Fun Saturday

Keith wanted to take a drive up to Tehachapi for breakfast on Saturday, so we drove up there and ate, stopping at the Murray Family Farms fruit stand to use the restroom and buy some apples and pomegranate jelly. They have a bear in their peach orchards that keeps evading the animal control people who are trying to get the bear back up into the mountains. No, we didn't see the bear but had seen the pictures on the news of the bear just hanging out in the orchards and having a great time amongst all the fruity abundance.

Then in the afternoon we pretended we were shopping for a new house and went looking at model homes. There are all these new developments in town that are now having real problems trying to sell all of these houses and are offering all sorts of incentives to buy-free pools, ten thousand dollar gas cards, no down payment, and one was even offering a buy one get one free for a while.

One development was huge custom homes, we looked at one that had a central courtyard with fireplace, movie room, and the biggest kitchen I've ever seen with a center island that was bigger than 2 pool tables side by side. I just wondered how you would clean the island, you'd have to get a stepladder to reach the middle of it or just climb up on top of it. We don't know how much this house was, obviously totally unaffordable for us though!

One of our favorites was a spanish style house with a front porch the entire width of the house, the entryway had a formal living room on one side and dining room on the other, then a central enclosed courtyard/patio thing, a huge huge master bedroom suite with a sitting room, stairs going up to the upper level with an landing half way up and a window seat on the landing. We could just picture all the kitties sitting on the window seat.

The best development that we saw was the 55 and older houses. I was kind of expecting town house type things but these were actual houses with big master bedrooms and 2nd bedrooms for guests or grandkids. They had six houses to look at and we liked every one of them. I never thought I'd get excited about a 55 and over neighborhood, but think about it-no screaming kids, no skateboarders or bicyclists that you might run over since your sight isn't getting any better. No young firm bodies at the pool to make you feel even older than you are, and no trick or treaters to disturb you on Halloween. The place is gated so all the young riff raff can't get it!

It was a little disturbing to see all of the for sale signs in the neighborhood, though, did these people get in over their heads with the payments or all they all dropping dead? Hmmm...

Keith and I want to see a model home that looks like real people live there. The living room would be decorated with lazyboy recliners and a few beer cans would be leaving rings on the coffee table. The kitchen would have dish soap and sponges on the windowsills, some dirty dishes in the sink, and coupons and junk mail on the counters. The bathrooms would have a wet towel or two on the floor, magazines on the back of the toilet, and the kids rooms would have toys and dirty clothes all over the floor. And an old sofa on the front porch to welcome you.

I'm Going To

Try to be a little more productive today. I did already make the bed-well, only because I am making myself make the bed before I turn on the computer which is right next to the bed, and also to prevent lots of cat hair from getting in the sheets since the cats like to sleep on the bed. And I did fold the clothes (and even put them away) that were in the dryer from yesterday. And, I even put another load into the washer. I'm even going to empty the dishwasher!

It's hard getting excited about cleaning house, not that we are total slobs, but I haven't been much of a housekeeper lately. The bathroom, especially, gets a little grungy before I'll force myself to clean it. So, I'd better get that done today.

It's really difficult to get motivated when your house is STILL not finished and you STILL have no kitchen or hallway floor. I don't want to constantly nag Keith about it, but I have hinted around that I might spend more time in the kitchen cooking delicious entrees for him IF I HAD A KITCHEN FLOOR TO STAND ON!!!

I'm really tired of walking around on ripped up linoleum and bare concrete that is never clean even if I do damp mop it once in a while. And since I go barefoot around the house, my feet are always dirty, too.

So, in a few minutes I'll drag the vacuum out and scare all the kitties with it and then maybe get the bathroom clean although I really hate cleaning the shower and sometimes make Keith do it while he's taking his shower after work. He's actually a much better shower cleaner than me, I just give it a quick once over and he actually gets it clean.

I Really...

