is it haunted?

I meant to add this to the last blog post and spaced it...

Remember the clock on the wall in the living room?  Well, I got it on sale at Home depot for $10 - was originally $60 - loved it...brought it home, put a battery in it and admired it.  It stopped at 4:22pm.  Reset it and didn't think much of it until i got up the next morning and it had stopped at 4:22am.  Put a new battery in it since the original was an old one.  Got home from work and it stopped at 4:22pm. Started to worry we might be haunted because during the night Don kept smelling sulfer ..I didn't smell anything but he was dead serious about it.  Reset the stupid cheap clock again adn yep, you guessed it it died at at 4:22 am....have not replaced the battery...

Look close...stopped forever at 4:22

Moved into the bigger apartment.

Microwave was set to military time...I get it but I don't like it so I reset it to regular time.  Next day...get all moved in, and taadaa reset itself to military time!

We decided that 1) makes a great story, 2) don't worry about what time it is....life is too short :)

Get up with the sun and go to bed with the sun....that's how we do it here! Love love love it even if it is haunted :)

I wasn't sure I'd like it here.....

but it turns out, I LOVE it here!  Life is so different here in the south, we're going on our 1 month anniversary here and even though i could do without the humidity, I wouldn't change anything about my life right now ....well 'cept for having my kids with me and grandsons on my lap.
Life moves at a much slower pace here.  I've learned that unless I'm particularly "long on time" I try to not ask the cashiers at the grocery store "how are you today?" because they WILL tell you and they will start at their toes and work their way up to the top of their head (got a bunion on my little piggy and my knee is actin up a bit, my hip hurts some, must be from jumpin on the trampoline with them childs, my hair is attrocious" and they they proceed to tell you about their kin "my son.." it cracks me up because i don't think they're really talking to me, they're just talking to be talkin cause that's what they do here.  Folks like to talk and they'll talk to you about everything under the sun. For hours.  And the folks in line behind you don't seem to mind at all. Nobody is in a hurry here it seems. And while it's been an adjustment for my hyperactive self, I'm adapting just fine and learning to relax.  I can't tell you the last time I slept in..well, yes actually I can...both yesterday and today....slept till 9:00 yesterday and nearly 8:00 today - to some thats not really sleeping in but when you get up at 4am during the week that's like sleeping an extra week.  And when i woke up I wasnt' all panicked because it meant I was going to be running late for whatever it was i had to do because here, i don't have to do anything on the weekends except for what I want to do and I love it. 
Sundays are my favorite.  We sleep in and then get up and have our coffee on the balcony and lounge around and watch tv and read the paper and eat some breakfast and then we get cleaned up and head to the grocery store.  Yep, going to the grocery store is about as exciting as it gets on Sunday because everyone is in church and nothing really opens until at least noon - if then.  There are churches on every corner and several throughout the blocks in between.  We've have a bapitist church on the corner next door to a methodist church across the street from the lutheran church next door to the catholic church next door to the....get the picture?  The Saturday paper has a whole section dedicated to just church adverstisements, and they're all so pretty.  Here's a few in our neighborhood:

Speaking of the paper, I love the paper here.  Sure it's full of all sorts of news - good and bad - but one thing they do is they celebrate their people.  On Sundays, there's an insert called "20 under 40" where they highlight 20 people under 40 y/o that have made some sort of positive impact on the community.  High School football is where it is.  2 weeks ago they had a "city wide pep rally" to kick off the football season, we sadly didn't go because we were out driving around MS, that had about 5000 people there according to the paper - that's 1/3 of Vicksburg residents!!  For a High School football pep rally?? are you kidding me?  no i'm not, there's about 15,000 people here.  Town shuts down for church and football...gotta love that!  Plus in the paper they talk about all ages of folks - from the little kids to the old - someone does something good? it's in the paper e.g. "Billy Marks helped Mrs. Ella Simpson across the street even though he was late for school, way to go Billy!" kind of stuff.    The wedding announcements are wonderful....quarter of the page for each one and colored pictures...love those. 

We sit out on the deck of our apartment in the mornings on the weekend and the evenings during the week and folks will walk by and just stop and talk or drive by and wave...it's so different here.  Maybe it's not so much different here as it is that I'm different. hmm.  I'm not nearly as stressed or hurried as I was in Washington. I don't worry about trivial things like I did there.  I'm not all wrapped up in anyone's business but my own because I don't have to be.  I love that Don and I have been able to work through our differences because I love him and Ive rediscovered him in a way I thought was long gone...we sit and talk for hours about nothing...we make fun of each other's accents...we are stronger now than we've ever been and we're settling into our new life just fine thank ya.

