Even The Happiest People Have Bad Days

That’s my excuse for posting so late today. I’ll probably still post briefly because my right arm is in rough shape. The whole no ibuprofen thing does NOT at all work for me! I didn’t take it last night and while I slept okay, I could barely move when I woke up.

I managed to drag myself into the bathroom. My phone was on the charger and I unplugged it. It slipped into he sink. The sink was dry and I was hurting, so I hobbled over to the toilet to sit down. I grabbed my day’s vitamins and the ibuprofen bottle. I don’t HAVE to quit until tomorrow and I needed relief. I reached over and grabbed the drinking glass and set it in the sink. I filled it and it tipped over. I cursed at it and uprighted it. I tried it again and it tipped again. I thought I was so shaky that the glass kept tipping over…NO!!!! I remembered the phone falling in the sink.

Needless to say, the phone was toast.

I dried it as best as I could and took my vitamins and other pills, including an ibuprofen. Then I threw the phone in the small backpack I carry things around the house in and went to make coffee. The ibuprofen started to kick in within a half hour and I was still in pain, but less of it.

I sat the phone down and looked at it. Kaline and Carla were still lit up on it and it looked okay, but when I tried the buttons; nothing’. Then it became independent; when I hit the buttons nothing happened, but it was hitting buttons of its own. I didn’t touch it and I heard the beeps of numbers being pushed. The clear button still worked but every time I hit it a few seconds later more numbers. One time the operator voice came on. It said “we’re sorry; your plan does not include international calls.” Yikes! The phone is trying to call Tibet!

I was still in pain, but I had to go to get a new phone, so the walker and I went to pay a visit to the Verizon store. My phone was insured, but I was also up for a new phone, so I looked. I got a phone with a touch screen because I figure eventually that will be all there is anyway. It’s still a dumb phone, but I’m training my shaky right hand to like the slippery screen. We’ll see how that works.

For lunch, stressed and sore, I got a Jamoca shake from Arby's on the way home. Truly after starting out the door better but still sore anyway, too much driving, too much standing, I earned a shake! I could barely get up the three steps into the house. I’ve pretty much rested and carefully stretched all afternoon.  I took another ibuprofen


And now here I am, after dinner, after baseball, where in harmony with the day I’ve had the Tigers and Reds both lost, and almost after the day is done! And barely in time to still call it the Wednesday Hodge Podge!

1. My daughter2 is graduating from university this month and plans to teach elementary school. What are three qualities you most want to see evidenced in a teacher?

Patience, good communication skills that are suitable for the age of the kids without talking down to them and a sincere love of kids.


2. You can tell a lot about a person by_____________________.

The frequency and sincerity of their smile


3. What song makes you think spring?

One Step At A Time, Jordin Sparks, it’s a springy beat and in the video she’s wearing a beautiful spring green dress. It’s also great for graduations.


4. May 1st is Mother Goose Day...share your favorite nursery rhyme.


Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, only I knew just three lines

Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are?

Up above the world so high , like a diamond in the sky

Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are?

5. What makes someone unforgettable?

The way they make you see yourself.


6. Should music and/or art be part of a well-rounded education?

Absolutely! Understanding the qualities of the arts enhance education. Business and professional communication contain references to the classics. Building a business, even one that is already grown, is a work of art itself, so even if not for the sake of enjoying art and music, understanding what qualities people find appealing is essential.


7. What social situations make you flustered or nervous?

Anything in a big group. I prefer groups of a dozen or less people for a big party.


8. Insert your own random thought here.


I guess I started with a random thought but, Oh wait!

My brother found a huge spider, and by huge I mean he put a quarter next to it and the quarter was dwarfed by it, in his yard and found it necessary to take a photo and post it on Facebook. After replying that I was never coming to his house again, I blocked the post because it was making the hair stand up on my neck and my skin crawl. I won’t be able to go to his house without looking around like a paranoid freak and I am serious about asking if there are hotels near him. ::shudder::

I'm NOT Spidermom!

I had an appointment with my doctor this morning to have a “thing” looked at. I had what looked like a giant pimple or mosquito bite on my upper chest a couple weeks ago. “Spider bite?” David teased and I immediately thought about a movie I saw on cable many years ago where a woman had a similar mark on her cheek. It got bigger and eventually hundreds of tiny spiders burst out of her cheek. I told David about the movie, that it might be a spider nest!

