Oh the Chaos…

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Since last I had a chance to write, life has been just a little chaotic. First we had the Mountain Miners Day on September 20th. While I didn’t watch the parade or go to some of the events downtown, I was involved with a play written by Barbara Yule. It’s called “For Tomorrow We May Die”, the story of Mary Thomas. It was about a woman who survived the Ludlow Massacre. Originally it was a 3-4 person play, but turned into a one woman dramatic reading by Tanya Perkins. I made an apron and scarf for part of her costume and was the school connection as we were holding it at Washington School. It was lightly attended, but Oh My! It was beautiful.

The next week was a surgery for my dad, a school board meeting, a field trip with the school STEM class, a CASB (Colorado Association of School Boards) conference and the Celtic Music Festival. Yes, just a little jam packed. Dan drove my parents up to Colorado Springs for Dad’s surgery. I stayed home and attended the school board meeting.

On Wednesday, I went with Mark Thompson and his students to the Wings over the Rockies flight museum in Denver. That was a lot of fun.

Thursday was crazy. Once again, lots of stuff to get done. Dan was gone doing Celtic music festival stuff while I got things done around the house and prepared for the concert in Gardner. A Taste of Things to Come is always fun. The Gardner community center was packed.

Friday, 5:30am. Up, dressed and out the door to the CASB conference in Pueblo. Dan was out the door an hour later to work the festival. Lots of good info at the CASB event, and then home just in time to help at the first concert at the Fox. Full Set played. It was heavenly. Got home and got a phone call… My Dad was in hospital with an infection.

Saturday, 5:30am. Up, dressed off to Pueblo. Legislative delegate day at the CASB conference. I finished up by 2pm. Took Mom out to the hospital to see Dad. Then off to the evening concert and the 10th Anniversary concert afterwards. We got home around 1am.

Sunday. We got to sleep in until 7am! Wow! Off to La Veta for the final day of the Celtic music festival and the final performance of “For Tomorrow We May Die.” Oh was it grand. Packed house. Not a dry eye either. Oh… Oh my.

Afterwards, we went to see my Dad again. He was not doing well. Confused, etc. Monday thru Thursday was a mix of hospital trips, running errands, meetings, and playing catch up with work. Oh, and lots of planning. Friday, we got to bring Dad home. It was also the day that the doctors told him no more driving. So, Dan and I are now “Driving Mr. Sudar.” Luckily, Dad took it well after an initial bit of shock.

Over the weekend, we’ve tried to get ready for winter. We chopped firewood, cleaned up the yard a bit, brought plants in and have driven Mom and Dad wherever they needed to go. Somewhere in here we got our bathtub for the Wendy House. We hope to plumb it soon.New tub2 On Sunday we took a drive up Cordova Pass to see the aspen. Ahhhh… it was beautiful.

This week has been yet another rush of work, driving and meetings, and it is only Tuesday. Ah Chaos, thy name is normality around here…

Bits and Bobs

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At least that’s what it feels like we’ve accomplished since we came home from Battlemoor. Lots of little jobs. Clean this area, cook dinners, work on the gardens or the Wendy House. One big improvement was storage. We ‘floored’ the loft over the kitchen and rearranged the storage. No more tubbies on the ground. Plus, we added coat hooks, hooks for the iron, etc. It makes life just a little more livable. I even had a Western Scrub Jay come check out RedTom’s food dish.

Some of the time has been spent with Morgan. Her 18th birthday was on the 10th. Wow has time passed. I made green chile and a carob mayonnaise cake. The recipe uses may instead of oil and eggs. Our friend Mark and his daughter Catherine came over for dinner and cake. It was a good evening. Thursday night we went to their house. Friday was chaos.  It was Cold! I think we got to 41F! Fire in the wood stove and heavier clothes than I’ve worn in months. Brrrr!

Inside there was packing, laundry and trash. Morgan was getting ready to move out. Dan took her to do laundry and a few errands. Morgan left for Fowler, a room mate and a job on Friday night.

