Idle Wednesday

It used to be white washed, but I painted them with red weather proofing paint.

The "Flower Bed"

Happy, and sweaty.  I thought it would be cool to turn this into a dog bed one day.  A simple addition of a few holes,  rope  and maybe some ready made legs from Lowe's would make a great rope bed for Ama, I think.

Laurel and I worked on this one together.  The bench I bought from my little brother some time ago, and it had really out lived its usefulness. It wasn't terribly comfortable and I had only bought it as an excuse to be able to give Bub money anyway.  I had been mentally throwing it away, or giving it to goodwill, but I kept thinking it could do something.  It turns out that what it did was give me something to do over the weekend.  I don't  know if Laurel enjoyed doing it as much as I did, but I got a real sense of triumph out of it.  Next year I'll add more flowers AND more dirt.  We encountered a strange thing when Jay, the Girls, and I all tried to dig the holes for the plants.  Our yard is like one of the yards out of "The Truman Show" (The movie with Jim Carrey) about two or three inches past the  grass, the entire yard is gravel.. Weird, and creepy!
Anyway, I got inspired to make the rest of the porch look decent, and this is what I ended up with:

Jay's Gnome. We bought it while in Gatlinburg With the Posey's.

After a couple of months, this is now completely covered in vines!

The stump we brought back from our Maine trip. The vines did not like it.

Tired from digging and weeding!

The view from my chair.  Not the best one I've ever had, but it'll do for now.

Wash bucket foot stools.

Idle Wednesday (Round Two!)

I have taken enough time off from my Idle Wednesday posts! I'm starting Round Two off with this wreath. I WAS just going to buy one on Etsy, but when I looked at the selection, and the prices, I decided to head to Walmart. I ended up saving about $20.00 and that includes having to buy the glue gun.
This is simply a foam floral wreath, one skein of yarn, several sticks of hot glue, and five sheets of felt. This was incredibly easy! Check out "how to make felt roses" on YouTube for directions. The wreath is simply yarn wound around the tube, and hot glued on both ends.








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Harley wants to play!

And That's All I Have to Say About That.

     One last post today...just to do a quick update.  Things don't really seem interesting enough to blog about until there is a ton of stuff going on at once it seems.
     We went to see Laurel's friend Barlow's play.  It was a LOONG three hours because of my lack of sleep lately, but it was funny.  "Dirty Work at the Crossroads" is a black and white silent movie era story, complete with a victim tied to train tracks.  It was exactly how you imagine a high school production would be. 
     Just last week we signed up for The Fresh 20 which has made dinner the last week easy, and enjoyable.  I have come to loathe making menus and grocery lists, but these guys do it for you!  Low budget, healthy (Turns out WW friendly!) food that tastes great.  I polled the family, and they all want to keep these recipes and do them again.  That is a major compliment, and I highly recommend!
     I embarrassed the heck out of myself on the 16th... Jay asked me to lunch with him and some of his soldiers...I was wearing my soft star shoes, and I slipped in the light drizzle. I hit my knee, and slammed my finger into a pillar when I tried to catch myself. If Jay hadn't been holding my hand I would have face-planted.
You should have seen the look on the waitress' faces when they asked if I was okay. They looked as if I was going to sue! I had to giggle a bit. They were really nice and brought me ice, though.
     Jay and I got Samsung galaxy phones from our home phone carrier last week. I asked if we could get rid of the home phone to save money, and the lady said that it would end up being the same price because I "have a reeeealy nice package".
She did not laugh when I said "Why, THANK you!"
Jay and I almost cried, we were laughing so hard. Thank god it was over the phone, or she would have thought we were nuts.
     One of Jay's soldiers was at the Boston Marathon last week.  It doesn't seem to have bothered him that he ran past two bombs, and was spared a horrid experience merely because he trained well and ran fast.  He was on his was to the airport when the bombs went off, and just got out before everything was locked down.  I was in my car, yelling at Sean Hannity and calling him a moron, when he cut himself off to relay the news. It instantly occurred to me that this soldier was there, and I was worried.  The initial reports after an incident like this are unreliable, and wild and I had no idea whether this was a small matter, or another 9/11.  This is part of the reason I agreed to get a cellphone. I had no way to call Jay to find out what was going on, and it drove me crazy.  This particular soldier was fine, but another soldiers family was there and got injured, so it was nerve wracking. There isn't much I can say, except I wish this sort of thing would stop happening...and I wish there was something we could all do to make that a reality.
     One last thing.   I got into a fight with my extended family a little while back.  Now, I try to keep the very personal things out of my blog, the intimate details of my life that are not internet fodder, but for this one subject I am making an exception.  I think that I have waited a reasonable amount of time, allowing for thought and reflection before I just open my mouth.  The argument was rather simple, really. A while back, my brother mentioned on his blog that he wanted to write a book about his life and how he grew up.  By extension, I thought, this meant he may mention me, or my father (Who passed away when I was 14 and is then obviously no longer here to defend himself against my brothers poor and prejudiced memory.) I asked my mother to talk to him about this, and let him know that I didn't want anything about me written anywhere.  My story is mine to tell, and mine to edit as I see fit.  I thought that she understood what I meant, and she had a conversation with him about it.  To my surprise, not but a couple of weeks later, my mother herself wrote a story on Bub's blog about me and a friend of mine that was not in the last bit flattering.  Now, I might not have been nearly as mad if I hadn't been very specific about my wishes just a short time before...but there it is.  I called them both on it, and it only took a day for the post to come down, but of course, things are never gone when it comes to the internet.  I decided that the best course of action was to not argue about it. I just shut them off and out.  I am extremely careful about the people I surround myself with...and all of them are people I love and trust. I refuse to have to deal with people that call me names, refuse to let me grow, are negative, and suck the happy right out of me. So if you are still reading my blog, there is your answer.  And if you are one of the people that read that post on my brother's blog, I'm sorry to the friend with whom it concerned, and I have grown up since that incident.  The funny thing is, while my brother was screaming at me to own up to being a bad mother, and my mother was trying to say it didn't make me look bad, neither of them actually knew the whole story, and it was a damn sight better than you thought.
 And that's all I have to say about that.

