Obviously, the little green man arrived just before the Cafe au lait paint went on.

Because I most certainly have NOT painted it back to the blecky blue.

My Dad cracks me up. He and MotherDear went to the annual Azalea Festival this past Saturday. It was a perfectly lovely day for it and, unlike last year, the azaleas were actually in bloom! Except for the azaleas, the festival is your typical, Funnel Cakes and Corn Dogs and fresh-squeezed Lemonade and vendors hawking their wares and small rides for the kids. Great Family Day kinda day.

And of all of the things they might have bought or come home with, my Dad saw this dude and bought it for me.

Because it just screams, “Oh, Barb would just LOVE that!”, doesn’t it?

Well, it did to my Dad.

Gandalf’s Calming Collars came yesterday and he’s back to wearing it. He’s been on bathroom kitty confinement for a few weeks now because his marking behavior returned with a vengeance while Whitey was so sick. Don’t worry; I let him out quite frequently for closely supervised interaction with Grayson and Gracie, fresh air and leg-stretching. And some quality Cat Dancer time. And there’s a window sill he can sit on and feel like he’s almost with the group on the patio.

This photo is actually Grayson sitting on the bathroom window sill, but you get the idea. I took this from the back screened patio. While Gandalf is confined in the bathroom, he’s not sensory deprived or forgotten. In fact, he is actually much calmer.

I am truly at my wits end with this marking behavior, I tell you. Thankfully, he does not mark while in the bathroom. I’m waiting for Dr. Tad to find the contact info for a professional cat behaviorist. It’s about the only thing I haven’t tried.

I had a pretty good day at the office yesterday and then after I closed I got 2 more calls and they were both orders. YAY! I also did a few rather lovely Quotes yesterday and so I’m hoping they come in today. Or soon. I just love lots of lovely orders. Yes, indeedy.

Have yourselves a YAYful day today! And me, too.

Good Morning from the Swamp! Al & I worked most of the weekend on my office. Naturally, it took longer than I thought. Working around all of the office furniture in a tiny room crowded to the center of the tiny room just adds to the fun, right? Not!

BEFORE: blecky blue. I tried to love it, I really did.

NOW: I still have more to do, like that final section of chair rail on the wall near the hallway. We’re trying to decide how to deal with the wall switch. Why does everything have something to cause you grief?

Sorry these are really dark. It’s still dark out and I haven’t gotten the new ceiling fan with much more lighting installed yet. Maybe today… if Al’s body isn’t screaming at him as much as mine is screaming at me!

I also have lots of nail patching and touch-ups on the chair rail and baseboard and scraping off the paint from the window glass.

Oh, and faux wood blinds – 2nd try! The blinds I bought this time are only 2″ deep instead of 2-1/2″.  I am hoping they will work. These 1969 windows only have a depth of 1-1/2″ – which is a perfect fit for mini-blinds – but I am not crazy about mini blinds. Fingers crossed.

I’ve moved my desk away from the windows again. I’ve decided it’s much too hard to reach across my desk to open and close them. It also is quite a bother trying to work with cats on my desk. I’ve decided to buy a bench for under the window.

In case you were wondering, the ladder will NOT be a permanent fixture in my office, much as the kitties love their office condo!

Have yourselves a YAYful day! And me, too.

At any rate, Al and I were busy painting my office yesterday, as well as the window in my hallway bath, which still had the ugly ‘anything but white’ white paint. It’s white now… As are Gandalf’s toe pads. Dur.

Today we’ll finish up. We have a dash to Lowes for some new chair rail material, a quick painting for the chair rail and then nailing in the chair rail and baseboards. Done and doner before we know it.

And putting my office back together for work on Monday, of course!

So what color did I finally choose?

I think you’ve all already guessed!

Have yourselves a YAYful day! And me, too!

I’m using another shot of Gracie and Grayson on the ladder to show you the paneling in the office (which took 3 coats of white to cover the dark brown btw!) and the beach-y blue 1st coat on the top half of the walls, which is pop-corn texture. Hate it.

Anyhoo… the idea was to lighten the dreary, dark office up quite a bit. Ideally, I’d love to rip out the walls and put new wallboard up, but I’m not feeling up to gutting a room just now, and that’s what it would be as we’d end up having to tear down the ceiling, too. Oy. Not today.

Not every but nearly every room in the house is this Café au lait tan. I like it. A lot. It’s kind of hard to see the true color in photos but even though there’s so little Café au lait in this shot having it juxtaposed next to so much bright white gives a pretty good job of conveying the color. Just think ‘coffee with milk’ and you’ll have a pretty good idea.

Al and I have now put it in 5 or 6  houses. It’s our go-to color. It’s a really nice neutral that seems to appeal to everyone… and it doesn’t come off as a boring beige.

Although I did my bathroom in the Orchard in Sandy Beach, a boring beige, and it totally worked!

So… My conundrum this morning is which way to commit to before Al get here his morning and we get to work. Beach-y Blue or Café au lait? I just haven’t made up my mind yet. I will… Soon.

Tune in tomorrow to see which way I went! hahaha!

Have yourselves a YAYful day! And me, too.

Good Friday morning from the Swamp! Another lovely sky this morning. And not cold. Me likey.

I got up this morning to find an email from Carnival reminding me that my next cruise is less than 6 weeks away. As if I’d forget. Just think…6 weeks from today I’ll be aboard the Carnival Fascination and it will be a sea day! Woohoo!

