Monday, June 28, 2010

Bug, Bugs and More Bugs

Last week was a busy week. We are still packing up STUFF. Some for garage sale, some for charity and some for dumpster. We noticed that we are finding more and more bugs indoors lately. Really large bugs!

We have never had a bug problem until we started boxing up STUFF. I think they must have gotten a free ride into the house from some of those boxes we brought home for packing. We decided that we need to kill these huge ugly things before they completely take over the place. On Friday night we made the decision to get up extra early on Saturday morning so we could set off some bug bombs. No, we are not blowing up the house!

Anyway, we started at five thirty in the morning. We wanted to get it done early before the heat became too bearable. We got all our four legged kids outside the door and I went back in to be the assassin! I set off four of the bug bombs and ran out the door. Dawn and I both took a weed eater in hand and took off to trim the yard. We live on two acres. We have to trim along fences, around trees and driveways. We both trimmed for about two hours before it became too hot. We sat on the patio and waited for our four hour time limit to be up. The instructions said we have to wait four hours before re-entry. Well I am an impatient kind of person, so I went back in after only three hours. Man! Oh Man! Dead Bugs Galore!!!!! I first opened the windows and then proceeded to sweep and mop the floors and wipe down counters. We wanted to make sure we removed the poison before letting the kids back in. Well needless to say, we worked all afternoon getting the house back in order. We washed dishes, pots and pans. Finally somewhere around two-thirty we were finished and both sat down for a break. An hour later I woke up on the sofa to find Dawn asleep in her recliner.

We treated ourselves to dinner at our favorite Mexican food restaurant and went home to crash on the sofa again!

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Snaaaake!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am absolutely terrified of SNAKES. I can't even look at them on TV or in pictures. Everyone that knows me knows that I can walk on air, maybe that should be RUN on air if I see a snake. I will scream, jump and run like a wild woman if I see one! I don't care if they are dead or alive, I don't want to see them. I have been told I could scare a snake to death! Why not, They nearly scare me to death!

I have lived in Texas my entire life and have seen lots of snakes. That fact has not made it any easier to deal with. I heard on the news back in early spring that due to last winters weather we are going to have real problems with snakes this year. Needless to say, I had nightmares for a week after hearing that news. We live in the country, and living in the country means having snakes around.

People laugh at me because for the past few years I tape the inside of the front door (we never use the front door) I use wide packing tape to seal the door. The reason for this is because a couple of years ago we had a snake sighting on the front porch. He was pretty good size. He got away! Last fall I was sitting in the living room and looked over to see a snake on the window ledge looking in at me. He was about a foot long. He got away! One afternoon our door bell rang and there was young girl at our front door to report cows out on the road and told us she just saw the biggest snake she had ever seen in the shrubs next to our porch. He got away! We saw a rather large snake on the driveway last summer. He was every bit three foot long. He was ran over by a dually pickup. But he still got away! We spotted one on our patio. He got away! Dawn shot at one in the back yard last fall.It was about three foot long. She shot several times but it was difficult to shot. I had to call the neighbor (over 80 years old). he KILLED it with a hoe. A month ago my son found one about three foot long in the dog pen. The dog was playing with it! He killed it with a hoe.  A few weeks ago I was vacuuming at the office where I work and sucked a snake up the vacuum hose. It was a little over a foot long. It was behind the door in the kitchen. Luckily, one of the guys was able to get it out of the hose and kill it. It took me over an hour to calm down.

Yesterday Dawn was in the front yard watering flower when she almost stepped on a snake that was over four feet long. She calls me at the office and said she needed me to call and wake my son up that was in the house. She was keeping her eye on the snake to see where he was going so it wouldn't get away. I kept her on the line while I used my cell phone to call my son.I had to call him several times to wake him up. When he finally answered,  I told him I needed him to wake up and grab a hoe on the patio and go out to the front yard and meet Dawn who was keeping her eyes on a large snake. I can't imagine what he was thinking at that moment. He was half a sleep and I was trying to give him instructions on killing a snake over the phone. He must have thought he was dreaming. I am never calm when talking about snakes! He is not afraid of snakes, he is however terrified of spiders! I can handle a spiders, so if he will kill the snakes, I will kill the spiders!

I hang up the phone with him and let Dawn know that I have woke my son and that he would be out to help her in a moment. She tells me the snake has not moved. It is just laid out in the grass. She then reports to me that my son is there. She points to the snake and my son says holy @#%* and that he chopping off the snakes head. He couldn't believe how long it was either.

Dawn takes a picture of my son holding the snake so we could see how long it was. It was about five feet long. I would have died on the spot, if I came across that snake in the yard!!!

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Doggy Playpen

Our four legged kids love to travel. They love going to new places and exploring. They are small dogs and don't take up much space.

I am really proud of the great bargin we found at a local thrift store. It is a collapsable dog playpen.  We only paid $12.00 for it. That is about a $75.00 savings. It is portable and lightweight - perfect for travel! Use inside or out as a play area or barrier - may be shaped into many configurations for greater versatility. Durable, weather-resistant, easy clean plastic. Includes 6 hinged panels, an area of 12-1/2 square feet. Each panel measures 30" x 26" high.

We take it along with us so our little ones can enjoy the outdoors without us having to worry about them running off to explore on their own. I really like the fact that it is light wieght and we can add to it and make it larger if need be.





We carry it in the bed of the truck until we need it. I am looking to buy another to add to it to make a larger play area for our kids

Friday, June 18, 2010

It's Hot Outside

The weatherman is predicting temperatures at 100 this weekend! We haven’t had any measurable rain in almost a month. Summer in Texas can be pretty harsh!

