Oh, the holidays!

The holidays rolled through here like a giant snowball headed off a mountainside. It takes a minute to get the big boy started but once it gets going, then gains momentum, no one can get out of it's way. And it's always this time of year that I start thinking about how next year "It's all going to be different." Next year, I will have everything become a magical, winter wonderland. I will have my upstairs transformed into Christmas world with decorated trees in every corner. I will have a return of my weird, homemade Santa dummy who stands behind the door to scare the bejebus out of people entering Christmas world not expecting to have Santa get the jump on them. And speaking of tricks. I do believe we need more Christmas pranks. I'm going to work on that too. And then I want to extend a light show out into the Fuzzy Border area of our farm so that we can all go walking in a winter wonderland. And my family is getting a handmade gift! And I want to start working more toward world peace. How's that for a big dream?  I love Christmas and that is a big statement for me as I use to hate it. Can you believe that I actually hated Christmas? Why...you may ask yourself.. why would anyone hate Christmas? Well I think that attitude has it's root in my teen years when my mother gave me a Monopoly game. I knew it was all over when I tore into that package and came up with a board game. My mother could create Christmas magic like nobody's business and she gave me Monopoly and the magic was dead to me. And when I got a house and family of my own, I tried but feel that I miserably failed my children in the magic department. My grandmother Stevens started in September getting her Christmas program organized. And Mom would shop for gifts and put them in lay away and be ready to wow us all on Christmas morning and all I did was worry about spending too much money.  How dumb is that? I could have been pranking and making homemade crafts with those kids and now they are grown. Two years ago, I made a weird santa with a milk jug, a cut out magazine face and Goodwill red clothes...a cheap thrill Santa. And when the kids came around the door and saw him looking over their shoulder....Christmas mayhem! Ok, as long as there is life there is hope so a plan is now being hatched. Christmas 2010 is going to rock their world. Hide and watch!

Snow Days

It has snowed. Just days away from Christmas and we have snow on the ground...not a lot.... just enough to set the mood for the holidays. And speaking of setting the mood, you know how people set things out to decorate for the holidays? I set out a collection of figurines on the window sill. There was a group of 2 snowman figurines which went with three ceramic buildings, a group of 3 campfire figurines and a figurine of 2 kids dragging home a Christmas tree. Then my husband decided he had to open the window to adjust the antenna wire.  He put everything back in the window. Days later I noticed something was different. When I looked closer, I found the above pictured scene. A boy and girl sit by a campfire with their pet dog. They appear to be in a reflective mood.  The campfire burns before them. And across the flames appear another boy and girl with their old friend Frosty. They are dragging him on a sled to the flames. Frosty looks like he is trying to resist certain diseaster! This scene, created inadvertantly by my husband, gives Christmas decor a whole new meaning.

It snowed Monday. I woke to a snowy whitewash covering everything. It melted by midday but served as a reminder that winter is marching our way. Today the wind blew snow sideways. Wind scares me more than almost anything Mother Nature can send our way...though I'm not a big fan of fire either. A tree branch blew across my path as I headed down 14th street to the Nichol house. It was one of those Wizard of Oz moments. Two huge trees across the street from the Lincoln building were making a deep cracking - crunching sound. I was clearing ice off the steps at the front of the building. The wind was in my face and I kept hearing this sound that I at first thought was something clanging in the wind. So I stopped sweeping just to figure out what I was hearing. I have a hard time describing the sound correctly. Imagine an ice cube that cracks in your glass. Now record the sound and alter the sound to go real deep. I really expected that at any moment the tree would explode! And here's the weird thing, after all the cold and ice and blowing tree parts, as I was walking back into the building, I found myself grinning about it all and thinking "Not interested in living in Florida!"

p.s. back to Wizard of Oz moments..... I saw a huge, beautiful rainbow this morning.... it has been a weird day!

Nichol Street Experience - flue work

This week I re-hung the entry foyer door at the Nichol Street house. At some point in time, someone had taken it down for some reason that is beyond me. There must have been 50 nails, screws, staples, curtain hangers, and thumb tacks attached to the door.Weather stripping bits and pieces clung to the edges. I scraped them off. Now the door will need to be scraped, sanded, primed and painted.

