01.01.70
Posted in Transfered from Xanga 2/07 at 12:00 am by Lynette
Today is my DH’s 55th birthday. Just thought I would share the menu for dinner tonight.
Watergate Salad
Baked Potatoes w/sour cream, butter & chives
Grilled Asparagus w/olive oil & freshly grated parmesean cheese
Filet Lyonnaise…Filet Minon stuffed with spinach, garlic & butter baked in a sherry sauce
Devils Food Cake
This is his favorite menu. We have the tradition that the birthday person gets to choose what they want for dinner. The kids always choose McDonalds…I want mexican and Brad choose this menu. It was what I cooked for him on one of our first dates. Needless to say, the above menu costs about $100 to make.
I hope it is as good as I remember.
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Posted in Transfered from Xanga 2/07 at 12:00 am by Lynette
It is time for Socktoberfest. What you may ask is this? Celebration of all things socks or anything you put on your feet. Thanks to Ruby Plaid for pointing me in this direction. It seems like a natural considering my life is basically full of sock related things.
I haven’t settled on my goals for this Soctoberfest. I’ll muse that over and post next Monday. So ladies….and gentlemen, start your needles and join in Soctoberfest.
Eye Candy Friday is the day some of us Bloggers post a really nice picture for you to enjoy. But since everything is brown and dead as we wait for the rains to come…..here is the best I can do.
A wild Fuchsia from a Hummingbirds viewpoint.
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Posted in Transfered from Xanga 2/07 at 12:00 am by Lynette
Once again I’ve been humbled by things out of my control. Think of something really gross. Something you hope to never have to deal with. Something you would save for the special someone in your life….What is it? A Septic Tank.
To be specific OUR SEPTIC SYSTEM. 
There are several troubling things in this picture. The first is ‘manhole ports’. When I think of port I think of cruise, this is not any type of cruise I would want to go on.
Secondly is ’scum’. I have know a few scum in my life, usually male scum….and as a result of finding out the true meaning of ‘full’ I’ve seen scum in the past 24 hours (smelled it too!)
Sludge…I cannot think of anything I would associate with the word sludge that wouldn’t be unpleasant….it was.
In a perfect world, which apparently is not located in my yarn, a septic system is one of those things you have but don’t think about. Apparently I’ve learned that they usually last for about 30 years. Our house is 32 years old.
To be a septic pumper person you must have a good grasp on reality or a good sense of humor or look at the glass (or septic tank) as half empty, not half full. Unfortunately our tank was neither half full or empty….it was full to the top and overflowing. But the good news the pumper-guy said is the tank is in good shape, how did he know, he stuck his head down inside through that manhole cover. The bad news is after the tank was empty, the leach field drained back into the tank for 4 hours. I’ve not checked this morning but my guess is it is still dripping. Thinking on the positive side, I hope all this back drain will give the leach field time to dry out before the downpour rains start and saturate the ground.
Long story short, I now have two more holes in the back yard to go with the many others dug by our dog who hears mysterious noises underground and feels it is her duty to dig and investigate. Therefore, when I walk outside I can trip and sprain my ankle almost everywhere I walk. I also have a very green side yard. If I were paying attention I would have realize that without rain for the past 3 months there is no way my yard would look so green and my neighbor’s hedge should not have grown 4 feet this summer.
Yes, our leach field has failed and we are looking at a few bucks to repair/dig the lines.
I sure hope it will last until next summer.
In the mean time I’m monitoring who is going when and how long they are spending in the shower. Just call my the potty patrol. What a lovely thought.
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Posted in Transfered from Xanga 2/07 at 12:00 am by Lynette
Writing this blog is about all I am able to do. Everything hurts.
Why? you may ask….
Here is a before, the dining room has been without a formal floor since we took out the wall. That is the DH working on patching by the sun room.
Like all those nice food spots around where the table used to be?
Here is the finished dining room. It took us all day to put this pergo floor down. My knees will never be the same. Thankfully it is the last floor we have to do in the house.
Now we have a huge looking room with a small dining table. I could but both leaves in the table and serve 20 people for Thanksgiving, easy.
Since it is Soctoberfest I’ve been doing socks and working on felted slippers using Linda’s hand spun llama and mohair. Not knowing how it would felt I forged forward and made these…Needless to say, they didn’t felt enough.
Slippers before and After
…
Here is a picture of the camp sweater on my…..ta da….nice new floor….
This sweater did EXACTLY what I wanted. It knit up using Debi Bliss Tweed Silk/Wool and it felted to perfection. I guess I’ve finally made enough sucky sweaters to get one that fits.
Finally, socks made on the LeGare from a customer’s hand spun. These will be nice warm winter socks and hopefull she sells them at her Holiday festivals.
