Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas to all...


It's been a week here at the cabin. 

A week of failed plumbing, furniture moving, snow, wind and more furniture moving. 

I've done some baking. Banana bread that was unsuccessful.  Cookies that were yummy.  A batch of refried beans for Christmas lunch and the freezer. 

Tonight my middle chica and her friend arrive. We'll go to a party in town. 
Tomorrow hopefully Santa will come. 
In between I will read "The Night before Christmas" to anyone who will listen.

Wishing all of you a joyous Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, free of plumbing issues and wandering furniture.

No.1: Big 60th Birthday Trip and No. 64: South Padre Island

No. 1: Big 60th Birthday Trip plus No. 64: South Padre Island/ A Two-Fer!


Again, sorry for the silence.  In the past month I've helped my mom move, been out of town, and started a new job. Lots of little adjustments. But now, I'm back.....

Just came back from a weekend in Terrell, Tx with my high school friends and realized, What?!, I never did a post on last year's 60th birthday trip to S. Padre.

February 2016. I am really late on this one!

Friend Ann had been a bit under the weather and overwhelmed (metastatic breast cancer will do that to you) so we decided to keep the 60th Birthday Trip a little closer to home. Some of us (okay, me) had never been to S. Padre Island, others had been and loved it. Being driving distance away was the icing on the cake.

M. Anne found us a lovely condo on the beach complete with pool that was supposed to heat up. I'm sure it would have gotten warm if the owners had turned the heater on about a week before we showed up. As it was, the weather was a little cool, and so was the pool.

That pool started to get warm the last day we were there. 

Too little, too late.

And too sad, since M. Anne really worked hard to find us a heated pool.

S. Padre Island was...an island. With pretty white sand. And row after row after row of condos.  I've been now, no need to go back. Yes, the sand was gorgeous but I was raised going to Galveston and Surfside where the sand isn't always so pretty and I still love those beaches. Between the distance we drove and the abundance of condos, I would be just as happy staying closer to home and living with non-white sand.

However, put six women, an abundance of champagne and wine, lots of excellent food and an opportunity to shop together for a weekend and happiness is guaranteed.

Every trip we do a bottle photo. 

Sometimes it's a little embarrassing. 

And, for the record, I'm mostly a beer drinker. 

We did a tour of the sea turtle rescue center and hit the convention center for a craft's fair.

Liddy, Peggy and Allison getting their turtle on.

The sea turtle rescue center was a little rag-tag but still fun. They could use some donations. (In case you have some money you need to get rid of...)

Help me!

I swim in circles. 

Sweet rescue turtle...

We walked the beach and listened to live music at Clayton's,  the largest beach bar in Texas. The music was good, the daiquiris were better and the array of dancers was the best.  I firmly believe that no matter how old you are on the outside, we all feel our best age on the inside when we cut loose.  Apparently that age was somewhere between 18 and 22 for the majority of the 55+ aged dancers.

A last minute pic- no make up, wet hair,  ready to roll. 

Sixty is pretty cute.

B: Me, Allison, Liddy

F: Peggy, M. Anne, and Ann

So we did it. Celebrated our 60th birthdays AND went to the island.

Which brings us to last weekend.

Liddy's first grand baby was born last October, at 25 weeks along and weighing only 11 ounces. She is one of the smallest surviving babies in the world.  Now weighing about 3 pounds, it was time to have a baby shower for her. So all of us ladies descended on Terrell to celebrate Baby Watson.
(Great video of her and her parents here.)

Watson Jean is one teeny tiny baby. 

Ann was under the weather and couldn't make it but Kathleen did come, all the way from Birmingham.  Another weekend away in the company of wonderful friends, another reason to celebrate.

Sixty one is pretty cute, too.

(Although truthfully only Allison and I are there- the rest have later birthdays.)

Liddy, Peggy, Kathleen, M. Anne, Allison and me in front.)

I am all about the celebrations. We need to find our joy where we can.

Yep. We found our joy!

