The two beasts got home today around 1pm (that's central time here 'cause that's what time zone we claim). He came home bearing gifts, of a sort. Fresh baked bread from Publix along with some tomatoes, lettuce, various lunchmeats and nectarines he found there. He surprised me coming in because I was on the opposite side of the house from the garage and had the TV on here in my computer room. The baby was asleep so I was trying to finish up a game on Pogo before she woke up. When Baron, the sort-of little Beast, was suddenly at my elbow, I must have jumped up a foot off my chair, I was THAT surprised. Oh, I knew they were on their way home, I just expected to HEAR them come in....LOL.

When the Beast left Chicago yesterday, it was cold. We were cold, too. I think there was only about a 5 degree difference. It was also about the same when he left Centralia today. But it WAS warmer here by late afternoon...got all the way up to 32 degrees.

However, tomorrow is going to be a different story. It's showing that the temperature is going up as we speak. It's 36 degrees now and is supposed to be up in the mid-50's tomorrow and might even get up as high as 60!!!! The forecast for the upcoming weekend and half the following week is fantastic. It's weird because, if I were still living in Florida, I would feel like I was FREEZING at that temperature!!! LOL...everything is perspective.

The weather here is so DRY that we actually had fire alerts once the winds picked up. I knew it was dry because I went to blow my nose and it started bleeding. I boiled some water on my stove to bring up the humidity in the house. The Princess had been complaining about her hair being full of static electricity but I didn't feel real sorry for THAT problem. She's not in the house here as much as I am and I wasn't having any problems. Of course, MY hair is short.

The Beast just glowed when he watched the weather forecast. We happen to get WGN news out of Chicago, so he had a ball watching it and comparing it to ours until they started forecasting weather up to 50 heading for it. THAT pissed him off. I just thought it was funny that he picked one of the worst weeks of the winter to go up that way. I was glad he was gone but I really didn't like the idea of him being cold. I don't like for anyone to be cold. At least he wasn't anywhere that had lost electricity. Unlike our kids in Louisville. But things are now getting back to what passes for normal in the states affected badly by the ice storm and I am grateful and happy for everyone.

Baron came in sporting a new, bigger collar. It was time for one for him since his neck is so thick. We had reached the limit of his previous collar. He was also sporting a new name tag that's about the size of a silver dollar. We changed our phone number so the old one wasn't up-to-date. The collar is a strange color of leather that looked pink under our lights inside but isn't in daylight. I just thought it was funny (and peculiar) that the Beast would have done that until I let the dog out in the backyard to inspect it and see if it had changed. I kid you not, that's what it looked like. He didn't even bark at the dogs next door, although THEY got vocal.

Well, time for me to close for now. I need my rest and I'm sure not getting it here. I took my pain pill and whatever other ones I needed so I'm going to go snuggle under my electric blanket until the warmer weather actually hits us.
Love you all. Keep warm and I hope your weather just keeps getting better and better.

Yes, they are and they actually DID stop to spend the evening and night in Centralia. He was sorry to see that his brother had the heat knocked down to about 40 degrees (to save the pipes, I think) and had the hot water heater completely off. So, he suffered through the warm-up process by standing in front of the partially open oven door with the heat on until he unfroze....LOL. Baron didn't know what to do with himself so he finally just plopped on the bed, curled up in a ball and shivered.

The Beast said he warmed up some of Baron's dog food (homemade variety from the Brother) to help the dog warm up a bit. He also made himself some nice hot chocolate (one of his favorite things) while he was standing in front of the oven. He always travels well supplied for his own needs...and the dogs, too, of course.

So he will be home around noon or shortly after, I figure. I know him and he will be waking early, trying to get the dog out to pee in that cold while he's warming up the car. He will stop for breakfast after an hour or two on the road and then won't stop until he gets close to his barber's locally. Oh, wait...he WILL make one other stop. That will be at Publix Supermarket to pick up some fresh bread and some good bologna (Boar's Head, tyvm).

While I am waiting for him to get here, I have a couple things I will need to complete. One is to finish straightening up the house. The other is to get the last of the things I want to get packed away, packed away in my last bin heading for the attic. That might not be so easy with Chewlee wanting to be underfoot constantly these past couple days. *sigh* But, I will manage.

