Endings and Thanksgiving

I thought I'd get some of that expanding foam insulation that you spray and then it expands to fill holes - to spray in a few places under my patio where I think snakes hide.  I went to my handy-dandy True Value and asked a guy about the foam insulation and he advised me to use wood putty instead.  He said snakes could eat the insulation?!  I said, "really?  I didn't think snakes would do that."  I should have gone with my gut instinct but I figured...he's an older guy, he should know what he's talking about.  I got home and worked and worked the inner and outer putty together and then leaned down to place it over one of the holes - a little leery that a snake might bump its head against the putty on the other side - and I have no idea what I did but somehow I got some grass off to the side to move, I thought it was a snake and fell on my butt thinking a snake was going to get me.  And the putty didn't work anyway.  So I remembered the caulking I had from the upstairs bathroom, found it in the basement and caulked the poop out of 2-3-4 holes that were under my patio and sidewalk.  It ain't pretty but the holes are filled - mission accomplished.

Friday night I got together with my two girlfriends from 4th grade at one of their houses which was in Ankeny.  I made brownies - the box said I'd get 12 brownies out of my 8 x 8 pan.  When it was time to cut them I'm like - no way will I get 12 - those would be bite-size.  So I went for 9 brownies and those still looked kind of small.  I said we were going to have 6 brownies out of the pan and proceeded to cut.  All three of us enjoyed a very large brownie for dessert :)  One of my friends found the "newspaper" we helped print in 5th grade, there was four or five different editions that were a hoot to look at.  Hand written, on stencils, run on a mimeograph machine - remember those days?!  We laughed about how the "newspaper" would look today done by school kids on a computer.

Yesterday I went with another friend to my first ever estate tag sale - that was an experience - and crowded.  There was stuff and more stuff.  It was fun to have experienced and I told my friend to let me know when she finds out about more sales.  I walked her to her car and she handed me a plastic bag with three bananas and a dog treat for Butler :)  I laughed and told her Butler would definitely enjoy the treat.

After running errands I filled three more bags with leaves from the driveway and some of the front lawn - this week if the last week WDM will pick up yard waste.  I also bought some spray foam insulation to spray by the front door of the porch between the floor of the front porch and landing that people stand on when ringing my doorbell.  I sprayed and watched the foam kind of expand - and tried to rub my gloved finger across the foamy stuff to "level" it like when you caulk - that was messy - and then left it for a while to finish doing its thing.  I looked at it about an hour later and good googly moogly - some of it expanded like three inches above the flooring.  Down to Mike's work bench I go to find one of those little, long, skinny saws with a handle that was more like a hand grip to cut the excess insulation off.............

For some unknown reason I decided to watch "The Sons of Katie Elder" (John Wayne) yesterday afternoon.  I'd watched parts of it before with Mike but thought I'd watch it all the way through.  It's pretty good but I was so amazed at what a great shot John Wayne was - have you ever noticed that :)

Endings - well there was one today and the other will be Tuesday night for me.  Today - NASCAR.  Tuesday - Dancing With The Stars.  Heavy sigh.  I'm down to Bones on Thursday night and The Amazing Race on Sunday night (which has 3-4 more weeks and it's finished).  It always makes me a little sad when the NASCAR season ends because it's such a long season (mid-February to almost Thanksgiving).  I'll be going into NASCAR withdrawal until February 26th when the Daytona 500 is back.  The race was rain delayed - which was good since I did my normal NASCAR nap during that time.  At the end of today's race Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart tied for points for the Championship - it went to a tie breaker with Tony Stewart winning because he had the most wins (and only wins) between him and Carl during the last ten races.

I need to finish my Christmas letter so I can get it printed, and print my labels so I can get my Christmas cards out this coming weekend.  I asked Dad if he wanted to put out a Christmas letter - I had typed Mom and Dad's letter for several years and printed their envelope labels.  Dad decided he's not sending letters this year - so I just have to make sure I get my stuff done.

The weather is supposed to be nice so I'll drive to Pella to be with Dad for part of Thanksgiving.  HyVee is open in Pella and he wants to buy a few things for our Bread on the Waters grocery collection project at church, so we'll do that.  He mentioned something about eating at one of the restaurants that is open for lunch - so we might do that too.

I hope everyone has a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Chainsaw.....Nifty

Wednesday we woke up to - I can't write it - snow.....blick.  Luckily the streets were warm enough to melt what we got but some of the snow stayed a few days on the grass in the shady areas.  And I had a largish limb that had come down in the back yard - see picture below.  I also got the snow shovels in their strategic locations (front porch, outside back porch and right by door in garage).  Poor Butler, he kind of slipped on the back porch, hit the snow shovel some how and knocked it over and then he went sprawling.......

