Life Update

Things Happening:

1. My mother-in-law is helping me organize our house! I am not very talented when it comes to organizing, so her help is MUCH appreciated. She is also helping with other things.



Back from when our roof was leaking almost a year ago, we tore down a bunch of drywall to find the leak. And then we left it because other projects were more pressing. My mother-in-law helped me install drywall* in our alcove. I did the joining tape and spackling, and I painted it, and replaced the carpet with more fake wood floor. Now it houses our two big [empty!] water barrels and some shelves. Oh, I guess this isn't really about actual organizing--we've done that, too.

2. I installed fake wood floor in our old office! The idea was to swap the dining room and office, because the "dining room" has new carpet and the office had very old carpet. Having our table, refrigerator, and trash cans on carpet was just not the best. Now, we're not sure if the "dining room" will actually be moving to the fake wood floor bedroom or not. We'll see.



3. I'm teaching 8 year-old kids at Church this year. Last year J and me taught the 5 year-old kids. It was pretty fun. This year, we were assigned the kids who are turning 9 this year. So far I really like them. It seems like they all want to be best friends with me, which is fun. They fight** to sit by me. I've decided to stop trying to get the kids to sit still during class. Here's the thing: they have to sit still for Sacrament meeting (before my class), and they have to sit still for Primary (after my class), and it's just not worth it to me to try and make them sit still in my class too. So we DO THINGS.


A few weeks ago we acted out our whole lesson. The last time I taught, we made salt dough maps of the places Jesus lived (because that's what the lesson was about). The kids are loving it, and I feel less stressed about them not sitting still. We still look up scriptures together--I think that's super important, that the kids become really familiar with the Bible and learn to use the maps and footnotes, etc. I want them to love the scriptures as much as I do, so I'm trying to make the scriptures more exciting and easy to relate to. We'll see how the rest of the year goes. Maybe I'll change my mind about letting them be so squirmy. So far everyone really likes it. I think it's important that we stay structured enough that the kids can feel the Spirit and actually learn about the gospel.***

4. I am taking a GNOWFGLINS class about Cultured Dairy. I was going to do the Fundamentals class when Wardeh started it, but at the time I was just about to get married and trying to graduate and about 3000 other things, so I ended up canceling my membership. I knew I wanted to do it eventually, though. This month the Cultured Dairy class was beginning so I decided it was time to come back. In the class we will be learning to make a whole bunch of yogurts and cheeses**** so J and I are both really excited about this class because we love cheese! So far we've only had the introduction class, but tomorrow we'll actually start making things, so I'm excited. I've already been having fun meeting people on the forums*****.

5. I've been blogging for eFoods Direct! (I'll post separately about this when the new site is released.) My topic is "Emergency Preparedness" and I blog on Mondays. I absolutely love it. I've cared a lot about emergency preparedness for a really long time so it's fun to blog about it, and learn and think more about preparedness. J and I actually revamped our preparation efforts last fall because we're worried about the direction our country seems to be headed...but that's another blog post for another day, maybe.

6. J broke his finger. At the gym. He thought it was just sprained or strained, but he kept re-injuring it, and it kept not healing. Last Thursday (12 days after the original injury) he went into urgent care to have it x-rayed. It was definitely broken. Poor guy. The urgent care doctor said for sure we'll be meeting our deductible. Too bad.



So then on Friday, J got an emergency appointment to see a o. surgeon to have it looked at, and the doctor said "this needs surgery..." but then we talked to him about setting it. The trouble is, it broke at an angle so that the muscle in J's finger will naturally kind of slide the bone right back out. The doctor said there was a chance setting it would work, but maybe only a 10-50% chance. We decided it was worth trying. So the doctor set J's finger and it hurt very very badly. As he was massaging J's finger, I tried to distract my poor husband:


"So, J...what is your favorite flavor of ice cream?"
"Aouhmmm...cookies and cream..."
"Really? You like it better than all of your other flavors?"
"Uh...uh...aihhuhm...yeah."
"But what about chocolate peanut butter and strawberry? You like it better than those, too?"
"Uh...Yeah."

Poor guy. I don't know if it actually helped distract him from hurting at all, but it did make him happy because he thought it was really silly for me to be asking him about ice cream.

Anyway, after the doctor set his finger, they x-rayed it again to see if it stayed in place. IT DID! So J was splinted up and sent home with a return appointment for today--if his bone stayed in place, he would get a cast. If not, he would get surgery and a little metal plate and pins to hold his finger together. (Ouch.)

We hoped and prayed his finger would stay in place. J was very, very careful not to bump it over the weekend. (But it didn't actually need to be bumped to slide out of place.)

We went in for his appointment today and he had his hand x-rayed again to see how he'd held up over the weekend. Here is the new x-ray. What do you think, readers? Cast or surgery? (It's a strange angle because the splint is on and it holds fingers in a strange position for x-rays.)



The doctor said it looked good! He said it had moved a little bit, but not very much, so J was probably out of the woods now. He said he had tried to call his colleague who is a hand specialist to get his opinion on whether it was good enough or not, and he wasn't able to talk to him yet, but most likely J would be just fine in a cast! The doctor said he would talk to the specialist and call J back this afternoon to confirm it was all right.

The doctor said it was kind of like if you ask your mom, "Mom, can I spend the night at my friend's house?" and your mom says, "Probably, but I'll have to check with your Dad." And you're kind of like, "Well, hmm, can I or can't I?" And maybe your dad will say, "Oh, no, remember, we grounded him last week," or something that Mom just forgot or didn't know about, but probably you can. The doctor said it was like that. He said we shouldn't get our hopes up, but J could go ahead and get a cast because it looked good.

So, of course, we immediately got our hopes up.

We went to the casting room where J was going to get his cast. J broke his wrist when he was 12, so he's had a cast before. I asked him over the weekend what color of cast he'd get if he could get a cast and he said white. White? "Do they come in other colors?" he asked, not sure whether I was being serious or not. "Of course they do!" It's been a long time since he was 12. I suggested he go with pink or red, since it's about time for Valentine's day. We also discussed more work-appropriate options, like khaki or grey. (I don't think they come in those colors, though.) J wasn't sure which color he would want.

When we got to the special cast room, the girl putting his cast on showed him a ring of different cast color swatches. His cast would be on for two weeks, and then he would come in for an x-ray to be sure things were healing up right. The girl explained that they would remove the cast at the two week appointment. I suggested pink or red again, because Valentine's day is especially relevant for the next couple weeks. J was not convinced. The girl suggested red with pink hearts ("She's just a Ute, that's why she wants me to get a red one," J countered). So she suggested pink with red hearts. J picked dark green.

The girl wove cotton around J's fingers. He would have his index finger, but the other three fingers would be in the cast, and the cotton would keep them from rubbing and getting blisters. Oh. Then she put a special sock on J's arm, cutting holes for his finger and stuff. She wrapped cotton all around his arm and hand, carefully doing the spots where there would be edges of the cast, so they wouldn't rub. She got his green cast stuff out and got it wet. She brought it over to J and started to put it on...



