Coming Soon--A Flower Bed with Flowers

One of the reasons for starting a blog was so I could show off my flower bed that came with our new house last year. When we first moved in, it was more of a weed bed with a couple of rose bushes. Eventually I weeded it and planted some wildflower seeds.

By early summer, one rose bush was budding and a few wild flowers were coming up. But it wasn't really enough to make it look like a flower bed. So last fall, I purchased some daffodil and hyacinth bulbs and planted them.

I have read that bulbs come up pretty easy if you plant them at the right time and the right way. (Pointy side goes up.) This appears to be true. My daffodils are well above ground now as are the hyacinths. My concern now is that we started getting more freezing weather over the past week and I hope all my little bulbs survive this cold snap.

The roses are also starting to form new leaves. So at this point, everything is alive. We'll see if I can keep it that way this season.

Sunrise, Sunset

No, this is not about the song from Fiddler on the Roof.

When I was growing up, the big picture window in our house faced West. I saw more gorgeous sunsets then I will ever be able to count. Recently it occurred to me that I haven't seen very many gorgeous sunrises, even when we had windows facing East. The reason I missed all of them is because we had blinds on those windows and I usually didn't open them until very late in the morning.

Our house that we live in now has a big window that faces South, but we have a nice view of the East. Right now it doesn't have blinds on it. During the winter, when we all have to get up early for school, work, etc, it is still dark. But this affords me the opportunity to watch a gorgeous sunrise. Of course, the sun rises every morning, but if it is too rainy or foggy, the sky just gets lighter. It only counts as a gorgeous sunrise if the sky turns pink.

Over the past month, I have found myself putting off things I need to do just so I can sit and watch the sky turn pink. And I realize how many of these I have missed out on.

I would like to get some sort of window covering in the living room, but I definitely do not want blinds. I'm thinking some sort of drapes. I want some privacy but I also want to let in enough early morning light so I can tell when the sky is pink.

If All Else Fails, Try Punching Some Buttons

About nine months ago, I purchased a high efficiency washer and dryer set. Although laundry is still a major chore (Quandary about laundry here), the new appliances made it a lot easier and faster. There was only one thing that bugged me about them: at the end of each cycle, I would hear a very loud alarm letting me know the machine had stopped. The dryer let out one long, drawn-out noise, and the washer let out three sets of three equally loud noises.

Most of the time I didn't mind them too much because then I knew it was time to continue the laundry process. One load to fold, one load to put in the dryer, and one load to put in the washer. However, when people were downstairs near the machines watching TV or playing on the X-box, those alarms were especially annoying.

Now, for the record, I did look in each manual to figure out how to turn those hideous things off, but there were no directions pertaining to this. So we suffered.

Recently, I decided to mess with the "Options" control button to see if I could get rid of the noise. In just a couple button pushes, the "cycle signal" light turned off. The dryer stopped without making a racket. Later, I figured out how to do the same thing to the washer. Yippee! Now I can do laundry when company is around without interrupting our X-box games with a shrill alarm!

Of course, while cleaning upstairs I will still need my "cycle signals." But it's nice to know that I can choose to silence them if necessary.

And it only took me nine months, one week, two days, and 30 seconds to figure it out.

I recently saw a commercial for a men's body wash. It was one of those all-in-one washes, covering hair, face, and body. Similar products are made for children. That might work well for men and kids, but no self-respecting woman would ever use just one product in the shower.

For hair, we use shampoo. Since it is a sin to use soap on your face, we use facial cleanser. Then there is body wash for the body and foot scrub for our feet. Sometimes body polish follows the regular washing. After everything has been cleansed, washed, scrubbed and polished, we need to moisturize. For the hair, there is conditioner. The face needs moisturizer. Not lotion, moisturizer. Then there is the body lotion. Our feet need either lotion or moisturizer specifically made for feet. Right now, I have a foot "creme" (not cream).

Each product is used exclusively for its own set purpose. Can you imagine what chaos would ensue if our foot creme met up with the body lotion in the ankle area?

Women need a large number of cleansing and moisturizing products. This can be seen at any grocery store in the aisle of body washes. There are about 90 for women, 6 for men, and maybe 2 for little kids. What can I say? A woman must smell her best.

It makes me wonder how our grandmothers survived with (gasp) plain soap and water.

Lessons learned

One Saturday, not long ago, I was doing my usual Saturday stuff when I got a phone call from my husband. He said there had been a grease fire in the kitchen, but fortunately it had been put out with the fire extinguisher. No big deal, I thought. So I lost a frying pan. It needed replacing anyway. Then he said he was going to call our insurance agent. Insurance agent? I wondered. How much damage had been done anyway?

