I have been absent from this blog for the past few days, partly because i have been busy, but mostly because I had no access to post on it. Something went screwy with Movable Type (imagine that!) and I got an error page whenever I navigated to the blogging interface, saying that the directory was not found, or something like that. It is fixed now, but something really has to be done about this blog. I want to convert over to WordPress or something that is not riddled with "issues" like MT is, but I do not have the technical knowledge to attempt it myself. Oh well.

So, what have I been up to lately? The past two Saturdays we have had someone come in and reglaze our shower and our tub surround. They have this process where they etch the tile, then they spray what is essentially like an enamel glaze over it, changing the color of the tile and filling in little cracks and voids. Our shower and tub surround were not in terrible shape, but were covered in cheap grey tile. When the shower was tiled, they did a really crappy job of grouting it, and some of the unfired edges of the tiles could be seen at the grout lines making it look like it was dirty all of the time. The floor of the shower was a lost cause; we had never seen it look halfway decent. There were also two tiles in the shower that had fine cracks in them radiating out from where they had been cut to go around the sill at the bottom of the shower. The tub surround had its own issues: two edge tiles that had popped off because they hadn't used enough mortar, one tile that had the ceramic surface chipped at the corner, some holes drilled in a few tiles where a shower door had been installed before we removed it, and the grey no longer matched anything in the room after we replaced the vanity last year.

We couldn't fix the edge tiles that had come loose because one of them had split in half and they were so thin that we couldn't find any that would match without sticking out. The tile store people said they were Brazilian tiles and that they are no longer made. We had a few extra of the tiles, but not the edge pieces, so Andy cut them to the same size as the edge pieces and installed them. The holes in the tiles were filled with Bondo and sanded smooth. Then the whole thing was sprayed with white enamel glaze. We went with white because it looks clean and is very neutral so it should appeal to the widest range of buyers when we go to sell in a few months. We had to do something to make the bathrooms look their best- the glazing has a five year warranty and it only took about half a day to complete each bathroom. Way easier than chipping out all of that tile and redoing it. This way it looks nice and is functional with no problems for a prospective buyer, ad if they so choose, they can tear out the tile and redo it. We just couldn't go that route with everything else we have going on right now.

These pictures show the before and after of the master bathroom- I'll post pics of the downstairs bath once we get everything back together. We still need to reinstall the faucet handle, shower head, shower curtain rod, etc.

Andy is packing up his things and getting ready to go up to Ohio for Aunt Deb's funeral. It comes at a bad time in terms of things at work, but death is never convenient, so you have to do what you have to do. He is leaving early tomorrow morning to fly out of Orlando and will return late on Saturday night. That will allow him to be there for the viewing Thursday and the funeral Friday. It just sucks all around because she is gone already. It would be so much different if he would be able to actually see her. At least he was able to spend time with her in March when he went up there for a visit. That was when she was still healthy and had no inkling that there was anything wrong, so fortunately his last memories of her will be good ones.

I always hate it when Andy flies somewhere. I am always afraid that he will be taken away from me- it is just the worrier in me. It doesn't help my confidence that Aunt Deb was just ruthlessly taken from us well before her time. But he'll be fine and so will I. I will have the company of a bunch of animals to keep me occupied while he is gone. Actually I should be quite busy taking care of everyone by myself during his absence. They are a lot of work!

I have been somewhat absent from this blog for the last few days. Chalk it up to schoolwork- I got two more quizzes and another writing assignment completed for my class. I have a section exam to take and then I will be halfway complete with my first real class since I returned to school only a couple of weeks ago.

Today I had to take some time out of my studying schedule to address our household shame. You know those desirable architectural features known as plant shelves? Well, I do not desire them, but I have them. You should not desire them either, unless you live in a very non-dusty area or you have a sick compulsion to climb ladders regularly to dust. Neither of these apply to us, yet we have plant shelves. Mostly, we ignore the piling up of world class dust bunnies up there, even though it can be viewed easily from our upstairs hallway that is like a loft looking down over the plant shelves. We choose not to look, because we don't want to deal with it. We have put off the chore of dusting up there for centuries.

Finally I decided we had to do it. I think it was because last night we started having snow flurries from the globs of dust that were liberating from the ceiling fan. Keep in mind that in most senses I am a total neat freak, I have just chosen to ignore this rapidly worsening condition by not looking up there. When we finally started working on the piles of dust, it wasn't pretty. The silk plants that were taken down from the shelves had intricate patterns of dust on them, almost like delicate snowflakes or spiderwebs, but as soon as they were moved, chunks of dust started flying everywhere. I took each one outside and thoroughly beat all of the dust out of it while Andy vacuumed the shelves and ceiling fan atop a ladder. After it was all over, I had to dust everything below and clean the florrs of all of the dust that had fallen on them. Yuck.

So that is how I spent my Sunday, dealing with our household shame. What about you?

Okay, not really, I lied. But that is what I say to Andy when I look out the front windows and there are parked cars lined up all across the front of our property. This is pretty much a weekly occurence, so I say it a lot. It is like an inside joke anymore that we're nearly always having a party.

