Disturbing dreams wake me...along with the monsters wrecking the blankets, but that’s nothing new I suppose. Hah. I had wanted to get up earlier today, but when I wake an hour before the alarm, I find myself sitting up in the bed, blinking stupidly at the Boxer and Dane, each pulling at one side of my quilt.
My eyes drift shut even as I’m muttering my disapproval, I make a half-hearted lunge towards Knight II and drifting off mid-movement. Not smart! I almost topple off the bed when I miscalculate the distance and just barely manage to catch my balance.
He isn’t impressed, and neither is Trin Trin, whom I finally grab by the scruff of her neck and drag on the bed before I sink back down into sweet oblivion keeping the monster Boxer in a headlock. I don’t wake up again until the alarm shrills and the monsters are once again “playing” at the foot end of the bed, tearing the edge of my quilt to pieces. Nice, that!
Reluctantly, I get out of bed and let the screeching pack out, leaning limply against the post of the door and squinting at the bright sunlight falling inside.
“Oh, today’s going to be a doozy,” I remember thinking while I shake my head and move back to my room to make the bed.
I drag my way through the morning rituals, considerably sore in my neck–somehow my small neck-pillow has ended up under the bed during the night–I’m semi-happy about the decision of changing my exercise routine to once every three days, rather than every other one for the duration of the kitchen remodeling project. I’m so not in the mood today, even though I’m sure I’ll regret it by the time the evening arrives.
Exercise, I’ve found is an excellent way to keep turmoil thoughts at bay, but in order to function something definitely has to go. Ah well, soon the kitchen will be done, and then I’ll see about how I’m going to handle the workouts.
There’s a big load of laundry to fold, but luckily no new batch to hang, when I arrive at the house. It takes little time to get the pile organized into neat stacks and by the time breakfast is over and done with, big brother and I settle at the computers.
We spent a little while online, with him doing his thing and me going over my messages before grandpa arrives and distracts us from the editing we should be doing.
At long last, by the time the sibs join us from their quarters, we get a few pages done, before, once again, we are drawn away with the disturbing realization that the dogs have escaped the fences again, and are roaming outside, having a blast.
Prama and Tadaika, the little hellions. They’re young still, little over a year, and more than eager to create havoc by literally breaking through our steel fences and riling the rest of the usually calm pack up until they all follow.
What with the last storm that blew out the gate, we haven’t gotten around to making proper repairs yet, and with this latest debacle we decide we’ve had enough of taking this risk. Within an hour of calling the dogs back, and counting them all to make sure we’re not missing any, we set to work.
This time we’re doing a major repair that involves more than just steel wires. After getting the battery run drill, some bolts and a nice metal pole, we bend to the task and give the gate a good yank to test it’s strength by the time we’re done.
It’ll hold…for a while at least.
A serious wind has picked up during the time we work on the gate, and my hands are freezing cold when I head on back down to the house to soak up some much needed heat.
My dogs act as if I’ve been gone a full day instead of the actual fifteen minutes it took us to fix the gate, and I actually need to haul Knight II down on all fours when he slams his huge front paws into my back. What with Chaos, the labs and the cockers throwing their full weight into my knees and hips, I lose my balance completely, and hit the door I’ve just passed sideways, since the narrow corridor is filled to capacity by crazy dogs. Insanity rules for a good five minutes before they all saunter back towards the sitting area and settle in front of the heater as if nothing has happened.
Rolling my eyes at them, I head back to the table and set the computer, I’d put away for the duration of the gate-fix, up. Big brother and I fail completely at focusing on editing, once more. A frustrating thing, especially when the story you’re working on is as filled with humor as this one is, but it does happen on occasion in an author’s life, I’ve learned. You deal with it by distracting yourself with different projects.
At long last I give up on the work, and head for the kitchen to reheat the leftovers from last night’s dinner, adding Krupuk (aka prawn crackers) with small fried cheese in dough snacks to make up for the lack of quantity that needs to be considerable for a family of seven.
It takes only a little time to prepare and eat, bringing me back to work on the kitchen less than an hour later when nothing playing on the TV manages to capture my attention. “Criminal Minds” is on. But it’s a rerun, much to my regret.
Instead, I start sanding the shelves I cut, and little sister painted, last night, fully intending on taking the painting chore on my shoulders, when little sister comes heading down the stairs, proclaiming that she’s doing the painting again.
