Archive | March, 2016

Oops!

30 Mar

When we were trying to decide what color to paint the walls in the guest room, I brought home two small jars of green paint, which we smeared on the wall in several places, to see how the light hit it in different areas.

Decision made, I went back to Lowe’s and got a of gallon Artichoke green paint. After we were finished painting, we found a number of spots we had missed, either where we hadn’t pressed hard enough with the roller (my biggest failing) or the blue tape had been too far down and there was a white line under the moulding. I got my trusty little foam craft brush, and rather than opening the big can, I used the sample jar to do all the touch-up work.

After it had all dried, we discovered that the sample was satin finish, while the paint in the can has a flat finish.

Even after two coats of flat paint, there are still places where the shiny paint shows through. I suppose we’ll have to keep dabbing at it. There’s only so much you can hide with clever arrangements of furniture, artificial trees, and art work.

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Holy Week

27 Mar

Whew! What a workout!

I’m on the Altar Guild, and the current head is training me to take over for her, as both she and her husband are in poor health, and this is a position I held back in the 80s, right after I retired.

More costume changes than the Ice Capades -purple all during Lent, the red for Palm Sunday, purple again for Maundy Thursday, only to strip down the altar at the end of the service, and then on Saturday morning, everything has to be gussied up for Easter Vigil and Easter Day itself. By the end of the second service today, Fr. M said, “It is finished,  well and truly”.

I’m on a new medication, which has caused me to put on an inordinate amount of weight, and when I tried on my Easter Suit Wednesday night, I knew there was no way I was going to squeeze this body into that outfit. Thursday morning, while The Squire went to the Y, I took the car to Target and JC Penney’s. Target has some cute outfits, but nothing suitable for a little old lady, but I really lucked out at Penney’s. They had just marked down a bunch of $60 dresses to half price, and they were suitable for an adult to wear. Fancy that! I wore the dress to church Saturday night and again today.

Fr. M always invites the children in the congregation up to the altar when he does communion, so they can see what’s going on. He lets them help break the large priest’s host into smaller pieces, and when we say the Lord’s Prayer he has them all hold hands, and sometimes the kids will start to swing their hands back and forth. It’s pretty informal, but the kids get the idea that going to church is fun, not drudgery, which is nice. The smallest of the lot somehow got behind him this morning, so she couldn’t see anything, and when he backed up he nearly squashed her. She is too short to see, anyway, so I ended up doing half of the Prayer of Consecration holding her in my arms. She may be little, but she certainly was beginning to get heavy!

We have an elderly retired priest in the congregation, who showed up wearing a top hat, and using a cane. When the congregation was leaving after the service, a one-year old grabbed hold of the cane, and she and Paul walked out together – the oldest and the youngest.Easter Munchkin

We went up to Eldest Daughter’s home for Easter dinner – just the two of them, plus both of their kids, the Munchkin, and The Squire and myself. Just nice. Granddaughter-in-law is the sweetest girl, and I really wish we had a chance to get together more often than we do.

And I am exhausted, and going off to bed.

A very little girl, with a very large drumstick.

 

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Palm Sunday

20 Mar

palm Sunday

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Spring Comes to Baltimore

19 Mar

Aubrey.Our great-granddaughter, also known as The Munchkin, enjoying a warm day at the park . I gave her that outfit as a baby shower gift. Most folks load the parents up with newborn items, but I always give 12 to 18 month clothing.

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Oh, the Irony!

9 Mar

The funeral home went to the cemetery today with a probe, and my mum is not  buried in Doris’s grave. In fact, they poked several holes along that row, and she’s not in any of them.

And so, as she said of my dad, “God knows where to find her”.

Serves her right.

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Grave Problems

8 Mar

As some of you may know, my mum ended up being buried in another person’s grave. Well, the day of reckoning has arrived; Doris died Sunday and she’s going to want her spot back.

My mother was easily one of the oddest people on earth. We won’t go into all of that, but it probably tells you a good bit that she didn’t want a tombstone on her husband’s grave.   When my sister and I kicked up a mini-fuss over him being buried in an unmarked grave like a common pauper, she simply shrugged and replied, “God will know where to find him.” He was a veteran, so the marker would be free, and even though I knew there wasn’t a shot in this world that she’d ever visit his grave, I simply never got around to doing it.  As a result, when she died, all the person who marked the spot knew was “Fr. Parker was buried next to the Traftons.” Well, he was. On the right side as you face the line; my mum got planted on the left side. (I personally believe he had a hand in it, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Oddly enough, I had just spoken the to Cemetery Warden at the church on Thursday or Friday, explaining how the mix-up had occurred. I told him I had spoken to the state and they didn’t have any problems with my mum being moved. We met at the church today to look over the lay of the land, and there is a possibility that my mum may have been planted in the next spot over; when Mr. Trafton died, his wife had a concrete slab poured at the same time to hold her marker when it was needed. With that slab in place, it’s quite possible the grave digger skipped over that spot and buried my mum in the next available place.

