Fill in the blank Friday!

My greatest strength is my determination (or hardheadedness!) and perseverance.

My greatest weakness is probably tending to take on more than I should.  Wears a girl out sometimes.

People always compliment me on my skin.  They want to know what I use to wash my face.  I'm always trying out cleansers and moisturizers and usually don't buy the same ones twice.  Right now, I'm using white Dove soap and aloe vera gel.  Easy squeezy.

If you found me procrastinating, you'd probably find me on Facebook.  Not probably.  You WOULD find me there.  :)

The most cozy place in all the world is MY BED.

Something new that I tried recently is inspecting the inside of an F-15 cockpit and assuring that all the pins and belts and buckles were as they should be.  I have the coolest job!!!

This weekend, I would like to go see a movie.  I haven't been to the movies since Breaking Dawn!  In November!!!  I'm just not interested in anything that's playing right now.  So I'll probably just hang out with my hubby and sleep.

Happy Weekend!!

What I'm loving Wednesday!

I haven't done one of these in a while!

Today, I'm loving that I'm almost finished with the training for my new job!!!

Tomorrow, I'll learn all about ground escape for the F-15, which is the aircraft I'll be working with and hopefully I'll get to go out to my building and walk around and then Friday, we'll be in another building for respirator training and I'll go to my job area on Monday!!!  I am SO thankful for all this knowledge and information and my head is just slap FULL of stuff.  I just hope I'll be able to retrieve it IF it's ever necessary!

I'm also loving that I decided to exchange those steel-toe boots that were pinching my right pinky toe so bad.  I took them back Friday and got another pair that are 1/2 size bigger and just a little bit wider.  That little bit of room made ALL the difference!!!  These don't pinch my toe.  Yay!!!  I have an appointment next month to see a podiatrist about it, though.  This toe has hurt me for two years.  It's time something was did about it.  :)

OH!!  And Red Wing has the most awesome steel-toe boot socks!!!  I got two pair of them Friday.  They have that marshmallow sock feel at the toe.  Sooooo soft and comfy.  And WELL worth $7 a pair, lemme tell ya!!!  So, yeah, I'm loving that today, too!

I'm pretty much loving LIFE right now!!  The Lord has truly blessed me and Larry this year and we're only in MARCH.  I got this super cool job that I've wanted and prayed for for two years and the Parole Board gave us the greatest news last month, too.  They are FINALLY going to let him come home!!!  After 36 years.  I have a little bit of "nesting" time but not much.  I have lots that I want to do before then.  I know I'm having at least two big old yard sales to get rid of some of this stuff!!  How one person has accumulated so much just baffles me.  THREE TV's??!!  I mean, come on.  I call myself living simply but if you saw my closets, you wouldn't think so.  I've got to get BUSY!!!

But first??  I need a nap.  The flightline calls earrrrrrrrrrly.

Safety. I can has it.

Yesterday and today, we had lectures on safety in the workplace.  We saw gruesome, gory pictures of what happens when your wedding band gets caught up in machinery and when a tire blows up in your face.  How DID that guy's FOOT end up on top of his HEAD??  I still don't get it.

And this is what happens when you let a heavy glass door close on your arm.  It's a lot worse than it looks.  :)

 

Oh the stories she could tell...

I found this precious little wooden Japanese doll at the base thrift shop today and I just HAD to have her! I immediately fell in love with her sweet little face. :)  She just seemed to call out to me.

I found myself wondering where she'd been, how many tables she'd sat on, how many times she'd been dropped or thrown by a child, how many times she'd been wrapped in tissue paper and placed in a box and moved, across the country, across the world?  I know she originated in Japan because she still has a little Japanese sticker on her bottom.

I named her Yoko, not just 'cause I love John Lennon but because one of the meanings of Yoko is "ocean child" or "foreign child".  She traveled across the ocean and now she's home.

 

Happy spring, kinda sorta

 My pretty pink azalea, in full bloom on this first day of spring!

Something else that's in full bloom is the pollen!  It's hit me hard all of a sudden and I've been saying for a week that it feels thicker this year and seemed worse than it's been since I started having allergy problems 10 years ago.  

