we need an ongoing thread to share our failures ond / or accomplishments each day. some of them could be pretty humorous. remember in morgan county indiana we say " it aint braggin if ya done it.
you have to use two different color of bandanas to show just how little you give a dam .. 25 years ago people laughed at me for wearing work boots and cutoff jeans . granted it was at my wedding but today everyone in the construction community wears work boots and cutoffs . theyll get to the boottop bandanas but by then ill be breaking another fashion barrier somewhere else .. losers !!
Yo capt'n! I'd rather put the barrett in my hair and keep shaving off the stubborn singular curls that sprout on my chin! bandanas on boot tops? That sounds like a fun fashion for girls with high boots and short skirts, but it sure sounds like a practical solution for your work. You have tons of energy! That's super.
newsflash , susan . clothes have been permanent press for 30 years . cram the sob's in a drawer . im so ahead of my time it causes me extreme duress sometimes . someday everyone will wear a beardclip and bandanas on their boot tops . maybe the dumb ones will still scald and scrape their faces everyday and live with sawdust in their boots but those will be the exception ..
Took mom out to our normal Sunday breakfast with family, back home, and then back out to her best friend's birthday party. This required getting mom in and out of the van 3x, getting her scooter out of and back into the van, making sure she had her meds taken etc....glad we pulled it off, but I am WHIPPED. I can't wait to curl up in bed tonight, but first I need to get some groceries, do dishes, and do a bit more laundry....oh, and there's the mountain of clean laundry on my bed to be folded before I can crawl into it.
Pamzim, that was so nice that your father enjoyed the musical. Yes, bring him along as much as possible while he can still enjoy it.
Accomplishment: yesterday, in frustration because I cannot find my multiple screwdriver set, I started throwing 'junk' that I collected thru the years into the trash. I have too many junk and papers that needs to be gone through and throw what is no longer needed/required.
Goal: just work on one drawer at a time. I have like 8 dresser drawers that I need to go through. Instead of having clothes in it, I have stuff like old pocket calendars, mini flashlights, pens, pencils, mini battery operated fans, clocks, etc.... Don't think - just throw or get rid of.
Aww Veronica, you brought back the greatest memory for me... my mom could make the best rhubarb pie in Texas.... but sorry you had to use a pickaxe... but that was your exercise for the day..... thanks for the memory
Todays accomplishement was relocating the rhubarb. The spot it was in was too wet and in full sun so I found a better place for it. The trouble is our soil is so hard and rocky I had to dig the hole with a pickaxe.
took Mom and Dad to see Ring of Fire with another couple today, and we all Loved it. I looked over to see dad (alz) singing along, and I started to cry. It's so great to see him remember something and enjoy it so much He keeps saying how much fun he had, and mom loves Johnny Cash.We have to do this more often, when it is musicals. The other couple wants to go see some plays there, but I think following a plot will be too much for dad.. but musicals we are up for!!
today started out kind of mundane till the customer called to go over his new home plans with me . i may never leave his farm , theres lots of machinery to take care of , possible 3 homes to stone and ive asked him to use me in any capacity hes in need of . bushhogged a field for him a couple weeks ago . its just a fun place to hang out . all his sons / helpers are college educated and theres never a lull in great conversation . im old friends with the framing crew and will even help them if they need a hand . the customer has a great foreman / mechanic and i love sharing knowlege with him but theres no way " jeff " will ever keep up with the repair of all this equiptment . ill be into it up to my elbows in a matter of time . looks like good times ahead . i can always go to the forest and cut wood when the weather is too crappy to lay stone . still like to meet a good life partner but those kinds of things just happen . im a believer in pheromones in human relationships . an online connection does not constitute a " spark " .. aint gonna happen ..
Hi SoDoneWith: just have to say NPR rocks! I use NPR instead of TV: the reporting is in depth, they have great personal stories, inspiring things going on in the arts and community, help you see different aspects of a world news story, and it IS intelligent media. Your Mom must have made a donation to get the tote bag.
Accomplishments this week (since I haven't posted in a while):
Laundry caught up from vacation 2 weeks ago. (I've been doing what was necessary, but was too busy to do everything, so I finally got it all done)
*Part* of the kitchen cleaned up from the dust and mess of the work that was done on the house while we were gone.
Bills paid.
