We have puppies!!

Late last December, we bred our two standard poodles.

Annie was the perfect little pregant girl. She remained healthy throughout the pregnancy. Gunner didn't understand why she wouldn't play with him as roughly as she always has but they adapted.

So we were expecting our little bundles of joy around February 17th.

We did all sorts of research. Had emergency numbers for our vets. Knew what to watch for. We had organized her whelping bed. We were ready with the surgical gloves, clean towels, dental floss and scissors. Ok, let me clarify one point - I was ready with all these things. T was manning the phone, ready to call the vet at a moment's notice.

So, on February 12th, the dogs wanted to go outside. I put them out. They began pawing at the door after about 10 minutes so I went to let them in. Imagine my surprise when I opened up the door and saw 2 puppies laying there. One wiggling around and the other not out of the amniotic sac. My normally calm, cool and collected demeanor went straight out the window. There had been no signs at all that she would be having puppies today but there they were.

I yelled back through the house at T - "We have puppies." I'm fairly certain she heard the panic in my voice because she came running back through the house, saying, "What?"

"We have puppies... I need towels!" I was already running to the bathroom. Well, we were in the wrong part of the house. I grabbed the first thing I could find which happened to be my favorite WHITE bathrobe. I scooped up the puppies. T had made it back with towels by this time. I handed her the one that was moving around telling her to rub it roughly. I went to work on the one who was still in the sac. I cleared its face so it could breathe but it wasn't breathing. I rubbed and rubbed and finally, it took a breath. I was never so relieved in my life.

So I continued to hold on to it and rub until the sac was gone. Annie was running around completely panicked by this time. I tied and cut the umbilical cord on the one I had. Traded T and told her to keep rubbing this little guy. Took the one she had, tied and cut the cord and put it in the whelping bed. He was a feisty little guy. He was all over the whelping box whining and looking for his momma.

Annie was running around with that, "WTF just happened" look on her face. She went under the dining room table and had another pup, and after cleaning him, she just walked off. I grabbed him, tied his cord and cut it, finished cleaning him up and took him over to join the other little one in the whelping bed. Then I heard another cry under the table. She'd apparently had another one while I was taking care of this one. She didn't clean him up though. So I grabbed him and tore away the membrane and started cleaning him up.

Of course, we were panicked so she would have NOTHING to do with the pups at first. I'd bring one over to her and she'd literally RUN from it. Finally, I wised up and calmed down. I brought one of the pups over to her and started talking soothingly and she let him nurse.

I brought the others over and all has been well since.

Stimulus Package

I'm a news hound. Staying informed of current events is my obsession.

I'm not a political person. Until the 2004 election, I would have considered myself to be one of the most apolitical people you could ever encounter. I had never voted. However, I didn't like the way things were going with ol' W. in office so I registered to vote for the first time in my life and I still couldn't get off the fence - I registered independent. I didn't register so that I could vote FOR someone... I registered so I could vote AGAINST Bush. My logic was that if I didn't vote then I had effectively put my fate in the hands of millions of others and forfeited my voice. Basically, if I didn't vote, I couldn't bitch about the buffoon that was in office.

Maybe it was my age. Maybe I realized that after years of trying to stay as far away from politics and politicians as possible, I had a voice. Maybe it was my children - I want a better world for them when they reach my age than the one we're living in now. Whatever IT was - a light bulb went on in my head and I've been current on politics since.

I was reading this article on MSNBC's Web site this morning and I was furious.

I think the bailout/stimulus package is a necessary evil in our current economical situation. I think there have been some much needed stipulations added to this stimulus package. Corporate executives need caps on their pay until their company is solvent and profitable. I think this was a good move. The portion of the package that I have issue with is the bonuses given to corporate executives.

The current stimulus package that President Obama will most likely sign next week makes some concessions as far as bonuses are concerned. It limits bonuses to no more than one third of executives' annual compensation at institutions receiving government aid. The bonuses will be paid in company stock and cannot be redeemed until the government has been repaid. It's better than nothing, I suppose. In my humble opinion, it does not go far enough.

