Chatter Boxes

We have a chimney!!!

We headed out to Hillsdale Lake for some wave runner fun. Here's my man with a farmer's tan (it's actually a "roofing tan"). The weather was unbelievable for the end of July. Low 80's, no humidity, and a cool breeze.

With all the fun...there's still house work to do. Our drywall work begins this week so we have to clear the front field so the delivery trucks could get through. While John fiddled with the tractor...I took pictures of our foliage. We've had so much rain so everything is big, beautiful, and green.

And look what I had to mow down...that's my little head poking out through the weeds.
So there you have it. Another weekend in the books.

It's Wednesday and I'm not at work. It's my day off. Usually what that means is that we'd be working on the house. BUT NOT TODAY!!!

This is the front door.

The fridge floated onto it's back.

The counter tops were warped.

The laundry room

The washing machine...full of water. I couldn't get anyone to stick their hand down there.

These worms met their fate on the window screens.

The most striking part of this was the smell. It smelled like hot, old fish. Peooey! There were lots of people pulling carpets, furniture, clothes, toys out of their houses and marching them right to the curb for trash pick-up. It was so sad.

The city deemed the house a total loss and our insurance company covered it. Praise the Lord!

We are back from our whirlwind vacation.

The last week has been chocked full of benadryl and hydrocortisone cream. I experienced my first attack of merciless chiggers. They are mean! I was standing around on Saturday waiting for stain to dry and thought, "oh, I'll go change the horse's water". I headed to the back field, dumped his water tub and then spent about 30 minutes scrubbing it out while standing in flooded grass. I believe this is when the attack occurred.

I woke up Sunday morning and found one bite on my hip...then another one...then another one. I had 5 total. Not bad I thought. By Sunday evening I had 53. By Monday morning 59 and that's when I stopped counting.


I looked them up to see if I needed to boil my bedsheets and found this statement. "Chiggers do not burrow under your skin, as many people believe, they actually feed on the fluids in skin cells. To get the fluids, they attach themselves to a skin pore or hair follicle and inject a digestive enzyme that ruptures the cells. The enzyme also hardens the surrounding skin tissue, forming a sort of straw for sucking the skin cell fluids" Pretty huh? The bites often are located in rather inappropriate places to be scratching when in the company of others. Great! I've only been caught once by the vice president of the hospital where I work. He pretended not to see anything and I'm choosing to believe he didn't.


"Wednesday work day" was a soggy one. We both worked our real jobs during the day and worked on the house in the evening. My parents joined us. The rain was pouring down most of the time so, after pulling my car out of the mud, we worked on the inside. John and Dad installed insulation while mom and I scrubbed the inside walls so we could stain them.


Mom checked on her garden which is growing like crazy! We "harvested" two fat cucumbers, two tiny pea pods, and one stubby carrot. I'll post pictures when mom figures out how to get them downloaded from her new digital camera. Don't wait up...that could be awhile.


We're also experiencing the hatching of eggs that have been laid in our rafters. The nests were started before the roof was finished so now they find themselves trapped. Momma bird was not pleased with our presence at all on Saturday and now we know why. I shuffled one baby bird out of our house and into the world last night. I hope the rest get out somehow.

John and I are headed on a whirlwind 6 day vacation. I can't talk about the first half yet, it's a secret mission. I'll tell you when we get back. The second half will be to chigger-infested Oklahoma to see John's parents. Someone from OK told me that's where they originated. Not to worry...I'll be armed with enough insect repellent to take out the evil chigger army. And John's mom is an expert in insect control...she won't let anything bad happen to me.

Sorry for the lack of updating lately. As you can see we've been busy! And don't be fooled...this is not a miniature replica made out of Lincoln Logs...that's really our house!

We also completed another very important part of this process. And by "we", I mean a nice man and his son who came out with their big machines and fancy measuring devices to install a crucial part of our house plans. This is our septic system, for you city-folk (like me who have heard of such things but have never prodded for more information). There are actually five "chambers" side-by-side that now sit underground in our front field. My mom was with us on this blessed day and said, "That's a lot of poo!" I'm sorry mom, but you said it and you know these things could end up published. She's right though... that's 425 ft. of poo to be exact!


On this day, while the nice man with the big machines was digging big ditches, mom and I installed two door knobs. It took us a while to decipher the directions but in three hours time...two door knobs with deadbolts were installed. No wonder building a house is taking so long right? And of course, there are no pictures of this.

We've started the process of discussing kitchen cabinets and countertops which is almost as exciting as actually getting those things purchased and installed. We're headed in the right direction folks!

More to come...