My next door neighbor came over today and was bragging about his new garage flooring and cabinets that he had installed a couple of weeks ago. Well, of course I had to go over to check it out! When I got over to his place and into his garage, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven! His garage looked like a dream come true! His floor was beautiful, he had brand new cabinets and the greatest storage organizers you can imagine! His garage was so great that I didn’t want to come home to my own garage! I’ve been working hard at fixing up my garage as best as I can with my limited resources, but his was very enviable to say the least!
I asked him where he got his garage floor and cabinets and organizers, and he told me that he got them from a place that he found from the premiergarage.com website. So I’ve been spending the last several minutes on their website, looking at the different floor finishes and types, and trying to figure out which one I would like the best for my garage. I’m going to contact the company for more information next week.
I got up early this morning to stuff the stockings and start breakfast for my wife and family. It’s unusual for her to sleep this late any morning; I’m surprised that isn’t awake yet! I’m looking forward to watching her open her Christmas gift this morning; I bought her exactly what she told me that she wanted. I bought her a couple of miniature buildings of our town made by company BrandyWine. They are similar in nature to the Cat’s Meow Village pieces that she had collected from the town that we used to live in. When we moved here she tried to find Cat’s Meow pieces of our new town, but had no luck finding them anywhere.
One day she was at a friend’s house and saw what looked like Cat’s Meow pieces and asked her friend where she bought them. So she was told where to get them, and that is how it came to be! We’ve been told since then that Cat’s Meow had gone out of business, but was trying to get started back up again. It will be interesting to see if they can, and do start up again. I hope so, because my wife really enjoyed collecting them and would like to have a collection of our new town!
I have to say that I really marvel at all of the beautiful mailboxes that I see when I drive around this area of the country. Sure, there are certainly the fair share of old, beat up boxes, but there are a lot of really nice mail boxes in front of the nicer houses in the area.
When we moved into this house, the mailbox in front of the house was literally hanging down off the side of the post. We put up a new inexpensive one for the time being, so we could get our mail, but my wife has been hinting from the very beginning that she would like to get a nice new mail box as soon as we can afford to spiff the place up a little bit.
I’m hoping that this spring we can put in a new one; I’ve told my wife to take a look at the mailboxixchange.com website and see which one she thinks she would like the best. They have a large assortment of really nice ones! We’ve tried looking in the local stores and can’t find hardly anything, so I was pleased when I found this website!
This morning my wife and I were watching the morning news, waiting for a weather report. We wanted to go out grocery shopping and weren’t sure which car to take. We saw that New England is getting buried in snow again. Thank goodness we don’t live there anymore! We certainly don’t miss that at all! My wife remarked that today is the first day of winter, and therefore days will be getting longer now! I’m glad that we’ll be seeing more daylight; it’s a real drag to have so many dark hours! We end up driving in the dark way too much during the winter! Although I have to admit that it is nice to see how many folks decorate their homes with Holiday decorations to brighten up the night! So anyway, happy first day of winter! I hope it is a mild one for us here.
My wife has been interested and very actively involved in training our dogs from an early age. She got her first puppy when she was in her early 20’s and she took it to a place that taught her how to train it. She (and the puppy) learned very well, and she has applied what she has learned to every dog she has owned since that time. She truly believes that our pets are family members, and she makes sure that they are cared for as well as any human in the house. That being said, she won’t feed them people food (except cheese.) When we go away on vacation she is always reluctant to board our pets, and tries to find someone to pet sit for us. Having a caring pet sitter is always her first choice; she says it is less traumatic for the pets when we go away.
So when her girl friend Tanya from San Diego called us last week and said she was coming into town for the holidays and was going to stop in for a visit, the conversation naturally turned to what was she going to do with her pets? My wife told Tanya that she would look up a San Diego pet sitting service on the Internet and let her know what she could find. She called her back this afternoon and suggested that she look at the expertdogtrainingsd.com website and consider using their services. They offer expert dog training for adult dogs as well as puppies, dog walking, and pet sitting in her area.
