Things to Sit On

 

A couple weekends ago,

 we went to antique shops

 up in Fowlerville,

with Bob & Peg...

 

and we found this amazing cow milking stool.

 

It was heavily coated in shellac,

and white paint spatters.

 

Terry has been sanding it forever.

 

More on that later...

 

Hmm.... what's all this?

 

They are the parts to this chair...

 

There are two of them,

a rocker and a stationery chair.

 

They're called "hotel chairs" by collectors

of these heavy-duty, last-forever gems.

 

I acquired these chairs from my mom,

who acquired them from her mom and dad.

 

This is a picture of the chairs

sitting on their porch on Burt Road

in Detroit, in the fifties.

 

The chairs have been painted many times,

in many colors...

 

and Terry has taken on the loving mission of restoring them.

 

He's been out in the garage for days.

He goes out there after work and sands, and scrapes, and

I don't even want to know...

 

He tells me they are almost ready for primer.

 

Can't wait to pick out a paint color for them.

 

Meanwhile...

Back to the milking stool.

 

We picked out a stain that was close to the original,

and a couple of coats of poly...

 

 

and there it is.

 

Love it, love it, love it.

 

It sits in our upstairs 1/2 bathroom,

which is exactly where I pictured it

when I found it at the antique shop.

 

Petey came by today for some peanuts

and he let me get a couple feet away to get this pic.

 

He's sooo cute.

Petey

 

The end of March, almost April, and the weather is up & down.

 

One day it's 30 degrees and the next day it's sixty-five.

 

*

 

Over the winter we became enamored by the birds and squirrels in our backyard,

and we hung feeders for them.

 

Now we love them, and might be considered obsessed with them.

 

Filling the suet feeders and the birdseed feeders everyday.

 

We have regular customers; a woodpecker and his wife,

 finches, cardinals, and sparrows,

 and sometimes nasty crows that we shoo away...

 

but our favorite "pet" is a fox squirrel that we have named Petey.

 

He comes around when he feels like it,

 and we run outside, and throw him peanuts...

 

yes, we go to the store and buy peanuts, just for him.

 

We watch for him, we wait for him,

 and when he wanders into the backyard, we become childlike,

running to get peanuts for him.

 

Here's the funny part:

 

We thought that he started coming around just this year,

but Terry was looking through old pictures

 of when we first moved into this house (three years ago),

and he found this picture of Petey on our second story bedroom window ledge.

 

He was here the whole time.

 

 



We are Still Alive

 

Somewhere between the beginning of January

 and this day in March,

 I lost all track of time...

 

January was a blur.

I know we took a weekend trip to Soaring Eagle Casino,

which was super fun,

 and then we lost the whole month of February with the flu.

We both had a bad strain of the flu

 that led to bronchitis,

and it took the whole month to get back to feeling human again.

 

All of  sudden,

it's the middle of March and I realize that

I haven't taken a picture or written a word for two months....

 

The realization came tonight,

 while Terry and I sat on our new chaise lounge cushions... 

 

I had to order some new cushions for our patio chaise chairs.

 

They came today

 and since the chairs have been stored down in the basement

 for the winter...

we took out the cushions and the chairs

 and set them up in the basement.

 

We're still so tired from our illness

 that we sat in the chairs and didn't get up for an hour.

 

The cushions are A+

and we are now starting to talk about our spring projects...

 

Second story tuck pointing,

a new awning for the back door,

garden planning,

privacy fence staining,

maybe a pool...

 

the list is long...

 

For now, we'll just sit in the basement.