Stupid Checks and More 'Old People' Mail

Lately, I have received a couple of checks in the mail for very stupid amounts.  

Here's the first one I received:

Really?

(It's a stock dividend payment for the 3 crappy shares of bank stock I have from the stupid bank that I used to work for).

Getting this check, to me, was pretty embarrassing.  I mean, what can you do with it?  You'd feel like a fool for taking it to the bank to cash, even if you did try to slip it incognito through the drive-thru.  But hey, 9 cents is 9 cents that I didn't have before, and it's my nine cents, so I didn't want to just throw it away.  I decided to wait 'til I had at least one more check to cash before taking it to the bank.

Then, just a few days later, I got this other silly check through the mail:

*uhh*

(It's an insurance refund check).  But hey, at least it's for more than a dollar!  (And even better, more than 9 cents)!  So after receiving this slightly higher check, I felt a little better about taking the cheapo checks to the bank to cash.  I do have another (non-embarrassing) check, so I'll take all 3 checks to the bank to cash tomorrow, and then I won't feel so much like a clod.  :/

The 'old people' mail has slacked off lately, but it still seems to come in spits and spurts.

I got another one of these stupid things that they've sent me before:

And I got another one of these stupid things:

It's funny how every time they send me one of these, it always says "Second Notice" on the envelope.  Even the very first one they ever sent me said "Second Notice".  It's stupid.

In animal news, Myrtle appears to have gotten a manicure:

And she even gave me a little wink & told me "hi" (make sure all your volumes are full blast and listen really close):

Patches the cat sure has been frisky lately.  Yesterday, Lilly was drawing on the garage floor with her sidewalk chalk, and of course Patches had to get in on the action, and she rolled all over Lilly's drawings.  I snapped a picture of Patches' chalky colored head while she was taking a water break:

That funny li'l kitty was pink and blue all over!  :)

Well, I go back to work tomorrow.  It's been a long summer.  The only thing that sucks about working in the school lunchroom is that if school is out, you don't get paid (since you're not working).  But it's still worth it to me, to be able to be home with Lilly whenever school's out.  School doesn't actually start 'til Friday, but we have to get in the shipments of food, and get everything unpacked, organized, cleaned back up, and ready.  Before school let out a couple of months ago, they were starting to train me to be a cashier, so I hope I can get the hang of that quickly.  All the students have a number, and as they go through the line, they punch their number into a little device, and the money that their parents put into their lunch account gets deducted for the lunch they bought.  I do OK with it until someone actually hands me money, and then I kind of blank out and tend to mess up on the computer.  It's a little hard for me to focus, since the kids come flying through the line like gangbusters, but you have to make them stop so you can handle the transaction correctly.  There are two cashier lines.  On one of them, the kids come through on both sides of you, so you feel like you're having to watch a tennis match very closely.  So that, combined with the fact that you know you need to go as fast as possible, since the kids only have a limited amount of time to eat, kind of gets me a little flustered.  Me, learning something new (especially with numbers and/or math involved), and having to go really fast, doesn't get along very well.  So I'm hoping that I can stay calm and get the hang of it soon.  When I get freaked out, I have a tendency to just go blank.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, that this turns out to be a good school year for me in the lunchroom; and that Lilly has a good 5th grade year, too!  :)

I'll keep ya posted...!

Random Happenings

Check out this teeny-tiny little-bitty snail I discovered in the sandbox the other day:

Cute!  :)

It sort of reminds me of Spongebob's pet snail, Gary:

LOL!  :)

Speaking of 'meow', in cat news, our new li'l kitty Patches (who is only about 6 months old) is feeling much better, and has become quite the little hunter!:

She's killed a bunch of lizards so far, and today even presented one to me on the doormat for the first time as a gift!  It was fantastic!  She begged me to let her bring it in the house, but I wouldn't let her.  Especially since it was nowhere near being dead yet, and it kept escaping from her mouth when she would meow to be let in with it, and it ran around all over the garage several times until Patches finally chewed it up enough to kill it.  :P

In other cat news, our old fat cat Domino is still disgruntled by Patches, and discovered a fantastic new impromptu hiding place to utilize this afternoon:

The wrapping paper storage bin that I had left on top of the bed.

In Lilly news, a picture of her 4-H Camp group was in this week's newspaper:

Lilly's the first one in the front row.

