Donate your pet fur (God knows I have enough around my house)

Thursday 22 Jul 2010 by Shelley | No Comments
Filed under: Life

Pet fur is help­ing to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf, and every­one who owns a dog or cat can do their part. Mat­ter of Trust, a non­profit in San Fran­cisco, has been col­lect­ing dona­tions of hair and fur for more than ten years now. An absorbent, renew­able nat­ural fiber, fur is per­fect for remov­ing oil from spills. The hair and fur received from styl­ists and groomers by Mat­ter of Trust is stored in ware­houses. Vol­un­teers then stuff it into nylon stock­ings to make mats and booms that are used to con­tain oil spills, such as the cur­rent one in the Gulf of Mexico. Check with the orga­ni­za­tion to see if they are cur­rently accept­ing boxes of fur — some­times they are at capac­ity. But they will soon need more and they must always be pre­pared for more disasters. If you go to their web­site, www.matteroftrust.org, you can sign up for their Face­book fan page or Twit­ter alerts and you can watch a video about how the process works.... Read More →


Whatever work you do, enjoy it!

Sunday 18 Jul 2010 by Shelley | No Comments
Filed under: Fun Tags: , ,

What­ever work you do in life, enjoy it as much as this guy does.  Read More →


John Elder Robison explains life as an Aspergian

Thursday 5 Nov 2009 by Shelley | No Comments
Filed under: Disabilities, Life Tags: , , ,

“If this trac­tor would have sex with you, would you get rid of your wife?” Augusten Burroughs “Well pos­si­bly, or maybe for a freight loco­mo­tive.” –John Elder Robison I love this. I wish I could get my sis­ter, Andrea, to explain in writ­ing what it’s like to be a per­son with intel­lec­tual dis­abil­i­ties. That, how­ever, would be a much longer YouTube video.  Read More →


Stay Hungry

Wednesday 4 Nov 2009 by Shelley | No Comments
Filed under: Life Tags: , , ,

I am not feel­ing too well tonight, but NaBloPoMo must go on. I’ll keep it short though. I sched­uled 3 esti­mates for paint­ing the room today. Two of them did not show up on time. One never showed. In the mid­dle of it all my neigh­bors son revealed a des­per­ate need to work. He, like many peo­ple out there, is strug­gling and work­ing through it by throw­ing lawn equip­ment into the back of his Dodge Neon and ask­ing to mow lawns to break even. Lucky me, he’s been laid off from con­struc­tion. SERENDIPITY in Action! Prim­ing starts tomor­row and he’s tak­ing on the project. the pros who didn’t have the finesse to show up to a sched­uled appoint­ment to get busi­ness need not apply. When you’re hun­gry you don’t take any­thing for granted. The hunger for work is a rare but good ethic to carry into any sit­u­a­tion. Stay hun­gry my friends.  Read More →


What was I thinking?

Tuesday 3 Nov 2009 by Shelley | No Comments
Filed under: Life Tags: ,

I started prim­ing the grooves of my pan­el­ing today. About 6 grooves later, I was exhausted and really over­whelmed. The wood sucks up the primer like a sponge. I’m embar­rassed to admit this, but I gave up. I put down the paint­brush, logged into Angie’s List, and sched­uled esti­mates for paint­ing the entire room. The first one is tomor­row morning. It’s not that I couldn’t do the project. Phys­i­cally, (if spread out over a cou­ple weeks) I could man­age it. How­ever, I only planned to paint one wall. There were still 3 more walls to go. The prospect of barely fin­ish­ing the project only to still have 3 walls remain­ing leaves me defeated. I would hold a paint party if there weren’t so much room for error with the paneling. Maybe the expense is worth it. We don’t use the room now– It’s 4 walls and a ceil­ing of dark dreary wood pan­el­ing. Chang­ing it into a bright room that is fin­ished out and usable could make a huge dif­fer­ence in my... Read More →


Painting Slippery Surfaces & Other Quandries

Monday 2 Nov 2009 by Shelley | No Comments
Filed under: Life Tags: , , , , ,

Ok, yes. I was laid off on Fri­day. I’m sure this will pro­vide me with plenty of mate­r­ial to write about once I fig­ure out what the heck hap­pened. I’m still pretty shell shocked (which sur­prises me) so instead of deal­ing with the real­ity of it, I’m pre­tend­ing I’m on an extended dream ‘hol­i­day’ taken with my fab­u­lous imag­i­nary Euro­pean vaca­tion days (don’t they get a month or more?). To make the most of my illu­sions of grandeur, I’ve taken on a project that has turned out to have a sim­i­lar scale of hal­lu­ci­na­tion: Paint­ing. I intend to trans­form ONE wall in my house into a happy thing to stare at. sounds easy right? Wait, wait…Here’s the catch: I picked the most dif­fi­cult wall there was. This is not your ordi­nary wood pan­el­ing. It’s not par­ti­cle­board. It has 1/4 inch-deep routed grooves every 4 inches. It’s shel­lacked, stained wood. It’s old. It’s dingy. It’s knot­ted. It’s real wood. Did... Read More →


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