On Time for Cleaning Houses:

For those of you who don’t know, I have a couple of doll houses I made to go with the hand made Victorian dolls I made some 15 years or so ago.

It was one of those projects that just kept going and growing. First the Dolls. Then some stuff (Clothing and a few bits and bobs.) and more stuff for the dolls, houses to put the stuff and dolls into, books I've written about them for my nieces, pictures to use as illustrations in the books… a doll house garden… Yes, I know I’m crazy, but I hope it is a good crazy.

The dolls are 15 inches high. The houses are six feet high.
















Mountain Man standing next to one of the houses.

I have two of these large doll houses. A two part, six room, three floored house. Picture above. (7 feet wide and 6 foot high) and a four room, three floored house (4 foot wide and 6 foot high) with a garden.














If you look in the box of matches on the shelf, you will find mini matches. In the jigsaw puzzle boxes are jigsaw puzzles. And there is a block of ice and a drip pan in the icebox. The pantry is full of food stuffs, apples to oranges, crackers in the cracker box, cookies in the cookie jar.

It takes the better part of two weeks to clean it all. I use a paint brush for a broom. And I wash up and down everything I can, bedding to bustles.

All the little fiddly bits, knickknacks, and all. From the tops of their heads and the roof top chimneys, right down to the their high buttons shoes and the foundations of the building all gets a cleaning.

I fix the stuff that got broken, replace the things I can’t fix, and I make a few more things for the houses or dolls each time I give all of it a proper clean out.

I’m a busy doll mommy at this time of year. But I’m having fun doing it. Much more fun than I have cleaning my own house.

On A Door to Convenience:

Life is great when the bad times are over. So I’m going with, If it weren’t for migraines, I wouldn’t know how good life could be.

Of course, I do get to have one little complaint. ‘Another week lost from my life!’ (Rant over.)

On the up side. Now that I’m feeling better, Mountain Man is replacing an old door that his father made with a much better one that doesn’t leak the heat out and the cold in.

It will be so nice not to have to pack insulation in between the screen door and the house door, rendering it unusable all winter long. And it is the door closer to the wood shed making it easier to get wood in the house in the winter.

I hated having to go the long way around to the wood shed when there was a door just feet away that we couldn’t use once the insulation was up for the season. And no more digging through the snow to get there and back either.

Why we didn’t do this years ago I’ll never know. We talked about it. But other things just got done first, second, third…

So, as I watch a little piece of family history (the door his father built) be tossed aside for convenience sake, I’ll be jumping for joy at the prospect of not having to dig a path through the snow and ice to the wood shed any longer.

Convenience is a wonderful thing.

On Distractions:

For days I have been trying to find a resolution about 4 video games I bought from the 'Nevosoft' company. Annabel, and My Kingdom for the Princess 1, 2 & 3. I went to 'Nevosoft' because they are the makers of these games and they offered disc versions at a reasonable price. $6.99 each for most of their games and that included shipping.

I really have liked playing these games on line and wanted the discs (Full versions) so I could put them in my various computers without having to pay for the games over and over again for each download, as I moved from one computer to the next.

After waiting for the discs to arrive for weeks without result, I got in touch with the distributor 'RegNow' to find that I was sent an email with the codes for the downloadable versions. And that they never got the word to send backup discs.

I went into an explaination of needing discs to wrap for presents. (As they are a gift from my husband to me.)

There is no place to talk to the 'Nevosoft' company directly. Only a Tech Support email address. I can’t do much right now but let the credit card company try to get my money back.

One of the reasons it is taking so long is that we are in a rain pattern again. I’ve learned the hard way that I need to unplug my computer when a storm comes to call. So I’m lucky if I get a quick email out before I need to unplug again.

I am thankful that the flooding is not hitting my house. But the inconvenience of all this rain is getting on my nerves. And it bugs me when I don’t get what I paid for. Sorry for the rant folks. I do try to keep them to a minimum.

On So Much Info, So Little Time:

I had a really good time listening to my father’s tales of when he was younger.

He used to go the dump where the factories would get rid of miss-made products and regularly get pink pencil erasers for school by the pounds, along with a variety of other things that he and his friends or family could use.

I learned that my grandfather was a professional Roller Derby skater for a time.

And that my uncle, when he was in the navy, was stationed on the aircraft carrier ‘Enterprise’ before and during World War II.

(For those of you who don’t know. The ‘Enterprise’ was the most decorated ship of that war, if not ever. Wikipedia link here. History Channel link here. Battle 360 links here.)

Now I know where my father got all those scars from. My father was attacked by dogs more than once. Most were minor leg bites while delivering news papers.

But the worst one: My father, in his own back yard when he was only about 8 years old, was attacked by a dog and bitten 11 times before his brother managed to hit the dog with a hammer to get it off of him. He has a long, jagged scar that goes from the corner of his eyebrow and over his head, along with others he wouldn‘t talk about when we were kids.

There were tales of misadventure along with childish bad judgment. But he and the others survived those days of not enough to go around. They made it to adulthood and some of the old group still meet a few times a year even though the group gets smaller each year.

He may be the last of his family’s generation. His brothers and sisters are all gone now and his parents died when I was a child.

So he tells the tales that only he is left to pass down to the generations he has fathered and grandfathered hoping that some of those stories will live on when he is gone. It is family history and it should not get lost.

On Busy, Busy Company Coming:

I’ve been trying to help the local flood victims clean up and do my own Autumn cleaning. And on top of that my Dad and Step-mom are coming to visit for a few days.

Yes, despite my long years on this planet all my parents are still alive.

To see them you would not take them for their ages and in some ways you’d think them younger than me. (I’m a bit bent over and slow right now from hauling and cleaning stuff this past week.)

They’ll arrive on Friday and will be staying through the weekend. So I must not just set the air mattress out in the parlor for them like I do for the kids when they come. I give Dan and Step-mom my big, dark, high, ornate, bed so my Dad doesn’t have to get up from the floor in the morning. They just have to use the stool to get into it at night.

This means clearing out my bedroom so as not to scare them to death with my Gothy décor. Like skulls on the bed finials and such stuff. Not that it is strictly necessary to remove them, but it is an excuse to give the room a good Autumn clean out.

So down comes the well cultivated cobwebs. Banished is the dust too thick to write on in the corners. (Yes, you can have dust too thick. It falls back down into the cleared space where you just tried to write in it and it puffs up in clouds in your face.)

My bottles of spider’s eyelashes and such stuff and my caldron get moved into the closet, along with my dead flowers and plants. My mourning pictures and the ones of the moon through clouds and bare branches come down to be cleaned behind as well and my dead stuffed animals too.

My collective parents, (Mom Dad and Stepmom.) are old school Christian and they love me in their way, although they do not like my life choices. So we compromise and they come when I’m doing my Autumn cleaning so that they don’t have to see all my Gothiness all at once.

I love them so I have some of my stuff down and out of the way for more days than just cleaning would necessitate. I cut back on the face paint and wardrobe too because, why have that time old discussion about style when, we can have a good time doing other things before they are gone. (I’m no kid anymore. Just one of their kids. There are nine of us altogether and why should I be the troublesome one besides the strangest.)

So if you were looking for me I was in my vanilla clothing getting it all dirty and torn, cleaning up Deathwatch Manor and then some. (Boy, I wish I could keep some servants around here. But they will clean things up a little ‘too’ clean for my tastes.)

On Trigger Finger:

I was helping out with the clean up after the storms and flooding.

And well I have blisters on most of my fingers, but the worst one is on my trigger finger.

I was using a trigger sprayer and I’ve never sprayed so much stuff for so long. I think I may have sprained it too.

So my blog will be short and sweet tonight. Do to my one fingered typing.

Tomorrow is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. So shoulder your parrot and break out the crackers and your eye patch. Arrrgggg! Me Harties! Do it of you’ll be walking the plank!

No. All in fun really.

On Breaking Three Figures:

Yes, I know that there are more of you reading my blog than it shows on my Blogger Follower List, but I have to say that it was a little thrilling to see that three digit ‘100’.

This is my 789’th posting here on ‘Thoughts from a Eclectic Goth Mind‘. For years I’ve blogged. I’ve written my dark stories for my other blog ‘Thrill or Shiver’ also as time went by.

I supported other bloggers. Jumped on to follow new bloggers so they didn’t have to wait for over a year to get that first follower or months for a first comment like I did.

I saw the numbers rise, fast and furious, for some younger bloggers and, yes I felt a little jealous.

No, I am not into popularity contests. I’m not on facebook or any other social network. (They scare me. And I don’t play well with others.)

But here I am with 100 followers on blogger.

So three cheers for the little guy. It took a long time, but I’ve made it to three digits. Another life goal met.

Now I have to put my black thinking cap on and step up to the plate. Bring my ‘A’ game more often. Because I have people waiting to hear from me. And I don’t like to disappoint.

I may even bring back my Epitaph give away. (You send in an Epitaph and I pick one to win a prize.) I still have some prizes left, if I’m remembering correctly. Let me know if you’d like that!

So thank you out there for reading my blog. Thank you for thinking it was worth following. Thank you for being a friend.

I thank you also my long time readers. You kept me going by hanging in there when my time and subject matter was getting thin.

Oh Happy Goth 100 Day!