•••••••••••••

And while we were there I got to do a little plumbing. Liddy dropped an earring back down the drain. It was a locking back made especially for her earring, not an easy one to replace.  I assured her that was not a problem. I grew up wearing hard contact lenses. They were always slipping down the drain and my mother taught me many moons ago how to disconnect that pipe under the sink to retrieve lost items.  (She was a contact wearer, also.)  Like mother like daughter like daughter...
Teach your kids how to do stuff, it gives them power.   It's a good thing.

Heads Up!

Heads Up!


Sometimes you just need a little project.
One that is physical, that requires some effort. Not just the dainty sit at my sewing machine or ,obviously, considering my frequent absences, type at the computer type of project.  A get down and dirty project.

Since Belle and Bunny have both moved out, their rooms are getting the remove, refresh and renew treatment. 

I started in Belle's room which has a bed, a desk, side table, her "tofu" and a cabinet.  (That cabinet needs to find another home...)  The futon has a cheetah print cover, the desk is black and the bedding was nonexistent. Her walls are my favorite shade of ballet pink.  

So I needed bedding. A trip to Home Goods solved that problem. This Indian print bedspread seemed to tie things together enough to make it passable. I could even use her old hot pink sheets.

Boring with a capital B

But ugh....boring, boring with no headboard.  She's never had one although at one point she had a gorgeous painted fence and garden "headboard".  Killed me when she insisted I paint over it.

Probably my most favorite painting project ever done in this house.

And it got painted over.

Wahhhhhhh.

But, but..... there was a headboard. Procured at a garage sale many years ago and stored across the street in the parent's garage.

Sadly I did not get a pic before the spindles were removed. 

See those ugly calla lilies? 

Except. It had rust. And the brass was terribly tarnished. And the paint was oxidized it was so old. 

Originally I hoped to just sand a bit and spray paint over but once I dragged it out of the garage I knew that wasn't going to work. Stripping was going to be required. And not the Victoria's Secret/ brass pole kind of stripping....  The chemical kind. Ugh. 

The hubs and I took a trip to Home Depot where he grabbed a can of Citristrip, the safe and easy stripper. Ha! That man has never stripped anything in his life. I have. I was not going to mess around.  We walked out the door with the professional level, heavy duty, kill the environment, chemical cornucopia stripper. 

Give me the PREMIUM stripper. 

I want results and I want them now!

So satisfying. After painting the stripper on, I listened to the music of the chemicals eating away at old paint. It sounded like Rice Krispies. Snap, crackle, pop, peel. The paint quickly bubbled up in the most delightful way.

Doesn't that just put a smile on your face? 

A scraper made quick work of most of the old paint. A quick sanding with the detail sander (I have the ancient version of this one and love it.) was required for the little dibs and dabs of paint that I didn't get with the stripper. 

The spindles that were brass were a challenge. I spent most of one day trying to get the tarnish off before I realized it had been treated with a clear lacquer.  A little more stripper and then some brass polish made them shine. A quick spray with clear lacquer once they were shining will ensure they stay that way. (I hope.)

Polished within an inch of their lives. 

My hands were happy to have this part finished. 

A nice coat of primer will hopefully keep the paint on the headboard and not on the wall.

Primer gray.

Looking pretty good...

Black satin spray paint-two coats- made such a difference. I wasn't too fond of the little flowers and especially the larger calla lilies that adorned the frame. The black paint made them disappear into just "ornament".  
The spindles were reinstalled and Voila!  I LOVE IT.

Happy results. 

Such a difference in the room. Such a difference in the headboard. 

Worth those hot sweaty days out in the garage stripping, sanding and spraying.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••

And like mother, like daughter.....

Bunny called me in a frantic panic last week. Her hair is turning green. This was particularly upsetting since she had paid for her own highlights right before she left for school.

I guess it does have a green tint to it. 

When Bunny was little and spent most of the summer in the pool, her hair would end up a bright lime green. Belle's might get a hint of green, but Bunny's would be GREEN.

She called her colorist who suggested a clarifying shampoo. That didn't work.

