How Do You Spell STRESS?????? Teaching RS

My BH has to teach a RS lesson this Sunday. She only needs to teach maybe once every 2 or 3 months but whenever it occurs, she stresses for weeks prior to that dreaded day. I understand why because if I had to teach I would be a basket case, but she has been teaching piano lessons for 23+ years and guitar lessons for 5+ years - she is great - she is a natural at it!!!!!!!!!!! She gets new students just by word of mouth because all her students love her.

Put her in front of a group of women and all that experience disappears or hides behind STRESS. Every time she teaches, everyone raves about her lesson and once she is done, she becomes her usual wonderful self again. I admire her for teaching because I couldn't do it. I tell everyone that if I wanted to teach something, I would have become a teacher. I would rather have a root canal than teach anything!!!!!!!!!

Right this very minute she is reading and studying the upcoming lesson......she could probably recite the lesson word for word from memory right now if she had to. There is never enough time for the entire lesson and she STRESSES that she will forget an important point that she would like to cover. Being a man, I try to help but men aren't the greatest listeners when it comes to things like this......we want to solve problems and give solutions. I am guilty of this. I tell her to just pick a few headings from the lesson and concentrate on them - that is my solution to the problem and to me it sounds perfectly logical but I AM A MAN....what do I know!

Anyway, whoever reads this, please let my BH know that she is a super teacher.....she knows it but any words of encouragement and support would be wonderful......and appreciated.

If I could find that little picture of a person with his or her standing on end, and them pulling it out, I would have that inserted with this blog but I can't find it.

Oh, To Sleep In Our Bed Again!!!!!

After spending a couple nights on sleeping pads on the floor or on couches, we are sleeping in our bed again. The BH slept in the bed (there were no blinds or curtains on either window, I might add) Sunday night while I was at the fire station. We got the bedroom put back together late last night. The BH did another fabulous job repairing holes and retexturing walls. We painted yesterday and moved furniture back to where it is supposed to be. Even dead tired before she turned her reading lamp off, she saw that there were a couple of spots that needed touching up, paint-wise. We are taking a short break before tackling the other bedroom and the kitchen. The bathroom only has a couple small sections of wall that needs to be textured and painted and that room will be finished also. Probably tomorrow for that small project. This little home improvement project has turned into a lot bigger thing than either of us expected but I think we will reap the benefits of lower utility bills and a cooler home in the summer and a warmer home in the winter.

Before..........and..........After

You might remember the before pictures of our walls after we had insulation blown in. Well, it's been a week and here is what the walls in the living room look like after my BH got done with them. She did a great job, don't you think? She fixed places that were just a little objectionable to her from when we first moved in or that have been "repaired" when we have painted but she wasn't satisfied with my work so she tackled it and now you can't see where my fix it job was. What a woman!!!!!!!!

1 room down and 4 to go. The bedroom, bathroom, little bedroom and kitchen still need to be finished but the patching has been almost completed, just needs a little finishing up and TLC to get them ready for texture and paint. The kitchen is going to be the biggest project because she wants to take the linoleum coving off the floor and wall in 2 places and put baseboard down. That will be a little tricky but it is doable. The walls don't have any texturing on them so she is going to texture them herself and then we will paint. She is talking about a shade of yellow in there. We are also going to replace the old florescent light in there with something new.

It won't be long before we won't be able to tell that anything was done and you won't have to listen to me talk about walls and patching anymore. Then I can explain just why she is my BH!!!!!!!!

Update on Friday's Excitement (Part 1)

No pictures to show but things are looking better around here. We had 4 workers (3 from south of the border and one gringo) here yesterday morning trying to make us happy. They assured us that everything was fine and that the plugs just needed to be pounded in farther. Much to our surprise, that is what they did. I went around yesterday and began repairing the holes and filling the voids up with drywall mud. Just getting that done made a big difference in how things looked. The BH (and me) were impressed with the improvement. I got up this morning while the BH showered and did the "girl things" and got a second coat on everything and I tackled the bad spot over the front door. For only having the first coat of mud on it, it doesn't look too bad!!!!!! Maybe tonight I will get a third coat on everything - we'll have to see how I feel after being on my feet for 8 hrs at HD today - and then tomorrow, if she feels like it, the BH can do a little sanding and begin texturing the patches.

