Her Side Funnies

Of course, I’m speaking of Heidi. In the last column I mentioned that she had shown up with a new boyfriend who got initiated to our clan by way of Ken’s chicken pen…er…cathedral. Jayde, as I must now call him—instead of buggar, eraser head and hey you—is a great guy. Just the kind of prospect we had hoped to pester through a Bible-length torrent of “boyfriend-break-in-pranks.”

Perhaps sensing we were up to no good, Heidi flipped the table on us mid-December by announcing she and Jayde intended to marry.

No surprise there. They were in love. It was written all over them. I was picturing three years out. Maybe we could host the reception in Ken’s chicken pen….

Then, Heidi—using logic only Heidi would use—said, “We’ve thought about this and feel that our education will be compromised if we have to attend to wedding details during our college semester.”

Good, I thought. Put this wedding talk to rest. Get a puppy instead. (more…)

I repeatedly mention that my husband is from Denver. It explains his innocence and gullibility and his resistance to accepting my core Redneck values.

Last spring we bought some chicks from the farm store. Buff Orpingtons. Golden Rolls Royce’s of the chicken world. They were cute. They were fuzzy. They quickly morphed into flapping balls of feathers coating the interior of the house with more dust than my liberal housekeeping policy allows.

A chicken house needed to be constructed, which brought the first of many misunderstandings between Ken and myself.

Ken believed that the chickens needed a far more “sturdy” home than I recognized from my childhood. My family’s chicken coop consisted of patchy chicken wire, baling string, a German Shepherd dog, and a door with a tricky latch that allowed cousins to be locked in the chicken coop for games of cowboys, Indians, robbers and jail until their mothers played squawk-n-swat, an unpopular farm game involving yelling and spanking. But, I digress. (more…)

So, some people wonder how Ken and I have stayed married so happily for so long.  It’s easy.  Whenever we come across a problem we do not agree on, we stop and move to something else that we do agree on.  Then, we re-visit the problem later.  That’s how a bedroom on the ground floor ended up not having door handles for 10, yes 10, years.  That’s also how our second floor balcony was left rail-less for the same period of time.

It is with relief that I can now say, “Welcome to our patio,” without adding, “Please do not fall off of it.”

Unfortunately, on the day I took the photo, I had removed the wreath which ordinarily graces the gap beneath the arched window at the peak of the roof line.  Still, it shows the winning railing choice after a decade long battle over designs.  We went through fancy ideas, ornate ideas, wooden ideas, plexiglass ideas, curved-and-extended ideas, and with each idea, one or the other (more…)

Hey all.  I know this posting is still not as clear as a direct download would be, but I am still monkeying with how to get these up and so far, this is the easiest.  Again, I’ve made some adjustments and would love to hear whether 1) you could read the text in the bubbles, and 2) if the appearance on your computer was great, good, fair, poor, or made you think I should keep my day job!  Wait, this IS my day job!  Maybe by now they’ve got an opening in Animal Control….

This post follows Slipforming, part 14 – Cold seam repairs.  To see a complete index of slipforming posts, click here.  For an index of comical posts, click here.

Houston, we have a landing…SNOW!!!

Despite feverishly throwing cement in cracks, holes, gaps and spider nests, and working on the shed in between, the weather has closed in on us.  This morning marks the first snow of the season.  About three inches is atop the patio table.  Still falling.  Cider anyone?

We’ve not gotten a good shot of the house lit up at night, so I decided to try to get a shot of it this morning because it was dark enough that I thought I could get snow and the lights in one shot.  Haven’t dragged out the snow shoes, so wore my crocks.  Poor planning on my part! (Slosh, slosh) (more…)