I have two. Now I need a gnome. It’s just the way it is.
But none of them bending-over-grannies-showing-bloomers. My standards are very low, but not quite that low. (Now the peeing boy fountain…)
Bad news. It’s ix-nay on the uppy-pay. It turns out the ad in the paper the Little Woman found was for rescue grown-up dogs. We don’t currently want grown-up dogs. We want a puppy. So the hunt continues.
Wow, go into training mode for a few weeks, which means little comp access at work, and competing with daughter ministriker and Mrs. S for comp time at home, and I’m lost. I feel ashamed for missing Tornadope, but the missus and daughter were out horseback riding all day, and I was at home with the boy. It sounds like good and strange times.
Wednesday waas Mrs. S’s birthday, so I bought her new eyes and a cookie cake, so now she can see. I’m not sure if that is to my advantage, but she seems thrilled about it, so that makes me happy. However, I was a jerk because I really in’t go out of my way like I should have so she could have the " anything you want, you get" birthday treatment that she gives me… no snerking allowed, because that is not the case there. I felt like a real shlep, and realized how much I took her for granted, and didn’t listen to her, so I’ve been playing catch up with the niceness since.
Long weekend plans don’t include too much, hopefully a good bit of r&r for the whole family, but I’m sure that is not the way it will work out. Have a good weekend all!
Yeah, but do you have a five-foot-tall garden gargoyle? Cause if you don’t, you’re slacking in the gargoyle department. Those little bitty gargoyles just don’t have the same impact in your petunia patch.
My mother gave me to gnomes for my birthday. I don’t know why, they are not really my style. However, I smiled brightly, said thank you and put them in my back flower bed.
Okay, I’ve been cleaning, but I still have a long way to go. I also shredded fifty bazillion credit card offers. That seemed to take the longest time. Now I need to sterilize my counters and island, sweep the kitchen floor, vacuum the kitchen floor, wash the kitchen floor, dust the great room, vacuum the great room, scrub the powder room, wash the powder room floor, do some laundry, vacuum the stairs (ugh, I hate, hate vacuuming stairs), start makin fixin’s for tater salad, take a shower, run to the store, clean up some more, scrub the grill, and a whole bunch more that I’m sure I’ve left out.
I don’t think there will be any rest for the weary today…sigh.
I’m going to make the hubby do the liquor or beer run. He can do that at least since everyone invited themselves or was invited by my husband without my input. I guess it’s nice that people think they can just invite themselves and know I won’t throw a big ol’ hissy fit. I’m just not that kinda gal.
The kids were supposed to be pressed into service today. Let see, they’ve emptied the garbage and took the can outs for recycling. I’m about to irritate them because I’m going to make them clean the bonus room. My son is reading this right now…wait for the roll-eyes. He just said, “I can’t believe this”. Yeah, like I’m supposed to clean the room that I never go into.
Well, I need to slurp some more coffee and move along. It’s supposed to be over 90 degrees today! I would much rather be enjoying myself outside in my garden.
Hee! A herd of gnomes so vast it stretches to the horizon. Like the once-mighty herds of buffalo, the earth itself trembles at their approach. How did America’s midwest come to be trampled under their millions of booties? Well, it all started with a man named Rue. Rue DeDay. Maverick gnome rancher.
I can hardly wait to find out how **FairyChatMom ** fits into the puzzle!
Swampy, don’t switch to water until everything is blurry and you feel like throwing up. Grandma Pepsi appreciates your support.
Hmmmm, it’s very quiet here. I’m thinking you all started your weekend…
Just need to wash my kitchen floor and scrub the powder room then I’m done, with the house anyway.
I’ve taken my shower and I need to hose off the back patio and set up our cheesy plastic patio furniture and haul out the grill. Then it’s off to the store. I’m thinkin’ pasta salad instead of tater salad. I dunno, we’ll see what I feel like making.