So anyway, back on track.. as I said, runnin to the Krogers on Sunday is the highlight of the day. Groceries are comparable...somethings are more expensive some less. Things that cost more here are potatoes (which kills me coming from the potato capital of the world), milk, cherries ("frum the nathwest sugar, theys cholesterol free" said the lady at Walmart who was giving out samples -- I had to laugh and thought to myself, "I've had the real thing, fresh from the trees, not going to buy them here - especially at 5.89/pound!. Most fruits/veggies are cheaper here though -- watermellon, cantelope, strawberries (OMG to die for!). Milk is $2.39 for 1/2 gallon and we paid $3.29/gallon for gas yesterday and big beef steak tomatoes are only .49/pound. Booze is cheap here too - gallon of Jack Daniels goes for about $30-35 depending on where you shop, beer is about $10/12 pack.  I love going to the grocery store here - so many different things than what I'm used to seeing in the store!  like what? well like gallon jars of pickled pigs feet - now, I know that they sell them in Washington but not like here...quail eggs...ewwww....you can even buy quail and squirrel (yes, I said Squirrel!!  it's open season all year long here! but you have to ask for it special) in the meat department of some stores...eww again lol....hog jaws..don't really want to know how to cook that....salad isn't really a staple like it was in washington because these folks have "greens" and I have found I LOVE them too!  I had a wilted lettuce salad for lunch the other day and all I can say is OMG it was awesome!  back home we could order fish like salmon cause it was so fresh but here it's not so much - the fish here to buy are like crappie, trout and my favorite? catfish..spicy grilled? yes please!  But if you don't feel like cookin then Krogers got ya covered and come Sunday after church people will wait in line for an hour to get some of Kroger's chicken...seriously you can't get anywhere near the deli on Sunday afternoon and the other cool thing about shopping on Sunday afternoon is you get to see all the church folks dressed up and let me tell you...them folks dress to the nines!

Can't figure out how to get pic to flip and save - ut all those people?  yep...in line for Chicken at the
Krogers! there's like 30 people in line!

So then I got to wonderin...where do all those folks go with their chicken?  well our Sunday afternoon led me to that answer....

These people had serious food going on today!  they had crockpots and bbq'ers and smokers and I told
Don we needed to stop and be polite and we'd probably be invited for the best food yet!

So the other thing we do on Sundays is take random drives...pick a road and take it...we find all sorts of cool places and sometimes? sometimes we just make a big ol circle and land right where we started.  I was worried about learning my away around and have figured out that if I get lost head for the freeway or just keep driving and eventually I'll get back where I need to be.

Here's some of the pics from today's drive along with some misc pics of our hometown:

House across the street from us...it's for sale...$599k... see more here
http://www.coldwellbanker.com/property?propertyId=145797893&mode=detail&brandType=CB

Love love love the street lights here...my village came to life! lol

Our living room....walls are concrete...have to use velcro tabs
to keep pictures on them lol...love the hardwood floors and chandeliers.....take note of the clock on the wall...have a story to follow on this

Lizard getting his "tude" on...they bounce their heads up and down, stop, and blow their chins up like this
as a self-defense mode

HOLLY!  in our courtyard...beautiful!

Took this to show the cobblestone streets downtown

Driving downtown

One of the many many antebelum mansions here - this one was built in 1802
Ante-before and Bellum-before the war (that was learn something new everyday thing today lol)

Antebellum home - built in 1807 - it's for sale too but I don't know the price

Hill down to the river

Hill up from the river

Muddy Mississippi River...so pretty...beach on the other side is Lousianna

Bridge between Mississipp and Louisianna

One of the many memorial marker sites

Waffle house (duh)...YUM for CHEAP!

Liquor Store - you can get your car washed while you shop and the ol boy washes it by hand!

Oh look! another lizard!!!

The road that "Samantha" the GPS girl insisted we take...yea, we turned around lol

Dock from which we were fishing - Natchez state park - absolutely beautiful

Trying to catch the big fish we kept seeing jump - didn't happen lol

no...haven't ventured in yet....but think about it...shoppin and BBQ all in one place? Man I love it here!

Real flame in the lantern

Don playing with the resident cat

Old pipe organ at one of the churches at the military park

OLD Fire truck

Welcome center at the military park

Courthouse in Port Gibson...about 40 miles from here...built in 1817...GORGEOUS

This is the old Vicksburg Court house - now its a museum and you could spend all day and not see everything

and that my friends is the end of todays blog...taken me practically all day to do this because I had to go get pictures of some of the stuff I was gonna tell you about it..

Love ya all!!!!

Screams in the night....