Yesterday, Dan worked on organizing his office (an ongoing project) and concealing the network wiring. We no longer look like we live in an IT closet!

While he did that, I cleaned Morgan’s room, moved sewing storage tubbies in and made the last loaf of Artisan’s bread. This is the first time I’ve tried it. Very nice. I’ll be playing with the recipe over the next few months.

Then it was time to tackle the Wendy House. Threw all the scatter rugs outside, and emptied the bathroom and Brandy’s area. Swept, mopped, dusted, etc. I wiped down everything in the bathroom as I replaced and reorganized it. I hosed down the rugs and Brandy’s bedding. Most of them were too doggied to throw in a washer. While I was doing that, I got bit by red ants. Ugh… It burns! It swells! It makes me feel horrid! I slathered on Benadryl and kept going. Vacuumed the bedroom and swept the main living area. It was so nice for it to be clean.

Plus, while we were waiting for things to dry, I had a thought. Brandy would be warmer if her bed wasn’t on the floor. While trying to engineer this in my head, I was cruising Off Grid Quest, a website I visit. I came across one of the pallet stories and *POOF*! An idea was born. Dan went down to our local feed store which gives away pallets, and grabbed a load. A bit of circular saw work and Brandy had a bed platform. She was a bit uncertain at first, but it looks pretty good. We might fancy it up a bit, but for now, it works. We also have pallets for future projects and/or firewood.

Today is going to be low-key. I still feel like dreck from the ant bites and all the dust I ejected from the Wendy House. Dan mowed my parents yard and is finishing up the last of the office work. I’m going to make another batch of artisan’s bread and dinner with all of the veggies from the garden.

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700 pounds of garbage.

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Yes, 700 pounds of building rubbled hauled to the dump. When we took the sheds down oh… 4 years ago, we piled stuff off to one side with great plans to recycle and reuse the corrugated roofing and other timbers. You can stop giggling. The pile has been great housing for Red Tom, and killed weeds. However, we realized that our expectations were a little off. There was just too much work to be done to reuse it. So, we cut it up and with the help of Daniel, hauled it to the dump. Our little pickup was so full, I swear the front tires were barely on the ground.

This was the start to our crazy busy weekend. Once we finished at the dump, we headed to the grocery store. Our original intent was to grab a few needed items like toilet paper and dish soap and then head home. Well… we decided to have a celebratory picnic. We grabbed chicken, potato salad, drinks, and dessert. Then we headed up old La Veta pass. We sat in a huge meadow, watched the ants and birds and listened to the wind blow through the trees. It was a much needed bit of solace. On the way home, we grabbed sandstone for our garden.

After we unloaded the truck, we started to look around and figure out what was next. Dan decided to mow the back yard. He got 4 ft done when our mower died. Yes, our brand new mower. So, we loaded it in the truck, and headed to Pueblo. We dropped it off at Lowes and then grabbed flooring for the Wendy House. When we got home, we cut the law with the weed wacker.

Sunday, I cleared the living room space while Dan went over to mow my parents lawn. When he came home, we tried to put a shelf up. This originally was a wooden fireplace mantle. Forty minutes later, we realized it would not fit where we wanted it and moved it to the East wall.

Then it was time for the flooring. We are covering old cement that has cracks, oil stains and is a bit of a mess. A variety of interruptions made a hash of the day, our tempers and stamina. By 9pm, we were exhausted, but… we had 90% of the work done. To our frustration, we realized that the area of the old ramp was still spongy inspite of everything we’d done. The solution of course is to put another layer of flooring down. sigh… However, for the moment, we have a level floor. We built part of the plinth that matches the height of the one under the wardrobes. This has been needed because of the uneven nature of the foundation on the north and east walls.

By the time we flopped into bed, I think every muscle I have ached. We loaded and unloaded huge weights of material six times. Our poor pickup! Then we shuffled, moved and built until we couldn’t see straight. In spite of all of the delays, we got a lot accomplished.

