Cat face spider

It's almost Halloween, and I guess that means it's time for the creepy crawly things to come out of hiding.

We found this tonight on the carpet in the living room, among Lachlan's legos. While he was playing with them...

She's a cat face spider, so named because of the shape and coloring of her abdomen, which is supposed to resemble a cat's face (looks more like the face of a rat or weasel to me).

They are supposed to be harmless to humans and an extremely beneficial enemy of many garden insects. So she'll be left to live another day. But in another location on this property.

A good year for apricots

It was a good year for apricots. The tree is absolutely loaded with the little suckers. I have several bowls of them in the fridge already, and plenty more on the tree waiting to be picked. I have my work cut out for me this weekend.

And it's a good thing that I have to work on making jam this weekend, because I most definitely won't be spending time thinking about renovating the condo, because we heard today that we can't buy it.

If any of you out there ever decide to buy a condo as an investment property, be sure you check yourself what the percentage of owner occupants is before you write up the contract. Don't trust the seller's agent (or even your own), because he'll just tell you "Yea, yea. It's fine!" Although the bank itself approved the loan, it had to go to Fannie Mae for approval, and they don't like the number of owner occupants of condo units to go below 51%.

I completely understand their reasoning: lots of investors in a condo means lots of renters, and neither the investors nor the renters are usually particularly interested in maintaining the value of it, let alone actually putting money into upgrades. By making sure that there aren't too many investors, Fannie Mae is protecting the value of the units that are owner-occupied, and also protecting the value of the property for the banks holding the mortgages. So I totally understand them wanting to say no, even though we hoped that they'd give us a break because we intended to renovate it and sell it to an owner occupant. I just wish I had known about all of this before we ever made an offer on the place. So frustrating. And I feel so bad for the seller, who is in a bind and needs to sell the place. And unfortunately, the place is in such bad condition that I think it will be a long time before he finds an owner occupant to buy it.

But on the bright side I've found two SUPER CUTE old little Victorian houses right here in Palisade that are for sale and in our price range and SCREAMING at me to buy them and restore them to their former glory. So stay tuned for hopefully good news on one of them!

Before I sign out for the day, thanks so much for the comments and emails about the fire. We are still fine and not at all in harm's way (at least I hope so!), but the fire continues to burn and grow. Last night the smoke was so thick in the valley that the smoke alarm inside the house detected it at 4 am. Sadie actually woke me up right before the alarm started chirping. Thanks, Sadie!!! Fortunately I was able to turn off the air conditioner and stop the room fans in time before the alarm went into full-on freak out mode. Lachlan does not like it when that happens...

Real estate and fires

I've been gone from here for awhile. And for those of you keeping score, we still haven't bought the condo. We're still trying to buy it, but between an incompetent loan processor, an incompetent and arrogant mortgage broker, an idiot at underwriting, and a non-responsive jerk at the HOA, we still are really no closer to closing on it than we were two full weeks ago. Tomorrow is the final deadline. I'm not holding my breath. Every spare moment lately--and there are few of them--has been spent looking at the MLS and viewing properties. I'm hoping this is over soon. I need to take out my frustrations by ripping out flooring and maybe even knocking down a wall or two.

And then there are the fires burning in Colorado and New Mexico. Dear family friends who live near Colorado Springs were evacuated today. The fire is near the ridge line right behind their house. One of my best customers at Paper and Present lives in Fort Collins. I haven't heard back from her recently, so I hope she is OK and has managed to locate a friend of hers who lived in one of the worst-hit areas.

And tonight we have our own fire burning just 10 miles from our house. It was started by lightning this afternoon and now is at 500 acres and growing rapidly. They have already evacuated one area, and with all the fires burning in the state I am sure the resources are stretched thin right now. We are all praying for rain, but the forecast shows nothing but sun and high temperatures.

I hope to be back soon with better news.



Snake charming

The husband seems to have a thing for snakes lately. He found a rather large garter snake hanging out near the garden the other day. He looked fat and healthy, and I hope it's not because he's been snacking on the family of baby toads living in my rose bushes...

Right after he showed me the snake and asked where I wanted him relocated (far away from baby toads, please!), I turned around to start getting the table ready for dinner and saw this.

A snake skin on the table? Really? Gross.

He has had this preoccupation with snakes ever since he took a "How to catch and handle a deadly snake" class right before he came home from Australia. I would think it would be a short class. How do you catch and handle a deadly snake? You don't. You run screaming in the other direction. Class over.

But all the guys (and a couple of gals) at work gathered around for some hands-on snake charming and catching.

I don't know about you, but if I was a guy I'd be rather nervous about that snake's head right there...

I guess all of the guys got to take a turn catching a snake (yes, a venomous one) and plopping it safely into a bag. This here is the husband's friend, Ray. Ray is apparently as crazy as the husband.

Taxes

I am going to drop our stuff off at the accountant today. Finally. I feel like I have been through a tornado or hurricane or some other equally traumatic event.

I am not good at "keeping books" or anything even remotely related to it. I got a C in my required college accounting class, and only because of a very generous grading curve. I think balancing a checkbook is silly. The idea of organizing receipts--heck, even keeping them in general--is almost as silly. So when you combine that kind of attitude with 4 months of receipts that were stored on the computer and lost when the computer died the second time and then add awful things like "inventory" and "cost of goods sold," well, it's a recipe for disaster.

I have spent many, many, many late nights trying to sort it all out. Nights and nap time are the only time for computer work, so it has taken me a good long while to do and so once again I have been mostly absent here. Sorry!

I'm starting to look into what program will be best for me to use to organize and track everything now that I'm dealing with inventory. Does anybody have any suggestions? Quick Books is an obvious option, but does anyone else have any recommendations for any other reallllly user-friendly programs for accounting-challenged people like me?

On a somewhat related note, I love the pictures I took of the honey bees on our apricot blossoms. The whole area around the tree smelled amazing for days and you didn't have to get very close at all to hear the buzzing of the bees as they started their important work of pollinating all of the trees in the valley. And somehow it seemed so fitting for my life lately. Busy as a bee...

Forty sucks

Someone I know (name withheld to protect the innocent) turned 40 at the end of August. She has a pretty good sense of humor, so I decided to have some fun. I originally planned to send flowers to her at work, but flowers soon die, and when you turn 40 that's not really something you want to be reminded of!

So I sent her a little package with this instead. Ha.

Lachlan's Bumblebee

Have any of you seen the Transformers movies? In them, the main character has a yellow Camaro Transformer named Bumblebee that watches over and protects him. The car started out life in the first movie as a beat up hunk of junk at a used car lot.

I was lucky (?) enough to see the third Transformer movie with the husband last weekend. In honor of the event, which the husband has been looking forward to for months, we drove the husband's old car.

He's had the car since high school, and it hasn't had a lot of love in recent years. It's been mostly sitting around. Its only job in life has been to attract passer-bys who immediately identify it as a 1967 Camaro. During the summer, when there is a lot of traffic on the road in front of our house, I get visits nearly every day from people looking to buy it, hoping like crazy that I don't know the value of the car.

But I do know the value, and I told the husband a few years ago that as soon as we finished remodeling the house, he could work on restoring the car. He's been busy with work, so he hasn't been able to do much with the car other than consult with our neighbor (who has restored two old cars) on just how crazy he can get with the restoration.

Just last week he finally renewed its registration, so we drove it to see the movie. Parked at the far end of the parking lot was a brand new silver Camaro, so we both got a good laugh by parking right next to it.





The husband's work schedule is pretty hectic for the next few months, but I'm anxious for him to get the restoration underway. I love joking with him that he needs to get the car restored so that we can give it to Lachlan when he turns 16. You should see how quickly the color drains out of his face when I mention that!

Too bad the car is already registered. I think we should have gotten a license plate for it that says LCHLNS. Ha!

F Game

Well, shoot. This was the week where I was going to bring my A Game to blog world. I've been really busy behind the scenes and I'm way behind on posting things, and this was the week I was going to start catching things up around here.

But then this happened on Sunday.



It's true. One tiny spark from a piece of equipment can cause a fire. A little fire that gets into dried grass and then dried brush and then turns into a bigger fire. And then before you know it, it's heading toward the neighbor's house. Thank goodness for long hoses, nice neighbors, and friendly strangers armed with shovels.




Fortunately we had the fire pretty much out before the fire department showed up. And the only casualty was our cable and internet line. Thank goodness. Yes, we are counting our lucky stars.

We finally had the internet back up and running late Tuesday and I spent most of yesterday trying to catch up on emails and whatnot.

And then this happened. Not once, but twice. He moved about 10 feet from where I last put him down, and he did it in about a minute!



He's not crawling yet. He just rolls back and forth and pivots around and somehow manages to cover a lot of ground quickly. Is this what they call "creeping"? I call it "I'm not ready for life as I know it to end yet." Sadie agrees.

Mother's day

I hope all the mothers out there had a wonderful day yesterday. I had a great day with my mom, the husband and Lachlan. We went to the art and jazz festival in downtown Grand Junction in the morning and I got some cool things I'll show you in the next few days.

My gift for mother's day was a hole in the ground.

Well, not just a hole in the ground, but 13 holes in the ground!

And I didn't even have to dig them!

The best part is that these holes in the ground will soon be home to 13 new David Austin roses that will probably arrive this week. I'm getting 10 Queen of Sweden roses and 3 Claire Austin roses. Yahooo!

Save the peaches!

It's almost May. It's also 27 degrees outside and there is a light covering of snow on the ground. That whump-whump-whump I hear is the windmills in the orchard across the street trying with all their might to circulate the air and hopefully save this year's crop of peaches.



I sure hope it works. Lachlan is really looking forward to tasting the first of many world-famous Palisade peaches this summer.

