Jumbled Mess

/ Dora Hiers / 10 Comments
Looks like a jumbled mess of boards in our back yard, right? 

Maybe right now it does, but by the time hubby is finished with these wooden slats, you won’t believe they came from those pallets.

So what’s he going to do with the jumbled mess?

After seven years of living in our house, we finally decided to add a cover to our deck. Here’s a snapshot taken on a late September afternoon.
That flimsy umbrella doesn’t do much to prevent the sun from continually beating down on the deck for most of the day, which means it really isn’t pleasant for lounging except early mornings or late evenings. Plus, hubby wanted an outdoor space to house the smoker so he wouldn’t have to lug it out of the garage every time he’d like to crank it up.

If that means smoked ribs more often, I’m all for that. 😀

Well, you know how it goes. Suddenly, our plans mushroomed from just a cover to a total outdoor kitchen, complete with one of those fancy gas grill inserts, an outdoor sink and mini-fridge. 

We finally found a contractor with a bid that we could swallow, and we decided to go ahead. But the high price of the cover meant cutting costs on the outdoor kitchen. Even switching from the fancy gas grill insert to modifying a regular one to fit and chunking some of the components like the outdoor sink and mini-fridge, didn’t help the cost too much. We decided to stick with the original plan. A cover and some type of bar/counter to store the smoker.

“Honey, you know, you could build something that would look just as nice as any of these. And it would be exactly what we wanted,” I said, smiling sweetly.

His brows narrowed, and his head began a ferocious wag back and forth. He’d heard these exact words before. He doesn’t consider himself a good woodworker. But I know better. Check out a couple of his DIY projects…

Along with my father, he built these two goodies, a desk and a cubby-holder:
my office
And this work bench for the garage, even including sliding drawers and pull-out organizers:
garage work bench

What do you think?For now this may be a jumbled mess of boards, but it won’t be that way for long. I’ll keep you posted. Bring on the ribs! 
A to Z blog hop at Patterings.http://www.linkytools.com/thumbnail_linky_include.aspx?id=204563

I is for Incredible

/ Dora Hiers / 17 Comments

We’re baaaack!

Hubby and I just returned from our cruise through Europe, and that’s the only way I can describe it…incredible! Plus, I needed an I word to make it work for this week’s blog. 🙂

Mind if I share a few pictures? No? Phew! That’s good because I planned to anyway. lol

As is the case with most European flights, we flew all night. After a two hour bus ride from Heathrow, we sailed from Dover, just outside London. We didn’t suffer too much jet lag this year. Last year, I was down for the count, but this time, I was more prepared. 

Our first four ports were in Norway. For some reason, I anticipated quaint little towns, but that wasn’t the case with these ports, as you can see. Still incredible scenery.


Alesund, Norway
A Bookstore in Bergen, Norway (couldn’t resist!)
Stavanger, Norway

Our first glimpse of Oslo, Norway

Check out this stunning sunset as we sailed away from Hamburg, Germany. Incredible, isn’t it?

Hamburg, Germany

Amsterdam, one of my favorite stops.

Amsterdam
Bruges, Belgium

And what a way to end the cruise ~ touring Paris. You cannot imagine the magnificence of the Eiffel Tower until you’re standing close. Wow! 

Hubby at the Eiffel Tower

We spent an extra day touring London since we didn’t have time before the cruise. Hubby’s idea. He figured if I was going to spend an entire day sleeping away jet lag, we might as well do it on the ship and save the extra day to take in the sights when we returned. Have I mentioned how smart he is? 🙂

Tower Bridge (And I always thought this was the London Bridge!!)

Incredible. The only thing that would have made this cruise any better was if my parents had been able to join us. Next time!

Where did you take your last “incredible” trip?

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H is for Hanging

/ Dora Hiers

It’s been loads of fun hanging out with new friends on the AtoZ blog hop and checking out their blogs! I’m still with limited Internet access, so I can’t link up, but if you’d like to hop on, you can do so here. 

This week’s letter is…H….for … Hanging

Not as in dangling from a rope, but as in being left hanging. Or leaving things hanging, suspended, or unfinished.

During my auditor years, I visited schools on a daily basis to ensure they followed safe accounting practices. For each of the three different types of audits we performed, I knew how to schedule my work week. Some audits lasted days, some weeks, but for each, I enjoyed the satisfaction of wrapping up an audit and turning in the report.

When I switched to working special audits, my calendar might be blocked out with the same task for months. Although I adjusted, I never really liked this aspect of my job. You see, I value accomplishment, and I appreciate checklists and enjoy checking tasks off as I complete them. 

Since writing a book takes months, to help me overcome this negative vibe, I created an Excel spreadsheet to track my forward progress for every book. Not only does the spreadsheet offer me a sense of accomplishment by entering my daily word count, it also gives me an ending date, something tangible so that I don’t feel as if I’m hanging forever.

Sometimes leaving things hanging is unavoidable. Like now. We booked our cruise months ago, not knowing our son would accept a job in Washington DC, about 10 days before our sailing date. We promised to help him move his stuff to DC when we return.

As a writer, sometimes I leave my characters hanging, whether it’s in a particularly intense scene or, like now, because I couldn’t give them their happily-ever-after before I hopped on that airplane. I tried, I really did, but life got in the way. That, and latching on to every available minute with my son. My characters will be there when I return home. My son won’t.

Our son and grandson
What about you? How do you feel about being left hanging? Or leaving things hanging?


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