Your bathroom and your roof are connected

Some of you have commented that my "country" post is in a very small font. I've tried to fix it, it shows up fine on my computer, but I expect it is some weird html thing that is currently beyond me.

Well, I could have gone to a fun stitching day at my "local" LNS (two+ hours away in Austin), but I opted to stay home with DH while he works on the new bathroom. He's taking Monday off as he really wants to get a lot done on it and "get past the plumbing work."

My job is to make sure he is fed and Gatoraded. DH tends to get so intense on working that he forgets to eat and drink. He gets dehydrated and then wonders why he's starting to feel bad. Men.

And yes, I'll stitch off and on.

I really can't do much to help right now; my part will come later when we get to the painting and finish work. However, I am often called upon to be a third hand. This morning, I stood on a ladder and guided a plumbing pipe as DH stabbed another pipe into it while on the roof. And I've held stuff in the right place or out of the way. I'm good at that. ☺

And we may have to go to town for another toilet. I bought one last summer for the new bathroom. But we ended up using it in the old bathroom to replace the existing toilet that had a crack in the bowl and was leaking.

DH spent the morning drilling a hole in the roof for the bathroom vent pipe, then stabbing the pipe down and installing flashing around it. He is currently running more pipe inside the walls. I think he is getting high on PVC pipe glue. I want him to get the plumbing done so we can hang the rest of the sheetrock and cover up those hideous pink studs!

Dr. Welby doesn't post here

Recently, as I was reading message boards while eating my morning oatmeal, I had to severely rein in my cranky, carnal, and cynical side. We all have them. I just try real hard to keep mine in check.

You've all read posts where someone says something like, "I just had an appendectomy. How long did it take you to get over yours? My doctor says to rub cocoa butter on the scar; any other remedies for scarring out there?" These types of posts are fine and don't bother me. The person is under a doctor's care, and just wants to hear about other people's experiences.

Sometimes they want encouragement or reassurance. Sometimes they just want to share war stories. Men don't engage in this kind of behavior generally, but women seem to love to hear and discuss other's experiences with whatever they are going through or facing themselves. And often it is very helpful in getting through the problem and getting over it.

But then there are posts like this one, "I have this pain in my gut right by my belly button. I don't have it all the time. Sometimes it's real bad. Anyone else have something like this? What could it be?"

These kind of posts DO drive me nuts. First of all, Dr. Welby doesn't post here and no one here is a doctor. The nurses that post here usually respond by telling you to go see your doctor. Secondly, without examining you in person, even Dr. Welby could not and would not diagnose you. The same goes for those of us with medical experience; we can't begin to guess at your problem based on these vague symptoms. Nor should we. You need to go see your doctor. I repeat, YOU NEED TO GO SEE YOUR DOCTOR.

The 3C side of me (cranky, carnal, and cynical) often wants to post a reply like this one: "Are you a complete idiot? Of course you are. If and when you do go to the doctor, you'll find out that belly button pain is a symptom of imminent brain rupture. Your brain will begin to ooze out of your right ear, unless you are left-handed in which case it will ooze out of your left ear. After your brain begins to ooze, your belly button will completely unscrew itself from the inside and your legs will cease to move. Next, your legs and elbows will become numb and this will cause your breasts to descend to your navel level. If you survive to this point, you will be no longer able to cross stitch because your thumbs will begin to twiddle incessantly and you'll become severely allergic to chocolate. It's too late for you. You should have gone to the doctor sooner. All this will happen in less than five days. You will die soon after. Call the funeral home and alert the relatives. Get your will in order."

You can see why I keep the ol' 3C side squashed as much as possible. Panic would reign on the message boards. ☺

A note from my stitching chair: "The Alamo" is coming along. I've just about got the trunk of the big tree stitched and have the leaves and all the backstitching left to do. I may start on the backstitching and wait on stitching the leaves just because I really want to see the design pop out. And because the leaves will be annoying to stitch, especially in five different colors of green with confetti stitching.

Reflections on the country life

For years, I used to get up and run/jog two miles every morning. Then my knees started talking to me. So I bought some low-impact workout DVDs and worked out in the house. Over time, the DVDs began to bore me out of my mind. So recently, I've started walking instead. I like being out of doors in the morning with the sounds of nature and my own thoughts - no headphones and muzak for me.

It's .13 miles from the house down our driveway to the road. This picture is of part our driveway - beautiful morning, eh?

This morning, as I took my morning walk along our dirt road, I was passed as usual by several vehicles. Everyone waved at me and I waved back. I'm sure they're neighbors we've not met yet, but waving is just something you do.

DH and I grew up in a medium-sized city next to a very large metroplex. We've never particularly liked the city. During my marriage to DH, we've moved farther out into the country with each move.

We first lived in the country when we lived in Kansas. We moved to a 100-year-old farmhouse on the edge of a very small town about a half-hour away from the city of Wichita. We had the town ball diamond on one side of us, a huge wheat field behind us, and the world's greatest neighbors - Mr. and Mrs. Bailey - on the other side of us.

We were astonished to find that EVERYONE waved to you in town and out on the roads in the country. They did this whether they knew you or not. Once you got into the city (Wichita) no one waved anymore. We immediately got into the waving habit.

We also found out that everyone in and around town soon knew all about us. Everyone knew we had bought the "old Neiman house" and that we worked in "the city." They knew we went to church "in the city." They knew we shopped at Kevin's grocery store in town and had only one vehicle, a maroon truck, and that we had moved from "the city," but we came from Texas. Oh, and we had a pit bull dog, but he was really friendly with a loud big dog bark.

Once, when I stopped at Kevin's for some groceries, I accidentally left some of my canvas shopping bags there. (Yeah, I've been green for years; the bags have Skaggs Alpha Beta stamped on them. Anybody remember that store?) The next morning, they were hanging on our front door knob.

Once, my mom said how she worried about me driving out in the country after dark. What if the truck broke down? What would I do? (Note: this was before cell phones and we had only one vehicle.) I replied, "Mom, I'd walk to the nearest farm house. They'd invite me in to use the phone to call DH. The farmer would go out with his truck or tractor and tow my truck back to the house. He would try to fix it. If he couldn't fix it, he'd tow me home. If the family was having dinner, they'd invite me to have dinner with them. I'd get home one way or another. It's just what folks do. There's no way I'd wait in the truck for help." (Now, let me say that I wouldn't do that on a big interstate highway or in the city. My parents didn't raise a fool.)

For now, I'll keep waving at folks on my walks. Yesterday, I met a neighbor up the road when she stopped in her car to introduce herself. "Oh, y'all are the folks that bought the old Henry hunting cabin from Lance." ☺

Lost socks and frogs

Recently, I was flummoxed because one of DH's socks disappeared during the laundry process. I never lose socks. Maybe it's because there are only two of us to do laundry for. Maybe it's because we're anal about only having just enough socks but not too many. I don't know. But in 21+ years of marriage, I have never lost a sock...until last month.

One of DH's khaki socks turned up missing. I looked everywhere for it. I did subsequent loads of laundry hoping it would turn up. It didn't. Then yesterday, DH came home with the missing sock in his lunchbox. (Hey, it's HIS lunchbox. If he wants to stick a dirty sock in there, then more power to him.)

Anyway, when he was changing from work clothes to softball clothes for a right-after-work game recently, he accidentally left it behind at work in the unused storage room where he changes clothes. When he went in the room on Monday to look for something, he found the missing sock. My record of never having lost a sock in the laundry process is safe!

A note from my stitching chair: I spent last night entertaining the frog. I frogged and then restitched for an hour and a half. I'm stitching "The Alamo" over two and found out I was off by one. And of course, I was using DMC 3371 so I had to work really hard to get rid of the floss ghosts. Hopefully, the little green nuisance has found someone else to bother today and I'll be frog-free when I stitch later.

Painting finished

Well, the weather cooperated. It didn't rain (although we'd want it to; we're dry as a bone here) like it was threatening to, and the high was only 95 degrees yesterday.

Billy was here to help DH finish the trim painting on the addition. Or rather, DH helped Billy finish the trim painting. Billy relegated DH to painting the straight boards with no cutting-in after realizing that DH cut-in only one linear foot of eave while he cut-in over 20 linear feet. Billy is much faster at cutting-in than DH. They were finished by noon.

After they cleaned up and I fed them lunch, they traipsed off into the woods to look at DH's new tree stand and the deer corn feeder. Then they came back to the house and made vast inroads into a plate of my brownies.

In between kitchen duties and making sure the guys were properly watered and Gatoraded, I did get to stitch a bit. I'll post a picture later this week.

Grammar Police and Spelling Nazis

Notice anything wrong with this picture? This is one of the small storage tubs we are using to house miscellaneous stuff. I have four of them and had great fun labeling them with my labeler. Yeah. I noticed this morning that I misspelled "extension." Happens to the best of spellers. *sigh* I need to go find my labeler...

I usually see spelling and grammar errors immediately. I can't help it. I can't NOT see them. I'm an excellent speller and I have an excellent understanding of grammar rules and usage. Also, because of my high school background in journalism and being on the school newspaper staff, I'm a very good proofreader. I've been proofreading for people half my life and I've also done some copy-editing for folks.

I also know it's best to proofread your own work first and then have someone else proofread it. Your own eye can fool you; it's better to have a second unbiased proofreader. This is why writers have editors.

Spelling and grammar checker computer programs are great, but they are not perfect. This is why you should proofread again yourself after you run these programs.