She called maintenance at the school. Nothing they could do. It's the copper pipes and the chlorine in the water and O well!

But she is my baby girl.

It took two trips to Home Depot, a late night session with the RA, a couple of wrenches and Face Timing with her mom (at 12:30am) but look!!
As she says : Shower By Bunny

She unscrewed the floor's community shower head, switched it out with one that has a filter and hopefully no more green hair.

The old shower head....

she just switches them out when she showers. 

Isn't she a smarty? 

All that plumbing at the cabin has paid off. I told her if this college gig doesn't work out, the two of us can open up our own plumbing company.   Click here, here and here to read about some of our other plumbing adventures.  We've had a few!

SaveSave

Doing It Like I Mean It...

Doing it like I mean it...or at least trying to.

Back at the beginning of summer I did a recap of our time in Colorado before we headed back to  Texas for a bit of the summer. There was one thing I wish I had done but didn't. One little regret.

So now that I am here for another year, maybe longer,  let's see how I am doing on rectifying that regret.

The one thing I regretted? 

Not getting a job. 

Not doing it like I meant it.

Originally our plan was to come here for the 2013 Fall semester of school. Obviously, we stayed longer. Then the plan was to go to Texas and Florida for the Summer, get everyone settled and be back in Texas for the Fall semester of school for Bunny. 

That didn't pan out either. 

We were back in Colorado before the bags got unpacked from the Spring.

The Twin Sisters.

Just couldn't stay away.

So I have been looking for a job. 

I've filled out online applications. 

One application, I felt like they should have given me the job just for slogging through all the questions. 

I have dropped off applications.

I have interviewed. 

So frustrating. 

Nada. Nothing. Zip.

Apparently being a stay at home mom has made me capable of anything, qualified for nothing.

There has been an article floating around the web about the luxury of being a stay at home mom.  Not that it is a luxury for the mom but that it is a luxury for the spouse. And the kids. And also a boon to the other working moms. A person at home holds everything together.
Hell, every mom I know would like to have their own stay at home mom.

As a mom I have gotten three kids to school, baseball games, soccer practice, piano and guitar lessons, driver's ed classes, friend's houses, etc. etc. etc. 

I haven't lost a kid yet. 

I've managed all the finances and handled two houses in two different states- insurance, bills, repairs, maintenance, improvements. 

I'm in charge of keeping FIVE cars running. Buying them, trading them in, maintaining them. (I am a ruthless bargainer when it comes to a car purchase.) See here and here for just some of what I have dealt with.

Jump starting the car. Again and again and again.

I've planned trips both domestic and international. Gotten passports, rental cars, and hotels. Packed bags for five people. Did laundry for five people upon return.

I know more about plumbing than I ever ever ever thought I would.

Fixing the plumbing. Again and again and again.

Been a room mom, worked on the school festivals, volunteered at the front desk of the middle school. 

And guess what?

None of that matters.
I am not qualified for any job opening.

BUT!

I am still trying to do it like I mean it.

I've volunteered. A morning was spent at the Colorado Farm to Table fields harvesting acorn squash and tiny pumpkins.

About 15 of us picked THOUSANDS of these in one morning.

I signed up for a work day at Shedfest, a celebration of the last day of the farmers market for the season.

A scene from Shedfest 2014.

Photo from the Mountain Mail by J.D. Thomas.

For one day I "bantered with customers and took money" while a lovely young man made fabulous egg sandwiches for the crowds. It was so much fun and I loved being in the crowd of farmer's market people. Made me wish I had gotten involved with the farmer's market last spring.
Maybe this coming spring.

So, we will see.
Still trying to do it like I mean it.

(On a related note, if someone wants to hire me to write for them, let me know.
I could kill No.11: Get Something Published and accomplish the job thing all in one fell swoop!)

A Wrap Up: Things We Have Learned

A Wrap Up   or
Five Things We Have Learned in the Last Ten Months


Goodness!

