I’m so not a green thumb. I adore flower gardens and love the idea of growing my own vegetables, but I just don’t know much about growing stuff. I’ve never taken the time to do it. You might imagine that given the opportunity to work in someone else’s garden, I would pass. But I’ve had that opportunity this week, and I took it.

A guy Hubby has known for many years called and asked him to help him and his sister with their gardening and some mowing, and he jumped at the chance, because he has worked for them before and they pay well. I went over there with him to borrow a bushhog the day before he was to start, and they asked if I would like to help as well. Seeing how we need some quick cash to tide us over until our paydays, I said yes.

I’ve worked over there two mornings this week, and I’ve learned a few things about gardening. And I also got my hands on some dahlia starts and sunflower seeds. And Pumpkin went with us today and came back home with enough flowers to make a small garden.

So it looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me. We’ll have to get a trowel and some topsoil and get those babies in the ground. I also need to weed around the wild roses that have popped up all over the place here, which I have fallen in love with. After we get that done, this place will look even more like a home.

Today my DSL was down yet again. This is becoming way too common lately, and it’s really cutting into my work time.

This time it was down almost all day. I came home from a side job this morning to find it non-operational, called the phone company, and they said there were no reports of when it would be fixed. I kept checking to no avail until about an hour before I had to make a quick trip out of town.

I got cleaned up and had a few minutes to spare. I checked again, and was able to get my email and check a forum. The timing sucked, but at least I would be able to get some work done when I got back. Or so I thought.

I got back home, turned on my computer, and the DSL was down yet again. Lovely. I called the phone company back, and they told me the same thing. So I proceeded to try to do a thing or two around the house, checking intermittently. Nothing.

It finally came up sometime before 10:00 pm. And now I’m too tired and frustrated to work. Deadlines are creeping up on me, and I was supposed to go back to the side job tomorrow morning. I may just have to skip it and work on my writing. If the DSL is working, that is.

To all you dads out there, hope you’re having a wonderful day! I lost my dad 4 years ago, so the closest dad in my life is Hubby. I haven’t gotten to spend much time with him today, but I did help Pumpkin make him a card and a piece of artwork.

I’m proud to say that Hubby is an awesome dad. When Pumpkin was a baby, he had no qualms about taking care of her while I worked, or giving me a break when I needed it. He was the only one who she would let rock her to sleep at night. There were times when he would be playing with her, and she would look at him in this certain way that reminded me of those cartoons where the characters’ eyes become heart-shaped. It sounds silly, but you could just see the adoration in her eyes.

She sees me at home a lot more than she does him nowadays, but they still spend quite a bit of time together. Anywhere he goes, she wants to go. They just have a beautiful relationship, and I hope it always stays that way.

Hubby, Pumpkin, Hubby’s cousin, his daughter and I are going to see wrestling tonight. Not WWE or anything like that, just mostly local people. But the Boogie Woogie Man and Kid Cash are going to be there.

Hubby and I went to where they’re having it to give his brother some money today and met the Boogie Woogie Man. We hadn’t planned on going to the event, but the promoter talked us into getting tickets. I thought it would be fun for Pumpkin, so it wasn’t a hard sell.

Gotta go… Hubby’s in a hurry to leave. Laters!

It has been hot up here in the mountains for early June. Temperatures have been steadily in the eighties since the beginning of the month. It has been a little toasty in the house with no AC, but so far I’ve been able to live with it. But over the next week it’s supposed to cool down… according to the local weather website, quite a bit. See the notes for Thursday below:

High near zero, low near zero, huh? Well, if anyone out there is planning on coming to take advantage of this area’s fine golf courses, you might want to either come right now or put up your golf bags for another couple of weeks. And if that’s what they call pleasant, they’re seriously warped!

Today Pumpkin up and decided that she wanted to do some crafting. I was very happy about that, because I had actually been planning to look for some crafts for her to do over the summer but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. But I had no idea what she could do with our limited craft supplies.

She dug up some construction paper, scissors and a glue stick, and decided to cut out shapes and make animals out of them. Of course she wanted me to make one too, and who am I to say no? So we started snipping and gluing, and what you see above is the result. The frog is mine, and the bunny is hers.

It was a nice little bonding experience, just as I had hoped. I even told her we would do it again tomorrow. Before you know it, we’ll have a whole entire zoo made out of construction paper! Maybe we’ll even get Hubby in on it too.

At my high school prom, they gave away those little plastic keychains that you can put a wallet-sized photo in. They were quite nice, with the school name and date of the prom on them. My keys went on mine as soon as I got my prom pics back, and they stayed on it until my high school sweetheart and I parted ways. I guess I could have put a different picture in it, but that logo was still there and I wasn’t interested in even seeing that every time I got ready to leave the house.

Technology has given “photo keychain” a whole new meaning. Now you don’t have to cut a picture and put it in your keychain. All you have to do is hook it up to your computer and upload it. And you can put tons of them on there, not just one. I’d love to have one!

Today’s Gizmos, Gadgets and Tech and WholesaleKeychain.com have teamed up to give away three digital photo keychains, complete with engraving. Wholesalekeychain.com has a great selection of automotive and sports keychains, as well as a selection of digital photo keychains. Other than the photo ones, my favorite would have to be the Mach 1 Mustang. Now if I just had a Mach 1 Mustang to go with it, I would order one.

Head on over to Today’s Gizmos, Gadgets and Tech and enter to win. They make great gifts!

Today I’ve felt pretty bad. I’m on antibiotics for a sinus infection, but true to form, they’re not quite cutting it. I’m going to give them a little longer before I try to talk the doctor into calling me something stronger in for it. She probably will since she knows that I have a history of sinus troubles, but if she doesn’t I guess I’ll go in.

I went to bed last night with a headache, then got back up this morning with one. So I took some Aleve and Tylenol shortly after I got up. I hate to do that, but it seems to be the only thing that helps. It did help for a while, but a few hours later it came back in full force. I took more Tylenol, lay down and took a nap. That more or less killed the pain, but my brain still isn’t functioning at full capacity. It’s like I have a fog in my head.

Enough whining for now I guess. I need to go find something to fix for supper. I’m hoping that I feel better later and can get some work done. I promised Hubby and Pumpkin that I would try my very best to spend the weekend with them, and I’m not planning on backing out.

Here’s the last of my posts about the places I’ve called home over the years. If you’ve missed any of the previous ones and would like to read them, here’s the list:

• I Must Be Crazy
• The Early Years
• My Bachelorette Pad
• Into the Mountains
• Living With the Parents the Second Time Around
• Movin’ on Up… Sort of
• Another Dump
• A Home of Our Own… Sorta

Once we found out we could no longer keep our mobile home on the rented lot we had, we started looking at our options. I put it in the paper right away, but I also put an ad in there looking for lots for rent. We didn’t have the money to have it moved, but we were just sort of hoping for a miracle.

The miracle of being able to move it didn’t happen, but another one did. We found a fixer-upper house for sale, and to make a really long story short, we got it. And now we’re calling it home.

There’s plenty to find fault with here, for sure. It could stand to be completely replumbed, the floors in some rooms need to be redone, the dishwasher that I was so glad to see turned out to be broken, and we will need to put in another heat source before winter rolls back around. Oh yeah, and did I mention that we have a slight snake problem? (Hubby fixed the place where that one got in, so I hope we won’t see any more!) And yet I’m still quite happy here.

My favorite thing about this place is that it’s so peaceful. I don’t mind having neighbors somewhat close by if they’re good ones, but living as close as we did to our landlady at the old place was hellish. When she wasn’t being hateful to us, she was staring as we walked from the driveway to the house, and when she couldn’t find anything to do to try and get under our skin, she was bickering very loudly with her family. Compared to that, having not another house in sight is pure bliss.

There is still some of our stuff that I need to find a permanent place for, especially in my office. But this place is already feeling very much like home. I hope there comes a time when we will be doing well enough that we can sell this place and buy a newer and larger one, but I think I’ll be content where I’m at until that time comes.

Here’s the next (and next to last) in my series about the places I’ve called home throughout the years. It’s kind of bittersweet, so again, bear with me.

Hubby and I had been wanting a place of our own every since we got married. We had saved up a little money, and I picked up the local trading post publication just to see what I could find. It was something that I didn’t do often, but I just took a notion to look one day. I saw a listing for a used mobile home, as well as one for a private lot for rent. I took it as a sign and called about both.

Hubby and I looked at the mobile home first, and it was in pretty good shape. It was an older model, but it had been well taken care of. So we went to look at the lot. We talked to the man who owned it, and he seemed pretty reasonable. It was a little close to his house and another that he was renting, but I liked it. It symbolized freedom from having to deal with landlords who didn’t want to fix anything (except that we would have to depend on them to keep the water and septic up). I talked Hubby into going for it. If I hadn’t, we never would have gotten the mobile home, because the only other lots we could find were in trailer parks. And Hubby refuses to live anywhere that he would be that close to the neighbors.

We ended up having to fight for both home and land, but eventually it all came together. But no sooner than they pulled the trailer onto the lot, the landlady’s evil side began to show. Her husband had told us that we could use a bunch of cinderblocks that were piled up on the lot, and when Hubby mentioned using it, she started cussing up a storm. But it was too late to back out by then.

We got along with them for about a year, at the expense of their other renters. When we first moved in they kept telling us how great the landlords were, but they quit getting along shortly thereafter. But things were pretty good for us, until a few months after the other renters moved out.

The landlady was hateful to the new renters from the get-go, but still got along with us. Until, that is, we started hanging out with those new renters. It was like she only rented those places out so she could have her own personal war going on between the inhabitants. She started being a little nicer to them, and was downright nasty to us. I guess she thought that would cause a rift between us, but much to her dismay, it didn’t. So she resumed hatefulness toward them as well.

They moved, some other people moved in, and it all started over (with us still the bad guys). We just kept to ourselves as much as possible, and ignored them (which further infuriated her). She finally told us that we would have to move our mobile home.

We were devastated. We were going through a very rough time financially, and we knew there was no way we could move it. And even though it wasn’t much, it was the first place that had truly belonged to us (even though the ground beneath it didn’t). We had been trying to save up enough money to buy some land to put it on, and that might have happened if we had had more time after Hubby went back to work. But we were broke. So with heavy hearts, we put it in the “For Sale” section of the paper and started looking for a place to rent.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to rent again. We found a place to buy. If you’re a regular reader you already know about that, but I’ll discuss what makes it home tomorrow.