And then the doctor came back in the room. He finally spoke with the hand surgeon, and unfortunately J's bone wasn't quite perfect enough. He will be needing surgery after all. Too bad! So the girl removed the little bit of green that she'd put on J, and she splinted his hand back up (on top of the cast stuff), and bandaged it all back up, and cut off the cast part that didn't need to be there since it is only a splint and not a cast. J will most likely be having hand surgery on Friday, but it will depend. It's too bad because it is going to be much more painful and expensive. We'll know more later.



* Although we both enjoy building things, we also both agree that we do not like installing drywall. It is heavy, and not fun to work with, and the insulation is a pain to work with. She was very pleasant about helping, though.
** Reverently, of course.
*** "Sister K! Can I sit on this tower of 4 chairs?!" "Yes! As long as you remove all of the chairs beneath you except one."
**** We're learning to make sour cream, cultured butter and buttermilk, clabbered milk and cheese, heritage yogurt, greek yogurt, kefir and kefir cheese, kefir cream and ice cream, ricotta and soft cheese, cottage cheese, feta cheese, Middle Eastern fresh cheese, Queso Fresco cheese, fresh Cheddar cheese, traditional Mozzarella cheese, and we'll learn about keeping mother cultures so that we can just keep going.
***** Can you imagine? There are other people like me that like doing things like making cheese. NEAT.

The saga continues! - Episode 2

[CONTINUED FROM EPISODE 1]


I suddenly remembered--our carpet has gotten WET! Remember? When I walked in the alcove that one day, my feet got wet. We pulled the carpet up, pulled the sheet rock off, and set up a fan, but maybe we didn't get it dry enough? Maybe it molded?

And then I remembered the day that I had poured gallons and gallons and gallons of water in our furnace/water heater closet*, only a couple weeks before. When our furnace was installed, it had a little pump put beneath it. After I poured so, so much water in there, we tried to use a Shopvac to pick it up, but we got, like, a pint of water. "Huh, that's weird," I said. "I know there was WAY more water than we're vacuuming, but maybe the furnace pump already took care of it?" It seemed weird, but the water just wasn't there, so it had to have gone somewhere.

Maybe more of the water was in the carpet than we realized, and we couldn't dry it fast enough with our fans. Maybe it molded.

J and I decided I would pull up the carpet to take a look. Most likely, the carpet and carpet pad were moldy, and anyway, it wouldn't be a bad idea to replace them. I've really wanted fake wood floors, and one of my buddies at HD*** told me I could put in Trafficmaster Allure**** and it would be SO easy, and SO fast, and he said it's cheap, but it actually lasts. So. I was excited that I would be pulling up the carpet that day.

I got up to go look at the carpet by the furnace area, and as I headed that way I realized something. "J, no way, I just thought of something and you're not going to believe it..."

I crawled into the furnace closet to look beneath the furnace at the pump.

Back when I installed linoleum under our kitchen counters, I saw beneath the furnace: there was a line of 2x4s. It needed to be there to access furnace stuff, I just assumed.

"Yep. The pump is self contained. J. Remember how when you were buying this house, there was a line of 2x4s out in the hallway by the garage?"

"Mhmm?" (He was listening.)

"I think...I think the line of 2x4s goes all the way down the middle of our house...And that's why the floor is not level, and kind of goes up in the middle."

"Ohhhhh..."

I continued: "Yeah. I'll BET...I'll bet when all that water poured into the furnace closet, it wasn't pumped at all. It couldn't have been, actually, since the pump is all self-contained. You know what it did? It poured into this channel down the middle of the house. No way... Hm. I'll bet that's it. I'll bet that's why you're so allergic to the house. Think about it! The floor would get wet, from when it rained, and any water that got down there would sit beneath the floor, down the middle of the house. And it would just sit there. And that's why you're sick a few weeks after I poured so much water down there."

J nodded. "I think you're onto something. We never even thought about the 2x4s in the hallway. I think we just thought it was a vent..."

"Yeah."

J: "So you'll go ahead and pull up the carpet, then, because that would definitely cause mold under the carpet."

Me: "All right."

And I pulled up the carpet while J was gone to work, so he wouldn't get super-sick from participating in the project.

Sure enough, there were boards down the middle of our main room.

I started to pull up the 2x4s and I was in for a bigger surprise than either of us had imagined!

The ends of the boards were resting on little concrete ledges. Basically, there was a trench down the main room of our house. It was about 15" across, and about 10" deep. The bottom of the trench was gravel and dirt--just like the ground outside our house! Except, this gravel and dirt was damp, and very musty.

For sure, for sure, I had definitely found the source of J's allergy problems. No question about it.

The trench connected with the section outside. Down the middle of the trench, there was a 1" PVC pipe. The pipe we already knew about--it comes up from the 2x4s in the hallway outside.

When I talked to the previous owner (and also on the How the House Works DVD), he explained that the pipe went up along the wall of the patio, out to the roof outside, and then along a fence that no longer exists. They used the pipe to water their garden outside. Now, the pipe still goes up the wall, and outside, but then it is severed--there is no fence or garden.*****

So definitely, what happened is, all of the gallons of water went into a trench in the middle of our house, and sat there. But not only that! This year, we began irrigating. Any time water runs near the house, I am quite certain we have also been irrigating the middle of our house.

I determined that we should probably remove the PVC pipe and fill the trench in, but I wasn't sure what I needed to do, so I went to Home Depot to go find someone to explain what I would need to do.



[...TO BE CONTINUED!]


* This is a story that I meant to blog before, but I'm pretty sure I never did. Maybe I'll still get to it. This can be like LOST, with flashbacks that make the present stuff make more sense.**
** This is almost everything I remember about LOST, since I only watched part of one season.
*** Online, everyone calls HD "Orange" and Lowie's "Blue." So they're like, "I was at Orange the other day and they had x on sale!" Or, they'll ask "Orange or Blue?" and you're supposed to say whether you like Home Depot or Lowie's better. I don't get it. If I were talking about Vons, or Walmart, or Smithy's, or any other store, I would say the name of the store. Is there some reason we're not supposed to name names when it comes to Home Improvement stores? Like, I could say "Red, Blue, Yellow, or Green??" and mean, "Do you like Smithy's, Albertsons, Macey's, or Reams the best?!?" but I wouldn't...So, I'm not into using secret logo-color codes to talk about home improvement shopping, I guess.
**** When I say the names of home improvement project parts, it makes me feel like I am bragging about specs for something else--'It's got a 203948320 GIG HARD DRIVE, with 38 RPM!!' 'It's a Mac.' 'You just can't beat the suspension--nobody makes a better suspension than ThisBrand!' or 'We're installing Trafficmaster Allure. [*frownsmile*?] It has a 25 year warranty.' It's just like, whatever it is, it must be so good that for some reason I need to namedrop, and can expect people to know what it is. But actually, it isn't really bragging, because it isn't Pergo, and it's in my little house that is not deluxe deluxe at all.
***** The previous owner did not mention the trench went to the furnace closet. When I asked him about the 2x4s in the hall, and asked about what it connected to, he mentioned the garden, and he told me that, you know, they didn't do everything the best way, but that it had worked for them. When he said that, it confused me, and I just told him we enjoy the house a lot.

