Updated downloads page

I updated my downloads page to include a link to Omni Massage Systems. They're just so darned neat!

I'd Rather They Bark

My MIL's dog Jonah is a yapper and really carries on. The fact that he's hard of hearing doesn't help any - just makes him bark all the louder, we think.

In anticipation of his being in her apartment downstairs, we borrowed a bark collar (one similar to this one, only not rechargeable) from a friend. We had misgivings about these collars, but our friend had used it successfully with his beagle, so we thought we'd try it. The collar, touted to issue a "mild correction" at the vibration of a bark, would be there in case his barking got to be too much.

Howie picked up a battery for it, but we weren't sure how to turn it on/regulate it. There were no directions. Since Emma is a barker herself, we thought we'd try the collar on her and see if it worked.

It was horrible. She barked, then cried out loudly in pain and jerked back. Her cries made it "correct" (read: shock) her again, which only made her cry out again. It was horrible and I couldn't get it off of her fast enough.

I felt so terrible at inflicting this pain on her! I bawled as I held her trembling body close to me and tried to calm her. Her heart was going a mile a minute and she was terrified. She had no clue what had happened, why she was hurting like that. It was just plain cruel.

We will never use one of these again, and will tell everyone who mentions wanting to try one to seek an alternative. There are collars which release a spritz of citronella, for instance, or others which issue ultrasonic tones - both of which are supposed to distract the dog without the cruelty of shocking it.

I still tear up when I think about the terrified yelps she made. I just felt really small at the thought of hurting my puppy-girl. She's such a good girl, and hadn't done anything wrong. :( I think part of the reason it hit me so hard because of all the stresses these past few weeks, what with construction, my father, the impending scrapbook project, and all - it's just been a doozy of a month or so, and I guess I've been repressing a lot. Once that tiny chink opened up in the emotional dam, it all came flooding out.

Logo angst

I'm working on my blog's logo, but having trouble making a transparent GIF or PNG come out looking decent. Blah! Bear with me...I'm working on it. In the meantime, just hold your hand over the top of the screen while you read!

Update: Well, this JPG image will work for a while. It's a little too big, though. I'll make it smaller.

Wait! Newsflash! For now, I shall make my green background a layer in Photoshop and let my logo go above it; then when I save it, it will match the background already up at my site.

Added: Oooh, I think I might need to make a theme out of my birdhouse picture. It's a little mosaic birdhouse I picked up at Big Lots a while back - I liked the photo of it and made my logo from it - might as well piddle around with it some more!

Moving Day and a Recap

Today's the day my MIL Nancy moved in. We can't believe it's already time; we first started talking about redoing the basement into an apartment for her last October, had the basement waterproofed in January, and started construction on the rooms in May. And now she's here!

The contractor and plumber have a few things left to do downstairs and upstairs, but they'll be done this week. Next Monday, after it's all done, Merry Maids will be tackling our upstairs for us - a special treat after living with this salmagundi of plaster dust, sawdust, dirt, and other construction matter. We can't wait!

The scrapbook is now back in the hands of its rightful owners. In all, I did 38 pages. Sad thing is, despite even pulling an all-nighter from 9pm Thursday to 8am Friday, I was only finished through the end of third grade pictures. At some point, perhaps worn down by the lack of sleep, I came to the correct realization that I was NOT going to be able to complete it in time, nomatter how badly I wanted to. That in itself was freeing for this guilt-ridden girl. But, really, considering I didn't get the pictures until Tuesday, I don't think I did so badly! I'm pleased with how they came out, because I did them with love and with the same attention as my own scrapbook. That's enough. :)

Friday morning was a really fun scene, starting off bright and early as Rite Rug called us at 6:45am to say they'd be here in 15 minutes! Have you ever in your life heard of carpet installers coming that early without a customer specifically requesting it? I think it should be a capitol offense. It was doubly frantic because the contractor, assuming the carpet guys wouldn't come until at least 8 or 9am, had not completed clearing the rooms and sweeping the floors; like us, he never dreamed we'd have to be ready that soon and was just going to come in early and finish up before they arrived.

So, Howie called him and let him know everything was happening, and we headed downstairs to get the last of the debris and such out of the rooms. The carpet guys came right on time and helped us finish sweeping up. What a way to start the day! And with no sleep...Whoooo. Carpet looks great, though.

I ended up staying up until about eight last night, then crashing for a good night's sleep until ten this morning. It felt sooo good to crawl between those freshly-laundered sheets and listen to the pond's waterfall splashing a few feet outside the bedroom window. It's been unseasonably cool here, good sleeping weather. And sleep I did.