I read today that it IS worse!  There are 9,369 pollen particles per cubic meter of air.  That's 1,200 particles more than last year's high.  Now I've had a little bit of physics and I did a little figuring and I came up with this.  

My smallest bathroom is 7x5x8.  If you divide that bathroom into eight cubes and pretend that one of those eight cubes is nothing but pollen, and has NO AIR in it at all, then drop that cube on the floor and slam the door and just stand there and breathe, that's what it's like outside, per cubic meter.  

No wonder we're all dying!  That's a LOT of pollen in that little bitty bathroom.

I finished up orientation and new employee training today on the first day of spring.  We'll start on flightline training in the morning and we'll do that through next week.  I got my base ID (CAC card) yesterday and was pretty happy with the way it turned out, even though I walked to the building and it was 85 degrees in the shade and my hair kinda went pancake on me.  I was smiling and my eyes were open (Ami!), so I was happy.  My boots are just about broken in, too.  They still pinch my bad little right pinky toe but I've made an appointment with a foot doctor to get that checked out.  I think there might be a bone spur in there.  I had to wait until I got that good Blue Cross Federal insurance and I got that today.  :)

So here's hoping for a short pollen season, lots of spring showers and less sensitive little pinky toes!

Do you have these in pink?

Looky what Uncle Sam bought ME today!  Steel-toe boots.  Red Wing.  Good 'uns that will keep my toes nice and safe on the flightline.  We got vouchers for them today and just had to go to the Red Wing store and get fitted and take 'em home.  They have this thing that you stand on that measures your foot and shows your pressure points to make sure you get pretty much a custom fit.  As soon as I stood on that thing and my feet showed up on the screen, the salesgirl gasped and said, "Oh my God, LOOK at your feet!"  I know I have bad feet.  It comes from being barefoot 99.99% of the time (the tagline of my blog ain't there for nothin'.  My walk through life IS mostly barefoot.  I admit that openly and without shame.).  I hate shoes.  Always have.  And I have never, ever bought a pair of good support shoes.  I like flip flops and thin, flat little shoes that I can kick off and be barefoot again.

And now that I'm almost 45, I have bad feet.  And bad ankles. Just a mess of pain and swelling.  It's usually not pretty.

The Red Wing thingamajiggitybobbity tells you where you're putting the most pressure on your feet when you stand and walk.  The most pressure is supposed to be on the balls of your feet and your heels.  That's red on the screen.  The rest of your foot should be blue.  The SIDES of my feet were red, from toes to heel and the balls of my feet were blue.  :)  I walk on the sides of my feet like a duck, always have, probably always will.  They told me today that these boots will keep my feet straight and MAKE me walk right.

Yeah, right, whatever.  Maybe if they were pink, they would.

Wingin' it

Dis where I work now.  My dang cheeks hurt from smiling so much.

I'm just on Day Two and I still have five more days of orientation and then another 7-10 days of training before I even get started on my actual JOB but I'm just so tickled, I 'bout can't stand it.

My actual job will be in the Maintenance Wing on the flightline and I'll be working in the F-15 rewire shop.

Can you believe that?  A girl who, until three years ago, had never done anything but make loans to people and then aggravate the stew out of them until they paid her back.

I got out at lunch today and just drove around, trying to get familiar with streets and places and stuff to do.  There is SO much going on and so many activities to get involved in, classes we can take, things and services that are available to us as government employees, I've never seen anything like it.  They gave us a map and I spread it out on the seat beside me and just drove around today, all the while thinking how I'll be zipping around that place in no time!  It's all new and HUGE and strange and wonderful but it won't take me long to find my way around.  And it'll still be wonderful.  :)

We've had two days of briefings and have collected quite a stack of paperwork, brochures and information that we'll need to make our time on base easier and more efficient.  They have this new employee thing down to a science and I have been so impressed.

Oh, and I LOVE their efforts to be green.  They have recycling barrels all over for plastic bottles and they also recycle paper, plastic, aluminum cans and cardboard.  AND nearly all of the outside benches and tables are made from recycled plastics AND they compost.  I totally heart them already.

They give you three hours a week fitness leave so you can go work out at the gyms there and I intended to take FULL advantage of that until I actually got to see the building I'll be working in today.  I drove out there after we were dismissed to see if I could find it and maybe talk to somebody out there.  I got one of the supervisors who works IN my building and he showed it to me.  He pointed to it.  It's way out there on the runway.  A mile from the parking lot.  Where my car will be.