Any day now my nephew Brian and niece Anna are expecting their first baby to be born. They chose to keep the baby’s sex a surprise! They will find out in the delivery room whether they have a son or a daughter. Sometime shortly thereafter, they will tell the rest of us the name they’ve chosen. Exciting!

Family Secrets… we have some.

There will be no painting today at the Swamp. My lovely assistant Al has declared it to be his day off! So it shall be done. He’ll be back tomorrow. We’ve decided that my office is next. That’s got to be done on the weekend. See how well that worked out? I’ve decided I quite hate the blue… Off with its head!

It’s Friday so I’m hoping for some lovely orders today, of course. Momma needs some pocket money for my cruises.

And groceries.

Don’t forget to put some YAY in your day! And me, too.

Me? I’m just bringing a carry-on.

And a mindset for fun!

In case you missed that 2nd little Cruise Countdown over there on the side of the blog and if you didn’t hear about it on Facebook, I finally managed to book that little getaway mini-cruise for me and MotherDear! Nassau and Freeport. Not terribly exciting ports, but I’m all about the ship and I don’t really care where it’s going… as long as I’m on it!

If I’d booked this very same cruise a month ago, and I very nearly did, it would have cost $100 less for each of us. I had to hold off booking it because MotherDear’s passport still hadn’t arrived and also because Whitey was so sick. Oh, well, it’s just money, right?

But it IS booked and I can’t wait!

Come to the Islands!

srsly!

And don’t forget to have a YAYful day! And me, too.

This conversation was on my SisterDear’s Facebook last week and it cracked me up. My grandniece Aria will soon be 3 years old and is currently enrolled in Potty Training 101.

This is an excerpt of Lynda’s phone conversation with her granddaughter, Aria:

Me: “Hi Aria.”
Aria: “Hi Nana. I went poops in the potty today. Mommy give me jelly beans.”
Me: “No, Aria, you went poops in your new underpants. You’re suppose to poop in your little potty and pour the poops in the big…”
Aria: “Bye Bye Nana, I love you.”

Who do you think won that little volley?

Have yourselves a YAYful day! And me, too.

Because I’m just that nice.

Actually, it’s because I’m just that lucky. Sometimes the light here takes my breath away, and while I have never once caught a photo of the light that begins to compare with what my eyes see, I keep trying. Every once in a while I catch something my eyes did not see. In this case, it’s two of the hawks, one on either side of the sun coming up.

After taking the above photo I tapped my screen to refocus and *poof*, they were both gone from the scene.

After that massive rainfall we had, there is also the benefit of having the light reflected on the water which was just beginning to recede from my yard and back into the Swamp, where it belongs.

Mother Nature can kick up a storm for sure, but she’s always amazing.

As an quirky aside, I arrived late but still managed to join MotherDear at BWTB yesterday. Someone had the audacity to take MotherDear’s seat and she was forced to chose from among all of the others that were not her regular seat! In getting myself settled in to the new area of the bingo hall, I happened to see a man walking towards me who just happened to look very much like a very dear, old friend. So much so, that I greeted the man and told him how much he favored my friend Ernie. He turned out to be quite a very lovely man; congenial, endearing, intelligent, engaging… and a retired meteorologist and college professor.

We talked briefly about the weekend weather, mostly about the tornadoes which touched down in the area. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day, in fact. My friends Al & Barbara drove over, picked me up and we went shopping and out to lunch at Longhorn. I had the Parmesan Chicken sandwich.

Grilled Chicken, red onion, lettuce and tomato… with Parmesan cheese. Why did I never think of using shaved Parmesan on a sandwich before? Loved it!

Much to MotherDear’s delight, Al & Barbara dropped me off at BWTB.

It was good to get out of the house.

And after dinner I connected my new Blu-Ray Wi-Fi Netflix thingy up!

It was a good day.

…and today it’s back to work again. Don’t forget to put some YAY in your day! And me, too.

I took this yesterday around suppertime. That water is NOT supposed to be under the shed or the garage. It is also not supposed to be a lake on the other side of the garage with geese swimming in it.

It’s still dark outside as I type this so I don’t yet know how bad it got during the night. All I know for sure is that the house is still dry.

And that we did NOT have a Tornado come through. Thank Heaven.

One more thing: In readiness for cleaning up today, Dad has dug out his complete set of yellow rain gear; pants, top, and Gorton’s fisherman hat, as well as his white wading boots. He should look amazing! I’ll try to get a photo of that for you! Dad’s a pretty good sport about stuff like that!

With all that rain and the Tornado and Flash Flood Warnings, I decided not to leave the house yesterday. I was really hoping to get a hair cut and then get over to Best Buy to pick up a newfangled Blu-Ray smart WiFi player thingy for watching movies and TV shows through Netflix. Al & Barbara’s son set that up for them during his visit and it’s amazing! When we lost the satellite yesterday I watched one movie on my computer and then when I decided to take a nap I watched another movie in my bedroom on my iPad. Luckily, we did not lose electricity, phone or internet. This Netflix streaming content for $7.99 a month is pretty awesome.

And then I had a nice nap.

I’ll try to get to Best Buy today and get Blu-Ray thingy and get it all hooked up to my big TV. Perhaps I’ll find another movie to watch while I take another nap.

Hope you put your some YAY in your day, too.