Burger vs. Booger

Okay...I'm taking a quick break from scrapbooking because I am laughing too hard to cut out any more of pastor's precious family pictures

All I've done today is crop pictures in preparation for putting them on pages. The whole afternoon, I've been listening to various radio stations online and having a good old time playing with all this paper. The music's helping keep me from stressing at all there is left to do!

Anyway, a little bit ago, I was listening to K-LOVE radio online heard this catchy song. I'm boppin' along, when suddenly the words "tender as a booger in the microwave..." leap out at me.

What the Hey?

Thank God for the Internet and instant access to factoids. I headed on over to Google to look, but couldn't find the phrase. This might have been due to my misspelling booger as "bugger", big dummy. Not to be thwarted, I change my tactics and type "tender as a" and "in the microwave" into Google's brain. Aha! A few references come up and I'm on my way.

Turns out, the band is The Newsboys, and the song's "Who".

Heh. It also turns out the words are actually "tender as a burger in your microwave".

Now, before you think me either deaf or really ditzy, I must point out that others thought the same thing. One of 'em posted it at kissthisguy.com, the wonderful online archive of misheard song lyrics.

Scrappin' for the Lord

If I'm scarce for a few (more) days, it's because I'm working on a massive scrapbook project. No, not mine! My pastor's son is graduating HS and I'm doing his scrapbook; his mom's been so swamped with other stuff going on with work and church, she just couldn't get it done in time for his open house this Saturday night. I love doing hands-on creative stuff like that, so I thought I'd take a stab at it. I love them, too, so it's a labor of love.

I'm figuring on about 100 pages total since it spans preschool through HS. His mom's got everything organized by grade and then by event, and she's going to do the journaling part of it on the pages. So, "all" I am doing is cropping and doing the layouts. It's a paying job, too, at a time when we could really use the extra cash - wooo-hooo!

I'm praying the creative cup will overflow, and that I can stay on task and work efficiently. See ya later, alligators!

What movie quote are YOU?

Well, I guess I'm Shrek, and for once one of these quiz answers makes some sense. My body somewhat resembles his, and the description is pretty apt...


You are... Shrek -
"Well I have to save my ass!"

You walk tough and talk tough, but inside you're just a gooey ball of mush. Your friends are important to you (whether you admit it or not) and you'd do just about anything for them (but you wouldn't like it). Trust is important to you, and so is respect. Looks don't matter to you; it's the gooey ball of mush inside that really counts.


What movie quote are YOU?
brought to you by Quizilla

Note: You'll probably have to tweak their HTML if you put the code in your blog; there were a lot of line breaks added in poor places, plus the word "respect" was misspelled. I threw it in here with a blockquote.

Not good words to hear

The plumber and his helper are working on our upstairs bath right now, putting in the drain and getting ready to insert the shower.

I'm hearing the sounds of the reciprocating saw and words like "dang" and "ohhh, mannnnn" and "how bad am I making it down there?".

These words frighten me.

News from Illinois

First off, if you don't know the history between my father and me, or are sadistic and just want to refresh your memory, here's your chance to catch up. Just peruse this entry from June12, 2002, this one from June 17, 2002, and one last one, from June 21, 2002.

Wednesday evening, I saw a call was coming through from my uncle's phone number in Illinois. Fearing it was probably my father again, perhaps just using my uncle's phone, I zapped the call. I was feeling down and just didn't want to deal with my father if it was him starting to call and harass me again. I assumed that someone would call back if it were an emergency. No one did, but it kept bugging me. I wasn't bugged enough to call and see why someone from that number was calling, however. I'm a big chicken, you know.

The next day, there was a message on our voicemail from the head nurse at the facility where my father is living. Evidently, his parkinson's disease has progressed further, plus he'd become despondent to the point of not eating the last couple of weeks. The woman said he's lost a bunch of weight in the last month, and doctors were going to have to insert a feeding tube if he were going to receive any nourishment. Unable to make this decision for himself because he's non-responsive, a doctor would need a family member's permission to insert a tube.

Because his sister finally couldn't take his abuse anymore and went to court to remove herself as his power of attorney, she could not give this permission. His brother was contacted, but did not want to okay or deny this without talking with his sister and with me. So, I was called. I suppose I would have done the same thing had I been in their shoes.It still doesn't make me want to be involved with all this.

It must sound cold-hearted to someone on the outside. The thing is, I've not talked to my father since last June, and I don't have any relationship with him. I tried to, for a time, but he just started abusing what little I was able to offer him so tentatively. But as my aunt (my other one - mom's sister) so eloquently put it, "...even though you and your father are estranged, the ties still pull and hurt". That about sums it up.

