Admonished

There I was at work, just a working away, when my coworker came over and asked, "Did you write a blog yesterday?" 

Truth is, I hadn't, because I was just so tired I couldn't think of anything to say.  It was the worst kind of tired, too.  Not because the work day was so busy.  Quite the opposite.  It was because it was so slow.  I'm the kind of person who likes to stay busy, and days like yesterday are pure torture.  I can't stand just standing around, or trying to find stuff to do.  I want to work.  But that's how it was all day yesterday.  By the time I got home, all I wanted to do was sit in front of the TV and do nothing.  Thus, no post.

I told my coworker no, and she admonished me with a shake of her finger.  You should all be thankful, because if it weren't for her finger wagging, you probably wouldn't be getting a post today, either.  I have been totally discombobulated all day long. 

It all started when I woke up sometime in the middle of the night, and the first thing that popped into my head was, "I was asleep!  I was actually asleep!"  And the day just went down hill from there.

One of my coworkers is expecting a baby early next month, so we are going to have a little baby shower for her.  I was mentioning to another coworker that I had to go to the store this afternoon, and it was raining.  All the way home yesterday, I was telling myself to go to the store, because it was going to be raining today, but I didn't go, so now I have to go.  She asked me what I needed to get, and I said, "A gift for [our coworker]".  The one to whom I was speaking looked at me like I'd lost my mind and said, "You know when the shower is, right?"  I said, "tomorrow."  No, it's next Friday. 

She'd told me the date, but for some reason, I had tomorrow set in my mind.  So, yay, I didn't have to go to the store in the rain.  But that wasn't the end of my discombobulation.  As the work day drew to a close, I started looking for my supervisor to bring our paychecks.  It got closer and closer to quitting time, and still no paycheck.  Where was he with my paycheck???  Oh wait, it's only Thursday.  Sigh...

The good news is, there was a package waiting for me when I got home.  In said package was some yarn my mother in law sent me.

It's a really nice wool acrylic blend, and is so soft.  

It's DK weight, too, which I don't have a lot of.  I'm sure I'll find something to do with it.

Sometime between Tuesday and today, I realized I hadn't shown you the ceiling in my half bath off the master bedroom. It's as bad as the rest of the room. 

Yes, that is an actual hole in the upper right of the photo.  There are also several small bumps like the one at the bottom of the photo, just to the right of the lights.  I'm not even sure what they are.  Someone asked me if the previous owners did this job themselves.   I would have to say yes, because I can't imagine a professional doing this shoddy of a job. 

I know when I get it redone, I will be hiring a professional.  Which is why it hasn't happened yet, because those professionals don't work for free. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to browse patterns for DK weight yarn. 

My Bathroom

It's a good thing I got out and moved my spider lily bulbs yesterday, instead of waiting until today.  It was raining when I got up this morning.  It was raining when I went to work.  It was raining when I got off work.  It's raining now.  It's supposed to rain all day tomorrow, too.  And Thursday.  And I don't want to talk about it any more.

Since I brought up the subject of my bathroom yesterday, some of you might think I was exaggerating.  So, here are pictures to prove what I was saying.

1.  I know it's hard to see in this picture, but the top half of this wall is about 1/4 inch further back than the bottom half.  It looks like they bent the drywall to make the seams meet.  And, yes, it was stained like that already.

 2.  For some reason, instead of installing the drywall vertically, it seems to have been hung horizontally.  Therefore little lines like this go all the way around the room.  And I do mean, all the way.

3.  The drywall doesn't meet in the corners.   This is the worst one, but none of them are flush.  BTW, this picture is the closest one to the actual color of the walls.

4.  The texturing -- which is awful to begin with -- is very unevenly applied.  You can see here it is very dense. 

Just a few inches away, the wall is nearly smooth. 

5.  Here is an obvious seam between the drywall panels, in addition to the horizontal one going all the way around the room.

As you can see, it's not worth trying to fix what is there, so when I can save up enough money, I'm going to have the whole thing redone.  Completely replace the drywall, get the wiring up to code, and replace the insulation.  I'm sure it has the fiberglass stuff that was popular back in the 60s and 70s.  I want to put that expanding foam insulation in there.  I know it's more expensive, but I think it's worth the money. 