Our weekend has been good, but we didn't do much of anything. Just the usual crap like grocery shopping and laundry that we normally do, plus dog training for Annabel. We did go out and meet with some people at a kitchen design place and they are working on putting together a plan for our kitchen in the new house. We will go in again next Saturday to see what they came up with. And we did meet with our builder briefly out at the property yesterday. We were supposed to meet with the dirt guy and the land clearing guy at the same time, but one was stuck on a broken down boat in the middle of a river somewhere, and the other we don't know. It was storming outside, so we wouldn't have made much progress anyway.

We stopped in at a flooring store and looked at some options. We saw some neat things and started researching on the internet. We had planned to use carbonized bamboo flooring throughout most of the house originally, but after reading some reviews I realized that bamboo is not the right product for us. I researched some other options and I think we have settled on laminate flooring as the most practical for us. We want the same thing throughout the living rooms, bedrooms, kitchen, etc., and even real wood floors we were concerned would show too much wear in the traffic pattern. Laminate seems to be the perfect option; it is very durable and there are so many choices. Andy had a hard time switching gears for the new flooring idea as he generally does- he is less willing to accept change than I am and takes a while to warm up to something new, but he eventually comes around.

This afternoon there was a huge ruckus from the kids, birds and dogs alike, when someone came to the door. It was someone from the neighborhood to tell us that we had been chosen for "Yard of the Month."
Yard of the Month was started a couple of months ago by our successors as officers of the Homeowners association. They chose the first one, and then whoever wins each month has to chooose the winner for the next month, and they get a $25 gift certificate from Home Depot and a yard sign and such. I have joked with Andy since the beginning of the program that he needed to try harder so he could get Yard of the Month. He doesn't care in the least because we are just trying to get out of this neighborhood; our yard actually is one of the nicest ones even without him really trying and just doing the minimum required to keep the yard up to our standards. I guess most of the neighborhood is comfortable living below our minimum standards, though.

Just as a side note, we went out to lunch on Saturday while we had the oil in Andy's truck changed. I don't know if you have an Uno's where you are but if you do and you go there, you must try the buffalo chicken quesadillas. They were so effing good. I got nothing else right now. i hope you had a nice holiday weekend.

I am normally quite focused, but in certain things, I get wrapped up completely and all of a sudden I don't know where the hours have gone.

For example, I could be doing a couple of easy chores on a Sunday morning, as simple as feeding the birds and dogs. When I finish, I notice something on the counter that needs to be wiped up, like some juice from the fruit I cut up for the birds. I grab a paper towel to wipe it up and it is the last paper towel on the roll. I walk into the laundry/utility room to grab another roll of paper towels. I get the paper towels and notice the garbage in there is full and needs to be taken out. I take the garbage out and come back in and go to put a new trash bag in the can and see a beach towel folded sitting on the dryer. I take the towel outside to the cabinet on the back porch to put it away, and I see that the back porch needs sweeping. I sweep the back porch and realize that the pool deck needs to be hosed off. I spray down the pool deck and then decide I should clean the back porch while I have the hose out. I spray off the back porch and then decide the back of the house is pretty dirty too, so I spray it as well. Then I figure the plants on the back porch need watering.

Can you see where I am leading with this? I could keep going on, but I think you get the point. The hours just evaporate and pretty soon I am worn out from running around cleaning. Do you have this problem or am I just a major scatterbrained cleaning freak?

The time had come for us. After five years of DSL and all the problems we had with it, we decided it was time for a change and switched to cable internet. We got DSL back in 2002 and were fine until they bumped up our speed in 2004. At that point, though we didn't realize it at the time, the increased speeds were too much to be handled for the distance we are from the origination point. Of course it took three years of problems and us calling for them to finally send someone out, and once the problem was identified, it wasn't like they offered any solution. They just said we weren't qualified for that fast of service and had us bumped back down. This pissed me off, because we had been paying an inflated rate for crummy service that shut down all the time for three years and they offered us basically nothing. Lame.

So today we took the plunge to go for cable internet. Of course, it couldn't be easy- it took a long time for the installer to get everything going, and even after that we had to mess with it for several hours to get our wireless connection working again. The most entertaining part of the whole ordeal, was that the installer guy that came to the house farted loudly right in front of me. And he was like "oops, I'm not supposed to do that in the customer's house." I was thinking, "Oh my God, that guy did not just shit himself right in front of me," but he did. Ew.

So our shower door upstairs has been sticking quite a lot lately, and Andy finally decided that it was time for him to take it apart and fix it. The shower doors have been in place for about four or five years. Andy found them on clearance at Lowes for only about a third of the regular price and they have been great up until about two weeks ago. When he took them apart, he found that one of the little wheels that the doors ride on had come apart and all of the bearings had come out.

I went to this great local hardware store that was established in 1885 to find replacements for the shower door wheels. The place is unbelievable, they carry over 64,000 different items, and will order anything you could possibly need. Every time I go there looking for something I see more different parts of the store, which is un-air conditioned and built almost like a small complex of buildings. This time a nice little old man led me through a different building that I had never seen before up to the second floor which was like an attic with fans blowing air through the place. We passed umpteen thousand little bins of assorted hardware and finally got to the section with different obscure door hardware, where we found, of course the very wheels I needed.

Andy decided to take the opportunity to take the whole frame for the shower doors out completely and re-caulk everything. What a mess. So we have had to use the downstairs bathroom to shower since yesterday. Andy took one shower in that bathroom and immediately went out to buy a new shower head for it. I could have told him that the one we had was horrible, but until he tried it for himself it wouldn't have made that kind of impact. That bathroom is the one we use to bathe dogs, and the shower head has to be one of those kind that has a hose and detaches. Thenew one he got works soooo much better; I put it through its paces by washing two dogs already.

