I’m telling you now, though, if you don’t read The Thirteenth Tale soon, I’m going to show up on your porch, barge my way in, set you down in a recliner, hand you the book and force you to read it. I’m just sayin’.
It’s in the queue! I swear it! In fact, I’ll look when I go upstairs tonight, and if it’s not in the next five books, I’ll move it up! How’s that?
We have those type of stairs and call them “pain in the ass to move anything big up them” stairs.
Dude. TELL me about it. When we had to move my furniture upstairs (when I moved from the downstairs bedroom to the upstairs), it was a HUGE pain in the ass to get my mattress up the stairs, let alone anything else. I guess I’m just lucky I don’t sleep in a King size bed!
[It’s called a]return staircase. sorry, i know the strangest things!
I knew someone would know the answer!
We have hardwood floors in our house. They need to be refinished. How did you decide between doing it yourself or having them done by somebody else?
I actually had to call Fred and ask him for the answer to this one, ’cause I couldn’t remember. At first Fred was planning to do them himself (with some help from me, I’m sure), but he always researches everything thoroughly before he does it, and the more research he did, the more concerned he was that he’d mess it up and we’d end up paying a professional to do it anyway. After much deliberation, waffling, dithering and A LOT OF ANNOYING OF HIS WIFE, he decided to get quotes from local area businesses. The first guy who came and looked the house over gave us a quote that fit into our budget (I’m not being coy here, I honestly don’t remember how much it cost at ALL), was very professional, and gave us a lot of references. I really wanted to have a professional do it, and after a little more time spent thinking about it, Fred ended up agreeing with me.
Fred did end up redoing the stairs himself (with a lot of help and direction from his father), which gave him a definite appreciation for the work involved, and a year and a half later, he says that if he had it to do over again, he’d still hire a professional for the floors.
I thought of you: This is challenging to read because of how the dog writes (worse than LOLspeak) but funny nonetheless.
Oh my lord, my head aches. I found that if you read it quickly rather than try to figure out every word, it goes a lot easier.
And it is pretty funny!
I’m cracking up at the last sentence of your bringing Miz Poo home story….Sorry for all the kitten talk. HAHAHAHA. If you knew then what you know now.
I totally had no idea, 9 years ago, that I was going to turn into a batshit crazy cat lady!
Hey! Didn’t you have a camera set up to see who was peeing on the bed???? Whatever happened to that? Did you find out who it was????
After a stint as an egg-hatching cam, a brooder cam and a front-porch cam, the webcam is… You know, I’m not even sure where I stashed it. I think it’s on the bookcase in the front room. I need to set it back up in the guest bedroom because it’s been long enough since the bed was peed upon that we’re just about due for an incident!
(I’m trying to convince Fred that we should set the webcam up in the chicken yard for at least a few days so y’all can watch the chickens strut about!)
OK – am I the only one who wonders why you don’t take your shower BEFORE you go get your hair done? Or are you one of those fussies (like my daughter) who hates the way the hairdresser styles their hair?
Oh, I do take a shower before I go have my hair done – and then I take another afterward. She tends to use a lot of product in my hair, and I touch my hair a LOT (also, I touch my face a lot. Apparently I’m a self-touching fool.) and the feel of product-laden hair bugs me. Also, she’s good about getting most of the teeny little hairs off me when she’s done, but there are still plenty on me, so I take a shower and change clothes to get rid of those.
What’s a girl who lives in the boonies with rabbit ears to do? I only get 3 networks, and I still struggle with watching/taping everything! I actually look forward to re-runs!!!
I recommend Hulu.com and iTunes! Edited to add – you can go here and search to find your favorite shows. Thank you, Lisa the awesome!!!
Didn’t you have a recipe for homemade liquid hand soap? If not do know anyone who has made some successfully?
I haven’t made the hand soap yet myself, but Nance did, and her recipe is: 1 bar Castille soap, grated; 3 c. water. Heat ’til the soap melts. I have the soap and am ready to make it, but my liquid soap dispensers aren’t anywhere close to empty, so I’m waiting ’til they are. I have it on good authority that it works pretty well!
