Hey g, I hear ya on no outside. It's darn raw here today. Was supposed to be warm, but you can't tell it by me. I've had a number of experiences over the years, but I'll tell ya'll about the first one I remember. When I was five my grandfather died. I had wanted to go visit him just before then but my parents wouldn't let me...long story. So, when he died I wanted to go to the funeral bad. They wouldn't let me, said I was too young. I was very adamant and really threw a fit about it. I didnt' get to go. Shortly thereafter, one night I was in bed. A storm was coming, something woke me up and I saw a figure of a man at the window putting the window down. I knew it was him. Right after that my mother came in to shut the window and was surprised it was already shut since I was too small to do it. I told her Grandpop had did it. That summer several times he came and shut the window before a storm. After that my mother wasn't surprised when she came in and it was already done. About ten years ago my father died. I live in the house where I grew up. Had moved back here to help him a few years before he died. Sometime in the first year after he died, I was at the computer in the living room with my back to the hallway. All of a sudden I heard his loud.. Hey.. It was how he always greeted us. My mother died before him and that was about the same time I kept feeling her around when I'd talk about her. Smiles. Guess he wanted to make himself known too. My mother and I learned when I first moved away from home that we could do the mental messages to each other. If one wanted the other to call, we'd just think of it and they would get the message. Then I started doing it with my aunt and later my best friend and I would do it. Still do it with my aunt and best friend. Friend lives across country and we don't talk often, unless one of us sends 'the message'. To this day I always can tell when my mother is around because we smell the cigarette smoke. No one has smoked in this house in twenty years at least.

I am probably not going to be posting many pics when asking questions any more because I find that too many people are only looking at the pictures, NOT reading the text, and thus their responses are either directly contrary to something I've said in the text (for instance "get rid of XYZ" or "the color of ABC is wrong" when I've already said in the accompanying that I love XYZ so it's not going anywhere or that the color of ABC is really more toward mauve when it shows up as puce in the picture) or have nothing at all to do with what I'm asking. I find that intensely frustrating. I have almost no pictures of my current house because it's still in "whatta dump" stage. No paint (walls need a TON of work), short on furniture, dreadfully designed kitchen that's a perpetual mess because there's nowhere to put things... and forget outside pictures, a few weeks ago we ripped out almost every trace of vegetation outside (and will not be replacing it until next year, probably fall '09 to get the end-of-season sales) due to a honeysuckle invasion that I swear was growing by feet per day and was starting to attack the porch. I'll happily post pictures of my previous house because I think I did a pretty decent job with it. We're not on Google Maps but we're kinda-sorta on Google Earth - but the best you can get is a fuzzy whitish blob in the midst of a bunch of other fuzzy whitish blobs on a fuzzy grayish stripe. No closeups. Our town is clearly not a high priority as far as Google is concerned! WRT security - we live in a somewhat iffy neighborhood so I am one HECK of a lot more worried about the people a dozen houses down the street breaking in looking for meth money than I am about someone trying to track me down via the Internet (I Googlebate every so often just to see what's out there re: me) from half a dozen states away. I've been email-stalked and -harassed a bunch of times in my 18 years online because of my outspoken ;-) opinions and my ISPs have always been helpful in dealing with it. However, I've had meet-ups with a whole slew of people I've met online over the years, twice flying nearly cross-country to do so, and it's been grand fun.

I know I know - for what I pay for this I really shouldn't complain..but it gets so frustrating. Anyway since you suggested I post my workaround method... sI remembered some of the more unusual words in the post- one of them was needlepoint navy.(scary what trivia my brain retains) So I put "needlepoint navy" in quotes just like that in the google search bar. Then a few possibilities came up, one of which was this. I just tried it now, and it didn't work, but thankfully it worked before. My suggestion is to put in whatever unique definite words you can recall in the google search box and chances are it will bring up a long lost post. hope this helps someone:) Here is a link that might be useful: the long lost post

I just clicked on a post listed on the right hand side and it was from 2011. An old oe of mine fro2013 popped up, too. I hope Houzz soon gets the bugs ironed out.