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…

Ah the difference of a fortnight!

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Two weeks ago we had snow. Today it is 83, and even the breeze is a tad warm. My backyard looks like a jungle, and I will have to pull tons of weeds just to find the patio. 🙂 I plan to do lots of yard work tomorrow. (insert giggle)

Friday, I went to see the school lawyer. We had a good chat and worked out various contracts and other bits and pieces. Afterwards, I indulged in a bit of retail therapy. Yes, I went shopping at Joann’s. I bought a bunch of fat quarters for a prayer flag swap I’m hosting with my online quilting group, QuiltersCoven. (350 online crazy pagan quilters.) I think we have 10 or 12 people participating. There was linen on sale, but I didn’t have the cash for it. sigh…

Saturday, we were sort of stuck, as it was rainy and damp. 🙂 Dan suggested that we head up to Pueblo and get that linen I hadn’t got the day before. I’m terrible about buying stuff for me. In the end, we got $180 worth of linen and thread to match for about $88. Rust, teal, navy blue and cream colored linen.

Sunday was suppose to be a sleep in and catch up day. Projects for the Wendy House and other things. Instead, we drove out and ‘rescued’ my parents. The oil and check engine light had come on and Dad pulled over. When Dan checked, there was less than 1/4th of a quart of oil. Three quarts later, we got them home.

My parents were suppose to head up to Littleton on Monday. However, the Subaru needed to be checked by a mechanic, just to make sure there were no hidden issues. That meant I drove my mom up to Littleton. We left around 9am. Listened to Old Blind Dogs on the stereo, talked and had a good time. I visited with my sister and her family, and picked up about 1/3 of a cord of wood. They had just chopped down a tree, and I said I’d take it. I’ll pick the rest up on a future trip.

While I was gone, Dan did some work on the Wendy House. He built the sink base for the bathroom and opened up a vent between the bedroom and living room. He also cleaned up the back porch that we use for a shop. Now to re-clean the herb room where he piled all the stuff that doesn’t belong in the shop!

Today, I’m catching up on a three day absence from the computer. 🙂 It was kind of nice. While I was reading email, I had a bird fly in the door, around my desk three times and then out the window. Tonight I have a school board meeting and tomorrow I’m gardening!

Switching Centuries

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Last week was a small bit of hell. There is an event in late winter which we had planned to attend. This is Corazon de Leon III. It’s held in La Veta and put on by our own shire. Shire Villaleon. I wanted to make some new clothes for the event, as it is a Winter event. A nice balance to Battlemoor, held at the end of August.

I bought the fabric in November, and figured that I’d have PLENTY of time to make two hats, a tunic and a new overdress. Silly me. Life in it’s own way got busy. So, on February 1st, I put my foot down. I was going to SEW! Keep in mind that my sewing studio is unheated. If you go back through my posts, you’ll notice something… Every one of them from November on has the word SNOW in the title. Can you see my problem? It was too cold most days to sit on the front porch and sew.

I also forgot to mention something. On February 19th, when we were up in Denver for the CASB Legislative conference, I slipped and broke my nose. Yes, big goose egg on my head, slight concussion and of course, the obligatory Black Eyes from hell. I managed one day at the conference before the bruises bloomed, but that was it.

It also put my behind schedule, because I just didn’t feel good enough to use a little tiny needle…

March 1st. Of course, there was snow. I managed though to plan out Dan’s hat.

March 2nd. Sewed, ripped, sewed, ripped the hat. Finally realized I needed fur. Rabbit fur. We had to order it. Fast.

March 6th. Cut out my dress and Dan’s tunic. Did a little sewing.

March 8th. It snowed, but I actually got some stuff done. Worked on the viking coat a little and did the last minute drafts for the tunic pattern. Keep in mind, that unlike most modern sewing patterns, medieval patterns are sketched and measured onto the fabric.

March 10th. Meetings. Awgh! Sewing like a crazy person. I used the machine on the major straight seams. All the flat feld seams and hems done by hand. 

March 13th. Dan’s hat is done, as is his tunic and the main portion of my apron dress.

March 14th. While with my parents in Colorado Springs, I’m sewing like crazy. Dad is suppose to be in hospital for bladder surgery, but instead we ended up in ER. They thought he had a stroke. Craziness ensues. Dad ends up spending the night in hospital, and we go home. Only good thing… I finished my hat.

