We forego the candles to prevent the buttercream from melting in the heat.

Last year on this day, I reminded you of all the spectacular things that happened on February 17th in history. This year, I'll just remind you of the important one. (hint: it's not the Battle of Rudau)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LSH! One year closer to FREE COFFEE AT McDONALD'S!!

(It's good to have goals.)

Twins!

David Bowie and his wife married in 1992 and have one daughter. Just like LSH and I. We have SO MUCH in common!!

RIP, Mr. Jones. You will be missed.

On the 12th day of Christmas

Did your true love give you 12 drummers today?

"XRF 12days" by Xavier Romero-Frias - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons

 

Quite an impractical gift anyway. I'd rather have a pear tree. And I know LSH would prefer the nine ladies dancing.

And I have the blisters to prove it.

Hey! You know what we did this weekend at the Punkinhouse? (And no guessing "read" because that is a given.)
We raked leaves!! All of the leaves. In the State of Ohio.

An anonymous Internet user's image of what our leaves kinda look like.

Well, it seemed like it.

The gift that keeps on giving

We celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary last Saturday. Twenty-three years my Long-Suffering Husband has suffered. If that isn't proof of his masochistic tendencies, I don't know what is.

If you're wondering what to get for us:

For the traditional theme of Silver symbolizing beauty, this is the perfect wedding anniversary theme for your 23rd wedding anniversary. The modern theme of Silver is a significant reminder to you and your significant other of sharing meals and building a family. Below you will find some 23rd wedding anniversary Gift ideas for both Traditional and Modern themes that will end your twenty third marriage anniversary on a good note and way to kick off your 24th anniversary :

Traditional Theme: Silver Plate

Modtern Theme: Silver Plate

23rd Anniversary Gemstone: Imperial Topaz

23rd Anniversary Color: Silver

Traditional Gift Ideas: Flowers Cigar Humidor Jewelry box Custom wood Pub sign Steel & Iron cooler/firepit [Must see] Bookends Personalized Steak Branding Iron in wood box

Modern Gift Ideas: Silverware Silver Wine Bucket Silver Jewelry Silver picture frame Silver rimmed beer mug

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Supermoon!

The clouds did not cooperate with my SUPERBLOODMOON viewing last night. LSH and I caught a grand total of about a minute (in 10 second increments) of the whole event.
Still, what we saw was pretty cool.
I was, however, disappointed with how little the moon looked. I suppose 14% isn't a large increase in the appearance of its size, but it really looked just normal-sized from where I was standing. The lunar eclipse I saw in August of 1989 on the side of a mountain in Ecuador was much more impressive. But, you know: on a mountain, on the equator, handsome boyfriend, summer study-abroad --that is one combo that would be hard to beat.
Sorry, Supermoon. Better luck in 2033.

(Or 2019 for regular moon)

Make note

I took some time off from writing/posting here. I was feeling an end-of-summer lull. There wasn't much to comment on that hasn't already been beaten into the ground.
But now summer is over.

• All the kids are back in school. (I know this because I'm trapped behind at least two school buses every day on my way to work.)
• The monarch butterflies are migrating south. (This is an amazingly cool thing to see.)
• I haven't seen a hummingbird at the feeder in two days. (A true harbinger of fall.)
• All the garden centers and local shops have mums for sale. (At least it's not wreaths and holly.)
• Great Lakes Oktoberfest beer is on tap everywhere. (I think there's an Ohio law.)
• The Browns are losing games that actually count. (Like this is something new.)
• LSH went to a clambake. (I do not do bi-valves.)
• People are wearing jackets. (Even in their Instagrams.)

So in honor of the coming change-of-season (just one week away), I am wearing socks and shoes to work today.

Sock and shoe on my feet.

Hey. Baby steps.

New house

I think I found the MOST ADORABLE WAY to upgrade the sadly deteriorating playhouse in the back yard that LSH fondly refers to as the "mother-in-law suite." I am very impressed with this guy's work! If only she didn't need a bathroom...

Please make a note, LSH.

