Saturday, April 28, 2007

The continuing saga of "The Door" and other stuff

The Door: I got home from work yesterday and was pretty tired and not paying much attention. I went to open the screen doorless back door when all of a sudden it opened on it's own. I jumped and then looked to see Ryan. I can only blame it on a Friday that I didn't notice his truck parked on the road in front of the house. He was there to work on the door some more and was just waiting for Brent to show up. There is good news and bad news.

The good news. I now have a screen door up. And it's not the butt ugly new door, but yet not really the old door. It's a hybrid door. The door itself is the old door, but all the hinges and the door extender are from the new door package. So thank heavens the door itself isn't all that bad. Unfortunately, because they used parts from both doors, I can't take the new door back - and it's sitting in my kitchen. Cost me quite a bit of money for hinges and an extender.

The bad news. My boys are relatively young - 28 and 26. They aren't used to all that much manly man fixing things yet. As Lisa pointed out - 'it's not part of their genes when they were born'. So that explains I think, why the door doesn't close all the way but instead only part way. They tried the little dearlings. And Ryan is planning on coming back and working on it some more. But as of right now. I have to yank pretty hard to get it to close all the way. Which leaves things wide open if a big heavy gust of wind comes up and someone has forgotten to yank it closed - which I believe is the thing that started the saga of the door.

Other Stuff: I tried going without medication for depression. (I'm back on it now and it's finally starting to kick in thank goodness) but one of the side effects of the depression was my mail opening phobia came back in all it's glory. This is NOT a good thing when we get close to tax season and everyone mailing tax stuff. The fight Ryan and I had last weekend was when I asked him if he was going to do my taxes and he yelled that I had to give the stuff to him first. Well - I hadn't opened a good majority of it and although I tried - I just couldn't do it. I gotta tell you - this kind of a phobia or thing is most embarrasing. People understand fear of snakes or spiders or heights or flying but what person in the normal sense is scared of mail?????? It' s to bizzare for words. So, Ryan doesn't know I'm scared of mail. I think Ron had an inkling, but at the time I didn't really realize I was terrified of mail. I would look at the huge pile that was building and feel sick inside knowing it had my tax stuff in it. But Lisa - dear sister that she is - came over today and opened it for me. So now I have all my tax stuff ready altogether to give to Ryan tomorrow so he has one day to get my taxes done. Good thing he's an accountant!
While Lisa was here I also picked out the book for her - the non-romance reader to read. I settled with Mr. Perfect by Linda Howard. I'm sure she'll include somewhere that it's " too romancy" for her tastes - but one never knows. She's going to pick out one of her non-romance books for me to read - that was the agreement.

I also said I would do a do-over of the two pictures that didn't turn out well. Hopefully these are better.











While being in a picture taking mood and being very proud of my books, I took a few more. I mentioned that I also have hidden pockets of TBR's upstairs too.

The one on the left is from a plastic three-door shelf I have in one of the bedrooms. The one on the right is the nightstand I have in my bedroom.











I also have quite a number of Harlequins that there is no room for in 'the library'. I artfully arranged them on a couple of chairs to take their pictures. You will note in the one picture some of my Georgette Heyer books too. I have tons more. These are only but a few.












And then there is - The Princes - Xina - because she insisted and didn't want to share her picture with a bunch of books.









And finally the last other stuff

Sanctuary's Finest have a new blog, The Book Binge. Let's see if this works or not


Whoa!!! How about that! It did work, it did!









'til later

15 comments:

Jennie said...

I love the covers on those old Heyers! So much more interesting than the ugly newer HQN reissues.

And sorry about the door. At least it's up--that's something.

(Maybe this one will break too and you can make the boys go get the pretty girly one. Or do you just want the whole mess to be over?!)

CindyS said...

Next time we're up your way Bob can take a look at the door unless you would like to keep the male egos stroked ;) I'm so glad you have Lisa and that she helped you with your mail. Of course, I just finished our taxes tonight but because we moved I have to paper file and I never told the government we moved and OMG!!! Yes, I had a meltdown about an hour ago when my printer decided it didn't want to print anything. I'm far from impressed!

All those pretty books and I see some that I own in the Harlequin group - talk about old times!

Okay, off to snuggle with Emma who always seems to know when tax time is and that mama is gonna need some loving!

CindyS

Lori said...

I'm glad Lisa was able to help you with the mail in time. Hey, one day's enough, right? LOL! We had to do our taxes down here by the 17th this year. We were planning to efile, so of course waited till the last minute. When a glitch in the system disallowed our efile. Who knew that if you had a tax-exempt day care provider, you couldn't efile? They must have a tax ID number to efile. So I had to print and mail. At the last minute. Sheesh! Now I'm in the process of trying to get the difference back as a refund from the software company since I paid up front for the efiling. *rolling my eyes* yeah, good luck with that!

Rosie said...

While I know the gist of what goes on with our taxes GG does ours. He actually likes it and reads all the new stuff about changes each year. Yes, I think that is very weird.

Wow, saw lots of the same books I have in your pics. Our reading sure makes it a small world doesn't it?

nath said...

Hey Kristie :D

ah well, for the door... I guess at least, you have a door :D and yeah, the fixing stuff, it comes with experience... but I think genes have something to do in it too... like my dad, he's been fixing stuff for a long time, but it never turns out perfect (there's always some screws left over or he has to cut some pipe down to fit it again ^^;...)

as for your taxes, OMG, you're so lucky your son is an accountant! LOL

Wendy said...

