One Time Diamonds

I am not an accessorized kind-of girl. For those of you who know me and see me on a regular basis, I am just thankful that I remembered to put on my bra and deodorant, and that my shoes match when I leave my house for work every day. I work with several women who are very accessorized and I admire their beauty and attention to detail and the care that they put into each day to make themselves look and feel better. But because I function in survival mode at work and at home, accessories, while I own them, are not part of my repertoire.

However, here's a vain little secret that I have....   I LOVE DIAMONDS!

And apparently, I am one of those One Time Diamond kind of girls. I may only ever receive diamonds for that one special momentous occasion. Upon the anticipation of being proposed to, there is an expected diamond figured into the equation. And then apparently that's all you get, cuz I have seen neither hide nor hair of one since and I don't get the feeling there are any pending in the future. I am chuckling while I say this because I know I am being completely selfish in wanting more diamonds in my future. However, they are a girl's best friend, aren't they? 

I stare at my beautiful sparkly engagement ring and diamond studded wedding band wherever I go. Some lights really capture all of the glittery diamonds and it reminds me how much I love my rings. My husband really outdid himself when he picked out my set, and I never cease to tell him how beautiful my rings are and add a little hint hint hint that maybe I need earrings too! :)

Do you have any quirky little things that you love selfishly and wish you had tons more of? If so, please share them with me in the comments section. :)

I, I, I was abstinent….

As a Kindergarten teacher, I have accumulated so many funny stories from the little people that I have taught over the years that I could probably write a book. But because I have the attention span of an ADHD Kindergartener, I am only going to share one of those stories right now (instead of starting that book) as a tribute to one of my former students (let's call him Chuck) who is moving out of my school and who I will miss seeing every day. :(

Chuck was what we call a "repeat offender." That's redneck for someone who has repeated a grade more than one time. I happen to be a repeat offender, myself. I went to Kindergarten twice, and now I teach it! I entered school the first time at the ripe ole age of 4 because I was turning 5 within a few months of starting school. My mom thought I was ready, until I clung to her leg every morning and screamed and cried and had to be picked up from school repeatedly because I was such an emotional basket case. I had never attended preschool and my mom was a stay-at-home mom, so I had never been away from home. And when she put me on the bus that first time I thought she was sending me to an orphanage never to return home again. It had finally gotten so bad that my teacher, who was extremely pregnant at the time, told my mom very clearly one day, "Keep her home for the rest of the year, and let's try this again next year."

Anyhow, back to Chuck. Chuck had a tendency to miss a lot of school for random reasons that didn't always pertain to sickness. Chuck also had a severe speech impediment and he stuttered, so at times I felt like I needed an interpreter to tell me what he said. One week he had missed school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and finally on Thursday he came skipping in to class at arrival and I said, "Chuck! You're here! Where have you been all my life?!"

Chuck looked at me and stuttered out, "I, I, I was abstinent." (That's Kindergarten speak for absent apparently). Another teacher was walking passed us at that exact moment and I thought he was going to wet himself laughing so hard. :)

The Garden is Life

My husband has a need to plow and toil and plant and pull weeds :) … I love to watch it grow and harvest. Our daughter Ava loves to plant and pick. She is a pea-eater :). Jim and Ava plant rows and rows of peas and Ava picks them one at a time, putting them in her little sand buckets and gives them to her neighbors Pat and Sue and PaPa.

Last year we had the usual vegetables that grow well in our climate here in western PA: green peppers, Hungarian wax banana peppers, jalepenos, peas, zucchini, acorn squash, basil, watermelons, cantelopes, and of course lots and lots of tomatoes. We like to make our own spaghetti sauce, although the year before last we lost 16 quarts of our sauce because we didn’t process the long method. Cutting corners was a huge loss and made us both sick as we dumped each jar of that sauce we worked so hard for.

