Going to the light!

The pod had its makeover, and is a nice little hideaway.  Husband even found a 6 volt fan, so I can get air in the afternoon, when it is warmer.

But.

The old door, which is now the ceiling, was filthy. The pod was the "box" of a box van, and many miles of dirt had accumulated.

 This also made it less reflective, and I was trying to make it as light as possible, to make it easy to see, and less light needed if I was out in the morning or evening.

So, Husband found a scraper, I got a bucket of soapy water and a couple rags, and dug in. In some cases, literally.  Dirt fell off in chunks, the tarps I put down were blackened, and I looked vaguely like a long haired Pig-pen from Charlie Brown, when I finished. 

Husband had to check on me from time to time, because I was inside the box, so the door could have locked me in.  Made very sure I had the pull rope, and a large block to jam the door open with! But after scrape and scrub, it was clean... Enough.  At least for what I was doing.

So, after letting it dry, (warm day, didn't take long), I painted. Husband had some paint left over from another project, so I dug in and slopped paint about.  One coat, and since it was afternoon by this point, the paint was drying quick!  I was able to get 2 coats on.  I believe it is semi gloss, but whatever it is, it is bright and light, and really opens up the room, visually.

So, it now is a nice reflective item, rather than a light suck.  Makes it just look even nicer, to me.

Now to get all the DUST off of everything.  Note to self, dust covers are a GREAT help.  But... I did it!

Oh, and the bucket with soapy water? Ew...

And that was after a rinse!!!

Minty fresh chickens.

I hadn't cleaned the hen yard, and it was getting overgrown with teasels.  I finally decided it was a mess and picked up my anvil loppers and went for it. 

I normally like to use my weed whacker, it's much faster. However, with the weather we've been having, the teasels were taller than I am! So cutting them one by one allowed me to control them a bit better, and not have a forest of them all fall on me.

As I cut, I found the bit of peppermint had spread. A LOT! It now covered the pathway to the back of the chicken house.  I didn't care, it's not hurting anything where it is, so I finished up, and let the chickens out while I got some feed out for them.

Now, my chickens have a strange habit. They run around the hen house when I get ready to feed them.  But with all the weeds, they were running single file right by the building.  With all of them gone, the chickens spread out, running through the peppermint.

Several times...

When I opened the door to let them in, it smelled like a small explosion of candy canes!  Considering the way that hen house CAN smell, it is a pleasant change. 

So, I cleaned the yard, and now have minty fresh chickens!  ;)

Mess on aisle...

I had stored the white pumpkins in my pod, whence they turned yellow.  It's cool and dark in there, so I didn't worry about them... I figured, hey, when I need them, I will get them out to feed the chickens...

Ugh.  What a mistake.  I didn't take into account, cool, dark place doesn't mean 27 degrees.  Yeppers, it was well  below freezing for a few days, might have even been cooler than that, but it was cold...

I figured, well, I am not going to use the pumpkins, I am going to gift them to the chickens for Christmas.

Oh, what a mess...  I opened the pod door, and the pumpkins had shrunk.  They were lopped over to one side, and looked a bit like a mis-colored flat tire.

Uh, oh...

I tried lifting up one, and well, let's just say, it didn't work.  I ended up using a shovel, and the chickens, well, they tore it apart and ate the seeds, but it wasn't exactly the feast I'd planned...   I sprayed the pod area with Lysol, and, since it was still cold, decided to close up shop, and deal with it later...

Fast forward to about a few days ago.  Husband and I were chatting about a change that he was going to make to the pod, and he said, did you ever get that pumpkin mess cleaned up?

Oh, @$^%!!! 

Er, no, honey, forgot all about it...  So, we had a rare January 50 degree day, and I got out a mop and a bucket, some towels, and went out, expecting a slurry, mold, SOMETHING disgusting...

But it really wasn't.  There was a long area where the pumpkins had leaked liquid, now dust dry, and two little spots that were bits of pumpkin where they had sat, also dry. 

I mopped the dust up, and it was nearly undetectable, once I had finished, except for one bit of pumpkin, that I will have to use a plastic card or something to scrape up, because it sort of stuck.  Not bad for a 'what are we going to have to clean up after nearly a month?' (Whew!)

