A Small Tribute to a Yearly Visitor

Since we moved in here 14 years ago an elderly woman would stop by for a visit. She was a Jehovah's Witness doing the door to door thing they do.

Over the years I have gotten rid of the JWs in various ways but this woman was special, she really was. I didn't immediately  just try and get rid of her, and I have come up with many ways to do that. She was really friendly and just made me want to talk to her. I always enjoyed it.

A few months ago I realized she had not come by and started wondering about her, a little concerned something had happened to her. I even voiced my concern to a few close friends. I did not recall her name. She surely told me the first time she came but the next year or two I saw an elderly lady with The Watchtower and the Bible in her hand I knew it was the same woman and later I knew her by sight, didn't need to see The Watchtower in her hand. I don't know if she ever told me her name again.

Today, Sunday, I had a visit from a couple, a woman and her husband, someone else was in the back seat of the car but the dog scared them and they didn't come out. I realized they were JWs and asked about the woman that used to come here every year. The woman told me that as she pulled in the drive she realized that she had been here a couple time with a an elderly woman named Frances and that must be who I was talking about, I agree, I did not remember this woman but that doesn't matter, visiting just a couple times in 14 years… nah, don't recall her, but now I know the name of the elderly woman that did come every year. Frances passed away last year. I am saddened by her passing even though I traditionally do not care for JW visits I kind of looked forward to her coming by.

Before leaving they asked if they could stop by again, I told them sure, they could, I don't follow the same path but had gotten to like looking over the The Watchtower and the newer one, called Awake! Maybe next year we will get into a real conversation like Frances and I did.

A very neat thing they showed me was an ap for tablet and smartphones, I don't have either but kind of wish I did just for this ap. I mentioned that I had a few different versions of the Bible and liked to compare and even often go online and compare verses of the Bible in other versions that I don't have. The husband then showed me this ap that www.jw.org has as a free download that you can click on any verse in the online Bible and it shows you the different Bible versions of that same verse. Oh I love it! I wish I could use it; how perfect for someone like me who loves to compare them. Oh well, maybe it will be available at some point to a regular computer user only.

I have and will continue to miss Frances, may she enjoy her afterlife.

Good Bye Frances. You really were the first JW I didn't mind having visits from and congratulations for not being scared away the first time. I really respected you.

More Stuff on the New Room and Halloween

Yeah, I started this two days ago and got as far as the title before being interrupted and well, just getting back to it now.

Today is voting day. I voted. Did you? Remember the smaller the election the larger your voice. That doesn't mean you should blow off the big ones though. 

Halloween was okay, Tink had fun so that was a good thing but I was not having the greatest day. I was irritable to say the least. Tink was so excited about Halloween coming up, more excited than I can really remember her being. She has always liked Halloween but she was just kind of over the top. She looked so cute with her make up on. And she played along and growled at people who acted afraid of her.

The new room construction slowed down a bit. Ron forgot to order the roofing and siding tin in a timely manner and so the was a Day 5 and then a big slow down of about a week before any building helpers came back. During the "lay off" Ron and I did some things, so I guess that could be considered another day but, eh. I pulled the siding off of the house that was now inside the room and he applied some flashing along the bottom outside so critters and wind can't get under. I could call that Day 5 1/2 but I didn't take pictures of it.

Day 5 did show a lot of change. The peak part of the wall was finished, windows and the door went in, that black rosin/tar/felt paper (whatever it is called in your neck of the woods) was put on the roof, and the room was wrapped.

So then came Day 5 1/2 where I did the siding and Ron did the flashing. You can see the flashing in some Day 6 pics but not the siding part. Mostly, Day 6 was the roof tin being put on.

  

Then things came up, such as a sick baby and the weather so while we expected the siding up by now, it is not. Ron has started running the wire inside and set the outlet boxes etc. Nothing hooked up, just holes drilled and dead end wires running through them and little blue plastic boxes nailed to the studs. Still need a couple things, like the boxes for the ceiling lighting and the wires hooked up to the fuse box and then we can put in the insulation. Not sure when the guys are coming back to side it. It won't be long though.

A neighbor that came by for some eggs told me that the room would fill up faster than expected. I told her I didn't think so, that room was going to be filled right away, that is what it is for, to clear out a lot of the rest of the crap in the house.

The New Room Part 2

The work on the new room has progressed for two more days. Wednesday is not going to be a working day for the guys coming over to work on it. The main guy is being paid a silly amount of money by someone for him to come and install something. Since the guy is our friend and this is an informal hiring on our part, we thought it would probably be good for him to take the day off from our place to do this other job.

