Sometimes I do dumb things. At the time they don't seem so stupid, but hindsight is a great teacher. I was speaking at a conference for three days last month and was hosted in a beautiful home. After arriving at my destination, I wanted to wash my hair quickly and assumed the bathtub was the best place to do that. I knelt on a throw rug and s t r e t c h e d my neck to reach the bathtub faucet. About an inch shy of the faucet, I stretched some more by "standing" on my tip toes. There! I could do this!
BUT.....the rug slipped out from under me and I landed on the metal edge of the shower track on the tub. I heard the noise and before the pain set in, I said out loud "NO!" I heard my ribs crack. My mind raced wondering how I was going to stand in high heels while speaking each day for a few hours let alone carry boxes of my books into the venue.
I managed and no one noticed. But when I got home and relaxed later that week, the pain intensified. Funny how that works.
I was excited to be featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul's Newsletter at this event. I was selling my books as well as the Chicken Soup ones I have written a contribution.
Does one dumb thing lead to another?
Speaking of stupid things, my husband was reaching for a T-square in the garage and his elbow hit a bottle of sulfuric acid on the shelf. It landed on the cement floor and the carpeting by the back door. I heard the crash and ran to the garage. In a matter of seconds, the acid ate through his jeans, shoes, and socks. While he was getting out of his clothes, I threw lots of paper towels onto the floor to soak up the acid. It was beyond weird seeing the red acid eat like cancer.
Thank God he was not wearing shorts and that he had shoes on his feet. His feet are still very sore and burning as well as being a beautiful orange color. While cleaning it up and then neutralizing it with water, we were breathing it in -- not good!
We have been in our store location for 11 years on main street downtown in our coastal town. Over the years we wanted to do improvements but our landlady was reluctant to give the go-ahead. After that many years, she referred to us as 'family' but we soon found out that talk is CHEAP. And so is she. She owns several complexes, homes, and buildings in our town and all of them are deteriorating. But the rent goes up each year.
Last October we noticed rat droppings in our back storage room. We contacted pest control and they set traps. The landlady had the roof repaired earlier that year and suspected these were roof rats that had found a way into the store - as many as 20 each week.
After seven months of fighting with her and the rats, she stopped paying for pest control and refused to fix the problem. We had been diligently trying to find another place to rent and were advised by our attorney that we were within our rights to break our lease. In fact, the law states that we would be able to collect from her all the rent we had paid since the problem started, plus our moving expense. Fat chance of that happening.
There were absolutely NO spots to rent downtown. We tried going out of town a mile or so which didn't work out either.
I Smell a RAT!
In the meantime, the smell of the rats dying in the ceiling was unbelievable. Both my hubby and I started to feel ill but the day I walked into my office and there were MAGGOTS crawling around was the day I lost it. I closed my business.
However, we still had to maintain our jewelry store as it was our livelihood. Then a miracle happened.
A man who owns the strip mall on the other (sunny) side of the street walked into our store and asked if we were interested in renting an additional parking space as he owned the parking lot. We told him we were not but jokingly asked if he had any places to lease. He said, "As a matter of fact, I have a tenant moving out of one of my large spaces but I would be willing to divide it in half to be the size of your current store."
He offered us a brand new space the same size as our existing one for HALF of what we are paying now. The building is beautiful and the store.......well, I'll post pictures as we approach Grand Opening but it will be awesome. I will be eternally grateful for those nasty rats!
Besides the major feat of moving, we had to get our John Dillinger 3,500 pound safe moved. Through sheer brilliance, hubby and friend were able to figure out a way to raise the safe high enough to get a pallet jack under it to move it out the front door.
OOOOOPPPPS - it might not fit. We had 1/2 an inch to spare but that did not include the handles. By some kind of miracle, they were able to walk it out the door and had a tow truck lift it up and move it across the street. Wonder what people thought to see a safe swinging from the back of a tow truck. I couldn't watch. My heart was in my throat.
Three thousand five hundred pounds and it is NOT on rollers!
BUT....they did it. We are now doing our renovations and hopefully will be open in a couple weeks. I will have a beautiful office twice the size mine is now. Considering we will have air conditioning, which we never had in the previous one, we may just sleep there some nights! But NOT YET.....here's week one:
Tearing down walls, putting in new spotlights, painting......
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| Notice the 96 spot lights they installed. Awesome |
Nothin' better than fresh Halibut
My SIL took grandson fishing almost every day this month. They were catching enough salmon for all of us to enjoy throughout the winter. One day they caught 11 salmon in 45 minutes. But the best day was when a 50 pound Halibut took the bait, broke the fishing pole and SIL had to wrestle the beast onto the boat. Here stands two very proud fishermen!
No Fly on the Wall post would be complete without the grands
The first pic is Brie playing with her ice cream. She was warned that it might fall if she continued to do that and there would not be another one. Did she listen? No. The picture of disappointment (she knows better than to complain) says it all:
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| She's such a deep thinker |
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| And a bathing beauty |
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| Star and Gunner adore my friend and must be held |
My favorite blog post of the month always is Fly on the Wall. It gives me a chance to share what happened in my life during the past month as well as connecting with other bloggers to hear what their month was like.
Grab a cup or a glass and have some fun reading these posts:
Baking In A Tornado
Menopausal Mother
Searching for Sanity
Spatulas on Parade
Bookworm in the Kitchen
The Blogging 911
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