LOST!

Has anyone seen a box of banana flavored MoonPies? Since not one single person in this house knows where they got off to, I reckon they've grown legs and walked off on their own. If anyone sees a MoonPie resembling the fella above, please let me know and I'll come fetch him.

I broke down and bought a box of this favorite treat of mine on Thursday after avoiding the MoonPie aisle at the supermarket for a whole month. I had a fresh cup of coffee this morning, a little peace and quiet, ( cause Zach and James had gone fishing) and I remembered the box of banana MoonPies that I'd hidden and thought to myself,

"Self, this would be the perfect occasion for one of them there MoonPies"

After Self tore into the cabinet, taking everything out at least twice, did a search of the Terrorist's hidey holes, and looked beside, and under, the man's favorite snacking spot for evidence, Self did a bit of cussing, stomping, and was near tears as she resigned herself to the fact that there would be nary a one tasty MoonPie to be had with her coffee.

I better not find out that those MoonPies went fishing.

Dammit, next time I lose my stamina in the MoonPie aisle, I'm going to buy some mousetraps to guard them with.

Just can't fix ugly

The big fella above survived the tornado last week. He wasn't hurt (that's red paint on the shop floor, not blood), but he sure was in shock. He didn't even try to move while I was taking these shots. If he had, I'd have moved faster!

I know these are God's creatures but they sure have a look that gives you a bit of a shiver, don't they?

Photo Challenge

Bright and a little shiny.

PopPop's shiny money jar.

Bright.

It was Miz Donna's choice of challenge this time and it was a good un! Her other challengers were
Dabrah, Sandy, Donna, and Joan. And Nita joined in too.

Feeling Like Mrs. Murphy Again

Stuff has just seemed to "happen" these past few days, enough stuff to make me wonder if there's a conspiracy going on specifically in my universe.

The storm happened down on the farms and while James thought they only had 2 pivots turned over on their part of the farms and no hail damage, it turns out there were 3 and there was some hail damage. Stuff like this comes home with him and he gets cranky over little things which makes me cranky about everything.

On Sunday, (yep, Mother's Day) my freezer decided it would be cranky and start thawing out all of the food that was stored in it. We only bought it less than 15 months ago, but wouldn't you know, 15 months is 3 months passed the Sears warranty. We don't buy extended warranties on our appliances because the cost of a couple of years of those would buy a whole new appliance which, from my experience with Sears merchandise over the past 3 years, is probably what's going to occur in this household (repairs on dryer, washer, and now freezer and the oldest appliance is a bit less than 3 yrs old).

Yesterday the phone rang. It was that Sweetie Pie, Special K, calling, it's like she knew my soul needed a good bout of cleansing laughter and I surely do love talking and laughing with her. So we laughed and talked, and talked and laughed, and I was feeling really good until we had to say goodbye when the school bus came and unloaded all our "chillins"

One of the things we laughed about was my bad little cockatiel, Ya-Ya, and I had this little niggling thought in the back of my mind when I heard the school bus pull into the drive as we were saying goodbye, "Hmmm, why didn't Ya-Ya squawk their arrival?" He usually let's me know the bus is on the way when they're a mile down the road.

It got busy for a bit with the kids streaming in strewing homework here and there so I didn't think about my sassy bird again until Zach went into the kitchen and said, "What's wrong with Ya-Ya?" I ran in there and he was laying in the bottom of his cage barely breathing, and could barely open his eyes to look at us. He died a very short time later, and when James came in, he buried him beneath the rose bush for me.

I'm gonna miss my Ya-Ya.

My universe better get aligned here soon folks.