The roof/floor saga begins! - Episode 1

I have been so busy lately.

My main project over the past month or so has been replacing our floor. There have been other things going on. This feels like my capstone [home-improvement] project, though. Like, I keep telling my Homies* about it, and they just can't believe all this. It's pretty hard core. I'll blog about it, but if you're going to read this, you should probably take a break to go grab some safety glasses, ear protection, and a ventilator mask. You will probably need all that, just to read this post. It's pretty intense.**

SO, here we go.

J has been allergic to our house*** ever since he moved in. It's a mold allergy. Sometimes it's been better and sometimes it's been worse. Before we got married, he sometimes moved into his parents' house for a little while, until he got better. When he's having an allergic reaction, he just can't do much of anything. He feels blah, and just not really great.

Right before he closed on the house (last summer), the bathroom ceiling fell in. There was mold everywhere.

It was a problem with the roof. On the How-the-House-Works DVD, the previous owner talks about getting on the roof to re-tar it.

We had the bathroom ceiling replaced. We had our [not-very-]handyman replace the sheetrock, and I told him to also replace all of the insulation that had mold on it, please. So he did. The "handy"man also patched the tar on the roof for us.

J did well for a while. We patched the tar on the roof a couple more times in September, and during the fall. When the bathroom ceiling kept getting moist, we had a roofer come out to replace the flashing around the chimney. He did a pretty good job, we thought, but we kept having problems.

We called him out, as part of the warranty on it (because he said we wouldn't have any more problems with it getting wet), and he confirmed that it was done correctly, and told us we could pay more to have them look for another problem. They started talking about re-sloping the roof (because it's a pretty flat roof.)

J and I applied more tar.

I realized that the sheets of metal on our part of the roof moved around a lot. So we got silicone caulking stuff and lots of screws, and we fastened the heck out of our metal sheeting that was on our part of the roof. We sealed the seams like crazy! The problems magically stopped.

And then it became winter. And then a few months later, we started having more problems. I forget what happened first, but basically, we wondered if maybe the rest of the ceiling/insulation in the problem area was moldy. We determined that I would demolish part of our ceiling so that we could just see what it looked like (without having to hire someone and pay a few hundred dollars if we didn't need to). So I did that (March 8-9th). It turned out that the part I pulled down was moldy, so I kept removing sheetrock and insulation until the parts I was pulling down were not water-damaged.

We had a guy replace it. (A handier-man.) He sprayed bleach and painted KILZ to take care of the mold. He also put a plastic barrier in some places. He reminded us that he is NOT a roof guy, but he said he thought it would keep the mold from being a problem. He repainted the area so that it matched the rest of our alcove.

A few weeks later, on April 1st**** it snowed again. I happened to go into our alcove to grab some cleaning stuff, and about 4-5 ft from the wall, my socks got all wet. I was walking into a giant carpet-puddle. It was not fixed. In fact, there were pools of water under the paint, and spots where water was dripping from the ceiling. OH, no.

We tore the sheetrock down, pulled the carpet up, and set up a fan to dry things out, but about a week later, J was seriously allergic to the house again. He was mostly living at his parents' house.

I called real roofers. We wanted to know what the cheap, quick-fix would be, and then what the lasting solution needed to be. We had heard before that we may need a cricket (a built-in thing to re-slope part of the roof), but we didn't want to spend $2-3000 to fix the roof.

One guy suggested water and ice tape. We tried this, actually. On Easter, between sessions of General Conference, J and I got up on the roof. I re-tarred it, and J was going to put snow & ice tape along the seams, and along the rain gutter. What a joke! It didn't stick to anything very well. It no-way would have solved the problem. Even a lot of it wouldn't have. J just kept laughing because the whole thing was so ridiculous.

Another guy told me with great confidence that we needed a membrane. I liked him because he called me "ma'am" and took off his boots before he came inside, and he had a nice accent (he was from South Africa). He also seemed like he REALLY knew what was going on. He kept explaining things to me, and giving me metaphors, and showing me things on the roof, and he seemed very genuine.

He showed me that our roof was basically rolled roofing (not sure what that is even usually for, but it's very cheap, very flimsy, not-at-all durable stuff), with sheets of metal attached to it. During the summer and winter, metal contracts and expands. So it was impossible for the metal roof to do much of anything. Basically, a 20 year old rolled-roof was all that was protecting us! NO WONDER J was having problems. The worker told me we needed to pull up all of the old roofing, replace all of the plywood, and put a TPO membrane down. (Because after years of getting wet, there wasn't much chance that our plywood would be good anymore.)

A TPO membrane is what they use for really flat roofs. The stuff was originally formulated to line ponds--water can pool on it and just stay there, and it doesn't go through the membrane. I don't know how they got started using it in roofing, but nowadays, it's very common for commercial and industrial buildings. Most people just don't build houses with flat (or very low pitched) roofs.

Another company verified that we needed a membrane, but they were willing to just do the junction between our back portion of the house and the front portion of the house. That was going to be quite a bit cheaper. We liked them until we Googled them to see reviews--and it looked like they had written their own fake reviews. It seemed really weird and dishonest, so we left them alone. We called the second company to see if they would be willing to do just the junction between the roofs.

They were willing to do that. So we had them do it on April 18-19th. And we felt pretty good about their work.

EXCEPT, even though the plywood wasn't in great shape, and there was obviously a lot of water damage in some places, there really wasn't much mold. So we were kind of confused.

Within a couple months weeks, it rained again, and J became sick again. Summer kind of started, and as J got sicker, I arranged to have another [cheaper, but still good] guy replace the rest of our roof with membrane (on June 22nd). Obviously since J was so allergic, it must have been a collective problem, right?

No!

The rest of the plywood was still in decent shape. We replaced it anyway. None of the insulation had mold on it. Our roof looks nicer, and our makeshift-skylight was transformed into a pair of very pretty, real skylights. But J didn't get better. He only got worse. J kept wanting to sleep outside (which I really, really didn't like), and he did for a week. Then we began sleeping at J's parents' house. J started moving his stuff over there, because he didn't even want to come home to get ready in the mornings.

We wondered...what could J possibly still be allergic to?

It didn't make any sense.

We guessed that it might be the carpet. Although we had new carpet "installed"***** when J first bought the place, we left the carpet that was in the main room, because it didn't look bad. We also left the carpet in one of the bedrooms. But J thought it was more likely a problem with the main room carpet, because he didn't spend a lot of time in our office and when he did, it didn't make him extra sick.

And then I remembered something very important!

[...TO BE CONTINUED!]







* aka. my friends at Home Depot. I mean, the workers.
** I was so tempted to put something like this (for while you were getting your stuff):

....
...
..
.

ARE YOU BACK YET??

DID YOU GET YOUR SAFETY ITEMS???

.

.
.

MAKE A WISH!

