rayhawk’s posterous

Thank you Mommy!!

We were going to buy the cheapest one they had at Lowes but it was only 5000 BTU and would only cool 150 sq ft.  I have 288 sq ft to cool and we were afraid the AC would either run constantly our would burn out quicker so we went for the next size up.  This is what we got:

This is the advertisement from Lowes

$149.00

First off I need to thank my friend Lori for the idea.  I met Lori online about a year ago and we have been communicating ever since.  She is a fellow do it yourselfer and we often share ideas for using salvage materials for home repairs.  Lori has her own booth on Bonanzle where she sells her hand crafted items to supplement her disability income.  She lives with a painful neurological disorder and is raising her own kids plus a niece.  Her home and vehicle seems to be always crying out for some kind of repair too.

She thought it would be a good idea for me to open a booth.  I laughed and said...with what.  I have nothing to sell!  We can't afford to do crafts and if we could I can't do much in that area, Amy can, but often we have no money for craft supplies.  When we do buy yarns or materials it's for her to make winter socks, leg and arm warmers, hats, mittens etc.. things our family needs.  Our income is strictly budgeted to cover our bare basics and what we might have left over is usually sunk in either car or home repair needs.

She says...well I can donate a few of my things for you to sell through your store.  I thought that sounded pretty good, she makes some really nice things.  I gave her my log in stuff and asked her to set up my booth because I have no clue how to sell things.

She set it up and loaded in a few items, then had the idea of taking some of the pics of my animals and some pics of Amy and I at our local fund raiser events and using those listings to tell a bit about our family and why this kennel build is so important.  Some of my friends who are also on Bonanzle liked the idea of contributing items to sell through my booth. 

Soon Peg asked me to select a few items from her booth and she would load them into my store for me to sell for the project.  Peg has a really nice store full of beanie babies she too is an animal lover and rescuer.  Now I had more items and as the booth started finding viewers another friend wanted to make me a banner and she helped me find my way around a bit.  She's also going to make a digital art piece to sell through the Crippled Critter Booth.  Karri makes some awesome digital art and she has a booth on Bonanzle.

I started to promote the booth a bit and Sherri a friend on many other sites I am a member of wanted to contribute some Avon Items to sell through my booth.  Sherri has a hard life but she is a strong, loving and supportive person.  She has a lupus which is a very difficult disorder to live with and her husband lives with cancer.  This wonderful couple has learned to support each other through illness and recovery time and again and try to make ends meet with Sherri's Avon sales.  Please do check out her booth, you just might find something you didn't even know Avon sold.

So now I have an active Bonanzle booth.  I told my mom about it and she will knit a pair of socks to donate through the booth.  Speaking of my mom.  She donated funds for me to buy a new window air conditioner so I won't be swelling up and suffering in the South Carolina heat.  Both of our AC's blew within days of each other.  Thanks to some online advice my son is able to run his on low and it's a bit more tolerable in his room.  Mine is worthless and needs to be replaced.  My mom more than anyone in the world knows I'm a strong survivor and when I complain about something it's because I have already tried to live with, repair, replace, or raise what is needed to handle the problem before I reach out for help.  I do have a lot of pride, it's all I have that is mine and totally mine, I earned it through being strong and adaptive.  It hurts my pride when I can't do something on my own, and since my pride is all that I have that is truly all mine and 100% earned by me...I don't like to put myself in a position where I lose pride in myself.  There is no pride in begging...so I don't beg.  I acknowledge that I need help and when help is given I have a perfect history of always repaying or paying forward MORE than I received because nothing comes free.  To me donations are not gifts...they are debts and if I don't repay the donor, I'll pay it forward every time.  That is the only way I can accept a donation without hurting my pride.

Back to my booth...LOL...check it out.  All funds raised or donated will go towards building a stockade style fence to surround an acre of property as well as a feline containment netting system to prevent cats from escaping the kennel.

This is the stockade fencing panels available at my local Lowes.  You can click on the photo for more info from Lowes.  This is what we intend to surround 3 sides of our property with.  The rear half my property is on a tree line and we can re-use the existing kennel walls
to build that fence wall.

We will need feline containment netting and for that we will need several pipes, the cheapest is low grade conduit pipe with T adapters on the top.  Nylon netting will be stapled along the fence walls, then a cable strung through the net which will expand 4 feet away from the fence and threaded through the T's at the top of the pipes driven into the ground.  Then all the cables will be pulled tight and we will have a 4 foot net canopy that will top cats from climbing the fence and going over the top.

We have an acre of land, but are unable to use it until we put up a fence.  The reason...it's pure and simple.  My neighbors do not like us because we don't live the way they think we should live.  We live the way that suits our family.  We are a non drinking family, we don't do drugs.  We are not materialistic and don't spend money on making the outside of our home pretty. We like to hang our granny panties on the clothesline instead of using an expensive dryer.  We offer love and care to special needs animals and devote our life to them and to recycling, and reusing discarded items and supplies for our family projects.  This is us...we don't like nor want a pretty property with perfectly trimmed grass and trees.  We don't want to live quietly inside our box...I mean home and make our neighbors happy.  We want to be outside making something useful out of whatever it is we happen to find.

We don't buy if we don't have to and we use odd materials like tires, washer tubs, etc for our own projects.  Come on...don't tell me you haven't heard of building with tires or using washing machine or dryer tubs to plant in?  They are huge and already have drainage holes and you can usually find them free.  Same with tires.

Check out this Tire Retaining wall...now that is a great way to build something...dunno if I like the color though.

Here is someone using a washing machine tub as a planter. 

Old refrigerators, freezers and bath tubs can be laid down on their sides filled with rocks and soil and make an excellent raised garden bed.  There are so many ways to use "junk" if you are allowed to collect it in your own yard.  I'm in a wheelchair and I would love to garden, but we need to have raised or hanging gardens for me to do that.  Gardening would greatly reduce our food bill and with the economy growing worse by the day growing your own food is the most logical way to make sure you can eat properly.  Why should we be living with constant complaints for trying to improve the lives of our own family through the reduce/reuse/recycle method that has been taught to everyone since grade school?




Yep I might be crazy...but check this out, what a way to recycle an old bath tub turn it into a sofa!



Many were happy for us when a wheelchair ramp was built.  We heard questions about when we were going to get rid of this pile of scrap lumber.  It looks like crap...when are you going to get rid of it?  Why do you have all that stuff there?

Well this pile of 20 year old salvaged lumber from a donated deck that was cut up with a chain saw and trucked here



Was turned into a very useful wheelchair ramp which also serves as a ramp for elderly, blind and physically challenged animals



We do things differently but our "junk" collections have purpose.  We reuse and recycle as much as we can.  It's earth responsible and it's financially responsible.  Why go buy something when you don't really have the money and you can pick it up for free because someone else threw it out?  Had I been ordered to remove my collected salvage because it was offensive to neighbors I would not have a wheelchair ramp today and someones discarded deck would be filling up the landfill instead of going to good use.

We need the fence so we can continue with other projects that our family needs.  We can always find salvage...we just need a place to keep it and since we have an acre of property we should be able to keep it here.  Our animals deserve to use the entire property too, there is plenty of room for them to roam but we can't build a chicken wire kennel where it can be visible from the street or along neighbors property lines.  Our kennel is small and they deserve more room as do the humans in our family. 

Since we are paying for an acre of land it would be really nice if we could use it

The month of July didn't start out so well for us.  Again I had been expecting some money coming in that didn't come in.  I was told last month that it wouldn't be late again so I thought it was safe to budget on it...well that was another mistake and my car insurance bounced on me again meaning that when my SSI check came in I had to cover the insurance out of the general bill account and also the late fees.  Two payments were missed that I had budgeted on that that messed up our whole financial system for about 3 months into the future.

Just to make things even more wonderful my wheelchair tire blew out on me!  That day sitting in the heat in a chair that was hurting my hips like crazy I noticed my window AC was frozen over.  My son's had been doing that too and we couldn't figure out the problem but when his room is too hot he can go visit the neighbor.  When mine started doing the same thing, well I'm stuck in one room with nowhere else to go and on this day I was in serious pain from sitting in chairs that I can't position correctly in.  Argh...not fun!  Well we went out the next morning to try to replace this tire.  Bike shop was closed so we went to the department store.  Evidently finding a 24 X 1 3/8 inch tube is not as easy as I thought!  Not a single store had them!  Finally I'm hot, sweaty, in pain and frustrated and my son says lets just try a 2 inch tube, the worst that will happen is it won't work.  Well the tire was damaged too so we got the tube kit that has that slime sealent stuff in it.  Thankfully my sons idea worked...one less problem.

Get home and it's hot as...well you know.  Not a single AC is working!  I hopped online to get some fast ideas.  I got some good advice and we went out to get a few things to try to clean up the AC's and prevent the ice.  My son's kinda drools cool air now if it's on low.  Mine is icing up worse now that we cleaned it!  We had needed to replace my other son's AC but now we have 2 and 1/2 dead AC's.  My sons can always spend their days at their friends house and it's much cooler at night.  I however am stuck in one room all day, every day and I will need an AC in my room.

I reached into my bookbag for something and found out the screen on my camera is smashed.  My camera is used as part of my position for another non-profit I work with.  Now I will have to replace that!  Luckily I can do that pretty cheap, I don't need a fancy camera just once that does video and still shots.  It's just yet another aggrivation.

Finally the last straw...or maybe the last strap....we were headed out to a store to get something else said to help with the AC and my heel strap broke on the shoes I use with my braces!!  I attached it with a rubber band but that throws my whole gait off and is dangerous.  Now I had to buy another pair of shoes!  I don't walk much, I don't need shoes...but I need them to hold my braces on which hold my feet and ankles in the right position so my feet/ankles don't roll over and sprain when I stand up.  Really....this has been a crappy month!  I'm sure I could have found a much better place to drop $20 than on a pair of shoes!!