The taxpayers are bailing out these corporations because top executives performed poorly, made bad decisions and yet, still sat back collecting bonuses and large salaries. I make a decent living but with the price of everything going up, my pay doesn't go nearly as far as it once did. Who's going to bail me out?

I think that no bonuses should be awarded until the government has been repaid.

Lobbyists are whining about this particular caveat in the stimulus package. Scott Talbott, the chief lobbyist for the nation's largest financial services firm, stated that, "This is a big deal. This is a problem. It undermines the current incentive structure." (from the article) Maybe the current incentive structure is what undermined the financial institutions in the first place. Until you've repaid the government and the taxpayers - maybe doing your job and getting your company financially solvent should be incentive enough. Just a thought.

I realize some financial institutions will lose top execs because of these limits but truly, did they perform well enough to warrant this worry? Are you not receiving government funding to keep your business afloat? What are you really losing if you lose one of these people? Let's face it - their track records aren't exactly spotless.

President Obama has a tough road ahead of him. The Bush administration left quite a mess for someone else to clean up. I realize President Obama had to get something in place quickly and this was a good first step. I just wish it had gone further.

Well hell.

This is my daughter. This picture was taken the day of her junior prom. This is one of my all-time favorite pictures of her. I think she is a beautiful girl. Unfortunately, when it comes to boys... she doesn't choose well.


I was hoping that when they split up this time, it was for good. They have what I consider to be a toxic relationship. She doesn't want him but she doesn't want anyone else to have him either and vice versa.

Maybe Derek did too good a job of making her feel better when she was sad.


This is her before her senior prom. Again, she looks lovely - at least in my opinion. I'm her momma so my opinion is definitely biased.

Parenting is a big racket. Children are born small for a reason - they're cute and you get attached to them and then for the rest of your life, you see them as this cute little thing that adored you and you adored. What this effectively does is assure that you've grown attached to them by the time they hit their teenage years so you won't kill them.

This is her and the boyfriend. They've been together for 4 years. That's 3 years and 9 months too long.

She was only in trouble once in elementary school. In kindergarten. For kissing a little boy on the cheek. That little boy is standing next to her in this picture. Yep. One and the same. Ughhh!

I try not to say too much but it is getting to the point that I can't stay quiet any longer. They just graduated. He is neither working nor going to school and has no intentions of doing either as far as I can see.

He is disrespectful, controlling and not-so-bright and I don't even think he knows what 'ambition' means. He isolates her from her friends and her family and she lets it happen.

I want her to experience life. To go to college. To fall in love several times. To find her person. To get a job and be self-sufficient. To travel. To know that there is a an entire world out there to explore and experience before she even thinks of settling down. To struggle and win. To struggle and lose. To find herself - not just the self that I or anyone else imagines for her - but her true self.

I have no desire for grandchildren in the next 10 years but when she does have children - I certainly don't want them to look like THIS!

A room reaches its full PO-tential

Ok, this was the largest bedroom in the house. It was probably one of the darkest and ugliest bedrooms I have ever seen. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to make us run screaming.

We learned a lot of things while working on this room. Like the previous owners had this thing for HUGE nails and a LOT of them. I don't know if the nails were on sale or what but we pulled out one 2 X 4 that had 63 of these nails in it. 63!

It doesn't look that large in these pictures but believe me - when you're laying hardwood floors.. you learn just how big a room is.

First order of business... moving the door to the bathroom. It was in the hallway which we had decided to turn into closets. One for each of the master suites we had planned. One thing I haven't mentioned is that we took down a lot of walls. Luckily, the roof was trussed so we could move any wall without worrying about whether or not it was load-bearing.

The photo to the left shows part of one closet and the doors of the other closet where we busted through the wall to gain access to the bathroom from the bedroom. The door on the far left is the
hallway. We tore up the carpet. Tore out the closets. We still weren't happy so we cut out a window and installed French doors to the outside.

Now... when I saw "we" cut out the window. I actually mean our very good friend, J. Again, this is when we still had friends and he volunteered. Neither of us could lift the saw that he had to use to cut through the brick exterior. It took nearly all day but there's a doorway where the window used to be.