NOW FORWARD THIS BLOG POST TO 30 OF YOUR BEST FRIENS AND IF YOU DO YOU WILL BE KISSED BY YOUR CRUSH BY FRIEDAY AND HAVE A HAPPY LIFE AND IF NOT YOU WILL FAIL ALL YOUR CLASES AND YOUR TOES WILL FALL OFF!

THIS IS NOT A JOKE!!!

*** One way he knows it's the house is because he wakes up feeling like he is having an allergic reaction, and he doesn't do too well at the beginning of work, but then by the afternoon he is feeling much better.
**** Now, remember, J and I were married March 20th. So, I was tearing down sheetrock two weeks before our wedding (the day after my bridal pictures!), and hiring roofers, etc., was just a couple weeks after we got back from our honeymoon. Hey.
***** By the "handy"man. WORST Carpet Installation EVER.

I am not a Professional Striper.

It's been another busy week for us.

(Every week is, though, so that's nothing new.)

Last Monday, I striped our parking lot. The lines were really faded, so it seemed like a good idea. The previous owner told us it was one of the best things he ever did, and he said you can call up a company and they'll come out and paint the stripes for like $100.

Here is a "before" picture:


But we only have 7 or 8 stripes, so I was like, "NO PROBLEM! I'll just do it!" Because I have experience with that sort of thing, anyway.*

So I found out that there was striping paint that you could just buy(!)** at Lowie's or HD, to do parking lots. Piece of cake! It's called "Striping Paint"*** because it's for making stripes. And it would seem like stripes would always be for parking lots, but it turns out there are SO MANY USES for striping paint.**** In fact, striping paint is such a big deal that there is a whole secret code for what colors you're supposed to use when you stripe things. [The legend (key?) is on boxes of things, in case you don't know it. One example is, you don't use red paint for painting parking lines.] They also make marking paint, which can be used for stripes. It's more popular for marking gas lines, or power lines, or trees to cut down, though.

So anyway, I really looked into it and I saw online that you can paint stripes with either a striping machine thing, or with a marking wand thing. The difference is, the striping machine (about $100) has four intense (all-terrain! (I think)) wheels, to keep things really straight, and the line you spray can vary in width. The marking wand (about $20) just has a little wheel to keep things as straight as you can draw them.

I decided that I was not a hard-core enough parking-striper to buy a special striping machine. The wand would work for me! So I went and bought my can of striping paint (to cover 250 ft! Wow!), and a wand. I bought some pink plastic DON'T GO HERE! tape, so that I could block off the parking lot and our tenants would remember NOT TO GO THERE.

On Friday I posted a sign on everyone's doors to say:
1. We're re-painting the parking lot stripes on Monday!
2. Please move your cars by 8:30 am and don't plan to park in the lot again until 7 pm! (Because I knew I would probably be there at 9:00 or so, and I wanted to give them a little extra time to be moved. Also, the paint said it would take 8 hours to dry, so I wanted to allow myself an hour or so, just in case it took me longer to paint than I thought it would, plus plenty of time for things to dry.)
3. If you don't move your car, I reserve the right to tow it, at your expense. (To emphasize that it was important, and just in case.) Buuut, please just plan to park somewhere else, pretty please.

It was a great sign! It even had a border and a giant can of paint in the lower corner, just like people would expect.

So on Monday morning, I gathered my striping paint, and my marking wand, and my pink tape, and some masking tape (just in case!) and I headed off to the property.

A car was still parked there, but two of the other tenants who were home had moved their cars to the street. (Good job, guys!) The car was parked on one end, so I decided I would just block it off, and then if I could, I would paint around it. And if not, then I would knock on doors and ask whoever it was to move it. Or maybe paint another day. Towing cars is pretty mean, I think.

So I put up my pink DON'T GO HERE tape, and I stretched it from the fence on one side, allllllll the way across the ends of the parking spaces, down to the mailboxes. I tightened it so that it would remain as taut as it could for being stretched so far with no support in the middle.

I started laying out masking tape, so that I would be able to see my lines really clearly. The existing lines were pretty worn out, so I just wanted to be sure that I did a good job, and kept the lines pretty straight.

I taped up one line and part of a second one, and then I ran out of masking tape.

Oh well! No big deal!

But the tape didn't stick too well (because it's an old parking lot, and the asphalt is gravel in a lot of places now). So I would use my hand to brush the little rocks away, and tape it down where it was coming up. I also brushed the rocks out of the parking line area, because OF COURSE if you paint lines on gravel it's going to look pretty bad pretty quickly.

I was ready to go!

I pulled the marking wand out, and I assembled it, by attaching the wheel. It popped right in! Good!

I read the instructions. Twice. And then I shook the can (vigorously!) for a full two minutes after I could hear the little metal ball inside. I took the cap off of the striping paint, and put the can in the wand, and I think I lined things up right, and I went over to my taped line, and I lined it up straight in the middle of the space to be painted. (You've got to be careful with lining things up when you're using a wand instead of a striping machine, but it's just a sacrifice you have to make.)

I pulled the trigger on the wand, and...


Nothing happened.

I rolled the wand back and forth, and click, click, clicked the trigger.

Nothing.

I picked it up, and looked at it, and I wondered if maybe I hadn't lined it up right. Maybe I had mixed up the thing something was supposed to be parallel with, and it wasn't working right. So I turned the can around, and put it down, and centered it...

And nothing happened when I tried to stripe that time either.

So I looked at how it was working. The little lever needed to hit the top of the paint can, and it seemed like it did, but it just wasn't working. I sprayed the striping paint, to be sure that it wasn't unusually difficult, or clogged, or something. It worked.

Hm.

I called Rust-Oleum to see if we could figure it out together, but they were currently experiencing a high call volume. So I stayed on the line, but I continued trying to get it to work.

After several minutes of it not working, and several minutes of Rust-Oleum queue music, I headed towards Lowe's. Obviously there was either something wrong with my striping paint, or with my wand. Maybe the wand thing that pokes the top of the can wasn't assembled facing the right direction.

Halfway to Lowe's, Rust-Oleum answered. I explained the problem, and explained that I was on my way to the store, to see what was wrong. The Rust-Oleum girl was like, "OH, well, I know exactly what your problem is." I told her, "Oh! Great! You do?"

Her: "Yes. You see, you're using the marking wand with striping paint. That's not gonna work. The tops are shaped differently. That's why it isn't working. That's not gonna work. With the marking wand you've got to use marking paint."

Me: "Ohhhhh, so if I want to use striping paint, I need to use the more expensive machine. See, I'm new to this. I've never done this before, and it's just for our little parking lot. So I just thought stripes were a kind of marking, so they seemed like the same thing to me. [Chuckle.]"

Her: "Yeahhh. ... No, you can use the marking paint, though, and that will work for you."

Me: "Even for parking lots? The lines won't be as good though, will they? I thought the marking paint was for like, marking gas lines and things. Can I still get crisp lines with the marking paint?"

Her (reassuringly): "Oh, yeah. The marking paint works for parking lots too. It won't last quite as long, and it won't be quite as crisp of lines as you would get if you were using striping, but..."

Me: "Right...that's understandable."

