AtomicMrX

Sunday I spent an hour and a half cutting, digging the sod from our garden area and putting it under the big tree in the corner. Eventually there will be a vegetable and flower garden to the side of the house. Shannon started the project a month ago and let it sit. So I got the hard part done - sod removal. It will probably be too late to make it into a garden now but it will be ready for Spring!

Let’s hope the sod in the new location takes hold.

Happy Father’s Day!!! Here are some great photos of my Dad.

I hope you have a great Father’s Day Dad!

Today has been a productive day and it’s only the afternoon! I made my blog posting for “Let’s Go There - Blog” and then got cleaned up. First I made a bee line to the car wash because it had been a month since the poor car was cleaned and it showed. I made that adventure for under $5 and got a super cleaned car to boot! Then I stopped at Taco Bell for Lunch and followed that with a brief visit to Walmart to get bird seed and diaper jeni refills (for Jaki’s litter box). While I was getting the see I picked up a finch feeder and some finch mixed seed. We have tons of sparrows now but I’d like to see some finches, so we will encourage them with the feeder, no? I had a budget going into Walmart of getting the seed and diaper jeni refills and even with getting two refill (they were on sale), the bird seed, and the addition of the finch feeder plus finch seed; I was still under budget! Now I moved on to the grocery store and did good at staying in budget there too ($50).

I filled up the feeder with the new seed mix (suppose to not encourage black birds) and set up the new finch feeder. We had sparrows feeding at almost all the posts in a matter of a few minutes. I loved it! At one point in time there were seven sparrows, four black birds, one dove, and a baby squirrel feeding. There were four sparrows on the finch feeder and everyone else was on the ground. Very cool! Now I’ll wait for actual “finches” to get on board!

I’m going to grill up burgers and hot dogs for dinner meals this week in a little bit. I wanted the deck to get into the shade and be a little closer to dinner before starting.

Jaki is curled up in my lap asleep while I type this all in. She’s been doing real well this summer and not getting too crazy with the running in the back yard. We tell her to slow it down and she does. We don’t want her back to go out again. Each time it has - it was worse than the time before. So we are cautious because she forgets all about the pain and lives in the moment.

I guess come this Winter I will have to invest in a bird bath heater. By then we’ll have a lot of birds relying on our kindness.

A progress report on the Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner: It is doing a fantastic job. I am very impressed. I did go into there and scrub off the doors and floor. We have a terrible time with the floor looking dirty. It is staying whiter most of the time now and the walls are very clean. You can even see the difference from where the walls get sprayed with the cleaner and where it doesn’t reach. The cleaner sprayed areas are WHITE and the areas above are off white. The only bad thing to report on it is that it seems to be rusting our new shower caddy in record time. That’s okay. I’d rather have clean walls - I’ll get a new caddy when this one is totally nasty.

On a sad note. My friends Greg and Ron that lived in Lee’s Summit have officially moved and are now Midtown Kansas City residents. I kind of feel alone out here in the suburbs. It will be weird to visit them in an apartment when all I’ve associated them with is a great house and killer yard. I hope Fiona and Rufus make the adjustment well (their two dachshunds). Good luck in the “big city” guys! By the way, great “We’ve Moved” email Greg! Rufus and Fiona look so cute.

Here is proof of the birds at the feeder. We finally are getting a nice feeding pattern started. Even our little ground squirrel got into the act, although he stuffed his cheeks from the ground - he wasn’t on the feeder. You’ll have to excuse me for the quality of bird photos; I was shooting through the kitchen blinds - trying not to spook the birds. So that is what the fuzzy horizontal lines are.

We got a maid to clean our shower. Okay, so it’s not a person but that nifty little device from Scrubbing Bubbles that does all the work. If you want to get one then go to their web site and print off a $5 coupon and buy it at Walmart where they only cost $19.88. It comes with two bottles of the cleaner refills.

We are going to give it a go and see if it keeps the “black mold” at bay - it’s a real problem. We need to make over the bathroom next spring with income tax money and rip out all the dry wall and put some green board in there to help eliminate the mold problem.

So here’s our little shower cleaner and a new shower caddy that with my 20% off coupon and my birthday $20 gift card only cost me $14!!! What a deal. I completely forgot I had the gift card for Bed Bath and Beyond. They are starting a new employee recognition thing at work this year and celebrating their employees birthdays with a balloon, card, and gift card of choice. I like it!

It says we’ll notice the difference in about 14 days - so I’ll get back with ya on this shower cleaner do-dad.

Finally! This morning two birds were at the feeder and they were both chic-a-dees. They were very pretty. Looked like a male and female. I’m glad someone other than a black bird is eating from it. I was beginning to worry that we wouldn’t have any birds at the feeder.

Eventually it will be a popular buffet but right now it is rare to see anything at it other than the blue birds and squirrels eating in the grass below it.

Shannon and I are about to go eat dinner - cheap Chinese Buffet.

Happy Gay Pride 2006 Kansas City!