SSS SECRET

Welcome to another edition of 

Saturday Scavenger Shots!

Our word this week : secret.

Psssst...

Here is what I believe is the secret to living forever...

Our families!

We live on in the hearts and memories of those who love us.

Besides, who wants to actually live forever?
I don't want to know what I would look 
like in a thousand years.
Yikes!

Pssst...

See this snoozing, snoring middle aged man?

He is the secret to my happiness!

Pssst...

This blanket was crocheted for my X...

by a woman friend.

I liked it so much that I sort of stole it when 
I moved away.

hee hee

But that's a secret!

Don't you dare tell anyone.

Psst...
Here is a special thing...

Its my blog!
I say it is very special because this is where I can
tell all my secrets...
and not have to worry about anyone seeing what 
I say and blabbing to anyone I don't want to 
hear them.
It is a safe and secret place
full of good friends who can be trusted...
because they really don't know who I am or even where I really live.
'Cause those are secrets too!

I hope you enjoyed this week's 
game and will go to the other player's 
blogs to see what secrets they share
in pictures.
Just visit laura b.'s 
"What Fresh Hell Is This?"
on my side bar and tell her you are playing
and then get busy 
telling us your secret ideas. 

 

CRAP!

The monster lurks...

Okay, so I should have known I guess.

But I was sure that I had it under some form of control.

The idea was as soon as the washer

began to drain that I would check the bathrooms for sign of flooding.

The man needed clean socks.

I scurried to the bathroom when the washer did its thing...

and yep... it was backing up... fast!

I dashed to the washer to shut it off...

and found that I was now flooding the man's shop.

There were his cabinet projects (in progress)

quickly becoming islands in a sea of soapy wash water.

I am dead woman living in an "I love Lucy" episode.

Unfinished wood and water do not mix well.

I smashed in the button on the machine and the flood ebbed to a stop.

Not a single towel, shop rag or old sheet remained dry

by the time I'd dried the wood pieces, 

moved them and then mopped the shop floor.

Yep, I was dead.

At least I had the presence of mind in my utter panic to shut off the power strips that feed his precious machines.

Well, crap.

I texted the MIL to tell her about the issue.

They would bring the snake and a camp toilet the following day.

Meanwhile... it was time for a bucket.

Funny how much you need to relieve yourself when it is not convenient.

I had one day before my sisters came to visit.

Not a good thing.

The man slept through it all.

Fortunately for me, his wood was dry by the time he woke.

My execution was stayed for the time being.

Might I note here how unfair it is that men can just stand up to pee outside?

It is a form of penis envy that I admit to having...

since I lack that ability.

=:/

Next day MIL and FIL show up...

they did not have a snake or the camp toilet.

My mood went black.

They took me to lunch.

Then we bought a snake.

Yay!

But can we get on with fixing the clog?

Only no one knew where the clean out was...

just that it was buried somewhere in the middle of berry vines thicker 

than the Amazon.

My luck was still holding bad.

They departed for a funeral.

I was left to hack my way through the Amazon on the side of the house.

Alone.

The man slept through this too.

Near dark they returned.

Sigh.

Looking like something attacked by a big ugly cat,

I stood there and watched FIL dig.

As it turns out there was a map in the house file.

It was drawn 30+ years ago...

before the addition of the family room...

by the man's deceased father who could not be  consulted.

Like something out of a bad pirate film,

we paced things off and dug holes...

where MIL was sure it must be.

Several times.

It was not here, it was not there.

So, FIL decided to go under the house and see if there

was a clean out below the toilets.

Finally... a sane idea!

As soon as he opened the hatch to the under house

we saw a clean out.

MIL was sure that this was to the long ago buried septic tank.

Off he crawled to find a better one.

It didn't exist.

They gave up and went home.

Easy for them to do... they have working toilets and showers!

I felt very sorry for myself.

The man woke up and looked at my face.

"Baby, call Roto-Rooter before you go insane."

I did immediately.

The nice lady told me that a technician

would call me back.

There was about an hour of panic before he did

and a huge relief when he promised to come over...

now.

The truck drove past our driveway and on down the street.

I chased the Roto-Rooter truck.

He seemed amused by this... and I was okay with that.

He looked inside and outside.

We locked up Roxy who wanted to play and let the man go to work.

I doubt he was here more than half an hour.

I felt like blowing him kisses when he drove away.

"Wow" says the man "This place is a shit hole."

True words.

Guess who stayed up until the wee hours to clean it?

But I got to take a nice, long, hot shower when it was done.

I finished the wash...

and thank goodness I did not have to greet my sisters 

smelling like an outhouse.

It was worth the money  to have it fixed.

Every single cent.

The Roto- Rooter Man is a hero!

So is the man for spending the money.

I'd had all the shit I could deal with thank you.

Interesting note:

That clean out was the clean out... they built the family room on top of it.

And...

The issue as it turns out was our new low flow toilet.

R-R Man told us that low flow toilets can't push the "product"

through older pipes very well.

Older homes and remodeled homes tend to have a variety

of pipe sizes interconnected.

This was further compounded by the light flush and heavy flush button

on our particular toilet.

"Product" was going only a little way and getting hung up on 

these odd sized connections.

The solution was simple.

Only use the heavy flush button...

and run the shower with cold water for 5 minutes once a week

to make sure the pipes are kept flowing right.

Sort of defeats the whole idea of a low flow toilet don't you think?

So it goes.

SISTERS

Goodness what a horrible photo!

You can hardly see their faces... but these are my two eldest sisters.

The sane, not horrible ones.

Irony here... the one with the dark hair is the oldest.

The one with hair more silver than my own is second oldest in my family.

Ten and eight years my seniors.

Our father, who lives in DPH,

turns 87 on Saturday.

My sisters and their husbands stopped here to have 

breakfast with us on their way up to celebrate with Grump Pa.

Neither had been able to attend our wedding,

so this was their introduction to the man.

Cinderella, silver hair was supposed to go on an anniversary

trip paid for months prior to our invitation.

However life interjected a series of events that kept that from happening.

While I thought she was lounging on a beautiful beach...

their tree was blown down by a freak tornado

and her father-in-law died suddenly.

Our wedding day was his funeral day.

Meanwhile, Duffy, dark hair and husband Bull

were attending a reunion where no one showed up that they could recall knowing.

Isn't that how life goes?

Such was the conversation this morning as we chatted and ate.

Nothing much to talk about really.

A few funny old family stories and swapping pics of the grand kids.

But it was wonderful to see them.

I was glad to have "normal" family members to introduce to the man

vs the not so normal Grump Pa and Medusa.

The thing that stuck me immediately was how much my sisters

looked like other family women that I thought of as

elderly.

Ha!

Duffy looks like Auntie J and Cinderella looks like the grandmother

we called only "Gertrude".

It also confirmed my suspicion that Bear sounds

very much like Duffy when she speaks...

and proved to the man that both Cinderella and I snort when we laugh.

And that we both laugh a lot.

The Grump used to call us "the jolly girls".

Yeah... we didn't care for that much.

It was fun and strange and sweet

to see them all.

How much we have all changed over the years.

How different but essentially the same.

I wished that I had more time to visit,

but at the same time welcomed being home again.

A morning of contradiction.

When I hugged Cinderella...

she whispered in my ear...

"I am so glad to see you happy."

I came home and said good night to the man

and wandered out here to post.

I thought about her parting words

and the intensity with which they were said.

I guess I hadn't fooled anyone all those years

that I was not happy.

How wonderful that they can see now that I am.

One point of conversation came up...

the Duck game tonight against Cal Bears.

The man asked who they would be rooting for...

Cal Bears!

I had to laugh.

We were raised Californians

and it is where they all still live.

We'll be rooting against them of course.

=:]

Brother-in-laws paying their bills.

Sweet!

SNAKE!

A day ago I heard the man cursing in the rear bathroom

followed by the unmistakable slosh-swoosh of the plunger.

I didn't think much about it after that...

he's a fairly handy man.

A few hours passed and the man went to work.

I stood watching myself brush my hair in the front bathroom...

to my left came the sound of burbling.

Ut-oh.

Burbling is the sound that Mr. Glug-Glug

makes to announce that he has come calling.

I lifted the lid that we keep down to discourage Roxy from drinking there.

The water was churning.

Not a rolling boil, but a tumbling activity minus any flushing.

This cannot be good.

In the morning when the man arrived home from work,

I gave him the bad news that the toilets have gone crazy.

He sighed and went to check both toilets out.

At this point, both have dropped their water levels

to nearly nil.

He flushes one and it responds in a proper manor.

Cool beans!

Thank you lord I can pee at last!

The man gets ready to sleep and visits the rear toilet...

I can hear him cursing out in the shop.

When he pokes his head out and says

"You haven't been flushing tampons have you?"

I am indignant!

"You know for over ten years I was the one who had to fix toilets..."

He holds his hand up to stave off further lecture.

I was standing in my front bathroom with a hand towel wrapped around the toilet brush... jammed into the toilet's exit hole.

The man is in the rear bathroom squishing the plunger at an insane rate.

All he gets is wet with icky waste water.

By the sound of his vocabulary,

I have finally found the event that can cause him to utterly lose his cool.

Well now...

His last words as he was leaving for work were

"You know you're a homeowner when you're the guy who has to pay the Rooter-Rooter bill."

Meanwhile the folks at Albertsons think that I have a serious

problem.

 I do, but its not the kind they must think.

The next step was buying Liquid Plumber.

No... not to pour in the toilet.

I know better.

At this point, water was trying to back up into the front shower.

One dose and it's not moving much.

I'll give it another shot in about an hour.

Grumble.

If that doesn't work...

I'll be searching for the clean out on the side of the house.

It's under black berries.

Its under the ground... but there is a map.

Like I can follow a map!

It was supposed to have a nice tidy box around it,

but the man's dad died and his mom didn't know what to do with it.

So she buried it and put a flag on it.

The cable guy needed to connect to something out there and 

even though she asked him to be careful of the flag...

he removed it and forgot where it went.

I want to run the washing machine.

I want to take a shower.

I'd love to use my toilet.

I am really hoping that a second dose of drain cleaner

will the trick.

Oh boy.

The house goes quiet.

Living the graveyard life.

Website for this image

Graveyard Secrets Part Two

gemmamawdsley.wordpress.com

If you have been following along, you know that the man

recently got a job at a company he has wanted to work for a long time.

He now works the graveyard shift.

Acclimating our selves to this shift is a challenge.

I've worked graveyard myself in the past

and have no trouble with it.

I am a night person.

The man is not really.

He's been a 7:00 AM to 3:30 PM guy for a long time.

A day worker and a napper.

His body wants to be awake if its light...

or to sleep in short bursts.

There were concerns...

when to eat what meal, when to take medications,

when to do the banking and bill paying, etc.

Everything we do needed to be tweeked.

I think we've got it now.

He goes to work... I go to bed.

I get up... he comes home.

We have a brief interlude of time where I 

serve him diner and a drink.

He chews and sips, grunts out short responses

to the questions that I have.

I am careful to have the house calm when he gets home.

I close off all the light that I can so that inside,

it is dusky.

It doesn't take long for him to nod off...

when I encourage him to go to bed.

Roxy and I have things down.

The man leaves and we secure the house.

Roxy does a quick yard patrol and probably her business

then comes back inside to lay on the floor at my feet

until I start to get sleepy.

I go to my bed... she goes to hers.

The house goes quiet.

In the morning, I hop up and make his diner.

Roxy checks out the yard and does her thing.

When the man pulls up...

we are both waiting and wiggly,

happy that he has come home.

Roxy wiggles more... I'm still drinking coffee.

Its not ideal.

I could have altered my schedule to match his.

But I am job hunting and that is a daytime endeavor.

I can do the shopping, billy paying, etc.

And really, when he's done for the day,

he needs sleep more than me.

 So far it seems to work well.

He eventually wakes up in the early evening.

We have time then to visit and enjoy each others company,

watch a game or whatever. 

But it is different.

I have a lot of time alone with Roxy.

We say good-night to him in the morning

and remove ourselves to the shop or outside...

so that the house can again go quiet.

BTW...

We did hunt yesterday for half a day.

Neither the man or I even got a shot off.

One of the guys in our party

got a small deer... a very young one.

He is handicapped and the rules for him are different.

The same guy also got some grouses...

however you spell it.

I didn't know that you don't pluck them...

you skin them.

Interesting.

But we'll go again next weekend...

and so on until the season ends.

Hopefully we can make the freezer fat.

That is the point.

Its the same reason we feed the freezer fish.

I'd love to say that we save tons of money.

With fishing we do.

Not so with hunting... which is expensive.

Did I enjoy myself?

As much as anyone could standing in the forest

getting wet from the drizzle.

I'm hoping it won't rain next time. 

SSS RED

 Welcome to Saturday Scavenger Shots.

Our word this week is : 

RED

Normally I'd be plowing through my pics looking for things that were RED,

because RED is a color and I must have a bazillion things that are RED.

It is my favorite color.

However, as soon as I saw our word for the week...

one thing immediately popped into my mind.

RED Forman

from That 70's Show.

 If you aren't a fan of the show or never happened 

to catch it.

RED was the lead character's hard nosed dad.

 He was not only named RED,

but he often saw RED and flew off the handle.

 RED was well know for his catch phrases

"I'll put my foot up your ass"

and

"Dumb ass!"

That is it for my SSS offering for this week.

I hope you enjoyed seeing RED.

=;]