I Don't Know Where I'm Going, But I'm on My Way!

Phhhhhhh…..Here I am blowing the dust off this old blog.   I’ve been gone for a few weeks and that seems to be the trending theme with this old blog lately.  Sorry.

I’ll tell you why I slowed down stopped writing a while ago.  It wasn’t that I was soooo busy redecorating, traveling, gardening or reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy.  Nope.  It wasn’t that I was too busy to write; au contraire, I had plenty of time to for that.  Uh-uh.  It wasn’t that I didn’t have things to say; if you know me, you know I always have something to say.  Nope, it wasn’t any of that at all.  Here’s what happened:

My blog got discovered.

I mean, ordinarily, in the blog-o-sphere having your blog discovered is considered a good thing.  Right?

More readers = happy writer?  Right?

Well, probably for most other bloggers that’d be true.

But not for me.

You see, my blog wasn’t discovered by “the masses”. 

Nope. 

It was discovered by one person. 

Snapshots was discovered by …

One of my former students.

And so, why would that keep me from writing you might ask?

Well, people, I had to pause for a bit to figure out how I felt about someone from my place of employment having insights into my personal life.    Because, just like in the Republic of the United States of America, I like to keep Church (work) and State (life) separate. 

I mean it’s one thing to share the details of our life with  friends and family spread across this vast and wide continent, but isn’t it another thing entirely to have people outside of my inner circle reading the daily minutia that makes up our lives here on the sandbar?

So, it’s taken me a couple of months of thought and here’s what I’ve decided.

There are really no state secrets on my blog.

It’s a great tool to share what’s happening in our world, so far from our families and closest friends.  It’s a creative outlet for me.  It’s a place I can showcase my growing skills at photog’ing (new word meaning the taking of photographic images).   It’s fun.  I like it.  I’m not giving it up dammit.

Buzz and I are about to embark on a really big adventure in uncertainty that will take us many more miles away from some family & close friends (but closer to others) and what better place to keep you all apprised of what’s happening with us than to continue to update here?

I may redesign this site.

I will probably rename this site.

I don’t know.

Just like almost everything else that’s going on in our lives, this too is changing.  Come along for the ride, won’t you?

The Sound of Silence

We have friends here on the island that have a dog that doesn't bark.  Doesn't that sound lovely?  Well, the dog actually does bark, but when he does he makes this weird, laryngitis-sounding squeaks.  At best, he sounds hoarse, but mostly he just sounds ridiculous.  As a former show dog (and when he was owned by someone else), they had his vocal chords nipped.  Isn't that horrible?  I think it's horrible.  I would never do that to one of my dogs.  Nope.  No sirree.  It's just not right.

Or so I thought.

But then The Gidge, over the last couple of years, has developed this incredibly annoying, jump-out-of-your-skin, barking tirade habit and the more we had to endure it, the more we started wondering "just how much do you think that vocal chord surgery would cost?".

You see, she may only be 10-lbs of Silky Terrier, but in her mind, she's 1000-lbs of Grizzley Bear.  To say she's territorial would be an understatement.  She's got hair-trigger nerves, and, well, it's been a bloody bark-fest around these parts for way too long.

Some of the things that could set her off?

• A ballcap resting on a doorknob
• Inconsiderate placement of the tv remote control ("inconsiderate" is anywhere within her sight line)
• Me, dancing in the kitchen
• Snickers, whenever he moves too fast for her liking
• Frieda
• The wind whistling through the trees (dare I mention that here on the sandbar, it's always windy?)
• Perhaps the worst of all though is anytime anyone knocks on, or rings our door.  That unleashes a tirade that only stops once she's hunted down the culprit and heaven forbid we lock her in the kitchen while we attend to the person at the door.  That will set the Gidge into a fury the likes of which you'll hopefully never know.

Oh, we consulted with our vet who in turn consulted with the animal behaviorist on staff at the Atlantic Veterinary College.  We thought it was anxiety and perhaps it is...but the behaviorist diagnosed it as adult-onset crankiness.

What?

"It's the breed" said she.

"The breed?"  said I.

"Yes.  This breed of dog is known to be exceptionally territorial and the older they get, the more this comes out in their personality and really, there's not much you can do about it, short of medication."