We also use that tub to wash Charley, the parrot. He has a perch that sits down in the bottom of the tub and we take the shower head down low and spray the water up so that it rains down on him, which he loves. When we tried to give him a bath with the new shower head, he wasn't having any of it. The old shower head was white, the new one is chrome, and he didn't like it one bit. He took off flying when the shower head came near him.

Finally, I was able to show him that it was just water, just like the old shower head he liked so much, and then he was fine. You would have thought I was trying to spray him with acid, or something. Birds. So very strange.

I didn't post yesterday because I finally got my act together and did a bunch of cleaning, organizing, and cooking that I wanted to get done this weekend. Andy comes home today- in fact I think he has probably left already- and I don't want him to think I am a total degenerate vegetable without him around. He'll be back this afternoon by the time I get home and I can't wait to see him. The "kids," furry and feathered will be beside themselves with happiness. They missed him a ton. This was the first time Louie spent a night away from his dad since we got him at six and a half weeks old.

Andy is in Ohio right now, and I am home alone and up way past my bedtime. He left yesterday morning and it is just me and a house full of animals, but we are all doing fine. I haven't gotten crap done- I had all kinds of big plans but I have whiled the time away so far by putzing around on the computer rather than doing anything productive. That means tomorrow I have to get moving and do the grocery shopping for the week and all the cleaning and organizing I wanted to do this weekend. It is so easy to NOT do all of that stuff though, and to totally lose track of time. Which is why I am still awake at this late hour. I think I am going to go crawl into bed with my dogs before the whole night is gone!

Some of you that have been readers here for a long time remember that we had all kinds of issues when we had our swimming pool put in, and that it was a nightmarish experience that took an entire year to complete. Since then, we have put all of that behind us, except we have one lingering issue with the pool, a leak near the top of the pool, at a component that they forgot to seal. They installed it without sealing it, and then the deck was poured and it could not be sealed properly. We have "lifetime" warranty on the pool against leaks, but all that has meant is that they will come out and apply some putty to the leak when we call them, and then six to eight weeks later, it will leak again. They tried all different kinds of products to seal it up, epoxies, putties, some kind of crap that they use to repair cruise ships, and something that they called a "hydraulic patch." None of it worked. The leak would always come back and the water leaks out until the water level is just barely above the bottom of the skimmer, and it causes the pump to pull air through it, which is very bad.

Andy and I have always been concerned about the recurring leak, especially now that we will be trying to sell this house when the new one is built, and no one is going to want to deal with that leak, but we would be forced to disclose it. Well, a couple of weeks ago we went to a home show and talked to different vendors. We didn't even bother with the pool people that were there, but we were talking to a lady with a local mortgage company, and she told us we should talk to the pool guy at the booth next to hers. We had a little chat with the guy about our leaky problem, and he said he thought he could fix it. He quoted us a hundred bucks to fix it and we thought that sounded like a bargain if it really worked. We decided to give him a call.

First off, we could tell this guy was not like most of the pool people we have dealt with because he showed up on time, actually it was even a bit early, for the first visit to assess the problem. And for the second visit, there was an emergency that happened with his dog, but he called in advance of when he was scheduled to show up to reschedule. Again, this is something we have never seen before when dealing with pool people- generally they don't show or call. He showed up this morning to do the repair, and Andy described what he had come up with to me. It was actually quite ingenious and should be a permanent solution- one that our rotten pool company should have come up with a long time ago. He managed to stabilize a joint that was previously subject to motion which was causing it to crack any putty or substance that was used to stop the leaks. It is way more complicated than that, but you get the idea.

We are so thrilled that the leak is now a thing of the past- and we couldn't believe it only cost us a hundred bucks. We were happy to pay it not to have to deal with it anymore. Isn't it wonderful to work with someone that is reliable, courteous, and does a good job? You would think that would be the norm, but we know better. It is hard to get good help these days, don't you think?

Today Painting Chef wrote about how her husband gets wrapped up at work sometimes and has to stay late and how he now calls her every few hours so she won't worry. Of course this is after putting her into a major panic once because of lack of communication. She worried he was dead in a ditch somewhere of course, like all of us worriers would.

Andy used to regularly scare me nearly to death the same way. He works second shift, and I am on first. He normally gets home at about 11:30 at night, but sometimes he will have to stay over until as late as 4:00 in the morning. I am usually asleep when he gets home anyway, so when he finds out that he has to stay late it is already so late that he doesn’t want to call and wake me up. Trouble is, when I wake up at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and he isn’t home, I start to worry if he is in a ditch somewhere bleeding to death. I have woken up many a time in a panic because it was several hours after the end of his shift and he still isn't home.

Now we have a system. He will send a text message to my cell phone if he is going to be late, and if I wake up worried, I will go downstairs and check my phone for the message. It works out well, and if I don't wake up on my own and notice he is late then at least my sleep won't be disturbed by a ringing phone. I think I have almost always woken up when he is late, though. Must be the subconscious worrier in me.

Even though we are "on vacation," Andy and I are making a concerted effort to get up early every day and get some things done. It is just that we have spent so many "vacations" away from work just relaxing and hanging out that seem to whizz past and we don't know what we have done with our time. It makes it seem like the break is longer when it is packed with things to do and places to go. And we are off to a good start.

