Cleaning Up Loose Ends

Tim and I just spent 11 days on the road and saw a few sights on the way to Wisconsin in order to get stuff we had in our trailer in Stone Lake, WI. I missed a few old friends at Sand Lake RV park but caught up with a few others and that was nice catching up with them. We got back safe and sound, emptied the U-Haul and now my dining room and living room look like I'm a hoarder. Tim put his shoulder out and is in great pain, slowly recovering. I can't sleep. It's 5:30 in the morning and I'm back to washing cloths that smell like moth balls and breaking down boxes. Ugh. In a week this mess has to be cleaned up, put away and we will be leaving for Long Beach to get on a cruise ship, oh yeah, ahoy matey. Having never been on a cruise I'm both excited and apprehensive. The best part so far is getting some new makeup and cloths, including a "little black dress" for the formal Captains dinner. Jackie wears bare minerals and we had to find a store that carries it here. It wasn't easy but we did find such a store - Ulta! I have never been in such a fabulous makeup store. Sure, it had creams and lotions and pretty pretties but the makeup was amazing. This wrinkled old lady had fun browsing and eventually fell to temptation and bought a bare minerals starting kit. It was my "coming of age" store. A real eye opener. I'm old - I'm not getting any younger and the wrinkles are here to stay. I started using anti-aging/wrinkle cream a while back and frankly, I don't think they work. I'll see if the bare minerals make me look less blotchy, less wrinkled and less "old". Jackie also helped me shop for cloths - very helpful indeed. I saw my grandma while shopping. Amazing! She was in the mirror. I wasn't sure at first but yep, there she was, the elbows and arm skin gave it away. I've walked like her for years now, I get out of the chair like her and now I'm morphing into her - only I think I'm fatter - great! When I'm not feeling sorry for myself I have been spinning some heavenly white alpaca and that is almost as good as it gets. I missed my spinning wheel, I missed the fiber in my fingers and I missed the mesmerizing, relaxing motion of the wheel. Come back again for real blogging, not midnight rambling. Love to all, Diane.

Little Road Trip

We're making progressing in the "life style change". Our fabulous truck is gone and we are now the proud owners of new Ford Edge and looking forward to going to Wisconsin on approx. $300 worth of gas, not $1,100. In logging the first 100 miles on the car it was a bit disturbing to see we were getting 9 mpg. Then slowly it edged up (maybe that's why it is called an Edge?) and last night at 111 miles logged the dash was showing 25 mpg. Excellent! I'll try to keep records for the first month or two and see how much of a gas savings we have. I would have insisted on the Escape Hybrid - electric car that used electric under 47 MPH except to charge the battery. How cool would that have been? However Tim's head was close to the roof and it was very tight for leg room, he would have hit his knees all the time on the dash. Good excuses. However, if you are going new you might as well check out the electric cars, it isn't out reach financially. We are heading out later this morning and are going to check out the Great Salt Lake, since we never saw it, or at least I haven't. Then on to Yellowstone for 2 nights and we'll get in some sight seeing at Custer's last stand and try to see Devil's Tower. After that, it is straight to Stone Lake to gather up lots of stuff we left behind, like a big TV, tred mill and alas, my spinning wheel. We'll have to rent a U-Haul trailer. Then down to Milwaukee, see family, shhh dont' tell Mom, I'm going to try to surprise her, and then home. Zoe is off the hook for traveling but Rocky is making his road trip debut. Looking forward to posting pix of our trip. Later gators-Go Pack, Love, Mummy and Diane

Following bloggers

I've rediscovered the joy of just paging through blogs, next blog, next blog, next blog and so on. Lots of fun and pretty interesting at times. Then along came yahoo news and directed me to
http://newdressaday.wordpress.com. This chic buys resale dresses, limit $1.00 and remakes them - she's doing this for a year ala Julie and Julia. Some of her creations are amazing. Now that sound like alot of fun. I might just try it I do however, have dogs so considering that Zoe sheds a small dog a day and both of them lie down on anything I'm involved with at floor level, I'm limited for cutting space. I could go to the spare room though for laying out and cutting. Jackie's cat has access to it and she'll leave if I hiss at her, louder than she hisses at me.

