Come Hell or High Water...

and i can promise you the high water's coming first.

we made it to and from the beale street music festival last night in one piece! we mingled around between the stages, saw Flyleaf, Joan Jett, and some really fun bands over at the blues shack. we did a lot of people watching, ate some amazing crepes, listened to the 18 year old in front of us brag about how even cops were ok with her having alcohol when they looked at her id and then watched her get denied that frozen daquari bc they just weren't sure that the picture was of her, dodged pelting rain while waiting for ben folds and then gave up (totally soaked) and headed home. it was a lot of fun! we're heading back later today for Simple Plan, Seether, Disturbed, Matisyahu, Santana and maybe even Duman (a band from Turkey that I've yet to hear). Plus, we're going to get some funnel cake now that it's not raining. :) What are you doing with your weekend? Leave me a comment and let me know!

...

here's a quick glimpse at spring life here. It's involved lots of plant sales, planting, cleaning, building, home improvements, running the dogs in and out whenever the rain dictates, knitting, reading, planning... we've got 30 boxes of solid bamboo flooring sitting in our living room. soon to be covering the concrete and replacing the worn out old carpet! today i'll build (i hope) a home for the dogs (more or less) and plant into my windowboxes (the ones walter built and my mom and i stained... they're still in the garage). today's walter's last day of the semester. his final final is done and he's just pulled in the garage! (i know, you all care very much :/)

Happy Spring everybody!

flood pics

here are a couple of pics I took of the flood. for your enjoyment...

(the access road beside the highway)


(on the access road, ppl pull their mobil homes and rv's to higher ground hoping not to float away)


(sign in front of access road)


(one part of access road)

(cows grazing on the levee)

MISS-ISS-IPP-I

I don't know if y'all watch weather channel or if it's news anywhere else but I do know that my mom's interested if no one else is. :)

The Mighty Mississippi has been at flood stage for almost two weeks now and I took a movie to a) show you just how far it's stretched passed its usual banks and b) to reassure my momma that the levee will indeed hold ;). Here ya go:

and that's all I have time for now... I just found a gardening book from the library that I'd left outside in the rain so I'm off to blow dry about 350 pages and hope that I don't get a big fat fine. :/ At least my garden is bursting with green!

p.s. i wrote this post two days ago but couldn't publish it until i found a way to reduce the size of the video. i'm happy to report that the book looks pretty good thanks to my blowdryer and a day or so of smooshing by two bricks. yay! (4.05.08)

crafting, chicken broth, and coffee

I'm sick today which means I'm perusing the internet to find craft ideas I would plunge into if only I didn't have to go to the store for supplies. The current list: a 20-36 cc syringe & rubber bands. I went out last night to buy the lace but forgot the rubber bands. so sad. I'll figure something out.
Anyway, I think it's time to turn the left-overs of our rotisserie chicken from dinner into a chicken broth for lunch. I've vowed to give us lots of wonderful clear liquids today in hopes of a miraculous recovery. (yay!)
Here's what I'll leave you with: a picture from Yellow Springs, OH *(yay, again!) that I found through my craftzine search. I miss that wonderful little city and the coffee shop at the back right of the pic. What a beautiful place!

Once was Lost. Now is Found...

This picture shows two very momentous events in my Arkansas history:

1. The first snow of the year! (tho a week or so ago we had some flurries and even collected a flurry drift in our doorway... so even tho' this is the second time I've seen snow fall from the sky it's the only time the ground has begun to turn white) They predicted 3-5 inches! For all of you mid-westerners who are sick to death of snow, humor me. It's super exciting! :)

2. Marion got a Starbucks! I'm drinking a chai tea latte from only 5 minutes away instead of 25 or 35 or 45 (those are the three Starbucks in Memphis that I know of). The line for the drive thru was out of the parking lot and on to the street. I knew it would be a hit. Now if only a target would move in next door (there's a movie theater slated for the area too) I know it would be a hit.

SO also the picture shows that we found our camera. It was hiding on our bookshelf under a big dark drop cloth in the living room. Also, the whole ground is white now. I should have waited to take the picture till it looked like a good-ish amount of snow... but why risk it? It might melt or I might get busy and forget to document this once in a year experience. YAY FOR SNOW!

Here's some more proof that our camera is back safe and sound. ;)

This is our yard on Wednesday after a big rain storm. This lake ate up almost a third of our yard and a third of the street as well.
Maybe I should have made this picture bigger. This abandoned house is a few roads away from ours. I absolutely love it.
This is Bell Road, driving up to our house. :) Isn't it lovely?

Here's the first day of ceiling sanding and the cats enjoying the ladder in the new addition to the living room.

This is Walter after a few minutes on the job (the dust you see is in the air. I thought it was on the lens. Nope, it's just that dusty) and a larger view of the room a few days ago. Now all that's left is to sand the kitchen and paint the room. Can't wait! (oh and flooring... but that's next)

Three Cheers...

...for Emily, Momma, and Deborah! they are apparently my only true friends in the world ;) I thought about replying to you in a post but I've decided to comment after your comments (on my last post) instead. hope that isn't too confusing. you're all smart. i think you can handle it. :)

Here are some things you may not know about my recent life:

1. I made a key fob! Have you ever heard of that? I hadn't! I saw what I thought was just the cutest key chain on etsy.com and decided to make myself one. Later I found out what it was and that it was made that way so you could hold your keys hands free. How great! Another great thing about my key fop is that the fabric was free. (oOo!) I bought 11 yards of canvas duck cloth for roman shades and found a ridiculously small remnant of ribbon that the fabric counter lady refused to measure. She tacked it on to my bolt of fabric and off I went. It is a very cute key-fob.

2. I made the first cut on the fabric for my roman shades! i'm not good at cutting. i'm not good at cutting 58" in a perfect straight line when my cutting mat is only 24" at its longest. i'm open for suggestions on this one.

3. When the fabric lady scanned the bar code and went to print up my receipt (she was not the usual fabric lady) she let out a little gasp and looked at me to tell me that when i saw the price I would probably rather just buy pre-made curtains. The total was probably about the cost of two sets of walmart curtains. Little did she know that I was going to make the equivalent of approx. 7 standard windows. Not just one or two. Oh well. I got a free key-fob.

4.I don't know where my camera is. Otherwise I'd show you our larger smoother ceilinged great room (it'll be very smooth by the end of this week-- spring break -- walt's promised me), the famous key fob and the strawberry plant that has at least 4 blooms on it already.

5. While I went out to run errands Walter spent the first day of his spring break building me a vegetable garden box. Our soil is too dense for easy gardening and this seems to be the best solution. Did you know that you can feed one person from a 4x4 square of garden for an entire year (using your freezer of course)? We're starting with one square until the septic tank guy comes and tells us where he's putting in the new one. Then we'll add a second!

After my running and going this morning and my cleaning and cooking of the early afternoon I'm just inexcusably exhausted (ridiculously). I've been spacing out on the bed for almost 2 hours now, almost like it took too much energy to fall asleep. But I smell the chicken tortilla soup that's been cooking in the crock pot and I think it's not going to make it to the longer side of the recipe's instructions (isn't it great that crock pot recipes give you an hour or more leeway? i'm too hungry for this soup to make it 4 hours tonight.) I can't wait to turn off the music and eat soup and salad while listening to the rain and intermittent thunderstorms. This is something I missed in PA. We didn't have good storms. You have to come back into the plains/prairies for that one. That's one thing I'm grateful for. It's a definite perk of tornado alley. ;)