This is neither here nor there, but I've started cataloging my TBR over at Library Thing. At this moment I've got 153 cataloged and we share 43 books between us. You either need to move to CA or me to Canada. We both could probably save a lot of money.

Suisan said...

Oh Man, Kristie. I hear you on the mail phobia thing. I thought I was the only one. I HATE opening the mail. Hate it. Hate it.

I'm not sure what I'm afraid is going to leap out at me. But I can't stand it.

I think somehow opening up bills makes me feel guilty? (That makes no sense.) When I see that I owe money I always get a feeling of dread. So then I avoid the dread, and, um, no mail opening for me.

Regarding the door--I'm not sure I've EVER had a fully functional screen door, come to think of it. Sounds like you should hire Cindy's Bob to finetune it.

At least it's not ugly. ;)

Kristie (J) said...

Suisan: I told Ryan yesterday about my mail phobia and (natch) he didn't get it. He asked what's the worse that can happen - a papercut? I couldn't explain what it was - but I'm glad I'm not alone with that feeling of dread. But at least I explained why I freaked out on him the week before.

Wendy: Isn't LibraryThing fun? I have nights where I spend the whole evening scanning pictures so all the books I have have covers to show. I bet many of the ones we share are Westerns! It would be nice wouldn't it - living closer to share books *sigh*

Nath: I am glad he's an accountant. If I had to do it myself - well I don't know what I'd do. The next step with Lisa is going to be going through the past two years of unopened mail so I can do those taxes to - yes I do indeed have two years worth of unopened mail!!! I know I get money back though so at least I'm not going to be paying a whopping penalty when I get around to doing them - or rather when Ryan get's around to it. That one will be tough - handing him two years worth of taxes. And I do feel much better with a screen door again! It just seemed naked somehow without it.

Rosie: It is a small world isn't it - the romance reading world. Even though we're spread all over the world

Lori: part of it is I just don't get the point of taxes! We pay them all year in oh so many different ways. Why then at the end or middle of a certain month do we have to do it all? I just don't get it???

Cindy: If the fix it genes don't make an appearance and the boys don't get the door fixed - I will take your Bob up on it *g*. And I don't know what I would have done without Lisa either. While she was opening it, a couple of times I asked "doesn't this bother you?" and nope was her reply. I envied that :(

Jennie: I like the newer cover of the Heyer's - but there is something grand about having such old copies. Almost like first editions or something.
And *chuckle* I hope this one doesn't break. Although I'd love a nice girl door - I already have one extra door *g*. Altough - if I were to get a girl door and put it next to a boy door - maybe I'd end up with a couple of little baby doors.

Rowena said...

OMGOSH, you have lots and lots of great looking books, I'd take pictures too if my camera was working.

*sigh*

Sorry about the door sweetie. But atleast the door is up! =) And I hate tax time, grrr...but shh, don't tell Izzy! hehe.

Rowena said...

Oh dangit, and THANKS so much for pimping the new blog!! =)

Anonymous said...

Hi Kristie

It's been a while. Hope all is well with you. :)

Anonymous said...

alo. was blog hopping. nice layout. :)

Mailyn said...

Well, your cat is GORGEOUS and I am so jealous of your book shelves. Mine are nowhere near that big but I don't keep most anything I read. It's a sort of fear of having things stacked up and well, let's just say it's enough to get me to not buy many books. I've been borrowing from our library a lot.

I understand perfectly ell your mail phobia. I have some "weird" ones as well and don't let anyone make you embarrassed by it. A phobia's a phobia. I've seen people petrified of teeny tiny kittens.

Oh, don't know if you read Kelly Armstrong [paranormal romance I believe] but she is over on Twisted Kingdom and there is a contest.

Twisted Kingdom

ReneeW said...

I wish I lived closer too. The fun I (we) would have :) Yes, get Bob to look at it, he's got the fit-it gene. OMG, I hate doing taxes too. You're lucky your son is an accountant. I paid someone to do ours this year for the first time ever. And she saved us a pile of money. I confess I have the mail opening phobia too but not quite as bad. I have piles of unopened mail, but I force myself to open it once a month so I can pay bills. One time I got a letter from the IRS and let it sit a month! I was too scared to open it. Turned out I owned $8.56. Sheesh.

Loved all those pretty books. I think I have had (or still have) lots of those. I found Wendy on LibraryThing. We only share 22 books.

Kristie (J) said...

Rowena *g* thanks. I don't boast about a lot of things - but I sure love my library and all the books!

Rene: It's getting better. I went through a struggle but I'm coming out of it now

`aki: thank you for dropping by. The layout was done by the incredibly talented Mailyn. So I can say it is gorgeous isn't it?

Mailyn: I've read the first Bitten by Kelly Armstrong. Interesting fact - we live very close to each other. I'm not exactly sure where she lives but I think it's only about 1/2 hour away if that. I'll have to drop by Twisted Kingdom and check out what she has to say *g*.

Renee: Ryan hasn't gotten back to me on the taxes yet - so I'm obviously late. I just hope I don't have to pay 'cause if I do it means a penalty :-(
I can open bills - that's about the only thing I can open and only cause I don't want them diconnecting the phone, cable, heat etc. And I saw Wendy's list. She has lot's of good looking Westerns I don't have *g*.