I spoke to my uncle's wife last night, and she filled me in on the details. Here was this woman, a stranger to me, yet we were bound by the common tie of my father's mental illness. We've all tried to help him, and he's abused us all in his insatiable, crazy need. It's one of those situations where you find yourself sharing a rueful, mirthless chuckle over the idiocy you've witnessed.

She told me my uncle and aunt both agreed that my father has just become so depressed with his life that he just doesn't want to live anymore. In all honesty, I can sympathize; he has a body that is messed up with a progressive neurological disease, life-long depression, no true friends, and no place to call home other than a crappy nursing home which receives his government check every month. Given the situation, I think I might want to just let go and die, too.

It would be cruel to prolong this. And, really, forced sustinance or not, he's on a decline. He's only approaching his 60th birthday, too. How sad is that?

I'm in the middle of such a dichotomy about this. On the one hand, his situation is pretty pathetic and it's such a shame. But on the other, he's brought so much of this on himself, at least the being alone part. There's only so much friends and family can give. That is a shame, too.

When he finally does die, I don't know if I will journey out there for the funeral or not. I've only seen my aunt a smattering of times before mom and I moved away from Illinois in 1981, and I barely know my uncle. With my father, there are awful memories; with his siblings, there aren't many memories at all. I don't know what the point would be in my going out there.

I think everyone involved will be relieved when he finally goes. I have often wished he would just die rather than keep being so messed up, because at least then I could just say "my father is dead". It's so much simpler. God, that sounds selfish and awful, but that's how I've felt.

Ugh.

Who's your ducky?

The plumber and the contractor doing the basement made their way out of the house yesterday with our old cast-iron tub balanced on a dolly. Until Jamie the plumber hauls it away, it's sitting in our front yard. Last night when Howie got home from work, he rolled the trash bin out to the curb, as usual. While he was out there, he moseyed on over to the tub to take a look at it.

"Is this our rubber ducky?", he asked. When I asked him if it was the yellow one our friend's son left here one time, he said it wasn't. Hmmmmmmmm.....

Yes, someone had placed a rubber ducky in our lawn tub. Oh, the hilarity!

It didn't remain a mystery for long, because someone couldn't keep her glee to herself. Last night, in reply to some pictures I'd e-mailed my siteless buddy Angie, I received the following missive:

when/who/how are you getting rid of it? just think it might be good to check it over before she goes.

Yep, it was her. She'd left our place around 10:30pm last night and gone to Wal-Mart to pick up some pictures. While there, she bought the little rubber ducky and snuck back to our house about 11:00pm. She parked her car down the street and covertly scrambled down the sidewalk in front of our house.

She could see me in the office window, puttering away at my computer. I never had a clue, sneaky thing. I just love her!

This, too, shall pass

Construction continues, and our upstairs bathtub and its surrounding wall are being have been dismantled and removed. The wall behind the tile was pretty well rotten, so it's good timing, all this. We're having a Sterling 60" shower with two seats installed instead of another tub; with Howie's back injury, this will make his life much easier. Though I love baths, I rarely go to the hassle of one when I can shower so quickly.

Well, it's done now, huh?

The downstairs is really looking good! I've not posted pictures lately, but I've been chronicling everything in photos (note to self: do backup!). John's got the bathroom, hallway and laundry room all drywalled...It's just amazing how it's coming together. We'll be sooo glad when it's all done, though. Even though we've pretty much grown used to the various construction noises, it still makes morning sleep restless, and we're looking forward to having a working sink, shower and toilet all in ONE room again (two rooms, if you count the full bath downstairs).

We found a beautiful, quality nylon carpet at Rite Rug yesterday. It's a mix of soft blues in a deep, sculptured plush. Best yet, we were able to buy it in the form of three large carpet remnants rather than off the rack. We'd decided to get a cheap, taupe carpet at Lowe's for $2/square foot, including installation, but it was lousy carpet and the cheapest padding. This way, we're getting premium carpet, along with a nice, thick pad, and only paying a couple hundred more than the cruddy stuff would have cost us at Lowe's. Moral of this story: Check the remnants section at your local carpet store!

RIP Angiepangie.com

Darned girl decided to forego her site, for a while anyway. That's the only reason it's been removed from my sidebar links. I guess that's the impetus for me to offer Pangie updates. Let's see...She's got some resumes floating around right now, and has an interview tomorrow at a local business. Woo! If we can get her to, perhaps she'll pop in Good Soil ever so often and speak for herself.

