Yawn......it's Tuesday

Sunday we went to the kids to put up the crib and came home to a larger swarm of ants. This has been going on for over a month now. Where's the darn queen?

I think it's time to figure out how to get D up in the attic to spray. They aren't coming from outside. I've sprayed the foundation around the house twice and D once. There are no trails anywhere. These little creeps are living in the rafters. Oye vey.

I came home last night and there were even more. Talk about breeding like crazy. I do like the fact that if they leave this corner I kill them by spraying 409 on the kitchen counter. It snuffs them out instantly.

When I was changing to go to the kids I found this on my leg. It's huge and I haven't a clue where or when I got it. Usually I'll bump myself and then think I'll remember what I did later. Not this time. It just appeared by magic. I think it looks a bit like South America. LOL!

Well, it's obnoxious grandma time. We put the crib up Sunday. D and S were supposed to do it. As you can see S handles an awkward box pretty well.

While D takes a minute to conference with the help on how to attack the project. I'm sure Cole had tons of ideas for D.

Let's see....box says, 'do not use knife to cut open box'. Explains why D is using scissors. LOL!

Confused? Hahahahahaha! How can one crib have so many parts?

Once a Manager always a Manager. Let the young tackle the grunt work while you read the directions.

The important keeper of the small parts. She doled them out perfectly except I want to know why we had two parts left over. Hmmmmmm.....

Now the mother of the child suggested doing this in the bedroom because the crib won't fit through the door and hall once assembled. The father of the child ignored her......for awhile.

Note the crib has been moved to the bedroom for assembly. I love it when the women are right.

Okay, okay...it was supposed to be a guy project but the Irish in me just wouldn't butt out. It turned out to be a competition between mom and son on who could assemble their corners fastest. I think it was a wash.

Just a few finishing touches and walla! A crib for one.

S stumbled on this crib set by accident at Ross. It matches the room perfectly!

Ya think they're gonna be proud parents?

Some of the animals S made and put on the wall. They're much cuter in person.

Okay, I'm going to work now so you guys won't have to deal with anymore baby stuff this posting. I'm leaving now....watch me leave....bye.....I'm moving....really I am.....

Friday, Saturday & Sunday....

They were making fun of me Friday at work because I was telling them how beautiful the sunrise was that morning.

Just before 6:00 I looked outside and saw this. Is it beautiful or what? At 5:30 it was pitch dark, just before 6 Mother Nature put on a show.

The moon was showing through the clouds. It was a quarter moon and just as bright as can be. It was so pretty I didn't feel quite so foolish running from the front to the backyard in my nightgown snapping pictures.

The top picture of the moon was taken in the backyard. By the time I'd moved to the front, the sky had lightened this much. It just teaches you to grab the camera right away because Mother Nature moves fast and in the blink of an eye.

Speaking of eye, Rene at work said the only thing he wants to see at that time in the morning is the inside of his eyelids. LOL! I'm thinking I won't be seeing him on any early morning sightseeing tours.

I was going to embroider all day Saturday but woke up to more ants. Technically they never went away. We just get new hoards of them. They thin out and then a new swarm comes through. I'd think by now, we'd have poisoned the queen but it looks like she's still alive and kicking in the attic somewhere.

If D didn't have a car blocking access to the attic, I'd send his tushie up there to spray. Since the car is on blocks, there's no way we can move it. Welcome to my world. sigh.....

I decided Saturday I wanted the house in that, "Companies coming!" mode. You know where everything is clean and pretty? So....I didn't embroider. Instead I spent all day cleaning, cleaning and then cleaning some more.

The house is beautiful and it feels good to know, I don't need company to come over in order get it in that condition. I was exhausted last night but so happy to look around at everything shiny, clean and polished.

When I was bleaching the kitchen sink, something caught my eye. I ran to get my camera and this is what I shot. See the tail?

This is the coyote that's been visiting the yard the past couple of months. When he first showed up he was very skinny and sickly looking. He's apparently been doing a terrific job keeping the rodent population under control.

He usually wanders through the hill in the morning. This was around 1:30 so I was surprised to see him.