I swear, the woman is as much trouble dead as she ever was when she was alive.

 

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Repaint – and Thin No More!

7 Mar

We have the ceiling and the trim done, so today we did the walls. We intend to put up wainscoting, so I measured 43 inches from the floor and drew a line. When I stepped back to see how it looked, the line was not level.  Now, I’m not the brightest crayon in the box, but I can at least draw a straight line with a yardstick. Well, silly me, I just took it as a given that the floor was level, and you’d think, after forty-one years, I’d just know better. Forty-three inches from the floor here is not necessarily the same as forty-three inches from the floor there. Should make cutting the wainscoting interesting.

The Squire got his six foot level and we started at one corner and went on around the room. Much better!

We taped all the trim and also ran a line of tape  around the room at the pencil mark. Discovered several things. 1) Blue painters tape sticks mercilessly to enamel trim, and 2) where it doesn’t fall straight off the wall, it sticks enough to pull off the original paint. Lots of touch-ups to be done, but the green paint is up.

After much scraping of walls and knuckles, we decided to paint over the textured paint on the end wall. The green paint picks up the little nubbins and deposits them elsewhere on the wall, white side up, so there are a lot of little flecks to be covered, and we also need to repaint along the bottom edge, as that is one of the places the blue tape pulled off the original paint.

A week of scraping, and we could have just crisscrossed it with tape and lifted that bad boy right off the wall.

 

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Soup, Anyone?

6 Mar

You’d think a person who has been cooking as long as I have would realize that a recipe that casoup potlls for an entire 8 ounce box of orzo and three 32 ounce cartons of broth is going to make one heck of a lot of soup. I could float a rowboat in that pot!

Fortunately, The Squire likes it, ‘coz we’re going to be eating it for quite some time.

 

stock picture – of a stock pot!

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Warning!

5 Mar

They’ve already sent us Ted Cruz;  what could be worse than that?Canadaian Warning

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Surprise!

4 Mar

We woke up this morning to about an inch of snow! It’s been well above 40-F for the last few days, so it really didn’t amount to much, other than looking pretty on the trees and grass for a while. It was all gone by noon. Blazer thought it was lovely! The last snow we had was so deep he was buried, but this was just enough to “snovel” around and kick up his heels. Mind you, it’ll be Spring in two weeks, but the weather will do as it pleases.

Speaking of things doing as they please, Local Grandson called to tell us he and his wife are expecting a baby in early October. His mom’s birthday is the 5th, and that was the original due date, but now the doctor says it will probably be a bit later. I reminded him that babies, like the weather, and the economy, will do as they please. Apparently twins run in his wife’s family because he said he kept asking the doctor, “You’re sure there’s only one in there?” So now, we have four great-grandchildren, plus two-thirds and one-third.

Which doesn’t quite add up to a whole baby. Yet.

We’ve gotten two coats of paint on the ceiling, and it really looks good. We also put a coat on the trim.  I think that will look better done in gloss, but at least it has a base coat. I got some samples of green paint, and we sloshed those on the wall to see which one we liked best. The jury is still out on that. We have a lot more of that blasted textured paint to scrape off yet before we can get too involved in that part of the project.

The Structural Engineer recommended putting extra posts under the dormer, and The Squire took care of that Tuesday and Wednesday. Where there were three, there are now seven posts; I feel as if I’m looking through the bars of the Folsom County jail, and the dog has gotten his rope wrapped around them a couple of times, but the SE felt part of the problem with the wall under the window was the extra weight of the second floor, and this certainly ought to relieve that. The good news is that because all we are doing is making repairs and not new construction, we don’t need a permit. Thanks Be To God. This place wouldn’t pass any sort of inspection; there are no footers, and there’s not a square corner or level floor in the entire place.

The Squire had an MRI of his head a few days ago, and he spoke with the GP today. Apparently, he has an effusion of the mastoid on the right side. Haven’t a clue what that means, frankly, but MRI does show a lot of “stuff” on the right side of his head. He has an appointment with the ENT on the 17th, so maybe we’ll get some sort of answers. I told him he needed to look for zebras. If there’s something odd, either The Squire or I will have it.

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