Tag Archives: house maintenance

June 28, 2023 · 3:23 pm

Grrrrrrr

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I may very well be bald as an egg by the end of the day. My husband is on a tear and it’s impossible to stop him without completely decking him – though I’m thinking about that as I type.

We got the new/used air pump we bought on eBay today. My husband disappeared, when I thought he was in his chair reading, and took the old one out, put the new one in, and it WORKS! We just now went up with soapy water to see if we could find any leaks in the mattress. We didn’t, after extensive testing, so we’re suspecting that the leak came from the connections to the failing air pump. We are now letting the mattress dry before we try to put the bed together again, put on fresh sheets, etc.

I have the washer going to wash the mattress pad and then the sheets we took off, or I DID. My husband came in and announced, “The washer isn’t working.” Since it was when I left it, I got up and checked. ‘SOMEONE’ had pushed buttons – putting it in a waiting state. When I asked him, he said, “Well, it wasn’t working, so I pushed some buttons.” I got it going again.

Then I saw the stair lights were on and figured out he was upstairs again. I went up to find him with one of the new LED tubes in his hand, looking around. I finally found out he was looking for his glasses. I pointed to his shirt, where they were hanging on his front. He had the good grace to look sheepish, but I asked him why he was up there with the tube. He then said he was going to put in one of the new tubes in the kitchen.

We had a ‘discussion’ at this point, since he told me earlier that we were only going to tackle one of the project things today and were already in the middle of the bed project. He said, “Well, that’s drying and we can see if this tube stuff is going to work. I objected, since I am usually there to receive the old tubes and hand him the new. AND this will be a matter of taking the ballast transformer out, rewiring, and THEN putting new tubes in. I told him I really didn’t want to get into that today.

He said, “That’s fine. I can do it myself.” After growling to myself (I think) I mentioned that if he was going to do this, he should do it in the utility room where the only ceiling light we had only had one dim tube working.

I’m giving myself a chance to cool down mentally a bit and then I’ll go check on him. It used to be that we could do our separate projects, if needed, without even thinking about it. This is no longer the case and I find I may need to check on eBay to see if they have any used brains with an extra supply of patience for sale.

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June 28, 2023 · 11:34 am

All RIGHT!

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I just came in from weeding. I finished the other two planters in the trio of brick planters running between our front yard and the driveway. I’m sitting here with my sweatband still on, drinking like a camel, and trying to cool off while patting myself on the back. That’s IT for outside today.

While I was weeding, the UPS man came up to deliver a package! That is amazing in that most of the drivers now just leave packages by our robot at the bottom of the driveway. Some let us know. Some don’t. I thanked this man profusely and made sure he had another bottle of water. We laughed together when he showed me that the package had ‘FEDEX’ on the side… :0)

He brought us the replacement for our air pump for our mattress. My husband just put it in and it seems to work fine. The next step is trying to find and repair leaks in the mattress before putting things back together.

My husband went to town to return a box of fluorescents. He discovered that yet another insult to how old we are and how long we’ve been here in this house is that our fluorescent tubes and the ballast transformers that go in the fixtures will no longer be made starting in August of this year. He read a bunch of stuff and figured out that LED tubes don’t use ballast transformers. If you take out the transformers and rewire the fixture, you can then use the LED tubes in the existing fixture. So this starts a pretty big project for us, changing out the transformers and wiring in each fixture. I’m hoping that we’ll do this in a calm fashion, but I’m dealing with EverReady Man who thinks he’s still 25…

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May 7, 2021 · 9:36 am

Thoughts on a Friday 5-7-2021

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It looks like today will be another perfect day. We had one yesterday, too – sunny and 80 – and I’m not taking a minute of these for granted.

We leave in a bit more than an hour for Lunch Bunch. Today I’m taking gallon bags of spinach and lettuce from our garden to my friends. I absolutely love it when we have enough to be able to share with people who mean so much to me.

I’m hoping that one of my friends will have pictures of her new kitchen floor to share. She had a pipe burst during the last winter storm and it completely ruined her floor. Apparently a LOT of people had damage because she had to wait a long time for someone to be able to build a new one for her. I talked to her on the phone, though, and she said she was THRILLED with it.