I just couldn't see myself shelling out $$ every month for valium for the dog when I don't have my own prescription, so we muddled on, hoping and praying that the Gidge would perhaps grow out of this phase.  I mean, she grew into it?  Maybe she'd grow out of it?

It just got worse.  The barking, while not exactly non-stop, sure felt that way.  You can see the attraction of the vocal chord surgery, now, can't you?

Well, before we went down that road, I went to my local pet store in search of some sort of training device that might help us with this problem and lo and behold...my local pet store guy had a couple of solutions.  One involved a very expensive sonar/vibrator/I don't know what else contraption, but that would only work if she were an outside dog.  And as thrilling as the prospect of putting Gidget outside for the rest of her life was, we remembered the birds of prey (not to mention the local coyotes & foxes) and decided, no, she's best suited for the indoors.   That took that device off the table.

Which left us with this:

It's a little battery-operated device that when activated by the sound of barking emits a little citronella infused spray of air, right into her face and guess what?  IT SHUTS HER UP!

Really, it's quite funny - she's surprised every time it happens and she looks at me with a "WTF just happened?" expression.  But it does the trick.  It breaks her fixation on whatever has her attention and she stops barking.  Silent Gidge.

I put it on her every night, about a half hour before Buzz comes home (because, yes, as soon as she hears his car in the driveway she starts with the announcements "he's home, he's home, he's HOME") and while she may bark once, she does not bark incessantly.  It is a thing of beauty.  Silent Gidge.

We've been using this little contraption every night since Friday.  Which means we've now had six nights of uninterrupted sleep.  Six nights of silence, courtesy of Silent Gidge.

You have no idea how this has improved the quality of our life.

Nookie Nookie

Oh, get your mind out of the gutter...I know what you're thinking!

So, hellooooo!   Is there anybody out there?  It's been so long since I've posted anything I'd be shocked if I still had readers!  It's no excuse, but I've been busy producing my very own version of  Extreme Makeover, the Kim & Dwayne Edition the past few weeks and, in between vacuuming up drywall dust, rolling miles and miles of paint onto thirsty walls, pushing furniture around, restoring old furniture and you know, traveling, putting the garden in, etc., etc., etc., well, it's been a busy summer so far.

So what led to this sudden desire to re-do the old farmhouse?  Well...On a dark and stormy night  way back last April, our roof blew off the house.  Okay, it didn't exactly fly off the house, but suffice it to say enough of the roof blew off that we ended up replacing the entire thing, tar-paper, shingles and all.  It just made sense given the interior damage caused by the rain that fell into our attic and onto our upstairs hallway ceiling.

There's no worse enemy to a house than water.  Take my word for it.  The havoc it can wreak - it's ugly.

The resulting repairs took 8 weeks, not because roofers are in such short supply here on the sandbar.  Nope.  Our roof was repaired within mere days of it blowing away.  No, it took 8 weeks because our handy-dandy, insurance company recommended drywall installer could not manage to schedule the repair to our upstairs ceiling for 6 weeks...despite my almost daily phone calls to remind him that the work was yet to be completed.  I know what my next career is going to be, if this whole teaching thing doesn't work out, is all I'm saying.

Anyway, we went away at the end of May with the hopes and dreams that when we came back the interior work would magically be done and we could move forward with the next phase of the project which involved painting the entire rest of the house.  You read that correctly.  The.  Entire.  Rest.  Of.  The.  House.  90% by myself...but with exceptional taping produced by Buzz - he's an artist with a roll of green painter's tape, believe me!

So while it's kept me from posting here on any kind of regular basis, I have to say...it was well worth it because now...now...I have a house that after living in for almost 3 years I finally LOVE!  It's a thing of beauty.  I know I'm biased...but really, take a look...

Isn't it purdy?


So when the upstair ceiling got replaced and painted the resulting paint job was "cut" into the hallway walls.  And you know how old farmhouses are built?  One hallway leads to another and before you know it, painting one hallway leads to the livingroom, leads to the nook, leads to the mudroom and so on.  


We selected a lovely, buttery, creamy shade of "rattan" and let me tell you, does it ever warm up our home.  

We moved furniture about from the nook to the kitchen and from the basement to the nook thereby adding about 200 sq ft of space to our living-room that until now has been un-usable...

Added some framed photographs of island scenes I've taken during our time here...

