Today Jon primed the downstairs stairway and hallway going into the basement. He tinted the primer yellow and it already has brightened up that area a ton! I just let Butler out for the last time and when I turned on the light for that stairway I thought the sun had come up it was so bright - and that was just the tinted primer. The paint fumes - that's another story - I can smell them clear upstairs in the bedroom......
And it must be time for light bulbs to blow on me when I flip switches. Last night the really high light bulb in the downstairs stairway blew on me. Thankfully Jon changed the light bulb for me today. When this happens again in the future I think I'll have to drag out my step ladder to be able to reach this one. And then just now when I went to get Butler's laundry out of the dryer (yes, Butler's laundry), one of the two light bulbs in the basement blew on me. I put a light bulb on the kitchen counter to take down with me to change that bulb out when I leave for work tomorrow.
Last night my niece and one of her boys stopped by thinking we could get Mike's motorcycle loaded into Tanner's truck so they could take it back home to Pella with them - nope. Actually the motorcycle was Mike's brother Ron's - who was Chrissy's dad and Tanner's grandfather. After Ron passed, we bought the bike off Marcia (my sis-in-law). I didn't know if the motorcycle would start since it had been in the basement for almost a year with the battery hooked up to the charger the way Mike had left it. Tanner was positive it would start. Tanner finally got the motorcycle out of the basement into my driveway, put the key in - took the key out to unlock the gas tank to check the gas - put the key back in and guess what?!?! It started!!!!!
Chrissy got teary because she said the last time she saw anyone on that motorcycle was her dad (Ron) so Tanner is reving the bike with one hand and reaches out to grab his mom with the other to hug her. Then I get teary because I remember how cute Mike looked in his brown, golf wind jacket - with a baseball cap on backward - pulling into the driveway after taking the bike for a ride. So Tanner then reaches out to me to give me a hug - still sitting on the bike as it's running. And the look on Tanner's face as the bike is running was ab-so-lute-ly priceless! Unfortunately the three of us couldn't pick the bike up to put in Tanner's truck - so the bike is back in the basement awaiting another time when we can have more bodies available to put the bike in the truck so it can go live with Tanner and his brother Colton - for another generation of McFall boys to ride it.
The kid that mows my lawn mowed today and I wondered how he did. I had to email him to advise him to mow the little strip of grass that is on the south side of my house between the sidewalk and privacy fence. For some reason he didn't mow this the first two times he mowed. It wasn't that big a deal the first week he mowed because the grass wasn't that high - but last week you could definitely tell that he should have mowed it. So as I let Butler out when I got home from work I walk around the side of the house and just stared - at one strip of grass (about a lawn mower's width) that had been mowed and another strip of grass (a little wider than a lawn mower's width) that hadn't been mowed. I'm like what in the world?! The kid is here to mow GRASS - that is a strip of GRASS that needed to be mowed that will be even taller next week. I just didn't have the strength to deal with it tonight - I'll call or email the kid tomorrow......................
Butterfly bush bloom.
Stick before a bloom opens all the way.
I guess I've named this hibiscus Dumb since this is the "dumb" hibiscus that kept falling over - check out the blooms.
