It’s Coming!! Fall Is Coming!!
Category: Change
The Chairs, Phase 2
After the wood filler on the chairs had dried, I sanded those areas smooth and scuffed up the chairs with my sandpaper to help the primer adhere better and to smooth out some damaged edges. I concentrated most on the tops of the chairs and parts that are more noticeable, and just smoothed out the dings on the bottom rungs. (Oops, some of the wood filler came out of the largest space I filled where the veneer was missing, so I filled it again, let dry, and sanded more.) Then I wiped the chairs down with a wet rag to remove the sanding dust.
As soon as it got light I went out to the patio and got the primer. I picked the two hottest days of the week to work on these, so I wanted to get the primer done while it was still cool outside! It is predicted to be in the 90s today as it was yesterday, and when I went out in the afternoon yesterday it was just stifling.
I decided to put the chairs on the patio table to paint the lower parts, with a sheet underneath and the chairs set up on boxes so the sheet won’t get in the paint. With the primer I’ll paint the top parts of the chairs first and then flip them and paint the underneath parts because I’ll be sanding the primer when it’s dry anyway. When painting, I’ll do underneath first in case there are any drips or boo-boos.
I finished the first coat of primer at 7:30 a.m. and decided to wait two hours to sand out any brush strokes and put the next coat of primer on. The chairs already look better with just the primer on them. I was concerned that the details of the chairs would sort of fade out once they were such a light color, but I see the details actually standing out now that they are white instead of dark wood.
As I started to put the second coat of primer on, I noticed a few areas of the old wood stain bleeding through the primer. I put a second coat on those areas and let them dry to see if the second coat would cover it, and it didn’t. So, I went to Lowe’s and bought some Kilz 3 Premium which is supposed to be good for painting over wood. I put a coat of Kilz 3 primer on both chairs and they are drying now.
Tune in tomorrow to see if the Kilz primer does cover the bleed-throughs, and how the first coat of paint turns out!
Keepsakes
Marnie and I went to an estate sale today and found all sorts of goodies. I even missed some of the items for sale because there were so many things to look at! All the items for sale had been moved to the barns on the property and some items were very dirty. In fact, one of my items was marked $3 but the lady only charged me $1 because it was really filthy. Dirt for the win! Right now I’m going through some of the things I bought, hoping to find things I can sell in my Etsy store. I got a whole box of sewing notions – vintage patterns, thread, buttons, and zippers; a bag of game pieces; some Christmas decorations; a bowl made of English walnut that is worth far more than I paid for it; a concrete bear statue for the side yard; two wind chimes; some other things, and most interestingly a box of cards and letters originally owned by a Mennonite girl named Irene. I think this is her senior picture:
Right now I’m going through the box and wiping off all the dirt and spider webs from the cards and letters. They are mostly just letters from her friends with a few newspaper clippings, such as this one about some giant waves at the coast. I do wish there were more newspaper clippings, as I enjoy reading the ads and other little articles.
Irene was very detailed in noting on each envelope that she had answered the letter. I assume she would have gotten many more letters than this in her life and I’m not sure why these are the only ones left, but I imagine that her family had looked at these and didn’t feel they were important. There are no photos in the box except the senior photo. Plus, they are all dirty and webby and there was an actual spider in the box.
Of course, you don’t learn much about a person from reading the letters sent to them. I don’t know if the estate was hers or how she was related to the person who left the estate, but I found her obituary online and she indeed passed away in the last few months. It sounds like she was a wonderful and generous woman who loved to help people. But she had no children of her own, and some letters from her teenage years would have meant little to her nephews and niece, I think.
Anyway, I always find it very interesting to read old letters and postcards. I was hoping to find some postcards in the box, but only one has turned up so far. It is a photo of Giant Geyser in Yellowstone National Park, from 1961.
Toes
I don’t have much to report today, except that I had my right big toenail removed on Tuesday. It kept trying to grow a new toenail but didn’t succeed in getting very far, so there were layers of toenail that kept trying to grow. (I don’t remember any trauma to the toe, so the origin of the problem is a mystery.) The nail had also mostly separated from the toe, so the podiatrist thought removing it would be the best option in hopes that it will grow back in a normal fashion. He actually showed me his toe that was growing a nice new nail after he lost it in a mountain biking accident. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a toenail removed, if you have you know that there are shots involved. The doctor sprayed my toe with cold spray, then put two or three shots in my toe. (It hurt a bunch, I’m not gonna lie. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes tightly so I couldn’t see what he was doing.) The reason they have to give your toe more than one shot is that they don’t know for sure which nerve will hurt when removing the toenail.