We spent hours last night and much of today working on our Christmas cards to send out. I made up a little one page letter to go with the cards for relatives we don't see often and for Andy's relatives that we do see often but that like that kind of little shit even though they already know about everything written in the newsletter. We printed those out on some shiny paper, updated our address list, printed out and stuck all of our labels, wrote out the cards and finally trekked to the post office, of course on the busiest mailing day of the year, so that we would have the pleasure of standing in line with all the other procrastinators to get our second choice of Christmas stamps, as the one I wanted was sold out already. Oh well. How's that for a run-on sentence?

So, the cards are sent, but if you are one of my blog friends and want to be on the list, I am still sending out "straggler" cards as I get addresses, so don't let that stop you.

And I decided the other day that I am going to make a second batch of my Grandma's famous cuccis, as there weren't enough from the first batch to send to everyone, and I didn't have the updated list of family addresses at the time. They won't arrive before Christmas, but I am sure no one will mind. I have all of the ingredients and bought a new heavy marble rolling pin and a hand pastry blender to make the process easier on myself.

So anyway, I am ready for the rest of the vacation to fall into place now, as all of the time critical stuff has been taken care of. Tomorrow we are taking the two girl dogs to be groomed and then we are volunteering at the mall for a while in the afternoon- wrapping gifts to benefit the poodle rescue, but that is fun stuff. And then we have some other fun projects to work on- more on those later in the break. I hope you are feeling the holiday spirit as well!

Our vacuum cleaner hasn't been working well in a while. I noticed that it didn't even sound the same; instead of the deep roar it initially had it made sort of a whiny sound and didn't pick up much at all. The last time I used it I declared to Andy that the damn thing was broken- I had gone back and forth over the same stupid little feather that was laying on the carpet and it wouldn't even pick THAT up. I was pretty sure it hadn't worked right in ages. Andy kept telling me it was fine, that we should just keep using it because he didn't want to buy a new vacuum cleaner now because we are having all wood floors in our new house.

Well, I am not sure what got into him today, but when I opened the garage door to pull in when I got home, I noticed the vacuum cleaner was in the trashcan. When I got in the house there was little note on the counter that said "look in the laundry room trash can." I looked, and there was a mountain of crap- dirt and lint from inside of a vacuum cleaner. I went to go see if there was a new vacuum cleaner in the closet, and when I opened the door there was a new vacuum with a bow on it.

Andy called me from work just then and said that he had gotten TONS of crap out of the carpets with the new vac, all the junk that was left behind by vacuuming with the old one that I had sworn didn't work. I guess he believes me now. At least we can use it on the area rugs in the new house. And that is still at least a year away.

I found this frog on the back porch this morning after it stopped raining. I can't believe how tiny he is. He's not even as wide as my ring.

This post is going to sound a lot like a product endorsement, but it isn't; I just wanted to share what someone shared with me today. This morning we stopped at the vet on the way to the grocery store and I don't even remember exactly how it was brought up, but one of the ladies there told us that Mr. Clean Magic Erasers- the heavy duty ones- work great for cleaning grout.

Now I don't know about you, but in our house almost the entire bottom floor is covered in 18" tile and it has a fairly wide grout line. The tile is a nice light beige and the grout is almost the same color, or should I say was the same color, because it is impossible to get it clean. I have tried everything on that damn grout over the years, bleach with a toothbrush, special pastes made just for cleaning grout and nearly every spray product on the shelf that claims to clean grout including ones like Kaboom and Finazzle that are supposed to work well on that kind of stuff. We even had someone come in and clean the grout professionally but I was less than impressed with the results. So I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that we would always have icky looking grout.

Well I decided to pick up some of the Magic Erasers and give it a shot anyway. They are the ones that say they are 50% stronger for heavy duty use on the box. And then this afternoon, I gave them a try. The results were amazing. It cleaned that grout like freakin' magic; I really couldn't believe it. I did a large section of the floor but used up the whole box of four so I need to get more tomorrow. The best part is that there are no harsh chemicals and I can work on the floors without having to worry about the dogs or my bird breathing the fumes or getting bleach all over myself and ruining clothes. I didn't even need to wear gloves. Seriously, if you have dirty grout you have got to try these things.

In the driveway today when I got home I found this, the chewed off tail of a rather large fish. I was baffled for a minute as to how a fish tail would have ended up in the middle of my driveway, but I think I have it figured out now. An osprey, which is a large fish-eating bird of prey that inhabits this area, must have grabbed a fish and dropped the tail off while it was flying over. That is the only logical explanation. And I have seen plenty of ospreys fly over clutching fish in their talons. Still, how very odd.

Okay so the war is only the war on fleas, but it is a big one and right now the fleas are winning. I picked up Annabel last night off the rug and her cute sweet little belly was just crawling with the nasty little vermin, and this after I have been spraying them and treating them regularly with Frontline/Advantage. I guess they need treatment more often than every month even. I put Anna immediately in the bathtub, and scrubbed her down thoroughly to get rid of the fleas that were on her at the time. Then I re-treated her and a couple of the others with what little Frontline Spray I had left. I picked up some more of the Frontline Spray this afternoon and doused them all in it and rubbed it in to their skin well. Andy has been treating the yard for fleas, but the next great frontier for us is to treat the house. We have regular indoor pest control, but it is only the crack/crevice dusting type deal and apparently that is not enough. I have been hesitant to spray because of Charley, our parrot, as birds are very sensitive to chemicals, but we have got to do something.

