Walmart

I warned you in my last post that this one was coming but after my experience there today it pushed me to write it sooner rather than later... Ah Walmart, you evil creation you. So when we got orders here I started looking on the internet trying to see what it was like down here. There was nothing here. No real stores or anything as far as I could find. Ed had someone down here he was talking to from the command and one day his wife called me just to say hi and introduce herself to me (she was from here). While talking I asked if there was anything here and she said "yeah, there's a walmart" I said "ok, anything else? No real stores or anything." again I was met with "theres a walmart" emphasis on Walmart like it was the coolest invention ever. I happen to disagree I think that Walmart is an evil invention sent here just to make my life miserable. The cashiers are the slowest people I've ever met. Look people I have three kids age 5 and under they are not perfect, they're kids, could we possibly hurry this up since they don't really enjoy shopping and by the time I've gotten to you they are now fighting with each other. And speaking of my children, yes I have three of them. Yes they are close together. And no, I don't know what causes it. I've actually told someone that when they asked. I mean, comeon is it any of your business if I actually took sex ed. Let's put it this way, see the wedding ring, I'm married to their father, he has a decent job, we're not on welfare or food stamps. It's no concern of yours how many I have or how close together they are, or for that matter whether they were planned or not. And just because my youngest is a girl doesn't automatically mean I'm done having kids because I have a girl now. I'm pretty sure Heavenly Father didn't send me Tabi as a means of making me stop having children, cause I love her to pieces. I'm a big believer in tube tops not being a smart invention for anyone but really we shouldn't make them in size XXXXL, it will never end well, I'm just saying. But everytime I walk into the walmart here I see someone who clearly should not be showing so much skin showing it to the world. Skin tight mini skirts and tube tops are not good when they could get lost in the rolls of fat. I'm not a little girl, I know it sounds like I'm being hard on heavy people, I'm not I just believe that you should dress in a way that flatters your body, and leaves at least something to the imagination. Self checkouts... these could be wonderful inventions... if the scale wasn't so stinking sensitive or they had cashiers who actually paid attention. and comeon people they aren't new... if you need to write a check go through a real line. While I was there today two, count them TWO people tried to write checks at the self check. It's just silly, you're not saving yourself any time people. So that is my rant about Walmart. Given the option I will spend a little more to shop at Target because it's a more peaceful experience usually. Target HQ if you're reading this... PLEASE BUILD ONE IN SAINT MARYS!