March 15th. Corazon. Well, we managed to be there for about 3 hours. sigh… At least we got to see some friends and wear our new clothes for a few hours. Later that day we went up and got my Dad. No stroke, but not sure what happened. A very rough weekend.

Here are the pictures of the clothes and some of Corazon. This coming week, I’ll be doing some adjustments to the apron dress.

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Dratted Cold Continues

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We did have a few warm weeks. However, Ground Hog’s day saw us plunge back into arctic weather. Snow and COLD. It was -22 Wednesday night. it would have been alright except for the wind rattling the trees and plunging us into wind chill cold. Speaking of wind, we had one tremendous wind storm just over a week ago. Just before it ripped the weather station off of the house, it registered 83mph.

It’s been busy since I posted last. Lots of school board meetings, stacking firewood, trips to Pueblo for all sorts of things, stacking more firewood, trips to Denver, moving more firewood, working on organizing the crafts area, taking care of my parents and their house, working on knitting and nalbinding needles, and trying to stay warm!

I have to admit that I am so glad that we have our little woodstove. It is our sanity saver even if it seems like all I do some times is move, stack, restack and move more firewood. 🙂

We are getting ready to build the closet in the Wendy House. Two weeks ago while it was still warm, we built a small cover for the plumbing and I bricked in part of the patio area next to the Wendy House. The cover worked pretty well, until two nights ago. It was too cold for any plumbing. At least we use Pex, and that is pretty sturdy.

I’m hoping to get the craft area fixed up this week if it is warm enough. I want to finish up a few projects and get going on some that have been burning my brain. 🙂 We have Corazon in about a month, and I want some things done so that we have warm gear! 🙂 I did get my socks done. I only did the first one in August, and didn’t do anything else for nearly 6 months.

Well, off to finish dinner. Italian onion soup. 🙂

Oh what a crazy month!

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This month has been crazy. Chaotic. Dizzying. Now, I thought it was a little crazy, because I spent most of the first week at the CASB Winter Conference. This is the big school board association conference held every year at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. It was a very good, although COLD conference. Average temperature was about 13F outside for most of the week.

I went up on the 4th, as I was presenting at the New Boardmember’s Boot Camp Workshop. 🙂 Five minutes of fame. LOL! Well, it started snowing on Wednesday morning and I was taking a school district vehicle. The VAN. A huge 12 passenger van, which made me feel like a five year old. I nearly needed a step ladder to climb in. Granted, it was nice to have the weight, as I was driving in snow and on ice most of the time.

This was also the first time in almost a year that Dan couldn’t come with me. As it was so cold, he stayed home to keep Brandy from turning into a Pupcicle. We had no one to feed her or dog sit her, so there was no choice but for him to stay.

Thursday was great. I went to my first session about Rural districts and then presented that afternoon. Five minutes on ‘how data is important.’ The rest of the conference was good, and I was very glad to get home on Sunday. Once I got home, we went and picked Morgan up from La Junta. Monday, I spent time with Daniel and Angela. We went shopping in Pueblo and had a great time. I should have gone to a District Accountability meeting, but I didn’t make it.

Tuesday was our board meeting. A long one, but good. Thursday was busy. Two events. A school holiday party and a school district office party. Sort of stacked together, but we managed both. 🙂 Good thing they were next door to each other.

Friday, we drove to Denver. We did a bit of shopping and on Saturday we saw our computer client. Got home late Sunday. The week started out busy. A trip to Pueblo, work for Dan, the holiday program at Gardner on Wednesday, cleaning my parents house and then up to Denver again on Thursday because our computer client was having weird issues. Friday we did shopping and then drove home late.

Saturday was Solstice. Yule. We got up at dawn and enjoyed the sun rise. Then instead of a nice breakfast, we had to check on the school wrestling tournament. Should have been a 10 minute stop. Nope. It wasn’t. At noon, I left to go help my dad stack a cord of firewood. I was done in 90 minutes, and went back to the wrestling tournament. We were there till about 7pm. Afterwards, we grabbed dinner and then collapsed in bed.

We woke up to snow this morning. Today we did odd jobs around the house and tried to relax a bit. Oh, and Dan built a faux satellite transmitter to test his ground station. The rest of the week isn’t looking much calmer.

