And the winner is . . .

. . . Julie!!!!! Who "hit the nail on the head", so to speak (or the "screw" in actuality). Our landlord's been doing a lot of work in the basement as of late. One day, last week, it felt like he was sanding and pounding our floor away. We expected his head to pop up any minute. Well, his head never came up, but something did. Flannery was walking about later that same day and found her food impailed upon the tip of a screw. Ouch! We began searching and found a whole line of them. We promptly called our landlord and I covered them with puffy stickers (I had to stack up 3 to cover the tallest screw!). Flannery wanted to pound them back in (nice thinking, Julie!), but I was afraid that whatever he had created in the basement would fall apart, and screws aren't the easiest things to pound out, and we should take advantage of the fact that we are renting and spend our time doing non-house-related stuff. The thing is, our landlord wasn't much concerned that he had drilled through a lovely, old wood floor. In fact, when he finally came to fix them, he didn't even remove the stickers, and sparks FLEW and he grinded down the screw, wood floor and all.



P.S. - Sorry about the lack of blogging. We had a nice string of the kids being sick, me being sick, Flannery having a ton of work, me getting the stomach flu for a day, us running out of heating oil for a day, and then my 19-year-old knee surgery finally letting go. This is not downer news, Donna, because it is all past! However, the non-downer string of events did allow me to read, In Their Own Voices: Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories by Rita James Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda (not a downer book - very hopeful), half of Race, by Studs Terkel (more of a downer, but uplifting as well), and the first few chapters in People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn (downer, downer, downer!!!!).