Sad Day

We had to put our 12 year old Basset Hound Miss Ruby Sue to sleep today. :-( I think it's beyond my 6 yr old's mind, but maybe not. We'll have to see. It's a sad day all around. We only had crumb sweeper now and the little white dust mop isn't quite the same as the hound dog. Have a swift safe passing to Rainbow Bridge Ruby Sue. We miss you.

Oh and did I mention?

That our house is haunted? (Even writing that creeps me out.) Yeah. About 3-4 weeks after we bought our house the P.O. killed himself. This house had been in his family for about 60 years. There are three bedrooms upstairs, two of them have remote controlled fan/light combos. The third one has a new fan/light installed by dear hubby, when we moved here a year ago. So you can turn the remote fan/light combos out by either the remote, the pullchain, or the switch on the wall. In the middle of the night the fan and lights will come on, whether or not you have the light and fans turned off by the pullchain and/or switches or not. Doesn't matter. This will happen in the bedroom that does not have the remote fan/light combo as well, but not as often. I've kinda gotten used to it, the kiddos haven't, but I have.
Then the other night I had a terrible dream. Frightening ghosts, scary hallways, sounds silly now, but oh so real in my dream. That night the light came on twice in our room, once in daughter's room, and twice in my son's room, the three year old ended up sleeping with me. When I got up the next morning and came downstairs, things had been moved. And moved weirdly. Party dress up hats my kids played with were all over the house. ALL OVER. I called dear hubby, since he was on his way home from his third shift job, had he moved them before he left and I forgot? Nope he remembered them the same way I did. The dogs were in their kennels at night, so they didn't do it. It just kinda freaks me out. I don't like to talk about it a lot at night or in the house, weird huh?

Knives are tricky things

Besides being a wanna be do it yourselfer, I love to cook and bake. I never make a cake from scratch. Bread is my specialty, and well I make a mean Moroccan Chicken Taco. So it's been quite some time since I've cut myself cooking. I mean years. But when you don't keep sharp knives, well.....you end up with your finger sliced down to the knuckle.
I have just been so plain busy I have forgotten to keep my chef sharp. So now with a throbbing hand I will be reminded of that for quite a while!
Of course this happened while my three year old was at the table wanting a slice of bread and butter, my stepson had friends in the basement, my husband was at the fire station, and my six year old was staring at me while blood was pouring down my hand, with her eyes as wide as could be. Yeah, not a good time.
Dear hubby came home shortly, but still, if it wasn't for bad luck we wouldn't have any luck at all. I think will slow things down maybe a tad bit more for a couple of days.....

Real Life is Hard

It would be so nice just to work on the house, but my real job interferes with that. Don't get me wrong I love my real job, (most of the time.) But man, I really want to stain that wainscoting. Plus throw in a three year old with a sensory disorder and you have mayhem!
So as you may or may not have guessed, the basement is going rather slow. We do have that icky flood smell gone. That was nasty! We have the walls coated, and mostly insulated. We have 3/4 of the wainscoting up.
My dear stepson came this weekend. He turns 15 tomorrow. So we set up his bed in his partially finished room. The poor kid is kinda sick of sleeping in the living room. I think "camp-outs" get old after age 7. So that also means about 6-8 15 year olds in his room all weekend long....so no more working on the basement this weekend.
Hmmmmmm..... Maybe I can transplant the peonies..............

As the winds blow colder...

And the nights grow longer, me thinks we really need new windows. Now I know this open up a whole other debate about original verses replacement windows, however, we do not have the original windows in our house. Ours are crappy Sears replacement windows from 1970 something, so we need new ones. Now with 26 windows that need replacing, that is quite the budget buster, if we had one. Before this winter I had hoped to have the exterior lead paint stripped off all the windows and the three windows in my dtr's room replaced and our two windows replaced. Even with the storm windows on you can see through a crack right outside. This can be quite drafty during January around 2am or so. But then we had water damage to our basement. So there went our window budget. But now I'm thinking we just need to find a way to get those windows.
I have not figured out a way to get to my daughter's windows with falling off of the little roof on the porch. (Speaking of that room, can anyone tell me an easy way to cool it off in the summer and have it retain heat in the winter? It is well insulated, except for the lovely exterior wall, but all our rooms have that issue, so I don't know why that room is such a problem. What am I missing?)
Anyway, windows, basement and bathroom. Hmmmm not a lot to do...right tell it to dear hubby. :-)

Steppin Out

Well today was the walk for Gundersen Lutheran Steppin Out In Pink. What a beautiful day we had! The sun was shining and we had so many people we were running out of things! I manned the information tent with my boss for most of the day. I had so much fun and I think most of the walkers did too! It was truly amazing to see all those people! Truly amazing and truly humbling.