Things Wisely Left Behind: The Dick Angel

Second hand shopping is a passion of mine. I feel slightly pretentious saying so, but it's true. I love thrift stores. I love Craigslist. I love garage sales. Hell, I've even been known to dumpster dive. I love digging through old discarded junk and coming up with a treasure.

I used to hunt through local shops for old ponies, I still scour them for household items, and now I rummage for building materials. Our local Savers often have things I will be needing. I'm also blessed to have five Habitat for Humanity ReStores within driving distance. If you've never been to one of these stores, it's wonderland of donated and reclaimed bricks, and tile, and wood, and lights, and hardware, and cabinets, and sinks, and EVERYTHING. I've been slowly procuring things like doors, windows, sinks, and light fixtures for the house. Some of these pieces are really unique and I will be trotting them out for everyone once the building is further along.

Now, sometimes when I'm out sifting through cast off doo-dads, I come across things that just makes you pause. Pause, double-take, cringe, and back away. Sometimes I'll bark a laugh that scares the old ladies in the next aisle.

Today I came across one of these items. I present, The Dick Angel:

I came across this folksy wonder at the Salvation Army in Lawrence, KS. Initially we were calling her the Dangel, but Dongel has been slowly gaining preference.

This makes me think I could start making a quite marketable decorative item for Etsy. I wonder if Alibaba sells rubber dongs in bulk?

Update on the Foundation Redesign and Other Things

After what's felt like a horribly long time of getting nowhere, things are finally coming together. We've had a break in the rain. The trench was cleaned out, the sides have been mostly repaired, and we're just about ready to have another inspection.

After talking with the inspector, he had a suggestion that would speed things up and make it a bit easier on us. Instead of pouring our footings 10 inches thick, we're pouring it up to 24 inches and laying a cinder block stem wall on that. It's costing us a little more and requires us to do a bit more rebar than the original plans. I've been a bit stressed out about that because I've never done rebar like this nor did I have a lot of time to go over the code. I really hope I got it right, because there's not much time left before cold weather sets in. No pressure, right?

This required three pieces of rebar running horizontally and vertical rebar placed every four feet. The verticals had to be placed just so since they will be running through the cavities of the cinder blocks. To make sure I was on the mark I ran the lines on the batter boards and checked my placement with a template of the cinder blocks.

Jack decided that cats are more interesting than rebar. I agree.

So here's more Jack:

Beyond the rebar, we've just been enjoying a quiet summer on the prairie. Our garden has done pretty well for the first year. We have a tiny black cat that has been hanging around. We're calling her Beyonce. She loves to sing, and since all our cats are boys she is the single lady.

No photos of her yet. She's still very skittish.

We have some prairie sunflowers that have grown on the property. Normally, I dislike sunflowers. A lot. Sunflowers are what interior decorators use when they want a place to be Kansas-y. I always associate them with truck stops, gas station bathrooms, kitschy gift shops, and the girls locker room all throughout the 90s. OK, that last one was just Elizabeth Arden's Sunflowers, but it still sucks.

These sunflowers, however, are MY sunflowers, so they're totally different. I love them. The bees really seem to like them too so they are definitely staying.

Edgar is still doing well.

I put up our mailbox and started decorating it. I'm painting mushrooms from my favorite 1970s enamelware set, and yes, the stems look like dicks. Ha ha, dicks.

diiiiiiiiiiicks

The farmer that owns the surrounding land came through and hayed. Now we have large hay bales.

Yeah, they're really not that interesting.

Not us though. We don't really want the grasses cut and hauled away. We're letting it grow wild for now and will be mulching it so we can help restore the top soil.

Damn long-grassed hippies.

I've done some work down in the tree line. There's flat spot that I want to turn into a meditation garden. It sits under a huge oak tree and next to our little stream. Right now it's full of flowers...

Awwwww.

... and a giant honking orb spider.

EEEEEEEEEEEE

That's pretty much it for now. I've had some new stuff happen as far as the trenches go since I started this post, but that will wait for now. Hopefully I'll be sharing some concrete pouring in the next week or so.