So yesterday it was muggy here. I know truely hard to believe.  But really.  It was.  We've completely switched our shower routines to take showers at night (and sometimes in the morning and/or in the middle of the day) for the most part.  It just makes you sleep better cause there's nothing worst than going to bed and sticking to each other without any effort involved (grin).   So anyway, I take my shower at night before I go to bed and then in the morning if i don't take another one, I get my hair wet in the sink (because my hair HATES the south) so I can style it (haha that is also know as shelacking it and yea, I probably spelled it wrong).

So like I said, yesterday was muggy here ...very muggy...and so I took my shower before bed and was looking forward to getting some good zzz's.  Boy was I wrong.  I really struggled to fall asleep and then when I did i fell into a very bizare dream involving snow that wasn't snow, my cousin Tracey who in my dream worked in a green room - everything in the room was green - desk, chair, walls, garbage can, computer, filing cabinet, carpet, everything! and her boss looked like Madge Simpson only her neck wasn't a neck like we know them but instead it was about 4 feet long and made of KINNEX blocks and she could sit in her office and put her head into Traceys from around the corner and then when we found out that that snow wasn't snow we had to go to a grand assembly where the 'leader' searching for the secret "one" and we took him presents- mine was a Woody doll from Toy Story and turns out that I was the secret "one" and given magical powers.  Then I woke up.  I looked at the clock and realized I'd only been out for about an hour.  Maybe.
So I got up to get a drink of water and I flipped on the light in the kitchen went to the fridge and grabbed a water bottle turned back around to the counter and saw something with 4 legs and a long tail scale the wall jump onto the toaster like he had suction cups on his feet and then he disappeared and i freaked out!  I stood in the kitchen and yelled "DONALD JOHNSON THERE IS A LIZARRRRD IN MYYYY KITCHEN" and he came running in to see what the heck was going on.  He moved the toaster and a little tiny tiny version of the one I'd seen came running out, jumped over a spoon that was sitting on the counter and made a beeline for the sink.  At this point I'm practically hyperventilating and trying to convince Don that that was not the one I saw but an additional one.  He's all lovely dovey coochi coo with it cause it was just a baby, couldn't be more than a few days old if that, it didnt' even have any color.  So now, I'm standing in the dining room so i can make a quick get-a-way if needed but I didn't need to.  I heard the water running and Don came out of the kitchen and told me the baby went down the drain and was gone.

I believed him.

I tossed and turned all night, or at least it felt like that's what I was doing so about 3:30 (normally get up at 4) I finally gave up and just got out of bed.  I turned the light on in the kitchen before I actually went into the kitchen and thought the coast was clear and started the coffee pot, grabbed a towel from the bathroom and went back in to get my hair wet.  As i found myself standing above the sink I saw it!  This little bastard came flying out of nowhere - not exactly, it came up from the sink drain - and I freaked again but realized it was now about 3:40 am and I had to be quiet so I didn't wake Don or the neighbrs up.  So now Im peeking over the edge of the sink and he's climbing up the side so I flipped on the water, grabbed and filled up my coffee and I tried to wash him down the drain...and what did he do? jumped to the other side of the sink.  So I tried again and this time he jumped across to the other side and this time appeared to be coming out.  So I grabbed a glass and a papertowel and tried to get the glass the over the top of him so I could slide the cup up the side and top it off with the papertowel wiht my intention being to release it outside. but the moved LOL and I dropped the glass and ran into the bedroom where I whispered Don's name until he *finally* answered and I explained my predictament and begged him for his help.  He comes all butt as* naked into the kitchen pretending the light wasn't killing his eyes, took the cup sweeped the little bastard up, covered the top with a paper towel and actually tried to had it to me.  FAT CHANCE!  and he looked at me then down at himself and then at the lizard and then at me, so i grabbled the towel i had planned on using for my shower wrapped it around his waist and followed him to the front door holding the towel in place the whole way cause I wasn't about to take that glass from him, I opened the door leading out to the courtyard and held the towel a little tighter as he tried to get the lizard out of the glass. Finally he succeeded and we made it back into the house without any charges of indecent exposure.  He rolled his eyes at me, handed me the glass and headed back to bed. 

So you know how sometimes something in your subconscious comes out at the weirdest times? Well mine did that this morning and it stems from seeing advertisments for the new Final Destination moive and as I was waiting for about about 5 gallons of water to run down the drain just in case the lizard cousins were lying in wait and my subconscious kicked in and I had this vision of one of them climbing out of the drain as I have my head under the faucet, and either slimming itself into my mouth or into my sinus and me chocking on it or maybe getting into my ear and sucking my brain out and there I'd be stuck dead right there until the neighbors responded to the flood of water only that would make it even longer before someone found me because we live on the bottom floor so nobody would notice the water....so I shut the water off and used my spray bottle...I wasn't about to try the shower...it's got an even bigger drain!