Today I picked up some diatomaceous earth that we can dust into the carpets and furniture and it is supposed be very safe for our pets but also kill fleas and other vermin in no more than 48 hours by drying them out. I am going to keep looking for other better stuff to treat with and we are going to vacuum the area rug in the living room and the carpet in the bedrooms pretty much daily to get rid of any nasty little flea carcasses and eggs. Ick. Does anyone have any other suggestions? Harsh chemicals or foggers are not an option due to the bird. I don't want to lose this battle!

So it is time for the Blog Tour of Homes. Actually it is a little early, but since I am an evening blogger, I figured I'd better go ahead and get my photos up. According to BooMama's site, which is where the tour of homes is being hosted, the photos should be first your front door, second where you blog, third your main living area, fourth, your kitchen, and fifth is your choice. I have adhered roughly to that order, but I threw in a few extras.

Here's my front door, and the front porch of my house:

We have a wireless network, so I do my blogging all over the house on my laptop, but my actual desk is here. You can see Charley, my parrot sitting on his playgym right next to where I sit.

Here is our living room, and of course it is full of dogs, just like we like it.

The next two photos are of the kitchen, which Andy and I remodeled in 2003.

This is the little attic room that serves as Andy's office.

This red wall is in our hallway upstairs and is our pet portrait wall. I need to do some paintings of the newly adopted dogs, but I will probably wait till we get to the new house.

And here is the focal point of our backyard, the pool we put in a couple of years ago. The landscape is all our own; I designed it and Andy did all the large plantings. I planted the small plants.

I hope you enjoyed the tour. Stop by BooMama's site for the full listing of the blogs participating in the tour.

I can't think of anything good to post today, so I am leaving you with some photos I took this afternoon of the tropical plants around the pool. Have a great weekend!

It was a really slow weekend here around these parts. Andy had to work Friday night until three thirty in the morning and then go back to work again Saturday afternoon at three and work just as late that night. He finally had the day off today, which was a good thing since I hardly get to see him when he is working second shift.

So I spent most of the weekend alone. At least as alone as you can be with six dogs and a bird in the house. They didn't disappoint either. We went swimming and they ran around and played in the yard. I floated around the pool in my floating lounge chair and looked at a magazine while they waded in the shallow "beach" part of the pool or rested under the umbrella or porch. Denny found himself a new favorite place to hang out- the lounge chair on the porch. We cooked, did some laundry and just hung out. Dogs really do make good company.

On that note, I sent an email to the president of the poodle rescue about how we would really like to keep Denny and Michaela. She didn't say no- so it is a possibility. I am definitely praying about it. Those two are really special.

Last night Andy had to work really late because of the shuttle rollout to the launch pad, as in he didn't get home until four in the morning. I snapped this cute shot of him with the dogs sleeping this morning.

He is back at work already again, on overtime, but hopefully he won't be working quite so late tonight.

One of my favorite plants out around the pool is finally blooming. Well, I say "blooming" but actually the "flowers" aren't flowers but colored bracts, but you get the idea. The plant is called Lobster claw heliconia, for obvious reasons and it is really impressive. It is a tropical plant which we are lucky to be able to grow down here in Florida. The claw shaped bracts look almost as if they are made of plastic, but they are actually kind of fuzzy to the touch.

You might remember my horrifying discovery several weeks ago, when I found that there was a terrible toilet leak that had wicked up the drywall and been infested by mold.

The whole thing turned out for the best actually, because we had a beautiful white vanity waiting for us in the garage. We found the vanity on clearance at Lowes because it was bashed in a little on the right side, but in our house that side was up against the wall so it didn't matter. We paid twenty-five dollars for the vanity that was worth at least two hundred. At the same time we found a nice white bathroom sink on clearance for a mere five dollars. The items had sat and waited for us to install them for quite a while, because we never could find a countertop that would fit. The original vanity was custom to the house and therefore was not a standard size, it had three inches added on one side. Andy was able to build up the vanity on the side it needed it with extra laminate from a shelf inside the vanity, but the countertop was our big challenge. That is the reason the vanity and sink sat in the garage for so long. Anyway, I finally found a great deal on a countertop on eBay, of all places. I found someone to fabricate the countertop out of Corian to our exact dimensions and for the bargain price of only $109, shipped. We saved over four hundred dollars from what it would have cost through the normal retailers. And the countertop is beautiful. We recieved it by Fed Ex and it fits perfectly. The whole thing was made from a drawing I scanned and sent to the seller. I think we ended up saving about six to seven hundred dollars on the whole deal and ended up with a much richer looking bathroom. Here are some photos of the whole rigamarole:

Here is the carnage- a moldy disgusting mess.

This is my drawing that I sent to the countertop fabricator. The countertop fit perfectly.

And here is the fabulous result. I am extremely pleased at how it all came out, and even more pleased that it was so inexpensive.

And if you want to see something REALLY SCARY, here is a picture of the very same bathroom before we moved in. It was country-fied to high HELL.

