30 thoughts on “Rants! and Raves! 4-27-13”

  2. Realtors coming this morning to discuss what we want in what should be our last house.

    Can’t decide if that sounds grim or refreshing! 🙂

    🙂 Teenage youth member coming to weed. Finally flushed one out!

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  3. Michelle, be sure that you don’t get too much. Espcially one that requires constant yard attention. If it’s your last house, your husband will find that he gradually loses his stamina to do what he would like to do. We, in our early eighties, still manage stairs, but I would be careful to get a place where you can live on one floor. We have overhead lights in all our rooms because we requested them. Still not a problem. But I can see that it might be a problem someday. The builder wisely put handles, rather than knobs, on the doors. It doesn’t matter now, but could someday.

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  4. 🙂 Last night at fun day, the baseball park had a fun day. This included competitions. Guess who won first place as the 9-10 year old King of Swat competition. (that means hitting) My baby!
    😦 He should have won something in fielding as well. They tossed him three balls and he made three perfect (from my angle) throws to first base. Yet he somehow didn’t even win a third place medal. The coaches used their own judgement on that one and I have a felling they used it to give medals to people who didn’t have one yet.
    🙂 Second place in running went to one of our players little six-year old brother. His mom told him she didn’t know if he qualified, since he was neither 9 or 10, but he was a big favorite with the moms and the coaches knew better than not to give it to him. .

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  5. Michelle, if you get a garage, be sure to get an electronic opener. Our neighbors skipped that feature when they had their house built. Now, they’re old and it’s a burden doing it manually. So they called an installer. Turns out the garage attic wasn’t wired for electricity and it’s a massive job getting into an attic with no access built in to install wiring and the equipment.

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  6. 🙂 Saturday. Got to “sleep in” by an extra hour (but then I went to bed later than usual, too, last night).

    😦 Promised myself I’d attack the foxtails in the backyard today.

    😦 Hmmm. Our state tax refunds appear to be taking longer than usual out here in the ‘golden’ state. I figure someday the state will just go broke — and we won’t get them at all. They’ll just keep all the money they owe back to us.

    😦 See? Foxtails and taxes. Groan. There you go. That’s why I’m really not a fan of spring. It’s the “thorns and thistles” season, as far as I’m concerned.

    🙂 OK, I’m bound to feel more cheerful once I have some coffee and a shower and get moving. In general I’m not very fond of mornings, either. 🙂

    😦 Eee. What a grump I am today!

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  7. Saturday! Up at five thirty, showered, Bible time, and out the door to work with the children in the garden at six thirty. We are working on the strawberries, rhubarb, and grapes for the most part. Then into the house for breakfast for them, I will eat a bit later when I have time to get my onions and peppers and venison and eggs prepared. They are off to church clean up, then set up for the big square dance, then the dance itself. Meanwhile, the younger four are here doing school work.

    Five year old is in charge of cleaning the guest room. She sweeps and dusts and cleans the sink, tub, and toilet. Today she has to change the sheets. She does a nice job. Not perfect, but she does well.

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  8. 🙂 Thanks for your advice, Chas. We’ve determined 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, one story, two car garage (we’ve always had a garage door opener; that was a given), easy to maintain yard.

    😦 This house had levered doors when we moved in but our Gordon Setter turned out to be smart enough to open them, so we shifted to regular door knobs! Since she’s now blind, we can go back to the levered door knobs . . . which I need for my hands anyway.

    🙂 We’re looking ahead, but the Lord may have other plans. We’re not really that old, but recognize leaving 18 steps into the house is a great idea! (Indeed, we’ve had several requests from church to get a level house so we have Bible study for them again!)

    In other news:

    🙂 H is settling in well to missionary life in Italy. We’re excited.

    😦 She posted an interesting piece on FB; an Evangelical missionary to Italy’s take on the new pope:

    http://www.jonnywhitman.com/

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  9. 🙂 Great small group wrap up last night

    🙂 Dogs

    🙂 Ground appears to have finally thawed overnight. The large area of water across the road to the south has gone down (it has no where to run)

    🙂 Lots of snow melted yesterday

    🙂 Spent some time out on the deck enjoying the sunshine in my deck chair that finally made it out of the garden shed

    🙂 Hubby ran in shorts this morning and said every now and then a very warm wind came down out of the sky and warmed him up despite the rain.

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  10. 🙂 I am the queen of avoidance. The more I thought about the foxtails awaiting me in the backyard, the more “other” things came to mind that I really did have to do, after all. Like go get my bangs trimmed. Feed the animals. Hard boil some eggs for the week ahead. Do the dishes. …

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  12. Lawn? (laugh track). This is the backyard which is, well, shall we say more scruffy except for the nice vegetation all around the perimeter.

