Pouring Concrete. Yay.

So yeah, it’s been a busy couple of days, and I’m really roughhousing my way through this thing, but what has to be done, has to be done.

Let’s start off with the bit of news of the fire that raged across the valley where we live. Big brother and I were working on the manuscript in my cabin, when suddenly we noticed a bright orange glow in the distance. It was a rather huge fire that swept across the mountains that face ours. It was all rather impressive. There were lights of helicopters swarming over it. Emergency services lights flashed, and for the duration we kept a close eye on the matter. Considering that the winds were sweeping down full force, (bad for the fire and those poor firefighters, good for us, ‘cause it went in the direction of the sea rather than our place) we really didn’t want to get caught unprepared, but come morning the fire had been extinguished and the yellow alert (ours that is) turned off, so to speak. Hah.

Yesterday pretty much involved preparing for today. There were only a couple of hours of editing for big brother and me…my focus was really shot after a dream where I was late for everything, including a flight to the U.S…for some reason I couldn’t manage to get my bags packed. And there you have it the ultimate nightmare for me. Give me zombies, werewolves, vampires and monsters: No prob. But dreaming that I’m late for something will have me in a genuine tizzy when I wake up. And to think that in real life I can just go with the flow and don’t mind such a “disaster”. In regard to that I’ve really got the Spanish mentality of, “Mañana”.
Go figure, it just makes no sense whatsoever.

But I got distracted. Where was I? Oh yes, preparations. So yeah, after I made some adjustments to my new drawers…made a slight error during construction that had to be fixed…and then it was up the mountain. Considering that we want to pour the concrete gutter before the winter rains start, it is a job we have to get done in proper time, so we start weighing the options.

There are really only two ways to get to the area in question: The roof, which would mean hauling buckets onto the roof, then walking across the expanse of it (probably damaging a lot of the tiles in the process) to pour the stuff down behind the house until the gutter is filled.
Second option is hauling it down the mountain on rope and then fill it up. Not a fun way either, so we put our heads together and designed and apparatus of sorts made of sewer tubes and a large piece of metal shaped into a rather large funnel that fit into the connecting corner that we put on the end of the twenty yard tube we stuck down the mountain.
Using a handful of metal bars, which we drove into the ground, we tied the entire thing up and gave it a test run with a bucket of water. The test went well, so with that done we went off on different ventures.

Little sister and I set out cut metal bars to put in the section where the concrete will be poured, and then put it all in place for today. By nightfall, what could be prepared in advance was done, and we headed inside for dinner and another edit. It went well, considering that we actually managed to get to our daily quota of doing four pages a day.

But, since nightfall is coming fast now, big brother and I decide to make the leap, and change our usual routine completely. Chores and projects first and then in the dark hours of the evening editing. It is going to take some getting used to, but once we do it should work out fine.

With that in mind we made it an early night and got up early so we could start today fresh and new. It work rather well to declare as much in the evening, it really works when you say: I give up today, and start fresh and new in the morning.
I like it.

So today (song of the day: practically any song I know that has a yodel in it. Downright weird, I tell ya) it was going through the usual chores, such as laundry and cleaning, and then doing some repairs. There’s a section of the ceiling that got damaged during the floor project that needs to be fixed and two lamp fittings have to be replaced in the kitchen and then we get to work on the kitchen furnace.

As it turns out, a rat got into it, decided to nest inside…yep, we saw it sitting in there while we were taking the dratted device apart, and the dogs were going bonkers…and messed up the wiring completely. It took a couple of hours, but we got it all cleaned out (the dogs didn’t manage to get the rat in question, though they tried with a passion) and put it all back together again. Phew. Works like a charm again.

That done we had a quick lunch, after which we were running slightly behind. No matter, though, the sibs were ready and together we all headed up the mountain, out the gate (leaving the dogs inside…making them go bonkers for a bit, of course. The dog’s really don’t appreciate being left out.) and then towards where the tubing had been set up.

We hauled the concrete mixer up, buckets, water hose, shovels and of course wheelbarrows full of sand and cement bags. Oh my God, it’s a good thing we has so much practice with the rock walls, ‘cause it was a doozy of a day. We succeeded, however. We managed to get the entire gutter in, which meant mixing over fifteen batches of concrete and lifting over a hundred buckets to pour it down the tubing.

The first hour or so was downright splendid, what with the sun shining warmly and the wind having died down for the first time in days. Really, it was like sunbathing. Lovely. Just lovely. It makes working outside absolutely wonderful.

Good cooperation today. The sisters and I were doing the cement mixing and pouring it down, while little brother hauled sand towards us, and big brother kept an eye on the progress (and spreading of the stuff, of course) behind the house. In the end we got it all done in four hours, which is excellent. The evening was about to fall when we started cleanup. The entire mess was hosed down, the tubing removed, empty bags gathered (wind had started up again, so debris wanted to scatter) buckets and mixer cleaned out, and before you know it, the sun disappeared behind the mountain.

The dogs were ecstatic when we finally returned within the property fences, and after capturing Knight II by his collar (he attempted to bowl me over more than once) I took a few minutes to calm them down and pet them all, crooning approval to them, for having been so brave as to stay behind the fences. Hah.

With a successful day behind us, we headed down to the house for dinner and an attempt at editing (we really were too tired; no surprise to it, really, since we managed to finish a task we’d thought to spread out over two days) after about an hour of basically staring at three paragraphs we decided to give up and went on to different ventures which were a little less energy consuming.

Which concludes the update of the past couple of days. On to the next.