Hillbilly Central Vac

Some of you might remember our Hillbilly Air Conditioner 2000.  For those who don't, I regrettably do not have a picture, but it was a fan/roughneck/ice concoction that worked quite well!  I honestly don't even remember how it was set up, but that Pat made it work!  

Well, Pat is at it again.  He has now made the Hillbilly Central Vac.  We have a little corner that houses our wood for the woodstove and our dogs.  You can image the amount of debris that collects on a daily basis, especially as the weather continues to cool and the woodstove is getting more use.  Pat had enough one day and decided to do something about it.

 After careful price comparisons, we brought our new shop-vac home and took it to the crawl space.  Pat had used the hillbilly romex (extension cord) to wire it up under an unused register.  We set it up as close as possible to take advantage of the retractable 8' hose!  Notice we had to work around our custom radiant floor heat piping (that is heated by our woodstove for the bathroom!).  It was tough work.

 Once completed, it is quite invisible.  The register hides all components, and since the floor was once part of the sunken floor, we have a perfect storage area for the attachments!  Since the broom was never quite cutting it, we had to do something, and let me just say, this is fabulous!  It works great!  Simply remove the register, reach down and flip the switch to turn it on, and pull the hose with any needed attachments to where the dirt/dog hair/woodchips are hiding and suck it up!

Hillbilly Perfection!

34

I celebrate birthdays.

I do wish, however, that I could pass on the increasing amount of gray in my hair.  I know, seriously shallow and vain.  I have found some slight pleasure in knowing that my husband now has some of his own:

 You see that big light hair in his goatee?  It's the fat gray one!  You have no idea the excitement I had this night!  Obviously, I had to get the camera and document this momentous event!

Sadly, I am winning this contest.  Pat must be thinking golf score.  I wish I could convince my follicles to play that way.

Oh well.  If this is the worse thing in my life (and it's pretty high up there) then that is a testament to how amazingly blessed my life has been these 34 years.  I have to admit, I don't stress about much.  In fact, I rarely stress.  This last year has opened my eyes and heart to so much, and I am a little apprehensive but extremely excited to see where this knowledge takes me.  Ten years ago my life changed.  Eight and a half years ago my life became combined with another's and change has been my constant!  I have no idea what lies ahead, but I know that change has been good to me and I will celebrate this change in my age!

Now then, perhaps I need to change that hair color...