The problem is getting the money.  The good news is, I get to go in early tomorrow to do what we call picking up partials.  What that means isn't really that important to the story.  What is important is overtime.

Yay! 

Besides, who needs sleep anyway? 

Success!

I have succeeded in getting Cody's room cleaned up.  It is once again his room, doubling as a guest room.  Except that I never have guests.  So, it's mostly just Cody's room.  Except that he never comes home, so...it's... still his room, and it always will be. 

Over the last few months, however, it had started transforming into a storage room again, and I wasn't about to let it complete that transformation.  So, this afternoon, I put on some music, and got in there and started cleaning.

A big part of that cleaning was combining boxes.  When Cody left to go back for his last semester of college, he left several boxes of his things behind.  Turns out most of those boxes were only half full.  I combined them and was able to toss two empty boxes into the trash.  Everything else I stacked neatly in a corner of the closet.  It looks a whole lot better in there now.

I finally got his new sheets and comforter on his bed.  I still need to get some pillows for that room, but at least he's got sheets now.

Somebody tell me, what is the deal with polyester sheets?  I don't think they would be at all comfortable to sleep on.  If they hadn't come with the set, I wouldn't have bought them.  I don't think Cody will care, though.  He can sleep anywhere.   

The blue and black curtains will eventually be moved out of that room.  The blue one will go into my bedroom, and the black one will be moved into the craft room.  I can't find any curtains the color I want to put into Cody's room, though.  I'm looking for the dark green color of the fish and canoes, but haven't found it yet.  OK, OK, I haven't really looked, but now that Christmas is behind me, I can get back to working on the house. 

While I was cleaning, I found some paintings Beverly and James had given to Cody when they moved out.  I'd forgotten about them.  I'll have to get them down and see what they are, and see if they'll go with the hunting lodge theme I've got going in there. 

I wanted to show you this other thing I found.  It's a box of glass ornaments that someone gave me for Christmas years and years ago.

I have never, ever put them on the tree, because cats, and I'm a bit on the klutzy side, but I absolutely love them.  I especially love this.

It's a sheet showing which space each ornament fits into.  So much better than trying to guess where they go.  And look, even the storage box is gorgeous.

It it wasn't storing glass ornaments, I'd put my treasures into it.  If I had any treasures, that is...

It's the little things that made a house a home.  I finally got my toilet paper holder put up. 

I'd bought it several months ago, but hadn't put it up because I want to redo that bathroom.  I was going to just paint it, but whoever put up that drywall did a really poor job of it.  Same with the texturing, which I don't like anyway.  It's really thick in some spots, and almost nonexistent in others. 

After thinking about it, I'm going to find someone to pull all the drywall off and just replace it completely.  It's going to be a while before I can afford that, so I went ahead and hung the TP roller.  I can put it back up after getting the bathroom done. 

Don't you just love that color? 

That's sarcasm, by the way.  It just boggles my mind they way they decorated that bathroom.  I don't understand why anyone would even do that.  How could they have thought that would look nice?  Well, different people have different tastes, and this room definitely isn't in my taste.

So, I did all that this afternoon while it was raining.  This morning, I got out into the yard and moved four more clumps of spider lily bulbs out of the middle of my yard.  That's the last of the ones in the front yard.  I still have one sizeable clump, but those are the ones I'm going to send to my friend Cyndye. 

My neighbor Mrs. Newman was out working in her yard.  She asked me what I was going to put into my front flower beds this year.  I said I don't know yet.  I usually just walk through the flower section at Wal-mart and pick out stuff I like.  I am going to extend my bed a little more, too. 

But I'll show you all that as it happens. 

Want To Play A Game?

Remember how I told you we used to like to play games?  Well, I got all those games out and moved them to the front closet, and in the process, I thought I'd show you what all I had.  .

There are the old classics, like Life, Clue, and Othello.

Scrabble, Connect Four, and dominoes.