A good example of this is my "crotch" story. When I was an Instructor at UTHSC for the Prosthetics and Orthotics Program, one of my favorite students was a terrible speller. He knew this and used his Spell-Check program all the time, but he didn't always proofread after he ran it.

The class was assigned to write up a summary report or "SOAP" note after they observed patients in a local clinic. I was grading the reports and the students knew I was a stickler for spelling and grammar. They were training to be medical professionals and often what they wrote would go in a patient's permanent medical record, and would be seen by other medical professionals. If you are a professional, then EVERYTHING you do should reflect that, especially your writing in whatever form it takes (letters, e-mails, etc.).

Anyway, I called the student to my office and asked him to demonstrate for me a "crotch" gait. He looked at me with complete bafflement on his face. There's no such thing as a crotch gait. Now there is such thing as a crouch gait, usually seen in patients with spastic cerebral palsy; they walk in a crouched position, often on their toes.

After letting him stutter and exclaim for a bit, I smiled evilly and said, "You didn't proofread your report, did you?" He admitted that he hadn't, but wailed, "But I Spell-Checked it!" He had misspelled "crouch" as "crotch" but he had spelled "crotch" correctly, so Spell-Check didn't flag it. And crouch was a word that he could spell correctly. (No, I didn't let him off the hook.)

So, what makes a good speller? I think some people just have more of a knack for it than others. My dad is a highly educated man, but a bad speller. I've been proofreading for him since my junior high school days. He spells phonetically. He's often lamented that a dictionary can't help you spell a word right if you don't spell it right well enough to look it up. ☺

There are some words that even I still have trouble with. I can never remember if "recommend" has one "c" or two until I write or type it out and look at it. I can tell by looking that one "c" is correct. Of course, if I remind myself that "re" is a prefix, then I can spell it correctly, too.

And grammar? Well, I think you have to study up on this a bit and make it a priority to learn and use it well.

All that being said, I never correct someone's grammar or spelling unless they specifically ask me to proofread a document for them. But I do lament and get my knickers in a knot over common and repeated mistakes I come across on message boards, blogs, and the media in general.

I find this website very helpful for word usage mistakes: Common Errors in English. This website is run by Dr. Paul Brians, a retired former Professor of English. There is also a book by the same name, but the website is updated frequently.

Another fun site, but not really helpful at all with learning how to handle grammar mistakes is this one: Self-Appointed Grammar Police. This is a UK website that pokes fun at media grammar errors.

So what do you do? How do you improve? Well, I currently have eight different books on my desk that cover grammar and/or punctuation, and writing style. I also have a dictionary and thesaurus handy. When in doubt or if you have a question have something handy so you can look it up. To me, learning spelling and grammar is an ongoing process; hopefully, I'll continue to always improve in both.

And then there are errors due to bad typing, but that's a whole 'nuther story (and I plead the fifth)!

Ramblings

While I love summer, I haven't liked this pressure system that has been sitting over south central Texas for several weeks. It is playing havoc with my sinuses. Not to mention the fact that it has been very hot and we've had no rain. Very hot to a south central Texan is 100+ degrees with a heat index of over 115+ degrees. Yep, we're sweatin' heavy down here.

A note from my stitching chair: I'm cruising along on "The Alamo." This has been a really fun stitch.

I enjoy getting catalogs in the mail. I like looking through them. Lately, the only one in our house getting catalogs is DH. He's been getting tons of hunting catalogs.

I liked to have died laughing last night as he perused one of them. He described these roll-on scent masking products. You can mask your human scent (so the critters you're hunting can't smell you) with one of these fine scents: Herd in a Stick (deer), Bear Bait in a Stick, Rutting Boar in a Stick, and lastly, Estrus Sow in a Stick. DH wasn't sure about where you're supposed to rub these. I told him if he rubbed them under his arms, I was moving out. ☺ Man toys are very weird.

Here's a story from the "Now I've heard everything!" category. I came across this on the 123MB this morning. A lady and her DH were dining out at an upscale restaurant. A young couple with a baby had the table next to them. While the mother went to the restroom, the dad changed the baby's diaper ON THE DINNER TABLE OUT IN FRONT OF GOD AND EVERYBODY and then took the dirty diaper through the restaurant to dispose of it near the kitchen. Goodness gracious and heavens to betsy! What in the world was he thinking????!!!!!! Unbelievable!

I am vexed today because I have piles of stuff that need homes in my house. DH needs to build me some cabinetry to hold them. If I whine to him, he'll want to make it all better and build them. If he builds them now, the new bathroom won't get worked on. We can't put in the HVAC until the new bathroom is finished; I don't want to have to live through another winter of heating this house with space heaters. So I'll keep my whining to myself and on my blog. DH doesn't read my blog; he can barely turn on a computer unassisted, probably because he doesn't think a computer is a power tool. ☺