I’ve got a couple of cold Heinies and one Alaskan Amber in the fridge…maybe I’ll treat myself to one. It’s after noon, it’s the weekend, it’s very hot, I’m entitled.
I don’t think I could throw gnomes in my class. I could make gnome pedestals, but not gnomes. Sorry.
I’m pooped! I replumbed the head on the boat - that is, the hot and cold water lines going to the shower and the sink. It wouldn’t have been that big a deal except I had to do it from my knees reaching thru an opening less than a foot wide. I’m more than a foot wide - it was a challenge when I needed to get both hands in there. But I got it done, and when we turned the water on, there was no leakage, so Yay!
We flushed the antifreeze out of the whole water system, then refilled the tank with fresh water and a small bottle of bleach. We ran the water until there was bleach water in all the water lines, and we left it to sit over night. Tomorrow, I’ll flush the bleach water out, then fill and empty the tanks a couple of times, and finally fill it.
I also washed and started the fridge, dusted and vacuumed, tidied stuff, and threw away some more old stuff that needed throwing out. I’ve got laundry going now, and we had a nice dinner of ham, broccoli, and cheesy pseudo rice-a-roni.
I’m pooped. My feet hurt. My lips are chapped. But it was a good, productive day. More tomorrow. On Monday, a guy is coming down to dive on our hull and scrape the winter scum off. Somewhere along the line, we’ll put the sails back on. Then we’ll be ready for the summer.
I think I need some chocolate. My sweetie is going out for a little motorcycle ride - I suggested he might look for a dessert-like substance. woohoo!
Spent all of yesterday in Cleveland at the Cleveland Flower Show, which was really cool. Spectacular is a better word. Name sounds like you spend the whole day staring at flowers, but that was really only a small part of it. The coolest parts were the installations that were added for the show. Four are temporary and four are there for the next 2 years. One had the most beautiful fountain I’ve ever seen. The water fell in a curve, but was completely smooth, so it was like moving glass. I’m hoping some of my pictures came out OK.
Meanwhile at work, there were some big changes, so I got a couple of calls. I’m in denial till Monday (when I’ll be making up for having taken yesterday off).
And last night I came back to what I thought was just a bachelorette dinner for Local Best Friend. It started pretty late and when we got there, I found out there were additional stops planned (dancing and who knows what else). I groaned inwardly as we’d all arrived together, not in my car, and I’d been up since 5 and needed to be up early today. It was mostly her work friends and a couple of cousins, but fortunately, LBF and her cousin had pre-planned me a ride home after dinner. So I got home at not-quite-midnight, which saved me from becoming a pumpkin.
GT
Whew - it’s 8AM and I’m exhausted already. I woke up about 5:30 and couldn’t fall back to sleep. So I got up, took the dog out, and fed the critters. Then I decided to do something about some of the meat we bought at BJ’s the other day. I cut two large hunks of salmon into 4 meal-size hunks and froze them. We’d bought a package of 6 steaks - 2 were rewrapped for future steak meals, and the other 4 were cut up for soup meat - two baggies worth. Then I got the 5.5# container of ground beef.
While I was looking for space to store the other stuff in the freezer, I came across a 1.75# package of ground beef - so it went into the microwave to defrost. While that was happening, I divided the big package of meat - about a pound and a quarter went into a bag for future use. Then I made a big meatloaf and 8 burger patties. Once all of those were in the freezer, I made up a big batch of spaghetti sauce with the newly defrosted meat. It’s still simmering.
I emptied the dishwasher, filled it with the accumulated dirties, and it’s washing now. Then I watered my houseplants, and had breakfast - a Dove bar.
What?? It’s got milk!
My sweetie just got up - apparently the birds in the yard were tweeting too loud. Time for real breakfast, then we’ll plan the rest of the day.
Oh yeah - and I still have the whole pork loin to divide into meal-size portions. It’s gonna be a looooooooong day.
