Independence

Eddie's eye is looking much better--less swollen. He had a good time with this washcloth.

G'ma Wisc. made him these overalls a while back but was waiting until he grew into them. Here she is trying them on him--now she just has to cut them to length. I dropped enough hints about wanting her to make him stuff and now he has this cute pattern. Such a trend-setter, he'll be.

I've never considered myself a 'handy' kind of person. Dennis on the other hand, is quite handy. Just about every time he does a project around the house, from putting up trim around the windows, to recaulking a bath, I want to know how it's done. At least until I get bored, then I let him finish.

Fortunately I was paying reasonable attention during our caulking lesson a couple years back. Per my previous post, we've had some water issues in our garage and basement from the recent rains. Course Den had to leave town (shocker, I know). Last night, the water kept coming in. Thank goodness G'ma and G'pa Wisc. were here--they helped with everything from watching Eddie to shoveling water out of our garage and everything in between.

Today I was determined to stop the flow of water. I watched carefully last night where it appeared to be getting into the garage and subsequently into the house. I decided that I would load those areas up with caulk. I only had to call my dad 2 times and Den once--to find out which of the 6 varites of caulk I was to use and how to get the old caulk out of the caulk gun---did you even know such a thing existed? Dad helped with the logistics such as, "if this stuff sticks so well to everything, I suspect I don't want to wash it off my hands into the sink?" and " I can't get it to come out of the tube--I did everything Den said to, and it's stuck in there".

I did what our window installers called "fire caulking". I used an ENTIRE tube in front of the door to our garage (and a little bit of the tube on the garage itself). So far no water to speak of, but then we've just had a nice steady rain, not the downpours that make it look like you are peering our from behind Niagra Falls. It wasn't a pretty job. I was afraid to thin/smooth out the line for fear it would jeapordize the sheer volume I was going for. Den is going to be a little chagrined to see the lack of attention to detail on the caulk job, but I'm sure he can fix it.