Let it all hang out

When I was growing up, we always had a clothesline.  Even after we got a dryer, Mama still hung our clothes out on the line.  She's told us stories of hanging our diapers out (and she had two babies in diapers at the same time!) in the winter and how they'd freeze on the line.  The clothesline was always a big, even if not always necessary, part of our lives and I was raised hanging out clothes and then bringing them back in again.  Many summer afternoons, we would run out there and bring the clothes in just before a thunderstorm.  I admit I'm lazy and not at all down with being outside when it's cold so I don't even use my clothesline in the winter.  If the Lord decides to bless Larry and me with a baby, our cloth diapers will tumble away in the dryer in the winter.  Ain't nobody got time for that!

But.  All spring and summer, I use my clothesline and I love it!!  My clothesline ain't fancy.  It's just a line tied between two trees in the backyard but I love everything about it.  There is no laundry detergent or fabric softener in the world that can put that fresh, line-dried heavenly scent in your clothes, your sheets and your towels.  I love feeling the sun on my skin, hearing the birds sing in the trees, I even love how the wooden clothespins feel in my fingers.  Like Miss Kay said in the hilarious episode of "Duck Dynasty" where they go to get her a new dryer and get lost, it makes you feel like a pioneer woman.  And not only is line drying green and energy-saving, it's also free!  Sun and wind are free!  

I've been using my clothesline again for three weeks now.  I usually do my laundry and housework on Fridays when I'm home.  Here's my new-to-me beautiful vintage pillowcases that I won on eBay last week drying on the line this morning. 

Pioneer woman, indeed. 

Memorial Day

 

As long as we remember them, they're never really lost.

A few things that made my weekend awesome!

I love four-day weekends!

Friday morning, we celebrated Tabbie Hoffman's first birthday!  Here he is checking out his cancake AKA a can of Meow Mix chicken Pate Topper.  Ha!  He got a cute little summertime toy with a dangly seahorse and starfish and he enjoyed his mama singing "Happy Birthday" to him.  I think.  ;)

Friday afternoon, I went out to the college and picked up my top secret, sealed transcript to turn in to the base next week so they can start my conversion process back to full time status (there go my Fridays!  At least until the furloughs start!) and promote me to a WG-08.  Two promotions and two big raises in less than 16 months.  A girl could get used to movin' on up like that!

I finished up my necessary training hours on the fuel pit Thursday night.  A gorgeous, breezy, quiet, star-filled night to work on the pit.  I sat in the cockpit and monitored the fuel levels while the guys down below fueled and defueled the plane.  F-15s have a warning voice the guys call "Bitchin' Betty".  I think I would have called her "Freakin' Freida" because I got to hear her scream in my headset, "Warning! Fuel Low!" half a dozen times and it sounded like she was freaking the hell right on out.  Calm down, Betty.  Dang.  Now, is that the kind of voice we want a pilot in distress to hear??  I think not.  They should let me do it.  I would say it all slow and calm, with my charming Southern drawl, "Now, honey, your fuel's gettin' a little low.  You might want to get you some more.  I think there might be some in the wings." or something like that.  :)  

Here's Betty if you want to hear her freakin'.  Bless her heart.

http://www.f-15e.info/multimedia/audio/betty.mp3

After I left the college with my top secret, sealed transcript (no joke!), I went over to the theater and met with a Facebook friend of mine for the very first time!  I'd been talking to Belinda on FB for years.  We live in the same town, for goodness sake!  So we arranged to go see the third and final installment of The Hangover and it was hilarious!  I love those movies.  It was a little more violent than the other two but funny all the same.  My favorite line was that crazy Chow saying, "We're gonna die...finally!"

Saturday, I trimmed the shrub bushes in front of the house.  Y'all.  They had NEVER been trimmed.  Not in the ten years I've lived here.  I joked on Facebook that I had no idea there were even seven of them there.  I thought there was just the one big one.  They are cut completely away from the house now.  I can easily get to the water faucet and the dryer vent and I can clean the siding when it needs it.  Not to mention the bug treatment will be so much more successful now.  :)  I planted a purple Mexican petunia in that tiny flower bed and as soon as Uncle JB and the irises come up and bloom and I plant a few more hostas and some geraniums, it's really going to be pretty right there.

