Karen

Note To Self: Never Let Someone With A Pierced Nose Cut Your Hair

One of the few drawbacks to the lifestyle we have is that I usually have to find a new hair stylist every other time I get my hair cut. My step-daughter, Becky, cut my hair from the time she was in high school, and she did it very well. She owns a shop in the Atlanta area now. She is in such demand that it is hard for me to get an appointment with her when I am in town. I like to brag that she used to cut the hair of one of the ladies who was on the Weather Channel. If she could see what my hair looks like now, she would have a fit. Just like I did.

What I usually do when I need a haircut is to look at other people’s hair when I am in the grocery store, in a restaurant, where ever, and when I see a particularly good hair cut, I ask the woman who does her hair. Now, every woman knows that if someone asks her that question, she must look really good, so I have always gotten a “Why thank you for asking, I get it done at…” But since we are in a rural area, when I have asked that question for the last couple of weeks, it is always someone who cuts hair in her home for her friends and family only. (I guess that should have told me something about the beauty shops around here.)

Just a couple of days ago, I saw the most perfect haircut ever. The woman must have been about 65 years old, with snow-white hair. But the haircut was so modern, so trendy, so, well, just so good of a haircut. She was eating lunch with a friend of hers at a restaurant in town. So, of course, I asked her where she got her hair done. And, she proceeds to tell me it was her friend’s son, who used to work for Paul Mitchell, but he is retired from doing hair and only cuts hair for a few friends and family members now. Crap. I should have taken her picture, but I didn’t think about it until later. Much later. Too much later.

And so, since I was looking rather shaggy, and was in a real need of a haircut, I got out the phone book at the campground office and looked in the yellow pages. The first place I called could see me right away. That should have been a warning, but no, I went ahead with it. The girl who greeted me at the front desk had a nose ring. One nostril was pierced and adorned with the tiniest little stud nose ring, but still, a pierced nose.

She took me back to her lair immediately and asked me how I wanted my hair cut. I told her I usually get it cut short, with bangs, over my ears, and straight across in the back. This is what I have told every hair stylist I have ever been to, and they have managed to cut my hair in a close semblance of how Becky used to cut my hair. So she starts to cut. And she cuts, and cuts some more. When she was done, this is how it looked:

It looks like she actually cut a hole in my hair here. This looks like the picture in the Hair Club For Men commercial.

I am not a person who likes to spend a lot of time on my hair. I usually wash, blow dry, and go. I have never used any styling products. Just shampoo and conditioner, never anything else. And I have not cried about the way my hair looked since the last time my mother put a Tony Home Perm in it when I was about 12 years old. But, when I went home this time, my hair was a disaster. Jim said I needed to get a hat. Thanks a lot, big guy, that really makes me feel better.

So, today when we went to Wal-Mart, I stopped in at the hair shop there. I told the girls working there that I had gotten this hair cut yesterday, and it looks really bad to me and what could they suggest. They told me I needed something to make it “stand up”, to give it some body. So, they sold me some Molding Glue. For hair. Mess It Up Styler. Ummm, it was already messed up.

They showed me how to use it, just a dab and run my fingers through it just so, and voila! It does look a little better, so I bought the stuff. $11.00 for a little jar of it. It should last a very long time, with as little hair as I have. So, this is what it looks like now:

Note to self: Never let someone with a pierced nose cut your hair.

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Giving The Term "A Father’s Day Bash" A Whole New Meaning…

Karen · 2 Comments

We were expecting it to be busy, but somehow I did not expect it to be as busy as it was. Yes, we had lots of families camping together in celebration of Father’s Day. They came out in all the usual modes of camping, from tents to 40-foot motor homes. All of them wanted the same thing—a couple of days rest and relaxation at the campground, fishing, roasting marshmallows, enjoying a campfire, and enjoying the family.

So, on Friday night, as usual, we were covered up with people checking in. We had more than 160 check-ins for the day, about 120 of them between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. Everything went pretty good until the boyz showed up. This was a really haggard looking bunch of about 5 guys who wanted to rent a tent site. Now, I am not against groups of people camping in tents, but the management here has a rule that there must be at least one person per site who is 25 years old, and we have to card them to make sure they are.

Another rule that the management has is that there are no overnight “guests” on a tent site. The tent sites can have a maximum of 2 adults per site. If there are more than 2 adults, they have to rent another site. If you have a so-called guest, that person must pay the tent rate to stay, because there is one tent per site. I really do understand what the management is trying to accomplish by doing this, and that is to cut down on the number of teen beer parties on Friday and Saturday nights.

So, as the Night Shift Supervisor, I have the most pleasant task of informing the teeny boppers that they cannot stay at this campground when they arrive to get a tent site for the night. Now, try to imagine this guy, covered with tattoos, bandana on his head, baggy shorts drooping down over his butt crack, saying, “Well, my mama is camping here and I’ll just go get her to rent the site.” And I say, “Is she going to stay on that site with you all night?” And he says, “No, she is just going to rent it.” So I say, “No, you can’t do that. What you can do is pay for camping and put a tent on her campsite.” They didn’t want to do that, so they finally left. And I get on with the rest of my job.

The rest of Friday night went by in a flash, with no other out of the ordinary occurrences. On Saturday, I had about 30 more check-ins, and loads of people with loads of money buying stuff in the store. It was a constant stream of people, which made the day go by fast. We had a retail clerk at the candy counter until 6 p.m. After she went home, there were two of us left to handle the crowd.

My co-worker was 15 years old, not old enough to sell cigarettes in the state of Pennsylvania. So, no matter whatever else I was doing, I had to stop and ring up cigarettes for our customers. Not such a hard thing, except that as the Night Shift Supervisor, I have other duties I must complete before I go home for the night, such as counting the cash drawers from the snack bar and the mini golf shack; doing the sales reports from those two places; calling people who have made reservations and who have not paid their deposits after 7 days to request payment of the deposit; filing a large stack of paperwork that was given to me with a note that said “Do Not Delegate”; and about 10 other miscellaneous tasks. I felt like I was up to my neck in alligators that night.

About 3:30 p.m., a guy comes in and want to register as a guest of his friend. I asked him his friends last name, and he did not know it. I asked if he had his friends telephone number, and he did not know that either. So I asked if he knew what site his friend was camping on. He did not know. But, if I would let him in he could just drive around and find him. I asked if his friend was camping in a tent. He said yes. So, I told the guy he would have to pay for a tent site, he could not camp as a guest on a tent site. He did not want to do that, and again asked me to let him just drive around and find his friend. I told him again that we do not allow that. He left.

So about 5 minutes later, he came in again, and went to my co-workers register. He started saying the same things to her. Since I am the Night Shift Supervisor, I asked the customer I was assisting if he could wait just a moment, and stepped over to where Tammy was working. I told this man again that he would have to pay for a tent site to get into the campground. He said, well, can I just go in and pick out a site before I pay? I said, NO, YOU CAN NOT. We will register you and assign you a site, and if you don’t like it, you can move to any other tent site that is available, but you have to pay FIRST. He finally agreed to pay, and I returned to my customer. But, I heard him saying to my 15 year old co-worker “That woman is such a bitch!” I started to call one of them maintenance workers and have him escorted out of the park, but I didn’t. If that happens again, I will do that.

Then, at about 9:30 p.m., a man came into the store and told me there was a domestic dispute going on at that group tenting area. He said that a guy had his wife on the ground, punching her and kicking her, and that some other guys who were camping nearby came to her rescue, and a big free for all ensued. So, I called the campground owner on the radio and told him he had “an incident that needed attention”. He went down there, and called me on the radio, and told me to call 911. So, I had a radio to the boss in one hand, the telephone with the police in the other hand, trying to get the cops out here to apprehend the jerk, when a woman who wanted to buy cigarettes comes up and is indignant because she can not pay for her cigarettes!!! Give me a break, lady.

So, the police arrive and go up to where the altercation is “in progress”. My husband had to go up there too to lead the police to the scene. He said that when the police arrived, someone pointed and yelled, there he goes right now. He was in a truck trying to flee the area. The police cut him off, and he jumped out of the truck and started running. Jim said it was just like on COPS on TV.

In the meantime, the woman came into the store. She had a baby about 6 months old, another one about 18 months old, and a 3 year old. She and all her children were crying, I had about 25 customers in the store trying to get checked out, and one co-worker trying to get it all done, as I was still on the phone with the 911 operator. I asked the guy on the phone if she needed to go back up to the scene, and he said if she wanted to press charges, she need to go back up there.

So, I told her that, and she started screaming that she didn’t want to go up there because he was still there. I got off the phone then, and told the girl that she either had to go back up to the scene to press charges or she would have to go outside and sit on the bench out there, but she could not stay in the store. Yes, I really felt sorry for her, but I had other work to do. If she didn’t want to go through with pressing charges against the jerk, there was nothing I could do for her.

I finally got her out of the store, and sold all those dang cigarettes. Why is it that I feel bad that I couldn’t help her? I had nothing to offer her in the store. Should there have been something else I could have done? It took us longer than usual to get the store closed, cleaned, the money counted, lock up and go home. I was glad to get there. I still had Sunday to go.

On Sunday, I arrived to find out I was scheduled to work by myself from 4 p.m. until 8 p.m. I was so thrilled to learn that. What a good time I had. I still had the no deposits report, the check-ins for the coming week to check for accuracy, the confirmations batch to run, retail sales, the phones ringing off the hook, the little kids wanting to redeem their tickets from the arcade games for the little junky prizes, email reservation requests to handle, etc., etc., etc. And after the store closed at 8 p.m., I still had to sweep and mop the store, stock the bottled water in the cooler, straighten all the shelves, empty the trash cans, count all the cash drawers, do the cash report…It took me an hour to get it all done. When I got home I felt like I had run a marathon. Tell me again why I like this job?

On Monday night, Jim and I and our co-worker, Linda, had our own little Mexican fiesta. I made black bean and shrimp nachos. She made a delicious dessert that started out with gluten free tortillas. Spread with a cream cheese filling, top with fresh fruit. OMG!!! Yummy was the word for that. Oh, did I mention the margaritas? Yep, and I had three! I had forgotten how good a margarita could make you feel. I couldn’t feel my legs for about an hour or so. Linda was the one who went to the liquor store for the tequila. I have always bought Jose Cuervo tequila, but never again. She got Herra-Durra brand, and I have to say, that was the BEST tequila I have ever had. It would be dangerous for me to have a bottle of it in the house. ¡Vivo la vida loca!

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A New Yummy Gluten Free Pizza Recipe

Karen · Leave a Comment

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I have been tryng out different pizza dough recipes for a couple weeks now, trying to find one Jim and I can both eat and like. Here is the one I tried today. It was really good, so good that Jim was bragging to the people we work with that I made a de-lish-ous homemade pizza for lunch. He said it is a keeper recipe.

For the crust:

1 packet rapid rise dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water
2 tsp. Brown sugar
2/3 cup white rice flour
½ cup tapioca flour
2 tsp. Xanthan gum
½ tsp. Salt
½ tsp. Baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp cider vinegar

Add the yeast and brown sugar to the water, and stir to disolve the yeast. Set aside. Measure all the dry ingredients and put in a medium size bowl. Add olive oil, vinegar, and yeast water. Stir with a fork until a ball forms. The dough will be soft. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until about double in size. Stir down the dough. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Spray foil with olive oil. Spread dough with the back of spoon til very thin, making sure you close up any tears or holes in the dough.

For the topping:

1 jar of Classico Pesto sauce, or homemade pesto sauce
black olives
2 or 3 fresh tomatoes, sliced
pepperoni or cooked Italian sausage
1 cup shredded mozzeralla cheese

Spread the pesto on the pizza dough. Add Italian sausage or pepperoni on top of the pesto. Slice tomatoes very thin, and add on top of the meat. Slice the black olives on top of tomatoes. Sprinkle cheese over all. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Let the pizza rest for abut 5 minutes before slicing.

This was very good. The bottom of the crust was a nice golden brown, and the whole crust was crispy and chewy, just the way I like pizza dough. I am going to try this again next week , but use the dough to make some bread sticks. I will let you all know how it turns out.

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Night Shift Campground Supervisor

Karen · 1 Comment

I love being the night shift campground supervisor. As summer gets closer, and school gets out around the country, more and more people are coming to Gettysburg, and to the campground.I am beginning to feel more like a resident of Gettysburg than a visitor. I can tell our guests where to find a good restaurant and give them directions how to get there. I can tell them how to get to the campground from the major highways, and I can tell them where they can go to see a movie. Jim thinks this is funny, because he thinks I am bad at giving directions, even though we have only gotten lost once in 15 years with me reading the maps.

If anyone out there wonders what it is really like to be a Night Shift Campground Supervisor, here are a few things that went on at my job over the last week:

A little girl was bitten by a dog.She was with her parents at the shuffleboard court when the owner of the dog came up. All the adults chatted for a minute about the dog, which was a very nice dog. While the adults were chatting, the child was petting the dog. All of a sudden, the dog snapped at her, resulting in a gash on her face that required 12 stitches. Now the different part is that the father was calm, cool, collected. He did not yell and scream at the owner of the dog. He told me later that things happen, he just wished that it had not happened to his little girl. I thought that was amazing, how calm he could be about the whole thing. Most people would be talking about lawyers and suing and such. He just said, “I was standing right there and could not have prevented it myself.”

