What I HATE About Our Garage!

Nice paint job, eh? It SHOULD be!
L applies the main coat of paint with our Wagner Power Roller. It only takes him 3-4 hours to paint the whole garage. My job is cutting in the edges and painting all the #$% grooves in the siding. I HATE those @#$% grooves!!
I am happy to say that this front wall now has 2 COMPLETE coats of paint, and is ready for caulk. Now I just have 3 more walls of grooves to put a second coat on! Good thing we have a 3-day weekend coming up.

What I LOVE About Our Garage!

See that stack of lumber in front of the ladders? That lumber will be the new trim on our shed, as soon as we finish painting it. Some of that lumber is 12 ft long. A year ago, that lumber would have been stored on our living room floor. NOW we have plenty of room to store, cut and paint our trim in our roomy garage!!

My 15 Minutes of Fame

My 15 minutes of fame arrives in miniscule increments.

5 years ago, I was on the Today show for 15 seconds.

Today, I found out that I'm a minor character in a children's book, written by an award winning author. Does this honor equal a whole minute of fame?

Scrunch's Questions

My loving, deep-thinking husband L, also known as Scrunch, over at www.scrunch56.blogspot.com, has come up with a soul-searching question: What do we expect from life? He has succinctly put this question into four categories:

4 Things You NEED:
Love
Shelter
Food
Water
I'm grateful, every day, for these basics in my life!
The last 3 things on my list are no-brainers. Everybody needs these things to physically survive. Love is what makes us decent human beings. I'm not talking about love of things; I'm talking about love for each other. We also need to be given unconditional love from birth. I've seen too many human shells, who were deprived of love in childhood. My husband was one of them. Some of these children become too hardened to ever freely give and receive love. My husband was lucky. He protected the loving being within, and bloomed when given unconditional love.

4 Things You WANT:
Affordable health care for everyone.
A clean house
A secure future
More love in the world!

We've ALWAYS had to divide our life into NEEDS versus WANTS. Early on in our marriage, we had to learn to meet our needs first. We had a child to raise, and her needs HAD to come first! We always WANTED a second child, but we couldn't risk our first child's welfare. This explains the 14 yr difference in our kids' ages. But do you know what? We never felt deprived.

The top thing on my want list has always(since Z was born), been a garage. I know that a lot of you are pretty sick of hearing about it, but we're THRILLED with the whole construction process. L and I have worked our butts off, all our lives, to be able to afford the luxury of a garage. We'll NEVER take this luxury for granted.

4 Things You DESERVE:
Respect : I've worked hard all my life, making something from nothing. We've made it, on our own! I've raised two respectful, deep-thinking human beings. I'm the BEST waittress in our county. Yes, I deserve respect!

Fun: We've been working our butts off, the last two summers, improving our home. Our jobs are demanding and our spare time is consumed by homeschooling. We DESERVE some FUN!

My smart aleck kids: Remember your mother saying: "I hope you have kids JUST LIKE YOU, someday!" ? This curse works, much to my parent's amusement.

LOVE! : EVERY human deserves love! I'm not sure if love is inborn or learned. I do know that hate is learned. Let's spread our love around, and make this world a better place!


Vancouver Voyeur said: " I think some people are attracted to fancy, pretty, shiny things that money can buy. If I had enough money to not worry about food and shelter, I don't think I'd want that much. A nice home by a mountain lake is as big as my fantasies have extended. :-) "

WELL SAID, my friend!! I'm with you 100% !

Do yourself a favor. Go through your home, room by room, and sort your possessions into NEEDS and WANTS. For example; what do you really NEED in your kitchen: stove, refrigerator, a few pots and pans, a few cooking untensils, a good knife, can opener, enough place settings to feed your family. ALL the rest is just fluff; be grateful for it!

We Be BUSY!

