Defensive Gardening

Plus I made English muffins for the first time:

Plus I’m still the best aunt ever. Here’s the step-niece’s birthday cake:

And here’s that autographed Capt. Rex picture I got for the nephew – thanks to Melinda and Marty who actually went to the convention!

Tags: Defensive Gardening, Kids

My dad was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer a few weeks ago so I have been really lax in updating the blog.  I’ve been cooking and taking food over there and trying to come to terms with this myself.  He is doing chemo but to hear him tell it, the chemo is useless but the rest of us are refusing to believe that.  I went to see him yesterday and was very excited to see he finally had pants on!  Not to mention had made it downstairs to the couch!  He’s been up in bed sans pants for over a week now and that’s just wrong for the rest of us to have to deal with.  He still has his sense of humor, though, as do I, so we are sarcastically getting through this one day at a time! 

Since I decided the garden was on strike this summer, I noticed a few bell peppers on one plant – 2 months after we should have had them. I just don’t know what the problem is, although with this particular plant that is not in the garden proper, I think those damn squirrels ripped most of the leaves off of it and since Steve the Cat has disappeared, we have lost our squirrel protection. Orange Cat is still lounging around in the driveway, though.

We did go geocaching last week on the rail trail.

We saw a BUNCH of dragonflies on the trail – more than I have ever seen in one place before.

Two weeks before that we went geocaching in Darlington:

Well, that was after the nephew and I did some on our own before the niece got out of camp so she could go to Darlington with us:

This is how ridiculous these hiding containers are getting:

I don’t remember where this one was:

That may be about it. At least for now.

Tags: Geocaching, Kids

And as I told my friend Lyn, she and my Aunt Hazel are my biggest fans, but it’s hard to think about a blog post when your dad’s undergoing chemo.  However, in the same vein, it is a great distraction so I went through my pictures and did have a bunch that I needed to upload so here we go! 

Let’s see… What have I been up to?  I went to the Punk Rock Legends of SC concert at the beach which was a freaking blast!  And apparently they are fond of dumping toilets in the middle of everywhere down there:

And the concert – there were mosh pits – there were people I haven’t seen in many years – and there was lots and lots of fun to be had by all! Then, of course, I came home and two days later got the news that Dad’s sick so that kind of sucked the wind out of my sails, but let’s see what else we have missed to turn that frown upside down! (I think I puked a little in my mouth when I said that)

My vanilla extract experimant is still going strong, although I may have (I did) forgotten to slosh it around during the past couple of weeks.

Since we have officially started shuffling around the rooms, the nephew got really over-excited about getting the niece out of his room – the niece was way more concerned with going to camp and playing with her friends from camp and the kid next door – but while she was the life of the party, the nephew was moving her shit out of his room and arranging her Webkinz all over her bed.

He was determined to get the move over with! He worked so hard and was so excited to have his room all to himself that he fell asleep trying to claim both single beds as his own!

Whew! How exhausting!

We did go geocaching that week, too, and I will post those pictures later. I’m tired and that cat, Steve, is whining that I haven’t fed him again today, and his friend Orange Cat is at the door, too, so I need to go remind them that they need to go home while I’m feeding them. Dammit!

Thank goodness!  Furniture moved into the new room today and some furniture moved around upstairs today – then Alan took all the kids to Six Flags for the weekend.  And it’s only Wednesday!  He did get my old hard drive up and running and back in my desktop with its new motherboard so that is a great relief! Oh, and the garden has sprouted some butter beans – just waiting on them to grow…  Next thing up is pictures of the room…  Oh, but wait!  Jennifer gave the niece some old prom dresses to play with – we can’t get her to quit wearing the pink one – even in a storm while out and about in the neighborhood or while hanging out eating boiled peanuts!

Next are the lightswitch covers I made for the little dipsticks:

And last but not least, the new room, furnished…

And the hallway – with the bookcase the nephew and s-nephew put together all by themselves!

