Random Thoughts & Musings

This is the tree outside my office, it is suddenly "on fire" and is beautiful. Until today, when it rained and we had lots of wind - which deposited quite a few of those leaves all over my car!

This is a recipe for disaster if there ever was one. Both dogs have had a condition lately that we've called "Burning Rubber Butt" and now with both dog rear ends together, it's only a matter of time until everything in this house melts from the stench!

This picture is blurry, sorry about that! This is the Fenton (what else is there, really?) piece that Froggy got me at the flea market last summer. It's a cranberry opalescent hobnail vase, I can't remember the years it was produced but it's not recent by any stretch of the imagination. It is fairly rare, especially to find it in such a good condition. She got a very good price for it, which I might have paid except that I was trying to make my Fenton $$ last and get as much bang for the buck as I could. And I did get a lot of bang for my bucks! But I'm very thankful, Froggy! It's on the new wooden shelf that Bill built for me.

Here's the shelf! Both hummingbirds are Fenton as well. I'm thinking that I need another piece (or two!) in cranberry or rose pink to go on the shelf. But since I don't currently have any other pieces...

Well, I'll see what I can do about remedying that situation! :)

Anyway, the shelf was going to be a very pale pink but the color I bought turned out to be a lot closer to pepto bismol pink than the label & sample showed. Also, the varnish coat caused the paint to bubble so I got the sander that Bill bought me a couple of years ago and sanded all the paint off. Then I hit it with Kilz, and then painted it a green color that is very similar to the green fabric on the bulletin board I made a while back. The green paint is paint that I originally bought well before we moved, the label said it was 5/30/04, so I've had it a while. Bill was going to replace the curtains on the sliding door we had in our bedroom in the old house and he was going to put up a wooden curtain rod. I bought the paint to use on the curtain rod. Then a month later, Dad left us and we bought our then-new home in a matter of weeks so the curtain rod never actually got painted beyond the kilz coat and is in fact hanging up in the garage. Where it's been for 5 years and will probably stay until I can think of a use for it! But I did at least find a use for the paint!

We got the 2nd opinion on the chimney today. It does need to be repaired, but it is at least clean now. The problem it has is something that is probably related to the way it was constructed when this house was built. It wasn't constructed badly, but over time things change as a matter of normality and some of the bricks are a little loose. The first inspector told me that some of the bricks had fallen in and that we were in danger of losing the entire chimney, basically. Well, Bill didn't think that was right and after I cleaned the fireplace last week (dirty, messy work), I stuck my head in there and I could see what Bill was saying was right. So that's when we decided to get the second opinion. He came out today, and some of the bricks have loosened up a little which is what happens over time. The concern in that case is that if we have a really big, hot fire (and we usually do have that kind), a stray spark could concievably get behind one of the bricks. If that happened, we could lose the entire house and possibly us along with it. He gave us a bid to repair and it's similar to the first bid, but the work he wants to do looks like it will be better and will last longer. The two prices are virtually the same. So we are going to go with the guy from today. I'm not sure when, soon, but Bill's got to arrange the time off because it is probably a 2-day job. And we need to get it done before the roof work. He suggested that we not use the fireplace, unless it was a situation of an ice storm and no power but we have a little time before winter hits. Not a lot, but enough.

We may have missed our window on the roof, however. Winter is coming and it's not far. So, although we would prefer not to have to wait, it looks like it might be next spring before we can get the roof replaced. We know we have missed our weather window to do the painting outside that we need to do.

Sunday is rock garden day! It's been raining all day and it's just way too muddy & wet to even think about it today. Yesterday would have been good, but it was very windy and as soon as I went outside my allergies fired up and they are still around. There really isn't that much left to do, it's just been a matter of finding the time when it's not raining. And in NE Oklahoma, it rains pretty much all Fall!