Latex. Paint, that is!

Well it's been a busy couple of weeks, it has.  A while back I finally called a contractor to come see about replacing my retaining walls in the front yard.  They're currently old brick and are tilting and cracking with the weight of ages.  I want to see them replaced with some nice looking field stone.  Mmm, rocky.  But the price he gave me was way too high.  He did, however, give me a reasonable offer on a house painting.

My house was last painted when I was around.. eleven?  Twelve?  Something like that.  Many eons ago, anyway.  They painted it themselves, actually, to save money.  My mom was always about saving money even when we had plenty of money saved up.  She would almost never let us run the AC in the summer.  It was only with much persuasion and begging that I was able to get a window AC in my room when I was 16.  Anyhow, it's been a long time since the house was last painted and it's been flaking and chipping a lot in the past few years.  And some of the masonite siding and wood trim was warped or rotten with age.  Not to mention the gosh darn woodpecker holes.  So I decided I needed paint far more urgently than a new wall.

Well, it's done now.  Except for some odds and ends like the doors and steps.  I wanted to go for tannish gray walls and black trim.  Little bit goth, ya know.  But the gray turned out much lighter than expected, like a very very light beigey gray.  I had an anxiety attack or two worrying about how that would look.  It turned out okay, though the contrast of the light color and the black is starker than I had planned.  Ah well.  The house certainly looks tidier!  They replaced a lot of the damaged boards and caulked my cracks...  yes.  So that should last a long time.

Distressingly, they discovered some termites when removing a damaged board.  They hadn't gotten into the framework or anything, just the wet, crumbly stuff, but still.  I've never had termite problems before.  So I had to get the termite people out here to take a look.  They're going to dig a trench around my house and fill it with poison, it would appear.  They wanted me to get rid of a ton of cardboard boxes my dad had left in a corner of the basement for some reason.. rainy day boxes, I guess.  It's been pouring rain since then, though, so I haven't been able to get to work on that til today.

My basement is really more of a dirt floored, deep crawl space accessable only from the outside.. it's about 6 feet at the deepest end and about a foot at the shallowest.  Sadly it's not very suitable for a dungeon.  Well, it's dirty and dank and such, so that's not so bad, but it's also full of bugs, spiders, and the occasional Arkansas scorpion (they're small and pale, but pack quite a punch).  It's not really a place I would want to leave someone tied up in.  Not responsibly, anyway.  Alas. 

It's been pouring rain for a couple days and the deepest part, which I had to cross, was flooded with several inches of water.  I had to take a few spare cinder blocks from behind the house and put them down as stepping stones.  Then I moved a ton of dirty old boxes of all sizes out of the cramped corner.  They're piled up outside now, taking up half the patio.  I'm not sure what I'll do with them, as I'm not sure the garbage men take heaps of loose boxes.  Well, at least it's done now.  One of these days I need to totally clean out all the ancient detritus from my basement, but I guess I could wait til I have a slave.  Slave labor, you know.

Retro day

While shopping today I noticed they had a new drink for sale called Mountain Dew Throwback.  It's made with sugar instead of corn syrup.  Hardly anything has sugar in it anymore, it's all corn, corn, corn.  I thought that interesting so I got some and just tried it.  I like it.  It's very smooth, perhaps not as much carbonation, and the sweetness lingers in the back of the throat a lot longer.  It's refreshin!

The other day I happened across the name of an old Commodore 64 game I used to enjoy.  This was back in, oh, 85 or 86.  I'd never forgotten the game, but try as I might I couldn't remember the name.  Well, I found it and it's called Ultimate Wizard.  It was a very frustrating game (it was so easy for the little wizard guy to die), but it was fun.  I didn't have a C64, myself - we had an Apple 2c with a teeny tiny green and black screen monitor - but I'd play it for hours at a time at a friend's house when spending the night.  And it was one of the first games that had a construction set, so we could build our own levels that often didn't work right.  But it was fun.  Anyway, seeing the youtube videos of it and hearing the sounds instantly took me back, so that was nice.  We also played a game called Mail Order Monsters a whole lot.  That one was fun, too.

because

   "Why does she want me?" Coraline asked the cat.  "Why does
she want me to stay here with her?"
   "She wants something to love, I think," said the cat. "Something
that isn't her.  She might want something to eat as well.  It's hard
to tell with creatures like that."

- Coraline

Who will bake the cake when I'm gone?

1 18.25 pounds packaged chocolate cake mix
1 can prepared coconut pecan frosting
3/4 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup butter or margarine
1 and 2/3 cups granulated sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour

Don't forget garnishes such as:
Fish-shaped crackers
Fish-shaped candy
Fish-shaped solid waste
Fish-shaped dirt
Fish-shaped ethyl benzine
Whole and peeled licorice
Fish shaped volatile organic compounds
And sediment-shaped sediment
Peanut butter candy coated pieces, shaped like fish

1 cup lemon juice
Alpha resins
Unsaturated polyester resin
Fiberglass surface resins
And volatile malted milk impoundments
9 large egg yolks
12 medium geo-synthetic membranes
1 cup granulated sugar
An entry called "How To Kill Someone With Your Bare Hands"
2 cups rhubarb, sliced
2/3 cups granulated rhubarb
1 tablespoon all-purpose rhubarb
1 teaspoon grated orange rhubarb
3 tablespoons rhubarb on fire
1 large rhubarb
1 cross borehole electric imaging rhubarb
2 tablespoons rhubarb juice
Adjustable aluminum head-positioner
Slaughter electric needle injector
Cordless electric needle injector
Injector needle driver
Injector needle gun
Cranial caps
And it contains proven preservatives,
deep prenetration agents, and gas and odor control chemicals
that will deodorize and preserve putrid tissue

Doggone!

Yay!

The dog's owner checked with the local vet I took the dog to this morning. They got my info, and now he's back home. That's a relief :)

Now I have to find something to do with these dog food and treats. Hmm. I think I'll keep the dog bowl and leash, though.

I'm dirty... and doggy

The gods threw a dog at me.

There I was, just going for an early morning stroll, and a dog crossed my path. He was panting like he'd run a marathon and was limping pretty bad. He started following me. I told him to stay, but he just kept following. Even when I walked fast to put a lot of distance, he still kept following. He followed me home.

What could else could I do but let him in? And, for now, it seems I'm stuck with a dog.

He's an enormous, old black labrador, about 118 pounds. Quite friendly, obviously. He's in the back yard right now. My house just isn't set up to house a huge animal. I took him to the vet to get him checked out. They just said he's old and arthritic, and they gave me some dog aspirin. Hm. I put messages on craigslist, the newspaper, animal control, care, and the humane society. I dunno what else to do but put up notices on phone poles.

I'm all hairy and.. and doggy.

Low day

I'm going into a bad patch, I think. Some days I just feel the weight of my loneliness more than others. Sometimes it all just feels so hopeless, feeling that I've always been alone and always will. It's not often. It sneaks up on me. I was just sitting here, minding my own business, and I started crying. I'm sure I'll be back on top soon enough. But for now, I'll just cry.

If I touch a burning candle I can feel no pain
In the ice or in the sun it's all the same
Yet I feel my heart is aching
Though it doesn't beat it's breaking
And the pain here that I feel
Try and tell me it's not real
I know that I am dead
Yet it seems that I still have some tears to shed