Annie, I realized this weekend that I do a lot of squatting while I help the kids. This motivates me to do even more. Bpathome, I am going to start planks this week! Strolling is still exercise. ANY movement, no matter how small, counts. It all counts. Sounds like a really fun walk! Lizbeth, I am sorry you needed surgery! It's OK if you missed some time-- what is always important is that you are back. To me, this is a learning process. I know what you mean about mornings. I try to go on automatic and just get it up and do it without thinking. Gibby, woo hoo!!! How did the weekend go? Amj, glad you are feeling better. What a great support your DH will be! My husband has no interest in exercise. Blfenton, I love how you incorporate exercise so regularly. I definitely see this as investment, as you said. I think, for a long time, I thought of it as vanity, or someone bossing me around about what I "should" be doing, but being 40, I see what a long road lies ahead (or short one!) if I don't take care of little problems NOW. Gscience, that's great that you already have a routine! RE: the fruit/veg, I am trying to get more in by eating some every other time I eat. Are you going to be done soon with the school yr, or teach during the summer term, too?

Wow, thanks for all the kind words! We tried to get some sort of reaction out of our kids and the workers but no one was saying much ;-) I should have known I could count on gardenweb! linb007, the floors are common 1 and 2 random width (3-5-7) american black walnut. I fell in love with some I saw at 32 dollars a sq foot (of course) and hunted them like prey until I found them for less than a quarter of that. We got them from Blackford & Sons out of Tennessee, unfinished with hand scrapped edges. My contact there is Luke Blackford. They are sweethearts there. I can send you his email if you want. kitchenkrazed, I am going to post this seperately (cabinet issue), I need the GW advice! The firm is a very reputable firm, HOWEVER, our designer left a week before we placed the order. So we are in a sort of odd situation and they never gave us a list of exact cabinets (I wasnt liking that but that is how they said it worked), they gave us 100 drawings and elevations and the cabinet type and finish, etc. but not a detailed BOM. So we are discussing it with them right now but I dont like that I dont have my original designer to clearly state that this is not what we discussed. honorbilkit, yes, we are surprised to find out that we are doing ok without the first floor. Esp since we always say the house is too small for us (we love our neighborhood though). My 6 year old said today he doesnt want to move back into the first floor. I thought he liked the closeness of all of us. Turns out he liked being able to watch TV while eating (basement set up, not allowed in real life upstairs). Rascal. Dinalo, yes that is stenciling, or as we like to say: entertainment for the onsite crew. Its one of my "Projects" where i experiment and stress out my husband. We had rich blue walls (faux sky) before so to cover it, I laid a TON of primer and ceiling white, and I COULD STILL SEE THE BLUE! So then I lugged 50 lbs of joint compound in (this is where the workers perked up wondering what the heck I was up to) and slathered it on. Then I color washed it with acrylics. Then I did a dimensional damask stencil with some of the bottom metallic paint mixed in. Since this photo I have added metallic highlighting to match under chair rail and then started distressed it with sandpaper (not done) b/c my highlighting was too "new" looking. Its like an 18 layer wall. I think I need to be committed if I make any starts towards 19. It's been sort of fun, Ive been cranking the ipod and putting movies on for the kids, but I think most people could skip 80% of my steps and get a similar effect! Lol.

This year I hope to make some progress on the basement. I am waiting for the quote from the contractor regarding my bathroom. I think I'll email/call him today. That will be done by summer. I took out one of the fluorescent fixtures in the basement and the stupid junction box is on a joist perpendicular to the floor, so no way can I install a new fixture. I'm not moving a junction box! A guy at work can though, so I need to clean up down there a bit and I'll get him to come over and move it. There are two more down there, so I assume those are the same. I am just putting in inexpensive track lights from Ikea until we can get things going down there. For the immediate future, I need to get the basketball hoop set up so another guy from work can help me put that up. I need to replace the one we have, because it's broken, and this one we will mount higher. Yard work is never ending of course, but the weather has been less than pleasant for that on my days off. Days I work are beautiful of course. I'm still training for my 15k in Toronto in 3 weeks. Yikes! I think I'll be ready. I have no grand illusions of finishing in a great time. I just want to have fun. :)

