Expanding Vocabulary

Word verification sometimes suggests new, unique terms. I like thinking about possible definitions. Here are a few.

resuplet: v.. to enjoy a small meal of left overs - preferably while standing in front of the open refrigerator door. or n. the left-overs you eat.


Last night I was too tired to cook so we enjoyed resupletting things from the last few meals.

Now, that's a yummy resuplet - a scrap of pizza heated in the microwave!


allaman: adj. an intact animal of the male persuasion. One who has not been neutered.

I have an allaman Chocolate Lab. 
Because of our community covenants we are not allowed to have allaman horses on our property.


sadmin: n. the administrative arm of a failing business.

Blockbuster's sadmin was indirectly responsible for their failure as they didn't have a good vision of the future.



Maybe you'd like to try your hand by coming up with a definition for one of the following:

eloot                        subcow                            inarund

The Project: Week 16 - What's Cooking?

I can't believe that we have spent 16 weeks working on this project house. But, looking back through the posts shows me just how much progress we have made. What a difference! This week the kitchen was finally finished - OMG, we have a really, truly working kitchen! We can cook! We can clean! We can store food and cooking tools! Now we just have to finish the bath and get the barn ready for the boys... And finally, we can move!
This week we:

• finished tiling the kitchen backsplash, sealed the tile, grouted the tile and put a second coat of sealer on it. Wouldn't you know I was 6 tiles short. I had to run to the tile place to finish the project.
• continued to work on tiling the shower and the front of the bath. Again, I'm short on my tile. I need to run to the store again tomorrow!
• turned on the water heater - oh, how nice to finally have warm water for hand washing!
• had the offending granite slab replaced
• played host to the cabinet installation guys, one more time, while they finished the bathroom cabinet installation and did the final bit of work in the kitchen (toe kicks, installation of the microwave, and a few other minor things - like attaching the dishwasher so it won't spill all of my good china some day in the future when I load it up and pull the drawer out to load just one more thing (phew...how's that for a run -on sentence - my English teacher would kill me!)
• swept and vacuumed the basement and cleaned out most of the junk that was left by previous tenants
• sprayed for thistles (I should have been listing that on each of the previous week's lists... thistles have run rampant in the yard. Our 'lawn' is fence-to-fence thistle. The gardens are carpeted in thistle. That is one prolific plant!)
• secured dog fencing on the paddock fence to keep Tucker out of the paddock and pastures beyond.
• painted 240 feet of baseboard.
• tried to buy some knobs for the cabinets. I need 35 in the kitchen and 11 in the bathroom. (It seems that most knobs begin at about $5.... found one I liked for almost $10. Hate to think of spending that much!) We went by a large home goods and decorator store. We could not get anyone to wait on us. As this has been a recurring problem at this particular store I wrote an email to management stating the facts. Would you believe, I got a call in the morning? The manager was very interested in my stories. He said the staff WILL here about this at their weekly staff meeting. And, by the way, would I come back and shop if he sent me a $50 gift card?! I was amazed at the reaction to my email. I hope that in the long run it makes a difference - I do like the merchandise in the store. As I told him, with the slow economy I am beginning to like that certain stores bend over backward to help the customer and to make sure the customer is pleased - his store is not one of these! Maybe things will change!

Here are some before and after photos of the kitchen:

Conversations With Mom

The best conversations with mothers always take place in silence, 

when only the heart speaks. 

                                                    -Carrie Latet

I find myself speaking to my mom frequently,

and often, I can hear her answers.

Love you, and miss you!

Mom and me. Shopping at Harbour Town 

on Hilton Head Island, SC. ~1975

What did we buy? What were we talking about?

Why do I look so serious?

It is one thing to be with your mom, yet entirely different to BE a mom. 

Love my boys and love being a mom!

From the times when they were young: 

to the time when they were ready to leave the nest:

and forever!

Thank you, CS and D, for letting me be your mom!

Happy Mother's Day to everyone.

Ouch!

I hurt my hand in April  last year! Being the cheap resourceful person that I am I decided that all it needed was some rest well, maybe at night.  I did buy a brace that held my thumb somewhat immobile and that seemed to help. But I left it in a hotel a while back. A year later my hand is still killing me. 

I finally decided it was time to do something about it, since it wasn't responding to my treatment. I made an appointment with a hand specialist, since my regular doctor couldn't seem to find anything specific. I figured Mr. Hand Doctor would have some magic cure that would make the pain go away. Maybe a special band aid! That would make me happy!

source

Off I went to the doctor. He seemed OK. He took some x-rays. He looked at the x-rays. And without the first shred of sympathy diagnosed my problem as arthritis.

