A Year of Change

The Mr. is not too happy, happy, happy with me. After I got the linoleum up I decided to attack the bathtub insert which must have been installed in 1968 along with the rest of the house. With a hammer and chisel in hand I slowly started pounding and pulling that darn insert away from the walls. I’ve been very careful as not to destroy the sheetrock behind the insert. I’m three quarters  of the way finished with the insert and only two casualties thus far….a 20 pound piece of the formica “ish” wall fell on my barefoot big toe(I’ll wear shoes from now on) and while I was using all my weight to pull some of the insert off the wall it snapped back and pinched my left thumb. Ouch! I got the soffit out, and that was a big challenge. The soffit was not your average soffit made with drywall and   2x2s. It was 2x4s connected to the studs with more nails than I could count. The outer  part of the soffit was solid wood…again attached with many, many nails and the soffit was installed circa 1980. The former owners must have been unfamiliar with drywall. There is a big and I mean big hole in the ceiling that goes right through to the attic…I can see light coming through the hole and that leads me to believe that we probably need more insulation, or we can just move.

Again, I don’t know what the Mr. was thinking when he said we could have Harry do the bathroom, but I don’t think we were on the same page. From what I understand, as remodeling goes husbands and wives are rarely on the same page…I even over heard the Mr. giving marital advise to the oldest regarding the oldest’s future wife.

I have a plumber ( a friend’s husband) coming by to look at the shower and sink and give me a bid, so I can stay under budget. Youtube is going to be my best friend, since there are do it yourself videos on bathroom remodels and tile installation. I’m sure with a couple of tutorials I can do it myself.

The Mr. is off to Vail and I am off to make breakfast and lunch for the kiddos.

Have a great day and God Bless

Good morning, the bathroom is a mess, I’m hiding all the hammers and tools before I go but don’t tell Lori. I’m sure my $2K budget is already approaching $4K. Maybe I can put a lock on the door, we’ll see. Here’s a comment from Annette,

September 19, 2013 at 4:37 pm

That’s right, snow up there, winter will be here soon, but today, let’s take a break and read this instead, God Bless….A couple of pictures from the dance.

Her hair was up in a pony tail, her favorite dress tied with a bow. Today was Daddy’s Day at school, and she couldn’t wait to go. But her mummy tried to tell her, that she probably should stay home. Why the kids might not understand, if she went to school alone. But she was not afraid; she knew just what to say. What to tell her classmates of why he wasn’t there today. But still her mother worried, for her to face this day alone. And that was why once again, she tried to keep her daughter home. But the little girl went to school eager to tell them all. About a dad she never sees. A dad who never calls. There were daddies along the wall in back, For everyone to meet. Children squirming impatiently, anxious in their seats. One by one the teacher called a student from the class. To introduce their daddy, as seconds slowly passed. At last the teacher called her name, every child turned to stare. Each of them was searching, a man who wasn’t there. ‘Where’s her daddy at?’ She heard a boy call out. ‘She probably doesn’t have one,’ another student dared to shout. And from somewhere near the back, she heard a daddy say, ‘Looks like another deadbeat dad, too busy to waste his day.’ The words did not offend her, as she smiled up at her Mom, and looked back at her teacher, who told her to go on. And with hands behind her back, slowly she began to speak. And out from the mouth of a child, came words incredibly unique. ‘My Daddy couldn’t be here, because he lives so far away. But I know he wishes he could be, since this is such a special day. And though you cannot meet him, I wanted you to know all about my daddy, and how much he loves me so. He loved to tell me stories He taught me to ride my bike. He surprised me with pink roses, and taught me to fly a kite. We used to share fudge sundaes, and ice cream in a cone though you cannot see him. I’m not standing here alone. ‘Cause my daddy’s always with me, Even though we are apart I know because he told me, He’ll forever be in my heart’ with that, her little hand reached up, and lay across her chest, feeling her own heartbeat, beneath her favorite dress. And from somewhere here in the crowd of dads, her mother stood in tears. Proudly watching her daughter, who was wise beyond her years! For she stood up for the love of a man not in her life, doing what was best for her, doing what was right. And when she dropped her hand back down, staring straight into the crowd. She finished with a voice so soft, But its message clear and loud. ‘I love my daddy very much, he’s my shining star. And if he could, he’d be here, but heaven’s just too far. You see he is a soldier and died just this past year when a roadside bomb hit his convoy and taught us all to fear. But sometimes when I close my eyes, it’s like he never went away.’ And then she closed her eyes, and saw him there that day. And to her mother’s amazement, she witnessed with surprise. A room full of daddies and children, all starting to close their eyes. Who knows what they saw before them, who knows what they felt inside. Perhaps for merely a second, they saw him at her side. ‘I know you’re with me Daddy,’ to the silence she called out. And what happened next, made believers, of those once filled with doubt. Not one in that room could explain it, for each of their eyes had been closed. But there on the desk beside her, was a fragrant long-stemmed rose. And a child was blessed, if only for a moment, by the love of her shining star and given the gift of believing, that heaven is never too far.

That’s what’s going on in the upstairs bathroom, the misses has a sledge hammer and she’s on a mission. I don’t know who showed her where the hammer is but they’re going to be in trouble! I’m afraid to go out of town next week as I don’t know what else she’ll do while I’m gone. She likes tearing stuff up too much!

I worked most of the day yesterday and will do the same today. The other guy from work who was supposed to arrive today will join us by phone instead as the flight would have cost $800! The airlines seem to be doing well these days.

Jag had his first band practice with the bass clarinet and Ty was at lacrosse again getting ready for his first game which might be this weekend.

I’ve stayed away from the shooting incident but the dems sure haven’t. Once again they’re trying to blame guns when this guy stole a gun from a police officer after he was inside and purchased one illegally. Good old, and I mean OLD, Dianne Feinstein has once again skirted reality to try to push a misguided agenda and change the subject from our Pres’s poor performance on the economy and embarrassing debacle with Syria on the World stage. And of yea, you can’t tour the White House but here’s another broken campaign promise, 344 lobbyists have walked right in! They of course came to see the guy that in 2008 said he “will allow no lobbyists in his White House”. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Here’s more on our illustrious so called leader if you want to read on,

Here It Comes: Obama Calls For Gun Control, Again, In Aftermath Of Shipyard Shootings

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/17/2013 – 19:47

The bodies of the casualties from yesterday’s latest mass shooting incident have not been buried yet, but already the president, fresh from his embarrassing foreign relations defeat with Russia and not to mention the ongoing NSA snafu, is back in ‘distract em with a campaign-cum-crusade mode’ after calling, once again, forCongress to pass gun control legislation this time in an interview with Noticias Telemundo. One can only assume the president was himself too distracted by all his recent scandals and/or was just spying too hard on the American people to recall that it was only in April that the Democratically-controlled Senate killed an amendment to a Democratic gun control bill, which was the first and biggest slap in the face of the freshly re-elected president so far in 2013 (little did we know it was only downhill from there), and made a mockery of Obama’s crusade to enact gun control.

Enough said, time to go, God Bless

Actually I’m shocked. I had no idea how much curb appeal new garage doors would add to our house. They look so good that they probably added $50,000 to the value of our home. That might be stretching it a bit but that’s how good they look! It took the guy from 2:30 until 7:30 to take out the old doors and install the new. Glad we did it.

Today I have company in town and we’ll work from 11 to 4 or so. Then tomorrow another guy arrives and the three of us will work all day. On top of that I need to get some work done on the phone as well. Meanwhile Mom needs to go unload the Suburban that’s still filled up with props from the school dance.

Things are sort of drying out around here but have a long way to go. In lots of places you can’t flush your toilets or take showers but we lucked out this time.

Everyone is up so time to run. Hope everyone is doing well. Take care and God Bless.

Yesterday everything was overshadowed by the Bronco game. We won (in case you’re living under a rock!) 41 to 23 or something like that. We’ve scored 90 points in two games which is pretty impressive. Sorry we can’t say the same for San Francisco, ouch.

This week I have people in tomorrow and Wednesday leaving Thursday am. Then next week I’m in Seattle Wednesday until Saturday morning so lots going on. My friend Harry from Colfax Ca is coming to town this weekend and will stay through next week to remodel our upstairs bathroom. The misses spent most of the day tearing up the old linoleum up there. We’re also going to try to get the downstairs area off the kitchen tiled, we’ll see. We have new garage doors being installed today meaning I need to move all the stuff in the garage, I need to get across town and rent a bass clarinet for Jag, I have 2 or 3 conference calls and a few other errands to run. I told Lori, I’d better make a list!

She’s getting out of the shower as she needs to be at school at 7am to pick up the rest of the props from the dance and take them somewhere. Oh yea, here’s a comment from Annette,

Annette says:

This morning the kids run a 5K which they do every year, known as the Farmers 5000. It’s named after the mascot of my high school, the Wheat Ridge Farmers. Hopefully Jag will wait and run with Ty as Mom can’t do it this year.

The rains are still here and so is the flooding. We missed the worst of it yesterday and are hoping we do so again today. Our friends, Mark and Carries house, has water pouring into holes drilled in their foundation at a rate of about 5 gallons a minute. Mark had holes drilled in the concrete and put in sump pumps that are connected to hoses that are draining water out to the street. What a mess and no one has flood insurance.

