Hot grits and grease

It has been a trying couple of months. I drive an average of 1,300 miles per week for work, Dorian is in playing baseball and only has two days per week off so at the end of the day I am extremely tired. George is on my last nerve because he is on one behind this government shutdown which has halted any activity or payment for reservist. Some weeks I go days without talking to him. He doesn't help out around the house (even though he is home all day most days), he doesn't take Dorian to his practices or games (in fact most times he finds something to tinker with around the house and doesn't show up at all, if he does it's late), and he's sleeping more often. I notice these are all signs of depression, but there is no reasoning with him these days about relaxing. As if I'm not stressed enough, work has been more than challenging as we are switching over to a new delivery method for assessments. This past Wednesday I had to take a day trip to Sacramento to a state conference on the new computer based delivery method for the GED exam. It's a huge hassle with a lot of unknowns because just like any other branch of the government, the state of CA has waited until the last minute to negotiate contracts and figure out how this process will work. To top it all off, they didn't consider one of their major clients, correctional facilities. Certainly it is stressful enough administering exams to jail inmates while I sit in a room locked in with this inmate and no one watching. There have been a few coworkers that have been giving me grief over the new delivery method (as if it's my decision to change the format of a nationwide exam), and due to stress I have begin swelling again. I am in the middle of lab testing to determine if I will be diagnosed with Hereditary Angioadema (HAE). For years I've dealt with swelling of the face, hands, feet abdomen and a few times my esophagus. It can be extremely painful depending on what body part swells up. I have not had any outbreaks in 10 years, and I really was excited to know I was over it, but my abdomen started swelling (which feels like someone is wringing out your stomach and causes nausea, vomiting and other side effects) and I didn't figure it out until my lip swelled and then my foot.
Current events make for enough stress without my husband acting like a jack ass! Reasoning with him doesn't work and since he seems to want to e-mail me, rather than speaking to me, I've decided to stop wasting my breath altogether on talking to him. We've been broke before, so what is the big deal with him now. After spending some time with my friend Robin, we contemplated the issue of me making more money than him is unsettling for him. George and I have spoken about this scenario before, but at the time he was making more than me. He said it wouldn't bother him, who cared it's just money and we are one, but he never intended on having to eat those words. Dorian joked about him being a "house husband" and he didn't find it funny at all. He is so wrapped up in typical male and female roles, that he can't lift a finger to wash clothes or dishes. I'm really at my wits end, and something is going to have to change soon. I now realize why he didn't support me in business (because I was making too much money), why he allows me to run around attempting to get everything done on my own (so that I will break and give something up) and I'm not enjoying this version of him. Everyday in marriage is a lesson, and I pray we learn whatever lesson we're supposed to learn immediately so that we never have to repeat this test again. If I start cooking grits and frying chicken at the same time, start a collection for my bail money.