Have nothing to talk about. Of any importance anyway. Life here in this hot smoggy city is much the same every day. Wake up, feed cats, coffee, computer, clean cat boxes, computer some more, mess around in the workroom, computer some more, maybe cook dinner, feed cats, clean cat boxes, a little more computer, then since Keith has to go to bed early and the computer is in the bedroom, out to the living room and watch some tv.

This is the first season of tv that I'm actually paying some attention to the new shows. When I was working at that horrible place (walmart) I had such weird hours that I didn't watch much tv, and then when I worked overnights at that horrible place (walmart) the evenings were my mornings and it just seemed wrong to watch tv in the morning and there were too many other things to do before I went off to work each night. Now I actually have time for the ultimate time waster itself, tv.

We finished watching the first season of Life on dvd, so that show is a must watch for me (premiers next week!), and then I had to watch Heroes since I just finished the first 2 seasons on dvd, and then of course I absolutely have to watch The Office, but so far those are the only 3 shows that have really interested me. I'm sorry but I just can't handle most reality shows, like Dancing with the Stars (or Dancing with the Has-Beens, as the case may be). The only reality shows that I am embarrased to admit I like are Street Patrol-a clone of Cops, and Jail. I really wonder at those people who allow themselves to be shown on tv in all their jail going glory, though. I guess people will do anything to be on tv.

Sometime I wish we had cable if only so that I could watch the current season of Mad Men, but I'm not willing to pay for cable, so I'll just have to wait until it comes out on dvd a long time from now. We watched the first season on dvd and are hooked! I'm going to write more about Mad Men some other time, it's a whole blog post in itself.

What else is going on here? Nothing!

Little Houses

I've always loved little things. One of my favorite series of books to read when I was growing up was The Borrowers-the little world with little people and their little adventures fascinated me. Dollhouses and miniature shadow boxes still fascinate me.

Years ago I made little cardboard house ornaments, painstakingly cutting and gluing papers and cardboard together, making tiny little windows out of paper, and gluing little dried flowers around the base for a garden. These little houses took hours and hours to make and I think I sold them for around $5.00. And I sold a lot of them, most buyers not realizing that the entire house was made by hand. I'd been thinking about these little houses lately, wanting to try something a little different with my collage papers. The thought of cutting and gluing the houses together made me think twice, though, so yesterday I made a trip to Michaels, thinking maybe they had some premade houses that I could embellish. So, I found these houses in the Christmas section and brought some home to paint and paper and glitter up. I think they came out pretty cute.


At first they looked kind of plain, so I added some of my plastic flowers and some rhinestones and glitter to sparkle them up and I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. The visions in my head are nothing like the end result, of course, but I guess that's all part of the creative process.

I wasn't sure how to price these, they do have a lot of work in them but not a lot of material cost, so I did a search on etsy for cardboard houses to get a price range and I found the cutest shop with the most original little houses I've ever seen.

These are from http://recyclerabbit.etsy.com and I just love them!
She does the imaging on the computer and then makes the houses out of recycled cardboard, like cereal boxes.
These bird houses are just too cute!

At First Glance

Doesn't this look like a pair of wooden underwear? My first though when I glanced at this on the etsy home page tonight was what the ....? Wooden underwear? A new kind of chastity belt?

How uncomfortable they look.

It's actually a coffee table.

September 18, 1981

Was the day my favorite son-okay my only son, but still my favorite-came into the world with his bald little head and round little cheeks. What a cutie he was! (and still is).

Joseph Edward Gartman is his name, but I think he prefers just Joe these days, and I just have to wonder where all those years went. It seems like one day you've got this little redheaded toddler playing with cars and trains and then the next day you wake up and he's about six feet tall and has a red beard and is driving those cars and trains!

Here he is on his first day home from the hospital-look at those cheeks!

And with big sister Jennifer.
And on his very first birthday. The cake was good! And Joe was such a fun and happy little boy!

This is one of my favorite pictures from when he was three. We had gone downtown for some sort of street fair and he saw this elephant and wanted to take a ride. He was so proud of himself for being so brave and riding that elephant!This kid was always fascinated with cars and trains and trucks and anything with wheels. Cement trucks and the garbage truck were always exciting to see and if we went to dinner with the family at Dominicks Italian Restaurant in Oxnard, you could guarantee that when the train went by on the tracks across the street, Joe would hear it coming and be at the window watching it go by. One of his earliest adventures in drawing on the walls was making train tracks on his sister's bedroom wall. I couldn't help but laugh because he was so proud to show me his train tracks. We gave him lots of paper and crayons to draw train tracks with after that!

Here he is on his first engineering trip when he was five.

And here he is being a real engineer!

I'm so glad that this little boy who always wanted to be a railroad engineer was actually able to make his dream come true and work for the railroad.

So, Happy Birthday, favorite son!

Sigh

Sales are slow on etsy-is it the economy or etsy's recent woes with newly listed items not showing up and the search working at a snail's pace or just too many sellers on etsy now? Who knows, but it's hard to get motivated to work on things when you wake up to an empty in box. I've got shops on two new sites that I'm hoping will eventually take off.

The first one is icraft, a Canadian site that has a really nice professional look, the listing is free right now, and I've made a couple of sales there. I like the one stop listing page where everything gets done at once, you can load up to 6 pictures all at one time, and it only takes a few minutes.

Another new site is madeitmyself, a site out of California but it's still in the beta not so nice looking stage. It's free to list and free to get your stuff 'featured' right now also. The listing is still easy but you have to go through 5 pages like on etsy, and the listing forms are something that appears to have been made from some sort of auction site template, as there is one space where you put in whether the item is 'new', 'like new', 'slightly used', etc. Since it's a handmade site, I would hope everything is new! I've made one sale on there, but I'm going to keep adding to both of these sites and hope that the word gets out about them.

On another note, do you ever just want to get rid of all your stuff and start over? We have so much stuff in this house, a closet full of books that we might read again, a closet full of clothes and shoes that we might wear again, a room full of craft supplies that I might use, drawers and cabinets full of cleaning and grooming supplies that I should use, but am usually too lazy. I'm doing good to brush my hair in the mornings, never mind some sort of face washing routine. And makeup? fuggedaboudit!

I'm talking about all the stuff that you accumulate throughout your life, knick knacks and dishes and wall art, and furniture, and books, and papers, and dvds and cds, and just a whole bunch of stuff! Sometimes I'd just like to rent a big dumpster, toss it all in there, and start over from scratch, hopefully with a more minimalistic zen approach to things.

When we moved almost five years ago, we got rid of tons of stuff and have never missed any of it, so it just makes me wonder how much stuff we really need in our daily lives. A bed to sleep on, a refrigerator and a stove and a microwave so we can eat, a dish to eat on and some silverware to eat with, a glass to drink out of, a table to eat at and a chair to sit on, a shower and soap and a toothbrush and toothpase, and a computer to mess around on, and a book to read, and a movie to watch, and a tv to watch that movie on, and a couch to sit on to watch that movie, and a coffee table to put your feet up on while sitting on that couch, and some nice pajamas to wear while watching that movie, and a washer and dryer to wash those pajamas, and I guess we do need some of all this stuff that fills up our houses and lives.

Pudding Cottage Cheese Eggs and Oatmeal

Soft foods. Blah. I had my gum surgery on Friday and I am supposed to eat soft foods for a while. I'm already bored with soft foods. I had some macaroni and cheese last night which I'm really not supposed to eat because it is all carbohydrates which turn into sugar which screws up my diabetic blood sugar levels. So, mostly cottage cheese and sugar free pudding and some cream of wheat, which I had to eat almost cold because I wasn't supposed to have hot stuff this weekend. Not even coffee, unless it was ice cold.

