Juel's Journal

Born to be Wild!

You go, Miss Beulah!

My Horoscope for Today

Giving up on your dreams is not an option at this stage of the game. Whatever setback may have occurred, it doesn't mean that your goals and ambitions are kaput. What it actually signifies is that your path may have a few more twists and turns than you originally expected. So no matter what, hang onto your high hopes, because they haven't been dashed -- they're just behind a curtain, doing a quick costume change.

Isn't that ducky? Just what makes that lil ol' ant think he can move that rubbertree plant...

Here Birdy!

Wierd Dream

Night before last I kept having this odd dream. In it I was walking down a long alley. It was like I was watching myself from above. Something was urging me to go down it, and into this warehouse to the left of the alley. This something was telling me that the missing gal in Aruba was there in that warehouse. But when I'd go inside, I found the warehouse totally empty. I'd wake up, mumble, 'If you're trying to show me where she is, you have to do better than blasted riddles, cuz I'm dense.' Then I'd go back to sleep and dream it again. That went on no less than a half dozen times. I doubt they even have warehouses there. What an odd dream.

Manchester Cemeteries

Stan and I went to Manchester for the 2nd time last week looking for cemeteries there. He was driving - he's famous for his 'Sunday Driving' - the guy will do 25MPH on 75E - so I figured I'd have time to look for the cemeteries at that nice slow pace of his. I saw nothing! Not one cemetery.
All at once... I saw a sign!

"Stan! Follow that Hearse!"

He shot me a look and I told him that it was a funeral, and would lead us to a cemetery.. I told him it was a sign from above. *laughs* He shook his head at me like a billy goat and said, hell I've heard of ambulance chasers but this takes the cake.

I wasn't worried that the Hearse would get away from us.. even at Stan's pace, because it's a small town, 2 lanes, and it was a FUNERAL, so I was confident that it would lead us to a cemetery. I told Stan we'd not stop and go in until the services were over, but we could just follow the Hearse to the cemetery so we'd know where it was.

He agreed and for the first 5 minutes, we had the procession in sight. All of a sudden, it just disappeared. Hearse, the cars that were following it.. (about 12 in all) .. all of 'em. Just gone.

Now it was my turn to shake my head like a billy goat.

"Now see? We're looking for a graveyard. We've been looking for hours. What happens? A Hearse jumps up and down right in front of you, "I'll show you where, follow me!" ...and you let it get away.

*laughs*

I got a scathing look for that remark. Still, it was a good ride, maybe we'll find a cemetery there another time.

2nd Mad Cow In USA

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050625/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/mad_cow

Lot's of Daddys...

...This big bunch of things that looks like sticks in a nest.. are Daddy Long Legs spiders. They are all over the place at mom's like this.

Old Corbin Hospital Sold

20,000 dollars. According to the newspaper, now it's going to be demolished.

E-gads time's a-flying!

Sarah was trying to have the baby last night. Another trip to the hospital (after she stopped off to have a steak dinner at a nice sit down restaurant of course) they stopped her labor and sent her home again. She said Roy had to get gas and oil for the car before taking her on to the hospital as well.. and she asked him if he wanted to go someplace and get the tires rotated while he was at it. It's just comical. This baby is going to slam in when she's good and darned ready...and I don't think any of us are going to be prepared for the 'real' thing.

We had a nice dinner outside today, and I don't know which was better, the smell of the charcoal coming from the grill, or the hamburgers that Stan fried there. The kids swam all day until about an hour or so ago, then it started to get windy and thundery. So far no storm, but it's still acting like it wants to.

Joel's worrying me with this pool. Both pools actually.. I don't understand it but he wants to put his face right down in the water. In the little pool, it's worrysome because he goes down the slide face first and it takes him forever to come up. I can't help but hover and grab him so he doesn't scare the living hell out of me. In the big pool, he's a literal nightmare.

I've never seen a child do this before. I put his little life jacket on him, he laughs with glee, takes off walking, (the water is only up to his chest - I don't have it all the way full) and then he'll stumble, fall face first, and then float.. face down into the water. The girls will thrash with their hands, kick with their feet to right themselves. Always would... even when they were small and smaller than Joel.

He doesn't. It's like his fight or flight instinct is missing. He will simply float, still inhaling, like he is accepting that he's breathing in water, drowning - Not one ounce of fight, no thrashing, he doesn't even wave his little arms in that water. No leg kicking, nothing. He simply goes with it. I snatch him up, shocked that he's just content to drown and then I start worrying, my God, what if he gets in that water 2 minutes before I can catch him. He'll drown.

