Here it is…

The blue ball of wonder that I will eat ALL GONE!

See.

Shack Nasty 09

Let’s see…the Shack…hmmm.

I’ll just let you see for yourself.

Tainted gene pool

Last week my mother gave me a large folder filled with art work and old school projects that she had kept from when I was in school.

School did not come particularly easy to me.  In fact, I remember sitting at the dinning room table going over and over and over spelling words.  My parents got so tired of testing me that they had me spell them into a tape recorder and listen to them back…it was great fun.

Needless to say, this picture brought me right back to that dinning room table when I looked at it.  If you can’t read the title of the picture, I wrote ” I like Suturday Becaz I like swimgn in The aftrnoon.  dut I like goig with a frend.”

I guess I’m going to have to take the hit for this one if our kids can’t spell worth a lick.  Ohhh well.

Things

This picture of the day from Dooce made me instantly want a second dog as well as a better, faster camera.

For those of you who don’t read the comments

Sometimes people don’t dig into the comments section.  This was so funny I just had to post it.  It’s from our friend Troy who just spent a few days in THE MAD HOUSE I call home.

I just finished listening to a VM Mary left me yesterday – After I got done with her To-Do list – drain pipes eaten away compliments of some acid-wielding crazy lady, a couple of leaky faucets, a storm door closer torn from the door by some crazy lady’s crazy kids (supposedly), etc. I had left her an e-mail and a few notes yesterday explaining what I accomplished and what her family can do in the future to spare her pipes from that acid she loves to buy and use (drain cleaner that is) and hopefully avoid having to turn another snake or two lose in the drain pipes in the oldest part of her house. I started with the little wimpy snake a few days ago and even though my right-hand man KP thought it was really cool, it didn’t solve the problem. So I returned with the long power snake that you connect to a drill – KP thought this one was even cooler and KP, Mary and the cat all decided they needed to see this one in action!

Troy, the sink, the cat and the snake

Anyway, their desire to observe caused a serious dilemma for yours truly. You see rotary snakes are often the only way to clean old drain pipes, but the decision to use them is not free of several risks that can create much more serious problems for homeowners. You see, rotary snakes will almost always go down the pipe, but they don’t always come out. And if they get stuck really good, the drain will never work again. Which means if the homeowner has any intention of using the the sink, toilet and tub that all drain into the pipe that is now plugged with the stuck rotary snake, the only way for them to do so is to hire a carpenter to cut away the floors and walls where the old pipes run so they can be removed and replaced with new ones…

So there I was, sitting with the acid-wielding blogger, her camera, her son, and their cat all focused on my every move. All I could think about was how this situation was tailor-made for a good-hearted guy with considerable handyman skills and the desire to help out a neighbor in need to get a really good lesson taught to him re: why it is so important for contractors to be licensed and to carry insurance…. I could also hear my father’s words of wisdom in my ear – “make sure to take things REALLY SLOW when using a rotary snake as you are really F#@ked if you get it stuck in the pipe and can’t get it out.”

So should I give Mary the “buyer beware” talk that every licensed plumber would give her before proceeding? Or should I try the rotary snake VERY SLOWLY and see what happens??? I have to admit, if KP wouldn’t have been looking at me like I was about to save someone’s life with that damn snake, I would have probably told Mary “On second thought I think you should call a plumber or someone else who has better insurance – make that any insurance – than I do to do this for you.”

But KP was giving me that “your the man Mr. Auth” look that one can never walk away from so I pushed the trigger on the drill and began pushing the snake into the pipe. The deeper it went the bigger KP’s smile got and the more pictures Mary flashed. Little did they know that pushing the snake in is the easy part. Once it busted through the clog, I wiggled it around and then started pulling it out. It actually came out covered with black, greasy sewer pipe grime and the spring on the end was filled with all the crud that does such a great job of clogging drains. I breathed a sigh of relief and told KP and Mary I thought it worked – with produced a “Let me see that stuff on that spring” from KP and another string of flashes from Mary’s camera. I cleaned the snake up, put it back in my truck, put the drain pipes under the sink back together and couldn’t wait to fill the sink up with water and then open the stopper. The water created one of those tornado-like whirlpools like the drains in brand-new homes with brand new plastic sewer pipes do and the water disappeared so fast that Mary exclaimed “that drain hasn’t worked that well in all the years we’ve lived here”. Which made me smile from ear to ear. And then KP said “we need to tell PJ to quit putting her blonde hair down that drain” – which was the icing on the cake.

Who needs insurance when one has great neighbors and customers like Mary and KP…

Looking down the drain

You know those moments where you just know you have gone one step too far?

Yeah, that was me yesterday.

With the furnace on the fritz and a clogged kid’s bathroom sink, that I had been trying for days to fix with no avail…I poured in the earth killing, skin eating, most caustic liquid solid over the counter to random woman who try to fix their own problems could possibly purchase, down the sink.

And ohhhhhh did it fix it, it ate right through the pipe.

Thanks to our friend Troy, who has now rebuild the 20 some-year-old plumbing in that bathroom and has now come to find the clog to be in the WALL behind all the tile, I got to see what it looks like looking through a sink drain.

I knew there was a reason this was happening.

New perspective.

I hope I don’t get to see through the wall next.

The Dangler

This…this type of dangling tooth, whenever I see it makes me want to throw up in my mouth.

Hopefully she’ll get kicked in the face again.   Like on Friday in Kung Fu when she got tagged by a foot in the mouth and lost that bottom dangler.

It must go.

Jump

The kids are gone.

Adam is at work.

I’m still in my Saturday morning running clothes and catching up on blogs.

I find this month’s Superhero Photo Challenge and can’t stop myself.

Seriously, I had way too much fun putting my camera up on pots and pans and hitting the 10 second timer.

Try it.

You gotta try it.

Freaky little thing

Tiny little dog

I found this little dog in my dirty laundry bin.

I have no idea where it came from or whose it is.

My pinkie finger is there to show you just how small it is.

It is velvety soft.

It looks kinda mad, kinda mean, kinda nasty and certainly not the COME PLAY WITH ME kinda happy you’re going for as a kid.

This small thing is very disturbing to me.

I don’t like it one bit.

Who the hell would play with that?

The dog won’t even chew it to death.

I think it’s the eyes.

Chemo can be fun!

All good news today.

Ok, a touch anemic…but who cares.

Today we take what we can get.