A Prairie View

Getting On Schedule

Its been a long day - but I’m sure will continue to be a long week as well. Just as last week was. We have soooo much paperwork that needs to be caught up. Ethan was at camp last week, so we worked until 6 & 7:00 each evening. PLUS, I worked all day Saturday. We had a birthday part to attend yesterday, so we didn’t work then; but today I stayed until 6:00. We are chipping away — since David worked with me Saturday, he was able to get the driver’s paperwork checked then instead of today … or Tuesday, like he has been doing lately. So, I was able to start on the billing as soon as I got out there, instead of late afternoon or the next day.

I’m actually on schedule for a change, which I hope makes a difference come the end of the week. Those weeks that he didn’t get the billing checked until late afternoon or Tuesday, it would be Thursday before I could make any kind of deposit and do the cash receipting, and then Friday work on the IFTA report, or check expenses. But the IFTA report (at least my part of it) is done for the quarter, and I have a full quarter to get caught up and stay caught up before the next one is due. We have had some really good weeks, with extra loads and such, so its been a hectic time. I’m hoping it will slow down just a bit, plus working these extra hours will make a difference.

Trick My Truck

David doesn’t watch much TV, but he does have a few “favorites” that he tries not to miss. Fortunately, some of them are on later in the evening, so he doesn’t miss them very often. One such show is “Trick My Truck”. Being a former-truck driver/now dispatcher, its not surprising that he likes this show. Its amazing what a little imagination, an airbrush, and a group of talented guys can do to a truck. Course, David always questions just how “workable” the trucks are after they leave the shop? And also, if the drivers didn’t take real good care of them when they were in bad shade, do they take better care of the tricked out truck? Just a thought. Nonetheless, he still likes to see what all the crome-shop mofia can do and I’m sure, even though he won’t ever express it outloud, he probably wishes for a truck just like what they do each week.

Looking Up To Him

Its amazing how, being around a group of your peers makes you start taking more time with your appearance. Ethan works and is around the public alot, and he does shower daily, and wears clean clothes, and deoradant. Brushes his teeth. You know. The basics. Yesterday, when he was getting ready for camp, we hit the store for a few more essentials. He decided maybe he needed to get some acne treatment cream, and some smelly shampoo. And shaving cream. He’s still at that stage where he doesn’t need to shave every day. But. He does need to save occasionally. Something tells me he will probably shave every day while he’s at camp. Because he’s the “big dog” at camp now — he’s worked his way up, from 1st grade til now. He’s almost a man, and, its important those “little squirts” — you know, the freshman and sophmores, look up to him. Course, at 6′ tall, EVERYONE looks up to him. But, you know what I mean.

He may be an “almost man”, but he’s still my little boy, and always will be. *sniff. He’s only been gone one day, and I already miss him. What am I going to do next year when he goes away for more than just a week???

Getting Our Name Out There

We see alot of free promotional products come in through the mail. We have seen several different kinds of pens, and even ordered some for the drivers to use at the trucking company. We got a pocket calendar in the other day, and both David and I think we should order some for the driver’s next year. However, the boss thinks they are too small, and thus, doesn’t want to order them. So, unless something changes between now and the end of the year, we probably won’t order them. The main difference I can see between the pens and the calendars, is that that pens can be “left” at different places to get out name out there. The calendars, though, would be a personal item that the guys would want to hang on to and use. And that doesn’t really get our name out there as well. And that, of course, is the whole point of getting promotional products.

Bells & Whistles

I have had several different cellphones along the way, but one constant has been — I have to have the “bells & whistles”. I want to be able to have a variety of ringtones to choose from. And not just any ringtone. But rather a truetone ringtone. I like standing out from the crowd when my cell phone rings. Don’t you just hate it when a cell phone rings, and half a dozen people grab for their phone, thinking it is theirs. Not me. You will be hard pressed to find someone else thinking they should answer their phone when the song “Jesus Take The Wheel” starts playing. I love being able to organize my phone to where when “The Entertainer” starts playing, I know its Ethan. And “Eight Days A Week” is David. Before I got my Blackberry, my old phone had a ringtone app, and I was always paying to get the different ringtones. I didn’t pay enough attention to checking out my options. I could have gone to an online company like Ringtonefactory.com had gotten free ringtones from them. But, no, I just continued to shell out my bucks for the apps.

I hope I will learn from that. I have options. Free options. I think I will take the time this weekend to see what all Ringtonefactory.com has to offer, and get up to speed with not spending so much money!