I soon found out. The kitchen was smothered with white powder from the fire extinguisher. The range hood was pretty much destroyed. In fact, a piece of it had melted and fallen onto the range. It then solidified and became a permanent fixture on the coil burner. I wanted to just sweep up all the powder, but we had to wait until an insurance adjuster (or an assessor or somebody) looked at all the damage. Besides, the powder was an irritant and shouldn't just be swept up. So our kitchen was not usable. We went out to dinner for several nights in a row.

One might think that eating out all the time like that would have resembled being on vacation. If one were to think that, however, one would be wrong. Vacations are when you spend your days at an amusement park or beach and you get to go out to eat. We were not spending our days doing fun things and we had to go out to eat. By the fifth night, I really didn't care where we had dinner. I just wanted food to somehow come our way. One night, we went to my mother-in-law's house, and it was a very nice change for the better.

Eventually, we were able to get a new stove. A very nice new stove. A stove with a convection setup and one of those burners that is just for keeping food warm. It has three racks. (The old stove had only one.) It also has this really cool feature where you turn a knob and the correct burner turns on. (Something the old stove didn't have.) Anyway, our kitchen is now quite usable and I am happy to be cooking again.

So what are the lessons here? I am not saying that you should set fire to your kitchen in order to get a new stove. The phone calls and paperwork were a big headache and I am quite opposed to kitchen fires. Or any indoor fire for that matter.

One important lesson is to always have a fire extinguisher in your house. It is like having a form of insurance. You hope you'll never use it, but there might just come a day when you will be very glad to have it.

The other lesson is this: Sometimes you might have a problem so big that you can't even begin to figure out how to solve it. But after a time, it might turn out just right and somehow you may even find a happy ending.

Flower Quest

Ever since we bought our first home last year and increased our living space, I have been pulling vases out of storage and trying to put them on display, preferably with flowers in them. Of course, fresh flowers would be nice, but that can't happen year round. So I have been on a mission to find silk flowers.

One craft store in the area went out of business, so I made the seven mile trek to another craft store the next town over. (I combined it with another errand in the same town so as not to waste gas.) There I found an abundance of beautiful fake flowers, ranging in price from $1.99 to about $4 a flower. So I grabbed some up, went home and put some in the vases. I bought some more from the same place a few weeks later.

Recently, I went to one of those dollar stores not far from my house. I was looking for a cheap umbrella, but they didn't have any. But they did have silk flowers. Four for a dollar! I wish I had known that they were there, just five minutes from where I live. Soon I will have enough flowers to fill all my vases.

Interestingly, my kids asked me why I chose to put a vase of these flowers on the dining room table. Would we be eating around this vase from now on? Of course, the vase is removed before each meal. And why else would I display a vase full of flowers? Because it's pretty!

A Cat's Life

I feel compelled to once again blog about our cat, Olivia. This time I am trying to figure out why she seems so intelligent in some cases and completely idiotic in others.

There are times when I am impressed with her cognitive abilities. For example, one day Olivia decided to step from couch to the window sill. (See photo) She sat there for a while then realized there was no way down. It was too far to jump down and the coffee table was too far away to step onto. It took her about 20 minutes to figure out that she had to walk backwards to the end of the sill, jump onto the couch and then to the floor. Smart cat, right? But remember this is the same cat who fell onto the stairs every day for about a month before she finally quit napping next to the stairs. (See previous post, Olivia the Super-Cat)

Still, I know Olivia has some intelligence. In the three houses we have lived in since we acquired her, she has always known to stay away from the street. Even now when we are right next to it.

But then I think of the ritual she and I go through just about every week. Olivia's food dish is in the kitchen. Once a week, I move her dish to the living room so I can vacuum and mop the kitchen. About 30 seconds after I move it, she decides to eat. She goes into the kitchen and stares at the empty space where her dish usually is. She looks at me and meows. I point to the temporary location of the food dish. I even pick it up and shake it so she can see what it is. She gives me a blank stare and meows again. I point to the food dish again. She looks at the kitchen floor then looks back at me and meows. Finally, I start the vacuum which scares her and she runs off. About a half hour later, while the kitchen floor is drying, Olivia figures out where her food dish is and begins eating.

Now if she were really a smart cat, wouldn't she figure all of this out so we wouldn't have to go through the same thing every week? Apparently not.

Then again, she has been smart enough to stay alive to the age of 15.