The Amberstone Warrior is going to school!

I'm giving my nephew my beloved truck! He's the first one in my family to have the chance to go to college.

His POS Dakota would never make it in Nashville (or even TO Nashville!) so I am trading my truck for his truck. This boy is soo smart it is scarey! I want to help him as much as I can,since I can't help him money-wise I'm letting have my truck.

The topper will go back on this week...a totally uncool item for the younger set but nephew is practical about it...

"COOL! I can haul my stuff down and then throw a mattress in the back!"

...ahhhh, youth! Looks on the best side of everything!

On the other hand, I am giving up my 84,000 mile 1993 baby for a 250,000 mile 1990 beat-from-one-end-to-the-other Dakota!



I hope the radio works!

push push.....blow,blow...push push....blow,blow....

No I'm not having a baby (or having sex)! I attended CPR training today for my job at the jail.

We had to practice a bunch on these alien-looking torsos...

These things were really ugly...I'd have to be really drunk to date one
(Ummmmm, now that I think about it,been there...done that!)

WOW! This is hard work! At the end of the first full session I was ready for the paramedics myself!

It was a good class tho, I knew the basics (sorta, I have watched TV!) but this class really explained WHY you do these things in this order. That I never knew and having the WHY explained helped me a lot in remembering what to do.

I want to take some more classes and learn how do do this and overcome my tendency to be the one that runs around screaming like an idjit, or just stand there vibrating!

Who knows? I might be at a strip club on of these days and a dancer collapses onstage! I'll be there,READY!

Party Animal

We have an alcoholic squirrel out at the farm!
When Brother and I are working on stuff out in the shop and sometimes (always)in the evenings we will have a few beers (surprise surprise!). After we are done with the beer cans we toss them in an old milk crate,then the first one back out there the next day smashes them and throws them into the recycling bin we have out there for aluminum.
Well several morning in a row we have found a squirrel in there lapping up the dribbles out of the cans!
When surprised he jumps out of the bin and runs (slowly) over to the trees and just kind of sits there, looking at us. If we walk towards him he will try to scramble up the tree but sometimes he doesn't make it and slides back down!(I can identify with him, I've had problems climbing the three steps up on my porch at times!)
Poor guy! We don't chase him or try to annoy him and just let him rest there at the base of the tree til he can make it back up to his home.
We laugh about him,saying there is a squirrel up in this tree sleeping off a hangover and I'm sure he's getting hell from Mama Squirrel about laying around all day and drinking all night instead of out gathering nuts!

There's a tool for that????

The last few days we have been trying to straighten up the "shop" out to dad's,enduring the cussing and screaming and accusations from dad. Dad has hauled shit into here at the farm for the past 100 years and thinks he knows everything that is out there. Well he can't remember if he ate lunch or not or who we are! He calls bro by our uncle's name and often calls me by my mom's name! (God love her, I wish I was more like her but unfortunately the older I get the more I resemble the ass {dad} that made my childhood {and is making my adulthood!} miserable!!!)

Anyhoo, while moving stuff in the shop I happened to look up at the top of a post and spotted a bright red something. Looked a lot like and old keychain keeper or a coin purse. Upon closer inspection I found this...

...what on earth was this used for? (other than the obvious nasty thoughts that immediately came to mind!)

Okay, back to the dad rant! When dad retired back in the 80's...he RETIRED! I mean from doing anything except drinking beer and driving around everywhere (and yes, at the same time). He started going with Mom to auctions (Mom was an antique dealer) and drug home all manner of useless crap, if it was cheap he bought it,truckloads of stuff! We must have about 20 electric weed-eaters here. Including one that will totally light you up if you plug it in! I refuse to test anymore after THAT ordeal!

So today I tested electric drills that we unearthed from under a table, I guess I'll never learn!

The same with everything else,if there is one here there is a dozen! And sadly what stuff was good isn't now. Dad when he bought stuff just threw it anywhere and there it laid. We have run across so much stuff that used to be good and useful and is now scrap or trash. The shop is an old tin building with a damp earthen floor and stuff is just piled up helter-skelter. We have found probably 20 log chains that are ruined, rusted together in a lump (good log chains aren't cheap!)


Just another day of cussing and screaming and whining....

a normal day in my life....

any wonder I drink?
(which is the reason my posts are few and far between and rarely make any sense!)

