I’m Back!

Hello — I’m back (I hope) to blogging about the wonders in my life.  A lot has happened over the past year that I’ve been away.  Guilt for one thing, for ignoring my blog.  Really though, during the school year, I was too busy to blog.  I had a full time job, had returned to school and took two classes, my family was in the wings awaiting my attention, and the property had a ton of work waiting.

After the Ike storm, the property was a mess with fallen trees and branches everywhere.  You couldn’t even tell that we had ever worked on it.  Several one-hundred-year-old trees were topped out and one of the old trees was completely demolished, laying in the middle of where the house was going to be someday.  Looking at the mess, and with all of the work we had to do at home, Hubby and I felt overwhelmed.  Feeling that we needed some professional help, we called an equipment company to clean up some.  A backhoe was hired and the guy pushed up trees and debri and piled it up.  Great, the property was looking better than it did before the storm, but the property had been pockmarked with holes where small trees had been uprooted, and furthermore, you couldn’t walk two feet without stumbling over roots and small tree trunks.  The equipment operator had done exactly what we had asked, but I just hated the way the land looked, naked, exposed, the rich soil exposed to the elements of the hot gulf winds.  What the property needed was lots and lots of dirt brought in, then smoothed out, then grass planted.  But with the checking account falling quickly towards “0″, the dirt business would have to wait.

What awaited our attention on the property was five huge piles of the felled trees, vines, branches, and trunks.  We had only a few choices for the removal of the debri piles — we could burn the piles or have the piles removed with more expensive equipment (have I mentioned yet that my husband and I are lower-middle-class-income folks?).  We were out of money, so bringing in more equipment to move the debri was out of the question.  I thought about renting a wood chipper but we were really too broke to even handle that.  So we decided to allow the debri to dry out since the brush was still green, then we could burn it — not good for the environment at all but the poor-man’s way to get rid of unwanted waste.

 

debri after storm Ike

A month went by and then another with one excuse and then another from Hubby.  Then at the first of the year, a burn ban was issued by the county because of a lack of rain in the area.  We did some cleanup work here and there, built up another pile of brush and waited for rain.  Well, it didn’t rain and our little ugly pond that travels next to our property went dry.  And it still didn’t rain.  And springtime went by without a spit or a promise.  Then June came along and I anticipated a nice rainy early summer because we normally get some good rain during June — but alas, it didn’t come.

Cleanup work after Ike's visit

after Ike cleanup

In the meantime, I went to school; during the fall session I took American History, made a “B”, also took Math (what my charming daughter calls “stupid math”), a prealgebra course, and completed that course with an “A” — yes!  Both courses were so hard but I did well.  I stayed in school for spring, took American History II, made another “B” and was damned happy with that “B” because it was damned hard, and also took the next Math, another prealgebra course and made a “B”.  I would have loved to have taken a summer course, but alas, I received tough news from work.

During May, my boss gave me the news that I was getting laid off.  My last day at work was June 30; now I’m one of the unemployed statitics.  I took the summer off to spend some time with my teenager, but it will be time to get out of the house and pound the pavement along with the rest of the unemployed.  Wish me luck!

Five People? In one bed?

On Friday evening, I actually did some reading.  I had been trying to get interested in a John Irving novel, but like the other novel that I read by him, I’m having trouble starting it.  He must have issues in getting his novels started. 

 

After a couple of weeks of trouble trying to read the thing, I threw it down and picked up another book.  I am now reading “Gentle Rain” by Deborah Smith.  It is a contemporary novel, written around ten years ago, I believe, and so far, it’s very good.  The storyline is about a wealthy young woman who loses her parents in an accident, and as she goes through their things after the funeral, she finds out she was adopted.  When she tries to find out more about her birth parents, she finds out that her parents were mentally challenged and they work on a cattle ranch in North Florida.  So far, the book is very interesting and a lot of fun to read.  I’ll let you know how the last half of the book is.

 

In the meantime, Hubby began nagging me to search for the car title on the 97 Nissan Altima. (Hubby is worse than any woman about nagging).  The vehicle was still broken down, still sitting in the driveway and still not sold.  Oh God, I would have rather been beaten with a stick than to search for the one little sheet of paper in my messy house. 

