When it rains it pours.

It does. Quite literally in fact.
It's been coming down all the day. Hah

Song of the day: “The Banana Boat Song” by Harry Belafonte and “Opposites attract” by Paula Abdul. I don’t know why, but the two songs were going through my head off and on during the day.

So let’s do this quick, because, as usual, time is short once more.
First off, I made pumpkin soup yesterday and it went splendidly, and just when I was done grinding the lot into a nice even mush, the pot slipped from between my hands and poured all over the furnace. Not funny, but the dogs loved helping clean up. Managed only to save 1/3 of the amount and luckily we could enjoy it both days.

Next, we spent an hour or so unloading the car from supplies and ended up processing pallet wood for storage. Got some nice slats of wood for the efforts.
Vinyl tiles aplenty for the new floor in the bus, which is really starting to become necessary. Rugs really don’t do the trick anymore, and when we start on that floor, we really should put in new wood in the bathroom floor, because that sure won’t hold much longer.

For what was left of the day we worked on the carport roof. We saw on the weather channel that there was rain coming, so while the sibs loaded up the car early, we finished up the extra bit of roof plating and painting the wood. Looking good, I assure you. Hah

Since the day wasn’t over by the time we were done, I spent the remainder of the afternoon sawing plating for big brother’s balustrade/wall. Since there are slight blemishes on the triplex wood, I finished up filling it with pliable wood in the last minutes of daylight.

There was a very decent edit at the end of the day. We managed to get through ten pages, so Yay! for us on that score. Hah. We did good, I think. There is very little left to change, and the things that need to be changed are just typos and missing words every now and then.

At the end of the evening, I really had to do some cleaning in my cabin. It was getting to be ridiculous. I changed my sheets, took away spider webs and scrubbed the toilet and sink. It was bad, I tell ya.

Today commenced with me baking pancakes up at tenant’s place. She really liked them too, so I figured I might as well do it in her company. Get her to help out to boot, and she did. She ended up making dough while I peeled and sliced apples. She ate two of them in fact. Regretfully she couldn’t go outside today, what with the rain coming down for the most of it. Boy, did it rain. It was pouring buckets…meaning we had to go down to the guest quarters to unplug the drains and open up gutters and such.

Luckily, by then there was a pause in the downpour, so all that got wet was the bottom of my pants trousers. My dogs didn’t like it at all, and were actually more than happy to spend the day in my cabin. Seriously, normally I can’t keep them inside with a stick, but today they were really well behaved. Whenever I went in and out of the place I would “stay” and they would actually listen…in fact, they would barely look up from whatever spot they were snoozing at. Hah.

We did a quick check of the greenhouse. The zucchini plants, lettuce and cauliflower are doing really well. And seeing as everything was properly wet, we didn’t need to water anything.

For the most part, today was all about working on these big wooden boxes (for drawers later on) for under big brother’s bed. It took some looking but in the end I found enough material to put together three of the things, that will make up the bottom of his king-size bed.
I really like carpentry work, if you must know. There is very little that compares to working with your hands and seeing a piece of furniture appear. It feels a lot like writing, I guess. You work on something for a long time. You design the lines of it, work on the idea, gather the ingredients and then put it all together until it has cohesion.

That’s it for today. I’ve got more edits to do, as usual, so I better get to it fast. Time’s a-wasting.

Quick, quick, quick. Sorry.

Song of the day: “Hold my Hand” by Michael Jackson and Akon. Loved the first, don’t like the second one all that much, but it is still a great song that I didn’t discover until yesterday. Almost missed it too, but there it was and now I’ve got it stuck in my head. Hah.

Running behind again, and we really have to get started on editing so I’m going to do my best to keep it short. If I don’t, slap me on the back of my head please. Okay. It was a bunch of busy days on the most part and it involved a lot of exercise, luckily.

First of all we started laying the beech parquet floor in big brother’s room yesterday. This meant that our friend Dani and I (she came over for the day) hauled the packages from under the tarps and carrying all 30 of them down to my terrace. For the remainder of the day we spent going back and forth to the room until we laid the complete floor, except for the last three lines, which had their turn today…but that’s getting ahead of myself, isn’t it?… okay, back. There was still the piece under the shelving that needed to be done, but at that time big brother was so smart as to slam the hammer right on top of his index finger. Suffice it to say, he felt a tad faint for the remainder of the afternoon, meaning that I had to finish up. Hah.