I have some pics of our new carpet and new porch floor to share with my friends. It will be a LONG time before I get up to walk anywhere on the first floor of our house and fail to smile ear to ear. It’s such a pleasure to have things looking good. We’ve been opening our front and back doors to enjoy the weather in the afternoons. I can also see our new porch floor when we do that. And the carpet FEELS so good when you walk on it. :0)

Yesterday when we were going to get our mail and make a quick run to the grocery store, we couldn’t get our garage door to stay closed. It kept going down, then ‘bouncing’ off the bottom and going up again. Apparently the last big storm we had recently blew its mind. We ended up getting out the paperwork and reprogramming the remote that lives in the truck and the manual opener that lives outside the garage. Now it seems to be working fine.

Yesterday’s project bundle was threefold: 1) three loads of laundry, 2) put new sheets on our bed and change out the electric blanket for a summer velour one, and 3) change my clothes in my closet, putting winter stuff in the guest room closet and bringing summer stuff into my bedroom closet. I got most all of this accomplished yesterday. Today I’ll finish organizing my closet today, plus I’m promising myself to actually go through my stuff carefully, looking for things to donate.

I will also check my garden to see if I need to start the automatic watering again. We’ve been getting a lot of rain, so I turned the system off. We’re supposed to get more rain tomorrow night into Sunday…

We splurged last night, eating hot dogs and chips, with ice cream and fresh cut up strawberries for dessert. It’s been about a year since we did that last, so it tasted like Heaven. :0)

I hope that your Friday is wonderful. Enjoy every minute!

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April 6, 2021 · 9:47 am

Thoughts on a Tuesday 4-6-2021

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We are having a beautiful day today. It’s hard to believe that we are due for possibly severe storms overnight into tomorrow, with gusty winds and hail (and flying hair balls) much of the day tomorrow. I’m hoping that the whole thing will bypass us.

My guys are due tomorrow to finish painting our new porch ceiling. They will also paint the rest of the woodwork on the porch, so it will seem like a whole new porch when it’s finished! They have already installed a new shutter to replace the one that fell off the front of the house and sealed the area of the roof soffit where the squirrels were getting in. Clifford Harden is very reliable. He either comes when he says he will or calls to let us know what is happening, so we’re not left hanging. He, his brothers, and other workers in the group they call Safe Elite Transformations have a passion for excellence. You can reach them through Home Advisor, or directly at 479-849-0520.

If Mother Nature cooperates with us, by the end of the day tomorrow we should have a nice-looking new porch ceiling!

Since our weather is so nice today, I’m planning to transplant the celery I’ve started in the kitchen to the main garden. I’ll take some pics so show you later. Things are happy in the garden so far. I’m also planning to finish weed whacking in the back and then hopefully spray some KillzAll to discourage the weeds from popping right back up. My goal is to have less and less to weed whack each time throughout the season.

I’m still trying to go through the things I brought home from the booth I shared with my friend Carla at Rags & Roses in Greenwood. It is a really nice shop, and the owner, Joanna Brandt, is a peach. Our sales were super slow, though, so we decided that it was best we try other venues. I am going through things, trying to decide which I should list on my Amazon Handmade page. I’m taking my time, so my office looks like of like an explosion occurred. :0)

I hope that your Tuesday will be a nice one.

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March 24, 2021 · 9:37 am

Big Check Mark!

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Yesterday afternoon – after a year of trying to get it done – the wonderful guys at Window World of Fort Smith called, came, and installed replacement windows in two places for us.

We got the windows originally in 2005, I think, and we have been delighted. About a year ago, though, an upstairs window and the center one in our dining area got liquid between the layers during a storm.

Due to my stupidity, we had trouble proving to the company that they had, in fact, installed the windows originally. Finally, I was able to produce a small piece of paper that had a number on it. That turned out to be the serial number on one of our windows and they were able to locate our account and the information they needed through that to help us. Hooray!

Then the pandemic came and the world as we know it fell apart. Like everyone else, they had trouble staying safe, as people, and afloat, as a company. They were trying to create replacement windows for us.