When I began work on this house back in January of 2009, the man from the gas company told me that he would go ahead and turn on the gas since no one was living in the house but in the event that it ever has to be lit again, we would need a cover over the opening to the pilot light on the gas water heater. Furthermore, the exhaust pipe from the water heater would need to be hooked up correctly. It was just a smaller pipe laying in a bigger pipe. So we had gas heat last winter. Over the summer, Phil had the gas turned off to save money. As the weather got cooler, I couldn't help but remind Phil that we needed to get the water heater situation covered. I figured this was his job since I have no idea about any of this and he's the guy. The weather continued to cool down. Then one afternoon, just as I was leaving the house around 4pm, Philip showed up with some flue pipes. He was heading to the basement to fix the flue. Getting the flue fixed was one of those pivotal points in this construction project. We will need heat soon when we start the painting. And heat's needed for the joint compound to dry. Things were looking good. I went home to start dinner. Around 7 pm I called Phil to see how much longer he would be. He was at the hardware store. "I needed a part. I have everything together so I will just let you hook it all up tomorrow." He offered. I was furious! Thanks a lot. I guess if I want a job done, I will have to do it myself!
Another part of me knows that if I don't get this together, it will be another month before he makes it back over here. I could wait it out but I want to be finished with this place!
The next morning, I took a few tools and the 4inch to 3inch conversion pipe to the basement and began tinkering with the flue system. I had no idea what I was doing except that Phil told me that I would need to cut the 3inch pipe to fit into the 4inch pipe just so. I crammed the new pipe into the hole in the wall and discovered that the pipe in the wall was only an illusion as it crumbled into a pile of rust on the floor. I scraped out the rust in the hole and tried my best to wedge the new pipe into the hole. Long story short, the crumbled up pipe in the included pictures is that new pipe. Anyway, 2 days, 3 new pieces of flue pipe, 2 hack sawed chunks of old galvanized pipe and 3 trips to the hardware store, the flue pipes were assembled and in place. A job that Phil said should have taken "15 minutes."
Now for the pilot light cover. The original cover had disappeared a long time ago so all I knew to do was make a new cover. As I looked into the pilot light area, I noticed a pile of papers crammed in around the burn area. So I pulled the papers out and threw them in a pile on the floor. A woman's face caught my eye. She had pretty blue eyes and blond hair all arranged in a nice, up swept, going to the prom - hairdo. A man was standing behind her with his private part laying on her head, in that pretty pile of hair, like some kind of fancy Easter bonnet. The woman looked off into the distance as if she had something heavy on her mind. I laughed. "For goodness sakes" I said to myself. "Nothing seems to be working right today." I fixed the cover then scraped up the mess - Easter bonnet and all and threw it in the trash. I promise.
I am almost finished with the spackling. I have the entry foyer and the kitchen to finish. I will probably have to do a bit more in the dining room as that too is a long story. It feels like I am in the home stretch. I won't say too much as it is always more than I figure on.

A walk through the garden

I am not that good with modern technology. I am trying to download or upload a 3 minute video I took of my garden. I believe this was made in September. The garden was grown in celebration of my son - Harrison's wedding in July to Brittany Barnett. By September there was a battle of weeds to be fought. They were the victor and I was the vanquished. So as you take the tour, please note that though there are weeds here and there, flowers also flourished. I will also admit that when I planned the garden, I underestimated the boom factor of flowers. I play garden like a child plays house. I put the zinnia too close to the path and didn't allow for the boom factor and by September, the zinnias have hidden the path. I find that gardening is a learning / evolutionary process. And it doesn't hurt to have a little patience.

P.S. Due to technical difficulties, I am so far unable to upload or download my video. Check back later.

Update: the video I have is 182 MB and this is apparently larger than allowed by Blogger. I will try to figure another way and hopefully without signing up for a you tube account.

Another Update: I was able to post the walk through my garden on my facebook page. My friends can watch it there.