And the s-nephew put all of those books there – those were supposed to stay upstairs… We’ll get around to moving those eventually!

But some cabinet handles – or one? - need to be put in, a hook on the back of a door or two, and touch up painting, yet again – and they might – MIGHT – be finished.  Then clean up outside – haul off concrete busted up driveway pieces and then get the elusive inspector back out to inspect for the four thousandth time and some furniture might be able to be moved!

That box up there is just to keep Abbey out – she keeps wandering in there and then can’t get out. Maybe I’ll look into a little nicer doggie gate than the plastic awful one I have…

I’m just packing it in on the garden this year. I mean, really! It’s embarrassing. The construction workers now seem to be taking pity on us and our pathetic garden and are bringing like giant bushels of tomatoes from their gardens with buckets full of okra since ours is so pathetic. It’s embarrassing. Damn. I don’t know what the problem is because we have not had this problem in previous years but something has happened – probably those damn cats are peeing in the garden or something or the squirrels are – either way, Steve had better talk to his little friends and take care of this or the bb gun is going to be coming out!

They have built and painted the bookshelf/TV shelf in the nook and it’s coming along:

And they have put up the molding and made the old side entry door into just a doorway…

We went to the Thieves Market today. There are some pictures below. That place really does have some neat stuff – a lot of antique dealers have stalls there, I guess, but some of the stuff for sale really doesn’t qualify as an antique, like this Stan from Southpark Mask:

And wow they had a big Christian book section – it was bigger than the non-fiction section – so wait, does that mean that this place is admitting that the Christian books are fiction?  Don’t get mad at me – it’s just an observation!:

And apparently a serial killer lives there in the market’s off time:

And, Mom, I really don’t have anywhere to put this, but I just want it, okay?

Wait – you’re finally open on Mondays but closed on Monday? Man!

And ANNOUNCEMENT: The great vanilla experiment of 2010 – Florence-style – starts today. I have to say that it’s Florence-style because my friend Charlotte (ask the niece about what alliteration is and she will tell you an example is shut up, Charlotte – which is rude, but still how I remember what it is so thanks Charlotte! (approx. 1983)… Anyway, I’ve been wanting to try this little experiment for a while but have just been over-researching it. So I finally decided to take some advice from some person I’ve never met and try dark rum with vanilla beans – like a bunch of them – and then to shove the experiment in a closet for a month. I’ll have a taste testing event in a month and we’ll see how this works out – hopefully it works. If not, then I guess I’ll have “vanilla liquor” as the guy at the liquor store said. Yeah, that convo went, “Hey, I’m trying to make my own vanilla extract?” (Girl cashier snorted, rolled eyes and left – seriously) Owner or son of owner because I haven’t seen the owner in a few weeks and I’m getting kind of worried but that’s another story said in his accent, “You wan’t to make vanilla?” I said, “No, I want to make vanilla extract and just need to buy one of those little bottles back there (along with my other purchse) of something like dark rum but not that 151 proof stuff – that’s crazy.” He said, “Like vanilla liquor?” I said, “No, just vanilla extract like you bake with? Like to make cookies or something?” He gave up and said, “yes.” But I know he still thinks I’m making vanilla liquor. Whatever. I had to give up then!

So there has been a little bit of progress – there’s not much to do but wait on the floor to be put in. Supposedly whatever morons from Charlotte Lowe’s hires will be here Monday. The new side/front door has been painted so here’s an updated view of the front o’ the house.  And of course Steve’s there.  We’re never going to shake that cat – who now has figured out he can slither in the house through the storm doors during that last second before the door closes when you’ve walked away from it. 

And the shower doors have been put up – the nephew insisted he was going to take the first shower in there and could have today but for some unknown reason he changed his mind. He’ll probably take one in there tomorrow morning when I tell him that he won’t be taking the “first” shower if he waits until he comes back, that is, if everything goes as planned and Grandma moves into the new room before he gets back!