So, Friday I went to the dentist at 9:30 and sat in the chair for about 45 minutes before they finally started numbing my mouth with lots and lots and lots of shots all over the inside of my mouth. I had a little panic attack because it felt like I couldn't swallow and was choking after all of those shots. So, after everything was numb, the periodontist started peeling back my gums-you're going to feel some pressure and pushing here! Then, the super sonic water thing cleaned out all the junk that was buried deep in my gums, then a little drilling or something-all I know is that it was noisy and sounded like drilling. Then some bone replacement stuff-bondo or something-was squished in there, and then it was all sewed up again. Both gums on the right side and the upper gum on the left side. All of this took about an hour and I was extremely tense the entire time. They don't put you to sleep because they need to be able to tell you to turn your head this way and that. So, while I was white knuckling it, the dentist and the assistant talked about thier weekend plans.

After it was all over I still had to wait for about another half hour to get my prescription and instructions so it was noon before we got out of there. Keith took the day off so that he could make sure everything went okay and be my drug runner.

There hasn't been a lot of pain, I've been taking super strong ibuprofen 4 times a day and a vicodin at night, but I did have some 'discomfort' while waiting for Keith to get home with my drugs on Friday afternoon.

So, now I have some swelling and a bunch of threads in my mouth that feel really strange and a big huge dental bill.

I'm so dying for a cheeseburger right now!

phones

I do not have a cell phone. I have never had a cell phone. I hope I never have a cell phone. I don't like cell phones.

But, if I had to commute to a job or traveled a lot or wandered around town in the middle of the night, a cell phone would be handy in case of an emergency. An emergency only. Not because you need to tell your best friend that you are on your way to the doctors because you are having a weird discharge 'down there'. True story, Keith had to listen to a cell phone conversation about just that while waiting in line at the bank. A loud cell phone conversation because for some reason people think they have an invisible phone booth around them when they are talking on their cell phones.

When I was growing up, cell phones were something that hadn't been imagined yet, the closest thing was a walkie talkie. Our phones were big and heavy and had this weird dial thing on it with letters and numbers, and to call anyone you had to stick your fingers in the holes that corresponded to the number you wanted to dial and manually turn the whole thing for each number. Dialing a number could take a minute or two, and then you had to wait a little while to get connected and listen to the phone ring and hope that whoever you were trying to call was actually at home to answer the phone. Or you would get a busy tone that meant that the party in question was talking to someone else on the phone. And then you would have to just try again later, again hoping that they would still be home to answer the phone. There were no such things as answering machines or call waiting or call forwarding or three way calling or all that stuff. Although some houses still had party lines where you could pick up the phone and if the line was already being used you could listen in on the latest gossip around town. That was always fun until the people on the line could hear you breathing and tell you to get off the line.

There were no such thing as portable phones where you could wander around the house or go to the bathroom while talking on the phone. You were connected by that twirly phone cord that would only stretch a few feet unless you got the super long twirly cord that always tangled up and the only way to untangle it was to let the phone dangle at the end of the cord and twirl around untangling itself. If you wanted a private conversation, you had to go into the hall closet and shut the door with the phone cord under the door.

No, nowadays you can talk on the phone whenever and wherever you want and you are always available and always have that cell phone with you just in case someone is trying to reach you. You can talk while eating in a restaurant, while checking out at the grocery store, while waiting in line for a movie, while in the movie, while at the doctor's office, while giving birth, while going poop, you can talk anywhere! And they have those bluetooth things so you don't even have to hold a phone up to your ear, you can just yack away looking like a total idiot because those of us that can't see your bluetooth think you are talking to yourself and have some severe mental issues since you have that glazed look in your eyes, and never mind that you are dressed in a business suit and are oh so incredibly important that your phone conversation must be conducted in public, you still look like you are mentally deranged and are hearing those voices in your head again.