Back in Texas and Man! Is it hot and steamy and pretty much miserable.
I have Michelle Duggar hair. (But not, thank goodness, 19 children.)

Not me, but maybe my hair ??

I feel like I am being punished.  Made it all the way through a cold and snowy Colorado winter and now I have to be here for a Texas summer?

The Gods are not smiling upon me.


BUT!

I have been reviewing in my tiny little brain all of the things that the girls and I have learned, managed, dealt with over the last ten months and thought I would share.

Let this be a lesson to anyone and everyone who thinks "I can't".  Because guess what? You can.


1. Plumbing is not rocket science.  The reason those plumbers make a boat-load of money is that it can be gross and disgusting not to mention physical, but not because they are paying off their years of plumbing school.   Most of it is Part A goes into Part B, make sure to either lube or tape it and keep a bucket and some towels handy.  (Also, plumbing terminology is sexy. Male and female parts. Butts. Ballcocks. Lube. Cocks and cockholes.  Diaphragms. Couplers. Hardness leakage.  I could do a whole Fifty Shades of Plumbing book.) Anyway, you can learn a lot online.
(Plumbing adventures here  and here and here.)

Me, bonding with the potty.

Which brings me to  #2.

2.YouTube is a God-Send.  You can learn how to do most anything by watching a video. And there are usually many many videos with different teaching styles- all for the same process- so every teaching style is addressed.  Plumbing, car repair, high altitude cooking, most of life's daily requirements are covered.
( Read here, here and here for some examples  of YouTube magic!)

3. Snow is not constant in Colorado.   Prior to moving to Colorado, I had this vision of a Colorado winter starting with a snow in November and then it would snow EVERY DAY until May.  I know many other people who have never lived in a snowy area also believe the same because of the many questions I have gotten regarding snow. That isn't what happens.   It snows, maybe a whole bunch, for one or two days. The snow plow comes. You go out and shovel. The snow sits in the shady areas of the grass.  But for the most part, roads are clear and the snow is not EVERYWHERE. Then the next week it happens again. Or maybe two weeks later or maybe three days later.   But the snow is manageable.  And after typing this I am thinking "Maybe I shouldn't share this, because then more people will realize what a lovely place Colorado is even in the winter and then more people will move there." I don't want to share.

Snow. It comes, it goes.

And Carlos loved to play in it.

4. Colorado is VERY hard on cars. (Although we don't seem to be having any better luck here in Texas and I haven't even been home a week.)
In ten months we have had all the electrical replaced on one car, along with the radiator, battery and the transmission. New tires and most of the wiring on another car redone. New wiper blades, wheel well and back bumper on the third car which was purchased while there.
Three (four?) battery jumps for one reason or the other.
FIVE dings/cracks in the windshields repaired.
A couple of routine oil changes thrown in also.
I believe I had rental cars something like 12 weeks of our Colorado stay. (That would be three months of ten for those that are mathematically challenged.)
(Car mishaps galore: lightning, mishaps, tires and accidents.

 YouTube and some jumper cables saved the day this time.

AAA and a tow truck came in handy for this missed turn.

5. Teenagers are much more resourceful and capable than we give them credit for.
The girls have had to deal with many, many car issues. They have been stranded. My first instinct is to run to their sides and stand there and call AAA for them and handle it. But a couple of times things happened when I wasn't available. And guess what?  They dealt with it just fine.  Both of them know where the OnStar buttons are in their cars. They know which friends carry jumper cables and which friends know how to use them. They know they have AAA if OnStar can't handle it.
They also have learned to camp- if you call putting a real live mattress in the back of a car, piling on five thousand blankets and throwing in some crackers and water bottles actually camping. But they joined kids who really did know how to camp and learned the joys of bonfires and S'mores and being out in the middle of nowhere with 40 other kids and not a parent in sight. They all lived. 9-1-1 was never needed.
It's all good.   I am definitely stepping back and letting them handle more stuff on their own.  Free range children: it's a good thing.

Bunny changes her own windshield wipers. 

Because she's awesome like that. 

