Stupid Stupid Stupid

Well the stupid road graders were at it again this afternoon and after all the rain we have had lately the road is almost impassable. I think the County Engineer planned it. Naturally he is out of the office for the rest of the week. Stupid Coward. I can't believe he is afraid of a little old housewife.
I guess on the upside though is that the snakes are now in hiding for the winter.
I don't know what the big deal is with Austin but he has reminded me 3 times this week that my birthday is next Thursday. Like I didn't know that. I told him for my birthday I wanted him, baby and Hyde to leave for the weekend. Thankfully he knew I was joking. He said that he might be able to pull off getting Mason out of the house for the night. I think I might be a little closer to getting him trained because that is all I really want. A whole night alone with my husband. Preferably in a good mood but I will take what I can get. I think I am going to try to talk him into eating at the little Mexican place in town and renting a movie. I know real exciting stuff.
I saw Earl the Squirrel today. A sign that winter is coming. He raided my bird feeder. It was good to see him and somewhere this summer he picked up a little friend. I hope that means that we will have little baby squirrels this spring. There is nothing cuter than little baby squirrels. Austin would argue that point but I am entitled to my own opinion.

How long does it take?

We started work on the bathroom on August the 8th. We are now 2 months later and it still isn't done. So here is the update:



Tile is down where the washer and dryer are going to go.

Walls have been mudded, sanded, primed and painted in the washer/dryer area.

Ceiling has been mudded and sanded everywhere but where the light fixtures are.

Only the corners need to be mudded. (I can not do them anywhere near as good as Austin so he has agreed to do them. We have decided to wait until the floor is down to do the rest.)

I found a magazine rack for the bathroom. (Austin has been asking for one for years)

Austin did his own laundry without complaining because he saw the snake in the basement again.

My yard...

Tabe wrote a comment about my yard.

"is that ur yard?? its huge"

Yes that is my yard. Our house sits on 3 acres. We have a huge barn, old pole barn, corn crib, garden shed, well house and a dog run. I thought I had done a post about my yard already but I guess I haven't so here it is.

My Yard!!

We have since taken out this little fence because we no longer have chickens.

This is the view coming from the south on the gravel. Don't let it deceive you. That little green stripe closest to the bottom of the photo is really wider than it looks.

I don't remember why I had to drive the AWESOME green truck. I mean really my car is in the driveway.

A view from the front. The property is almost completely square and if you were to draw a tic-tack-toe on it the house would sit in the bottom middle one. The front door faces the west so we get great views of the Iowa sunsets. The windows on the second level is our bedroom. the bed sits right under these windows facing the door that looks right out into the hallway and the hallway window that faces the east. So we get the sunsets at night and the sunrises in the mornings. It just so happens that when the sun peaks over the horizon it shines directly in my eyes. Consequently I rather like the sunsets.

We have a good sized riding lawn mower, John Deere 345, 20hp, 52 inch deck, and it still takes a solid 3 hours to mow the yard. It used to only take 2 and half but Austin got a little carried away with the fertilizer this last spring. I don't mind though because the lawn mower is loud enough that I can't hear myself think. It is the only time I get to myself and I love it.

So that is my yard. I love to be outside working on it. Whether it is mowing or weeding flower beds. I can't wait until the first frost so that I can out there and clear out the beds. I have bulbs that need planting. There were some beds that we just didn't like and have been in the process of redoing these last couple of years. Well I should say that I knew I didn't want what was in them so we took them out and I didn't know what I wanted to put back in them so we did some temporary landscaping. I have finally decided what I want in them and have just recently purchased a butt load of bulbs that now need planting. It should be fun. Hopefully after the first frost the snakes are in hiding and not hiding in my flower beds.

It only took a week...

Well I guess I should count myself as lucky that it wasn't me that had to take the snake outside. I had asked him everyday. EVERYDAY!! To take it outside and either kill it or take it far far FAR away from our property.
One whole week.
So finally he runs out of clean underwear and decides he had better do something about the stupid snake.
Austin goes to the basement and takes the box off the glass bowl and the bowl off the snake and it just stays there all coiled. That is when Austin puts on his leather gloves and goes to grab it and it strikes.
At this point I would have shat my pants had it been me grabbing for it but not my husband. He gets this evil grin and I swear I hear him laugh. He denies it but anyways. He starts to play with it.
Playing with it in my basement. I just have this vision of this snake getting away from him while playing with it so I yell down the stairs, "For crying out loud, take it outside. Then you can play with it, you damned idiot! I swear you lose that snake and you will be sleeping in that basement till you find it!"
That might be when he got annoyed with me. I would have thought that would have happened on day two of me asking him to get it out of my house. But anyways. So he grabs the snake and starts to chase me through the kitchen. I could have killed him.
He finally gets it outside and takes it to the side yard grabbing a spade on the way. He looks around for the perfect spot puts the snake on the grass and grabs its head and shoves the shovel on it. Stands on the shovel taking the head off clean.
At this point he just has a hold of the body by the tail so he flings it at me. As you can imagine that instantly sets me off.
It took him 30 minutes to find the hide-a-key to get back in the house. I don't know why he has to be such a butt to me.
We have found where they are getting in but there isn't much we can do about it. They are getting in a drain. I have told asked my husband to put a wire mesh in the drain in hopes of stopping them from coming up. Hopefully he will have it done by winter.
It's okay, I am laughing too. Mine though is more of a psycho humor me laugh, but still laughing.

Enjoy photos of our former house guest.

So I Thought The Snake Was Dead...

Ya, it wasn't. It is still there. Alive under a glass bowl. ALIVE in my basement. I cannot think of anything worse. Well I can but I would rather not.

Just call me 'Snake Killer'....

Hyde found a snake in the basement yesterday afternoon. A real live snake.
Now it is a dying snake with a glass bowl over it. I thought about using a pan but I decided that I wanted to be able to see inside of whatever was over it. I sure didn't want it to get out and me not know about it until Austin went to dispose of it. How horrible would that be? Not to mention the smell.
I am now on the lookout for a new glass bowl. Naturally the only one that was clean was my favorite. Needless to say my new project is to clean the leftovers out of the fridge.
Reading that it sounds like there might be a lot of leftovers in my fridge but that is not the case. I only had 3 glass bowls all in different sizes. The one over the snake happens to be my largest. The one that I use for making bread, cookies, cakes, salads, noodles, or sauces. In other words EVERYTHING!! I guess I could use one of my Pyrex bowls for that but it just wouldn't be the same. Well, that and I don't want my husband to get a hold of them.
I collect old Pyrex bowls that have the designs on the outside. The funkier the color or design the better. I mostly use them for serving and decoration. I sure don't want my husband to think that they are to be used as everyday mixing bowls. He has a tendency to break things and some of those bowls I paid good money for.
So now to wait for Austin to get home and get the snake out of my basement.
Is it just me or is this week going extremely slow. Thursday is taking forever to get here.

Rain? Seriously?

Well it is raining here again. I am so tired of rain. I also realize how lucky we are in where we live that we have no water in our basement and there is no threat to our house. A lot of other Iowans are not so fortunate. So far this year the state of Iowa has been hit by tornadoes and even if they weren't classified as tornadoes the same storm systems have done damage in I think almost every county. Now some of the worst hit areas are also getting hit by some pretty bad flooding.
I am sitting here wondering when it will let up because I would like to be able to mow the yard. Well that and I am afraid we are going to get more snakes in the basement because our yard is water logged.
Did you know they can climb stairs. EWWW!!