This is the song that I woke up with on Solstice.

Just a Flake or Two…

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Remember that we got a dusting of snow on Thursday and Friday? Well… it snowed a lot on Saturday, and even more on Sunday. We woke up today to over a foot of snow. This is wet heavy stuff. Not the dry squeak when you walk stuff like we had on Friday. Lucky for us, we got a load of firewood on Friday. Amazing how a bit of tree can make you so happy. (and warm!)

Today we slept in a bit, and we had just gotten dressed and finished breakfast when the phone rang. It was Dad. He needed help with the snow in his driveway. So, we got in the car, slid down the alleys and paid our water bill. (the Big job for the day). Then we drove, slid, rolled to my parents house. For all of the ten blocks difference, they got less snow than we did.

Dan used my parents snow blower while Dad shoveled a bit of the walk way. Funny bit is that at one point, I looked out and Dad was playing out the electric cord for the snow blower and all I could think of is “On Belay!” (Dad was a technical mountaineer for years, doing lots of rope work)

Then Dan got the truck stuck in the middle of the street. He grabbed the chains and lo and behold… when you change your tires, Always, ALWAYS check to make sure your chains fit! Ours didn’t. The two of them had to dig the truck out and use the chains for traction on the snow than on the tires.

After the truck was free of the snowbank, we headed to the grocery for Thanksgiving dinner. I’m bringing the pies and Dan is making rolladen. Yum!

As I was taking pictures, I realized that many of the pics look exactly the same as I’m using the same spot. So, I tried to change them up a bit this time. Two of the pics are at my parent’s house, and the rest are here.

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Wow! What is that blue stuff?

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Oh yeah… The sky. We’ve had a couple of short rain showers, but for the most part, we’ve had lovely sunny weather. Dan says it is because I’m working on coats for Battlemoor. 🙂 All the sun has allowed us to finally mow our weeds out front. They were hip tall on me! Maybe next week we will attack the back yard. Right now, our dog plays hide and seek in the weeds.

Also over the last few weeks, Dan has worked for the school district as a contractor. Since we only have the one truck, sometimes it means we have to shuffle schedules. It’s been a long week. A really long week.

Monday: Teacher inservice breakfast meet and greet.
Tuesday: Take Mom to Dorcas and a school board meeting. Also first day of school
Wednesday: Cleaned parents house, did laundry. School district IT interviews in the evening.
Thursday: Did not feel well.
Friday: Ran errands in Pueblo and got the oil changed on the truck.
Saturday: Breakfast with parents, did yard work for parents.

Along with all of that, I’ve taken Dan to work, run my own errands, worked on SCA clothing for Battlemoor, and tried to keep up with all the “Regular” stuff.

Tomorrow, we take Morgan back to college.

I am so ready for our vacation in 9 days!!!

Fire

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Wednesday night around 6:30pm, a fire started on the East Spanish Peak. Life went from this:

huajatolla-3.jpgto this:EastpeakfireAnd by the evening it looked like this:Fire from Lathrop State park

The fire started on the Boy Scout Ranch were there were about 178 boy scouts from Kansas and Texas staying. They were evacuated with short notice and were taken to John Mall High School where the Red Cross had set up a shelter.

We saw the fire when we sat down for supper on Wednesday night. Friday morning, I went to the high school and checked how things were going. I ran the rest of my errands after making sure that the scouts had what the district could provide for them.

Dan set up the weather station on the roof so that the local incident control group could use it’s stats. We’ve watched the fire ebb and race with the wind. Yesterday, we thought it was going to die down, only to have the wind pick up and energize the fire. The smoke was really bad, as the East Peak Fire smoke joined with that of the West Fork Complex fire smoke. Not only was the sun orange, but so was the moon last night. Last time I saw the sun look like that was in the 1970’s when we climbed Mt. Whitney and California was burning.

Whitney sunrise

It is now Sunday and the fire has burned 12,442 acres and is about 10% contained. Fire investigators have found the source of the fire, a tree struck by lightning. People have been evacuated from just east of La Veta all the way to I-25 and from south of Walsenburg and HWY 160 to the county line. Walsenburg, La Veta, Aguilar and Trinidad are all on what is called Pre-Evacuation notice. In other words, pack your belongings that you wouldn’t want to lose and be ready to leave.

So, my life is in boxes yet again.