 

The next morning, Saturday, I realized that my prayers had not been answered (my car title had not magically appeared despite my prayers) so I had to spend literally the whole morning searching through a mountain of bills and papers in search of that title.  While I worked on that fun little task, I did separate the bills into dated boxes so that my future searches would not be as time consuming.  Two hours later, I still had not found that title.  Figuring that I was looking in the wrong place, I jumped in the truck and drove the 15 miles to work, downtown, to see if it was at work.  I didn’t find it though and returned home to pick up where I had left off in my search an hour earlier.  Believe it or not, I did find the darn document almost at the bottom of the mountain of papers.  I went ahead and completed the vast amount of receipts and invoices and bills, completed the separation of all paperwork and then put the boxes up.  I didn’t think I would ever finish.  But as mad as I had been, at least I had accomplished the monumental task and I can now give myself a pat on the back.  All I need to do now is go through some of the older papers again and weed them out again – it would give us more room. 

 

That afternoon, Hubby followed me over to No.1son’s so that I could leave my 2002 Nissan Altima with him.  My brakes had been sounding funny so he agreed to do a brakejob and check the air conditioning filter to see if it was clogged.  No.1son usually saves me a good bit of money.  I took the kids off of his hands so that he could work, and Hubby and I took the kids and No.2son to the property with us.  We didn’t do any work on the property this time, it was just too hot (97 degrees), we just wanted to check on the camper and make sure that all was well.  While we were there, we took a hike just to have something to do and the kids loved it.  We were eaten up by mosquitoes, but the little ones get such a kick of going through the woods like that, I imagine the woods seem larger than life to them.  We saw a snake while on our excursion, but I’m not sure if all of the kids saw it or not.  From my position, I could only see it’s head poking up from the other side of a log.  I think it was enough that there was a snake nearby.  Hubby tried to get as close as he could to it and confirmed that it was NON-poisonous and let it go, he predicted that it was a black-runner, I’m not sure if it really was or not but it was definitely a dark brown and black with a little round head, not a triangular-shaped head; Hubby got a hearty thank-you from me for a change. 

I did get a photo of a strange spider.  I knocked it’s web down so that I could get a good shot of it, and it slowly moved around giving me ample opportunity to get in focus.

red spider

The next shot is of a butterfly that I was lucky enough to capture on film.  They flutter around so quickly, that you don’t see how in the world you will get a shot.  Sometimes you feel so lucky.  Isn’t he great?

Butterfly

 

The last shot from the property is a reminder to always be careful and watch what you are doing in the country.

 

snake-skin

When we returned to the truck, the kids threw out some corn for the property critters, then we left.  It had been a nice afternoon.  When we returned home, Hubby inflated the kiddie pool in the backyard and the kids played in the water for more than an hour.  After getting all of the kids dressed for bed and teeth brushed and all of that fun stuff, I went on to bed, leaving Perry in the livingroom to watch TV with the kids.

 

There were five people in my bed on Saturday night.  Around 11:00 p.m., I awoke when kids started piling in the bed.  Obviously, Hubby was too tired to pull out the air-mattress.  Sheesh, I could give that night up on getting any rest.  For the next hour, No.2GS talked and talked and talked (the kid never shuts up), while Baby Girl elbowed me and kicked me, Hubby snored on the other side of me, and No.1GS complained about his Paw-Paw snoring.  Then, around midnight, my stomach started hurting.  I don’t know what was wrong, but I couldn’t stay off of the toilet and I was up and down like a yo-yo.  Eventually, I just moved to the couch with my pillow and stayed there the rest of the night.  The couch is almost miserable to sleep on, it only looks squishy and comfy.  There is some sort of rod separating the couch into thirds, hitting me square in the ribs and again in the thigh bone.  Then I got hot and had to turn down the air-conditioning.  Then I was still hot and I had to get up to unplug the fan and move it to another location.  Then I decided the fan was too close to me and I got up to move it further away.  After I at last got comfortable, I’ll be darned if DD didn’t come home from work around 1:00 a.m., making racket as she made her way to her room.  I’m the type of person who likes a fairly quiet house when I sleep.  Several minutes later, she went to the kitchen and cooked something, rattling the pots and pans around noisily while the kitchen light nearly blinded me.  The last time I looked at the clock, it was 2:30 a.m.