    Unfortunately, “mowing” or cutting down foxtails only spreads the misery (they have seeds). The only sure way to get rid of them is getting them out by the roots.

    I don’t have as many as I used to since I do this every year (but I can’t seem to get to every corner and thoroughly finish them off for good — amazing how you can work on this for 3 hours and make just the tiniest “dent”). They’re a scourge.

    And now the vacant lot across the street from me is a virtual field of foxtails — which probably has further anchored them in the neighborhood.

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  14. They’re worse when they dry out (which is happening close to now, I’m afraid). Then they detach and you have to round them up with a rake or by hand, the best you can. 😦 Mowing them just detaches them and they dry out quickly — leaving you with the same problem of trying to gather them all up.

    From an LA Times article: And if you are mowing a yard that has foxtails? “Mowing them down isn’t adequate because they’re dry,” Kay said. “After mowing them, you have to rake and get them out of your yard.” Put them in your green waste bin rather than compost them at home. Municipal compost piles get much hotter than small domestic ones and therefore kill weed seeds more effectively.

    I do kind of like the head gear the dog is wearing in the photo. But my dogs wouldn’t really go for anything like that. 🙂

    http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home_blog/2011/08/dogs-foxtails.html

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  15. Well, seems to me then, if your dogs are trained, you can tell them to go roll in the yard. Then all you have to do is brush them out.

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  16. No, if they get in a dog’s nose or paws, they can require an expensive visit to the vet, unfortunately.

    I’ve got a kid outside weeding now. I told him to pull the fox tails first.

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  17. A dog I had when I first moved in here “sniffed” 2 of them up his nose, requiring a nighttime visit the doggie ER (he was non-stop sneezing blood).

    Another couple I met once in my vet’s waiting room were there after getting hundreds of dollars done in xrays trying to track a foxtail inside their dog so they could get it surgically removed.

    So I read online that if you spray them with white vinegar it will kill them but also makes them easier to pull in a couple days. So I’ve dumped vinegar over them all out there, I’ll see where I stand tomorrow. Always in the end, however, the roots have to be pulled out and they have to be removed completely, just “killing” them doesn’t do you any good. 😦

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  19. I doubt that any of you remember Biship Fulton J. Sheen. I just saw a sermon by him in B&W. A great sermon, a little over acted, but great. Could have been a Baptist preacher.
    😆

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  20. Well, they do sort of smell salad-like now, doused with all that vinegar. 😉 Pucker.

    🙂 😦 Talking to a neighbor from across the street today who recently lost her dad. She’s 30-something, a bit flighty, highly emotional, Roman Catholic (not sure how seriously).

    At one point she looked at the small, silver celtic cross I wear around my neck most days and said, “See? Look at your cross, you’re a good person.”

    Ha. Decidedly NOT very good, I told her. Which is exactly WHY I need that cross …

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  21. 🙂 Just found out that the Kid offered to give his baseball medal to another kid who was upset that he didn’t win one. Sweet and a good baseball player.

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  22. 🙂 Very productive week and very productive day. But a good part of today’s productivity was outside, and I do need a shower.

    🙂 Scanners. I’m going through a lifetime’s worth of photos, tossing some, putting most back in their envelopes, and scanning a few. And it’s wonderful to be able to zoom in on the best parts of a photo–in many cases “rescuing” a mediocre photo and turning it into a good one. If cropping doesn’t do enough to fix it, brightening it or darkening it sometimes does. People used to have to have darkrooms to do this sort of thing, and then with black-and-white photos! Now I can do it in two minutes at home.

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  23. 🙂 Technology.

    😦 Technology.

    🙂 kBells, very classy.

    🙂 Baked spaghetti casserole in the oven for church tomorrow. Only thing left to do with that is the dishes. So it was a reasonably productive day, though the foxtails are a work in progress.

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  27. 🙂 Good worship service today. We’re still in Romans and the pastor noted at one point how (because Scripture has an authoritative claim on the lives of everyone) the world likes to reduce the Bible to “mythology” — so they can ignore it.

    Except … They don’t ignore it, do they? They continually rail against it. If it’s just “mythology,” why the obsession? Why the constant complaint? 😉

    😦 Just remembered in the middle of the night that I’d accidentally left the bag of litter box scoopings from next door (I’m cat sitting) on a side table last night as I was petting the cat. I meant to bring it with me, of course, to toss in my outdoor trash can. The neighbors get home today but they’re not home yet so … I suppose I really should dash back over there and grab that.

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