Put Pencil to Paper, Make Squiggly Lines, Repeat Until Finished

We’ll get to the exciting news soon enough, but first I must bore you with the more mundane parts of my life you’ve become accustomed to reading.

We haven’t made any more progress on “Operation Anti-Cardboard” despite having the intentions of doing some almost every day since we started.  Hopefully, we’ll get the second coat painted on the closet doors this week, so we can set them out of the way and get to work on the rest of the room in earnest.

Candice colored Gabe and Donna’s hair the other weekend at Donna’s request and Gabe’s “I have to do everything everyone else is doing.”  Donna’s hair is purple and pink, and is still colored.  Gabe chose cherry red, and it didn’t stick with his hair.

Gabe is done with school for the summer.  I feel bad for Candice, though I foresee Gabe getting a decent tan from being sent outside quite a bit. 

Ghost knocked the bird cage off its resting spot and it freed the birds.  The back door was open at the time and one of them made its way outside before Candice could get it closed.  We’ve since done a makeshift fix to the birdcage to keep it from being knocked off again.  Next year, we’ll probably get a much nicer birdcage for them that can’t be knocked over (and if it is won’t separate from the base).

This weekend was busy.  Friday after work, I took Candice’s car in to have the iSimple installed so we no longer have to find a “free” radio station to broadcast the iPod with in order to listen to it through the car radio.  The sound is much more amazing this way and we can control the iPod through the car stereo even.  The cross-country drives are going to be much better not having to find a new station every 10-50 miles!  And the bonus is, I got it on Amazon.com and paid for installation at Best Buy and saved $50 over just buying it at Best Buy and not having it installed!

While there, the people we were getting the kittens from called Candice to tell her that they were ready to be picked up, so I went and got them that evening.  Phantom (the blackish calico – apparently called a “brindle”) and Chimera (the golden one) came home and are now playing like they’ve always lived here.

Ghost went to get fixed Sunday.  Despite having just gotten out of surgery for being spayed, she was alert when we picked her up.  And once we got her home, she was basically acting as if nothing at all had happened.  In fact, she seems even more rambunctious now just two days removed from surgery than she did prior to going!

We also went and got a couple of new birds to keep the other one company.  We’ve kind of decided that for most pets, we’re going to do them in threes (one for each kid basically) except if we get any large breed dog.

Candice started P90X the other week, and after nearly being killed by the first day’s routine, she promptly stopped.  Now she’s going to give it another try.  She did the first day’s routine again last night and plans to do the second day’s routine today or tomorrow.  She really wants to lose weight and get more fit, so I hope she sticks to it or at least finds a routine she can stick to that will help her accomplish her goals.  There’s also likely to be a hiatus from exercising coming up, but we won’t know more until after a doctor’s appointment Friday.

Oh, and the exciting news:  Both Candice AND myself are again plunging back into our creative endeavors of choice.  Candice has started working at her art desk again, creating stuff with her hands, and just last night, I started writing a story again for the first time in about 5 years.

It’s about a haunted painting that can change appearances and interact with the world outside the painting, and whoever is the true owner can not be rid of it until they die.  The story doesn’t come out and say that in as many words, but the implications and clues are all there for the reader to piece it together.  I had lots of ideas to include, but as I was writing, I encountered the perfect ending for the story before getting to some of the stuff I planned to include.  Now I’m in the dilemma of figuring out if I should leave it be, extend the story to include the extra and have a less spectacular ending unless I stumble upon something better, or more likely, add the extra stuff in prior to my perfect ending.  As you can see, I am leaning towards the latter choice because I really like the ending but also think the story needs the extra terror added to it.

As I was writing, I needed a description for a painting and chose my favorite painting of all time which I first saw in the Louvre:  Aelbert Cuyp - Boats on the Estuary of the Hollands Diep River Near Dordrecht.   Here’s a picture of it:

It starts out with only two of the three people in the rowboat and then starts making subtle changes in the early stages of the story.

Anyway, I’m totally excited about the story, because it happened without the aid of a deep depression or alcohol, so there might still be a future for T. Allan Bishop as an author in post-retirement…

The Official Passing of the Graveyard

So yesterday the neighbors from Halloween House formally handed over the cemetery to us.  We got the cemetery fencing (minus the fancy gate), the window boardings, and the partial coffins that look like their bursting up from the ground.  I kind of have mixed feelings on that.  It’s a shame that Shawn won’t be there for Halloween this year (or any year in the future), but kind of nice that some of the materials will still be used in the cul-de-sac.  I think the new stuff will cover the front of our house and the neighbors on the opposite side of the former Halloween House.

