This is NOT man-bashing...honest....

Answer me this: Are all men stubborn, or is it just the one that comes with me?

We've done some remodeling in our cellar/family room. We added a bathroom, a laundry room and made a delineated area for my art stuff and Larry's wood working shop. It looks great. We have a great contractor who puts up with my whining and complaining when I tell him what I want done. I know better than to think that we, Larry and I, could possibly do the work which needs to be done to get a room looking like a room.

Many years ago we did some remodeling by ourselves and it nearly ended in divorce court. Since that time, we know to hire outside help. Yes, I know it's more costly, but when you consider the cost for lawyers and courts, it's the less costly way to go about the remodeling.

This time we decided to add the bathroom 10 days before a party. For some unknown reason we felt everything would be done in plenty of time to hold the party in the family room with the new bathroom at the ready for all the guests.

Believe it or not, the contractor finished the last of the remodel at 12:00pm the day of the party. We went downstairs immediately to clean, clear and set up for that evenings festivities. We did a great job too, together. We had so much to do there was no time to bicker, sneer or complain to each other. The party came off pretty well. Just one time I had to brush off my friends tush to get the sheet rock dust removed. Not bad, considering the way it looked when we started the cleaning.

However, when the remodel was completed we realized the walls of the existing family room looked bad, I mean really bad. We're talking 1960's maple paneling...(I know...it's coming back in style...but honest, there is no way this stuff will ever be on the H&G network as a "new and improved" look for your house....It's said that "everything old is new again" but that phrase wouldn't cut it for this paneling....My gosh, when we bought it, it was $3.49 a sheet [that's 4' X 8' sheets we're talking...] ). Anyway, the paneling needed work, of some kind. The best thing would've been to remove it and do something different on the wall, but Larry thought better of that idea.

Up we went to our neighborhood big box home improvement place. We were looking for something called, "coverall". It's a kind of wallpaper made to be painted, or not. It covers a mass of sins on existing walls, paneling being one of those sins.

We found some and bought it. This would be a "GREAT" project stated Larry. (I think he'd had a couple of beers before we went to the store. He was in a very "project" minded mood. It was either the beers, or it was the fact he was so excited about the bathroom in his "man-cave" that he morphed into some alien being....I'm still not sure).

So the party was over, a success I might add, but we had two more parties that week. I thought the wallpaper project would be done after all the parties...How dumb am I? No, Larry (or the new alien being I'm living with...still to be determined...) decides he's going to "just try a strip or two".

Larry is not the one who does wall covering in the house as a general rule, that's my bailiwick. Larry decided to go ahead and do it while I was getting ready for party number two.

Anyone who has had experience doing wall covering knows there are certain instructions that cannot be skipped. Oh, you can try to skip them, but it will take more time in the long run and the process will be so bad you'll be looking for a bunch of baby ducks to peck you to death. However, what do I know? I had to leave the family room because I started to kibitz and started to see the fire coming out of his ears.....I knew my retreat from the family room should be post haste.


After quite a while he came up and said, "something is wrong.....". I looked up from the umpteenth crystal glass I was polishing and said, "Why, whatever do you mean???" He looked at me and said, in all sincerity, "I think I should have done more prep work before hanging the paper". "Oh, reeeeally?" said I.

I followed him downstairs to the family room. We opened the door, directly opposite from the doorway where we were standing was the wall covering rolling down the wall, falling into a puddle on the rug....I just turned around and went back up the stairs, as Larry uttered, "Thanks for all your help...". ARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!

To be continued...

Just one of those days....

I sure most people can relate to this.

I'm a person who likes to make lists of things I have to get done in a certain time. I don't leave things up in the air, because I know full well if it isn't written down by my own hand, not typed on the computer, it's not going to gain any priority in my brain. As a matter of fact, it won't take up any space in my brain what so ever...This is a true fact, from years of experience.

Armed with my list this morning, I promptly started to complete some of the tasks listed for Sunday, November 21. Since the Thanksgiving feast will be at my house, I have this big honking turkey in my refrigerator in some stage, I hope, of defrosting. I know from past experience it's better to turn over the turkey at intervals. With that thought it mind, I opened the refrigerator door, pushed up the shelf that was resting on the top of the turkey, and proceeded to pull the big beast off the shelf. With a tug and a heave ho, the beast came out of the fridge and promptly fell on my big toe, the one that has had some pretty bad hits of late...

At the same time as I was trying to remove the turkey, things that were apparently wedged behind the behemoth decided to explode open. Not too bad a problem really, I had some containers of oatmeal on the bottom shelf (why oatmeal in the refrigerator, you ask? Don't ask).

The oatmeal had a mind of it's own and sprayed, literally, all over the bottom of the fridge, into the seal of the freezer (my freezer in on the bottom-the most common sense place for refrigerator freezers in my opinion), and all over the floor in front of the fridge. The turkey, still on my foot, had a sprinkling of oatmeal on top.