Easiest Beef Stew Ever

I made beef stew last night-yay! an actual home cooked meal!! Never mind that it was still in the 100's yesterday and I had the oven on for 2 hours, we had a delicious home cooked dinner that was pretty darn easy to make.

Whenever round steak or london broil is on sale at the grocery store, it's time to make beef stew. I'm really picky about meat, any fatty meats just gross me out, so round steak or london broil is about the only meat that I buy, no precut stew meat for me, it's just too icky.

This recipe is just so easy, you just cut everything up and put it in a casserole pan, no browning the meat or any of that nonsense. All you do is:

Cut up your steak, removing all nasty fatty parts of course-the recipe calls for 2 lbs, but I just use one round steak or london broil.
Cut up an onion-I use sweet onions because the regular ones make me cry and give me indigestion.
Cut up some potatoes-the recipe calls for 4, but I used 2 big ones.
Cut up some carrots-2 or 3 or 4 or however many you want.
Oh, spray the pan with cooking spray first-for easy clean up and easy scooping out of the stew.
As you are cutting, you can arrange all the stuff in the pan so it's mixed together to insure you get steak, potatoes, carrots, and onion in your bowl instead of just a bowl of carrots because all the meat is on the other side of the pan.
See how the ingredients are neatly arranged in the pan, saving you from mixing anything together.

And make sure you have adequate supervision in the kitchen.
Then, after everything is all arranged in a pleasing manner in the pan, you mix together (in a bowl)
2 cups tomato juice-you could probably try V-8 for a different taste sensation here.
1 cup water
3 tablespoons quick cooking tapioca-for those of you who didn't grow up in the 60's, tapioca is most commonly used for pudding, but it works as a thickener in this stew. It comes in a little red box that looks like a minute rice box, but much smaller. This recipe is the only thing I've ever used tapioca for, so the little box lasts a very very long time.
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

After this is all mixed together in the bowl, you just pour it over the beef stew in the pan, tightly cover the pan with aluminum foil and stick the whole thing into a 350 degree oven for 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
Again, make sure your dish is approved for appearance.

Then, after the 2 to 2 1/2 hours have passed by and your house smells like beef stew (as long as you remembered to turn on the oven, anyway), take the pan out of the oven-be sure to use oven mitts cause it's hot!-remove the foil and dinner is ready. Some bread or something is good with this stew because the gravy it makes tastes really good when you dunk your bread into it. Or you could have a green salad or something. Or both bread and green salad. Whatever, this stew is really good and easy enough for a lazy person like me to make.
Be sure to put it in bowls and let it cool off a little. Remember it's been in the oven for 2 to 2 1/2 hours and it's hot! As Keith found out when he stuck a spoon in this for a taste test.
Dinner's ready!

What The...

It is about 100 degrees outside today. Keith is outside burning stuff in the backyard. Making the backyard about 200 degrees.

Why? I don't know. And please disregard our junky back yard-he is still working on his gravely project out there. In the 100 degree heat. Sigh...

For The Sake of My Sanity and Cancer-A-Thon

I have to stay off of the etsy forums.

Recently there have been hoards of sellers jumping onto etsy selling knock off designer handbags, wigs, and plasma tvs-things you would normally sell on ebay. So, in an effort to stop these sellers hoards of etsyers start thread after thread all day long about these resellers of mass produced junk in an effort to stop them, thereby filling up etsy's forums with these threads and making admin shut down thread after thread because it is against etsy rules to denigrate another seller in the forums, no matter what they are selling. The etsyers who started doing this found that the shops in question were getting shut down faster than when they went the preferred route of flagging so they are all on a huge bandwagon starting thread after thread. Which in turn causes the poor admin guy who is responsible for monitoring the forums endless rounds of closing these threads. A vicious circle indeed.

So, I think I will resist the urge to check on the forums to see if there is anything of actual interest in there.