Well, more jobs around here are calling me so.................. ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!

Friday's Excitement Around Here ----

if you can call it "excitement." I would call it more like "FRUSTRATION."

We own a house that was build in the very early '50s and back then people didn't put insulation in the walls. There was a little insulation put in the attic (who knows when) but I blew several feet of insulation into the attic several years ago with the help of my son.

Now we have plenty up there but you could feel the cold coming thru the walls since they were hollow - you could almost feel a breeze thru the walls on a windy day. Well, there are several energy conservation rebates available, one thru Rocky Mountain Power and the other thru Questar so we checked into having insulation blown into the walls. We had a representative from an insulation company stop by a couple of weeks ago and we decided to do it. We were assured that the job would be done professionally and there would be minimal work, on our part, to do once it was complete. The process goes as follows: #1. Everything has to be moved away from the outside walls and covered with plastic to keep the blown in insulation from getting all over your furniture. #2 The workmen show up in a large truck with a blower and hoses and all the insulation that is needed on the right day (sometime within a 4 hour window so you are at their mercy). #3 3" holes are drilled at strategic locations to access the voids in the walls (as you can see from the picture, they missed on a couple of attempts). #4 The insulation is blown into the walls, hopefully filling the walls with insulation. #5 (This is where the frustration comes in) Round wooden plugs are pushed into the pre-drilled holes, going into the wall past the surface of the sheetrock so sheetrock mud can be put over the plugs and textured to match the existing wall surface. As you can see from the picture, many many of them didn't fit. The workman took a hammer to force the plugs into the openings, hoping to achieve the desired depth. Well, it didn't work and now we have many many plugs that protrude from our walls. This all happened Friday afternoon into the early evening so we couldn't talk with the bigwigs of the insulation company. That is on the agenda for tomorrow morning!!!!! I have 3 different phone numbers to contact and hopefully we will be able to get some satisfaction from someplace or someone (keep your fingers crossed for us). When the work was done Friday, one of the workers wanted to use our vacuum, they had a shop vac for the big stuff but wanted to use ours also (only for fine stuff and sheetrock powder and other stuff like that). Well, after they left we proceded to continue cleaning up and much to our dismay, they had broken our vacuum. Vacuums are one of the few things that you really like to say that they suck but ours didn't!!!!!! Now, if you know my BH, you know that she likes a clean house and not having a vacuum nearly put her over the edge. Well, you all know that if mom isn't happy, nobody's happy, so I went to the very local Wal-Mart and got us an el cheapo vacuum and she took ours to the vacuum repair shop yesterday. (it will be done Tuesday, hopefully - unless it is something SERIOUS!!!!!).

We have returned the majority of our house to as normal as possible for now until we find out from the insulation bigwigs what they are going to do to make us happy. My BH (and some of you) know that I am not the most tactful person on the phone when I get started. I have been known to asK for someone who isn't a "bottom feeder". Yes, I have been hung up on several times but I am getting better as far as phone etiquette is concerned. We will see what happens tomorrow. WISH US LUCK AND LOOK FOR MORE PICTURES OF REPAIRED WALLS IN THE FUTURE.

It's Been A While

As you can see, neither of us are very good at blogging on a regular basis.
A little history about both of us. The BH (better half) which will be another day explaining the many reasons she is MY better half, was married to a great guy before me and has 3 littles (not little any more) but that can be another day also.
I also have been married before (twice) and you know the old saying that the third time is the charm. Well, for me it has been.
We met at the Orem Rec Center one day while I was there jogging (I used to do marathons until I either wised up and realized that my body couldn't take it any more or I got tired of all the miles - I don't know which.) I tell the BH that I jogged to get away from the former wife and now I don't want to get away so I don't jog.
We have been married almost 10 years and in all honesty, I can say we have never gone to bed mad at each other in that time. It also maybe helps that I am gone 10 days out of the month at the fire station so I'm not here to get on her nerves. Who knows!!!!!!
Well, lets see if it is another month or so before we blog again.