I Did It!

Whew - it's been a long time since I posted. I was in Delaware for 4 out of the last 5 weeks; 3 weeks there, 1 week home, then 1 week there again. And are you ready for this?! Drum roll, please........ I drove there MYSELF both times. Not only that, but during the first session (the three-week stint) I drove from Delaware to Annapolis to meet Tom and Sam and have lunch at Red Robin in the mall, then drove back to Delaware again. Yes, ME! Jerry says he's going to have to keep an eye on me now because I'll be all over the place. Everyone has asked me about the Bay Bridge - believe it or not, that didn't bother me at all. And yes, I do know about the tractor trailer that went off the bridge the week or so before I went. What bothered me the most was the traffic through Annapolis. I feel so boxed in - trapped. I do not like being in the middle of a lot of traffic at all. Oh, and I don't like two-way traffic on the Bay Bridge. My poor truck doesn't know what to think - the odometer actually turned over to 10,000 miles while we were gone. This February will be three years that we have had that vehicle - hmmm, 10,000 miles in three years - do you think I should cut back on my driving some?!

I had fully intended to go parasailing while we were there but it was Labor Day weekend and it was nuts and Labor Day was the last day the parasailing place was open. Here's a link to the parasail place. Look out next year, though! Dad thought I had lost my mind. When he asked me what I could possibly be thinking, I told him he could have his midlife crisis his way, and I'd have mine my way! (can't afford a red convertible, ya know!).

Andy and I are excited - turns out that the neighbors who live on the street behind us homeschool and belong to Conowingo-Rising Sun Christian School too. Conowingo sends out a newsletter with members' names, addresses and emails on it and I was really glad to see someone on there who is so close to us. I emailed them to introduce ourselves and they wrote back. They have a son who is a year older than Andy, a daughter who is 1 year younger, and another son who is 3 years younger. Their mom wrote and said that their oldest likes to skateboard and play video games and asked what Andy liked to do. How cool is that?! Andy likes the very same things. We are looking forward to meeting them.

I am declaring war on my house (again). I am fed up with this clutter. I have had bags of clothes and things sitting around that I was going to list on eBay, but now I just want them out of my house. I want open space back. A thrift shop has moved into the old post office building just down the street now. Guess where all my stuff is going this week?! I do not have the time right now to list all that stuff and the amount I would make from it would be minimal compared to the time spent writing listings for it. I would be better off just doing a few extra medical reports. Flylady is big on letting go of perfectionism and that's a bad trait of mine. My thinking was that I can't get rid of the clothes until I list them perfectly, take perfect pictures, etc. Well, I don't have that kind of time anymore nor do I want them taking up my space anymore - I love that mop commercial where the uppity guy says "Remove it from my space!" Sorry - hope I didn't give you whiplash by changing gears like that! I will still list things like school books and things like that, but the clothes have got to go now.

You may remember a couple of tips I wrote in the past, Karen's Ramblings: Karen's Household Hint #1, and Karen's Ramblings: Laundry Lessons. Here's another one - don't try to wash the fabric softener attachment of your washer in your dishwasher. Just don't. Your dishes will be Downy-fresh for the next 18 cycles.

Santa found a Wii for the boys. Good thing, too. Dad and Mom sure couldn't find one ANYWHERE.
This is one of the azalea bushes with clear blinking lights, although in the picture you can't tell that they're clear or blinking. It's really very pretty at nighttime, though.
Here's the front of our house with the front posts wrapped with pine and lights and the aforementioned azalea bush (behind the lamppost). The bow on the lamppost was blown by the wind and is looking a little sad!
Here's another large azalea that we covered with big lights. Well, the bush was too big to cover, and we ran out of lights - but we did the best we could! It looks nice, anyway.

Here's Andy checking out the carnage.
Jerry does not look like a happy camper, does he?!
Jars, jars, and more jars!
The chipper from Hades.

Jerry netting a crab from the crab line. Turns out it was too small to keep, though!

Nuts To You

What an interesting day. Tom started his new job today. He left at 4 AM to be sure he was there on time. He called at 5:25 to let us know he had arrived. It was a little worse getting home, though. He said he took a wrong turn somewhere (Albuquerque?!) and ended up in Alexandria and had to figure his way out of there and back on the beltway. He is working for an HVAC company and right now they are finishing up work on a rec center in Fairfax. Tom said he helped build a catwalk on the side of the building today that will be used to access the new units that were installed earlier. It's too early to say if he likes it or not - the initial jitters haven't worn off yet.

Sometimes the boys tease me about what they call my "family orientation". I am a stickler for eating dinner together at the table with no television on, and I try at least on Sundays for us all to eat breakfast together. I am also known for initiating "family pizza and movie nights", "video game time", where all of us compete against one another, and other things which really bug them sometimes. Oh, well - there will be time enough for everyone to be off on their own doing their own things. Right now we are blessed enough to all be in one place, so I think a little (or a lot) of "togetherness" is nice! The boys didn't see it that way when I initiated a "family split-and-stack-firewood-for-the-whole-winter day". Anyway, in true "family orientation" spirit, I made everyone get up to see Tom off to work this morning. Yes, at 4 AM. To be honest, I think everyone kind of had the jitters, because all of us had trouble getting to sleep and it really wasn't difficult waking anyone when it was time for him to leave. Jerry gave him last-minute map checks and I made sure he didn't forget his lunch. One day very soon, we PROMISE to treat him according to his age - but not today! I don't expect that he'll have the same send-off tomorrow morning, but you never can tell with this bunch.

In science Andy was learning about Venus (the planet - not the woman!). The atmosphere is so thick there that scientists use radar to "see" the surface as they can't get a clear picture through the thick clouds covering the planet. As an experiment, I had to make up a model for Andy to map out using a kind of radar. I crumpled newspaper into a small box and then poured plaster over it, creating hills and valleys in the box when the plaster dried. Then I made a numbered grid on paper and covered the box with it. Andy had not seen the box and so didn't know what was in it. He had to mark a stick (we used a wooden kebob skewer) with measurements, then poke the stick through each grid and mark the measurement on a corresponding paper. By using the measurements when he was finished, he was able to make a "picture" of what was in the box based on his measurements. Then he took the paper off to see how close he was, and he had mapped our Venus-in-a-box perfectly. The experiment took a while, but it was a lot of fun. Low-tech, but it worked!

I wonder what it means when the nut trees and pine trees are VERY productive? Does it mean a harsh winter or something? Yesterday Andy, Hilda and I picked up shagbark hickory nuts that had fallen from the three trees near our driveway. We have never seen this many before. Most of the time the squirrels get just about all of them and we are lucky if we get a few. Not this year. We picked up an entire bucketful, plus a huge Tupperware bowlful, and Andy and I went back out today and filled a cardboard box top with several more. Looks like we'll have nut bread this year! While we were out today, Andy and I noticed that there were lots of pinecones lying on the ground, too - more than I can remember seeing in a long time. Today was a beautiful fall day and we really enjoyed being outside. Andy wanted to do his lessons outside, so that's what we did.

Jerry is hard at work on his truck. The motor on his brown truck (his baby) had finally died, so he ordered another one which finally came in and he has been hard at work putting in the new engine. A while back Jerry was working on a house when the man who lived across the street came to the job to ask if Jerry would give him a price to put siding on his house when he was finished that job. Well, they started talking and it turns out that this man painted vehicles for a living and Jerry just happened to need new paint on his baby, and so they worked out a deal - siding for paint. Shortly after starting on Jerry's truck, the man found out that he had cancer. It took him a long time to finish the truck because in between he needed surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation. Jerry felt badly and kept telling Lonnie that it didn't need to be finished, but Lonnie kept at it, and he finished painting it. It was two-tone, brown with beige down the middle, but Lonnie got the brown done and was going to get to the beige later on, but he just got too sick to finish it, and we felt terrible that he was pushing himself to finish. We brought it home as it was, and I guess it will stay that way unless Jerry decides to paint the beige himself. Sadly, Lonnie died a few weeks ago. His wife called here a few days before and said that Lonnie was asking for all of his friends to come visit him, as he knew he wasn't doing well. Lonnie was a good guy, and Jerry really misses him. Anyway, soon his truck will be back on the road, with a new engine and new paint.

Whew - long post this time! I really should start posting more often and maybe each entry would be shorter!

THIS is how you work on a truck.