rodentraiser

I got kidney stones three times in the 90s in one year and have never had them since. But yeah, talk about pain. I actually collapsed on the ER floor and when I came to, other patients were trying to get me up and going for the nurse. Good times. The pump truck has yet to arrive and now I have Wellcare I need to call back - did I tell you how much fun Wellcare has been since last October when I signed up? Well, I will one of these days. It's quite - well, I don't know quite what it is, but it's another of those long frustrating things that just won't resolve. Now it appears they've assigned me a doctor I don't know and have never met, but gee, is only 45 miles away. That thump you hear is my head hitting the desk.

Lisa, you might want to message jdodyd personally. This is such an old thread that I doubt if she would check it.

Can things get worse? Why, yes, yes they can! So along with the sciatica, I was up all night night before last and in the ER all day Saturday with - tada! Gallstones. I finally ended up walking out of the ER when it became to painful to sit and then had to drive a curvy road home more than an hour in the rain. Got home, took 2 sleeping tablets at 7pm and then at 2am and slept 14 hours. I have laundry piled so high it's leaning. One of my neighbors kindly took pity on me and washed a couple pairs of underwear, two sweaters, and two slacks so at least I'd have something to wear today. Then it was off to the store to get a few things so at least I'd have something to eat for another week. Tomorrow the tank is going to be pumped and then on Wednesday I finally bring the car in. That's the day I'll do half my laundry at the laundromat and stop at the discount store for the majority of my groceries. Some day I'm going to get back to my garden. Oh, yeah, the zipper broke off my purse, too. When it rains...Man, I needed all that cute stuff.

Well, I'm back to being a drama llama again. Last week, the electric went out in half the trailer. I had to get someone to fix that. Then I stupidly left the valve open on the black tank in my trailer and now the tank needs to be pumped. Over $200 for that. And on Friday, the car goes in - both the engine light and airbag lights are on and it needs an oil change. I would like to drive a car whose dashboard doesn't look like a pinball machine. Well, I didn't want to save any money this year anyway. Meantime, I still have bags of soil and bark that need to be opened and spread, weeding up the ying yang to do, three blue mist plants that arrived today and need to be planted, I still need to plant the iris bulbs, and I need to go out and rearrange all my buckets and barrels because I have 37 strawberry plants, two blueberry plants, and a wintergreen plant arriving any day now. And my sciatica is back and I am screaming and swearing like a sailor when I have to walk anywhere. I'm seriously thinking of running away from home.

If you don't mind putting in fake windows and doors, a 10-gallon aquarium makes a neat roombox. You simply turn it on its side and paper the walls and finish the ceiling and floors like any room. I don't know how much they cost now, but at one time a 10-gallon aquarium was only about $20. Heck of a lot cheaper than a wood roombox.

Since the contractor and my neighbor haven't figured out what they're going to do yet, I decided I'd just follow my original plan: live in this trailer for the next five years and save money. But I'm going to be comfortable living here. That's why I had the living room painted. Next I'm having a couple cabinets and the remaining kitchen table bench removed. That will make a practically full size kitchen in here. Then the kitchen gets painted. I know I'm wasting money if I'm going to be moving soon, but honestly, if those guys get a shed done over by December, I'll be really surprised. So right now I'm not counting them to actually do it. I still think a 40 to 42 foot trailer with a couple slideouts will be just fine for me. That can give me as much as 400sqft and as long as it has room for my sofa, my computer desk, my bookcases, and my dollhouse, that's all the room I need.

I still haven't gotten the extra soil and I still haven't done anything with the iris bulbs. Twas the beginning of the month and that meant two trips to the grocery store and a trip to the laundromat. Then I called the painters to paint my 7' x 8' living room. It used to have stark white wainscoting on the bottom and an ugly blue gray on the upper walls. When the sun didn't shine, it was like living in a cave. So now the wainscoting is a dark moss green and the upper walls are the same cream color that's in the bedroom. It's a little yellower than a regular cream, sort of a rich, butter cream color. It looks marvelous. The painters also hauled the old canopy out into the yard where I guess I'm starting another junk pile. Meantime, I started to mend net fences again. This time I piled up four cinder block, stuck a dowel in each opening, and then filled them with sand. That's what's going in the corner to hold the ropes I attach the netting to. Last time I had the dowels in a pot with potting soil and they kept pulling themselves out. It looks like this is going to work because we had high wind today and everything held. Only one more net fence to put up. But this hauling a month's worth of laundry, loading and unloading sacks of birdseed, moving furniture in and out of the living room, stacking cinder blocks and then lifting 50lb bags of sand to pour down them has made my back start screaming. So I"m taking the next couple of days off before I get 20 more bags of soil and THEN I will finally get to the irises. Of course, after that comes weeding and getting my rock garden beds into shape to plant next month. This may all help me lose weight, but I bet I walk hunched over for the rest of my life! LOL Holly, you take care of yourself, hear?!?

Thank you, but those aren't the patterns I'm looking for.

Carmen, I've been drooling for those kits for decades. The company has been out of business for about that long and whenever I see something they made on eBay, it goes for way more than I can afford. I wish I had bought them in the 80s. I still have the paper cutouts of their kitchen cabinets, sink, stove, and fridge that you use to make sure everything fits in your kitchen so you could buy the correct cabinets. I'm not giving those up yet! LOL Meantime, I'm also still looking for two patterns of wallpaper from BH. I'm not sure if they're from the same company.

Would you guys believe it? I just now saw the like buttons. How long have we had those? I think I hear my keeper calling me... Holly, all I got to say is: My sorry a** isn't going to be alone in this world without you. Sorry, but you're gonna be around for a long time yet. LOL

I think the tortoiseshell, like Shadow, was already previously owned by someone living up here. Shadow just likes my bed better, I guess. My one fear is the owners will move away and take him with and I won't know. Thank you for loaning Russ, but I don't think anything can beef up these awnings. This time it was mainly my fault because I broke a strut setting it up last spring. Although I had the canvas on top slit every which way (should have just taken it off) to let the rain through (the broken strut caused the rain to pool rather than to just slide off the top), in just one spot that wet, heavy snow just collapsed that section of the canopy again. You think I'd learn. What I need is a porch roof or something. I'll be getting another canopy in April. Now here is something I don't know if it's going to happen. My neighbor came over to help me move some furniture and then later, when I was talking about getting a better trailer, he told me that he and my contractor may contribute $10,000 each and try to build me something like a converted shed to live in. It would certainly be nice to not live in a trailer, but I have some doubts. First, I'm not sure I want to owe another $20,000 and I don't think they can build anything for less than $50,000 anyway, and I sure don't want to owe that. Secondly, I don't want to seem ungrateful, but this would be the last place I'd be living in for the rest of my life, so it's got to be something I want to live in. No tiny home of 200sqft. Plus I want the kitchen to be arranged a certain way and I want a bathtub. Also, the county says anything over 200sqft needs a permit. These guys are talking about not getting permits and I don't want to be caught out later on with having to have the place inspected and brought up to code. And to make more room, the neighbor said something about getting a two story structure and finishing off the upstairs. People, I'm closer to 70 and going up and down stairs now is a pain. If I had a finished bedroom upstairs, that would also mean I'd have to have a full bath upstairs too and that means a half bath downstairs. That is going to cost a mint of money. Then there's the time frame. My contractor never even got to my yard last year. How does he think he's going to be building a small house? I might be dead and burned before it's finished. And I don't want something half finished. I've seen some really beautiful, beautiful trailers that I could buy and the things only have to last about 30 years, which they will if I can get a top over one. So all that means that while I may put up a canopy this year, IF the little house gets built, it might have a porch and then I won't have to worry about one next year. So the new canopy can fall to pieces if it wants to. Of course, next year I plan to be a little smarter and take the top off BEFORE it snows! Oh, by the way, that good attitude (thank you for saying that) is only when I type on here. That's when I've finally calmed down enough to see the humor in everything. But when things are happening...good is probably the last word you'd use to describe my attitude. I am a first class complainer and I've learned a lot of naughty words over my lifetime. I even use them sometimes. LOL

Oh, yeah. I thought I should add. Shadow the cat has come in to sleep on my bed every night for the last four months now. And I found out she's not a she. She's a he. It's a good thing I picked a gender neutral name. LOL The other cat, the long haired tortoiseshell, used to come around every morning to get fed but I haven't seen her in a month or more. I hope she's OK. She usually doesn't show up in rain or snow and all we've had is one of the other, but we have had some clear days and she's still been AWOL. I hope she's OK. Meanwhile Shadow turned two on January first (totally arbitrary day) and is HUGE now. He looks like a black panther roaming around my yard. I don't think the hawks are going to get this one. He's snoozing on my bed now.

I am slowly getting things done. I finally opened the bags of dirt that I had lying by the driveway and dumped them. I've been decorating the side of the driveway by first dumping dirt there, spreading it out, then spreading bark over it to keep the weeds down, then planting. The first section has been done and now I'm doing the second section. So now the dirt is out there and then it snowed. The snow is finally gone and now it's raining. And now I realize I need more dirt. I can't get that until next month. Meantime I thought I could start weeding my little rock garden beds but before I could do that, a windstorm blew my net fencing all to H E double hockey sticks. Then the snow caused my canopy to completely collapse again. So now I have to drag out the canopy to get hauled away and then I get to work on the garden beds and then I get to put the fence up. All before I can get to the weeding. Which should be done before next month before I get more dirt. And that's sort of a priority because I have 40 iris bulbs that should have been planted there last fall but will go in as soon as I can get around to it. I'm tired of gardening and I haven't even started yet!

Are they in the box? Because I never opened the box. If they're in there, I'll send them to Ronny.

I am not a do-it-yourselfer. So while this might be easy to do with trim, this is the direction I'd probably go. I will eventually need to make small, high fireplaces for a new house I may be working on this summer, sort of like those fireplaces you see in French dollhouses. So I thought this might work. Take a single French door minus the mullions. Measure down from the top maybe 5" or however tall you want your fireplace to be. Mark the lengths and then just cut straight across. Now you have a small fireplace with a mantle and an interior from the top of the door. And I'm sure someone here will figure out a great use for the bottom half of the door. From this: To this: