Still Kicking

It has been really "trying" here after the fire and being so sick. I seem to get tired much too easily and there is just So Much that needs to be done, but I just run out of steam. Then all kind of life things keep popping up in the way.

My dear friend in Tenn. had sent this lovely gift for my pups for Christmas. It was just so cute that I had saved it-believing it to be much too cute -but thinking my pickie pups would have nothing to do with it, as I have a hard time just finding food they will eat. Not like my daughter's hound who will gobble up anything in town. lol

The first testor is Indy and he liked it so much that he is gobbling up the crumbs right under his nose working his way to the "pie".  Hum???

Testor #2 , Daisy who is very "testy" - she gives it her paw of approval with lots of delicious licks.

And testor #3, Mocha who is the Parlor Princess and lives on the bed says it is "tongue licking" good. She looks as shocked as I am that here is something that she likes??

Testors 4 and 5 are hiding so they will come out later in the day to get their sample. I am still very surprised and very grateful to my buddy for thinking of my beloved furbabies. There is no better gift than seeing something you love made happy and having great friends who pull that off for you is a Blessing...When God picks our friends for us - they always turn out to be the BEST.



The temperatures are mild here today , but it has been raining and it is a muddy mess. I laid some hay down outdoors in one of the chicken runs that was muddy.  It is on a hilly slope so they will scratch it all down the hill into a pile so it is a challenge keeping them nice. I would have liked to use that in compost but it is under a walnut tree and you cannot use walnut in compost -darn it.


My house is still upside down. I am still working in the kitchen. It is a tiny kitchen just crammed so it is very difficult to tackle it. Plus climbing up and down the step ladder is painful and with my poor balance and bad eyesight -a little scarey. I get very overwhelmed- and I hate that.

My sewing buddy , Lynne took my sewing machine home with her and fixed it, where it would not work at a sewing group recently. I was so disappointed in it-but turned out it was my lack of maintence that had caused the problem in the first place. She Even Found A Pin down in the machine !!!!!!!!!! How in the world did I manage to pull that off??????????????????  See what I mean about having wonderful friends !

Then Saturday I was working hard outdoors to get all my chores accomplished before the rain was to arrive and my last project was to change the oil in the car. So, I got all my tools together and all the supplies and moved the car where I could get under the front of her to reach the oil plug. I really hate this job because I am closterphobic and not really made to be a mechanic. But I do want my little car to last as long as she possibly can. I pulled on my ratchet but it did not want to budge? It was Way Tigher than normal and it took quiet a bit of persuading to get it to start to turn-and Turn-and Turn-and Turn! Yea- it was not suppose to do that! 

So, as usual I had got myself into a pickle. My neighbor was helping Crystal with a project so I went and asked his opinion. He checked it out and could do nothing with it and said that the oil plug had stripped out???????????????????? I Really wanted to just cry. Another neighbor stopped but he could not help and then Crystal tried a couple of things but her hands are in such bad shape from her carpal tunnel that she could not do anything either???? ( I certainly wish that Workman's Comp would get her hands fixed, but it has been a nightmare. She had even been put off from work because of restrictions the doctor had put on her until her hands are to be fixed. So she filed for unemployment the other day and then received a claim denied because no wages were found - AFTER working for the post office for 17 years ??????No wages???? I don't think she worked for free for 17 years?????

But when people started talking that I would need a new oil pan and a new oil plug and that would cost over a hunred dollars?????

So, I gave up and called my oldest son, Cory and asked for his help. He told me to bring it over so  he could work on it. Crystal followed me and low and behold in just a few moments Cory had got that dude out and Crystal went and got a new oil plug which Cory had to fight with a little bit to get back in because of the threads. But he got it in ! He is one of those men who can do anything! He is amazing and I admire him so very much. I wish I had just a wee bit of his talents! and I do mean Talents.So I had to give him a quick hug and take off because it was getting very late and poor light and my macular degeneration is getting worse so driving near dark is a challenge for me.

But that is the way my life seems to run-one challenge after another and I get so side-tracked ? This was suppose to be my month to rest and regroup for new projects for Christmas 2018? No rest this January?????????

Well Folks, It Happened Again

It has been a very challenging month for sure. We started off our year with below freezing temperatures and I was just fighting keeping the outdoor birds food and water as the water would freeze solid within 30 minutes of me getting it to them. I was cold and miserable also and fighting to keep my energy up to accomplish the goals. Then I got sick, a sinus infection with the worst headache.