Here's a closeup of Lilly:

In strange news, I made soft tacos for supper tonight, and to my surprise when I opened the package of tortillas, there was a black marker pen streak on one of the tortillas:

So I did what any reasonable person would do, and that is to simply tear that offending part off and eat the rest of it anyway.

So if I die, sue the tortilla company.  And if you win, they'll probably pay you with a lifetime's supply of black marker pens.  :/

LOL!

New Kitty! :D

OK, so we got a new kitty 5 days ago!:

I know we're crazy; we already had 2 dogs, a cat, and a bunny, but we just couldn't help it.  This li'l kitty showed up at Jamie's dad's house over a week ago, and when Jamie and Lilly went to visit him, they discovered this cute, friendly li'l kitty.  Of course Jamie's dad said "take it home with ya!" and Jamie called me on the cell phone to discuss it.  Eventually, I just sighed and muttered "bring her on home".

This li'l kitty is so sweet.  The poor little thing was about to starve to death.  Of course Domino hates her, but this li'l kitty doesn't even care.  She's the most laid-back li'l kitty in the world.  We've been kind of struggling with what to name her, and the name Patches seems to have stuck most of all.  And we refer to her as 'Li'l Bit' too.  Or just 'Li'l Kitty'.

Anyway, she's super-sweet, and we'll be getting her spayed soon.  We took her to the vet for a checkup on Thursday because she was a little sickly, and she needed an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory (and of course a rabies shot).  She was very dehydrated.  I think she most likely would have died if we hadn't taken her in.  Now she's doing great, and we're really happy!  :)

Lilly Made It Home From Camp! / Frog City

Well, Lilly made it back home from camp yesterday!  She had a lot of fun.  She had some mixed emotions about it; one minute she said it sucked, but then she would turn around and said it was fun.  I asked her if she would want to do it again next year, and she said no, but then she immediately said maybe.  So we'll see.  I think she would have had a slightly better time if she hadn't have had to share a cabin with a crappy mean little girl that she can't stand.  But all in all, I think the experience was great for Lilly.  She said she did get homesick (for the cat and bunny, allegedly).  But she made it through just fine.  Lilly ended up going to sleep pretty early Friday night because I guess she was really worn out, so that was good.  Maybe it will help us get ourselves back into a more reasonable routine.

And now, on to the frogs.

As I have mentioned before, we have an unusually large abundance of frogs around our house this year.  One day this week, most of the frogs were feeling photogenic, so I took some pictures of them.

Check it out.  Our crosstie wall has become a frog apartment complex, with 4 tenants on the first floor:

The first one is Big Frank.  He's the largest, and grumpiest-looking:

*I thawt I told yu to git off mah lawn!  Nao git!*

Then there's Big Frank's neighbors, Howard and Myrtle:

(Myrtle's on the left, and Howard's on the right).

*pleezd tu maik ur ackwaintence*

Howard and Myrtle's next-door neighbor, Ethel, is pretty shy and aloof.  She doesn't like to have her picture taken.

But there's another neighbor that lives in the basement, Luther, and he likes to play games.

Can you spot Luther?:

Look really hard.

Howard and Myrtle know where he is.

Still can't find Luther?

Here he is:

In a hole in the ground!

LOL!

Clyde is another neighbor who lives in a single-family rock dwelling adjacent to the apartment complex.  

In this picture, I caught him comfily nestled down in the cool, moist dirt in his front yard, but usually he's sunning himself on his front deck:

*aaaaaahhhhhh...so refreshing...*

In the next frog town over (Front Yard Frog Town), I met two new frogs.  I didn't even know that town was there!  It was quite a nice surprise!

Here they are...Beatrice and Herman!  (I was so excited, it caused the picture to be a little blurry):

(Beatrice is in the hole, while Herman looks out)

Beatrice, Toad In The Hole:

*this is my 'good side'*

Beatrice actually kinda liked the photo shoot, but once Herman caught on, he freaked out.