Mason Birthday

We have been so busy. I really hope this is not how the whole summer is going to go. It has been awhile since I have wrote anything of sustenance so that is my goal for today. Some things have happened over the last week or so that I can laugh about NOW. I think we will start with last Friday.
Last Thursday we got rain. I don't mean a little rain. I mean we got r-a-i-n. It was a torrential downpour. We got about 4 inches here at the house. Ames got around 7. Friday morning while watching the news I hear that parts of Ames are flooding. I wasn't concerned about this for awhile because I don't drive into Ames very often. Then I remembered that we had Mason's cake and sandwiches ordered at the new Super Walmart to be picked up in the morning before his party on Saturday. I might have started to panic at that point. The Super Walmart is located on the same road they had just shut down for the flooding. Then they show the parking lot on TV. Almost the whole parking lot is under water. So I make an executive decision and call another Super Walmart close by and switch my order to that store. It might be a little farther to drive but at least I knew we would be able to get our sandwiches and cake for the 25 or so people that would be invading my house on Saturday.
I then spend the next 2 hours on the phone getting everything canceled and set up. Let me rephrase that, I spent 2 hours on hold with the Walmart in Ames trying to cancel. While on hold with the bakery, the bakery calls my home phone. Let me just say 'Are you f'n kidding me? They leave me on hold to call other people.' So they were calling me as a courteous call (HAHA) to say that the City of Ames had closed the store due to rising waters and that they won't be able to get my cake done. So I asked her if they had a line on hold she said 'yes' so I told her to pick it up. Yep it was me on my cell! So I had her pick me back up from my home line being on hold and transfer me over to the deli. That was a quick call I wasn't even on the phone 5 minutes. So why didn't they just answer my call earlier instead of leaving me on hold. I might still be a little upset about that...
Saturday finally rolls around and the Walmart deli in Ames calls to see if I want the sandwiches on white or wheat. I was to say the very least annoyed. I told them as nicely as I could that I had called yesterday to cancel the order. Believe it, or not, she got upset with me. I kindly explained to her that I did my part and that it wasn't my fault if one of her co-workers dropped the ball and then I hung up.
I had planned to go and get the cake and sandwiches by myself. You know to give myself a chance to relax, calm down, maybe hear my own thoughts (translation- sneak a cig) because I knew the day was going to be busy and stressful. Well I didn't get to go by myself. Nope! Austin was having none of that. So Mason and I set out to town and what do you know the car needed gas and my sweet child has learned that if he screeches just right it annoys mommy and keeps himself awake. So after making a quick and painful stop at the gas station I turned up the radio real loud and made the rest of the trip in relative silence. I don't know how long after leaving the gas station Mason fell asleep but he did. So after getting to Walmart I opened the doors to the car and enjoyed myself a cig. It was over 3 months old and dried out real bad so it went real quick but I didn't care.
I left the house at 9:30 and Austin called at 12 to see where I was at. He got lucky I was only about 5 minutes from the house. Walmart was packed. It took forever. Mason got lucky and the bakery ladies gave him a cookie covered in pink frosting. Everything got covered in pink frosting. Including me! Mason was much better on the way home. I think he was asleep before we even got out of town. While I was gone Austin did vacuum and get some things ready. Lucky for him because otherwise I would have been very upset. Bonus for me he didn't smell any smoke on me. That or he knew better than to say anything.
Everyone showed up about 1 or so. Lucky for us it was sunny out so no one was in the house too much. While at Walmart I bought bubble wands for the kids to play with so that kept them fairly occupied and out of our hair. We did the food, cake, ice cream, presents and talked. I would like to think that everyone had a good time but when you have little kids together it is not a party until they all cry at least once. So in that regard it was a blast. yippee.
Mason basically just took all the frosting off of his little cake and rubbed it all over his little face. He tore the cake in half but I don't think he actually ate it. He did end up with frosting in his nose that stayed there for 3 days because he wouldn't let me pick it out. I figured it wouldn't kill him so I didn't fight him about it.
Towards the end of the party a snake joined us. Yes a snake. A BIG snake. My b-i-l Jesse ran to the garage and grabbed some hedge clippers and snipped the snake but what do you know that just made it mad. So I went and got a spade. The snake was M-A-D and kept striking at the spade so finally I got it put on it just below the head and proceeded to cut the head off. Now it is a dead snake. I was rather proud of myself. I didn't just stand there and scream and act the wimp. Austin was rather surprised. I know that he would have just put it in a bucket and taken it to the creek and I would have had to worry about it every time I stepped outside. This way I don't. I can walk outside without having a panic attack.
So after that things calmed down. Almost everyone left about 5 or so. Mom, Dad, Mare, Jesse, Major, and Hunter left about 7:30. It was a long day. Good but long.

Snakes!!!

Sunday we were cleaning out the basement and I found a snake. Did you hear me? A SNAKE!!!! In my basement. A snake! I can handle about anything but that.
I am deathly afraid of snakes. I saw it and started screaming. Poor Austin didn't know what was wrong. Good thing he was helping to clean. Otherwise I would have been down there screaming scared stiff until he got home. He did his duty and got the thing out of my house.
Monday I was gonna do laundry and had such a bad panic attack I ended up bowing to the porcelain thrown. Just the thought that there could be more down there is enough to do it for me. I cannot bring myself to go to the basement. Hopefully there are no tornadoes this summer. I will surely die because there is no way I can go down there.

Sunshine

Today and yesterday have been just wonderful outside. Mason and I have spent as much time as possible outside. Yesterday we walked a mile to the stopsign and back and played in the yard. Well that is until we saw a huge (HUGE) snake. I am so scared of snakes. Ridiculously scared. So Mason and I spent the rest of yesterday afternoon inside. When Austin got home he wanted to take a walk so Mason and I walked another mile to the stopsign and back. In case your adding that up that is 4 whole miles.
Today Mason didn't wake up until 9. It was wonderful!! We spent a large portion of today outside also and now it is time for a bath to get all the slimy baby sunscreen off of him. I hate how it feels on our skin. It is to rain tonight and tomorrow so we will be stuck inside again. Hopefully by Thursday it will be nice enough to get back out.

The Tree

The tree Austin decided need cutt down in the middle of an ice storm.

The people that we bought the house from did a lot of outside decorating with chairs. I got rid of the rest of them. I left this one because on the day I went to get it there was a HUGE snake under it. There was no way I was going to touch it. I am sure that chair will just decompose right were it is. I figure it isn't hurting anyone and in the summer no one can even see it.

I know it is just sick how afraid I am of snakes.