I splurged yesterday and bought two things that will make my life a whole lot easier while working on the house.

The first might be obvious.  I decided that I was making enough trips with the banana box full of leaves and branches that I’d do well to get a garden cart instead.  That will make things so much easier as I continue to clean the front yard.

The second isn’t going to be as obvious because I haven’t said a lot about the other work I’m doing.  The kitchen cabinets were all wood, and were in very good condition, though they were filthy like the rest of the house. I bought sand paper and was using a multi tool to take the paint off the cabinets.  Of course, it was taking over 3 hours for 1 square foot, so I needed something easier.

Yesterday I bought a heat gun.  I couldn’t find mine in storage.  Let me tell you, I got so much done in an hour that I really think I’m going to be able to refinish those cabinets so much faster.  Some of the parts I’m going to have to replace, but the rest I’ll be able to sand and varnish and they’ll turn out exactly like I’m wanting.  Once the wall is in, I’ll put them in and they’ll be gorgeous.

With the paint gun, I”ll be able to refinish the wood cabinets in both bathrooms as well.  My next splurge is going to be a shop vac so I can get some of the debris cleaned up before we start putting in walls.  It’s still going to be awhile before I need to do that.

Oh, and my so-called tulips?  I should have looked more closely at the leaves, they were gorgeous yellow daffodils.  I’ll have to see if I get more blooms, so I can post a good picture.  I still have a number of bunches of leaves that I can’t figure out what they are – especially since there aren’t any flowers yet, and some flowers that remind me of hyacinth, but with fewer blossoms on the stems.

My husband has been working 7 days a week since the last big snow storm came through.  That makes it hard for him to make any progress on the house, so I stepped up.  It’s not that I didn’t know what needed to be done or how to do it, I was leaving it to him because he wanted to do it, and it saved the arguments.

Saturday, I finished sawing out an area so I could put in the next king stud.   I don’t remember if I talked about these before, they’re a 2×4 that goes from the floor to the ceiling and is flush on either side of a door or window.  I think they’re for safety, like the headers, which are 2 – 2×12 pieces of board sandwiching a piece of plywood which goes above the door or window.  Since there weren’t any walls when we bought the house, we need to add these so the house will pass inspection.

I also put up the last 4′ of wall that my husband had put together but hadn’t put in.

I didn’t get that much done, but I had only 2 hours to work, since I had to do it around the rest of my normal Saturday errands.  I think this weekend, I’ll skip everything except for the laundry and bank runs so I have more time to work.  The only thing I’ll miss is yoga.  I’ll explain to the instructor tomorrow.

It’s also supposed to be in the 80’s this weekend, so I can do some outside and some inside. Or if my husband has Sunday off, I can work inside the house on Saturday and outside of it on Sunday while he’s working inside.

And as I type that, I remember the consignment sale I’m supposed to go to on Saturday as well. It’s an inexpensive way to get clothes for the kids, or at least my daughter.  Last fall, I got a couple of pretty dresses for $5 each.  You can’t beat that price.

On that note, it’s late and I’m tired.  I think that’s why I’m forgetting things like the consignment sale.

Laterness & g’nite.

Pretty much everyone at work is signed up to get emails from the head of the local emergency management agency.  The agency that sends out notices when the weather is foul, or the wind is going in circles and touching the ground.

On Friday, I got a kick out of reading his email.  It was a fairly short (for him) email.  Sometimes at work we joke that he likes to hear himself talk too.. though it’s in email, so I guess it’s just that he likes to type.

He’s encouraging people to be prepared for bad weather.  Including having supplies on hand if the weather is really bad and the electricity goes out for longer than the few days that it was out last week.

Basically, to me on Friday, it sounded like he was describing homesteading.  Rather fascinating, since sometimes people like to see those who are into preparedness as wackos.

I’m not a wacko, I just don’t want to rely on a system that is so dependent on aging infrastructure.  What happens if the roads are blocked?  We can do without milk, what about having food on hand?  With all the tornadoes and flooding in the last few years, a stockpile isn’t necessarily a bad idea.   And my husband laughs at me.

All I’m interested in is being prepared, and finding a cheaper way to eat lawn clippings – er vegetables. Besides, have you tasted a real tomato lately instead of one of those waxy things you buy at the store?

Hey, 3 days in a row, anyone shocked yet?  Probably 🙂 I went so long without posting at all.

I’ve been looking into Homesteading lately.  Mostly because I’m frustrated with work and would love to be able to get by on just my husband’s income so I could stay home.