I am hoping our new bathroom door comes in tomorrow and we can work on that. It is supposed to be here by Thursday but I am still hoping it will get here a day early. If it doesn't, we can pull some siding from inside the room. The new bathroom door will replace the lack of door we have on the bathroom; we have a curtain. The curtain is better than no door which is the way the bathroom is actually built. I ordered an accordion door for it. It is a large span to cover, 54 inches, and the door is 48 inches fully spread open (or would that be closed?). I could have ordered two doors and had then join in the middle but thought it would work better, and a lot less expensive, to block one side of the doorway with a 1 x 12 plank and hang the door from it. That gives us a few inches of play for the door so it isn't stretched to its limit. I need to stain the plank to match the rest.

Anyway, here are some more pics of the new room.

Three walls are up.

A view of the new and old back door.

Rafters are up, end of day three.

Day four and the sheeting is going up.

From inside facing the back.

Inside facing front.

Last Day four pic. Some roofing sheets have been put up.

It is going to be sweet to have this new room.

The Next Blog/The New Room

8/5/2014,

The Next Blog

I was sending these blogs to my dad as letters but he died on July 24th so I obviously will not be doing that anymore. He was a good guy; I do, and will continue to, miss him.

10/19/2014

The New Room

I included the failed attempt I made at a blog after my dad died. It didn't get far. And then other things came up, such as my just turned 15 year old running away. We are still not through that mess but that is not what I want to write about right now, I want to write about my new room. I include the little blurb about my dad because it seemed fitting.

My dad left my siblings and I some life insurance money. One of the things I am doing with that money is home improvement. The first step in this is a new room on the back/side of the house just off the kitchen. This room is 12 x 14 outside dimensions. It will hold the washer and dryer and hot water heater, all of which is on the other side of the house in a small utility room that isn't well insulated or easy to move around in. The hot water will no longer take forever to get to the kitchen and we will not have to worry as much about it freezing up in the winter. The room will also hold our upright deep freeze and possibly our chest freezer but I am not sure about that at the moment. I will have room for all the odd kitchen stuff I have and don't use every day or every week but do not want to get rid of, like my canners, food dehydrator, extra large stock pots, empty canning jars even, all sorts of stuff; I'll even have a place to put the vacuum cleaner.

Wow, a little off topic here, I just looked at the TV and saw the nighttime skyline of Denver because of the Bronco game -- I am sure glad I don't live there anymore.

The room will be open to the house, via the kitchen door and the window over the sink during the winter so it can stay warm. But we will close the door and window in the summer so we don't have to cool it. The room will have good insulation (better than the rest of the house has) and will have good summer ventilation (which this house also lacks in general) to keep it cooler without making the AC do it. I figure I will be doing some summer cooking out there too.

Getting this room done and set up will allow us to finish the kitchen floor a lot easier than we had been looking at. We need to pull the last of the carpet up, which is only along part of two walls and under stuff, like the refrigerator. Then pull up the layer of old tiles followed by the layer of even older tiles until we are at the subfloor. We are to the subfloor in about half of the kitchen, another part is down to just one layer of tile. Unfortunately, we started this a couple years ago but Ron can't get down to scrape the tile because of his back and I was doing it until it put me into so much pain I just quit. We have had bare subfloor in part of the kitchen for quite some time. But my hernia has been fixed and I think I can scrape again, especially if I can actually get to the floor without having to move a bunch of stuff every few feet. 

Probably next spring we will start on the other part of the home improvement, a big part. We will tear down the den and old utility room, the den being a carport that has tin walls and a wooden door, enough to keep the weather off you when taking a cigarette, and the small utility room that is at the back of the den is barely more substantial. Anyway, that will be torn off and we will use the cement slab for the foundation of a two story add-on of approx. 12 x 20. That we are going to do that is pretty solid but what we are doing with the add-on is still up in the air. Two large rooms or four medium rooms or one large and two medium, two down, one up, or two up and one down, what exactly the rooms will be -- still a bit fuzzy there.

I failed to take a real "before" picture but I did get a couple real early ones. You can see the frame of the old awning we had over the back step; it did have brown tin on top of it.

The floor level is being set here. The freezer is still on the step.

It looks a bit small with the awning frame. This was day one.

Here is day two.

Notice no awning frame and the freezer is gone.

The window to the left of the door, and the door, will go into the room. The other window is on the outside of the room.

You can see that better in this last picture. There will be a new back door facing the actual back of the house whereas this door is on the side.

Well, that is the end of day two.

I'll try to keep you updated.

Little Things

There really has not been much going on here.

Our weather has been rather cool for summer, just a couple days in the 90s and that was followed by this odd cold front we are in right now. Our temps are supposed to get down into the low-mid-50s tonight; it is not the first time this week. And our highs have been in the 70s. It really does not seem like July in the Ozarks.