Yesterday was a blur, all I know is the misses cleaned and cleaned all day and the house looks great. She must have put away 100 pounds of laundry. Every now and then I get to the point where I just can’t handle the mess and that was yesterday morning. I went to Cherry Creek to get my hair trimmed and then stopped at the grocery store. I also raked all the leaves in the front yard but didn’t get to the back where the majority of the debris is. What a mess it is out there.

Here’s the misses to post some pictures from the school dance but first, here’s a comment from our most loyal commenter, Annette.

Annette says:

Last night we were with lots of our friends who also have kids as we were all at the school dance. Turns out almost everyone we know has had their house flooded. We’re really lucky that our basement is still dry however that could change any moment. I think we’re supposed to get another 3 inches or so in a blast tomorrow morning on top of the steady rain that’ll fall throughout the day today. Then if we’re lucky, it’ll begin to dry out. They say we’ve had a years worth or rain in a week!  The humidity in our basement is about 75% according to the meter in the wine cellar. I’m sure there’s tons of water under the foundation but like I said, so far, we’re one of the lucky ones.
Annette says:

Good morning,  once again we are awake entirely too early….5:10. I awoke to the sound of crackling paper. After I came downstairs it was no surprise when I turned on the light I found our four legged friend…the one with the doggy eating disorder…chowing down on graham crackers. She had silently opened the pantry door and strategically opened the box, taken out a sealed package of graham crackers and opened the package to enjoy her spoils. Lacey is really quite amazing…the inner graham cracker package looked as if she opened it with a box knife. I don’t know about you, but I have to use scissors to open those packages.

Tonight is the Hollywood Stars Dance. I’m really excited, because the decorations are going to be amazing…I think.  We have two 8 ft. Oscar Statues to adorn the entrance…we even have giant up lights to cast a Hollywood shadow on Oscar…both of them.  We have a 40ft red carpet runner and stantions with red velvet ropes. I had a banner made that the Mr. is kindly picking up for me today, and the banner will be the backdrop for the red carpet photos. We have a projection of the Hollywood Hills and the famous Hollywood sign that we will project up on the stage. Aime and I went to the wholesale floral place and bought live palm leaves to attach to our palm tree trunks, and 50 red roses for .32 cents per stem. We have red feather plumes, white plumes, black plumes, faux diamonds to scatter around, battery operated tea lights, pearls and real table lines…black of course. I’m excited to see it all come together, and I will take many photos and post them.

The oldest is wearing his suit today. The kids and teachers are encouraged to dress up and we have a costume contest for the teachers during, school and the kids contest is during the dance. Hopefully we won’t be flooded out!

Rain, rain go away. I’m happy to have all the moisture, but enough is enough. According to the Mr. the ditch behind our pool is now 25ft wide. That is really scary…..Here is the Mr. to fill you in on the flooding and the rain…glad we don’t live in a flood plane especially since the media is beginning to call this a 100 year flood.

Lots going on but at least no rain is in our house. I’m sure it’s under it though! If it was 30 degrees cooler we would have had 10 feet of snow, that’s how bad it is. We’re even on the Today Show, whoo hoo. Time to run, no politics as we’re too busy preparing for the collapse of the economy, ha ha.

God Bless

So…. Lacey started shaking her head(another ear infection)at 3:22 a.m. The Mr. fortunately slept through it.  He had a terrible head ache all of yesterday and last night. It was so bad in fact that he went to bed a bit after 8:00p.m.

Lacey was followed by the youngest coming in to our room at 4:10 due to a bad dream. Luckily, the Mr. slept through that as well. The barking for breakfast began at 5:00 a.m. by this point I’m thinking the Mr. is faking sleep, since he is the one that usually gets up with the pups. The youngest had been whispering to me from the moment he climbed into our bed that he couldn’t go back to sleep. The two of us got up to see if our old girl needed to go out…NO she did not need to go out…she just wanted food! I put her in the crate and told her gently in no uncertain terms that she may not wake us up for breakfast. The big dog on the other hand climbed onto the dog bed where he continues to wait patiently for breakfast.

Yesterday, after the oldest went to Intramural’s the youngest and I walked to school. On the way we saved some worms from certain death by picking them up from the flooding gutter and tossing them back in the grass. We also saw two disgusting drowned rats while we were walking…Disgussssting in the words of the youngest. One rat had exposed ribs and intact guts showing and it’s brain was oozing out the head.EWWW!  A little while down the road the youngest said, “Mommy I just can’t get the disgusting image of those rats out of my brain, I hope those images aren’t in my head forever.”  It’s no wonder he had a bad dream.

I went down and picked up props for the dance…I’ll post pictures..hopefully it turns out the way I imagine it to be.

The Mr. ran errands and cooked a delicious dinner for us.

I have a conference call with New York and Switzerland this morning, and then I need to work on the boys attire.

Time to run…love to all and God Bless.