I'm still catching up. Nancy, I usually don't see aphids at all, though I saw them on western ironweed growing outside the garden fence this year. Ants were farming them and lady bugs were trying to eat them, so the ants and ladybugs were slugging it out. This year the oleander aphids did pop up on my butterflyweed plants in the garden, but about 2 minutes after I noticed them there, I saw ladybugs working the plants. A day or two later, all the oleander aphids were gone. It just amazes me how good the ladybugs are at finding a 'problem' and dealing with it or, from their point of view, maybe they are just happy to have a nice meal. When I was younger, more foolish and inclined to ignore the heat, I would just garden hard, endlessly, throughout July and August. Now? Being older and wiser, I listen to the heat and listen to my body and know when enough is enough....and I try to get out of the heat before 'enough' becomes 'too much'. I'm already looking at the tomato plants in the big containers and asking myself if I want to water them all summer long. Y'all shouldn't be surprised if I stop watering them in 2, 3 or 4 weeks. I don't even have the patience any more to stand out there in the heat with a hose in my hand....so heaven help those plants when I start thinking it is too hot at 7 a.m. (Or, I could just put up the drip irrigation lines for them.) The last few years, I've turned my focus to indoors DIY projects and this year might be kinda sorta the same, more or less, at least in August.and comes into bloom and produces much faster than okra planted in cool weather despite the estimated DTMs. I planted Jambalaya (which has a quick DTM of 50 days anyway) in, hmmm, late May I think, and it was producing by the end of June. I think it was so fast because it didn't really experience cool soil temperatures. Hopefully your okra will produce extra-quickly like that. You know, I learned this with hot peppers ages ago. I used to put them in the ground the same time I plant tomatoes, but that exposed them to soil temperatures and sometimes nighttime lows that are cooler than they like and it slows them down. Nowadays I plant them 2-4 weeks later than the tomato plants, and am harvesting hot peppers in June regardless---and heavier yields than I got from those earlier plantings. It amazes me what a difference it makes when the plants are not exposed to any cold. Benadryl for pets is important at times though it depends on the bite's locatio. We have had neighbors' dogs get bitten on the paw and the paw swelled so quickly that it halted the flow of blood and they lost the dog, so we always give a dog Benadryl if it is bitten and we usually don't even go to the vet. You can see the dogs' swelling go down literally in front of your eyes. I don't know why it doesn't work for people, but I know it is absolutely not recommended for people. Here's my theory though: If you've ever known anyone who was bitten by a venomous snake, you might have noticed the doctors circle the wound area and mark on it with a Sharpie. They come back, usually every 30 minutes, and mark the extent of the swelling or redness and this allows them to track the way the person's reaction is advancing (or, eventually) receding, in the area of the bite. This is important info for them as it can guide some treatment choices. So, if you have taken something like Benadryl and if it affects you by decreasing the swelling, it can interfere with their ability to track your reaction. I think medical personnel are the ones to decide if you are having an allergic reaction (which is separate from your body's reaction to the venom) and if you need an antihistamine, which one, etc. Jennifer, Yes, grocery story squash normally will be hybrid. They have special hybrids bred for commercial growers and I'd be surprised if you could buy any grocery store squash that is not a hybrid. Yes, your mystery squash could very well be one of mini pumpkins grown as decorative items. Amy, Yes, I wish we had that cool Spring weather back again. Sadly, we do not. Nancy, After worrying that Chris will accidentally blow up himself and kill himself setting off fire works, I'm over it. I spent over 2 hours this afternoon opening up all the packaging, taking things out, etc. and lining them up on a shelving unit so they are ready to go. I had a big black trash bag completely full of all the external wrappers and the bags from the Fireworks stand. The fireworks don't have to kill him. I am going to kill him myself. He bought enough fireworks to open his own fireworks stand, and I am not kidding about that. He bought a bunch of these big boxes with a fuse. You light the fuse, and the box goes off---some of them have 20 to 250 shells or balls in them that will go off in rapid succession. Our neighbors, and all the animals, are going to hate us tonight. I bet he has 20 or 30 of those, big box things, and they are just the tip of the iceberg. In his defense, the smaller stuff he bought earlier in the week is much smaller and run-of-the-mill. It is today's purchases, on half-off-everything day at the fireworks warehouse that enabled him to buy too much of everything and most of it really big stuff. I'm glad Tom, and you, survived his night out. I hate being outside listening to all the fireworks and will be glad when this weekend is over. K, I'm out of time, but almost caught up. Time for me to get dinner on the table. There will be six of us for dinner: 4 adults and 2 wrinkled prunes who don't even care that much about the fireworks because, for them, it is all about the pool. Have a nice evening everyone. I believe I am going to have a loud one. Dawn