The picture above is of a Cuban treefrog comfortably nestled in the top of one of our carved tikis out by the pool. The damn things are everywhere. This weekend while we were volunteering, I was chatting with Jean, one of the other volunteers. There was a snake exhibit just across the way from us, and we started talking about snakes, and then progressed to frogs. We were discussing the onslaught of the Cuban treefrogs in the area. I have written about them before, and how they have spread to our area and have outcompeted or eaten all of the native treefrogs.

Jean said that we need to get rid of them before they take over completely. She said that a herpetologist (scientist that studies reptiles and amphibians) had told her to place them in a plastic ziplock bag with Oragel, the stuff you put on sore gums and place them in the freezer. She said you didn't have to use the Oragel, you could just pop them in the freezer plain in the plasic bag, if you wanted. I am not sure what benefit there is to using the Oragel, but anyway, the frogs in the freezer get really cold, go to sleep, and then die. I told her that I didn't think I could do it, and even though she said that these Cuban frogs are killing all of our native frogs, deep down I like all frogs and it is really hard for me to kill a living thing (other than a mosquito or roach). She volunteered to come over and freeze all of our frogs for us, but I think it may have been an idle promise. We will have to see.

I came home to a real mess after work today. The dogs must have been busy. As soon as I walked in the door, I saw a little poop nugget on the floor, courtesy of Ollie, my eighteen year old dog. He can't help it, really, so no big deal. I looked in the laundry room and there was more poop, so I was cleaning it up and carrying it to the toilet to flush, and I passed the dining room where Charley the parrot's cage is. I was horrified to see the mess there at the base of his cage. His giant cage goes all the way down to the ground, almost. It is on wheels to make it easier to move and there is a tray at the bottom underneath the bottom grate. He loves to throw out perfectly good food- take it from his bowl and throw it down on the bottom of the cage. It drives the dogs nuts, and Louie, the black dog, will actually use his front legs like they are arms and stand up on the seed catcher part of the cage and reach way in to try to drag the newspapers with the fruit, pasta, cheese or whatever Charley has dropped on them. The other dogs gather round to share in the spoils. Usually he is not very successful at this endeavor, but today while we were at work he managed to drag an entire sheet of newspaper out of the cage and onto the floor. That would be bad enough, but then Ollie must have come by and peed on the paper, so there were little bits of torn newspaper practically cemented to the tile floor and little crumbs of food EVERYWHERE. I spent the next forty-five minutes cleaning out the bird cage and putting new papers down, wiping and vacuuming up all of the mess and then steam cleaning all of the tile floors with my Eureka Envirosteamer. Dogs will be dogs, I guess. One of these days I am going to get a new birdcage that is raised up off the ground more so they can't get to it.

I swear, I just try to do one darned thing, and everything falls to shit. I got up during a commercial to get a drink, and I noticed that the dogs' water bowl was very low. It is one of those one gallon dispenser deals, so I scrubbed it thoroghly and refilled it, then wiped down the tray it sits on. While I was doing that, one of the dogs was digging away at the base of the bird cage, trying to steal food that Charley had thrown on the bottom of his cage. So I decided that the bird cage needed cleaning. I dragged out the dustbuster and the trashcan to change his cage papers and of course while I had his tray out to re-paper it, he pooped on the floor. So then I reach for the paper towels and spray cleaner, and there was only one paper towel left on the roll and no cleaner. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!! So, I leave the poop, go to fill the cleaner and manage to knock the large package of extra paper towels off the top of the cabinets where it was precariously balanced. I filled the bottle, got more paper towels for the roll, realized that the garbage was full, took the garbage out, put a new bag in the can, now wait- where the hell was I? Oh yeah, there is still poop on the floor!

I should have written about this when it happened, back in the fall, but I think I was too traumatized to relive it at that point. It was back when Andy was still on second shift, and I had come home from work and gone for a run around the neighborhood. I decided that I should do a little pool maintenance while I was all sweaty, so I went out to hose off the pool filter. It is a paper filter and you take it out of the housing and use the spray nozzle on the hose to remove all of the gook from it. Yes, gook is a very technical term.

Anyway, the sprayer we have is a brass twisty nozzle type thing and when I turned it on, no water came out. I thought that it was really strange, because the design of the thing is very simple and there isn't much that could go wrong. I ended up unscrewing the outer nozzle completely to see what was blocking it, and I saw something well, fleshy. I thought maybe a slug had crawled up in there and I took a stick and tried to poke it out of there. It wasn't coming out. I couldn't even find an opening large enough to get it out, and I figured it was dead in there, so I continued jabbing at it with the stick and almost gagging while little bits of it came out of the holes. At one point, I think I saw a tiny foot, which leads me to believe it was a frog that had crawled up in there. It was revolting, let me tell you. Finally I decided that the only was to get the dead frog out of the hose was to blast it out with water. I didn't want to see the chunks of it flying out, so I wound the hose in and out of some of the pool plumbing to hold it in place while I turned the water on full blast. What I saw from where I stood was a big balloon of frog skin inflate out one of the holes and then rupture. It was gross and I truly feel bad for the little frog. I never wanted to hurt him, but he made his home in a very unfortunate place.

I related the awful story to Andy on the phone that night and he laughed his ass of at me, of course, while I cursed him for not being there to help me. I think his work buddies had a good laugh about it too. Oh well.

