A Distraction

I want to thank all of you for your prayers and good wishes. And Carole, he knows all of those. Bill's surgery is at 7:00 a.m. today and they are also doing one of his carotid arteries at the same time. I think it's his right one which was over 90% blocked.
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Today I did something I've been talking about for years, which was make a half man, who is headless, coming out of the ground. What? You guys don't have one of these?

The reason I never got around to doing it even though I made the neck part many years ago was because I couldn't figure out how to do the hands:

Well, today I came up with an idea. I had a whole box of latex gloves, but you usually think to fill them with water. As a matter of fact, a couple of Halloweens ago I filled two with water and green food coloring, froze them, peeled off the latex, and set them out. But gloves filled with water look like gloves filled with water. So what to do? I thought and thought and came up with the idea of sand. I have a whole bag of sand. I don't like to leave my house and always have to think in terms of "What is in my house? What do I have?"

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I filled the two gloves with sand and then painted some knuckles and dirt on them with brown acrylic paint mixed with glaze. I painted the same stuff on a water bottle. Water bottles are roundish. I used that to cut out the fingernails and then glued them on. I was pretty happy with my hands.

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The body base is a clear storage container without the lid and turned on end. I put bricks in the bottom. I used some chicken wire and a towel to round out the shoulders and the arms are two beer case boxes rolled up with the help of some duct tape. The dirt is peat moss. I think I'm going to add more peat moss tomorrow when I put out my ghoul. Then I will take more pictures. Oh and that fence thing are the red eyes I had to paint in the skulls.

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Again, thanks for all the good wishes! I will keep everyone informed and I wish everyone a Happy Halloween!

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Boo!

Bill Update

They finally decided Bill had a heart attack and went in to do the angioplasty but there was too much blockage for stents, so they will have to do a triple bypass on Friday. He had to be cleared by his lung doctor. I was there when he came in today and Bill was borderline acceptable for the surgery, but the lung doctor said he had to have the surgery. He also believes the heart attack caused a mini-stroke. Bill has no memory of Sunday at all and remembers going to bed Saturday night and waking up in a hospital room on Monday. He was very lucid today and tonight they moved him into a regular room in the heart center (he had been in cardiac ICU). Fortunately I was there today for two different doctors so it was nice to get information first hand instead of third hand. I stayed about an hour and then his local daughter and 3 kids came in with his older daughter that lives in Colorado. That was a nice surprise. The room got packed, so I made my exit. If the surgery goes well and he recovers from that and quits smoking, he should be good to go for a few more years. Now it's all just waiting.

Bill

We spent 6 hours at the hospital on Sunday. My father-in-law could not be roused on Sunday and my MIL called 911. He was taken to the emergency room where he spent about 8 hours before being admitted. Sometime on Monday they decided he may have had a heart attack and scheduled a 5:30 p.m. angioplasty. When they sent the scopes into him there was too much blockage for a simple angioplasty. He is now in the Cardiac Wing waiting for the doctors to consult with heart surgeons on what to do next. The doctor told him he did not want to waste his time unless he will stop smoking. He is 75 and has been smoking unfiltered Camels since he was 6 or 7 years old. I guess we will know more later today.


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That's my father-in-law on the right. If you haven't been around long enough, you may not know that he asked me to make this picture for him. He's always had a crazy sense of humor and has a million great stories. He has been in unpublic places in the Great Pyramid and has partied with the original astronauts in Houston. He's also hung out with Willie Nelson and plays a mean guitar. If you know me well enough through my blog, you will know I'm very pragmatic about death. I don't freak out when people die because everybody dies. When old people die it just seems normal to me. Children dying is sad, but everybody dies and no one gets to pick the date. I'm more concerned about My Sweetie's Mom. And My Sweetie. I guess Bill has been My Sweetie's extra Dad since MS was 11 or 12. Heck, his sister even calls Bill "Dad." I've only met the "real dad" twice in 13 years, so I realize that Bill is far more a Dad than their dad. "Real dad" did the blonde trophy wife thing and started all over again in another state
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Anyway a lot is going on here with us with this. I'll know more in the next few days. Bill wouldn't want anyone to worry and I'll finish this with my favorite joke that he told me:
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A set of jumper cables walks into bar. The bartender says, "Okay, I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

One Sentence about the U.S. Elections

I've always admired John McCain as a person but his stunt casting of Sarah Palin as his V.P. running mate was ludicrous.

