Scrapbooking for me!

Evidently, the part of my brain that can knit is on hiatus. I have been struggling with a pair of fingerless mitts and simply cannot get on board with the pattern....which is a no brainer. I know I have done/can do this, but for some reason, it is just not clicking. So I am putting it away and starting a new sit around project.

Tomorrow (today), I'll stop at Walgreen's and get all the photos of the hotel printed up. Although standing at the little kiosk and monkeying with the photos is entertaining, it sure was a lot simpler when you just dropped off the roll and got a mish-mash of photos back. I figure it will take AT LEAST an hour to chose, crop and monkey with them. THEN, while they are being developed, I'm going to the scrapbook store to stock up on fresh supplies...not too many, since there lies madness. Just enough to keep me busy this weekend.

Lisi gets her first paycheck on Friday and is quite excited. She is really enjoying her job---it is a perfect fit for her. Part event planning and part chatting to the public, it seems to be custom made for her right now. She even likes the classes in her major---but then, criminal justice is just all around entertaining, if you don't take it overly seriously.

I am back at work after a year long absence. They are being very accommodating--tomorrow(today) I will be going thru stacks of files. I tested on Wednesday and did paperwork on Tuesday. I am TIRED. Just the chatting and the people and the walking in real shoes has worn me out. (I wore real clothes and real shoes for 2 days in a row...ALL DAY. And I drove back and forth to work.)
I came home too tired to do much more than fix dinner and clean up the kitchen. Mike came home and wanted to go swimming (it's really hot) and the idea of finding and putting on my suit and walking out to the backyard was JUST. TOO. MUCH. Maybe on Thursday. For sure on Thursday so I can get some sun.

Transom windows

Mike is building the stained glass for the transoms. Each one of the interior rooms has a transom over the door (this was an old hotel). He works on them between appointments...or if I'm there like this weekend, I'll work on one of my projects and he'll work on them. He has 9 done...2 to go. This particular pattern has 87 pieces, with something like 350-400 cuts, with 360 solder joints...so this is a very pickety project. (It's not a hobby...too complicated.)

This photo is the original English window pattern I found, called "Aquitane Rose".

We bought all of our glass at Scarab Glass in Fresno. We've been there so many time that I can find it right off the freeway and then get back ON the freeway, instead of trying to meander across town, which is what we did in the beginning.

I took my tapestry fabric with me and then just sort of let Mike and the gal from the shop choose the colors. It was sort of funny...they would hold up two pieces to the light and say "So, how do you like this?" Heck, I didn't know! No idea what I was looking at. Or for.

They are so helpful there...when I am picking out glass, they act as if I know what I'm doing.

But the finished product looks great, propped in the shop window!

A -sandin' and a-strippin'

I have several antique pieces I've had in storage at the shop that we got out of a tear down. The house was built in 1880 and I believe that there was pigeon shit on these pieces dating FROM that year. A lot. A whole lot.

Here is what I worked on today.
Headboard with dirt and all (there is a foot board, too)

This is a twin size; Mike is going to build a frame with drawers underneath it for the mattress. The room this goes in is going to be my guest/sewing room and will have this in there, too...along with a double armoire that I haven't found yet. When I re-do this fainting couch, I'll do it upstairs, where the sewing stuff will be.
That band at the bottom looks a little like smocking...so I'll pick up that detail in the curtain headers. Trust me on this one. I can do it.


I

Headboard Detail..the curlieques and rosettes will all be gold leafed

So today, I got this REALLY smart idea. I would start sanding the iron bedstead...that would tire me out. I really need to put laundry away/vacuum/clean the fridge/clean the office/weed...but NONE of those chores really appealed to me as a tire-me-out activity. (And I need to get tired because I haven't slept in a couple of days.)

Now, if you have never cleaned up 127 years of pigeon shit and lead paint (oh, I am sure it is lead paint), well, suffice to say you simply do not know the meaning of boring. I have photos so you can see how hard I worked.