Her: "But. Yeah, you can still get that crisp line you're looking for."

Me: "Ohhh, okay. Well, I guess I'll do that, then. That should work. I'm still driving to the store, so I'll just plan to get that instead, and now I don't need to figure out what's wrong. [Chuckle.] Thanks."

Her: "Okay. And don't get mad at the people working at the hardware store for it, because that's what you bought.." [Or something like that.]

Me: [Confused.] "What? Oh. ... No. I'm not a mean customer like that. I'm just going to get the marking paint instead. ... All right. Thanks for your help. Have a good day."

Her: "You too. Goodbye."

I wasn't like, angry on the call, so I don't know why she told me to not get mad at the hardware store. But, whatever, it was nice to know what the problem was.

So I got to Lowe's and I went in, and I grabbed a can of (white) marking paint, and some masking tape (just in case), and I hustled back to the parking lot.

I could see that the top of the paint was totally different, just like she had mentioned. I shook that paint for a couple minutes, got it centered on my taped up line, and started spraying.

And it sprayed!

But...it made such a skinny (and semi-transparent!) line that I had to go back and forth, back and forth to get to the sides, and to make it opaque enough. I taped up the second line the rest of the way, and I started spraying that line. And then, I ran out of marking paint.

After 1 1/2 lines!

[Please note: most of the white in the picture is masking tape.]

Good grief.

So I could see that marking paint was not going to work for me. It didn't look very good. The lines were not crisp at all (except for what the masking tape did), and they weren't very solid, and I went through the stuff SO fast. It wasn't even all that windy! And I had brushed the gravel away!

I drove to Home Depot and got myself a paint-striper. I bought another can of striping paint, too, just in case.

And I drove back, shook the can (vigorously!) for two minutes, and put it in the machine. It worked! I ended up needing to brush away gravel on all of the stripes, and that was a pain, but our parking lot is re-striped!*****


So, I'm pretty happy with how that all went. Now that we own a marking wand and a striping machine, plus I used three cans of paint (1 marking, 2 striping), the job cost us about $150 plus 3 hours of time (instead of $100 and no time). So, it was not the most profitable decision, at least for the short-term. But now I know what's up--I know the difference between marking and striping. And if anyone wants me to paint parking lines for them, I have the tools!

(It kind of makes me want to set up a race. Because I could maybe find temporary marking paint, and then it would be just like what they use for 5Ks and stuff. Not sure what I would raise money for, if I had a race. But I should probably think about that, since, of course, the only thing people really need in order to have a race is a marking wand, right?)


SPOILER FOR MY NEXT POST:
When I finished at about noon, I hurried home to take Chalcy outside, and then I hurried over to J's parents' house, because J's dad had volunteered to fix sprinklers with me.



* One time, (in California) I was walking over to the grocery store from the little Italian restaurant where I worked, and there was a guy re-painting the STOP letters on the asphalt, in the parking lot. I'd never seen anyone do that before! So I stopped and asked him about it. He was using a (big!) stencil and some paint, and rolling it out. It was pretty simple, he said. He offered to let me do one of the letters, and I DID. I thought it was kind of cool. So, I have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, actually, you know?
** As long as you are 18 or older.
*** (which I always confuse with "Stripping Paint" so it looks more risque than it actually is, but what would "stripping paint" even be used for anyway? Usually stripping is removing, not adding, so like, for removing paint from walls, I think you use a stripping solvent or something. I don't know.)
**** Like painting aisles. Or basketball courts. Etc.
***** Except for the one paint line by the car, because I ran out of paint right then anyway. (And the store was all out. And I was tired of doing that project, because I thought it would take like an hour, and it was already almost noon.)

Puppy Prep

I've been trying to get ready for our puppy.

I've read as many 'Bringing Your Puppy Home,' 'Housebreaking Your New Puppy,' and 'Training Your Puppy' articles* as I could find. Especially ones specific to Danes.

I think I've bought all of the 'Essential Items for Puppies!' (except that I don't like the food/water dish that I got, so I'm not going to use it.) Puppy has:
- a crate** for crate training;
- a towel that smells like me (sort of)***;
- a soft toy ("as a poor substitute for her missing littermates," one website said);
- a puppy Nylabone (and a Kong with special treats, to pull out for her sometime soon);
- a clicker (and a book about training);
- a lot of liver treats****;
- a big bag of large breed puppy food (so I don't ruin her joints, or something);
- a spraything full of enzymatic cleaner for accidents (which hopefully hopefully won't happen, but actually realistically most likely will);
- a collar and leash to grow out of in the next couple months...

I forget what else.

I think we're prepared.*****

But Puppy still does not have:
- a name; or
- a tag for her collar, since she has no name.[******]

I'm leaving now to go pick her up. The girl is driving her down to Salt Lake, and we're meeting at Puppy's dad's house, so we can meet him, too.

Wish us luck!




* Do real websites with actual information exist anymore? I found so, so many generic websites. The articles are almost always useless, because they're more about search optimization than anything else. They go like this:
"Bringing Your Puppy Home is an important time because when you Bring Your Puppy Home you hope that you are prepared to Bring Your Puppy Home. Try to be gentle with your puppy when you Bring Your Puppy Home because he is nervous. Since Bringing Your Puppy Home is stressful for the pup, do not expect much; when you Bring Your Puppy Home you may find that your puppy is happy or it may be sad. Your puppy may be hungry or it may want to sleep...[etc.]"
Gee, thanks.
** I suggested J and I stop at a big big yard sale on Redwood Rd. a couple weeks ago, to see if we could find a crate. Because on KSL they're usually like $30-$40 and at Walmart they're $70ish. We found an old dog crate that was dirty and a little rusty (but a pretty good one anyway), and when I asked how much it was, the lady said to make an offer. So I offered $5. And she said we had a deal. (Heck yeah, we did!) So I cleaned it, sanded it, and primed it, and J and I decided it would be fun to paint it pink, since we knew we wanted a girl puppy. Today I brought it in from the garage, and actually, it turns out it doesn't match ANYTHING--not our house, not Puppy's toys, NOTHING. But [*shrug*] it was still kind of fun, and it makes her little homecoming special. And it was lots cheaper than $70.
*** This was a suggestion from either the worker at Walmart or the lady we're buying Puppy from. Both people gave lots of suggestions. We were advised to take a blanket or something kind of worn out and let Puppy have that in her crate so she can feel comforted and get used to our smells, and because puppies ruin the fancy dog beds their owners buy anyway. We didn't really have a worn out blanket, though, so she's getting a towel instead.
**** When I really, really wanted a dog before, I one time went to a dog show with this lady my dad knew. I remember everyone gave their dogs liver treats. And now that I'm so used to reading every label on everything J and I eat, it's hard to knowingly poison our puppy with the stuff I saw on ingredient lists for dog treats. Liver treats are ONLY freeze dried liver (and nothing else) so they seemed like a good place to start.
***** I am so, so nervous. I don't want to ruin Puppy! I removed a bunch of things that are down low, but I'm sure I didn't get everything. I keep remembering: It's OKAY. She will be under CLOSE SUPERVISION until she is housebroken anyway, so I can still move things up higher, etc, for a little while. She [most likely] won't be ruined just because I'm not an experienced puppy-proofer.
****** [We don't know what to coll-er.]

