Is it bad to want new screens in hurricane season?

My patio is in pretty bad shape with rusty screws, ripped screens and assorted dirt and mildew threats. The last straw was the screen door latch that broke off a couple of days ago.

I had a guy come out and estimate how much to fix everything and it seems reasonable enough to me, but even he said wait until hurricane season is over. If I do that I'll have to do something about that door latch ASAP because the door is slapping open shut open shut open shut.

But I'll be very happy to have my patio pretty again. Then I'll have to buy a new table/chair set. Go team!

I am currently reading:

Dragonfly in Amber on my Kindle
Derik's Bane on my iPod Touch (as a printed ebook)
Faeries Gone Wild as a paperback dead tree book on my breaks at work
Supreme Courtship audio CD book in my car
Another audio book on my iPod Touch (too embarrassed to mention the title)

Adult ADD anyone? That's 5 different books I'm reading now. If anyone had any doubts about my being scatter-brained they can just put them to rest right now.

It's not just all the stories to juggle, they're all in different formats, too. Technology, helping us to be even more scatter-brained. Gotta love it!

America's Funniest Home Videos missed this one.

This freaking BIG lizard ran up my shirt! Ok, he was provoked. He was on my grill and I poked him with my tongs to make him jump off. He jumped right on my shorts and ran up the inside of my shirt.

If anyone had been there it would have been a candidate for America's Funniest Home Videos. None of my neighbors heard it but I don't know how they could have missed it.

This is a Cuban Brown Anole, about 9 inches long and about 1.5 " across his big body.

YUCK YUCK YUCK

He sits on the screens during the day but I suspect he lives in the grill at night and I don't want him there! I don't want to kill it, and I don't even mind if he lives on my porch, but not all up in my grill, ya know? (That sounds so ghetto.) Or running up my clothes. Just, no.

I went to Home Depot, and would you believe they actually have lizard repellent spray? It's called Iguana Rid. Only in South Florida.

I have to go practice throwing stuff at the grill. I'm not poking critters with tongs again. Ever.

Selling the car from hell's little brother

Nina abandoned the car-from-hell's little brother in my neighborhood last February. At the beginning of April I found out it had been there for 2 months. They moved to New York and gave the title to her dad to sell, but he can't get into the neighborhood to show it. (Thanks to it being gated and all.)

It was running when they left but it doesn't start now. Thanks to their bad care of it, it is in poor condition and won't get half of the book value. I'll be lucky if my HOA doesn't just tow it away, now that the license tag has been removed.

Know anyone who wants a junker? I'll throw in a box of homemade cookies, but you have to call my ex-husband if you want the title.

Tell us what's in YOUR flatware drawer!

I have the stainless steel flatware from my aunt and uncle that's vaguely Scandinavian in design. It is so cool looking, but the tines on the fork are so shallow that I drop a lot of food. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

Then, there's the picnic set my sister gave me on my 50th birthday. It's kind of cheap looking but it has sentimental value to me. And the flowers are so cheerful! One of the forks is missing, go figure.

Then, there is the hammered set that came from Publix back in the 90's as some kind of promotion. It's a good, heavy, quality stainless. Too bad I don't care for the way it looks. But it's only one place setting, right?

And then there's the teaspoon that was a sample from Oneida back when we could fill out a tiny coupon in the back of Glamour magazine and for the shipping cost of $.25 they would send you the spoon! I'm pretty sure I did this in the early 1970's, in my first round of single days.

And then, there are the stray pieces that came in from who knows where. I think they may have followed me home from a potluck, or have been brought to my former house when we had bunches of people over. Group "eat-togethers" sometimes caused a little chaos. Is that my son-in-law's pet spoon that he left behind? I can't remember when most of the strays showed up.

My point is, as a grownup it's ok if I have matching flatware, so why can't I decide what I want and just get it?

I lied on my census form, again.

So, my daughter and her husband have moved 2 times since they left my house, a mere seven weeks ago. They were asked to leave all 3 places. My house, a shared apartment and an illegal boarding house.

So, I asked my daughter if they had filled out a census at any of their new homes. Nope, its the last thing on their minds right now. On April 1 they are officially homeless, all their possessions in a truck and driving to NY to live with his parents next.

So, I lied. I put both of them on my census form.

Thirty years ago, on April 1, 1980, I got married at the courthouse in the morning and we went home and my hubs replaced the kitchen sink while I filled out the census form. It was the long form, too. So when it came to the question about indoor plumbing, I lied and said we had it. But right at that moment there was no water running to the house and we didn't.

In both these cases, I didn't mind lying for the better good of the statistics.

My daughter lost her job the day after they were told to leave the boardinghouse. My son-in-law hates Florida and this seemed like an omen that they should go back to his little town in upstate NY.

But the census office, here in Florida, keeps calling my house, to offer her a job.

20 or more packages of hand sewing needles

So, I'm in my sewing room, yay! And I am looking for a particular hook and eye style I know I have in that big box of notions.

I wasn't there to organize, only find what I wanted, but I kept running into these packages of hand sewing needles. So I started to pull them out so they could be put in a plastic bag. Containerized, if you will. I found over 20 packages of hand sewing needles. What?!?

Some of them are so old I remember using them in high school. I graduated 40 years ago, BTW. They've got some rust on them now so I'll dump them after I finish writing this. But they aren't the oldest needles there, oh no. There are needles in there that I inherited from Mimi, and one package I either got from Nanny or my original mother.

I have no idea why there are so many packages of needles. I spent most of the 90's trying to avoid hand sewing, LOL. And I sewed a lot in the 90's.

I found duplicates of many sewing notions that have me scratching my head. For example, I must have 5 seam gauges. OK, but why do I have 4 different rotary cutters? Several seam rippers, and enough Perfect Waist for at least 15 waistbands. Lot's of thread and elastic, but that didn't surprise me.

The biggest surprise was the Windows startup disk from my (former) laptop at work. Who put that there and why didn't I notice it until now? Did I mention it was a big box?