Happy Halloween ya'll

I was in the fourth grade, on the school bus, heading home. Birdie Hensley, a fellow classmate, was looking at a monster movie magazine in the seat beside me. I tried hard not to look. Sort of like driving past a horrible car crash. You know you don't want to see but you can't not look. I guess she noticed my reluctance and kept shoving the magazine toward me. She finally said "You're afraid to look!" Yes, she nailed the truth on the head but I said "I'm not afraid, I'm just not that interested in monsters." And so she set that monster magazine right in my lap. I sat petrified - as if the very paper this stuff was printed on was eating the flesh from my legs!

There was the wolf man who I always thought was a dumb idea for a horror figure. A guy changing into a wild dog...please. And same goes for vampires. A man changing into a bat? Vampires suck! Two colossal mistakes for monsters. I'm just not a fan of the changing forms concept for horror....which I guess is basically the whole premise behind horror. And, oh yeah, that creature from the black lagoon. He just looks like a guy in a rubber suit to me. Yet, all those guys gave me (4th grade Sarah) the creeps! But the creepiest one of all was the mummy. Something about that character, coming back from the dead and all. And me growing up in the south -confused about religion and knowing that coming back from the dead was, according to a lot of reliable adults that I knew, possible. Of course this was all before I understood the concept of spiritual versus physical death. The idea of walking mummies scared me!

So that afternoon after the fateful bus ride, I was walking back from feeding the pigs in the back holler. Suddenly I got that weird feeling one gets when they think someone is watching them. I kept looking over my shoulder, with flashbacks to that magazine in my lap, and walking a little faster. I was so sure that I had seen something. Was it a mummy? Wasn't there something white back there? Was that a sound? Like a moan? Was it a mummy moan?

I ran to the house as fast as I could. Mom was there and she could fend off any of those ugly creeps! I felt better just being around her.

Anyways, I lay in bed the other night thinking about that day. Why did those stupid books trigger such fear in me? My rational mind knew they were just actors in costumes but that irrational mind of mine forgot all that and ran with the fear.Why?

As I lay there in the dark thinking "why" something else occurred to me. The vampire could turn into a bat and fly to any known spot. And the werewolf could run as fast as a wolf, so he could get about pretty fast too. Yet the mummy would take a step and (long pause) take another step. Take a step (long pause) take another step. On and on. I could have walked quickly from the pig pen to the wood shed, sat down, knit an afghan for my grandmother, finished off my Christmas card list and then walked over the back porch to compose a 3 act opera. Mummy would just be getting over the rise of the hill. Mummies move slow. I guess it's the being dead a long time that slows 'em down. And in the movies, these guys are actually catching flesh and blood people. How slow does one healthy human being have to be to get caught by a mummy?

I lay in bed laughing about this! Then it occurred to me that maybe that mummy from my childhood is still after me. Maybe he has been walking that one step, (long pause) another step (long pause) for over 45 years and several states. Maybe as I am laying here in bed having a good laugh about dumb, slow mummies, he has made it all the way from North Carolina - because mummies never quit and he is right at my window right now. And for an instant, I could have sworn that I heard something..............

Hang Ten - again

Hello Blog Fans! Well here we are at the top of the stairway. For the longest time, I contemplated just how to get up high enough to finish off the ceilings at the top of the stairs. As fate would have it, when the need became necessary, a way to do it developed. Let me bring you up to date on the Nichol Street Experience (my art project for 2009), all the upstairs rooms are ready to paint. I will be doing a final check before the painting begins but right now, that part is ready. The entire stairwell will be ready to paint in two more working days. I framed in the back door and cleaned up the wall around the door. I learned that I am not good at installing panelling. This is OK news to me because I've got enough to do. I had planned to put panelling over the rough wall around the back door area but it just wasn't working. Trust me, when I get finished with the house I will do a before and after blog feature. Anyway, Barnaby has been coming by to help me with some of the work. One day he went to Taco Bell for lunch. When he returned and saw me up on the ladder in the stairwell he almost lost it! "Mom, what are you doing?" I explained that the ladder isn't going anywhere and that I just think of surfing videos. He says "They land in water."

