OITNB

Busy as bees here. Well, sort of, or Bill is. Although I did help put the poly on the island and the drawers and cupboards, I still need to poly the insides of the drawers, hopefully this weekend. Everyday something else gets checked off the list.

We have shelves and drawer fronts. I’m a happy girl. Like Gene @ Umbul Umbul said, “Happy wife, happy life.”  At this point I can’t find enough drawer pulls that I like for the kitchen so until I do, we will have none. My kitchen in Everson didn’t have any and it was fine.

 

I decided the boys needed new beds. I wanted them made out of waterproof material but not plastic stuff. We went to a shop called Waldinas AKA Valdinas. I think it’s Waldinas because the email is waldinawonderwoman@….I like this Waldina chick already. We opted for the less costly Guatemalan Sunbrella imposter. It was $30.00 a yard cheaper than the US Sunbrella, which costs Waldina’s $1000.00 / roll. These ARE dog beds and Highway DOES have a tendency to destroy all dog beds, except the heavy ones from Costco. He hasn’t destroyed one of those yet. We ordered them late Wednesday afternoon and she said they would be ready the next day and they would call me. Yeah right. You’ll call me. HAH!! No call on Thursday, which was no surprise. I planned to stop by on Friday when I went out. Friday morning at 9 AM they called, the cushions were ready. I ran to the bank and then grabbed the new beds and came home. I was anxious to give them to the boys. I went up on the back porch and took them out of the bag, threw the first one down on the ground and Highway jumped on it, attacked the bed and grabbed the corner in his teeth and started shaking his head. We were both very quick to stop that particular behavior. When we left yesterday I put the 2 new beds on the table so he wouldn’t eat them. I don’t know what I was thinking buying new dog beds but once I get fixated on something usually nothing can change my direction. You may say I border on the side of obsessive. Maybe. And Bill, I know exactly what is going through your mind at this very moment. Not funny. The point of this whole convo is that my boy dogs have new waterproof orange beds.

 

I also decided we (I) needed a sideboard for the house. Dian who owns Umbul Umbul (love that store and Annie’s) just received a shipment from Bali. In fact they were closed WHEN WE DROVE BY ON MONDAY. I think it’s the first I have ever driven by and not stopped. The container was parked across from the store and there was stuff that I wanted to buy sitting everywhere. As we drove by, I wiped the drool from my chin and told myself she had a sideboard I wanted. I just knew it.

Yesterday we had to go to Coxen Hole and Sandy Bay so we stopped at Umbul Umbul. I swear I am there more than anyone else. The first thing I saw was a sideboard. It had my name on it. Well, mentally it did. Bill is very much not interested in the stuff there It’s not that he doesn’t like it,  it all stems from him being a woodworker, these pieces are not made to his likings. But they are so damn cool I don’t care. We looked around and checked out the 2 levels below, Bill had enough and went out to sit in the truck with the air on. The piece I wanted didn’t have a price so Gene went to ask Dian. She had advertised they were overstocked and she was having a sale on the Teak furniture, which is what the piece I wanted was. Gene came in with the price and I went out to talk to Bill. He was like, whatever and came back in to look at it, looked at the broken rail and said easy fix, they loaded it, I paid and we left. We stopped to look at a new used Hyundai Santa Fe for me but they want too much for it, cars are very expensive down here. There is a Mitsubishi Outlander on the mainland, like I drove in the US but 1 year OLDER and they want $7500.00. Mine was in excellent shape and booked for 2 grand. WTH?? We got home, got the furniture off the truck and inside but it was too heavy to carry upstairs. Or so I thought. Amazingly, I allowed it to sit downstairs overnight. Yes, it bothered me, I really wanted to put it where it belonged in the house.

I spent my Friday night drinking wine out of the bottle (there wasn’t enough left to warrant the effort to pour) and watching a stooopid chick flick called The Other Woman. I only watched it because Leslie Mann is in it and I think she is hysterical. After that I watched Mission Blue on Netflix. It’s about the amazing Dr. Sylvia Earle. What a woman! If you are interested in all things related to the ocean check it out.

The rain woke me again last night as it was blowing across the room and onto the bed. It was thundering and lightning so I let Dooce in to go downstairs and hide in her hidey hole, the guest shower. It is a bunker for her. I went back to bed because the porch was still dry so the boys were OK. I couldn’t go back to sleep, after playing Angry Birds and getting, well, ANGRY, I played Yahtzee, Pinterested for awhile and ended up on the porch with the boys. I brought them both inside with me and they followed me into the bedroom. By now Dooce was hiding in a corner of the upstairs closet. Luck went over right away and licked Bill, who was sleeping. Luck ended up sleeping on my side of the floor with his head under the bed, Highway was in the middle of the room and Dooce was tucked away securely in a tiny corner. Bill got up with the boys and made bacon. I was planning to stay in bed and sleep since it was pouring but the bacon was like an elixir, drawing me from the bedroom with that pungent high fat smell that is so delightful. Bacon Bacon Bacon. I bought the bacon mainly so I would have bacon fat to make dog biscuits. Yes, I am Betty Crocker or Martha Stewart without the jail sentence. Cleo makes them and gives them to our dogs, it makes me look bad. I had to gain the respect of the dogs back, so bake I did. This is the recipe I used: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Bacon-Flavored-Dog-Biscuits/Detail.aspx?prop24=etaf. I decided to add some chopped apple to half of them, we’ll see how that turns out. I am not cool like Cleo though, she has a cutter the shape of a dog bone. She is an over achiever. I made mine to look like meatballs, hopefully they will flatten like cookies..First batch out, not flattened so I flattened them and did the second tray before it went in the oven. The biscuits were a licking gobbling success. The dogs loved them!

 

Bill managed to carry the sideboard almost all the way onto the deck alone so I helped and we got it inside with ease. I planned to put my pendulum on it. We bought the pendelum in Lahaina, Maui and had it shipped home. When we got it we noticed it was made in North Carolina. Funny. Something happened to the sand/glass that the pendulum moves in. It’s W E T. I now have it sitting in the sun hoping the moisture will go away. Damn Caribbean air.

 

I recently read the book Roatan Odyssey, written by Anne Jennings Brown. It is supposed to be a “true” story that takes place on Roatan from 1966-1976. I found it quite an enjoyable read. If Anne really did many of the things she says she did, she was a very strong woman. My problem with her story is that she left her young boys in a boarding school in England while she traipsed across the world and settled on Roatan. How do you do that? How do you leave your young children? I never could, never ever..

 

It must be baby lizard season because I have seen and rescued several tiny ones. There was one in the house last night that I think was a baby iguana because it had a black and white tail. We saw another larger green iguana in the tree yesterday when we were leaving. Iguanas and Anole lizards are OK, I just don’t like geckos. I don’t like their color, or lack of color, they are too close to flesh/skin color for my liking and I find them ugly as hell and want them to go away. Have I mentioned I’m a little obsessive?

AND, my favorite new band, Walk off the Earth. I seriously love these guys (and girl.) Check them out here and here.

Thanks for reading.