There were strange dreams this night, though I can’t really remember what they were about. It was strange on the overall, and it made me feel…well, out of sorts when I woke up at the sound of the alarm.
After the morning rituals and bringing the dogs down to the house, I get to taking down the dry laundry immediately. It’s a big batch, and it isn’t until forty minutes later–it needs to be folded, of course–that I get to breakfast and a much-needed coffee.
Once settled behind the computer and tackling the edits once more, the day slowly progresses as we improve on the story with another read through of the past few days’ progress. Once that is done we move on to the next section, managing about one page before it is time to head on outside to see what else needs to be done.
The rooms by the pool, which have been used as storage for the past few years, are a mess, and while little sister starts dragging stuff out. I get the wheelbarrow and push the mess up to the truck. It isn’t pleasant work; I’ll say that much about it. Rolling the wheelbarrow up the steep incline while it’s stuffed with moldy substances that need to be brought to the landfill is murder on the knees, actually.
While little sister and I are tackling the rooms and emptying them from two years of neglect, our two brothers are attempting another fire at the bottom of the property. Though they manage parts of it, the grass around it is already becoming too dry to do it safely, so that effort is ceased in the middle. They too join the cleanup.
By the time I get the first batch up the mountain, I’m breathing hard and sweating somewhat fierce. By the fifth trip I can hardly put one foot before the other–either up or down–so we do a much needed shift change. The next few trips are up to little brother, leaving the last ones for big brother and grandpa when at last the first room is empty of debris and we can actually walking inside without tripping over moldy torn cartons and what not.
Once the room is done, leaving anything that is still useable neatly stored in the second one, we start on the weeds and dried mud that covers the path leading to the entrance.
At least three wheelbarrows get wheeled away, along with a nice big pile of weeds until at last the path is cleared and the rock floor is revealed.
Little sister is sweeping the stairs, big brother is stripping the three acacia trees of dead branches, and middle sister takes the shovel on up to the terrace to tackle the dried mud that has gathered in the north corner. Once we’re done with the lower section I pick up tools and mount the steps to take the lounge chairs that got blown down during the last storm.
Since middle sister needs to use the pitchfork in the corner–vines have twined their way into the dirt–we exchange tools so I can start removing the composting fruits of the dead palm tree and make the path towards the terrace more accessible. It’s slow going, the dirt hard and rocks making easy stabs with the shovel practically impossible. It takes up to thirty minutes before I suddenly notice that the younger sibs have disappeared.
We joke about it, coming up with outrageous stories as to why they departed and work well past sundown by dragging strips of the old pool liner half way up the path. A little mishap occurs while we’re dragging the liner pieces out. I have grabbed Knight II by his collar to keep him out of the way, and while I’m distracted with trying to tug the heavy materials to the side, he moves back…slamming full force into my still bad knee.
Now, the joint hadn’t been agreeing with all the walking up and down in the first place, but this is just a bit too much. A burning flash goes up and down the limb, almost making it buckle when I stumble back and wrap my hands around it. Startled with my pained gasp (and ensuing swearword, huh) middle sister gratefully grabs hold of the big Dane while I carefully lower myself on the low wall.
Holy crap that hurt! The burning sensation goes up and down and continues to do so for several minutes until the entire leg feels…well, pleasantly numb. The Dane must have hit a nerve when he backed into me. Imagine a really painful version of hitting one’s elbow on something hard.
Once the discomfort subsides a little, I resume dragging the liner pieces away.
Later we’ll have to load it all in the truck, but not tonight.
In the end, sore and exhausted, we crawl up the mountain and enter the house where the younger sibs demand what the heck took us so long.
As it turns out they thought that we were calling it a day when I started to gather tools, hah. No harm done, however. Mom made a slight miscalculation with the night’s dinner, so they spent the time adding some extras to fill everyone’s stomach.
Limping a little, I fill my plate, grab a bag of frozen peas and hobble over to a chair with the promise of sweet relief for the dratted knee.
Something is wrong with our satellite reception at the moment–we have no idea what–so during dinner we make due with a recorded episode of “Burn Notice” and “Life” before we shut the TV off entirely. On the bright side we save on expenses this way, and settle behind our computers to get some more work done on the book.
My shoulders and back are hurting like heck, what with pushing the heavy wheelbarrow around and the shoveling, so before “digging in” I decide to hang on the bar for at least thirty seconds allowing my spine to rearrange the way it’s supposed to. It helps my shoulders too, since now the pain is no longer on the bottom of the shoulder blades, but the top of the sockets instead. Neat how that works. Hah.
For the next couple of hours, big brother and I go through three more pages of “Saving Nina”, bringing the edited section of the story up to one third of the whole, yay. Now we’re getting somewhere. There were some hiccups during the process; a description of two intruders, barely visible in the darkness, but the protagonists still being able to see that they were armed, but we managed to struggle through it in the end…as usual.
There are a lot of distractions during the edit. Several dogs come near for a petting, which results in the removal of scores of ticks–the blasted little critters are starting to appear everywhere–that are hidden under thick and thin fur alike. Admittedly, it is a nasty side effect of letting the dogs roam free, but luckily our loyal four-legged companions love the attention.
Though I hadn’t thought that I’d be able to muster the energy to do another edit session this evening, we do make our quota of the day. I’d already decided, that if we were too tired, I would head to my room early, but by the time we resurface, it’s past midnight and I have to rush on up to my cabin.
I feed the dogs that appear hungrier than usual today diving on the food as if they haven’t already eaten at the house.
Afterwards I’m startled for a moment when Knight II comes to stand in front of me for attention and loud noises come from him. He ate so fast his insides appear to be singing…literally…Hah. Never heard anything like it.
After a quick read, putting my clean laundry away, and setting to rights–sort of–the bedroom, I switch the laptop on and get to work.
No comments:
Post a Comment