I love a rainy night

It's been rainy here.  It started falling last night and continues.  I have fought the urge to take a nap all day,  and now it's too late.  So I did these other things to occupy my time.

I am making Pioneer Woman's meatloaf.  I have never made any other meatloaf except for my mother's recipe that involved part ground beef and part ground veal or pork.  It's my favorite.  But P-dub has one that involves wrapping the loaves in bacon.  Enough said.

I finally found something that will make my house smell like our neighbor Molly's.  Her house always smells so good - but lemon is the only scent in the mixture that I can identify.  I switched to Lysol lemon scented to clean.  It smells good, but not like Molly's.  But today, I stumbled across this Paula Deen candle.

Lemon Basil.  I've been burning it all afternoon.  Mission accomplished.

I also made a wreath.  I love wreaths, but I'm not very crafty.  I just picked out a bunch of felt flowers and owls that were on sale at Michael's and gave in and bought myself a glue gun.  Here's the result.

Quit.  I know it's not great, but it makes me happy.  

As long as you're making fun of me, I might as well really give you something to laugh at.  Remember that song by Eddie Rabbitt?  "I Love a Rainy Night."  Well, I adored that song.  Still do.  I think I'll go listen to it now.

And later, I'm going to watch a movie, snuggled in my bed with whatever boys will join me.  One of my favorite spooky movies, perfect for a rainy night, is Fallen with Denzel Washington, John Goodman, and Donald Sutherland.  Oh my gracious it is good.  All about fallen angels and good versus evil.  I love me a good versus evil movie.

This hurts me more than it hurts you

Our six-month-old puppy got her lady parts fixed yesterday.  Fixed.  As in - removed.  So that we don't populate the planet with even more puppies, however cute they may be.  

I dropped her off at the clinic early in the morning and Aquaman picked her up late in the afternoon.  He said she walked out on a leash fine, but then just kind of stood there.  Then she laid right down in the waiting room.

When I came home, she still managed to haul herself up out of her bed and greet me and the twins at the door in her cone of shame.  Only now, I'm calling it the cone of pain.  Because it hurts real bad when she slams into your legs with it.  Which she does.  About twenty times a day.

She hasn't let the pain meds slow her down any, either.  She can't navigate the back steps to the yard very well, but she goes just as quickly, stumbling the entire way.  If she wants to go out, she still sits by the back door, and still tries to push open the storm door with her nose.  The same nose that is now about an inch lower than the white plastic cone of shame/pain.  So she just scrapes it up against the door and pushes.  It works.

I'll admit that I was kind of hoping that she'd be more, I don't know, down for the count for a few days.  But I'll be damned if she didn't jump up on one boy's bed this morning to snuggle up with him.  And she was up on the couch this afternoon.  She even attempted to jump up on one boy returning from school.  Damn it.

She'll be on pain meds for three days and in the cone of shame/pain for two weeks when we'll return to have her staples removed from the incision.  I think everyone in the house will have bruised shins by that time.  My favorite depiction of the cone of shame is in the Disney animated movie Up.  If you haven't seen it, you really should.

    

 

Whew! That was a lot of work!

For the past five days, Aquaman and I have gotten busy.

Painting. (What did you think I was talking about?)

After the boys were all safely on the bus each morning, we'd finish our coffee and head out to the back yard. There, the monster waited.

The back side of our house - and the work the insurance company is requiring us to do to it - has been hanging over our heads since the fall. While Aquaman was gone for several months on a boat, I managed to pull off the siding all the way around the house (you can see the whole process at texasbungalow.blogspot.com). This was the siding the insurance company wanted us to repair. I hated the 1970s era, asphalt crap and refused to repair it and was just certain that there must be beautiful clapboard underneath that ugly stuff. I was right.

But it wasn't in perfect condition - few things are on a century-old house. So we read a few books and talked to a few carpenters and then we started scraping the old paint off. Most of the wood was salvaged, some had to be replaced. And we had to put up a railing on the porch steps.  Then we were ready to prime, paint and caulk.

So that's what we did this week. All week. For five mornings straight. I am so tired.

The priming wasn't too bad, except Aquaman sloshed quite a bit on my head while he was up above me on a ladder. Aquaman sloshed a lot of paint everywhere, actually. It's on his hands and arms and in his hair. He even managed to get some on his stomach, underneath his shirt. How does one manage that, exactly?

After priming, there was caulking. Caulk has a very interesting pronunciation that made for a hilarious morning.
"Get your caulk over here," I  ordered.
"Don't drip your caulk on me!" I'd warn him.
It was endless.
"Hold your caulk steady."
"Is the caulk still wet?"
"We went through that caulk fast."
"Squirt the caulk in real deep over here."
"You have to get the caulk in every nook and cranny."

We had the best time. We listened to lots of music while we worked - mostly on Pandora. I love Pandora. You should check out this internet radio if you haven't yet. We had Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers radio on most of the time (in preparation for his concert this weekend), but also Johnny Cash, Adele, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Colbie Caillet, ABBA, Steve Miller Band, Foster the People, Glen Hansard and The Cure. Each song would remind one of us of something different: college days or having kids or our parents. And quite a few reminded us, and had us talking about, the past two years and how difficult they've been. Nothing but time to talk while we painted.   Strangely enough, talking about difficult times was good.

And today, when we finished, we were grateful. Grateful the job is done. Grateful that we're still married. They're both a lot of work: painting and marriage. They both leave you exhausted at times and beaming with pride at others. Sometimes you miss a spot and your partner comes in to fill in behind you. And between the two of you, it ends up looking pretty damn good.