Building a little more.

Song of the day: “Apple Jack” by Dolly Parton. I don’t know why, but for some reason I’ve got the little lady on my mind these days.

Okay, the day. So yeah, I would love to have a little rant about new writing styles that are popping up all over the place. It makes me want to scream because apparently “strong writing” amounts to short, to the point, sentences that, for as far as I can see, can be read by a ten year old.

I mean, I don’t have anything against being to the point (though, I do like to spin a sentence around, hah) but if you have to break apart beautiful descriptions, bring them down to a bare, rather bland minimum, for the sake of word count, I want to bare my teeth.
Let’s look at this in perspective, shall we? Here we have the civilized world where the majority goes to school, and some even college, and yet some are under the impression that standards need to be lowered for books to sell.

I don’t get it, I really don’t. For the past few years, since this has become sort of fashion trend, I’ve been enjoying books less and less. I didn’t understand why for the longest time, especially not when even my favorite authors started to go on that downhill slide. But there you have it; the simplicity trend, the less is more, and all that crap carries the blame. I’m sorry, but sometimes more is just more. Hah.

But enough of that, if I don’t keep a lid on this we’ll be here ‘till next week before I’m done with this particular issue. Ah well, I wanna watch the Fifth Element, so let’s quickly get down to the day.

There was the proofreading of course (thus explaining my aggravation) and a particularly frustrating exploration on the net, explaining some particulars of what publishers are looking for these days. Aaargh.
Okay, I’m trying not to think of it in favor of holding on to my cool. Hah. Let’s skip this particular part and move on to the rest of the day.

We’re running behind a bit when we finally get outside, and while big brother works on mom’s computer wire (it was broken, so the battery wouldn’t charge) the younger sibs and I start on the other projects of the day. Middle sister is making cement while little brother helps me throw the bundled reed canes on top of the carport roof, so the dogs won’t pee on them…yes that is something they like to do when they’re set on the floor.

Once the cement is made we start hauling rocks because the place where we removed the old fence yesterday needs a higher wall, or else the dogs will be able to get up on the roof. It goes rather well, seeing as we get it almost completely done in the hours that ensue.
When we finish, and the younger sibs have returned inside, I finish up the last bits and head down a ways to check out the step of the stairs big brother is making. Beautifully big, flat and made completely out of flat rocks…yep, we did find a few wonderful batches.

By the time we finish up covering the new step up with pieces of old fencing, it is getting dark, so we head inside for the dinner. It’s almost ridiculous to say this, especially in August, but by now the pool is already getting to cold for a late night dip, darn it. Instead, we just continue on our way into the house and put on the macaroni I boiled this morning. Mac and cheese, nothing goes down better after some hard work.

Oh yeah, we also put in some tomato seedlings in the ground today, what with the new plants still relatively small we figure we might as well use the ground for some veggies later on.

Well, that’s it for today; hopefully I can get some more work done on the edit, and of course finish watching the movie. Hah.

Strange, frustrating stuff.

Song of the day: “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton. Hah. Perky song, but it came really out of the blue, and I really have no idea why this particular one came by; I don’t even have it on my Itunes, for crying out loud.

Nothing of great interest today either; no dreams…oh wait, I had one…but I can’t just write it down it was like seriously X-rated, so we’ll just skip that, shall we.

When I arrive at the house this morning, I falter a little when I pass the washing machine, which for some peculiar reason is standing on the ground rather than the perch I created for it just a couple of months ago. Considering I’m just barely awake, I shake my head and walk on, only distantly wondering what the hell happened before start with the morning chores.

As it turns out, last night while the machine was running with a blanket in it, something (I seriously have no idea what) made it topple over and drop face-first (if you can call it such) on the floor. It’s a miracle it was still running, but except for a broken tube and some loose hooks, it appears that big brother will be able to repair it…I hope.