Okay, I know that there aren’t spiders that build nests under people’s skin, I looked it up after seeing that movie, but it was an interesting joke with this. The mark went away after I’d popped it and put sanitizer on it, but then it came back, bigger and warm to the touch. So I called and made an appointment. After some online research, I thought maybe a boil, those can happen for many reasons and a compromised immune system is something that can trigger them, or I was still sticking with the baby spiders. I told David I might need a prescription for antibiotics or prenatal vitamins.

The doctor got a chuckle out of the spider theory. He did assure me that there were no reports he knew of about spiders hatching from under a human’s skin outside of Hollywood, but took a culture for testing and said he’d make sure there wasn’t a staph infection or eggs.

It’s a cyst. The doctor said he could remove it, but because of where it is, he’d suggest going to a surgeon for the procedure to minimize scarring. So I left with an antibiotic, not prenatal vitamin, prescription and a note and number to make an appointment with a surgeon for the outpatient procedure. WAY better than baby spiders!  The only place I've ever had stitches is in my mouth.  This will be a new experience for me.

When we dropped off the prescription, we passed the U-Haul place where there was a trailer with Wapakoneta on it. I love Wapakoneta because it is just a COOL name for a city. We stayed in Wapakoneta once just so I could say “I slept in Wapakoneta.” I told David that I’d love to rent a Wapakoneta U-Haul if I needed a U-Haul, but if they brought me the one with the giant spider on it, I’d tell them to send it back. Nuh-uh, no way would I drive a van with a huge spider on it. He mentioned my concern about the spider nest and I wondered of I’d feel differently if I had hatched hundreds of baby spiders. Would my maternal instincts kick in? That would cure my arachnophobia if I had a bunch of 8-legged kids!

I think I’m going to limit my mothering to no more than 4 legs. Those maternal instincts kicked in with a pair of humans when they were babies and a certain 4-legged creature who thinks I actually am her mother. That’s enough for me right now. Hundreds times 8 is more legs than my maternal instincts can take!

Wednesday Hodge Podge

1.. The NFL playoffs were held this past weekend and this year's Superbowl lineup will feature The New York Giants versus The New England Patriots. How do you define 'patriot'?

Super Bowl Champions? :)


A patriot is one who thinks of country before self. Today, there are more football patriots than American patriots.




2. What's something in your life right now that feels like a 'giant'?

The reorganizing project in the house, which is just a nail and hammer away from remodeling. I’m making decent progress though. Tomorrow is assemble the first shelving unit day!



3. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think back to being 18?

Voting! I turned 18 in a Presidential election year and I was pretty excited about voting. My birthday was a Sunday, but I was at the Secretary of State office on Monday to register.

Many presidents for whom I didn’t vote lived in the White House before a candidate for whom I voted did, but I finally felt like I had a right to complain about it!



4. Coconut-mashed potatoes-vanilla ice cream-mayonnaise...which white food would be the hardest to give up?

That one’s easy. Vanilla ice cream; there would be no Baseball Nut ice cream without it!






5. Describe an incident or a day you remember as the coldest you've ever experienced?

Once the temperature drops below70 outside, I’m pretty much cold all the time, unless I’m in bed or someplace with heat. Right now I’m wearing the thick fleece robe I always wear over jammas or clothes at home and my furry house slippers!


The coldest I remember in my mind was ice fishing when I was little and I think that’s where my intense dislike for cold came from. It was a family adventure when I was 6 or 7 years old. It was cold enough that the ice on the lake was thick enough to drive on to get to the shanty for fishing. Everyone was in snowmobile suits with ski masks and gloves, much layered warm clothing. They sent my brother and me outside to play. I guess it’s because we were restless in the shanty. I remember being so cold that I was sitting next to the ice shanty balled up and rocking back and forth praying. You see, it was supposed to be fun and I felt bad that I wasn’t having fun at all. In fact, I was praying that God wouldn’t let me die from the cold because it would make my parents feel bad if I died. I was a kid. That is what I remember thinking, that it would hurt their feelings if I died.

That memory has never left me and I don’t think I’ve ever perceived I was that cold. It was the most terrified I remember being of the cold.



6. You're hosting a brunch...what's your favorite dish to prepare and serve?

I could say “waffles” because David cooks the waffles. :)


Seriously, if I’m hosting the brunch, my specialty is cinnamon chip pancakes.