We had a very fun evening last night with lots of good food. I made a huge bowl of pasta salad and it’s almost all gone. I was hoping for leftovers, but oh well, I guess that means people liked it. We played 99 and I won 35 dollars, woot! That paid for our trip to the liquor store.
We are loading up the boat for a day of skiing and tubing. Temps will be in the 80s today, thank goodness because it was about 93 here yesterday.
I’m going to take the camera and maybe, just maybe someone will remember to take pictures and I’ll post them.
The hubby is snapping the whip. Gotta go.
(Running in late…) Back from a week of training. It was the immersive kind, late hours, projects, but overall very interesting. But I wasn’t on the web at all, so I have to catch up:
Rue, after reading the MMP, I wondered, were there mushrooms at that gathering? Just asking. Puppies always make a day better.
**Taxi ** and Keith, squirrely. Our kind of couple.
The best art car I ever saw was one that was all grass. Maybe FCM can help out–an all-marigold car. FCM, your pots looked great. Just think: there will come a time that you will want to make uneven sides, but your skilled hands won’t let you, and you will look back with longing at your early days. The small one can be used to hold the extra Godiva chocolate while you eat the first one.
VB, I, too, have a U-Haul moving horror story. You are a master of constraint, and we learn at your feet.
Amazon also knows me by my first name.
My boss is a weasel, but did I mention I have 3 ferrets? So weasel is a term of endearment to me. A greasy weasel, well, that’s just nasty.
I think there needs to be teeshirts with **Camp Swampy ** on them.
Gardentraveler, make sure you listen to the commentaries on Firefly. They are in a weird place–you have to look under languages. Firefly: Poor interface design, but one of the best set of stories in the history of the world…until the movie comes out.
Taters, why do I picture you in a pink negligee and your husband in leather?
I was out late last night, so I slept ridiculously late this morning, and I have an excellent plan to lounge around and not do much today. I’d be more motivated if it was a nice day, but it’s cloudy and kind of a sleepy day, so maybe I’ll take a nap later. Or go for a walk. Or go for a walk, and then take a nap. It’s a rough life, but somebody has to do it! But later this afternoon, I have to work on a newspaper ad, so I do have some real work to do today.
FCM, anything with milk in it is good breakfast! Rice Krispie treats and Krackel bars have cereal, so they’re good breakfast, too. But this is coming from the person who thinks Chunky Monkey is a balanced meal. 
merrily, welcome back! A flower car–very interesting! Just like the Trading Spaces where Hildi stapled flowers all over that bathroom.
V-Bob, I’m dying to know more about your bad U-Haul experience. The last time I moved, I rented a U-Haul, and I won’t be doing that again.
FCM, I know you couldn’t throw them (they’d break :D), but perhaps you could sculpt some gnomes. With marigolds. I think it sounds…picturesque.
Welcome back, merrily!
I’ve rented from them twice and never had a problem. Unless you count the time I got one with a manual transmission that didn’t really like going into 2nd gear; I put a grand total of 5 miles on the truck, so it wasn’t really a hardship (just skipped cavalierly through 2nd to 3rd). Of course, with that mileage, I’m not sure it counts as experience…
I listened to the commentary on the pilot already; I think I found it by process of elimination - it is in an odd place. Very amusing. I was inspired to watch it by the film festival in Cafe Society, but haven’t really kept up with the threads yet. I don’t usually like sci-fi-ish stuff all that well, but it is a really good story…
I spent most of the morning at the park where I volunteer - it was a nice day to be outdoors - and then went to a friend’s house because she had several plants she wanted to share. I came home with more than I know what to do with (this is normal); I’m sure I’ll find spots to tuck them into…
GT
Sculpt? ME? Um, I think you overestimate my artisticism… by a LOT!! I stick to round, non-sculpted stuff.