It was late that evening before we actually got the door in. Unfortunately, I lost most of the mid-construction photos of this room. As I recall, it was relatively uneventful with one exception.

For any of those that have ever finished drywall - you know what a mess it can be. There was drywall dust everyhere.

We spent the day at the office, came to the house after work and spent all evening working. We

were ready to go back to the apartment and die but wanted to clean up the drywall dust first. Trace got the bright idea to use the leaf blower and push the dust out the doors. OMG!!! It was like a white out in the bedroom. She had to follow the power cord back to the wall just to be able to get out of the bedroom. She looked like a ghost. We just left it to settle and went home.

I'm skipping quite a few steps here - like before we put down the hardwood floors and were trying to decide what color the curtains should be. We hung one of each color on each window.

And the fact that we tore these hardwood floors out of an old house during the hottest part of the summer. We both fell through the sub-floor in that old house and I nearly clawed Trace's eyes out trying to get out because I was terrified there may have been a snake under the house. And covering up the trap door in this room that dropped down onto the water heater - purposely.

The floors turned out beautifully as you can see in the above photo. And we finally decided on curtains. This room looks nothing like the room we started with.

I did all the molding - crown, case, baseboard, and shoe molding. The door on the left is a walk-in closet. It was once the hallway. The door on the right is the bathroom. There is another walk-in closet in there. No need to put away summer clothes and pull out winter clothes - there's a closet for each. At least theoretically but we're both clothes horses so it doesn't work EXACTLY that way but pretty close.

The walls are painted with a greyish-beige color that I think is called buckskin or something like that. The ceiling is painted the palest shade of pink called Blush. The molding just makes it pop.

We still have a few finishing touches - like dropping another cable for the television. That is going to require someone to go under the house and run it and we all know by now, it isn't going to be me.

As you can see, the dogs are patiently waiting to come back in.

Voila! Finished. One room, at least..

First things first...

 When we bought the house, we knew it was going to be a while before we could afford to do the kitchen remodel. I love to cook and I have a pretty definite idea of what I want. This... is definitely not it.

So although the kitchen wasn't a priority, something had to be done because I just couldn't live with this. It was bad. I couldn't make up my mind if i wanted to pull my hair out or take a hit of acid every time I walked in this room.

We took down the border along the soffit. That in itself was a big improvement. Then we painted the cabinets. Again - big improvement.It was almost livable by this time.

A trip to Lowe's or Home Depot revealed that a can of appliance paint can be a girl's best friend. That olive green wall oven HAD to go. The refrigerator taking up half a room had to go as well but what to do with it?

At the same time, we were taking out the hallway wall and the bar that was attached to it.

My best friend and her husband had looked at the house when we did. Luckily for us, her husband had a phobia of buying a home and we got our offer in first. Or maybe.. not so luckily. Anyway.. she loved the green and white tile and wanted what we took down so we took it down very carefully.

In taking down the wall and the bar, we learned something that would leave us scratching our heads and pretty much set the tone for the rest of the remodel. We gave up the head-scratching and wondering "why" after a couple of months.

There was a light on the bar. When we took the wall down, we cut the power that was going to that light. We later went outside to open the garage door. Hit the button - nothing happened because there was now no power to the garage. Don't ask me. I have no idea but the entire house was wired strangely. Oh joy! I hate electrical work! 


It's amazing what a little paint can do. We still have the ugly tile and countertops to deal with but at least we're not giving new meaning to the phrase "Go Green." It took a coat of primer and 2 coats of white paint to cover up that green and then we put a couple coats of sealer over top of that. At least I no longer had the desire to try hard drugs.
We took out the hallway wall, took down the green striped wallpaper and put up drywall.
We created a door from the kitchen into the tiny bedroom and turned it into a utility
room. We also cut a hole in this wall and stuffed the refrigerator through it. All
we see from the kitchen are the refrigerator doors, the rest of it is in the utility
room. We all thought Trace was crazy when she came up with this idea but it turned out well and it gets the refrigerator out of the way.

