Weekly Chat Thread March 24 - 30

[kritter]

Now I'm afraid to ask for workers on that site.

Never ask for workers on NextDoor because either everybody can do it or they know somebody who can do it.  I go to the Services or whatever it is called and look at the people/companies that were recommended by other neighbors.  I have even PMed the neighbor if I had any questions.  That is how I found my fence guy.

[denise15601]

Desire-I agree! It is really hard to find someone. My daughter's fiancee sometimes did stuff for me, but now that he has his own construction company, he is way too busy. But he asked his friend to check out my lawn tractor, that might be done this week.

My former handyman was great, but he died in November. My friend recommended her handyman who worked on my garbage disposal for me and I really like him. But he does charge a lot more.

I have also asked on Facebook for referrals, so that way some of my friends could recommend someone.

[Dawn R]

I live in Maryland and can't stop watching the Key Bridge footage. My husband crossed it twie a day going to and from work.

[val2525]

"Make Up Your Own Holiday" Day? Who comes up with these days?

[val2525]

In case anyone is wondering what Dawn is referring to:


www.baltimoresun.com/2024/03/26/key-bridge-collapses-into-patapsco/

[Dawn R]

Thanks Val. I thought I had put a link on my post.

[labbypaws]

That was horrible to watch. My MIL hated bridges and refused yo go anywhere on a road that crossed water. Good thing she isn’t around to witness that.

[denise15601]

Dawn-that is too close to home for you!

[sunsetpainter]

I love bridges and it was so sad to witness this accident. I feel so bad for the families of the workers.

Getting a new roof put on the house today. Lots of guys stomping around on the roof right over my office. Hard to concentrate.

But we are very thankful that we called this company. We had gotten 2 estimates, one from a guy who put up a ladder but only climbed high enough to look over the gutters (never went on the roof!) and said "about 18 - 20 grand", and the other one just called us and said he looked at the satellite photos to come up with an estimate (about the same), never even saw the roof in person. So we called this company (heard their ad on the radio) and he came out to give an estimate. He was on the roof a good 20 - 30 minutes, taking measurements, circling spots with chalk, and taking photos. He came down and said he was going to contact our insurance company because we had hail damage that should be covered. (The other 2 guys didn't say a word about hail damage!)

Insurance guy came and approved new roofs (yes plural!) for the house, barn, and garden shed. It's only going to cost us the deductible to get them all replaced. So glad we called around. The company we went with also gave us addresses of other houses they had done, and we talked to several of the homeowners who were very pleased with their work.

[denise15601]

Yay sunset! I had hail damage from a tornado about 13 years ago and got a new roof out of it.

[denise15601]

Deja vu. I had to cover my shrubs again since the night-time temps will be in the low 30's for the next 3 or 4 days. Whine

[Desire]

Denise - what shrubs do you need to cover? We have almost 100 shrubs here and they all live through our winters. Are these special warmer weather shrubs or flowers/plants you are talking about? Do you need to cover them all winter? Just curious, as I know you do this often. Besides all the shrubs here we have daffodils and tulips coming up too and they survive our cold frost nights.  

[kritter]

It's National Weeds Appreciation Day - the only thing I appreciate about weeds is how fast they die when I spray them!

[denise15601]

Desire-my hydrangeas, azaleas and butterfly bushes need to be covered. When the weather got nicer, they all started to bud, and that makes them vulnerable.
I didn't cover them last year and they all suffered and looked terrible all summer.

My other shrubs and flowers survive okay.

I don't cover them in the winter since they don't have the green buds then.

[labbypaws]

For contractors, depending on your state you can check to see if they have had civil judgments filed against them. In PA you can look on county websites for civil cases. And for criminal cases on the state website. A link is on the county page.

For Montgomery County PA:  www.montgomerycountypa.gov/294/Docket-Searches

[kritter]

[val2525]

I have a Temu order coming in today. I noticed they used UPS this time, instead of UniUni. I will say one thing for UniUni - they pickup the package from the airport after customs clearance faster than UPS does. I have both my cell phone and my desktop on the Google web messages set to notify me when UPS delivers. I have several packages being delivered today and I really don't want any of them stolen

Mid 70s and sunny on tap here today. Have you killed all the weeds yet, Kritter?

[kritter]

Have you killed all the weeds yet, Kritter?

Nope, not yet but going out this afternoon for another sweep in the front yard.  Those few rainy or kinda trying to be rainy days threw me off schedule.  The main war has been fought where the new fence is going.  Now I am cleaning up in the areas I missed.

Lowes is continuing their $7.99 hibiscus sale for another week.  Pretty sure the powers that be are directing me towards a giant hibiscus garden for the front yard.  I saw a few bougainvillea plants at Lowes last week but too expensive and not that eye catching.  Probably going there tomorrow to see what they have going on. 

My HEB hasn't brought in any outside plants because of the construction so I'll probably drop by the Austin Hwy store across from Lowes to see what HEB is putting out.  I don't think they can beat the $7.99 price if they even have hibiscus.

[jesmelric]

Hello, hope everyone is doing ok. It's a lovely day here, mid 70s with low humidity Unfortunately we are having to have a large oak tree taken down today. Most of the branches are over the neighbors yard and they offered to go in 1/2 with us if we'd be willing to take it down. Well some branches are loose and the arborist said it has some kind of disease that's affecting the bark as well, so we really don't have a choice. They have two young boys that play in the backyard so we can't take a chance with it losing branches. They will actually be the ones losing most of the shade. This will be the 3rd large tree we've had to have taken down. When we bought the house 25 years ago we were like: what nice shade trees! Of course we weren't thinking of down the road when they might cause problems.

Poor Janey is stressed out by the activity and she can't go in the backyard so I took her for an extra walk this afternoon, so we could both enjoy the beautiful weather. Dh is actually home today because work is slow. Sigh. Right when we have to pony up for tree removal, of course.

We are going to Home Depot in another week or so, I want to look for an Indian Hawthorn bush to plant in the backyard, where we buried mom's ashes. Then I need to mulch. And then pray for no drought this summer!

Not sure if I've updated about my sister, who's still in the neck brace and it will be 8 weeks Saturday. The orthopedic doctor said it's not healing and said she needs surgery. But that doctor isn't a surgeon so my sister is getting a second opinion from an orthopedic surgeon, and was able to move her appointment up to this Tuesday. She's hoping for no surgery, but you just never know. I hope not, she would be back to the beginning with healing, etc. Youngest DD is coming for Easter and she's picking up my sister so she can have a meal and a nice visit with us. I am cooking a turkey. 

[denise15601]

(((Jes' sis))) Sure hope that her second opinion is better!

[kritter]

Interesting development on the Lowes mulch front. I picked up my order the other day and it was kinda chaotic with nobody seeming to know what they were doing. Before when I have ordered online, I go to the pickup desk in the store and they give me a ticket to hand to the guys in the Garden Dept. showing that I paid.

This time the computer apparently showed that 16 bags of mulch were in their store pickup area which it wasn't. So, this kid walks by and tells me to meet him in the parking lot by the mulch and he will load it for me. All goes well, mulch loaded and off I go.

Today I get two messages from Lowes that my mulch order is ready for pickup and if I don't pick it up in 4 days, the order will cancel. Think I am just going to sit here in the bushes and see what happens in 4 days. I thought it was weird that my cash back didn't show up as it usually would after an order is shipped/picked up from an online purchase but the Lowes purchase cash back email still hasn't arrived.

[Desire]

Mar 28, 2024 16:13:25 GMT denise15601 said:

Desire-my hydrangeas, azaleas and butterfly bushes need to be covered. When the weather got nicer, they all started to bud, and that makes them vulnerable.
I didn't cover them last year and they all suffered and looked terrible all summer.

My other shrubs and flowers survive okay.

I don't cover them in the winter since they don't have the green buds then.

OK - now I understand.  Thanks for explaining as I've heard you mention often that you need to cover your shrubs and could not figure out why since you are warmer climate than me.

[denise15601]

Mar 28, 2024 22:01:40 GMT Desire said:

Mar 28, 2024 16:13:25 GMT denise15601 said:

Desire-my hydrangeas, azaleas and butterfly bushes need to be covered. When the weather got nicer, they all started to bud, and that makes them vulnerable.
I didn't cover them last year and they all suffered and looked terrible all summer.

My other shrubs and flowers survive okay.

I don't cover them in the winter since they don't have the green buds then.

OK - now I understand.  Thanks for explaining as I've heard you mention often that you need to cover your shrubs and could not figure out why since you are warmer climate than me.

I should have called them flowering shrubs, I guess. 

[denise15601]

Mar 28, 2024 21:26:36 GMT kritter said:

Interesting development on the Lowes mulch front. I picked up my order the other day and it was kinda chaotic with nobody seeming to know what they were doing. Before when I have ordered online, I go to the pickup desk in the store and they give me a ticket to hand to the guys in the Garden Dept. showing that I paid.

This time the computer apparently showed that 16 bags of mulch were in their store pickup area which it wasn't. So, this kid walks by and tells me to meet him in the parking lot by the mulch and he will load it for me. All goes well, mulch loaded and off I go.

Today I get two messages from Lowes that my mulch order is ready for pickup and if I don't pick it up in 4 days, the order will cancel. Think I am just going to sit here in the bushes and see what happens in 4 days. I thought it was weird that my cash back didn't show up as it usually would after an order is shipped/picked up from an online purchase but the Lowes purchase cash back email still hasn't arrived.

That's weird.  I forgot about curbside pick-up and might do that when I get mulch and stuff. 

[chapeaunoir]

jesmelric - I'm sorry to hear about your sister! A friend I used to ride bikes with has trouble with bone healing. She broke her collarbone and had to get some kind of TENS unit in the end for bone stimulation. Another time she broke her wrist and again, she had trouble with healing and had to have a special unit. She's quite healthy, so it might be one of those physiologic quirks. In the end she healed up great, it just took longer. 

Squally here - nothing new. We have these sunbursts and then the sunlight glares on our perma-wet pavement and no one can see anything. I'd rather it just be cloudy. 

Home renos are kind of like Shakespeare's true course of love which "never runs smooth." We've got the asbestos abatement lined up, but the tile we chose for the kitchen/dining room/laundry room won't be in until mid-May. I suggested to the DH that we just go ahead with it then, but he said that's about when the weather breaks and he doesn't want to deal with it at that time of year (i.e., moving appliances, etc.). So we plodded through tons of tiling choices to get some other ideas. I took a photo of our kitchen area and used an app to show how our various choices would look and he went through about a billion different tiling options and we came up with three we liked. So far the warehouse still has enough square footage of each, so hopefully our tiling guy can nab them for us. 

[jesmelric]

Mar 29, 2024 0:47:56 GMT chapeaunoir said:

jesmelric - I'm sorry to hear about your sister! A friend I used to ride bikes with has trouble with bone healing. She broke her collarbone and had to get some kind of TENS unit in the end for bone stimulation. Another time she broke her wrist and again, she had trouble with healing and had to have a special unit. She's quite healthy, so it might be one of those physiologic quirks. In the end she healed up great, it just took longer. 

I don't know if it's got something to do with the type of fracture, or something specific to do with her not healing? She is pre-diabetic and has I forget the word but it's essentially pre-osteoprosis.  The hospital trauma center made it sound like she probably wouldn't need surgery but she might need some "minor in office" procedure. But they were anxious to release her and the doctor they told her to follow up with wasn't on her insurance. Hopefully she won't need surgery, but this doctor is a surgeon so his opinion will be much more meaningful that the orthopedic doctor who told her "I don't do necks, if it was your knee I could help you". I mean why did the lawyer send her there? Money, I'm sure.

Well they didn't finish the tree yesterday and are grinding the stump today. Poor Janey. She's really fed up with the disruption to her territory. Even though we didn't get much shade from the tree, she liked to lie under it We've planted 3 new trees in the last 3 years but DH will be 60 on the 8th and I'll be 58 in May so they'll never get nearly as large in our lifetimes. Sigh.

Chap sorry you had to change your tile plans, what a pain! But I know like my daughter in Portland, you guys can have a short window of great weather and I understand why your DH doesn't want to interfere with that. Hopefully you will love it either way.

[Desire]

Jes - make sure she goes to an orthopedic doctor who specializes in neck and spine only. A general ortho surgeon should not touch her. Many do try and mess people up. We have one great doctor here, Dr. David Kramer who is a neck and spine specialist, does all complicated spinal surgeries. Every ortho doctor we've been to praises him for outstanding neck and spinal surgeries and my personal ortho doctor says he will not recommend anyone else. Try to find someone like that.

[val2525]

I agree with Desire. Your sister needs a specialist, jes.

[denise15601]

Osteopenia is the word to which you referred. Yes, she does need a specialist.

[chapeaunoir]

jesmelric - my friend is pre-diabetic, so there's that in common. 

Orthopedic surgeons are a mixed bag, and many of them all they know how to do is slice and dice, but some are extremely good (the surgeon who fixed my rotator cuff is a star) so I hope your sister can find a really good specialist. I can understand necks being a speciality study - they can be complicated.