Night before last Tim and I found ourselves out and about long after dark. It is amazing how beautiful all the lights are out here. At night, this doesn't look like such a big city since darkness and mountains frame the valley. I guess it really isn't that big. We were out after dark on the 4th of July too, we were coming down from Mt. Charleston and watched the fireworks for a bit. They were going off everywhere and it was amazing. 90% of them were illegal. According to the news, homeowners should have nothing that leaves the ground so I figured why bother spending $$$$ if they are going to skitter around the ground? I guess nobody paid any attention to the laws. Bye for now. Love from Mummy and Diane

It was a dark Saturday morning

Actually it is a dark saturday morning and I am up earlier than usual and can't get back to sleep on the couch so I turn to my trusty companion, my new BF, Dell. A few days ago I submitted my blog to the search engines hoping I would get some fresh hits for the book. My keywords were extremely common, I couldn't think of anything truly unique. So in the darkness of the wee hours and out of curiosity I decided to put the title of my book "Resurrecting Clara" into the yahoo search. To my surprise several items with Clara and Resurrection came up. One lead me to a blog about an old but snazzy motorcycle named Clara. There is hit for The University of Santa Clara and resurrecting auto graveyards. One interesting hit is another blog with references to resurrecting photos of Clara Bow. The Philipinos have an award called Maria Clara -- those are the names of my main characters. How odd. Another link to an author, Elizabeth Letts, got me nervous. It turns out she has a book with a main character being Clara who works in labor & delivery and somewhere the word resurrecting comes up in the book. A 1993 movie, Necronomicon: Book of the Dead, resurrects people, one whose name is Clara, and that is just a bit disturbing. There were several more hits referencing Santa Clara County and Univeristy of Santa Clara, all "resurrecting" something or another like neglected heritage, etc. It was actually interesting. But I became bored with that. Then I googled me. Intelius knows me. And anyone who reads this too! At least they charge for the meaty information. I don't have any criminal records but maybe some of the other Diane Puzas do. Lester Buildings, the builder of our barn in Edgerton, has our barn and names on their website. We won an award for it, well they did but we designed it. I didn't realize until now that it is on the internet. Having once been involved in the Babydoll Sheep industry I am out there as an officer, but those days are far behind me (but the fiber addiction still lingers). And then there is Kathy Miller's Soap Making pages. Her pages were the place to go for reliable information. I once made a bar that wrinkled so bad I made it into her "botched batches" section. I had totally forgotten about that. It was interesting to see how many Puzas there are in this world. I have never met another one outside of Tim's immediate family. And folks, Mario Puzo is not Mario Puza, although I must have seen it a dozen times in the hits. Have a good day. Bye, Hugs and Kisses to all who want or need them. Mummy and Diane

My Friday Rant

Okay, we are here because of me and we did buy a home with an HOA but it isn't gated and the fees are dirt cheap so how bad can it be. Right? Well 3 times now, since May 27, we've received notices. The last notice involves our driveway which we had approved by the association. We sent drawings, contractor information, approvals by both neighbors blah blah blah. So today's letter states we are in violation because there isn't a drain down the center to direct flood waters to the street. I cant' wait to see a flood here in the land of the dry and drier. I know, it will flood during the monsoons which are actually during this time of year but I doubt we'll flood our neighbors out and when it rains we run outside like kids to enjoy it. We have yet to see more than 1/100th of an inch. So at Tim's behest I took a walk up the street and the next 3 houses all have RV parking and all have the exact same pitch as ours (you can compare by the bricks on the walls) and none of them have gutters down the center to divert flood waters). Not one! And our neighbors, whose RV parking is directly next to ours seperated only by the wall, is exactly like ours. The picture doesn't do the pitch justice because of the angle and the shade but it is about a 3 inch pitch for the entire stretch from back to front.