There was a rather miserable attempt at editing afterwards, but since it didn’t work (big brother was understandably distracted) we called it a day early and headed up to my cabin to see a DVD. The Expendables with the whole string of known action movie actors. Gawd it was just like the good old days, just some mindless violence, no major message other than good winning from evil in the most wonderfully gruesome ways. It was nostalgia more than anything, seeing as the movie was far from “amazing” but still, I had fun…especially the digs and black humor. I remember the old days so…*slap* Gawd, so sorry. Got distracted there.

This morning there was a slight detour from the planned continuance of working on the floor, seeing as Sally’s door oddly gave the spirit and needed to be fixed, as well as her windows, which she was unable to close for some reason. It took us a couple of hours to fix the mishaps, but then we could head up to the carport and resume with the floor. Of course I first had to break down the shelving closet (big brother’s finger, remember?) and had quite a bit of fun with that, actually (despite the inch of dust on them). Seriously, I wrecked the thing with saw, hammer and tire-iron, before finally resulting in just bringing my heel (the good one btw) down on the last board. Then the stupid shelving was out and grandpa could haul it away. I put in the last pieces of the floor, the threshold and then it was time to put in the metal threshold big brother had made for the second door.
It looks good, I assure you. Clean too, which is the most important thing in the end. I even took out the spider webs, and there were plenty of those, I assure you.

The good part is that I found back a whole crate of books that big brother borrowed from me, so Yay. One of the walls is painted and thus clean, and we had pumpkin soup I made yesterday morning, and which turned out splendidly again.

Tenant spent both afternoons on my porch, enjoying the large amounts of sunshine that is pouring down every day now. Sure the air is pretty chilly, but the sunshine, ah the sunshine. It’s what makes living here the best. Why I still remember…*slap*…Okay, sorry again.

The dogs behaved well, after I spent the majority of yesterday snarling at them, every time I had to get through the door. Showing my teeth and growling works really well, in case you’re wondering. It worked so well in fact, that I needed to do it only once before they let me go through the door without half the herd trying to slip through.

Okay, I’ve gotta go.

Temporary change?

Song of the day: “Strange” by Wet Wet Wet. It has been a while since I had anything in my head from this band. Makes for a nice change, I say.

Well, I think it is safe to say that today is going to be a short blog for a change, considering yesterday was Monday work day, and except for the fact that I didn’t get paid yet (I sent an email but haven’t gotten an answer yet) and that John Doe wasn’t there, but a new guy. Let’s call him Dewey, shall we, ‘cause I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be mentioning him more often. Hah.

Dewey is a strange little fellow. He’s rotund, short and doesn’t say much, apparently. Personally I wouldn’t have hired him, but then, I never hired a person in my life, so who knows. Maybe he’s ridiculously good at his job…what, it’s possible, right? *sighs*

So anyway, the job went flawless. We could start at two thirty due to Dewey, so what with the route so very neatly lodged in our heads already, we arrived home at nine thirty for a change. It was a novel experience, I’ll say that much for it. Heck, we even managed to do a four, or five page edit in the end, which is always a good thing for as far as I’m concerned.

Got to be in bed in time, and had to get up at eight in the morning to pick up our friend in Marbella again. First we did a quick tour of the village to disperse the last few of the papers and then headed to the city.

Turns out this was the last time we needed to pick her up. After many months of complaints about her employer (she’s a caregiver for the elderly) she quit her job today and will be staying with us for a bit at least. A good thing too, since she’s been looking pretty bad late. Heck, I feared she was going to keel over any minute but she insisted on seeing the job through.
Her decision naturally, but I think she wouldn’t have had such a bad time of it if she had done it several weeks ago.

Ah well, no matter. What’s done is done, and this means that the budget is going to be a wee bit tighter once more. Not that I mind. Heck, I can do without cookies, cornflakes and other luxuries. I’m going to look at this as another good exercise in cowboying up, that’s for sure. It sill sure be interesting to see how things go. For the sake of her probably being in more blogs in the near future let’s call her Sally. Hah.

Okay, project wise. Once we got home this morning, we got to work immediately. Big brother’s floor…seriously, it’s a disaster. He sleeps with about thirty dogs and you can only imagine how bad it is…now, tenfold that and you’ll maybe have a slight idea how bad it is, hah.
So yeah, we ripped out about three square meters of his floor, just in time too, mind you, and then the same amount of ceiling of the living room, because the mess had seeped through. Grrr.
I was nauseous, I tell ya.

