4 in a row once more

Song of the day: “Man down” by Rihanna. Following “Men in this town” by Shakira, which was haunting me since I woke up this morning. Hah.

I am totally drawing blanks at the moment, so don’t blame me if I mess this up. I have faint memories of all that happened in the past three or four days, but to organize them would take way too much time. I’m just going to write them down as they come and leave you to guess as to which happened when.

Easiest memory of all is of course today, which was not only wet with rain and hail, but also freaky cold for as far as I’m concerned. I’m thinking low thirties, and I am not a happy camper. Seriously, my feet are all tingly because they felt frostbitten most of the day. Grrr. I am sitting in front of the stove now, though (about one foot away, hah) so I am gradually defrosting.

Another thing I’m most unhappy about at the moment is that for the past three days in a row, we have been forced to get out of the house every single afternoon. Seriously, it is enough o drive me bonkers. And if it were over now it would be fine, but nope, the fun goes on. Monday we’ve got to bring the car to the MOT, the next day I’ve got to head to the doctor’s to pick up my new insoles (please let them be done, my feet have been effing killing me for days now…seriously, I’m considering just chopping them off and getting it over with. It’s like walking on glass with bare feet for crying out loud!) And after that it is the day of days, the most splendid event of the month. Grocery shopping day. I am psyched, I assure you. *snort*

Okay, what else? There was the burning of six reed mats, which used to lie rotting in the yard. I finally had enough of them, got the big barrel down from storage and lit the whole lot up. It took a while, but finally the mats were gone, leaving nothing behind but half a barrel of charred remains that will serve as excellent fertilizer. Yay. The dogs loved this little venture seeing as it was cold out. They were all snoozing in a three feet radius, regardless of the rocky ground under them. I would have taken a picture but I didn’t get my phone back until this afternoon. Hah.

There were two kickboxing workouts. One went splendidly, the other only so-so. The wind was gone, though, so that made both rather pleasurable in my estimation. Nothing like standing on the terrace overlooking the valley (working out) while the sun comes up and crawls over the hills and valleys with fingers of gold.

Since four days past there were three mornings spent in the yard. We had to water (hopefully it will rain enough to fill the half-full basin again) the terraces on all occasions, in particular the newly sowed fields and the smaller seedlings.
I chased, hunted and killed bugs. The little buggers are extremely good at hiding, but I’m onto them *ponderous laugh* and will persevere.

Harvested a nice batch of broccoli, and yesterday two big bushels of kale which I bundled up with celery and fresh herbs to bring on over to the vet with a couple of pumpkins. She was most appreciative, also because we were there to pay for the latest operation (Amos had a hysterectomy, and there was still Amri to pay for, too). Her assistant was out, however. A family emergency.

One of the trips was heading to tow drop of mom’s computer at the computer repair shop, another was to pick it up…along with the one for little sister, both of them fixed, thankfully.

Since we were in town anyway, we went past the garage as well. The other day we detected a disturbing sound in the Land Rover engine, so we had the mechanic check. He couldn’t find anything, and that was reassuring at least. Best case scenario we heard something that isn’t different at all, just something we never noticed before. Hah.

The jackhammer! I worked with the jackhammer the other day…why did I…oh right. Now I remember. I had to take the ramp out of grandpa’s doorway. It was solid concrete and he asked me to do it so he could start mixing concrete for his new floor.

A long afternoon was spent up in the old horse paddock. There cousin Ed, Dani and I puzzled with tiles for several hours, coming up with a proper pattern for grandpa’s kitchen. At the same time grandpa and big brother were pouring concrete in the same kitchen, removing the knotted old concrete floor and making it smooth for tiling.
It took a while, and five different patterns to come up with a proper solution, but when we did we figured out a pattern and coloring that worked to everyone’s satisfaction. An apricot and white checker pattern in the dining area and a big L of soft yellow tiles in front of the kitchen counter and from the door. Gawd, for a while I thought we were never going to agree…in particular not with grandpa who can be really picky about such things.

Cousin Ed and I unloaded thirty bags of cement from the car, storing them behind my cabin for easy use. And at another time we unloaded groceries (several boxes of fruit juice, so we won’t have to get them on Tuesday) which were the result of a fruitless trip towards a different town than usual because we had to check if a certain sale was there. It wasn’t, darn it.

Oh yes, the argument with big brother. Seriously, I was this close to doing him some serious damage. He was going through a car scene and suddenly decided that this would be a good scene to take out, so we could put back the attack scene that we took out a couple of weeks ago. I was like, “WHAT?” You can’t take this one out, it’s vital, while the attack scene was a mistake I realized I’d made after I wrote it. Also, there was a certain point during the edit where big brother got all huffy and asked “Why did you do this that way?”
I ground my teeth and slowly turned my head to look at him. “What always makes you think that I do anything for any reason. This is a first edit. I wrote this in one session without conscious thought, just following the story as it developed. There’s no thought process involved, thank you very much.”
At which point he abated and gave up being huffy in favor of thinking along while we tried to find a solution to the sentence structure he found offensive, for some reason. Grrrr.
Seriously, though. I might complain a lot, but I do know that the edits are vital. With every edit we do, the story gets a little better. It is just a question of getting through the process without committing homicide. Hah.

I distinctly remember hauling stuff, which includes rubble, and several slabs of heavy marble, which will be part of my future outside kitchen, thank you very much. One was almost too big for carrying, but what the heck. The storage area is sure starting to look much better. All the messy plastic stuff is gone (had several garbage runs over the past couple of days), the tiles are all gathered in one corner on pallets and tables and the wood is neatly piled. Heck, some day we might actually look respectable up there. Hah.

Sally is having some health problems. She fears cancer, but the doctors can’t find anything so it is all just a matter of getting stressed out about the what ifs. I understand the reason, but I also know that stress is not going to help her. Ah well, none of my business, right?

There were several hours spent in the kitchen, making paneer and ghee (the latter took ages, but was well worth it). Since I was standing in the kitchen anyway for one, I figured I might as well make the other too. And since this was taking a long time anyway, I made dog food as well, figuring our little darlings needed a treat for a change. Afterwards I fled into the yard, thank you very much.

I did take an hour or so last night to get fully up to date with personal messages. I’d been postponing forever and ever, meaning that I was a handful of letters behind, which I went through ASAP before continuing on to the daily edit. Was nice to get that done at last…along with getting up to date on old friendships.

Grandpa is really happy with his new pocket watch. The other day I came up to his bungalow he asked, eyes shiny, “Do you know what time it is? I do!” and proceeded show how well it had dried and saying how much he liked it. Very gratifying, that.

Tenant is a little sleepy the past few days. Winter tends to do that to her, really. She’ll doze in her chair a lot, won’t want to go out to get a breath of fresh air, which makes it worse, of course. Ah well. Those are her choices to make, naturally.

And that is about the limit of my memories of the past couple of days. I’ve got an edit to do, a bed to visit, because let’s face it, the time is just past ten and it’s already luring me. Hah. Gotta go.