Recipe for a Successful Weekend….

One Truck
2.5 cu Ft of Fishing Tackle
8-10 Fishing poles (aka-rod n reels)
12 pack of beer
2 kids
1 dog
1 Fishing Buddy
32,000 acre fishing lake
Dash of Snacks
Couple of grandparents (to watch the children)
1 dock
1 boat
10 Hours to do nothing but fish and get drunk.

We’re headed to the lake.  We decided that it’s time we did something RELAXING…we aren’t exactly sure what it’s going to feel like but with 12 Miller Light longnecks…I bet I’ll remember pretty damn quickly, EXACTLY what relaxation feels like.

I’ll have pictures…although I still haven’t posted pictures from the beach.  I really hope to get some time to organize all my photos and get them into seperate albums and such.  So….

I’ll be trying my damndesst to get too drunk to fish…cause after all I’m a redneck’s daughter…yessiree….YEEEHAW!

So, what do you write about after you come home from a funeral?  Hell if I know but nothing seems very significant right now.  The DH and I are still sitting around saying things like, “I just can’t believe he’s gone.”  and “The kids won’t ever really know him.” 

Watching the first season of Six Feet Under didn’t help The DH.  He said that he kept thinking about where the body was and what all was done to it, and where it was going, etc..etc…

The services were nice and all of FIL’s JROTC kids were some great kids….FIL was one loved man…I do have some interesting stories about some ‘coincidences’ as The DH calls them.  I call them, his father looking out for him…but he doesn’t see it that way…silly man.

Well, I’m not sure what to do right now so I’ll just blog lightly for the next few days.  Honestly, I just want the post on July 5 to go to the next page…it hurts to see it right now, but I don’t want to delete it…it is part of my life.

By the way, FIL passed on July 4th…what a fitting day for a man who loved his country and his military (he wasn’t too thrilled with his government, but hey…who really is? ).  He went out with a HUGE bang heard around the country.  He deserved it.

Also, on July 4th The DH had a co-worker’s sister-in-law pass.  FIL and the co-worker’s SIL both had the same type brain tumor and they were diagnosed around the same time…FIL is helping his fellow cancer-mate, wherever they are.  Gawd, the people he helped…man oh man….you wouldn’t believe the 16, 17 year old boys that were boo-hooing at the service.  It was awesome.

I’m out of here for now, but will be back tomorrow!

We’re back.  The funeral was nice, considering.  The DH did rather well….SIL didn’t start anything…although she was rude to us, but then again she’s always rude….so, no big deal.

It was really hard to do all of this and right now I don’t want to go into any great details, I just want to let everyone know that we’re back and all is well.

Take Care everyone and I’ll be back later…possibly (or shall I say probably) tomorrow.

Fair Winds and Following Seas, Master Chief.

1953-2003

I have nothing witty, entertaining, or even bitchy to post about.  Well, ok I could bitch about something.  It’s like my mother says, “If I ain’t bitchin’….I’m dead.” So, I’ll bitch…

I’ve had a headache for 3 fucking days now.  The in-laws are driving me abso-fucking-lutely mad.  The DH’s grandmother called yesterday and was telling me that 5 people are at FIL’s house with FIL and SMIL…they are STAYING there, OVERNIGHT.  2 of those 5 are SMIL’s children, one is SIL and the other two are FIL’s sisters.  FIL’s sisters and SIL do NOT get along with SMIL….they never really have….yet they are staying at her house while her husband is dying….now for the good part of all this horse shit…The DH’s grandmother (GM) was bitching to me about how SMIL has been a nasty person since everyone has been there…to quote:

“She just stays in the bedroom with [FIL] with the door closed, she doesn’t even act like she knows they’re there!”…my jaw hit the fucking floor….I responded with;

“Well, you know if it were [DH] I wouldn’t want anyone in my house, they don’t need to be staying there, I can understand 2-3 hours a day, but they DO NOT need to be staying there all the time. [SMIL] doesn’t need that.”

GM just said “Well I know, and it isn’t good for [SIL] and everyone else either…they need their own time.”

HELL-FUCKING-OOOO people!! This woman’s husband is dying and everyone is bitching that she isn’t playing Happy Hostess?!?!?!?!?! WHAT THE GAWDDAMN FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!?!?!?!

I am more than livid at these morons for acting like spoiled rotten, imbiciles.  I can’t believe that they expect SMIL to donn an apron and bake fucking cookies and serve tea or some shit…HER HUSBAND IS DYING!!! SHE IS ABOUT TO BE A WIDOW AND SHE’S ONLY 40-SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The poor woman has NO PLACE in her home to go and just break down and cry and think about everything she’s going through.  There are people all in her house!!!!  She’s never going to come to terms with his death if she doesn’t get time to just sit down in her living room and cry out “WHY ME?!”…she doesn’t get the grieving time alone…and gawd knows she won’t do it in front of her dying husband.

These people have just sent me off into a crazed pschyo-bitch fit…if I could, I’d get a plane down there and kick all their asses out and tell them to get the fuck home and come back tomorrow for THREE HOURS then they have to leave again, and I’d see that they did it.  And all this talk about what a mean person SMIL is being, oh man I’d be smacking people around and cursing like a sailor in a fist fight….

And to top it all off, everyone keeps calling The DH and telling him he needs to go down there and be with his sister…the sister who has NEVER tried to have a decent relationship with him, his wife or his children…he’s suppose to drop everything and go support her? Where’s her husband?? What’s he doing? Oh, yeah he’s going to work and school, and doing what he has to do, but The DH can just drop everything because his family isn’t important..SIL is. Fuck that.  I’ve had it.  I’ve been a stressed out mess since SIL started calling us every 2 days saying “We’re a few days closer, just a few more days.” Ya know, we need the reminders because everytime she calls I think “HOLY SHIT, NO WAY! He was so healthy!” ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Dramaqueens as in-laws are the WORSE!!! I’d rather have someone who meddles than someone who calls us up and acts all alarmed that her father, whom she wasn’t that close to, and she never really tried to be close to him, either, is dying!  We knew he was dying when we were down there 2 weeks ago!  We don’t need daily updates of “He’s one day closer to being dead.”….jeezus crispy!

Then she acts all surprised when we tell her we aren’t bringing the kids down…DUH! They’re 2 and 5!!!!!!!!! Besides, they didn’t even really know their Granddad…they just know him as “Daddy’s Daddy” that’s what BT calls him…he can’t even remember his granddad’s name….The whole family has this idea that everyone else should go see them and no one travels to see anyone else, if you’re out of state, then you’re out of the family..plain and simple.  BUT, if they ‘need’ you for something, then by gawd you better hurry up and be the whipping boy…

I’m just tired of it all and I came *thisclose* to telling GM, yesterday; “You know what..just call us when he dies and let us know the funeral arrangements, and dates…this is getting ridiculous.”  But, I didn’t…I just let The DH handle it.  He told her he didn’t want to go down there because there was nothing he could do, he had to work and that SMIL didn’t need one more (#6, to be exact) person in her house that she had to bother with.  GM told him to just go down for 24 hours because his sister ‘needs’ him.  Fuck her.  The only thing she’s ever done that had ANYTHING to do with being a member of our family, was to write me a nasty letter telling me that I wouldn’t let her be an aunt to my kids…  The kids that NEVER get a birthday card or present from their aunt…the kids who never get Xmas gifts or recognistion at Xmas from their ‘aunt’…Yeah, those kids that, when you and your husband drive to TN and stop for gas IN OUR FUCKING TOWN, RIGHT DOWN THE GAWD DAMN ROAD, don’t even call to meet us anywhere or try to see us.  Yeah, those kids that I won’t let her be an ‘aunt’ to.  Yep, now DH is suppose to go and be a ‘support’ person to her?  No thanks..you can’t piss on people then expect them to treat you well when you ‘need’ them.

And all of this is just going to spar yet ANOTHER drama moment. After SIL is done greiving she can start writing us nasty letters telling us what horrible people we are, because really…what drama will she have in her life after her dad is gone? Oh yeah there is always MIL, the forever “She’s almost dead” woman…yep, we’ll get nasty letters about that.  This ‘woman’ (and I use that term loosely) is a fucking basket case and she HAS to have some sort of drama in her life…if she doesn’t have any, she makes it.  She has been known to fire off letters to us after we haven’t spoken with her in YEARS and everyone in the family has just come to terms with all the bullshit that happened.  She’ll fire off letters about what terrible people we are.  I should write back and just say; “Wow, [SIL] is your life really THAT boring? DAMN! Get a puppy or something, but stop harrassing us.”

I’m just sick of it all and to add the shit icing to my fuck cake, I have to deal with a funeral….the funeral of my husband’s father.  A man that he wanted to know but never really will.  This is what my life is all about right now.  My mom said to come over to her house tomorrow, we’ll get drunk.  I’m so there.

Have a good 4th and I’ll try to update when I can but right now I just want to sleep for a few days and not think about all this bullshit.

Well, househunting has ended…for a while….

We looked at the two I mentioned earlier and neither of them were what we’re looking for.  The one on 32 acres was great, but there isn’t any garage or even an interior room to go to in case of a tornado (yes, in GA we have tornados, ALL the time, it seems).I thought to myself; ‘Ya know that’s like building a house on the FLorida coast and not considering hurricanes, and they don’t even get hurricanes once a year…we get tornaodes 2-3 times a year!..The train tracks were far off from the back of the house, past a large creek, so those weren’t an issue.  But with no out buildings it just made the price tag a little more than I want to spend.

The other house, with a basement that I thought had potential..does have potential, and a LOT of neighbors, so..that’s a no go. 

I have one more house that I’m semi-interested in..but the acreage is a lot less than what we’ve been looking at (it’s on 5 acres as opposed to the 10+ we’re looking for) but, it has a pool and it’s a foreclosure so it’s DIRT CHEAP!  We might look at that one and our agent is about to list one that she says will probably interest us…so maybe we’ll find something.  Who knows….

FIL is not well, we’re waiting for the ‘final’ phone call.  DH is going down there Friday one way or the other.  This is hard for him and it makes me realize that no matter how terrible our kids act towards us, or hate us…I will never just ‘leave them alone’…DH lost precious years he could have had with his father, all over stupid teenage contempt and I think he finally realizes that no one is perfect and you have to understand everyone’s fault(s) and then deal with them accordingly.  His father was never malicious but his mother led him to belive that his father was a sorry SOB..now he’ll never be close to his father.  Never believe what anyone tells you about another human being…investigate it for yourself..make your own conclusions…..but don’t EVER sell someone short over another person’s opinion.

If anyone out there has a rocky relationship with a parent or other loved one, just remember that one day they won’t be here anymore (physically anyway)…make every day count…Apologize for being stupid and rotten, if they apologize, great…if not, then don’t worry about it.  But at least try.  Life is so short and I hope to make mine worth every minute of it.  The best things in life are; family, friends, and laughter…we could all use a little more of each.

SCANNER STOOOORRRRRIIIIEEEESSSS!!!!

Man, in his 50′s, riding around downtown Square on a bicycle wearing high heels, purple scarf, red camisole top, with his chest hanging out, carrying a ‘fruity’ wand.

Woman parks illegally, blocks man in. Man becomes irate, screams at woman, and proceeds to back into her car, pull forward, back into her car again and leaves the scene. Officers have all information pertaining to this man, including his home phone number, place of employment, address, etc….Filing criminal charges for destruction of property. Woman was given a ticket for illegally parking a vehicle.

Major highway is shut down due to accident with injuries… One walking wounded, no entrapments. Two patients being transported, one refuses to go be checked out.

19yr old female walking around parking lot with razor blade, possible suicide attempt.

20mo. old male burned his hand on a stove burner, blistered.

Black gym-type bag found on side of the road. The road is a not-so-great area of our county…officer radios sgt. on the private channel and explains about the bag and says; “I figure there isn’t too much terrorism on Franklin Rd. I mean, if they want to blow up Franklin Rd. I say go for it.” Sarge agrees. Officer decides to go ahead and open the bag by saying, “Yeah, we’ll get Riti to do it, she’s pretty much expendable.” Later on officer is radiong a fellow cop and says “Yeah, I thought about jumping her from behind or something, but you know, sexual harrassment and all…I wanted to throw an M-80 between her feet, that’d been pretty funny.”

Woman is stopped for driving without headlights. She explains to the officer that she is driving a rental and isn’t responsible for making sure her headlights are on. Officer tells her “So you’re telling me that because it’s a rental and if I stop you for speeding, I shouldn’t write you a ticket, because you didn’t realize that your foot was on the pedal?” The woman became irate and exclaimed, “My brother is a cop and on a traffic unit, he would never write this ticket!” The officer tells a fellow officer over the radio; “All I could think was, ‘Well then that isn’t much of a traffic unit.’

We thought about buying land, but honestly we can’t buy land, pay it off AND pay a mortgage too.  So the plan is to buy enough land that we REALLY like, with a house that we can live with for 10 years or so, then build what we really want or just remodel the existing house.  We aren’t planning on moving EVER after this, so if the house is just REALLY not what we can live with for a few years, or able to be added on to later, then we don’t want it.

We want a TON of land, 32 acres isn’t too much. As a matter of fact, it really isn’t enough! I don’t want ANYONE around me EVER…subdivisions are popping up EVERYWHERE…especially in the Atlanta area and surrounding/outlying counties..we’ll be about 1.5 hrs from Atlanta proper, but people still live up there and urban sprawl is growing.  We want a piece of land that is large enough so that if we are ever surrounded by subdivisions, we won’t really know it.  My parents bought a house on about an acre when they moved to GA and by the time my mom moved out the area we lived in was going mad with development.  I grew up in a SMALL town, everyone knew everyone…then the developers saw some trees….and well, THOSE just HAD to go…you know those stupid pesky trees and all.  Honestly, development in GA is out of control and we want away from it, NOW!

Also, our long term plans include horses, so most of our land will be comprimised of pasture and trees…which is just fine by me!

I’m not sure about railroad tracks near the house…we would have to put up a HUGE fence so that animals and kids couldn’t back there….but the 32 acres is mostly trees anyway, so there goes my pasture land, unless I want to clear trees (nothankyou!)….I’m not sure what we’re going to do right now.  I’m really just trying to figure out what it is we’re looking for.  I’m thinking that we’re looking for pastures and trees, an equal mix of the two.  Hopefully, we’ll find it soon enough and we can move..I’m really sick of being here suffocated surrounded by people.

If you have any other thoughts, let me know!  I need to make sure we think all of this through……I know that when I first saw this house I *knew* that this was the house I wanted to live in..not forever, but it was meant to be ours…and here we are…so I’m sure that I’ll find the right house, I just want to talk about it and try to figure everything out…well that and if I emerse myself into finding a house then I don’t have to think about the impending funeral and other unplesantries……

Well, I was a chatty ol’ hag this weekend, eh?  Now it is time for house-buying advice…

Here’s our delimma;

There are 2 houses that we like, sort of….I haven’t looked at them yet, but they both have their downsides…

House #1; On 32 acres, the house is only 2 years old and is built in the manner of an old farmhouse, VERY charming.  It does need some serious landscaping, but that is no problem and I’d have a BLAST working with a blank canvas. The rooms are HUGE and it has 2 porches, one on the front and one in back, both BIG Southern Living Porches.  The master bedroom is about double what we have now.  It is at the top of our price range, The DH doesn’t like that aspect.  But the other aspect is this; It’s near railroad tracks.  When I did an aerial view of the address I saw that the house sits in the back of the 32 acres (I believe) and that about 1-2 acres away from the house, is a railroad.  Granted it’s ONE track and it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  Of course there are a lot of houses surrounding the 32 acres, but hey with 32 acres, that’s pretty damn private.  Here are the aerial views; HOUSE and CITY Hopefully, you can get a better idea about what I’m talking about.