I had curled up in my chair with the pups and a blanket and dosed off to sleep as I was exhausted. I awoke to a fog- both in the house and in my brain. My eyes have not been working too great anyway-lots of blurry things ??? It was like I was in a house stuffed full of white cotton ??? I thought that was odd because the blow back smoke from the stove was always black and hard to breath in? But I got up and opened the front door to let the smoke out-but after a spell it was not going anywhere and was even more dense??? I checked the wood stove and it was almost out?? So, I decided to fill it up and it would cause an updraft and pull out any smoke?(Bad decision)  It did take right off but the smoke was not going anywhere?

I looked at the aquarium and I could see smoke rising up from the light-so I thought the light was on fire . I unplugged it and took it out on the front porch and came back and looked at the aquarium-only to see smoke drifting up from under the stand. I yanked off the front covering and pulled out the two bins of crochet patterns and placed them on the couch, but could not see the floor because the stand had a solid bottom. I thought maybe it was coming from the basement so I ran down to the basement and looked but no smoke - no fire???

On my way back around the house outdoors I spotted the smoke billowing from the side wall of the house -and I knew I was in trouble . I ran in , grabbed the phone and called 911 and Crystal.  Fighting to see in the haze I found my dog crates and started snatching up the pups and tossing them in the crates all crammed together. I ran them out to the car and moved the car up the hill to make room for the fire department . It was 3 degrees and miserable. Crystal had arrived and she grabbed a hammer and me a crowbar. She was tearing into the wall and found a spot where the pipe went into the wall and there was a nest of fire. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and tossed it to her and she hit it with that.  Crystal was trying desperately to tear the sheet-rock off the wall but the trouble she has been having with her hands and her carpel tunnel had weakened her hands so she could not even break through.

About that time our neighbor who is the fire chief arrived and tossed us out of the house. We took the animals up to her "Tiny House" and then came back down and Jessie on the rescue put us in her warm truck to watch. I went into shock as I watched the firemen cut out the wall and chase the fire in the wall. They also carried out the wood in the stove -piece by piece and tossed it in the yard -then carried out the entire wood stove and set it on the little porch , just big enough to hold it.  Hours later it was over and the one wall was gone to the living room.

They thought I would stay with Crystal in the Tiny House where it was nice and warm but I would not leave my house. Bill nailed up some plywood and Crystal got the old furnace working. It was a good thing I stayed because the heat kept going off and the pipes would have frozen and burst. I kept fiddling with it until the wee hours of the morning when the electricity went off entirely.

When my son arrived the next morning it was 39 degrees in the house. Cory tore off the outside siding all burnt and twisted and Bill gave us two sheets of the black insulation board , which Cory put up. Cory is outdoors working on this in 3 degrees and he is dead sick also..... Once he got the outside wall closed in some then it got warmer in the house. I carried bag after bag of trash down to the highway , just trying to make some room to work. Crystal took a day off from work and she put up the sheet-rock in the house .That night I was so cold I had on 3 layers of clothing and a winter jacket and fleece cap and went to bed like that with 3 blankets and my pups. I was shivering so bad the entire bed was shaking. My friend , Joyce came and brought me two hundred dollars so I decided to go to the doctor. But my doctor was closed  so Crystal took me to something called Urgent Care. They treated me like angels . I was so appreciative and they took X-rays of my lungs and they showed spots of damage from the smoke so I came home with a basket of medicine and all of Joyce's money gone. Medicine is expensive .

While Crystal and I were on the road traveling we became entangled in stalled traffic. We were just 8 cars from where a lady was on her phone , crossed the line and hit a tractor trailer in front of us -killing her. I was beginning to feel like death was nipping a little too close on my heels?

I know I was in shock and even grieving for all the disaster in the house and started to cry off and on . Finally I was too sick to continue to try to clean up. I have washed 3 of the walls in the living room but my energy gave out entirely to this stuff and I slept most of the day yesterday.  We had a break in the weather and then yesterday the pipes in the building burst flooding it . I grabbed the drill and drill bits and drilled holes in the floor to let the water escape -trying to keep it away from the chicken runs so their little feet do  not freeze.

Crystal is laying a ceramic mat on the floor for the stove to come back in .

Cory has installed the thimbles in the wall for the new stove pipe and he built a concrete form to hold the thimbles so there is NO WOOD anywhere around the pipe in the wall. The fire inspector said that the chimney had settled -crushing the thimbles that were in the wall , allowing the fire to escape into the wall on the board that was a cross board which all the 2 X 4's were hooked to and that was how the fire traveled inside the wall.

I am very grateful for my wonderful , talented kids. It is hard to believe that these tiny babies that I raised have grown into such talented adults. I am just so tired of being sick and having no energy to lay hands to what needs to be accomplished. This was suppose to be my month to rest. lol

My pups have really struggled trying to understand how their world got turned upside down. The 3 older ones have been in hiding most of the time, just trying to find somewhere to find heat. I have hated to see them stressed, with their life upside down too. Love to all!