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#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 2 My Brother

June 12, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Billie Happy

I happened across this picture last week and saw it again in my picture on my computer today. This is one of those pictures that makes you laugh and cry. I laugh because this is a picture that completely showcases my fun brother. In this photo, I’m positive he was making fun of me in some lovable way that only brothers can get away with. It also makes me sad because he is no longer with us to make us laugh.

Can I be Happy for 100 Days in a Row? I’m up for the challenge as a reminder to enjoy every moment of every day! 

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#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 1 My Garden

June 11, 2014 by Leave a Comment

My Garden

My garden makes me happy. It makes me happy to see all of my vegetables and herbs really growing and starting to bloom.

While I could have been complaining about the rainy days this week, I’m thankful and pleased that the rain was able to give my plants the nourishment that they need.

We are even beginning to see peppers!

Baby Banana Pepper in My Garden

 

I’m also loving my “rouge” pumpkin I have in the garden. I wondered if this would happen when I dumped all of our rotting pumpkins in the garden this fall.

rouge pumpkin

Can I be Happy for 100 Days in a Row? I’m up for the challenge as a reminder to enjoy every moment of every day! 

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I Hate Rude Salespeople Who Are Inconvenienced by MY Schedule

May 19, 2014 by Leave a Comment

In general, I think I just HATE salespeople. I hate their pushiness. I hate their “chit chat.” I hate all of it. I could never be a salesperson because I don’t want to annoy people like these people annoy me on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, I work in a place where we get lots of sales phone calls and walk-ins. Normally, I don’t have to deal with the salespeople as our receptionist handles it. I try not to be rude when I do have to deal with these people. However, they all just want 30 minutes of your time. Or they want the owner’s schedule so they know when to drop it. I even hear them asking the receptionist personal questions about key people so they can pretend to be in the know the next time.

Let’s talk about the most recent one who has put a damper on my Monday….

There are these people that will sell advertising space for organizations. This guy, who we are going to call “Slick Rick,”  happened to be working for a law enforcement publication that is selling for our local sheriff’s department. Of course, we want to help our local organizations so our owner authorized an ad in the publication. But instead of billing you on a invoice and mailing in a check, these particular types need a check right now.

For personal reasons I work three days a week. I’m also paid accordingly. Apparently, this is über inconvenient for “Slick Rick.” Honestly, I don’t know his name but this seems to be fitting for him with the toothpick dangling from his mouth with the slicked back dark hair. Yes, a toothpick.

He comes in on a Monday and would like to pick up the check. I should have just said it is not ready and you can get it on Friday. However, to spare our receptionist from “Slick Rick” for a fifth visit, I decided I would write it right then. I should not have done this. She told him I don’t work on Fridays so she hadn’t got to that stack yet but she’s going to do it right now.

For the record, this invoice was just put in my bin on Friday. It was after lunch on Monday. I didn’t have a note that this guy would be here to pick it up today or I might have written it right away. Otherwise, stuff like this is not my priority. Getting billing out, paying vendor bills, dealing with customer issues, receiving checks, etc. are a priority.

I overhear “Slick Rick” discussing me. “Well, if she would have worked on Friday, she would have it done by now.” I want to scream at him at this point. He may have been trying to be funny. I was not amused. “I think Mondays and Fridays are the dumbest days off. If I was in charge, I wouldn’t allow my people to have those days off.” I had to walk out of my office into the warehouse at this point. I’m scared of a world where a “Slick Rick” would be in charge of people.

I decided to be professional and came back into my office and slammed a cabinet. Which apparently caused one of our owners to get in weapon ready mode. HAHA. I said, “Oops, I’m sorry” in a flat tone. “Slick Rick” was in the front office mouthing something. I didn’t even care at this point. I was the comic strip character with fumes coming out of my ears.

annoying salesperson alert

Well this is my schedule and thankfully he is NOT my boss. I also wanted to rip up my check and shove it in his face when I overheard him talking about me like this. However, I am not rude like that so I had our receptionist come and get it so I wasn’t tempted to tell this guy off as we do WANT to support our local law enforcement. After discussing with our owner, in the future we will be thinking twice before advertising with this organization.

Tell me about your annoying/rude salespeople stories!

 

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I’ve Stopped Wearing Eyeliner and Love It!

April 1, 2014 by 1 Comment

For most of my adult life, I’ve felt that eyeliner is the only way to complete my look in the morning. If I didn’t have eyeliner on, then I felt that I might as well be wearing my pajamas. I felt naked without it. I felt like my look was incomplete. I felt like I looked tired if I wasn’t wearing it.

Well now I’m stopping this madness.

The dark side of eyeliner is that by the end of the day it looks like crap. It has smeared. It is nearly impossible to get off when you use liquid eyeliner without buying special makeup removal products. I looked gross by the end of the day.

After not wearing eye liner for almost two weeks, I can say I’m HAPPY to not be wearing it. Less hassle at the end of the day with removing my makeup and less time I’m spending in the mornings putting it on. I also have not had any questions or looks that seem to imply I look like crap either. Haha. The one person who would tell me didn’t say anything so I asked. He hadn’t noticed. So there ya go.

This is not to say that I will never wear eyeliner again. However, it will now be reserved for special occasions only and not everyday wear!

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I Deactivated Facebook…

November 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment

As a blogger, Facebook is a large part of my life. However, I made a decision after weeks of pondering to deactivate my personal Facebook account.  Luckily, I still had a business profile so I am still able to post on my business pages.

Why did I deactivate Facebook? 

Of course, there was a final straw. However, legally, at this point, I’m not allowed to talk about it. It was more than slightly disturbing and just more proof of the idiotic people in this world. Especially ones that don’t know the difference between their/there/they’re. If you are going to send harassing messages or get in an argument on Facebook, you should at least try to make sure you don’t have glaring grammatical mistakes in your messages.

The thing about Facebook is there is quite a bit of bitching that happens. Yes, I’ve been guilty of it myself. Hence, deactivation. I just hate when I come in with a commonsense comment with a logical resolution and I get bombarded by idiots.

Example: The funny part about this story is I thought nothing after my postings on a recent Halloween bitch-fest> People were ticked because our town didn’t change hours even though we were supposed to get a huge storm. Apparently, this equaled our town and leaders hating children. It is the only logical conclusion that a reasonable person could come to after reading the mayor’s letter. {sarcasm} BTW, it rained most of the evening on Halloween but not quite the storms predicted.  It wasn’t all that bad plus there were churches that had indoor activities so plenty of darn places for your kids to get their free candy. Anyway, I  ticked someone off that is a friend of a friend. So much so that she told her elementary aged child that “we were in a fight on Facebook.” My third grader comes home telling me this and I was like, “what?” I don’t even know who this woman is! Then I search my email for Facebook comments. I couldn’t find mine because the original poster had deleted the conversation. However, I did come across this golden nugget, which kind of tells you the mentality that I’m dealing with…

facebook

This also means I need to add “there’s” as a new variation of theirs. I just can’t even….Are/our, holy run-on and fragmented sentences. This is an actual adult who wrote this post.

I know I’m not perfect at grammar and everyone makes mistakes but sooooo many in one short Facebook comment. This is something that you can’t quite blame on auto-correct either! Obviously, I can’t keep my fingers from typing when on Facebook and the idiots will not be going away so deactivation here I come. BTW, this was not my final straw. There is even worse (more worse – hahahahaha) stuff that has happened since this alleged Facebook “fight.”

My core reasons to deactivate:

  • Less time on Facebook = more time work on other things.
  • Stop worrying about what everyone else is doing/saying/posting/etc.
  • Won’t be annoyed/ticked off with idiotic posts and idiotic people.
  • Small town gossip that is spread via Facebook with vague postings that everyone starts to talk about.
  • Adult bullying of children that they believe are bullies via Facebook.
  • Messages from people wanting donations, home party invites from random-ish people, etc.
  • Braggy posts that make you want to vomit about alleged perfect lives. (We all know that is NOT true!)
  • Starting to dislike people solely based on their Facebook posts.
  • Knowing way too many details about people.
  • Reading drama that has nothing to do with me just out of sheer curiosity. It is just a time waster.
  • Stalkers. Yes, I have them. Again, not my final straw but at least if people want to stalk me now, it will benefit me from them visiting my actual websites instead of just on Facebook.

Am I having withdrawals?

Surprisingly, I am not. I thought it would be extremely hard for me to quit Facebook. However, I stay in touch with the people that are my actual friends on text message, phone calls, and in person.

Bonus is that I will be posting more on my personal website! I know you are thrilled. All two readers that I have! 🙂

Oh and I also deactivated my personal Twitter account too. It used to be my sanctuary from Facebook but too many local folks are now joining so I’m done with it.

Future of my Facebook Account?

I’m sure I will reactivate my account.  However, I will not have the app on my phone or my iPad. This will limit me to just viewing Facebook when on the computer to keep up with the long distance friends & family that I want to keep up with!

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Wordless Wednesday: Group Selfie

November 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment

group selfieFlashback to the summer…a group selfie in Daddy’s “old car” after going to a car show!

 

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Grandpa Tom

November 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment

grandpa tom and billie

If you knew this guy (Tom Turkey, Uncle Tom, Tommy, Tommy T, Get ‘er done Tom, perhaps a few that we won’t name, and to me – Grandpa Tom)…you would know how great of a guy he was! Always the entertainer, willing to help anyone out who needed it without asking for anything in return, he was a friend to those who had no friends, he was a hard worker, and all around cool guy to hang out. As young kids, Tabitha, Billie, and I spent a lot of time as the oldest grandchildren at grandpa and grandma’s house. We lived close enough that we could ride our bikes over there as we got older.

These are some of the best childhood memories.

I’m actually surprised we survived some of the things we were allowed to do! “Oh, Nan, let them have their fun,” he would say! Even if it meant jumping off the roof into the pool or working on some kind of mechanical thing that we were clearly not qualified to operate or whatever the case may be (though, I’m not sure I ever really did that one!)

Some of our fun activities: Spray painting, mowing (while he supervised the activity the entire time!), driving the duster down the runway way before we had driver’s licenses, playing in the camper, creating our own garden in the greenhouse, playing in the shop, cleaning the shop, cleaning the duster, looking at his airplane, discussing all the conspiracy theories, and so many many more!

So many Grandpa Tom stories where he helped someone out or said something that made you laugh….as I have received so many of them in my inbox, Facebook, and via text. He was one of those unique characters that comes around once in a lifetime. Anyone who met him, always remembered him. He loved entertaining us, even during these past final days.

Our family is not the most expressive family about our feelings as often you would go in for a hug and either get a handshake or a pat on the head but we knew that grandpa loved us and cared about us because he wanted to spend time with us and teach us how to do things (right). He used to always call me on my birthday…he called me using my extension at work several times to talk to me about things all on his own – which completely surprised me, and was a regular visitor at the office – though, he didn’t mind if you were in the middle of a business meeting or a phone call! 🙂 He was often the winner of the JA award (those of you in the family know what that stands for!) but he always kept life interesting for those around him.

After all the years of helping everyone else without asking for anything in return, we were finally able to help him the final weeks of his life.  He was very appreciative of the all help and allowed us to help him when he was unable…and really we all felt so helpless.(A tommism – We? What do you mean we. You got a mouse in your pocket!) When I think back on that time and the past few years in general, it has  shown me how important family is and I’m lucky to be part of such a close, loving, and fun family.

I will miss him dearly and things do not seem quite right without him telling us how to do something the “right” way! A few more Tommyisms:

So what do you think, Bri?

Get ‘er done.

Watch, watch. We?

You got a mouse in your pocket.

We’ll get ‘er.

<insert anything> DOT COM

Ah, we will finish it tomorrow.

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Random Things That Make Me Think Of You…

November 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment

photo (4)

The death of my brother affects me every single day of my life especially when I’m alone with my thoughts. “They” say it gets better but it doesn’t get better you just don’t dwell on it every single second of the day like you did in the beginning. At some point, you are able to push it towards the back of your mind but the pain is still there waiting to be exposed at slightest thought of you.

For example how the mind wanders. We moved and I thought of all the people who would stop in now that we are closer to town. This made me think of the days when my brother used to stop in every night after work at our first house in town. This made me sad to think that he didn’t do that when we moved to the country. Then I thought, maybe if we had lived in town and he had us to come visit he wouldn’t have resorted to drugs. Then I feel guilty and sad. Then I cry as I try to push something else into my brain so the tears will stop.

Someone talks about their adult brother. I automatically think of the brother I don’t have.

I watch the television show “King of Queens.” I think of the times my brother would stop over after work and we would watch it together and laugh. The big guy “Doug” is kind of goofy like my brother was which is why I think he liked the show so much. He would talk about the funny parts in this show all of the time.

Someone says the word brother and I think of you.

I drive by your grave and I think of you.

I see your obituary hanging on my refrigerator and I think of you.

I eat Doritos and I think of how we used to fight and fight and fight over the bag when we were little.

I open a can of beans and I remember how much you hated beans.

I open a can of tomato paste and I think of the time you cut your finger on a can in a kitchen growing up.

I see a daschund dog and I think of how much you loved our dog Chelsea.

I think of you more than you will ever know. I hate myself for thinking of you more now than I did before you died. I should have been a better sister. I should have not took for granted the time we had together thinking that there would always be more time….

 

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