The Last 10 Days

Here's a recap of all the FUN I've had lately, while Mind Blogging.

(1) A couples days after the Creek is Flooding blog, a pile of bikes showed up in the road, as I swung the car around the curve, heading home from work.

A crowd of boys was having the time of their life slogging through the boggy creek bed, discovering treasures and muddying up every article of clothing they had on. I had fun watching them. Are they the ones who got that soccer ball?

I hope so. I'm just glad I'm not the mother of this pack of wild things.

(2) Spring is so definitely here, that I had to take a few shots of the evidence.



(3) It's easy to catch nice photos on quiet days, when just Warren and I and the cats are rattling around the house. It's when four more people come roaring in with suitcases and exciting lives and big plans and lots of stories, that I forget to get out the camera.

First my dear hubby drove up to St. Paul to pick up my father for an Easter visit. He hit snow on the Minnesota border, from 4 to 10 inches around the Twin Cities.


They got back the next day with little to show for it but the traces of salt that covered the car. (No photo of that. But I did THINK about taking that shot!)

(4) We had great times, sitting around the table with family and friends, chatting about so many things. I was lucky to get any photos during this time.


(5) Here's a shot of my three "kids." Dan--Sarah's dear hubby, Sarah, and Ben.


(6) During this time period we also noticed a bluebird pair scouting our bluebird houses. Maybe this year, we'll be blessed with bluebird eggs that hatch!

The male scouts out the box:


The female waits patiently in the redbud:


I'll be back. Things to do. More Mind Blogging to take care of....

Bathroom Update - Week Six

I know you're all wondering what happened during last weekend's remodeling project. Ben was here for a visit and we had lots of fun putting him to work. (Sorry for the sideways clip. I gotta quit doing that!)

In this clip, the guys are joking about how Ben keeps almost cutting his finger off. I'm not biting, but they're really trying hard to pull it off.

This week's project came about as we'd walked around the bathroom for the last week. There were parts of the floor that were really spongy. The plywood subfloor would dip down at least 1/2 inch or more. So the first thing Warren and I did was discuss whether the dipping would be "masked" by the thick concrete backer board that goes on top. We decided most places the dipping would probably would be fixed by the backer board, but in the area in front of the sinks, where we stand all the time, we'd better take it down to the studs and start over.

So that's what we did. First we had to decide how big to make the hole. Then Warren cut it out with a circular saw. Ben wasn't up yet at this point--we let him sleep in--but you can guess he was up soon after the sawing started!

You can see the dust on the lens from the circular saw here. I had to clean it off before I took more pictures.

This shows how Warren used a crowbar to pull up sections of the area he'd cut out with the circular saw. The plywood was glued onto the studs below so each section had to be FORCED up. Lots of work.

Here's the hole we ended up with. We were committed now!

The next part of the project involved adding 2 x 6 inch side beams on which to rest the new plywood subfloor.

We finally had the new subfloor in.

Good job, guys! I appreciate having a floor again--even a subfloor is better than that hole!

Bathroom Project Update - Week Five

Glue is Gone!

Week Five is over, ending before noon, as usual. We started, or I should say, Warren started at around 8 am. The floor was covered with alleyways of nasty particle-board-speckled mastic glue. Nasty. If you scroll down and look at earlier weeks, you can see the ridges formed by the glue.


The process involves brushing a solvent over the stripes of glue gunk, covering with plastic sheeting, waiting for at least a half hour, then scraping the softened mess into trash bags. The fumes were horrible, so I spent the morning out of the house. Warren had a fan going in the window, both windows wide open to ventilate. If you use enough of the solvent and wait long enough, the scraping part is relatively easy. Just smelly.


By the end of the morning, every bit of the glue was gone. The floor is now ready for leveling and attaching concrete board.

Here you can see the cleared floor, the wetness of the glue still apparent. By nightfall, the worst of the smell was already gone.The next step was measuring from the floor to the top of the hardwood in the bedroom. We want the transition from tile to hardwood to be as even as possible. So we have to add the thickness of the cement backer board, the mastic, and the tile, to be sure. Right now we have NO IDEA how thick the mastic would be so we still aren't sure how thick the backer board will be. That's the "job" for this week.

Next weekend, Ben will be home for a short visit. Whoo! Hoo! He was hoping to help us lay tile. Won't be happening, but now Warren has come up with another idea. They may work together next Saturday morning removing the popcorn ceiling in the bathroom and repainting the ceiling. Sounds like a good plan to me! I'll "supervise."

Thank You!

Big thanks to Ben, Sarah & Dan!
I love all of you!
to quote a famous person,

How'd I ever get so lucky!

Love,
Mom

Early Arrival at the Office:


Later, budding already:

So I took it home.
Here's what I left for the office:


Thanks!

Thanksgiving

We came and went at a furious pace this past week. Off to St. Louis for Thanksgiving dinner with 23 at the table of our daughter, Sarah's, in-laws. We feel like we know the family now, this being our second Thanksgiving with Dan and Cassie and having partied at the wedding with all the Marshs.

Then home again to work on Friday, then cook another Thanksgiving for 11 at our house on Saturday. Great fun--for us anyway. Different story for the cats.

I couldn't make my bed all weekend because the cats took to our bed as a reasonable alternative to getting stomped on under all the feet in the house. They came down when the coast cleared to triptophan out on leftover turkey. Then back upstairs or outside, avoiding the humans at all cost.

Our son, Ben, seemed to be the best one to hit up for turkey treats, especially when he cooked a leftover smoked turkey pasta dish last night. Oh my! That was good! Miss Ellie slept last night, I can tell you. Hamilton hung around long after the spreading darkness called for him to vacate the premises.

No pictures--too busy having fun or cleaning kitchens to snap any shots. Will have to get on that, I guess.

Hamilton is MAADD!!!!!!!

We are a two-cat house. But it didn't start out that way.

I married into a one-cat family. Warren and I met in Minneapolis in 1974. He had an orange cat named Buffy. But Buffy died--more on that another time--and we became a two-cat house shortly after that.

We've been a two-cat house ever since.

Today, Hamilton and Miss Ellie live in our house in Missouri. Or maybe we live in their house. It's a toss-up some days.

Hamilton joined our house a few days after Eclipse, our son Ben's cat, died. Ben had grown up and moved to New York City. Eclipse died while Ben was away. Warren dragged me over to the city animal shelter a few days later to introduce me to Hamilton. It was love at first site.

More about Hamilton's early years another day. I have more important things to talk about right now.

Hamilton is MAD because he's injured. He doesn't like to hurt. He's hurting, and of course, I'm hurting, too. I'm hurting because I let him go out at night and he got hurt on one of his midnight adventures. I want Hamilton to be himself, who came to me with a past--more on that later-- but I don't want to lose him, either.

I love this cat. He is the first and only cat who has claimed me as his person.

And tonight he is hurting because he got into it with some critter outside a few days ago and hurt his back right paw.

He's MAD because we forced him to visit his enemy, the Vet, who is actually a good guy who understands Hamilton, but he gave Hamilton a shot in the BUTT, for heaven's sake. And tonight I gave Hamilton an eyedropper full of an antibiotic. Good grief, folks, leave me alone!

So Hammy's quite put-out by the PAIN, which is mild, according to the Vet, and the INDIGNITY of the forced feeding of yucky stuff.

He won't be happy with me when he figures out I won't let him go out tonight. But he loves me, so I know he will forgive me, when he gets done letting me know how MAD he is.