He hopped over and whispered to Beatrice, asking if she was aware that someone was taking her picture, and she just gave him the cold shoulder (get it?  Cold Shoulder?  Cold-blooded amphibian?  A-hahahaha I crack myself up)!  *ahem*:

*psssst...hey, Beatrice...*

*piss off, Herman; I'm in the middle of a photo shoot*

*fine*

*wh- what?  Holy crap!  Wait a minute!  What's this?  Glamour Shots?*

*Oh hail no...I'm outta here...!*

*all right!  An escape crack!*

*I'll hop in here until that crazy person with the camera goes away!*

And there you have it.  I don't know why we have so many frogs around the house this year, but they sure are entertaining!  :)

Summertime Vacation Adventures

Man, have we been busy lately!  Since Jamie got home from Illinois earlier this week, we've been taking advantage of the rest of his vacation away from work, and we've been all over the place, doing all kinds of things!

On Wednesday, we went back to the Baugh House so Jamie could see it for himself.  That was really all we intended to do that day, but while we were there, Jamie remembered that there was a copper mining museum not too terribly far away from there that he'd been wanting to go to for some time.  So off we went!

For some reason, a lot of the pictures I took with my cameras turned out kinda lousy, but you get the idea.

Here's some pics from our trip to the copper mine museum:

I thought it was weird that the miners had to hang their shoes up in little metal baskets, but I was a dork and didn't bother to ask the museum lady why:

I think this is a big ol' thing that they used to melt the copper in, but I'm not completely sure:

Before we left, the museum people told us about two big truckloads of dirt outside that had garnets all in it.  They told us that we were welcome to dig around in it, and that we could keep whatever garnets we found.  The museum man even gave us 4 garnets from the pile, so we would know what to look for, and even if we couldn't find any ourselves, then at least we would have those 4 that he gave us.  We were really excited about being able to do that.  I was wrangling Lilly, and I thought Jamie knew where the piles of dirt were, since the museum lady was pointing it out to him on a map on the wall, and he was nodding and saying "yeah".  But as Jamie was driving us away in the truck, I asked him "OK; now where are the 2 piles of dirt that we can dig through for garnets?", and he said he didn't know.  I was mortally pissed.  So we didn't get to look for garnets.  >:{

Since we were fairly close to it, we decided to go ahead and drive over to Fields of the Wood.  None of us had ever been there before.  It's a big 'Bible' park.  So we went, and here are some pictures of it:

Me, standing in the doorway of a replica of Jesus' tomb:

I think this is the world's largest 'Ten Commandments':

Jamie and Lilly standing in front of the giant-sized Ten Commandments:

Lilly begged to walk the stairway to the top of the Ten Commandments, so Jamie went with her.  There was no way I could've made it without passing out and having a heart attack, so I drove Jamie's truck to the top, since they have a handy-dandy road that you can take up there.

Here are some pictures of Jamie & Lilly's ascent up the hill.

Step 1 - Standing at the bottom:

Step 2 - About a third of the way up:

Step 3 - About two-thirds of the way up:

Step 4 - They reached the top!:

(You can only see Jamie standing there at the base of the open Bible because Lilly was so exhausted and freaked out by the height, that she had to sit down)!

Here are some pictures of the view from the top:

These pictures don't even do it justice.  I can assure you that this gigantic hillside is outrageously steep, high, and pants-crappingly terrifying.  Talk about 'putting the fear of God in ya'!  :)  I had to make Jamie take some of these pictures because I couldn't stand getting even remotely close to the edge (even though the 'safety wall' came all the way up to my boobs)!  

If somebody told me that I HAD to mow this 'Ten Commandments' hill, I would step over into the Jesus' Tomb replica, roll the stone back over the door, lay down inside, and just die!  I wonder how they do mow it?!?

Don't let our smiles fool ya; both me and Lilly were absolutely scared to death to be that high up:

And here we are in a much less terrifying section of the park:

I am ashamed to admit that I did accidentally cuss just a couple of times in the Jesus park, but at least I wasn't the only one.  I did overhear a man say "There's no way my @$$ can make it up that hill!", so I didn't feel too bad!  :/  LOL!

That was the extent of our excursions for that day.  But the next day, we struck out again for some more adventures!

First, we went to a museum in a nearby town that was actually inside of their old jail.  It was neat!

Here are some pictures of the jail portion of the museum:

(This really used to be this town's old jail; see the original iron bars still on almost all of the windows?):

The actual jail cells were located upstairs in the building.  I'm guessing that was probably to make it more difficult to escape.

I have no idea why the toilet was jacked up so high off the floor.  It sure did make it seem like a 'throne', though!