Of mice, men, and plans.

Well, it's that season, when things slow down a bit, not much is happening, and so I made plans.

And that sound you hear is the Universe laughing so hard it wet itself...

Thought I would take Mom camping.  Dad had some problems, and so we delayed the trip.  I was going to do some personal camping, (read: I go out into the camper, stay in the back yard, and eat foods Husband doesn't like, read books, and binge watch Downton Abbey.  And work on the garden.  Probably in that order.)

So, we had a phone call.  We knew Husband's Dad and Mom in law had been talking about coming out.  So, it was his Dad.  Husband asked how it was going.  Dad in law pipes up, Oh, we're in Nebraska.

!!?!??!!!   !

Oh!  Well, I might still 'camp'.  But it will be a LOT shorter than I planned.  I believe, with the way the two of them drive, it wouldn't surprise me if they showed up at our house at, or before, Friday.  So, one day will be dedicated to making the table usable for several people, rather than an open concept office desk for the two of us.  Picking up the multiples of magazines I had set aside to read, too.  (Might just take those out to the "camp", and read them... Sometime?  Put them with the month's worth of newspapers I want to look through?  Gah...)

They have set up with a friend to have a place to stay nearby, so I don't have to worry too much about the accommodations, but I don't want to move things continually to give them a place to sit themselves, or their stuff, nor do I really want it to look like we had a tornado go through a paper mill before they visit...

I have food put back, so we shall have something that they can eat when they show up.  I have a few other things I need to make sure are taken care of.  Husband has a new hearing aid he needs adjusted, before they show.  I think that we will have enough things to entertain and amuse for a bit, they love to go and visit friends...  (Ok, except for the sort of sad comment, we asked if they were going to visit some friends in a nearby state, they said, no, they had all died, so there was no sense stopping.  With age comes wisdom, but it still sucks, from time to time...)

So, when Dad gets all his stuff and doings worked out, Husband's hearing is up to snuff, the in-laws are settled and doing well, and I get through any more surprises, we'll go do the camping thing.

Why, oh, why am I hearing that dang laughing again???

Woooah, look at all the pretty colors... ??

For my American friends, Happy Independence Day!  If not, Happy Thursday! 

******************************************************

Well, it was clean the chicken house day, and I had a mess.  I cleaned, and cleaned.  Without going into great detail, some of the older birds are... prodigious in the EXTREME in voiding... EEEEW, even.  So, I had to clean up, and put down fresh cedar. 

I also had to clean the yard, too.  The brambles and blackberry vines were taking over the whole of the back of the chicken house.  Not good for getting around, and gives hiding spots for chickens... And predators.  And so about an hour or a bit less, everything was whacked down to a reasonable walking area again.  (And I discovered where the blasted broodies were hiding eggs in the yard.  Which are now removed... Sigh.)

When I finish this, I am bushed.  Husband got me a very powerful weed whacker, and I can use it for a limited amount of time, or it darn near rattles my teeth out!  So, after all the dust, pollen, plant bits, and... doo...  I was a mess.  I came in the house, and was ready to clean up.  I sat down to remove my shoes and socks.  This is normally a no biggie item...

Until Ding showed up. 

Yon kitty decided I was eminently sniffable.  And proceeded to do so, from bottom to top.  She was relentless! I would move her from my feet to start taking off a shoe, and she was then up beside me, sniffing my belly and elbows.  She was really into sniffing, going full flehmen, all over me. 

I let her continue for a while, then had to draw the line when she climbed up to my face, and proceeded to sniff and lick same, and tried to even pull off my glasses by nipping them! 

I still don't know exactly what set her off, but... 

We do have wild peppermint in the hen yard.  Considering that, we could have other wild plants out there that 'tripped her trigger', too.  I don't know if peppermint would do it, but it could have been that, too.

Or, she just thought dirty hen yard smells good... With that crazy kitty, anything is possible. 

But, after a shower, and change of clothes, she was back to good ol' "meh" mode...

Germs and Cleaning.

I think it’s safe to come out… I hope.  After being off and on for nearly a month, I thought I’d whipped the problem.  Grandma passed away, and I went to the funeral.