'strokin' again...

....HEAT strokin' that is! If yesterday wasn't bad enough, today was worse as far as heat was concerned! I'm sure that Val thinks I am a total wimp because I can't handle 92 degree afternoons! But the humidity here is killer!

So bro and I mowed out to dad's today....thank god for the beer cooler! I don't think I woulds have made it otherwise!

HOT HOT HOT! No breeze what-so-ever!

So what do I do? When I get home I decide to burn all the twigs and branches and clipping I gathered up last night. (remember the no breeze comment!)

No breeze...no wind... I rarely get to chance to burn stuff here in town (for some reason the town frowns on burning when it is windy, I don't know why!!!!)

So I light up the brush...and guess what... a breeze starts up! So here I am running around with a rake trying to contain burning debris in a gale storm in 90+ degree heat!

So of course a burning leaf decides to go down my shirt...I do a major screaming funky chicken dance around the yard...I'm sure the neighbors were majorly entertained!!!!

Singed chest hair smells AWFUL!

Courting Heatstroke

OMG IT IS FREAKIN HOT AND HUMID!!!!

Okay that statement is out of the way! But it is hot and miserable here right now.

And rain! It seems it rains everyday! Not just little pissy showers, we're talking about thinking about hiding under the house storms! BOOM BOOM BOOM are we going to end up in Kansas type of storms!

So there was no storm forecast for today (tonight is another matter entirely!) so I took a day off (not from work...from DAD'S!) so I could hopefully get some yard work done before the next monsoon comes thru tonight.

The grass was getting so high that sheep and cows from outside of town were putting in for transfers to my yard!

And so out into the heat I go in my cute little shorts and cut off shirt ( I'm sure the neighbors were impressed) and enough sunscreen on the top of my bald head to coat an entire girl scout troop and attacked the jungle that normally is my yard.

Nothing sexier than a bald fat man trying to have sunstroke and a heart attack at the same time!

One good thing, my farmers tan is darkening nicely,the legs are still snow white but they are shaded by my belly the whole time!

I have so much yard work to do it is not funny. Flower beds to weed,edges to trim,gravel to rake,mulch to put down....
The list goes on and on!

It really depresses me to look at my yard, I always took so much pride in it and my flowers but since Dad got bad I have no time to work on it. The weeds are taking over.However I was thrilled to see while I was courting a coronary that the cactus is finally blooming this year! You have to ignore the weeds!



And my Mimosa tree (that I started from seed from Mom's tree which is now dead) is going great guns! I had about twenty sprouts a few years ago and this was the only one that survived a freak freeze we had that year. The Mimosa is about three years old now and I think it's gonna make it! (again please ignore the weeds!) I should have blooms probably next year!Some things thrive on neglect tho! This is my "miniature" Japanese Maple! Don't always believe the tags on clearanced plants at Wal-Mart! This tree was supposed be (according to the tag) a small,weeping Japanese Maple like my buddy has! His is about 10 years old and only about 3 feet tall,cascades beautifully down and behaves itself in its spot. Mine has turned into a monster tree! I love the tree but if I had known it was going to do this I would have planted it in a different spot!

The hostas are going berzerk and hopefully I can divide them this fall...I had to cut down the roses, those damn jap beetles wiped them out!

I guess I have to be grateful of what plants did survive while I was away and just hope I can replace what bit the dust!

Happy birthday to me,somewhat!

Today is my birthday,only one year away from the half-a-century mark now!

And if that fact isn't depressing enough (actually that doesn't bother me)life in general sucks.

I am finally close in getting caught up with all the bills, but you know how that goes,get caught up and something else happens to put you behind again. I my case I found out that I have to now replace the gas line in my house. The gas company showed up and it seems I have been lucky,my gas line under my house is full of holes and my crawlspace was full of natural gas!

YIKES!

I have been living on a time bomb! I could have lit a cig or flipped a switch and ended up in Kansas!

They pulled the meter and shut the system down but now I have to have a new line installed under the house. More money to spend that I don't have! I am grateful that the company found that and that my ass didn't end up in Kansas (and every state between here and there!) but why does every silver lining come with a price tag?

On a less life threatening note,(but still very frustrating) my computer has some major problems, I'm gonna have to take it in and have someone give it an enema and fix it (more money out!) but since the computer is my only link to the outside world I need to have it done.

