No Time to Even Answer the Phone....

It’s been a rough ride for us. Dwayne headed off this morning for another round of his work schedule. The strange part about that -–it feels like he should still be at home today. Why? Because we’ve only made a dent in our efforts to get the house and porches power-washed and resealed. Please give yourself time to make note to self – if you ever decide to buy a log home. You do NOT want chinking. You do NOT want ANY portion of your basement constructed above ground so high that it requires extension ladders and walk-boards to reach the eves of your home. This has been a project that actually required help from friends and family. We’ve only made the dent on the front of the house. We’re not able to spray the sealant because of the chinking. We’re using cheap brushes. But the real pain thus far has been each and every spindle in the banister of the deck. I still have two sections to finish. Those will be worked on today while Dwayne’s at work. After that – I get the porch landing and stairs going down to the driveway. And of course – there is always weather to threaten our race to the finish. That sealant is like molasses. If you haven’t tried the new Palmolive Eco Gel Dishwashing Detergent – I highly recommend it. I’m showering with it to get the sealant removed. Not only that, but – I used it this weekend for pre-treating a pair of Dwayne’s jeans and it worked like a charm! He had solid grass stains all the way up to his knees. But you’d never know that now. This is one product I’d recommend everyone keep in their house - even if you don’t have a dishwasher. We have no more trouble cleaning those pain-in-the-butt chunks of cooked whatever on the pots and pans! Thank God – we began with the front of the house. The back of the house will be the easiest of all four sides. The two sides of the house will require extension ladders and walk-boards. We’re very lucky there. One of Dwayne’s friends at work happens to have the set-up. There is something wrong with our computer. I have done every imaginable thing I can think of to find the culprit and all efforts are proving fruitless. I may have to burn vital data and overhaul the system. My virtual memory keeps sending me constant messages when I’m on the Net – telling me that scripts cannot be run due to low memory condition. There are times when I shut the Browser down and find as much as 60MB of temporary files dumped into the system after being on any major website. And I mean – literally – just being there. Most of the major websites seem to be transitioning into the java layers and Flash – among others - for all the interaction they want to provide. They need to find a better way that will keep their game-plan from sucking up the memory in users’ computers. Talk about a great way to run people off! I bought an external drive that has 500 Gigibytes of memory. After moving files and programs over to the new drive – after running my cleaner - after Defragging and running all my scans – after doing a Restart – the problem remains. And I’m downright ticked off. At this point – it has created a problem with transferring photos from my digital camera to my computer. From what I am able to figure out – the Kodak EasyShare Program refuses to install anywhere else except the C-drive. For those of you that have that same program – in case you do not know this – that program slams your computer with a stored cache of every single photo you upload off your camera – from Day One. Thank God – I have consistently burned the originals onto cd’s before dumping them. They’re the same size as the files being cached. Each photo would eat up an entire sheet of paper if I printed one. If anyone knows how I can dump that cache – please let me know! In the meantime – I have installed PhotoShop Elements 7 - which gave me the option for installing onto my external drive. I’m hoping to find a way to get my camera to upload my photos to that program. If I succeed – I will be uninstalling my Kodak EasyShare. Sorry Guys. You should give customers the option of installing your program to an external drive. Despite the major challenges Dwayne and I are dealing with right now – life goes on. And that means all the other daily routine required attention. But the timing with the garden is proving to be another kick to our knees. The tomatoes are turning. The corn, green beans, squash and jalapeno peppers have been coming on strong. I’m only too happy that the squash is about to play out for this season. And right now – my kitchen is beginning to look like a produce stand. I can’t get to it all fast enough. And Dwayne can’t get the power-washing and sealing done by himself. We ran out of room in the freezer this round of days off. Dwayne left this morning with a bag of green tomatoes, packaged corn and green beans for Wayne and Charlotte. We’re only too grateful for being able to hand that over to them for all the help they’ve given to Jennifer. He also had five or six nice Zucchini squashes to hand out to the guys at work. All in all – I’d say the entire lot that he left with this morning, alone, would have cost at least $30 at WalMart. I pulled the remaining potatoes from the garden, yesterday. Found instructions for blanching and freezing them. Yukon Gold potatoes do not store for a