I almost stepped on a copperhead the other day; this is not the first time and no reason to panic. I was shooing the milk cow out of our little pet cemetery and put my foot down next to a stick. I thought to myself, "That looks like the butt of Ron's walking stick. I wonder what it is doing laying out here." About that time it slithered away. Copperheads are not aggressive thank goodness. I just snickered and said, "Oh, it was a snick." I admit I seem to have an issue with telling copperheads and sticks apart if the copperhead isn't coiled up. I almost stepped on the biggest copperhead I have ever seen. A few others said the same about it. It was as big around as my foot. And I put my foot down right next to the thing. When I realized it was a snake I was a bit unnerved this time, it was really big, I hollered, "SNICK!" which was supposed to be, "The stick is a snake." Which in hindsight wouldn't have made sense to anyone else anyway… SO we have snick and snakes here.

But the only other snake I have seen was a little one in the garden, a bit bigger than a garter snake but no idea what it was, it ran too fast. Ron hasn't seen a snake but says he can smell them everywhere. So can the cats and dogs. And one dog got bit by a copperhead, we assume as he swelled up real bad at the bite area but did not die. We have had cats bit before but not a dog. It was at his throat so it is a really good thing he has a thick coat of hair as that is kind of a deadly spot even with copperheads. He should be more careful from now on.

Right at the end of June I found a four leaf clover while collecting turtle food. I thought that was neat, can't recall ever finding one before. Then, once again collecting turtle food, I find another. Wow. Here a couple weeks go by and I find another one yesterday (Wednesday). And, then, I found another one today. Four of them in less than a month. All the years I collected clover for the bunnies I never found one.

Yesterday, so I find another four leaf clover. Just a few minutes until my soap opera comes on and I grab my insulated mug thing I drink my morning tea from to go rinse it; I had meant to do it last time I had gotten up but had forgotten to take it with me. I walk toward the kitchen and can see water all over the floor and there is the sound of a lot of water running. The sink is not on, it isn't coming from the fridge, I look back at the sink and it is pouring out from the cabinet underneath. I run over there to shut the water off assuming, I guess, that the water was just dumping downward. I opened the door and got blasted full on in the face and chest with ice cold water -- it was like someone turned the hose on me. Now, I was cussing rather loudly at this point. Ron opens the door and asks, "What's wrong?" I yelled at him, "Shut the water off at the pumphouse, NOW!" He did. When he came back he was concerned that he didn't catch all I was saying but I told him the rest was just cussing as I stood in a kitchen full of water. A clamp had given way and the water had been just pouring onto the floor for just under 10 minutes, I had just been in there. Ron shop-vaced up 20 gallons and there were another few gallons gotten by towel, we are still drying out. But before you think my four leaf clovers aren't lucky, that could have happened while we were in town, while we were in bed, while we were in the garden even. For that matter if I hadn't forgotten to rinse out my tea cup I probably would not have walked back in there for another half hour or longer. I think we were darn lucky. Plus, the water stopped about 4 inches from the boxes of photos.

Tink was cute. As soon as the pump was turned off she said, "The water stopped."

I had to laugh at that, I told her I wished she would have told someone it started.

Tink is cleaning up cat puke now. She has watched us do it for years. Get a plastic bag and some paper towels. She does that. But somehow she missed that we throw the plastic bag away afterward. She sticks it back under the sink where she got it. Surprise, surprise. It isn't so bad know that we know to check.

Turtles

We turned the box turtles loose today. I am sad *and* happy about it. Morg adopted the first one 4 years ago after a turtle race at a community picnic. Her name was Nancy, I called her Nancy Pants, and she was a three-toed box turtle that may have had a little ornate box turtle mixed in somewhere in her background. The other came a year later after another turtle race at the next years picnic. He was named Mayhem and he was an ornate box turtle.

She took very good care of them at first, even though I discovered this year that their enclosures should have been twice the size they were. But about two years ago, when she adopted an African tortoise she sort of stopped taking care of them. And it was not because she was paying attention to the tortoise, she was sort of neglecting that too.

Incidentally, I said "NO" on the tortoise but she wound up with it anyway. I guess I should be happy because originally she was going to get two of them. Morg's half sisters' uncle breeds them in Arizona so she had the opportunity to get them for free and they are rather costly. But they were babies. In the pet trade they need to be four inches to sell. After two years this one is finally close to that. I think it is just wrong to have one here in this climate. They need temps from 80 to 100. That might work in the summer but what about the winter? We don't keep our house that warm in either season. And sure, it is little now but it will need a room of it's own in a few more years, these things get large, I mean LARGE. Stick little kids on it for a ride type large. We don't have a place for it inside or out.