We
knew we wanted to put hardwood floors in the house but we also knew we'd never be able to afford to have them done at one time. We came up with a viable second option
though - recycled floors. It was not necessarily our intention to go green but it
was economical. These floors are from a 100-yr old farmhouse in Wisconsin. We found
them on eBay. It's 3/4" maple. The guy took them up, took the nails out and delivered
it for about $1 a square foot. Installing them was not necessarily fun but the improvement was definitely noticeable.

We took everything out of the front part of the house and moved it to the back part of the house. We lived on fast food and anything that could be put in the microwave for 3 weeks while we were finishing the floors.

Sanding the floors was a pain in the ass. They had different finishes and different heights because they had been in different rooms. We sanded them in a weekend. We worked round the clock but the guy at the rental place made the mistake of saying there was no way we could do it in a weekend.
I gave up around 2am Monday morning. Trace woke me up at 5am. She had been falling asleep on her trips up and down the floor. I got up and finished it in the next 3 or 4 hours and we got it back to the rental place on time and we were finished.
Pffftttt.... This guy had apparently never ran across two very determined women.
We had a timeline... we were trying to get this finished by Thanksgiving.

Now we just need to get them stained and get a million coats of polyurethane on them, let them harden for 2 weeks and we can move furniture back in.
Our friend, Pat, came over to help. We actually still had friends at this time. They weren't afraid to come for dinner. A note to anyone who tries to take on the task of remodeling an old house - demolition is fun for everyone! Construction is not so much fun. You will have more friends than you know during the demolition phase but they will gradually thin out as you move to the construction phase. We couldn't even bribe them with dinner and I'm a great cook! I can't say I blame them though.
So these two are the twisted sisters of wood floors. Pat with a rubber glove and an
evil gleam in her eyes... I was a little worried for Tracy's safety. It took me
forever to convince Pat that floor stain didn't make a good self-tanner. I think
she finally believed me.

The three of us stained the floors and then went gambling at the track. We couldn't
put another coat on for 4 - 6 hours. What else are we gonna do?

The floors turned out beautifully but the green and white tile was still driving me crazy. A quick Google search yielded a temporary fix. If you use a good, oil-based primer - you can paint ANYTHING - just don't try to clean up the roller or brush. It will be ruined one you are finished so plan on tossing it. You'll make a bigger mess trying to clean it.

We used Zinsser oil-based primer and it sets up as hard as enamel. We chose Gold #3 from the family of colors we'd been using for the walls and painted the tile.
We then went to Michael's and bought a paint pen and went along the "grout" lines and put two coats of marine sealer over it.

We did the same thing with the countertop. We primed it and let it harden. We chose
Gold #4, bought a couple packages of gold flakes to mix in the paint. We put 2 or
3 coats of paint on the counter and then 3 coats of marine sealer over top of the
paint. It has been over 2 years and it still looks good.

The backsplash was uneven where it connected to the wall so we took a rounded shoe
mold and attached it to the top to even it out. It is painted in the same family
of Gold colors we've been using although it looks white.

You can see a little of what we did to the ceiling in the photo on the left above
this one. The ceilings are only 8 feet. The ceiling fans made the ceiling feel even
lower. We painted 24 inches of the ceiling the same color as the walls and then
painted the center of the ceiling a shade lighter (Gold #2). This brings the eye
up and makes the ceilings look higher.

We later added case molding along the paint line to create the illusion of a tray
ceiling. It makes the room feel much more spacious.

PO-tential

I think Webster's needs to add a new word to their dictionary - PO-tential. Not potential but PO-tential. Different pronunciation and different definition. Two completely different words actually.

We've already talked about the definition of potential. I think the definition of PO-tential should be this -

PO-tential: (adj.) - not even close to reality; so far from reality as to be nearly delusional.
-(noun) a dream of what something could be that will take years to achieve.

You would think that when to normally rational and relatively intelligent women walked into a house and saw this kitchen - they would've ran screaming without a second glance. But no. No. Noooooo... That would've been the sensible thing to do. Sensible is something neither of us have ever been accused of.

So these are pictures of the kitchen when we looked at the house. What the picture does not accurately show is the true use of color in this room. The tiles are apple green and white, the paint on the cabinets is like the Crayola Crayon color Fern. The countertop was closer to Yellow-Green.