Lizzzaaard in miiiiiii sink!

States in 3 weeks:

Washington
Oregon
Idaho
Utah
Wyoming
Nebraska
Kansas
Missouri
Illinois
Kentucky
Tennessee
Alabama
Mississipi
Louisiana

and as you can see the southern states out number the northwestern states (funny at work they all know me as "the lady from the northwest" and make fun of my northwest accent - which has all been completely dis-a-peir'd - one of my favorite pastimes lately is trying to understand what my husband is saying, we've both picked up the southern accent pretty quickly..he speaks real slow and I speak real fast and we fit in just perfectly and it's funny because I called a little gal at the bank the otha day and she laughed at me and said "you've only been there 3 weeks" and I said "Crystal..I knooooow! it's just plumb crazee gurl!" lol and anyway back to my point...13 states....the last 5 are definetely "southern" states and I have so far managed to avoid Okra even though they have it everywhere even at McDonalds!  Speaking of McDonalds, they serve biscuits and gravy:

and this is how they entertain kids - fah too haut to play outside:

Don and I went to dinner at our favoirite "go to" place - the Craka Berrel - for dinner the other night and we were joined by a new co-worker who had the audacity to sit down and order okra as one of his side dishes - I told him I was considering making him sit at another table for ordering that shit at mine and wuz attacked by him and the waitress and well...we might have to wear disguises next tahm we try and go in there.  I will not give in. 

Now, I waited to dern long to make a decent blaug post so I'm gonna just toss out the random pictures I took on tha trip down here that wernt posted on Facebook and we'll go frum theah...these are in no particular orda ...

The arches of St. Louis - on our way into Illinois to see my Uncle Bob and Aunt Ann and family

"Sic em on a chicken" (Zac Brown) - never in my life had I seen a chicken bus! Feathers flyin evowhere

Don taking the "train wreck" challenge in a bar/grill in Wyoming-3 pound burger with Ham, Bacon, Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato, onion on a sour dough bread bun, and steak fries -- the challenge? Eat it all in 45 minutes and it's free - he lost...cost us $24 but it was so worth watching him and laughing at him trying to get it all down - he ate just a little over 1/2.

The road I drive to work...it's b-e-a-utiful but man is it eva dahk out thar in the mornins!

Fried bologna sandwichs - my daddy would have loved this!

This was it...all we took with us....crazeee.  liberating.  I love it!

Gabe watering the bushes oat grandma's one last time LOL

Kaden had a great time playing in the dirt before we left!

Hail storm in Wyoming...this is what made it inside our motel room door

Hail ball from storm in Wyoming

"McStop"

My little cousin -Cambria - she's my cousins daughter daughter

My family in Ilinois

Don and Cambria - it was love at 1st sight for both of them!

PIGGLY WIGGLY - funny, it wasn't as amazing as I remembered it being when I got my 1st bike at the one in Kent WA

A house neare the plant where I work....actually looks pretty red-neckish but it's brilliant considering the flooding that happens here --- so I'm told --- I'm praying this is gonna be a no-flood year lol - we'll be safe where we live and well..so will these folks lol

Lightener = Creamer "back home" - any idea how weird it is to say that??

These 2 pictures are of a major thunder/lightening/rain storm taken from the balcony of our apartment

This is the street leading to our apartment

My phone at work - seriously....bwahaha!  craxcks me up!

Courtyard of our apartment bldg - the 1 br we started in is at the top right...our 2 br now is on
the bottom left - can't see it from here

 So I waited way to long in between posts - too many things to write about and i just can't seem to finish a post so now i got something on here I can release the pressure valve and break it all down.

I just want to say that I love it here!  I miss my kids/grandkids/family but honestly I talk to them more now than I did when I lived there and while I would give ANYTHING to hold those grandbabies in my arms I have no regrets in moving across county and I won't look back.  It's amazing how freeing selling pretty much everything we own really is - I missed stuff for a few days but realized that I didn't really need all that crap...we live pretty simple and I love it.

I love that when we sit out on the balcony in the evening drinking our ice tea that people actually SAY hello - out loud - and those in cars passing down our street wave to us...and that we know all of our neighbors by name - I lived in the last house in West Richland and I couldn't tell you any of my neighbors names which makes me very sad because something I'm learning here as I watch the people and listen to them and adapt to the culture is that the world could take lessons from the folks in the south...if you don't have something nice to say ..shut the front door!  if you have something nice to say c'mon in!" I've only met 2 rude people since we've got here - one of them i found out later was grumpy because she is diabetic and needed to eat...the other? well I think her bun was just tooo tight for her own good!

I write more regularly because everyday here is a new lesson and I think y'all are smart enough to learn from them.

Love to all!