You don't say?!

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You're all going to be noticing some changes around here on MHICTy..maybe you already have.For the past four years my family and I have had traumatic event after horrific devastation.  On a "good day" it's just a massive ordeal.  We've had deaths and losses that will never heal along with salt and battery acid being rubbed in the wounds.  And I'm not exaggerating, I wish I was. I can tell you this, that old adage of "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is a load of BS.  I plugged forward with my MHiCTY posts anyway thinking that working on creative projects would be helpful and be a good distraction.  I have presented some well photographed and creative presentations but the writing was lackluster because I'm not in a comical mood.  Over the past several months I have been spending a good amount of time outside in nature (well, my yard while working on the exterior of the house) and thinking things through.  I now am realizing I have not allowed myself time to attempt to heal or at the very least the grace of understanding just how much I have been through.
Right now I am doing my best to cut back on anything that adds extra work. maintenance, financial commitments, or mental stress. I have also been doing the "inner work" of positive thought (that's hard for a sour ball such as myself) , focusing on the current day, gratitude and Stoic teachings of letting go and caring less.  I've cut out keeping up with all the drama and bad news of the world.  All of this has been helping however we are now into Summer which causes me seasonal depression since it's impossible to go out and enjoy outdoors, even at night.  I have gratitude for air conditioning and early releases of Halloween stuff during this season.
So like I mentioned earlier, changes around here are going to be...I don't even know.  Less posts or less posts that involve multiple layers of work.  I may start leaning more into life essays and opinions.  Rants and venting only if I think they will be comical because I'm staying away from negativity.  I don't need to purposefully bring it into my life, it's got no problem seeking me out on its' own (that was a joke?!).
I do expect to be all systems firing for Halloween though! 

Preheating

photo credit: Camerique/Getty Images

Mr. Husband said something to me that I found quite hilarious and sadly true.  Right now Florida is just "preheating"... and it's already miserable out there with us hitting the low 90s. We'll be really feeling the burn, and I mean that literally, July thru September.  I noticed it was like a switch got flipped from cool and comfortable on April 30 to humid and horrid on May 1.  However I have been seeing reports of northern states that typically get to enjoy decent spring type weather are having temps higher than we have in Florida.  I say good!  Those northern states are the ones that whine about Winter and how much they love Summer so here you go..... Have some Summer, enjoy your climb into a 500 degree oven!

 

Tormented

For Nightmare Theatre's season 4 finale with the film offering of 1960's Tormented I made us a themed cake for the viewing.  Since a certain friend is still going hard at his diet of no sugar, I made a sugar free cake with sugar free icing.  It's all from a mix/tub so no recipe is needed. 

I tried to make it look like a sandy beach with seaweed.  The sand is the domed top of the cake cut away and crumbled.  I made a lighthouse cake topper from trash (plastic cups, foam board, scrap paper), put a print of the movie poster on it along with floating disembodied heads of the Mittens, Sapo, and the Baron. 

Sugar free cake isn't all that bad and it saves you about 60 calories per slice.

Of coarse the main person that this cake was made for had to be sure to let me know afterwards that sugar free cake gives him gas.....

Here is a brief synopsis of the episode:

A jazz pianist is haunted by the ghost of his ex-girlfriend, whom he watched fall to her death on the eve of his wedding to another woman in this Bert I. Gordon sleezeball from 1960. Back at the NMTV studios, cable access investigative journalist Dr Lester W. Sinclair is convinced that Sapo is an escaped convict, and launches a campaign to bring him to justice.

 And here is Nightmare Theatre, season four's finale, Tormented!

2024 Celebrations

As seen in  the previous post I spent a lot of time and effort working on the exterior of our house during the first few months of the year since that is the only time in Florida that it's comfortable to be outside for hours and not need medical assistance for heat exhaustion.  The issue with this is that a bunch of our family celebrations are during this time frame with 2024 being a bunch of milestone ones.  This year is PB's 20th birthday, Mr. Husband's 55th Birthday, and our 10th wedding anny.  Trying to tend to the exterior and make celebration magic happen, well, just couldn't happen.  I couldn't do it all.  So this year I had to do something a bit different.  I had PB do Mr. Husband's B-day theme and vice versa.  (I did help them each with the decorating but I didn't go wild with allspice over it.)  For our anny we went out for an expensive dinner.  And for all of the events I made a simple cake for each.

Here's how everything came together:

So first up is PB's birthday.  Mr. Husband choose to do "20 Faces of PB" .  We went through all of the photos we had and picked our favorite one from each year of his life then printed a bunch out and placed them around the dining room.

I made a box mix cake and put the images on skewers.

For Mr. Husband's birthday theme PB picked a show that Mr. Husband loves...Walker Texas Ranger.

We printed out Walker photos and decorated with all the western type items we own.

For our 10th anny I made us our favorite Hummingbird cake in the shape of a horseshoe for good luck:

We then dressed up in our wedding clothes and made fools of our selves at a nice restaurant:

House scraping, sanding, repairing, wood puttying, priming, painting.....ugh.

 

I thought I would show some of the long, hard, and laborious work I have been doing over the past few months.  These images are showing most of the work up to the priming stage.  I have since gotten all of this painted but I haven't taken photos of it yet since I still need to paint all the window trims and a set of shutters need to be painted and rehung.

Most all of this has had to be done up on a ten foot ladder or even climbing on the roof, which I do not enjoy doing.

Since the heat is horrible right now I am trying to squeeze in all of the last bits here and there in the afternoons if it hasn't rained or isn't going to rain.  I still have a big chuck of the back side of the house that needs everything done to it but that's going to have to wait til next season.

Here is what the house looks like when it doesn't appear to be covered in zinc: