Month: August 2013 (Page 1 of 2)

We had another work day in New Auburn, although we did leave early (about 3:30) because we were hot and exhausted. We hung sheet rock, then when Dad got bored, we did outside cleaning, burning, clipping, etc. before heading back inside to do more of that work. The laundry room is almost finished (finally) and we hung one piece in the living room. Slowly, but surely, we will get this house done.

We realized over lunch, sitting in the shade, that the two houses we have now are the first that have had southern exposures where a person would want to hang out. Both the Chetek house and the New Auburn house have patios on the south side of the house, so we spend a lot of time there, and they are both SO HOT on sunny days. But now we realize that for years we lived in houses with eastern or northern exposures, so didn’t have that problem. Or we lived where there was a lot of tree cover to the south. Let that be a lesson – don’t build a house with a southern exposure unless you plant some trees there or put up a porch or something. Even today when it was only in the 70’s, we were just dripping with sweat working outside near the house. But the heat must radiate off the south side as well as off the patio.

Tomorrow after church we head to Waukesha. We’ll visit Grandma Fritz tomorrow and Monday a.m., then head to Grandma Mick’s for lunch and an afternoon of chores (including toe nail and hair cutting) before heading back north again.

Hope you all have a great Labor Day.

It isn’t all I do all day, but now I have completed another 2 intermediate sudoku puzzles, plus a page of the bridges puzzles and a page of the inky puzzles. I like the fact that you can figure them out by logic and don’t have to resort to guessing, although I do a fair amount of guessing on the inky ones. Good thing I have a big eraser!  It was a great gift idea – I love it!

Boy, was it hot again today! I took Sherlock for a walk this afternoon and I thought he was going to have a heart attack. We just went a mile, but it was a very hot mile.

The rest of the day we stayed inside, except for watering the flowers around suppertime.

And, drum roll please…. I finished my first “intermediate level” Sudoku! Took a while, but I did it!!

So, today is the day I assign everyone their lesson time. I thought everything was going fine until I got an e mail reply from the parent of a student that had only given me one suggestion of a time (rather than 2nd, 3rd, and 4th choice), telling me that is wasn’t about seniority, but about whether her son could attend. The other person who wants the same time has taken from me for 6 years, which is 5 years longer than the kid in question. So, do I give in and give her that time and bump David to his second choice? Of course not. So I lose a student, but maybe it is just as well. I really don’t like working with people who think the world revolves around them. Her son really showed promise, though, so I’m sad I won’t have him back this year. But, then again, he was the only student I ever actually yelled at, because he gets so hyper and argumentative some days.

Oh, well. Life goes on. I have 10 signed up, plus I’ll have 3 in Cameron and I haven’t assigned them times yet.

I took Sherlock to the vet today because he just hasn’t been himself. He wakes up so stiff he can hardly move and has trouble jumping up on things. Last night out at the property he was running up the hill, then he just stopped and started walking really slowly like he was totally out of steam.

The vet looked him over real well, listened to his heart (which can be a problem with boxers), checked him for heartworm, Lyme’s disease and some other things and declared he is in perfectly good health, so it must just be his arthritis. She sent us home with pain relievers that we can give as we see fit. We’ll wait until after we get home, because I don’t want the dog-sitter to have to deal with that. Plus, he’ll be fine when all he has to do is lie around all day. Dad even said he’s going to leave the air conditioning on for him, since it looks like it will be hot when we are gone.

I can’t believe he’s getting old so soon. Plus I just learned that boxers are very susceptible to cancer. But the vet says he looks really good so far. We just have to stay vigilant. All that cost me $118.00. But he’s definitely worth it.  I hate to think of being without him some day.

Here are some shots of the garage paint job and how well it matches the house. Also a picture of the sheet rock in the laundry room, of a lovely flower still blooming and of the enormous vining flower thing in the neighbor’s yard.

Huge vine – is it a trumpet vine?

I spent almost the whole day painting. Since we got the house, the garage has been in extreme need of paint. The last people started different colors here and there and then didn’t finish. Then we replaced the door with an ugly brown one from the house. And the paint was really badly peeling and they had caulked around the door and that was all pulling away. It looked really awful. So I painted the garage today and the transformation is amazing. It actually makes the house look better because the garage now matches the house, color-wise, and looks just so cute. You can’t even tell that the siding is really getting old and a bit rotten here and there.

I guess, at this point, I should admit that I didn’t paint the whole garage. I actually just painted the front and the side you can see from the house, but not the whole side, because the bushes hide part of it. The back is pretty much covered by the wood pile right now. And we don’t care about the side to the neighbor’s on the east, because he’s hardly ever there and his place is a wreck. We’ll get to it later this fall. It was the front, the garage door and the part around the other door that were bothering us, and that is all finished except one more coat of white to do on the door that was brown.

I also finished the porch area where I painted the ceiling joists white (2 coats of Kilz and a coat of semi-gloss), the trim and the support posts. It looks cute now, but is still too small to block much sun. But it is out of the rain and has a concrete floor, so is a nice solid place to put chairs and sit.

Dad worked all day on the laundry room and that is pretty much all sheetrocked and he has the light wired in – just needs a switch. So, we’ll be moving on to the living room tomorrow.

Do you know what the biggest lesson Dad and I need to learn now that you are all grown?  That we are not God.  Duh, right?

But when one of you is in trouble we want so bad to be able to fix it for you and feel so helpless that we can’t. And it is easy to say “just trust God” and much harder to believe when there is absolutely nothing we can do to help. We are much better with being the means that God uses, but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes we are mere spectators.

But, praise the Lord, God is still God and I’m not. And Erica, Tim, Chloe, and JD have a nice place to move into and they can even start moving before the trip. And Erica can start teaching on time and they can relax on the frantic house hunt. Things are perfect. And I had nothing to do with it. 🙂

Ahhhhh….. (we can relax)

Do you know what ganache is? If you don’t, you simply must learn. It is the easiest thing to make and is absolutely wonderful. I learned about it watching a video on making a mini-cake for Dad’s birthday. It was decorated with ganache.

Ganache is simply a combination of chocolate and cream. You heat the cream until it is almost boiling (I actually boiled my a few seconds, but it didn’t seem to hurt.) You then pour it over your chocolate chips and let it set a few minutes, then beat it up so the the chips melt and combine. At first it doesn’t look like it will work, but keep whisking. You can use different ratios, depending on what you are making. I used 1:1 for the cake. I’m now using the left overs for dipping strawberries. In the fridge, it gets quite hard, but it microwaved in only a few seconds to where I could stir it up.

Seriously… yum!

…until we leave, but also until my annual physical, and I wanted to be a lot lighter than I am. The past two weeks I’ve just been in a holding pattern. I can’t seem to figure out how much to eat to not be in the “starvation mode,” which makes it harder to lose, but also not be eating too much to lose any weight. I gave in and had ice cream yesterday, and I had cookies over the weekend. But now I’m ready to get serious for the next nine days.

I went to the dentist today – he had to remove and replace a filling that had cracked. I must say he got it nice and numb and all fixed up in less time than it took my last dentist to get it numb. But now I have to wait for hours before the numbness wears off. The good news is that it is over with. I have an eye doctor appt. next Monday. If I need new glasses, I think I’m going to get them put in my old frames and save that money. We don’t have eye insurance any more.

Only nine days!!!!! I can hardly wait!