Home Improvement

We’ve been busy around here with numerous home related projects. My regular readers are familiar with the RRR Projects posts and I’ll have a few more of those coming up here soon. We’ve been on a major home re-do kick here and have made some impressive changes. Our most recent project however is painting the interior of the house. This of course involved not one, not two, but many paint samples. We were having a hard time discovering a color we really loved and had it narrowed down to two colors which are right next to each other. But we still felt one was too light and the other too dark; leave it to us to be difficult like that. So we went down to the paint store and asked them if they could make us something right in between the two colors. They did, and thankfully it was perfect. The hubby was overjoyed with the fact that he could finally start painting and get rid of our ridiculous patchwork wall. 

Before he started painting, I decided to clean out the hall closet. Some items I uncovered were; the sheet to Little Guy's pack-and-play that I sold about two years ago, my granny sandals I wore when pregnant because no other shoes fit and the sad discovery of Murray’s leash. But the best discovery was this gem; a brand new, still has the tags on, fishing vest from Eddie Bauer. Beyond the fact that he bought this long before we were ever married and he's never gone fishing since we've been married is the hilarious realization that it makes him look like the main character of one of our new favorite shows; “$#*! My Dad Says”.

 

 

 

You’ll have to exscuse the messy hair and unshaven face. The guy’s been painting all day.

Learning the same lessons over and over

 

I’d like to briefly discuss a particular lesson I’d really like to not continually re-learn. That lesson would be the one about not going off the wagon, so to speak, in regards to my food choices that ends up in a weight gain. You know it’s bad when you step on the scale and your WW leader exclaims; “Whoa, what did you do this week?!” Yeah, it’s that bad. Let’s just say if they gave an award for weight gain a one week I’d be a big winner. Of course, I’d much prefer to be a big loser, pardon the pun.

So here’s the thing; I could list lots of excuses for letting my weight go up instead of down, but ultimately it all boils down to not properly planning for the right food choices and simply eating beyond what I should be. Like I say; “Weight loss requires planning. When I fly by the seat of my pants, it means I’ll need bigger pants”. But while we’re talking about excuses I do have to address one little thing I really am having an issue with. Weight Watcher’s decided to revamp their program, effectively making the old points system null and void and starting out with the brand new PointsPlus system. The thing is, they’re still calling it “points” but yet they aren’t really points as we’ve come to know them. The points values for numerous foods have gone up, in many cases doubling and tripling the former points. Oh sure, they tried to make us feel better about it because we get “more points" in a week, but if you do the math, we don’t get anywhere near the amount of points that would cover the points that foods have increased to. And that’s a hard thing to adjust to. In addition, I have yet to go through everything I normally eat, recalculate all the new PointsPlus values and plan my meals around that new information. Of course that sounds like it would be pretty important to do, right? Yes, I must get on that. Because I am really, really tired of not fitting into my pants.

That Darn Cat

Originally, this was going to be titled “Conversations with Teenager” until I realized he had a very small part in the actual conversation.

Ever since our dog Murray left us, one year ago this month in fact, the cat has been difficult to deal with. She frequently wants in and then wants back out. As previously mentioned, we cannot have a pet door or we’ll be dealing with live critters in the house (mice, lizards and snakes) along with the occasional dead bird and associated feather mess. So we deal with the whole in and out thing. The rule is she has to be “out” when we’re gone. She knows this and tries to get around it by this little maneuver; she “camps out” at the front door stealthily, knowing I’m about to leave at any moment. This morning’s attempt at gaining entry was straight out of a comedy routine, though at the time I failed to see the humor. I was ready to head out with Little Guy, wearing my coat, car keys in hand and loaded down with my travel coffee container, water bottle, purse, and assorted bags of things I was taking with me. I open the door and the cat darts in and zooms past me at lightning speed. A somewhat unfortunate word may have escaped my mouth as I took off chasing her. She darted down the hall, at first trying to break into the Teenager's room. When she found that door closed she turned around and headed back down the hall towards the dining room and hid underneath the table. As I was screaming like a lunatic, gently trying to coax her out, I noticed little guy was standing by the front door laughing at this whole scene. I finally managed to get her out from underneath the table and chase her towards the back door where I was able to boot her out.

When Teenager arrived home this afternoon, I relayed the tale of “What your @%&! Cat did” only to have him also laugh hysterically at his Mother’s ridiculous tale. The kicker was his comment at the end of my story; “Well, you would have been able to chase her down a lot sooner if you’d put all your stuff down!”

I hate it when Teenagers are right.

New Year, New Feature

Long before the show, the book and back before I even heard of and started the following the author of the hilarious Tweets that kicked off “$#*! My Dad Says”, I often thought I should be sharing my own hilarity in the stuff that my 82 year old mother comes out with. So I decided I need to start a new feature here on the blog, titled “Stuff My Mom Says”. To kick this off, I need to share a little back story with you.

The Teenager has been trying for some time now to get a job. He’s had no luck finding anybody within walking distance (he has no car yet, one of the reasons he wants to get a job) that would hire him. With the economy the way it is, a lot of the “teen” type jobs have been going to the adults. Furthermore, many businesses nowadays don’t want to hire the teens and are requiring them to be at least 18, and he only just recently had his 18th birthday. He’s still finding many places simply not hiring.

So, during a phone call with my mother, she inquired about Teenager’s recent attempts at obtaining employment. I stated that he’d just put in another couple of applications, but so far had no luck. She’d asked about what types of business he’d applied to and I told her mostly food places and a couple retail stores. She then suggested the following; “You know, ‘Service Stations’ and ‘Garages’ are always looking to hire young people.” It was all I could do to not bust up laughing. Poor Mom, I don’t know the last time she went to get gas in her car, but she must’ve taken a time machine back to the 1950’s.


Back to a time when “young people” actually worked at "filling stations" that had "garages" and actually provided "services". As I’m trying to hold back my laughter all I could picture in my mind is Goober from the old Andy Griffith Show working at Wally’s Service Station.