Memorial Day Weekend

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend. Mine was fantastic, of course, because I had a day off from work and that hasn't happened in a while. I love days off. They rock.

I spent all day Saturday washing and cleaning my car. Well, not all day. First we went to the grocery store. When we came home I planned on painting my "wicker" chairs with two cans of brown spray paint I'd purchased while we were out. We're on a tight budget now. I've not purchased anything not absolutely necessary for quite a while. Neither has the hubby. (Need I remind you about the entire birthday/Mother's Day debacle?) Our "wicker" furniture consist of four white chairs with cushions purchased at Lowe's on clearance two or three years ago. I say wicker in quotation marks because this wicker is not wood but vinyl strands woven together to look like wicker. When we purchased them, the chairs were white. Since that time they've become not white. By that, I mean gray. I spent one afternoon when I was preggars with the little one scrubbing them with bleach water. It didn't help whiten them at all. I think it looks terrible.

A couple of months ago, JCPenney had a sale on their outdoor furniture. We purchased outdoor cushions for each of the chairs. The original cushions were light green with taupe colored flowers on one side; green, taupe, and white stripes on the other side. These cushions, though intended for outdoor use, became covered with mildew throughout the time that we've had them. Again, bleach didn't help. So, we purchased new cushions that match the color scheme of the house better. They are rust, green and beige stripes. To improve the appearance of the chairs and coordinate the units better, we decided to paint the chairs dark brown. So far, I've gotten two completed. Each chair takes about two cans of spray paint. Each can of paint costs almost $4. We're buying 2 at a time because that's just the way we roll.

I purchased 2 Saturday morning. My plan was to touch up the second chair I'd already painted and paint a third chair. We moved the chairs off of the porch so that we wouldn't stain the porch. I touched up the second chair and rinsed off the third. While it was drying, we went to work on washing the car. I heard a noise. It sounded like an aerosol can being sprayed. I looked at my chair, where a can of paint had been placed, and my baby was holding a can of paint with paint spraying out, directly at him.

I thought he was spraying it and thought he was going to spray it in his face. On closer inspection though, he was not spraying it. The can had fallen onto the ground, with a little help from him, and was punctured. He was holding it and paint was spraying out at two different points. His feet and legs were covered. I took the can. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm cheap. I'd just spent $4 for that can of paint. I didn't want the entire thing to go to waste so I held it over the chair that was waiting to be painted. It didn't look good or go on evenly but it did at least go a long way to covering the underside of the chair. I now have brown splotches all over my feet. Well, not all over, I was wearing flip flops so I have a nice delineation across the top of my foot. Like I said, I'm cheap. I've never denied it.

After that, we washed the car and cleaned it out. It desperately needed both. And when I say we, I don't mean hubby and myself. He was busy burying a drain pipe and building a retaining wall to hide it. When I say me I mean me and my helpers. They like to help. They're really good at it too. They like to climb all over the interior of the car and leave gray dirty footprints while I vacuum. They also like to pour old coffee out in the cup holder. That's what they do. They're good at it. Really good.  

Monday we went to the cemetery. Hubby made wooden crosses and I decorated them with a couple of floral stems and some fake ivy. We made one for his mom's grave and one for my baby's. Angel BK's tombstone has a picture of a teddy bear carved into it as well as some alphabet blocks. Big BK and Baby BK went to the cemetery with us. Big BK was climbing all over his brother's grave. He looked at his tombstone, pointed to the picture of the teddy bear and said that was his brother. He doesn't understand the significance of the tombstone so he thinks, when we say that's where Angel BK is, that the teddy bear is a picture of our baby. That very nearly broke my heart.

If you read the post from last week, you know we have two new pets, Butterscotch and Banana. Here they are. This is Butterscotch. Well, this is the back half of Butterscotch as he tries, with some measure of success, to flee from my son-his arch nemesis.

This is after he gave Baby BK the slip. It isn't that hard to do. If there had been food and water in this dish, you'd probably see a picture of Baby BK putting the dry food into the water. That's his favorite thing to do. No matter how much trouble he gets into, he continues to do it to the dog's food and water. I don't understand it, but, I'm his mother, I'm not meant to understand him.

This is Banana. He wasn't as quick as his brother. He was captured by the enemy and held for some time. This is an improvement over the previous times he's been taken captive though. Being carried around the garage by your neck until your eyes bug out of your head and your lungs seize up, or being picked up from the floor by the tail can certainly be classified as torture. The UN is likely to call this contrary to the Geneva Convention. Baby BK isn't scared. He also is unconcerned with PETA threats. The cats are very much afraid.