Airy Nothing Chatter

That's where I've been all day.

My tummy was feeling bad when I woke up this morning (yes! morning!!), so I came and sat here at the computer. Long after my tummy felt better, I was still here... I'm still here! Most of the day I've been looking at various needlework sites. It started out with me catching up on my RSS feeds. I have a lot of crafty sites there and I ended up surfing and even adding a few more sites. LOL I can't read a bunch of them. It's the photos and free patterns that made me add them. Those are the Russian sites. There are also a bunch of French sites. I understand a bit of what I read there. That led me add a French English dictionary and a French Language forum to my list of links. Maybe I'll finally get better at French.

Anyway, now I'm all geared up to work on projects again. I still have my windows, 2 meme projects (one is 90% done) and some mending to get done. I wish thinking made it so (or in this case -- sew).

Actually, I'd settle for just being able to get my thoughts recorded somewhere permanent. Obviously, my brain is not a very good file keeper. I know there was something I wanted to write down when I woke up, but by the time I sat here, it was already gone. I also had various ideas when I got up and moved around, but they were gone when I came back. My ideas are in and out again in a flash. I hope as I start to get better sleep, my short term memory gets better, but I don't see it yet.

Yesterday I got out and cut back the rosebushes, hydrangeas and dead stuff. Anyone who has met my cat, Llyan, might blame this

on her, but they would be wrong. It was the fairy roses that got me. They don't really need to be cut back, but they grow with such abandon, that, in order to keep them from rooting in the lawn, I decided to cut them. Because they grow so well, I probably should have taken the hedge shears to them. That would have save my hands and forearms from damage. The scratches are all stingy and itchy -- no great pain, but annoying.

It rained today, but fortunately not before Iqbal got the lawn mowed. Had he not got out there, I might have had to call it a field. Spots of lawn were about a foot high, already. Shoot! I forgot to cut some of that and bring it in to Llyan. That's the tasty grass. I wish the whole lawn were made of it. It may be a rough lawn, but it doesn't dry out as fast as the softer grass does.

I have misplaced my boring book. I have never taken so long to read a book. The main reason is that, usually, if I find a book boring, I stop trying to read it. I glanced at the reviews on LibraryThing. A lot of people liked this book. I'm just not one of them.

What annoys me, though is that I feel obligated to finish and write a review of the book and that makes me feel guilty every time I pick up another book. As a result, I've finish one book all year and it's March already. I should have finished at least eight books by now. It's not like I don't have a gazillion her to be read.

(1:05 a.m.)



Wednesday
Now it's 2:55 p.m. and I found and finally finished that book! Yippee! I read about two hours last night and another hour this afternoon. It's like a weight has been lifted. I hope to have a review up by Friday. Briefly it will sum up as "Show, don't tell!!!"

I think I'll spend some time reading Louis L'Amour.

Today is almost as gray as it can get. I have four lamps in this room and have them all on. Every little bit helps, but the work lamp is best. It's almost as bright as the therapy lamp. I have that next to my bed, set to come on automatically a couple of hours before I get up. Kinda like a sunrise, I guess. Everything helps, but nothing works as well as real sunlight. But the days are noticeably longer!

Well, if I was going to say something else, I've lost it again. I think I will go spend a couple of hours working on projects

Saturday I spent the whole afternoon looking for the right pipes for the dryer vent. Apparently most people go with the accordion pipes, but the one I always see recommended is the regular tin pipe. Finally, at Ace Hardware, I finally found someone who did more than say "Those are what we have." He explained the different grades and showed me the cleaning tool. I hadn't realized there are two sizes and I hadn't measured, so I had to go back today.

There are some photos behind the cut.

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I spent the whole evening and half the night posting this blog entry:

Puttering Around That's what I've been doing for a few days now. A little this. A little that. Click pictures for full size. I did some re-potting. Mouse over to see what these plants are. I may have to redo the Burro's Tai... read more

When I was writing this, I was listening to:
George Winston - The Venice Dreamer (Part 2)
George Winston - Cloudy This Morning
NatureQuest - Seaside Serenade
George Winston - Living in the Country
George Winston - Living without You
George Winston - Goodbye Montana - Part 2
George Winston - Treat Street
Don Shetterly - A Mother's Day Gift
George Winston - Merry Go Round
Dan Gibson - Beauty Abounds

7/04/2009
I got the purple paint for my bedroom. It's Behr's Garden Butterfly. The guy said it wasn't often that the paint matched the customer's shirt. LOL It did, but I hadn't realized it until he mentioned it. I guess anyone can tell I like the color.

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Alex harassed me to start. I thought he was going to help more than he did, but he will be helping with later parts of this and he did help a bit last night.

When we moved into our house this is what the hallway looked like:

After we painted it looked like this:

After four hours of work last night, it looks like this:

[Ha ha! Emily's "headlights" match the wall! I know not everyone will think the green is an improvement, but I thrive on bright color. I wouldn't want this color in a room, but I love it in the hall. To me it's a lovely foil to the yellow in the living room and the terracotta in the kitchen -- and a soothing contrast to the red of my den.]

I expected the floor to be worse than it is. It has about 8 or 9 nails pounded too deep for me to get them out and a lot of small nail holes and several divots, the biggest of which is about the size of a quarter. Debie knows about a professional guy who does floors and he may be able to get the nails out. For now, all I plan to do is fill the holes with stained putty to match the floor. The woodwork still needed to be painted, anyway, so all I need to do there is sand the edge of the paint line, so it's smooth all the way down.

On Monday I hope to get project 1b done. This is the before photo of that:

I'm not sure yet, how we'll do it. I think we'll pull out all the carpet first and then work on removing the tack strips. That's what takes the longest time. I'm really hoping the floor in there is as good as the hall floor. I can't move the heavy stuff, but I'll have to move all the little stuff (knickknacks, etc.) and empty the cabinet with all my birds. Iqbal will have to help Alex move the big pieces - piano, sofa, cabinet, TV and chairs. I guess we'll push everything to one side and rip the carpet out, them move it all back to the uncarpeted side and get the rest out.

This carpet looks better in the photos than in real life. It's worn, dirty and matted. Only the corners look halfway decent in reality. The padding is compressed in areas and is starting to disintegrate. I will be happy when all the carpet up here is gone. I'm not particularly happy with the carpet downstairs, but I know that has concrete underneath, so it must wait until we can replace it. (Maybe next year.) It won't be carpet in the main room. I need a hard surface for my sewing area and to block that off with tile or linoleum and have the rest carpeted would look weird. The den and bedroom will have carpet, though -- and the stairs [although if there's a way to make the stairs look nice with something other than carpet, I'd prefer no carpeting there. They are a magnet for pet hair and all the sticks, stones, leaves and dirt that 8 (4 pets, 4 people) beings can carry inside.]

I spent this afternoon helping Debie with some filing, so I haven't worked on any projects today. Now I'm going to finish the book I'm reading and perhaps start the next one I got for review.