Arthritis? Isn't that for old people? I can't have arthritis. I'm not that old. He nodded. His nurse brought out a special, magic ugly soft brace and showed me how to put it on. No cowboy bandages. No magic bullet. No fix. Put up. Shut up. Take NSAIDs. Out the door.

Yesterday I got the bill. (You wanna know why they call it a bill? I looked up the etymology of the word: It came about mid-14th century. From Anglo-Latin, the word billa meaning "list," and from Medieval Latin, the word bulla meaning "decree, seal or sealed document." Based on what I received I really think we should have been calling these annoying reminders to pay money "BULL"!) Oh, sorry, I got a bit sidetracked. So.... here is the bull bill:

Click to "biggify"... you gotta see this!

My "Comfort Cool" splint can be purchased from sites on the Internet for around $30. I called the billing bull  department and sweetly made an inquiry about the price (really, I was very kind - but it was a bit hard to talk while biting my tongue). I mentioned the prices I had seen the splint selling for on the Internet. She commented that they had raised their prices a bit (you have got to be kidding me... a bit?!), and asked me to hold while she checked. My bill, which seemed to be full of bull, has been adjusted. I am happy that I don't have to pay the outrageous charge, but it so ticks me off that the medical field inflates prices to such a degree. No wonder our medical costs are skyrocketing. No wonder insurance is so expensive.

Geesh! It makes my hand hurt even more!

Promises

I can see the promise of spring - finally!

Swelling buds on our Austrian Pine

Brave Iris peaking up through the soil....

And look, a flower!

Sadly, that sweet purple flower is Redstem filaree.
It is on the Colorado noxious weed "B" list.

Please, oh please, don't tell the weed control guy that
I have it in my garden!!!
Well, OK....it's gone now. I just pulled it out by the roots!
I promise...

The promise of blossoms on our Canada Red Cherry

This is an Easter Lily I planted years ago...

Well, better late than never I always say!

Part of my future garden...

A Zinnia gets ready to bloom!
I think it's rushing the season!

Cucumber blossoms in the basement!

Young life...

A promise of the flowers to come.

 Find out what's happening with other folks interested in plants and animals. 

Visit

Farm Friend Friday

or 

Farmgirl Friday

My Day Off!

Woohoo! I had a day 'off' yesterday! I didn't go to the project house - no tiling; no painting; no ripping out carpet; no planting trees; no... nothing!

Instead.....

• I got out the sprinkler and watered some of our grass - hoping to wake it up and say, "it's spring. Time to rise up and grow and turn green!"
• I watered most of the trees in the front yard.
• I read and commented on blogs
• I took a few extra minutes to sweep the barn.
• I filled the water trough.
• I watered my seedlings in the basement.
• I brought a bed frame up from the barn and set my son's bed up - when he's visited the poor boy has been sleeping on his mattress on the floor. We have his antique bed but decided since we hope to move fairly soon there was no sense in setting it up.
• I did a load of dishes in the dishwasher - yeah, I know, that isn't really anything special, but I did have to get down on my hands and knees and search through the junk in the cabinet to find a packet of dishwasher detergent that I knew was there. We forgot to get a new box the last time we were at the store.
• I had my semi-annual mammogram. Here's a link to my post from last year. Basically this trip was a repeat of that one and all is well. I am now back to an annual schedule.
• I went to the paper store to get some handmade paper for card making. They didn't have what I wanted because the factory burned down some time last year!!
• I stopped by a kitchen design shop to look at cabinet knobs. Oh yeah, right, of course the ones that I liked are $13.85 EACH!! Hmmm, guess I'll have to look some more!
• I resisted the urge to turn my car into a craft store's parking lot. That would have gotten me in a lot of trouble.... I can never just 'look'!
• I ran over to the neighbors to replace the baking powder I borrowed. I gave them a bottle of my beer bread as a 'Thank You'. Of course, we had to chat a bit!
• I worked both boys in the round pen. They are so out of shape - they need lots and lots of trotting. They both did really well. We worked a lot on transitions - using voice - from walk to trot, trot to extended trot, back to an 'easy' trot. I love my boys!

Hmmm...other than usual stuff - that's about all I did with my day 'off'! Oh, and I guess I should tell you I fell into bed around 9:00 PM!

Week 7: Wednesday What's It?

What's It?

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So, do you think you know what it is? 

Have you ever used this? 

It is very heavy and can cause awful blisters.

But.....

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in this case, the pictured item is not a fence post pounder inner thingy...
what they call, in professional terms, a post driver!

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We have found another use for it....

It's a Tucker anchor!!

We can loop his leash through the handle. 

He can be near us.
He can move,
but not that far and not that fast!

 

We were able to let Tucker join us while we worked on fencing this week. Since we had the driver with us, it seemed to be the perfect solution for keeping Tucker around!