Today was our second Sunday for our small group to host the Bread on the Waters grocery collection project table and we had another good response from church families taking slips with food items to purchase.  We also had some start to bring their items in today (they are in the plastic bags under the table).

So.....why did I title this blog Chainsaw???  I called a friend and her hubby from church asking if he would be able to help me with the branch in the back yard.  I wasn't sure if I still had Mike's chain saw or if Andy had taken it to Pennsylvania with him - and even if I did still have it - I didn't think I wanted to mess with it because it was fairly big and I would probably have had to mix oil and gas.  A pain.  I asked Jim if after taking care of the limb if he'd be willing to go to True Value with me to look at small chain saws and help me pick one out that I could have - thinking I'd go with a rechargeable one - so I could take care of future limbs instead of needing to call on someone to help me.  He said he was more than happy to help.

Well I decided to check chain saws out yesterday and stopped at True Value.  The only rechargeable one was like $140ish.  No way no how.  I didn't want an electric one to have to deal with extension cords so I left True Value not sure what to do - then I decided to head to Home Depot.  I got a nice young man to help me and we talked about how often I would use the chain saw - maybe once or twice a year.  I finally settled on a 14" electric chain saw - no mixing gas and oil.  The young man was really nice to explain how to care/clean the chain after using it too - BIG thing to know is to wear gloves when oiling/cleaning the chain so I don't cut myself!

So after church today Barb and Jim stopped by with Jim putting the chain oil in the chain saw and cutting up my branch for me.  When he was finished I wanted to make sure I knew how to start the chain saw and it's pretty slick and doesn't jiggle/bounce/kick/whatever at all.  And at that moment I understood why Tim the Tooltime Taylor made his grunting noises when it came to tools - I almost grunted too.  So.....next time limbs come down I'm good to go - unless it's half a tree or something :)

Jeans and Bread on the Waters

Without going into a lot of details let me just say that the last few weeks have been "interesting" and I've really been through it - but I had to go through it to get to where I am now - which is a very good place.  God and I have really been having some heart-to-heart talks and I'm still working on some things that need to be taken care of - but we'll get there.

The jean saga has come to an end - sort of.  I finally convinced myself that I had to deal with the "new waist" which is really slightly above women's hips and found one pair that I can tolerate.  I only bought one pair because I've lost some weight and I'm not sure if I'll stay at this weight or gain some pounds but no matter what - I HAD to get a decent pair of jeans.  All my jeans (even at my old weight) were kind of baggy in the behind area.

And because of how this pair of jeans "rides" on me - unfortunately I had to buy some new undies.  I'm sure some of you are SO glad I shared that - but I think some ladies can relate to all this.  First - why is it so hard to find a six-pack of undies, in the right size, in the right cut, that are all white?  I don't need wild colors or patterns - just give me plain white and I'm good.  I'll wear the wild colors and patterns on my outside clothes thank you.  But no - no plain white in the style I thought would work for my new jeans.  At least the six-pack I ended up buying were solid, subdued colors.....................goodness.

Leaves - they are really pretty on the trees but not pretty when I have to rake them up.  I had five bags of leaves this week.  The only good thing was we had rain one day so yesterday when I raked the avalanche of leaves that fell in the back corner of my yard they were wet so they didn't blow away when I put them in the bag - and I could put a lot more leaves in the bag when they were wet than when they were dry.

My small group at church discussed a project two weeks ago that we thought would be good for the holiday season - and something the whole church could get behind.  It's called Bread on the Waters and we presented it today.  We are using Ecclesiastes 11:1-2 and Galations 6: 9-10 as our key verses for the project which is a grocery collection.  Our goal is to collect enough groceries to fill 18 boxes to give to some families in our church and some families that have visited a few times - to be a help and blessing during the holiday season.

While our small group discussed this project - several of us volunteered to do certain aspects such as:  work the display table each Sunday morning, create the tags of food items we need, create the display board for the table, record tags taken and what food items those were for, etc.  Our small group leader thought through everything else that needed to be done and plugged all of us in the spots so we know who is doing what.

Barb and I are working the display table each Sunday and we had to set it up during the song service so it would be ready to go after the service.  It looked great and I had absolutely nothing to do with any aspect of the table except put things on the table.  And the response for our first Sunday was really good.  There are lots of items that need to be purchased because we want all the boxes to have the same items in it (2 boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios, 2 cans of beans, 4 cans of vegetables, etc.).  So when you say your prayers, maybe say a little prayer for this project too.

And I can't believe I didn't take a picture of the table - where was my head?!  I'll take one next week to share with you :)