Truthfully, I never liked Scrabble that much.  I only bought the game because I'd read that they were going to stop making them with real wood tiles.   Not sure if they did or not, but I bought one because of it.   I also didn't really like traditional dominoes, but we played Chickenfoot all the time. 

I'm not quite sure why I have three varieties of Monopoly, since I absolutely hate that game, but there they are.

Then there are these Lord Of The Rings games,

And this one.  It's one of those card games.  I never figured out how to play it. 

Same with this card game (on the right).  We did play a modified version of the board game on the left.  Cody really liked that one, and asked to play it often.

I bought these two when I was overseas, but the ex wasn't too much into playing games. 

So, family game night never became a thing with us.

Mancala was one of Cody's favorite games, and Skip-Bo was one of mine. 

The cribbage set was one my dad gave me, and the Roman game in the middle was another one I never figured out how to play.  I ordered it out of a game and puzzle catalog that I used to get every year around Christmas time.  I liked the idea of playing an ancient game. 




Trumpet was also a favorite, as was the Christmas Trivia game, which was designed to be used with a Trivial Pursuit board. 

We didn't have one, the LOTR version coming along much later, so we just answered the questions without keeping score.  Oh, the Star Wars game is another one that never got played. 

But this, this game is the piece de resistance of my game collection.  The very rare and hard to find Dragonriders of Pern board game.

OK, maybe not so rare, since I checked Ebay and found three of them on there, and two on Amazon.  I got mine off Ebay many winters ago.  It's another one I've never played.  I haven't even punched out the game pieces. 

I've also got at least one of my Dad's chess sets around here somewhere.  If I find it, I'll be sure to show it to you. 

Everything is all video games now, but I think there's a lot to be said for good, old fashioned board games -- you know, the kind where you actually have to interact with your opponents.  It's something that needs to make a comeback. 

Day One

I have a long weekend this weekend. 

I have long list of things I want to get accomplished on this long weekend that I have this weekend.  Amazingly enough, I've actually gotten a few things done from my long list of things I want to get accomplished on this long weekend that I have this weekend.  I figured I'd spend this long weekend that I have this weekend sitting in front of the TV, but no, I've been a real go-getter on this first day of this long weekend that I have this weekend. 

Top of the list, I bought some of that expanding foam sealer and clogged up the openings where the wasps are getting in and out. 

Kinda looks like Jabba the Hutt is crawling up the side of my house...OK, I may have gone a little overboard with the foam, but I wanted to make sure those suckers were plugged.  I'm tired of having to dodge wasps every time I go out my back door. 

Besides, I can trim it flush once it sets well.  I went around and plugged all the holes, gaps, and cracks I could find, around all my windows and doors.  Maybe that'll help keep the giant spiders out of my house, too.  

Also on the list was to work on cutting up that big pile of firewood in my back yard, and maybe start sorting through some of the stuff in my shed.  However, it has been sooooo humid these last few days, that I didn't want to do anything outside.  I wasn't even outside that long, and was drenched -- well, it wasn't hot enough to really sweat, so let's just call it condensation.

How humid has it been?  It was so humid that last night when I went to bed, my sheets were damp.  I kid you not.  It made for a miserable night.  I changed said sheets this morning, and kept my little window air conditioner running all day, just to try to keep the dampness down.

Anyway, since it was too muggy to work outside, I thought I'd start cleaning Cody's room up.  When he was little, we liked to play games.  We stopped, though, because he got so ugly when he lost.  Not just when he lost, when I scored at all.  He wanted it to be a total shutout every time, and would pitch such a fit I didn't want to play with him.  It just wasn't fun any more.  I still have all the games, though.  When I moved into this house, I'd stuck them in the top of his closet.  

I'm thinking of moving them into the top of the coat closet in the living room, and put my Christmas wreaths up into his closet, where the games are now.   I ended up not doing that today, because I went into the craft room to get something, and got distracted.

I don't even remember now what I was looking for, but what I found was an entire bag of sock yarn I'd forgotten I had.  And a partially finished sock. 

I'm going to have to rip it and start over, I think.  I remember that I'd made alterations to the pattern, but I didn't write them down, because I'd remember, right?  Only I don't remember.

