Got kids? Then you’ve got dirt! So SHOUT IT OUT!

The DIRT. Not the kids. lol

Shout® has been a round a long time, hasn’t it? I remember seeing ads for the product on TV when I was a kid, back when my mom used to SHOUT it out, too. But back then, it wasn’t just the dirt getting shouted at. Ha ha!!

Stain removal is serious business. Have you seen the cost of clothing?! It’s not like we all can go out and simply replace grass-stained jeans and chocolate-splattered t-shirts. It’s much more economical to get the stains out, but I’ll admit that some stains are really tough. And that’s why we love Shout®. It has a “triple acting formula” that grasps that grimy crud and wrests it away from the clothing fibers. It’s safe for ALL colorfast washable clothing, too, and works in cold, warm or hot water temperatures. I love how it’s so adaptable. It’s pretty much a no-brainer to use. Perfect for me!

And even better, it’s EASY to use. No pouring a messy liquid or juggling pastes or powders– Shout® has a nice new trigger-activated bottle. So you don’t only remove stains, you blast them into oblivion with each squirt! Since Shout® has been around so long, the brand is synonymous with quality as an effective stain removal. It’s become one of the staples of the laundry room: detergent, bleach, fabric softener, and Shout® stain removal.

Shout® is available at just about every grocery store in the country! I can’t imagine a store not selling it. And if you’re looking for a deal, go to the Walmart Shout® Trigger product website to get a coupon. So Shout® now only saves clothing, it saves cash, too.

And the next time your kids tumble in from the mud puddle or the “hands on” creative art class, don’t raise your voice. Raise the trigger, and Shout®  it out!

I finally finished the income taxes!!! :iquit: Good gravy, I was barely clinging to the sanity can with it all this year.

WOW.

So my life is sloooowly starting to come back. Everything has kind of been in upheaval right now. In a week where we had both snow and warm weather, both the snow blower and the lawn tractor broke. Sweet. :rants:

On the bright side, I’ve been clobbered with work assignments, many of them things I love to write about (WordPress, home improvement, and gardening!). So I’ve been very busy researching and writing that stuff. Not much time for blogging, nor visiting blogs.

In a way, it’s good to get away for a bit. After so many years of writing, you start to feel a little drained of good stories. Life settles into the mundane, and the creative juices slow down a bit.

Plus, my house is a total disaster and SOMEBODY has got to clean it out. lol. The IRS has made sure that I can’t hire a maid any time soon…..

Thanks to all you devoted friends who have been visiting and leaving me comments. They make me smile. Something we always have need of after April 15th.

Here’s the weekly Meet Me on Monday! How would you answer?

1. What are your plans for St. Patrick’s Day?
Uhhhh… St. Patrick’s Day?? (glimpses at calendar to see what day it falls on). Oh, it’s Saturday. Um, I’ll probably spray paint myself in green, don a leprechaun hat, and go out dancing in the fields in search of the pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow. Mmmhmm. Aye, my Scottish sarcasm is leaking out….

2. What is your favorite room in your house?
It WOULD be the living room… but I don’t even HAVE a living room right now. Because I homeschool 4 kids and work at home, the living room is cluttered with desks, bookshelves, file cabinets, musical instruments, and boxes of junk stuff that I must review for the websites. My 8-foot long couch is crammed against one wall. Oh, I have plans for a living room, of course. I have to convert the attached garage into a family room, so the gang can keep all their musical instruments in there. Then I’m going to revolutionize the living room into this wood-paneled English country style library. My desk will be in here, with sitting room chairs and a nice gas log fireplace (with mantel that I will make myself). Yes, it will be my favorite room, then.

My dream room. Of course, I'd have to scale mine down just a bit.

3. What ‘gadget’ do you have that you can’t live without?
I can actually live without them all (and definitely will, someday), but I really love the iPhone. I love it because I can connect to the Internet at any time. SO many times in the past, I;d be driving or out walking with the kids and we’d wonder, “When did this happen?” or “What is that all about?” and I’d go home and completely forget about it until 3am, in bed. Now, thanks to the iPhone, I can check it immediately. I can also check my email, maps, social networking, blog comments, everything! It’s marvelous little piece of machinery.