I kept checking back with the nice office lady from time to time to no avail.

When I called last week, though, she told me she would check in the back to see if our windows were there and call me back. They were there!

We set up installation tentatively for late Tuesday afternoon.

Now we have brand new windows replacing the ones that lost their seal. I called the office this morning to thank them again for standing behind their warranty, getting the new windows made, and getting them installed for us.

This is a BIG CHECK MARK finally off the list – and – unlike all the rest – this one didn’t cost us anything. :0)

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March 7, 2021 · 2:16 pm

Thoughts on a Sunday 3-7-2021

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We spent from before lunch until 6:30 in the evening, but we got the new garage door opener installed and running yesterday. I am definitely coming back ( in my next life) as a combination weight lifter and basketball player who majored in fixing things.

The main thing that strikes me about the new opener is how QUIET it is compared to the one we replaced. I’m also very grateful we don’t have to manually haul the door up and carefully let it down now. A device that does that at a touch of a button is definitely a good thing. :0) It would be very nice if our garage were as clean as the one shown in the nice image above. No such luck.

We are resting today, still pretty whipped out with all the labor yesterday. The weather is gorgeous with reasonable temperatures and lots of sunshine. I will try to at least walk around the yard awhile before the afternoon is over, just to smile at the sun a bit, if nothing else.

I’m enjoying book # 29 “Widows Walk” by Robert B. Parker. I think there are 40 in the Spenser series, and I am truly enjoying revisiting his wit, sense of humor, wonderfully drawn characters, and clean writing.

I have spaghetti sauce in the slow cooker for dinner tonight. Nice Sunday.

I hope that YOUR Sunday is a good one, too.

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March 4, 2021 · 1:44 pm

Progress re Revenge of the Gremlins

I told you recently that gremlins have taken over our home lately. We have had to move from one thing needing repair or replacement to the next over and over and over, all starting when we were iced in for a week and then snowed in for another week last month.

One of the important things was that our generator didn’t do its automatic weekly test. My husband was unable to start it manually, either. Thank goodness we didn’t need it while the weather was so challenging. We recharged the battery that we just bought a little over a month ago and I bought a new air filter, and we made sure the oil was good, but that wasn’t enough. My husband took out the starter motor. We called around and found a guy who fixes small motors, and drove to Ft. Smith – leaving it with him. He called later and said he was unable to fix it, but that he had a new one we could buy.

My husband went back to Ft. Smith, bought the new starter motor. On his way home he had a flat and managed to get to a tire place to buy a used tire to get him home. We ordered two new rear tires for the Vette.

My husband installed the new starter motor in the generator and tested it. It RAN! He left it set on automatic weekly testing. I put the time of 12:20 today for the test on my calendar. I set my alarm so I could open the door and HEAR it start for the test. It was 12:23 when the motor turned on and started the generator!!!!! It ran for 10 minutes and shut itself off.

ONE PROBLEM SOLVED!

We got the two new rear tires and headed for the local tire place, with me following my husband there. They installed the new tires, but told him that he needed new FRONT tires ASAP. So – we ordered new front tires…

While we were waiting for those to arrive, we took the Vette to the dealer in Ft. Smith because the turn signals weren’t working. I followed him there and we left the vehicle, asking them also to look at whatever holds the exhaust system up because it was rattling, and the headlights, which opened up, but were recalcitrant about going back down when we push the button. They called us back, wanting $1200 to fix the exhaust system and they wanted to change the headlights. My husband told them to JUST fix the turn signals. (That entails taking the whole front off the Vette). They called us later that day, so we made a second trip to Ft. Smith to pick up the Vette.) They charged us $211 for the turn signals. My husband says if the exhaust system rattles get louder, we’ll take it to Midas. He will ignore the problem on the lights, since that isn’t a safety issue.

Today we received the new front tires and have now left the Vette at the local tire place for them to put them on. They will call us when it is ready.

So we will have TWO of the several problems we have had one after the other FIXED – or as fixed as we can afford. :0)

Two remaining problems is that the heater in the shop isn’t working and the garage door opener quit. We have contacted the propane people about the shop heater and we have ordered a new garage door opener. The company wanted around $900 to install a new garage door opener, but we ordered one for $250 and will install it ourselves – we hope.

