So, I am not so good at keeping up with the old blog. Sorry.

I had recently scanned a bunch of photos. And then T's step-mom sent us a TON of his baby pictures. Oy. Good LORD he was cute. *sigh* I am not gonna lie. I want another baby. Now, before everyone starts falling off of their chairs, I am not going to actually DO that. Just sayin'. I always wanted M to have a sibling and it just kinda stinks that things have gone the way that they have.

Anyway, I came across this one photo of T and OMG.. haha.. See for yourself...


That is T and his paternal grammy, and the pea and I on Christmas morning of 2006. They are roughly the same age in these photos. And people say she looks like me? NOT. LOL

Then, I came across this next photo. It is an old Polaroid. It has faded and changed to wonky colors and I did my best to fix it in Photochop.. however, my photo editing skillz are limited. What I wanted to convey with this photo, is the look on my dad's face. I saw this pic and CRACKED up, because I could just envision the scene.


My dad is out there trying to cut up fire wood, and my moms yelling at him to look at her. He in turn looks at her like "Dammit woman! WHAT do you want?? Can you not see I am trying to cut some damned wood??" Hahaa. It just made me smile.. and made me miss him even more than I already do. *sigh*
Also? If you look closely, the ever-present smoke is dangling out of his mouth, and he needs a hair cut. He looks a bit like a koala in this photo. LOL!

M is still sick. She has a cough that just will NOT quit. I have not slept through the night in about 3 weeks and it is wearing on me. I get an hour here, two hours there. UGH. NOT good for what I need to be getting done. I am going to sleep in her room for the next few nights, with medicine at the ready, tissues and a drink, and hope that I can get her what she needs without going into the kitchen and needing to put on a light and schlepping up and down the stairs 3 or 4 times. Because once I go through all of that, I am awake.

We are going to the Docs today. Hoping to get some answers...

I know that most of you who read here, follow me on Facebook. Which is why this place tends to get ignored. There is more interaction on Facebook. That is why blogging kind of irritates me. Yes, I blog for me. But knowing there are people reading... well.. COMMENT all ready. LOL All you have to do is use your gmail login. If you don't have one, you can sign up for one in about 3 seconds. It is free and you never have to use the email addy for anything but SHOWING ME LOVE. Hah.

Anyway, I went out the other day for a drive, and spent some time watching my river. :)
It really fascinates me. It was moving so fast, and there were these HUGE sheets of ice floating by...




They were crashing into the pylons, shaking the bridge. I was glad to get out and get some air. I sure do look forward to a clear, friendlier river this summer!! It was very windy and cold and so I watched for awhile, but when I could no longer feel my face and hands, I figured it was time to call it a day and head home.

All in all we ended up with about 10 inches or so, I would guess. This morning, we got another 3 or 4 inches. It is very beautiful. I do not mind it much, but I AM counting the days til spring. This place is so beautiful in the spring and summer. I cannot wait!

We have real grass here! I cannot wait to be able to run around in the yard with no shoes on!!
The grass in FL is prickly and hard and WEIRD. Won't miss that!!

Missing my brother today. He has chosen to remove himself from our lives and we do not really know why. It is a bummer.. today is his birthday. Happy Birthday Bro.. I miss you...

It snowed a little bit today. ;)

That would be M using her sled as a shovel. That child was determined to build a fort. I need to find one of those block igloo maker things so we can make a REAL fort the next time we get a good snow. *sigh* I love her. :)

Where do I begin? Ugh.

These are the stairs leading down to where we park. Or, leading from where we park up to the house. :P

In this photo, you can see the rock wall in major disarray, the gutter hanging off of the back of the house, the un-tilled garden mess to the left there. A few things that you cannot see, are the toppled-over grape arbor which causes me GREAT distress. I do NOT want to lose that thing. The stairs are crumbling and need massive repair. The windows need replacing...

The yard needs LOTS of work. I think we are just going to clear it all out, turn up the dirt, and leave it til fall, then I will plant some bulbs and leave it be. The house itself needs a good power wash. Too bad that whore sold our pressure washer. Grr.

I am not sure HOW the grape arbor is going to get fixed. It is not something that T and I can handle.. we have NO idea what we are doing. The garden just needs to be tilled and raked over, we can burn all of the crap in there. I guess I need to do some gardening research because I have no idea when to plant what. LOL.

Of course, we do not have a tiller, so that should be interesting.

The sheds down back need to go as well. One is about to fall down, the other is in ok condition, but will look odd as heck once the other one is torn down. (can you say BONFIRES?)

I am starting to feel overwhelmed. T says he will help with all of this stuff, but really? I do not see it happening. *sigh*

p.s. Notice that a few windows are open? LOL. It was 45 degrees that day. We were having a heat wave! :)

These are some of our neighbors. They are a quiet bunch. Thankfully, we do not ever see them. *grin*

This cemetery is very old, mostly Civil War era, although it is peppered with souls departed from later dates. What always struck me as odd about this place, is it's... haphazardness. There is no rhyme or reason to the plots and to the layout of the place.

I can see how it has sunken in spots over the years. The hill on one side is far more drastic now than it was when I was 8. And on the back end by the river, well, there are several missing graves from the flooding and the embankment giving way. I will have to go take some photos of the grave stones along the edge where I am pretty sure the occupants no longer rest in peace.