And, for a lot of these self proclaimed let's save etsy sellers, if they spent a little more time minding their own shops, they might actually sell something.

And, on another note, I watched the celebrity cancer-a-thon last night. The best part was Homer Simpson's televised colonoscopy. Whoo hoo you bought me a colonoscopy!

I hope they raised a lot of money for research, but you kind of wonder if this isn't just the latest Hollywood lets get a cause fad. Remember all of them wearing the red AIDS ribbons and all of them singing about we are the world and the children and whatever that was all about? And Farm Aid and Live Aid and Comic Relief? Hmmm...where did all those causes go?

I think all of the celebrity Hollywood types need to champion affordable health care for all Americans first- a lot of people with cancer end up bankrupt and/or dead because they can't afford insurance or are under-insured but make too much money to qualify for state coverage. Affordable as in a national health care system that is funded by our taxes that God knows we pay enough of rather than private insurance companies. Oh, but then the insurance companies might be put out of business because as we all know, they aren't in business for their health, and it certainly isn't because they don't make a huge profit on all of us who pay our weekly premiums but then are denied basic treatments because oops, you went out of network, or oops, that treatment is considered experimental, or oops, you went over your yearly limit.

Irritated

Just irritated. My head hurts and I don't feel like dealing with demanding customers today. Yes, I know the customer is always right and I should bend over backwards for every sale, but you know what? For $4.00 it just is NOT worth it to completely redo a listing because you want it a little different. For $40.00 maybe, but for $4.00 a resounding NO! And, if you don't see it in my shop, chances are I DON'T HAVE IT OR IT WOULD BE LISTED!

Okay, now I feel a little better.

A mystery was solved this morning. We have a fancy bird feeder that was hanging in front of the kitty window, but we moved it against the garage after our kitties kept crashing into the window trying to get a bird. Not to mention the time when the window was open and they crashed through and broke the screen trying to get a bird.

So, we moved it over where they could still see it but not be quite so tempted, and Keith filled it with bird seed only to come out and find bird seed not in the feeder but scattered all over the sidewalk. Was it the big blue jays that like to chase off the smaller birds and get all the goodies for themselves? Were they kicking out all the unwanted seed as they rummaged through the offerings?

Nope

This morning I looked out to see the neighbor's black and white kitty sitting directly under the bird feeder salivating at the sight of the innocent little bird that was sitting on the feeder, totally oblivious to the danger below. Then, wham! a leap up as far as little kitty could go and the bird feeder was swinging around wildly, spraying, you guessed it, bird seed all over the sidewalk. The bird of course flew away long before the kitty could get its paws on it.

This is the same kitty that was chasing the dog down the sidewalk and also craps in our yard every chance it gets.

Disturbing

Remember the story about the skeletons found stuffed into trash cans in the storage locker? Well, they found out who they were from dental records, which surprises me that the victims were actually taken to the dentist in their short lives.

A woman died of a drug overdose back in January and the people that she was staying with went to clean out the storage locker where she had been storing some stuff and found the bodies of what were her son and daughter, who had been born in the early 90's, stuffed into the trash cans. The bodies had been in the trash cans for two to four years and showed signs of abuse and apparently Child Protective Services had been called quite a few times during these kids short lives. Where's the father? He went back to Mexico a long time ago. The mother is of course the prime suspect, but you kind of wonder what Dad was doing while these kids were being killed and stuffed into the trash cans.

And, on a lighter note, this morning I went outside in time to see a tiny tiny little Chihuahua running down the street just as fast as his little tiny legs could carry him. The neighbor's black and white kitty was on the sidewalk, so the dumb little dog went 'ooh, a friend!' and of course the kitty swiped at him with its paw and then started chasing the little tiny dog down the street. I thought the dogs were supposed to chase the cats?

This

Is what came in the mail on my birthday.

Nice, huh?

And this


Is what living in what is rapidly becoming a ghetto neighborhood that is near a huge shopping center looks like.