Lordy, lordy, but I'm tired tonight. I felt like I could have crawled into bed for the night about 6:00 tonight. VERY unlike me! But, I worked hard, too, and got a lot done.
In preparation for it maybe going to The Peanut's house for a while, I had to access the portable sawmill built and shared between Swamp River Ridge and The Peanut and Bunny's family. It was parked in the Back 40, and the amount of weeds and saplings growing around up and through it aren't even funny! But, before I could even think about trying to pull it out, I had to do some logging.
When I went to jump into the truck, I found this:
I bought a chocolate milkshake on the way home the other night, and this is what the heat in the cab of the 1-Ton (and direct sunlight) did to the plastic! Hot, eh?
Back to the work at hand, I put the truck into reverse and headed up the hill from the parking area, backwards. Suddenly, I felt a . . . well, it's no better described as BAD . . . jolt and sound.
File this under Stoopid. You can't tell at ALL in this picture, but that rear tire is dangling about 4" off the ground!
I remember that the ex once ran over a chainsaw with this truck, and I couldn't understand how he could have forgotten that it was sitting in the driveway. Kind of like . . . how could someone forget she'd left a couple huge, honkin' logs in the middle of the driveway from mowing the day before? Logs that were invisible as she drove backwards with the high tailgate up? Until 1 of the 4 wheels was off the ground. Yup, NUTHIN' BUT talent! Geez, what an idiot.
After I took care of THAT little problem, I was at the Y in the driveway where the road to the trapper cabin splits off. During one of the summer's big storms, this poplar had gone down, effectively blocking the road.
Here's the 'Before'.
And, the 'After' - the branches loaded into the truck to haul to the burn pile, and most of the rest of the tree cut into smaller lengths waiting to be cut again into stove-length pieces.
After I'd unloaded the branches onto the burn pile, it was further up the trapper cabin road to this tree that'd been hung up on others for an age. In order for me to pull the long length of the sawmill out, this had to come down. So, I hooked up the steel cable, and . . .
The bugs are still bad, and any work outside still requires head-to-toe coverage . . . which is oh, so fun in the heat. (Mama & Papa Pea don't have any more bugs at their place which doesn't seem quite FAIR! But, I do live in the woods . . . .)
See what I meant about the area being overgrown?! There's the top of the blade / engine assembly. Beyond that is a car, a pick-up, AND a Suburban!
Here, when I was turning the truck around, you can see how tall the fireweed is: 2-3' higher than the hood!!
Now I've trampled down the undergrowth (OVERgrowth?!) enough that you can see the tongue end of the trailer at the left side of the picture.
I'd hoped I'd be able to lift the trailer into place by hand, but that body is made out of STEEL (which is good)! So, I had to resort to the oh-so-handy jack.
It didn't take me too many tries to get the truck lined up and the trailer hitch on. I helped / watched Papa Pea do it SO many times when I was growing up!!
And, there's the sawmill at the bottom of the trapper cabin driveway. GEEZ, I need to mow that road! Can't even tell it IS a road! Maybe I'll sneak some breaks away from the computer today to do so.
It's now Wednesday, the 17th, and it's taken me this whole past week to finish the above post! But, now that this is done, I can update you on some of the other stuff that's happened since then.
The sawmill was hauled away on Saturday although I wasn't around to see my friends take it. It was a busy, busy in-town at the office or nannying weekend. On Monday, the first day of my weekend, I was SO exhausted and grumpy that I couldn't even see straight. I even snapped at the dogs - a sure sign that I'm not in "a good place". I didn't get much done that day but a 1/2 pint of jam made from some leftover blueberries and raspberries that weren't enough to do much of anything else with. Got a big batch of dishes done, too, and more dog food made up. (HOW does a single person end up with SO many dishes??!! I guess that's the down side to making food - including the dogs' - from scratch.) Then I finally gave the rest of my day over to my current good audio book ('Hard Truth' by Nevada Barr) and stayed up WAY too late rolling a hugely jumbled mess of yarn into a compact ball. You "yarnies" know what I mean: the fine, expensive skein of wool that your mother offers to help you roll when you first get it . . . to which you reply, "Oh no, I'll be able to keep it this way." HA! I ended up cutting it into a million sections and then tying and rolling those.