I'd say that it must be a boy thing, but I don't ever remember any of my male cousins, or Nick doing anything like that. They too would at least splash, thrash and try to get their heads out of that water. Wierd! I don't trust him one iota. I'm going to get the lil rascal one of those tubes for toddlers that hold them up in the straddle and won't let them go under at all. Until then, he can't get back in the pool unless one of us grownups hold him. What on earth could be the reason the lil guy won't even try to stand up and get his face out of the water like that?

Mikyla and Mallory are spending a lot of time here these past few days. We just know Sarah's gonna go into labor any time now and want to be sure the girls are here when that happens. Right now I've run them into the den, and am taking a quick kid break.

Sarah's gone back home to do something with Roy's dog. He has a Pitt Bull that was trained to hate men running loose up there around their house and his neighbor isn't liking it. I don't think I'd like it much either if I were the neighbor. The dog doesn't care much for men, and Pitt Bulls can be pretty grumpy anyway.

I, myself, don't like it up there around the little ones the way she roams. I wish they'd either put it in a kennel up there, or get rid of it. Bleah! Sarah says.. mom the kids ride her like a dog. I say.. yeah, until she hits PMS or they accidentally stand on her teats then look out! But then I'm a worry wart, she's probably as gentle as a kitten. Even so, I just don't trust Pitt Bulls around small children. I don't know of many who do.

Aha, there's more thunder. I love the sound of it. I think I'm gonna go out on the porch and watch the storm.

Mikyla

She's doing SO much better.. Sarah took her back to the doctor.. after I.. *coughsnaggedhercoughs* ..urged her to a little. She had a staph infection. Another round of antibiotics for her and now she's doing great!

Sarah took her to the allergist yesterday for her first round of shots.. Mik said she screamed, but then it was over.

She and Mallory spent the night with me last night and they were good as gold. Minimal fighting, and no snoring or sneezing at all from Mik. I think that's the first night I can recall that she slept the full night through without waking me up 10 times just to say hi. *laughs* They're doing really good.

They spent the night at home tonight. They traded Mam's in for a really cool water slide that Sarah put up over there for them. I don't blame them.. mom went to see it tonight and said it's way cool. Cooler than Mam's. *pretends to cry* waaaah!

Michael Jackson

Innocent. How 'bout that?

People Soup

Last fall we gave the big swimming pool to one of Stan's friends. I was just afraid of it.. terrified one of these babies would wander out back and drown in it. But now that the heat's set in, it's hot! I knew we'd all want to get in a pool to cool down so I bought one of those little pools that looks like a cauldron from K-mart. It's like.. 15 feet round and 3 and a half feet deep. Just right for the little ones, and us big ones. It's comical looking though, just like a big pot of people soup!

Joel's Lazy Eye

I thought he was having seizures for the longest time. His eyes would roll back in his head and one night he did it, Mikyla said, "Mammy! Joel's losing his powers!" That made me laugh. But at least we know now, it's not lazy eye, it's not seizures, and he's not losing his powers at all. He's extremely far sighted.

The clinic he had to go to examined him, and said that the one eye that goes into the corner is just Joel trying to focus to see things.

Bonnie got him a little pair of blue wire frames, she says he looks like Harry Potter with them on. They should be ready in a couple of weeks. Now someone tell me.. how the heck do you keep eyeglasses on a 2 year old?

One hell of a day...

Joey da paowot died this evening. He broke his lil neck jumping from his perch to the bottom of the cage. :(

This day has surely sucked.

My Heart Hurts :(

It's heavy. I'm bummed this evening.

I don't know if it's that she's not feeling well, or what, but my sidekick hasn't been behaving very well lately.

I don't know what's wrong, but we took her to Manchester with us and she just couldn't seem to stop picking on Joel or her sister. They started fighting the minute we left the driveway until we pulled back up to call Sarah to come get them. Usually though it's Mallory who picks the fights. This time though, it was Mikyla.

Poor Joleybean burned his lil chin on a pop tart yesterday and I turned to quiet them just as she reached up and rubbed the red raw spot on Joel's lil chin. He went into screaming fits. I know that hurt. It went from there to jabbing at Mallory with her little plastic horse, screaming, yelling, just overall misbehavior.

Mikyla has always been so good to mind me, and when I told her if she didn't stop I was taking her home, she fell apart... crying, begging for one more chance. I told her we'd given her a dozen chances, and she cried so hard I gave her one more.. but even then she just couldn't seem to bring herself to stop picking on the little ones to make them cry.

We brought her home for real and Sarah came to get them. I told Mikyla she couldn't stay all night with me anymore until she started minding me again. She cried like her heart was broken and God knows mine was. I don't understand what's gotten into her. She's never been like this before. Her usual misbehavior consists of crying and being grouchy - and that's when she always ends up having an ear infection.

Now it's getting dark and I'm missing my sidekick something fierce. About now we'd be out on the porch, having ice cream, or swinging on the swing..

This is her last summer with me before school starts and with spring dragging on with the cold and rain, we've not really had much good weather to get out and enjoy our last summer before school starts. And now she's taken to not wanting to mind me. Sassing, just.. she doesn't act like Mikyla lately. I hate this. Now Sarah's grounded her from her swimming pool for a week.

Please, Mikyla be yourself again so you can come back and stay with me some before school. I miss you. I miss you big. :*(

Sevierville

We got back before noon yesterday, and I have to tell you, I had a wonderful time. We stayed at Robin's house, and she couldn't have made us feel more welcome. She cooked a nice meal, had plenty of coffee and soft drinks, and the atmosphere there was just so nice.. no stress or tension, just a really nice warm, right-at-home-in-Tennessee atmosphere. I really enjoyed myself.

They took us to a documented haunted cemetery down there, Shilo's, in Pigeon Forge. The team set up the equipment close to this really neat tent of spruce trees. By each corner stone of this lot, someone long ago had planted a tree. The trees were at least 30 feet tall by now, and had been trimmed at the bottom so that the branches above us were touching each other, making a natural tent directly over the whole lot.

It had been raining and we walked under those trees, and all of a sudden a bird up there in those branches objected and raindrops fell out of the limbs and it startled me - I had to laugh, it was a perfect beginning to the investigation. Ambiance!

There were no powerlines anywhere close to where we were, I looked. The emf meter just kept going, weakly, then it would stop, get stronger, then weak again, then strong again. We started taking photos, and I know I got an orb and 2 mist photos, but when I got home and tried to open them on the computer, everything opened just fine except for those three pictures. Those, my computer insisted, weren't valid images and couldn't be opened.

This cemetery is said to have a shadow man. Tall, in black clothes, he walks, letting people see him from time to time. Did I see him? I don't know. I saw someone. Tall and thin, and yes, he was dressed in dark clothes, but the thing was...he moved quickly, behind an 8 foot oblisque, which was in a row of about 6 other oblisques. I remembered what Robin had said about the shadow man, but what I'd seen looked too real to have been a ghost. I nudged Bonnie and told her what I'd seen, and told her I thought a real person was there in the dark cemetery with us, trying to mess with our heads. She nodded and we set off in the direction of the oblisques, to catch him. We figured it was someone who lived in the houses across the street.

We got to the oblisques but there was no one there. The way the cemetery is, there's really no way he could have gotten past us, or gone farther to the north, because we were able to see, it was dark, but lit by the lights of a hotel across the highway. Still.. I pretended to think it was a ghost just in case the guy was laying on the ground where we couldn't see him, and I said out loud, "I saw you, if you can, reach out and touch Bonnie." *laughs* Now, usually, when I say that in a haunted place, Bonnie will shake her head no and answer, "No, reach out and touch mom, leave me alone."... this time, she didn't. Like me, she was still sure this was a real person I'd seen in there, so she was sort of sarcastic with him, and said, "yeah, touch me."

We waited and nothing happened, so we wandered back over to the group. I glanced back, and again, he walked from behind one oblisque to behind another. I told Bonnie what I'd seen, and she just nodded. We still thought it was a real person. We watched for him to walk back out where we could see him but we didn't see any more of him.

We took a break and I was standing by the car, Bonnie was sitting beside it when she slapped her arm.. aloud she told us that a bug had bitten her arm. She tugged my hand and when I knelt by her she said "Mom, I didn't want to say anything out loud, they'll think I'm nuts, but that wasn't a bite, something pinched me."

Robin and Roger got some really cool orb pictures, and orbs on videotape. When it was time to go, Roger pointed to the tree that was beside the oblisques, and said he'd seen something, a form, but not a dog, go up the tree, but it didn't climb it, it just went upwards beside the trunk of the tree.

We got in the car and Bonnie showed me her arm. She had a really nice pinch bruise. Not a bug bite. I think the thing we thought was a real man, was this shadowman and he pinched her for her sarcasm!