Got a quote from a local bathtub company on what to do to help mom get in and out of the tub/shower easier. I was thinking it was going to be $3000-$4000 to remove the tub and put in a walk-in shower. Nope - $795 to have the tub cut and finished with an open spot for Mom to walk in and out. No door, just an opening with a 3-4" lip at the bottom to stop the water from coming out. I love it! That will be done towards the end of next month.
Made a call about getting ALL the pine trees in the yard removed. It's going to cost about $5000-$7000 to do it, but the company is a small local one and will let me make payments on it (THANK GOD) - so that work starts the end of this month. We've already lost one of the trees in a windstorm, and the others are massive...if they fall, there's going to be serious damage to our property or the neighbors'.
Reserved the room for our next trip. Mom and I have to be out of the house so the workers can come back in and sand/varnish the wood floors - they'll be in the house pretty much 24/7, so we have to be out. My original trip to see my son fell through, so Mom and I are going to a place she really loves, and I've reserved a little cabin that looks out over the lake. She'll love it.
Accomplishments: I finally dug in and cleared out a TON of old bills, papers, junk, and just stuff in general and got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the floor with my lavender Pine Sol....it is so sparkly and nice now. I am getting that room fixed up so it will be a haven instead of a nightmare....I had a new bedding ensemble I had been saving and I am not saving it anymore...yay.....
Accomplishment: NOT worrying about cooking out, entertaining doing anything on the 4th except for Mama and me. Had an aunt call yesterday somewhere in the midst of all the cleaning and leave a message that she and my uncle were coming today for a visit.....WTF ....NO...I am beyond exhausted after all the work I have done this week. I picked up the phone and called her and let her know that I loved them, appreciated their thoughts and would love to see them soon, but tomorrow (today) was not good. end of story. She did not like it...said they could come on down and I could go out for a while. While appreciated, and will take them up on THAT sometime, I am too tired to even think of going anywhere..so no thank you...goodby....that wasn't so hard after all. yay me!
I'm in the midst of figuring out whether National Public Radio sent my MIL the canvas tote bag that husband and I ordered for her birthday last week. She wasn't sure if she ever got it when husband called to wish her a happy birthday, and wanted to know if it was blue (it wasn't. She probably found a blue shopping bag lying around somewhere and thought that was it.)
MIL loves her some NPR. She's a total snob when it comes to liking the "right" things (i.e., things the New Yorker magazine approves of, and NPR is high on her list of things that prove she's enlightened and intellectual.)
Anyway, I'm hot on the trail of the missing tote bag. Next year, I may send her one from the NRA to see her horrified reaction, because I'm evil like that.
my chi trip just keeps getting better . hoping to visit the great lakes naval museum today . always had a fascination for the massive scale of naval machinery . sons g-f's kid is the military buff from h*ll -- this trip is for him and I to further connect . got yet another call from lillium from va this am . still virus undetectable , will be checked again in three weeks , considered a hepc cure at that time . 15 yrs of tribulation , I can barely muster a yay. lol but really , YAY !!
So far accomplishments: Breakfast made and eaten, coffee tasty and drinken Failures: talking to MIL about have 2 walks a day could turn into an accomplishment as the day goes on though also a failure drinking coffee with ulcers bad bad me I know but so good and keeps me going
Thanks, Glad - but GPS was useless here. I am in the wilds of the U.P. of Michigan where cell signal is extremely spotty and there are *many* roads that don't show up on GPS - I found one of them, of course. I pulled out my handy-dandy smartphone with GPS app to tell 911 where I was located and it told me I was somewhere 15 miles from my actual location - because it couldn't tell where I was.
We did have a good time - until we tried to go back up the hill. Chalk it up to another adventure, and something we can laugh about in the future.
Not sure if to count this as a failure, accomplishment, or incredible adventure.
Mom decided today she wanted to go to a beach she and Dad used to go to when they were dating, before they were married. So, off we went. Now, Mom knows the roads here like the back of her hand, but I have noticed her memory lapses are starting to affect that as well - so I thought we'd give it a shot, but I'd be keeping an eye on where we were going in case she got us lost, so I could get us back out.