I know this is going to sound like a commercial, but now that I have my chronic heartburn under control, I am going to want to attend many more wine dinners. The one at Fahrenheit tonight was delicious and fun.
I also learned that the Mondavi patriarch who first emigrated to the U.S. ran a saloon in Minnesota, of all places! And no one is a stranger after 5 full glasses of wine.

Cheers!

Checked off the honey-do list

LSH did the taxes today. Kudos to him for not waiting until the last minute. (Just the second-to-the-last)
Now I need to find something else to nag him about... .

This counts as exercise, right?

Now that it is officially spring, the clean-up in the yard has begun. Never mind that the HIGH temperature today is expected to be 30°F and there are rumors of snow on the horizon. Last year's leaves must be removed.
Saturday, before the balmy 44 degree temps began to tumble, we managed to completely rebuild the birdbath fountain and rake out about 75 square feet of flower bed. We filled six brown bags. Sunday was freezing. Literally. But we forced ourselves outside for the "fill a bag" challenge. (I lost because I took longer to fill my brown bag than LSH did.)
We have completed precisely 1/8th of the cleanup. Unfortunately, the mulch comes on Saturday.

Also applies to those who don't like it

Shouldn't I be more stressed out?
I have all of my in-laws coming to dinner on Christmas Day and a half-finished bathroom with a non-functioning sink. We just yesterday pulled the tree out of its giant plastic storage container home and re-assembled it to upright. In the process we discovered (naturally) that about one third of the lights mysteriously burnt out while sitting unused for 11 months. (I blame squirrel-Qaeda.)
I can attest to the fact that it looks perfectly fine with two-thirds of its lights and about half its usual compliment of ornaments (since we are just too damn exhausted to unpack them all).
I cleaned up most of the construction debris in the bathroom and put an enormous bottle of hand sanitizer in the dry sink. If it weren't for the brushing of teeth, I might just leave it like that permanently.
A million little annoyances become magnified when you have to negotiate crushes of shoppers and packs of cars. Grocery shopping Saturday has extended into Monday because a bag went missing somewhere between the scanner and the car. This necessitated another trip to the store to resolve the missing cans of cat food and green beans. It was simply accomplished, but it ostensibly adds to the holiday stress.
Therefore, I have to ask: shouldn't I be more stressed out? I think the fatigue is working in my favor. I'm just too damn tired to care, and if I don't care, I can't stress about it. I have found the solution to everyone's perfect holiday: stop giving a f*ck.

Why I'm not reading

Yeah, yeah. I know. I didn't do a Friday Book Blog AGAIN last week. But the truth is I haven't read an entire book since I-can't-remember-when. Every spare second is spent on our bathroom remodel.
We are doing all the work ourselves AND paying cash, so it is, by necessity, being completed in stages.
We have this luxury because there is a second bathroom in the house. (That was a real selling point for houses built in the 50s when this house was completely overhauled from a summer cottage to a year-round home. Today you are hard-pressed to find a new home that doesn't have more bathrooms than bedrooms!)
The downside to doing the work ourselves is that (aside from being a lot of work! --and if I haven't mentioned it: I hate you, HGTV, for making this crap look so easy!) it takes ALL of your free time. So I have been reading (or not reading) the same book for the past two weeks and I'm only half-way through.
The upside to remodeling on your own is the enormous sense of accomplishment and the tons of money you save. Anything that reinforces my awesomeness and puts money in my pocket is going to win out over reading, at least temporarily.

Adventures in renovating

We have been spending so much time trying to get things done in the bathroom (have I mentioned 1. renovating a bathroom on your own while working full time is unpleasant and nearly impossible? and 2. how much I hate HGTV for making us believe that two doofuses like me and LSH can do crap like this?) that I had until this morning not really thought about the fact that I had promised dessert for Thanksgiving at my mom's and I had not purchased a single ingredient. Oops.
So I got to spend a fun-filled hour at the grocery store while LSH installed the toilet. This worked fine until I got home to help... and we promptly cracked the bowl. (I had planned to keep the toilet even though everything else will be new.)

Now, LSH gets to spend Black Friday at Home Cheapo buying a toilet. Lucky guy!

Subject to blue laws?