7. How do you combat negative thinking?

I write in my journal about it. Sometimes it takes a few pages, or even a couple days of writing if something is really bugging me, but I usually find the answer to getting over my troubles.



8. Insert your own random thought here.

I made stuffed pepper soup Sunday with a recipe I found online. I did a half batch, which was 3 servings. I had the last one for lunch yesterday and I don’t know what I’m gonna do now that it’s gone! Oh my, it was HEAVEN! I need to make a huge pot of it to freeze!

Click photo for recipe

Come join Joyce at From This Side of The Pond and share your Hodge Podge of answers!

Finishing Thursday

Mmmm…. A nice warm cup of Caramel Crunch decaf and a hearty piece of thickly frosted devil’s food cake. It’s totally okay cake, and totally delicious. We finally found a local source for The Butterfly Bakery sugar free products locally! I don’t “need” my cake to be sugar free, but the piece of sugar free cake is a lot bigger than the regular sugar cake for the same calories! When I first tasted the double chocolate sugar free muffins, David didn’t realize were sugar free when he got them for me, I thought they must be sweetened with Stevia. Stevia is the only non-sugar sweetener I’ve ever tasted that has absolutely no not-quite-sugar taste. Even Splenda, which I love, has a slightly not-sugar taste. But The Butterfly Bakery doesn’t sweeten with Stevia, their sugar free products are sweetened with Lactitol, a sugar alcohol made from milk! I used my pocket Weight Watchers point’s calculator and I could have one of those huge muffins for breakfast and still have yogurt, fruit and coffee! In the Toledo area you can find The Butterfly Bakery products at Giant Eagle in the refrigerated section of the bakery. David brought me home the frosted devil’s food cake. With that Devil, I’m in Heaven!

A couple hours after dinner, dessert was easy. Tonight, dinner was the challenge. David picked up a package of Amish chicken breasts when we were at Sofo Foods, my Italian grocery in town, Monday. After a couple of nights he worked, and he had steak last night. When David has steak, I usually have tamale. I get a six-pack of corn husk tamales from Schwan’s every now and then and they fit perfect when David has steak because he likes tamales as much as I like steak! Tonight I was going to do the chicken breasts the easy way – Shake-N-Bake. They were huge and I figured I’d cut one on half and cook one for me and whole breast for him and freeze the other half and whole for dinner next week some time. So, I opened up the package and was a little bit frozen looking at them.

Now, I know this makes me sound incredibly clueless white collar suburban, but the chicken breasts had BONES! I have never in my life cooked a chicken breast with bones in it. I have cooked whole chickens with bones, the carcass makes great soup, but never, ever, have I done just a breast with bones. David had never really seen a raw chicken breast with bones in it out of the package either. I am so glad I decided to do Shake-N-Bake tonight because the bake time for with and without bones is different! Learn something new every day, huh? Now I know many of you reading this are looking incredulously at the screen and more are probably laughing at me. It’s oaky. I only aim to entertain. The chicken, by the way, was wonderful. Amish chickens are a cut above, even if not a cut away from the bones.

It was windy today! I was working on this week’s school assignments and would get a chill because I was seeing fluffy masses falling out of the corner of my eye. It was relief that it was NOT snow! It was leaves falling from our oak, and the neighbors' oaks. All falling in our yard. I had to do some budgeting this year after our spending last year and either the snow plowing or the leaf raking had to go. Since that was my bill, I got to choose. Easy enough, really. Rick from Rapid Snow Removal plows the driveway, shovels the walks and salts everything. I have an incredible fear of falling on the ice. Okay, I have an incredible fear of falling in the kitchen too, but the fear when there’s ice is about quadrupled. I feel less guilty about leaving David to rake the leaves than shovel the snow. From when I used to be able to do both, leaf raking is less strenuous than snow shoveling and the temperatures are more extreme with snow too. So we aren’t getting the leaves raked this year so I can be sure that no matter how much snow we get we can get a professional plow job. Still, it would be nice if the wind could figure out a way to blow the leaves out of our yard instead of in!


Weigh-In day wasn’t a happy one this morning. I was up a pound. I know that had everything to do with not really sticking to my plan yesterday. A little too much candy and a big bowl of popcorn. Popcorn, even air-popped, does that to me because it makes me retain water. Weigh-In day is Thursday and as a rule, I don’t eat popcorn on Wednesdays.