The wall oven - I would call that 70's olive green. So - 4 different and not necessarily complementary shades of green and that's just the tile, cabinets and oven. The border along the soffit had a couple of different shades of green in it. Believe me when I say - it was BAD. Then, within sight of the kitchen was a hallway that had a striped wallpaper on the walls that had hunter green in it. Who knew there were so many different shades of green!? And we still didn't run. At least the counter and the island shared the same color green. It has PO-tential.

On to the rec room... feast your eyes on this. This is not a great photo but you get the picture. Dark, heavy paneling on the walls, a Brady Bunch fireplace on the right, and cream-colored carpet on the floors. One would've thought the hearth would've been stone considering that the fireplace was but no. It was tiled parquet that stretched from the far end of the fireplace across the front of the sliding glass door and to the nearest wall. Mmmmmhmmmmm. Bad. Did we run? Nooo... This place has PO-tential.

This was the opposite end of the rec rom. Lovely peach-colored paint on the paneling with a clear view of one of the bedrooms which was actually probably one of the least offensive rooms in the house.

The lines in this room were strange. Unfortunately, I had a computer crash that resulted in the loss of a lot of pics and I can only describe to you how strange this room was.

The wall you see on the right in this picture was a closet jutting out from the hallway on the other side of the wall. The bedrooms were along this hallway - one to the right and two to the left with a bathroom between the two sides. The hallway was about 4 feet wide and a total waste of space. The door to the outside that you can't see in either of these two pictures was sunken in relation to the rest of the walls and the fireplace. On the opposite end of the fireplace was another recessed wall. The wall opposite the fireplace, again, recessed behind the door to the hallway and the bedrooms. Strange and a lot of wasted space.

Unfortunately, pictures of the bedrooms are one of the things I lost when my computer crashed. I did have this one though. This was the "master" bedroom or at least the largest.

Dark paneling - different color than in the rec room but just as dark and just as heavy. Dark blue carpet that looked like it had been there since the house was built.

This was actually one of the better looking bedrooms. I wish I still had the photos of the one with the yellow and orange vinyl paneling and the black carpet with purple, green and pink flowers.

So, let's see. From the back entry - we walked into a pantry of sorts. Shelves lining the wall on three sides. No doors covering up these shelves. Just shelves. From there, you walk into the library. The library is on the side of the house closest to the driveway. There is a brick fireplace with a cast-iron stove inserted into it and no windows facing that side of the house. Only one window facing the driveway leading up to the house. Through the library and to the right, the dining room, kitchen, and living room - all separate living spaces and rooms. A hallway that leads to the back part of the house - a bathroom and a tiny bedroom off the hallway. The bedroom was just off the kitchen. Yes.. off the kitchen. When I say tiny - I mean only large enough for a twin bed and a little dresser and you might bump your knees trying to get between the two. Moving on....

Through the hallway and into the rec room - a bedroom and hallway off the rec room. Through the hallway, 3 more bedrooms, a closet and a bathroom. Altogether 3000 sq ft of truly rambling brick ranch. Not one square inch that didn't need something done to it.

PO-tential. Uhhhg!

I adore him!

This is my nephew. He's 3 years old and just as rotten as he looks in this photo. We could all learn a lot about compassion and selflessness from him.
He is normally a very active child. Running and playing until he drops. His mind works faster than his mouth sometimes and he gets frustrated but he is ALWAYS thinking. Whether it be about what kind of trouble to get into next or whatever. He is never still unless he's asleep and even then, he is not still. He is hilarious. And always talking.

An example is this exchange between him and his dad. He had been at my parents' home for 3 or 4 days. He didn't want to go home. His dad came to pick him up.

D: "Daddy, what you doin' heah?"
F: "I came to pick you up, Bub. I miss you."
D: "But Daddy, my not want to go home wif you."
F: "Bub, you've been here for 4 days. You have to come home."
D: "But Daddy... my no wike you." Stops and thinks for a minute... and continues... "Mommy no wike you. Bubby no wike you. Even Jesus no wike you."