We went to the splash pad Wednesday that is out at Lynches River State Park. That was pretty cool, actually. First of all, the weather had cooled off a little bit and it sprinkled a little rain that day to cool things off so that was a great relief. I would not have stayed out there 15 minutes if it was 150 degrees! But as it was, we did stay quite a while and had a picnic and Grandma even invited a couple of other kids from the ‘hood to go with us so the niece and nephew had friends to play with.   That was quite interesting – I should have brought my handheld recorder to record their conversations:  Nephew, “Hey, do you like Star Wars?”  Friend, “Yeah, but my little brother is crazy about it.”  Or Friend, “Did you watch the game last night?”  Nephew, “Yeah, but Grandma made me go to bed.”  Friend, “I watched the whole thing and was screaming when we won.  Wait, do you like Carolina or Clemson?”  Nephew, “Gamecocks!”  Friend, “Oh, okay, good.”  Nephew, “Hey, do you like Justin Bieber?”  Friend, “NO!”  Nephew, “Thank goodness!  Me neither!”  Niece from way back seat, “Hey!” 

And I’m sure I can’t be the only one that, in her head, knows this is a guy fishing in the river, but sees this as a guy peeing into the river. I’m not, right?

And lastly, while the girls played with the Littlest Pet Shop toys and discussed various important topics of the day, I took the boys geocaching since friend had never heard of it so we trekked through some dirtbike trails off of Cashua Drive and walked part of the rail trail and were 2 for 3. We have got to go back for the one we missed – maybe once we’ve read the comments we can find it – there could be a hint in there!

Tags: Geocaching, Kids

The AC guys finally came back.  Apparently there has been some contention between the contractor and the AC guys.  The contractor even said that he called the company since they hadn’t shown up when promised and totally busted the guy in charge for making someone else answer the phone so he didn’t have to talk to him.  Maybe I should share with him the story of my showing up at the other job of the guy that was redoing the counters in my kitchen who refused to come back to work where I told his other employers about his failure to finish my job and shamed him into coming back?  Anyway…

And we went geocaching and I swear it was 409 degrees out there with the humidity!

And then we went shopping with Grandma for a faucet for her new bathroom at 400 stores then to the grocery store and finally home to make another batch of the nephew’s salsa that he is experimenting with and the niece’s new experiment – homemade lemonade! The nephew’s salsa experiments 1 and 2 have both been successes. The niece’s lemonade experiment also a success! Yay!

Did I mention the niece loves to just eat lemons?

First of all, let me just say that it is normally not good business sense for a major store to be calling its customers at 6:26 a.m.!  But Lowe’s apparently thinks it is a good idea.  Well, it’s not.  While pissing me off may not majorly affect their business, it will a little bit because I have not stopped telling everyone I know about the fact that these morons called my house at 6:26 a.m., then when I didn’t answer – BECAUSE IT WAS 6:26 A.M. – didn’t leave a message!  Yeah, I knew they were going to be delivering the flooring materials that day – but since the construction workers and contractor don’t show up until at the very least after 8:00, why would I be expecting some a-hole at Lowe’s to be calling at 6:26 a.m.?  And since they didn’t leave a message and don’t have their business name on their phone number, the caller I.D. didn’t show up as Lowe’s so then when I finally did get up for work – after finally falling back asleep from that unpleasant awakening, I Googled the number and found out it was from our local Lowe’s store on the west side of town.  6:26 Lowe’s?  Really?  I hate them.  Oh, plus they say their flooring guys can’t come install it until sometime in July…

Anyway, so there has been a little progress going on.

The bedroom closet has come along:

And the hall closet finally has shelves:

Light fixture on the porch – with electricity – and then the one in the new hall:

And the bathroom – first a picture of the floor in progress, then the toilet moved in and the shower…

And finally, a picture of the front of the whole shebang since some people find it hard to imagine:

Tags: construction