 

This year we were determined to not make the same mistakes in the processing department. We endured a very dry summer, producing tomatoes that we bought from a man on a back road one day on our way to a picnic, in which he said were heirlooms. The tomatoes were monstrous in size and very complicated and bulbous in their shapes and dense and not juicy. So on my travels to take the children to meet their dad we passed a little farmer’s stand owned by a preacher and his wife who have a bountiful garden. I asked if they had any tomatoes to spare and the lovely older woman grimaced as if to think for a moment until she said she thought she could rummage up "some". I waited all that Saturday for her to call me to come and pick them up and at about 7 p.m. I got a message from a very tired little woman that she picked quite a few and to come get um. 12 bushels of tomatoes were waiting for me on her door step! My husband nearly fainted at the thought of squeezo-ing that many tomatoes. Overly confident in thinking I could give some away I took all of them because I felt so guilty that she had picked and picked all day and could have gone into cardiac arrest, although she is probably in better shape than I am. I was only able to give away 2 bushels so my loving amazing husband and I washed and cored and squeezed 10 blessed bushels of tomatoes in one day. Exhausted, we froze the juice in gallon freezer bags and had to buy a new deep freezer to accommodate the massive gallons of tomato juice. Finally many weeks later we boiled it down into tomato juice to can into spaghetti sauce. 64 quarts and almost a month later and they are all still sealed! Hallelujah!

A Lineman's Wife

Being a lineman’s wife means my husband’s cell phone rings any time, any where and the dispatcher on the other line responds to names such as Donk or Bow. It never fails, if there is a telephone pole anywhere within the vicinity of a road, someone is going to hit it and my husband and all his buddies at work are going to get called out to repair the lines or pole. Linemen, at least the ones I know, are simple, hardworking, and down to earth guys. They tend to drink a lot of beer, chew a lot of tobacco, and use a lot of curse words. Their hands are beat up, their clothes get really dirty and grungy, and they love Sheetz coffee. In fact, I met my husband in a Sheetz (local convenience story chain) and the rest they say is happy history. J

Me, Myself, and I

A day in the life of…..

A farmer’s daughter

A lineman’s wife

An old school educator

An overworked underappreciated public school kindergarten teacher

Mother of three brilliant beautiful little humans

Hunting widow

Want to be hunter

Wife of an incredibly sexy barbaric hardworking intelligent and amazing man

Great neighbor

Harley Rider

Gardener

Canner/Preserver

Loyal friend

Open book

On a mission to become a personal chef

　

　

　
When I grow up I want to be….

All of the above J ….

I am who I am, and I am asking myself, who am I that I could write a “blog” and anyone would actually want to read it??? I am a multifaceted individual with a lot to say about each different facet of my life. My hope is that someone somewhere is going to relate positively to something I have said.



A country girl’s kitchen is what I want to officially name my someday personal chef business… that dream that I carry to not do what I do everyday. Or is it my dream to do what I do every day?

Every day when my eyes open I am that incredibly sexy barbaric hardworking intelligent amazing man’s wife and I am so thankful. Jim, or Conan as I will refer to him as, is my best friend. My drinking buddy. My support system. My encourager. My provider. My dream come true. He is an incredible father. He is simple and kind. He is smart and can fix anything. An amazing hunter. We share the same hobbies like riding motorcycles and 4-wheelers and gardening and canning, hunting and enjoying our children.

　

The children

Caleb is 8. He is such a sweet little boy. He is the best big brother I have ever seen in a child. He is a wonderful reader. He loves shooting his bb gun and riding his bike. He is an easy child to love and raise.

Ava is 5. She is my sweet little dolly. She is creative and giving and oh so smart. She went from being 3 to 13... Ava is the little girl my mother never had. I was a tomboy, A raggamuffin. Ava loves to wear her Christmas best all year round, has had up to 36 barrettes in her hair at once, and is a crafter and baker, both of which my mother is. When Ava says jump, MooMoo, as she calls my mom, asks her how high?

Jake is almost 2. That should say it in a nutshell. He is our Wildman. He is Conan the Barbarian Junior. He too is very smart for his little size, and comical. He is his father’s universe. He looks like him, acts like him, is just like him. On this day one year ago my husband experienced a part of his soul become human form and he is eternally grateful for the gift of a son.

Caleb and Ava are my husband’s step children. They love Jim, and he loves them and cares for them as if they were his own. They call him the “big guy” and think he has Super Man strength. They also think we are the richest people on the planet, which isn’t a true story monetarily. J They have a nice friendship, as well as a familial relationship. He jokes around with them and teaches them how to do things in the yard, woods, and garage. We have a wonderful family. :)

I hope you stay tuned for more adventures from our little neck of the woods :)