Anyway, I came back and have nothing of paranormal value on my disks, the good ones wouldn't open. But it was a deliciously eerie investigation in a really neat dark and mysterious cemetery, and I had the time of my life! Thanks again, Robin, Lindsey and Roger, that was Greeeeeeeat!!

The Old Way...

Jeanie's funeral is over, she's been buried on her son's land in Upper Michigan.

Her sons drove her body in the back of their truck from her home where she passed away. In the old way, they dug her grave with their own hands. Then buried her. What a memorial to the woman who gave birth to them.

These days, the family rarely touches their loved ones after death. Strangers come in and do it all for them. While I'm sure the people who prepare our loved ones do a fantastic, wonderful job... I can't think that they would do it with so much love and caring as a son would do.

Kudo's, boys, I admire you for looking after her right to the very last moment. God bless you all, and Rest well, Jeanie.

Joel

Bonnie said he's loving his little car, but that when she has to plug in the battery to let it charge, he sits with his head in his hands and sulks.

*laughs*

I bet he does too.

We called Gary from Walmart to ask if Acey could have one of those little cars for his birthday too, but Gary said Acey already had 2 of them, and 2 bikes, that he just needed clothes. So that's what we got for him. But clothes aren't fun for a birthday, so we got him a Dora the Explorer talking backpack, and a pair of cinderella slippers.

He's a gentle little boy for the most part, but when he's here, he has to wear the girl's dress up Barbie shoes. They each have a pair of Cinderella ones, and Snow White ones. He'll literally tackle them, throwing punches to get those shoes. He'll put them on and prance all over the place with them. I figure he'll outgrow that one day, and bought him his own pair. It's comical to see, but it's what he likes.

Everyone Needs an H.P.

So that they can better appreciate the Compaq that died. *weeps like a child*

Why didn't anyone tell me that these pictures here load so slowly.. sooo

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....
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....slooooooooowly.

Mallory

She'll be 4 in a couple of months. Where the HELL is time going? I blink and they're another year old. She's basically the same, nurturer, yet antagonist all at once. *laughs* Mom material!

Mikyla Now

Mikyla is getting so big. She's going to be in school this August, and boy do I dread it. I was looking at her here day before yesterday and couldn't believe it. The 6x swim suit I'd just gotten for her is just too small. She hasn't acted like she's felt good for the past few days to me. I sure hope she's not getting another ear infection.

Maegan Jessica

Sarah kept asking me what the baby's middle name is going to be and for the longest time, I didn't know. But now I know. Meagan Jessica.

Shannon's Dream

She called yesterday to ask me if I'd seen a box, a jewelry chest, just a tad bigger, longer than a regular sized jewelry box.. with shiny things glued to it, and what she said looked like a turquois broach glued to the top. She said that mamaw showed it to her in the dream and told her that the answer was in that chest. I want to know the answer!! I want to see the chest! I want to know the question!! Shannon, find the chest!!

Ladder 49

It was odd to see Travolta in a gray-at-the-temples-father-figure roll, but it was a really good, touching movie. Watch it and you'll gain new respect for fire fighters. Don't forget the Kleenex.

Filthy Mouth?

We rode up to Sarah's this evening to take Mikyla her lotion, and when we got there Mallory jumped up into Dippy's arms, hugged him, then the little twirp put the two fingers of her left hand spang into his smiling mouth!

He sputtered, drew his head back and scowled, "UGH! Don't do that, Mallory!"

"Is your mouth nasty?" She responded.

"No, but your fingers are!" He informed her.

I thought I'd die laughing.. she'd been outside playing with the dog when we pulled up. That kid is something else.

Bonnie and I are supposed to be going to Tennessee on a ghost investigation soon, and I was telling Sarah about it. Mikyla, all ears, took it all in, and when she heard the part about staying overnight in a hotel, she didn't take that very well. She frowned and scolded me but later when we were at Lisa's, she really got onto me.

"No, Mammy, promise me you won't leave me to go stay in a hotel, promise me!"

Egads, I didn't promise, but Lisa told her I wouldn't go and that satisfied her.

I won't lie to the runt.

I want to go, but I'm superstitous, so now I'm starting to get that lil voice in my head.. what if I go and something icky happens.. maybe I should stay home...

I still want to go!

Today was a really nice day.. gosh it was HOT out there!

I think we're going to Lisa's tomorrow evening, but we have to mow sometime tomorrow. The grass is getting tall enough to hide snakes! Yikes!