So I’m out to the sock machine to do nothing but move my arm as everything else is painful.
Have a great day!
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Posted in Transfered from Xanga 2/07 at 12:00 am by Lynette
Do you know someone who always seems to have chaos in their life? They always complain and if there isn’t something going wrong - they aren’t happy. Well I am not one of those people, I hope I reflect the theory that the glass is half full. But lately my glass must have a crack in it because the water of life seems to be dripping onto the floor.
So Ive decided to do a Gilmore Pro Con list of things here at the Haven of Bliss.
Pro:
The oldest son passed his final physical for the Department of Corrections and things should start rolling for him before the end of the year.
The oldest daughter and her DH are doing great even though they think they are poor/starving college students. (For the record, I’ve seen poor starving people and they aren’t anywhere near that classification.)
The youngest son brought home his report card and it was all B’s. This is an amazing improvement….it validated the fact that I took the step to have him diagnosed with ADHD and put him on meds.
The youngest daughter is almost through with cheerleading. Soon there will be no more practices until 7 at night and we can all sit at the table and eat dinner.
My Dr. appointment went well this week. I am one of the lucky people (actually 1 in 100,000) with my condition but I’ve started new meds and my lungs feel much better.
The roof didn’t leak with these past few showers.
The oldest daughter and her DH might be comming to dinner for Thanksgiving…this makes me smile.
This one can be either pro or con. I have orders for socks but don’t have time to make socks because I have orders for socks.
Con:
The DH still hasn’t got a deer, even after spending $300 for the license in Oregon. My guess is we will not revisit that again next year.
The septic is terminal. Our leach field has failed and I’m just waiting on they ‘poo poo’ guy to serve the final blow with an estimate.
The dog can hardly walk on her back leg. She is only 6 years old and the operation would cost $500.
Our new fridge is leaking water…I hate Sears.
My old washer is leaking water….I’ve never had a new washer…maybe it is time.
Apparently the wiring in our house is totally skrewed up. We’re probably a fire waiting to happen. Re-wiring the box will cost $1500.
When looking at the above pro/con list I see that the pros are mostly regarding family and the cons are things.
Even though the cons outweigh the pros I would much rather have ‘good’ family things….because without family we have no legacy, no joy, no happiness, no peace. Family is everything and I am truly rich in the fact that my family is healthy and near by.
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Posted in Transfered from Xanga 2/07 at 12:00 am by Lynette
I love fall. As a child I would stand in the middle of our street (aptly named Crescent Ave….now I live in Crescent City, 400 miles away from Lodi). The warm wind blew the leaves down the street. On a really blustery day I donned my skates, stood in the street with a big piece of cardboard held high above my head and let the wind push me down the road as the leaves chased me. I now know the neighbors thought I was weird, my Mother probably knew I was strange but who cared, it was Autumn, my favorite season.
Up here on the Pacific Northwest Coast fall is a bit different. There is still a warm wind occasionally but the trees do not drop their leaves, just redwood needles. There are beautiful sunrises and spiders. Spiders you say? Yup big, honkin spiders.
The spiders have created a bit of a problem for my youngest daughter. She is afraid of them, and won’t walk anywhere where they have made a web.
She cannot feed the rabbit because there is a spider living above his cage.
She will not walk out to the car by the side garage door because, there is a spider in the rose bushes.
She will not go out the back door to the yard because there is a spider.
As of this morning she won’t go in the kitchen because…you guessed it, there is a spider making his web above the stove. The picture is blury because he was traveling kinda fast.
But, there are no spiders in the sun room where, as you can see, I’ve hung my recently dyed yarn waiting to make socks.
On a side note….I love the lavender and purple colors…I’ve run out of color combinations to try and this customer gave me her order with colors so I’ve been having fun trying new things and actually like some of them. I’ll dye some more and you’ll see them up on ETSY for sale in the next couple of weeks.
So that means we can only go out the front deck door, through the garage and out the side garage door, around the side of the house to the car in the front drive.
Why, you may ask, don’t I just kill the spiders and make all our lives much easier…Well…they actually serve a purpose. My neighbor has all these stumps from trees he’s cut down in the past and he burns his trash on them every morning (which is illegal because it is no burning but he does it anyway, including plastic and anything from the house….it stinks up the neighborhood and makes my lungs feel just great!). Those spider webs trap all the flying termites that live in those stumps and POUR out after he burns probably because he has warmed up their homes and now they feel the need to live long and prosper in someone elses yard. Therefore, when looking out the windows we have spider webs with termites stuggling to get loose but just getting more tangled up. The spiders wait until they are totally wrapped up in web and pounce. It is reality TV at it’s best!
As soon as the rains come all those spiders will skeedaddle somewhere and I’ll wash the windows and take down the webs. But until then let’s hope the front door stays clear or KT will never leave the house.
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Posted in Transfered from Xanga 2/07 at 12:00 am by Lynette
What a busy weekend. We did go purchase a new washer to replace the old one that is now living on the side of my house. I have it hooked up to the outside water and will use it to felt. Speaking of felting…check out these very nice (if I do say so myself) slippers I made this weekend while watching the World Series.
The gray ones are knit from Linda’s wool and, I think, llama. They are size 6 womens. The ‘buttons’ are needle felted. I really couldn’t think of anything cute to do on those. I thought about ribbon but what do you think? Any ideas?
The one on the left are from commercial Brown Sheep yarn. The flowers are needle felted (I’m lov’in this needle felting thing!). These are size 2-3 children’s.
The interesting fact is they are knit on the same size needles with the same pattern. But this shows how different yarns felt….well….differently. So once again I will say…always knit a swatch.
I’ve finished winding the yarn that was dyed on Friday. All those skeins are in nice neat little balls with labels so I know who they are for and what size to knit them
.
I can hardly wait to knit up the lavender and purple ones. I think they will turn out really cute.
Check out my Christmas Cactus. All 4 plants I have are starting to bloom. I guess they like the sunroom.
Finally, I just got a call from the oldest son. He was driving out to Smith River to go to work and hit a deer. He is OK but apparently the deer is not. And, unfortunately, neither is his truck. The grill, lights and bumper are totally messed up. Plus he cannot get up the hood.
Just another day in paradise.
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Posted in Transfered from Xanga 2/07 at 12:00 am by Lynette
Water can carve its
way, even through stone.
And when trapped,
water makes a new path.
‘Memoirs of a Geisha’
I am water. I wear a silver necklace. The chain flows around my neck and drops to a pendant that is the sign of water. Last night. while trying to get over my ‘mad on’ regarding the flooding ONCE AGAIN of my workroom/laundry room, I realized….I am water. Why fight it?
The above quote reflects events my life. Married at 19 to a much older man (not only in years but in soul). I had to carve my way through 3 years of marriage. When trapped I made a new path, I got a divorce, made a way for myself and became self-sufficient. I met my current husband after 2 years of being single. We have 4 beautiful children and live in a great area and have been married for 25 years. We’ve had our ups and downs as every marriage has. Troubled times and times I thought I would again take the path of water and flow out of the marriage. But we worked through things, both of us on our own paths, flowing in our lives sometimes separately and sometimes in the same direction. My life now is good but….Somewhere along the way I’ve lost that secure feeling of being in control of my future, my independent spirit. I no longer work so I depend upon my husband for everything. Then came the realization that he will retire in 2.5 - 3 years and the changes that will result are unsettling. I feel like this reality has resulted in days that are like water running through my fingers. So much will change. No more health insurance, no more free days to do whatever I like. No more alone time.
So I guess it is time for me to start thinking toward the future. I cannot control the path my life will take, I can only hold on for the ride. As we know, water goes where it wants and the way is not always easy. It flows, meets adversity and goes around it. I should not be depressed or discouraged about the flow of my life in the next few years. I need to regain that sense of adventure and independence. I’m just not sure where to start…perhaps by getting all the water out of my laundry room?
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Posted in Transfered from Xanga 2/07 at 12:00 am by Lynette
My little Halloween fairy is fairly sick today. She woke up at 4 with the up-chucks and is spending the day on the couch.
But we got picks of the costume her big sister made for her. She did a great job and KT just loves it. I hope she is well enough to attend the Halloween party tomorrow afternoon.
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Posted in Transfered from Xanga 2/07 at 12:00 am by Lynette
You know I don’t feel well when I do not want to knit. I’ve spent the day on the couch alternating Tylenol and Asprin for the joint pain. Finally tonight I feel better. I cannot imagine this is ‘the’ flu but all 4 of us have had it in the past 48 hours.
Perhaps the reason it has been fairly mild for me is because I had a flu shot 3 weeks ago.
Now the husband is on the couch and I know it is a matter of time before he becomes eruptive (if you know what I mean.)
So tomorrow I’ll try to get back on my feet and nurse the boys to feeling better.
I sure hope the oldest son doesn’t get it because he just had 4 wisdom teeth out and that would not be a good experience.
So this week’s goals are to….feel better (duh!), get everyone back to work/school. Finish knitting up the order for 18 pairs of socks. Dye the yarn I’ve sold on EBAY.
So, if you’ve purchased yarn from me within the last week, I apologize for the delay, it will go out this week.
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