If that didn't fry my beans enough, there is another paragraph addressing the trees we planted behind the walls - which trees can be seen from the common areas. Dahhhhh. They are trees. We are of the understanding that what we do behind our wall is our business - it is not considered a common area and by what I've seen, most people don't give a rat's ass what is in their yard. As for our yard, I can't wait until the short trees start showing over the top of the wall. Landscaping in the front has to be approved and that sucks because most gardeners I like, me included, get a bug up their ass and want to put in flowers immediately. If I see a nice plant and want to have it, I buy it and plant it. I don't want to have my neighbors approve it and sign forms indicating their approval, fill out 4 HOA forms and submit with drawings for their approval. Oh, I should do that. I should have everyone just shower them with garbage. I should go through all that for a geranium plant. Signatures, drawings, the whole 9 yards. Oh just the thought of it calms me down. I feel giddy with revenge!

Our concrete fellow called and assured me there are no codes in the City's laws that require these drains unless, for example, you are putting a pool next to a patio and then you need a drain because both concrete sections are going in 2 different directions. But the drive has a pitch and that's all it needs. Now if they would have gotten on my case to get that gait painted, I would have understood. Bye for now from both of us, Mummy and Diane

More Ramblings and a 2nd Blog

A good friend, who chooses to remain "anonymous" asked if I got busy with gathering soap supplies. The answer is yes. I have plenty of fragrances and I have been spying such goodies as goats milk, coconut oil, coconut milk and fancy oils but have yet to locate good old fashion lye. It is pretty much off the shelves because it is used for making meth. I can't imagine ingesting lye in any form but it is an ingredient and the lack of it puts my soap making on hold. I think I have to order it on line but that is in bigger bulk and I'm not looking to buy more than 1 pound at a time. That said, I'm anxious to get going started up with making soap again. First of all, the house always smelled really amazing. Second, I was hard pressed to find people who didn't like handmade soap so it is always appreciated. Artistic expression is endless with soap. I hate to create the same thing twice. Mom suggested trying put it out in the "little shops" here in Vegas. I said "Mom, they don't exist here in Vegas" and that was hard for her to understand. At least I haven't found the small gifty cutsie type of shop you can find all over the U.S., except here. I think the closest I have spotted to a gifty cutsie shop is a Coach scratch and dent shop with purses at close to no discount. And if you really want to drop your jaw shopping, Caesar's Palace has unbelievable shops. The first time I was there was the first time I ever saw shop about 200 square feet with 5 items showcased and no prices. AND, it was staffed with 3 sales persons dressed in black to move these 5 items. Being born, raised and aged to near perfection in Wisconsin my first thought was HAHAHAHAHAHA. My second thought was . . . I had no second thought.

Speaking of a good laugh I hurt my throat really bad last night laughing at Tosh.O on the comedy channel. I laughed so hard I couldn't inhale and when I did it sounded like a sports car burning rubber on asphalt. Oh man, I think I "skinned my throat". I have a dry cough as a result of this dry patch of tissue on the left half of my throat. I was alone at the time and that was a good thing because if Tim had been there he would have been laughing at me for laughing so hard that it would have made it impossible for me to recover from my breathlessness and I might just have passed out. The injury, however, was well worth the jokes and I will risk injury again!

As if this blog, knitting, putzing and watching dogs isn't enough to humor me on an hour by hour basis, I've decided to begin a blog dedicated to my longest running passion; my novel. I've been working on it and when it is fully up and running I'll send a link.

By the way, I stepped outside and the weather is fabulous. It is 7:20 a.m. and the temps are in the 70s, it's rather chilly and oh so fresh. Lovin' it.

That's about it for this morning so bye for now from both of us. Love, Mummy and Diane