Friday, July 31, 2009

No Laughing Allowed...

Just to prove sometimes it's the simplest things in life that make us happy, here's what thrilled me today.

I went out to my bounty of tomato plants and on the smallest, youngest bush was this itsy bitsy cherry tomato. My first ripe one of the season. It's sitting in a teaspoon so you can get the idea of it's humongous size.

Okay, it wasn't quite ripe but still better than the cardboard ones I buy in the grocery store. Being a fair minded person, I actually cut the little thing in half and shared it with D. He held back his making fun of me and my tomato. He actually smiled and went, "Mmmmmmm....good".

Now that what I call love.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Work & Training Time

Yesterday morning I could tell it was going to be hot..hot..hot.. so I decided I'd stack the leftover bead board in the wagon and get it moved to the other side of the yard. It took a couple of very tall loads but I got everything moved and stacked before 9:00 a.m.
It was already hot in the sun and I was sure glad I was unloading and stacking mostly in the shade.
It's hard to tell but the 3 highest stacks are taller than me. It felt odd swinging those long boards over my head to get stacked. Hopefully, D will get his metal frame up behind his shed so I can move this wood one last time before he decides where he's going to use it. This is the 3rd time I've moved and stacked the darn stuff. I can handle one more time if I know it's the last time I'll touch it.

Okay, the exercise certainly didn't hurt me one teeny bit. I could probably use more physical work in my life. I just don't have to like it.
I went in this morning to talk to D and this is what I found. He was working on his computer completely oblivious a deer was eating his Japanese Maple behind him.
Even my showing up at the door didn't scare the little beauty. Time to make her scared of humans so she doesn't get hurt on the road. This time around screaming and waving my arms did the trick. Time to find a reliable paint ball gun to educate her on where the boundaries are. It's the most humane way I can come up with the make the deer afraid of people. Granted they look funny with a blob of paint on their butts but if it saves the life of one, then my work is done.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Good 'n Bad

The good news: D's decided rather than breaking or injuring himself, he'll work on inadament objects.
The bad news: Yesterday he broke his glasses (again). He's actually blaming the dogs for snapping off the arm of his glasses.
The good news: He takes out the insurance for free repairs/replacement because glasses seem to explode around him.
Once he buys a new pair they and puts them on, they start shaking from fear of their new owner so bad they almost fall off. I have to stop him from running around and yelling "EARTHQUAKE" each time he puts on new glasses.
The bad news: We took them in yesterday for repair but they sent us home because there wasn't 'Upper Management' around to approve the replacement.
The good news: He'll go back to the store and deal with 'Upper Management'.
The bad news: He'll have to wait a week or so for new glasses to arrive.
The good news: I'm hushing up now so you don't have to read 'good news, bad news' anymore. LOL!

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Going Nuts!

I've been going crazy trying to find a horrible smell in the bedroom. When I got back from my trip it hit me. I'd smell it most at night in bed. I thought maybe a mouse had crawled under the bed and died. Yesterday I ripped all the blankets and sheets off the bed, took the mattress off and pulled off one of the box springs. This is what I saw. Nothing...zilch...nada. Hrrrumph!

Well, at least I cleaned up the dust bunnies, removed the electric blanket for the summer and have clean crisp sheets on the bed. I even washed the pillows and comforter which are down. Contrary to the manufacturers instructions, they actually wash up and dry very nicely.
I love the weekends because D works and it lets me clean the house and do my chores uninterrupted. Okay, that's not quite true, I always have help from the canines. Here they are helping me push the mattress back onto the box springs.

I've always had insomnia and the doctor has tried several times to regulate my sleeping. It works for a short time then I'm back to waking up over and over again at night.

When I was in Washington, I slept like a rock. For me that means one trip to the bathroom and one, 'for no reason' wake up. It was wonderful. It told me I am capable of sleeping if left alone.

I came home and told D the Bear was to be caged at night and no longer allowed to sleep in the bed with us. My sleep pattern is much better. I still wake up a couple of times but go back to sleep instantly. When I was away, I realized how much the Bear wakes me up sleeping on me, pushing me off the bed and her most frequent maneuver....pushing my head off the pillow so she could sleep on it.