Belle documenting her amazing camping prep.

I am sure I've learned more but these are the big things.
Some things I would have done differently.
Maybe some things I wouldn't have done.
But maybe that's another post. Thursday.

Still Having the Green Acres Experience

Green Acres…Still!


I've said it before but I'll say it again.

Living in this cabin full time is like living with the Douglases at Green Acres.
If you aren't old enough to remember that TV show, click here. All will be explained.

Last week the one and only shower was having issues. Water pressure was less than perfect and the pulse part of the shower head- the one required by the three females living in this cabin if we want to get shampoo out of our hair- was not working.

Now, none of us have ever been that fond of the original shower head anyway but we've been going with the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" theory.

However, now it appeared to be broken.  Yay!

I just happened to need to go over to Cañon City anyway to pick up the newly repaired sewing machine (more on that later in the week) so I scheduled an additional stop at the Home Depot.

And there I picked up this lovely:

Ooooo! Hand held.  Snazzy.

The Home Depot employee assured me I could handle this. Consultation with a contractor friend reinforced that opinion. Plumbing is do-able. 

And guess what? It was easy-peasy and now I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner. 

You know what I had to do to get the old one off?  

Unscrew it.   That's it.   

Didn't even require a wrench. 

Didn't even have to turn the water off.   (This is a shower/bath combo. Otherwise, cutting off the water to the house would have been an important step.)

On another note, it was delightful to see that the previous owners hadn't even bothered using that nice plumbing tape which keeps things tight and leak free. O well. It hadn't been a problem.

The old non-functioning shower head. Ick.

The hardest part of this whole project was getting the new shower head out of the stupid plastic clam-shell.  Wrap rage- I didn't realize there was a name for that frustration!

 Scissors. Frustration. Foul language.

Finally success.

Because I am a goody-goody, I did the job correctly. Plumber's tape around the existing pipe.

The new shower head will not leak!

 And then all I had to do was screw on the new shower head…..

Hook up the hoses….

And Voilá!   A new functioning shower head. 

All was wonderful for almost a week. 

Then Friday afternoon I heard Bunny scream from the bathroom "Where's the water pressure???"

Uh oh. 

That is never a good sign.

The cabin is on a well. 

Well water here is FULL of minerals.

And sand.

And probably other stuff I don't want to know about.

Because of all those things that are in our (otherwise perfectly safe) well water, we have a whole house water filter. Conveniently installed UNDERNEATH the house. 

In a crawl space. 

Filled with spiders and Lord knows what else. 

I had to crawl through THIS tiny door.

I have managed in the past four years to avoid being the one that changed the water filter. 

 But guess what?  No other sucker one else was around. 

So Saturday I got a new filter and picked up my assistant from town. (That would be my sweet friend Cherrilla who was visiting from Martha's Vineyard.) 

And she helped me change the filter. Sort of. 

Mostly she took some really delightful pictures.  (NOT)

Into this tiny space under the house I went….

Spiders, mice, and what else??

I don't want to know.

See?

My (former) friend took this lovely shot.

Amazingly we are still speaking.

Fortunately the space was high enough for me to kind of sit up while I worked.

I'm sporting the hub's one piece jumper purchased specifically

for crawling under the house. 

Stylish!

And finally I managed to remove the (disgusting) filter holder and hand it out to Cherrilla to be rinsed out.

Yep. That lovely brown stuff is what the  filter removes from our water. 

This filter change was a few months over due. 

Success. I survived. Nothing bit me. Nothing leaks. And we have water.  Clean water.

And we have great water pressure. Yay!

Which brings me back to that new shower head. 

The old one probably wasn't broken after all.  

I just needed to change the house filter. 

O well. 

We are loving the new hand held.

And I am feeling like quite the plumber. 

Cue the theme song:

                     

Click HERE if it doesn't come up automatically.

Another Day, Another Castle

Grrr…  The Internet Gods are not shining down on my little cabin.
Neither are the Plumbing Gods for that matter.