He, of course, loves his Dad. He just didn't want to go home with him. He wanted to stay at Maw's and Paw's. This is what his little mind came up with to try to get to stay. Needless to say, we were all cracking up. I dare you to put the kid in timeout and NOT laugh while he sits there and makes faces. He knows if he can make you laugh, he's in the clear.


Yesterday, my 18 yr old daughter was very sad. She and her boyfriend of 4 years have broken up and hopefully, it's for good this time. Even though I'm happy about this, she is sad so I'd never tell her that I hope it sticks this time. Even though, in the long run, this is for the best - it doesn't negate her feelings. She hurts.

He isn't a bad kid. He just isn't respectful or ambitious and she can do so much better.

So my normally active and rambunctious nephew, who had no idea what was wrong but just knew that she was sad, gave her what none of the adults in her life could offer - pure, unbiased compassion.

He sat with her for hours. Holding her hand and speaking soothingly to her. Trying to make her smile. He is a funny little guy and can crack you up regardless of the situation.

He was still...for...hours.

He sat on her lap. Kissed her. Hugged her. Repeatedly. And then some more. He rubbed her cheeks gently with his tiny little hands and said, "You come stay wif me. You can sweep wif me evwy night and I div you kisses.... We can pway wif my toys and watch Elmo and den you won't be sad." How can you argue with that?

It may not seem like much but to a 3-yr old, that's his world and he was offering to let her share it if that would make her feel better.

You would've thought he was 15 years older than her rather than being 15 years younger. He knew just what to say to make her smile. Stroking her hair and saying, "Sissy... I wuv you all da waaaay to heaven and back." If she even looked like she was going to cry, he would wrap his little but surprisingly strong arms around her neck and squeeze her as hard as he could.

I sat there with them. Just watching. And my heart ached. Ached for her because she is hurt, angry and sad. It ached with love for both of them. It ached because of his sweetness and his selflessness and his all-encompassing compassion. He may only be 3 years old but we can all learn from that.

For hours he sat with her. Sometimes not saying anything at all - just holding her hand. And by the time she finally had to move, she felt a little better.

How could she not?

A little paint can make a HUGE difference

Luckily, some projects were relatively easy to do but the impact was huge. Case in point - the storage building and the garage. According to neighbor Bill, one of the sons had that hideous yellow color on the garage and storage building custom-mixed. Hmmmm... I'm thinking it must've been on sale. Either way, these buildings stuck out like a sore thumb.

We had already picked out our colors and wanted to make everything look cohesive so I got to buy a new tool - a power sprayer. You would've though it might have kept me from getting so much paint on me but uhmm... nope. I'm the world's messiest painter. I end up wearing almost as much as I get on the whatever I'm painting. Without the power sprayer, this would've taken weeks. As it was, it took a couple of weekends and I'm fairly certain we now own stock in American Tradition paint. The garage alone took 4 coats and could probably use another.


The tree in the photo to the right is a plum tree. We tried to save it but it was too far gone and although we loved the shape, it had to go. Trace was out working in the garden one day, raised up and saw a snake laying under this tree. She said that it grew as she got closer. She was going to be brave and kill it but by the time she got to the garage, she was fairly certain it was an anaconda. So she hopped across Bill's garden and asked him to come rescue her.

Apparently, it was "just" a black snake. It does not matter to me if it's a plastic snake. A snake is a snake is a snake and the only "good" snake is one that I never see. I don't care to share my world with them but I don't want to see them. He said, "Well, I'll go get one of the boys and they'll take it home with them." She looked at him and says in all seriousness, "Bill, are they moving out of state?" Bill laughs, "Well, no." She tells him, "Bill.. you have to kill this snake. If Lethie finds out it was out here, she'll never step foot outside the house again." So he killed the snake or at least, that's the story Trace told me. I choose to believe it because I enjoy the outdoors so much and don't want to be confined inside the house for the rest of my life. Lie number 2 revealed!


So this is what the garage and storage building look like now. I think the storage building looks like an old one-room school building and I want to put a bell on it and a cupola.

We spend a lot of time on the porch of the storage building. Neighbor Bill and his wife love the color so much that he asked us for a paint chip. Apparently, the porch of the church they attend is now painted this color. His wife came over and thanked us for painting the buildings. She hated the yellow color. This was an easy fix.. Too bad they weren't all like that.