We’re going out for Pop’s birthday Saturday to my favorite local Italian restaurant, La Scola. I’ve wanted to take my Dad there since the first time we went. That first time happened to also be with Tori and Rina and they both said at that time, “We have to come back and bring Papa!” Well, that will be Saturday. After dinner, the girls are going to spend the night with us. I need to have the dining room ready for games night!

I was very pleased to find out that a problem I’ve been occasionally having since July is more than likely an MS symptom. In perspective, anything that’s an MS symptom is not something else wrong with me. I am a member of a discussion group in the Weight Watchers community of women on the plan and dealing with MS. So I threw my since July problem out there for discussion to see if anyone else had experienced it. It doesn’t happen every night and it has never happened more than once in a night, but sometimes as I’m just about to fall into unconscious sleep, I hear a loud noise that instantly puts me wide awake. When it first happened in the summer, we were sleeping with the window open and I thought it was from outside. I woke David up and asked him if he heard something. Yeah, dumb. If he’d heard it, he’d be awake too. It happens once or twice a week. The responses were as varied as MS symptoms are. But about half of the replies were that they had experienced that noise that wakes you up as you’re falling asleep. We all agreed that it was one of the less debilitating symptoms, but I encouraged everyone who’s had it happen to mention it to their neurologist next time they see them. I have an appointment with my new local neurologist in January and I’m definitely going to mention it in that first visit. Like I said in the forum, in the long run we owe it to each other and to everyone not yet diagnosed to tell the doctors everything. If one neurologist has just one patient with a given symptom and she talks to a colleague who has just 2 with that same symptom, it could start some dialog that could eventually add another piece to the MS puzzle, no matter how small it seems. That one piece could complete a section that suddenly makes sense to researchers. But the doctors can’t compare notes if we don’t give them notes to compare!

Okay, much homework to finish tomorrow, so bed time! ‘Night!

Links:
The Butterfly Bakery

Rapid Snow Removal

La Scola Italian Grill

Giving Thursday

That’s my Dad when he was a teenager!
Credit - “The Old Stuff” brag book page by Digitalegacies Designs

It’s one week before Thanksgiving Thursday, so, I’m going to make this “Giving Thursday” so I have something to be thankful I gave next week!

I won’t have a cyber presence next Thursday and a good portion of Friday. Oh, it’s all family stuff. The Friday part has nothing to do with shopping! I promote things all of you Black Friday fans might enjoy, but the truth is, I won’t be joining you! If when all is said and done on this planet, I find that I haven’t been good enough to get into Heaven after all, I will spend the rest of eternity in a mall with a sale paper!

I love looking at all of the Christmas displays and the lights everywhere during the holidays, but when I’m in the store looking at those displays, it’s during the week, during the day if I can, or maybe near close on a Tuesday, when the crowds are smaller. I also shop in non-mall department stores, like Kmart or Target and small local shops. I save money on the things I make for gifts, so I can avoid sale crowds!

I have friends and family who LOVE the rush of Black Friday and that whole holiday mob. If I see a good sale on something that might interest them, I pass on the information and I really do love the marketing phenomenon. I just prefer looking at the statistics rather than experiencing it first hand!

Today I’m going to take an extended lunch to run a few errands, including the shopping I need to do for my contributions for Thanksgiving dinner! I make the cranberry relish (see Davlicious Recipes) and decorated cookies using my turkey cookie cutters. I’m also in charge of getting the Starbucks coffee and flavored creamers. Verona and pumpkin spice, it gives Thanksgiving dinner the definite touch of Nani-flavor!

Before I leave on those errands, I want to do that giving I was talking about! I did a small set of brag book pages with “The Old Stuff” Brag books are awesome gifts, especially nice for those of us on limited funds and a mallphobia! I have pages I made, some I downloaded and iPhoto. Add a mini-album from the dollar store and a few other supplies with my glue gun and it makes a beautiful hybrid masterpiece! Well, anyway, a great gift!

So, if you are thinking along similar lines,or if you are now, Here are 5 pages you can add to the collection to choose from for your project!

Sorry, this link is expired.

Happy Halloween!

My first Jack-o-lantern!

I have a love-hate feeling about this holiday. There is only one thing I hate, but it is major. WHY oh WHY do people insist on thinking of spiders as “decoration?” My arachnophobia is on high alert at this time of year because those creepy things are looking to move into the house because it’s getting colder anyway. Giant arachnids on people lawns are NOT decoration! To me, they are paralyzing sight. If I had young kids that I went with when they trick or treated, they would not stop at giant spider houses. Yick!

