Oh I haven't been here for a couple of days. I am sorry. We have been hanging with the babies. I babysat last night and am babysitting tonight. Yesterday, Grampy and I took them to McDonald's to play. We were there from 1130 to 1400! They were exhausted.
I took Reagan to her first movie today. She informed me that the popcorn doesn't smell like Target's popcorn. It was a family free showing of Ice Age 2. She wasn't really that interested in the movie. According to Reagan, the best part of the movie was the little box of nerds I gave her.
After the movie, I had to go to the bank. I love this bank. They have freshly made cookies. Reagan and I shared a chocolate chocolate chip cookie. They have a children's area with a fish tank. She wanted to stay there coloring for hours. I finally lured her away with a promise of McDonalds lunch.
We get to McDonalds and it is finally really raining. UGH! The children's area is packed. We ate and then Reagan went to play. She didn't play long because there were too many kids.
We went to the library after that to return a book.
Tomorrow night Tommy and I are going to a social hour with the Exchange Club. I am excited about meeting new people. I am hoping to make friends.

Tears

Ok, I had a good day with my family. We went to Toys R Us and Reagan got another Barbie furniture set Why the sigh you ask? Because Reagan loves me (actually probably ANYONE) to lie down on her floor and play with her dolls. First of all, I am too old to lie on the floor playing Barbie and second of all, I am too fat to lie on the floor. But I do it because I am Grammie.
Then I got my mail and a friend of mine sent me some photos from WDW, a Mickey Mouse diary, and a card. It made me cry. My group of friends will be going there in Nov. I have known for a long time that I wasn't going to go and I was fine with it but today, I started to cry. I must be hormonal because I am crying again.
I want to go to Walt Disney World.

Patience

Well, yesterday was a nightmare. I think the day went fine but I can't remember because the night was so traumatic. Oh my gatos!!
I had met a girl and liked her hair so I asked her who did it, she recommended a girl at a beauty school. I was fine with it and made an appointment. The beauty school itself is really nice.
I made the mistake of saying I wanted to keep my blonde streaks in my hair. I could try to explain for hours why it went wrong but let's just say it went terribly wrong. First of all, it took the girl over 3 hours just to foil my hair. She got me soaking wet when she washed it out. When I got home, I found out I had hair dye all over the back of my shirt. Anyway, she almost started crying when she washed it out because my hair was blonde all over the top and dark dark red in the back AND my roots were still showing. I told her to just dye my hair one color and get rid of those roots. There was a meeting over my hair and the instructor insisted on putting in low lights. She had two girls foiling my hair at the same time. Ok..so how does this end..my hair is lots of colors..none of them the red I wanted. I got home around 11:30pm. Yep...I started at 5pm and got done about 11:15! I was exhausted but I couldn't sleep.
Then today, I went back (why???) to get my hair cut. I am still unsure of why I went back except that I felt sorry for the girl. She was upset and she knew I wasn't happy with my color. The good news is that in 5 weeks I will get it done again but I won't be going back there. So why did I go back for my haircut? I have no idea...all I know is that I committed to going back so I did.
So I hate my hair...wait..hate is a strong word..I don't hate it..It just isn't what I wanted.

And today....

Tommy and I went to the Career Center. Tommy really looked at the jobs and put his info into the system. I printed up another job application. Whippee! I am tired of doing this and not getting any bites. It is not fun! It is very demoralizing. I found myself looking at the job fair at the local McDonald's and wondering if I should go visit them.
I need to do something but what???
I didn't see much of the kids today and I missed them.
I did get to watch Camden while Reagan went to dance class. He helped me take the trash out. He also helped me cook dinner. I cut up a cucumber and I tried to get him to taste it but he decided that Grampy would like to eat it so he took it to Grampy. Then every few minutes he would tell me that he needed to give another cucumber to Grampy! Grampy ate them all.
I shared my steak and mashed potatoes with Camden. Tonight he actually ate all of the mashed potatoes when I put a little sour cream on his plate. I didn't stay upstairs to see if he ate any dinner when Chris came home.
I had checked out a couple of VeggieTales DVDs from the library yesterday. I put the dancing one on the TV after Reagan came home from dance and we all danced. We didn't hear all the songs but one of them cracked me up. It is called Sport Utility Vehicle. It was about how wonderful SUVs are. I enjoyed it a lot.
Now I am back to looking for jobs on the Internet.