I can't access my e-mail now, or most anything else, I can't even get on my Fiesta message board! I did manage to get on the message board briefly tonight but after reading one post and replying, the 'puter went dead and I had to restart. So I guess I'll have to wait til after I get this dastardly thing back from the shop to acknowledge any messages there.

After the restart, this infernal machine did let me into my blog so I thought I would try to do a post, I have no idea if it will let me or not!

There was a bright spot today, when I got to work, there was a birthday card waiting for me signed by a bunch of the staff and several of the inmates!!!

And one of the inmates came out with drink cups stuck under his shirt and performed the Marilyn Monroe JFK version of Happy Birthday for me! It was a hoot and a hell of a way to start the day! Imagine a skinny,tattooed inmate with pointy "breasts" singing a breathless song to you at 5am!

Cousin Itt

My wisteria is loaded this year! This type of wisteria (what kind it is I have no idea!) grows wild around here in certain places. This was a little sprout dug up from my friend's woods. It's about 4 years old.

Most wisterias take about 7 to 10 years to bloom but this stuff just takes a couple! And it will take over and choke out anything else around it if left on it's own. I buried an old ladder in the back yard well away from everything else and let it go to town. Soon it will get too top heavy and break the ladder so I'll have to cut it down and start over but for now I just enjoy the look of it. I've nicknamed it Cousin Itt from the Addams Family (does anyone one else remember that far back?)!

I spotted another patch of it today not too far from dad's house if I need more starts of it.


Those are trees under all that! This is out in the old coal mine country and there used to be a house here. I don't know if it was planted here or just started on it's own. Oh, the smell in this area is heavenly!

Click on the pics for a larger view.

A mess

What's up with some of these child-proof caps? I mean some of them take an act of congress to get open!

I just bought a new bottle of baby oil (get your mind out of the gutter! It's NOT for THAT! I use it on the bottom of my feet because they get so dry and cracked,I'm too old and fat to buy it for those "other" reasons!)

It wouldn't open, just sat there and spun. Hmmm. So I put my eyes on and checked out the writing on the top.

"Push down top and turn while holding opposing sides in"

Okay besides the fact that I don't have seven fingers on my hand to perform this feat, that still didn't work!

I pushed and twisted, held in, rotated, and generally turned that cap every which way but loose!

No go.

(I'm pretty sure I heard the cap laughing at me)

I try again. And again.

Still no go.

(by this time I know that whoever designed this thing is rolling on the floor busting a gut thinking about someone trying to open it!)

So I'm sitting here with a death grip on the bottle and trying to open the cap when...

GEYSER!

The bottle split open along the side.

Yep! Baby oil absolutely EVERYWHERE!

Except of course on my feet.

So I have to get up and throw the bed clothes in the washer (and the bottle in the trash!!!!)

I can't imagine a young mother trying to open this thing while holding down a screaming, squirming baby!

Are packaging manufacturers sadist?

HOLY SHIT!

Today out at the farm was another "repair the barn roof" day. Only this time I didn't get to throw the hammer at brother!

The old barn was very poorly constructed by dad,like most things around here it was done half-assed and as cheaply as possible. Rather that spend just a touch more and buy longer nails,dad went the cheapest route and bought short nails, as a result, the wind is working the short nails out and letting the tin fly off the barn!

Anyhoo, on the west side of the barn (we worked on the east side last time) there is a rain gutter just above my head. While brother was getting the tools and supplies ready for the repair I decided to clean that gutter out. I could just reach up and pull the leaves and crap out of it.

I cleaned out about 15 feet of it (nasty old rotted leaves and twigs,smelly!) before bro was ready to go up on the roof.

Part of my job today was using my considerable weight on the ladder to keep it from tipping up and letting bro fall off the roof. While I was up on the ladder I glanced down at the gutter to see how much more nasty shit there was to clean out.

About 10" from where I stopped reaching up blindly to grab crap out of the gutter was a large snake!

It was a barn snake about 5' long! Apparently it crawled up there to sun itself.

If bro had not been ready to work on the roof I would have continued down that gutter and grabbed that sucker!

I would have had a heart-attack right there on the spot!

Of course this would have been after I had a screaming fit and scared the hell out of neighbors at least a mile away!

There's no way! It's not possible!Can we really? Finally?

