So when my first hubby and I bought our first house together and had to go to the store and buy winterizing pool chemicals and replace the missing pool filters for the in-ground swimming pool that we fell in love with the entire idea of the work involved in keeping the swimming pool so nice and crisp and clean came as a bit of a shock to me! Fortunately my hubby said that he was happy to take care of all of the chores related to the pool because I was not going to be able to take care of the house and work my full-time job and take college courses and raise the kids AND deal with the upkeep of the swimming pool!

When I asked him if his compass had broken, or if his GPS unit had been hacked, he just laughed. He said that he did, in fact, go to Texas and traveled all over the state looking for work and simply could not find any work at all. And apparently he had run into some trouble that ended up in a fist fight with some local men at a nightclub and decided that it was in his best interest to get out of town. So he went back to his folk’s home in North Carolina for a few weeks and then was given some job leads in Toronto, so off he went!

The folks on the Yahoo groups that I belong to are frequently writing about how they keep a small flock of backyard chickens to help keep the ticks at bay. In addition they say that they enjoy all of the fresh eggs that they could possibly want. From time to time they offer up some chickens for sale and my hubby and I discuss the ins and outs of owning chickens. My biggest concerns involve predators and who would care for them if we went on vacation. I really don’t think we just dump a bunch of chicken feed in a trough and leave them for a week.

Well, no one came and offered me any assistance and when I approached the associate and asked for help that associate blew me off! Needless to say that home improvement score got bad marks on that mystery shop!

But that was another time and another place. A completely different state than where we live now. Now when I go to the local home improvement store with my hubby I like walking around different parts of the store, looking for things that I might have never known existed before. Sometimes I feel like I have led a very sheltered life when I walk around a store like that! When I see all of the different beautiful light fixtures and ceiling fans I just stand in awe and try to imagine which room in our house would benefit from some of those being installed. For example, I would love to have a new ceiling fan in the master bedroom – especially one that is quiet so it would circulate the air but also provide some white noise to sleep by.

The fan we use right now is one that takes up space on the floor, and although it does what it is supposed to do, I really would prefer a pretty ceiling fan in there; I think it would make the room look more like a luxurious retreat. Whenever I find any great deals from lowes stores I am more than happy to accompany my hubby there so he can buy whatever lumber or pipe or cable he needs while I go and fantasize about my dream bedroom.

When my hubby and I split up and I moved out i brought that spice rack with me, intended to mount it on the wall of my new kitchen. Wouldn’t you know it, all of the kitchen walls were completely filled up with cupboards so there was no space to put that rack on the wall! I did find space for it on the counter, though, beside the stove and there is where it stayed for a good number of years.

Eventually all of the original bottles from the spice rack broke and I could not find replacement bottles that fit, so the little rack got “freecycled” away when I moved again. Now I store my spices in my pantry, and have tried various methods of storing them, but I really have not found a suitable system for the spices. I miss that rack!

For the past couple of years I’ve been wanting to design a pattern for an address plaque that would complement the painted mailbox that we have. My hubby brought a plain plaque home last fall and told me that he wanted to use it but I’m not quite sure exactly where he was planning on putting it. At first he said he was going to put in on the mailbox but I really don’t see the need for that since the mailbox is already hand painted and numbered quite well. It will be interesting to see what exactly it is that he does with it!

When my hubby and I moved into our first house, we were so excited to share our joy with our friends. So we had a big Independence Day party; complete with a pot-luck barbecue and pool party. The guests were completely enamored of our litter of five week old keeshond puppies, which were confined inside their six foot tall chain link kennel run.

One of our guests (which I did not want invited but hubby insisted) decided that he would light a string of black cat firecrackers and throw them into the kennel run. The quick bang-bang-bang and yelp-yelp-yelp brought my hubby and me running quickly to see what in the world was going on. When we saw the inebriated guest laughing at the upset puppies, we asked him to leave the party. Needless to say, feelings were hurt.

The next morning when we went out to feed the puppies, we discovered that someone had removed them from their kennel and put them inside the fenced in pool area. The puppies had all drowned in the pool. My heart was completely broken. Later that day we went to the pool supply store and bought a pool cover for our swimming pool in the hopes that this kind of tragedy never happens again. And I never spoke to that guy that had thrown firecrackers into the puppy pen, as we suspect that he was the one responsible for relocating the puppies. It would have been impossible for the puppies to escape their pen and enter the fenced in pool area on their own.

The entire discussion reminded me of a few years ago when my sister accepted a job out in Los Angeles, and had to find some Los Angeles movers to help her with her relocation process. She told me that she had hired a Los Angeles moving company to do everything that needed to be done – even the packing! I thought that was amazing, I had never heard of a company that will do the packing for you in addition to the transportation! I wonder if the LA movers are the only ones that do that, or if it is a service available around the US and I just live under a rock.

I’ve gained a few pounds since last year, so none of my bathing suits fit!  I’m going to have to buy a new one!

Apparently the company told her that even if she moved out of her house that she would still be responsible to pay the remainder of the contract. Her house is currently for sale because she cannot afford the mortgage payments anymore and she is trying to get out from under it. So when we found out that our own mother went out and bought herself a security system instead of taking over my sisters, we were really upset. This crazy family needs to learn to communicate better – my mother could have taken over the contract and had a perfectly wonderful system!

The reason that I think this would help them save money is because if they only delivered mail to a neighborhood centralized clustered mailbox then they would reduce the amount of time that the delivery person had to actually go to deliver the mail. In addition, if they used commercial cluster mailboxes that had a lock and key to them, the mail would be very secure.

And delivering the mail only five days a week instead of six days a week would reduce costs tremendously, don’t you agree? I know I wouldn’t mind not getting the mail delivered on a Saturday – sometimes I don’t even like to leave the house on a Saturday to go down to the mailbox and get the mail!