Jones Family Reunion 2013

There were soooo many wonderful details of this years reunion, that I don't have enough space (or desire) to write and include everything. I've decided to take the most memorable and interesting events and include them. First let me say that every year, George's family has a reunion held in Utica, MS. We have not made it to a single one in the past 7 years, but on the 8th one we made sure not to miss it, as his grandmother (lovingly referred to as Big Mama) is aging and we didn't make our annual Thanksgiving trip in 2012. George was on a training exercise in New Orleans, and being his cheapness has rubbed off on me, I refused to spend $1,300 for Dorian and I to fly to MS. I decided to rent a convertible mustang and drive. Well that plan quickly went out the door and so did being the only driver. I opted to coerce my BFF, Shayla, into going with me to help me drive, in exchange I would cover her hotel room and expenses. Forgetting she vowed to never drive to MS ever again, she agreed to go.
Once there we checked into the Battlefield Inn in Vicksburg. We'd stayed there in 2008 when George and I had our wedding. They had a free all you can eat breakfast buffet and free drinks in their bar along with karaoke nightly that made it a fun place to stay. My cousin Tanisha refers to it as the "Good Grits Inn." We received our room keys and decided to settle Shayla in first. After getting the room door opened, someone sat up in the bed, prompting Shayla to scream and the elderly lady who was awkwardly awaken at 5:something in the morning to apologize. We returned to the front desk for another room. The second room smelled heavily of cat pee and had black mold in the fridge. We thought perhaps the third time was a charm, so we asked the young man working alone to find us a room closer to the one I was given. Aside from the 13" TV which seemed to be missing it's remote, Shayla's room had seemed okay. The place had quickly gone down, and we decided we'd put up with it just for the bountiful breakfast in the morning. It was now 5:45am, and breakfast began at 6:00am, so we decided to stay awake and eat then hit the bed. We were told about the new location for breakfast, and once 6:00am rolled around we stepped outside our rooms to look down into the lobby from our indoor balcony rooms to see they were only serving cold cereal and biscuits that appeared to have some grayish colored meat in between them (which we decided must have been sausage) sitting on a counter. We passed on the breakfast and went to our rooms to get some sleep. After we awoke for real, we showered and discovered there was no hot water. Too tired to complain we got dressed and went to find the closest Cracker Barrel. We decided it was not worth staying at the Battlefield Inn, and went to check into the nearest Holiday Inn Express. We went back to collect our things and check out of the B.I and had a challenge with that. They attempted to charge the credit card twice, the manager wanted to charge us for two nights (even though we had only been there 6 hours) and they refused to compensate us for the problems we had encountered there. We finally were able to leave, confident they had been paid for only one night, and relaxed comfortably at the HIE. George arrived at the Jackson airport the following day.
During our road trip we stopped at Matt's Big Breakfast in Phoenix, AZ. It was alright, but not really note worthy. I'd eat there again simply for the portions they gave, but I'd probably order something that couldn't possibly be messed up. Like pancakes. We did enjoy our time in AZ, although it was 118 while we were driving through, which caused a small computer glitch in the Civic that delayed us about an hour and two mechanics to find that everything was working fine even though we had a small overheating problem. We turned off the AC while in the middle of nowhere, but the cooler temperature (115 degrees) in Tucson was still too hot, so we turned the AC back on.
Thursday was the family reunion. We arrived later than most of the family, but there were enough members there to have had the whole place set up. Instead they all sat around a fan waiting for my sister-in-law (who is highly productive) to set up everything by herself. Shayla and I, although we said we wouldn't help with anything, decided to give her a hand. We were greeted by my mother-in-law with hugs and unintelligible ranting. This is always the case when she hasn't seen us in a long while, but her shirt had seen better days. There were more holes than material, and the contents of her breast pockets did not cover all the flesh we could see. George and his sister yelled at her to go put something else on, which she did after she was good and ready. Once the PA system was set up, she returned with her reunion T-shirt on and began singing "Amen" over the mic. As family members began to yell at George to go get his mother, he simply lowered his head and covered his face and shook his head. I leaned into him understandingly, gently touched his arm and quietly said "you better not ever say anything else about how crazy my mother is!" Everything went off smoothly, well that is if you consider a loud ignorant family member yelling and cursing at her daughter, bad toddlers pulling down the volleyball net, and George and his three aunts holding their own private church service as they played The Williams Bros. over the PA system smooth. The day did not disappoint.
On the ride home, we decided to just rush back so we could have at least one day of total rest before going back to work. At some point we probably had white-line fever, as we relied on singing loudly and playing hangman to keep us awake. We stopped only when necessary, slept overnight in Van Horn, TX (the midpoint between home and Vicksburg) and got home in time to give us an entire day of rest. George stayed in Utica an extra 10 days.
I'll admit, I actually wished we had more time to stay there. Not necessarily to visit, but it had been so long since we had been there in the summer time, that the fields of corn and soybeans were nice to see. I love everything country, and the green down south is not just green it's GUREEN!!!!!! We're planning a trip to Pittsburgh later in the year, but we may just have to go back to MS. George said he didn't get a chance to take us fishing and hunting. Not sure about shooting an animal, but if I get to fire a gun, I'm all for aiming to miss.
I realized when we walked in our house, that there is no place like home. And even though I love the country, I like our little slice of country...that is still only 10 minutes away from my nail shop.

Matt's Big Breakfast

Milk jug stools at Matt's Big Breakfast

Omelette

Egg scramble with ham and spinach and home fries

Pork chop, home fries and eggs (what Guy Fieri actually had)

We had some overheating problems

They couldn't find anything wrong, and it never overheated there or back

What happens when it's 118 and the AC is off

nice view

sunset was too pretty to be captured

The Country Boy breakfast at the Cracker Barrel

All Meat Breakfast at Cracker Barrel

Low Carb Breakfast at Cracker Barrel

Hwy 18, or 27 or 61, they all looked alike

The casino with the good buffet right on the river

The Simpson's clouds

expecting the Children of the Corn to come stepping out the field

okay, this was hwy 18, but I could be wrong

George trying to get through the hula hoop

an impromptu praise break the old Southern Baptist way

Shut up and hold on!!!

I am often offended by the use of "shut up", but it seems at times that it is the best way to express how urgent the the moment requires one's complete and absolute silence. After being with George for going on 9 years, I find myself internally screaming to myself to to do just that, "shut up." This self conversation has sometimes been expressed externally, and now I have to reel it back in, as I find myself telling George and Dorian sometimes (as he really hasn't learned how not to express everything that comes to his mind) to comply with this urgent need for silence. Although the words came from an unknown comedian I was listening to on an AM talk radio station, they were none the wiser. He was expressing that he was into his third marriage and he was finally learning the address the three questions every married person should ask themselves when communicating with their spouse.
#1 Does this (whatever it may be) need to be said?
#2 Does this need to be said now?
#3 Does this need to be said by me?
Sometimes it seems the only thing George asks himself in the morning is, "is my voice working" because everything that happens to fall out of his mouth during the day seem to be off basis, unnecessary, and annoying. I've had to learn to curve my verbal responses in our relationship (someone had to) or this blog would have a different title, something like "Loving Living Single" has a nice ring to it. I have started asking these questions about the things George says to me (you didn't really think I'd start with myself did you, that would require me to admit that I'm wrong, and well...we all know that's not possible. LOL), and I find that 98% of his comments don't get pass the first requirement, and don't need to be said at all. After a week of listening to him, I've found that on the things I truly want to say in response to him, are not necessary, so I edit myself (man has that been hard). If we could all just ask these questions when talking to anyone, we would find that most of the words we speak to others are words that build them up, not tear them down. Sometimes we just need to shut up and wait before speaking, wouldn't a little silence be nice?