Mister Boogers LOVES someone?? How is that even possible?
In his own way, Mister Boogers loves people. For a little while. Until the het takes over and he has to cast them aside. His love is fleeting; his het is not.
(From Kinzie, whose daughter coined “Honkshu”, which I immediately stole for my own usage) Got another one for ya. They told me they can’t talk about the “b-word”, which is Pickle’s balls, so they say “He’s showing me his beehive.” HAHAHA. Where do they GET this stuff??
HEE.
I think you would like this site too: http://iamneurotic.com/ It’s kind of like post secret but you list your neuroses. Very fun to browse through–makes me feel normal!
I do like that site – and you’re right, it totally makes me feel normal!
I just finished Manhunt, which is about the 12 day chase for John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln’s death. There was an incredible amount of research done and it ended up reading more like a suspense/thriller than a history book. I hear that that book is supposedly being made into a made for tv movie. Hope it does! Reading it made me want to go do all of the tours of Mudd’s house and the Surratt house and Ford’s Theatre again. Good thing I live nearby them!
Is it a gap in my education, or was I just not paying attention, that I didn’t realize it took 12 days for them to catch him? I had no idea – I thought it was a matter of HOURS! (I’m definitely adding that book to my wish list. It sounds good – also, educational. Clearly I need me some education.)
Um, can i come vacation at your house? I think I could really be happy eating and watching TV.
Wouldn’t I be an excellent slacker vacation host? I’m always excited to have people come visit ’cause it means I have someone to go out to eat with and drag to whatever store I want to visit!
What happened with little Zoe? Did she get adopted? I noticed you didn’t mention that you brought her home again.
No, she hasn’t been adopted yet. As of yesterday, she was still there. She’s in a cage by herself, but – I think as a result of being in a cage alone – she’s a lot friendlier than she was when I took her to the pet store. Of course I spoil her when I go in there – she’s the first one out of her cage and the last one back in, and I give her plenty of cuddles in between. If too much more time goes by and she remains unadopted, I’ll likely bring her home to give her a break from the cage and give another kitten a chance to be exposed to the people who go by the cat room.
There’s a book out about the Ice Man… hit man serial killer…something like that. I have it wrote down somewhere but anyway… I saw a piece on him on A&E (I think) and that man was a cold human being/monster. But his story fascinates me and I want to know more.
Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, maybe? It certainly looks interesting!
Completely off topic and SO not related to your entry, but have you ever heard that you can wash your hair with Baking soda (http://babyslime.livejournal.com/174054.html) and your face with oils (http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?t=20244)?
I had never heard that! Well, I may have heard of washing your hair with baking soda, but washing your face with oils? That sounds so odd!
Anyone tried either of those?
What color did she use on your hair?? I must have it too!!!
I haven’t got a clue – it’s something she mixes up in the back. Maybe it’s magic!
I was about to tell you the surefire method of having easy peeling eggs… which is to not boil them fresh, boil ones that have been in your fridge for a week or so and they peel with ease. Then I remembered that there are ONLY fresh eggs at Crooked Acres. How long does it take for an egg to go from chicken’s ass to the grocery store anyway?
When we have deviled eggs, I always immediately set another dozen eggs aside to let them “age”, because I’ve always heard that they’re easier to peel when they’re a bit older. I want to try the 12-minute low boil followed by baking soda and ice bath, and see if it works as well on fresher eggs. Probably we’ll be having egg salad this weekend!
By the time eggs get to the grocery store, they’re 7 to 10 days old; in comparison, we had scrambled eggs for dinner last night that were maybe three hours out of the chickens.
I can’t recommend getting your own chickens enough, if you live in an area where that’s a possibility.
Umm…HOW do you get pics of your cats with such awesome expressions? And what the devil was he doing? The doesn’t look like a yawn?
With the invention of digital cameras, people like me can take picture after picture after picture and end up with some pretty good ones. It doesn’t cost anything to take 10 billion pictures and delete all but one of them.
Of course, it also helps to have cats who are real characters and make such goofy faces, too.
Mister Boogers was actually at the tail end of a yawn in that picture – though it’s also the face he makes when he sneezes, so I’ve gotten plenty of pictures of him making that face!
How surprised were you to see those dogs on your porch? The raccoon wasn’t that surprising (but cute), but those were two big dogs! Speaking of big, the spider that crawls across the porch was pretty large, too. Blech.
and
Do you know who those dogs belong to? I would love to save dogs/raccoons/stray cats come up and feed on my porch, but since I live in a suburb with NO land around us whatsoever, I do not think our neighbors would appreciate that.
I wasn’t terribly surprised – we’ve seen both those dogs around here from time to time, ever since we moved in. I think, though I don’t know for sure, that they may have belonged to the people who sold us this house. I’d love to get my hands on them to at least have them neutered, but the few times they’ve caught sight of me, they’ve run off immediately and ignored my calls.
How much cat food do you go through out on the porch? If that was just a sampling of the free loaders, I can’t imagine that how much food you’re going through.
Less than you’d think, actually – I buy maybe two big bags of (cheap) cat food a month, whatever’s on sale. Some mornings I go out and the food dish is completely empty, but most mornings it’s only 1/3 to 1/2 empty. I’m guessing that the dogs are getting food elsewhere as well as on our front porch. I don’t know if someone else is feeding them, or if they’re catching small animals to eat or what, but they seem to be at a good size, not too skinny, so they’re eating SOMETHING.
Enjoyed the porch cam. A wild game cam with night vision out at the back forty might truly capture a lot of roaming deer, raccoons and who knows what all. About 100 miles south of where you live, a woman has a wild game cam and catches lots of deer, raccoons, possums — as well as lots of coyotes! (They are not hunters, just like to see what is wandering around their fields and woods.)
I would LOVE to have a wild game cam with night vision! I think it would be really neat to see what moves through the back forty at night. I’m still working on Fred, trying to convince him that we need one!
LOVE the porch cam! Wouldn’t you have DIED if you were going through the images and saw like, a PERSON sneaking up on your porch? Looking right into the camera? And giving you this evil grin? Shudder.
I told Fred that I half-expected to find a movie of The Walkin’ Dude (who we also refer to as Crackhead Bob) snoozing on the porch swing!
Your journal was full of yummy goodness today. Love the front porch cam. Hard to believe how entertaining that was! Something along that line: http://errabundusbus.blogspot.com/2008/05/pimp-my-ride-investigator.html
Too cool!
Pigs and birds enjoy popped popcorn….. so does little fat squirrels that you won’t bake cookies for ; )
Oh, the pigs and birds and squirrels get PLENTY of food, believe me. In fact, I have a tree that’s pretty much devoted to squirrels – they get peanut butter suet nuggets, a square of corn and sunflower seeds, and if they get bored with those, I put peanuts (in the shell) on fence posts for them.
Any animal who wanders across our property sure does get spoiled rotten, don’t they?
What kind of webcam do you have? I just bought one on ebay. Do you capture it to a tape or dvd, or to a browser?
Fred can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it’s a TRENDnet Internet Camera. It comes with software you install on your computer, then you connect (wirelessly) to the camera, and you can set it to record manually, at set times, or when motion sets it off; it records right to your hard drive.
You can mess with the motion sensitivity; when I had it on the front porch, I had to fiddle with the camera “zones” so that the bushes blowing in the breeze didn’t set it off.
Just wanted to say that I used to feel the same way about slow walkers. With all due respect, I changed my mind one day when good friend’s mother, who was elderly and had to use a walker, was “nudged” and knocked down by an impatient truck driver. The truck driver, who saw what he had done, drove off, leaving her lying in the street with a broken hip. She later died. I guess the truck driver had more important things to do in his oh so very busy and important life than help a fellow human being, whose distress he had caused. My attitude now towards people who get impatient with slow-walkers is…take a valium and chill out. You’ll be a lot happier and, unless those 15 extra seconds spent at some intersection mean that now you won’t have time to discover the cure for cancer, I’d say they really aren’t all that important in the grand scheme of things.
Oh, I agree – I figure I’ll get there sooner or later, but CERTAIN PEOPLE take the fact that sometimes people are in their way as personal insults.
You’ve probably addressed it before, but … WHY does the cat have to pee in the litter box the second it is cleaned and put back on the floor? Said cat, Simon, practically dances on his two back legs clutching his, um, self, waiting for me to finish!
Good question! All I can guess is that some cats are pickier than others when it comes to litter box cleanliness. I know that some of our cats will wait until I’ve scooped all the litter boxes, and then they use them immediately. What drives me crazy is that they’re picky about the cleanliness of their litter boxes, but they ALL use the damn same hole in the back yard as an outside litter box and you can bet I do NOT scoop that damn thing!
Oh God! No! Don’t waste your time reading those books, read the recaps that Cleolinda Jones wrote. Go here, they’re funny:
http://cleoland.pbwiki.com/Twilight#Bookdiscussionentries
Now, in Stephanie Meyer’s defense, she wrote a book called The Host for an adult audience which was much, much better. She’s definitely writing Twilight for a fourteen-year-old reader, and she KNOWS her audience. That’s why Twilight is such a repetitive soap-opera. Don’t be afraid to put the book down.
Oddly enough, I picked up The Host in Target yesterday, then put it down because I decided I had enough damn books to read!
I’m going to check out Cleolinda’s recaps, but I think these are definitely worth checking out as well – they cracked me UP (though I only read the first few chapters so as not to ruin the surprise of the rest of the book for myself!).
My dad always talks about honkshuing. Of course, he also talks about things being cattywhampus, calls unidentified objects ’sphagnum’, and refers to sick people as having ‘collywabbles in the bingbang’. I’m never sure which words he’s made up, which ones he’s using completely (on purpose) incorrectly, and which ones are legitimate. We are an odd odd family.
I would have guessed, if pressed, that “collywabbles in the bingbang” would be like “bats in the belfry”, guess not! I’m going to try to remember to use “collywabbles” in the future and see if I get A Look. Heh.
So my question is – does he use the phrase just in passing, or does he do it to get A Look from someone?
I don’t have HBO but really want to see the True Blood series. Does anyone out there have a DVR and is keeping the episodes? Could I beg someone to copy the episodes to a DVD for me (or VHS is fine too)? I’d be happy to wait until the season’s over even if I could get all of them. I’d pay for the DVDs and shipping. If someone’s willing, let me know and we can exchange e-mails or something to work out the details.
Anyone willing to help out, let me know and I’ll pass you along to Lo! Edited to add – you can go here and search to find your favorite shows. Thank you, Lisa the awesome!!!
So I missed the unveiling of the House Tour, which I had whined for, because of the week-long power outage up here (”Ike Hits Ohio”), and then you up and go away.
I have been in serious BP withdrawal.
Anyone who might have missed it, the House Tour is here (and you can always follow the link in the sidebar to the right in the future).
And there, there. I’m back now, and I don’t intend to take any more time off from journaling in the near future, I promise! 🙂
Previously
2007: I was a little shaky as I looked around the first floor of the garage, then I said “I have a gun and I’m coming up there!” and I went upstairs.
2006: He’s always a party pooper.
2005: If I hadn’ta covered my head with my hands, I might be DEAD right now!
2004: No entry.
2003: “No,” Fred said. “You’re the muffinhead. DID SHE STAND OVER YOU AND MAKE YOU INSTALL IT??”
2002: Spanky is the Lance Bass of our family.
2001: I guess if tomorrow’s Day Zero and Friday is Day One, that makes today Day Negative One.
2000: No entry.