more timely manner, I’ll be happy!

I tell you, the past 13 or so hours have been the longest 13 hours of my life…LOL! I was sitting here at my computer last night around 8 or so when the news guys broke into the regular programming warning about some very strong storms that were heading right for our area. As I sat there and watched them talk about the storms, they jumped in telling the people that live in the area that my mom does that they need to take cover ASAP that the winds with this storm had registered near 100 MPH and there was rotation forming in the clouds. I quick called her to make sure she knew what was going on, which she didn’t because she was driving and not at home, so it was a good thing that I called her.

Within minutes after calling her, we got hit with the heaviest rain I’ve seen in a very long time. From the kitchen window I could see that the rain was coming down in at least 2 different directions and it was coming down so fast and heavy that I couldn’t even see across the side yard out to the trampoline. The weathermen then came on the TV and said large hail was being reported in areas close to mine so at that point I decided that I needed to wake my husband up because he was asleep in the recliner directly in front of the sliding glass door. Good thing I woke him up when I did because within minutes the sliding glass door became a flood zone.

The door was installed not too long before we moved in here and they never completely finished the installation. I was thinking what was unfinished was more cosmetic than anything, but I discovered last night that the top of the door was never sealed when the rain started pouring in through the crack at the top of the door. Thankfully I save the 2 1/2 gallon buckets that we buy ice cream in, so I started putting those under the “streams” of water that were coming in. But there were so many that it was basically impossible to catch everything, so I ended up with an inch or so of water covering a good part of the floor out here. We were grabbing sheets, blankets and towels to try and at least stop the water from running to other parts of the room.

After the storm finally passed and we got all the water back on we discovered that although we never lost power somehow the DVR had shut itself off and reset. I figured if we just kept hitting the continue option everything would be OK, boy was I wrong…LOL! We ended up having to call the satellite company to get things figured out, but thankfully they were really nice about it and were able to fix it fairly quickly.

When I finally sat back down at my computer I went to open a website and all of a sudden my computer went whacko! Before I knew it I had over 40 tabs open in my browser and the browser wouldn’t shut down by clicking the “X” or by the task manager, so I had no choice but to restart it. When it was powered back up I ran my anti virus/anti spyware program to find out that I had a total of 3 different “worms” on my computer. Excuse me, HOW did my computer get worms on it? I don’t visit odd sites, I go to the same sites over and over again. It was apparent that while I was gone on my trip someone had went somewhere on this computer that I wouldn’t have approved of.

So, at about 10 or so last night I started going through a step by step guide that included downloading 5 other programs in order to try and remove the worms from my computer. My own antivirus/antispyware program would not remove them, no matter what I did, and this was a guide that I had used once before on the kids’ computer with success, so I decided I’d do it on my own computer, hopefully with the same success.

To make a long story short, it did work, but it ended up taking nearly 5 hours to get everything ran. Yes, I could have put it off until this morning, but I also knew that the kids had an appointment this morning and I also didn’t want to shut my computer down knowing what was wrong with it, so I was up until a little after 3 AM.

My hubby tried to wake me up before he left for work, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I told him just to set the alarm for 9 and I’d get up then, what a HUGE mistake that was! When I got up with the alarm, I walked out to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and noticed a “puddle” in the family room. My first thought was that the puppy had an accident before hubby left for work and he didn’t realize it. It would have been nice if it were that simple. When I got out to the family room I realized it was raining really hard again and the sliding door was once again leaking! So, off I went to try and scramble up some more towels or sheets or anything I could find, this time it was running down the door, so buckets weren’t going to catch it.

NOT the way I wanted to start my day, hopefully it gets better, but I have a feeling I’m going to get a stern lecture from the kids’ doctor this morning over an argument I had over the phone with his nurse. Oh well

I’m trying to decide exactly what I’m going to do today. It’s going to be drop dead gorgeous, weather wise, so I thought about doing some work on the yard. But I have no idea what my husband did with the rakes and stuff, and I’m not so sure I even want to begin that task. I also have the new to me kitchen cabinets to prime and paint, which is going to be a chore, but something that also really needs to get done. Then, there is the never ending mountain of laundry that I have in the laundry room. Although I did several loads to catch up over the weekend, I swear the pile got bigger rather than smaller! I also need to give the puppy a bath today, she’s starting to smell not so good…LOL!

Monday is the day that I usually declare as my “day off”, a day where I just kind of chill out and do whatever I want to do. But with so much to do around here, I don’t think that’s going to happen today. Right now I’m just going to enjoy my coffee and the peace and quiet since all the puppies are sleeping…LOL! Since this kind of quiet doesn’t happen that often around here, I try to take advantage of it when I can!

So what are you up to today? Is your weather going to be nice too, or are you still stuck with crappy weather? OH, speaking of weather, as I said it’s possible it will hit 70 degrees today, they’re calling for temps in the 40’s and the possibility of snow this weekend…LOL! We have had 58.1 inches of show this season, which currently puts us as the 6th snowiest winter on record. But we’re only 1.3 inches away from the number 5 record, and it’s just the beginning of April, so there’s still a chance that we can meet or beat the #5 record of 59.4 inches of snow before we’re in the clear! And that record is 39 years old!

I often share with you the many things I see when I look out the windows here. If anything, the view for the past several months has been VERY consistent, and this morning definitely isn’t an exception…LOL! Before you look at the pictures, please keep in mind that the temp here yesterday was in the upper 40’s. ENJOY!

Isn’t that just the prettiest sight you’ve ever seen in your life? (Notice the sarcasm there? LOL) Yes ladies and gents, we got even MORE snow over night, four to six inches to be exact. We’re bordering closer to the six inch side here, but from what I understand it’s less in town.

If anyone out there knows how to get in touch with Mother Nature, could you PLEASE tell her that if it doesn’t stop snowing SOON, I may end up going off the deep end like Jack Nicholson did in The Shining….LOL! And if there is anyone out there with several dump trucks that would like to come haul this away for me, I’ll let you have it for free ;o)

After the snow that we’ve gotten this winter and the arrival of spring this past week, I’m counting the days until we actually have decent weather for a change! Friday and Saturday we received another 6 inches of snow, putting our seasonal snow total near 60 inches of snow this winter. It’s not my idea of a great winter, but I know that living in the area that I live in, it’s to be expected. But with family and my husbands job, moving away from this area at this point in time simply isn’t an option, so I try not to complain too much about it.

But with the calendar saying that spring has arrived as well as my first Robin sighting of the year, I have no doubt we’ll be seeing better weather soon! And warm weather brings the rush of people trying to shed those excess pounds they put on over the winter. I went to the store the other day to pick up a few things for the house and I seen display after display filled with exercise books and equipment as well as weight loss products like Hydroxycut. Since weight loss products really aren’t an option for me I’m going to work harder at eating better and exercising more. I can’t wait to put Sage in the van and take her for her first trip to the park. We can head out and walk some of the trails and I can let her roam in the open areas. She has a fun sense of adventure and I think that she’ll have fun at the park!

Good morning everyone! TGIF and Happy Good Friday to those that celebrate it! In true NW Ohio fashion, spring is starting on an ugly weather note this weekend. The weathermen have changed their minds 3 times over the past two days about the storm that is heading our way. Initially they were saying that our area was going to get hit with about 6 inches of snow. Then they changed it from 6 inches to right around two inches. This morning all local stations are now saying we’ll get anywhere from 5 to 9 inches of snow. I’m so ready for the snow just to be GONE, as in FOREVER! Yes, I know that I always have the option of moving somewhere that it doesn’t snow, but I’m not ready to do that right now!