I wasn't in a much better space, mentally, yesterday although I did get a lot of work done at the computer. Of course, today is fairly mild with a blue sky and super high winds: the perfect weather to get stuff done outside . . . and I am stuck to the computer with necessities, once again. No outside work for me these past days . . . which I don't like AT ALL. Grumble, grump. But, at least my bad mood and aching neck are a million times better today, so that's a HUGE somethin'!
Hope YOU are having a good day today . . . and not stressing about seeing the first of fall's colors begin to appear. ;) WHERE . . . has the summer . . . GONE?!
I just got notification from the lawyer that the divorce had been filed and was finalized . . . which meant that I could run to the court house to get a certified copy of it off in the mail yet today in order to get the financial settlement . . . in order to pay the office rent & mortgage due on the first of the month! I'd been completely stressing about how I was going to (not!) pay them until much later in the month (until the paperwork was done & finished).
So, when she told me, my mood SKY-rocketed - that stress OFF my shoulders!
I called the court administrator to order the copies up, all ready to then run to pick them up and get 'em out in today's mail. "No, no, no!" the court administrator said. "She [my lawyer] must not have read the notice properly. It said that the case has been FILED, but it's still waiting for judge review & signature [at which time it *will* be complete], but that won't happen until some time next week."
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Maybe I should be like that certain blogger we all know and love (to ridicule) and slap a PayPal widget here on the blog & ask y'all to join me in a figurative "barn raising". (Cough, cough, choke!)
I'm down in the dumps but, oddly, do want to blog. But, my mood does not bode well for any chirky posts, so what to write? Well, it just dawned on me: fight fire with fire.
I was just trying to organize some of the many digital pictures here on my computer: putting the "loose" ones into their appropriate folders. So, in the spirit of bah-humbug, I am going to post all the depressing pictures I can find amongst the "loose" ones. (All 1,137 of 'em. Really. I just counted.)
First, I'm gonna run out and do nighttime chores, though. Be back in a sec'.
Okay, here goes:
Depressing: I was supposed to get Tom's passport renewal off ages ago. Now, I don't even know where his passport is. It was somewhere . . . here . . . on my desk . . . . (Nice mugshot, eh?)
Depressing: This fabric pie carrier was made for me by a dear, now-departed woman. After it carried this pie, Maisy smelled the apple pie ooze on it, pulled it out of the laundry, and chewed it beyond repair.
Depressing: During the Christmas snowstorm, our back-up plow truck's (and only other truck) transmission hemorrhaged. Now we have no back-up plow truck . . . nor any other truck with which to pull the main truck out if it gets stuck.
Depressing: This was the morning harvest from ONE night's worth of garden slugs who commited Harry Carry in the cheap beer I'd set out for just that purpose. September '09.
Depressing: While hurrying to get ready for one of the Christmas art festivals, I lit my finger on fire while starting the woodstove. What the . . . ?!
Depressing: This is how big my broccoli got this past summer.
Depressing: This is the big, beautiful pond I always dreamed of. It doesn't hold water.
Depressing: To enjoy the outdoors during the summer here, a bug shirt & being covered head-to-toe, no matter the temperature, is required.
And, one final depressing note to end this depressing day . . . .
Depressing: Thinking the huge, 4' square pile of ashes you shoveled out of the wood furnace a couple of days ago are cool . . . and then placing the large in-ground, animal-grade "pond" (that you just bought for the ducks & geese and hauled 3 hours home from Menards) over it in order to keep the ashes from flying around in the high winds. And then going out in the morning & realizing that those ashes weren't so cold, after all.
Not the brightest bulb in the bin, am I? Although, I surely am the reddest!
Obviously, I chose the 100% DEET route yesterday while working outside instead of the Covered Head To Toe in Mosquito Netting option. And then I promptly forgot that my winter-tenderized skin had not seen the light of day in about, oh, 9 months.
Oddly enough, though, it doesn't hurt. I had Tom apply a combination of Lavender & Idaho Tansy essential oils last night after my shower . . . but it didn't hurt before that, either, so . . . ? At any rate, I'm considering myself lucky that I'm not in pain.
I AM in pain, however, when it comes to my aching, swollen right thumb.
Late last night, when I went out to close up the chickens, my hand slipped while shoving a stubborn double-hung window closed, and my thumb SMASHED up into the low ceiling. THANKFULLY, I'd clipped my usually long nails last week. If I hadn't, I don't think I'd have a thumbnail this morning. As it was, after I opened my eyes following the blinding pain of bending the thumbnail backwards, I thought, "Geez, I think I bloodied it this time!" But then, it ALWAYS feels that bad when you do that, doesn't it? And, there never is any blood.
But, when I got inside and took off my glove . . . vindication! Blood! I won't tell you how far down the nail bent backwards - that would only curl your toes even more. Suffice it to say, though, I "did it good"!
I feel like I'm beginning to sound like a broken record. I'm tired. I'm "behind". I need to get caught up. Hmph. Bitch, bitch, moan, moan. Blah, blah.
So, what can I do to change things? Well, getting more sleep would probably help a lot. Going to bed at 1:20 AM does not make Weslie a happy girl, I've learned. (Come morning, anyway!) But, I'll blame that Wednesday night bedtime on my husband . . . who asked me to do some paperwork for him MUCH too late in the evening (thus pushing my right-before-bed-R&R time even later . . . resulting in the insane bedtime). Thursday night? Hmm, can't remember that far back. Friday night was a late one, too, if memory serves. Definitely more in the AM of Saturday than the PM of Friday when I hit the sack. 'Course, I didn't get home from my town day until 9:00 PM. Last night, I was in bed before midnight, but I slept badly - as I had the night before.
I had bad, horrible, yucky dreams last night - probably not helped by the DVD episodes of 'CSI' I've been ripping through during my previously mentioned right-before-bed-R&R. Also, my inexplicable fear of anything supernatural was awakened during the middle of the night last night when the dispatcher on the police scanner crackled a request for a patrol to drive to the west end of the county to investigate the eerie "flashing green and red light in the sky 40° degrees above the horizon" that SEVERAL folks had called in to report. Notice the insertion of the adjective 'eerie'? Did the dispatcher say that? Of course not. It's just that my half-awake / half-asleep mind instantly went there.
So, the bottom line? Go to bed earlier, don't listen to the scanner while trying to sleep, and don't watch so many episodes of 'CSI'! Duh.
I know my brain was a bit foggy pre-bedtime, too, last night from the massive quantities of chemical fumes I was sniffing. No, 'a bit foggy' is an understatement. A more accurate description would be that my head felt like it was gonna pop off and float around the kitchen!
About 8:00 PM last night, I decided to start painting and staining the kitchen. (Perhaps this is where my problems began - starting a project like that so late at night. But, hey, I AM a night-owl!)
Anyway, the kitchen has a fairly high, vaulted ceiling, and it is a room unto itself (vs. many which are open to the dining room or living room). So, any fumes created in the kitchen are generally fairly well trapped in that room. And, it was cold outside, so I couldn't (well, didn't) open the windows. But, I got the window trim on the window above the sink stained, and one quarter of another window stained. Then, I stained the cupboard Tom and I had made a couple of weeks (months now?!) ago. Next, I argued with the firmly stuck lid on the 5-gallon bucket of the treatment we put on the timbers until I finally gave up and gently shook it instead of stirring it. Then I poured some out of the pour-spout in the lid and treated the timbers. (We affectionately call this stuff 'Jesus Juice' 'cause the company that makes it is very religious and prints their doctrine on each pail of the stuff. A local who began using it way before we did coined the new name, and it's stuck!) Finally, I pulled out the 2 gallon bucket of sheetrock sealer / primer and mixed that up to paint all but the edges of two kitchen wall portions.
This morning, I hoped to get the primer onto the edges of those areas, but the 'Jesus Juiced' timbers were STILL STICKY!!! 'Course, with us not having fired up the wood furnace yet, it IS only 55° in the house! So now, as I sit in my office - my fingers FROZEN as I type - the kitchen is closed up with a toasty fire corkin' away in the cookstove. I just checked the timbers when I went in to get another cup of coffee, and they're still a little slimy . . . but I anticipate they'll dry as the day progresses (provided I keep that fire goin').