I spent most of the day measuring and sawing while big brother, grandpa and our friend Dani (she was visiting too and since she wants to learn DIY it was a perfect opportunity) ripped out the old floor. Rather than try to salvage anything of the mess, we sawed the old rotting wood to pieces and burned it in our winter vat without delay. It was nice and warm working near the vat, by the way. I didn’t think we were going to make it, but we did. The old is out, the new is in, painted and all, and come tomorrow (with a little luck) we’ll start laying the parquet tomorrow.

The day was beautiful, tenant joined me on my porch, keeping me company most of the day while she sat reading in the sunshine, and enjoying it.

The dogs were happy that we were home for the day, and happily alternated between sunbathing and lying around the burning vat. Boy do they like that. Sitabah was literally twisting into odd angles to get as close as possible to the heat. Dax likewise, and Knigth II sat at a slight distance, his head high and his eyes closed in bliss. Seriously, we’ve got some heat loving dogs here. Hah.

Well, I should get some more work done on the book, and I’ve got some messages to see to fast.

Back to normal.

Song of the day: “Hit the Road Jack” by James Brown, I think. I looked it up once, but my memory could be failing me. It usually does. Hah.

Okay, let’s get this done fast, because I’ve got stuff to do and only a little time today. I would like to say that I’ve got something immensely exciting to talk about, but except that the sibs and mom sold well at the market today, things were pretty much like normal.

I did have another dream, but unlike the Zombie dream the other night, this one faded way too fast. I couldn’t even jot down notes, for crying out loud. But anyway. Yesterday I overslept by almost two hours…and felt miserable because of it. I don’t know what it is about oversleeping but I wasn’t myself all day.

Which, of course, is an excellent reason to get busy fast for as far as I’m concerned. The project yesterday was the path towards the carport, and the gravel that has been a thorn in my eye for the past year or so. I decided to tackle the path and get rid of the gravel at the same time.

For the first hour or two I worked on cutting into the path, chopping out rock and clay until I had a proper track that could be filled with concrete. Though there were some hard spots, on the overall it went well enough due to the recent rains. The clay at least was soft, so I could get things done with the pickax and jackhammer in good time.

Next grandpa started making concrete so I could see to spreading and flattening it on the path until we ran out of cement. Almost got it all the way up, darn it. Guess it’ll have to wait ‘till some other time. We covered the newly poured strip up and headed for the carport.

Big brother had spent most of the day there working on fixing grandpa/tenant’s washing machine. The door had broken off, and since the handle didn’t work either, it took him several hours to figure out a solution. Worked too, considering it is all back in place now, and they can do their laundry again. Dontcha just love it when fixing something costs you nothing but time? I do.

I also made dried pea soup yesterday, and it worked out rather well, I admit. Broth, leek, onion, ginger powder, dried cilantro (aka Coriander), honey and a couple of pounds of dried peas that had been soaking in water during the night. It was friggin’ good soup that tasted even better on a slice of bread with butter and cheese. Hah.

We did some good edits last night (good thing too, because the day before that went horribly. I was way too distracted and tired). Got through at least ten pages, and considering we really ought to finish this book before spring as well, that’s good progress.

Today (I woke in time, thank you very much) the weather was once again wonderful. At least it was for the first part of it. The first thing we did after the habitual stint with the day’s laundry was go into the yard for a bit.
For some peculiar reason my back has been killing me since yesterday afternoon. I guess I am no longer used to bending over like that for any amount of time. It really isn’t at all surprising. To get rid of the problem I have been doing a lot of stretches and bends until some of the discomfort receded.

But anyway, since the dogs ate so many tomatoes last summer, we’ve got tomato plants springing from the ground everywhere. Good thing too, because none of the seeds that we sowed came up. We now have six little plants in the greenhouse at least, so, yay.
It was rather nice working in the greenhouse for a bit, in particular because it was wonderfully warm in there. I wouldn’t mind at all spending a lot of time in there.

Grandpa just finished painting the inside of tenant’s solarium, and declared this morning that he was redoing it because he found the paint to grainy. I looked at it, but couldn’t detect anything wrong with the stuff, but what the hey. It’s his choice if he wants to do it again.

After the morning chores, we headed for the storage shed up on the property to get wood. We need a slight expansion on the carport in order to put up wind screens. What with winters getting colder we’re definitely going to need some way to block the winder properly.
We got the main frame up today, and should be able to start with the covering sometime this week. I would have liked to say tomorrow, but since tomorrow is a work day, that definitely isn’t going work.

Okay, I’ve gotta get outta here. I’ve got fun work to do on the book. Hah.