It was a creepy place to me as a child, not so much now. I often wonder about all of those people. Who were they? Where did they live? Were they happy? What did they look like? Although some of the graves have photos on them of the departed and THAT is creepy.. even though I often wonder these things.. More photos to come, when it is not buried under a foot of snow.

The snow has been unrelenting. It sure is pretty though. M went out to play today. The two things that she REALLY wanted to do? Sled and build a fort. Neither of which she was able to do. She plunked her sled down, and promptly sank into the deep snow. She tried and tried again, to no avail.

I told her that it was just too deep. So she decided to move on to fort building. That did not fare well either, as the snow was very light and powder-like. This made for a very unhappy Pea.
*sigh*

She got mad at me because I could not make the snow better for her to make a fort. Ugh. All I could do was bring her inside and give her cake and hot chocolate. Then we read some books, painted, played a game or two and made dinner. We were outside for about an hour and it tuckered her out.

I really wish that she would sleep in. But I am sure that she will be waking me up around 7 a.m., so it is off to dreamland for me!!

Ok, so I slacked for a few days. There is not much to photograph when you are stuck in the house.
It started snowing again yesterday afternoon. T and I were in the next town over. We got home in just enough time to get M off of the bus. I had some laundry to do so I kept sweeping my way down stairs. When I awoke this morning, I was sorta shocked at how much accumulation there was.

For the first time since yesterday, it has stopped snowing. I need to go out and shovel now.

Here is what I awoke to this morning, around 7 a.m.




And this, was taken just about 10 minutes ago out the kitchen window. It has gone from near white out conditions to just a few rogue flurries here and there.





People keep asking me if I am ready to go back to FL yet. I love it here. I always have. I spent my life in a climate just like this. I had only spent 12 years in FL. Sure, it is nice to not have to deal with the snow. But I have always loved it. When I was in FL and would see everyone complaining about the snow and the cold, I was always a bit jealous, as I really missed it!

Anyway, I have to go shovel....

Two pictures today.

I needed to run to town today to get some things at Wally World. M was outside playing. I had been shoveling the back stairs (ugh) and the sun came out and there were big puffy clouds in the sky.
So, I shoveled. And it damned near killed me. So I said to T "let her play for a bit, I am running to the store."

I got into the car, and drove down the road and through our teensy little town. As I got the the road to head on out of town, I could not believe what I was seeing... I went from sunshine, to this in about 2.5 minutes..



UNREAL. You can barely see the mountain just across the river. It was coming down all heavy and crazy. I thought about turning around and heading home and then decided just to suck it up and go on. It was just a squall, and moved along rather quickly though, thankfully.

This second picture was taken yesterday as we played out in the snow. M had decided that she wanted to build a fort. So she marched on past us, went to the porch upstairs and came back down dragging the shovel behind her. T and I were laughing so hard. She was so determined to shovel some snow. We ended up being the shovelers, giving her a rather large mound of snow with which to forge her a fort. I LOVE her determination. She does not let ANYONE tell her that she cannot do something. :)

I love watching her love the magic of snow....

Sometimes a mug of hot chocolate with cool whip just makes everything better.

The intersection of streets where we live...

This morning, I remembered my hat, AND my camera. It was a bit warmer this morning. I think I remembered seeing it on my phone, it was 29 this morning, as opposed to yesterday's 18. I waited a bit longer this morning before taking M out to wait for the bus. As soon as we walked up, the bus came around the corner. She looked at me and said "Good one Mom!" Hah. I snagged a quick kiss and hug and off she went... And I stood there like a dolt watching the bus drive off.

I grabbed my camera out of my pocket, aimed and snapped. This is not exactly what I had hoped this photo would be LOL as the bus was too far away and about to round a corner, and I did not have time to zoom. I love this camera though. I like how it captures colors as they are. The lights on our porch are yellow. I hate them. LOL. But to see what a warm glow it gives off makes me hate on them a bit less. Not sure what the deal is with the orbs or dust speckles or whatever you want to call them. Call me silly, but I would like to think that maybe my dad and nan and aunt were watching the bus take my baby to school with me. Cheesy. I know.. *sigh*

So, not exactly what any real photographer would even call a good shot, it is what it is. And years from now when I look at it, I will remember this morning as it was.

As you know, most of our belongings sat in storage for over a year. Moving in here was like Christmas. I found things that I had forgotten all about. One of them, was my beloved pepper mill.
So when I found it, I shouted with far too much glee, and ran out to buy fresh peppercorns.

Oh I was so happy! And even happier that something as simple as having my pepper mill made me so happy! You see? Lots of happiness going on over here. I peppered my eggs, and my meatloaf and my turkey sammich! Glee, I tell you.

Then, about a week into it, I was peppering some steaks, and it happened.


Evidence:



One of my beloved pepper mill's little handles snapped under the massive strength of my hand. *grin*

......

*gasp*

It REALLY pissed me off!! Have to run into town tomorrow. Wally World better have these things. That last one I had bought at Target, and there is not a Target around these parts. I GUESS it could wait til next week when I take T to the VA. There is a Target in Clarksburg...

Either way, it WILL be mine.. oh yes... *rubs hands together in an evil manner*

One of the things I have always loved about this place, is how the fog comes up off of the river. I used to love sitting outside in the early mornings with my coffee, watching the bands of fog rise and lift slowly towards the sky.