I found a Jayne hat.

And an almost finished Jayne hat, for which I already have a pom pom made that I can't currently find.  I just know I'd already made it.

Why I felt I needed so many Jayne hats is beyond me, but there they are.  I've actually knit one more, that I gave to Cody a few years ago.  When I was down there last month, he told me he does wear it.  And out in public, too.  We also discussed the fact that Cody's roommate had never seen Firefly, and how that was going to have to change.  He'd never seen Star Wars either.  Now he has.  Now, he is buying the DVDs of Star Wars. 

And I found a baby hat.

Which is nice, because we're having a baby shower next Friday for my coworker, who -- quite conveniently -- is having a boy.

That's about it for my day, unless you want to hear about the laundry I did, or the dishes I washed, or the dog's toenails I clipped.

Nah, didn't think so. 

Be Careful What You Wish For

Yeah, yeah, I know it's been awhile.  There just hasn't been much interesting going on lately.  Still trying to get back into the groove at work, so there's not much exciting going on there. 

We do have some new people on our line.  Some of them are temps, but one came from second shift.  I won't call her name, but she calls herself "Queen" because that's what she seems to think she is.  And she writes it with 3s instead of the Es.  Like Qu33n.  She has attitude oozing from every pore.

At first, I thought it was just me, since I sometimes have trouble reading people.  However, in the last week, I've heard other coworkers talking.  They've noticed her attitude, too.   For example, yesterday, a couple of the header assemblies weren't fitting onto the coil, so Theresa told the person putting them on to bring them back to Queen to straighten them out.  Queen told the girl that she wasn't going to straighten the headers and for her to give them to me to do.  I guess she thought she was too good to rework headers.

She's also been complaining because when we git a bit ahead in our work, Group Leader Theresa has been asking her to help out on the line.  Now, let me step outside of my story for a moment, and tell you that we all get moved from time to time.  It's not like Theresa has been singling her out.  Everybody has to go and do what needs to be done, whether it's their regular position or not.  But, Queen somehow thinks she should be above such things.  Getting moved is just for us little people, so to speak.  And she's been letting everyone know exactly how she feels about it.

I'm not supposed to be working on the line.  I'm a sub-brazer. 
She's not supposed to move me, I came here to sub-braze. 
How come she never moves you? (Looking disdainfully down her nose at me.)
And don't you people know who my daddy is?

She's been whining to her daddy --who also works there, but isn't anyone of any significance.  He's a peon just like the rest of us.  She's been complaining about how badly she's been treated since she came to day shift.  Yesterday, I overheard him tell her, "Maybe you should take a vacation day.  If they have to run the line without you, they'll see how important you are." 

OK, so now I know where she got the attitude. 

It's a good thing I didn't have anything in my mouth, or everyone over there would have gotten a shower.  I went and told my group leader what he'd said, and she said, "Are you serious?" 

Today, Queen got her wish.  One of the line brazers was absent.  As soon as I saw she wasn't going to be there, I asked Group Leader Theresa if I could go line braze for the day.  I like to do that every once in a while, just so I don't forget how.  As soon as I asked, Theresa got this sly grin on her face and said, "Go ahead." 

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. 

I won't go into all the gory details.  Let's just say it wasn't pretty.  It was not pretty at all.  Theresa called her over to put her own headers on the coils, and she couldn't even do it, because they were so bad.  Maybe now now she understands why Theresa never moves me.   I can definitely say that all the people on the line do understand why Theresa never moves me.   They were begging me to go back to my stand, but Theresa said, "Stay over here a little longer." 

I have a feeling it will be a long, long time before Theresa moves me again. 

Ah, but I said I didn't want my blog to be nothing but griping about work, so let's talk about something else.  Such as knitting.


I'm still working on this scarf.  I've gotten to the point that my skein was starting to fall apart, so I had to wind the rest of my yarn into a ball. 

I'm almost done, but got kind of bored with it.  So, I picked up my sock again.

This is after two pattern repeats.  I'll probably knit two more repeats before beginning the heel flap. 

Sometimes, though, you just need mindlessness, so I started another square on the sock yarn blanket.