This took all morning (from 7am until noon).

Sanding entertains ME for about 5 minutes. It is only interesting for about that long. And the foot board weighs about 50 pounds, which didn't stop me from dragging it outside, hosing it off and dragging it back inside the shop every time my hands started to hurt.

And I am TIRED.

My daughter is going to give me a heart attack

And if she doesn't manage, I am sure my work will do me in
She got rear ended this morning on her way to school. Did she call the police? Don't be silly. She is calling the insurance company right now....SIX HOURS after the accident. She did exchange info with the driver....but the ONE and ONLY time I did that and didn't call the police, I ended up paying for the entire repair my own self.

When she told me, I went berserk....and she got snippy....which, if the tables were turned, I would have done the same. EXCEPT I'm the one paying for all the insurance.

Then I got a call from work. They need a memo to the warden so he can approve my health insurance while I am off work. Never fear, taxpayers, I will repay it all either when I go back to work or when I retire. It comes right off the top.

Then I got a call from SDI....they need a note from my doctor to send me any more payments. Also, I need to send in a memo to them, explaining why the dates on all of the doctor's notes are wrong. (Because my doctor is an idiot, that's why.) He's a great guy, he just is no good with paperwork. My FMLA was expired before he managed to get the paperwork in correctly. It took him FIVE times. I was almost ready to just fill it in myself, since every time I dragged it back in to him he would get so frustrated. Although what he had to be frustrated about is beyond me...I'm the one on leave without pay.

Dr. Migraine is in

I woke up to what I thought was a lightening storm...just inside my head. I've taken the usual barrage of pills and hope that it will just stall itself out. There for a while, I thought I was going to just call an ambulance, tell them I was having a stroke and let them deal with it.

This morning the sunlight is low and soft...very pretty outside the windows. Lots of birds. My new chicken is...well, happy isn;t the word, nor is lonely. She is in the big coop all by herself and slept in her box last night. She will get used to it and spend more time on the perches. She is too young yet to lay and I am thinking of getting a few more to keep her company, although I'm not sure that chickens are smart enough to understand company.

I have been using a curry comb on Tank...he has enough hair to make extra dogs every day! No wonder the kitchen floor was a flurry every day. The daily combing has helped a lot...and he enjoys the extra attention. I have never had such an attention hog before in my life. The other two dogs don;t mind a little petting on the occasion (note: seldom and little)

Still having a devil of a time with the knitted mittens. I KNOW for a fact I have used DPNs and successfully in the past but this project has been yanked out more than once. Somehow, it manages to twist itself...and I'm being CAREFUL! Nothing to do but to continue to battle with it. I have some mending to do on some knitting...no that I can manage. A moron could manage mending, so it is no great accomplishment. I have a basket of loose buttons to work on, as well.

We might go to the coast this weekend....a change is as good as a rest, I guess. Girlie got her hair cut yesterday....it went from wait-length to chin length and she is considering a pixi cut. It looks very cute and will be cooler for this very hot summer. She will be working at a satallite station for the police department, so it will be a change from pulling it up in a pony tail. She has bought all kinds of cute new outfits....her college student semi grunge look is over.

I have a neuro appointment at the end of the month...will need to rearrange some other appointments to fit him in. I'll leave that to next week. I think maybe I will go lie down in a dark room for a little bit. I wouldn;t wish migraines on my worst enemy...which makes me wonder about the kind of person who wished THIS on me!!

A B C All About Me!

Paulie at postcardsfrompaulie has tagged me. So here goes!


A- Attached or Single? Very muchly married

B- Best Friend- Marji and Pat...I talk to them every day

C- Cake or Pie- neither one blows my dress up. Too much sugar

D- Drink of choice- Root beer

E- Essential Items- Moisturizer, eyelash curler, lip gloss and some sun

F- Favorite color- turquoise

G- Gummi Bears or Worms- Can I just choose licorace?