Last weekend our contractor completed HIS work on our garage, and took all his scaffolding, tools, and ladders home with him. The following day he brought his final bill and we happily paid him off. Monday afternoon I shoveled the leftover gravel, which had been blocked off by the pile of scaffolding, into all the appropriate places. Removing the gravel pile made room for our camper to be returned from it's summer sojourn on my parent's lawn.

This whole process made us feel very satisfied. Everything on our property is, once again, OURS. For better or worse, the completion of our garage, except for a day's work from our electrician, is in OUR HANDS. Now we have room to move all of our tools into their new home. Now we can operate our table saw IN OUR GARAGE! This will enable us to make some minor repairs to our house and shed. Then we can get the house and shed painted before the snow flies. *crossing fingers*

We, hopefully, solved our skunk problem by allowing nature to take it's course. One hot, DRY, day, I was trying to think of a way to make the skunk's environment less inviting. Where were the skunks finding water during our drought? DOH!! Our birdbath! We haven't seen the skunks since we dumped the birdbath. L took advantage of their absence and filled in their den with rocks and topsoil. In addition, Z has been dumping all the dog poo onto their hill. Hopefully they'll find a more hospitable place to breed next spring.

DW is out of jail and back to her old tricks. She didn't show for work, or bother to call in, on Monday. Today she called in to say she had a headache and wouldn't be coming to work.
BS's 8-yr-old son has taken to playing with matches. Does this mean that BS will actually start supervising his children's activities? Of course not! When will these people get a clue?

My workplace does have 2 rays of sunshine. Kid is 15, smart, and reliable. He's been coming in, at a moment's notice, to replace DW. Brat is 17, smart, reliable, and has a wicked sense of humor. She's been waittressing, 3 days a week, for the past two summers. Neither of these kids has ANY patience with DW's antics. During slack times, these two hang around my waittress station. We've had some great philosophical discussions throughout the summer. I'll really miss their wit when they return to school. It's kids like this that give me hope for the future of our world!

Diana's Tag

Five things I would never wear:
1. Thong underwear. I have NEVER felt the need to floss my butt.
2. Spike heels. I have a short husband, so I never wear heels. Spike heels wreak havoc on your flooring. I spend all day on my feet, I don't need to torture them further.
3. A bikini. Sorry, those days are over.
4. That godawful bright, lime-green color that is so popular.
5. Bib overalls. Don't laugh. A lot of women, my age and older wear them. They're cute on kids, but when you're over 30...throw them out.

Five favorite TV shows:
1. CSIs I'm not real fond of NY, but I watch it anyway.
2. 2 1/2 Men I LOVE the kid and the housekeeper!!
3. NCIS
That's about all I watch on a regular basis. We watch a lot of educational TV like Discovery, History Channel, etc. The rest of the time we watch movies.

Five things I would do with a 100 million dollars:
1. Buy my current place of employment. L and I would LOVE to straighten out the mess my boss and her son have made of the business. Hey, everybody needs a reason to get out of the house.
2. Make sure that all my loved ones are financially secure.
3. Host a blogfriends get together. Wouldn't that be COOL?!
4. Hire the world's best private tutors for our son.
5. Do good works with most of the money. I don't know what this would be, but I'd start researching as soon as I had the money.

Five greatest joys:
1. My family.
2. The love that God has so graciously given me to share!
3. The beauty of nature. That's why we live in the "sticks".
4. Days off!!!
5. Reading

Five songs I can sing from memory:
1. The Partridge Family theme song. Much to my son's embarrassment we discovered that I still remembered this when we watched Must Love Dogs.
2. Show Me the Way to Go Home. We had to sing this to our daughter every night at bedtime.
3. It's All For the Best. This one amazes my daughter.
4. Dancing in the Moonlight
5. TONS of Christmas songs!

Five favorite toys:
1. Computer
2. Cameras
3. Scanner
4. Board games
5. Our AV hookup

Here's a set I HAD to add!