I got these two beauties for the patio.  A pink impatien and her sister, an orange sunpatien.

This pretty begonia hangs in the backyard.

Neither the shrubs or the flowers were on my Ultimate Homecoming list but since y'all brought it up, the list is now down to THREE.  Steam clean the carpets, buy new bed stuffs and get his recliner.  That is IT.  I am so proud!!!  I'm going to do the carpets myself in the fall so between now and then, I'm sure I'll be adding to the list.  :)

I won two beautiful sets of vintage pillowcases on eBay this weekend, too!  I am all into vintage mismatched sheets and pillowcases lately.  These are in blue, pink and yellow flower prints and were made in the 60's.  Squeeeee!!

I also ordered a bunch of books this weekend to kick off my summer reading.  I like to read Southern, light and funny in the summer and one of the books I ordered is called Sue Ellen's Girl Ain't Fat, She Just Weighs Heavy.  Chapter One is "She Got Those Heavy Legs From Her Mama's Side". Bwahaha! 

I hope you're all having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!  And take a minute to remember why we're having this weekend in the first place.

Don't fence me in

Don't you just lovvvvvvve neighbors?? Especially neighbors who build fences butt up against your backyard gate denying you access to the outside world??

Yeah, me, too.  That's why I called the zoning department at City Hall this morning to share it with them and invite them to come out and see it, too!

The NERVE!  Got his junk all up against the back of our shop, too!!  For shame.  That lean-to??  Totally ours.

And we're not done yet!!  He put a piece of fencing over the other side, blocking us in over there, too.

I'm anxious to see how long it takes somebody to come out and look at this but I will keep you updated right here on this blog, you can count on that!  :)

Wow.  Neighbors are so awesome.  That's why I'm going back to the country!

Gettin' it DONE

When Larry left for Quitman, I made a list of things I wanted to get done before he came home in January.  I had 19 things on that list.  My baby has been gone just six weeks tomorrow and my list is down to SEVEN. And four of those seven are just things I need to buy.  I have been busy!!!  One of those things I wanted to do was have the house pressure washed and Brian and Ami were so sweet to offer their washer and their time!  I don't have a pressure washer (but that's going to change very shortly!) so I've been paying people to do it, $300 a pop.  So not only did they save me lots of money but I got to spend time with them yesterday and we got to sit down and eat supper together.  I can't even remember the last time I got to set my table!  It was so nice.  Just frozen Stouffer's lasagna and garlic bread but it was great to have company!  They brought a chocolate cake and I had some ice cream (sea salt caramel, OMG) and we just had a wonderful visit together!  Tabbie Hoffman didn't think it was so wonderful, though.  After scratching the crap out of my belly to get down, he hid under the bed the whole time.  He doesn't do well with people.  Or lizards or vacuum cleaners or six bags of groceries coming in the door at one time or pretty much, anything that's not just his mama.  I dragged him out a couple of times to get pictures, though.  He'll be a year old next Friday and I wanted some professional pictures of him.  I was determined to get 'em!  We don't know for SURE that his birthday is the 24th but when I found him on July 15th and took him to the vet to get him checked out, the doctor told me he was around eight weeks old, which made him born in May sometime.  Since Larry's birthday is February 24th and my birthday is June 24th, Larry said Tabbie Hoffman's birthday is May 24th.  :)  And so it is.

Sweet, scared little boy laying on my shoulder.  Awwww!

Brian signed on to pressure wash the house but once he got started on the deck, he couldn't stop!  I got in on it, too!  I thought since it's 13 or 14 years old, that deck was just weathered.  I've used deck cleaner on it and I've put water seal on it every spring for the past ten years.  I know that water seal is what's kept it together all these years!  But, naw, it was not just weathered.  It was filthy!!  That pressure washer took allllll that funk off.  That's why I said there will be a pressure washer at the Schneider Condostead lickety-split.

Just look at the difference!  It looks brand new!!

Here it is in progress!  Wow!

