WHOA IS ME!

June 28, 2014

Howdy Doodlemaniacs, wherever you are! I hope your June has been less full of cruddishness than mine, for my cruds runneth over. (Sing it with me, to the tune of the Armour Hotdog song.)

>Big cruds, little cruds, cruds that crunch and scrape,
>tough cruds, wimpy cruds, even cruds that take weird shapes!
>Yes, crudballs, Kussly crudballs!
>The crud we’d like to escape!

We are now at the end of our second month of our month long home improvement project. Our old driveway was scraped away 6 weeks ago and remains a gravel pit. The first day the sunroom was framed in incorrectly and crooked and had to be done over. Our custom ordered French door for the brick wall kitchen entrance to the sunroom is three inches too large to replace the hideous sliding door that has tormented me for years with its lack of slidyness. The unslidy is NOT staying, so my husband will be attempting to cut the new non-refundable door down to size. We can only hope taking the old door out will not reveal anything hideous that needs to be replaced in the floor or wall. (I envision the whole kitchen falling in as the door comes out.) It will also be a miracle if the door actually fits. Only basic electrical work for the garage and sunroom was included in the building contract so we had to shell out some extra money to be able to light up our lives as we desire. Oh, and the non-refundable doors cost more than the budget, also. And there are some other pricey items not specifically mentioned in the contract that we are afraid to question.

We had to pay out a month’s salary in one day to cover the tuition costs of our youngest daughter’s summer classes. I am now working as many hours as my beloved employers will allow to fill up the gaping hole in our bank account, dribble by dribble. Our air conditioning went out twice in a month’s time, requiring two separate repairs of two different problems. Our daughter had a tire blow-out on the interstate last week and we had to buy two new tires.

The old carport concrete floor isn’t level so the future garage door will not close properly. Something has to be done about that. The old patio where we’re building the sunroom needs to be leveled in a less drastic way before flooring can be installed there. The hubby is going to make and install the window and floor trim for the sunroom himself and maybe install the flooring. This involves sawing which makes me nervous.

Throughout all this, the backyard fence has been down in one spot, so we have to keep our bloodhound in the house most of the time and accompany her when she does goes out to prevent her from running amok in the neighborhood.

It has been hotter than usual for June. I feel like a nasty soured dishrag when I get home from work in the evenings. We are trying to sell the Chicago daughter’s car and the paperwork that we mailed to her two weeks ago wasn’t signed in the right place, so now we have to send it back to her to sign and send back to us again. My house is a pile of clutter and dog hair.

WHOA THERE, NELLIE! AREN’T YOU FORGETTING SOMETHING?

Oh yeah! The Lord has continued to provide all that we need through these crudball days. So far we are still solvent, more or less, and the air conditioning continues to work!

Our daughter was not hurt when her tire blew out and she managed to make it to just a tad short of the exit closest to home for her daddy to come rescue her. And when she arrived home, she had some money in the mail from her grandparents that covered the cost of the tires with some left over to use on her upcoming study abroad trip to Ireland!

We are all healthy and my oldest daughter is expecting our second grandchild! My husband and I have not divorced or killed each other yet!
Our 11-year-old dog is slowing down, but still glowing with excitement whenever food is around! We have great friends and a great church to support us in prayer! God works EVERYTHING for GOOD for us who love Him and have been called according to His purpose! EVEN CRUDBALLS!!

Stay tuned next month for another installment of “Crudballs Blowing in the Wind.” Here are a couple of photos of our work in progress: