LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

Lauren

Unexpected peace

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So, Lloyd and I need to get our act together. He actually wrote a post about his second day in Hawaii, but I didn’t see it in the drafts, and now – as you read this – he is on his fourth day, so what are we going to do with all this chaos? We’ll have a mashup, that’s what we’ll do.

First, his witty writing:

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Yawn, another day in paradise. We got up pretty early again today and Samith and I went to the beach. I think we walked a mile or so and then walked back. On our walk we met an interesting character who told us of his exploits, recent and not. I’m not sure how much of what he said was true, and I’m not sure if it mattered. I blamed Samith for the conversation. He blamed me.

We came home and ate some of our supplies from yesterday for breakfast. After that we went to a weekly swap meet. It was a huge collection of people who set up canopies and sold things. I got my second shave ice. Samith got a coconut just to drink the milk (which tastes very different fresh). Brad almost bought some pottery and I paid too much for a jar of mustard (but it is quite good).

After the swap meet it was a trip up the volcano. Switch-back after switch-back through eucalyptus forests, Alpine like meadows and eventually clouds and lava. We made it up to 10,000 feet. And not that wimpy 10,000 feet that you might see in Colorado where you start at 5,000 feet above sea level. We started, quite literally at sea level with a walk on the beach.

It was cold at the top and very windy. There was a cool plant called a silverleaf (or something like that). It only grows on the volcano and can live for up to 50 years. Then it blooms. Then it dies. There was one blooming while we were there. It smelled good. I would like to grow one, but will need to find a volcano first.

We hiked up a short 0.2 miles to a great look out spot. There were lots of German tourists around. I’m not sure where I was going with that. Lets just let it drop.

On the way down we stopped at this great burger place. Fatburger is a chain, but as this is the first one I’ve ever been to and as I am on Maui, I’m going to choose to believe that this was the only one. We did not accept the challenge to eat a 1.5 pound burger, even though we would have gotten our picture on the wall.

Back to Brad’s house for our afternoon nap and then off to the other end of the island to see the most recent lava flow. It stopped flowing in 1790, so we didn’t see any actual glowing hot lava. Instead we explored tidal pools and lept gracefully from rock to rock. We saw our first sunset from the beach. It was well done.

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And back to Seward: Here is a dumb photo of what I did on Sunday when I was scavanging for bricks for a future project.

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I remembered that long ago by the fairgrounds they used to dump rubble. I went to check it out and it just happened to be by our full-of-rain creek. Huh. I like the sound of running water so I sat in the back of the truck and did some work and listened to it whoosh by. It was almost like being by the ocean, but without all the terror.

Take that, Hawaii.

What I’ve been up to.

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First of all, please don’t feel sorry for me that I didn’t go to Hawaii. In addition to not wanting to be where the ocean is, I did want to do what I love best: be home in the quiet. Honestly, the past few days have been awesome. You might think that you know what ‘introvert’ means, but you haven’t met me. Sitting around the house and not talking to anyone? Oh, yeah. Plus I have a few projects I need to work on, and being here gives me motivation to work on them.

The first night I was almost giddy. I flitted about and cleaned so that I could be quiet without the guilt of ‘clean this house already’. The second night I conked out on the sofa at 8 because I had stayed up so late making that video. That brings us to today, Saturday.

First, I was awake at 5 because Wally was loudly hacking up a piece of string he was eating. I fed them, then went back to bed. Woo-hoo! Lazy breakfast making and dawdling about, and I was finally on the road to Lincoln by 11. At each store I went I met some remarkable employees. The first was a lady at the hardware store that could have been a character on t.v. – the gravelly-voiced, good natured lady from Brooklyn. Seriously, I should have recorded her. Next was an incredibly friendly man at Big Lots with a booming voice. He also seemed unreal. Finally, the sweet, raven-haired stylist who completely misunderstood what I was telling her about my hair and gave me the cut that I was going to get next month. I told her to just make it shorter for now, and that next month I was going to try that ‘longer-in-the-front’ look. She did it, but in a weird way. Arrrggghhh!! Whatever. It’s just hair.

Back in Seward I stopped at work to re-do the devilish countertop in the kitchen. That stupid thing refuses to be caulked correctly. This must be the fourth time I’ve done it since we’ve been there. (Maybe I should just find somebody who knows what they’re doing, right?) I actually watched a video this time and learned a great tip – tape off the caulkline first, then you’ll have an even edge. I taped it off, got my tube ready, then realized I bought clear caulk!! D’oh! Off to Wal-Mart for white caulk, but no remarkable employees.

I also changed out the toilet seats in the boys’ bathroom. We won’t speak of that. All I will say is: Boys are disgusting.

*jibblie*

I am an idiot

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Sooooooo……

My truck has had battery problems. About twice a year, it has increasing trouble starting, until a week or two later when it just conks out completely. I understand why it happens – I start it up cold, drive thirteen blocks, let it sit all day, then repeat the process to go home. I hardly ever go anywhere after work, and we never take the truck into Lincoln because it’s a more efficient to take the car. So, the battery doesn’t get charged up. (I asked about this problem last time I took it in, and the guys didn’t really seem to care. The battery is under warranty so they just replace it for free.)

Well, earlier this week it was starting to make the warning sounds, so I let it idle fifteen minutes in the driveway. When Lloyd came home I told him about it and he said, “Tomorrow, let it run an hour.”

So I did. I drove Ralph home, left the car running, and said to myself, “Set a timer so you don’t forget.” This was around 5:00. Then Ralph started doing his pitifully hilarious shennanigans.

As I was writing my post last night at 8:30, there was a knock at the door. It was Mr. Durre, our neighbor. He started to speak, but I went pale and said, “The truck!”

God bless him. If he hasn’t stopped by, that thing would have run out of gas. I am so stupid.

Bright side? It started like a dream this morning.

My future favorite site.

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I know that it’s only Friday, but I don’t have any good post fodder for tonight. The following post is a link to what will be my most vary favorite place to loiter – a site filled with tidbits: Rulesofthumb.org

This is a screenshot. Move along, folks.

How can I not love a site that has things like, “THE GARAGE SALE RULE
One out of five items costing under $75 that you buy at a garage sale will end up in your garage sale within the next 1.5 years.” or “When starting out, raise the same breed of cattle as your neighbors. Specialize later, when you have experience.” or “People are more likely to remember you if you always wear the same outfit.” (That last one is a keeper. Tell me the last time you didn’t recognize the pope.)

I haven’t had time to really sit down and read through some pages yet. If I were clearer-headed, I might have a few rules of thumb to add on my own. One I have passed on from my student teaching days is “Never cut through just one sheet of paper.”

Spring Cleaning

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I’m not sure if we are very late or very early for spring cleaning, but more things got cleaned in our house today than normally get cleaned in a week. Maybe more than a week, unless Lauren is cleaning things without me knowing about it.

Really, that’s not likely, because I am utterly fascinated by cleaning. I could sit and watch someone clean for hours. But today Lauren somehow tricked me into also cleaning.

The floor needed mopping.

Furniture even got moved around. We moved the trunk to vacuum the rug, and I said, “Our goal is to get the rest of it that middle color.” Lauren insisted that it was faded from the sun, as she has actually been vacuuming lately.

It's got to be sun damage.

After vacuuming, she insisted that it must have been a haze of shredded tissue particles from the kittens. Sure, Lauren.

Whoa. That was dirty.

Luckily, we got finished cleaning in time for nap time.

I am a battlefield

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Sorry to gripe about allergies again, but today was kind of funny. I have been running low on the non-drowsy pills the past few days ( and have bben too lazy to just go buy some more) so I rationed them. At night I would take half of a ‘drowsy’ tablet, and the effect usually wore off by nine in the morning after a few cups of coffee, then I’d take the daytime pill.

On Thursday I called Lloyd when he happened to be close to a Walgreen’s in Lincoln. I asked if he would get some 24-hour non-drowsy allergy medicine, and he was happy to oblige.

He brought home 24-hour drowsy kind. He was sorrowful at his mistake, and said that he even talked to a sweet little old lady at the store to get advice, and resisted the urge to buy two gigantic bottles of the stuff because it was ‘buy one get one half-off’ and he normally can’t resist deals like that due to a genetic condition.

Sidebar: who takes medicine that makes them sleepy for a whole day?

Anyway, he said he’d return the bottle, so I had to take a whole sleepy-making pill at night, and the effects did NOT wear off by nine. I was sooooooo groggy, yet just kept drinking caffeine, and at the end of the day marveled at the chemical war going on in my body. Who would win? Itchy throat? Sleepy eyes? Shaky hands? Burning stomach?