Green Belt Testing

Tomorrow, our grandson will be testing for Green Belt in his Karate classes. We will be video taping it. Well, David or Ethan will be video taping it. I’ll capture what I can on my camera. But my DIL is wanting us to video tape it because she wants a copy of it. We have all these tapes of various things, but we haven’t done much more than record on the tape with them. Because she is wanting a copy of it, and she doesn’t have a camcorder, I’m thinking we will need to get a HDMI cord to be able to transfer the tape to a CD, going through the computer. Well, I assume thats what you do. It makes sense. And there was one project Ethan did for school that he used our video recorder, and then transfered it to a CD to be able to turn it in for the assignment. So, maybe we already have what we need. That would be good. Will just need to find the time then to get it transfered over for her. She wants a complete record of this, all the way through, with all the different belts he’ll achieve. Sounds like a good plan to me!

Getting Ahead

It feels good to be in a position to go to the bank, week after week, to make our house payment. There was a time in our lives that I would trip myself and if it had continued, we probably would have been looking for foreclosure help. I made stupid choices and stupid decisions. But, David and I have finally worked out a financial plan, that works for both of us, and we are doing just fine. Not great. But our bills are paid and we have a little bit of money in the bank. We aren’t at the point if something major happens, we would be able to breeze through it. We would struggle and very possibly go under. But, for the day to day month to month stuff, we are doing fine, and slowly getting ahead of the game. And that… is many steps ahead of where we used to be.

Lots Of Stuff

I know my mom would probably be upset with me, but she died so suddenly, and we had so many decision to make in a short amount of time, including packing up all of her earthly belongings. I loved her dearly, but she was a packrat. She saved everything. It would have taken a mover NYC style to do what David did in that short amount of time. I was no help at all. I couldn’t go to her apartment without emotionally falling apart. He boxed up everything. He had a huge yard sale, and sold alot of it. I was able to go through and get the stuff that I knew I wanted to keep. What didn’t sell at the yard sale, we still have. I am still sorting through, and it will probably still take me years, the rate I am going. I hate to think what David will do if I die first. I’m an awful lot like my mom. Lots of stuff. But besides MY stuff, we have my mom’s stuff. And my aunt’s stuff. Lots. Of. Stuff.Lo

Making Decisions

Ethan had a hard decision to make last night. Well, actually, he didn’t. The decision was somewhat made for him because of the activities he has been and still is involved in (Barbershop chorus and then choir in High School). The Chorus came down from Topeka last night for a performance, and 1/2 the proceeds of their show was going to presented to the HS choir. So. He had to be there.

But. He also really really wanted to be up at the High School as well. Every year, a traveling play company comes to our town. They audition kids of all ages on Monday, start practice, and practice all week long. They give 2 performances on Saturday. Ethan has been involved with this every year since he was little. This company is a professional company, complete with costumes, scripts — the words. One year, Ethan’s costume had ostrich feathers in the hat. Even though he had to work this week and couldn’t be a part of it, he wanted to go see one of the performancs. But, because we didn’t get home from Topeka until after 3:00, he didn’t get to see the afternoon performance. And then last night, he had to attend the Barbershop chorus performance. He wasn’t happy. But that part of life. Sometimes, you have to make decisions, some that you don’t like. But you have to look at the big picture, and not always choose what you want, but what will work for everyone. It was best that he was were he was last night.

A Getaway Gift

I take a lot of pictures, and I do like my camera. But at Christmas time, my sister-in-law got a Canon camera for Christmas, and after listening to her what all it did, plus reading through the instruction booklet that came with it, this is definately one thing on my “wish list” of things. Its not as compact as the camera that I carry in my purse all the time, but her camera took pictures that almost look like they were taken by professionals. Course, it cost just a bit more than what my camera cost, which is why I haven’t gotten one yet. But,as fast as this year seems to be rolling by, this would be a good thing to put on MY Christmas list. Or, if we actually get away like we have talked about for our 25th wedding anniversary, getting a new camera for that would be perfect as well.

Protect Baby, Protect Mom

I, like millions of others, has listened to the news, and about stem cell research. The pros and the cons. Why we should do it. Why we shouldn’t. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand it all. But, because the attention of a little boy was brought to us by a family member of his, who did a benefit bike ride to help raise funds to help with medical expenses, I do understand it a little bit more. His uncle, who did the benefit ride, told us about the importance of the saving the mom’s umbilical cord blood stem cells. This family was not familar with companies like Cryo-Cell Innovative Stem Cell Solutions , when little Granton was born. And yet, a few short months after his birth, it has become the center of their world. But, he has had a blood stem cell transplant, and and has been successful so far. They had discovered he had no immune system. But now, with the transplant, things are turning around, and just a couple days ago, they found a few commando white blood cells, also known as Natural Killer Cells. This is a wonderful thing.