Tried to tidy up today's post/draft that was started on my iPad but the silly big computer would NOT connect last night. Five feet away the iPad is humming away sending data hither and yon into the web-o-sphere. The big Mac sits like a lump, not even giving me the dreaded "cannot connect to server" message. Just doing ….nothing.  So Tuesday's post will be arriving on Wednesday for most.

And can an iPad keyboard get crumbs in it? Maybe it was that face-plant off the desk onto the wood floor, but the keys on my iPad seem to be developing a mind of their own. Or auto correct, which I have always thought of as incredibly intuitive, has decided it is smarter than me all the time. I type periods and get question marks.  Or the sentence "I try going to the castle" becomes "It yoe going tot her aste".   Huh? Crumbs in the keypad for sure.

Anyway, blogging issues. The pain and suffering I go through to entertain the (very tiny) masses.

So.

We made it to the Ice Castle in Breckenridge, but just barely.

Gorgeous enormous Ice Castle

Last Friday the girlies and I headed out through South Park (of Comedy Central cartoon fame, for real) to Breckenridge to see the Ice Castle.  Because this part of Colorado has warmed up (unlike the rest of the U.S.) the castle was scheduled to close the very next day. Melting is inevitable when the temps are above freezing.

Belle and a friend a zillion years ago 

when they realized that South Park was a real place.

It was both fabulous and maybe a tiny bit disappointing. 

The castle was smaller than we expected. But inside the icicles were amazing and there were paths and tunnels and little caves. Looking up was the best.

Me, doing my best Ice Princess impersonation.

Also trying very hard not to slip on the ice…

 Up, my favorite direction, was the best.

We were a bit concerned about being impaled by falling icicles.

Thankfully we survived.

But we missed the boat. I think to truly enjoy the wonderful-ness of the Ice Castle we needed to go at night, when the sprinklers that keep it "growing" wouldn't be quite so obvious and the LED lights embedded inside the ice would glow. We agreed it would make a fabulous romantic date.  In the day light it was not quite as magic.

 If you are a teenager, this is just one big Instagram opportunity.

But isn't that cavern lovely?

 Bunny tucked inside a little cove. 

You can see along the sides where things are starting to melt.

Still, it was magical.

Hopefully there will be next year.  And we will go at night.  This year there were three Ice Castles in the U.S. and Colorado has been one of the lucky states to have one for the last few years.

If you want to read a bit about how the Ice Castles are formed, click here.
And if you want to know how they came about in the first place, click here.  It's a fun story and one of those "Why didn't I think of this?" moments.
O yes! I know why I didn't think of it.
I was living in  Texas. My only hope of building anything with ice would require a VERY large freezer.


And then back to the Plumbing Gods.
We were gone all day on Friday, something I did not give one second thought to.
Until Sunday when I walked through the laundry area and heard the water heating revving up. I looked at the girls and neither one had been in the shower. And they certainly had not been washing dishes. So it pinged the back of my brain, but not much.  A second pass through that area alerted me to the sound of splashing water. THAT got my attention.
The water heater, which is centrally located in a closet in the exact middle of the house (apparently situated so as to do the MOST damage possible in case of a leak),  was spewing scalding hot water. Into the closet. And onto the floor.

Hot water heater. 

In a closet.

Under the stairs.

Backed up to the kitchen on one wall,

the living room on the other.

And surrounded by water-hating laminate floors. 

Great plan.

Just like the stairs, the hot water heater is not installed according to any building code.
Which means when it overheats, the pressure valve releases and water goes everywhere, not neatly down a pipe and away from the house.
So while the Plumbing Gods were working against me, there obviously was a higher power at work, too.
If the heater had exploded while we were in Breckenridge, we would have come home to our own indoor water park.
And we could have had our very own little Ice Castle.

Whew. Dodged a bullet there.
Because really, what are the odds that we would be in the house the exact moment that sucker decided to blow?
We were Lucky with a capital L.



For the cabin tour, click here. (You can see what didn't get destroyed.)
For more musings on castles in Colorado, click here and here and here.