4. What will your first thought be when you learn that you won a lottery?
Oh my word, it’s a MIRACLE!! A REAL MIRACLE!!!

(because I don’t play the lottery!)

5. Other than Acting Balanced and your own, what is your favorite blog to read?
Haha, nothing like a bit of shameless promotion in the MMoM questions, eh? *wink wink* Well….. I have a lot of favorites, although my online reading has become very sporadic. I have about 12 “must reads” every day with about 1,000 in my reader.

How is your Monday turning out? Have a great one, pals!

***

I read a very interesting article at How recently: Emotional Distress: How It Affects Your Income. According to the (very, very) brief article, it says that you do not have to pay income taxes on certain compensation income from emotional distress.

Well, I get severe emotional distress from paying my taxes. Can they then somehow cancel each other out?

***

I found a cute Internet quiz called What Downton Abbey Character Are You? I’ve always like Masterpiece Theatre (it’s called “Masterpiece” now). Since I downloaded the PBS app for the iPad I have been riveted to one of their series, Downton Abbey. I’m a big sucker for British history (I study it in my spare time) and so obviously I am nuts about this series. I loved Season 1, as it really blended the historic period (sinking of the Titantic, the Gilded Age, etc) so well with typical British aristocracy (the lords and ladies, castles, entails, etc). Season 2 has become more of a soap opera and there have been a few lewd scenes in it, so the luster has cooled a bit. Still, I love the general history and I LOVE that castle! I have GOT to see Highclere Castle someday. I recently discovered that Highclere is the home of the Carnarvons! Lord Carnarvon discovered King Tut’s tomb in the 1920s– I studied that discovery thoroughly as a kid. I’ve seen a few documentaries of the castle…. oh, what a beautiful place.

Anyway, I took the little quiz. Cute. My first result was Anna.

Oddly enough, the scenes with Anna and Mr. Bates are the least interesting to me! My favorite characters are Violet (who doesn’t love Violet), Matthew, Edith, and O’Brien.

I took the quiz again because there were a few questions that I could have answered differently. I always got Matthew as a result after that.

Don’t I wish I could inherit Highclere!

***
Spring is almost here. It’s a two-edged sword for many of us in Upstate New York. It’s usually our rainiest season, and we sometimes suffer severe flooding. Two torrential spring rains and late summer hurricanes wiped a lot of us out last year. I recently saw some numbers from last year.

Last year, my area experienced almost 52 inches of rain, total.
April had over 7 inches of rain. Normal is 3.5 inches.
May had over 10 inches of rain.

I don’t know how much Hurricanes Irene and Lee brought, but it was a lot. I have never seen such terrible flooding.

Rainfall is only part of the problem. There’s just nowhere for the rain to go anymore. It used to run down small ditches and rivulets into the creeks. But excessive development in rural areas (we suffer from suburban sprawl here) and regulations by the Department of Environmental Conservation have made our area a swamp. The DEC forbids us from dredging the creeks and restoring the artificial banks. It’s not “natural,” they say. Uh huh, but 10 feet of water in our homes is “natural.” Bah, bureaucrats!

***

Woo hoooo!!! I have the day off! The first in a long time! OHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH what will I DO today? Should I vacuum… yeah, I should. Should I do laundry?? … definitely. Catch up on the exploding dust bunny population? Clean my tornado-stricken desk or bookshelf? Maybe even install the flatbed scanner and the software I’m missing since the computer virus wiped out my hard drive?

Oh yes yes yes, I should, i know I should.

But. But it’s my DAY OFF.

What do you think I should do today? I’ll have a poll. You vote for one of the following choices and tell me. Even if you read this Saturday night or something, I’ll keep the tally handy and do it the next time I get a day off (which, judging by my estimations, should be sometime in the spring of 2045).

What Say You?

1. “Good God, woman, clean the house before the junk sucks the family into a black hole!”

2. “Get your computer in order. You need it nice and neat so you can visit my blogs and leave your witty comments!”

3. “Meh, relax. You work too hard as it is. Put your feet up, sip the coffee and do some reading!”

Leave your select number in the comments, eh?

See how pitiful my sink is. Be glad I spared you photos of the bathtub.

I sprayed on the Greased Lightning. The sprayed is impressive. The stuff came right out. You housewives know what I mean about some of those sprayers– you have to painfully chugchugchug to get anything out of the nozzle. I have small hands and “sprayer quality” is important to me, especially for large jobs like the huge kitchen sink or bathtub. The Greased Lightning sprayer gets my official stamp of approval. The smell of the product is nice, too. It’s not acrid or overpowering at all. Has a very light lemony scent. Unlike some of those other nuclear-waste-type products, you can use Greased Lightning without a gas mask!

I sprayed it on. I scrubbed with a washcloth for a few minutes. All the congealed goop in the sink washed out immediately, but the stains remained. Hm.

I scrubbed with a nylon brush for about 3 minutes. Hot water. The stains came out! The sink is beautiful again.

According to the label, Greased Lightning is best used for really greasy, grimy stuff found in and on microwaves, stove tops, and stove vents. It removes dirt from outdoor patio furniture, too! It can remove red wine, pet stains and some laundry and carpet stains. The best use of all, in my opinion, is that is removes soap scum from showers and tubs. I HATE SCRUBBING the tub. I will procrastinate until the tub is caked with 2 inches of soap scum. Well, OK OK I’m exaggerating. A little.

Anyway, I like Greased Lightning. I will keep it around the house for sure. You can buy the product at Walmart, Home Depot, and Dollar General, to name a few major stores. If you want a coupon to try it out, go to the Greased Lightning website and print some coupons! You can also learn more about Greased Lighting on their Facebook page. Try it! You will like it!

A minute or two later, I heard a faint “SHHHHHHH” sound in the kitchen.

Oops.

The spaghetti slid out of the box, onto the floor. Yes, my house is THAT crooked. It’s *only* 160 years old, thank you.

So the noodles were all over the floor. I picked most of them up. Livvy, sensing unusual sounds (that is, me grunting from crawling all over the floor), raced into the kitchen, and stopped dead in her tracks.

WHAT IS THIS MONSTROSITY ALL OVER THE FLOOR??? You could almost hear her think. WHAT COULD THEY BE?!

Toys, of course!

Hey. Over here, Sherlock.

She had fun and entertained me for a good three minutes.

Game over. Back to naps.

*long silence*

“What was that?” my husband asked.

I look up at him, surprised, from my computer. He usually doesn’t notice all the noises in the house. We have a LOT of noises. Yipping Yorkies, the cockatiel, traffic from outside, four kids ramming around upstairs in a creaky old house….. there are always lots of crazy noises and after a while you shut them out. So I took note of his notice. It must be a big deal if he asks.

“I don’t know.”

*short silence*

Husband gets up out of his chair and calls to the son in the other room (dining room).

“Hey, what was that noise?”

“I don’t know,” son says in between mouthfuls of cereal.

Husband goes out to the dining room and looks out the window. He walks back into the living room and tells me, “A red-tailed hawk slammed into the window in the dining room! It looks likes he’s injured, he’s just laying in the snow!” Husband starts to lace up his boots.

“Oh no!” I get up from my chair and rush out to the dining room. As I near the window, the son is standing in front of it.

“Ooo– there he goes!” We watch as a flurry of tawny-brown feathers filled the view and flew away. I didn’t get a very big look at him, rats. I wanted to. I DID think of grabbing the camera this time, unlike my previous failure. But a hawk is a LOT faster than a stove!

We marveled that the bird even HIT the house. Red-tailed hawks, don’t they have good vision and control? Why would he hit the house?? Is he going blind?

I then noticed rabbit tracks in the snow. I’ll betcha the hawk was looking for a tasty breakfast and the rabbit scurried to the side of the house for shelter. As the hawk was diving, he must have gotten too close to the house and crashed into it.

As I walked away from the window, I thought, “Hoh boy, do I feel like that hawk, today.” Here you are, sailing the big open blue looking for breakfast, and then WHAM you hit a solid obstruction at 30 mph. Knocks you out. That’s how I’ve felt for the past 2 months. It seems like these great big huge obstructions have entered my view, my path. I feel like I’ve slammed into a building. I’m flailing in the snow, unable to get up and terrified that something bigger will come along and eat me….

There’s a happy ending, though. The hawk finally came to his senses, rose up like a Phoenix, and soared again to his wide open spaces. The saga continues…

My stove was on fire this morning. Yeah. Fun times.

Let me start at the beginning since I do so love to tell a good story. I’d baked an apple pie in the oven for Christmas dinner. I used apples from our tree, apples that we had pre-sliced, pre-diced and froze in the freezer for such an occasion. Unfortunately, this variety of apple is *pretty* juicy, and freezing them wasn’t such a great idea because when they thawed, they were like little cubes of applesauce mush. Still, we all wanted apple pie and I was loathe to run to the grocery store on Christmas morning for a can of that pre-processed slop they call “apple pie filling.”

So I took the chance and made… well, it turned out to be applesauce pie. lol. Even though I’d set the pie pan on a round metal cookie sheet to catch drips, the pie virtually melted at the bottom of my stove (I have an electric stove so you can imagine the fun it is to clean the caramelized apple sugars that spill all over it). It created quite a bit of smoke BUT the smoke detectors didn’t go off! Now that I think about it, I’m not sure if that’s a silver lining or if it’s another thing I should be worried about….

Anyway…

I’ve been pretty busy with a zillion things (half of them emergencies or urgent matters) since Christmas, so I procrastinated cleaning the oven. We don’t use the oven all that much, so I knew I could wait for a more convenient time. Like this morning. My oven has a “self cleaning” mode. You lock the door and turn the dial to “clean” and the oven basically heats up to a billion degrees and incinerates all the dirt in the oven to ash. I’m in a hurry, I lock the door, I flip the dial and I’m off to do all the other things I have to cram in today. About a half an hour later, I hear my husband call me. He called me “Beck.” I thought that was odd, he rarely ever ever calls me that. I think this is perhaps the second or third time he’s ever called me that in our 22 years together.

“Beck.”

Odd. Why is he calling me that? I wonder. “Yes?”

“Uh. There are flames coming out of the oven.”

MAD DASH TO THE KITCHEN.

I see flames and heavy smoke shooting out from the bottom of the oven door, with more smoke belching out of the oven vent. The kitchen is thick with Los-Angeles-style smog.

“Oh no!” I flip the dial to “off” and watch as the flames continue to lick the bottom of the oven door. I ponder whether I should open the door or not. I hesitate, knowing that opening the door will create a whoosh of oxygen inside the stove, which will feed the flames inside…. oh boy. I pray that the fire goes out on its own. I don’t know what to do. The house is filling with huge, swirling clouds of smoke.

We rush around the house, opening windows. The kids groan (it’s 16 degrees out today, a bummer day for driving smoke out of the house) but the cat is wildly excited hopping from open window to window.

I check and see that the flames have disappeared. They have, whew. But then I got that sinking feeling that my stove is probably dead. I’d JUST said to my husband that morning that the stove has been a really terrific appliance– we got it when we bought the house 16 years ago, and it’s been in perfect condition since then. Famous last words, lol.

The only thing I could do about the stove right now was wait until the lock mechanism let me in. It locks automatically at high temperatures and unlocks when the sensor senses that the temps won’t incinerate me when I open the door. I sit down and it is then that I realize:

OH MAN. I never got a photo of the flames for the blog!

:blink:

Bad, bad blogger!!

I don’t know about you, but I am always amazed at those times when folks just seemed to have their cameras at the ready, snapping the most terrific moment in time for the world to see… but I always miss that opportunity. I guess it’s because I’m just too durn busy doing silly thing like putting out fires. Rats. I’M SUCH A LOSER!! :whyohwhy:

There’s no way I’m buying a new stove right now… So my heart is in my stomach…. and then I suddenly think: “Hey, I don’t think we even need a stove.” When we gutted and renovated the kitchen in 2010, we had to cook and eat in the garage. I had purchased a nice electric skillet, a small hot plate and we grilled out food on the barbecue. I think I would rather NOT have a stove, come to think of it. It’s a huge electricity eater and it takes up a lot of space in the kitchen. I think I can get one of those electric oven roasters and do marvelously well with that. I checked online and these suckers can cook a 22-pound turkey, bake casseroles– they can do anything a regular over does except bake a cake or pie. And maybe for me, that’s a very, very good thing….