And now the Coffee Table

I was having trouble with Photoshop on the new (Mom's old) computer, but I finally got wise and changed the RAM cache thing, so I was able to get my pics going again. And have I said how much I love those USB memory sticks? Thank you USB memory stick inventor peoples!
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I forgot to take a before before picture of the table that would become my new coffee table but I found this old picture on my blog from the estate sale pics. That's the table there below:
I found the table in the garage. It was my daughter's boyfriend's old kitchen table. A basic Ikea piece that I believe is Pine, but I am no wood identifying specialist. I told my daughter that either he could come and get it or I was going to make a coffee table from it. She said, "He'd probably take $20 for it." I said, "Yeah, that wasn't one of the options." So I ended up with it. My husband, after we brought it home, said, "What are we going to do with this?" I said, "I'm going to make it our new coffee table." He replied, "But it's too tall." Men are so funny. My friend Carole who also happens to be my two doors down neighbor, has a crafty husband (How NICE! He also COOKS!). They came by that Saturday afternoon, he unscrewed the legs, went to his cool machinery and cut them off. So here it is in my driveway before the sanding started:

The moron helpful lad at Lowe's had told me I would need a VERY fine grit sandpaper for my palm sander so I bought all this 220 and all I was doing was making fine dust. I kept trying lower and lower numbers which I fortunately already had, and finally got that bad boy sanded down to the raw wood:

Actually, that picture was taken after I had stained the legs. I did the legs first (4 coats) then the sides (4 coats) then the top (3 coats). Between every coat of every section, I had to clean my brush and stir stick and wait an hour. Why the stir stick? Because with all those coats I would have needed 11 stir sticks. I think, but I can't do math in my head. And anyway, I did not have 11 stir sticks. Or 10 or 12 even, so I kept cleaning the stir stick every time I cleaned the brush. If reading this was exhausting, then you can imagine what all that actual cleaning and waiting was like. Oh and I forgot: Before each new coat I did a fine hand sanding, so those 220's did come in handy after all.

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So here is the new coffee table which I actually keep stuff on top of, but which I removed to take this picture:

I took the old coffee table, sanded it, put a coat of primer/sealer on it and then outdoor paint that matches our wood trim and put it outside for Barney. It is now his dining table. And yes Barney lives outside now which I used to be against after I was against indoor cats, but I imagine that is all for another post. Also I just finished painting bright red eyes inside of skulls. Not real skulls, that would be gross. It's Halloween decoration stuff, which you know you will see eventually. And now I'm going to order my delicious Sea Dog Blue Paw beer from Maine. Oh and:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAROLE!

I Miss My Lazy

I used to foolheartedly brag about my laziness and this year it really came back to bite me in the ass haunt me. I had a pretty easy sedate life for a few years and this June I started moving about on a constant basis. And it was the FIFTH hottest summer on record. And it seems that once I started moving I could not stop. So I've been a little slow on posting about my projects and stuff so here is a project from a few weeks ago. I did this just after I painted the gold wall.
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Shortly after we moved here I was watching HGTV and there was a segment where a lady did a stamping mural thing and I thought, "Oooh! I can do that!" We didn't have a headboard and I thought I'd make a cool "faux headboard." So this is what I came up with:

Our bed was under that for several years and then one day we decided to rearrange the bedroom. So now this goofy mural thing was where I wanted to put My Sweetie's dresser and mirror. I wanted to paint over it but he did not want me to. I have no idea why. It looked really stupid behind his mirror:

