Things 'n stuff...

Ok, my brain should have exploded not long ago. I just needed to state this up front. It either exploded or its been leaking out my ear ever since... or maybe both. Let's take a glimpse into my brain, shall we?

Ok, the wife and I are in the process of becoming Foster Parents... this involves letting the government into your life in a large way. Now I'm not totally thrilled with this, but hey, at this point you do what you gotta do. So other than going to all sorts of trainings and filling out massive mounds of paperwork (government beauraucracy at it's finest!), your house has to pass a few inspections. One by the local fire department, and that makes sense. Not a big deal. But then their is the actual homestudy where the government caseworker comes into your house and tells you what you need to do to make your house ready.

Note that I said to make the house ready. Your house could be brand new and completely up to code, and still not pass. So needless to say, since our house is 60-odd years old, we have some things to do. We've been working on them throughout the past few months, but we still have a bunch of things that need to be done. It doesn't help that we have only been in the house for less than a year and things weren't completely unpacked/etc.

Now that being said, this weekend we had to run out for the day Saturday as a friend of the wife's was in a nearby city for a family thing, and we ran up there to say hey! Spent the whole day with her and did a bunch of stuff, but that took away a day of work. Then Sunday, its raining. A LOT. Well, have a few things that need to be done outside, and since my folks were coming into town to help with a few things, I head out early in the rain to do yard work. One of my jobs was to shovel a big pile of dirt back onto the septic tank. I do this and some other work and start to go inside.

Hmmmm... CRUD. My wedding ring is gone. I re-trace all of my steps, but the only thing I can think of is that it is somewhere in the mud that I shoveled. So I go through the mud and all around the yard and house. My folks bring out my old radio shack metal detector in vain hope that would help. So now I have to wait until everything dries so that I can sift through the dirt instead of the mud.

So my folks come to town, and while they are in town, my dad is going to help me try to figure out where a noise is coming from in the truck. Pull the front wheels and the brakes are tighter than Scrooge's fist on a silver dollar. Get them off and loosened the calipers and whatnot... then we go out for a test drive and we take the folks out to eat. Problem is still there. So we pull the back wheels... I can't tell you the last time I pulled the drums off the rear brakes... I think it's been a year and a half to two years. Took us about 2 hours, just to get the drums off. Need a rear brake job. Great. Get everything adjusted so its easy to take them off, put the tires back on. Then I find that I have a set of rear shoes for this truck. Well, by this point, its 9 pm or so? So my folks take off and they head home, and I get ready to crash out.

But wait! There's more. The puppy has the Hershey-squirts. Now, he is about 18 weeks old? I think, maybe, I dunno anymore. He was doing great on the one really expensive food, but when we ran out of that, we moved both dogs to a less expensive food. Maybe that's it, but.... *shrugs* We will have to see!

Hmmm, tonight, we have to clean out the chicken coop, then I'm off to the gym to run another couple/few miles. Maybe that will help get my head on straight?

Here's to hoping!