He's the size of a large german shepherd, very shy and now very healthy. Only the bear is let out alone to go potty and now I have to keep an eye on her. The odds of this guy bothering her are pretty slim but stranger things have been known to happen.

It was nice to wake up this morning to a clean house. I got dressed, made the bed and my work was done. I grabbed a bunch of strawberries and a glass of milk for breakfast, then sat down and finished a book on my kindle.

I thought I'd catch up my blog before heading to my son's house. D will meet us there after work today and we'll put up the crib we bought for the baby. Now that's going to be a fun afternoon!

Another Saturday Gone....

Here's a little history with our neighbors. Years ago they used to brew beer. They were very serious and very good at it. They have this 'guest house' that had 3 rooms in it. They wanted us to help turn the kitchen and bath into one large room tiled from floor to ceiling and add a huge fan and industrial sink so they can brew their beer.

It's locked up so I had to take pictures through the sliding glass door. But here's the tile job D and I did for them on the walls. The pictures for the floor just wouldn't turn out but it's the same tile with them alternating light and dark for a checkered pattern. On one end is a large drain.

D had to rewire the entire thing which of course I find that part boring and just not in my realm of interest. This room is about the same shape and size of Shannon's kitchen. There's a larger 'living room' in front.

This is why when they wanted their deck rebuilt, they came to D.

Last weekend we ended up with this. Just turning the corner to the second side of the deck.

Saturday, when I got there, I was amazed how much D had gotten done. He leaves mundane chores for me to do.

See that big beam sticking out? Well there are three of them.

Here I am straddling one of them installing additional big bolts. It's too high up so I had to sit on it with my legs dangling. That makes it hard to get leverage because I have nothing to brace myself against.

I love this drill! It has so much torque, it'll send me spinning in circles if I don't use it at low speed. Even then, it could very easily snap my wrist. It's fun but I highly respect its power.

So my question is, 'How in the world did D get those beams up there and installed all by himself'. I asked him and he just smiled. So I think that means, "Honey, you don't want to know".

D wants to make sure this deck doesn't fall apart like the other one. Talk about sistering boards together! Does my husband over build or what?

I can honestly say, when he makes something, it takes an act of God to blow it apart. LOL! Well that's not completely true because the winds up here have blown our neighbor's gazebos and arbors apart and ours are still standing.

Cudos to you sweetie!

Two posts in two days....wow!

I promised on yesterday's post I'd try to clean up the pictures on my desktop and post them. So consider me on a roll. Two posts in two days. Go me!

If you look really...really....really...r.e.a.l.l.y....hard you can see 7:57 in this picture. It was pitch black in the bedroom and this is the time displayed on my ceiling.

D. keeps unplugging his clock radio and moving it around the house, so he's always missing his alarm. I decided I'd set mom's clock up on his nightstand. I turned on the feature that displays the time on the ceiling. Sisters, you really messed up giving this to me. It is soooooo cool! You really need to run out and get one for yourselves. I love it!

Even though the display is above D's side of the bed, I can easily see it. No more having to lift my head off the pillow to view the time. Whenever I do that, it wakes me up and I can't get back to sleep.

This is side 1 of the 3 sided deck D has been working on. Look how pretty and green the lawn is. That's because D spent a week working on the sprinkler system which was totally out of whack.

Side one almost finished with the framing. D put me to work on Labor Day finishing up this part of the frame in.

I should have taken better pictures of how dangerous and rotted this deck was. I took some pictures of side two but not enough.

D finished up this corner last week. It was a real pain in the patoot. If you look very close, you can see where none of the pillars holding the deck up are straight. Not only were they not straight but some of them we're completely disconnected from their bases.

This is how rotted the wood was. Walking on the deck was very iffy at best.

These are the steps on side one...the front of the deck. They are so rotted and the nails have all pulled away I was actually scared to climb them in order to take pictures. I ended up stepping smack dab in the center where there's a support. They rocked and bowed when I stepped on them.

This is side two where D pulled off the old deck. He brought in 4 loads of gravel.

This looks simple but I think D used every swear word he knew in getting this corner lined up.