H- Hometown- Porterville, CA

I- Indulgence- Facials and pedicures

J- January or February?- February....closer to spring

K- Kids- 4: Keri, Julie, Ben and Lisi

L- Life is incomplete without- family (reading books with the dogs laying around)

M- Marriage Date- July 8,1998

N-Number of Siblings- Two sisters and a brother we adopted cause he fits so well with our family

O- Oranges or Apples?- man-eating oranges

P- Phobias/Fears- creepy crawlies

Q- Favorite Quote- "It's not good, it's not bad, it just is"

R- Reason to Smile- when my kids descend on me with the mess and the noise and the babies and the dogs

S- Seasons - Spring

T- Tags- marji over at tangledstrings

U- Unknown fact about me- My life is an open book..no secrets here! (Easier that way).

V- Vegetarian or oppressor of animals? It's all here for us to use, isn't it?

W- Worse Habit- worrying

X-X-rays or ultrasounds- either

Y- Your Favorite Food- sushi AND sashimi

Z- Zodiac- What sign was I born under? "Closed"

Pacing and wringing my hands

Always a sign of worry overload. WHAT I am worried about is not exactly clear.

I'm worried that my son's toothache will turn into SOMETHING DIRE. What, I'm not sure. I've only gotten as far as the capitals.

Then there is the bank, which may somehow manage to LOSE MY MONEY. Hasn't happened yet, but it might.

I have a slow sink upstairs, which MIGHT BE SOMETHING.

And of course, just the general bomb dropping. That worries me. But I live so close to the airbase, it would all be over before I ever woke up. If I ever sleep again. And the house would be flattened, so no foreign troops would notice that my kitchen wasn't immaculate.

Then there is my brother Clark, who has his own category of worry, named CLARK!.

Then there is the OH, NO! worries; the rising gas price worries, the will it ever sell worries, the something is worn in my brain because I cannot start a sock worries....I found myself worrying that I couldn't open up a checking account in a different back. (Okay, I know that is just a crazy worry.)

We talked about the wee bit of carpet to go up in the hotel (just my bedroom) and thought we'd just use the same stuff we have in this house...wears like iron, isn't hideous, nice neutral color and THAT sent me into hand wringing.

What I want to do is get a teardrop trailer, put my own bed in it and then drive around the country. Then all I would have to worry about would be where are we? (Who cares?) and what';s for dinner? (French onion soup.) I wouldn't have to worry about a bad bed or worse pillows. When I travel, those are the only things I fret about. The bed and the pillows. And nice sheets. Give me a teeny trailer where that is pretty much all I have and I'd be fine.

But in the meantime, I'll be up, pacing and wringing my hands.

To verify or not to verify

This blog must be spam heaven for every scam and ad on the planet. I tried unchecking the "no verification" dot...and the floodwaters opened. I must have had 500 comments, none of which I was interested in.

The reason I left MySpace was because my in-box was flooded with photos from adults who thought that pictures of their genitalia was the same as conversation. IMO, flooding my in box with spam is just about the same thing.

So for now, you posters will have to verify that you are human when you post. I know, not every blog requires this, but I am not willing to wade thru lines and lines and lines of junk to read one pithy comment.

One day, there will be a spamonly site, and the spammers can write to each other and leave me OUT of it!

Photos on their way

There are quite a few pieces that I am taking to the hotel from this house. For one thing, I have this HUGE entertainment center (yard sale) that we are going to use as a china cabinet. It will have to go on a base (which will have drawers for my table linens), and glass on all the open doors (to cut out all the dusting) and a shelf where the television is for my soup tureens and seasonal doodads. And lights! I have to have lights so that everyone can be dazzled by my sparkling crystal!

We have three pianos in this house and I have been talked into taking all three. We have the room and what the heck are we going to do with them anyway? I'm doing "God Bless the Broken Road" for the piano bench in the lobby and a magnolia blossom wreath for the piano bench in the dining room.