I grimace, looking around, wondering what the heck I can do instead, when my eye falls on the big board from which the build-in waste bin’s cover still needs to be cut.
At the table big brother is working on getting W.I. Investigations/Shapeshifter on Amazon’s CreateSpace, so he’s not doing the honors, and with middle sister’s help I set out on the chore that will bring us another step closer to the completion of the kitchen.
There is some measuring and cutting involved in the entire thing, but with the aid of the circle saw, we get it done quickly. Next comes attaching the metal hooks that are going to keep the back and front of the foldout waste bin together. It takes us some time to get the right screws from the variety of suitcases that are piled into a corner these days for accessibility.
We’ve got plenty of long ones, and really small ones but the sturdy middle size is lacking considerably until we finally find one for at least one of the metal eyes. The shorter ones will have to hold the rest together.
There’s quite a bit of agility involved in fastening screws in a narrow section such as this part of the kitchen counter, but in the end we manage, and continue to attach the handle and start looking for the piano hinge that we planned to use.
It is nowhere to be found, so in the end, after digging through old supplies I find two sturdy–rather big–hinges that had at one point been intended for some outside project that was altered before they were put to use.
From across the counter, little sister is debating the merits of the big hinges with me, while slapping the second layer of paint on the utensils’ compartment, cheerfully proclaiming that the hinges are really hideous. Well, duh. That much is apparent. Hah.
I examine them for a while, looking at them from all angles before I call big brother over and debate the possibility of using the “hideous” things with him. These two hinges might actually work even better, since they’re incredibly strong, and won’t be visible below the edge of the counter anyway. Pleased with the discovery, and the fact that we won’t have to postpone the project another day to get a proper hinge, middle sister and I start attaching them.
It works beautifully, and while middle sister is spraying a liberal amount of oil to overcome the squeaky sound they’re making, little sister is putting in the metal framework around the grilles on the raised section of the counter.
Deciding that, since the silicone is being used already, I remove the uneven edge of the waste bin’s cover with the big sanding machine, and have little sister attach a strip of the metal to the top as well. It will protect the wood, and give a pretty finishing touch to the whole to boot.
Sort of amazed that the foldout section actually works (I don’t know why, I haven’t messed up so far, hah) all the sibs take their turn in testing it. Little brother actually comes down from where he’s working on a personal computer project, and starts opening and closing the section time and again, droning the lines of the familiar Ikea commercial: “Mom. Can I have a cookie?” This provokes hysterical bursts of laughter from us when he keeps it up for a solid minute, wearing this deadpan expression on his face. Idiot!
By the time we finish cleaning up, and big brother’s apparent restlessness, combined with frustration, becomes blatantly clear, I decide to forego watching my regular late-night comedy, and promise to join him at the table for another try at editing.
He’s already set up the computers when I’m done helping with the kitchen, and sag down in my chair with a glass of OJ that I prudently set out of the way before we start reading again.
It goes a lot better now, I’ll admit, the pages flying past and the story slowly becoming even better as sentences are shuffled around, superfluous words removed, and punctuations rearranged.
We manage a solid chapter in the hour that passes, before the night has come to an end–and Knight II informs me of this by insistently stabbing his paw into my neck…time and again. While grabbing his paw before he does serious damage, I shut down my computer and talk with big brother how it went much better now than it did this morning.
It is unlikely that we’ll get more done tomorrow. It will be a school day, and this always put a serious strain on any plans we make. Strange how an hour or two can break up a day and knot up well thought through plans no matter what.
We’ve decided to keep it loose and see what we manage when tomorrow arrives. Who knows, inspiration might strike and we’ll be able to get it all done anyway.
With the younger sibs making their late night snack, and me stealing my habitual treat of a baked potato slice, I chase the dogs out of the courtyard and head up to my cabin. I’m halfway up there, when I remember that the forty pound bag of dog food is empty and that I’ll need to get a new one before I can settle down for my nightly reading.
I grumble about it for a bit, but in the end the dogs are fed and everything is ready for me to just sit down and relax for a bit. I really do need that wind-down time in the evenings, if for no other reason than to get rid of the day’s tensions.
It’ll be busy again tomorrow, I’m sure. It usually is. Still, it’s better than doing nothing, I guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment