10th St. House

Ah the joys of buying an as-is house. We got the water turned on finally. That is when we discovered the broken pipe in the garage. Okay. Got that fixed. Thought everything was good until I hit a spot of wet carpet. Hmmmm. Took two days but found the leak behind the shower in the master bath upstairs. Then after almost getting the whole tub torn apart.....the contractor and Dave decided it wasn't going to work and had to punch a hole in the wall from the stair side. So now the leak is hopefully repaired. Water will be put to it tomorrow and then fixing all the drywall in the bathroom begins. Jodi gets to repaint that room, but she will have a working bathroom. And we think, knock on wood, that that is the last repair and she is good to move in. I think she is going to start bringing stuff over tonight.

Decision

So I had an eye check-up today. The tests showed that everything is good. I do have some scar tissue in my eye. That is to be expected. So now I am given the option of keep getting the injections to keep things at this level. Or I wait and see if I have a recurrence and then treat those as they happen. 90 percent of people have recurrences and while I did respond good this time there is no way to tell how I will respond in the future. That said the risks involved with the injection may increase with time....they just don't know. I have six weeks until my next check-up and then I give the doc my decision. In the meantime I have a grid to look at every day to monitor what the eye may be doing.

10th St. House

A lot got done today at the 10th St. house. The fence was built. The under the house work was finished with the vapor barrier going in. The carpet and vinyl were laid. The trim outside was painted. The house was pressure washed yesterday and the inside was painted. We thought the interior was white, but when Eric started spraying we discovered that it was actually a beige color. We had little supervisors today. Eric brought his daughter with him. She in turn made a friend from next door.

Garden Update

So I managed to motivate myself and get the rest of the seed planted last night. Now all I need to do is buy the plants that I don't do from seed and get those in. Feeling much better about most of the work being done now. Well until the weeds come. :P

Garden

I had a helper with the garden today. Zach said he wanted to help. He found out it can be a bit of work. He planted all the corn and all the white onions. Then we took a break and had bbq ribs.

10th St. House

The house is now ready to be painted. Eric will come in tomorrow and just spray the whole thing. We told Jodi if she wants to change any color she is free to, but we are starting with white.

The fence posts are in. There is a creek at the back of the property so we opted to fence in the yard. Myk felt pretty proud of learning how to mix concrete.

10th St. House

Here are some beginning pictures of the 10th St. house. The stairway carpet shows how bad the carpet was. The rest of the pictures didn't show how bad it looked. It is all pulled up now along with the vinyl in the kitchen/half bath.

Minnesota Trip

My cousin Tammy graduated from nursing school this month. Nursing school is hard so that is a really really big accomplishment. Especially considering she has a family and jobs. There was a party celebrating. My cousin Brenda had mentioned it a few times and always said come. Well normally I don't go much, but was thinking it was time for a trip back to Minnesota. It was five years since my last trip there. Then I thought my mom might like to go since she hasn't been back since 1999. Dave got us the flights using frequent flier miles and a rental car using points from Hertz. I had to pay taxes and gas. Cheap trip.
So we arrived on Thursday and visited the city folk. My mom's sisters live in Minneapolis. Lovely to see them. Then we headed north to the farm. The farm is like 60 to 70 miles north of the cities. We got there and were so surprised. The whole place was all cleaned up. Brush gone, grass mowed, porch finished, and fallen barn torn down. The old cow pasture was turned into a field. I got farming lessons from my uncle Glen. I saw sand hill cranes and wild pheasants. Glen said there was bear and cougar around. Didn't see them though...bummer. I rode a four-wheeler for the first time ever. Glen told us to just ride it out to the field that he was planting way out back. I definitely understood using those on the farm.
We attended the party and had a nice supper. My cousin Teresa brought us strip steaks for the bbq. We visited with all the rest of the cousins. Was great to see everyone. Then when the noise level got louder it was time to go.
Sunday morning it was time to head back to the airport. Got home that afternoon and enjoyed being home. Guess we are going back in a couple of years for Mom's high school reunion. At least that is the plan for now.

My Poor Garden

So the garden got tilled a third time. Looks a bit better. But then it rained again. Still too wet to plant. We are hoping that the next few days it will dry it out enough to put the seed in. I do have one baby cucumber coming up in my starter pots. :)

And the fun begins

We finally closed on our rental house. We had to wait a day for the keys, but got those last night. We got Mike in to look at drywall repair and he will start today. Now the work and the fun begins. Sounds like some of it is going to go much quicker than we anticipated. Won't take Mike long to do his work and Eric figures a few days to get his done. Wow. Jodi and I need to get moving on our shopping. Carpet place today and then we need to start taping so Eric can spray paint the inside of the house when he is ready. Yeehaw.

Pretty Birds

Click on the picture to make it larger and you can see the birds better. Anyway....
My uncle Glen said he came home one day to the farm and my grandmother was just so happy. She told him that she had two big pretty birds in the cow pasture. They didn't used to be there. Those birds are sand hill cranes and they are big. They make a great rolling r sound. They dance and flap their wings. Glen said they are pretty destructive to fields. That may be true, but they sure are fun to watch and listen to.

Two Nights, Two Plays

Friday is lunch day with some friends of mine. I had missed a lunch due to my car needing servicing. That day Barb asked the group if they wanted to attend the play that her daughter was starring in. They all bought tickets. So then when we had lunch this Friday Kathy offered me her extra ticket that she had bought for her husband. He could not attend. So I went with my friends and had the best time. The play was very funny and the actresses were all just grand. This was the first play at the new sight of this theatre. It was just a little storefront downtown. I suggest anyone go to see plays done at the Magenta Theatre.
http://magentatheater.blogspot.com/

For Mother's Day I bought tickets to this play at Clark College. Mom and I ate at home with Dave bbqing the hamburgers. Then off to the play. And it was all right but not as good as "Steel Magnolias". Although we loved the actor playing Charles. We are pretty sure we have seen him in other plays at Clark.

Heather

Heather told me she was going to the shore for the weekend to put her toes in the sand. Then she sent me this picture to show that she did get sandy. I think this picture makes a very nice presentation of her dragonfly tattoo.

It's All Good Now

So a few years ago Doug sent us a picture of him and Scott when they went mountain climbing in Nepal. Nice picture in a nice frame. Somewhere along the line something got spilled on the frame and naturally it got on the picture making it adhere to the glass. That was all right. You could still look at the nice picture in the nice frame. I was doing a little cleaning and had placed the frame up on the mantle. It didn't quite fit right, but seemed to be staying put. I got distracted and forgot about it. Several nights later we hear this crash that made Minnie run. Seems something made that frame fall off the mantle and onto the hearth. Broke the glass.

Doug still had that picture and emailed it to me. I, in turn, uploaded it to a local photo place and had a nice new 5 X 7 made. Went to the glass place and got a new piece of glass. Got home, put them together, and placed it back where it goes. It's all good now and how cool is that? Never done the picture thing before with a digital picture.

Productive

One of the big jobs on my to do list is cleaning the cupboards. Myk owed me so I had him take all the stuff out of the bottom cupboards so I could wash the inside. Then I organized them. They look so nice when this is done. Got rid of a lot of parts with missing pieces. I have decided to put baby-locks on the glass cupboard and only let Adrianna play in the plastic. So as soon as she comes over it will not look this nice for a long time. I keep going over and opening the door and looking in it (I do that when I clean the frig too).

Then Dave got a little motivated and put the new gazebo together. He worked slowly and forced himself to finish it. Look at that beautiful top. The old one was so green and ripped from the weather. Dave did say this gazebo is much cheaper made than the last one. It will still be nice to sit under it all summer long.

Furkids on Doug's Latest Project

Doug sent me this picture of the furkids. He was showing me what his latest project was that he just finished. Looks pretty nice and like the furkids like it a lot. Probably cool on those warm Georgia days.