Winter Forecast

This little solid black woolly worm was crawling across my porch and I suddenly remembered what I've often heard from southerners around these parts. They say that if you see a solid black woolly worm that you are in for a cold snowy winter.

Well, there you have it...the weather forecast for this winter. I wonder if he's as accurate as that groundhog from Philadelphia?

Black Bears

Not me, but some other people saw a black bear wandering just 500 yards from our house this past week. The bears have been here in the college forests and in the surrounding mountainous wooded areas for some time now, but 500 yards is just too close for comfort. I knew that they would be seen here sooner or later, but I just hope they don't take a liking to cats as a snack or for supper. They've been around here for about 10 years and only on occasion do they come out in public. We only have about one bear sighting a year or so that's all I hear about. They're still very shy and stay away from humans and the one thing we do know is not to feed them so they'll stay wild. I think they've migrated up from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. We still have lots of forested unsettled land here where they can hide and roam easily without detection and to this day I've never even run into one and it's not because we don't go into the wilderness because we do.

Sharon's many faces

Woke up this morning to the sounds of light rain, but by now it has stopped and the sun is now shining. The weatherman said that we should expect light rain today and tomorrow. What's nice is that the temperature will only drop slightly and if feels pretty nice outside right now.

I spent the afternoon with Sharon yesterday and also about an hour with Megan during her meal break from the bank where she works. We had a nice visit and did a little shopping for some pants and shirts.

About right now Sharon should be in orientation for her new job. I hope she likes it. She'll be working full time in the electronics section of one of our local stores during the holiday season and all of us who get our haircare from Sharon won't have to worry about finding someone new because she's not giving that up, just adding another job to her already busy schedule which also includes being the Youth Minister of her church.

Air Supply - Making Love Out of Nothing at All

Lyrics

I know just how to whisper
And I know just how to cry
I know just where to find the answers
And I know just how to lie
I know just how to fake it
And I know just how to scheme
I know just when to face the truth
And then I know just when to dream

And I know just where to touch you
And I know just what to prove
I know when to pull you closer
And I know when to let you loose
And I know the night is fading
And I know the time’s gonna fly
And I’m never gonna tell you everything I’ve got to tell you
But I know I’ve got to give it a try

And I know the roads to riches
And I know the ways to fame
I know all the rules
And then I know how to break them
And I always know the name of the game

But I don’t know how to leave you
And I’ll never let you fall
And I don’t know how you do it
Making love out of nothing at all

Making love… Out of nothing at all
Making love… Out of nothing at all
Making love…
Out of nothing at all

Making love… Out of nothing at all
Making love… Out of nothing at all
Making love… Out of nothing at all

Every time I see you all the rays of the sun are streaming through the waves in your hair
And every star in the sky is taking aim at your eyes like a spotlight
The beating of my heart is a drum and it’s lost and it’s looking for a rhythm like you
You can take the darkness from the pit of the night
And turn into a beacon burning endlessly bright
I’ve got to follow it, cause everything I know, well it’s nothing till I give it to you

I can make the run or stumble
I can make the final block
And I can make every tackle at the sound of the whistle
I can make all the stadiums rock

I can make tonight forever
Or I can make it disappear by the dawn
And I can make you every promise that has ever been made
And I can make all your demons be gone

But I’m never gonna make it without you
Do you really want to see me crawl
And I’m never gonna make it like you do
Making love out of nothing at all

Making love… Out of nothing at all
Making love… Out of nothing at all
Making love…
Out of nothing at all

Making love… Out of nothing at all
Making love… Out of nothing at all
Making love… Out of nothing at all
(Repeat)

Being Spontaneous, getting creeped out, or creeping someone else out???

While Jimmy & I were on our trip to California & Arizona this summer, my daughter Suzanne called and wished us a Happy Anniversary and told us to look in the glove compartment of our car and pull out the blue envelope, so we did and in the envelope, along with a beautiful card was a gift card for Red Lobster. We never used it and today while Jimmy's daughter Sandie and her husband Glen were here, Glen suddenly blurted out, "Does anyone want to go to Red Lobster right now? Talking about those crawdads made me think of sea food."
Of course the rest of us all in unison yelled out, "YES!"
I bet it didn't take us 2 minutes to put the cats out, lock the house, go to the bathroom, grab our purses and leave the driveway. I tell you, we can be quick when it comes to food. Sandie had a gift card and we had a gift card so our meals turned out to be practically free.

I love being spontaneous like that, it's really much more fun than planning it out ahead of time. We went as we were and if it had been planned out I would still be thinking about which outfit I should wear and was it going to be cold and will this coat match these pants and so forth.

After we ate Glen however did make the mistake of asking us, out of politeness, if there was any place else that we wanted to go before we started for home so I said, how about Lowes? So we stopped at Lowes and bought some bamboo shades for the cats to keep the snow & rain off of them & their new heated cat blanket. Then Glen decided that they would stop at Belk's way across town and check on a GPS that was on sale and I told them that I would like to wait in the truck so that I could make some phone calls while I had cell phone service...unfortunately I wasn't able to reach who I wanted to talk to. Oh well...

But while sitting in the truck talking to my daughter an older, heavy set man gave me the creeps. I was sitting in the front passenger seat with the window down and he was standing very still just out of eyesight near the back door of the truck on my side...a baby step back and he would have been leaning on the door. I don't know how long he had been there but you know how you can get that creepy kind of feeling like someone is watching you? Well, I finally just slightly leaned forward and caught his image in the side mirror standing very still next to the door behind me just out of sight. I kept talking to my daughter watching him, but I couldn't see his head, just a small portion of his body and he wasn't moving at all. I didn't want him to know that I had seen him and he was standing there strangely still listening to us talk. I was hoping he'd go away and at that point I wasn't about to hang up the phone so I just kept talking until I decided to just take my chances and turned around and looked him straight in the eye and with that he moved off into the middle of the empty lane next to me and pretended like he was looking for his car with his car remote in his hand. He wasn't a bit still now as he pretended to look and search for his car but always staying in the empty lane next to me, never moving on. That's when I told my daughter what was going on and described him to her and after about 1-2 more minutes he finally found his truck. It was parked straight in front of him and me, our truck bumpers just three feet apart. I felt like I just missed a close call from some sort of deranged man. I know that I'm no spring chicken but neither was he and boy did he creep me out.

Now that I am safely home I'm thinking that I might have over reacted and misunderstood the older gentleman. He might have been deaf and had one of those senior moments and was really searching for his truck when I suddenly stuck my head out the window and scared the crap out of him. After all I was purposely being very still and he might not have seen me when he stopped to look for his truck.

That just goes to show you that you can't always judge what's really going on even if you are involved in the goings on.

It's finally Friday....

Yes, it's finally Friday and I can't wait until this day is finally over and I have my baby's smiling face back. I'll have to be sure to leave my gun at home so that I don't get tempted to shoot the messenger today if he doesn't give us good news. Those that know me well know that I would never shoot anyone and that was just a figure of speech....just wanted to get that straight.

Other than having this appointment this afternoon it looks like it's shaping up to be a beautiful day outside. We haven't had any rain in a few days, maybe a whole week (I haven't been counting), but I don't even see a cloud in the sky, just lots of beautiful sunshine. If you just look at some of the green/yellow/tan leaves left on the trees with the sunshine and a slight breeze flowing through them it seems like no one could possibly give you any bad news today, it's just too pretty.


UPDATE: We're back home from Jimmy's appointment and I should have known that the news for today, Friday the 13th would not be good. These are the Pathology results from the Rt. Thyroidectomy: Minimally invasive follicular carcinoma with capsular invasion. The lesion extends to the inked surgical margin.

Jimmy will have to go back and have the left side of his thyroid removed, but at the moment we don't have a surgery date. He's healing up really well from his first surgery, but the surgeon said that didn't matter at this point because they are going back in. Jimmy is very happy that the cancer can be removed so easily but he laughs that he is running out of body parts that he can do without.