Could it be possible we might be able to finally tear down the old house?
Dad has not given in for the last 5 years and let us tear down the old family house. The house sits right next to the new house but dad thinks it is still livable and just needs a bit of work. Well,it is beyond repair,the roof has huge holes in it,the floor has collapsed and the walls ain't far behind! It is a major hazard!

(check some pics of a previous post to see the condition of the house)

We finally got approval to order a storage building to put some of the stuff in that is still good. When the shed arrives in a couple of weeks it will be too tall (on the truck) to pass under the old wires to the house so dad let us take the wires down over the weekend (which also takes the old house off the tax roll! As long as power was run to that house we had to pay taxes on it even tho it was unlivable! As long as there were wires run to the house it was considered a residence)

I thought that was a major deal! The first step in convincing dad that the house had to go!

Well when I got out to the farm today, brother said we were taking down the old metal chimney off the back porch. I expected a major battle but dad was okay with it! Years ago when dad put that chimney up, he had welded some straps to it and then bolted it to the house. We took the bolts out and then realized that the pipe would not fall over because the straps were hitting the eaves of the house and wouldn't let it come down.

We tried and tried to figure out a way to make the straps clear the eave without ripping the eaves out, the straps wouldn't bend and the boards were nailed in every which way to Sunday on the eaves.

Dad came out while we were puzzling over it and said...

"Just rip those damn boards down, the whole place is coming down anyways!"

What? What? Did I hear him correctly? Is he finally accepting the fact that the house has to be torn down?

My shock for the day!

(of course brother probably will have to listen to him bitch all evening about it!)

Hopefully this attitude of his will continue and we can get this hazard torn down!

survivor

Mom had a green thumb. I can remember as a child the profusion of flowers around the house that mom had.
Oh the colors and the beauty! I was enchanted! Well once the brothers got old enough to mow the flowers started to disappear. I come from a family that hates to mow around anything! If it was in front of the mower it was fair game!
Slowly but surely everything gave up the ghost after being mowed down for several seasons!
Of all the fabulous flowers that I remember from my youth,very few survive today. I can remember a whole row of Iris (one of my fav flowers) in almost every color of the rainbow,only this single yellow and a few purple are left.
Mom had a huge bed of orange Oriental Poppies, gone now, Snow On The Mountains, history now, a Lilac bush that was pulled out of the ground because "it way in the way of turning the mower", several flowering trees that were also "in the way", several colors of Peony's (one determined white one remains!) and several others.
There are a few that refuse to go away and bravely comes back every year no matter how many times Brother mows them down!
The Paperwhites are trying their best to keep it going,the aforementioned Iris, the Lily Of The Valley is still going strong (but will have to be moved before the old house comes down or it is toast) and I have managed to save one Spirea bush (out of FIVE!) and it is doing good this year.
The pink vining Rose didn't survive last years spraying of a lethal brush killer, another casualty of "I don't want to mow around it"
I sure wish I had the opportunity to have starts of those flowers for my yard now!

Death of a Lady

This lovely old Victorian Painted Lady is slated for destruction here in town to make room for a new Dollar General store! Now granted I like the idea of the Dollar General being closer to me in a more convenient location (right now it is on the edge of town and a real pain in the ass to get in and out of) but I hate the idea of this fantastic house having to bite the dust!

This is a glorious old house that I don't understand why has sat empty for years. I attended an auction there about three years ago and got to tour her. She was beautifully preserved inside with a great fancy wrap-around staircase,gorgeous woodwook,wainscoting,fireplaces,etc.

The outside had been badly remodeled (or rather remuddled!) with horrible wide aluminum siding that was poorly installed. And all the fretwork was removed from the porches. I can remember this house when I was a kid (back in the stone age) and she was a very fanciful house, with the narrow clapboard siding, fishscales in the gables and gingerbread everywhere!

Painted up properly she would have been a great example of a Painted Lady. Someone tried to give her the look by painting that horrid aluminum siding in shades of purple. But the effect was like painting an old lady up like a whore.

I guess no one wanted her, she has been sold four times in the last three years and no one ever moved in! Something must have been horribly wrong with her. She had been wired for electricity, had central air and a fairly new heating system.

The location totally sucked, almost no yard space and on a busy street but there are other old homes in this town with similar spaces and people have restored them.

If I had the money I would have bought here and moved her to a more suitable locale.



Thankfully the current owner was smart enough to save as much of the good stuff as possible. She contracted a salvage company to remove the windows,woodwook,fireplaces,the stairs and anything else that could be reused to help restore someone else's beloved old house.
So many times when someone decides to tear down an old house they don't bother to save anything and some great stuff is forever lost.

The little green frame house next door meets an untimely death too, but it needed alot of work.

Death of a Lady pt 2

As you can see the salvage of the goodies has been started.

This fantastic spiderweb leaded glass window on the second floor was covered over! Why someone would hide this gem is beyond me. The only reason I can think of is the ones that did the remuddling and slapped on that horrid aluminum siding were too lazy to fit the siding around it!


Thankfully they didn't cover over the stained glass windows on the first floor! There were two of these windows on the first floor and both were in closets! I've noticed that alot of times in older houses the fancy windows were located in the closet spaces and always wondered why the builders put them there. Well I found out when talking to one of the salvage gus there, back when these houses were built, either electricity was limited or just unavailable so windows were often in closets and using stained glass windows let the light in without the botheration of curtains and kept the contents of your closet private from outside eyes! And the fact that these closets were big enough to use as changing rooms, the use of stained glass really makes sense!


Even the eaves were detailed!




And now she is just a pile of rubbish. Very sad!

"shroomin" 2

Okay, I lied, went out again today with brother hunting mushrooms. Went south instead of north on the old railroad right-of-way. Beautiful day, a bit (read majorly) windy, sweated my ass off, (82 today!), wearing a long sleeved flannel shirt (purple of course!) to attempt to keep the briar scratches to a minimum.
Walked about 450 miles,up and down major hills,saw several items of interest including:
some beautiful wild flowers...
two baby box turtles about the size of a quarter...
a large snake...(thankfully he was making tracks as fast as he could away from me!)
a really cool log...
the cowl section of a late 20's/early 30's car...
a baby deer...
a really large crawdead eco-skeleton...
The one thing we didn't find was...MUSHROOMS!!!

What's up with these woods? Everyone around us is finding tons of mushrooms! Is our woods played out? Mom used to find (literally) hundreds of those suckers here! Or am I so inept that I have tromped every mushroom out there with my big clumsey feet?

I can tell you this much, that if it was Fiesta out there I could spot it from 100 paces!

Who's 'shroomin' Who?

Or perhaps this post should be titled Mother Nature 3-Papa 0!

It's mushroom time here is the Hoosier state! If you have never had these delectible little beauties I recommend that you find some! There is nothing better than fresh fried wild mushrooms. Of course you have to know which ones to pick,some are lethal! I only pick the ones I know that are safe,which is actually a moot point right now. I HAVEN'T MANAGED TO FIND A SINGLE ONE!

Which is actually not surprising. Mom was a major mushroom hunter and could spot them suckers at 50 yards when they were only 1/2" tall and covered with 45 dead leaves! I can only see them if they are three feet tall and I trip over them!

When I would go mushrooming with Mom as a kid,Mom would bring back lots of mushrooms, I would bring back a box turtle. I will never forget Mom having to take off her shirt to put mushrooms in to carry because I refused to let the turtle go!

Brother has been fairly good at spotting them and I get to tag along and be miserable. Don't get me wrong, I love prowling around thru Mother Natures beauty and looking at the wonders of spring but when it comes to actually finding mushrooms I become a total klutz! Bro and I have been out three times so far this spring and haven't found a single mushroom. One of the guys at work sez he has found about 500 so far! (and the meanie won't share!)

I did find some last year so I guess,maybe,my mushroom hunting skills are finally coming forth.( I thought!)

The only things I have brought back to the house this year (so far,shudder) is a fucked up knee,a jammed hip and a nose full of mud!

I think Mother Nature is after me for kidnapping that turtle!

All three times we have been out, I have gotten my foot caught under a root or a limb or something and did face-plants in the dirt! Oh! And I forgot to mention the blackberry briar that whipped back and scored me right in the nuts!

Mother Nature must be really angry with me!

I may forego more ventures into the wild....besides the beer cooler gets heavy after awhile!