If you are pregnant, or know someone that is pregnant, a product like Cryo-Cell’s “Protect Baby, Protect Mom” could very well be a gift of life. The stem cells are saved, available to your child, or someone in your immediate family if and when a health crisis comes up that they would be required. There is a very good chance they will be a match. Otherwise, like other transplant programs, your child, or others in your family would be put on a waiting list, and maybe somewhere along the line, there will be a match. A product like Cryo-Cell Innovative Stem Cell Solutions takes the the guessing — and waiting game — out of long and tedious process.

Enjoying The Day

I really ennoyed yesterday.  It took a little bit of extra work on David’s part to make it happen, but I am so glad that he did.  Usually, on Saturday mornings, he has to be at the office to write paychecks for the all the drivers.  But, on those rare occasions that he knows he can’t be there, he calls all of his drivers on Friday, and tells them he needs their numbers, and he writes their checks, and then our boss is up bright and early on Saturday to hand out the checks to them and answer any questions or problems that might have come up.  Yesterday was one of those days.   Once a month, there is a WLS seminar in Topeka.  Its an informational seminar, to learn more about the surgery, what it is, what to expect, etc.   Since this is something I am considering, and because it will be a huge financial committment, David needs to be (and wants to be) to walk this journey every step of the way with me.  Ethan will play an important part in it as well, and it turned out he didn’t have to work, so he went with us.   A nice family day.   He took notes, and I’m sure retained more of the information that we did.  But we did get alot of informational handouts and booklets, etc, so that will help to as we go over all the material and decide just what it is I will do.

After the seminar, we ate lunch.  They went to Walmart and I went to Target.  We were home by 3:30 and David went to the office to work on something.  Jason and April and the kids came over, so talked with them for quite a while.  Quite a full day.  But enjoyable.

Today I have the house all to myself.  I have alot, though, that I would like to do, need to do, so no afternoon naps for me.  Gotta keep moving.

Finding It Locally

Living in the age of the internet, “not knowing” something is not an acceptable excuse. What ever it is you need to know, it can be found on the internet. Whether it is something local, or national, or even global. Local.com is a local search engine. I very often go to the local yellowpages in our phone book to find a company that I’m not familiar with for a product or service or even a local restaurants I’m looking for. My husband goes to the internet yellowpages — he has learned that when he needs to find a truck repair shop, or a tire shop, very often if he locates a convenience store (every town has one), whoever answers the phone is usually pretty friendly and helpful and he is able to find the “local” information that way.

Seems to me though, there has to be an easier way. Local.com is more than just online yellowpages. It is a hybrid of several different online sites — Citysearch.com, Yelp.com, Yellowpages.com, and Superpages.com By partnering with them, it allows me, as the user, to visit one site to view the contents from all the other sites. Basically, a one store shop for finding local businesses, service, accurate driving directions, or even business contact information and hours.

This does seem like a better way than depending on the mood and helpfulness of a convenience store worker!

Disappearing Pens

I need to remember to grab my Papermate pens when I head for work. I am really picky about the pens I use, and for some reason they seem to disappear at work. But that doesn’t stop me from taking them to work. I do keep some of them hidden and those usually stay safe. We did order some personalized pens with our church’s name and address on them awhile back, so the rate at which MY pens disappear has slowed down. Whats funny though, is there are some pens in my pen holder cup that have been there forever. I don’t like they way they write, but I keep them in there, for other people to use. Apparently, other people think the same thing I do, because they don’t get used. Thank goodness pens are fairly cheap, and I don’t mind buying them.

In The World Of Crock Pots

Working 40 hours a week, I very often come home from work and don’t want to fix supper. We end up eating out, which, once in awhile is fine, but the way we do it, it adds up quickly. I have checked websites that focus on crock pots, looking for recipes that are simple (how much simplier can you get than throwing something in a crock pot and letting it cook all day?), and something my family will eat.

You would think all crock pots would be the same. But they aren’t. Before buying one, you need to think through what it is you want from your crock pot, if it will be just for meats, or will you be doing alot of soups. Do you have a big family, and is it just you and your family. I didn’t realize crock pots came in different sizes, but they do. If you aren’t feeding an army, then don’t cook for an army. Fix just enough for you and your hubby. And yet, with the rising cost of food, and no relief in sight, then it also makes sense to fix for an army, even though its just the two of you, and freeze what you don’t eat. In that case, buying the large size crock pot makes sense, and will be cost effective in the long run.

Storm Free

We finally got through a Thursday without a storm. Ethan usually works most Thursday eveings, and he and the manager joke about it being “Thursday again”. At first, I didn’t think a whole lot about it. But then on the news, they expounded on it as well — that it has stormed every Thursday except for one since April. But, we actually got through another one yesterday — no storm. AND, its 4th of July week — that usually almost guarantees some kind of bad storm. I remember this, because David’s brother has a firework stand, and we always go out and help him secure things. But, all in all, its been a pretty quiet, storm free week! As much rain and and the number of storms we’ve been having, I’m really surprised!