Okay, back to the other story. Morg slowed in taking care of them so of course it became *my* job. I have been the one oing out and collecting wild greens and berries and digging worms, catching grasshoppers and pulling off their legs, catching moths and cutting their wings -- starting to sound a little cruel huh? Actually, it comes down to it is a darn good thing bugs don't bother me and I have always liked digging worms. I remember digging worms as a very little kid and getting mad at mom for dumping the can I was collecting them in after I went to bed. But anyway, I was spending a couple hours a day dealing with the turtles directly or telling Morg to do what she needs to do for them (change the water usually). I decided when I found out they really need as minimum to have twice the space they had that we really needed to be fair to them. None of it was being fair to me. So I talked to Morg about it and she was reluctant but still did not take over the turtle duties. I talked to her again. We set a date. I was going to fatten them up a little so the had a good start and we would free them. She was all sorts of sad and I am sure thinking of me as the bad guy. She went over to the turtles and looked at them. I walked up to her and told her she wasn't going to be the only one to miss them. I started to say something else then choked up and started crying -- as I sort of am right now, so I just turned and walked away. Morg realized I was not just being bitch about them. But the release day, Sunday June 29, was too hot to stick them out there without them having to find their way around and new shelter etc., it was the hottest day we have had. The next day was cooler but still hot. The forecast said today was not even going to get into the 80s, tomorrow also. No huge bouts of rain expected either. So today was the day.

Morg and I walked them about 100 yards up the stream and around the corner of the bluff and let them go. They were both getting excited as we walked, happy to be out again I am sure. When we put them down Nancy just took off. Mayhem got whiff of Nancy Pants and started after her. It is not breeding season bud, sorry. I picked him up and moved him in a different direction, it didn't help. I did it again, right back after Nancy. So I moved Nancy. That works for a moment but Mayhem got scent of her again and started in her direction; she still had ten feet between them. I told her she was on her own now. I told them both to "Live long and prosper." And I really, really hope they do. I am going to miss them.

My turtle duties are not over yet though, we still have that African thing. It is a total vegetarian, no worm digging but I still have to find greens, just not near as many. I am hoping we can locate a home for it before this winter since the old stand-by for heat was incandescent bulbs. Now everything is fluorescent and they just don't offer the heat so you have to buy an expensive heat lamp. And the poor thing is just screwed if the power goes out. I wonder if the zoo would be interested in it?

On a different note…We have had a lot of visitors since spring started. I really mean a lot. Spring comes on and people go about visiting a little, nothing unusual about that. It usually slows down, it hasn't. Not only has it not slowed, I think it has picked up since summer started. Almost everyday we have at least one visitor. Some days it is way more than one. The day before yesterday people were here all day, not the same people, they changed, but there were people here all day. Last night I thought we were getting a rare break, and after the day before I kind of needed one, but then someone showed up around 9 pm. We already had one visitor toady, don't know if anyone else will show up or not. I was a little confused at first, then I started getting a little irritated, now it is just getting humorous. It must be because we have a shady front yard.

Springtime

Just thought I would checking and say "howdy." So, Howdy!

It has been a rainyish day and we are waiting for a "severe" storm this evening. We are supposed to have a hard freeze, 25 degrees, Monday night, the 14th. It is a bit late in the year but there was a year, maybe 4 years ago, where it got down to the high teens on the 20th of April so just because it is past the "average" date doesn't mean it is odd.

\It does mean we have to bring in our seedlings. We don't have much place for them. If we did we would probably have a better garden because we could start almost everything inside in early March and have stuff planted out by mid to late April. Oh well, maybe one day we will manage to find a place inside. I haven't felt much like gardening so far this year but it one of those things where if I don't do it now my future self will be kind of mad at me. I hate that.

Another thing I haven't felt much like doing, but in this case am just about compelled to by unknown powers, is spring cleaning. It didn't get done last year because of my surgery. I am not positive much of it got done the year before because I was so sick. It isn't pretty. Morg has had the chore of vacuuming the living room for a while now. Typical, she has not done a good job at nooks, crannies and corners, I have done some of that over time. However, there was about three inches of dust and animal hair behind the entertainment center.

Speaking of Morg, she is doing her first paid job last night and tonight. A neighbor who does floor stripping and other stuff for stores around here needed a couple replacement hands for a job and he has called on Ron a couple times but still needed another so Morg went. They left at around 8 pm and got back around 3:30 am. They finish it up tonight but it won't be so late, probably around midnight or 1 am.

We have 3 kinds of Daffodils and usually they overlap in bloom with one kind fading as another is coming heavy into bloom and the third doesn't bloom until the first is all gone; all 3 are in bloom at the same time this year. The guy done the road, the one that does floors, told Ron last night none of his has bloomed at all. That is a little odd.

An there are almost no Morels. This is sad.

The ticks are starting to come out. This is sad too.