Finally Spring!

HAPPY 49th BIRTHDAY!!!!

to my friend Julie at 47 and Starting Over

I hope you have a wonderful day. 

I do apologize for my absence the past two weeks - I am the planner for one of the biggest conferences my agency hosts - around 500 health department-type people for a 4-day conference.  I have been doing the conference for about 12 years now, so it almost runs itself.  But there are some things I have to do and they wind up being all consuming.  But the conference was last week - it was very successful and now I am back to my normal life.

I have lived in Ohio my entire life,  so I am not one to really complain about winter.  It's a fact of life. I'm not 5 anymore, so if I truly disliked the cold and the snow I could pack up my suitcase and head to a warmer climate.  But I have a warm house, plenty of coffee and lots of quilts to hold me through.  (Though I must admit that I HATE wearing shoes with backs in them, so it's difficult to get me to wear boots - even with a foot of snow).  I am SO done with winter this year. The heavy snow we got smooshed down our shrubs in front of our house. Shrubs are pretty resillient and should bounce back - but not ours - the snow broke 2 of them in half. So it looks like we'll be pulling them out now. We had lots of heavy snow on the roof, so when it started melting, we had water running in our basement laundry room. We have a 2 story house - the water from the melting snow was running down our stove & vent pipe and continuing all the way down between the walls to the basement. So I guess I am complaining - a little.

I was more than thrilled when I saw this two weeks ago! 

The first sign of Spring - these two little, brave crocuses were peering out around our mailbox.  They have since been joined my many more of their brothers and sisters.  The weather is supposed to be more normal this week. Over the weekend I was able to open the windows and air out the house - that's such a nice feeling after being closed up all winter.  It also makes the cats very happy.  So hopefully where you are the weather is lookin' up - get out there and enjoy some of that sunshine!

DIY (Monday Giggle)

Tax season means different things for different people. I have been lucky enough to enjoy a hefty refund the past several years and while I really would like to spend it on an exotic vacation I have been spending it on housey stuff.  (Though this year I have set aside enough to buy C a large screen TV he longingly looks at for his birthday next week.  But ssssshhhhhh!  don't tell him it's going to be a surprise.)  But most of the the money went to a new HE washer & dryer (our washer was who knows how old and it has been making a scrapey noise for the last few months)  and a new water heater (the old one was probably the original for this house and you could barely get a gallon of hot water out of it at a time). The washer and dryer were delivered and setup last week.  The water heater was different - it was a DIY project.  C is very good at home improvement and is neat about it.  He spent most of Saturday installing the water heater.  It's fantastic to have enough hot water to take a shower.  But as I was watching C work on the water heater - I was thinking about my most recent ex and his attempts at home improvement.  While sometimes he was good at it, most of the time it was a disaster. He always made me "help", but really I was just there to yell at.  I remember once the kitchen sink was clogged - and we unclogged it by cutting the pipes apart with a saws-all.  I'm not a plumber, but my grandfather was - I don't ever remember him unclogging drains with a saw.  Anyway - I ran across these pictures - they remind me of some of the ex's projects.

Yep - the ex definitely had a hand in these repairs.... Scares me!!