It has been getting warmer and warmer outside lately, and yesterday I decided to turn the pool heater on. This morning, the pool was a comfortable 86 degrees, and after we finished the yard work, we went swimming for the first time since October, and Louie got to play his favorite game. Louie loves for us to throw his squeaky ball into the water and then he runs in to retrieve it. He is smart enough to know that when he gets hot, he should go in the water to cool off. He runs over to the pool's beach area and gets in the water, then kind of squats down so the water covers his back. We will have to build a pool with a beach entry or a sunbench at the new house too, just so he can wade. I would hate to deprive him.

This morning before work I was taking out all the kitchen trash and one of the cans wasn't quite full. I went into the downstairs bathroom to empty the small trashcan and there disaster struck. Or, more accurately disaster had struck a while ago, but I just then became aware of it. When I pulled the trashcan away from the wall, I saw a huge patch of dark mold. I called Andy over (who was thrilled, by the way) and he got a crowbar and pried the base board off. Apparently there is a leak, and the drywall got all wet, but we didn't notice it until the mold showed up. The affected area is behind the toilet, so it stands to reason that we wouldn't notice it. We gated off the bathroom to keep the dogs out, but the bathroom door open so the area could dry out, and had to leave for work.

This afternoon Andy cut out most of the damaged piece of wall. He had to go to school this evening, so he can't mess with it anymore, and I am prohibited from using that bathroom until the leak source is discovered and fixed. He might stay home from work tomorrow and work on it. It appears that some of the mold has crept behind the vanity, but strangely enough we have a brand new, nicer vanity sitting out in the garage that we have intended to install for a long time. There is also a brand new sink out there, but we would have to find a countertop. Here is a picture of the area after all the nasty mold was cut out. The fun around here never ends!

Most of you know how much I like creatures, and that even includes some insects. Ants can even be interesting sometimes, like the leaf cutter ants I saw in Costa Rica, once that carry huge slices of leaf many times larger than they are.

As neat as ants are, I do not so much relish observing them in the house. While Florida living is great, there are some cons to it, and one of those is the bugs. It never gets cold enough to kill them off, so they just multiply and multiply and you get the idea. Professional pest control is not a luxury, here, it is a necessity. And still, we will have bug problems from time to time. A stray silverfish here and there, once in a while an earwig, but mostly it is the ants. We get these little ants referred to as "crazy ants" or "sugar ants" and they are just the tiniest things. Probably smaller than the head of a pin, but where there is one, there are many of his friends. In addition to our pest control service we have to spray, bait, and smoosh the damn things, cause I don't care how neat they are, they can be neat and interesting OUTSIDE of the house. We encourage small geckos to take up residence in the house as they feed off the little vermin. No matter what we do, they always seem to come back, and lately there hasn't been a single day that wasn't punctuated by me yelling "DAMN ANTS!"

I guess you northerners don't have to deal with this kind of stuff, or do you? I guess the warm weather is worth it, but sometimes I feel like I am living in a giant ant farm.

The Christmas tree was driving me a little batty as it took up a lot of space. I was finally forced to take it down yesterday, and that signals the beginning of the end. The end of vacation, that is. There are only five days left of our Christmas vacation from work, and that is a little sad, because I think both Andy and I could get used to this not working thing.

I mean, it is not like we have been laying around on the couches and eating bon bons or anything. We have been quite busy getting a lot of things done. For instance, we have now taken Cody to the vet ten times this holiday break in an effort to get his insulin dosage correct. Tomorrow will be the eleventh and hopefully the last time. We have shopped for stone and tile for an upcoming bathroom remodel, gone out to eat a couple of times, drove around the island looking at houses, cleaned out the clearance aisles buying next year's Christmas lights, and we took trips to Orlando and Melbourne.

Andy has completed several projects in the garage, like painting and hanging new racks and hooks to hold things like ladders and gardening tools. He has spent countless hours configuring his new laptop the way he wants it and also put up new trellises for our allamanda plants to replace some that broke in the hurricane this year.

In the meantime, I wiped clean an old laptop and readied it for sale, then listed it on eBay as we were up to four laptops in a house with only two people. I planted a new plant, walked 21.41 miles (not all in one shot), and took lots of photos. And then of course I have been busy with posting on this site and also my new blogging job researching and writing about gadgets for Mobility Site.

So all in all we are having a busy but fun vacation, and I hope everyone else is too. This is just the kind of change of pace we need to get us motivated for the year ahead.

Andy and I have been terrible procrastinators this year, or if you ask him, I have been a terrible procrastinator. We just got our Christmas cards in the mail today, after much bickering. He blames me for not sending the addresses to his computer for him to print out the address labels, and I blame him for the fact that I had to make one of those horrible Christmas newsletters that everyone hates.

I made the mistake of making a newsletter for Christmas the first year we were married because I found the neatest paper in the entire world to print it on. It actually came out pretty cute. Now every year his family nags me to do one of those damn newsletters. The stupid thing is that they already know everything in the newsletter, because they are constantly calling or visiting, so it isn't even news.

Since I was forced to make one, I titled it Another Stinkin' Newsletter, which Andy didn't exactly love. I just wasn't into it. Then we had issues this morning with the label printing software and we were both a little bitchy because we were up so early working on the cards. I managed, as always, to get a paper cut on my mouth from licking envelopes, and at one point I even licked a self-adhesive stamp before applying it. Suffice it to say that I am really glad that ordeal is over, though Andy and I still have bits of glitter all over us from the cards. At least the cards are in the mail!