House #2; Costs a LOT less than #1, but is a little smaller.  Where #1 is one story with 3bdrms, #2 is 2 stories with 4 bdrms.  The master and the 2nd bdrm are upstairs then there are 2 bdrms in the basement, along with a large rec room.  Now this sounds great.  But I sort of have the feeling that I’m not really moving up housewise.  From the pictures, the kitchen, family room and dining room are all HUGE, MUCH bigger than what I have now…the bedrooms are what worry me.  I’m not overly concerned with the master bedroom…there is no way we’re going to find a master as large as what we have now without paying the price for it.  I have come to realize that the people out in the middle of nowhere, think that if they build a new home it’s automatically worth $400K…even on 3 acres.  It’s really just frustrating as all hell. So, back to House #2…There are 2 possibilities for screened in porches, one out front then 2 out back.  The house does need some minor cosmetic work, like paint and landscaping.  There aren’t a ton of trees right next to the house, but there are some about 1-2 acres away (like the railroad track to house #1, only with trees!).  Also, this house sits on 18 acres. AND has an above ground pool, complete with fence surrounding it and partial decking.  So far this house has the most possibility, but….It isn’t the big, stately, plantation that I had in mind.  Also, there is a house somewhat close to this house…not right next door and across the street, and everything like I have now…but still somewhat close. Here’s the Aerial and some other photos..HERE

Maybe I’m just in the suburbia mindset of ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’…I need to get out of that, break free and live my life how I want…and unlike 99% of the Joneses that live around here…I don’t want to be house poor….I can make my house what I want, right?….ok, someone give me some moral support or SOMETHING!!!!

The Mom and I are headed out Weds to look at these two houses.  If neither work, then I’m just going to give up for a while…I’ll start back looking in the fall, when all the spring houses that didn’t sell are reduced and maybe I can finally buy a house for what it’s really worth and not some flim-flam’s inflated pricetag.

And hey, just to get an idea of what I’m moving FROM…here’s the view of our current house….HERE

I have spent most of my weekend surfing the net looking for houses.  I have found TWO out of the 3.9 bazillion that I’ve looked at.  And those two, well they’re kinda sorta possibilities, but nothing too flattering. 

My agent keeps asking us, “So what are you REALLY looking for?”  The only answer that I truly have is, “Our home.”  I will know when the house we find is really, truly OUR house…I don’t know how many bedrooms or bathrooms it will have, or how much acreage it’ll have either.  Hell, it’ll probably be some house that I find while driving to my dad’s or my sister’s or something.  It could be a house on 30 acres with no pool and only 3 bedrooms….or it could be a house on 2 acres with 5 bedrooms and a pool.  I don’t know.  When I will know is when I find it.  When I walk into a house and say, “OK This is it…where’s the contract?”  That’s how I’ll know exactly what I’m looking for.

I guess I’m just sort of ranting out my feelings about not being able to find what we want….but maybe one day I’ll walk into a house and proclaim, “THIS IS IT, IT’S MINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  Or, I’ll be stuck in suburbia until the day I die…either way, I’ll try to make the best of it.

Well the FIL update is that he’s home from the hospital, has hospice care and decided to stop fighting and just die peacfully in his home.  I can’t blame him, cancer is a horrible thing to deal with and I can understand why someone would want to just give up and die…when it’s time, it’s time…Some people know it. 

The DH has decided not to go back down there to see his dad, but he’s calling down there as much as he can (my phone bill will be OUTRAGEOUS this month).  I’m just trying to absorb myself into house hunting and to finding the perfect place to live for the rest of my life.  Every once in a while though, I start thinking about the funeral and start making arrangements for the kids.  Hoping that my mom could watch them while we’re down there.  I really don’t want to go, but I know that I need to be there for The DH.  I hate funerals, people don’t handle death very well and I hate being in those situations.  I wish we just sort of took the dead on a boat said some words and threw ‘em over the side….be easier on all of us.  But, we have to bury them in big pretty boxes that no one will see, and have some sort of ‘civil’ ceremony and all sorts of stupid shit….And, I have to wear a dress.  I don’t even own a dress.

Ok, LT wants me to read to him, so I must go…I’ll be back later on, hopefully Monday with some COOL scanner stories…it’s the weekend you know!