In the process of moving the stuff from their basement to mine, I got the equivalent of climbing 85 flights of stairs (plus probably about the same descending, but we don’t really count those).

We started “Operation Anti-Cardboard” Saturday.  Candice painted the first coat on the closet doors and I did the first coat on the ceilings in the guest bedroom.  Not sure how long it’ll take for us to finish, but hopefully it won’t take nearly six months like it did to finish painting the ceilings in the living room and kitchen.  Having half the furniture cluttering up the loft might be an incentive to keep pushing through!

We also laid claim to two more kittens, which assuming Shadow doesn’t return, will bring the number to 3 – one for each kiddo.  The new kittens will hopefully help ghost not be quite so needy and annoying by giving her some companionship.  The new kittens will be named Chimera and Phantom.  One is calico (mostly black with some golden yellow highlights spread throughout) and the other a golden yellow.  We will pick them up this coming Sunday, so we have a week to get the litter boxes scooped and cleaned so that they will accept them.  Ghost also has another surprise this weekend as it’s time to get her fixed.

Donna has become an absolute beast lately, thinking she can do whatever she wants and ignoring what we tell her to do – or worse – back-talking.  That young lady is hopefully starting to learn that that does not work in this household, but I doubt it, since she seems to think she has impunity to our rules.

Moving Out Of The Cardboard Boxes

This weekend we held the birthday party for Megi and Donna's birthdays.  It was a nice success, especially since Candice and I were both battling different ailments the entire weekend.  Candice has had a chest cold and I have been battling a head cold.  Now I'm starting to get a little chest congestion, so I hope we aren't just trading illnesses.

We also started the process for finally getting the walls of the house to NOT look like cardboard boxes.  We got several colors to paint the guest bedroom (maple, orange, and yellow) which will become Gabe's new bedroom except when guests come over.  He doesn't know that he's moving into a new room yet, but it's part of a big master plan to get Megi her own room that isn't half of our walk-in closet.  First he'll move into the guest bedroom, then we'll paint his old room to be Megi's room.  Then we'll for a couple of days move Donna into it while we paint her room and move her back into it.  Then we'll get a futon or sofa that folds down into a bed for the loft so that Gabe has somewhere to sleep when guests come over (at least until we can afford to finish part of the basement).  Finally, we'll move Megi into her own room.  Gabe will have his own bathroom, and Megi and Donna will share one. 

Of course, before we start this project, we've got to finish painting the ceilings in the kitchen and living room that we started back before Christmas...

I finished the kitten coffins.  When Candice finishes painting their marker rock, we'll bury them in one of the flower gardens.

Still no sign of Shadow, so we can be almost 100% sure she's gone for good.  :-(

Subconscious aversions or gremlins

So it seems Candice has developed an ingrained sunbconsious aversion to certain items that she has such as her mouthguard and her fitbit.  With both she started out dedicated and religiously kept track of everything about them, and more recently keeps misplacing them for long periods of time.  It's become a sort of inside joke with us, and now we have key spots where we look which in the past have been where we've always found them, so her subconscious has seemed to take notice and found new places to "hide" them.  That, or we have gremlins.

I tend to side on the gremlin theory, because we have had so many costly things go wrong with the house and appliances.  Just last week the washing machine died and we had to buy a new one.  Last year the central air died.  Twice.  Once for A/C and once for Heating.  We had the master bathroom shower leak into the dining room.  What else could cause this stuff on a 6-7 year old house except gremlins? 

Shadow still hasn't returned, so I'm 99% sure she didn't make it.  :-(

This weekend's plans are to mow the front yard (yes, that dreaded time of year has finally started), finish the other kitten coffin, and get the vegitable garden ready for planting.  We are putting up two "fences" for beans and peas to grow up onto, and we'll be putting in four tomato cages.  We need to also dig up/till/add in non-clay soil to the levels for gardening.  I also should do something with the zone 8 sprinklers which will water the garden, so I guess I need to get on that in the gaining new knowledge department.

Anyway, that's all for this post.  Thanks for reading.

Anblick's Driving Academy

So, I forgot to mention in the last blog the slow painful death of our planned meals list.  We followed if faithfully for the first two weeks or so, then loosely followed it for the next two (we'd swap nights around, maybe substitute something from off the list on a night), and then we just kinda stopped following it alltogether.

Anblick's Driving Academy has started back up.  In it, I've been teaching Candice to drive a stick shift.  No one had been able to accomplish it in the past, so I took it up around September/October of last year.  She got to be pretty good for empty parking lot driving, but her confidence wasn't there to do much more than drive around the building.