My day stayed busy. I finished what I needed to do on the water system, including checking out the water heater. And I did some more cleaning, and I helped my sweetie finish the fuel system. Mostly I was handing him stuff, since there’s no room for two people in the engine room. But when he was installing 2 of the fuel filters, I figured out where 2 of the o-rings went, so there was that. We tried to start the engine, but the batteries are dead. We should have brought them home instead of leaving them aboard all winter.
When we got back, we had sketties for dinner - after I packaged 3 freezer bags of the sauce that I made this morning. Now we’re just chilling. I need a shower and a foot rub. I know I’ll get a shower. Oh well.
Tomorrow, he’s going back to the boat and I’m going to work in the yard. We’ll see who gets more tired and more dirty. Meanwhile, just chillin’… Oh yeah… 
I had a very amusing little trippy moment today. Was in Borders, scanning the cookbooks, and I picked up this book . They have a bunch of names printed on the inside cover of the book - I’m guessing members’ names. And there I was! Well, not me, but it was my name. It was semi-cool. Didn’t get me to buy the book, though. Feeling frugal.
I slept in until 11 today. Laziness on the weekend is good. Not so much on week days.
Susan
Today, I am a killer! Mwahahahahahaha!
I sprayed herbicide on my poison ivy. According to the package, it could take 2-6 weeks for the leaves to wither. Slow-acting poison - make those evil leaves suffer! I shall have my revenge! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
OK, that’s out of my system. I did just finish spraying the poison ivy nearest the house and the garden bed I plan to start clearing this afternoon. Fortunately (I think) there’s no poison in the area I’ll be de-weeding. But I’m still waiting for the wet stuff on the leaves to dry before I go out again. No sense rushing into physical labor, I always say.
Although I really should do something about cleaning the window screens and removing the windows on the front storm door and putting its screens in. I may do that before attacking the garden. Or instead of. Who knows…??
My sweetie has gone to the boat - he’s going to change the oil and tidy the engine room and figure out a better place to put the batteries, so we can monitor them and remove them easily for the winter. We discussed it at breakfast - I’m thinking we should use the storage area where the battery charger sits now - it’s in the pilot house and it’s easily accessible, yet out of the way. If we have to relocate the charger, that’s easy, since it requires no maintenance or monitoring at all.
It’s a beautiful day - we should be lying about enjoying it. Right.
Yeah, right.
My mother is still having issues, so I’ve been pretty stressed and without getting into too much TMI I’ll just it has been hell on my GI system. I also have an earache now, I have no idea how the two systems are connected.
Anyway, the cookbooks I ordered arrived a few days ago. One of them is Small Batch Baking. I like to cook but then I either overindulge in whatever I made or have to give some away or freeze some so I thought it would be good to just use smaller recipes (that way I can also try more recipes!). I made the giant oatmeal cookie recipe which makes just two large cookies. I replaced the raisins (we hates them!) with chocolate chips. You’re supposed to let them cool at least 15 minutes, the first one didn’t last that long and it was all I could do to save the second for the next day, so it’s a good thing it was a small batch. I think I will make myself a small red velvet cake for my birthday on Tuesday, but unless I pick up some red food coloring it will just be a brown velvet cake (brown because it has cocoa in it).
I also bought some gardening supplies so I will be working on some of that today too to help de-stress.
mmmmm - any chance you could share the 2-giant oatmeal cookie recipe? My sweetie and I both love oatmeal cookies, and I have to make a double batch, which means we eat tons of cookies that neither of us needs. But one cookie - that’s a respectable snack! 
I’m not sure if there are copyright issues for recipes, so I’ll just go ahead and link to an LJ community I belong to where I have already posted the recipe.
The cookies sound yummy.
I should be out in the garden cleaning stuff, but instead I’m going to go out and look for an outfit for the wedding next weekend. Just bought a carry-on because I just realized that I lent my cousin the bag I’d normally take, which is getting kind of ratty anyway (it’s about 18 years old and has been everywhere).
GT