A whole day and what do I have to show for it?

Well, Tommy and I opened a local checking account today. Do you know when I married Tommy, he was a quiet person. In fact, I was told by one of the sailors working under him that the only time he ever talked or smiled was when he was talking about me. Ok, so who was that guy who wouldn't shut up at the bank this morning? He said he learned it from me. Well, he needs to stop talking so I can.
I think I found a church home. Chapel of the Cross. They were quite welcoming and nice. I enjoyed it so much that I stayed for bible study. I will go back next Sunday.
Other than that...well...I watched Camden while my son took Reagan to dance class. ROFL! That boy is something else. I cooked dinner for myself and Tommy. I tried to eat but Camden wanted me to share so I did. He ate some of my mashed potatoes and steak. I realized that if I didn't put him in his high chair and make a plate for him, I would never get a chance to eat so I did that. Well, he ate the steak but I guess the mashed potato tasted differently when it was on his own plate. Chris arrived with McDonalds for him and he ate some of that also. He loved the yogurt parfait.
That was my day..wasn't it exciting?

Did I do anything?

Ok, did I do anything today? Nope!
Oh wait I worried about money. Did you know worrying about money doesn't bring you any money so it is a total waste of time.
I am trying to find out about subbing. I vascalate between doing temp work or subbing. I hated my last year subbing for Palm Springs Unified but was that because I was promised things that I didn't get or because subbing is horrid?
On the other hand, subbing is easy money and I can take off whenever I want to. So what do I do?
I don't know. It is discouraging. I went back to school to be a "real" teacher but I can't even get an interview. I don't know what else to do.
On the good side, I am enjoying my grandchildren.

Errands

Whew..we went all over the place and didn't achieve much.
We did get a scan of my teaching certificate. I needed it to apply for jobs. That was our first errand and it was so successful that I thought the rest would be also.
Then we drove to the Department of Motor Vehicles only in Missouri, it isn't called that. It is the Licensing place or some such name. We drove to St. Charles for that. We split up into two lines because I couldn't figure out where we were supposed to go. The place was dirty and icky. I got up first and I was told we needed passport, social security card, piece of mail with our new address on it. I don't remember what else because I was overwhelmed with the list.
We left and went looking for a T-mobile store so we could change our phone numbers. We changed our numbers.
As we were leaving T-Mobile, I saw a licensing bureau right down the street...it was 5 minutes from the house..we never had to drive to St. Charles.
Oh and we went back to the storage place and they gave us a refund on the second storage unit we didn't need.
We came home and I played with Reagan. We played Candyland and I WON!! Yep, the most exciting part of my life is beating a 4 year old at Candyland. I am pitiful.

Searching

One of the not so much fun about moving is finding a new church home. I have been to two different churches so far and I don't think I am a good fit for either one of them. Either would work in a pinch but I still need to look around. I think I went to 5 churches the last time I searched for a new church. I wonder where I will go next.
Meanwhile, the church I went to does have one program I really am interested in. It is called Angel's Food. You pay $30 and you get a box of food. Tommy and I belonged to a program like that in Maine and we enjoyed it.
I must say that there was a young couple who tried to make me feel at home so I know if I need to go to church and I can't find one, at least I can go back to this one and feel comfortable with one couple.
Meanwhile, I keep looking.