I'm much happier with the only animal in my bed at night being my husband. LOL! I've even been sleeping in until after 8:00 because I'm in such a deep sleep. Before I'd try and sleep in because I was exhausted. Now I'm hoping I can continue to sleep through the night and eventually get back to my waking up between 5:00 & 6:00 a.m. I miss watching the sun rise.

Ohhhhh...the horrible smell in the bedroom? Are you ready for this? D said it was v....e...r....y hot when I was gone and he was sweating like you wouldn't believe. He threw his wet sweaty clothes in the hamper by the bed where they decided to ripen and ferment while I was gone. I put the hamper in the laundry room yesterday and the bedroom smelled wonderful last night.

Today I'll finish washing up the bedspread and move on to the rancid stuff in the hamper. I'm thinking I'll be using a lot of vinegar with detergent today. LOL!

Friday, July 24, 2009

Now you see it...now you don't.

I finished eating dinner last night and thought I'd sit down to a nice big glass of milk. I took one sip and D called me into the kitchen for something. When I came back, my full glass of milk looked like this.
The next thing I know, Nisie comes slinking into the kitchen. I looked down at her and she's licking her lips but there's one little speck of milk on her muzzle. Talk about a guilty face! Hahahahahaha!

I didn't even have to pay attention to the Buddha belly she was sporting. I'll bet if I'd picked her up and shook her she would have sloshed.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Trip to Washington

Yesterday afternoon, I got back from my Washington trip where I went to see Aunt Phyllis and cousins. It was absolute torture driving this ugly blue Mustang. Yep, total embarrassment. Believe it or not, this Mustang was cheaper than a Ford Fusion and the other generic small/mid size cars available. Hmmmm...the last Ford Fusion I rented went back to the agency after some guy on a motorcycle tried to imprint his life on the front left fender.
Here's Aunt Phyllis in her assisted living home. It's a beautiful place. She has brain and lung cancer and an attitude toward life that would put a 20 year old to shame.

I wasn't sure how her health would be so I wanted to have my own private visit with her. We had a 3 1/2 hour visit that could have gone on longer but it was time for her to go to dinner so I thought I'd better skidaddle out of there.

She was the same old Aunt P. Funny, easy going and full of great stories which she let me record. We talked about life, growing up and dealing with death and our mortality. I needed to visit her and thank her for the great summer visits, for being in my life as a kid and tell her I loved her.

I achieved my goal with her and will be able to smile fondly the next time we meet, which will most likely be at her funeral.
Look at this quilt. It's absolutely beautiful. It's the hands of her children, grand children and great grand children. Mary told her when she's lonely or scared to wrap herself in the quilt and feel all their hands holding her.
Chris gave me a call and invited me on a tour of Seattle. She drives this huge double long bus. It was great. She was out of service while driving into Seattle so I had this huge bus to myself.
Whenever the bus empties, she takes a tour down the aisle to make sure people haven't left anything on it. Look at the length of this thing. Can you imagine trying to drive this thing in downtown Seattle? She handles it like it's a Volkswagon!
Yep, that little itty bitty dot is me. I feel like I'm a block away from the front of the bus.

Chris told me we'd have a boring trip back from Seattle because the riders would just want to be quiet and read on their way home from work. It turns out, the bus in front of us had gotten in an accident so we made a detour to stop on the side of the freeway and pick up its riders.

It was also a double length bus but we were able to squeeze all the riders in our aisle. I was surprised how relaxed and funny everyone was. They took the accident in stride and smiled and joked about us picking them up. They thanked Chris for the rescue.

Oh yeah. I met a woman who wrote a book and just had it put on Amazon.com to be loaded onto the Kindle. I bought her book Tomato Blossoms (Janice Brookshire) for $3 and started reading it. It's fast to get into and I'd read two chapters before she departed the bus. I told her she did a good job because it's a fast read. Chris gave her a transit pass which she autographed and gave to me. Now if she becomes another J.K. Rowling, I'll be able to say, "I met her on a bus in Seattle once and she gave me her Autograph!"
Look Ma! No sound walls. I always forget how beautiful Washington is. I think I need a reminder once in awhile. This is driving south just out of Bellingham after my visit with Aunt Phyllis.
I know...I know....I'm letting my TOURIST hat show here. But really, doesn't Washington have some of the most beautiful rest areas in this country?
I tried my best to get a picture of Uncle Bill where he wasn't either talking or eating. I've come to the conclusion that's an impossible task. So here's Uncle Larry (left) and Uncle Bill (right) at a family get together at Michael's house. Michael is my cousin and one of Larry's three sons.
This is my cousin Linda. She refused to let me take her picture so I took one of the bruise on her arm. It's actually double the size because we're only seeing half of it. She decided she would drive a moped around the yard. She popped the clutch and immediately ran into the picnic table. She's decided not to drive any type of two wheeled vehicle ever again. LOL! What a riot!
I thought I had a killer view. This is the view Chris has to deal with out her living room window everyday. While we were there, we could see whales in the sound. I didn't see breeching but I saw water spouts in the distance.
This is our token cheesecake picture. On the left from front to back is Barbara (Bill's Daughter), Chris (Phyllis' Daughter) and Linda is drinking out of the wine bottle (Bill's Daughter). On the right is Betsy (Larry's daughter) and me.
This is Barbara, Linda, Bob (Chris' friend), me and Betsy. Bob was a terrific sport. He took all our family pictures for us and fed us. You can see here how much he was suffering through our visit.

Which one of us is the California girl? They kept making fun of me and my red clothes. I told them I'd be happy to take off the red jacket but there was a red shirt under it. Hahahahaha!

Finally, I had a bonus to this trip. Through lots of driving and phone calls I was able to find my Aunt Harriet. Scratch that, Chris and Aunt Phyllis were responsible for getting me the location. Anyway, she's 95 and we had a fantastic visit! I was with her shy of 3 hours. She told me about my other great aunts, my great uncle (which I didn't know I had) and my grandmother. We talked about my Uncle Blackie and Uncle Otto.

I learned more about family and my roots from this visit. It was a trip I'll remember the rest of my life. I can't thank my Aunts enough for their valuable time and patience with my visit.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Good Days and Bad Days....

It took me 3 days to do this design. It was a ready made design I had to size and do some color changes on. So I spent the first day doing those changes and sewing out a sample. The next day I put the design on a black vest I'd bought. I couldn't hoop the vest back so I used the fast frames I use on bags. The design turned out lopsided and icky. The vest fabric is a soft knit so it stretched all over the place because the fast frames couldn't hold it equally on all sides.

D said it looked fine and nobody would notice. Of course being anal, I couldn't accept that. Yesterday I spent the day creating a mock frame around the design. Then I sewed it out on nice sturdy fabric. Before doing the black edgings, I pinned the lopsided design on the vest to the back of the hooped heavy material. Then I appliqued one design over the other with the three outside rings meshing both fabrics together. I started at 8 yesterday morning and finished around 4:30 yesterday afternoon. It took a ton of time and days but I'm really happy with the result. You can't tell there's a screwed up design under that whale. I just loved the design of the whale turning into a wolf representing both land and water animals and was going to make it look nice if it killed me. LOL!
See my melons? No? We worked very hard fencing in the garden area to keep out the critters. It took care of the rabbits and deer which are the animals I thought were my pests. As soon as the seeds would sprout, they'd disappear. Then something started digging up the mounds and pulling out the seeds. The other day I saw who was doing it. A squirrel. Yep, the little beast crawled under the shed and into the garden to dig up my seeds. I'm starting to think the powers that be don't want me to raise my own food. Hahahahaha! Next year, we'll be seeing what we can do about the squirrels.
On the up side, here's my first big boy tomato. It's about the size of my little pinkie but it's there.
Here are four romas doing just fine. No that's not the new math, there's a forth one hiding behind these three. the cherry tomatoes and tomatillos aren't showing any fruit yet. I'm hoping when I get back from Washington, the plants will be showing off their ability to bear lots of tomatoes.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

It's Been a Good Day!

One little fall. Yep, that's all it takes to make a man think safety. We put up a new antenna and replaced our old rotator today. This will be the 3rd replacement in the 25 years we've been here. I guess that's not too bad but I sure hate the job.

