A nice, quiet evening

Today was just a nice, laid back kind of day. We don't get those often, but with Mark on leave because of Nathan's surgery, and no therapy, also because of the surgery, I didn't have anywhere to run to.

Except for the voting poll place, and the lumber store. I have never voted before, and felt very proud of myself for voicing my opinion about the leadership of our county, state, and country. Even if the opinion of many more people outweighed my choice, I am still glad I did it.

At the lumber store I exchanged a 1"x7 3/4"x48" piece of fabricated shelving board that cost $9.99, for a 1"x8"x12' (12 feet) piece of pine that cost a little over $7. Out of that 12 feet, I can get 3 shelves, for a fraction of the price of the fancy pants shelf. Why do I need shelves? For food storage! I am growing out of my existing and quite bendy closet shelves. They aren't exactly sturdy enough for 10 5lb bags of flour... and I am scared they will break under boxes of canned peaches. So I am installing on the opposite wall a shelving system. Metal posts with holes screwed into the wall. Brackets fit into these holes, and support the shelves. Each shelf can hold up to 200lbs, supposedly. I have 3 posts, so each shelf will have 3 brackets. At least 1 if not 2 of the posts will be screwed into the studs, for added stability. I am so excited! It's awesome to see my storage grow, and although I still have a long ways to go, I can see how much progress I have made!

Ha Ha! I don't really know how I forgot this bit. After coming home and doing so homemakey stuff, I ventured out to the garage to put another coat of stain on a piece for my entertainment center, and a coat of polyacrylic on a small end table/lamp combination I am redoing. My friend Amanda was on the phone with me when the fire truck sirens started going off. Being a base, they often have nothing to do and will just run the siren to "make sure it works". They went for a good while and we took no notice of it. Until her daughter yelled up the stairs "Security Forces are at the door Mommy!"

"Mam, you need to evacuate your house. Please gather your chilren and head to __ or __ or __ . No, you don't need to get your animals out, but we don't know how long this will be."

Scary right? Yeah. I hop off the phone and head inside, Mark is wrapping the formerly sleeping William in a blanket and Nathan's getting slippers on. Turns out that the construction guys working on some new housing behind us hit a gas line and it cracked, leaking gas all over the neighborhood. Not good! It probably wasn't as bad as it sounds, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Amanda and we headed for the BX and grabbed some food since I had been planning on a good big snack after finishing the polyacrylic coat. We were only there an hour when we got the all-clear to come back. See, it wasn't as bad as they thought. They were able to get it fixed quickly, and the wind was blowing in the right direction to clear the gas from the area.

Good to know they take gas leaks seriously.

After that, Mark headed out to help some people move, and I stayed and got myself and the kids nice and high. I mean, stained the inside of the entertainment center. Hey, all the windows were open, the fans on, and the doors were letting in lots of freezing cold air! I just couldn't get the thing dragged outside, and I need to get it all finished and the doors put back on. William broke one off a couple months ago, and I am finally getting it finished. We made and ate dinner. Nathan took a bath, Mark and Oren played on the computer, and William was lounging on my recliner. I, took a nap. At 8:00. I know... I was reading a bit and just sort of passed out. I woke up about 8:30, got Nathan out of the bath since he was blue with cold at this point. He thinks that he has to have permission to get out of the tub. Too funny. Then we realized that the election results should be coming in on the live feeds and whatnot, so we turned the tv on.

The younger two got sent to bed while Oren finished redoing his school work. His handwriting was unacceptable and illegible to myself and to his teacher. He is capable of better, and so we expect better. He'll be tired in the morning, but that's because he kept goofing off. We caught the tail end of McCain's concession speech, the tv had been muted to keep distractions down, and I thought that he conducted himself in a very gracious manner. Once it became clear who won, we turned it off, because we really didn't feel like listening to a bunch of analysis and yada yada. Or the "I won" speech.

It really has been a quiet evening, for us. The tv is off, the children are asleep, I had a nap which is probably not a good thing, but hey... and I am sitting here, blogging away. Before I hit the sack I will throw some polyacrylic on the inside of the EC cupboard, and call it good.

For those of you who don't know, polyacrylic is like polyurathane. It is less flameable, won't cause lung cancer quite as fast, and has far less odor. It is milky white when wet but dries clear. It does not coat quite like polyurathane, but I find that if I do 2-3 very thin coats instead of 1 big thick one, I get a nicer finish.