Aaaand, promptly got sick again.

Yay…

Finally crawling out of the whole sneeze, blow nose, cough violently, repeat nonsense… For now.  I am, in fact, spraying hands, and anything that doesn’t move, with a little anti-germy spray I carry in my purse.  At the rate I’d been going, I was tempted to put an extra-large can of Lysol, but it wouldn’t fit…

AT THE MOMENT, the creeping crud seems to be away.  I am now in the “okay, healthy, now I need to get a flu shot, hopefully preventing further interruptions to my doings.”

I will be getting this maybe the end of the week, or the start of next, depending on when Husband and I get our respective derrieres in to get them, (or arms. Whatever.).  He and I like to go together, moral support, I guess.

It’s really odd, the place we get them is a store, but the room is kinda creepy, it’s a little closed off space, no windows, painted totally white, with this odd little yellow-orange floral chair.  A small desk by it, with the shots, and a wheeled stool for the pharmacist.  (I say pharmacist, as we go to a local store to get them.  I’ve no idea if the gal has any other letters after her name...) Anyway, it is a room that really could almost double for some of those interrogation rooms in spy movies.  But, it works, so I try not to think about it… Too much.

And as you’ve no doubt noticed, I haven’t blogged.  I needed to make a place for my computer.  And now, I have!  I have a nice desk now, in my now somewhat-in-progress-but-it-is-finally-usable-and-I-can-see-the-floor-again craft room.  When Grandma died, she had a desk in her room.  I remember it from when she lived in her old house.  I’d thought it was nice, but that was about it.  Well, no one in the family wanted it.  I had a desk in my craft room, but it was sort of rough, and it was… Um.  I’d had it since college, and it was starting to come apart in spots, and it was just not working well for me.  So I asked for the desk, and the family was more or less like, Oh, THANK G*D, TAKE IT!!!

Shall we say, cleaning out my Grandmother’s things was a bit of a challenge?  Finding homes for things was even more so!  Between being a hoarder, and a child of the Depression, we were finding crap scraps and bits that we really couldn’t fathom why were kept.  Anyone want every rubber band from all the things she ever had a rubber band on?  Some were quite brittle, she’d had them so long, some even broken, and tied back again.  She had tiny bits of paper with, I am assuming, pictures or notes she wanted.  But I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that she had hundreds of them in the desk.  We were trying to make sure she hadn’t put unpaid bills, or conversely, money in, as well, so it was a long task.  But finally, it was cleaned out, and I brought it home.  Or more accurately, Husband brought it home, and we dug out a space for it in the craft room.

That’s when I took a good long look at my craft room.

Oh... Dear...

I wasn’t seeing much difference there, than I was at Grandma’s!  Yoiks!!  And so, swallowing hard, I decided that was not what I wanted to see when I came into this room.  I have pack rat tendencies, but I can dump things when I want to.

And boy, after that, did I want to!

So, after getting healthy enough to do something, I started “digging out”.  I separated into basic piles.

1.  Want to keep, will use soon, put away.
2.  Don’t want, but still usable, donate.
3.  What the @#$% is this?  Either trash, or recycle for use in some other project.
4.  Junk, no value, just dump.

I was surprised that I had a bit more of #4 than I expected, but quite a bit was #2.  (About 4 or 5 big bags worth so far.)  After one meltdown, Husband realized I was ready to get his backhoe out and start cleaning the room.  Basically bashing the wall down and scraping everything out…  He decided to get involved.

I had tried desperately to clean as I went, but because of the way I had set up the room, I was just managing to make a batch of x, put it in a pile, which would allow me to get behind and clean out stuff, which would mean I would have to separate, and this made a new pile, or three.

This lead to my having no space, and lots of little bits and pieces.  Basically, from a large geologically layered mess, to a series of small explosions. (Or, less charitably, random cow pies. Take your pick.)  After Husband strong-armed the table, and helped me move a few boxes, and finally get boxes up on my shelves, I found the floor, and the boxes, (now LABELLED, so I have a clue what I have up there), I have room to separate and put things away.  He also recommended putting cones of yarn that I use up on a shelf, rather than on a spinning rack, which did not do much but take lots of space on the floor, as well as blocking my bookshelves.

