A Thinking Kind of Day

Where to start?  Woke up late this morning after a pretty rough night.  I started not feeling well yesterday early afternoon.  Took a nap and still felt crummy.  Let Ron do most of the work on the tree lot, trying to rest.  My left eye was really sore and I couldn't figure out why.  Woke up in the middle of the night with my eye burning.  Put a hot compress on it at 3:30 a.m.  Went back to sleep till the wind blowing the awning woke us up at 7:00 a.m.  Ron got up and went and pulled the awning in.  I put another hot cloth on my eye and we went back to sleep.  Woke up at 9:25 a.m. when a customer knocked on our door.  We quickly got moving.  Thankful she was patient with us.  She bought one of our larger trees. Yeah!

I then took the time to look at my eye.  It is quite swollen and red.  It looks like I scratched the lower lid or else developing a sty.  Not sure which.  Another hot compress and it felt a little better.  My mind has been running laps today.


Today would have been my Mom's 75th birthday.  Hard to believe that she has been gone for over 5 years.  Some days I find myself saying "I should call my mom about ...." and then remember she is gone.  That has happened quite a few times in the last week.  I guess with her birthday being today she has been on my mind a lot.  We didn't always have the best of relationships but the good times we had were wonderful.  I remember Christmas 1980.  She came to our place in Sumner that year.  Ron got a black cowboy hat from her.  He still has it though it is in storage.  Guess he will have to dig it out and take it with us to Texas.  He should fit right in then along with his cowboy boots.  My gift from her was 50 brand new $1 bills. She had folded each one in fourths and put them in a shoe box.  She would not let me open it till all the wrappings from the other gifts had been cleaned up.  I guess she knew me pretty well ~ when I opened the box and saw all that money in there I let out a whopper of a scream.  Yes, the one many of you have heard over the years.  $50 to spend on me, any way I wanted.  Another memory about that Christmas is that we put our Christmas tree in the playpen.  We had one of those wooden square ones.  Brandon was 10 months old and it was easier to cage the tree then to keep him from knocking it over.  We even strung lights around the edge of the playpen.  

My mom and I struggled over many things.  Thinking of them is sad so I try not going down that path.  Remembering the good things, the laughs and the teasing and the love that she had for my boys that is what makes me happy.  I wish she was here to know her three grandchildren.  I can picture her playing dolls with Opal, laughing with Christopher and encouraging Max in baseball.

I have also been thinking of her chicken gumbo.  It was so good.  I try to make it at least once a year.  This year I am going to make it while we are at Brandon's.  Mine is okay but not nearly as good as hers.  I follow the same recipe but something seems to be lacking, just not sure what it is.  

Have also been thinking of how we are celebrating Christmas this year.  It will be different as we will be on the road on Christmas Day driving to Post Falls to meet up with Brandon and his family for basketball tournament.  It will be just the two of us.  Have been thinking of dinner and what we are going to do.  Ron suggested we go out to eat but that seems weird to me.  But at the same time I can't think of what to fix since we will be driving all day.  Maybe I will plan on different appetizers that we can munch on while driving and then make some French Onion soup once we stop for the night.  Any suggestions please send them our way.  We are looking forward to going to Edmonds Lutheran Church which is right behind Safeway for their Christmas Eve service.  It starts at 8:00 p.m. which works great for us as we are done here on the lot at 5:00 p.m.  Will definitely make some phone calls on Christmas Day to Jamie, Suzanne & Opal and Brandon and his family, plus a couple of calls to friends and a few of our aunts & uncles.

Talked with Bonnie this morning from Lone Star Corral.  I don't know who is more excited ~ Ron & I and our upcoming trip to Texas and the new jobs or Bonnie and the board to know they have a couple coming on board in March.  Ron has been busy planning our route.  And making reservations at different campgrounds.  I have confirmed with my aunt in Middletown and Ron's aunt in McNeal, AZ.  Right now our plan is to leave on Sunday, February 13th from Blaine, WA and arrive in Hondo, TX on March 11th.  We start work on March 14th.  We want to use the weekend before we start to get settled in, organized and other household things preparing for full time work.  One thing I want to do is get back into planning our menu's for a month at time.  When I used to do that, we ate pretty healthy, grocery shopped only every other week which saved us money, and took a lot of stress off of wondering what is for dinner.  I will probably start the menu planning while we are driving so we can do a major grocery shop before landing in Hondo.

We have sold 10 trees today.  We have 82 trees left on the lot.  We were hoping for good weather today but that is not happening.  We woke up to high winds and very cold weather.  Now the rain has started.  Hoping it is not a big turn off to those who still need to buy a tree.  We have talked a lot about our experience of selling Christmas trees.  We are glad we tried it but don't think this is a job we want to do again.  But we can say we have done it.  We think selling Christmas trees wouldn't be so bad if we had one day a week off to get away from the lot but that is not how they do it.  We will have been here 33 days when we are done.  I have driven to Costco once, Ron once to the auto parts store to get light bulbs for the interior lights here in the motor home and we took off early one morning to do laundry.  Next week Wednesday we will go and do laundry again.  Thursday Ron will take the motor home to get gas as we don't know how many gas stations are going to be open on Christmas Day.

Sitting watching cars in the parking lot is quite entertaining.  We keep waiting for there to be a collision right on the corner of the lot.  So many people use the lot to cut through the area, cars go pretty fast through the lot and go the wrong way down the lanes.  There are times when the horns are honking and Ron and I just shake our heads.  If people went up/down the lanes as directed there might not be so many near misses.  Just now I watched one car trying to cut through a parking spot and two cars coming at opposite directions all stop looking at each other.  I wonder who is going to give first.


We have had a few visitors while we have been here and that has been nice.  So thankful for friends who have come by or called.  It helps to make the days go by a little faster.


I don't know much else and I think I am rambling on so I should probably end this post before boring all of you.


We have been praying for many things and would appreciate your praying along with us...


...for Tammy and Kenny as Tammy recuperates from her breast cancer surgery.  They should be meeting with the doctors early next week to see what the next step is.  Praising God that Tammy has quit smoking and that the desire for the cigarettes has not been too strong.


...thanking God for putting us on the hearts of friends who blessed us with a Safeway gift card!


...thanking the Lord for the customers he has sent our way and praying for the rest of these trees to sell.  We have sold three more while I have been writing my blog post today.  We are down to 79 on the lot.


...praising God for the friends who have given us an ear to listen to our thoughts, fears, questions about taking a new job so far from home.


Take care and may all of you have a full and blessed day!