When I said I wanted a Do over, I didn't mean one that was the same

Ok, so Tommy and I went to the Post Office to get postal money orders and....we couldn't do it because we have a limit per day on our debit card..oh yeah..I forgot.
So I call on my son and daughter in law. I am so lucky that my son and daughter in law are good to me. They met us at a bank and cashed a check.
Then we went to the storage place. It cracked me up. First of all, it is a really old place. I walked into the office and it smelled like cigarettes. I am from California. Nobody smokes in California. I have to get use to the smell of cigarettes...UGH!
Palm Springs has a film festival every year. This place reminded me of a movie I once saw at the film festival. It had Donald Sutherland in it. It was about a storage place. The people storing their stuff would hang out with their stuff every day. Maybe I will go there every day and hang out with my things.
After we got home, the driver called..yesterday he said he would be there after 12:30. Now he is going to be there after 6:00pm. I hope he is faster unloading than the guy who was loading or he will be unloading at 3:00am.
Ok, we are finally home. It is 10:30pm and we just got home from watching the guys unload that truck. We had 2 storage units but they only used one. The guy wanted me to cut the cost of storage in half but I refused to do so. I started yelling at him. I told him that we shouldn't have to be out here doing this at all and that they had stacked my stuff so high and tight that I have no idea how we are going to get it out. And I told him that my husband had to get up for work at 3am but he was here instead of sleeping.
I informed him that we paid so much money to have them move us so we wouldn't have to move ourselves and we were ending up having to move ourselves anyway. He told me that he understood that the moving company would be coming when we were ready and move the stuff for us. That was news to me. But I don't care I was beyond pissed. You should see my stuff..boxes were crushed..totes were smashed. They dropped 5 Disney Christmas ornaments on the truck (where the box was, I have no clue) and broke them. One of the crushed boxes was labeled "Stoneware." I am sure I won't have any plates. It is just a mess. I am so sick of the whole thing.
Chris brought us a camera so we could take a pictures of how they stacked things and what it looked like. Then we got home and I realized that I had blocked in Deidra. Chris had to take her to work. I feel badly about that. I forgot to leave the car keys. I am just a ditz.
And then to top it off, my Mom emailed me and told me that there has been no movement on the condo and she wants us to wait 2 months before we figure out what to do. I feel badly about that also. I would love to give my son and dil back their house.
Things are just sucking.............

A do over

Oh I so want a do over today.
Let me see should we start when Tommy started yelling at 5am. Why was he yelling at 5am you ask? Oh let me see.............oh because he should have been at work for a half hour and he was still in bed. Did he call them to tell them he would be late? Nope....He got there and they didn't even notice that he wasn't there.
Ok, after I finally went back to sleep..it should have been ok right?
Well, let me see...I picked up the mail and there was a letter from Palm Springs Unified School
District asking me to fill out a questionnaire about why I left. Do I tell them the truth, ignore the letter, or lie? That is the question. I haven't decided yet.
Then I was checking our bank account and I see $80 worth of pending charges from an Internet company that tried to do this once before but last time it was $25. That is when I found out there is no longer a branch of our bank in Missouri. Oh my gatos, how bad can this be? So Tommy called Washington Mutual and they told him that the charge had to go through then we can challenge it. I was mad. But not as mad as I was about to become.
Then the worse happens. I get a phone call from a truck driver identifying himself as having my belongings on his truck and wanting to deliver it tomorrow after 1230. What is the big deal you ask? Well, it was supposed to be in storage until June 27th..then I was going to ask them how much it would cost to keep it another month..instead it is here and I have no place for it. PLUS...they needed $1900 and I found out that our bank closed the only branch they had out here. I would put a deep sigh there but I was upset.
I called the moving company and they claimed it was impossible for a driver to have my stuff..it should have been in storage. They asked for time to figure it out then they called me back and told me, "Oops! What we will do is deliver it to a storage place on your end and you can deduct one month's storage from the $1900." It was said oh so cheerfully. I was beyond pissed. I asked her how she expected me to do this on a Friday night at 4:30pm. I managed to find one that charges $144 for the first month and the second month is free...that might work for us..I hope!!!
So now in the end, we are going to have to move our own stuff.
Oh and the name of this great moving company is ASAP Relocations, just in case anyone you know thinks of using them.
When I pointed out that their previous driver tipped over our big screen TV into the dining table and we didn't know if it worked, she said that if we found any breakage after we took the stuff out of storage to just call them and they would give us the claims information.
I went upstairs to discuss this with Chris and I fell apart crying. Poor Reagan got so upset because I was crying. Camden started crying too. I had to stop myself so I wouldn't scare them anymore but really all I want to do is have a big old meltdown. I am feeling extremely sorry for myself tonight. This is just not how I wanted it to happen.
Of course, I am being a drama queen about the whole thing.
I am so thankful to have my son and his wife. They have been so kind to us and I sit here bawling like a spoiled brat because things just aren't happening the way I planned them. Oops...maybe the problem is I planned them.
So anyway, I want a do over today and will probably want one tomorrow also.
Oh and what were our plans for tomorrow you ask..we were going to go to a county fair. Oh well!!!

