Dawn of a New Novel

Hello, friends! As I’ve shared with you before, my grandparents raised me. Granddaddy was stationed in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II, then he and the family lived in Japan and visited different areas of the Far East during the reconstruction years following the war. So, growing up, my house was filled with Japanese and Asian furniture, paintings, knickknacks, and other keepsakes. As such, I didn’t get an opportunity to hear much about the European side of the war. Grandma had a brother who was a German prisoner of war in Stalag IV-B, but all she ever really told me about that was that every week she’d go to the store and buy a carton of cigarettes to send him because he could trade them for something or other while he was in the prison camp.

Now, while all this talk was going on during my childhood, I attended a private Christian school. And at school, we didn’t focus on such things as World History or American History. Okay, we actually did to a degree, but more than that, we focused on Biblical History. So, yes, learning about ancient Babylon and King Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams of a bajillion years ago took precedent over the more recent World War. (No offense intended either to God or the dream-plagued king.) As such, I really had no idea about the magnitude of German or Italian involvement in the war… until the fourth grade, when my teacher, Mrs. O’Brian, assigned us to read Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. I was hooked! I thought Anne was just about the bravest girl to ever have lived!

My grandparents had a child who was just over a year older than my mother. Her name was Dawn, and she died from a hole in her heart early in 1962, a few months before her 15^th birthday. In fact, she was one of the earliest patients of Dr. Denton Cooley, the world-famous cardiothoracic surgeon who performed the first implantation of a totally artificial heart. (When Aunt Dawn was seven, Dr. Cooley tried an innovative experimental surgery on her wherein he inserted a metal plug into the hole in her heart. Unfortunately, with this technology being in the developmental stages, the doctor didn’t anticipate that as she grew, the hole would also grow, and the plug essentially fell out!) There were photos of Aunt Dawn all over my house when I was growing up. And after I read Anne Frank’s Diary, I was convinced that Anne (who died in 1945) had somehow reincarnated (even though at Christian school, such thoughts were a HUGE no-no!) herself into my aunt who I’d never met and who was born four years after Anne’s death.

My admiration of Anne Frank led me to study and learn a lot about the European side of the war, and I’m particularly drawn to victims of Hitler and his minions. I don’t just mean, “Wow, that’s awful;” I mean, my heart literally hurts for them and all they endured. My feelings on this don’t only include Holocaust victims, but also those who had to hide to avoid being killed and those who were victims of the Blitzkrieg missions that destroyed so much of Europe and also claimed thousands of lives. And I have the utmost respect and admiration for the brave souls who risked their own lives to help the targeted people stay out of harm’s way.

Fast forward: Prior to the Covid lockdowns, I had several full-length manuscripts that were ready or nearly ready to pursue traditional representation. But after losing and nearly losing numerous friends and loved ones to the Coronavirus, I’ve reprioritized many facets of my life. This meant that I also vaulted seven of my books because I suddenly found them to be too dark. Perhaps they’ll come out of retirement someday, or perhaps the spiders will enjoy a new place to quilt their webs. As for the others, I’ve decided that I now want to pursue self-publishing rather than taking the traditional route.

In 2014, when my idea for a new novel, The Changeling of the Third Reich, came to me, I knew it was something I had to research as thoroughly as possible before I could begin writing. But once I decided to self-publish, I also knew the cover had to be perfect. The obvious solution for a book involving the Holocaust and the Blitz would be a swastika. But the mere idea of that really skeeved me out. I, personally, would not want to sit on a subway train with my nose buried in a book with a swastika on the cover, so I couldn’t ask any of my potential readers to do so either.

Since I dedicated my book to my late Aunt Dawn, I asked for and received my mother’s blessing to use Aunt Dawn on the back cover and an altered version of her on the front cover. I’d like to think if she’d have lived and gotten to know me, hopefully, she’d read my work and be proud that I’d want to use her image. But lacking that possibility, if nothing else, I figure it will give her a little piece of immortality. (I’m hoping that any family members or friends who are still alive and knew her personally will feel the same way.)

At any rate, here’s the cover reveal for my historical fiction -slash- psychological thriller that will be released on June 22, 2023. I’d love to know your thoughts, and even more so, I hope you’ll read it… and love it.

Let’s talk: Is there a particular part of history you feel especially drawn to? Did you or someone you know ever visit a doctor only to learn later that doctor became famous for something? Do you have a historical doppelganger in your family?

What a Week!

Howdy, friends.  I was prepared to wake up and blog Tuesday morning this week, but when I stepped out of bed, I was ankle deep in water!  Long story short, my sewage grinder pump switch (which IS as gross as it sounds 🤢 !) failed and caused the toilet in my en suite to run all night and overflow all the way into my bedroom!  (Thankfully, it was clean water! Also, thankfully, it is only attached to my bathroom and not Sister Michelle’s or Son Jeremy’s.)

The baseboards as far as 15 feet away were ruined in my bathroom and bedroom, the flooring was ruined in both rooms, and the drywall may need to be replaced if it doesn’t dry.  Even the concrete subfloor was so soaked, it was still wet after six hours of fans being on it.  I’ve been dealing with the insurance adjuster and the mitigation guy that my insurance company sent who dries things.  He’s got no less than seven machines going in my little suite which dried the carpet yesterday after he removed the baseboards and the wood laminate.  The tile was the only thing that survived.  Today, he’s drying the walls, and tomorrow, he’s coming back to check the machines and to see if he needs to drill into the walls to help them dry.  At some point after he’s done with the fans, the dehumidifier, and the air purifier, he will then check for mold damage.  (Fingers crossed.)  Until then, these things run 24/7 and sound as if my end of the house is sitting on an airport runway. And then there’s the plumber.  He’s been so helpful, but while he started the job right away, we had to wait on parts, so he won’t be back until Friday to get it finished.  {{sigh}}  Already, my insurance company has told me I’ve got more than $10,000 in damage!  🙄  At any rate, that’s what’s been happening here.

Before all this happened, I planned to write about something entirely different.  But in light of all that’s been going on in my little corner of the universe this week, I think I’ll save that item for another time.  So, today, I’ll just give you a quick look at something I learned to do during the lockdown… Sister Michelle and I learned how to reupholster furniture.

We had four chairs in the living room that were less than five years old, but they’d been completely destroyed by our cats.  (Okay, by one of our cats.  I’m looking at you, Stewie!)  We LOVED the fabric on the two accent chairs, and we couldn’t find anything comparable in new chairs, so we started looking for fabric to recover them.  That didn’t work either, so we decided to just recover the bad parts with a complimentary fabric.  This meant the entire back and the front part of the seat.  And for the panel under the front of the seat that needed to stay patterned, we salvaged the part of the backs that was undamaged and just replaced it on the fronts.  It took only a Saturday to complete these two.  They came out pretty good, don’t you think?

Next, we looked at the other two chairs that were so comfortable and cute and just the right size for my short legs.  These weren’t very expensive at all, but the place where were got them didn’t sell them anymore.  So, Sister Michelle and I found some fabric we liked, and after watching several YouTube videos, we were confident we could tackle them.  Basically, it goes like this: Be careful when you remove the old fabric (and about 20 pounds of staples).  Then pull the stitches out of the old fabric and use it as a pattern to make the new covers.  Then remember what order you took everything off and put it back together in the reverse order.  It took two days to finish the first chair, then one day to finish the second one since we knew what to expect with that one.  We’re very happy with the way they turned out, but the funny thing was, this fabric looked more grey in the store and even while we were working with it, but on the chairs, the white dots stand out more than the grey. 

(No, that’s not Stewie; it’s Sophie.)

After that, we were on a roll, so we tackled an antique channel back chair.  That was actually an experience ordeal worth detailing, so I’ll save those details for another post.  Soon thereafter, we had a neighbor who was throwing away a bench she’d used for her dogs to get on the bed, but she thought we might want it.  She was correct.  We had to repair, strip, and re-stain the legs and replace the padding and webbing (because it was made wrong – with a piece of particle board rather than webbing.  We learned this from the channel back chair.)  It turned out so well that Son Jeremy decided he needed it for his room. 😊

(Sophie again)

A short time later, Jeremy found a cute (but broken) chair in the garbage and decided that since we were so good at upcycling, we might want another project to do.  (We did not. However, since he took the trouble to get it, we will tackle it in the future.) 😂

Let’s talk:  Have you ever reupholstered anything?  Have you ever dealt with a flooded house?  Do you know what a sewage grinder pump is?

Uncle Paul’s Sea Chest

Greetings, friends!  Over the years, I’ve told you that my grandparents raised me. Two of Grandma’s nine siblings lived in the same town as us, and they and their spouses were much like my grandparents since my actual grandparents were technically my parents.

