Much ado

Song of the day: “Rome wasn’t built in a day” by Morcheeba. A wonderfully easy song to sing, which I did plenty while tenant, Dani and I tackled the day’s canning of the tomatoes.

But that is for later, first we have to tackle yesterday don’t we? Well, first off, the car turned out NOT to be ready yesterday meaning that we didn’t have to go out...which reminds me of Sunday evening, which I have talked about yet. It was was after the blog after all.

So yeah, big brother an I were out to get a load of market donation items, and I was behind the wheel. We were going through a small domestic area when suddenly we suddenly saw something small and brown in the middle of the road. I only had time to swear once, and then we’d already gone over it. A small owl, there’s a lot of those in this area, and they have a tendency of sitting in the middle of the road. Darn it!

I was biting my lip, and big brother was looking back even as my foot went to the break. At the same time big brother said, “We hit it and it’s still alive and flopping on the road. Stop. Back up.” I did. “We’ll have to kill it, if it’s not dead yet,” he adds, and I shiver. Aaawwww. I hate it when that happens, but you can’t let a little creature like that suffer, and being hit by a Land Rover is not nothing.

Big brother reached the bird first, and I followed suit. The owl was sluggishly flipping over on the road and then stopped moving. Big brother jogged back to the car to get my vest so we could pick it up, and I touched it lightly to test if it was still alive. It was, and I did some more aaaawwwing while big brother carefully wrapped the bird into the fabric while he told me to get the car off the middle of the road...another car was waiting to pass.

In the car the bird started to move more, (I took a picture, but I don’t have the capacity to load it right now) and by the time we got to a quiet area away from the road, we got out of the car. It flitted in the air a little, still sluggish really, and then landed in the high dry grass. We didn’t really know what to do with it, so I suggested we pick it back up and take it home, or something, see if we could nurse it back to health, or something. I took it into my hands, and it just sat there, all quiet, unafraid, staring up at me with one big yellow eye, while the other was swollen shut. Then suddenly, it started crawling up my arm, my chin and then nose, slowly spreading its wings and then taking off with wobbly elegance.

It went well, even though it swayed in different directions before picking up speed and heading north, while we laughed in relief. It was a bit of freaky night too, since no more then five minutes later, still on the dirt road through the hills, a wild rabbit decided that it was smart to cross the road, calm as you please. Seriously, I almost went off the road right then and there trying to swerve with only steep rock wall on one side and steep incline on the other. *sigh* It was definitely careful-you-don’t-hit-wildlife-night, jeez! I was a nervous wreck by the end of the trip. Not to mention exhausted. Poor big brother, I fell asleep while he was driving us back.

But anyway, yesterday was a relatively quiet day. While big brother and grandpa were busy sawing my future floorboards, tenant (caregiver was at her other job again) and I spent most of the afternoon measuring, calculating and sorting through the finish floor boards, getting them ready for laying. I think she liked helping out, in particular since there is nothing wrong with her brain and she can do math better than me. Hah. But anyway, it was fun doing that with her, regardless that things went a little slower because of it. I consider it physical therapy, which is good for her. In particular since it makes her feel useful.

Writing went extremely well yesterday. Did a solid five pages, and am less than a hundred words from the wordcount limit. Aaaaah. Seriously, it’s going to be tough finishing the story, since I am in the middle of an escape scene. Luckily I have that option of taking out one scene, because with the way things are going at the moment I’m going to have to take that option just to be able to finish the story.
*sigh* I hate limits, but it has to be done.

On the high of an extremely good writing session, I finished the day working out in the car port. Pounded and kicked that bag, lifted weights, jumped about, pushed up, pulled up and all that stuff, leaving me properly exhausted by the end of the day when I fell in bed and passed out just the way I like it. Hah.

The thing that is driving me bonkers these past couple of weeks is the ticks. There are SOOOOO many of them at the moment that I get a little crazy whenever I’m trying to write. Seriously, one of the dogs walk past and I just have to check if the parasites are sucking them dry again. Jeez. No matter how often I take the loads of, the next time I look, just as many will be right there again.

Which brings us to today.
Overslept a little this morning, but then caught up by skipping the morning rituals and heading straight down for laundry, coffee and a dip...and not in that order. Hah. That’s when I got the call from the garage telling me that I could come pick up the Opel Astra. I didn’t think I was going to make it, since mom and little brother had to head out to visit friends a couple of hours later, but we decided to give it a shot anyway.

On our way out we came across a trailer with three cross-country motorcycles parked in front of our gate, but we didn’t have time to chat with the young man sitting in it, looking rather miserable. Instead we headed out and in the end managed to get to town and back in two hours, with the fixed (keeping my fingers crossed on that one) car.

The boy and the trailer were still there. He (red-headed late teen, I’m guessing) was lying between the motorcycles for some shade, so I decided to take pity on him and asked if everything was alright. Seriously, I have never in my life been the cause of this, but the poor kid couldn’t get a word out. I think I made him shy as heck (why, I don’t have a clue) because he just nodded, mumbling something unintelligible. Then when I asked if there was a problem, he mumbled something about back, tire and more that I couldn’t make out. “Got a flat tire?” I surmised, wondering if maybe I had guessed wrong about his language, but then at his nod, added, “Are you going cross country somewhere ‘round here?” which got me another mumble (and red cheeks) while he gestured a little wildly up the mountain and mumbled some more about father and new tire.
I decided to take pity on him and flashed him a smile before heading to the gate.

By then his dad (or at least I think he was his dad) returned in a black Toyota Rav4 and started talking with him. Since I was still there, and had to check the car before mom departed I exchanged a few words with the man, who asked if it would be okay to leave the bikes there while they went to town to get a new tire. I said sure, and then headed inside to change and get ready for today’s canning session.

Yes, there at last. For the next five hours tenant, Dani and I cooked pots, halved tomatoes, cut veggies (for lunch), sliced Gherkins for pickling and boiled the tomatoes before putting them in the newly cleaned pots. Twelve more canned tomato pots for winter, Yay!

Of course grandpa and big brother were the lucky ones, they got to mess around with power tools and sawed more of my new floorboards. *sigh* But anyways...lunch consisted of stir fry veggies with Asian noodles.

What remains now is starting to clear my room. I took the opportunity the other day to gather all the wandering books and shove them back on their shelfs. I put my piles of clean laundry in the closets and even took the opportunity to do some serious dusting, so, with a little luck, it won’t take ages getting most of the furniture out. Yay.

Oh right, the reason why I didn’t the do that yesterday is because it was so cloudy that for the longest time it seemed as if it was going to rain. A few drops fell, but that it. Gotta go.