Next, we read through our query letter. We’re going to have to start another round of sending out letters to publishers…I know, it’s a total bore, but what has to be done, has to be done. Darn.
This was then followed by an editing session, you know, putting the changes of the proofreading in. Kinda fun, ‘cause it appeared as if there were some major errors, which then could easily corrected by just shifting words around. Phew, such a relief.

Today’s outside work was basically the same as yesterday, small chores that are a tad boring, but need to be done. Big brother and grandpa work on the bungalow roof, and the younger sibs and I start putting in the sansevierias (remember, we found those really big plants at the landfill recently) also known as snake plants, on the hill over the old swimming pool.

Once we were done with that, we decided to start on taking away old fencing, which was a royal pain in the butt to do, cause there was like a mile of dirt, rocks and…stuff on it, so we end up cutting most of it off, rather than out.

So yeah, we haven’t got the car back, and according to the garage, which just fixed the problem of the clutch, we’re going to need a whole new clutch cylinder kind of thing. Yep, that’s gonna cost us another 600 bucks, darn it. It’s going to have to be ordered, installed, yadayadayada. Crap. I hate it when that happens. And yeah, what with the washing machine damaged (please don’t let it be broken) and now this…well, looks like we’re going to have to cut down even more on luxuries like food and stuff. Okay, not thinking about this, let’s go on with the day, shall we.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the removed fence.
The evening is still young, so since we’re on a roll anyway and managed to get the first one away, we figure we might as well continue with the piece of fencing that’s still standing up by my cabin. In the meantime, big brother is using the small jackhammer to prepare cutting out the rock where the stairs are going to be in the near future.

We really intended to do some more, but by then nightfall has arrived, and since we end up planning for the remaining projects, it is really too late to do anything else.
Dinner comes next, followed by the blog and then the day has blissfully come to an end.

Yep, another edit to go, and then I’m gonna pass out, I think.

Variety is the spice of life.

Song of the day: “Yes sir I can boogie” by Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Had it before, but it sure does boogie, hah.

So it was a busy day, lots of different little things that amounted to lots of variety all ‘round.
Still no fun dream to write about, I fear, so we’re just going to go to the day and see where it leads.

Once at the house, two big batches of laundry, hung and folded, breakfast over and done with, the dogs calmed down at last and we settle down for more proofreading and editing. There were some technical errors we picked up on…don’t ask me how they got through after three serious edits, but somehow they did…during the proofreading, and we went over them, correcting them throughout the manuscript. It’s a nuisance, but the end result should be well worth it, I’m thinking.

I do think, that through this entire proofread business, we are able to see that the work done is has vastly improved. There are scenes just perfect and those get me a little high when I’m reading through them. Hah.

We’re actually a little disappointed when the computer work comes to an end and it’s time to head outside. There are a variety of little jobs that need to be done today; wood has to be carried up to the main gate, the fence in my little backyard needs to be reset, the fence on the new wall still needs to be attached to the top, reed needs to be bundled and set away. A small pant container of rocks has to be built by the side of my cabin and the last two Eucalypti still need to be planted. We all split up to get to it.

Middle sister and I head up the mountain for the eucalypti, while big brother and grandpa get started on the fence on the wall. The two youngest sibs work on the reed and later on move on to hauling up the spare wood up to the old stable.
This part of the mountain (where the trees need to go in with big friggin clumps of dirt around their roots) is a little bit more difficult than yesterday to dig into. The ground is harder here, rockier too, and yet we manage between the two of us to chop out two reasonable holes. After filling them with water we set the trees and then gather out tools to head down to get to the next task.

Since the rest is still busy with different stuff, and little brother has already made cement for the planter later on, we go through my cabin and start loosing the old fence so we can take away the debris that has been rolling down from the mountain for the past three years or so. It takes three full wheelbarrows (they have to be rolled through my cabin and down the mountain for dumping, naturally) to clear it, but then we can start setting the fence all over again.

Big brother and grandpa come to help with this part, cause long metal bars need to be hammered deep into the rock bottom. By some miracle it actually works, (I feared we would have to pour concrete, or something) and once the pole are in, middle sister and I fasten the thick, hard wired fence to them.