I am getting the thought that I will clean the closet, and a couple other ‘junk’ spaces this way, as well.  After I get this monster down to size.  I am still working on it, but now it’s more little stuff that I need to sort out, not this monster pile ‘o stuff.

I was a bit amazed how many projects I had started, then put in my craft room. Not in Area 51, but just on my table.  That meant I had a table full of stuff, and didn’t have use of the table.  Now I have all the Un Finished Objects in boxes, and in Area 51.  If I didn’t want to do them, or in a couple cases, wondered what it was that I was making (only 2, but gah?  What IS that thing???) I undid the project, rewound the yarn, and put it away.  I now have at least 5 to 8 more points of  R factor insulation on one side of my room.

I also made myself a limit.  I have only 2 to three projects out at a time, (one for travel, like socks, and one or two for home), so I won’t have all the big mounds of stuff squirreled away here and there.  And looking at the 3 shelves of projects, I am to start NO new projects until I finish some of those.  (Only exception is for presents, such as baby blankets for family… However, since I have so far found at least 3 unfinished ones, that shouldn’t be a huge problem, either. Sigh…)

I have a bunch of unfinished teddy bears that I have stored for some time.  A gal said she would take them on a missions trip, then backed out when I called to confirm how many she wanted.  So I ended up with a batch of bears and no takers.  I have recently checked with a friend, that knows a motorcycle charity group, and they were thrilled to take them.  Sooooo, now I will have a “get the bears finished” session, and I will have yet MORE room, plus, some little kids will have new bears for Christmas.  Yaaaay!

Thusly, I think I have mostly caught you up with my last couple weeks.  Oh, and I cleaned out the garden, as we are going to have our first frost, so says the weather folks.  Most of the garden had been cleaned out, but I had carrots and beets left.  The carrots were fine, the beets… Uh, well, it’s a very good thing I was going to use them for natural dyes, let’s just leave it at that. Ew…

Not going to promise anything, at this point, but being on the healthy list again, having a real spot to use the computer again, and having cut down a lot on volunteer ‘stuff’, so I have some “me” time, you might even see blogs again, in less than blue moon increments! (Cross fingers!)

And with the computer where I can access it easily again, maybe you will see me stalking visiting your blogs, again, too!  And maybe even commenting! Will wonders never cease...

Writing, cleaning, and fluffy pillows.

Well, I have managed to keep up with The Challenge... I have only missed one day, (I wrote two notes today, as I, uh, zoned out and fell asleep last night, before writing my last one), so I am at this point caught up with all the letters I have meant to send out.

I found out I like writing with a fountain pen... I have also found out the paper I use sucks up ink like an alcoholic sucks up booze.  So, until I find a bit better paper, I will use a ball point.  I found out my Grandmother has 3 fountain pens squirreled away, I am going to have to ask if I could use them.

I have been cleaning the house today, I am amazed at how 2 people can create so much paper!  The house is not "dirty", really, I mean I dust, and vacuum, that sort of thing, but it is the amazing amount of reading material and mail we have.  I sorted out at least 10 or so magazines, (I get them in trades from various sources), and still have at least 6 or so left to read, Husband gave me 2 or three to give away.

Our kitchen table looked like a tornado had hit a paper plant!  Most was my letter writing 'stuff' and my husband's bills and mail for family (we are the mail forward point for 3 family members).  So, we looked at each other after lunch, and without saying a word, picked up and organized our respective disaster areas.  I put the letter writing 'stuff' into a folder, and have a little rack to set the mail and stamps in.  Husband picked up all the mail and put it into baskets, along with all the assorted ball caps that migrate to that area...  (I believe I counted 8...)  Now, for a while, we will have a kitchen table again!  And a front room table.

Until the next swath of mail and magazines, anyway.

I washed our pillows, too.  I don't know what the washer and dryer did, but I had a pillow, not more than two or three inches thick.  I now have a pillow that looks like a marshmallow on steroids.  We shall see how this monster sleeps!  I have washed this pillow before, but this is a different washer/dryer system.  Still, I wasn't really expecting the silly thing to blow up like a balloon!

The odd things that go on around this house...