After The Storm

This is the cotton picker that was pushed into the building by the apparent tornado. (click to enlarge photos) It was sitting over there beside the other one. A lot of the shop yard looks as though it's been swept clean, I guess the wind did that, but when the debris met the buildings, or trees, or a house, it just wrapped around it. There was pieces of the shop roof wrapped in the tops of trees (the ones left standing) and in the tops of power poles.
This is what's left of a storage shed in the shop yard. The employee who lives in a house next to this shed parked his truck there in case there was hail in the storm. I reckon hail damage would have been better than this.
This is what's left of the new ag plane hanger. There was an airplane tied down in there and the storm broke the tethers, gently? pushed it OUT of the hanger, and then proceeded to twist steel and metal hanger to look like this. The pilot went this afternoon, pulled the tin and other debris away from the path he'd need to take, then he taxied the plane out to the runway, and took off in it.
About 2 miles of power poles down. There were also trees down in the highway in several places but they took their pickups and pulled them out of the way.

Severe storms and those blasted tornadoes have seemed to taken a liking to Arkansas this Spring season. We dodged the bullet again last night but they didn't fare as well 10 miles south of us. Zach and I climbed under the dining room table when we saw our county was under a tornado warning until 9:15 pm last evening but all we had was a little wind, and a little hail, and rain, nothing nearly as bad as others we've had this Spring.

This morning our neighbor, who is also a farm manager for the same corporation my husband works for, came by to tell us that his farm headquarters took a hit. There are at least 2 miles (maybe more) of power lines and poles down, the new ag plane hanger they just built beside the farm shop is just a big pile of twisted metal and aluminum. The storm pushed a 6-r0w cotton picker about 25 feet into an old gin they used for storage, it broke the window out of a tractor, warped and tore the siding on the shop, uprooted trees, destroyed other storage sheds and buildings, tore part of the roof off, some of the siding, and some of the windows out of an employee house which sat next to the farm shop. Eleven irrigation pivots were toppled and twisted also.

James took Zach and I down to see the damage this afternoon.

At the farm my husband works at, down the road a few miles, there were 2 irrigation pivots damaged but so far that's the only damage they've found there.

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Where did my mind go? I want it back!

That school bus that I love in the mornings has come to be a dreaded arrival in the afternoons. Zach's sisters get off the with him in the afternoons and the homework hustle begins. I'm not good at doing the hustle, never been good at doing the hustle, never will be good at doing the hustle, yet, there I go.

Krysten, who has ADD 3 times worse than Zach's, took 28 minutes (yep, I timed her) doing the avoid-my-homework thing by taking all of her folders, papers, and whateverthehell else there was, out of her 3-ring binder. Then she thought she'd spend another 28 putting them all back, but she was wrong, I looked up from Abby's homework sheet that I was helping with and told her she had exactly 3 minutes to get em in and have the first homework problem done or the fly swat was going to be swatting something bigger than flies.

Then there was the little problem I had with Abby's first grade spelling homework. There was a list of their spelling words at the top and you had to choose the correct word for stuff like, "which word rhymes with cow", (this wasn't really a fair question cause two of the words, how and now, rhymed with cow and they asked for WHICH WORD, not Which words) and "which word is what you live on", and the one that really, really stumped me, "which word is a past tense verb"?

Now, I am not stupid and I really don't believe I've forgotten that much, so I'm looking through the words and the only verb there is "started". I know start is a verb, and one of the rules for past tense is the added ed, but is "started" really a past tense verb?

Example: The girl started to leave the room.

Now, tell me what's Past about that usage? Hell, she hasn't left yet, she only started to.

Anyway, to avoid confusing the poor child, and myself, I told her she'd better wait and ask her momma about that one.

MeriKate can do her homework with little or no help but she has to get her foot in the hustle ring too by doing whatever she can to make things easier for herself, such as tricking me into telling her the answers and I'm easily tricked, especially after trying to figure out all that stuff about first grade spelling.

We now come to Zach, the one who claims to have no homework even though he has to finish reading a book for a book report, and has a major Social Studies project about a county and city in Arkansas to have done before May 16th. Getting him to sit long enough to grill him about what needs to be done and what he's completed is similar to giving a bath to an unwilling cat. I'm considering handcuffs in his situation. Seriously.

Maybe some of those fuzzy, furry, ones so they won't leave marks. I don't want to go to jail for child abuse,,, but it may be a way to get some uninterrupted rest.