Dusk is arriving by then, and the plant container still needs to be built so the last plant (Dama de noche, aka night blooming jasmine) can be put in the ground. It takes remixing the cement, which became too hard while we were busy with the other stuff.

It is dark before the large bowl is finished, but with the last wheelbarrow from my little yard as filler, we set the plant and finish up by cleaning the terrace from debris and sand, and then sit in the cool evening air chatting about “Saving Nina” for a bit. A wonderful evening for sure, a sickle moon, bright stars, a grand view over the valley…ah, makes you want to sit outside all evening.

Of course we can’t: there’s still the Blog to do, dinner to eat and the usual evening chores before it is time to head up to my cabin for the final proofreading session of the day. Yep, I might be tired, but I am looking forward to reading some more.

A bit of gardening.

Song of the day: “This side of paradise” by Bryan Adams. No surprise there; it’s one of my favorites, hah.

The day started relatively slow, what with me waking up at the usual time. There had been lots of dreams again, but since they felt like normal days, I’m not going to bother writing their up. I mean, seriously; why write about building a rock wall, or pouring in a concrete floor in a dream when the real thing is a daily occurrence, aaargh.

But anyway, Knight II is making a racket when the alarm goes off; so is Trin Trin, who’s literally bouncing again as I roll out of bed and hurry to the door before they start tearing at my bed sheets again, the stupid idiots. Once they’re outside, I stand in the doorway, blinking at the bright sunlight (still remarkably cool, by the way. The mercury only hit 30 today) and scratching my middle finger like mad. It is still swollen from yesterday’s wasp sting.

Once I’ve gone through the usual morning rituals, and arrive in the house with the dogs in tow, I quickly get down to the chores of the day. There’s a quick round on the net before we start proofreading on the manuscript. We only have a few hours, really since today’s planning involves going to the village to get some plants for the containers we built outside.

Done with the morning’s reading and consequent editing, we head out and realize that the car is acting strangely. Whenever I try to shift, the stick just won’t go into gear, like the clutch won’t go deep enough, so rather than head for the nursery we turn towards the garage. After about an hour or so, it turns out there’s something wrong with the cylinder of the clutch, some sort of hole in the tube, and the liquid leaked out. So they refilled it, and we need to come back tomorrow so two parts can be replaced.

Next, we head for the plant nursery. Lots of choices for very reasonable prices, as a matter of fact, and we move around the place until we’ve got a nice selection going. Some lavender, Dame la Noche (they’re good against mosquitoes) eucalyptus, and…well, let’s keep it to a lot, rather than writing them all down. The friggin’ car is filled with green and flowers, and head on back home so we can get started on putting them into the ground.

Changing into work clothes and sandals (got those for six bucks last week, hah) and got to work. In the remaining hours of the evening, all plants except four three get planted. Middle sister and I even manage to put in two Eucalypti in the rock ground on top of the middle garden, right by the time night falls. Not at all easy, to dig a hole in rock, but by some miracle it worked rather well. They’re looking good, I’ll admit, and so do the oleanders and bougainvillea and everything, which will make this particular part of the yard look gorgeous.

Afterwards, (since mom went with us to the nursery there’s no dinner of course) I spend about half an hour grilling French bread, red bell pepper strips, onions, zucchini and cheese, which I put on the bread with fresh tomatoes, iceberg slaw and a homemade yogurt sauce. Gawd, that was delicious after such a day. Hah.

That’s about all there is to today’s events. Not much, just a day. Oh well, can’t make it any more interesting than it is, really. Let’s just hope that I can still do an edit tonight, ‘cause all that digging and everything was kind of exhausting, but what the hey, we’ll see.

And back to work. Yay.

Song of the day: “Always look on the bright side of life” by the dudes from Monty Python, I know it’s terrible of me, but I just can’t recall his name. Hah. I do know that it was from the movie “The life of Brian.”

Well, let’s see if I can do a better Blog today, after yesterday’s debacle. I was just so darn tired yesterday; I could barely keep a single thought in my head. It took a tad too long, and the amounts…well; let’s just say I made it a really early night.

Let’s see, I woke on the dot this morning, my head filled with a jumble of dreams I didn’t even begin to unravel, because, let’s face it, it was just daily life stuff and not even remotely interesting. It sure wasn’t for me, so to write them down would be completely superfluous.

This makes today’s subject similarly bland, so I’ll endeavor to make it remotely interesting…how on earth I’m going to manage it, is a mystery, however.

Let’s just start and see where it heads: the dogs are a mite restless when I get up this morning and go through the morning rituals. While opening the curtains a bloody wasp stabs me in my middle finger and within a few minutes the digit starts to swell a little. After spraying vinegar over the area, I make ready to go to the house. The temperatures are gradually dropping, almost as if September has already started, and when I head down the mountain there are thin layers of clouds over the sun. Such a strange summer really, only six or eight really hot days in total.

But be that as it may, I go to the house, take some homeopathic pearls of Apis Meliphica to fight the swelling, go through the morning chores, the laundry and such and then settle down for the proofreading. This is followed by putting in the few changes we found the day before yesterday and some fussing over a particular sentence that just doesn’t come out right until we throw it around completely.

We get a couple of chapters done before it is time to head outside into the cool afternoon air, for about half an hour we stand on the new terrace chatting, and overlooking the work that has been done. Today looks like a day of reflection, if this particular moment is an indication.

Soon we are headed down to the guest quarters, where some tasks still need to be done. The floor gets cleaned again, lights hung, book shelves attached and then the final touches that’ll make it comfortable. Once middle sister and I have scrubbed the bathroom and the hallway, the door gets closed against the dogs and together we clear the dirt away from the path that leads to it.

By then twilight is arriving and after hauling up any leftovers that were still by the guest quarters, I spend a few moments hauling rocks away from the path (they were still there from the wall) and then passing the wood that still needs to be carried up to the old stable to the middle part of the garden. Next, I head on up the mountain to where big brother and grandpa are working on the new fence (apparently it was too low for Tadaika and Prama, who have been scaling it constantly since it went up).

While making my way up in the last rays of sunlight (literally), I am once again struck by how much the yard has changed. There is an intricate pattern of walls and steps, new terraces, gleaming lanterns and the yellowish reed roof of the courtyard. Sort of idyllic, actually, and downright beautiful as I stand there overlooking it all from an angle where I haven’t seen it for the last few weeks.

While we’re standing there, we are discussing future project, pouring concrete on the path that leads to the courtyard, the three stairs that still need to be made, the wall for the veranda, and then, sometime next year, maybe a portico, or pergola on top of the ridge that overlooks the entire garden. Ah yes, it is always wonderful to have more to do, hah.

Big brother and I head on out to the landfill for the large amounts we’ve accumulated with the construction, remodeling, etc. etc. We actually find several nice beams of wood…apparently someone took down some trees in a yard…so on the way back we were pretty loaded up again.

The rest of the evening was pretty standard, so I’m going to leave it at this and head on up to my cabin for another proofreading session, I think. I’m rather looking forward to it, actually.

Grocery hassles.

No song of the day; just too busy, I guess.

I think I just might break my personal record and make this the shortest post ever. Hah.

Anyway, considering that today was grocery day after four hours of editing (just pick a blog some odd three weeks ago, and two before that, and two before that, and you’ll get the general idea from what today was like. Thirteen friggin’ stores had to be visited…I know, we could have spread it out over a couple of days, but since we sorta dislike grocery day, we decided to just get it over with…and we did it in just under six hours. Gawd, at the end I thought I was going to pass out. Hah. Being a professional shopper would be such an inappropriate job for me. Aaaargh.
And then I’m not evening mentioning the forty minutes it took us to empty the Defender, (the back and the middle seat of the back bench were literally filled) put it all away once we hauled the stuff into the house.

Luckily we got it all done, so we should be good for another two or three weeks…and boy do I need them. I think I’m going to have to build another rock wall, just to recover. *sigh*

Painting and planting

Song of the day: “Torn” by Nathalie Imbruglia. It’s been a while when I last heard it, but then we had the radio on and there it was.

I’m going to have to do another short one because today got to be way too busy to have time left for actual Blogging.

The majority of the morning and noon were spent on the proofreading. Went rather well, if I do say so myself. I read through four chapters and think I found most of the remaining errors. Some punctuation got shuffled around, found one typo and I removed some excess words. All in all a good edit, since there were no major errors that I couldn’t get around.

In the afternoon (the weather is still remarkably cool, it almost feels as if we’re in autumn already) we gather up painting tools and three buckets of leftovers from the past few years, and head down to the guest cabin. While the sisters and I start scraping off the old paint, little brother mixes the other paint to a single light yellow that we slather on in the hours that follow.

It is a messy endeavor, to say the least, considering that the dogs are moving in and out of the room continuously and often end up lying up against the newly painted walls. Hah. Suffice it to say that we now have a pack dotted (and sometimes completely) yellow. Hah.

After the painting is done, another long while is spent cleaning the entire mess up, of course. Removing thick plaques of old paint, mopping up new ones, vacuuming the corners and then hurrying up the mountain so we can plant the majority of the plants we found yesterday before nightfall; that done, we head back down to finish up and put in the most of the furniture.

It looks rather good by the time we finish (around eleven PM) and head on up to the house for a much-deserved dinner, and that’s about all I’ve got to write about. I think. Or is there something else? The new plants look rather nice, so does the guest cabin and…well, that’s it. So boring, I know. Can’t help it. Hah.

Cleaning up.

Song of the day was some sort of classical tune. Really annoying too since it just kept repeating over and over again while I had no idea which one it was.

A near accident this morning; my dogs opened my front door just when grandpa came by, but luckily I heard it happening, so I was out of bed and down on the terrace to snatch Trin Trin right off the ground and shout Knight II back into the cabin. Grandpa, thankfully managed to fend them off until I got there so no harm was done in the end.

But let’s keep this short, I bet you have a lot of better things to do that read this…I know I do. Hah.
I was right on the dot again this morning the way I was supposed to. I did have kink in my neck, so I was like, ouch, ouch, and not in the best of moods while doing some stretches. After a few of them, it’s time to start on the morning rituals and then down to the house.

Today we started reading through the printed version and managed about four chapters before the mind got to be too murm. By then, it’s time to head out. Since the walls are pretty much done, and soon we’re going to have a guest around here, it is rather necessary to clear out the guest cabin (we’ve been using it for storage these past few years) and it takes us at least three hours to get it all done.

The effort pays off too, since we find several boxes filled with glasses and cups (I’d just written a list of those to buy during Monday’s shopping) and all sorts of other stuff that’s going to come in really handy in the kitchen. We’d completely forgotten that we stored it down there several years ago. Hah. But anyways, we manage to sort it all out. Whatever needs to be kept gets brought to the igloo, garbage gets lugged up to the car, and wood supplies get set by yesterday’s wall for later hauling.

About half an hour before dusk we’ve got the rooms practically empty so we can start cleaning and painting them tomorrow…I hope. Finished up and the dogs - poor old Bommel included - brought up to the courtyard, bit brother and I head out to the local landfill to dump the full back truck and find five…count them 5 huge plants that have been dumped there with pot and all. They’ll be perfect for the new plots, that’s a fact. This is what I call excellent recycling. Hah.

Suffice it to say that we take quite a while unloading and the reloading with the plants, along with a huge pile of wooden boards that’ll come in handy too during construction time. Sometimes it amazes me to see what some people will throw away. It is rather sad…albeit rather handy for us. Hah. I am thoroughly running on empty by the time we return home, not surprisingly.

Well that’s about it, I guess. Not much more to tell, just the normal stuff to go…oh yeah, and dinner.