There's a party going on round here...

As most of you may already know, I have been working on fixing up a rental house in Anderson. About 3 weeks ago, I arrived to find tiny foot prints in the spackling dust all over the house. You cannot imagine the bolt of terror that went through me when I saw these little tracks. My imagination had a hideous, huge creature jumping on my head and ripping my eyes out! So I slowly made my way through the house looking behind every door and around every corner. I went down in the basement thinking about those horror movies where people are going into the basement and you're thinking "Don't go down in the basement!" I looked everywhere for an opening that a creature could come into the house. I spotted an open flue that emptied into the massive chimney. I figured the varmint must have come in that way. I stuffed a huge chunk of insulation into the opening! When I got back to the Lincoln building, I googled 'animal tracks' and came up with squirrel. Time went by and no more tracks....until Monday of this week. I arrived at Nichol to find squirrel tracks all through the dust like some kind of wild party had taken place. A trash bucket was turned over. Not only were there tracks on the floor, there were tracks on the step ladder, on the stair rail, tracks on the commode and tracks on the wall where a cord comes into the room from the satelite dish. I think the squirrel was pulling the cord for some reason. I decided to go back to the basement and check the flue opening. Before I went down the steps, I opened the back door to let more light into the stairwell. I heard a chattering outside the door. The squirrel was sitting in a tree making a noise that sounded a lot like laughter. The insulation was missing from the flue opening. Now the flue opening has a flue stopper in place and hopefully the crazy parties have stopped.

Hang Ten

As most of you know, I have been working on remodelling the house on Nichol Avenue since January of this year. I wanted to give you a little update on my progress. I think I have repaired all the walls that need repairing. I did the interior encasement framing on about 14 windows and now I am in the taping and spackling phase. The pictures I've included here are of the living room. .. "before" and "currently". The walls in here were covered with spackle that was put on in what I call cake icing style and topped with gold glitter. Maybe it was quite beautiful when it was first created but over time, dust had settled on the different surfaces. It was quite a mess. I knocked off all the edges and washed down the walls to create a somewhat smooth surface. I then spackled over all the walls to make a smoother finish yet.

Last week I was standing on a ladder, 3 feet off the floor, reaching to the top of the 9 foot walls to smooth spackle on the walls and dipple it into the ceiling. I had some music playing. It was a cd that my friend - Julie - gave me years ago after she and Jack and Phil and I had gone to Chicago to see Circe de Soliel (sp?). It was Varekai(sp?). As I was reaching and spackling, I thought of those performers on the stage in one particular skit. There were about a dozen performers up on a moving contraption and as they were moving and spinning, many of them would flip around and land on this shed type structure. They got to moving so fast and furious that it looked like some kind of human molecular structure in action. The whole thing was so amazing that as I watched, I felt like I was holding my breath so as not to in any way throw off their balance and momentum. And I think everyone else in the audience felt the same way because when the performance ended, we all exhaled in relief and jubilation that no one had gotten themselves killed! It was thrilling.

I bring that memory up because as I was standing there on the third rung of the ladder, my feet clutching the step and my left hand holding the wall as I smeared the spackle, I started thinking about courage. Where do the people who do the toughest things get the courage? I don't know if you would have to have the greatest faith or have to abandon faith altogether to flip from a moving structure to land on the shoulders of someone standing on an 8 foot high structure 10 feet away. I felt a little better standing on that rickety, old ladder after that.

Speaking of courage, check this out....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Pw7vKtqpo

Red Moon Rising

The moon rose red over the soybean field. It seemed to quiver in the blue of the night sky. I was sitting at my dining table witnessing this ancient happening. I grabbed my camera and went out by the mailbox to take a picture.... a red moon on the horizon. Later I went back to take a video of this scene as the clouds had started to do a peek a boo.
After downloading the videos to my computer, I thought that I might just delete the videos as it is hard to get a good movie of far away objects. Then I noticed the sounds in this video. And maybe I'm just weird but I love the sounds even if it is hard to make out the moon.



I was looking at the Prairie Home Companion website this week and came across a good piece of advice from Garrison Keillor. A young writer wrote in to him and asked "Do you have any advice for an aspiring young writer?"
Keillor wrote back ... " The first obligation of a young writer is to describe your parents, a major project. I also think you should start a novel right away. I put mine off for years, thinking I wasn't ready, but it's invaluable experience---- to set out to write a sustained work of prose fiction of a hundred-thousand words or so. The main character is you yourself, it's set in Bristol, and your parents are definitely in it. Your main character has to get in trouble and then get out. And maybe that's the problem here. You've been too good, too obliging, helpful, kind, considerate, thoughtful, generous, responsible, etc, etc. It's hard to be interesting writing about pure goodness. Find some vein of evil within yourself and work from that. You don't need to enact these things in real life, by the way. Unless, of course, you want to. The way to write a novel is to write a few hundred words a day, every day, no fail. So try it. Maybe it'll be a big failure, but big failures can build the foundation for great success."

Mama and me

I was laying in bed this morning, recovering from a nightmare. I dreamed that I was in my house and I heard a noise over by the front door. I went to the door to investigate and a strange woman was standing there by the coat rack. Immediately, I told her that she would have to go. "You have to go!" I kept yelling. Though Phil said it came out more like "Aaaugh, aaaugh, aaaugh" real loud. Anyway, I woke up and had a horrible headache. I've been waking with a lot of headaches lately. It is allergy season so I am not surprised. This will keep happening until the end of September. One morning this week, I actually pondered the question - Could a skull actually split open like a watermelon in the garden? It really felt like my head was getting ready to do that.

So back to this morning - I woke up with a headache and didn't want to move, didn't want to see any form of light, didn't want to hear any loud sounds, didn't want to smell any strong scents. I just wanted to move through this world in slow quiet motion. Phil made some coffee and I closed my eyes and ventured into the kitchen to pour a cup for myself. Immediately, I noticed that it looked like coffee soup....dark and thick.... and I almost started something. I even asked him if he ever measures the coffee. He said no at which point I just gave him a dirty look. So I decided to just pour a cup and get back to my dark, cold bedroom, get back in bed and get over this headache.

I set the coffee cup on the table beside my bed and got under the covers. I was laying there, covers up to my chin, cold, darkness all around me and the smell of that thick coffee started calling to me. I took a sip. It was bitter. Yuck. I set the cup down and pulled the covers close. I lay there for about 5 minutes. Then I took another sip of coffee. I gathered the covers close again and lay back on my pillows. This is the point where an insight came to me.... I want to be kooky and quirky! I almost laughed but it hurt too much. Me, kooky and quirky. Yet somehow the idea interested me. I'll have to think it over and report back.

As you may have noticed, I have two pictures on this post. The one on the right is me - in pink.

My little sister took this picture or maybe I did. And this picture of me really resonates with me. You know how we all have that little voice in our heads that steer us through life? ( Ok, if I am the only one having this experience, please let me know - I may need help). Anyway, there is an inner voice that tells us what we need to know. I think this picture is that inner voice. She is the one who, when I was a young child and I heard the dogs scratching flees on the porch outside and thought it was someone knocking on the door, she told me "It's just the dogs scratching flees". And when the house would settle in the dark night, making cracks or pops and I thought it was someone creeping through the house, the inner voice would say "That's just the house settling." That good old inner voice has clued me in to a lot of stuff along the way. Once, after I was grown and times were really stressful. I thought I was having a nervous breakdown because I looked in the mirror and 'thought' my skull was swollen up like some kind of Martian being. My inner voice said "Girl, you need to get some rest". And as I went to climb into bed and felt like I wouldn't be able to sleep, that inner voice said "Sit down right here in the floor and give all your worries, stresses and deepest woe to God." And I did just that. I followed just what my inner voice told me. I told God that I couldn't make anyone outside of myself do anything that they didn't want to do. I told God that I had solutions to a lot of people's problems but they weren't interested. I cannot solve any of this. I told God that I have 4 children that do need my help and to help them I will need to sleep and cheer up. So I am putting all this 'stuff' into God's hands to hold. And that night I slept like a baby. I slept for almost 12 hours and when I woke up, Phil left for an appointment and it was just me and my 4 darling children at the house. I left the television off as Wall Street was having a meltdown and the news media were in a feeding frenzy. I just listened to my children go about the business of being kids. At one point I turned on the radio for some music and came across a station where they were speaking in tongues and my inner voice said "Turn that off." I turned it off and just listened to my world. So this picture of me reminds me of who I am at the core. I wanted to balance this picture next to another picture of me in work clothes and tell you about the kind hearted me who would do almost anything to help a friend but I will have to do that later due to technical difficulties. Instead I have a picture of my mother. She and I are roughly about the same age in these two pictures. She was a kind hearted person who would do almost anything to help her family or her friends. Mama loved to shop. She didn't have a lot of money so that made it a bit difficult. I love this picture of her. She was shopping. She went by one of her favorite stores and the clerk was showing her this instamatic camera. He took her picture (this picture) with that camera and she bought it. I love this picture! And it has a million cracks in it. I took a picture of the picture since one of my sisters owns the original. I thought I might photoshop it since time has cracked the film. Now I look at it as if it were a stained glass window, picturing a holy, sacred image....Mama mother or Sarah.

geezer in the geyser

My sister Grace and I were leaving the Andrews Geyser in Old Fort, NC. last week when we saw this guy climb into the geyser and get soaked. It happened right after Grace's granddaughter Cadence's birthday party.

Garden Highlights

Here's a few pictures of my garden at present from different vantage points. It has been a labor of love.

Progress Update

Hello world! My garden is moving right along. There is a spot right in the center of things which is not cooperating and it seems like the Bachelor Buttons are taking forever to show their colors but other things are falling right into place.

My son's wedding went off with only one hitch and everything was beautiful. Brittany was gorgeous in her dress and her hair looked like spun gold. I had such a good time but am feeling a little sheepish now. Why? Well as I was looking back through the pictures of the people dancing, I noticed that at the end of the evening, I was about the only person in my age group still dancing. Everyone else was less than 40 and looked cool dancing. But I love music and I hate to sit around. So what could I do but DANCE!?!

A Work in Progress

Hello Blog fans! It has been a while since I wrote. I haven't dropped off the end of the Earth. I am trapped on a vicious treadmill and can't get off! Yes, I am still working on the Nichol house. I have been working on repairing 13 windows and am down to my last 3. The truth is I am not a trained carpenter. My Dad was a carpenter and two of my brothers are as well. I have seen carpentry in action. I know that things should be on the level when it comes to building. It helps when they are square too. The Nichol House windows are neither. So it has been a bit trying. I will soon post a few pictures of my work.

I have also started a wedding garden as my son is getting married in July. The above picture is the general layout. You can see that I like trails to walk on and explore the plants. I believe it is known as a stroll garden in the gardening world.

I have also been on the look out for funny things. That is my latest project. First off, I have to tell you that I saw a kid with droopy drawers the other day as I was driving through Anderson. I burst out laughing. He must have been 13 or 14 years old and was walking down the street holding onto the front of "his" shorts as tight as he could. It looked like he was wearing his fat uncle's gym shorts as they about drug the street behind him. I couldn't help it, I laughed and I think he saw me laugh and I am not sure but I may have pointed at him like ..."kiddo, you are so funny!" I drove on down the street and looked in my rear view mirror and noticed that he was looking over his shoulder at me. It was a weird interchange. Now, I am thinking that I need to start taking pictures of this lunacy because future generations will find it hard to believe that we actually did this.

Finally, my sister Marlene came for a visit a week ago. We went by to see Harrison's house then went on to Knightstown as Harrison wanted his aunt to see the gym where the movie "Hoosiers" was filmed. We walked around looking at the old gym and shot some baskets. The guy working there offered to take the 4 of us to the locker rooms. He was a talkative sort so I kind of dreaded going down stairs to listen to him expound on the biggest moment of his life. Anyway, as we were going downstairs, my husband -Philip- says "I like your court (they had just refinished the floor) and I like your balls too." I hear a snort from behind me and there at the top of the stairs stood my sister doubled over - holding back the laughs. She was snickering and then I was too. The men just went on ahead of us oblivious of this comic moment!