Some time after we moved our bed, Mom gave me a bed frame from one of her guest rooms. I really like this. You may remember it from June:

I tried various things over the bed. I did My Sweetie's and my childhood pictures, then a thing from the living room after I had I rearranged things in there, but nothing ever looked right. So I figured that if I made a new mural I could finally paint over the other one. I found a cute leafy stamp that I really liked and I did this:

I took a silk rope thing and hung it from the center and made a pencil line to get the natural drape look. Then I just took my stamp and turned it in different directions. I really like how it came out. I can't hang a large picture over my bed because part of being crazy is thinking that a large picture hanging over your bed will randomly fall and decapitate you. Oh, and I did paint over the old mural thing.

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I will work on getting my new coffee table pics organized and even though I told myself to take a project break, today I did another project. I also saw The Secret Life of Bees which is a GREAT movie.

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And Friday I met Amy The Realtor out at the house and gave her keys. KEYS. And she put up a sign. A SIGN. I filled up the back of my truck with the very last little bunch of stuff from the garage. I cleaned the two fridges. I walked around and looked at every room. I thought of things, I remembered things. And I drove home.

Notes from my brain

I stopped at the grocery store this afternoon and pulled in next to a car that had some big high school thing in the backseat showing the name of the school and a girl's full name. On the front passenger seat was a bookbag and a purse. I waited for a little bit because I wanted to warn the people that this was not a good idea, but no one ever came. I figured maybe it was an employee and went in to look for her. I found her rather quickly because she had an unusual name. I'll call her "September Fallacci." So I walked in and scanned the tags and there was September. I walked up and said, "I don't want to freak you out but I parked next to your car and saw way too much information about you: your name, your school, and even your purse is in the front seat. I'm a mom with a daughter and you need to go out and put all of that stuff in the trunk." She seemed sort of naive and said, "It's just a book bag." I explained to her again and then went about my shopping. When I finished and went back to my truck, all her stuff was still there in full view. I called my mom for a quick food question and told her about the girl and Mom said, "Geewits, you can't save the world." I said, "Yeah, but maybe I can help people one at a time." When I got home I called the store manager and told him my concern and he said he would send her out to her car to move her things. Maybe all I did was make a lot of people roll their eyes, but I wouldn't want my daughter to be parked somewhere with so much information in full view.

I feed Barney a can of this every day. Today I was really looking at it and thought: This looks more like real food than several things I actually eat! Those things are Vienna Sausages, Slim Jims, bologna, and hot dogs.

This morning I was wishing I wouldn't have the one lady today that's so out of the way. When I got to the church there was a cancellation note for her. There was also new person on my route that was very close to that lady. I thought that was weird.

I realized when I was halfway to the church that I had forgotten my camera. I felt odd and uncomfortable for a while as if I left the house without my wedding rings or something. I bet I don't forget my camera again for a while.

I was supposed to meet Amy the realtor at the house today but it was raining and she wanted to take pictures of the house. I'm also waiting for the sun to come back out to get pictures of my new coffee table. That thing was three days of work. For some reason it doesn't photograph well with the flash.

If you want to see something really funny, check out this page. You can move your mouse around and click to get different actions. I thought it was hilarious. Have a good time.

Being Goofy

Throughout the summer Chili's was sponsoring a thing with St. Jude's Children Hospital. You could get a "create-a-pepper" pic and color it and then donate money and they would hang it on the wall. I did one in July at the Chili's near my MOW route and put a lot of effort into it. I tried to do a lot of shading and colors using my 3 crayons to make a realistic pepper. The next time I went I walked around to try to find it and I found a dozen that I thought were mine but weren't. So in late September I went to the new Chili's near my house and decided to do something different and I made a Snoopy Pepper.

And here it is on the wall. Both of the Chili's that I frequent had lots and lots of these pepper pics all over their walls and I hope St. Jude's got a ton of money. It's fun to get to color in public without getting the side-eye.