I also hope that my ten new Corsican violets are as hardy as they're supposed to be...

Bionic woman

Let me start by saying that I don't believe those gimmicky "as seen on TV" products. But someone the husband works with got a "Bionic band" and claimed it did wonders for the pain in his shoulder, and when I was visiting my parents a few weeks ago, I found out that my dad had one, so I figured I'd try it.



See, in the fall of 2009 I was doing a lot of printing and spent many hours standing on one leg while using the other to operate the press treadle. As a result, I ended up with a horrible heel spur on my left foot and a moderately bad one on my right foot. I tried a custom pair of orthotics but they provided little relief. I took Advil by the handful until I got pregnant, and then I had to suck it up and hobble around. By September last fall, the pain in my foot was so bad that my usual 2-mile daily walk with Sadie was limited to me standing in place and throwing a frisbee for her. I finally decided to get a cortisone shot in my foot. It was phenomenal, and finally my foot was pain free again.

Near the end of my pregnancy the pain started to come back, but I didn't get another shot, hoping that once I lost the pregnancy weight the pain would get a little better. Three weeks after Lachlan arrived, I had lost all the weight but the pain was still there and slowly getting worse. I was going to get another cortisone shot when I got back from my parents' house, but I decided to try my dad's Bionic band first. Although my foot is still a little achy and stiff at the end of a long day on my feet, after wearing the band for about three weeks I am still virtually pain free while walking and standing.

I'm a little dumbfounded over how it works. They say it is "proton alignment resonance technology," whatever that means... I'm curious if any of you have ever tried a bionic band (or other similar product) and if you have had any success with it. And if anyone can explain to me how it has helped me, I'm really curious to know!

Sore loser

I think it's safe to say that there were a few sore losers last night. I had my own personal encounter with one!







Tragic.

Palisade peaches

ave I mentioned lately how awesome it is to live across the street from one of our valley's best peach orchards? And have I mentioned how awesome those neighbors are? They do nice things like bring us peaches like this. If they see me out in the front yard, they'll stop by with a bag or two. Sometimes I return home from running errands and find goodies like these Red Haven peaches waiting for me at the front door.



And I stuff my face with them every afternoon.



So does the husband. Sheesh. He can polish off one giant peach in four bites or less. No lie. It's quite a thing to see.

So that's precisely why I badgered him until he agreed to enter the peach-eating contest at this year's Peach Festival, which happened last weekend. It's a contest to see who can eat one peach the fastest. I honestly didn't see how anyone could stand a chance against him.

First up in the contest was the kids 2-5 years old. There were so many entries they had to do two heats.

This girl did a great job.



But she didn't stand a chance against the girl on the right of this photo. She won the heat in what I'm sure is a Peach Festival record for girls.





And see this little boy in the middle with the red hair? He didn't have a clue what was going on, but he was so cute that nobody cared.



The second heat was all boys. The boy on the right was how I envision the husband when he was younger. Dead serious about cramming that peach in his face as fast as possible.

The poor young boy on the left really didn't stand a chance. Between being horrified at the animal of a kid to his left, and trying to wipe his face, hands, and table with a napkin to sop up all the peach juice between every bite, he came in dead last. But his mom must have been so proud of what a tidy little eater he is.



Yep, this kid here is a carbon copy of the husband.



In the end, the husband decided not to participate in the contest. He claimed that he didn't want to wait around until his age group because it was really hot and he was worried about me standing there in the heat. But in reality, I think he was afraid his time might not stand up to the kids' times.

Oh, well. There's always next year...

That ain't no hummingbird!

Friday afternoon I walked into the closet in our bedroom to change my clothes. We have a window that looks out onto our birch tree, where I hang one of my hummingbird feeders. I almost fell over when I saw this little guy. I ran back to get my camera and got some video. He made four visits to the feeder that I saw.



I had no idea that birds other than hummingbirds will feed at these things. Apparently, several species of birds love the syrup in hummingbird feeders!

I believe it is an Oriole, though it is a much brighter yellow than the orange that I was expecting. But Wikipedia includes this photo, which sure looks like my little guy, and says that they are often seen drinking at hummingbird feeders. And here's a news flash for me: Oriole feeders contain the same food as hummingbird feeders, but are designed for orioles, and are orange instead of red and have larger perches. I guess not every Oriole has figured out how to sit backwards on a hummingbird feeder!



The migration pattern of the Baltimore Oriole does include the eastern half of Colorado, but I'm way over on the far western side of the state. Maybe he was taking the scenic route...

Happy Mother's Day!

I had hoped that this post would be a progress report on the house, but my contractor was in a very bad car accident last week. He's supposed to be out of the hospital now, so I'm praying for his speedy recovery and that he's feeling better soon.

So instead of a house update, I leave you with this photo of one of my roses from last year (sadly, it did not survive the winter) and wish a Happy Mother's Day to my mom, Barbara (the coolest lady I know!), and to all the other moms out there! Have a wonderful weekend.