If you see the gremlins, please catch them for us. We will see if they can be appeased…

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January 30, 2021 · 9:13 am

We Have a Leak

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In 2005 we bought a competitor to the Sleep Number Bed, called Celenia, by Comfortaire. It has been a wonderful bed. We particularly like the fact that each of us can independently adjust the firmness of our side of the bed. It has worked flawlessly until lately, when my husband keeps having to hit the control to pump up his side.

We stripped the bed all the way down to the fancy, super-sturdy air mattresses this morning. We will tackle finding and repairing the leak, if possible today. This is much like finding a leak in a tire. We will make up a solution of soap and water and see if any area of the bed bubbles up. If that doesn’t find it, the problem may be where the hose goes into the mattress – a more complicated problem.

I’m a good go-fer and will endeavor to keep my mouth firmly closed – with any suggestions or questions squelched before they are allowed to see the light of day. Hopefully, we will find and fix the leak while I’m washing everything that goes ON the bed. I really would rather not have to call and try to find someone who can come and fix it for us…

Fingers crossed for our success.

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September 19, 2020 · 10:19 am

“Rub-a-Dub, 2 Fish in a Tub…”

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I just finished cleaning out the aquarium, and all is squeaky clean again. The fish are busily checking out the ‘new’ decorations.

 

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July 1, 2020 · 9:28 am

Fingers Crossed

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Our good plumber is supposed to come today to help us figure out why the hot water in our shower is cutting off mid-shower.

We have a tankless water heater. This allows us to have all the hot water we need, regardless of how many things we run during the day or even at the same time. We are getting all the hot water we want downstairs, and in the sinks upstairs – but not the shower.

With the pandemic – plus the hot weather and working outside , we are taking even more showers than our usual one a day. My husband thinks we need a new water pressure tank in our well house. The job is too large for the two of us, so we have called our wonderful plumber to come take a look and see what he thinks will solve the problem.

I’m hoping that tonight I will be able to take a nice shower with hot water to rinse with, rather than cold… Fingers crossed!

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December 21, 2019 · 9:51 am

Water Pressure

We suddenly had very low water pressure several weeks ago. We discovered that the booster pump and motor in the well house (that control the added pressure we need on top of our hill) weren’t working. We spent quite awhile getting the booster pump and motor unattached and off the wall and called about trying to get it fixed. (We still had water, but just about 1/3 of the usual pressure).

As usual with our projects, the place we took it for repair LAST time had changed hands. Happily, the new owner agreed to see if he could fix our stuff. We left them with him in Fort Smith.

We waited and then finally the man called, saying the pump and motor were toast. They don’t make what we have any more, and no parts are available to replace. We gave him the go-ahead to order a new pump and motor – as close to what we had as possible. We picked them up in Fort Smith yesterday.

We spent from about 12:30 until 6:30 or so working in the well house and the shop on the installation. Of course, the new stuff couldn’t sit on the old mounts, so we spent a long time making a thick metal ‘shelf’ on which the assembly could sit.  When we got it made, we painted it so it wouldn’t rust. We took all the old attachment stuff to Yeager’s, trying to get new parts. We brought it all home and worked on it while we continued to wait for the paint to dry. (Even in the shop with the heat on, it takes a lot longer for paint to dry.)

We got the shelf mounted and attached the new pump and motor to it. We finished about 2/3 of the attachment yesterday, but discovered we didn’t have enough parts to finish.

Today – armed with gel with Arnica on my back and Tylenol – we’ll go to Yeager’s again for the parts we need to finish. I’m hoping that by the end of the day we’ll have our usual water pressure in the house again – a true luxury.

If we are successful, I’ll celebrate with a nice, hot shower!

 

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July 21, 2019 · 5:15 pm

Victory

 

I can finally declare victory for the day in the project of shoveling the saved potting soil back into the newly rebuilt planter!

I had just hauled the bricks that held the edges of the tarp together to the area behind the well house when my husband fell. (He is doing better – though his leg is pretty skinned up and we found a new little cut on the bottom of his big toe). He has rested this afternoon, eaten, had cold tea, read a whole book, and is now thinking about taking a nap.)