 

At 7:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, No.2GS decided to get up.  Now, he had been yakking at midnight the night before, what the heck was he doing up at 7:00 a.m.?  He normally never gets up at 7.  He went to the bathroom and then got in the livingroom chair and just looked at me, waiting for what, I don’t know.  I told him it was too early to get up, and offered the end of my couch if he wanted to sit there quietly.  A few minutes later, I looked over at him, and he had fallen back to sleep.  I fell back to sleep also. 

 

At 9:30, the other two kids arose, so I had to get up.  I cooked a large breakfast then slowly began getting the kids ready to go home, searching for shoes and trying to get Hubby up so that he could take me over to No.1son’s so that I could get my car.  Hubby was none too happy about me waking him up and he gave me a piece of his small mind.  Anyway, I was happy to get my car back.  All four brakes had to be changed and the rotors turned.  He only charged me for the cost of the brakes, $200, but I gave him an extra $80, so I only had to put out $280 for all four wheels.  He had also cleaned the air-conditioning filter; there was definitely a noticeable difference.  The car also brakes beautifully now I’m happy to say. 

 

The only thing I have to do to the car now is wait on some more headlight kits to come in that No.1son has ordered for me, then he will change them out.  Ever since I got the car, the headlight bulbs blow out if you just look at them wrong.  And these particular headlight bulbs have to be one of the most difficult to change out than any other vehicle model.  All mechanics hate the 2002 Nissan Altima headlights.  We’ve been putting off getting new headlight kits (which hold the headlight bulb) for two years now because the pair of kits will be around $300.  Yeap, you read that right.  Terry found a set for $150 so he put in an order for them.  The set will be in soon and he’ll change it out and I hope I never have any more problems with headlights again.  Terry also volunteered to change out my spark plugs since the vehicle now has more than 100K miles.

 

On Sunday afternoon, I picked up my camera from the house, filled my car up with gas, then rode around looking at houses.  I specifically wanted to look at house exteriors to decide on brick colors and metal roof colors and things like that.  I took a lot of pictures of houses (receiving a lot of strange looks from home-owners, I’m sure), but it was such a nice outing just riding alone by myself.  (It’s so seldom that I get “alone” time.  I have been well-blessed with company.)  If I build a house, I’m considering a metal roof instead of composition shingles.  Salesmen say it’s energy efficient and lasts twice as long as shingles.  But it costs a good bit more too – one and a half times more – ouch!  I’m particularly interested in the forest green color.  I love forest green so much!  To me, it almost goes with everything and every color.  But I also know that forest green is dark and would absorb too much heat, so another color that I’m considering is a tan color roof or maybe champagne.  Hmm.  I have also been eyeballing a limestone rock that is light in color and goes very well with the green roof.  But limestone rock is very expensive so I could only put it on a small portion of the house.  The rest of the exterior of the house would have to be made of another product.  We could go hardyplank siding (hardyplank is made of a concrete product) which looks like wood.  Or we could go with brick which is what I would rather do.  It’s longer lasting and greener because brick is thicker than hardiplank.

 

In knitting news, I completed a cute pink baby sweater for my sister made in stockinette stitch, with yarn-overs at the bottom, creating a lacy feminine look.  I had fallen in love with the yarn, Caron Soft, in the loveliest shade of pink.  But my knitting is still so immature at times; at the edges, I forgot to garter stitch a row here and there and the completed project looked messy and immature to me.  Furthermore, I was almost finished with the darn thing when my sister e-mailed with the glad tidings that the ultra-sound picked up a little indication that the baby is a boy.  Well, bless my soul, this poor sweater was doomed from the beginning.  I finished the sweater as quickly as possible, then asked this poor woman at the local knitting club if she would take it off my hands.  She was kind enough to do so.  And now I am on to another sweater for my dear sister — in the proper color this time — blue!   Wish me luck with this one.