Is it really Thursday?

I don't seem to be able to go to sleep at a decent hour. It is not good because I will sleep forever if you let me. I need to figure out how to be my big rear into bed at a decent hour.
Today, I got mail from my Mom. She is a TAC (The Angel Company) representative and she sent me the new catalog. I love so many of the rubberstamps. It made me want to scrap and make cards. They have some really cute stuff.
Let's see, we went to Costco this morning. Of course, I didn't realize that I need to buy cat litter soon or I would have bought it. No, I wait until I get back at the house to find out we are getting low on the stuff. Of course, in my defense I THOUGHT we had some in the car but it turns out we didn't. I brought it all in. Oh well!
Chris took the kids to the library and I tagged along. I really love the libraries out here. Isn't it amazing that I am living in what the snobs on the East and West Coast think of as backwards and they have nicer libraries than Palm Springs and Maine. The kids section is huge and full of fun for the kids. The periodicals section is very large though I do wonder why they get 2 different homeschooling magazines...who would have thought there was one homeschooling magazine much less two AND two quilting magazines but only one scrapbooking magazine. There computer set up is amazing. It is definitely a user friendly library with lots of librarians to help you. I have found them to be quite helpful. I need to get a Missouri driver's license so I can get a library card.
As usual, I had fun with Camden and Reagan today. They amaze me. They are so cute and so dang smart. Just watching them is exhausting.

As normal as it all gets

Well, Tommy is at work. His schedule sucks as far as I am concerned. He works from 4:30am to 1pm with Mondays and Tuesdays off.
Today, I sent in a resume to a school district that I really want to work in so please, pray for me.
Every morning, when I get up and go upstairs, I am greeted with a big, "GRAMMMMMMMMIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!" I have to pick up a princess and a big boy. I get a hug and a kiss from the princess and a head butt from the big boy. It is a lovely way to start the day.
Camden (my big boy) loves to come look at my cat. He stands at our bedroom door yelling, "Kitty Kitty." So I open the door and he runs in screaming and the cat runs under the bed in pure terror. Then he points under the bed and says, "MEOW MEOW!" After that, his true reason for demanding entry comes to light when he points to a box of Wheat Thins and says, "Cracker!" Meanwhile, Reagan (the princess) is right behind him but quieter. They both get one Wheat Thin and I chase them out of my room.
Yesterday, Tommy was sitting in the living room with his shirt unbuttoned. I don't know why. I swear he is becoming my grandfather (and he never even met my grandfather). Since we arrived in St. Peters he sits around in no shirt or an open shirt. He didn't do this in Palm Springs. Reagan called him, "The hairy guy!" It made him button up. She told him that nobody wanted to see that.
She cracks me up. Today she drew a picture of my cat for me. Then she drew a picture of Tommy to give him when he got home from work. ROFL! She put hair on both sides and left the top bald..looked just like him. He was so happy to get the picture.
I am loving being with my family.