The second thing that happened was that an older man came in, registered, and drove his motorhome to the site. He came back all huffy and mad as a hornet because our rock on the site had damaged his motorhome. He was demanding to speak to the manger, and guess who was the senior management person on duty? Me, the Night Shift Supervisor.So, while I was thinking to myself that HE was the one driving the thing, I asked him what I could do for him. He said he wanted to be compensated for his loss. I told him that I could not do anything like that and that he would need to speak to the owner, who was not on the property at the moment. Finally got him calmed down and out of the office. Whew!It is at times like that that I do not like being a supervisor.

Next in was a lady (and I use that term loosely) who was shopping in the store with her four year old child. I watched and listened (I was FORCED to listen as she was screaming at the child the whole time) as they walked through the store. The kid was holding two candy bars and a sucker in one hand, and a Kool-Aid drink in a plastic bottle in the other hand. He had the unopened drink in his mouth, chewing on the top of it. The mother was saying, “You need to decide it you want the candy or the drink, hurry up, make a decision, we have to go, decide!”I was thinking to myself, a four year old doesn’t even know what “decide” means! So, I said to her, “You will have to buy the drink because he has had it in his mouth already.”She looked at ME like I was crazy, and said “I KNOW THAT!”and I am thinking, then why are you making this kid think he has a choice about it?She wound buying all that sweet sugary stuff for him. Well, she is the one who has to live with the kid.

A while later, four teenage boys came in to register. They had made a reservation for two campsites next to each other, for a total of 8 people. When I told them the total due they wanted to argue about the amount, because our published rates are $175 for a week. I explained that it is $175 plus 10% tax for two people, and $8 plus 10% tax for each additional person per site. So, for a week on each site, with 4 people per site, that came to $315.70 per site for the week. The boy who had made the reservation claimed he was not told about the extra charges for the additional people, and therefore he should not have to pay it. I asked him how he found out about the campground. He said he saw the webpage on the internet. I told him our rates are published on the internet, and they state the charges for extra people and tax. They were not very happy, and even came back later and wanted a refund of a couple hundred dollars, because they did not think “it was fair for them to be charged when they did not know about it”.What? NO, I did not refund any money to them.

The next day, the four girls arrived. While one of my co-workers was checking them in, I overheard a converstion the girls were having amongst themselves:

1^st girl “Why didn’t we just come up with the guys yesterday?”
2^nd girl “Because Joe did’nt want me to ride up here with him.”

Excuse me, he wants you to sleep with his little teenage self in a tent for six nights, but he does not want you to ride to the campground with him in the same car? And you went for it? Where is your pride, girl? Oh, yeah, that stuff is none of my business.

So, on Monday night, all the work campers met at Linda’s site and shared some gluten-free pasta salad, some cheese, and some wine. Lots of wine. Night Shift Campground Supervisor is a great job, that requires lots of wine.

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FabGrandpa’s Socks

Karen · 3 Comments

I don’t know what it is with men and their socks. Jim always seems to be needing more socks, more often than I do at least. He says they lose their “springyness” and when they do, he does not like to wear them anymore. This is long before they look worn out to me, but because I love him so, I get him some more socks whenever he starts talking about the lack of spring, WHATEVER that means.

While we were at the sock store, better known as Target, I also got some socks for our new little man, who we are calling “Owen” for the time being, until his parents name him something else. Those cute little socks were just irresistable, almost as cute as I imagine the baby himself to be.

Jim is very excited about this new baby. The child has no blood relation to Jim at all, but the prospect of being “Poppa” is appealing to him. He loves all three of “our” grandchildren as much as I do. I would say “maybe more”, but I don’t see how that is possible. He loves to spend time with Spencer, Michael, and Sarah, and absolutely loves his role of grandfather. He is the FabGrandpa, no matter what anyone else thinks.

This is one of my favorite pictures of all time, Poppa with Michael, 1997.

Poppa with Spencer in 2002.

With Sarah at the 4-D Theater at Stone Mountain Dec 23, 2005. He loves his grandsons, but this little lady has stolen his heart!

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A Crabby Happy Birthday

Karen · 3 Comments

THE BIRTHDAY GIRLS

THE BIRTHDAY DINNER

My birthday was last week. I turned 55. I used to think that anyone who was 55 was over the hill, old as dirt, on their last leg. Well, I have changed my opinion of that now that I am there. I am enjoying my life, more than at any other time I have lived it.

My friend, Lynn, also had a birthday last week. So, Jim and I, our friends Lynn and Charlie, their friends Sandy and Phil, and our new friend Linda all went out to a neat little restaurant in Fairfield, Pennsylvania for dinner in celebration of the event.