I go so far as to refuse to download halloween scrapbook kits if they have spiders in them, even if they are free, even if I PAID for them. I don’t buy from displays that have the little plastic spiders on them and David has to get the bags of hershey’s halloween candy because they have spiders on the boxes.

I’m really not THAT bad, except at this time of year. There are so many of those things everywhere that it creeps me out to the point of sheer terror. I killed a real one in the house last week and was actually trembling for about 15 minutes after. David keeps threatening me with getting me cured, but the psychologist’s cure is to make the victim...I mean patient, face their fear and look at huge ones and even touch them! I can tell you from how I react at this time of year, that won’t work with me, it’ll make it worse, it does every October!


But other than a heightened sensitivity of my phobia, I love everything else about Halloween!

Last night I carved the pumpkin. It’s our first jack-o-lantern! We are such amateurs! Next year, we’ll be more careful to select a pumpkin with a flat bottom and a longer stem on top for taking the lid off to put in the candle! But, it looks okay. I’ll want to be sure to get a picture of the house with the pumpkin on the porch!

Another first for me, I roasted the pumpkin seeds! I ate about half of them too! I’d commented to David that I seemed to remember more seeds from a pumpkin when I was a kid. I suggested it might be the ozone layer, that global warming was responsible for a lower yield of seeds. Nah, it’s another case of my grown up brain reading a file my childhood brain created. It seems the mental notes in crayon were not drawn in actual size. The pictures of Dave and me building a snowman with Dad show a lot smaller snowman than I remembered too. I know those snowmen were usually as tall as DAD, not ME!

Tuesday I packed up the candy bags. Each bag has a fun-size chocolate bar, Snickers, Nestle Wafer or a choice from the assorted Hershey bag, either a mini pack of sweet tarts or Smarties and three tootsie roll midgies. I made 45 bags, in accordance with the number we had last year. I made 40 bags last year, but we had 5 more kids. (who got candy from the overflow bowl!) We make sure to have extras so we also have extra fun size bars and tootsie rolls if we go over last year’s count. We don’t have kids, so not having the expense of raising them, we can give a little extra for Halloween! It’s the one time of year that you can spoil a stranger’s kids without them wanting to look you up on the Internet for a record!

Last year I greeted visitors with my batty tiara. The kids who came to the door got a kick out of that. We actually had a great bunch of kids last year. Friendly and most of them even said “thank you! I commend the awesome parents in Toledo!! I even got that politeness from kids who were traveling with no parents, just other kids.

Trick or treating is from 6PM-8PM in Toledo, so with Halloween being on a Friday, adults can still have their parties after the kids are done. This year David and I will be attending a party that one of his coworkers is hosting after begging is over, so I’ll be in costume during the kids’ time. They’ll be greeted by a giant Mounds bar and if all goes well for David getting out a little early to help me, that Mounds bar will be sitting on the porch with a giant Almond Joy! We’re going to reprise our costumes from 2005, since it will be a new group of people seeing my costume handiwork!

I’ll be sure to get some pictures to scrap a few fun pages. Unfortunately, my memory will have to remember my favorite costumes like last year. It’s not cool to take pictures of other people’s kids on Halloween, but they are all so darned cute! I wish I could have taken video of our first trick or treater last year, both inside and outside the house!

I don’t know if it was just Halloween excitement or if she saw the two cats in the doorway, but our first trick or treater last year was about four or five, an adorable ladybug, who got to the the sidewalk in front of the door and just took off across the grass for the porch. Kaline and Baggle made a mad scramble up the stairs, Baggle first, then Kaline on top of him, it was like watching fleeing cartoon cats. I could hardly stop laughing! The little ladybug’s Mom caught up with her as I was opening the door.

The little ladybug had twinkling eyes and the most excited smile on her face as I put the candy bag in her pumpkin bucket. With wide eyes she said “Oh Boy!”

Her Mom reminded her, “What do you say?”

“Trick or treat!” a pause, “thank you!!”

Yeah, after so many years in a neighborhood where we didn’t have ANY trick or treaters, I was so excited to give out candy that I didn’t wait for the “trick or treat.” But with the exception of terrorized cats, the rest of the night went smoothly.

I can’t wait until tonight! Happy Halloween!!

Irrational Fears

There are two things I can say I DON’T like about spring. Just two, the laundry list of dislikes is WAY bigger for the winter, but there are two biggies for spring and they both zapped me big time yesterday!

