Category Archives: Home & Garden

A “Go-To” How-To

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Came across another “How-To” website tonight that looks promising, called Quamut. It’s a new internet venture by Barnes and Noble, completely different from any of their bookselling efforts. This site has professionally written articles on a variety of topics similar to a Wiki that you can read online free, but if you want to download the article for a printed reference that you can keep there is a small charge.

Each day there is a different download available free, so that is good incentive to keep coming back to the site every day. Today’s free download was about exterior painting. I grabbed that and put it on the wife’s desk. We’ve known for months that the exterior of the house needs a fresh coat of paint. This lets her know that we can do it ourselves if she’s willing, and we’ll save some money as long as we plan for a couple of days when the weather will be not too hot and not too much wind to paint.

Time to Wake Up

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How do twelve people sleeping under the same roof for the holiday weekend wake up? Well, at Mother’s summer house we all were roused from slumber by the beautiful chimes of her grandfather clock at 7:15 this morning.

Mother and my wife were already in the kitchen frying up 6 pounds of bacon, scrambling 3 dozen eggs, and setting up a huge self serve waffle bar. At 7:30 it is already 76 degrees, so we menfolks are heading out to the deck for a seat to sip coffee and let the kids get their plates fixed up.

My brother actually asked why the grandfather clock only woke him up at 7:00 and not through the night. Mother has placed the grandfather clock in her foyer, on the narrow wall fronting the hallway to the first floor guest bedroom and her master bedroom. Those two rooms hear it the loudest.

Full House

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Well, Mother’s summer house is chock full of people this weekend. My brother arrived with his family early this morning and combined with my offspring there are 6 kids running through the house having a blast and 6 adults trying to talk amongst themselves and keep some semblance of order.

After a big breakfast we all put on bathing suits and grabbed our beach stuff and it took four boatloads full of people to get everyone over to the island. The weather was perfect all day – warm and a slight breeze. We spend hours combing the sand for sharks teeth and sea shells, and Mother had packed two coolers with sandwiches, chips, cookies and soft drinks, so we had a feast on the blankets while we waved at all the other boats zipping by.

When everyone had enough sun we started sending boatloads back to the house. Now we’re in the middle of fixing hot dogs and burgers on the grill while the kids are down on the dock trying to net a few crabs and sharing stories. It’s been a really nice day for all of us and its great to have the families together.

Mother’s Guest Rooms

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We arrived at Mother’s late last night after the long drive and I have to admit that I paid little attention to where the kids ended up sleeping. I know they went to the guest rooms upstairs, but they settled in quickly and were sound asleep without much nagging or prodding from the adults.

Allergies

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This spring has brought so much rain and such a quick increase in temperatures that everyone seems to be having trouble with allergies this year.

I’ve tried a series of over the counter allergy medications and nothing seems to work for me. The pharmacist tells me that most of the allergy formulas have been changed to fight the drug abusers, and that the “good stuff” is not sold over the counter any more. That really blows – why should I have to go see a doctor and get a prescription for something that I used to be able to buy at will, as needed, on my own just because some lowlife trash wants to cook up batches of methadone and kill themselves off?

So I did go see the doctor for a $75 office visit fee and then bought a prescription allergy medication for $30 and spent $105 and two hours of my life to get a box of pills that should have cost $10 and taken 10 minutes to pick up from the local drug store.