Last night, we went out to try again for the first time since October.  She picked it up again pretty good, and I wouldn't let her stop until she had three smooth starts from a dead stop.  She did it.  But again, her biggest problem is her confidence.  She's not bad at it, but her doubts make her make mistakes.  When she relaxed, she's actually pretty good.  (But heaven forbid a car gets behind her.)  It will come though.  She's a pretty smart cookie.  She expects perfection out of most of what she does, and when she can't hit that off the bat, she gets discouraged and looses confidence.  I have a feeling that if I can get her to apply herself long enough to actually see the results, it might help her in some of the other things she starts but doesn't finish because she looses interest when she starts making mistakes at them.  Fingers are crossed.

That's all for this one.  Thanks for reading.

All Washed Up

So, our plans for the hearse are on a slower planning cycle to be out for next year's Halloween rather than this year's.  Pretty much exclusively because our plans to replace our washing machine have been accelerated.  And not by whim or choice (at least not our choice - the washing machine we have seemed to have made the choice for us).

Our current 15 year old model (for which parts are hard to find and expensive) had the motor go out on it.  This caused us to spend money on a new washer (it'll be delivered Thursday).  That of course will be made up for in the budget mostly by postponing this summer's budget on Halloween design. <insert frowny face here>

But that caused another fun experience for Candice and me.  The Laundromat.  I had not been in a laundromat since approximately 1991.  Not much has changed except that prices are WAY more expensive now.  Granted, the time to finish laundry is MUCH less when you can wash and dry all the loads simultaneously, but I'd still rather not have that "date night" experience again.  And this laundromat wasn't nearly as sketchy as some of the ones I'd been in 20+ years ago, but I'd still just as soon skip a repeat performance.

Lately we've been doing outside work in the yard.  I planted the Cherry Trees.  Candice has been weeding and planting stuff like crazy.  I've even sketched out the four garden areas so Candice can plan what to plant where.

On a sad note, Shadow, our one year-old long haired black cat has gone missing and has been missing for around 4 days.  And she got outside without her harness/tags on.  And there are loyts of Hawks and Coyotes in the area.  And we had a massive storm the other night that might have washed away all the smells to help her find her way back.  We're still hopeful and making trips to the back door to call for her every few hours.  Ghost is pestering us even more now that she's missing and Ghost's play pal is gone.

That's all for this edition.  Thanks for reading!

Tired and Sore (and Impulse Buying)

I worked swings (2nd shift) this past week to include Saturday, but Sunday we made a lot of good progress towards our outdoor projects.  I got the hanging flower brackets mounted to the deck railing so we can hang the tomato plants (we tried hanging them from below the deck but they were too big of a pain to water from above or below).  Finished digging up the scraggly bushes, but I still need to carry them over to the trash can side of the house and cut them down in size so we can put them in the garbage cans.  Candice started planting flower bulbs.  We started pulling up the "anti weed tarps" which are only good for keeping the plants you wand to grow from being planted - weeds seem to flourish through them.  We removed the ragged "rock border" to the front flower garden and moved some trapezoidal shaped bricks to take their place in an actual smooth line.

I also turned the sprinklers on.  Just in time for a cold snap today and tomorrow, but it looks like it shouldn't be too bad one day dips to 30 degrees for a couple of hours, but I can aleviate that easily without having to re-blow out the heads.  I also adjusted some of the heads to water the flower gardens out front too.

Today, I'm paying for it with all kinds of soreness all through my body.

The town of Erie has an annual program where they will reimburse residents up to $300 for the purchase of trees if bought through certain nurseries.  We should be getting a white oak tree which is going to cost about $350 to plant in the back yard and provide some shade on the back of the house.  It had looked like our planned purchase of cherry trees was going to have to wait until at least next year.  that is until we went to Home Depot last night to purchase blue lights for the outside lights for Autism Awareness Day.  Candice said "should we check to see if they have any cherry trees?"  I sighed because every tree I'd looked at in the previous week was expensive and I didn't think we could fit them in our budget.  BUT I was curious, so we went into their tree area and sure enough, they had lots of them for $24 apiece.  We bought two and had fun driving them home (Candice had to sit in the back and make sure the hatch didn't slam down and chop into the tree sections that hung out the back of our Santa Fe).  We still need to but several long posts for stability (especially given the winds in Erie), but should be planting them this weekend.

I finished one of the kitten coffins.  Still have to finish gluing and add hinges and the latch to the other one.  We'll probably bury the kittens that didn't make it later this month.