And shabby-chic'd out one antique buffet for the mud-room I found for a steal...

And suddenly, this old house feels like something fresh and new...and lovely!

    

Back Scratch Fever...

Some days are like this on the sandbar...hours and hours of surveying one's domain...

With the occasional change in the action like when a leaf blows across the yard that needs immediate inspection.

But then the urge strikes...

When you have an itch...

You just need to scratch.

And there's nowhere better than deep in the turf...

Thankfully we have tons of turf here on the sandbar.

The Places You Will Go...

...and the things you will do.  So said Dr. Seuss.  Well, I've been to a lot of places in my time on this planet and I've done a thing or two in my day.  Right now?  On the sandbar?  We're fixin' to re-do.

I'm not sure why I'm writin' with a twang, but after a long conversation with a friend of mine from down south, I do believe my inner-Belle is leaking out.

Anyhoo...

As I said, we've been fixin' up the farm the last couple of months, what with the roof blowing off in a colossal rain storm in April, it sort of needed a bit of an overhaul.  What started as one small little drip, drip, drip at 5-am one Tuesday morning has now resulted in a whole new roof plus a new ceiling for our second level hallway.

But here's the thing.  You start with a simple thing like fixing the water-damaged ceiling and the next thing you know you're painting the whole darned house.  Because of course when the ceiling guys fixed and painted our ceiling they cut the ceiling colour into the wall colour and hey, since we no longer have that particular shade of muddy paint lurking about in our basement anymore, well, there's no better excuse to paint the whole house than fixing a ceiling.

Right?

You see, in the design of the time our house was built (early last century) the upstairs hallway leads to the stairway walls, which (you guessed it) lead to our main floor level and you're right!  There is no logical break in any of those walls to cut off one shade of mud from another, so we're painting the whole shooting match, upstairs, stairway, living-room, nook, hallway & mud-room.  The whole shootin' match.

Currently our home is painted a lovely shade of capuccino.  I tend to think of it as a neutral shade of mud.  It's a bit dark for my taste so I'm planning to lighten up the farm with a lovely shade of parmesan...or pismo dunes...or butter cream.  We're still colour testing various shades of light, creamy, buttery, soft, warm, hues of yellows.  Buzz is afraid we'll end up with a ray of sunshine bleeding across the walls, but me?  I'm all for the yellow.  Bring it.  What better way to counter-act all the grey and dismal days we have here on the sandbar?

I'd show you to samples of what we're considering, but I couldn't get the colours to come our right...so, you may have to wait until the final product...which could take a while since my mother refuses to come to the sandbar to help with this project.  I don't know why suddenly, after Atlanta, Maui, Vancouver she's suddenly boycotting painting my homes, but there you go.

So, stay tuned...further updates on the re-do will be posted soon.

Wild Impulse

We have this little shop here on the sandbar called Wild Impulse.  It sits in a nondescript strip plaza, right beside where I go to get coiffed.  I've never been inside Wild Impulse because, truth be told, I'm not really  their target audience.  Although the  old men I see coming in and out every time I get my haircut must be.

Wild Impulse sells sex toys and such.  "And such" being a whole bunch of paraphernalia that involves rubber and edible clothing and other things to spice up your sex life.  I think.

Anyway, yesterday as I pulled into the parking lot for my hair appointment at the salon next door,  I noticed the sign above Wild Impulse...

"Wild Impulse now accepts Canadian Tire money."

How's that for some cross promotion?

Shades of Grey

Do you know how many different shades of grey there are?  I don't either, but if the colour picker on my photo editing software is any indication, perhaps there are a million.   I believe this to be true because at least a half a million have set up shop on top of my head, framing my face in a less than flattering way.

So today, feeling all powerful and strong because I go to Bootcamp and kick ass now...I am embarking on a journey to kick some grey matter off the top of my lid and I'm thinking...Platinum.  Platinum Blonde.  Like Marilyn or Madonna in the early years.

Whatdaya think?

Oh, hell, it doesn't really matter what anyone thinks because by the time you read this, I'll be sitting in Emily's chair and she'll be massaging chemicals into my scalp to turn my grey/brown/bronze colour into something perfectly blonde and summery and different.

I'm thinking it'll go with the new ass, abs and pipes I've been working on the last few months.

Photo evidence soon!