We started down a road she said led to the lake...no worries, smooth paved road, beautiful forests all around. Soon, the road changed to gravel...still no worries - plenty of dirt roads in Michigan, drive on them all the time. The the road narrowed...and narrowed further still...until it was essentially a one-lane, very rough, rutted dirt road through the woods, twisting and turning, up and down hills...one of the hills was almost washed out by a recent rainstorm, and I had to take great care going down that hill, to avoid getting the tires caught in the ruts caused by the rain. Oh...and did I mention that there was NO PLACE to turn around on this road - anywhere? It was follow it to the end and hope to find somewhere - anywhere - at the end to turn around...and this road was LOOOOONG.
We made it to the lake. Gorgeous, of course. Took the dog down to the water to play and I found a few pretty rocks. Mom sat in the van and just enjoyed watching the lake. The mosquitos were pretty bad, so we didn't stay long. Headed back out the long, long, LONG dirt road back to civilization. Remember that hill that was washed out by the rain with the deep ruts? Well....I got up some speed and tried to climb it, but the passenger side tires hit one of the ruts, and we kind of tipped sideways a bit, and then the the dirt road fell apart under the tires (because it was already weakened by the ruts in it), and we were stuck. I tried to put it in neutral and just let the weight of the van roll us back down the hill - no go. Reverse didn't work either. Van was buried up to the hubcaps.
I ended up having to call 911 to get a wrecker out there to pull us out of the spot we were stuck in. I felt like an absolute idiot. 2 hours in the woods, $100 for the wrecker, 1 potty accident for Mom and much frustration later, we were back at our motel.
Failure: Trusting Mom's failing memory to get us where she wants to go. She felt terrible. So did I, after I had to spend $100 of our trip money on a wrecker. I feel badly for her, because I know she really thought she knew the way to the beach, and her inability to remember the way really distressed her.
Accomplishment: I kept my cool through it all, and we just kind of laughed it off - there wasn't much else we could do. It could have been far worse. If I hadn't had cell signal, we might have been sitting there in the woods all night.
Oh Hope! what a life! i was excited yesterday when mums "stroller" arrived......... WHY? Yes im very bored lately i just dont know what to do? i go for a walk in the mornings then go for coffee then what can i do with no money? theres days when i would love to just keep walking until my life is sorted!
Capn....lol....hilarious!!! I've got to remember that one...
ACCOMPLISHMENT:
I may have already mentioned it, but we got our security light installed yesterday and I was so excited upon seeing that power truck roll up the hill you'd have thought that they were delivering a BMW to my front door! I went outside last night and just stood there in the warmth of the "glow" and was so proud of it...Friends, this was very exciting for me....I'm guessing my neighbors were wondering what the big deal was...haha....This mornings "high moment" was getting all of the garbage out of the house and to the curb ...which for me involves clearing out the up and downstairs, cleaning up behind myself, making sure the fridge is cleared out blah blah blah...well, it was a big deal, now I am boring my own self.....funny how mundane things actually excite me these days....
My mom calls me, complains about her health without letting me even grunt a response and goes on and on. Since she is resistant to any suggestions all I have to do is make one and she finds a way to end the conversation and hang up. Success: not caring so much. Sad but that's how it is.
" an athiest in a casket" thats brilliant Cap even mum laughed at that one!! I tell her im on a forum for "singles"!! As she always wonders why im always on here!
hope , " all dressed up with no place to go " youve just described an athiest in a casket . lol ali , i pretty much only look at the mature gals with graying hair . i think gray hair / beard looks great on an older man too . im only 55 but a persons tastes sure change as they age . id feel like a pedophile even looking at a 30 - 40 yr old woman ..course i only look when theyre not paying attention anyway . he he that must be frustrating for them -- knowing this m - f is going to check out my azz and theres little ( nothing ) i can do to stop him .. its a victimlerss crime -- like punching somebody in the dark ( nelson muntz ) ..
Failure: haven't been doing cardio gym class and juicing lately. It makes a big difference in my energy level. If all I do is take dad to endless doctor appointments and the chores for the house, I am too tired to have any fun and I don't feel so good. I've gotten out of some of my good habits and having hard time putting them back into place. Instead, I am now Facebooking like mad. :-P
Accomplishment: I'm a blonde now, too, hope! I figured if half of my hair was going to turn gray, I might as well lighten the rest and think of the grays as "highlights." I did it myself, too, after watching some YouTube videos. I slowly began to lighten it using combination of color remover, then bleach highlight kit for medium-to-dark shades of hair... And it worked, my grays blend in much better now and I get a lot longer time in between touch ups. The color turned out well but I think I may have done serious damage to my long hair by using the bleach and may have to have it cut shorter. Oh, schwell.