I decided – since the weather forecast is for possible rain tomorrow morning – that I wanted to get the potting soil into the planter by the end of the day. It took several short sessions, with lots of panting, water drinking and resting in-between, but I did it. I had just taken the tarp out to our burn barrel and was walking back to the house when my husband came out with both doggies.

He didn’t know I had been shoveling, and so was properly surprised that the job was done. The tarp you see in this picture is now gone, and a bare spot on the lawn is all that is left of the ‘save-the-potting-soil’ project. I still need to weed whack, since we couldn’t do a very good job without damaging the tarp, and I need to add a few more bags of potting soil to top off the planter, but basically it is ready to plant!  We have leftover bricks from the project, but we’ll decide what to do with them later.

I’ll take more pics when we’ve found some good things to put in the two planters.

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June 21, 2019 · 2:28 pm

Today’s Project – Cleaning Out My Area in the Garage

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I just came in from Session # 1 out in the garage. I look a lot like the poor kitty above. Picture an old lady with paper towels, a red face, and a BIG glass of ice water….

The weather folks say the heat index today is between 103 and 106, and I believe them!  I’m going to rest and drink a LOT of water before doing another session.

My area in the garage is the catch-all for everything that doesn’t have a permanent home. This includes cases of bottled water, cases of sugar-free pop, gallons of Zero Peach Iced Tea, and then the tools we have ready when we finally run out of excuses not to start the rebuild on the second brick planter that collapsed, plus bird feeders, plant food, bug killers, weed killers, planting tools, stools, roll-around stools, plastic buckets, bags of quik-crete, a new seed and ‘stuff’ spreader, my elliptical trainer, etc. etc., etc. (Aside – are you old enough that what I just said reminds you of Yul Brynner from “The King and I?”)

The other day I moved a bunch of stuff out to the greenhouse, but if you didn’t watch me do it, you wouldn’t know by the amount of stuff still stashed here. It’ll probably take two or three more sessions to make some sense of the area.  If I don’t die off of heat stroke before finishing, I’ll take some pics of the ‘healed’ area so you’ll know it’s clean and organized SOMETIMES. :0)

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February 27, 2019 · 4:30 pm

We MAY Have Found a Bricklayer!

This is one of the two 8-foot brick planters that threatened to collapse. We built 14 planters around the house, but none of the others have had any problems. We’re not sure if we used bad mortar – that ONLY lasted 30 years, or if water froze on the inside causing the problem, but one corner split and then the whole side bulged out. We knocked one of the planters down several weeks ago, wrapping up the potting soil as best we could with tarps.

 

This is the second planter. We have the new bricks we need. We had looked for bricklayers, but hadn’t been successful. A friend of ours had the name and phone number of a bricklayer she thought might work with us. My husband called and left a message today on his phone. Fingers crossed that he is willing to help us and that he is affordable. Mixing mortar is a hard job, and it would be really nice if this rebuilding could be done by someone who knows what he’s doing, rather than merely one old couple who will do their best…

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February 14, 2019 · 1:26 pm

Planter Project

 

Yesterday I told you that the weather forecast was for good weather until Tuesday of next week, when we’re due for another ‘wintry mix.’  I was happy because we wouldn’t be rushed on our demolishing of the 2nd of 2 planters that were falling apart.

Well, when I checked today, the forecast is NOW for a 40% chance of rain TOMORROW – morning!  Arrrrgh!!!!!!

You can see where we are now. We just finished our errands for the day and are resting a bit before we tackle this again. Since there is a good chance for rain tomorrow, we really need to see if we can get the dismantling done today, including digging out the remaining plants, digging out the rest of the potting soil, knocking down and hauling off the rest of the bricks, and then wrapping the tarp around the soil and putting bricks on top to try to save as much of the soil as possible for the rebuild in the spring.

My nose is out of joint right now about this –

  • It’s Valentine’s Day and I was hoping for a quiet day, with some time up in my art room. (We got some jumbo shrimp at the seafood place on the way home today from taking our tax stuff to our CPA. I peeled and cooked it, and it is cooling in the back fridge – but we may be dozing in our recliners from sheer exhaustion, rather than enjoying it tonight.)
  • We are a bit ‘long-in-the-tooth for this project. It’s probably a good character-building exercise to do it ourselves, but it would be so NICE not to have to get the whole demolition part into two days…

Okay. I hear you. Enough with the griping and on with the DOING.

I’ll post pics later today – or tomorrow… :0)

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June 8, 2018 · 1:34 pm

Ammo and Clothes Washer Pump

We order lots of things online, but we don’t usually get such an interesting combination in one delivery. Today the Fedex guy delivered 9mm ammunition and a replacement pump for our clothes washer.  Amber greeted him in the driveway having just gotten out of her pool. She jumped into the truck with him, making him laugh, even though she was dripping copiously.

We got a really good deal on 1000 rounds of 9mm ammo.

 

We didn’t get a great deal on the replacement clothes washer pump, but we needed it. Our washer has been sending us terse messages for the past couple of weeks saying it was unhappy. We got an “F02” which meant we should check the drain hose to see if were kinked or clogged, and a “SUD” which indicated that there were still suds in the rinse water.

We made sure the hose was fine. I figured out how to go ahead and use the washer, bypassing the error messages until the new pump arrived. It was delivered this morning, so when we got home from Lunch Bunch, we tackled replacing the pump. My husband found a video online that showed him at least the idea of what was required and how to attack it. In half an hour, he had the old pump off and the new pump on.

The old pump had a long screw and a penny in there which my husband thinks caused the clog to form. We don’t know when that happened, but the washer and dryer combo are 13 years old. We really don’t know how the washer was able to function at ALL with as much ‘stuff’ as it had in it. The washer is running happily now, free of clogs. It’s GOOD to have a husband who is good at diagnosing and fixing things.

Now I won’t have to shoot him with my new ammo! :0)

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September 30, 2017 · 10:58 am

A Step Too Far

We got the competitor of the Sleep Number Mattress (Comfortaire) in January of 2006. At that time we would have had to buy a bed frame, headboard, etc. in order to put in the new mattress because it’s basically two fancy air mattresses each with its own control. We looked all around, but were out of style yet again in that people didn’t want bookcase headboards. We decided to build our own.

This is what we built. Not as elegant as what you see in the stores, but the headboard has storage, controls for various things in the middle, lights, etc. The bed frame is solid wood and weighs a ton (more or less :0) ) It’s strong enough to house all the stuff you need to control the air in the mattress, the pump, hoses, etc., and the mattresses themselves, kind of like building a frame for a swimming pool.

We made frames on the headboard so we could decorate it with river rock.

 

We love this bed because we’re never in agreement on how firm the mattress should be. I also tend to change my firmness from time to time to accommodate my back, while my husband sets it and forgets it, other than hitting the button to replace any air that has been lost.

We also like an electric blanket for the same reason. With dual controls, we can both be comfortable. In January of 2006 my husband decided to ‘be neat’ with the electronics for the blanket. The wires ran all over the place, so he put the wires that ran from the headboard to the end of the blanket in the space under the plywood that was the mattress support of the frame of the bed. He also wired the controls into the headboard nicely, and THEN finished putting the headboard together.

This has worked beautifully for 11 years. I realized that when we put the electric blanket on the bed this time (because we LOVE to have the attic fan on at night when the weather allows it), I had it set on HIGH, but it was only warm. I froze to death several nights in a row, even with adding an afghan on my side of the bed,  before telling my husband we needed to get a new electric blanket.

We got busy during the day yesterday, but we decided to plug in the new blanket when we went up to bed last night. Easy, peezy, right?

When it became clear that we would have to take the whole bed apart in order to get the wiring for the non-functioning blanket out, I told my husband I refused. We ended up cutting the wires, cutting off the controls, and cutting off the plug in at the end of the bed. (Needless to say, our former plans of saving the blanket in case of emergency went out the window. It doesn’t make a good blanket by itself, so we can’t even donate it now. :0(  )  I did mention that we might have gone a step too far in trying to be neat 11 years ago…

At a little after 1 a.m. this morning, we finally got the bed together again with clean sheets, the new electric blanket with modernized controls,  a comforter, etc.