Though a dear friend has pointed out that me staying home would include me bored out of my mind.  I think this friend just knows me too well. LOL

Then again, there’s always gaming and writing to keep myself occupied.  Not to mention, working on a garden and whatever else is involved in homesteading (I really need to check into it – but our place is only 1/2 acre, not big enough for animals, not even chickens, so if Homesteading includes raising chickens, I may have to scrap that idea lol).

On the other hand, I will be starting a garden, most likely of the square foot variety.  With the quality of the fresh veggies you get at the store, and the price of said veggies, I think I need an alternative.

That’s why I started mulching old branches.  I’ll have to level the ground in the back yard and replant the grass as I can.

I’ll do the landscaping little by little as well.  I’m really planning on turning it into a work of art, just because that’s what I’ve always wanted to do.  I need to find a place where I can buy statuary, tho hubby won’t be happy mowing around it. We’ll just have to move it when we mow.

There’s another snow storm coming tonight.  School is already cancelled for tomorrow and nothing has hit yet.

And as much as I’m putting off going to sleep because I don’t want to work tomorrow, I already know they’re not closing the office.  Besides, I won’t be able to permanently avoid the power play going on, the one that I’m caught in the middle of.  I’m just going to have to ride everything out, and try to remember that it’s a steady paycheck, and the paycheck is what matters.

Now if they’d just let me work from home once the youngest starts pre-k next year.  Or else I need to really get my writing done.

So, late last week, I got a message on Facebook about setting up our 25th class reunion.   They’re planning it a year in advance so everyone can make it.

And of course a discussion about drinking and being able to hold your liquor came up.

Seriously?

Maybe it’s just that I don’t see the appeal of drinking, and I never really have.  Ok, so I went through a phase about 9 years ago where I drank a lot, or at least went out a lot.  I had just gone through a bad break-up and was feeling sorry for myself.  I was feeling like I was never going to find someone who would accept both myself and my son, and not let my son’s behavior drive them away.  After all, he was a kid and was going through a rough time himself.

Once I woke up to the fact that I didn’t need someone else, I stopped wanting more than an occasional drink.  Though I’ve considered learning to make my own beer, just because it sounds fun.  Like I need another hobby. LOL

Now, I could drink, but I really don’t care to.  I don’t see the appeal.  It’s much easier to relax after you’ve had a good run or other type of workout. I’m thinking a good hour-long martial arts or other workout, where your muscles shake because you’ve worked them so hard.

Alcohol is a depressant, and I tend toward depression any way.

I’ve always been able to have fun without drinking or drugs.

So, we shall see.  I will probably go to my reunion, but how much I participate will depend on how much drinking is involved.  I’d rather hike Mt. Pisgah.  I’d rather walk along Lake Memphremagog, or the brick streets at Burlington’s Church Street Marketplace.  Heck, even tour Ben & Jerry’s factory and the Vt. Teddy Bear Factory.  Those all sound more fun than getting bombed at night and sleeping all day.

Even better, maybe I can convince a few of the people who got me into gaming that we should start a quick gaming session… Maybe one of the newer games like Cards Against Humanity.

So, I obviously haven’t posted much for the last month.  I started clearing out another area of brush, and I have pictures of the before this time.  But the last few weekends have been a bit cold for me to work outside.  So I’ve been inside (we have the windows covered in plastic and a working fireplace, even though we don’t have any walls or other ways of heating the inside), or at least inside on the days that have been in the 50’s.

While inside, I’ve been working on refinishing the kitchen cupboard.  This has been a very time consuming problem.  First, they are custom made of hard wood.  Second, the shelves are covered with a thick layer of paint and then a layer of contact paper.  Everything has been hardened until it’s almost concrete.

I spent about 1.5 hours one day, and got about a square foot scraped.  But, it’s more than 6 feet long, and has 3 shelves for one 2′ side.

I spent another 3 hours on the cupboard on Monday, since I had the day off work.  This time, I managed to get about 2 sqft. I also started taking the cupboard apart to make it easier to scrape.  I can very easily put it back together and make sure it’s sturdy.

This weekend, I’m going to pick up a heat/paint gun.  It’ll help me go faster than using the multi-tool that we got from Sears.  Though the multi-tool has a scraper attachment and a sand paper attachment, I’ve managed to gouge the wood, using the scraper attachment.  Just using sand paper takes too long.  So I’ll get a heat gun with a scraper attachment.