With the holidays fast approaching, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to be hearing (and reading) more warnings about all of the toxic toys on the market. I am totally amazed that these manufacturers are continuing to manufacture this kind of poisonous garbage. As far as I’m concerned, these companies, and their CEO’s should be arrested and charged with aggravated assault. I was reading about the dangerous toys on the market, but not reading that they have been recalled yet. I sure hope they are recalled, and NOT allowed to stay on the market! I don’t know, maybe we need to set up a system where whenever anyone buys a toy they have to sign a national registry so if and when the toy is recalled that particular consumer will receive a written notice about the recall! Now I know that a lot of people would cry that violates some privacy issues, but the health of our kids are on the line here!
I decided to buy my mother a digital picture frame for one of her Christmas presents this year. To make the gift nicer I asked my wife to copy some of our family’s pictures onto a SD memory card to put in the frame, so when she gets the frame and turns it on she will see a variety of family pictures on it. I’m really excited about her getting this gift! I’m sorry I won’t be there to see her open it and turn it on. I know she’s going to love it!
My wife has been really busy working two part time jobs, so she asked me to try to help out more this Christmas than I have in years past. Since I’ve been staying home because of my injuries, I try to help out when and where I can. It is hard to help out, though, because I am still in a lot of pain. So I’m limited in what I can do around the house. Well, with the help of a friend we got our artificial tree out of the attic and put together. One of our dogs has decided that she likes to chew on the bottom string of lights and that has caused quite a problem, we can’t seem to break her of that. I guess next year we’ll be getting a different tree, one that is short enough to put on a table to keep the dog from chewing on the tree!
So over the course of this week I’ve been trying to decorate the parts of the tree that I can reach without hurting myself. I never realized how many ornaments we had! I stopped decorating when I thought the tree had enough ornaments on it, and there were tons of ornaments left over! I thought it looked just fine, but my wife said that I was only about half-way done. So today my wife has been spending some time decorating parts of the tree that I didn’t think needed decorating – you know – inside the innermost branches, and the back of the tree. It’s looking pretty good!
I’m very particular when it comes to our vehicles. My wife says I’m “fussy” about it. Well, I say tomahto, and she says tomato, but the point is that I care about the way the vehicles look. Every dent and scratch puts one more gray hair on my head! Every time I go outside the house, and am near one of the cars (or trucks or motorcycle, as the case may be) I scrutinize it for any new signs of abuse. There are some dents and scratches I can take care of myself, but not all of them. Some of them require the assistance of a good body shop.
Being new to the area, I’ve been at a disadvantage when it comes to finding good local service providers. My wife told me that she found a website I can use called collisionrepairexperts.com to help me find a list of the best body shops in the area. She explained that it was set up so that you typed in your zip code and a list of body shops comes up in the area that are in their network of experts. She said that the network is nationwide, so we could find California auto body shops or Virginia auto body shops and anyplace in between.
My wife heard from a dear friend of hers last night through the magic of Instant Messaging that she had not heard from in about two years. This friend is actually the young adult daughter of a close friend, and the girl calls my wife “auntie.” Anyway, it appeared that the young lady needed a shoulder to cry on about how hard marriage is (she’s been married only three years.” And of course, bemoaning how tight money is, and all the regular complaints that young married women have.
After the “conversation” was over, my wife was telling me that this young lady was complaining about how tight money is, and my wife was going to give her a tip on how to save money on groceries. My wife asked me which one of the couple does the cooking, and the answer was “we eat all of our meals out.”
Well, so much for tips on saving money on groceries, and so much for complaining about how tight money is if you are eating all of your meals out! That really gets my goat when people eat all of their meals out and have the audacity to complain that money is tight for them!
Well I’ve been reminding my wife every day this week that we need to get the Christmas gifts in the mail to the folks in New England so they will arrive in time for Christmas. She kept telling me that she didn’t have time to deal with it because of her work schedule, and for me to go ahead and get them ready to mail and we would mail them out early on Saturday morning when the Post Office was open. Sure enough, this morning she said “get the gifts together and we’ll take them to the Post Office.” Well, she wasn’t too impressed with the information that the gifts were not yet gift wrapped or boxed in shipping boxes. So now I am in the process of gift wrapping them and getting them ready to ship, although the Post Office is now closed for the weekend. Oh well, I guess the gifts will be arriving late this year!
My wife came home from her new job yesterday and told me that she was surprised that her new employer only gives one ten minute paid break after four hours of work and a 30 minute unpaid break after six hours of work. This is the first place she’s ever worked that gave such little time for breaks, and so much time to work between breaks. Most other places gave a fifteen or twenty minute paid break after two hours, and a thirty minute unpaid break after four hours.
We spent some time looking up labor laws this morning and found out that this state has no laws regarding breaks at work for people over the age of 16! The state we used to live in had very specific laws regarding breaks for every age. So we reasoned that this state must abide by federal law regarding breaks, and we looked that up. Imagine our shock when we found out that there are no federal laws regarding how much time for breaks, or when to take them either! The only laws we saw was that if an employee is required to do any work at all during their break (such as answer phones) then the employee is to be paid. Well, as far as I’m concerned, that would be reasonable because then the employee isn’t really taking a break, and SHOULD be paid!
Seems to me that there would be (and should be) federal laws mandating that workers are allowed to take breaks at work! I truly am amazed!
Throughout the year, my wife and I often consider buying gift cards for gifts for people who are having birthdays, anniversaries, and other “gift giving” occasions. We like to buy gift cards over the Internet if at all possible, to save us the trouble of going to the store that sells them. One of our favorite relatives loves a particular restaurant that is nowhere near where we live so it is difficult to get a gift card for that place unless we order it over the Internet.
One of the drawbacks to that in the past, has been that buying the gift cards from the company’s Internet website often incurs a shipping fee that adds quite a bit to the cost of the gift card itself. Imagine our delight when we found a website called giftcardmall.com that offers a huge variety of gift cards from many stores and restaurants for sale with no shipping fee (for standard shipping) for the entire month of December! This is a perfect time to buy gift cards and send them to the folks on our shopping lists – they can use them during the after-Christmas sales to buy the things that they really want – getting the biggest bang for the buck!
I’ve been getting the urge to cook sweets a lot lately. This can be dangerous, since I’m a diabetic! But my blood sugar has been very well under control lately, with it hovering around 90 every day, so I don’t feel too guilty if I indulge a little bit every now and then. My wife has been making sure to NOT buy a lot of sweets, she’s been afraid that I’d over-indulge in them, so lately I’ve been making brownies here at home while she’s at work.
We have this great double-walled insulated brownie pan that makes the perfect brownies! I never had any luck making brownies before I snagged this wife! A few weeks ago when I told her I wanted to mix up some brownies, she dug out “the pan” and said “use this pan – it is THE secret to perfect brownies!” Of course I scoffed at her, but I used the pan, and she is absolutely right. (Don’t tell her I said that, there will be no living with her if she found out I said she was right about something! – Just kidding – I love you honey!)
Anyway, I’ve put a twist on the brownies that she doesn’t do, I dust them with powdered sugar after they’ve cooled off – I think that makes them extra yummy!
My wife loves jewelry. Whenever I need to buy her a gift, the one thing I know she will always love is jewelry! With money as tight as it is right now, and Christmas coming up, I was excited to find a Zales promotional code that would help me save a lot of money on some beautiful jewelry for Christmas gifts for my wife, my daughter, my sister, AND my mother!
Believe me, there is nothing a woman likes for a gift as much as jewelry! Oh sure, there are men who buy things like kitchen appliances and vacuum cleaners, and those are nice practical ideas, but jewelry speaks to their very souls. It makes them feel that you value them as the special, mystical beings that they are. And let me tell you, you want the women in your life to feel that you value them! If you HAVE to buy them something practical, well, go ahead, but temper it with a small piece of sparkly jewelry and they will adore you for it!
A great place to go to find discount codes for jewelry is the savings.com website. In fact, they have discount codes and coupons on a wide variety of merchandise, sure to save you money during this gift giving season!
We were given a beef roast by my sister-in-law. It was packaged up in a commercially sealed bag, with some kind of marinade in it. It was frozen when we got it. There is no label on the roast, telling us what cut it is. So we’re not quite sure the right way to cook it. My wife suggested that we cook it in the oven for 20 minutes per pound at 350 degrees. Well, we weighed it on our postage scale and found it was 2.25 pounds. So I put it in the oven at 4pm, hoping it would be ready by 4:45 or 5pm. Well, we stuck a thermometer in the roast to make sure it was done to our liking, and we just now took it out of the oven at 5:40. Most of the cookbooks suggest about 20 minutes per pound, so I don’t quite understand why it took so long to cook! My wife always tells me when she cooks a roast that there really is no telling exactly when it will be done – she says “it’ll be ready when it’s ready!” I never understood why she would say that, but now I guess since I’m the one cooking it I understand that a little bit better – when it’s ready, it will be ready!
I’m sure hoping it isn’t tough! I’m letting it “stand” for a few minutes before slicing it. I wonder what flavor the marinade is!
I could not help but notice after we moved to Virginia, how many members of my wife’s family smoke cigarettes. Her sister, her brothers, her nephews and one of her neices all smoke. This was kind of a shock to me because I don’t have any family members that smoke. My parents used to smoke, but my father died of Lung cancer a long time ago, and my mother quit smoking about fifteen years ago.
Back when my father got his Lung cancer diagnosis from his doctors, he chose to hide the fact that he had cancer. We did not know what the Lung cancer symptoms were, and he was pretty good at hiding them from us. He was afraid of participating in any kind of Lung cancer treatment. He had heard that the Lung cancer surgery and following treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy would make him feel so bad that he’d wish he was dead. He also knew that meant he had to quit smoking cigarrettes, and he decided he’d rather simply die from cancer than quit smoking and go through the surgery and treatments.
When he finally admitted to us that he was sick and went to the hospital, he was dead in about two weeks. That was the first time we knew that he even had cancer! We were shocked and dismayed. It was a terrible time in my life, and I really wish that my in-laws would quit smoking because I don’t want any of them to get cancer and put their families through the grief that my family went through.
Yesterday my sister-in-law came over in her dilapidated old Suburban. The hinges on the driver’s side door had been sprung so she could no longer close the door, and the driver’s side window would no longer roll up or down. She asked me to take a look at it a couple of weeks ago and see if I could fix it for her. So I went up to her place and checked it out and told her that I could fix it, but she needed to pick up a few parts and bring it to my place for me to fix it (because my tools are here.)
So yesterday she came over and I fixed her junker Suburban for her. While I was working on it, she went inside and helped us out by doing some much neglected/needed dusting. So that worked out nicely. My wife has been too busy to clean house and I told her I’d take care of it but have not been keeping up with the work. So it was nice that my sister-in-law worked on that while I worked on her car! A little bit of “I’ll help you if you help me” going on there!
One thing my wife can’t argue with me about it that times are tough right now. Stores are closing left and right! Sadly, some of the stores that are closing happened to be some of our favorite stores! With the economy as shaky as it is right now, we feel that the best Christmas gifts to give this year are Visa gift cards. You can use them at any store that accepts Visa. A cool place to buy personalized Visa gift cards is the web page of giftcardlab.com. If you’re thinking about giving gift cards for gifts, check them out!
It was no surprise to my wife and I to hear on the morning news that the country is officially in a recession – since last December! We’ve known it all along; we’re just surprised that it took this long for it to be “official.” All this year “they’ve” been denying it, and now they’ve finally acknowledged it. I don’t know WHAT took so long for them to admit it! I just hope that after January things will get turned around. I know it is going to take a while; I hope we can hold on until then!
