Yesterday was fun, productive, loud and annoying. We went to Home Depot shortly after they opened to look at ceiling fans and toilets. Apparently, the Disabilities Act has caused toilets to go from a standard 14” in height to 16.5”. Not a very good thing if you’re as short as I am, but they do still have some 14’s and that’s what we’ll probably get. We decided on elongated bowls rather than round, but this is still a couple of weeks away. 

They charge 100 bucks per toilet for installation, plus 25 bucks for each of the old toilets to be hauled away, so we decided to save $250 and do it ourselves. Except for the carpet, we’ve always been do-it-yourselfers. 

We got a new ceiling fan for the living room. It’s the same 52” and the same brand as the old one, only this one is white and it has five blades instead of four. It was $70. Our living room is cavernous, so on really warm days the old one barely moved much air toward the corners. It has three thick frosted light fixtures that are sort of cone-shaped. We put the LED bulbs in it that were in the old one, which should last around 20 years. 

While we were looking at ceiling fans, my eyes casually swung to the nearby chandeliers, and then I spotted one that totally made my jaw drop. I was just like, OMG, that thing is gorgeous! The original chandelier in this place isn’t ugly and it does go with the place, but it’s not me. Once our new gorgeous crystal chandelier I'm surprised was only $99 is installed, I’ll take pictures of the old and the new like I did with the fans. 

After Home Depot we went to Walmart where we got a handful of goodies. He got some storage containers for electronic and computer-related parts that will help him organize things better, and I got Emeraude perfume, which has a unique fruity smell. 

I also got a beautiful tropical calendar for next year and a semi-realistic-looking vinyl king snake that I placed by the door and wished my mother could come back to life long enough to visit, LOL. It’s not as realistic as my rattler, but it’s enough to jolt the heart of the unsuspecting. We would see these snakes every now and then down in Arizona. The way they move is really cool. There was an all-black king snake that one could easily mistake for an old tire scrap that used to watch us when we would be out and about on the land. It would usually stick its head up out of a hole in the ground. These were harmless snakes, but the Western diamondback, as cool looking as it was, was one to be careful of. Tom came as close to death as he’d ever gotten the night he started to go out and get something from the car only to be greeted by a rattlesnake right outside the door. With the hospital being nearly an hour away, that would definitely not be a good place to get struck. 

I also got some scented wax cubes and the most sparkly eyeshadow I’ve ever seen in six different colors. It was the only one there. Am I too old to wear glitter eyeshadow? Yeah, probably. Do I care? Definitely not. Damn, I love being too selfish to care what others think! ;) I wish I had this attitude half a century ago. 

Our Walmart purchases were free since we had gift cards. 

I also have a couple of collectibles on the way to me from Amazon… a sexy “secretary” and an anime doll. 

I’ll write about the shit we came home to later on. 

Later… 

So the shit we came home to. That would be the very loud process of a tree being cut down behind the house. Yeah, we can’t go much more than a month or two without something going on here, can we? And this is on top of all the landscaping and traffic noise I hear almost daily. 

Heard about 6 whacks of a hammer somewhere too, but if it wasn’t Bob doing it just to make me hear him, then I don’t know where it came from. The only sound I’m sure he made was when he was blowing leaves for about 15-20 minutes. 

Anyway, they worked on the tree for about 3 hours. Not the all-day event I thought it would be like when they took down a tree next door last year, but it was just as loud, especially the wood chipper. They sawed the branches down, then they tossed them in the chipper, then they blew leaves out of the road. 

Unfortunately, I’m almost back on days, so I can just imagine what shit I’m in for today. If nothing else, it’ll be the Tuesday landscapers and God knows what from Bob. 

I’ve had a few moments where I thought I felt a bit anxious, but I have otherwise had no problem on the new dose. I wish it were December already. If I can make it to then without incident, then I should be fine. 

After dreaming about my dentist selling wallpaper and finding a huge bug with a strange paisley design on it, I awoke to find my hips oddly sore. After I get up after sitting for a while, it’s very uncomfortable. I don’t understand just what I did to get this sore. I helped with the fan installation, but I wasn’t the one climbing up and down the ladder. I just opened and handed him stuff so he wouldn’t have to keep climbing up and down. I did a lot of walking yesterday through the stores, so maybe I just need to do that more since biking works different muscles.