Mister here, first off, no I wasn’t faking, here’s a comment from Annette

Annette says:

Last night the Constitution won here in Colorado. Despite 10 times the money from back east, Bill Clinton and the democrats spin and lies, 2 Colorado senators were kicked out of office in historical recall elections. One was the President of the Senate and the other a senator who also voted against the will of the voters and passed unconstitutional gun laws. Now I won’t spend the entire morning on this, but this is a big deal. Washington was watching this closely and doing everything they could to prevent this from happening. Turns out that even in districts where there are a majority of democratic voters registered, the democratic senators couldn’t hold onto their jobs. This will be a warning shot to all those across the country who chose to listen to and go along with Washington and Obama rather than listen to what their constituents want. I’m very happy.

Meanwhile across the country, Anthony “let me show you my” Weiner, and Elliot “I like hookers” Spitzer were both also defeated. Looks like the people of our country are not as dumb as some politicians assume they are.

Finally today is the anniversary of 9/11. Hopefully our country will never have a day like that again. Meanwhile the administration is trying to now take credit for a potential solution to Syria that was basically a sarcastic statement by the Secretary of State that the Russians turned into a possible solution. This administration has no clue what the hell they’re doing. I’m sorry but it’s just a joke and they’re turning our country into a joke.  Oh well, maybe we can recall them too!

Here’s two comments,

1. Annette says:

   September 10, 2013 at 3:50 pm

   Way to go boys, very proud of you both! Christmas ornaments I thought we couldn’t do that anymore not pc!

   Reply
2. Robi says:

   September 10, 2013 at 4:30 pm

   Good job Jag and Ty, keep up the good work!!!

   Yes the boys are doing great. Ty had lacrosse last night and is off to a great start. The big school dance is this Friday and the misses is frantically trying to get everything picked up and set up. She sure has done a lot of work on this.

   It rained again and is supposed to come down even heavier today. The ground is so soaked that it’s running off pretty fast. Thankfully I have no water in the basement as many around here do. Hope that continues.

   It’s now 4:30 and time for me to head to the gym. I have to call London on the way so I’d better get moving. Take care and God Bless but first, check this out,

   

   The President, as expected, has back-peddled on his threats to attack Syria. After immense pressure from thousands of calls by concerned Americans to their Congressional representatives, threats of retaliation from Russia, and a total lack of credible evidence having been presented for the case to go to war in another middle eastern country, President Obama buckled.

   For now, the world has been spared another conflagration and one that could have spread very quickly and involved the globe’s most power nations in conflict.

   Once the American people realized that the pretext for war in Syria was eerily similar to that of the weapons of mass destruction claims which led to a decade’s long war in Iraq, Obama was left without any real support on the domestic front or the international community.

   His policy in the middle east has been a laughing stock, and it has left the world wondering if the President of the United States has any clue as to what’s really going on around him.

   Peggy Noonan explains:

   His plan was never good.

   The choices were never good. In any case he was going to lose either in terms of domestic prestige, the foreign result or both. Likely both.

   He got himself into it and now Vladimir Putin, who opposes U.S. policy in Syria and repeatedly opposed a strike, is getting him out. This would be coldly satisfying for Putin and no doubt personally galling for Obama—another reason he can’t look as if he’s lunging.

   A serious foreign-policy intellectual said recently that Putin’s problem is that he’s a Russian leader in search of a Nixon, a U.S. president he can really negotiate with, a stone player who can talk grand strategy and the needs of his nation, someone with whom he can thrash it through and work it out.

   Instead he has Obama, a self-besotted charismatic who can’t tell the difference between showbiz and strategy, and who enjoys unburdening himself of moral insights to his peers.

   This may well be one of the most embarrassing foreign policy gaffes in American Presidential history.

   Moreover, it almost threw the entire planet into a World War.

   And why? Because as Obama noted in his speech this evening, “we know the Assad regime was responsible.”

   “That’s my judgment as Commander-in-Chief,” he said, even though the U.S.government presented no irrefutable evidence that proved Assad had anything to do with it. However,  hundreds of pages and videos of Syrian rebels being responsible for the attack surfaced over the last couple of weeks, including an extensive report directly sanctioned by Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

   It’s not over yet, however, and we may well see this situation come to a head in the future. Iran is still in the process of manufacturing nuclear weapons and that bridge will be crossed soon enough.

   We’ll refrain from quoting any more of the President’s speech (which can be read herein its entirety), because, as most of our readers know, he is full of it.

   The late George Carlin broke it down succinctly.

   I have certain rules I live by.

   My first rule – I don’t believe anything the government tells me.

   …

   The media and the press… are nothing more than unpaid employees of the Department of Defense, and who most of the time function as kind of an unofficial public relations agency for the United States government.

   The worst thing about all this is that President Obama probably thinks he saved the world and deserves another Nobel Peace Prize.