I'll be skinny as a rail by June.  :D

C'mon get hoppy

 
I pulled out some of my Easter decorations today.  Now that's not nearly the event that pulling out my Christmas stuff is but I do have a few favorite little things that I like to get out every year.  Last year, I didn't do the eggs on my fence because I was still mad about the MOON next door but I'm pretty much over that.  I try not to stay mad about anything long.  Besides, there's not a thing I can do about it anyway.  So, with a kind, understanding neighbor heart (ha!) and in the misting rain today, I hung my pink and green and yellow eggs on the fence and put my little metal bunny right in front.

I hung some tie-dyed eggs on one of the eucalyptus trees, too!  

See the prize egg??

 Here are just a few of the little cuties inside!

 Jude and Lucy, still keeping things groovy

 Sweet little stuffed Peep that I found in my Easter basket a few years ago (yeah, and I might have a Beanie Baby or two)

And my cherished collection of beautiful eggs that 

Ami made for me over the course of several years

Next to the last

Today is my next to last day at home!!  I start my new job Monday morning and I am SO excited and ready to get started.  I've gotten a lot accomplished in my seven weeks at home, my house has benefited from a ridiculous amount of spring cleaning, my yards have been raked and readied for spring and flower plantin' and I have gotten lots of rest.  So much that night before last (yesterday morning actually!), I didn't go to sleep until 6:00 in the morning!  Even in my young, young days, I never stayed up all night.  I slept until 10:30 yesterday morning and I was up until 2:00 this morning.  I am all messed up!  Mama reminded me last night how she used to make us start going to bed at 9:00 a week or two before school started every year so we'd be ready to get up when the time came.  Ha!  Maybe I'll try that tonight.

I sure should be tired enough!  I had a few errands this morning and when they were done, I just started driving until the city ran out and I was in the country. I don't even know where I was, just somewhere between here and Byron.  Today's Photo-A-Day challenge is window and I spotted this old barn out there and snapped a picture of its window.  Perfect, I thought.

I came home and started working on the yards again.  I've already done this one time since I've been hanging out at home but those leaves are still falling.

I don't want to start planting flowers until after Easter because Georgia has been known to kick up a cold front to welcome spring so I'm gonna wait. I saw so many flowers today at Lowe's that I want!  And a two-tiered bird bath fountain, too.  :)

But I did make a little garden today.  A rock garden that kinda sums up how I'm feeling on my next to the last day at home.

Happy Birthday, Oreo cookie!

A hundred years ago today, the first little Oreo cookie rolled off the line at Chelsea Market Bakery in Manhattan, New York and a legend was born!  Who doesn't like Oreo cookies??  There are lots of different versions of them today like the Double Stuf, Golden (a vanilla cookie with chocolate cream on the inside!), Peanut Butter, Cool Mint and even a Reduced Fat version.

When I was younger, about 25 or so, I was working in Americus and I entered a contest at Piggly Wiggly to win a year's supply of Oreo cookies.  I'd never won anything in my life and sure didn't think I'd win then.  But I DID!!  I won a YEAR'S SUPPLY OF OREO COOKIES.  And every week for a year, I walked down to Piggly Wiggly from my office in the Perlis Plaza and picked up my pack of Oreos.  It got to the point that I was SO SICK of Oreos, my family was SO SICK of Oreos, so I started just giving them away to customers, people on the street, dogs, whoever would take them.

I can't even remember the last time I had an Oreo.  I know I had an Oreo Blizzard at Dairy Queen a couple of summers ago but an actual cookie??  I can't remember.

I do remember how I eat them, though.  I twist and separate and eat the center first.  Just like nearly 50% of women do.  Men usually eat the thing whole in one or two bites.  Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever seen a man twist and separate an Oreo.  Funny.  Larry eats 'em in one bite.

I think it's pretty amazing that a cookie has survived a hundred years.  Nothing lasts a hundred years in this country.  We are bombarded by new stuff daily and it's really hard to keep up.  So for this little cookie to stand the test of time really means something.  It's a classic.