More Ketchup

Ok, so we took off to Albuquerque on Sunday. Tommy wanted to stop at the Meteorite Crater. I agreed to do so. We went in but it was so hot and the cat was in the Mitsubishi. I worried and worried about her. We were going on the tour around the crater and it was an hour tour. Finally, I just told Tommy that I wasn't going on the tour and I was going to sit in the Mits with Celine. Poor Celine was panting. It was hot. Later, Tommy told me that she was panting even when he was driving with the air conditioner on. A couple of hours later we were off to New Mexico.
The plan was to go on a tour of the petrified forest, we could do that in the car so there wouldn't be the Celine problem BUT just as we got there, the rain came down. It was pouring, we were lucky to see the road much less the forest so we kept driving.
I have to say that New Mexico is beautiful! It was breathtaking.
Albuquerque looks like a great town. Unfortunately, we didn't get in until 10pm so we didn't get to enjoy it. But I would love to take a vacation there some time. They have lots of touristy things to do but I don't think you should try it when you are traveling with your belongings and a cat.
The next morning we got up and started driving to Oklahoma City. Ok, how does the landscape know it is now in a new state? Texas...what can I say? 11 years ago when we drove through Texas on the 10 Freeway, I described it as flat, brown and forever, well on the 40 it is not quite as flat, it has some green spots but it goes on forever. I think we stopped at Arby's for lunch. I noted that they had chocolate turnovers now. Well, anyone who knows my passion for chocolate would think I would jump on eating one of those. But something about the thought of eating warm chocolate in a turnover doesn't do it for me. I couldn't get myself to order one. I stuck to my beloved cherry turnover.
Ok, so we ended up in Oklahoma City at about 9pm. We had a GPS problem. The address for the Comfort Inn was an empty lot on a service road. We had to call them but we didn't have the phone number. Thank goodness for cellphones! I called 411 (yeah, they are going to charge me $1.50 for that call) and had them connect me BUT it was the wrong Comfort Inn. I didn't have a pen to write down the correct number and I got it wrong by 1 dang number so I had to call 411 again..another $1.50! We finally get the correct one and the desk guy gave me directions. When I asked for the address, he said, 'Oh, you are trying to GPS us. I will give you our next door neighbors address because that one will GPS correctly." So it was 9pm when we made it there.
We had Wendy's for dinner. I had the original chocolate frosty but Tommy had a cookies and cream frosty.
We discussed going to see the Memorial in Oklahoma City but decided that Tommy didn't want me to cry all the way to St. Louis. I am such a big baby about that stuff.
We got up the next morning and drove to St. Louis. I promised to call Chris when we hit St. Louis but we never really did hit the city. Our GPS routed us around it. We were a town away before I called him and told him we were almost there. Poor kid had to run out to get our dinner.
We got there and I got to hug and love my beautiful grandchildren. Reagan had been waiting all day for us to arrive. We waited all day also.
Whew!!! I thought we would never make it to St. Peters but we did.

My apologies

Ok, it was brought to my attention that I have not written in my blog for awhile. Well, I have been a little busy.
Here are some of the things that happened:
Here goes how Thursday went: We got up at 6am. We had to put our mattresses in plastic bags. Tom picked up his box spring and didn't realize that Celine was right there. Celine put her head where the box spring was supposed to be. Tom dropped the box spring down and Celine was stuck there. Tom thought he broke her neck. All I could see was the cat's body thrashing back and forth. Tom lifted the box spring and she took off like a bat out of Hades. She was ok but shook up.The moving people who were supposed to show up at 8:30 am didn't show until 1:30 pm. They were a mess and took 8 hours to load our stuff. We left for Nana's at 10pm. We got in at 3:30pm.
They proceeded to take 8 hours to load our stuff. The name of the game for them was to shrink wrap every piece of furniture we owned. They charged us for the shrinkwrap and the tape. They managed to build up $903 more dollars on the cost of the move.
The guy also managed to tip over Tom's Widescreen TV after he had covered it with cardboard..of course, he charged us for each piece of cardboard. It hit my dining room table. Tommy wasn't in the room when it happened so I text messaged him and he came strolling in right away. The guy turned to him and said, "Well, you wanted a new TV anyway."
It was a horrid day for all of us.
Next we drove in separate cars for 5 hours to my Mom's house. We got there around 3 am.
Celine is scared to death and hiding either in the closet or under the bed. We stayed until Sunday because we have to help my Mom with a couple of things and we are just too tired to drive alone for 8 hours. We need to calm a little bit and rest.
On Sunday, we drove to Albuquerque