Big things: Fourplex!

Almost a week after my graduation, J and I received some exciting news: we had final bank approval for us to purchase our fourplex!

Months ago, J and I decided we wanted to buy a fourplex, but we wanted to get a good deal on it. We analyzed the different properties that were available (over several months). J made a spreadsheet that calculated anticipated mortgage amounts, evaluated the rent collected for each unit, and produced a decimal to indicate how well it would pay for itself. We realized that most of the really good deals seemed to be short sales.

We didn't know much about short sales.

We learned all about them.

Basically, in a short sale, the seller owes more on a property than it is worth. Usually, the seller is about to go into foreclosure because they are in default on their mortgage, and they can't sell the property (because nobody will buy it for the amount owed). So they try to sell it at the amount it's actually worth, instead. It's usually in the bank's best interest for a short sale to happen because if the property goes into foreclosure, it will still only be worth the current value, and having to sell it and deal with it will cost the bank even more money. It's kind of a win/win (or lose-less/lose-less?) situation, because the seller avoids foreclosure (which looks really bad on a credit report) and the bank avoids the extra expense of foreclosure.

In order for it all to work, though, everyone has to cooperate. A lot of times they don't. In order to do a short sale, the seller needs permission from the bank(s). Especially if there is a second mortgage, it's tricky, because sometimes the first bank would be totally paid off if the foreclosure happened (since the second mortgage is paid after the first one), so they don't have a lot of incentive to cooperate for the short sale.

Our real estate agent told us we should be prepared to wait a long time to hear back from the banks, even after our offer was "accepted" by the seller. It usually takes them months. And even after that, the price isn't always approved. We put in offers on a couple different properties. One of them was accepted, but we canceled that offer because once we got inside, there were cockroaches and mold all over the place. (No thanks!) We waited on the other offer, though.

It took about 3 months for us to hear back from the banks, and they said YES IT WAS APPROVED BUT WE HAD TO DO IT ALL IN 15 DAYS OR ELSE. If we didn't close (and fund!) in 15 days, it was going to cost us $2500 more.

So right right after I graduated we got approval, and we hurry-hurry-hurried to get everything together. We had the home inspector come out on a Monday, got the home inspection report on Tuesday, had the appraisal on Wednesday, finally got the appraisal back on Friday. On the following Monday I set up insurance. We met with the seller a few times to pick up maintenance stuff for the fourplex, and we were going to close that Wednesday, but it got pushed to Thursday, and then it finally happened. The whole thing was all such a whirlwind!

Since then, I have stayed busy with fourplex things.

- I started my own business (an LLC!) to handle J and I's property management stuff. I set up a business bank account and a PO Box.

- I read up on A LOT of different landlord/tenant laws, and became VERY familiar with our tenants' leases (we have to honor the previous owner's leases). I developed and had our people fill out Property Condition reports, and Tenant Update forms.

- I installed smoke detectors in all of the units. I bought seismic bands for the water heaters (and was going to install them, but it turned out I didn't have the right tool at the time.)

- I bought tools!

- J and I met with the previous owner to learn how to summer-ize the evaporative coolers. It was nice of him to show us. We realized that when we summer-ized our evaporative cooler*, we actually didn't. [More to follow about that...]

- The previous owner also showed us how to use the sprinkler system, so we turned the water on for the summer and found out a sprinkler was broken. (So I learned how to fix sprinklers! I replaced some broken pipe. J helped with part of it.)

- This week, I repaired a broken drawer and performed maintenance on a dishwasher. Then J and I replaced a dishwasher a couple days ago, and yesterday I replaced the elbow thing on the new dishwasher, and I used teflon tape for the first time.

- My next projects will [probably] be: making and installing a bunch of screens (a few of the units are missing screens) and re-painting the parking lines in our little parking lot.

I am becoming so handy!** Also, I am making friends at Home Depot and Lowe's.

It seems to take a lot of time to learn how to do each new thing, but after each repair (or repair attempt!) I understand so much more about how things work. In the future, repairs will be quick and easy, and soooo much cheaper than if we were to hire repair people every time anything breaks.

In the past, J and I have sometimes talked about having me do property management. Recently, we like the idea even better. Instead of looking for a job now, I am studying to get my real estate license.*** To be licensed, Utah requires people to complete a 120-hour real estate course and then pass the state and national license exams. So. I signed up for one of the courses that is available both live and online (to mix it up a little bit), and I've been getting started with that. I'm going to try to finish it over the next couple months.


* You know, by just changing the pads. (LOL)
** Also, I am making friends at Home Depot and Lowe's. Since their employees have to walk me through all of the steps of my projects when online instructions are insufficient. Actually, the HD master plumber knows me now. In the past couple weeks, he and I have talked several times, for probably a couple hours in all. What a guy! He really knows his stuff.
*** In Utah, in order to manage other people's properties you need to have a real estate license.

CALVES!!! part one

Every time Gina blogs about their calves, I want one. They're so cute!

J and I have also been talking a lot lately about eating better meat. We want to switch to grass-fed no-hormone beef even though it's so much more expensive. We're just pretty convinced that commercial beef is not too good for people. Someone in one of my classes talked about the movie Food, Inc. and we watched it a couple weeks ago. That contributed to things, too.

On 13 February, we were talking again about getting a bull calf. J thought they would be pretty cheap, but on KSL, they're all like $400. Until! We realized! It's because those are the Angus ones that are meant to be steak. Male dairy calves would be cheaper. And they are. We found someone in Ogden who was selling one for $20. Sweet! J and I talked more about the logistics of it--where would we put it? How long would it take to grow big enough to be slaughtered? Does Jersey meat even taste good? J is worried about safety issues: what if the bull hurts someone?

We decided that we could put our little bull in the pasture area, and it would be fine with the renters' dogs. The right amount of time to raise him is 16-17 months, we think, and he can get up to 1200-1800 lbs. We're planning on moving later this year, so what we will do is: either slaughter earlier and not get as much meat, (but really, how many hundreds of pounds of beef do we need anyway?) or leave him in the pastured area and come by to take care of him after we've moved. People online say Jersey meat tastes really good, so that should be ok, and as long as we castrate him when he's fairly young, he will stay gentle.

Okay! With everything figured out, J said I could call about the day-old bull calf. So I did!
But we didn't hear back from the guy on KSL. We didn't hear from him that weekend, or Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday...

So we supposed we weren't going to have a calf after all. (Oh well. We're busy people anyway.)

EXCEPT! The guy called me back that Thursday! He had two bull calves, and did we want them? They were 1 day old (born Wednesday) and they'd had colostrum (= a Big Deal). We had only planned on having one. Calves are expensive to feed. The guy said he would call the next people on his list of people who had replied, and maybe there would be another single one by the weekend (when I said we would probably pick him up), so we could have one then. We talked some more about what if we did take both. The guy said most people want at least two because they keep each other company.