long period of time inside the house. Considering the winters we get here – I’m not about to spend my days going out into the single digit temperatures to dig up and throw back a bunch of dirt to grab a few potatoes for the two of us. It’s not so much the effort. My greatest barrier is time. I could always use another twelve hours in every day! I’ve already put up six pints of jalapeno peppers. We have a mess of green tomatoes – no thanks to the rigging Dwayne talked me into using this year. That will be the last time. We begin growing tomatoes ‘Teresa’s way’ next year. I’m the one that gets to deal with the nightmare. I should get to choose! But the fried green tomatoes we had last night were absolutely delicious! Let me tell you – I chopped those plants! I had to! And ya’ know what – they don’t seem to care. I’ll bet I’ve got 400 tomatoes out there – even after the chopping. And the dad-gum things are STILL throwing new vine growth! I got all the acreage outside the hay pasture mowed while Dwayne was power-washing the front of the house. I even made the trip around the hay pasture to mow down the trail on the edge for being able to walk around. My butt was killing me afterwards. But it had to be done. We picked up my putt-putt last Wednesday and got her back home. But Dwayne had to go back to work next day and I was afraid to drive it anywhere unless Dwayne was at home. So it was Saturday before I made my first trip to Lenoir City for groceries. The loud whine was driving me nuts. I have low-tone deafness. That intensifies high-pitch sounds like you would not believe. I can’t hear my neighbors partying in their yards below us. But I can hear a plane coming from inside that log home – long before Dwayne can step out and find it. They wanted $1,900.00 just for putting in one of their transmissions – not including labor. The whole car is not even worth that much, anymore. Dwayne found another used tranny in Powell to buy and deliver to them. We still had to pay them over $800.00 for the labor. The manager told us that they had found water in the other transmission and recommended some other part be included – of course. They are in the business to rape wallets, afterall. But Dwayne informed them that the car had not been driven with the transmission they removed. That was ‘a lemon’ that he had purchased up near Nashville to fix the problem. And the radiator is only a couple years old. So – they agreed not to install that other part. Well – we had to have the shop leave the car outside on the parking lot for us to pick up after-hours - due to schedule conflicts. Over this round of days off Dwayne checked and found a couple of things. There was some hose for the air cleaner left disconnected and the clamp missing. The transmission was filled with too much fluid. Dwayne decided to go ahead and drain the transmission fluid. He wanted to add a conditioner with the new fluid to see if it would help knock out the whine – which it has so far. But he found water in the transmission – very little, but it was there. The engine was only cranked a couple times in the driveway with the other transmission before it went to the shop. And the wheels would only make a full turn before hell broke loose and we’d have to kill the motor. Dwayne is going to change out the fluid again in a couple weeks. If we still find water in the tranny – somebody’s gonna be in some trouble. All in all – we have put around $1,500.00 into this thing – this year, alone. I’ve conceded and put my foot down. One more serious problem and Dwayne will have two choices. He can part it out until we can send the scraps to the scrap yard. Or – we will donate it to the Loudon County Boys and Girls Club to use in a Smash for Cash. You know – I realize people are hurting right now. I realize businesses are hurting, as well. But the very last thing anyone – individual or business of any kind – needs to be doing is screwing somebody else over – especially during these difficult times. Doing a half-ass job at work and slacking off will only damage the health of the company you work for. You only threaten the promise of keeping a paycheck coming to your house. Greed will get the doors of any company shut and locked for good. This is a time in life when every business can discover that ‘profit by volume’ can pay off so much more and in so many – many ways. So what – if you’re mark-up is only 15% and much lower than in the past. You are only going to triple your repeat customer base. You’re meeting a demand that the majority of people actually can afford to pay for. That’s going to keep your doors open for business. And you’re actually going to reap more profits this way. When you choose to screw one customer over – they can shut your business down without even taking you to court and suing you. It takes 1000 voices with good compliments to help build your business for you. It takes only 1 voice to put the word out there about your greed and malice to run your customers off and shut you down. Okay… daylight has broken. I have to water everything this morning before getting laundry going and getting back to sealing the porch railing and stairs. Hope everyone is hanging in there. At this point I can think of several of you that are probably feeling grateful for not having so much to take care of. LOL