The tractors

We used to have a few more,bigger tractors here when we actually farmed this ground, but those and all the useful equipment was sold last year before it was too far gone to use. Scroll back thru the archives to see them.
The only ones we have left are the little ones that do get some use,basically for mowing and puttin' around on.
This is the IH Cub Lo-Boy. I was mistaken in an earlier post,this is a 1967 model. Brother uses this one to mow with, I don't even know how to start it,he does something with the carb before it will start! Bro is an excellent mechanic and he could fix it so it starts normally but I think he leaves it that way to keep anyone else off of it!


This is the one from the 40's, a 1947 IH B Farmall. We have a sickle-bar mower attachment to use on the B to mow the woods and other areas.


Here's the oldest one on the farm, a 1937 Farmall F-20. We don't use it anymore (the motor is locked up). Dad built the front loader bucket on it and it has moved a lot of dirt and junk in it's day!


And here's the baby of the bunch and my playtoy! Tho not technically a farm tractor, we use this little Cub Cadet to pull a trailer around and haul the light stuff. It's pretty handy!

Still Got Junk!

This is just a small part of the inside of the shop. This the area we have to work in if we need to repair something! Unless, of course, we work outside. There are just narrow, meandering paths throughout to get to different areas. Believe it or not we used to be able to fit four cars in here to work on! But that was back when I was just a wee lad, lots of time since for dad to drag home stuff and fill it to the rafters!


There is an ungodly amount of stuff in here, even vintage porn! A 1966 girly calender is still hanging on the wall. (the top right one)


The junk just seems to go on and on forever!


Hmmm...someone must have been shopping!


And then there is the centerpiece of the farm...the old house, front and center, right out by the road for all passers-by to enjoy!


Just a little paint and drywall and she's move-in ready! It even comes with "skylights"! Well I suppose you might want to put down some carpeting too, the hardwood floors don't look like they can be refinished very easily!

Got junk?

WE sure do out at the farm! I have a request from M to see some of the junk out on the farm....so here it is!

This is just one pile (one of many!)next to the shop....

...the shop...

...every available shed is packed to the gills...

...need a combine? We got ya covered whether you need a self-propelled or pull-type, one row corn picker and there is a pull-type bean combine in the background...

...if you need to spread some lime, we've got just the ticket, a 1949 Ford F-8 with a lime spreader bed! Dad bought this truck brand new! I think it needs a bit more than a wax job now tho!

...or if you have the sudden urge to run out and drill some holes in your yard, we have this 1937 Dodge that is set up to drill water wells.

I'll post some more pics later, right now it is getting close to my beddy-bye time....gotta get up early and fix oatmeal for the boys!

Down on the Farm

Wow, I haven't been here in forever!Been busy,busy,busy! And when I haven't been busy I fight with the computer (it wouldn't let me log in to my blog! I gotta get this thing in for an enema!)

The weather is getting better,slooowly,and brother has a bunch of stuff he want's to get done out there. So,of course I'm drafted to help!

We've been trying to get all the old tin nailed back down on the barn before they take off sailing for New Jersey. Sounds simple right? NOT! That old barn wasn't built the sturdiest to start with 40 years ago and time has not been kind to it! So here's brother climbing around on it while I wait on the ground to fetch supplies and carry them up. I do not do heights well (hell I get shakey just standing on a chair to change a light bulb!)So getting me up one that ladder is a major feat and I sure as hell NOT climbing up on that roof! Not only would I be terrorized by the height I'm sure this fat boy would fall right thru and end up impaled on the old corn planter so something!

I do have to admit that having to throw the hammer at brother when he dropped it off the roof was fun!

And we had to start mowing as soon as the first blade of grass popped up. We've mowed twice now and I swear it doesn't look any different that before mowing! If it wasn't for the mower's tire tracks I wouldn't had been able to tell where I had mowed and where I hadn't!

But before we could even do that we had to get the mowers up-to-snuff for the season. Since I am such a mechanical wiz,(hell, one of the mowers I don't even know how to start! It's an IH Cub Lo-Boy built sometime in the 50's and you have to go thru some kind of procedure to start it!) again I am the parts,tool,rag handler.

Also we are trying to make some sense of one area of the shop so we will have space to work on stuff other than out in the yard (not fun in the rain!)
So we move stuff (junk) from one side to the other. We can't get rid of anything,Dad would have a cow! Actually he is bitchy just because we moved some things, but he is bitchy about everything so what's new?

We need a storage building to put stuff in before all of it is ruined. So many of the things in the shop already are shot and now worthless because of dampness and neglect. We'd like to save what we can before it is all worthless and fit only to be bull-dozed into a big hole. There are several welders,generators and lots of tools and other stuff. And lots of just pure junk too. Every building on the farm is stuff to the rafters with junk (anyone need some worn out tires? I could set you up with a bunch!)

Ok, it's about bedtime,hopefully I can get back in here and blog some more another time. Good-nite!

Heloise was right!

Ya know you read all those helpful handy household hints everyday in the newspaper. Well this one actually worked! I've used vinegar for several cleaning jobs in the past.Recently there was in Helosie about cleaning mini-blinds,a very tedious job!The article that day suggested putting some warm water in your tub and soaking your mini-blinds in them. Well today was extra early dad-sit day so out of utter boredom I decided to try to clean the blinds in the kitchen.
I used the garden tub (a totally useless object) in dad's bathroom,filled it with a couple inches of water and added a couple cups of vinegar and dumped the blinds in to soak.
Then I humg them off the shower curtain rod and rinsed them. A whole bunch of shit came off! But still not white. Hmmmmmm. Then I hit on the idea of using my mag wheel brush (super soft but long bristled) to brush them with. OMG the shit just rolled off them! Dipped the brush in vinegar and lightly ran it over them.
Nice and white with very little effort! (my kind of cleaning!)Bonus cleaning tip,the tub was nice and sparkly after I was done! Martha would be so proud of me!
Only got three of them done before I ran out of vinegar, I'll pick some more up later and do the rest.
Of course my hands smelled like a pickle when I was done,had to resist the urge to slap them between two pieces of bread with a hamburger patty and chow down. Popped a beer instead and killed that urge real quick!

Don't forget to change your clocks tonight!!

hack,Haack,HAAACK!

Sometimes I think my cat Harle's mission life is to make me miserable! Or kill me!Of course he does the trying to trip me up by getting underfootoot all the time and he knows the best,darkest,most lethal places to try it! Like the dark spots in the hall,coming around the counter in the kitchen, etc. One of these days he's gonna get me good!
Last night tho I was awakened by the sound of him horking up a big hairball. Disgusting sound right? Not normaly an alarming event, unless the you are sound asleep and the cat is sleeping on your head! Talk about flying out of that bed!
(parents take note,want to get your kids up fast?,have the cat hork on their heads,works every time!)
Of course I stepped in a pile on the way to get the paper towels,yeech! Needless to say Harle spent the rest of the night outside!

Damn, my beer is frozen...

I wasn't planning on drinking tonight,I needed to do some house-cleaning before B came over to watch Survivor. I needed to clean because my niece was coming down for the weekend and visit.

Well, AFTER I started to tackle the ungodly mess that is my fridge (removing UFOs [unidentified food objects]) I checked on-line and found out that my niece has sprained her ankle and won't be coming this weekend.

So since I had already dragged all my beer out of the fridge I decided to finish the job. I found things in there that I didn't know I had! BBQ sauce, pickles of an undetermined age, a bottle of Sloe Gin (!!!!score!!!!) and some stuff I have no idea of what it is (or rather was!!!)

Filled the bathtub up with hot sudzy water and piled the fridge shelves (cool looking tempered glass {okay only cool looking when CLEAN, otherwise really gross when they haven't been cleaned in months!!!} in. After soaking for awhile I was able to scrub the crap off.

[note to self, clean the shelves BEFORE they turn green!]

Anyhoo, I decided I deserved a beer for doing all this nasty work, so I popped one.......YEECH!....... HOT BEER!

So thinking I could enjoy some cold beer during Survivor I put a half a dozen in the freezer.

Got the box clean before B showed up and enjoyed a few nice cold ones during the show.

Then after the program I figured I could drink the last two and check the blogs....ERUPTION! BEER SPEWING ALL OVER MY DESK!

Thankfully the only things soaked were bills waiting to be paid (isn't there a law somewhere that beer-soaked bills can be thrown away and forgotten?)


After the mess was cleaned up I discovered I had a nice beer slushie! ROCK!

Survivor was great (more on that later)!

((BTW that is not a pic I took, that was "borrowed" from Photobucket! I'm a Can Fan!))

So since I have discovered Beer Slushies, ya think I could set up a stand this summer????