I told him to hang on, I'd talk to J, and I'd let him know. Mayyyybe we could take two. If we did, would he want us to pick them up that evening, or what? He said YEAH! If we could pick them up that evening, that would be great! He would take $30 for both calves.

So I called J at work and we decided that Yes! We would take them both! I called and let the guy know, and I hurried off to IFA to get calf milk replacer. And bottles. And some straw. I went back home and cleaned out the barn. After work, J borrowed his dad's truck and we drove up to Ogden to pick up the boys! The guy had suggested that we bring large-dog crates for them, but said that if we couldn't find any, we could hog-tie them, and that would work. We couldn't find any (sorry, guys!) but J's dad did put a tarp across the back of the truck, to keep so much air from getting down into the truck bed.

I told J that I was planning to name mine "Carne," and J thought he would name his "T-Bone." But then we thought of better names-- J named his "Stew" (like, as in "beef stew"), and I renamed mine "Chuck" (like "roast chuck" or "ground chuck"). They're perfect names for bulls, we think-- Chuck and Stu sound like buff, muscle, manly-biker-guy names. Also, perfect names for steak.

So we went up to Ogden and picked them up, and they were so cute!

I hadn't slept the night before (homework), so J and I had talked about me going over to his house early so we could bottle-feed the calves together in the morning, but we decided not to so that I could sleep in. And then I could just feed the calves by myself.

HAH! Yeah right.

[to be continued...]

[This last picture is from a couple days ago. Chuck is in back (with the orange rope) and Stew is in front (with the blue rope).]

*-cRaFt NiGhT!!!-*

J and I keep having SO SO many cRaFt NiGhTs, it's hard to even keep up with my blogging!

SO!

We've had this problem lately, which is, the roof leaks. J was thinking he needed to have the roof re-$loped, but we ended up deciding that the real problem is not actually the valley between the front and back of the house. [Actually, it's that the flashing (metal stuff) around the chimney is totally not up against the chimney right, so water can get in. (SOLUTION: put tar inside and use a special drill bit and special screws and uh, I forget what else, to reattach it better.) It's kind of confusing, but it will be wayyyy cheaper than having the roof re-sloped. We can do it.]

And then we had ANOTHER problem, which was, part of the skylight over J's part of the house flew off the roof a few days ago. (Whoops!) It's just the extra covering, but the actual skylight is cracked, so it is important.

So, it's not that big of a deal unless it rains.

And it's September, so no problem, right? Right?

We were on our way to church yesterday (on time!) and it started sprinkling. Like, sprinkling

big drops, though. So I said a prayer while J drove us back to his house so that we could put painter's plastic up. (Faith promoting story: It stopped raining right after I prayed for time to protect the roof! Neat. After we had the plastic up we went to church for the last two hours, and sometime during church it started raining again.)

We put plastic over the skylight and plastic around the chimney. We thought the whole thing was pretty funny. It looked pretty bad.

And then later in the afternoon, we replaced the skylight cover (because it's supposed to rain more today.) J mostly did that. I re-tarred the roof. I'm going to go back and finish it up, but I got a good start. There were a few cracks in the sealant they had used before.

We were up there for a little while, so Paley came up on the roof to check things out and see what we were doing.

Sometime later I'll blog about our FeNcE ~~~cRaFt NiGhTs!!!~~~

Soap's ready!

Well, I guess it probably seems like the only thing I ever blog about is our chickens. They're my favorite. I actually do still have hobbies other than chickens, though.

J is allergic to something in some brands of commercial soap, so he either has to buy the $6/homemade-style bar soap from Whole Foods or we get to MAKE soap. Guess which choice I picked.

This weekend the soap is finally ready! It's pretty exciting. We made it a month ago. J told me to pick a recipe and we would get the stuff. So I did.

We made the soap here, because it's called easy homemade soap, and having never made soap before I wanted to make a kind that was simple. For the scent, I chose lavender, because that's pretty much my favorite. I also like oatmeal vanilla soaps, and J said mint ones are nice as

well. This recipe called for olive oil (which he had, but we needed to get the cheap kind so we got more at Walmart), grapeseed oil (Amazon!), coconut oil (J already had this), and lye (which J also had).

We got some soap tools from DI-- an immersion blender ($3!), a glass bowl to mix the lye in (which ended up being wayyyy too small), a thermometer for comparing temperatures of oils (although, we were never really sure if it actually worked right or not. We did eventually get the lye and water mixture to match the mixed oils temperature).

We were both a little concerned that it was going to be a way harder project than it ended up being. I think we expected the lye and water to crackle and have terrible fumes. J stirred it out on the back porch with a wooden skewer and I think it did burn the wood, but that was really it.

And then all of the recipes warn us to DEFINITELY, FOR SURE, CERTAINLY wear safety goggles, or you would most likely go blind because it would splash into your eyes and lye is used to clean drains, not eyes. Buuut we didn't have safety goggles so we improvised by having J wear my sunglasses while he slowly combined the stuff, and I backed far away so that it wouldn't splash into my eyes...yeah. Totally nothing happened.

We used the immersion blender to mix the oils and lye to "trace", which is a special time where it's the right consistency and could harden at any moment, but that was uneventful also.

We poured the soap into our mould (a plastic box), put the lid on, and left it in a cooler for a day (because the site said to wrap it in blankets but J didn't want to accidentally ruin any of his blankets). The cooler worked out. It kept the mixture warm longer, so that the reaction could occur. The next day we used dental floss to cut it into bars, just like cinnamon rolls (but less tasty). I wrapped them in paper because they were supposed to sit somewhere cool, on brown paper, separated nicely. And then we piled them back into the plastic box and put them in a cool closet for two weeks. At two weeks we flipped all of the bars. And now that it's been a month, we can start using them. For fun, for fun!

*:*-...cRaFt NiGhT!!!!...-*:*

When we saw Jess for the Grand Canyon trip, she showed J and I her latest craft. Jess has been having craft nights every month for a little while now, but she always chooses times that I can't come and then flaunts it by sending me cute invitations by e-mail.

I told Jessica that J and I would have our own craft night.

So. We. Did.

This Friday I invited J and my girls [--BUT NOT JESS--] for my FIRST cRaFt NiGhT!!!!

Even though it was super short notice (like, 5 minutes), everyone came. We bought our supplies in advance and for craft night we painted. All six of us had So Much Fun! We loved being outside!

I left the girls in their box so they wouldn't get lost or painty, but they enjoyed the sunshine. J painted the sides of the chicken coop (which we've started calling "the barn") and I painted the doors and the nesting box thing. We painted with a waterproofing opaque wood stain thing, in the color "California Redwood" since I thought that sounded like the best option for a chicken coop.


We can't wait for our next craft night!!!

First Morsbag Complete!

I just finished my first Morsbag!

(This is a project that I have on my list of 101 things in 1001 days; I want to make 250 of them.)

I am so proud of myself.

It came out absolutely darling. If I were not already converted to bringing my own reusable grocery bags, this would totally win me over. Because why would you want to use nasty cheap plastic bags which kill animals if you could use a lovely (almost designer!) reusable bag also for free? Salt Lake is going to love morsbags.