I had some donations on a site where I am trying to raise funds for home repair and modifications, I can't get a payout there though so those funds are useless to me so right now I don't have that extra side cash I had been depending on to make ends meet...I guess that little bit of hope is gone now.  My ac's are blown, I'm running on a temporarily inflated tire, my car is off the road in need of radiator work, the truck is still running but it needs transmission work.  We need to open this yard up!  There is absolutely no way I can cook in my office without AC that is just dangerous and the yard has needed to be opened up with privacy fencing for a few years, now it's urgent we get this done so we can collect salvage materials to start our gardens, repairs and modification.

These last few months have SUCKED!  I really need to find some kind of Internet job I can do at home, we can't keep living like this.  I have skills.....just they are useless.  My skills are wonderful to donate, I help out with Wembaster duties, forum/egroup admin, management of calendar, blog, photo gallery, member support and communication.  Lots of people are glad for my donated skills and I can offer about 16 hours at second and third shift hours...nobody wants to hire me for a real paycheck though.  I am lucky to earn spare cash now and then, then I depend on it and it's gone and we are left spinning in the wind like a leaf spiraling to the ground.

Thanks for letting me vent a little, I'm so sick of this!  Anyone hiring?  I'm a great web mistress :)

Ok, that is no fun!  I'm sitting there then all of a sudden a strange hiss of air.  Looked down and my tire is flat.  Ok, yeah I know tires go flat, but there is something unsettling about a tire going flat in your wheelchair.  Tire goes flat on your bike and you can walk it home.  Goes flat on the road...well you can still sit in your car comfortably till help arrives.  When it goes flat on your chair you can't sit in it, you can't move as easily as you could 2 minutes ago.  It's hard for me to use other chairs to sit in, transferring is extremely painful on my knees and hips.  I have great difficulty getting out of any chair, but with my trusty wheelchair I can push the chair towards my legs as I'm trying to stand so my legs don't wobble so much which reduces the pain and stabilizes my legs which reduces the risk of collapse.  Wow...when a tire goes flat you really do realize just how much that piece of equipment has helped you and how totally lost you are without it.  Amy set me up with her office chair...I can't move the chair!  My legs can't push the chair backwards or pull it forward.  My insurance payment bounced this month, yet again I planned on money that didn't come in so now I have late fees, we are eating ramen and veggies till payday and now my freaking tire blows out on me!  I did not need this.

After returning from camping and realizing how much easier cooking over fire is, and how much I missed it we decided to scour our yard for stuff I could use to make an accessible fire pit.  We happened to find this round, heavy cement pipe.  Have no clue how it wound up in the woods behind our house but well...it will make a great fire pit.  We salvaged some cement blocks from a burnt out house and filled the bottom to allow for ash/coal fall and to raise the fire to a good cooking height.  We reused a stove grill from our old dead stove which we will use to cook on.

Here is a picture of the fire pit with one of our cats laying on it.  Don't worry, Chester is brain damaged, but he knows enough to try to lay on the pit when it's hot :)

I was informed last night that the annual Crippled Critter Benefit event will be held on September 29 this year with a rain date of October 5.  This years goal is to completely rebuild a kennel, but this time we will enclose the entire property.  The wheelchair ramps really ate up a lot of space in the existing kennel leaving little space for the animals.  Little grass and brush grows and since this is intended to be natural habitat that brush is needed.  Cats love to build nests and dens in brush and in the summer months they lie in the cool tall grasses.  While the always have access to an air conditioned space, they prefer the outside as most cats do.  Grass is also needed for proper decay of animal matter and the space is needed for both humans and animals.  Having a large animal family enclosed in a small space with humans is not the best environment for anyone.  We plan to concentrate all efforts through the summer and fall to fully enclose the hard with a feline containment system and privacy fencing since our neighbors do not like the way we store salvaged scrap, or like to see or animals.

We are extremely involved in reuse/reduce/recycle.  If there is any possible way to reuse something, or recycle something we use those options before buying something new.  We are trash pickers, scavengers...we use what others toss away and we shape it into what our needs are.  This is environmentally, socially and financially responsible...however many simply don't see it this way and they complain about "junk" visible on someones private property and unfortunately for us, they have all the rights and we must enclose our yard to prevent them from seeing our salvaged items that we plan to use for recycling.  It's sad when environmentally, socially, financially responsible people have absolutely no rights.  People just toss stuff away, let it enter our landfills which overfills them and causes problems for everyone.  People who prefer to collect this stuff for reuse or recycling are seen in such a negative light, yet reuse and recycling is known and proved to be beneficial.

Anyhow, the only way to keep our animals and family comfortable is to properly fence in the entire property including privacy screening and that is our current goal before we start using reuse/recycle items for our gardening and kennel supplies.