She doesn't really want me speaking for her, does she? Oh, my, she's brave if so.

Playing with Paper

I worked at the church today and did the Sunday bulletins. The Risograph machine really wasn't bad to use, and it made the copies so fast! I only used the black ink drum today, but I can get creative and use the red or green if the mood strikes me.

It's been so long since I've done papery-foldy types of things, though; there is no folding machine, and my speed left something to be desired when it came to folding and stuffing the bulletins with the two inserts we had this week. I ended up being there a couple hours longer than I though I'd be. Thank goodness there were only 150 bulletins to do.

I've decided I desperately want an 24" Fiskars rotary paper cutter...Oh, yeah, aaalrgrrhhh. The church office has one, and one of the wheels you can put on the thing does perforated lines, which we use for a tear-off registration card for visitors. Way cool, that cutter. It also has a wheel which does a fluted, wavy edge.

I have an unhealthy love for office supplies!

Final Inspection

The final inspection for the front rooms of the renovation was today, and both the structure and electric inspectors signed off. Tomorrow, John will start doing the raised floor for the hall and bathroom. Yippee! It sounds like the plumber may take up to 1 1/2 weeks to do his part, though. So, it doesn't appear we're going to meet our June 1 completion date. My MIL has not sold her trailer yet, either, so we're not in a huge hurry. We just want it done!

Clumsy Swarms

The termites from the colony in the remnant of the sycamore stump out back swarmed today. Yuck. They are clumsy flyers and only make it a few yards before falling to the ground. Their wings fall off at that point - serves 'em right, little pests.

The swarmers, or aletes, are the winged reproductives in a termite colony; it's their job to go out and create new colonies. The critters have underground nests, usually away from structures, and journey to wood structures just to load up on yummy wood pulp to take back to the nest. Seeing swarmers does not mean your home is infested.

I learned about termites when we were in the process of buying our home. The inspection showed there was a minor termite infestation under the back door. Leave it to a termite to find the one tiny bit of wood in our brick house -- the thin wood strip between the masonry block from the foundation and the brick wall above. The seller had to pay for an exterminator to come and treat our house. Actually, we are probably due for another treatment, or at least an inspection, since all that was back in 1999.

Back to the swarmers. Our small fishpond sits near the stump, and this afternoon its surface was littered with the bodies of their fallen comrades. I haven't bought a fishnet yet, so didn't have a way to skim them all off the surface. They're likely to have the pond water really fouled. Yuck again. The tiny feeder goldfish we put in the pond are in no way up to the task presented.

For more than you ever thought you'd want to know about termites, check out the University of Toronto's link here and Ohio State University's great Ohioline page.

A farewell to charms: The pissquiggler's exodus

You can tell it's warm in our office, for the dogs are stretched out unbecomingly in their crate. When it's cool, they morph into furry doggie-balls, snuggled closely. They share one big crate, our three, and love it. Whether in the crate or on the furniture, they tend to sleep in great piles of legs and paws. It always makes us smile.

There's good news to report, dog-wise. Angie's brotherDennis is going to give Buddy a home! Yep, da brudder's family has a female beagle, anyway, and wanted to get a companion for her. She's an outside dog...And he's buiding a kennel for them! It is a very specific answer to prayer, let me tell ya.

Ironically, Buddy's new home will be a couple of states away, in Illinois. Buddy will be quite the seasoned traveler by the time he gets there, bless his heart. Fortunately, our vet's prescribed tranquilizers for him since he gets nervous and carsick riding in vehicles. He'll pretty much zonk out and wake up in a new home. I hope he does really, really well there - he's such a sweet little guy, just stubbornly refuses to be housebroken.

It's a weird feeling, planning to find a dog a new home. But, just when we again felt ambivalent about it, Buddy graced us with another piece of abstract pissquiggle art all over the office floor. Howie's no longer waffling on the issue, and neither am I. Emma's sure going to miss him, though, and that makes us sad. They're such good friends, those two. I hope and pray Buddy gets along with his new little girlie beagle. Good thing Emma has Sarah (and us) to snuggle up to in Buddy's absence!

This is the dawning of the age of aquarium

We're shopping for an aquarium, probably a 55gal, though we'd really prefer a 75gal since we'd like to have goldfish again. The bigger the tank, the easier it is to maintain, and since goldfish produce a lot of waste we want to have a big tank. (Plus bigger tank means bigger fish, or more smaller ones). We thought about doing tropicals again, but goldfish - especially the fancy varieties like these guys - have so much personality and they're relaxing to watch. Tropicals dart all over the place, but goldfish just mosey around.

They're more our speed.

I have a wrought-iron stand I bought with an old aquarium at a yard sale last year. The tank was a real oldie by Metaframe (how's that for irony - before we used the term for internet stuff!). It was a weird size and impossible to find a hood for...Just more trouble than it was worth to make our own hood. We donated the tank to Goodwill during our Great Basement Cleanout of 2003; someone will be thrilled to get it for reptiles or other non-aquatic uses.

Anyway, the stand and filters I got with it were worth the $20 I paid. Thing is, the stand is an odd size: 48" long x 13" deep. We may be limited in what larger tanks would safely fit on it. We saw a 75gal setup advertised in the Jack's Aquarium and Petsonline sales flyer. It's an All-Glass Aquariums brand and is $139, including the hood and light. It measures 48"long, 18"deep x 20" high.

My big concern is that, even with a board bringing the top of our stand out to the tank's width, it would be topheavy. Those 75 gallons of water, at 8 pounds a gallon, would weigh in at 600 pounds! For that matter, I wonder if our floor will be okay under all that weight. It would be along our living room wall.

Am I just paranoid? Would any aquarists and/or physicists (even rocket scientists if you're so inclined) care to comment?

Annoying Celebs

I have to pipe up - Jim Carrey is incredibly annoying on talk shows. He's good at the type of slapstick, over-the-top humor he does, but he is a scene-stealing pest of a guest on talk shows.

Howie and I saw him on Jay Leno last night and just cringed at his behavior, especially when he kept drawing attention to himself when it was Amanda Bynes' turn to be interviewed. I'd never seen this actress before, but I felt badly for her time with Jay being sabotaged by that ham. She seemed annoyed, despite saying she was a fan of his (we noticed she said "was" and snickered that it might indeed be past tense after this guest appearance by his side).

We half expected Carrey to walk out on the stage while Tim McGraw was singing. It's hard to say whether Jay was amused or embarassed by Carrey. We're both just so turned off by Carrey; he strikes us as an immature, attention-starved brat when we see him in interviews. When he did a couple of more toned-down bits on the show, he was pretty funny. It's just that big humor that really turns us off.

Second-hand smoke produces a prodigy?

Howie and I saw one of the recent anti-smoking ads on TV last night. It's an ad depicting a dad sitting in a chair watching TV while his son plays on the floor nearby. Dad's puffing away on a ciggy and the room is hazy with smoke. On the floor next to him, his baby is playing with alphabet blocks.

As the voiceover recites the many dangers of second-hand smoke to children, the babe spells out these words with his blocks: bronchitis, asthma, sudden infant death syndrome.

I said to Howie, "So.....Is this saying second hand smoke makes your children really intelligent?"

Howie said, "If I were the kid, I'd just crawl out of the room."

"Yeah," I said, "if that baby has the manual dexterity to find those letters and spell out those words, surely he can crawl out there!"

Sometimes those ads are only moderately effective, you know? Guess you can't win 'em all.

To be fair, the other anti-smoking ad airing around here is good: The droplet-spattered windshield and the intermittent swipes of the windshield wipers tell us it's raining; mommy's got the minivan windows shut due to the weather. She's smoking as she drives, and the van is filled with smoke. Baby baby sits strapped in a carseat behind her, crying. She continues crying as the voiceover ensues. Toward the end, the screen goes dark and some text comes up. We hear the baby cry some more, then cough.

We always comment on that ad's effectiveness when we see it.

That reminds me...I see parents who conscientiously only smoke outside so they don't expose their kids to smoke. I even know mothers who quit smoking, cold-turkey mind you, while pregnant. That's no easy feat! Once they'd given birth and finished breastfeeding, though, they picked those cigarettes right back up.

They did so because they wanted to, because they like smoking, not because they couldn't help themselves. They admit it.

I think it admirable that these folks want to protect their kids from the harmful effects of nicotine. But, second-hand smoke arguments aside, I have to ask: Do you think they'll be any better off with you dying young from lung cancer?

You'd do anything to feed your kids if they were hungry or needed medical care, right? Well, this is every bit as important, folks.

Get help. Just do it.

You're next...

I've heard this before, in a much longer and ineffective version. When I received it today in my e-mail, I knew I had to share:

When I was younger, I hated going to weddings. After the
wedding and during the reception, my aunts and the
grandmotherly types would come up to me and poke me in the
ribs, cackling, "You're next."

Finally they stopped, when I started doing the same to
them at funerals!