It's pretty big, too. In the picture the label looks like it's 3" wide or something and the bag isn't so big...the label is actually about the length of a dollar bill.

The seams are all way reinforced, too, so these will be pretty sturdy bags.

Hm. This is a way fun project. I have stuff cut out to sew 14 more. (But not tonight! I need to go to bed!)

Tomorrow I'm going to donate platelets for the first time since I moved up to Utah. I've done a few other things from my list. And I need to blog about my garden, too. I've been doing a lot of stuff lately.

101 in 1001

One of Jessica's friends started doing this thing where you come up with 101 things you want to accomplish, and you try to do them in 1001 days.

Jess told us about it, and now all of the girls in our family are doing it together. We have a Google Docs document for it, and we've spent the past couple weeks coming up with our lists together so that we would be ready for 1 March, which was the day that we decided we wanted to start.

For more info about the project, you can visit this site, Day Zero, which gives some guidelines for setting goals (you know, specific, measurable, etc.), and links to a bunch of other people's lists.

Since we started on 1 March, we're working to complete our lists by 27 November 2011.

We divided our lists into categories, so that it would be easier for us to compare and do goals together, and to make it easier to balance our goals.

Everyone else chose 25 of their goals to work on in the next 250 days, but I didn't. Usually people edit their lists as they go; my sisters are changing the color of their items when they're in progress, and crossing them out when they're completed. On my blog I'll probably just blog about the things that I do complete, and maybe post updated lists a couple times.

Some people online put a lot of crazy stuff on their lists; visiting Africa, buying lots of expensive things, etc. I know that for about half of my 1001 days I'm going to be finishing my undergrad, and then for another year of it I'll most likely be doing my first year of law school. So I tried to be realistic about the things that I chose as goals. I think it will be a good 1001 days.

Here is my list:

Creativity & Projects

1. Finish quilt started with Grandma.

2. Make mission albums (3?)

3. Make NYC/DC/Boston album

4. Make pepper jack cheese.

5. Make mozzarella.

6. Learn to dye yarn.

7. Knit 12 pairs of socks. (0/12)

8. Spin enough yarn to knit a blanket, or make progress towards knitting a blanket from yarn I've spun.

9. Build a nice personal website.

10. Choose music I like, and sync my computer and phone.

11. Make my blog into books.

12. Can fresh fruit at least once.

13. Sew two Amy Butler Weekender bags. (0/2)

14. Sew an Amy Butler Sophia bag

15. Make an Amy Butler puzzle quilt

16. Blog at least twice a week for three months. (0/24)

17. Order moo cards.

Education & Learning

18. Review my Italian grammar book, completing all assignments.

19. Read Harry Potter in Italian.

20. Read Postmortem in Italian.

21. Graduate from college.

22. Take the LSAT. (?/180)

23. Apply for law school. (?/?)

24. Read 25 books outside of school reading. (0/25)

25. Take the Photoshop, etc, workshops on campus.

26. Take a carpentry class and make something.

27. Watch the AFI top 100 movies. (0/100)

28. Check into the Honors program at the U, and see how many more classes I would need. If possible to graduate on time, include these classes in my schedule.

29. Take a painting class for at least a month.

Environment & Outdoors

30. Find 100 caches. (0/100)

31. Place 15 caches. (0/15)

32. Sew 250 morsbags. (0/250)

33. Go camping at least once per year.

34. Go on 10 bike rides. (0/10)

35. Learn to cook 3 things in my Dutch oven. (0/3)

36. Switch to earth friendly cleaning products.

37. Pre-measure laundry detergent into snack bags or little containers so that I don't have to take the whole thing.

Family & Friends

38. Write to G&G 1x/month

39. Send real birthday cards/personal messages.

40. Send at least fun 3 letters to the boys. (0/3)

41. Read a satisfactory number of Mom's recommended reading.

Health, Fitness, & Appearance

42. Lose 25 lbs. (0/25)

43. Run 10 5Ks. (0/10)

44. Run a 1/2 marathon (April 2009!)

45. Run a full marathon (October 2009!)

46. Keep a running diary or training log for one month (0/31)

47. Do a sprint triathlon.

48. Learn to walk comfortably in heels. If such a thing is possible.

49. Buy five pairs of shoes. (0/5)

50. Donate an old item of clothing from my closet every time I get a new one until my closet only contains things that I actually wear.

51. Spend a weekend preparing at least 4 meals to freeze- at least 6 times. (0/6)

52. Learn to do eye makeup. (MAC class? book? Lots of practice?)

53. Wear eye makeup every day for 1 month. (0/31)

54. Take a swimming class.

55. Have my eyebrows done professionally.

56. Laser surgery.

57. Buy a hat.

58. Do a beginner's snowboarding class.

59. Plan meals for one month. (0/31)

60. Try all of the meals from the Nordstrom Friends & Family Cookbook that I've been meaning to try and haven't. (0/78)

61. Attend 10 yoga classes. (0/10)

62. Start an herb garden for my kitchen.

63. Make an exercise playlist and put it on my little iPod.

64. Buy a pasta roller and make pasta from scratch.

House & Home

65. Paint my bedroom.

66. Paint my bathroom.

67. Paint my kitchen.

68. Acquire and learn 10 new games. (Including Rook.) (0/10)

69. Buy a wii.

70. Buy wii fit.

71. Buy Rockband.

72. Organize my papers into files.

73. Destroy papers that I don't need.

74. Cross stitch or embroider either a Jesus picture or a picture of a temple.

75. Build a bookshelf.

76. Learn to cook Chicken Tikka Masala and Naan

77. Organize my kitchen cupboards with plastic containers.

78. Paint my living room.

Money, Finances, & Work

79. Make a budget.

80. Save change.

Responsibility & Good Things

81. Buy a harness, leash, and stake so that Paley can do homework outside with me.

82. Make a sincere effort to not gossip for one month. (0/31)

83. Volunteer 100 hours. (0/100)

84. Oh, also, Red Cross certification class thing.

85. Upgrade my ham license to general class.

86. Find my place in Salt Lake to donate platelets and go at least 5 times. (0/5)

87. Organize and reduce e-mail so that there are 50 e-mails or fewer in my inbox and keep it that way for at least 4 months. (progress)

88. Finish Paley's shots.

89. File 2008 taxes by March 15.

Spirituality

90. Read every Ensign cover to cover for 12 months. (0/12)

91. Attend the temple 30 times. (0/30)

91b. Get married one of those times. (HA. Just kidding.)

92. Read my church books that I have and have not finished. (0/4?)

93. Read the Liahona cover to cover for one year. (0/12)

94. Determine genealogy goal and accomplish it.

95. Finish reading the Old Testament. (I'm to Proverbs.)

96. Graduate from Institute.

Travel & Places to Go

97. Do iFly.

98. Renew passport when it expires (June 2010.)

99. Attend the Rome temple dedication, if I can. If not, visit Italy.

100. See 5 plays. (0/5)

101. Take a trip with friends.