This week in spring!

Hello blog fans! The Earth has gone wacky crazy over the past 10 days. Flowers everywhere!And of course weird weather. One day we had sun, rain, hail and snow flurries - all before lunch. The street pictured is Nichol Avenue. All down the lane - both sides are Bradford pears in full, popcorn bloom. I took the pictures over several days because they were so beautiful! Also, you'll notice the horses - mama and baby. I noticed them one day as I was travelling to Kora's house. I actually turned around and went back for the picture. They did me a favor and posed so nicely for the photo. And check out the Ajuga blooming across the street from out farm in the fallow field. The corner of the American flag was caught in the tree limbs and presented a flag in perment unfurldness on the moon effect And the rest pretty much speak for them selves. Ah, sweet spring!

After my last blog entry, I decided that I want to just write about funny things. Well, I've been waiting for weeks for a funny story and nothing funny has happened. Except for little funny things....like... one morning I was aggravated at Phil for some reason and was kinda fussing at him. So as I cleaned the kitchen and got ready for work, he was eaating his breakfast and telling me something irritating. I walked over to the cabinet to get a dish cloth. I opened the door and a handful of dish towels fell out of the cabinet onto the floor. I bent over to pick them up and Phil says " look at how messy it is in that cabinet." I just glared at him and started to put the fallen dish towels back inside the cabinet. Just as I started to close the door, more dish towels fell out, proving his point and he burst out laughing! Under my breath I said"Not funny, God." And then I had to laugh too. Hope you're enjoying the spring you're having as much as I am enjoying mine.

P.S. I have to tell you that today I actually framed in the first of about 14 windows in the Nichol house. It looked good and I just amazed myself. So I take this opportunity to pat myself on my back.

"Oh no you dit ent!"

Ok, on April 1st something happened that made me wonder why I ever gave up birth control pills, namely, two of my sons . I was at the Nichol house spackling away on the never ending walls of that 2 story art project. My cell phone rings just as I was taking a little coffee break. It was Barnaby on the line.

"Hey Mom" he says.

"Hey Barnaby, what's going on?" I ask.

"Not much, what's happening with you?" he asks.

"Oh, just spackling, trying to get these walls in shape" I reply.

"I was just thinking about you" I added.

"Bout anything in particular?" he asks.

"No, just wondering if anything has been happening with you" I said.

"Hmmm, well Mom, I was just calling to let you know that Saco Cabinets will be delivering a truckload of cabinets at your store today" he said.

"Oh really, what time?" I asked.

"Probably around 1 or 2 oclock" he said.

I paused to think how I would work around this disruption in my work progress.

"OK, no problem" I said.

"Mom, there's some money owed on the cabinets, so you'll need to collect it when the guy shows up to pick up the cabinets. He owes $849.32. He's gonna bring cash so make sure you get the right amount" he urged.

I was thinking at this point that maybe I should be writing this down.

"OK, that's no problem" I said in a kinda half hearted way.

And it felt like the conversation was over and this is when Barnaby said

"Let me give you his name. His name is Mr Poo Poo Pants. That's Poo Poo Pants!" he chortled.

In the background I could hear him and his brother Harrison roaring with laughter.

"April fools" he added.

I confess, when he first said Poo Poo Pants, I was actually thinking that the name sounded French. And when I realized that this was all just a big April fools ruse, I thought to myself that Barnaby had pulled this same kind of deal on me last April fools. Man, I am so gullible.

And I would have written all of this in my blog on April 1st but I stayed off my computer to avoid the well hyped Conficker computer virus. When I opened my computer this morning it still worked without any problem but who knows my computer may have been infiltrated and is now a secret compubot for some sinister poo poo pants a world away.

Signs and Wonders

I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. Just before the midnight hour, I believe I witnessed a sign from the other side. Allow me to explain. Yesterday, March 23 was my Mama's birthday. I remembered it when I woke up and was making the bed. I did the math and figured that if she were still alive, "today she would be 85 years old." I smiled.
Later in the day, my baby sister called to chat and mentioned it was mom's birthday. I told her that I had been thinking of Mama this morning and we started to talk about how we miss her. At about this time a customer came into the cabinet store that I run so I had to go.
I tried to call my sister back after the customer left but she had gotten to class and did not answer.
Then late last night, my husband and I were laying in bed watching television. I hate to admit it but I have a love / hate relationship with the show The Family Guy. That raunchy show cracks me up, then they hit a nerve and I swear that I wonder if I should even be watching this mess. The jury is still out. So I'm watching the show and as many of you may know they oftentimes cut away to some side story. The cut aways knock me out! Hilarious! So last night at the end of the show, they cut away to an actual recorded tape of Conway Twitty. I have seen them do this before - they run a clip of Conway Twitty for about a minute or less. And it is very rare that they cut to Conway Twitty - maybe twice a season. So my husband mentions that he had never seen them cut to actual tape instead of a cartoon. I said that I've seen them do it a few times. And then I mention that Conway Twitty was my Mama's favorite singer. And it occured to me that it seemed a strange coincidence that Conway Twitty would be on television on my Mama's birthday. And maybe it's a sign. And what was he singing:

Hello Darlin, nice to see you.
It's been a long time.
You're as lovely as you used to be.
How's your new love? Are you happy?
Hope you're doin fine.
Just to know means so much to me.

End of cut away....and I noticed that as he was singing these lines, the camera slowly closed in on his face to add punch to his lyrics....like this was her personal message to me. I'm taking it as a sign. Hello to you too!

P.S. My Mama loved Conway Twitty so much she named a dog after him! Now, that's devotion.

Yah for Spring!

This morning as I watched the news, I noticed a little count down clock in the corner of the screen that indicated so many minutes before the beginning or spring. At the point of my noticing, it was 13 minures so many seconds. How they know the beginning of the individual seasons to this degree - I just don't know. It reminds me of when my husband and I visited some Inca ruins and they had built these buildings eons ago and set them up so that when the soltice arrived, the Incas knew by a beam of light. I guess it's the same thing for Stonehenge. Huge timepieces that keep us humans in the know. But to me the seasons begin more gradually than a count down clock. I know that spring is here or near here when I see robins. And last week, I woke up one morning and a bird was singing somewhere outside in the wild world. And little flowers are starting to peek out. And the buds are starting to swell on the trees which in turn gives a spring blush to the far away forest. And I have started to dig through the piles of "get to one day" boxes that have been waiting for attention. And also, I have started going through my house plants, pulling off the dead stuff and deciding which ones need a new pot to grow in. Finally, in Indiana you know it's spring time when you start noticing a "tornado watch" icon on the television screen. No need to erect a monument, just pay attention to the signs.

Nichol House Update

It has been a tough week at the Nichol house project. I have been repairing walls since I began work here in January. I have all the wallpaper off the walls, including the stairwell. Last week I stood near the top of the 12 foot ladder, near the top of the first run of stairs - maybe 2 steps before the landing and I happened to notice that I also had a tootsie roll pop in my mouth. I laughed. The mother in me was having a fit. This week I am taping and mudding the walls. I am not so good at this stuff. I remember seeing my Dad do this when I was a kid. He was a natural. I hate it! Sometimes I feel like I am doing one gigantic paper mache project. The walls are starting to look a little better and soon I will begin the sanding and second mudding of these walls.

You may notice a date stamped in this image. I have not travelled back in time. My camera messed up and I just don't have the time to photoshop this picture. ..taken today March 19, 2009.

The saving grace about this week is that spring begins tomorrow. I've already been seeing the evidence but it will be nice to have it official. I have seeds, bulbs and roots just chomping at the bit to get into the earth. And I've promised my daughter that I will grow her a dahlia garden as a birthday gift. So now there are several bags of dahlia tubers waiting for spring weather too.