The second phase of the deck will be a step up from the first. Working the corner of the deck was an engineering feat. LOL! Friday, D already had 1/4 of the framing of the second part done. He's still got a long way to go.

I am sooooo far behind!

This is my desktop. I usually try to keep it pretty clear and put the important stuff on my hard drive. As you can see, I've fallen very far behind. The guys who take care of our computers at work tell us to keep our stuff off our desktops and on our hard drives so if our computer crashes, they can usually retrieve almost all of our work.

I've been meaning to post pictures since before I got back from the cousin reunion and just haven't had the time. In the black area of my desktop all those little squares are pictures I need to edit and post on my blog.

I figure since I'm already out of date order, I'm just going to grab a batch and post it. Then I can clear them from my desktop and look efficient again.

So....I'm starting with the pictures I took last night (Friday 9-9). As the sun was going down the dark storm clouds rolled in. It was so darn tropical, I felt like I was back in Fiji on vacation again.

Unfortunately, I had to reduce the size of this picture too much. In the original, I could see about half of the moon's shadow hidden in the clouds. It was really cool. It couldn't be seen by the naked eye but the camera picked it up.

Now, picture me sitting verrrrry still for about 10 minutes with the camera perched on my knees. Yep, I did that. We had so much lightening, I was determined to get a shot of it. The only problem is, I didn't know when it would strike and by the time the shutter opened and closed, the lightening was gone.

So use your imagination on this. Right in the center of the picture it's a little pink. Well, that's the end of the flash of lightening. So, technically I'm going to say I caught a picture of the flash. LOL.

Looking out the front of the house, the sky was dark on the left and clear on the right. When I started to rotate toward the back, I got a bit of blue showing through the storm.

As I turned to the garage side, I saw some dark clouds but mostly clear.

Within minutes Mother Nature was giving me a breathtaking view that knocked my socks off.

I called D out so he could stand in the hot rain with me. I love it when it's muggy and wet. Especially when the raindrops are those huge fat puppies. It's the time you don't care you hair and clothing is getting all wet.

Some Great Ants and not so Great....

For a week and a half we've been fighting the not so great ants. I've given up on the big names like Raid, Black Flag etc. They just don't make the same product they did years ago. Must be an eco thing. sigh.... We tried Hot Shot and the ants completely ignored it. We put Terro next to the Hot Shot dispensers and the ants went wild.

Rather than remove the old containers we just added new ones next to them. It's hard to see but each one of these is filled with little black bodies. Wooowhoooo! We've had a black line coming down the pillar on the kitchen counter for well over a week. Yesterday it got very thin and today I think there were less than a dozen creatures looking for food. Yep, Terro wins hand or should I say, Ants Down! LOL!

Now this is a Great Aunt. Yuck...yuck... This is my Great Aunt Harriet. For my nieces out there and daughter in law, this would be your Great, Great Aunt Harriet. She's my mother's, mother's sister.

When I was up in Seattle at the cousin reunion (pictures to follow at a later date), I called my cousin Harriet to see if I could visit my great aunt. She said, "Absolutely, she'd love it!"

I saw Aunt Harriet when I was up there in 2009 and she remembered the visit and all of what we talked about. She's as sharp as a tack for a woman who will be 97 in November. She's just limited on her mobility. Which doesn't seem to slow her down much.

She was thrilled I bought my sister Sue with me. It's been ages since they've seen each other.

This being Labor Day, I thought I'd labor. Yep, that's me working on the neighbor's deck. D was working on the part that will go around the second side of the house and I was permanently attaching the framing boards on the edge of the backyard side. I surprised him by being done much faster than he thought I'd be. So I filled in my time eating some grapes from Carol's arbor. LOL! They were pint size but sweet.

Now I'm home trying to catch up on paperwork but thought I'd better do the blog since I got a text message from my daughter-in-law reminding me I haven't posted in awhile. D is starting the BBQ so I can cook a pork roast for dinner but we'll head next door for a little more work.

I'd forgotten how rewarding it is to work on a project that size and actually had a great time. I do have a stipulation to work in the shade whenever possible. LOL!

Happy Labor Day to you all!