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That itch…

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To clean. Yes, Spring Clean. It’s almost warm enough. Nearly 68F if you don’t derate it for the wind… 🙂 I want to be cleaning. To dust, sort, shake out, sweep and wash windows. (don’t faint!)

However, Dan is writing the last paper for his class. I have a crazy week to get ready for and my allergies are… impressive. Achoooo!

Instead of working on some grand project, I’ve been nibbling at things. I did a clean and organize on the main house. Swept floors, tidied up my desk, etc. Did a little of that in the Wendy House. What I’m waiting for though is next weekend. We are planning to build the closet. When this is done, a whole domino of events can take place.

  • move, sort and shuffle clothes. (winter to summer wardrobe)
  • put floor in WH
  • move big dresser into the living area of the WH
  • rearrange ‘office area’ in WH bedroom.
  • Clean WH. (yes, that includes washing windows!)

And that doesn’t count other things like making raised beds, moving the compost pile (yet again!) and other bits. Now to just get through the next few days.

Of Snowdrops and Sparks

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While in some ways it has been quiet, in others, it has not. we’ve been trying to get the Wendy House more “livable”. Our efforts with siding showed good results in that the snow storm two days ago was hardly felt. 🙂 Less draughts and cold seeping in. Dan’s filling in the roof ends with insulation worked! In this last week we finally got all of the ditches filled in and the step back in place! No more drawbridge to navigate in the dark!!!

We added 500 pounds of gravel in a drainage ditch and then filled and leveled the ground as best we could. Then we moved the large slab of sandstone into place and it only took minor feats of amazing strength to level it.

On the inside, we have been working on the electric wiring. Grandpa Sudar was a very clever and devious man in many ways. Over the years, we have dealt with many of his building oddities. A six inch long Louiseville slugger stub filling in a hole, drywall Not attached to 2×4’s hidden in the wall, and now the electrical work. We’ve been trying to figure out where the wires ran so we could upgrade the romex. We were stumped. So, Dan began to undo the light fixture we are replacing with a ceiling fan. Lo and behold… Grandpa had built itty bitty soffits to carry the wire! We had always wondered why there were 1×2’s on the rafters… now we know!

So, we will be installing the lights by the weekend. We are also upgrading lights in the ‘garage’ part of the Wendy House. Four LED lights from IKEA. They will replace four 100 watt bulbs with bulbs that use about 9 watts and give the same light. 🙂 I love that our electric bill keeps on dropping! Average so far this year is about $50 a month. We’ve moved from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescents and now to LED bulbs.

Here are some pictures of our latest works:

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Dan’s Dominos

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Or how to knock over a whole slew of things with just one pull. 🙂 Yeah…

This weekend, we were finishing up the trim, electrical work and a few other bits and pieces on the Wendy House. I started on the brick wall in the main room that we use for a bedroom and my office. I took down all the bricks and then cleaned up a few of them. Then I put them back up on the wall with liquid nails. I was amazed at how fast and easy it went up. Better yet, how nice it looked. WendyHouseWork22 WendyHouseWork25Once I got the room put back together, I started working on the yard and doing a few other bits and pieces.

We had Daniel and Matthew as visitors too. Daniel borrowed some tools and Matt helped knock cement off of the bricks for me.

Dan started with the trim work and the shutters. He made me some cute ‘rustic’ styled shutters which I really like. As soon as we have the lumber, he will be making a planter to hang under the window.  We’d been talking about paint, what colors, whether we could manage this at the weekend, would the weather hold, etc. So, I started taking pictures. We were was almost finished when he realized that he had to add another piece of trim.

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Could he leave it alone? No. As he’d already put some of the tools away, he walked back into the garage and pulled on the cord of the drill. It was pinched under the chunk of drywall. As he pulled, it knocked the drywall, the siding, a few other things and… the bookcase. It was a beautiful (wince) domino effect.

