Let's have some fun, and fix stuff in the house!

Oh, the joys of home ownership. Seems like there's always something that needs fixing, inside or out. Or often, both at the same time.

We (and by "we" I mean my brother) have been doing some judicious tree removal over the last week or so, clearing out stuff that's died, begun taking over the walkways, or is growing too close to the house. We have lots of pine trees, some of them now dead husks, and those things love to fall over in high winds.

To show you what I mean about trees overtaking things, here's a shot of my azaleas in the front yard. Little maple and pine trees are coming in hard and fast behind them, and will need to be taken care of this spring. One of the dead pines would have fallen right through the middle of this area.

Wow, looks like I need to move some bushes this fall! They've really grown in the twelve years we've been here. It looks like there's tons of room in this picture, but these are actually taken up a lot of space, especially since there's a big hydrangea on the left.

By the way, these are two lavender azaleas that are nearly twenty years old, and what was supposed to be two pink ones, but the one on the right was mislabeled and is actually a dark watermelon red. Still beautiful, and I have a matching one out back that needs a new neighbor.

Back to the home repairs! Yesterday it was time to fix some leaky faucets. First up was the boys' bathroom, which had developed an annoying -- not to mention water-wasting -- trickle in the tub. Easy enough to fix after a quick trip to the big box hardware store for a $2 set of washers.

Of course, the tub in the boys' bathroom has also developed a crack, and needs to be replaced. Totally not in the budget for this month! So we'll go the cheap route, and spread a little silicone love over the crack, which will hold fine until I can find a bargain on a new tub.

Then it was on to the kitchen, and the long-standing drip there. Another, albeit slower, water waster. We tried to clean out the valves in the handle, which had worked a couple of times before, but that didn't help. Still with the drip-drip-drip!

A quick search on the Internet, and we learned that the cartridges tend to wear out, and as this faucet was almost ten years old, we figured we'd gotten all the service out of them we were going to, and back to the big box store we go. Weeeeee!

Fifteen dollars and a couple of gallons of gas later (we live out in the boonies, far from civilization), Number One settled in to remove the old innards. Not so easy, but with a little elbow grease the remaining parts came loose, and new cartridges went in.

Yay! No more drip. Total cost:  $17, a couple of gallons of gas, and some sweat equity. Amount saved by being the DIY people we are:  probably a couple of hundred dollars.

So there you have it, Gentle Readers, another busy day in Sheila's world. Take care, and fix something today.

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Happy Birthday to my daddy!

Today my father is 83 years old. A couple of months ago, we weren't sure he'd be alive to celebrate, so this is an incredible day. He'd been to the doctor, and gotten an initial diagnosis that shocked and frightened us -- bone cancer.

Wow. Hearing words like that just make anything else in the world seem so unimportant. Following  the diagnosis of breast cancer my mother got last year, we were doubly troubled and hit with the reality that as much as we didn't want to face it, our parents are elderly and Death is raising his scythe and looking our way.

After a visit with a cancer specialist, various tests and a bone marrow biopsy, we got better news:  not bone cancer, but a disease of the bone marrow called myelofibrosis. Not the best news, but better.

Due to Daddy's age, his doctor doesn't plan on doing a bone marrow transplant, and while he's feeling okay, Daddy won't get any of the other treatments available. It seems the treatment is sometimes worse than the disease.

Daddy's back to work, though on a lighter schedule, and feeling pretty upbeat about the whole thing. So we soldier on, and cherish every day we have with Daddy and Mama.

I've shown pictures of Daddy before, but I thought I'd post some more on this special day. First up is from when he was in the Army. Daddy spent two years active duty, and many more in the Reserves. I remember him going off to his weekend and summer assignments when I was little.

I made a shadow box for him a few years ago, and this was one of the pictures in it. Like many war veterans, Daddy never liked to talk about his experiences much, except with his good friend, Jim. Only recently has he come to share his veteran status. He's had me make decals for his car, and he bought a tag from the license bureau. I really need to get a picture of the decals, they take up most of the lower rear window!

This is his baby picture, which I'm repairing in Photoshop. Nearly done, just need some adjustment layers and a few other tweaks. Isn't he adorably grumpy? I love his sausage curl.

This one is grainy and blurry, because it was taken from a video, which in turn had been converted from an old film. It was made in the 1960s when Daddy and a group of his friends and coworkers had a gig at the old Daniel Boone Amusement Park, in Hillsboro, NC.

Those guys loved doing the Wild West act, always working on new scripts and looking for things to make their shows better. Daddy was "Black Bart", and along with "his brother" -- who I don't think ever had any other name -- played by his best friend, lead an outlaw gang that was the bane of the sheriff and his deputies, not to mention the "townsfolk" they regularly terrorized.