What I am ready for is getting things taken care of outside! We moved into this house in October and didn’t have the time to take care of things outside before winter reared it’s ugly head! We didn’t even have time to rake up all the leaves and debris that were in the lawn, but considering that we’re surrounded by acres and acres of woods, I doubt we’d have ever truly gotten the leaves taken care of..LOL! So to say that the yard is a mess it a complete understatement! On top of that we need to fix and expand the deck that is outside of the sliding glass door. It’s totally unstable, one of the corner support beams broke, and it’s way too small for my liking. We’ve built two decks before, so I know that putting one up here won’t be a major task. I just want a deck big enough that I can set a nice patio furniture on. And speaking of patio sets, I found some GORGEOUS teak patio furniture that would look so nice and fit right in with our wooded surroundings!

But with the way our winter weather went, I have the feeling it’s going to be quite a while before I’m going to be able to rake and clean the yard, let alone worry about building the new deck. It’s not even April yet and we almost always get smacked with at least one heavy snow storm in the first half of April. can you say UGH!

Yes, I have another headache today! So far it doesn’t feel like it’s going to go to the migraine stage, but it’s not a mild headache either. I don’t know what it is that’s causing me to have headaches to much lately, but I’m very sick of them!

We’ve had a couple of decent days weather wise here in NW Ohio, but that’s about to come to a VERY abrupt halt tonight! The current temperature right now is 45 degrees, but according to the weather man, it will be 60+ degrees COLDER tomorrow morning when you factor in the windchill! Yes, you read that right, I did say 60 (SIXTY) degrees. They’re calling for a morning temp, with the windchill, of 15 to 30 degrees BELOW zero! And we wonder why we’re all running around coughing and sneezing? But that kind of cold is just INSANE! Thankfully I don’t have class or anything tomorrow, but if my daughters school isn’t delayed or closed, I’ll have to take her to the bus stop tomorrow. Personally, I hope it’s at least delayed because I really don’t want to go out when it’s THAT damn cold! Tomorrow will be a good day for me to curl up in the recliner, grab my blanket and school books, and just spend the day studying! Especially after hearing my marketing teacher tell us today that we’ll probably be having our first exam next week.

Yes, I know, barely above freezing is not even CLOSE to Spring type weather. But when you’ve had an average high temp in the teens for almost 2 weeks, twice that temperature feels warm…LOL! On top of that I’ve been watching The Travel Channel today and they’ve had a few shows on about warm, tropical vacations.

But in all seriousness, once the warmer weather is here, we REALLY need to get busy on the outside of the house! The yard and flower beds were let go for a very long time, so we’re not going to have much of a choice except to pretty much start from scratch with them. And since the yard is nothing but sand, we’ll have to have several truck loads of topsoil brought in.

I also want to build a deck off the side of the house and have it lead down to a patio type area in the side yard. That way we can build a nice fire pit and put the patio furniture around it. Eventually I’d like the patio area to be screened in, but that will mean building a roof with an opening above the fire pit that will allow the smoke to escape, so that definitely won’t happen this year!

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a heat wave!  Just a few days ago I was complaining because it was BITTER cold!  So much so that we actually ran our wood burner several days straight to try and help the furnace keep up.  We ended up having to buy a cord of wood last week because we had almost used up what we had bought shortly after we moved in here.

Over the weekend, the weather was very mild, but nothing compared to what they are calling for today and tomorrow!  We actually have a chance here in NW Ohio of breaking a high temperature record that was set over 100 years ago!  The record high temp for today is 61 degrees set in 1907, they are calling for a high temp today in the mid 60’s and near or at 60 degrees tomorrow!  And considering that the temp was 57 at 5:30 this morning, I have no doubt we will hit the mid 60’s today!

I have short sleeves on and have opened a couple of windows in the house already!  It’s so nice to smell the fresh air!  Fortunately this house has a very open floor plan, so it doesn’t get that stuffy closed up smell a house normally gets in the winter time!  But I’m definitely taking advantage of being able to open windows and let the fresh air in while I can!

