Blasted geyser

Song of the day: Well, a whole bunch of Katie Melua songs, actually. They’ve been flip-flopping through my head all day.

It was a busy day today, but first I better get to yesterday.
First off, after the usual morning rituals down at the house, I went up to help tenant out and made paddy dough while I was up there. This time I experimented with white beans, rather than chickpeas and lentils. I didn’t dislike it, that’s a fact, and it did go rather well with supper later in the day.

But anyway, after that, leaving tenant to watch Animal Planet, which she loves, I went down to the greenhouse to water plants. Same went for the raised seedbed, in which I had to re-sow green beans and lettuce. I think the ants got to them, seeing as they really like lettuce seeds. As for the green beans, I have no idea why only five of the twenty three I put in came up. So I redid that, watered the whole lot and went through the yard in search of veggies. Found enough for a full meal, and then started checking the cabbages and such for caterpillars and leaf miners. (Still got a bloody lot of them.) By then, I had to go back up the mountain to check on tenant.

She decided to come down with me, after all, and chatting all the way, we headed down to the sunny, windless spot by the basin, where she could enjoy the remainder of the afternoon. Having gotten her settled, I went to the igloo to get out three pillows for my dogs. Gada has been disagreeable with the floor now that temperatures are dropping during the night. In fact, in the evenings, when big brother and I work on the terrace in front of my cabin, we are obliged to put down blankets on the floor for our poor little four-legged darlings.

Though I was a bit in a rush, grandpa did talk me into cutting the big rugs that we’re no longer using. We decided to cut them in strips for storage and use them through the winter instead of blankets…at least in our office. It’ll sure be warmer.
It took a bit to cut those things into eight manageable strips, but in the end I handed them over to grandpa and went back down to start on supper with tenant. What with her cutting most of the veggies, it was basically a question of throwing everything together for me.

That done it was up and got to work on my messages and then wrote some more for the Banshee story. That done there was of course an edit, which didn’t last as long as it should have, but since we wanted to do a workout in the morning, I figured some zzzs wouldn’t go amiss…of course I ended up lying awake most of the night. I can’t even explain why…well, there was the nightmare that continued after waking up six or seven times through the night. It was about bugs, thousands and thousands of bugs, and they were crawling all over me, and I was itching and scratching and that kept waking me up, time and again, until in the end my alarm went off and I had to get up. *sigh*

Had a good workout this morning regardless, even though my shwung was a little off.
That done, there was laundry, followed by breakfast and being startled by a huge truck arriving at our neighbors. They were from the phone company and they worked there for a solid day with this humongous generator roaring like mad. They did make for life entertainment for tenant, who finally wanted to go out into the sunshine around 3 in the afternoon.

But anyway, a trip down to the greenhouse to open everything up and water stuff followerd. With big brother’s help, we finished checking everything in about two hours, at which time we headed up with a big crate filled with young plants to put in the ground up in grandpa’s little yard up by the storage.

Those set, we tacked this humongous branch of a eucalypti that was really starting to become too big and threatened to break off, right on top of grandpa’s roof. It took a while, but we did manage taking it off, without damaging anything unduly.

Now that the wreck is gone from the storage, I got the chance to cut up a couple of pallets and started hauling the tile supplies to the far corner of the old paddock. The majority is now in place- While I was doing that, grandpa and big brother hung an old geyser in grandpa’s bathroom, but after they went through all that trouble, they discovered that there was a leak after all, meaning that our arching session was cancelled and we had to head for the city to get supplies and a new boiler. Sure, in summer it doesn’t matter if you don’t have hot water, but in winter that’s a little uncomfortable. Blast that old geyser for being broken, darn it.

My foot was downright killing me by the time I came back up from the yard, where the greenhouse and raised seed bed had to be closed for the night. Since the seedbed looked rather dry, I also watered it quickly, and went up to change clothes for the trip.

We went to several stores, and ended up with a semi cheap one that is going to be a bitch to hang, what with grandpa’s bathroom being so small that we’ll have to make adjustments to fit it in.

The dogs were upset with me when I got home and let them out the cabin. Knight II grabbed hold of my arm, and Sitabah was screeching at the top of her lungs. When she does that, I have a severe inclination to wring her little neck, darn it.

And just about now I’m starting to get cross-eyed, my foot hurts, and well…it’s been a long day *sigh* and I'm outta here.