Here's the bathtub that the prisoners used.  It was originally installed on the other side of the wall behind it.  I assume they didn't have showers?  Weird.:

I think this jail remained in use until maybe the mid-1970s.

Deana in jail!:

(I'll be the next 'Hot Convict'!  LOL!)

Jamie's turn to be in jail!:

(Gee, I guess he'll have to change his name to 'Jimmy'...)

And now, Lilly, in what should be her natural habitat!:

Upon exploring the jail cells, you could see the some of the things that the prisoners had written, drawn, or carved on the walls.  It was pretty funny.  Sometimes it's hard to realize that even the really bad cusswords and dirty phrases that are in use today, have actually been around for many, many, many years!  

One thing stood out to me.  Apparently there was a man who went by the name 'Wild Bill', because his name was scribbled or carved many times in multiple places inside the cells.  Sometimes he'd also scrawl his jail sentence under his name, like this:

Or this:

But my favorite was this one:

Yep.  'Wild Bill returns'.  LOL!

I bet that ol' Wild Bill was a character, to say the least!

Along with Wild Bill, another interesting part of the jail was seeing the hole in the ceiling above the cells that an inmate had made, and actually successfully escaped out of!:

But my very favorite part was this:

Isn't that totally amazing?

The area upstairs across the hall from the jail cells was filled with other random old-timey stuff.  Here are some pictures:

The downstairs area of the museum was separated into 3 different areas.  One was a replica of an old-timey kitchen.  I love stuff like that.  Here are some pictures:

I loved how the name on the stove said 'Progress':

The next room you come to after the kitchen replica, is devoted to the Cherokee Native Americans.  They had a display of a basketweaver that Lilly was terrified of:

And I couldn't help but think that this mask was absolutely hysterical:

The deer hoof for the nose is what got me.  LOL!

The next area of the museum was a doctor's office, just exactly as it was over 50 years ago.  They basically picked it up from its original location and sat it back down in this museum.  So that's really cool.  Here are some pictures:

I don't know what this chair was for, but it's freaky.  Check out the head-rest sticking up on the back of it.  And what's with the metal circle?  I just imagine it holding a puke-bucket.  I have no idea!  Also, look at that uncomfortable, knight's armor-looking leg contraption to the right of the chair.  Looks like that mess would only make your leg worse!:

Sheesh, I would not have wanted to go to the doctor back then!  Scary!

Outside the jail museum was a Cherokee Native American homestead exhibit.  It was totally awesome.  Here are some pictures:

Deana in the house:

I could totally live in this!

Lilly in the house:

Jamie in the house:

Then we noticed some kind of little walking trail, so we decided to give it a whirl:

So we walked:

And we walked:

Finally, we came to the conclusion that the trail was evidently 87 miles long, and we were hot, tired, thirsty, and I had to pee, so we abandoned our mission, turned back around, and started our walk back.  I secretly pee'd on the trail halfway back because I couldn't hold it any more!  (Shh!  Don't tell anybody)!  ;)

When we got back home, Lilly had been wanting to go camping, so I figured it was a good a time as any to do that.  So we pitched our tent down at the branch just past the end of our driveway, built a fire, and me and Lilly went camping:

Jamie wasn't invited, since we only have one tent, and neither me or Lilly can stand to hear Jamie breathe hard/wheeze/click/whistle in his sleep all night long.  I was really surprised how cold it got that night.  Both me and Lilly froze to death in the tent.  Of course I didn't sleep worth a flip, and we ended up having to patch 3 holes in our air mattress.  It still is always flat by dawn.  We evidently have another pinhole in it somewhere.  And as me and Lilly were working to patch one of the holes with duct tape, I accidentally knocked over my drink with a corner of the air mattress, spilling Pepsi all over the floor of the tent, and of course all over my only pair of shorts that I was supposed to wear the next day!  So since my shorts were already wet with Pepsi, I mopped up the rest of the Pepsi off the tent floor using my shorts.  Even though me and Lilly had stayed up 'til probably 2:00 in the morning, we ended up getting up at 6:30 AM!  (Lilly wouldn't let me try to sleep more)!  And evidently, I must have missed mopping up a spot of Pepsi, because when I got up, I discovered that my hair was all sticky in places!  :P  

As soon as Lilly woke up, she immediately began begging to go swimming in the lake, even though fog was rising up off the water!  She even went ahead and put on her bathing suit and everything!  I told her that we had to eat breakfast first.  I had brought some eggs and a little pot to cook them in.  Our fire had basically gone out overnight, so me and Lilly spent what felt like an eternity stoking it back up again and getting it back going good.  

