This blog is going to have lots of photos and with a whole lot of text to let you know the latest. So get ready for the ride.
I blogged about getting my tomato plant - I think I blogged about it - anyway... There was a red tomato one day but it was still sort of hard so I let it ripe and get bigger. A day or two later I checked and it was soft feeling but no bigger - hmmmmmm. So here is my first tomato of the season :)
It wasn't big - three baby bites and it was gone - but boy was it good!
While decluttering I found my uncles (Mom's brother) bandanas - this is after they were washed. Uncle was an old-time sign painter who painted anything from signs in store windows (on paper and on the glass), to vehicles (usually gas tanker trucks) to full-size billboards. He always had a bandana and I LOVE these colors! First these are "real" bandanas, not those "things" that claim to be bandanas today - and you just don't see many colors other than red and blue now-a-days.
This is one donation of clothes that I took to WDM Human Services. Check out how big the one box is with the top open. I already donated a box that size of clothes earlier this month. I finally got serious about going through the house and garage from top to bottom. Mike and I had planned on doing this March 2010 after I finished doing all my traveling for work that February. But Mike had a tumor appear in February and March 1, 2010 he was in the hospital for the first of three stays before he died in April. It's taken me this long to get motivated to tackle this project.
Plus I had to have the right mindset because I have really gone through Mike's things. I have a little bit of an issue of feeling like I have erased Mike from the house with donating his clothes, putting away all his ball caps and autographed golf balls from the Principal Charity Classic - but I haven't erased him in my heart. The house really looks good - different - but good. When the time comes for family to go through the house after I'm gone - they get to deal with all his ball caps (autographed and regular caps), golf balls, and shirts that I kept :)
One of the interesting things I found was a box of old ammunition - that went to the WDMPD to be destroyed......
And during all this I moved my uncle's green chair that had sat on the enclosed front porch forever upstairs all by myself - and his dresser that had been in the basement. Wow.
The next two pix are what I ended up donating to my church's garage sale. Hey - when you have lived in the same house since 1985 and haven't done a good cleaning for years this is what happens :)
Whether I would have gotten on this cleaning kick or not - I would have gone through the garage and basement to box up hazardous waste because this coming Saturday is a free hazardous waste drop off for the City of WDM. Check out what I'm "donating" - and the sad thing is that Dad and I went through some of the basement and garage last year and got rid of hazardous things. I happened to find Mike's stash.
Mike had a metal shelving unit in the garage that had finally seen its last leg (see pic below). I decided I would get it out of the garage and replace it with one of the shelving units in the basement now that I had cleaned a unit off. Well it wasn't that easy. I had to unscrew the good shelving unit from the one next to it in the basement - why Mike screwed them together I have no idea. Then I had to unscrew the unit in the garage that Mike had somehow screwed to the wall. I'm just glad the blicky unit is out - not sure how I'm going to get rid of it - but at least it's not in the garage anymore.
This is my recycle bin - yes full of broken-down boxes and the large box of empty shoe boxes I mentioned in my last blog - NONE of those boxes are in the bin. I'll be breaking them down this week to go out the next time the recycle bin is picked up :)
The next pic isn't the best but you can sort of see the "try to kill the snake with weed spray as I chase it across my back yard path" that I mentioned last time. I took this pic from inside my house from my kitchen window (that's why you are looking at my back yard through a screen) but I had a better vantage point to show the path than the pic from last week. The path starts on the right side of the picture and arcs up and to the left. Now I mowed again this week and didn't see any snakes until I was almost done with everything - mowing, weed eating and spraying for weeds. First I saw a large empty snake skin next to the round thing in my backyard. It wasn't there this morning before I went to church..... And then I saw a snake in the planter of my front yard. So are garter snakes brown with decent-sized yellow stripes on them because that is what I saw. I watched to see where he slithered away and then sprayed the poop out of the hole with wasp spray. I walked outside a few minutes later and there was the snake - so I grabbed the wasp spray (not weed killer mind you) and sprayed the crap out of him. He was going this way and that way in my front yard and once came my way - not good. I have never seen a snake slither as fast as this guy did to get away from me.