The oatmeal somehow managed to get into the two veggies bins and when I opened the bins, I noticed they were in dire need of wiping down. Veggies make a mess sometimes and this was one of those time.

I looked down at my turkey covered toes and noticed blood, not turkey blood either. My blood was pooling next to the toe that took the direct hit. At that time, I realized maybe the list thing I had on the table should be revised. I probably should have added, "Make time to take a trip to the hospital", but of course that wasn't on the list.

Larry wandered into the kitchen after hearing some strange, strangled, suffering sounds. He took one look at the turkey, toe, shelf, bins and burst out laughing. This was probably NOT the best thing for him to do, but honestly if I was faced with the same scene I'm not sure I'd be able to do anything else either. I gave him a pass on that reaction.

Everything eventually was cleaned, including the blood off the toe, and I crumpled up the list and went to bed...To Hell with the list...

It's that time of year again....ho hum...

Yep, here it is, another November screaming out from all the calendars. Usually the months change on the calendar without much fanfare, that is until you get to November. November is one of those months when you're either going to get euphoric because you can't wait until all the hoopla gets into full swing OR you're going to turn the calendar page over, look at the name of the month and turn to the kitchen to find a sharp knife to cut out your gizzard. Tearing out the gizzard MUST be better than what's in store for all of us these next two months.

I've gotten numb to the stores pushing the Winter holidays down my throat in August. I figure they need to get as much money as they can, as early as they can for a couple of reasons: Someone has to pay for the crap the merchandiser and buyers have bought, and they need to keep the employees doing something, because for sure, the employees are not killing themselves to help out customers . How many times have you walked into a store and IF you see an employee, they're either on a phone or walking quickly in the opposite direction from you. The employers understand that and to get something for the salary they're paying, they make the employees continually stock shelves.

November is that time of year when people start to think about the upcoming feast day....Thanksgiving. Now, I'm not going to blast the holiday by moaning about the excesses we all do on that day, nor am I going to get all pious and religious about why we should be thankful at this time in our lives. I am going to talk about how the holiday seems to start a frenzy of thoughts about the Christmas season. By the time the feast day arrives we all seem to have forgotten about that day, in anticipation for the frenzied thoughts of the upcoming days. It's like wham, bam, thank you ma'am and on to the next. Not breathing, no collecting $200 fir passing go, just slurp down the food, burp, and on to the next. What is it with us collectively? Are we just gluttons? Do we forget what these holidays are for? This is nuts.

I guess we have.....I'm going to continue this another day....I'm getting crazy.....

Having Company? Rip apart something just before they arrive....

If this didn't happen almost every time we have company I wouldn't wonder about it, but it does. If we are expecting folks to visit, for dinner or dessert, whatever, if seems like a switch turns to the "on" position for husband to do some radical "rehab" work.

This weekend we're having some folks over for dinner. During the next week we're having a friend stay with us for a couple of days. What does he decide to do? He decides to find out why there's a mildew smell in our bathroom we can't seem to locate.

In the last week we've pulled apart the baseboards, the fan, the cabinets, changed all the fixtures in the bathroom, and done everything possible to find out where this smell is coming from. I mean tearing apart everything and anything. We've looked high and low for anything that possibly would emit that smell.

The bathroom needs to be updated. The last time it was done was in 1990. When it was rehabbed at that time there was evidence that the sub-flooring had been wet and caused some damage. It had to be replaced. Can it be that this is where the smell is wafting from now? I'm betting it is... The bathroom needs to be gutted and redone. Larry is resisting like crazy.

Why he insists on ripping apart the fan in the ceiling at 1:00am during a torrential rain storm is beyond my comprehension, but he did it last night. I woke up with the sounds of hammers and other similar noises (as well as Oh@#$%, f%$# that, Mother%$#^ thing). Apparently something wasn't going his way at 1:00am when normal people are sleeping...LIKE ME!

For some ungodly reason he decided that the smell was coming from the attic and every time we entered the bathroom the smell would descend down the fan and into the bathroom. It should be noted that the fan pipe was dripping water from the rain coming down so hard there are flood warnings in our area (we live in an area where if it flooded we should all be building arks...we're high above sea level-so this is not your average rain fall). Would a normal, sane person fool around with a pipe that goes to the roof during a wicked rain storm? I think not, but then they're not my husband.

We've been at 100% humidity levels around here for the last three days and anything that was remotely damp is wet again and probably molding, hence the wet mildew smell. I say we should dry everything the best we can, get some light in the bathroom, maybe fans and try to dry it out until we can get the thing gutted and find out where the wet something is. Larry wants to rip apart, the day before company comes (in the only bathroom in the house mind you). And of course a couple of days before our company comes. I'm all for camouflage with candles and Lysol until we can figure out what's what. Am I wrong? Apparently Larry thinks so.

LIfe has to be lived while we're here

I'm getting to that age where reading the daily newspaper is becoming a challenge... I know I need to look at the obits because I usually recognize a bunch of names, but honestly, sometimes I wish the obits were an option in the paper, like the TV guides that have become some special option in all the papers around here. I'd gladly give up the obits to have the TV guide back...

At present I have several friends on the pathway to the end. I don't like to think about it, but it's inevitable for all of us, but for these friends they're on a fast moving walkway going like the wind to get to the end.

With that in mind, I've given some thought to the things I want to accomplish in the near future. The way I figure it, I'm on the moving walkway as well, but it hasn't been turned on yet, so I have some time to do some things.

I'm just about at the point where I'm going to say "to Hell with everything" and do what I damned well please, no regrets...well, not any I'm ready to admit to anyway. I have things that I want to do in the next few months and I've decided not to put them off. I guess it's sort of my own personal "Bucket List".

Here's the rub though... I have a significant other that doesn't see things quite the same way. I understand where he's coming from, we do have to remember we might need some of this money I'm about to blow in the future, but what if there is no future? What a quandary...

Maybe I'll rethink a bit and do some of the things and not all of them...then again maybe not....

LIfe has to be lived while we

Home DIY

If you ask me to check your oil, change your antifreeze, bleed your brakes, rotate your tires, change plugs and points (if you can still get to them), or any other car related stuff, I'm there.

Ask me to chain saw some limbs from trees, water cut tile, spread cement, build a stone retaining wall, or grow from seeds some weird plants, I'm there. But, ask me to do something in my house that takes a measuring device, level, drill, screw drivers or hammers and you may as well ask me to swim the English Channel. I'm not good at the handi-person (got to be politically correct these days-I get noise about that) house accessorizing things.

All I wanted to do was add a towel bar in my bathroom. With all the remodeling we've been doing we decided to remove our old glass shower doors and replace it with a curtain and one of those cool shower curtain rods that give you more room in the shower. They're kind of curved to pull the curtain out and around. No problem right?

Got the tools to do the job, sat down to read the directions, that made no sense at all, but knowing how inept I am at these house DYI's I figured I better take the time to read the directions. That was my first mistake.

Directions are written in pseudo English these days. Thank God someone somewhere had the foresight to add pictures... Larry got in on this one as well, so I thought we'd be good.

We followed the directions to a "T". The curtain rod rotated and looked like an elongated "U". That didn't seem right, so we started anew. This time we read the directions out loud and s-l-o-w-l-y. I put the last piece in and the rod was still looking like a "U".

We both started to laugh because we questioned the directions a few times but figured we were wrong and they were right. We were wrong....about them being right.

We finally did what was logical and the thing went up fine. We learned that we knew many words that should not be used in polite company however. Well, at least we learned something.

OK, now, because we no longer have the shower doors, we lost our towel racks and the ability to throw wet towels and other things over the top of the doors. I was getting pretty sick of the towels on the floor and over the bathtub, plus the bathroom smelled damp. It was time to do something about this problem.

The first thing I did was to buy a curtain hook, you know the kind of thing that holds curtains back to the side. I saw someone use one of those in the bathroom to hold a hand towel by the sink. This was a project I was sure I could do and I did it with little difficulty. Because I was so successful at that minor job, I thought, I'll do a towel rod. No problem.

It took me some time to find the one I wanted, but I finally found one. It's not elaborate but it had to be a certain size to fit where I needed it. At the same time I bought a couple of other hook type devices to match, figuring I could use all the hooks I could get and I was so accomplished at these hook installations, how hard could it be? Ha!!

According to the directions the job should have taken 8 minutes. Knowing what I know about myself I always multiply the figure by 20. So 20 times 8 minutes, the job should take me about 160 minutes. On top of that figure I add another 60 minutes or so to give me the time to find all the tools I'll need. Don't laugh, it's true. Every tool is in the house and someone thinks he knows where they are, but guess what? we have a gremlin that lives with us who loves to put things away in places they don't belong. The result is, we have to search. We go to the place the tool is supposed to be and start doing searches by 1 foot radius'. I've thought about using a system to square off the cellar like they do on archaeological sites to find things.

Sure enough, it took me 90 minutes to find the tools to do this 8 minute project. Again, I haven't learned lessons correctly, I sat down to read the directions. Not good.

I'm sure some Chinese people are laughing their heads off right now, knowing full well that some American is reading their convoluted directions to put up this towel rod.

I did everything according to the directions. I drilled the holes the way they asked me to. I put the little anchors into the drilled holes (the size the Chinese told me to make) and the little anchors went into the wall, through the sheet rock and down into the hinterlands of the wall...

My vocabulary is now peppered with expletives that I won't repeat here. Suffice to say I was pissed. Luckily I have an assortment of different kinds of anchor and mollie bolts so the wall was saved from my foot being slammed through it.

After some other feeble attempts at using the directions, I threw them away and put the damned thing up. It's not perfect, but then what is?