I made an executive decision that we will not be having a garage sale this weekend! It is too hot and there is plenty around the house for us to do that does not involve being cooked alive in the outdoors.

We are still boxing up STUFF and restocking the garage for the next sell. I know people are wondering why we don’t just set everything out at once. Well, we have so much STUFF that it would be a lot of work to put it all out at once and we would have to do it the night before. We live on a busy state hwy and don’t want to invite any night time shoppers! We also live on a hill and the wind blow almost nonstop.

We might do something FUN this weekend! I don’t know what it might be but you never know about us!

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Busy! Busy!

We have been spending evenings boxing up things that we plan on storing for future use. We have a lot of STUFF and we are in the process of thinning it out a bite. We try to spend a few hours each evening boxing up what we can.

Dawn has been experiencing cluster headaches again and has several of them a day. They last anywhere from a couple of minutes to twenty minutes at a time. She is physically and emotionally drained after each one. It has been hard for her to get finished with anything because she will develop a headache and will be down for the count. I am doing my best to take up the slack, but sometimes I just get lazy!

We also have a lot going on right now. We have boxes and bags of shredded paper sitting all over the house. Then our kitchen sink decided to stop up. We have been fighting that for a few days. We are lucky enough to have a couple of friend who happen to be plumbers. But we hate to ask them because they won’t charge us for their services and we hate to ask for help from people on their leisure time. But we did have to finally ask for help because the plunger was not fixing the problem! We have had one of the plumber friends over every night for the past few nights and still have a stopped up sink. Dawn has been practicing on her boondocking dish washing technique. Today we had a crew of plumbers working on it. Hopefully we are back to washing dishes in the kitchen.

Dawn’s sister is going thru the process of being placed on a liver transplant list and Dawn is trying to help her sister out whenever she can. There is a lot involved and it is a time consuming ordeal just getting placed on a transplant list. They have doctor’s appointments, test and evaluations. They have appointments with social workers and financial services people prior to the transplant. So needless to say, they are going to be very busy for the next few weeks.

And did I mention, we are hosting a wedding shower for my niece next month and have started preparing for that. She will be getting married August 22nd and I am also the wedding photographer?

Must Haves for Outdoor Living

Doing some more research on items we will need for the fulltiming life. We have a First Up Canopy. We bought this canopy at Wal-Mart a couple of years ago and love it. We decided after camping at few places that had absolutely no shade that it might be a good investment. We have also camped at places that had plenty of shade and a lot of birds. We all know what birds over our heads can produce! So we have used our canopy a lot. It came in a nifty carry case with wheels on one end. It is easy to put up. I have been known to put it up and take it down by myself. Of course, it takes a little longer but it can be done. We also bought the wind curtains, bug screen and rope lights too. This way we are ready for sun, bugs, wind and anything eles that comes our way!

We do a lot of our cooking outdoors. We think the food taste better! It’s also just more relaxing to cook outdoors. We bought a stainless steel 2 burner propane cook stove and a camp kitchen at Cabela’s.



We have enjoyed having the camping kitchen. We set it up near our outdoor table and it holds everything we need to cook outdoors.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Niece Is Engaged

Last weekend we met my niece and her fiancé Erik in Frisco at Heritage Park to take some engagement pictures. They are a very cute couple and both are very photogenic. I felt so very honored that she asked me to take the pictures.

They are a very busy young couple and only share one day a week off, Sunday. So we met them about eleven on Sunday. At eleven it was already very hot out. The weatherman was predicting triple digit heat. Needless to say, we didn’t waste any time getting the pictures taken. I shot over a hundred pictures in about an hour and a half. I wanted to get it done before any of us fell victim to a heat stroke! It doesn’t make for very good pictures when everyone has bet red faces either.

Afterwards we grabbed lunch at a nearby restaurant. We drank a lot of iced tea and had a great time visiting.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Hot Weather and Garage Sales

Wow, it was a Hot Weekend!

On Friday night I spent several hours out in the garage restocking the STUFF. I was setting out new STUFF in preparation for a garage sale on Saturday. We really are starting to make progress and I want to keep up the momentum. We debated whether or not to even bother since this was Memorial Day weekend. We weren’t too sure how well a garage sale would do on a holiday weekend but we thought it might be worth a try. I placed fans in several areas of the garage to help keep our customers cool.

Well, I am glad to announce, it was worth it. On Saturday we sold some more STUFF. We didn’t open until nine and we closed about two-thirty. We have tried opening earlier but no one shows up until about nine. We were surprised how many people stopped by and shopped in this heat on a holiday weekend. We had a few that stopped in, looked and left. But for the most part everyone else bought something. We sold Dawn’s Madame Alexander Dolls to our first customer of the day. Dawn has had them for over forty years. Even though they have been in boxes in the top of a closet she is still sad to see them go! We sold a many pieces of the Franciscan apple dinnerware to a good friend and we sold a lot of odds and ends too. Dawn was multi-tasking, she was also smoking brisket and pork butt while we were having the garage sale.

At two-thirty we closed up and went in to cool down. We were so tried from the garage sale and the heat.

We are both looking forward to our lives as fulltiming RVers. We look forward to moving to cooler areas for the summer and warmer areas in the winter. We are both from Texas and neither of us can stand the Texas summers. The older we get, the harder it is to suffer the heat and humidity here in Texas in the summer. Dawn was saying on Saturday how she wished she could have back one of the snows day we had last January!

On Sunday we did chores around the house and on Monday we went to Frisco and and did some exploring. Nice town.