We have finally ended the growing season. It was down to the mid 20's the other night. I had already brought all the plants into the garage and will put them back out tomorrow again. I was going to bring them directly into the house but we did that last year and ended up with two frogs/toads in the house... One, the cat and I chased around the dinning room before it got removed to the outside. The other somehow ended up in the washer with hot water and bleach....Needless to say it did not do well.

All is well here....well..... really just a normal comedy of ??? We have had a great couple of days. We have had a sewer smell in the basement for a couple of weeks, and have been trying to track down where exactly it was coming from. Originally, I thought it was the storage room and then any of the drains. But it was not.... Add to that the fact that the pc died! (and it smelled like it in the basement!) It was a good thing that Jeff (our computer guy) was home so he could work on the computer and diagnose that it was in fact kaput. On Tuesday, he was checking out the computer and then it was the plumber's turn. Finally, I think that we located the smell coming from the corner of the TV room where the hot water tank is. But to get to it you have to first move the bookcase and all the books that are in it. Once the plumber glued two pipes together....end of smell. It seems that when we had the roof replaced, a pipe got twisted and popped loose letting sewer gases vent into the house. I got a new pc yesterday and Jeff got that all up and working before he left for jump school. This morning I finished installing all the other programs except that now the sound plays though the Skype phone instead of the speakers....guess I will live with that until he comes home in December. I doubt that the military thinks that my speaker problem is an emergency!!

Add to that the fact that I replaced the sewer smell with the smell of charcoaled smoke and it makes a week of fun and games. I made green beans and potatoes...put them on stove...sat down on couch.....and you can guess the rest. Alarms went off. Smoke was everywhere. The dog was barking because Tom was home. I had to get the fans out of the attic because it has been so cold...we didn't need them. At least, I did not burn down the house...... But now we have burnt smell every where. I have to say that it is easier to take than the other smell. Now I will have to work on getting rid of the smoke smell tomorrow before we go off to watch Mathew's football game. At least they are playing on this side of the lake at School of the Osage. So we will not have to drive all the way to Versailles.

Well I feel like a sister of Pauline and Lucy. (Pauline.....from the Perils of Pauline....for those of us who are not old enough to remember....had things happening all the time.....just like Lucy.... Things Just Happen : )

I hope that all of you are enjoying our happenings. And when the world starts to 'thump you on the head'....

It could be worse...................... you could live here!!!

What a couple of months...glad that we went when we did. Don't know if we would have gone this month. September brought a water stain in the ceiling of my sewing room. Had the roof looked at and it needed to be replaced. Got the estimate, sent to the insurance, got check from the insurance with both our names and the mortgage company.....whats with that? Never had that before. Unfortunately, they are not here. We had to send the check to Phoenix to get their endorsement. Could not get anyone to start until it got back. Any way, we now have a new roof over our heads. Looks just like the old one. They had to take off two layers of shingles to get down to the wood. No rain and they were done in four days. But now we have small parts of shingles and a few nails and staples all over. They were really great at picking everything up.....but ..... we will probably be finding pieces for a long time.
Now with the election and with a few more commentators, and annalists....we won't even have to have an election....they can tell the outcome by asking a couple of people on the street and we can get on to something else on the news.....like the train wreck happening on Wall Street.....(but who cares). That may be all the entertainment we can afford. After years of saving.....we are about where we were 8 years ago, but older and ready to retire. The good thing is that Tom has job security in that every morning at 6am the doors open and......they will come. We had been looking forward to him retiring in 2010 but that may not happen as we will not have the 401k to use. Could not take it out till then....and hopefully the stock market will quit going down by 5% every day. At some point.....it has to start back up.
We have been really lucky. We have a nice home. Tom has a good job (most of the time). The kids and grandkids are all healthy and doing well (or were). We have great friends and family(if we have to sponge off someone!) The weather has been exceptional. We have enough food in the pantry and freezer to last. The Kat and dog think we are the greatest thing since ..... 'cat food' (their favorite!) And we are healthy for a couple of 'old farts'. I will just have to learn to enjoy margaritas..... on the deck.... watching the sun set behind the trees.....wrapped up like NaNuk of the North!

: D What more could you ask for??