Hopefully that’ll mean pictures of the finished cabinet soon.  I’m going to leave it natural wood color and polyurethane it to protect it.  The walls will be apricot/peach colored to complement the cabinets, and hubby’s grandfather has already refinished the doors and coated them with polyurethane.

Inside the house, we have about 5′ more to finish out the last wall, and we have to put headers on I think 7 doors and/or windows, and put in about 4 more ‘king studs’ (studs that go beside the windows from the floor to the ceiling joists.  Apparently, these weren’t required when the older part of the house was built, so we need to add them now to get the house inspected, especially since they tore the walls out before we bought the house.

I should have a more exciting update on Sunday, if the snow and ice melt.  I haven’t looked at a forecast, so if it stays around 20 degrees, I’m not going to work on the house or the yard.

On the other hand, I really need to get back and check on the tulips that I found in the yard.  The last snowfall didn’t kill them, I hope this one didn’t either.  I found other flowers coming up, but have no idea what they are.  I’ll have to do a search online and compare the pictures.

Please enjoy my tulip stems lol.

So the drama at home is getting to me.  It’s gotta be something in the air, as someone else is full of drama this week too.

Instead, I just want to go on a vacation. But that’s not going to happen.

Someone was watching the end of Mission Impossible: 2 today at work, to avoid watching the State of the State address.  My mind wandered to the first movie in the series.  I’m thinking I saw it at a drive-in theater… there actually was one back in ’95/’96 in Vermont.

I often wonder if that theater is still around.  I should check Google Maps sometime… but it’d have to be summer time or there’d be no way to tell.

Today, while my husband was working on fixing some of the ‘headers’ and ‘king studs’ in the house, I was working in the yard.  I picked the biggest pile of branches and leaves to start cutting everything up and clearing it out.  I didn’t get the plastic bin that I had planned, but it appears that was a good thing anyway, there was way more than the size of the container that I picked up.   Since we’re in Oklahoma, I put the mulch behind the shed under some smaller trees.  Hopefully, moving everything so far from the original location will mean the wind can’t blow it back where it started.  LOL  I cut up the larger branches with a bypass lopper and put everything in a big pile.

I filled a banana box up 6 times with the leaves and detritus that I was going to put in the back yard to mulch.  It took me 2.5 hours to get one pile completed, so I’ll have to work on it again next week or the next time the weather is above 30 degrees.

On the other hand, my finished product looked nice, as you can see below.  Just ignore the trash that I fished out of the pile, it’s two ceiling fans that we took out of the house, plus some pipes that have come from somewhere inside as well.  The truck belongs to my grandfather-in-law, somewhere on there is a DAV sticker.

I really do think my husband doesn’t know me at all, which is really odd considering we’ve been married for over 8 years.  While I was cleaning up the yard, he asked me if I was going to start bringing trash home in the van since I’m mulching the branches from the tree.  Please excuse me while I roll my eyes.  We’ll be making enough trash of our own 😉 Egg shells, coffee grounds (and tea bags), etc.

Anyway, I’m tired after my work in the yard, and I’m trying to do a few more things with my writing.  Watch me as I work at turning a part of my life around.  Of course, for some reason, I forgot that it started tomorrow, and I haven’t figured out what I want to change.

I’m still not writing as much as I wanted to aim for, but I am writing more than I was… that’s a good thing.

Yet tonight, I’m at a loss for words.  How do I even start? I grew up in church, and I have three families from church where I felt like the parents were my parents.  My mother worked a lot, and I spent a lot of times at these houses.  One of the families was the pastor at the time.  I felt like their youngest was my little brother, and he and I spent a lot of time watching movies.

Tonight, their 2nd oldest posted on Facebook that his mother was diagnosed with colon cancer.

In the last 3 years, two of my friends from eDiets died from cancer, so this hits home for me.  I know that people live through cancer, but right now I’m just worried, scared and sad and understand exactly why her son was rather scattered when he was posting the update on Facebook.

I’m at a loss for words.  There is much more going on with her health, but all I can do from here is pray that she gets better. And send my love to the family that is down there dealing with these issues.  And do my best not to cry.

I don’t even remember where I found the link below, but I really enjoyed reading the comic.

About a year ago, I was pushing myself to do a bunch of writing that I didn’t find very exciting.  I ended up with burnout.  Now, I’m struggling to get back to where I was before I started pushing myself so much.

So, enjoy, the comic in the link by The Oatmeal. (link opens in a new window)