I love that saying, "when you know better, you do better".  We said that yesterday.  I had NO idea that deck looked like that.  It has never looked like that, not even when we first bought the place ten years ago.  Now all we need is some new patio furniture, a grill, a hot tub and some of those pretty multicolored patio lights.  ;)

So, twelve Ultimate Homecoming things down, seven to go!  I think I'll spend Memorial Day weekend planting flowers.  :)

Come what May

Wow.  It's the 10th of May already!  Larry has been in Quitman a month already!!  He's doing great!!  Cooking, working, fixing folks' transmissions, wearing ties to church, growing a beard.  :)  He's working in their store down there Tuesday through Saturday and he cooks for the rest of the guys on Mondays, when the store is closed.  He has made fried chicken, baked chicken, mac and cheese, veggies and cheese, grilled cheese sammiches (He likes cheese.  A LOT.), brownies, cake, salads, just all kinds of stuff.  I am SO proud of him!!  And really looking forward to having him cook for me!  ;)

I officially finished school last Friday night with our graduation.  Yay!!!  I held on to that 4.0 GPA so I got to graduate with honors.  Never did that before.  Now all I need to do is get a copy of my transcript from the college, turn it in to the base along with my training folder, do a little paperwork and I'll be converted out of the co-op program and I'll be a WG-08 out there.  I've been working in the fuel pit lately since that's the last thing that I need to get signed off on in my training folder.  I worked out there last night actually.  And we had a wiring issue in a Cannon plug and it was cool to troubleshoot and find the problem.  It was also pretty doggone cool to sit in the cockpit and turn external power on!  If you'd told me three years ago that I'd be sitting in the cockpit of an F-15 and pressing buttons and flipping switches to turn power on the plane, I would have looked at you all crazy.  Do whaaaa???  But I do and I have and I DID.  :D

Mama and Daddy sent me the sweetest graduation card this week and Daddy even drew an airplane with a little girl on top of it.  That's my favorite place to work on that F-15.  The backbone, as we call it, or the wings, I like being on them, too.  I LOVE to just stand up on top of that plane.  It's still a little surreal to me that they are LETTING ME DO THAT.

Last weekend, I tackled our bedroom closet and even though I wanted to make it an even half and half, it's 3/4 girl stuff and 1/4 man stuff.  Still needs work, obviously.  :)  But!  He has four drawers in the dresser so I think we are good.  I'm not cleaning out or organizing a thing this weekend!  I'm meeting some girls from Central tomorrow afternoon for little hen party of sorts.  I haven't seen them since we left in March.  I have met and become friends with so many wonderful, beautiful, strong women over the years.  It takes unbelievable strength to live that life and love that man despite all kinds of obstacles, that I believe with all of my heart that God handpicked us all for it.  He had to.  I'm proud to call these ladies my friends.  And we are going to cackle like a bunch of hens come tomorrow.  I've missed them.

And Sunday is Mother's Day.  Gonna go see my mama and the rest of my family.  I'm really looking forward to that, too.  I'm gonna make a Hawaiian pie.  I got the recipe from a guy I work with and he said since his wife started making it, he hasn't had a birthday cake since.  He just prefers this pie.  I found a pic of it online.  It's crushed pineapple, bananas, coconut, Cool Whip and sweetened condensed milk with lemon juice, all smashed into a graham cracker crumb and butter crust and topped with maraschino cherries and pecans.  I can't wait to try it!!

I kinda fell off the weight loss wagon in March with all that TC/Wilcox drama mess that Larry and I went through.  When I'm stressed, I eat.  And I eat badly.  But I dusted off my butt and climbed back on May 1st and I've lost nine of the eleven pounds I gained back.  One step forward and two steps back.  Story of my life.  I've been losing a pound a day so maybe all eleven will be gone in the morning.  Or, rather, later THIS morning.  :)

So there we are.  All caught up again.  Thank you for stopping by to read about my life!  I want to do something special for my 50,000th visitor.  Have a little giveaway or something.  We're at 49,200 now!  All you'd have to do is leave a comment.  Virtually painless, right??  We'll talk more about that later.