I dragged out some of the homemade chicken noodles soup for the Beast for tomorrow. I told him I had saved him some since he loves it when I make the homemade noodles for it. I am making some of those Pillsbury Cinnabon cinnamon buns in the morning for Chewlee and me. The Princess and the Beast can have some if we leave any. I am going to hit the sack soon since I am tired. I haven't been sleeping really well because my room gets awfully cold at night. If it gets too cold, my left hand starts aching horribly and wakes me up. I guess I have to face the fact that I probably have arthritis in it. It starts at the wrist that Baron broke for me (and I ended up having surgery on) and spreads upwards from there. Maybe it's just the wrist but the whole damn hand hurts so I figure it's six of one and half dozen of another, regardless.

Love you all. Keep warm and pray for an early spring. I know *I* am.

As I was driving down the street on my way home from the bank today, I passed one of those offices that offer quick loans and do tax services. It made me remember when the Beast and I were young and had to use one or two of those places while we were young and when we were raising our children.

Like most young people at the time, we really had no direction on using credit. Our parents main experience with credit was the local corner food store (that offered you credit until payday) and some of the door-to-door sales people that worked the neighborhoods. We kids used to run to the grocery store for stuff we needed and just tell the owner to *put it on our account*. Our father's used to pay it after cashing their checks and we were set for another week (or two) depending on how often they were paid. Since we all lived closely and socialized together, there were no secrets. At least, not in OUR neighborhood. We were lucky since we didn't live in a tenement area like some of the kids I went to high school with later.

I played with the local grocer's daughter and my other siblings played with the younger ones in the family. They lived over their store and were considered fairly *well-to-do*. The only really *rich* people in the neighborhood were the tavern owners. Their kids were the ones that always had the great new bikes and, later on, got CARS! I used public transportation until my folks moved out into the suburbs. I wouldn't even have experienced driving except for this one guy that had a crush on my younger sister. I actually got to drive the car he inherited from his father around our block....once. LOL It's still a vivid memory to me.

It was the Beast, however, that truly taught me how to drive when I was 17. He had worked and saved for HIS car (although my mom used to let him drive hers when we were first dating). Before then, he also used local trains and buses to get around. It was possible in the city of Chicago back then. It was safe for even a young kid to get on alone and not be molested. I used the buses to get everywhere. I could find anyplace in the city as long as I knew the main drags necessary to get there. My parents never had to worry once they knew I KNEW what I was doing. I often visited aunts, uncles, grandparents or cousins on a whim.

Back to the credit thing. At the time we were growing up, there was no such thing as credit as we know it now. People saved to buy cars. They often bought homes for cash or with at least half down. The thing was, no one wanted to put themselves into any long term debt back then. It was considered shameful. They learned to put off something they wanted until they could afford it. It's a trait we seem to have lost somewhere along the way.

Perhaps it has to do with longings for nicer, better things while growing up. I learned to work at a very young age and so did my siblings....at least the first few after me. I ran errands, babysat, cleaned houses (and I was sought after because my mother had taught me well...*grin*). The two sisters just under me even passed along one of my babysitting jobs I had for years until different school hours and a move to the suburbs made those parents find someone else. I tried not to depend on my parents for things I could earn and buy for myself. I even bought stuff for the little ones for special times. You could buy nice Carter kids clothes for just $1 each piece back then.....LOL. I loved to dress them up in new things back then.

When the Beast and I got married, credit to buy a car was more widely accepted (but cars were up to $3000 and up by then) If only NOW.....LOL. We had bought a new car shortly before moving to Florida and didn't expect to take a pay hit as bad as we did back then. Minimum wage was around .60 an hour and the Beast was making little more than that as an apprentice pipe fitter in Florida. It was a state that was NOT *owned* by unions. I left a job making almost $8. an hour for the telephone company and was offered a special rate there (no CWA there) of $1.60 an hour. Right-to-work states suck, let me tell you.

We got in a bit of trouble over our car loan and ended up having to return it and pay a couple hundred dollars off to keep our credit from totally sucking. We bought an older Chevy that we drove for years and waited until the Beast was no longer an apprentice (5 years) before we even considered anything else, trust me. We were not alone in not understanding credit the way we should have. Our parents came from a long line of people who had no experience (and, truthfully, no use for it with the way THEY were raised). How could we get guidance from them? We had to learn how to use it correctly by ourselves. We did, finally, until we hit the jackpot with our own company and didn't even have to think much about it. Banks fell over themselves trying to get our business. Weird, huh?