We took a break. After a sandwich, a phone call and some planning, we started picking up the mess. I stacked stuff and he moved the big pieces.

Then he finished up the trim. About twenty minutes later, he was up in the ceiling doing the electrical wiring. The area he was in will eventually be a loft storage area and the ceiling to the kitchen area. After all that was done, we had to decide where to put the bookshelf. Moving that, we came to the realization that we needed to clean up the rest of the area too.  Mice droppings, dust, sawdust, spiders, (three black widows the size of dimes!) and leaves were everywhere. Up until last weekend, it had been only separated from the great outdoors by a rather old garage door. Not air tight or even dust tight.

WendyHouseWork23  It took a little longer than I thought it would, but it was worth it. We tossed all the lumber scraps in the firewood pile and placed the shelf in a different spot. Oh, and we tested the wiring job. That new kitchen light is bright! LED, but bright! We may replace it with a less intense one later.

Once we had everything cleaned up, sorted, and stuffed in the right spot or pile, we had dinner and then crawled into bed. It had been a long day! Productive too!

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Home Improvements and SpaceUp Denver

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The last week has been busy. We’ve been doing lots of home improvements and we went to SpaceUp Denver. While the weather is good, we are working on replacing the garage door with a door, window and wall. We’ve cut all the joists to level the ramp and make a real floor. Then we got the chance to go to SpaceUp.

We went up the night before and stayed at the Hotel VQ. It’s this sort of geometric hotel next to the Bronco Stadium. Dan called it the 14 story Yurt. 🙂 It was. Better yet, as I was looking at the hotel layout, all I could think of was 1) Adafruit Flora and 2) Ironman’s reactor. We giggled a lot.

SpaceUp Denver is an Unconference. There were about 25 people there, and I was the only woman other than SpaceUp staff. Oh well. The speaker, Dr. Alan Stern was interesting. We had another gentleman speak on Citizen Scientists and then Dan spoke on Mach 30 and ODE.

Best bit of the whole day though was the Trivia quiz. You could get two points of you answered it without prompts and 1 point if you used the prompt. Well, Dan was wizing through the questions, so I just listened. Then they asked…”Who was the 1st American in space.” I KNEW that Dan knew the answer, so I didn’t even check. Especially after he’s been working on the Shephard Test Stand for almost a year. Even I knew that it was Shepard.Then the prompts go up and Dan gets this funny look on his face and I realize…. Mr Always has the RIGHT answer had gotten it wrong!!!! I laughed! It was great!

When we finished, we visited my sister for an hour and then went to IKEA. We found a sink for the Wendy House for 1/2 off. It was a great end to a lovely visit.

And yes, I am still laughing about Dan’s wrong answer!

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Of Digging and sticking

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This weekend was full of digging, plumbing and sticky things liked grout! First off, we tiled the top of the rolling cabinet in the kitchen. It has needed a new top ever since the Formica peeled off years ago. And, I’ve had these tiles for oh… 15 years at least. Pretty ones with herb pots on them.

I glued the tiles down on Friday morning. Then I went up to Pueblo to get what I thought was the last of the supplies needed. Wrong! sigh.. The tiles I bought were too narrow for the space, so it was back to option B. Glass blobs, or whatever it is you call those little round bits of glass people put in vases and use as game markers. I have this huge bag of them.

Saturday, we grouted the tiles and then while I dug the trench for the water pipe, Dan worked on drilling holes in the Wendy House wall. As he drilled there was a high pitched squeal. He pulled the drill out and there was an old pepsi bottle. He couldn’t move it, so he pulled the board out. The reason he couldn’t move it was because there was a bunch of coal in between the walls! We ended up with two small buckets of coal. 🙂

Then he fought with the tin on the wall. Nearly burned out his drill and then found out that his little saws-all worked the best. After that, we collapsed.

This morning, I made steak and eggs for breakfast. While Dan did school work, I cleaned up the digging work and placed the water pipe into the ditch. Of course, the minute I did that, it started to rain! At least I know the drainage works in the ditch!