Anyway, it's always a dangerous job and I'm never satisfied with D on a ladder (and me tagging along) trying to balance this huge antenna while lifting it up to the roof. Yesterday I went outside and this is what I saw. Talk about home made scaffolding! You couldn't fall off this thing if you tried. I loved it. He made the platform large enough to fit both of us without being crowded.
I think this is the first time we've gotten an antenna up without bending or breaking one of the tongs. You're not supposed to do it in the wind but we rarely have moments of no wind or breeze. We decided to tackle the job early this morning because the air was still. As soon as I got on the roof, the wind picked up. It was hard holding the antenna and not have it turned into a big metal sail. I think it's the largest antenna we've ever bought but strangely enough seemed like the lightest.

Dave's working on attaching all the wiring for the rotator. Then he affixed all the guy wires to support the beast. I was in the house removing the old rotator and hooking all the wires to the new one. I turned on the power and it started to turn while D was working on the roof. Hahahahahhaha! He didn't see the humor. I immediately unplugged the rotator but D says it turned 90 degrees in a short time. I said, "Well, it works!" Still no humor from his perspective.

Once everything was up and running I spent the next couple of hours syncing the rotator, then scanning for stations with the converter box (again!). I pulled in 45 stations at 090 degrees. About half were foreign stations so back to the drawing board reading instructions on how to block those out.

Happily, now instead of getting only 3 stations we understand (ABC, one PBS station and channel 36), we now get somewhere in the area of 25 good quality english speaking stations. I picked up my Bay Area, Sacramento and San Jose PBS stations again. Yippee!!!! Back to watching British comedy again.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Random Stuff...

Sometimes I have a DUH moment. Actually, as I grow older I seem to have more and more of them.

Check this out. I'm sure I'm the second to the last one on earth (D being the last) to see Safari gives me these shortcuts. Each morning I type in the beginning letters of where I want to go on line and the computer outsmarts me and finishes up the html address for me. It's a nice shortcut and convenient for those pages I go to often....CL, Family Blogs, Jigzone, Yahoo mail, etc.

My fingernails have been growing so long they hit extra keys at random times. They hit this little box at the top of my screen and this came up. It shows the most often used sites (my favorites). All I do is click on the picture and it magically takes me there. No typing part of the web address.

I've used Safari how many years and never knew this shortcut was there. How many more goodies are on this computer I have no clue are there? Yep, this was definitely a DUH moment.
D wanted a patriotic design put on something for him to wear. I put this (it's very large) on the back of a cream color Levi's shirt for him and added it to his Father's Day gifts. Personally, I think it looks lonely being the only design on the shirt. I've almost got him convinced the yoke and above the pocket needs something also. I'm working on him for small designs on the cuffs also but he's resisting.
The Bear misses Tess. They'd both get on the lawn about the time I turned on the sprinklers and get soaked. Tess took it all in stride and would eventually wander off the lawn and the Bear would run like her tail was on fire. The other day she took the attitude of Tess and just meandered over to me all wet like she wouldn't melt with wet fur. Good job Tess!
I got a call from S yesterday. She wanted to go to Social Security and officially become a member of the family by changing her name. Here she is pleased as punch she now has a 4 letter last name which is faster to write. Next week she'll tackle DMV. I've already advised her to make an appointment.

It was a tough day. Half an hour at SS. An hour at lunch. Three hours shopping. It was hell I tell ya.

D and I saw Transformers today. I like the first one the best. I was really looking forward to the sequel and was disappointed it was so long and very little interaction with the humans. I thought the first one had a great blend of Transformers and human interaction. This one felt like it was CG most of the time. I was actually getting restless and losing interest in the long drawn out CG fight scenes. Am I getting old?

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

What a deal!

Monday I'm at the top of the Altamont Pass minding my own business enjoying the wind in my hair, when some strange lady in a pick-up truck pulls beside me and says, "Psssssst....hey lady, I'll trade you some apricots for your dogs". Now....me being a dog lover, really had to think this over. It's been years since I've had fresh apricots so I'm afraid my tummy won out over my love for dogs.

I handed over the dogs and received a huge colander full of beautiful apricots. Last night was cool enough to turn most of them into Apricot Cobbler. YUM!
The pan barely made it out of the oven when leprechauns snuck in and removed a chunk while it was still hot. Darned Irish!
These are the lone soldiers left. Guess we'll have to force ourselves to choke them down. Ahhhh....the sacrifices we must make in life. These are ice cold in the refer so I'm ready for the heat now.

Oh the dogs? The woman promised not to eat them. She's guaranteed they're joining a loving home where she already has a couple of dogs....birds....horses....