I even remember the first house we owned that never had a mortgage on it. The house we had built in Port Charlotte was a *pay-as-it-was-built* house so we owned it free and clear before we ever moved into it. It was a wonderful feeling, let me tell you. I still miss that house. It was darn near perfect from my point of view.

Now you would think that today's kids would be a bit better about the proper use of credit but they aren't. They are just as green as we were. They think they can handle it but, that first credit card...phew. It's like free money to them. They think, well, it will only be $xx. per month....I can do that. But they don't consider interest and compounding interest. It adds up quickly. The Princess, also, has had to learn that lesson. I think it's partly because she never really had to do without anything until she was on her own back before the baby was born. But, she has learned. Oh, she has learned. Now she only wants to have cash for all her purchases. She STILL has to learn to save money (although she has the inevitable savings for the baby....all the cash sent to Chewlee goes right into that) but she has no savings account of her own. She CLAIMS that part of her tax return, after finishing paying off her bills, is going into one but I am not holding my breath on that. She may just because she DOES want to take a nice vacation (or two) and that requires some funds. She also needs a new car soon. With all the miles on this one (that we bought her for her 16th birthday but it is now 8 years old and has waaaaaay over 100K miles on it), she will be needing that soon.

So, anyway, that's the end of my musings about some of the differences between THEN and NOW. At least, where it pertains to credit. I shall close for now and get a few things done. The Beast will be returning and I need to finish packing up this stuff so he can put it in the attic when he gets home. One of my sisters left me a note thanking me for packing up my summer clothes because she figures that is a true sign we will have an early spring....LOL

Love you all.

To my intense relief, I did finally find out that my kids in Louisville are alive and doing well. They got their electricity back sometime during the night between Sunday and Monday. It took them until late in the afternoon to charge up their cell phones but they were short on minutes. My son called his brother because he NEEDED some technical answers to one of his customer's computer problems and to pass on the info about themselves. My daughter has a cell phone that she buys minutes for and she was low. I gather she wanted to let her daughter know she was fine and had survived because they are still not able to get around the city much at all.

I did hear that Kentucky got an inch of snow in an hour with the front that was going through there earlier but don't know if it continued or not. At the moment, I am content knowing my loved ones are safe. There were 24 or 26 deaths in Kentucky, mainly due to hypothermia and the rest due to carbon monoxide leaks from generators. That is the early report, anyway. There are still an estimated 600,000 businesses and homes without electricity (which means also heat because even gas heat needs electric fans to distribute it). Continue your prayers for those people. I DID, hear, however, that before it started snowing again, they had reopened the schools and had planned on getting the kids back into classes (and heat and food) but I have no clue if that continued or not.

That's my update. I will leave you with that bright bit of news from MY corner of the world until I do my blog later today. I got to thinking today about how vastly different things are from when I was growing up. Just how different, I wll tell you later on. It's just step one in an *old person's* remembrances, as the Princess likes to tell me. LOL

Love you all. Talk at ya' later!

I heard today that the governor of Kentucky had called out their entire National Guard due to the extreme emergency situation in the state after the ice storm and following snows. My daughter had called me when they first lost their power shortly after her brother had pulled into the parking lot but before the lot itself was blocked. Her boyfriend used his truck to go somewhere but, by the time her returned, he had to park it in a nearby grocery store parking lot because some tree branches had come down and brought down electrical wires with them.

A storm earlier this past summer had made my daughter stock up on sterno, so they weren't worried about eating. They had even managed to make coffee that morning. They were, however, concerned about how long they might be without heat. I urged them to dress warmly, stay close, shut off as many rooms as possible and, if they were without electricity for too long, to find alternate shelter that the city and state would probably provide. I am hoping that is what they have done.

I DID try to reach them on their cell phones but figure that the charges on them are long gone. So, here I sit, a typical mother, worried that they might be trying to *tough it out* and be hungry, cold and even scared since they don't even have access to news. Me? I have access to too damn much of it.

The Beast made it to Chicago after spending four days in Centralia. They all traveled back together and got there in time to watch the Super Bowl on TV. Me? I didn't have to watch Chewlee because the Princess's boyfriend (yes, he is now OFFICIALLY the boyfriend) had come to *take care of her while she was sick*. It DID mainly consist of holding her BUT....I made it up to Walmart on Saturday and got her the Zycam that she swears by (I figured that whatever it cost me, if she BELIEVED it would work for her, it was worth it). Sure enough, on Sunday, she was feeling MUCH better and today she is almost like brand new. My allergies are making me nuts (who in the hell ever heard of allergies in WINTER?) and I am going through Kleenex like crazy. I took advantage of having my bed all to myself by changing the sheets and putting on the nice, flannel ones and laying in bed, watching DVD movies on the Beast's computer. It has been sheer heaven. *grin*

I told the Beast about it and he asked me why I had been watching my DVD's on his computer. I think he was afraid the new DVD player wasn't working but I told him that it was *comfort.....duh!* Like that shouldn't have been obvious. *rolling eyes here*

Tonight, the Princess took Chewlee over to meet the Boyfriend's grandparents, who have been complaining they hadn't met either her or *their grandbaby* (which the Princess can't quite make up her mind if it makes her embarrassed or upset). The whole family seems to be a really nice one and I told her to take it with a spoonful of sugar because they were so accepting of her and the baby. I think it's kind of cute, really. Chewlee just loves the Boyfriend and you have to trust the instincts of babies. They have insights into the heart of people. Of course, if he were a gangster type, I would have to wonder but he's just a sweet kid with a mother that has raised him right.

Chewlee is back home now and in bed for the night. She was really tired because the Princess went in and out of that bedroom, after putting her into bed, several times and Chewlee just didn't care. Since she did not react when the Princess left the house to return to the Boyfriend's house, I figure she dropped right off to sleep. As soon as I am done here, I am heading to my bedroom to enjoy MIB and MIB2. I just love Will Smith in those movies and they always make me laugh. A talking Pug....LOL!!!

The Beast got his brother's computer rebuilt, up and running for him so he is satisfied now. He claims he will start back here on either Wednesday or Thursday. He also claims he will stop in Centralia to break up the long drive home but I don't believe it. I KNOW him. Once he is headed home, all he wants is to be in his own domain, his own bed, surrounded by all his various comforts. If he leaves Wednesday, I will expect him home late Wednesday evening. Ditto on Thursday. I'm prepared. I did some of the cleaning I can't manage when he is home (and it was easier with the Princess and Chewlee gone, too). Tomorrow, I will finally get all my summer clothes packed up and ready to go up into the attic. I am also going to put away some of the excess linens and things I have until I need to replace them. I can use the in-house storage space more.

Well, say a prayer for those still trapped by the bad weather results (and my son and daughter, too). Love you all and stay healthy and warm.

I have been very worried about my two kids living in Louisville. I tried to reach them but, since the electricity has been out in their complex, I think their cell phones do not have a chance in hell of having a charge left in them. (Biting what is left of my fingernails here).

The last I heard was that the only drive into or out of their complex was blocked by fallen electric wires and some rather large tree branches. It was snowing like crazy still and even the snow plows could not (or would not) have done any good with conditions like it. They were parked and waiting to be able to work.

I know they had sterno so they could cook and even make coffee. They did not, however, have an form of heating apparatus available to them. Without snowshoes, there wasn't a chance in hell that they would be able to even trek anywhere IF there were anything available (such as propane heaters). My daughter did say that there was an A&P they might be able to manage if the storm lasted longer than a few days. It's the ICE that worried me the most since that is what brought down the power lines and the tree branches.

I heard on the news that it could take a week from when that hit Louisville before the people had their electricity back. I will feel better when I hear from one or both of them that things are getting back to what passes for normal. In the meantime, I am a typical mother.....just worrying that my kids might be cold or hungry or both. Hurry up Louisville and get your butts in gear! Worried mother here.

If they had managed (and could afford it) a motel room, I think I would have heard from them already. So, if anyone is out there in Louisville that has access to the internet and happens (although unlikely) to read this, WHAT THE HELL IS KEEPING THINGS FROM HAPPENING????? I NEED to hear from my kids so I can stop worrying. Why ANYONE would want to live where they have that kind of severe weather is beyond me.

Love you all. I hope I hear from my kids soon and keep those poor souls in KY in your prayers. They need it. And all the other places that haven't recovered from the ice storm, too. I'm sure I am not the only one worried.