A little history. My grand daughter lived with my husband and I for the first 5 years of her life. Her mother became pregnant at 18 also and was unmarried. The difference was that my daughter was graduated high school, had her own car and had a job. My daughter also lived at home and had the support of the whole family to help her raise her child. She had built in child care so she could get a leg up and get continued education and was able to secure a job to support herself. She also married and had someone to complete her own family.

For some reason my grand daughter thinks that she can have this baby and raise it without a job, without an education and without a spouse to help support her and her family. Where is the logic behind all this? Is she just lazy? I am beginning to think so!

I love this girl with all my heart and have no clue as to where all this is going. I see disaster written all over this.

None of my friends or family know about this blog, so I am free to write about anything I want on here. Watch I right some really horrid stuff about someone and they will find this blog on the internet somehow. Not holding my breath that anyone would find this. This can be my little sanctuary from the world. Writing anything I want that has no value to anyone but myself. I think this is going to be even more fun than I had originally planned.

I love having little hideaway places. There is something safe in having a secret hideout. I have always had some place to hideout. When I was a kid I would hide out in the basement. Probably because we lived in a tornado area and quite often would have small tornadoes come up the channel from the big lake. We were drilled quite often on heading to the basement in case of a tornado alert. Back then when there was an alert the local fire department would sound there alarms to inform the community of impending alerts. Then we would have to turn on our radios to catch what was going on. To the basement we would go for safety when the alarms went off. I guess I related safety to basements and creepy places from these experiences.

When I moved into my current house we had a somewhat finished attic. It had a lot of creepy things in it as well. But it felt so comfy cozy to me I claimed it as my private space. It has stained wood slat walls and very old water drums in it. It even has a hidden stair case in it. The foot of the staircase has been sealed off by a wall that was put up to enlarge the downstairs bathroom. The staircase to nowhere. The attic suits me though. Somewhat mysterious and private and safe.

So now that this blog is semi going underground, I will be writing here more often. Nothing I write here will be of any use to anyone, but me. I am really glad I started this blog now. I will be here writing and practicing my writing more here.

It is hard to even think of picking up and moving at 60. Besides the fact that we probably would never be able to sell our home. Many of our friends, baby boomers also, are feeling the same plight.

Who would have ever thought that we would be struggling so much at this stage in our lives? We raised our children and held jobs and was proud at our accomplishments. When the grand-babies came along we thought we would be set to be the fun grandparents. We wanted to be the ones to over spend and take them to exciting places. Not now. Now we are a drag and worry lines our faces. What is to become of us?

We are boomers and I am sure we will be able to figure out a way to re-invent ourselves. I read a lot of stuff on the Internet and there seems to be a lot going on in the way of making money online. We have discussed maybe selling stuff on eBay and see if that is a viable way to earn an income. Or perhaps we can start a Mom and Pop store of some kind? We are mulling over a lot of alternatives. Time will tell. Just going to keep the faith and keep our options open. It is just time to learn new and exciting things.

Sorry this post started out so negative it is just such a confusing time in our lives here. Guess there is no rocking chair life ahead of us in the near future. Retirement will have to wait for these two baby boomers. Its time to look into jobs and figure out what we want to be when we grow up.

Its funny when kids get an idea in their heads how they just can’t let it go. All of the sudden they were in a panic as to what or who they wanted to be on Halloween. After failing at pushing this idea out of their head we had to start looking online for Halloween costumes. Hard to do in July.

When my kids were little I used to spend weeks making Halloween costumes. Those days have long since pasted by. And the last time I made a Halloween costume it cost me more than it would have to buy one. I spent nearly $100 to make a costume that was only going to be worn for a few hours. Luckily it was made big enough to get a couple years wear out of.

So now I suppose the next few months will be spent finding the perfect Halloween costume. I plan on searching to find a cheap Halloween costume to buy. Maybe with any luck I will be able to find one at a garage sale or fea market this summer. The only problem I detect is there will be a Halloween costume that comes out in early October that will end up being real popular and that is what the kids will want.

Had the whole house to myself yesterday. Spent the whole day Twittering and chatting with relatives on Facebook. Oh and taking a little nap in the afternoon. It really was a heavenly time.

Went into a few sites to see about my basement mold issue and found some books that might help me out. We finally ended up hiring professional furnace people to come in a couple of months ago to clean the furnace and duck work. I am glad we did. It really wasn’t that expensive and it was well worth the piece of mind. I notice since then that the mold issue has subsided somewhat. I think all has been resolved except for the mold in the basement. That is going to involve a lot more work and time. We are sort of waiting for summer to start tackling this issue.

My husband got laid off a couple of weeks back and now we are trying to deal with this issue. We live in Michigan and are baby boomers. The chances of him getting another job is slim to none. Even though he does have a four year degree, agism is a real factor in getting a job. Most of the time employers call it over qualified. Ya Right!

Maybe he will have to become an eBay seller or an Internet Marketer. Making money online seems to be the only place that there are no age barriers now a days. We will do fine. When one door closes another opens. We just have to be receptive to open doors. Not real worried at this point.

Oh well, think I will top off the weekend with some Moose Tracks Ice cream.

Later People!

A flooded bassement means a wet basement and a perfect place for more mold to grow. We finally had this all under control and now we have to deal with this wet basement again.

I am happy that we finally had a warm spell but not real happy with the basement problems. The sump pump has been worging over time trying to keep the water out.

When dealing with a 200 year old house the foundation is in real bad shape. The foundation is made of large stones with several gaps in them. Basement waterproofing would be almost impossible. Basement waterproofing would involve digging around the whole structure of the house and resealing all the cracks. Basement waterproofing here would involve replacing the whole foundation with new. Not something we would consider or could afford to do.

We replaced the basement windows in the fall and now we have some decent sun light coming through so hopefully when the basement dries somewhat , the sunlight will aid in keeping the mold in check. We though we should also add a dehumidifier or two to help with the moisture build up. Not real practical when you have this much water.

The flooded basement seems to be an issue whenever there is a lot of rain or quick thaws. I think for now our best avenue for our basement waterproofing would be with some type of drainage system that would quickly drain the water away from the house. Not sure the cost of a project like this. We are planning on checking into this solution and see if it isn’t something we can do our selves.

The whole area surrounding the house is clay. This is another reason we are dealing with a flooded basement. Clay does not have the ability to let the water drain quick enough. This causes us to have a wet basement the majority of the time. Wet basement means moisture which in turn means more mold. This just adds to our dilemma of how to get rid of mold.

There is a lot of cool stuff that you can do with this template, so I will probably be making improvements in the days to come. I am so proud of myself for handling this all on my own. Never thought I could do this at my age.

I like the looks of this site way better than my old one. Good going Denise!

I have heard that mold can be removed by using vinegar. I don’t know how you would get it out of the heating system though.

I am going to use a bleach mixture with water on the exterior surfaces of the corners in the bathroom and down in the basement. I know that mold can be killed but I also know that killing the mold is not enough. You need to get rid of the mold completely or it will come back.

I have had black mold on interior walls before and I had to completely remove the whole wall to the studs and re drywall the whole entire wall. Before redrywalling we had to remove the mold from the studs. As to how to get rid of mold on studs, we just sprayed the surface with the bleach mixture and then let the studs dry. After drying we then scraped the studs until there was no evidence of mold remaining. We did not use the palm sander on the treated area for we did not want the spore to be transmitted in the sander dust into the air. I am hoping that this is not the case with mold in other areas and with less severity.

I have been doing some research on how to get rid of mold online but I have not come up with a whole lot of information. I guess I will just have to keep searching until I find more answers. I definitely do not want to leave this iisue unresolved. There is a lot of duck work to remove in this old house and I can not afford a professional heating company. I’ll come up with an answer somewhere.

Kind of feels like a downer right now especially with the holiday season. Money is tight everywhere and people are losing jobs left and right. You can almost smell fear in the air. No one is smiling as we go shopping for Christmas. The store clerks aren’t even as festive as they should be at this time of year. Gloom and doom all around.

I just can back from my granddaughter’s Christmas program and no one in the audience seemed to have the spirit. How sad! These kids have worked hard for this performance and no one seemed to celebrate their effort. I enjoyed the Choir concert eminsely! For a short time I forgot about the worries of the world and just remained in the moment.

Maybe this bad economy will bring people back to earth and focus their lives on what is important. The making money and spending was way out of control. Maybe people will finally learn to appreciate what it is they have instead of what they don’t have.

I have pretty good health for my age and I have the love of family. What more could I want? As long as I have a roof over my head and food on the table, the only thing that I am working hard at is loving my family and nurturing that.

As a baby boomer I am going into retirement real soon and I plan on spending the rest of my life loving everyone and enjoying the finer things in life. This would include a walk in the parK, putting my toes in the summer waters, hugging a lot, and to see how well I can optimize my health. I would consider myself a wealthy person if I could do these things.

This is way tougher than it looks. I thought going with a private blog that I would not have any issues. Guess I should have stayed with some of the free hosting platforms. Would have been a lot easier. But being the control freak that I am I had to do it my way. I guess I will get a learning experience out of this as well.

I definitely will have tons of stuff to blog about now.

I think the space between my ears gets narrower and narrower.