It is funny, I pretty much let go of the professional salon treatment a couple of years ago, but can tweak it pretty well myself with the box stuff...I have had that box of color sitting in there for a couple of weeks and this morning asked myself who on earth I was saving it for...haha....it sure feels a lot better...looks better too....all jazzed up and no where to go... !!!
25 years ago people laughed at me for wearing work boots and cutoff jeans . granted it was at my wedding but today everyone in the construction community wears work boots and cutoffs . theyll get to the boottop bandanas but by then ill be breaking another fashion barrier somewhere else ..
losers !!
maybe the dumb ones will still scald and scrape their faces everyday and live with sawdust in their boots but those will be the exception ..
Took mom out to our normal Sunday breakfast with family, back home, and then back out to her best friend's birthday party. This required getting mom in and out of the van 3x, getting her scooter out of and back into the van, making sure she had her meds taken etc....glad we pulled it off, but I am WHIPPED. I can't wait to curl up in bed tonight, but first I need to get some groceries, do dishes, and do a bit more laundry....oh, and there's the mountain of clean laundry on my bed to be folded before I can crawl into it.
I'll get it done....I think.....
Accomplishment: yesterday, in frustration because I cannot find my multiple screwdriver set, I started throwing 'junk' that I collected thru the years into the trash. I have too many junk and papers that needs to be gone through and throw what is no longer needed/required.
Goal: just work on one drawer at a time. I have like 8 dresser drawers that I need to go through. Instead of having clothes in it, I have stuff like old pocket calendars, mini flashlights, pens, pencils, mini battery operated fans, clocks, etc.... Don't think - just throw or get rid of.
still like to meet a good life partner but those kinds of things just happen . im a believer in pheromones in human relationships . an online connection does not constitute a " spark " .. aint gonna happen ..
Laundry caught up from vacation 2 weeks ago. (I've been doing what was necessary, but was too busy to do everything, so I finally got it all done)
*Part* of the kitchen cleaned up from the dust and mess of the work that was done on the house while we were gone.
Bills paid.
Got a quote from a local bathtub company on what to do to help mom get in and out of the tub/shower easier. I was thinking it was going to be $3000-$4000 to remove the tub and put in a walk-in shower. Nope - $795 to have the tub cut and finished with an open spot for Mom to walk in and out. No door, just an opening with a 3-4" lip at the bottom to stop the water from coming out. I love it! That will be done towards the end of next month.
Made a call about getting ALL the pine trees in the yard removed. It's going to cost about $5000-$7000 to do it, but the company is a small local one and will let me make payments on it (THANK GOD) - so that work starts the end of this month. We've already lost one of the trees in a windstorm, and the others are massive...if they fall, there's going to be serious damage to our property or the neighbors'.
Reserved the room for our next trip. Mom and I have to be out of the house so the workers can come back in and sand/varnish the wood floors - they'll be in the house pretty much 24/7, so we have to be out. My original trip to see my son fell through, so Mom and I are going to a place she really loves, and I've reserved a little cabin that looks out over the lake. She'll love it.
All in all, a pretty good week.
Accomplishment: NOT worrying about cooking out, entertaining doing anything on the 4th except for Mama and me. Had an aunt call yesterday somewhere in the midst of all the cleaning and leave a message that she and my uncle were coming today for a visit.....WTF ....NO...I am beyond exhausted after all the work I have done this week. I picked up the phone and called her and let her know that I loved them, appreciated their thoughts and would love to see them soon, but tomorrow (today) was not good. end of story. She did not like it...said they could come on down and I could go out for a while. While appreciated, and will take them up on THAT sometime, I am too tired to even think of going anywhere..so no thank you...goodby....that wasn't so hard after all. yay me!
MIL loves her some NPR. She's a total snob when it comes to liking the "right" things (i.e., things the New Yorker magazine approves of, and NPR is high on her list of things that prove she's enlightened and intellectual.)
Anyway, I'm hot on the trail of the missing tote bag. Next year, I may send her one from the NRA to see her horrified reaction, because I'm evil like that.
but really , YAY !!
Failures: talking to MIL about have 2 walks a day could turn into an accomplishment as the day goes on though also a failure drinking coffee with ulcers bad bad me I know but so good and keeps me going
We did have a good time - until we tried to go back up the hill. Chalk it up to another adventure, and something we can laugh about in the future.
Mom decided today she wanted to go to a beach she and Dad used to go to when they were dating, before they were married. So, off we went. Now, Mom knows the roads here like the back of her hand, but I have noticed her memory lapses are starting to affect that as well - so I thought we'd give it a shot, but I'd be keeping an eye on where we were going in case she got us lost, so I could get us back out.
We started down a road she said led to the lake...no worries, smooth paved road, beautiful forests all around. Soon, the road changed to gravel...still no worries - plenty of dirt roads in Michigan, drive on them all the time. The the road narrowed...and narrowed further still...until it was essentially a one-lane, very rough, rutted dirt road through the woods, twisting and turning, up and down hills...one of the hills was almost washed out by a recent rainstorm, and I had to take great care going down that hill, to avoid getting the tires caught in the ruts caused by the rain. Oh...and did I mention that there was NO PLACE to turn around on this road - anywhere? It was follow it to the end and hope to find somewhere - anywhere - at the end to turn around...and this road was LOOOOONG.
We made it to the lake. Gorgeous, of course. Took the dog down to the water to play and I found a few pretty rocks. Mom sat in the van and just enjoyed watching the lake. The mosquitos were pretty bad, so we didn't stay long. Headed back out the long, long, LONG dirt road back to civilization. Remember that hill that was washed out by the rain with the deep ruts? Well....I got up some speed and tried to climb it, but the passenger side tires hit one of the ruts, and we kind of tipped sideways a bit, and then the the dirt road fell apart under the tires (because it was already weakened by the ruts in it), and we were stuck. I tried to put it in neutral and just let the weight of the van roll us back down the hill - no go. Reverse didn't work either. Van was buried up to the hubcaps.
I ended up having to call 911 to get a wrecker out there to pull us out of the spot we were stuck in. I felt like an absolute idiot. 2 hours in the woods, $100 for the wrecker, 1 potty accident for Mom and much frustration later, we were back at our motel.
Failure: Trusting Mom's failing memory to get us where she wants to go. She felt terrible. So did I, after I had to spend $100 of our trip money on a wrecker. I feel badly for her, because I know she really thought she knew the way to the beach, and her inability to remember the way really distressed her.
Accomplishment: I kept my cool through it all, and we just kind of laughed it off - there wasn't much else we could do. It could have been far worse. If I hadn't had cell signal, we might have been sitting there in the woods all night.
ACCOMPLISHMENT:
I may have already mentioned it, but we got our security light installed yesterday and I was so excited upon seeing that power truck roll up the hill you'd have thought that they were delivering a BMW to my front door! I went outside last night and just stood there in the warmth of the "glow" and was so proud of it...Friends, this was very exciting for me....I'm guessing my neighbors were wondering what the big deal was...haha....This mornings "high moment" was getting all of the garbage out of the house and to the curb ...which for me involves clearing out the up and downstairs, cleaning up behind myself, making sure the fridge is cleared out blah blah blah...well, it was a big deal, now I am boring my own self.....funny how mundane things actually excite me these days....
not caring so much. Sad but that's how it is.
youve just described an athiest in a casket . lol
ali , i pretty much only look at the mature gals with graying hair . i think gray hair / beard looks great on an older man too . im only 55 but a persons tastes sure change as they age . id feel like a pedophile even looking at a 30 - 40 yr old woman ..course i only look when theyre not paying attention anyway . he he that must be frustrating for them -- knowing this m - f is going to check out my azz and theres little ( nothing ) i can do to stop him .. its a victimlerss crime -- like punching somebody in the dark ( nelson muntz ) ..
Accomplishment: I'm a blonde now, too, hope! I figured if half of my hair was going to turn gray, I might as well lighten the rest and think of the grays as "highlights." I did it myself, too, after watching some YouTube videos. I slowly began to lighten it using combination of color remover, then bleach highlight kit for medium-to-dark shades of hair... And it worked, my grays blend in much better now and I get a lot longer time in between touch ups. The color turned out well but I think I may have done serious damage to my long hair by using the bleach and may have to have it cut shorter. Oh, schwell.