Neighbors

My husband was raised in the middle of NOWHERE! Seriously, when he was young they lived in the mountains and then for a couple years they lived in suburbia and then they moved back into nowhere and bought a tree farm complete with chickens and turkeys, and with cows down the road. I on the other hand was raised in suburbia and on air force bases. Every once in awhile Edward will say, "when I get out of the Navy I want to move out of the city and buy land" I have requirements he must meet and he thinks he can deliver. It must be less than a 40 minute drive to a hospital not a clinic but an actual hospital. And there must also be a city closer than 30 miles. A real city not one where they tell you "but there's a walmart", I hate walmart.. but that's another blog... I digress, for years I've been thinking maybe I could get used to living in the middle of nowhere. Now I'm sure of it. About 6 months ago we got new neighbors across the street from us. Initially, I wasn't bothered by them. For the past 4 months they have been driving me to the brink of insanity. For those of you who don't know I have 2 cats. And they both have attitudes (one more than the other). There is no leash law on cats and my kitties like being outside (don't ask me why, in this heat I'd much prefer to be inside). But they are like snakes they lay on the pavement and sun themselves while they sleep, or they hide in the bushes under one of my windows and watch everything going past them. My cats know where their yard is, that's not saying they don't stray, they do, but they don't chase other animals unless they come into my yard. Back to my neighbors, they have three little yippy dogs who are very rarely if ever on leashes, and who don't know where their yard is and think that everything is their property. If they see my cats they will charge them and chase them. If they see me they charge at me, if the see my neighbor or her daughters who are scared of dogs they chase them and bark at them. Now, the "mother's" theory is to tell us "they don't bite" like that makes the whole thing better. A couple months one of the said "yappy" dogs found out he can get into my back yard and now it is usually a weekly occurrence that I have to chase a little dog out of my yard. I don't care for little dogs, when I was little I saw one get accidentally killed by being shut in a door during a sleepover and it scarred me for life. I believe I overcompensate, I have a 70 pound black lab. She has a kennel in the back she's usually in or she may have eaten one of these dogs at some point. I believe that today was my breaking point. As I was getting my kids an after school snack I heard a commotion at my front door. I open it to find my cat pushed against the door hissing and swatting at 3 dogs that have her cornered and the teenager who let the dogs out to go to the bathroom lazily walking across the street. I let Spice in shooed the dogs away and one of them goes into my neighbors yard and poops. (I know this bugs her because she doesn't have a dog, who wants to clean up another dogs poop, I don't even like cleaning up after Jewel). At this point I looked at the teenager, who I have told before that if she leashed her dogs this wouldn't happen, that if I were her I would go get a bag and clean up after her dog as it just went in the other neighbors yard. She just looked at me like I was the meanest person ever and walked in the house. Please don't tell me that this is what I have to look forward to when Tabi becomes a teenage girl. So here I am "mean Mrs. Gossett" (wow I thought I'd have to age another 40 years for that title) So starting tomorrow, I'm gonna let jewel run loose in the backyard and when they complain that Jewel ate one of their precious dogs I'm going to tell them I don't know what they're talking about but if they leashed their dog they would know where it was.

Only in Georgia

Since we have lived down here there are things we have done that I have thought "Wow, nowhere but in GA" some have been good experiences while others I just shake my head and think I definitely could have done without ever doing that. I have had a couple of these experiences in the past week or so, and so I thought I would blog about them.
Only in Georgia:
1) Can you pick up a bag of mulch at Walmart only to get 5 minutes down the road and have a 4 year old yelling "Mom there's a monster back here" So I went and got some red mulch to spruce up our flower beds in the front (the red color just never lasts from season to season) and apparently there was a stowaway on the mulch. A lizard. Zach has seen a million lizards in his 4 year life span. In fact, they like to sit on the outside of his window on the screen and he will sit for hours and watch them crawl up and down but if there is even a slight possibility that they COULD touch him he freaks out, which lands us back in my minivan with him hysterical over a lizard who was clearly more scared of his (cause he was in hysterics). By the time i got to a place where I could get the car to the side of the road ( i was hysterical by this time too only I was laughing so hard I was crying) Zachary was full on screaming about this lizard that turned out to be your garden variety gecko looking thing no bigger than 2 inches. I guess that this could happen pretty much anywhere there are lizards, however tonight Joshua had a musical at school and as we were pulling out of the school parking lot Zachary starts screaming again about a monster in the back and Joshua is laughing and saying "look mommy a lizard on the window, is that on the inside?" which of course threw Zachary into further hysterics. I pulled over and got the lizard out of the car. Seriously? Twice in two days? And before you ask, I'm sure it wasn't the same lizard, they were different colors.
2) Have you ever played a rousing game of catch the frog? Pretty much every October I get to play this game about once a week. The frogs come out, tree frogs, toads, bullfrogs. And they croak and they scare the begeezus out of me when I walk outside and they jump in front of me. Inevitably, one of these little buggers get into the house about once a week and I have to spend the time trying to catch it cause it thinks you're trying to kill it when in reality you just want it to get out of the house.
Georgia is an interesting place to live. I don't particularly care for Georgia, in fact I hate it here. It's been almost 4 years and as I've hoped for it to grow on me it hasn't. So i'm trying to turn over a new leaf. Find the positives. But as of right now I'm pretty positive that I can't wait for the Navy to tell us to go elsewhere.