Cabin Fever

This is what the backyard looked like when we moved in. The fenced in courtyard area with a little flower bed in front of it and all the overgrown bushes in the center of the backyard, split it up horribly.

Taking all this stuff out was one of the first things we wanted to do but then we found out I had to have surgery so it was not as much a priority as getting a bedroom finished so I would have some place to recuperate. We'd just have to live it with it until spring or so we thought.

It doesn't look so bad in this picture but looking at it from the house was a differnt story. It looked like an overgrown jungle.


My surgery wound up being more extensive than expected and my recovery period went from 6 weeks to 12 weeks. Fall came and went and winter reared it's ugly head. Once I got a little strength back, we would take daily walks to the barn and back. It seemed like miles the first few times. As we'd pass all this overgrown nonsense, it would drive me crazy. I guess I can be a little obsessive/compulsive and with all that was going on with my body, I would obsess on some things for days or weeks. There was a brief obsession with McDonald's french fries but luckily, it didn't last too long.

I just couldn't bear this view from the porch but there was little I could do about it at the time. Luckily, West Virginia has strange winters. It can be 15F today and 65F tomorrow. So somewhere between the first snow and the last, we had some really nice weather. We both prefer to be outside on any given day of the week so when the weather broke and we could get outside, we were both ready.

Taking the fence apart was easy enough. Taking out some of the posts was even relatively easy. Others... not so much. They were set in cement about 18 inches down. Not just a little cement. These people were fairly certain that using a lot of REALLY BIG nails and a lot of cement could hold together what they lacked in construction skills.

I am still recovering from surgery and was truly not much help other than taking the screws out of the fence and taking it down. Trace was stuck digging around the cement posts to try to loosen them. Once they were loosened, they were heavy! We still couldn't get them out so I went to the garage and brought our ATV over and would gently ram the posts until they either broke off above ground level or we could rock them loose enough to pull them out. Then we'd tie a rope around them and pull them with the ATV. There was one moment of terror on the first post when it unexpectly broke and I nearly ran over Trace with the ATV. Ooooopsie!

On to the bushes. Being that we would need to mow around the stumps, we decided to try to take them out by the roots. Trace dug around them and then we'd tie a rope around them and pull with the ATV. Then she'd dig a little more and we'd pull a little more. On and on this went. The tallest one took forever to get out. We were about to give up when it finally pulled free and landed on top of me as I was pulling it out. All I hear behind me as I'm scooting up closer to the handlebars is, "Keep driving... Keep driving..." Never mind that I'm being poked and stabbed by this thing just "keep driving."
Two days later, we were back to several inches of snow but my daily walks to the barn and around the property by this time, were much more pleasant because all that riff raff was gone.

It took two years of digging up all the overgrown flowers that were in the flowerbed where the fence was. There were millions of lilies growing in there. They were so tightly packed that they didn't even bloom.

We were giving away lillies to anyone who would take them. The neighbors.. my family.. planting them in other spots like along the driveway and beside the garage. We even through some on the ground behind the storage building and before we had another bonfire, they were blooming without even being planted. Lillies are hardy plants.

The backyard looks much cleaner now. We transplanted a few of the younger trees that were planted along the fence and planted grass and you can't even tell now that the fence or the flowers were ever there.

Unfortunately, the summer of 2007 brought with it a severe drought so the grass doesn't looks so good in the last picture but it was nice last summer.

We must've lost our minds... Part 2

This is the overgrown mess that was the front of the house. That is a HUGE rhodadendron there at the corner of the porch. It was nearly as tall as the roof. I'm sure it was probably lovely in the spring but I am TERRIFIED of snakes and any place they may be able to hide... It had to go. Getting the bush/tree itself down wasn't bad. Getting the roots out of the ground - not so easily done. After hours with a hand saw, we gave up and I decided to ruin a blade on the reciprocating saw to get the roots out of the ground.

We also decided the aluminum rails had to go. Have you ever tried getting 20 yr old screws out after they've all but rusted in place? Not fun. Recip saw to the rescue - again.

The day after we took possession of the house.. we came home to find one of the sons sitting on the porch of the storage building. They still had a bunch of stuff in the garage, storage building and the house that they were just going to leave. Uhmmmm.... no. We told them they had to get it all out and deal with it. It wasn't our problem. He said they'd get it out the next day. No problem... until we get home and there is NO ONE there but a fire burning right next to the barn. When he finally shows up an hour later, all he has to say is, "We burn there all the time." !!!
I think this is the evening he talked about putting on a mask, sneaking on the property to scare the "city girls" and the "we have a gun" exchange occurred. There was instead a call put into our real estate agent who called their real estate agent and strongly suggested they not set foot on the property again.

That very same day, I found out I had to have surgery and would be out of commission for at least 6 weeks. Surgery was scheduled in less than a week. I wanted to pick a project that I could finish before I had surgery. The porch drove me crazy. It was GREEN!!! It went so well with the white brick lamp post, the earth-tone brick circular planter beside it and the yellow buildings.. I wanted to get the cement part of it sanded and all of it painted before I had surgery. That way, it wouldn't drive me crazy when they brought me home from the hospital. It's the little things folks... the little things!

I bought an orbital sander and started working on the porch. (Buying tools becomes a recurring theme. I will still tackle any project that comes along as long as there's a new tool involved.)

It was a good ol' fashioned sledgehammer that took out that lamp post and most of the planter that's beside it.

I'm making progress. I get the rails down and the porch sanded and painted two nights before surgery. At least progress I can live with until the spring when I can rent a jackhammer to take out the sidewalk to no where.

At this point, we still haven't moved in. We were living in an apartment about 3 miles away. We'd go to work in the mornings and come home in the evenings to work on the house then we'd go to the apartment, shower and die for 3 or 4 hours and start all over again.

So flash forward to spring and the weekend we rented a jackhammer. OMG!! I did the entire sidewalk by myself. It was really bad when the jackhammer would get stuck and I had to pull it out. My arms were so sore the next day, I couldn't even type. It was 8 inches deep in some spots. Craziness!!

This was the weekend our next door neighbor confessed he and his wife can't wait to get up on the weekends to see what "the girls" are going to do next. They also told us how happy they were that we bought the place and were trying to fix it up because it hadn't looked this good in years.

This same spring we chose two separate colors that complemented the colors in the bricks on the house and painted the peak of the porch and the shutters.

We still weren't happy with the way the front of the house was looking so another trip to Home Depot cured that. We bought paint and lattice. We painted the top portion of the grey facade white about the width of a header all the way around. Then painted from that mark to the ground a dirt brown color and put the lattice over top of it. It looks like there's nothing but ground beneath the lattice.

We then went to the farmer's market for flowers. We change the flowers with the season. Rather than planting them directly in the ground and digging them up in the fall when we replace them with mums, we dug holes and put the pots in the holes. In the fall, we only need to pull up the pots and replace them with the pots of mums.

We also extended the porch deck to cover the steps that were there. We plan to put circular steps on either end of the porch and create a foot path around the the sides of the house.

The hanging fern warm up the porch and give it some interest. Unfortunately, birds normally nest in them and water them can be terrifying if you don't know a bird is living in there.

We also took out the yucca plants that were right in the middle of the front yard. They were overgrown and didn't actually bloom. I am not crazy about yucca in the first place and it was another hiding place for snakes.. I call them "yucky" plants. Can you tell where the new grass is in the photo to the right?

Unfortunately, right now I can't find any really good pictures of the end result. The one below shows only a third of the porch but you can see the sidewalk area filled in nicely. Hopefully, this summer we'll get to putting the steps in. Not having steps up to the front door gets a little tricky on Halloween. So we go to the end of the driveway with our camp chairs and pass out candy. That's how we introduced ourselves to the neighbors. We took them a treat Halloween night.

Now, let's have a moment of silence for my recently departed Jeep. That's it in the background of the photo to the right. Trace had a little trouble with slick roads this past December. She hit some black ice and started spinning and wound up flipping it. It's a total loss but luckily, she only hurt her hand. It could've been worse but believe me, I miss that car when I'm loading both dogs into my Camry.

More to come....