Yes, you heard that right!  In case you didn’t realize it, you only have six days left to buy my Christmas gift.  And if you live a LONG way away, you have even less time than that to either hand deliver it or ship it to me, so you’d better get busy!!  I’m waiting!  LOL!  I’m kidding around!  At this point in time the ONLY thing I want for Christmas is for this God awful cold to be GONE!  I’ve been so miserable these past couple of days.  My nose is running, my eyes are watering, I’m sneezing and coughing non stop.  It’s just a good thing for you that you can get my cooties through a computer monitor, isn’t it?  LOL!

It’s been a crazy few days, that’s for sure!  We had no snow on the ground by the time it was time for me to leave for the family get together this past Saturday, so my daughter and I headed out and went.  Honestly, I’m very happy I went!  My mother and step fathers reaction when they pulled up and all of their children, grand children and great grand children were standing outside to yell “HAPPY BIRTHDAY”, was priceless!  Mom instantly broke into tears, she had no clue that we had been planning this!  My step father was basically speechless, which says quite a bit…LOL!  They were so excited to see everyone and the hugs and kisses seemed never ending…LOL!  But I guess that’s to be expected when there are more than 30 family members in one place!

I should have left my sisters house about an hour earlier than I did, because by the time I did leave, the roads were a MESS!  It normally takes me about 45 minutes to get from my driveway to my sisters house.  The drive home Saturday night took an hour and a half.  It wouldn’t have been so bad except for the fact that my daughter was tripping out for most of the drive.  I’m the type of person that puts 100% of my energy and attention into driving if there are bad road conditions.  My daughter was a chatter box the whole drive home.  I know it was because of how bad the roads were and the fact that she was so nervous.  I’d try to talk to her as I could, but finally had to tell her that she really needed to be quiet so that I could focus on my driving.  But we made it home safe and sound, with only 3 times that I got scared…LOL!

From the time the snow storm started Saturday night to the time it finally stopped on Sunday, we ended up getting right around 8 inches of snow.  It was really pretty, and we had a few times during the day on Sunday that we had near white out conditions because it was snowing so hard!  It turned out to be a good thing that I didn’t have anywhere to go, for more reasons than one.  Besides the snow, I also ended up having my cold kick in early Sunday evening.  And by dinner time Sunday night, my daughters school had already delayed school for the next day.  By the next morning her school had canceled, but as of 6:00 Monday morning, my son’s school still had not even delayed, even though every other school in the area had at least delayed, if not canceled, which meant he would have school.  That was so ridiculous!  The roads were still in horrible shape and my county was still under a level 2 snow emergency.  I made an “executive” decision, and I kept him home Monday.  It was so stupid that they didn’t at least delay.  The sidewalks were not cleared so kids that had to walk to bus stops or to schools ended up walking in the streets, it was freezing cold and the snow was blowing, they put the kids’ safety in jeopardy!  I know many people think that because my son rides a bus rather than walking, my decision to keep him home was stupid, but it was my call to make and I still feel I made the right decision!

Anyway, school was on time for my son today, my daughters school delayed 2 hours, and after I got her to the school bus I crashed!  My cold was horrible and I just needed sleep!  I was able to get a little rest today, on and off.  My best friend suggested that I try drinking hot green tea to help with my congestion.  I’ve drank 4 cups and I’m not as congested, but I also took a dose of cold meds that I found in the cupboard…LOL!  I’m feeling OK tonight, just worn out!  It will definitely be an early to bed night!

I’ve finally realized the source of my recent depression. Tomorrow is the HUGE family get together for my mom and step fathers 70th birthdays. My sister made a HUGE issue out of the fact that I couldn’t contribute to a 42 inch TV they were all going in on as a gift and specifically said that she didn’t want me to feel left out or out of place when my mom and step dad open the card and my name isn’t on it. It doesn’t bother me at all, but I know her well enough that she’ll call me out in front of everyone about it saying something like “Don’t feel bad, it’s not a big deal”.