(Lilly had walked up to the house and got me some pajama pants, since my shorts had gotten soaked with Pepsi the night before!  Otherwise, I would've been sitting there in my bloomers)!  :D

Eventually, I finally got the eggs boiled.  I gave Lilly her boiled eggs, and she ate part of one of them, but when she got to the yolk, it grossed her out, and she refused to eat any more.  (The eggs were cooked perfectly; the yolks weren't runny, it's just that Lilly never eats the yolks of boiled eggs.  When I make them for her at home, I have to cut the eggs in half and remove the yolks, rinsing out all traces of the yolk in the sink).  Little terd!  So then we got in the paddleboat, and paddled across the lake to Lilly's favorite swimming spot.  While Lilly swam, I laid down in the bench seat of the paddleboat and cat-napped.  I did jolt awake from time to time to check to make sure my kid was still alive, though.  I ended up accidentally getting pretty badly sunburned on my legs.  I finally woke up for good when a car pulled up and some tourists got out, and walked down to where me and Lilly were and started asking me all kinds of questions.  I'm kind of a dork when it comes to recognizing foreign accents, (and I didn't want to seem like an even bigger dork by asking the tourists where they were from), so I'm going to say that their accent sounded German to me.  But I don't know for sure.  Anyway, of course they were super-nice, and one lady in particular seemed to act as their spokesperson.  She asked me if the area we were in was private property, and I replied "no; not that I'm aware of".  She asked me if the water is warm, and I told her that I'd seen a lot of people swimming, so it must be warm enough.  Then she put her fingers in the water and exclaimed happily that it was indeed warm.  She asked me where the nearest beach was, and I went into dork mode and said "uuuuhhhhhhhh", and proceeded to try to explain to her where Poteete Creek is.  I was trying to remember the name of the highway, but she knew the name of it, and blurted it out.  (Gee, maybe I should have pretended to be a tourist that didn't know where anything was, just to cover up how much of a dork I am when it comes to being put on the spot unexpectedly)!  I also mentioned to her about the little beach in Hiawassee, but again, she was more knowledgeable about this area than I realized, because she knew that the beach in Hiawassee is on Lake Chatuge, not Lake Nottely.  And then she asked me how I got there, and I explained that we live nearby, and we paddled over in our paddleboat.  Anyway, I was a little bumfuzzled by the whole experience, and they soon left, leaving me feeling a little like a dumb@$$.  I just don't seem to do very well when it comes to attempting to communicate with people.  I hope they ended up finding a beach.  Weird!

We messed around and relaxed for the rest of the day, and that evening, we headed to town to watch the 4th of July fireworks:

(Me, eating a s'more -- minus the s'more part, since we didn't have a campfire handy -- I guess you would call that a raw s'more?)

That dumb ol' streetlight kind of messed up our firework viewing, so maybe next year we'll plan a little better.

It's hard to take pictures of fireworks, especially with a lousy camera.  Maybe one of these days I'll get a good camera, and be able to take some awesome pictures!

Today is our cat, Domino's 14th birthday!  It's hard to believe that it's been 14 years since she was born in our living room closet!  So we all meowed her the 'Happy Birthday' tune multiple times throughout the day.  Lilly gave Domino her favorite treat of a piece of sandwich meat, and I gave her a little dab of yogurt.  Tee hee!  Lilly wanted to put a birthday hat on her, but we decided against it.  But here's a picture of Domino wearing a birthday hat for Bunnerdy's birthday several months ago!:

Heh heh heh!

Tomorrow will be a busy day, because we'll be getting Lilly all packed and ready to go off to 4-H Cloverleaf Camp down at Rock Eagle!  I'll have to have her in town, ready to board the bus at 6:30 Monday morning!  It's gonna be so fun for Lilly, and she's rarin' to go.  I'm planning on trying to get a lot of much-needed housework done while Lilly's gone for 5 days, so you may not hear from me for a week, unless something really wacky happens!  :)