Turns out I spent $60 on a Shop Vac to use one of its accessory attachment pieces to join the washer drain hose to the 27 ft. vacuum hose from the pool with a good bit of electrical tape. Net result? I can do all the laundry I want. Yes, the hose is hanging out the kitchen window, but hey – since when does aesthetics have anything to do with effectiveness? ...

I’m now the proud owner of a 4.5 horsepower Shop Vac, the strongest sucking one on the shelf. As you might have guessed, my brother-in-law suggested taking a Shop Vac to the drain, as he’s sucked all manner of weird things out of drains countless times over the years. Not so for me, I’m afraid. Either there’s nothing stuck in the trap in that...

Now that we have the holes in the privacy fence repaired, Cheerio has figured out she can still get out of the yard by going up on the pool deck and hopping over the fence into the neighbor’s backyard from there. The neighbor’s house is a rental house, is currently empty and has fence gate issues, as well, so I had to figure out a way to prevent access to...

Yesterday (Saturday) morning, we got up early and met my BFF Patsy at IHOP for breakfast at 8.

We tackled the repair of the privacy fence on Saturday. Second Son decided we should just get it out of the way, so I called Baby Sis to see if she’d go to Lowe’s with me to get the lumber (she’s got a truck, I don’t) and called Dad to see if he’d bring extra tools and come in to supervise and engineer the project. We got started about...

We’re going to have some major fun at our house this month. I know you’ll be wishing you could be here to share the joy, so I’ll do my best to post pictures and maybe even a video or two so you can feel included. The first bit ‘o fun on the schedule was opening our pool. This is a picture of our pool, taken oh…probably at least 4 summers...

Once upon a time, I was a barefoot girl. I didn't wear shoes anywhere but to work and the grocery store, and only then under duress. This despite having had a shard of glass removed from my left foot at age 4. (No lessons learned there.) But somewhere post-40th-birthday, socks found my feet. I even wear them to bed now. Maybe it has something to do with getting older, maybe I have poor circulation, or maybe - just maybe - now that I've shed the inch-thick callouses on my heels, I want to keep my feet soft. Matters not - the point is my feet now usually have socks on them. But this is not a story about socks. This is a story about plumbing. Plumbing that makes me instantly insane. Plumbing that, if I owned a gun, people would die over. My socks are just the trigger.

Oldest Son did not stop with the cabinet/desk project. On Sunday afternoon, in another fit of he-manliness, he built this in my front yard: I will be sure to take another picture later in the summer when the sedum is in full bloom. It grows fast, and will drape itself down over the limestone. That’ll be really pretty. Speaking of pretty, PDD knows I L-O-V-E...

It’s been a busy, busy weekend around here. And Oldest Son has been on a roll lately with the he-manliness he’s been displaying. Case in point: Friday afternoon, on the infamous trip to Wal-Mart to replace Tiffy, one of the other items I purchased was a put-it-together-yourself wood storage cabinet for PDD’s room. She’s been complaining that...

Ok, so remember when I told you about having typed the D key right off my laptop? Well, folks…I couldn’t take it any longer. I went on a dialing spree last week calling all manner of computer repair entities, only to find that no one had the keyboard my laptop requires in stock and they’d have to order it in. On top of that, the lowest fee I could...