Dave and Jane’s Crab Shack is a pleasant little surprise. It is located at 2989 Tract Road in Fairfield. Fairfield is about 10 miles west of Gettysburg, and about 2 miles north of the Maryland state line. It is nowhere near an ocean, or any body of water for that matter. But, they have the best seafood I have eaten in a long time.

As their name implies, they serve steamed crabs by the dozens. Even on a Wednesday night, we had to have reservations to get in the door. I was surprised at just how many people were there because it is out in the country.

They have an ALL YOU CAN EAT menu, as well as regular entrees. The AYCE specials are Steamed Crabs (In Season) for $29.95, Alaskan Crab Clusters for $29.95, Steamed Shrimp for $28.95, and an AYCE Trio for $31.95. If I had been with other people who love to eat steamed crabs as much as I do, I would have opted for the AYCE steamed crabs, but I did not because I would have been the only one, and the rest of the gang would have to have waited for me to finish. (Believe me when I say I can eat some crabs!)

So, instead, I ordered the Seafood Lovers Platter. For $22.95, I had 1 dozen steamed clams, 1 lb. of crab clusters, a half pound of steamed shrimp, a cup of cream of crab soup, and a tossed salad. I thought they would never stop bringing out my food! And talk about delish! It was soooo yummy! I also ordered a basket of 3 steamed crabs. I wound up bringing part of my dinner home with me, and that was after sharing with others at the table.

Jim ordered a Combination Seafood Platter. His included broiled shrimp, a crab cake, a broiled fish filet, broiled scallops, and fried oysters. There was more than he could eat, too, and we brought some of his home. The price for that platter was $18.95.

We really enjoyed our dinner party at Dave and Jane’s Crab Shack. If you are ever in the Gettysburg area, I think it is a “must go” place. To get there, take US 15 south from Gettysburg to Maryland 140 in Emmetsburg, Maryland. Turn west on 140 and drive about all the way through Emmetsburg. On the other side of town, you will see a large billboard on the right, at Tract Road. Turn right onto Tract Road and drive about 2 miles or so. Dave and Jane’s will be on the left. Call ahead to make reservations and to make sure they are open. 717 642-5025. You will be very glad you did. OH, they also sell crabs by the dozen to go. And they have a landlubbers menu, including steaks, chicken, sandwiches, and pizza. Prices start at $3.00 for a burger.

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Fab Home Made Soap

Karen · 1 Comment

As I mentioned in my profile, I have been making my own soap for more than 10 years. Jim and I have not bought a bar of soap in all that time. We were down to our last bar, so last week I made two batches.

I use palm kernel oil, almond oil, grapeseed oil, castor oil, and olive oil in my soap. In one batch I used peppermint and lavender essential oils for the scent. In the other batch, I used rosemary, peppermint, and eucalyptus essential oils. The Rosemary blend one is Jim’s favorite, so I make it every time I make a batch of soap.

In the picture above, the greenish soap is the lavender mint; the other one is the rosemary-mint-eucalyptus. My sad piggy bank from Mexico is watching over the bars.

I have some pretty molds that I use sometimes, but this time I was in a hurry, so I just used the loaf mold that one of my friends made for me. I gave him a bath size bar of Ivory soap and told him to make me a loaf mold that would make the finished soap that size. It is made out of pine wood, and has a divider in it so that I can make two different scents at the same time if I want to. I line it with a plastic trash bag so I can lift the loaf out when it is ready to cut. The picture below is my of my wooden loaf mold.

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Ebay Snatchers

Karen · 3 Comments

I can’t really express how I am feeling right now. Maybe the best way to put it is: ARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!! I received an email from Ebay, saying that someone had been using my account unauthorized. The email was addresed to my ebay username, with the wrong name attached to it.

I was not actually selling anything right now, and had no plans to sell anything in the near future, but I have had that ebay account for more than 8 years. I was MY account. MINE! How dare someone just waltz in and complicate my life just like that!

I did as instructed and went to the ebay website and tried to log in, and was refused entry to the site. I had to answer my “security questions”, and failed the test, even though the questions were such things as “What is your telephone number?” and “What is your date of birth?” Now, I know I am a grandmotherly type of person, but I do not have senility to the point of not knowing my birthday or telephone number, neither of which has changed in years.

My question is, how did this ebay snatching floosy get into my account? How could such a thing happen? And if they can get into my lowly ebay account so easily, do I now have to worry about my online banking, my email account, my BLOG??? Please, don’t let anyone take over my blog!! I can live with someone stealing my “mostly” plus ratings on ebay, but if they took over my blog, which is my “real” identity online, I would be devastated. My reputation could be ruined with just one post.

So, I spent most of the day changing my passwords everywhere I could think of to change them. I just hope I can remember them tomorrow.

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