Here’s Uncle Paul

Here’s Uncle Paul holding brand new me and Aunt Susie holding Sweet Cousin Kathy

Here’s Uncle Paul, Aunt Susie and Yours Truly

When Uncle Paul died in 1989, my uncle inherited his sea chest, a tangible memory of his years in the Coast Guard.  Fast forward a few decades.  Last year, my Sweet Cousin Kathy found Uncle Paul’s sea chest and knew I’d want it.  I felt like a kid on Christmas morning when she dropped it off.  (If you know me and how I love projects, you know what I mean.)  Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait to dive in, so I started cleaning it before I remembered that I should’ve taken “before pictures” first.  I grabbed the camera and decided I’d just document the progress as I went along.

As you can see, the trunk had been badly neglected for years decades.  I had to get a hammer to pry it open because one of the latches was bent and had caused part of the metal strap to bend inside of itself.  This, in turn, broke off a big chunk of the side to break off where it closed.  The whole thing had apparently been spray painted and you could see where some drips had dried.  And the veneer of the lid had obviously broken away, then somebody attempted to “repair” it by using about 79 staples.  (Don’t ever do that!)

I’d never restored a trunk before, so I turned to my good friends, YouTube and Google, for assistance. These both offered big help. I attempted to find a photo of an identical trunk on eBay, Etsy, and Google, but my search was unsuccessful. I’d hoped to restore it to its original glory, but since I was unable to determined what that was, I decided to stick with keeping it black.

When I finally got inside the trunk, the musty smell almost knocked me off my feet.  Research told me that when something smells, it’s most often paper holding moisture.  So, I removed the wallpaper liner and set a plate of DRY freshly ground coffee beans inside.  I found this hack on an antique restoration website on Google, and by golly, it worked!  It was much better than just baking soda, and I added this to my list of solutions to keep for the future.  (You’re welcome.)

Next, I sanded and stained the inside with a light cherry stain to preserve the original look of the wood. I then added a satin-finish polyurethane to ensure no more moisture would seep in. (If it was not is such bad condition, I would’ve kept the wood stained but naked.)

Each of the 6 faces of the trunk had approximately 70 rivets that were badly rusted. I dremmeled them down to the original stainless-steel finish then polished them with my Dremmel’s buffing attachment.

The lid was the most challenging part of the project.  Not only was the missing and stapled veneer a major problem, but it was warped so badly underneath that sanding would not take care of the problem.  I conditioned the old wood then cut away the damaged veneer.

At first, I tired filling in the void with wood putty. This may have worked fine if it were a newer piece of wood, but this 70+ year old wood was really dried out, so it absorbed the moisture from the putty and warped badly! In fact, it looked like a mini roller coaster track as it was drying. The next day, as I pondered what to do, I moved the trunk, and the putty fell off! (That was easy!) I left it alone to dry for another day, and the wavy wood went flat again. (Phew!)

That’s when I discovered my new best friend, BONDO! It worked great on the top, and since I was painting it anyway and not staining it, this was no problem. In fact, YouTube showed me how to make a mold out of wax paper-covered furring strips, and I used Bondo to repair the side that had been damaged. (And since then, I’ve used it to repair a friend’s front door as well as her bathtub.)

Each corner surface had a leather strip that was riveted on.  The leather was so hard, it felt like plastic.  In fact, until I started researching trunks, I thought it was some sort of plastic-like material.  The only reason I knew it wasn’t actually plastic was the age of it.  At any rate, I conditioned the leather numerous times, and that actually softened it a lot. Also, the hardware was badly rusted, so I sanded off the rust, oiled the moving parts, then painted them with antique gold oil-based gilding paint.

The original leather handles were both broken off and dried out, and the metal tabs that held them on were badly dented.  That unfortunately meant that I wouldn’t be able to retain the original hardware and handles.  But another internet search led me to Brettuns Village, an amazing trunk restoration store, and I purchased similar pieces as well as the mini railroad spike type of nails that are actually used to hold them on.  (Did you know trunks don’t actually use screws, not even in the hinges?)

Next, I came to the name plaque. It was made out of copper or brass that was dingy and had started to patina.  I buffed it to its own natural shine then added a thin coat of polishing wax with the Dremmel, and voila! All that natural beauty was just screaming to get out.

Finally, I masked, primered, and painted the exterior wooden parts black, then I used a glossy polyurethane on the outside.  I figured this poor thing had been neglected for so long, it deserved to be the center of attention for a while.  I originally intended this to stay in my spare room, but I loved the way it looked so much when I was done, I kept it in the living room, and people often ask me where I bought it.  I think I’ll check this project off as a success.  What do you think?

Thank you Sweet Cousin Kathy, and thank you, Uncle Paul!

Let’s talk:  Do you like restoration projects?  Have you ever used Bondo?  Did you know that trunks don’t use screws? Did you know coffee was great for removing odors?

Cake and Appliances

Greetings, friends!  I hope all the Bloggyville Mamas had a wonderful Mother’s Day!  In my little corner of the world, Daughter Stefani was sick, so she couldn’t come over, but she and Son Jeremy conspired to give me a wonderful day anyway.  First, let me share the backstory…

About a year ago, I didn’t feel well enough to write, but I needed a creative outlet. When I was a teenager, I worked as an assistant to a cake decorator for a brief time, and ever since then, I’d been wanting to get back into it. But for most of my children’s lives, I was a single mom with no child support, so buying the tools I would need was a mere dream. Last year, I decided to treat myself, so I loaded up my Amazon cart, and a couple of weeks later, I found myself squarely in the middle of a cake business.

Even though I didn’t intend for this to become a side-gig, friends and neighbors started asking me to make cakes for their occasions… so I complied. At the time, I had a generic stand mixer, a 15-year-old oven, and some new cake supplies. Here’s a few examples of the projects I did. (I like to call these “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, 😂 LOL!)…

These are a few of the birthday cakes I made…

This coconut cake tasted as delicious as it looks.

This is dark chocolate-peanut butter cake with fudge icing and peanut butter icing and with Reese’s on top and inside. YUM!

I realized too late that I should’ve used a thinner piping tip for the web. 🥺

This is a light cake with Mascarpone icing

…and the filling was made of fresh raspberries.

Here’s when I got bold and taught myself how to make both a creamy cheesecake and a New York-style cheesecake (though I think these photos might be of the same cake)…

When Sister Michelle’s office contracted me to make 6 dozen Halloween cupcakes, I got started then realized I didn’t have nearly enough candy eyes… So, a little research showed me how to make Royal icing eyes, and they were really quite easy and fun…

Frankenstein is peanut butter-dark chocolate cake with a Reese’s on top.

The stem is a chocolate-dipped pretzel.

The bat is obviously an Oreo.

The brain has cherry “blood”.

The werewolf face is peanut butter icing with Reese’s Pieces eyes, ears and nose,

The tombstone is a chocolate-covered Nutter Butter.

Pretzels hold the Royal icing eyes.

After the cupcakes, Sister Michelle’s office wanted a special Thanksgiving cake, so I experimented with fondant.  (I wish I’d have taken the photo after everything dried, but I had to box it up and send it off to her work)…

For my own house’s Thanksgiving, I tried an experiment that failed miserably! I make this pathetic turkey’s face, wings, and tail out of melted (then re-hardened) chocolate covered with Royal icing. I do NOT recommend this. It was WAY too heavy (and ugly), and the appendages fell off before we were ready to eat the cake. 😂 But it was good for a laugh…

Luckily, this sad guy tasted better than he looked.  😂 😂

For Valentine’s Day, Sister Michelle’s office wanted more cupcakes…

And then my oven broke. (This turned out to be the “break” I needed, because I’m so sick of cakes, I could scream! 🙄 This sampling of photos only represents about a third of the cakes I made in the year. Thankfully, my cake baking business is now officially CLOSED.)  As for the oven, Sister Michelle and I had already replaced the thermostat, both heating elements, and the plug. But this time, there was no reviving her.  In fact, she was so sick that she tripped the breaker every time we even turned a burner on.  So, we were lucky in that this pretty little thing happened to be on sale for 25% off!  We’d been eyeing her for months but didn’t want to put the money into that yet, then fate stepped in and made up our minds for us.  We love the way she looks.  (And we HATE the way she performs, at least the stove part, but that’s a story for another day 🥺)…

Pretty? Yes! Functional? Meh…

So, for Mother’s Day, my kiddos, decided Mom needed a new mixer to go with her new oven, so they bought me the Passion Red KitchenAid that I’d been eyeing for years as well as a pasta roller and cutter attachment!  SQUEEEEE!!!!  ❤️❤️❤️ Apparently, Sister Michelle was in on the surprise too, because she got me a ravioli press.  At any rate, I was so excited, and hopefully, I’ll figure out how to use the attachments soon.  When I do, you’re all invited to my house for pasta, ravioli, and pierogis! YUM! (Who knows? Perhaps my next side-hustle business will be pasta making. Lord, I hope not. 🙄)

YAY! What wonderful kiddos I have! ❤️

Let’s talk: Did you ever have to buy a new appliance out of necessity because one broke? Did you ever hate a new appliance soon after you bought it? Have you ever made a baked cheesecake? Have you ever gotten sucked into running a business that you never intended to do?

Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day to every one of you awesome Mamas, (as well as to the Dads, Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, and other caregivers who act as Moms)!  Have an amazing day, let your family wait on you hand and foot, and be sure to drink all the mimosas you want!  ❤️

Outside the Box

Greetings, friends! Most of you who’ve known me very long know that I often discuss my Asperger’s diagnosis and how it affects me. You may also remember that both of my children are also Aspies, and I’ve discussed their particulars at times also. One of the things that Autistic people experience is the need for routine. For example, most people generally like to change up their menu and don’t really mind when the TV stations change their daily line-ups. We don’t like that.

This quirk is also present when you’d think that it shouldn’t be, such as when there’s a holiday or special fun occasion. Nope. It’s still there. I’ve learned to take deep breaths and get through holiday seasons when we decorate the house differently (though after the holiday, I can’t wait to get things “back to normal”). But what people find particularly odd about me is that, knowing how much I love computers and technology, whenever I get a new computer, I usually bring it home from the store, then I literally set the box in the room and leave the computer boxed up for a few days to a couple of weeks, just so I can get used to the idea that a big change is coming. Yes, I know others chomp at the bit and can’t wait to unpack their new toy. Weird, I know, but that’s what works for me.

For Christmas 2020, Sister Michelle and Son Jeremy got me a Cricut. YAY! I’d been eyeing them for years, and when enough people I know got one and were able to use theirs successfully, I decided I was ready to take the plunge. Once again, adversity to change or fear of the unknown prohibited me from opening the box until mid-January 2021, but it wasn’t long before I started creating my own designs in Photoshop and thinking “outside the box” for different projects I could make. (See how I tied that in?)

And because I have the world’s best niece and nephew, they allowed me the honor of creating them some custom art to decorate their rooms. My niece, Jocelyn, loves mermaids, so I make her mermaid-themed goodies. My nephew, Julian, loves fishing, so I focus on angling for him.

My first fun custom Cricut project was a “portrait” of Julian catching a sailfish. (Or a marlin.) I used his school photo to create a vector of him, and I drew the waves, sky, fish, etc. in Photoshop then used Illustrator to convert the layers to SVG format and cut them with the Cricut. Now, if you don’t use these programs or machines, what you might have heard was, “Blah blah blah Cricut blah.” Don’t worry; there’s not a quiz at the end.

Bottom line, I made a picture of Julian in a boat. And he liked it.

With Jocelyn, I stuck to the familiar and just made a digital art of her as a mermaid.

In fact, the Photoshop welcome photo at the time was a beautiful image of a girl-turned-mermaid, and that’s what inspired me to do that for Jocelyn.

{This was the gorgeous Photoshop opening image in 2020.}

And she liked it.

By the next Christmas, I ventured a little further into my creative vein, and I made them each a box. I designed their names in the theme (Julian’s “J” was a fish on a hook, and the “L” was a fishing pole; and Jocelyn’s name was part of mermaid scales.), and I cut their names out with the Cricut. Then on Julian’s box, I mounted a net and several antique fishing lures.

On Jocelyn’s, I used polymer clay along with tulle, glitter, and gems to make an underwater scene of fish, seaweed, and a little mermaid that looks just like her.

They liked them.

(If I’m going to be transparent here, I should confess that whenever I make them gifts, I also include cash. Just in case. They’ve never complained. That’s what aunts do, so I’m happy to comply with the Auntie Guild Bylaws.)

In conclusion, last year for Christmas, Sister Michelle, Son Jeremy, and Daughter Stefani bought me a laser cutter. I’d been dying to have one, and I researched for weeks to find just the one I wanted. I even started a list of the different projects I planned to make. To date, it’s still in the box.

Let’s talk: Have you even looked forward to owning something then left it in the box for more than a couple of days? Do you include cash when you give gifts to your nieces and nephews? Did I make a marlin or a sailfish?

Taking the Plunge

Hello, friends. If you’re hearing a tiny voice from the past and wondering if it’s your imagination, it’s not. In fact, it’s me, plunging back in after a nearly three-year hiatus.

When I abandoned my blog in 2020, I was about to embark on a new task of painting my house exterior while the world was entering the early stages of a global pandemic. The house took longer than expected, and in so doing, I developed some other Lupus-related health issues. Those then sent me down a deep rabbit hole of depression and anxiety.

Meanwhile, the world wept and so did my household as Sister Michelle, Son Jeremy, and I helplessly counted more than 130 people that at least one of us knew personally in some capacity (maybe not a family member or friend, but a client or an acquaintance) as they denied Covid– and then contracted Covid… and we wept some more when 27 of those people we personally knew died of Covid.

Needless to say, it just never felt like the right time to blog again. (Though I have been intermittently reading several of my favorite blogger’s blogs, and those, my friends, helped cheer my broken heart immensely, thank you!) At any rate, I realized this month will be three years since my break started, and I figured it was time to take the plunge and get back to Bloggyville to let my Bloggy Family know just how much I’ve missed them.

While I’ve been away, I’ve been staying home and staying safe from the germs lurking around the corner. Some might say I’m missing out on life, but I’ve actually found a few new talents I didn’t know I had to keep me busy which I’ll tell you about in the coming weeks. (And I’ve never gotten Covid, thankfully!)

To close, here are the before and after photos of how my house painting experiment turned out. What we hoped would be a long weekend’s job turned out to take about three months (keeping in mind we can only do such projects on weekends). Sister Michelle and I did most of it by ourselves until we reached the four tall areas that we needed my son Jeremy to reach with the walkboard he balances between two ladders for his job as a pool cage repairman. You can see Jeremy here helping us with a couple of the tall parts. We actually finished painting the house and trim in about twelve days of working time, but it’s Florida, so it rains almost every day during the summer, and the rain made us keep postponing what parts we could tackle next. There’s nothing more frustrating that getting a couple of gallons of paint poured into the sprayer and dragging the heavy ladders out only to have the sky open up and have to clean it all up and wait for another day. The garage door took an additional month to complete because we had to remove the old paint before we could repaint it. It ended up looking fabulous and lasted for another seven or eight months before the motor died and we had to get it replaced. Go figure.

Let’s talk: What’s the biggest home-improvement project you’ve ever attempted? Have you ever taken considerable time or effort to improve something only to have it need to be replaced shortly thereafter? Have you and your loved ones stayed safe during Covid?

Shakespeare’s Banishment

(In the early days, William’s attitude frequently got him into trouble… Wonder if he had the dreaded Coronavirus?)

Keep washing your hands, stay six feet apart, and have a splendid weekend, friends!

So, this happened…

When Sister Michelle, Son Jeremy, and I bought our house a couple of years back, we, of course, had our mail forwarded.  We were so proud to own our first house and no longer be renters that we changed our Driver’s Licenses, Voters’ Registrations, magazine subscriptions, various insurances, etc., as soon as we could.

Between the three of us, we probably get a total of about five or six magazine subscriptions per month.  When you go on the magazine’s website to change your address, most of them tell you that it will likely be after the next issue is mailed before the change will take place, so be sure to notify the Post Office of your new address.  Okay, no big deal.

All three of us spent a lot of time those first couple of months camped out at Home Depot, Lowes, and Floor and Décor, among other home improvement stores.  We had tons of changes to make to make this place feel like it was really ours, and nothing was going to stop us.

Meanwhile, the mail piled up on a table by the door while we busily learned how to build walls, change out light fixtures, paint textured walls, etc.  Then came the day that we took a break and sorted through the mail.  That’s when we found this magazine.

Or what was left of a magazine after the Post Office damaged it.  (If you can’t tell, this is literally the bottom corner of the cover only of a magazine!)  At least they apologized for their error and included their wishes that the problem didn’t cause us too much inconvenience.

Let’s talk:  Is this hilarious, or what?  Did you ever get something like this from the Post Office?  What’s the most damaged item you’ve ever received from any shipping company?  Regarding the last place you moved, did you make any changes as soon as you got there, or did you wait a while?

Oh, Friar…

Have a lovely weekend, friends!