The house is starting to drive me a little nuts. I am a super neat freak and while it looks pretty clean, there is hidden dirt and dust that can't be reached without a lot of trouble. I can't see it, but I know that it is there and it bugs me. You know how your house is never as clean as when you first moved in? I want that just-moved-in clean again. What I need is a service that would come in, move all the furniture out, and then scrub and clean and even repaint if necessary, and have everything back in place in a day's time. They could call the business "A Clean Start" or something like that. I would pay big bucks for something like that. The idea of doing all that myself really overwhelms me and as time goes on and I know that the funk is piling up behind the furniture it overwhelms me as well. I wish there was some kind of machine that could attach to one of the doors or windows and it would just suck all the dust out of the entire house. I mean I dust and all, but it seems like only hours later it is back. How do you fight the house funk?

One thing I learned from working night shift on Sunday is that I could not do it on a regular basis. It is all well and good if you can sleep during the day, but when I got home and tried to go to sleep, it was like trying to fall asleep in the middle of a zoo at feeding time. Charley (the parrot) was happily yapping away at the top of his lungs, "tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle" and so on was his favorite that morning, over and over again. The dogs were in their active phase, and were thundering up and down the stairs and hallway. Annabel kept jumping on the bed and licking me in the face to let me know she wanted to play. Louie was barking. Needless to say I got very little sleep and hopefully I won't have to go through that again anytime soon.

This weekend we have spent time prepping for next week when we will put up the Christamas tree. There is a lot more to it than one would think. Last year we did not put up the tree at all because we were so worn out from dealing with having our pool built and doing all the landscaping and everything ourselves, so we just said screw it.

So, in the time since we last had the tree up, a few things have changed. We got Charley, our large parrot in his large cage that now resides where the Chrismas tree goes in the Dining room. He loves to throw his food and is extremely messy, so this weekend Andy spent hours scraping dried fruit and such off the walls behind and around his cage and repainting them. He also made a large plexiglass guard for the cage, so that Charley can't do that to the walls again.

So then, Andy and I started shuffling the furniture around, trying to figure out how we could fit everything in the dining room. The tree has to go in there, because it has a really high ceiling; it goes all the way up to the second floor, and our tree is over nine feet tall. Charley's cage has to go in there too, because it is the only place it fits. We also have a pen for the two youngest dogs to go in when we are not at home in the dining room. I know, it sounds like a zoo, but it really isn't that bad. And then of course there is the dining room table, and a small cabinet that matches it for storing extra dishes and such. Fitting all of that stuff with the tree in there is going to be a challenge. I think I would really rather make it into a sitting room or something other than a dining room, because we hardly ever sit in there to eat. We always end up sitting at the bar in the kitchen. It is kind of a waste of space to have that big old table in there anyway. I like the idea of having a small dining table with a couple of comfy chairs and a nice area rug.

Anyway, back to the holiday planning. The nice thing about not putting up the tree last year is I forgot about all of the cute ornaments we have. I started looking at some of them today and am excited to hang them. My favorite ones are the Boyd's Bears plush ornaments that are little bears dressed in holiday costumes. They are all ready to come out of their boxes and tissue paper next week. What about you? Are you ready for the holidays? Do the holidays force you to rearrange your house like we have to?

Since I have lived in Florida for most of my life, I forget that a lot of people don't consider it normal to be supporting non-paying squatters in their homes. The squatters I am speaking of are the geckos that share our house. They are kind of cute little lizards about two to three inches long that usually only come out at night and eat bugs. What more could you ask for really? They are better than a lot of the roomates I have had.

One time Andy's aunt and uncle from Ohio were here "visiting." Actually it was more like a free vacation for them; they were just using us as a hotel, basically. His aunt saw one of our geckos in the bathroom one night and FREAKED OUT. She was appalled, first that there was a lizard in the house, and second that we knew about it and told her to leave him alone. Little did she know if I had to choose between her and the gecko, the gecko would stay. At least he ate bugs, and he didn't leave a pile of sand in the bottom of my bathtub either.

These are the pictures I took the first day that the in-laws arrived, which was the only nice day weatherwise of their trip. We got to hang out a little in the backyard while Louie, the black dog showed off and made everyone play fetch with him. In the pictures are Andy, his mom and dad, and his grandparents.

I am the main decorator of the house, but the garage belongs to Andy and he has been working fixing it up for quite a while. One of the things he has wanted to do for a long time is this weeks's project, the garage floor. He is painting the garage floor with that Rustoleum Epoxy Shield stuff, so it looks like I will be parking outside in the driveway for the next two weeks or so. He is doing half of the garage at a time, because we have so much crap in the garage that he has to shift it all to one side, paint it and then shift it all to the other side and paint it. We have to let it cure for seven days before we can drive on it, so my poor Jeep will be out in the elements for a while. The floor is looking good, though.

Here is what the epoxy shield looks like in the grey color. It comes in tan as well, and the little colored "sprinkles" are included in the package for you to sprinkle over the paint while it is still wet.

This is the new door we just put on the side of the garage that we picked up on clearance for forty bucks. Not bad, huh?

Here is a nother view of the half of the garage that has been painted. Tuesday Andy will move all the crap over to that side and finish the job.

And this is the silly note that Andy put on the door leading out to the garage from the kitchen so his idiot wife (me) wouldn't forget and step out onto the wet paint.