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I've been exhausted from this coffee table I am refinishing. I hope it will be done tomorrow. I will have pictures.

The Meaning of Life

When you spend a lot of time in bars talking to people, you always talk about the meaning of life, and I always draw the picture above. I believe in the perfect combination of free will and destiny. This may sound crazy but it also fits with the Christians' belief of free will and God's plan. I think life is like the picture above. Your life is already laid out on a graph, but it's a possible graph. A graph of possibilities. Every intersection is a choice and sends you in a particular direction. Sometimes you can end up back at a certain intersection and that means you were meant to meet that person or get that job at that specific time, not when your lines first crossed. Or it may mean you didn't get something right the first time, whatever that was. Every single choice sends you in a certain direction. Some people stay inside a loop and keep doing the same things over and over. I guess they don't recognize the intersection points (which represent choice). I felt this idea about the meaning of life many years ago and it just makes sense to me. I like the idea that it's all laid out but the choices are there. What do you think?

Fair Day!

One Of the old buildings had "Fortune" and "Adventure" carved on either side of the stairs and it seemed like a perfect place for a photo.

Yes, that sign does say "Chicken Fried Bacon" and it was the only food place that I ever saw with a line. No, I did not try it.

I took this one just as we got off the Skyway. I really love the Skyway.


That's me hanging on for dear life on a crazy ride.

This was a really cute quilt in the craft building. I love that puppy!

This was just one of many turtles in the little lake. I fed him some of

my sesame sticks.

This was a shadow on the ground. I just thought it looked cool.

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It was a great day for the fair. The weather wasn't too hot and there were no crowds until about 6:00. We got there at 2:00. I heard a lot of my favorite songs including one being butchered at a Rock Band stage (a karaoke type video game). I didn't think anyone could sing worse than me. I was wrong. I had a delicious and messy philly cheesesteak type sandwich and some tamale balls. I won a little purple Snoopy throwing darts and some carnival guy gave me some silk roses for no reason at all. It was fun and I will do it all over again next year. Yay to the Texas State Fair!

Political Funnies

Not since Dana Carvey did H. Ross Perot, has "Saturday Night Live" done a more hilarious take on a political candidate than Tina Fey's Sarah Palin. The Youtube link is here. I also have to give a big nod to Darrell Hammond's Bill Clinton. That's just good stuff. Thank you SNL!!!