The good news is, we are getting a long weekend.  We get Monday off for MLK day, and I have a long list of things I want to get done.

The reality is, I'll probably sit in front of the TV all weekend. 

Baby It's Cold

So, there I was at work, just a working away, when one of my coworker tells me, "They said it's snowing."

"Really?"  says I, my face lighting up like the daughter of the original weather holic that I am.  "I'm going to go see."

Off I trotted (not literally, workplace safety and all that) to the nearest door and sure enough, tiny white flakes were drifting down from the gray sky.   It didn't last long, though, and soon, all we were left with was cold.  Bone chilling, mind numbing cold.

It was a perfect day to come home to a nice fire in the grate

and a bit of knitting in my lap.  

Hey, it could be worse.  I could live where my sister does.

So, see?  There is always a bright side to everything.

Second Day

Today was my second day back at work.  No, wait...is it the third?  Or the 25th or 47th?  I don't even know any more.  It feels like I've been there forever.  And they aren't even giving us any time to ease back into the routine before scheduling us to work Saturday.  I, for one, will be glad to get some overtime checks again.  My group leader tried to talk my supervisor into letting me start coming in early again, but he said they won't give him authorization for that.  He did say I can come in half an hour early.  That's all they'd let him do.  So, I'm going to start going in at 6:30 in the morning. 

So, there I was at work, just a working away...I went to tubing to check something on the computer when one of my coworkers told me I had some pretty lips. Okaaay...No, that's not weird at all.  I said, "I don't think anyone has ever told me that before."  Then she told me that I remind her of her mother.  Okaaaaay....she's 10-ish years older than me, and black.  That didn't make it any less weird.  But she's a really sweet lady, so I'll cut her some slack. 

You know that new shower curtain I put up just a few short weeks ago?  I was really disappointed in it.  It's only a couple of months old, yet the image is already starting to peel off of it.

I can stand there in the shower and run my fingernail down the plastic, and all the print just peels off, like sunburned skin.

Boo!  Once I get that first overtime check, I'm going to go on Amazon or somewhere and find a new one. I can pay a little more and get a better quality curtain.  The one I have is just a cheap thing from Wal-mart.  Then I've got to get back to trying to decorate it.  The bathroom, that is.  Not Wal-mart. 

Remember how much I griped about painting the paneling in my bedroom?  Somebody knock me upside the head, because I'm starting to get the urge to paint my living room.  Seriously, somebody knock me upside the head, and keep knocking me upside the head until the urge goes away.

The good news is,  my living room is about the same size as my bedroom, so it won't be a whole lot more work to paint it.  The other good news is, I've got to build my bank account back up, so it won't be happening any time soon anyway.  Plus, I still have to get my bathroom and bedroom finished.  So, there is that.

When I got home from work this afternoon, I found a lovely little surprise in my mailbox.  My mother in law sent me some wool socks!  

Realtree wool blend hiking socks.  And just in time for the cold weather! 

Thank you, Dawn! 

First Day Back

My first day back at work passed uneventfully, which is always a good thing -- even if it does made for rather dull blogging.

When the alarm went off at 5:30 AM, I lay there for a moment and wondered what would happen if I just didn't go in.  At all.  Ever. 

But of course, I knew the answer to that.  I'd lose my job, and the accompanying paycheck.  Without said paycheck, wouldn't be able to buy things, like my house, and my car, and food...so, out of bed I got and off to work I went.  Where the day, as previously mentioned, was uneventful. 

And therefore this blog post is dull. 

Except for this:  

Guess which one is me?

Monday Miscellany

Back in the day, back when James found Squeaky wandering in my front yard, I didn't know when she'd been born. She looked like she was around 4 months old, so I arbitrarily assigned her a January birthday.   What better day in January to acknowledge her birth than the first?

Yes, I know today is the second, but there just didn't seem to be any place to put her birthday in yesterday's post without disrupting the flow of what I was writing.  Eh, she's not picky.  So, Happy Birthday, Squeaky.  It's her sweet 16th.

Squeaky says, "You woke me up for this?????"

