The floor

We've been working on this house. All the floors had carpet. Most of the floors were covering hardwood, which merely required pulling and staple removal. The family room was a different story. The family room had carpet, but under the carpet was a layer of nasty 1960's linoleum  GLUED TO THE HARDWOOD. This first video is a time lapse of Lucy taking her turn chipping away at the top layer.

Then, Becky steamed off the gluey paper layer while wearing a gas mask, saving the work for while the rest of us were at work/school so as not to give us all mesothelioma. 

We didn't get a video of the sanding that took place next, but it necessitated a very large and powerful machine and produced about a full trash can full of sawdust. The staining took about 20 minutes.  Becky did the polyurethane, again to keep the rest of our lungs safe, which then required a couple nights at a hotel or grandma's house. 

Suck on that, Betty Foster.

Jack the "Dog"

This is Jack.

Jack is not our dog. Jack is staying with us for a week while his owners go somewhere more fun.

Jack is a good dog. Jack is an abnormally good dog. Jack is a brainwashed, neurotic, robot-like, good dog.

Jack does not get on the furniture. Jack does not beg for human food. Jack can sit, lay down, stay, spin, shake, stand, "kennel," and probably do taxes. 

At his house, Jack rings a bell that hangs on the door when he needs to urinate and/or defecate. His owners then open the door and Jack goes to his cordoned area in which he does his business. 

And herein lies the problem. 

Jack does not have his special poo-area when he is staying at the Tolman house. Jack's brain has been so well trained that he unable to relieve himself now that he is away from his routine. Instead, Jack nervously whines all night long with his dog butt full of poo, unable to do the deed when he's out in the yard being walked around by a Tolman in his pajama pants at 2 am. 

 You apparently cannot remove all of the annoying things that dogs do, and still expect the dog to function as a dog. 

So, now it's March of 2018

Well, it's been a while. That Facebook thing really sucked us in. I'm going to go back to this for a time. Posts on here will probably not be daily, but weekly perhaps? It's strange to take a step back from social media. I have no doubt that I'll get sucked back in, but for now, I'm taking a break from political "discussions," memes about Mondays, and quizzes about which Harry Potter actor I would be if I lived in Florida. 

Here are some things:

I want these things. There are four of them at work. They are promotional mugs from the makers of Actos, a drug that reduces insulin resistance that hardly anyone uses anymore. There are three more, the liver, the kidney and the muscle. These, left to right, are the pancreas, triglycerides, the stomach, and HDL cholesterol. I don't know why I want them, but I'm oddly tempted to spend the 40 bucks on ebay that it would take to complete the set. 

These are/were spiky balls from our "sweet gumball tree" in our back yard. We spent a good portion of Thursday sending about a million of them back to the hell from which they came.