We both slept blissfully well last night. Ahhhhh.

 

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September 20, 2017 · 10:41 am

Stretching C A R E F U L L Y…

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I’m doing some really C A R E F U L  stretching today, in addition to just the bending over and letting my arms hang down. This is Day Four of my back not hurting! I’m also being careful to ‘hold my mouth right’ and doing whatever else I can think of to not jinx myself, ending up back at square one.

I really wish I knew what I did to get myself into such a pickle. I can promise I wouldn’t do whatever it was again – EVER.  Since I don’t know, I’m treating myself as if I’m a time bomb, easing into each thing and seeing how it goes. This tees me off. I’m used to being able to do almost whatever I wanted to do without giving it a thought, unless I thought it was dangerous. The only limits have been my imagination. I’m ready to throw this caution to the winds as soon as possible.

I’ve decided to let the weed whacking go until we get over this last impressive heat spell.( That would be the middle of next week they say.)  If the present humidity of 67% holds until this afternoon, it will FEEL LIKE 114 degrees F. here. This is unacceptable, particularly if you’re entertaining the idea of yard work. So that kind of thing will be put on hold until the actual weather starts paying attention to the calendar and we get a break for the start of fall.

Meanwhile, I’m continuing my efforts INSIDE to throw away/give away/put away things that need help all over the house.

My latest project is reorganizing my books upstairs. Yesterday I moved the 44 Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb “In Death” series books to the guest room shelves. I’ll continue moving and reorganizing until I no longer have books falling on my head when I try to pull one out…

Wish me luck?

 

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Filed under Attitude, exercise, Housekeeping - Maintenance

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December 9, 2016 · 3:32 pm

Dog Bed

Orthopedic Bed - SerenityHealth.com - 3 Shades of Dog

Orthopedic Bed – SerenityHealth.com – 3 Shades of Dog

One of the three dog beds we have looks much like this one. At least it DID, before the dogs made holes in the cover on both sides and began pulling the foam out and spreading the fuzzy side of the cover all over the house…

Today we found some denim in the basement. We had to go back to town to get lots of large diaper pins – a hard thing to find in this day and age. We just finished safety pinning the denim to the top of the bed. It doesn’t look pretty, but Bambi, our pit bull, immediately got on it  and settled down for a nap.

Dog-approved, maybe the bed will last for awhile longer.

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Filed under Challenges, Changes, Housekeeping - Maintenance

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October 24, 2016 · 11:37 am

Purging and Reorganizing – Master Bath – Before

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I really have little excuse. I’m not Suzy Homemaker who puts things where they belong as they are used. I wish I were! Instead, I clean things like our sinks and the counter between them, stuffing things in drawers or on shelves. As a result, we have another area that desperately needs attention. It’s on the second floor of our home, so no one sees it but us, but enough is enough.

 

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This is one of two sets of shelves in our master bath. This mess has essentially been years in the making. This one acts as a linen closet, medicine cabinet, and cleaning supplies place.

 

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This second set of shelves is cosmetics, soap, lotions, potions….

I won’t show you my drawers (if you’ll pardon the expression :0) )  But I will show you some close-ups so you’ll have an idea of the job I’m undertaking. I can imagine you shaking your head in disgust, or feeling good that YOU don’t have this mess. It’s okay. I ALWAYS have excuses, other priorities…. I would have to clean and reorganize before I could get people to come and try to clean my house!

 

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The above pic was the end of the pics for the first set of shelves. The remaining pics are for the second set of shelves.

 

 

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So, now that I’ve again admitted that I’m a slob, I’ll get started doing something about it. I’ll need to do this in several sessions over at least a few days, but when I take breaks, I’ll post again – unless I get completely buried. (My husband is concentrating on straightening out our genealogy records on the computer and may not even notice I’ve been buried until he wonders why I haven’t brought him food yet….

Encouragement is definitely appreciated!

Have a wonderful day!!!

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Filed under Acting Like a Grownup, Housekeeping - Maintenance, I'm a slob

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