Five favorite tools:
1. compound miter saw
2. table saw
3. 1/3 sheet electric sander
4. Craftsman Robo Grip wrenches!!
5. VSR 1/2 inch electric drill

Diversions

I'm EXHAUSTED !!
Just when we start making major progress on our "planned" outdoor projects, something else requires our attention (and backbreaking labor).

This time it was toilets. Last week it was our toilet. The shutoff thingy broke, overflowed the tank, and would have flooded the bathroom, if I hadn't been standing right there. I temporarily fixed the problem with a bent wire hanger, until L could replace the works the following day.

Yesterday, it was Z's toilet. You know how DIY Network's, Ed the Plumber, says to replace the bolts on the toilet tank when they start to rust? He's right! This task was on our "roundtuit list". We thought it would wait until we were done with the outdoor projects. WRONG! One of the bolts, holding the tank to the bowl, snapped.

Z amazed me with his quick-thinking. He stuffed an ice cream pail under the leak, shoved towels around the toilet, and called me. I turned off the water while Z grabbed the shop vac. I sucked the remaining water out of the tank with the shop vac, while Z started mopping up...tragedy averted.

A quick inspection of the toilet revealed a couple of small cracks at the base of the toilet, so I opted for buying a new toilet. So I headed out to my home away from home, Menards. Let me tell you folks, TOILET IN A BOX is my new best friend! That's the actual name of the product. It comes complete, with everything you need to install a new toilet: flange bolts, washers, tank, tank bolts, tank seal, bowl, wax ring, seat...and here's the best part.... the mechanism is already installed in the tank!! This new toilet installed like a dream!

The hardest part was removing the rusted bolts in the base of the toilet. It took L and I until 11:30 last night, to finish the job. Working, while standing on your head, with 6 inches of clearance between the vanity on one side, and the tub on the other, is NOT FUN. Today I ache in places I didn't know I had!

Swiped from Squirl

THINGER
This is a quiz about movies. Or rather movie stars. Beside the name of each actor and actress please type your favorite of their movies.

Harrison Ford: Indiana Jones movies
Carrie Fisher: Star Wars
Mark Hamill: Star Wars
Gene Kelly: Singing in the Rain
Johnny Depp: Pirates of the Caribbean
Orlando Bloom: Lord of the Rings
Keira Knightly: Pirates of the Caribbean
Robert Redford: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Cary Elwes: The Princess Bride
Anne Hathaway: Ella Enchanted
Tom Hanks: Saving Private Ryan
Meg Ryan: Addicted to Love
Sandra Bullock: Miss Congeniality
Keanu Reeves: Sweet November, Point Break
Elijah Wood: LOTR (He's always looked just like my nephew, so I've gotta love him.)
Viggo Mortenson: Hidalgo
Will Smith: Men in Black
Nicole Kidman:The Peacemaker
Tommy Lee Jones: U.S. Marshals
Jim Carrey: Liar, Liar
Val Kilmer: Real Genius, Willow
Tom Cruise: Risky Business
Ewen MacGregor: Star Wars
Gwyneth Paltrow: Flesh and Bone
Toni Collette: About a Boy
Hugh Grant: Nine Months
Colin Firth: Circle of Friends
Renee Zellwegger: Bridget Jones movies
Kate Winslet: Titanic
Emma Thomson: Dead Again
Alan Rickman: Quigley Down Under, Harry Potter movies
Kevin Costner: Dances With Wolves
Arnold Schwarzenegger: True Lies
Elisabeth Shue: Adventures in Babysitting
Kathleen Turner: V.I. Warshowski
Michael Douglas: Romancing the Stone

(Squirl's additions)
John Turturro: I was going to say who? until I saw that he was in Anger Management
Matt Damon: The Bourne Identity
Woody Allen: YUCK!
John Goodman: Coyote Ugly

(My additions)

Dustin Hoffman:Hook
John Wayne:Big Jake
Nicolas Cage: ConAir
Bruce Willis: Armaggedon

What are YOUR favorites?