Meeting our new Neighbors

Remember how your mother always warned you
(and maybe still does!)
to be careful what kind of underwear you wear
because you never know when you may
be in an accident?
As a freshman in high school that came to my mind one day
as I waited in the emergency room
following a car accident.
I hope they were presentable.
I can't remember anymore.
But I do remember thinking about it.

Well, yesterday, I added a new one:
Be careful what you wear to paint in
because you may end up on the nightly news!

Yep, that's what happened.
Both Warren and I.
In some of the worst clothes we own.
My hair was a mess and....
Well, that's not really what this story is about.

Last week, for Warren's birthday,
I bought him a house.
Okay, that's not really true.
It just happen to close on his birthday.
Anyway, we bought it to try our hand at the rental
market while at the same time, hopefully,
helping out our monthly income.

The house is in pretty good condition seeing that it was built in '77
so the list isn't that long of what we need to do to get it rent able.
First of all, wallpaper needed to be removed (my job)
and painting needed to begin. (Warren's job)

When Warren got to the Master bedroom he noticed a box
on the closet shelf
and soon I was summoned to take a look.
Two (2) grenades.
After deciding it probably wasn't a good idea to throw them in the garbage
(we don't have trash pick-up there anyway!)
we decided we would get the number for the police the next day
and call them then.
We didn't think it warranted a 911 call.

A bit later Warren informed me that the police were on their way.
He had remembered that there was a phone book out in the trash pile
and got the number for the police so he had called them.
Then we got a phone call.
We were to exit the house until they got there.

Man, that was going to slow down the work!

Soon, we saw two police cars pull up. (they always come in twos)
They took Warren back in to check things out
and came back with mixed opinions.
But joint in the opinion that
the bomb squad needed to be called.
Police continued to come.
(at one time I counted 10 police cars lining our street)
and then the chief (or so we think)
from the bomb squad.
All of a sudden we were told to get in our vehicle and drive down the road a ways.
Crime scene - do not enter tape was strung across our property line.
We were told they were smoke grenades.
They weren't as concerned about those.
BUT in the box (of which Warren hadn't taken out to examine)
were two metal canisters of ether.
We were also told it was enough to blow up our house
but not enough to evacuate the neighborhood.
(not sure how much that would have to be!)
They knew they were old because of the metal casing.
Ether is no longer packaged in metal because it is prone
to deteriorate and then leak.
Ours was doing just that.
It also crystallizes with age.
And there lies the danger.
More of the bomb squad was called along with the truck and
trailer that carries "the canister".
"The canister" has a hydraulic lift on it for the lid and also for the
tub that lies inside of it.
Here the hazardous material is laid and then
carefully (with the use of the hydraulic lift)
put into the protective canister.
We watched as two bomb squad, fully armored, guys went into our house
to retrieve the explosives.
One man simply used a flashlight to direct the other man's carefully
placed feet as he carried that
"which could blow up our house"!
Two trips were made to get it out.
After it was safely in the canister Warren was asked if we knew of anything
else that would give us concern in the house.
Warren mentioned a box that he had seen in the crawlspace under the house.
Sure enough!
Some type of flares and different firework type of things
that could definitely explode with the heat that we get in a
Tennessee summer.

About 3 hours from start to finish we were told we could once again
enter our house.

We, along with one of our new neighbors,
were interviewed for a piece on
Chattanooga's channel 3 news.
Thus the concern for what I was wearing.

All in all
we never felt afraid.
We didn't realize that we had been in any danger until
we were already in a safe zone.
All in all
it's made for some pretty good
story telling.
I love stories.
That's what makes life interesting.

I did wear the same thing when we went back today.
We were painting after all.
And surely that was a once-in-a-lifetime thing!!!!!

These are not pictures of our house on fire
(it was still standing when we left today)
I just added them because Kellie said pictures make for
a more interesting post!

A Little Humor

This picture got me to thinking......

do you see any resemblance?.......

or is it my imagination?.....

I've got my own "Little Rascals"!!!!

the "Little Rascals", or early version "Our Gang" was a show created in the 1920's.
It was intended to be about real children doing things that real children do.
Google it and you will find a few laughs.

Project People...

We came to Foz wanting to do some practical things for Tim and TaLisa as well as serve in the church. Two months should have given us a lot of time to do a lot of projects but instead we found ourselves having to literally put it on our schedule! So we had one week that we set aside for painting.

A young girl from the church (Jerus) was already coming by before we got here to work on some things for them (tiling the roof, building a shed, etc) and so she came to help us. (actually it would be more accurate to say that we helped her!)

And she was great help!!!!

She not only was a hard worker but was invaluable for information. She had learned all of her skills from her,now deceased, father.

The first day we decided to start without her only to find when she did get here that we had used the wrong paint for the ceiling. We had used water based and we needed to use oil because of moisture here. Remember that nothing is insulated nor is it heated in the winter. Both contribute to the mold and peeling paint problems that they can have here. We also learned on that fateful day that we needed to paint the walls first and then the ceiling. (we are not totally convinced of that one yet!) But who are we to argue!!!

Now, you must remember that we speak very little Portuguese and she speaks about the same amount of English. Sometimes our conversations involved a telephone with a translator on the other end!!!! She did come armed one day with a list in Portuguese and drawings of the different tools we may use in construction and painting. She is an amazing artist! We found it very helpful as well as entertaining! We did make it through and, quite frankly, have had many a good laugh with Jerus. She is a gem. I look forward to the day I can really sit down and joke and laugh with her.

So we took to tackling the wall. Water based paint. Good! After surveying the paint out in the garage we realized that we didn't have enough so we walked down to the local improvement store (remember from my previous post?) Well, they don't mix paint colors at this site but an order was put in for us at the bigger store downtown. We tried to figure out at that point all that was needed for the entire project and get it when we were there. Well, that didn't work and we did make several trips to the neighborhood store! The walls were painted easily although the paint is very different from ours. And the supplies. No drop cloths, no angled trim brushes, no tray liners, etc! But man, the pleasure of seeing those walls painted was worth every second we spent on it!

Well, the walls and the water based paint was the easy part. Now we would move onto ceilings, doors and windows. All in oil. I hate oil and it's mess. But I must say when the job was competed there is nothing like oil to give a smooth and hard finish. It should clean well for TaLisa as we changed all the doors from gray (two shades of it obviously applied at two different times) to white. And there are a lot of doors in this little house! And ceilings - poor Warren got that job of rolling on the paint overhead!

A note about oil paint here. They don't sell it in different sheens. You just add thinner to take away the glossiness. Of course that makes for a runny, hard to manage paint and I am ashamed to say it made for some complaining on both Warren and my parts as we dripped here and there, had it running down our hands and arms, and of course our clothes. We had to take thinner and clean up floors (which are newly painted concrete) and we smelled like paint thinner and oil paint for days. We breathed it for about a week...

Are we glad we did it? You bet!!!! Would we do it again? You bet!
After all we are project people
and the reward in seeing it done was so worth it.

And by the way, I didn't really pick the paint color - TaLisa did - she just doesn't know it. They already had the kitchen painted this nice, light, natural color that I thought would go great with white trim. So we just continued on throughout the house. It's cool, clean and neutral and with the white it now goes with about any other color.

And by the way -

it's a surprise so don't tell.........

Line Hopping

Okay, I know that you guys like pictures and believe me I have pictures
but today will be a post with no pictures. It's either that or no post.

My new Mac computer is not working as it should so I can only open the window drive side (did that even make sense to you computer wizards?) I cannot load any pictures onto the window portion although I can use the internet from there but I cannot use the internet from the Mac side in order to access my blog. I had been using Warren's computer for posting but he's using it to study for tonight's message because the study helps are loaded on that computer. So, a post with no pictures. Come back later, though, and I will have great pictures of our anniversary celebration!!!!


Hopefully, you'll want to hear bad enough to bear with it just this once!

We have had a week of standing in line. Literally.

Side note: when we were in the airport on our way to Brazil we started talking with a young Brazilian couple. He spoke very good English. He told us how difficult our language was to learn because of the prepositions. He asked "so how can you stand on the line in some cases and in the line on others? Why do you get in the car but on the plane?"

Anyway, we were in line. For hours. For 3 days straight.

We had heard that Brazil is this way. Waiting in a line a lot. We had commented to each other just the day before that we hadn't really experienced that. Paying bills had been fairly easy. The grocery store no worse than at home, etc.

And then we decided we needed to apply for our CPF.

The CPF is a number that you need in Brazil in order to do any business. We even need it to rent an apartment. It keeps track of all of our business transactions in Brazil. You can liken it to our social security numbers. We had tried to do some research on the internet to know how to go about getting it and we did get the help of our Brazilian Portuguese teacher.

We are so thankful for her.

We truly couldn't have gotten this far without her. Or without Tim and TaLisa's car. Can you imagine doing this using the bus? Oh, I don't even want to think of that.....

So Wed. we started out with big plans that by the end of the day we would be holding our new CPF numbers in hand ready to seek God on the next step.

Well, we actually started on Tues. afternoon by going to the local post office asking for the form to fill out. At this point we were thinking we would take the form home, fill it out, return it and wait for the numbers to come in the mail. That's what we thought. We were told there that if we went to the large post office down town it would be processed faster so we decided to do that. That was God looking out for us because we found out the next day that the form we needed couldn't even be gotten at the post office so had we filled out the regular form that the small post office would have given us (for people with permanent visas or residents of Brazil) we would have waited a month only to find out it wasn't the right form for us.

So Wed., thinking we knew what we were doing, the three of us headed out to seek our coveted cards! Yes - you have figured it out. We couldn't get them at the post office, nor at the Police Federal, nor at the next place, nor the next....(now in this process there were a couple of times we had to quit for the day because we would find the next place closed and have to wait for morning). Each day we started out thinking we were on the right track only to be disappointed.

There is renewed hope though! On Fri. we did find the right place (we think!) as she promised that once we get our passport translated into Portuguese she would issue us our CPF numbers. So off we went to find a place to have the translation done. (it must be done by a certified person) That took 3 tries right there! But it was accomplished and they are suppose to be ready for us on Monday to take to the place we believe will finish the process.

Ohhhhh, I hope so.

We have now been to 10 locations in this process and as of now still do not hold in our hands the CPF cards. They tell us getting these is easy. Wait until we try for our new visas.

Now this is what I heard about Brazil!

Who would have thought that standing in line would
have been our big job for the week.

Sing Along and Blog It

We had heard of the beauty but, quite frankly, we were becoming doubters.

When planning our trip we had decided that we would take the southern route (how southern we haven't decided yet) but having just gone through California in January we headed toward Burns, Or. We took the turn off for Hwy 395 at Riley and traveled toward Lakeview. We had heard stories of Lakeview because our dear friends, the Rodgers, had lived there for 7 years. Just before we left Cindy had told us again how beautiful it was. This is where the doubt comes in.

Sage brush country, to us, is not that beautiful and since leaving Bend that is all we had seen. We were getting close to our destination and the scenery hadn't changed much. But then we rounded a corner. All of a sudden the county name of "Lakes" made sense. There was an oasis.

And it was beautiful.

As we continued our drive we marveled at the way God has made our world so wonderful for the eye to see and yet so practical for life itself. Lakeview, the town, was a quaint little place that I would have enjoyed exploring. We did eat at the Burger "queen". Very good food.

Cindy, we didn't find mile most 7 (maybe we were on the wrong road) but we did enjoy viewing the town as part of your history.

I DID buy a new camera while we were in Bend but, of course, the battery had to charge last night so I haven't got to use it yet. (These pictures are with the old one that only works part time!)

We kept ourselves amused by singing to each other and 'writing' blog posts out loud. (you can only guess how really crazy we are in private!) It's good to be laughing and just enjoying one another again.

This morning we woke up in Reno. Of all the beautiful hotels we probably could have stayed in we choose Super 8. Come on, give us a break. It was clean, cheap and away from the noise - and the first one we came to.

Life is good - on vacation! (we just wanted to rub it in!)

Questions in My Life

I wondered about it. Would it ever happen? Would I be there to see it happen?...

Well, it did and I was. Yesterday.

Those of you who have been to our house know that if you go to Corvallis in any direction you have to cross the railroad tracks. If you're going the quickest route you are barely on your way and you're crossing one set of them. Well, now that I am going to school 2 days a week and have to be there by 8:00 A.M. it puts me right in the middle of rush hour and it gets quite backed up on the main road right off of our street. (our street is a dead end so I MUST take this very backed up road.) The reason the line gets so long is because it crosses the railroad tracks, has room for one car and then hits a light that lets you enter Hwy 99W. Most of the time people are very nice and let me enter the busy, backed up road in front of them but it still makes for a wait at the light. Sometimes numerous times.

Yesterday I ended up behind a man stopped at the tracks, or rather ON the tracks. I see this often and have never thought it a good idea but because I had seen this before and because I knew I was there for a little while I let my mind wonder to school and everything that my day entailed.

I shouldn't have done that.

By the time I looked up from my books the man (in a very large pickup. Remember I'm in a Mini) in front of me had his window down and was waving frantically at me to back up. It was then that I noticed the crossing gate had come down (across his hood as best it could. It was a really BIG pickup). I looked behind me and backed as far as I could (remember there is a huge long line behind me) That indicated to the car behind me to move (and so forth down the line) which allowed me to back further. It took about 3 backings until the guy was back far enough to be out of the trains way...

Just in time for the train to pass.

I don't know. It wasn't a very long train, maybe the damage would have been minimal.... who am I kidding? It was a train!!!

The guy was not happy with me. He left his window down and turned his side mirror so I could see him swearing at me. So maybe I should have been paying more attention but really

Who's the guy who parked on the tracks?!!!

After he had his say with me by way of hand motions and lip contortion and before he rolled his window back up, I gave him the look that replied to his tongue lashing. You know the look...

"I wondered if anyone was ever dumb enough to park on the tracks when a train was coming" look.

He probably had to get some damage repaired on his truck from the arm coming down on it and than the slide of it across the hood as he backed up. First, though, he probably had to go home and change his clothes... I know I would have peed my pants...

You want pictures?

A long time ago I decide it's a lot better to laugh at myself than to cry. I'm rather a slow learner. Those things that come so easily to some are more of a trial to me. That's really why it took me so long to start a blog. How to begin was too overwhelming. So when Kellie was here she was kind enough to get me started. She's patient. Alright, this is fun! Oh no.... why is the size of my letters changing on me and why can't I correct them? what does " lol" mean anyway? Pictures. You want pictures?!
Okay, so tonight my other very patient daughter came over. Jodi was willing to show me why my letters were not the size I thought they should be and how to correct it. She also showed me how to do pictures and linking! WOW! Now if I can just remember how to do it. She said that I can call her though. Have your phone ready, Jodi!

Kellie also told me that "lol" means laugh out loud. I like that. I'm laughing- at myself.

*by the way, this is the picture Jodi helped me load. It's our sweet little Noah. I've been wanting to show him to you, I just didn't know how. Later I will do a whole blog about him. Until then - enjoy!

Another change

It really was a miracle that I was able to choose the paint colors for the church last summer without making a mistake. I don't say that lightly. I prayed about it a lot. I know me and I was way in over my head. God gave me the colors - sometimes I actually saw pictures of walls in my head painted the finished color. It was amazing.

I was reminded of that miracle today. I have to paint my hallway again. FOR THE THIRD TIME!
The first time it was a gray-brown color. I had wanted it more of a brown-gray color. (does that make sense?) It would have been perfect for the grand kids room which was way to blue-gray for my liking. So this week I used left-over paint that Kellie and I had used to do the nursery for Noah and Oliver. Very cute there, very awful here! It's a bright red. What was I thinking?! I don't go for bold, bright colors. The nursery had a lot of white bead board so it worked. I'm talking a hallway here with no windows. Warren said it was scary to walk through it! I don't know what color I'm going to repaint it yet but it will be repainted. In the meantime I used the red outside on an old piece of furniture I use to hold dishes. Was blue, now red. I love it!

I'll figure out the hallway. I just think I'll pray first.