Anyway, I’m praying that the storm that is supposed to hit us starts early enough so that I don’t have to go at all. We’re under a winter storm warning for tomorrow and Sunday and could get anywhere between 4 and 12 inches of snow, depending on what news channel or weather site you’re looking at. Since my little Honda doesn’t do so well in the snow compared to my hubby’s 4-wheel drive truck, and I don’t have a GPS system to guide me in case I went off road, if we get enough snow before it’s time to leave for the party, I can safely not go for weather related reasons! SO cross your fingers for me!

Yes, I’m already awake. I finally went to bed shortly after 3:00 AM, at that point my daughters school was the only one of the 2 kids’ schools that had a delay. But I was fairly sure that by morning, she would not be alone. It was a very short nights sleep, my husband tried to wake me up at 6:00, before he left for work, but that wasn’t going to happen. I remember him trying to wake me up, and I remember telling him to PLEASE drive careful.

Apparently my sub-conscience is more tired of the cold and yucky weather than I am because when I woke up because my husband was calling to let me know he made it to work safely, I was in the middle of a dream. I was dreaming that my husband and I had decided to purchase some beach front property and we were sitting in the office of a Wilmington NC real estate agent discussing our options. The real estate agent was trying to talk us into buying a beautiful property in the heart of Wilmington that was more inland than we wanted, but we were determined to purchase a property that sat right on the beach.   Maybe I’m more ready for our vacation than I thought I was…LOL!

WOW, after having basically no rain for weeks on end, we ended up getting almost 4 inches of rain last night alone.  This morning both my back yard and my driveway were under water, but as of now the backyard has soaked in.  According to the news we’re supposed to have some more strong storms this afternoon adding a few more inches of rain to our current rain count.  As long as it doesn’t come in down pours we’ll be OK.  But if it does come in down pours I may end up having to pump out the basement later on, which is not a task I enjoy at all…LOL!

I’ll keep you posted on the rain, in the mean time stop by and tell me about your weather!

**huggles**

After being in drought conditions for weeks with most lawns now being brown and dormant because of lack of rain, the drought ended over night and we now have flood warnings and roads closing because of high water across the road.  The rain started last night around 10:00 p.m.  It wasn’t that heavy of a rain, but it did include some pretty good thunder and lightning.  I was so tired that I fell asleep almost immediately, which was probably a good thing.  From the sounds of it we had very heavy rain as well as major thunder and lightning and strong winds over night.

This morning my driveway is flooded and on the news they have road after road being closed because of high water on the roads.  I’m not complaining because we really needed the rain!  Our area was over 2 inches below the average rainfall for the month, and our lawn was completely brown.  From what the news is saying we’re going to get a little bit of a break this morning, then more heavy storms this afternoon.  Makes me glad I don’t have anywhere to go today!

TODAY IS!

It’s 8:10 am and the current temperature is -3, with the “real feel” temp being -24! Nearly every school in the area is closed today, my kids’ just closed after being on a 2 hour delay since I got up this morning.

I’m sitting here “layered” I have socks and slippers on and my feet are still cold! I’m telling you, if anyone is heading out today to warmer places can I PLEASE come along? BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! We’re “supposed” to have today, tonight and tomorrow in this cold, then it’s supposed to “warm up”. I’ll take 60 degrees, THANK YOU! LOL

OK, I need to get ready for work. I have mixed emotions about this. I’m excited about going into the office, but man I do not want to walk out that door for even a second!!!

Current Mood: Alarmed

Talk about COLD! I woke up very early this morning for some reason, when I finally got to the puter, my weather program said the current temp was -5, and after the windchill it was -26. WOW!!! Fortunately we have no frozen pipes and both vehicles started, so we’re doing good! I do not plan on venturing outside today unless I have no other choice! So it’ll be a house work/play on the puter kind of day

For anyone else that’s feeling this cold, please stay safe and warm!