Jay's Birthday

An abandoned factory in Jefferson City

An old prison.  Made me thing of The Walking Dead. It was a tad creepy.

The State Capitol Building.  It has multiple personality disorder. There are Greek, Latin, Aztec, and American influences.  weird, but pretty.

The Missouri River

Geese!

Female Cardinal

My Jeep and the Capitol Building

The Cardinal Couple

My family!

Jefferson

The Train Station in Jefferson City

Laurel hates trains. Miah is just being Miah.

Jay was so happy about his first train ride he told EVERYONE!

The Osage River

Miah passed out!

Hermann, Mo

REAL GERMAN POTATO SALAD!

I couldn't eat it all.  I was full until bedtime.  The Ruben Burger.

Miah was in charge of the snack bag...she killed the bananas and Jay had to clean it up...

Laurel bought an Artist's box with a palate and lots of goodies inside...

The main point of the trip was that Jay had never been on a train, but it just so happened that on the weekend after his birthday there were two different antique shows in Hermann, and the train stopped dead center in town.  We only had to walk a total o three blocks or so the whole day.  Oh, and what a great day it was. 
There was a small hiccough near the end of the day, which might have been avoided by me, but I couldn't help myself.  A group of very, no, extremely drunk semi-adults were on the train in the morning...when they got to the train stop at the end of the day they were even more drunk.  Long story short, they tried to invade the building where my and another family were trying to remain separate from their "Girls gone wild" type behavior (They were mostly males, but one particularly gross skank was with them too) without thinking, pure reaction, I got between my kids, and this other family's two and eight year olds, and one particular 23/24ish dude who was easily a me and a half. I honestly don't remember much of what was said, except I threatened him bodily harm after the kids left, and he told me, "Congratulations on being a bad person!" which made me laugh my butt off.  Laurel informs me that SHE was trying to get up to "Have my back" and I pushed her back down in the seat.  I don't really remember that....but I do remember Jay standing up with me, but whether he was there to protect me, or the two drunk guys, I don't know...I do know that afterwards it was funny, and I really ticked that idiot off....and my kids learned a lesson.  They were both horrified and disgusted by this group...and the girl, who flashed her entire disgusting front to everyone in the crowd in the middle of town...
Besides that...We got to see some really great antiques.  I felt like we were at a museum where you could pick things up.  I had to laugh, when one older lady tried to explain to Jay and I that the item we were looking at was a can opener (REALLY?! Do I look that dumb? I USE one of these things!) She was telling us about the history of the can opener, and to show her I wasn't an idiot, I told the kids about the fact that the can opener was invented AFTER the can. I hate it when older folks assume the younger generations are morons. I'll bet my dad was born before her father was...
My only complaints are that the prices were horribly inflated...and one of the vendors kept telling me his stuff wasn't for sale.  I did get him to part with a couple of photos, but he really missed out on a lot of money.  He was also a little bit of a jerk.  Who puts cool things on the table then jerks them away? He did it to me three times!! It wasn't even a ploy for more money...I love to bargain and barter, but he was just not into it.  Weird. 
I got one photo in particular that I am very excited about.  I'll post about it later, along with the others.  I have a ton of photos to share!!!