Evidently I channeled Mike when I bought this at Bed Bath and Beyond because this is something he would have liked to have done. My little greenhouse project will grow sunflowers, two colors of zinnas and something else. I was putting this together Friday night while watching Nick Wallenda walk across Niagra falls. That was totally amazing and mind-blowing watchinghim do that.
I have some other projects I'm working on:
- I bought some paint remover and supplies to see if I can strip the woodwork in my downstairs hall to bring it back to wood and then paint the walls. If it ends up being too hard to get the paint off or smell too bad fumewise - I'll repaint the woodwork.
- I have my first of three line dancing classes next Sunday - I bought a deal from Living Social. I'm looking forward to this - haven't danced since the last City Employee party Mike and I went to January 2010.
- And...I bought a DealChicken deal for a permit to carry a gun class - and found out my niece had purchased the same deal. I'm not going to become Annie Oakley but thought it would be good to know how to shoot Mike's 9mm Glock. When I was a WDMPD reserve we weren't allowed to carry automatic guns so I have a good, 'ole S & W wheel gun that I like.
I remembered that we had bought two cots a long time ago thinking when the granddaughters visited they might sleep on them. I got one out because they are like the beds you see some kennels use for the dogs and set this up for Butler. It's a dog's life for him...... That's of a pile of dog food by his mouth, with a "pillow" to prop his head up, with his non-stuffing toy next to him, and he's covered with a blankie in case it gets too cold for him while I'm gone. Wow. And I take the staples out of his butt tomorrow - something for me to look forward to, right?
Yesterday and friend and I went to the downtown Farmer's Market - it's been YEARS since I went to it. We were talking about all the pretty flowers and I said that's one thing I miss - Mike didn't buy me flowers often but he didn't do too bad buying them for me. And I've only gotten flowers one time since he died - so we bought each other a bouquet of bright, fresh cut flowers yesterday. We each put our bouquet together to get the flowers and colors we wanted.
Then I noticed 3-4-5 guys in suits and sunglasses and thought that was interesting and wondered who they were protecting. Sure enough, there was a guy off to the side talking to someone with some of the "suits" just watching the crowd. We didn't recognize the famous guy so we walked over to the "suits" and my friend asked who the famous person was - the Govenor of Massachusetts (sp?). Why he was in Iowa yesterday I have no idea. One of the "suits" was really friendly and chatty and actually let me take his picture wearing my friend's hat :)
Here's how my flowers turned out after I got them home, arranged them, cut them and put them in water. LOVE the colors!
This isn't the best picture but I couldn't believe there was a squirrel eating on the round thing in my back yard this morning before church - thought he was too cute to not get his picture.
One of the bains of Mike's and my dad's existence is my papason chair that has been on the enclosed front porch forever - and in the way. Both Mike and Dad wanted to get rid of it numerous times and I would say NO! My goal was to get it upstairs in the bedroom and use it - well today I bought a new pillow for it and it's upstairs waiting for me to relax in it. If Mike had a grave to roll over in - he would be. I'm guessing Dad has lost his false teeth reading this :)
This morning a friend at church stopped me as we walked in commenting on my front porch - how much she loved it and wanted to come over and have some coffee with me. She said at first she wasn't really sure it really was my front porch and not just a picture or something. Well, the other side of the front porch is getting more organized now that the papason chair is gone. The pictures below show the Caribbean side and the older, McFall side.
The two chairs were my in-laws and the tv was in the house when we bought it. There's a better picture coming up of that sign between the chairs.
Many, many, many, many years ago a good friend mentioned how he had an annual family reunion in McFall, Missouri. Mike and I didn't believe him until we got a Missouri map and found it! This friend kidded different times how he was going to "obtain" the McFall city sign for us - and one day it appeared on our front porch. Mike kept it in the basement close to his work bench but I got it out today, cleaned it up and am proudly displaying it on the porch :)