I have several old fashioned stoves that I use as buffets on the patio; they will go up on the veranda. One of them...a round Swedish stove...will be re-nickeled and blacked and fixed up for an electric fire in my bedroom. Another one is going to be my actual stove in the kitchen. (It is all fixed up to work like a "real" stove...it just looks really cool.)

I have one wall in my bedroom where the Eastlake organ will go...I just use it to display family photos anyway and it will look nice on that one empty wall. (God knows, I can't just have an EMPTY WALL).

The overly romantic pictures with the extremely expensive frames (so expensive that I have never told my husband exactly how much I spent on them. Suffice to say that Prince Charles would have raised a HUGE fuss. It was one of those extravagances that REALLY only cost pennies, if you count how many times I look at them and love the way they look. Really. Just pennies per glance.)

I have a HUGE round dining room table (room for 18...can you believe it?) but I need to get new chairs. I do not like the dining room chairs we have now. Never have. Ugly. Uncomfortable. Clunky looking.

I'm not sure where all of the animal heads are going to go. (Hey! I didn't kill them...I liberated them from the trash heap.) There is no room in the library; no room in the lobby, no way they are going off in a yard sale. I love them. Maybe in the back hallway, which isn;t really the back hallway...it's the hallway we use when we use the elevator.

I'm going to teach my own self how to upholster, since I have a much more extravagant taste than cash. I found a fainting couch that I'm going to recover in a leopard print velvet with burned out velvet pillows...very '20's. I found a beautiful burgundy paisley chenille that I'm going to recover my grandmother's chair with...this will go in the library, too.

I have almost all of the fabric and almost all of the furniture....and I think the first project will be the veranda....get that all furnished and fixed up so I can watch the cars drive by. Then I have plenty of projects to work on after work..since I don't have all that yardwork to do!

Mother's Day

We had a great time! Both kids, my mom, my husband and I went out to the Mother's Day breakfast at Courthouse Square. We got all dressed up with fancy hats, piled into the touring car (with the top down).
This is a 1924 Dodge Brother's Special Edition and it just goes like the wind! (Well, at 40 mph, it feels like we are just flying down the road!)
There's my Mom and kids---she has an armload of presents. I made her a lightweight afgan...it is long and skinny, like an over sized shawl...perfect for over her shoulders when it is drafty and just right for tucking in over her legs and not getting caught up in the wheels. It was supposed to be a Christmas present but I had over estimated my knitting speed.
Mom is so funny....she told me at Christmas that she hoped she lived long enough to get it for Mother's Day. Talk about pressure to finish!

I didn't realize how SHORT I am compared to the kids...I'm 5'6" and look how they tower me!
I was equally "taller" than my mother, who was 5'2" and I thought she was a shrimp. If this goes on, my grandkids will be 6'5"!

Oh, my mother is OLDER than the car but she said that she felt like the Queen of England on tour. Evidently, this is one fancy car! It is in almost perfect condition....navy blue velvet seats, dove gray paint job and as you can see, it is totally air conditioned.

I am looking forward to showing this car for a few years and I am looking for a fancy hat to wear with my mink coat in the Christmas parade. (The Christmas parade is a BIG deal here in our little town.) I have a very fancy "Titanic" type of hat with pheasant feathers that I think will work. Mike will wear a derby, morning coat and long johns....it is COLD for the Christmas parade!

The Koi Pond

I tried to get the koi pond drained and refilled for Easter...I just ran out of gas. Yesterday, I had two guys over to help me weed....I have about a half acre in the front yard and once it gets ahead of me, it is like the Kentucky Derby. So the three of us did a total of24 hours of weeding, including mowing the giant front yard. It looks like someone lives here, once again.

So this morning, there was a lot of cleanup, mowing and raking that they could handle on their own, so I was in the bottom of the pond, mucking it out. This is such an icky job that I CAN'T asky anyone else to do it. I have two sump pump, draining the water, goop, sand and muck out. They are both in strainers so they don't suck up fish and leaf gunk...that is my job. Then I have a hose to keep diluting the gunk.