Covering Almost All of the Bullet Points

Wednesday at 3:00 I had the follow up appointment with the urologist. He said my uneven kidneys were normal and that the x-rays showed no clue to my problem, he wants to do other tests because I think he finds me fascinating. Not ME, I mean my problem. It's very odd and unusual and he is very intrigued. I told him I'd get back with him on that. This talk we had was at 4:30. You may have noticed I mentioned that the appointment was at 3:00. I was there at 3:00 and the little waiting room was full and at 3:20 I tapped on the glass and said, "Is he running behind again? I should have called before I came." She sadly nodded in assent and told me there were three people in front of me. I said, "Okay, how about I come back at 4:00, because just sitting here? That's not working for me." She said okay and the people in the waiting room looked at me like I was from another planet. I ran over to On The Border and had two Dos Equiis. As I was leaving to go back to the doctor's office, I saw the classic blogged about couple. There they were, on a lovely day, sitting on the outdoor deck and both of them were on the phone. I wanted to snap a picture right there, but I figured they might freak out and I imagined I had reached my quota for that for the day, so I got in my truck and took that picture through my dirty windshield.
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Late Saturday night or very early Sunday morning, however you see it, about an hour after I posted, the computer died. At first I thought it had just frozen but when I restarted, I got a big funky dark page of gobbledygook. So I went to bed. Sometime Sunday morning, My Sweetie woke me up and asked when the computer had died. Since I'm not really a clock watcher, I said, "About an hour after I posted." He hooked up Mom's computer so he could get on the internet, so we weren't totally stranded, but that was a temporary fix. He went out and bought this Concorde Jet of a computer. I moved Mom's computer over to where my deadish Mac had been and set up a picture download/Photoshop station over there. I'm using a memory stick to bring my photos over here. It's pretty simple.
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Unfortunately, every picture I have taken on my digital camera was on the dead computer (the internet one, not the Mac). I had found someone that could get them for me, but then my friend Carole told me they had done this before. So they have my old hard drive and are running a program over there that is chugging along very slowly. I'll be happy for anything I can get. I do have every picture that I have downloaded here on my blog and a few sets in Flickr, so all will not be lost.
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Today (Friday) I am going to the house to meet the carpet cleaners and on Monday I have a maid service to clean the bathrooms and kitchen and mop the tile floors. Then. I. Will. Be. Done. I will be so happy!!!! Yay!! I still have the Christmas stuff yard sale with my MIL on November 15th, but that's just extra money. Happy dance, happy dance.
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On Tuesdays, My Sweetie has his long day. After work he goes straight to school for a chemistry class and then a chemistry lab. I had to go to the house to meet the Salvation Army pick-up people at about 9:00 Tuesday morning and then spent the rest of the morning moving things for the carpet cleaners and packing my truck. I then tried Cheddar's for a late lunch because it's the only American Bistro type place left around here since Bennigan's, Fridays, and Ruby Tuesdays closed. I hadn't been there in 26 years so I wanted to check it out. Then I did some shopping and errands and stopped by Papa G's to drink some beer, unwind, and play some trivia.
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There was a bald guy on my left and we struck up a conversation. A blondish lady came in and sat on his left and I thought they were together, so I stopped talking and started concentrating on my game. He went to the bathroom and she leaned over and in a conspirational voice, whispered, "Sorry, if I cut in on your thing, I'll back off." I was all, "Huh?" I told her I was happily married and I didn't know this guy and was just making bar chit chat. He came back and they continued to talk and I just happened to hear her say she was a Playboy playmate. So I said, "Really, how cool! What year?" She said she was Miss September 1980 AND that she had been married to one of our big local oil money politicians. When she said 1980 I said, "We must be about the same age." and she said, "Oh, no, what are you, in your late 30's?" Ha ha. She was just 2 years older than me. I looked at her foldout online and the only resemblance I could see at all was the eye color. They are an interesting shade of green, so I figured that really was her. I have a picture of myself at 21 and I think I am much more recognizable.
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We won't be going to San Diego after three years in a row because they are having the golf tournament in Orlando this year. I hope we can still go though because I have a friend there that I would love to see. I'm going to North Carolina for Thanksgiving. Mom's birthday is November 20 and she will be 70 and I consider that a milestone and wanted to celebrate with her, so I will be there 5 days later. Although I grew up in N.C., I've never seen the beach in November, so I am really looking forward to it. Also, I decided to stay in that tiny cabin in their campground this time. I just think it will be fun. I sleep later than my parents and don't want to be underfoot when they get up. It's basically a little teeny house with bunkbeds and a TV. All I need is a radio and an ice chest full of beer. It's just for sleeping anyway.
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So much for the weather getting better. We keep getting fooled. 84° one day then 89° then back to 91°. This afternoon when I will be loading my truck it will be 91°. Yuck. The extended forecast calls for 82° on Wednesday and that would be great because that's when we are going to the State Fair! woot woot!
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I told My Sweetie that for Christmas we should just get ourselves tickets to see Carol Burnett on January 12th at Bass Hall. I'm very excited about being in the same room with the wonderful funny lady I grew up with. I can't wait to see her in person. I love Bass Hall and I love Carol Burnett. I'm sure I'll have lots to say in January about that experience.
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I guess the last thing is the mural in the bedroon, but that's going to involve a lot of pictures that I have not gotten around to sizing. At least I have them because they were all still on the camera. I'll get to that one later. I really like it, though. So with that, I'll just say TGIF!