Her Highness was not amused.  But at least I escaped unbloodied -- this time.


OK, then, moving right along...

My big project for the day was to get my Christmas decorations all taken down and put away.  Nifty thing is, one day last week when I was out getting some firewood, I discovered that the previous owner had stacked some of that wood on a pallet.  I'm not sure what it's made out of, but it looks like some kind of hard rubber or plastic. 

I got out there and got it.  I washed it off and put it into my shed to put my Christmas tree on.  When it rains, the floors in my shed get very wet.  I'm not sure if the rain is running in under my doors or if it's just the humidity.  I had some books in cardboard boxes get ruined because of this.  When I first realized what was happening, I set my Christmas tree up on some pieces of wood, so the stand wouldn't rust from sitting in water.  Setting it up on this pallet will be even better. 

I really need to start working on cleaning that shed out. 

Anyway, I wanted to get everything put back into the shed before the expected storms hit, and let me tell you, I barely made it.  Not 5 minutes after I'd taken the last box out there, the bottom dropped out and it came a regular gully washer. 

We got quite a bit of rain, but not the bad storms they were predicting.  At least, not here where I live.   There was a tornado South of here, but no injuries have been reported.

I've been blogging for a while now, but I don't have a really huge following.  My blog usually gets between 75 - 100 hits per post.  Not a whole lot, but not too shabby, either.  Every once in a while, though, I publish a post that gets an inordinate number of hits.  Like this one:

I wonder what it is about that one post that made it get 920 hits.  Not that I'm complaining, mind you.  I just wonder what made it so interesting, and what can I do to make the rest of my posts just as interesting? 

Finally, Beverly has been going through some of her mother's old photos and posted these.  This first one was taken around 1954 or 1955. 

That's my dad, standing in the back in the middle.  His two sisters are on either side of him, along with their husbands and children.  That's my Mammaw and Pappaw sitting in the front.

This next one looks like it was taken in late 1951 or early 1952. 

This last one was taken in the late 1940s. 

My dad is in his Army uniform, but I don't know if this was taken before he went to Japan, or after he got back.

Well, I have to go back to work tomorrow, and I'm not looking forward to it.  But at least, maybe I'll have something interesting to blog about. 

We shall see.

Happy New Year!

Last night, we bade farewell to 2016, and pretty much all of us said good riddance to it.  It was a year that was plagued by one celebrity death after another.  I don't know, maybe it was the presence of social media, but it just seemed like an awful lot of my childhood icons passed away, from Carol Brady to Princess Leia, to Shepherd Book, to Father Mulcahy.  Now, I'm normally not one to get wound up over celebrities -- just a quick, "Oh, how sad" and I move on.  There were two that really tore me up, though.  Two that actually wrenched tears from these usually dry eyes.  One was Alan Rickman.  The other was Mike VI.

They will be missed.

Well, since I last posted, I took another road trip.  This time I headed north to meet up with these lovely ladies in what has become an annual tradition.

We talked, we ate delicious food, we knit, we laughed until we cried, then all too soon it was time to go, and many bitter tears were shed at our parting.  We promised to get together next year, and we all made it home safely.

The good news is, I still haven't found any knots in this yarn. 

The sock is coming along nicely, too. 

I finally settled on a simple basket weave pattern.  It's one I've knit before, and I still had the pattern in a binder.   

Yesterday it rained all day long.  I took a bit of time to sort through some boxes I'd put in the snake/craft/computer room -- stuff that'd been waiting to be sorted since I moved into this house.  In one the boxes, I found a booklet that has the hat and scarf pattern I've been hunting for forever.  OK, maybe not forever, but for a long time.  Let's just say, I'd knit the set for my soon to be 17 year old nephew when he was three, and have been looking for the booklet ever since.  You'll be hearing more about that in the days to come.

Now to start your year with some humor.  One of the dogs left a few bits of dog food in the kitchen floor.  I was in there tidying up, and saw it laying there.  Briefly, I wondered how in the world a rabbit got inside the house and pooped in my kitchen. 

I've long since given up trying to find an explanation for such things.

Just roll with it.  It's what I do.