Happy birthday, Daddy! You're still the greatest.

So there you have it, Gentle Readers, another trip down nostalgia lane. Take care, and eat some cake.

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Returning from the land of the lost.

Lost motivation, that is.

I've been in a slump the last week or so, verging on depression. I guess the stuff over the last year just coalesced and hit me over the head all at once. Add in more teen boy drama, and let the spiraling begin!

There has been no writing, so covers, no editing, no formatting going on for a while now. Nada. Zip. Zilch. That just keeps adding to my down mood, because I know I need to get some of this work done. I have the updated files for my novel ready to format and upload, and they just sit abandoned on my hard drive.

Then I check, and find I haven't blogged since early March. Wow! That really opened my eyes. Time to kick this shit to the curb. I should have had book two out by now, instead, it is no where near ready. Damn.

Pity party, table for one.

I think I need to get some protein in me, and get busy. All things considered, my life isn't that bad, I'm just feeling sorry for myself.

Well, Gentle Readers, now that I've given myself a pep talk and strongly directed kick in the rear, I'm off. Take care, and smell the roses (or whatever is blooming your way).

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The Walking Dead birthday cake.

So, I posted a few days ago about the cake I made for my birthday, inspired by the AMC channel's The Walking Dead show. Number One finally transferred the pictures from his phone, and I've finally gotten around to posting them.

Here's the picture I used:

And the stencil I made from it in Photoshop:

The top of the cake:

 And the inside:

Isn't the plate cute? It's a big tropical themed platter I got years ago. I loaned out my cake carrier, and haven't gotten it back yet, so I had to improvise. This was the only thing I had the cake would fit on.

The stencil could have used some modifications, mainly being larger and having thicker black areas. It turns out my cake pans are nine inches, and I made the stencil to fit an eight inch cake. But cut me some slack, here. I usually make pound cakes, or sheet cakes, and I forgot!

I made the design with the frosting that comes in a plastic tube, and it was way thicker and stiffer than I though it would be. I could have made the outlines bigger, if I'd known that beforehand, or made another stencil.


But it was getting late, supper (take-out Chinese -- yum!) was waiting, and I hadn't been feeling well, so I just got 'er done.

The cake itself was a Red Velvet cake, which I made from scratch. It was delish! And you can see why I named it "Blood and Bone".

The frosting was store-bought cream cheese, because as I said, I'd been sick and just couldn't muster the strength to make that.

So, there you have it, Gentle Readers, my culinary masterpiece and homage to an awesome TV character. Stay calm, and in case of zombie apocalypse, stand behind Daryl Dixon.

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Whoa! I think I fell off the Internet!

Or something equally ridiculous. But then, you know me, ridiculous is my middle name. snort

Anyway, for those of you who are interested -- or who are masochists, which is really the same thing if you read here, isn't it? -- I thought I'd update you all on what's going on with Daddy.

After some blood work and a bone scan, we were no closer to finding out what was going on. His PSA is up, but then he's 82 years old and that wasn't very shocking news. There was something funny in his other blood work, which the doctor said needed further study. It could be due to the prostate, or it could be something else.

We won't mention the bone cancer thing. Nuh-uh. Nope. shiver

Hence his scheduling of a bone marrow biopsy, which Daddy had on Wednesday. Ouch. They had to go in three times to get enough sample to satisfy the doctor's assistant. We'll know sometime this week (next week? whatever) what the results from that are, and let me tell you, the waiting is horrible.

Mama, in the meanwhile, is sailing through towards the end of her chemo treatments. Her hair is coming back, and she's sporting a rather nifty almost-pixie cut.

I made it through the birthday, a week ago yesterday. Made myself a nifty cake, which I named Blood and Bone. It was a Walking Dead theme, with an image of my boyfriend, Daryl Dixon.

Yeah. Total zombie freak here. What can I say? There's just something about a redneck man...

I've got pictures that Number One took with his cell phone. I'm waiting for him to upload them and send them over to me, and I'll post them.

It was a pretty cool cake, and tasty, if I say so myself. Which I just did. But I'm awesome that way, as you all know.

On the writing front, I'm getting my butt back in gear to finish that blasted print formatting, which turned into a rewrite/edit marathon. At this point, I'm pretty sick of looking at the book, but I will press on.

So if you were by some chance thinking of buying my book, wait until you see that the second edition is up. It's much better, honestly, and I fixed some errors that slipped through the first time.

So, that's the news from the front, Gentle Readers. Take care, and get thee in for a physical.

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