After waiting a few minutes for the anesthetic to kick in, the doctor came back in and popped the toenail right off. I didn’t feel a thing really, the shots did their job. Then he bandaged it all up very effectively and I left the office with no toenail. I waited 24 hours like the doctor said and then took off the bandage to look at the toe. It didn’t look very nice at all, so I immediately put another bandage on it. The yellow stuff on my foot in the photo is the solution the nurse used to clean the area before the doctor took the nail off.
Though it didn’t hurt when the doctor took the toenail off, it is uncomfortable now. I had a hike planned this Saturday to Duffy Lake (the site of my very first backpacking trip, when I was 21!) but decided not to go as it isn’t an easy hike and we would have to cross a river, and I didn’t want to wade in and get germs on my toe. Hopefully I can get some easy walks in around the neighborhood in the next few days.
Have you ever had a toenail removed? How long did it take to recover and be hike ready? Comment below!
PCT, Here We Come!!
So here is my official announcement blog post — my bestie Marnie and I plan to thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail in 2022!! The trail traverses California, Oregon, and Washington, from Mexico to Canada, and is 2650 miles long. We plan to start at the southern terminus at the Mexico border and head north. It is a journey of five or six months, depending on how fast you hike.
We have gotten our thru-hike permits from the Pacific Crest Trail Association (albeit for days at the end of May which isn’t feasible when hiking through the California desert, we are looking for cancellations to get a better date and a date together) and we are working to get prepared for the trail.
EDIT: We were able to get permits for the end of March! Yay!
We would love it if you would pray for us for these specifics:
- That God will be glorified in our hiking.
- Provision (finances, bravery, physical and mental strength, etc.) for the trail.
- Protection from injury/illness, ice, snow, water crossings, critters, anything else.
- Fitness and ability to get good nutrition on trail (both of us sometimes find it hard to eat while backpacking).
- Successful and smooth food and resupply boxes prep (there are places where there isn’t a good place to resupply for food, we will mail supply boxes to those places).
- That we will get our “trail legs” soon so we can hike the miles we need to hike to finish on time (before the snows in Washington).
- Energy to journal at the end of each day.
- That neither of us will experience post-trail depression when we get home, but instead have energy and enthusiasm for the next stage of our lives.
- Anything else applicable that you can think of!
Thank you!! Please feel free to ask any questions about our trip in the comments!
And if you want to know more about the PCT, The Trek’s website is a great place to start!
1940s Saturday 2-1-14
This last weekend I bought a few magazines from the 1940s. I’m kicking myself for not buying the whole pile, but hoping that the man will be at the flea market next month with the rest. I want the magazines because A) I love reading old magazines; B) Our house was built in 1946 and I’m interested in the history; and most importantly C) we have been re-doing our bathroom, and I’ve decided (I think) to decorate with travel ads from the 1940s. This is the cover of one of the magazines, which will be perfect for my travel theme. Seriously, you should have seen the giant grin on my face when I found it!
While looking through old magazines, I’m always struck by how similar the articles and content are to what we have today. For instance, I read an article about a lady who was a writer, and tired of trying to do her work in a space where she was constantly trampled by children, puppies, and tradespeople, decided to redo a cellar room into a study. She managed to do it for only $25, ($384.59 by today’s standards, according to The Inflation Calculator). Today, however, I saw this in a 1941 Better Homes and Gardens. The first two paragraphs read:
“There’s one sure way to tell a long-lasting paint. Find out how much white lead it contains. For as good painters and architects will tell you, the greater the white lead content, the more enduring the paint. And you can’t get a more weather-resistant paint than one containing 100% pure white lead.”
<Jaw drops to floor>
Little did they know, a few years later children would be seriously injured from eating bits of the paint that was not, I suppose, as durable as the ads wanted them to believe. Of course, 15 years ago people still thought margarine was better for you than butter. We just never know when our prevailing wisdom will turn to foolishness! 
Wordless Wednesday 4-4-12
We hath a Hyathinth!
every day's just like starting over 