I had a headache. Not your run of the mill headache, I had a “the trees are budding, the trees are budding!” headache! I try not to be a crybaby about it. My allergies are so mild compared to what a lot of other people deal with, but the spring tree pollen allergies are the worst. I’m usually mildly discomforted for about a week, last week, then I have about three days where I get nasty, blinding headaches and try to fight off any worse. If I get a full sinus attack, it’s a miserable and stuffy week. If I can manage to deal with the headaches and fend off the full attack, I’m in the clear until fall! So Monday was the start of what I hope every year is just a few days of sporadic pain. Wish me luck!

The other thing I don’t like about spring, the thing I can say I truly hate about spring, is the return of the beasts that think they own the house. Those nasty 8-legged creatures that find their pleasure in paralyzing me with fear.

David works the evening shift on Mondays, so he’s usually home during the day, even on the sunny train days, he’s usually back in time to have lunch before work. Yesterday we sat having lunch and my eyes glanced up long enough to see the dark mass up in the corner where the wall and ceiling meet. I took a breath and calmly told David there was an unwanted guest on the wall. The wonderful thing about a 6’5” mate who is NOT arachnophobic is that he can, with a small corner of paper towel, reach and squish a spider, no marks on the ceiling. And he can get right up to the thing’s level, it doesn’t fall, it gets squished.

Unfortunately, that lunch time one was the lookout. Sorta like a suicide bomber. It spreads terror, then dies, but not until it send vital information back to the camp. “The tall defender is present, abort plans for a midday attack.”

Of course, since it was a beautiful day yesterday, we had all the windows open letting in the fresh air. When it started getting dark and cooler in the evening, I went to pull down the shades and close some of the windows. It wasn’t dark, just getting dark, so when I went to pull down the shade on the upstairs hall window, I almost fell backwards! Thankfully it was on the outside of the window, but The Terminator, the GIANT spider the suicide bomber contacted seconds before he was squished was sitting on the window. David was at work. It was just me and the cats at home.

I immediately closed the window. Kaline had tried to climb that screen Monday morning and, while she dismounted as soon as she heard the raised voice of discipline so I don’t think she damaged it, there was no way I was getting my glasses wearing self close enough to the window to check it out just then! After staring, shaking and beginning to hyperventilate, I grabbed a hold of myself and pulled the blind down. It took a few minutes, but I did manage to convince myself that it was on the outside and with the closed window and it was too big to get in the house.

I know it’s an irrational fear. Even the half-dollar size wood spiders that nest in the roof area of our house are much smaller than I am...much smaller than my foot or a baseball bat. Okay, after seeing the ceilings in my rooms at Dad’s house, David almost told me I couldn’t bring my baseball bat, or as I called it my “spider-squisher.” If they weren’t moving, it was nail them with the end of the bat and twist. As Grandma would say, “They won’t have the guts to do that again.” If they moved, it was a half can of spider spray until they stopped moving. Then when they fall, pound them a few times with the bat. They STILL didn’t have the guts to do it again!

Well, Ohio spiders are about five times as big as Michigan spiders. And the nastiest, biggest ones are usually on the outside of the second story windows. Sadly, what I’m most terrified of is the sight of them, followed by the knowledge that they are there. So, you can see that closing the blinds is not enough to make the goose-flesh subside. Killing them or seeing them killed is what I need to shake the creepy crawlies.

So this evening when David gets home, we’ll do the prevention drill we did last year that actually seemed to work, at least in the house. We patrol the basement, where the indoor ones camp to plot their assault on me, and shop-vac the ceiling and all the crevices. Then, David entertains the kids while I liberally spider spray the whole basement. Hot Shot spider spray will kill and keep most of them out for 3 months! Around the beginning of August, I go down and give the basement a booster vaccine.

As for the Terminator, I do ritually spray down the screens and the frames around the windows. Perhaps we could try a controlled burn on the roof? :)


Well, there’s my trauma of the day yesterday. Let’s move on to something happier, like today’s scrapbooking freebie!

As promised yesterday, part 2 of “In Only Seven Days” is offered and my sample layout for this kit is ready for your viewing too!


St. Joseph, Michigan

Credits: Kit - In Only Seven Days by Digitalegacies, Font - MA Sexy

And here is Day 2 of In Only Seven Days!


(sorry, link is expired)