I ended up using window caulking around the little glass blobs as there wasn’t enough grout. Fussy. Next time I’m filling the channel with grout and THEN putting the glass blobs in place. It looks okay though.

After dinner, we got all the plumbing we could done because we were short a coupling and a 45 degree elbow. We plan to finish up the plumbing on Tuesday.

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And Now…. the heat.

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Am I going to complain? NO. We’ve had some lovely rain, and right now it is trying to rain, even though it isn’t hitting the ground. We are working on getting use to Celsius temperature readings, so my atomic clock says that it is now 33C outside. (about 92F) A little warm, but much nicer than -12C. (10F)

On Mother’s Day we did a bunch of gardening. Keep in mind that our yard is Still a construction site. I just get more bits and pieces piling up. On Sunday, we made a tire garden out front on the steps to block access. Before you think I’m crazy, you need to understand that those stairs slant Downhill! They are a danger. So, we are blocking them and adding new steps to the side where everyone walks already. The first two pieces of wood are in place and the steps will be finished in the next week. We plan to add terracing and more herbs out front as well.

In the back, we fixed a piece of fencing with a piece of the old gate. It isn’t a perfect fit, but looks like it has been there a while. We opened up the rest of the gate area which will help the lilac bush.

Then we started building the potting bench. It’s an old cupboard that we’ve attached a door to that will eventually be painted and have a roof. Right now, it works well. On top of that, we repurposed a chunk of old gutter. We’ve attached it to the fence, filled it with dirt and planted lettuce seeds and onion seeds in it.

In the back, where we moved the old tin fence 90 degrees, we have built a raised bed. I added some paving  bricks and will be building a second raised bed to the south of that. Once we got that done, we fell into our chairs and collapsed. It was a great, long busy day.

Here are the pictures… Citronella on the front porch. The bulls head planter, green tire with mint, stairs, raised beds, and potting bench.

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Yet Another Blizzard

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Yes, it is snowing again. We’ve had a lot of snow since I wrote last. Probably 18 inches all total. Life in it’s own way has been crazy. We took my dad up to Colorado Springs for cancer testing. His bladder cancer is back and they will begin chemo in about two weeks. While we were at the hospital, Dan got some sort of stomach bug which has kicked his ass. Ugh.

He was nearly over it by the time we went up to the Colorado Association of School Board’s Winter Conference over Valentine’s Day. CASB’s conference was good and a fellow board member, David Tesitor went with me this year. Things in general with the school board are settling down. We just finished the superintendent’s evaluation. We work on her contract on Tuesday. I had been writing a separate blog about school board stuff, but simply couldn’t keep up with it. I’m working on writing more on my NaNoWriMo story which is a little more involved that I thought it would be.

On our way home, we stopped at IKEA. 🙂 We got new dishes, a kettle, a BIG cup for Morgan and some little bits and pieces. It was a good but tiring day.

Since we came home, it’s been running errands, general housekeeping stuff, electrical work at The Cowboy Connection for  Marianne Smithey and stacking a ton of wood. We bought a cord and I think we got closer to a cord and a half. 🙂

About that snow… I could just recycle the pictures. You’d never really know. However, here are the latest out our window.

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As predicted, it began to snow around 11am. My son Bryan and the two grandboys, Gavin and Talon were due to visit around 1pm. They made it just before it started to snow heavily. We had a good visit and I gave them some things that Dan and I just don’t use anymore. It saved me a trip to Dorcas Circle, and them a trip to the store. 🙂 Plus, he brought me an armload of firewood. Wheee!

I gave the boys two books I’ve had for them which they were so excited about. 🙂 Who knew that Peter Rabbit and Goodnight Moon would bring such smiles. They devoured two apples and half a dozen gingersnaps while I made potato soup for dinner. When they said goodbye, Talon told me “I love you to the Moon and back.” Pretty good for a three year old. 🙂