We have National Guard, the Army, A bunch of wildfire fighting teams and lots and lots of locals working the fire. We hear planes flying overhead to drop slurry and helicopters dropping water. We have watched the small planes check out the fire and guide the bigger planes in to do drops. Check out the Huerfano World Journal’s Facebook page for further information and lots of photographs.

And for a bit of dark humor… Everyone around here knows that the Spanish Peaks are also called the Wahatoyas… Breasts of the Mother Earth. Well, in a moment to try and relieve tension, I had one thought. Mother Nature picked one hell of a time to Burn her Bra.

Weekend Entertainment.

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Oh my! At least it was entertaining for my Dad and anyone watching.

A better title might have been “working on the chain gang”. We started on my Dad’s yard at 9:30am on Saturday. Dan cut up wood with the chain saw and I carried it to the truck. About a quarter of a cord. Then, while he mowed the front, I picked up about 30 gallons of twigs and sticks. While he mowed the back, I weeded in the front and trimmed up a rosebush that hadn’t been pruned in probably 15 years. The lawn mower had a sense of humor and ran out of gas when Dan had a 10 yard strip left to mow. We finished at 12:55.

When we got back to the house, we had to unload the truck. We had the wood to stack, Spearmint for the front and an Italian plum tree sucker we hope will transplant.  I pulled weeds and did gardening out front with Morgan while Dan washed dishes.  Then it was time to collapse. We finally recovered around 7pm.

Then I made pizza. Yes, homemade pizza. Morgan nearly burned her mouth again, trying to eat it when it was too hot. 🙂

Sunday… we did not sleep in. Instead, we got up and I made bacon and fried potatoes. After breakfast, I had a board meeting with Mach 30. Once that was done, Dan and I started to repair the roof of the Wendy House. He tarred and I sifted dirt for the cover layer. I also did a bit of weeding in the alley while he was on the roof. We will be touching up things for the next few days as everything soaks in. There were a ton of nail hole leaks. Oh, and the drips. It was 90 yesterday. Brandy of course walked right under some of them. She’ll just have to wait until the tar wears off. She’s speckled.

We pulled off some of the old tar paper siding on the west side of he Wendy house to see what was under there. Wood! We will need to replace some of it and then put siding on. I told Dan it WILL be before winter! I can see daylight through the cracks. However, the paper being gone will help in doing the plumbing.

Next up, Dan inspected the lower chimney on the main house. OMG! Nearly 3 feet of damage. Loose bricks, crumbling mortar, etc. He took it down to a safe level and capped it. I am very glad that we do not use that chimney. Funny part is that use to be the furnace chimney and supposedly safe. And… Grandpa Sudar wouldn’t use the fireplace chimney as he thought it was damaged. Nope. Other way around. We are lucky the house didn’t burn down.

While Dan threw bricks off the roof, I cleaned up part of the back patio and did more garden work in the front. I planted the yarrow in the yard and watered the transplanted mint and plum tree. The mint looks like it will survive. I’m not so sure about the tree.

Exhausted doesn’t even cover how we felt. We cleaned up, ate dinner and were in bed early. It was a lot of work, and while it may not seem that much was done, we were very busy.

That long weekend…

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Memorial Day.

Where everyone thinks summer begins. For me it is a quiet day. The last two weeks have been hectic and the rest of this week will be much of the same. Last week saw two retirement parties. Three teachers and one staff member. Oh, and contracts to sign. Lots of contracts. On Wednesday, we have two 8th grade graduations and the last days of school. Then just a modicum of quiet.

On the home front, we made a little progress on the garden. Dan hasn’t been feeling well, so I wasn’t able to accomplish as much as I’d like. Maybe next weekend. We did do some changes in the house though. Dan moved his ‘office’ back into the ‘lab’. He just wasn’t getting enough work done. He was getting distracted and spent more time watching things with Morgan or disturbing Morgan with “Look at this jet engine run!” than he did work. There are days I am so happy that my office is out in the Wendy House. 🙂

I’ve been doing some sewing as well. I’m working through the repair-tailor pile and then it will be on to the Battlemoor clothes! Only three more months! 🙂 I’ll share photos as I get things done.

Oh, and we are cat sitting. My parents are off to Denver for a few days. Zoe is such a sweetie. 🙂

Now back to that quiet…