 A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court has found that “the actual purpose in displaying the Cross at Ground Zero has always been secular.”
That’s right, the court ruled the purpose of displaying a Christian symbol has always been secular.
The appeals court ruled on Monday that the memorial cross at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York can remain at the newly-opened facility because the purpose of the cross is secular, not religious.

Perhaps the judges are unfamiliar with the word "secular." Perhaps we could point out that a synonym for the word is profane. Now the cross at Ground Zero is legally PROFANITY. I know a lot of atheists might agree, but I'm pretty sure all the Christians out there can't be happy.

h/t to LSH

Bar-none

So, it's Monday. It feels like it.
It's been a while since there's been activity in the garden so let me share this weekend's adventure. We have had an enormous barberry bush at the back corner of the house. It was approximately the size of a Smart Car. And growing to VW bug  proportions annually. The sparrows love it, but everyone else... -not so much.
So on Sunday, LSH put on the gloves and hauled out the loppers and shears and trimmers and cut the whole thing down! The lawn was littered with long arching thorn-covered branches. (Barberries are probably the thorniest bush in our suburban landscape repertoire. Even more than roses.)
The bad news is that we had no where to put the puptent-sized pile of pricklies. We ran out of our brown bags for lawn refuse.
In the end we re-repatriated the pile back to the shrub's original spot with the plan to purchase more bags.
And there it sits.

Of course

It was a pretty amazing holiday weekend. We had a little bit of rain on Thursday night and the next three days were about as perfect as you can get. Mid-70s and sunny. Excellent fireworks weather. Excellent cookout weather. Excellent concert weather. Excellent carnival weather.
But boy are my plants thirsty! So when I woke up to rumbles of thunder this morning, I thought they would be well cared for. Not so much. It was all sound and fury. Not a drop of rain had fallen by the time I got home from work, so LSH and I watered everything.
It will be raining shortly.

hip hip HOORAY!

Happy Independence Day!
Celebrating a birthday today are

• 1790 – George Everest, Welsh surveyor and geographer. just had to have the biggest mountain
• 1804 – Nathaniel Hawthorne, American author. Scarlet A for awful
• 1883 – Rube Goldberg, American sculptor, cartoonist, and author. if he built it, you will laugh
•  1937 – Queen Sonja of Norway She is Norwegian and a queen; how lucky can one gal get?
• 1943 – Geraldo Rivera, American lawyer, journalist, and author. porn-stache champion
• 1954 – Morganna, American model and dancer. Not the one from Arthurian legend
• 1971 – Koko, American gorilla. f*ck yeah! An AMERICAN gorilla, born on the 4th of July who is famous for nothing more than speaking her mind. 'Murica!
• 1992 -- Punkinhead. 

Yea! Punkin! Happy birthday!

Buy the book!

Once upon a time, my Long-Suffering Husband shared a picture of our house online. --It's a cute house:

One of his friends, who is a writer, saw the picture and was inspired to imagine a story of our little cottage. And, being the creative type that she is, the lightbulb went on and an anthology of short stories, inspired by our humble home was born. Including one written by LSH himself!

This anthology is available on amazon.com and 90% of the proceeds go to the Cancer Support Foundation.
I try not to use my blog to sell things since that's not its purpose, but I had to put a plug in for my budding author.

All hands on deck

Saturday morning, LSH says to me, "I'm going to run up to the Home Depot and see about renting a power washer." In his defense, this did not come completely out of the blue. We are having the house painted and will save a bit of money if we power wash it ourselves. This led to a discussion on the sorry state of our decks (front and back). I suggested that he try the local Ace which is closer and also rents equipment. He thanked me and was on his way.
**I imagine you know where this is going.**
An hour later, he returned. And, as you may have guessed, we are now the proud owners of a power washer.
The power washer strikes me a as a singularly American machine, but it turns out that a German company came up with it. Still, the concept of spraying pressurized water at a surface to clean it is, without a doubt, male. It is messy and noisy and expensive, but a helluva lot less work than scrubbing with a stiff-bristle brush and mild detergent. And in the end, I can't argue with its efficacy. He did the back deck on Sunday and it is gorgeous.