WHY YOU SHOULD BUY A HIGH HORSEPOWER MOWER
When I had to buy a new lawn mower because my old one was stolen ($%@#!@#), I was trying to stay on the less expensive side of things. The higher the horsepower, the higher the price, so the mower I have is like 4.7 horsepower or something. It turns out that the lower the horsepower, the more often the stupid mower clogs with stupid grass and chokes. You spend half your mowing time yanking on the stupid starter cord.
WHY I WAS EXCITED TO SEE A BUG
I was outside collecting seeds for next year when I saw it: a praying mantis. Actually, yesterday morning I saw two of them, so this was the THIRD. Mantids (Isn’t that weird? That’s the plural), Mantids are a GREAT sign in your garden. Seeing them means your garden is healthy and hospitable to wildlife. It also means you have fewer pest bugs, because the mantids eat them. Yay! Here’s a picture.
WHY I NO LONGER FEAR MY FRONT PORCH
The deck boards of my porch are very warpy. The steps right next to my door were particularly bad. They were warping so much, they were pulling the nails out. I was afraid that one of these days I would fall down the stairs, knock my head on the sidewalk, and drown in my pond. This would have been particularly embarrassing because my pond is only a foot deep. How would they write the obituary? “Idiot drowns in one foot of water. Tombstone will read ‘He was no Einstein’”.
Anyway, I decided to replace the step boards. After a harrowing visit to Home Depot, where I barely was able to pretend that I knew what I was doing, I got started. They had already cut my boards to the proper length, so all I had to do was pull off the old ones, and screw on the new ones. It was incredibly easy! I have new steps! I am quite sure I would be able to re-do all the decking on my warpy front porch. The only problem will be the cost. I spent $65 just doing the steps. How freakishly expensive would the whole porch be? I know THAT project will be waiting until I recover from the kitchen remodel.
Before (Well, actually during):
After:
I’ve been looking at all kinds of possibilities for the walls in the new kitchen. Below is the current front-runner for the backsplash. It’s hard to see what it really looks like in a picture, because the frost-looking spots are kind of iridescent. That doesn’t come across in a picture. Anyway, the problem now is that these tiles up against the counter top look busy. So now I’m thinking about changing the counter top. (Since it’s not in yet, that’s not a big deal) I’ll be making some trips to IKEA to look at their other selections.
Here are the tiles. I put my hand next to them so you can see that they’re three inch tiles… not full-sized, but not tiny either.
It has been a great week at school. Because it’s the beginning of the year, the kids are attentive, they are participating in class, AND they laugh at my jokes! It’s wonderful! I know it won’t last, so I’ll have to enjoy it while I can.
I have collected quite a few ties over the years. I really enjoy wearing them. I have never counted them, but I’m guessing I have over 250 ties now. I make it a point never to wear the same tie twice during the school year. In order to avoid repeats, I keep them in separate places on my tie rack. It makes an interesting visual reminder of how much of the school year is past, and how much is yet to come. Right here at the beginning of the year, it’s especially striking:
It’s only rained like two inches in the last two months. Things are getting kind of dry. So yesterday, after I had brought home a BLT from Zorbas across the street, I stopped to water a few things quick. It was about 6:00pm and I was HUNGRY because lunch is so early. But I thought if I didn’t water the plants then, I wouldn’t come back out after I ate. So I watered each thing for the count of sixty. (I always count when I water.) The last thing that needed watering was a shrub dogwood that grows against the house. It’s usually pretty tough, but it was looking sad. I decided that for this last thing, I would set the running hose at its roots, go inside to pour my drink, and come back outside to turn off the hose. So I set the hose at the roots of the plant, went inside to pour my drink, and sat down to eat my BLT. Then I watched some TV. Then I read the mail. Then I went merrily on with my evening. At 10:00pm, when it was time to go to bed, I was brushing my teeth and noticed that the water pressure in the bathroom sink was low. It took me a few minutes to figure it out. I ran outside and turned off the hose.
The plant I was watering looked great. But the basement didn’t look so great. Leaving the hose running against the side of your house for four hours is a pretty serious test of waterproofing. I don’t get water in the basement no matter how hard it’s rained. But there was water last night.
Stupid bad memory! Maybe I should start tying strings to my fingers or something.
Yesterday was the first full day of school. It was good. Very smooth. I’m glad to be back.
The beginning of the school year always is a little hard physically because I’m doing things I haven’t been doing all summer. One of those things is stand all day. My feet and legs hurt until I get used to it again. Another thing that I always forget about is my neck. I’m not used to wearing dress shirts, so the collars rub my neck raw. Is there such a thing as a “neck callous”? After a week or so, my neck stops hurting.
So does this make me a redneck?