I spent six hours until Girlie made me get out. I have about an hour left before it is spotless. ALL of the fish and tadpoles are in buckets in the shade. ALL of the lily pads, papyrus and cat tails are dug and in water in the shade, too. I have to pressure wash the filter and drain that (ick ick ick), dump 500 pounds of salt in the filter and then fill the pond tomorrow. It will take most of the day.


The critters will go back in on Sunday, along with 1,000 new baby koi. (I have a friend who has a pond also and these are the babies that he doesn't have room for.) When he cleans his pond out, he brings his fish over to vacation in my pond.

Then I have to go hunting for more tadpoles in the river next week...Girlie has Tuesday free to drag me to the slough. These are the ones I have but I love the way hundreds and hundreds look feeding around the edges of the pond.

Right now, I am SO tired, but it's a good tired....the pond is so enjoyable and only needs to be drained and cleaned twice a year. I just have to not dilly dally and just get ON with it, so it doesn;t turn into this huge, prolonged project.

This year, I am planning on working on some bog plants on the planting ledges....and snails and turtles, just because the whole wild life thing enchants me.

I found some tiny little seed lights to go in the tree, along with some pretty bird feeders and wind chimes. We spend so much time outside during the summer....feeding the fish, sitting in the shade, eating outside and cooling off in the pool, so I like to make it as comfortable as possible.

I still have to clean up the outdoor kitchen....blow out leaves, clean up the winter debris and getting it ready for summer pizza parties. These are just the regular late spring chores; the pool house has to be hosed out and the outdoor shower needs to be swept out. There are hooks out of the way of the water, as well as a wringer for bathing suits. I save all of my ratty towels to leave out there, as well as left behind bathing suits, so we are ready at the drop of a hat for a party.

Update on hotel

Things have slowed down, as they always do, during the good weather. The crew is busy working on customer jobs, not on my projects. During the winter, there isn't much work---no one wants work done in their home during the holidays OR the wet weather. That's when we work on the hotel.

Right now, all we are doing is moving books from this house to the library and working on the stained glass. The interior transoms (11 of them) are almost ready to be installed. The next bit of the project is the stained glass for the library. The pattern I picked has 172 cuts for each of the six windows. (The ones we are doing right now have a mere 95. Times 11 windows).

THEN I think we will work on the skylight. It has to be rebuilt and reglazed before the new stained glass goes up. This particular set of four windows are going to have a LOT of beveled glass, because the whole POINT of a skylight is to let in light all day long.

Once the skylight is rebuilt, we can put up the gigantic moldings (36 inches) and paint. The skylight is 2 stories above the lobby, so there is a lot of painting in the skylight, the lobby, hallways and stairwell.

Hotel master Bedroom

Let me try it! Here are my bedroom fabrics
for the hotel.

It worked! Now I just have to remember how to do it!
Thanks Paulie and Marji!!!

Cinco de Mayo Weekend

Spending it at the beach house, where there is nice weather AND a car show. I brought my knitting and camera, so I can post photos of my weekend. Right now, I'm knitting and drinking root beer...my new favorite. I weeded about a month ago, so I have no weeds, just seedlings coming up. I need to water and then I'm sitting in the sun with my afgan...which has a give away date of NEXT Sunday and two more balls of yarn to finish. Then, like with the yellow, I am DONE with pink for a while.

I haven't driven since NOVEMBER and being Miss Daisy is a drag. I am sick of weeding, sick of cleaning and sick sick sick of being stuck at home.

I am still dizzy but since no one can figure out why, it is as if I am not dizzy. So I am going in on Tuesday to my primary and see if I can get released to dizzy my way back to work. I need to go back to work to finance the furnishing of the hotel. (Nope. I am grounded until June. There is another neurologist in my immediate future.)