Getting down and dirty

Song of the day: “The arms of an angel” by Sarah McLachlan. A little melodramatic, but a beautiful song.

If I were to believe my brain at this particular moment I spend the past couple of days sitting on my hands doing absolutely nothing, but...knowing me the way we do, that is highly unlikely. *snort*

Okay, made a list whining to big brother about “what did we do, what did we do” knowing that it really didn’t have that much use since he is even worse at keeping track than I. *sigh* But okay, I have a small list so let’s see if I can make it into a semi-cohesive description.

First off, yesterday...Oh. My. Gawd! Time out, time out. One of the dogs just farted. Must. Not. Breathe. Through. My. Nose. Gawd, it’s like chemical waste. What the...okay, I can breathe again. Jeez. That was bad. Where was I?
Oh right. Yesterday.

It was time to dip the dogs. The fleas have been breeding beyond imagining since the temperatures dropped and the ticks started disappearing...well, the big ones anyway, the little black ticks are still having a feast on the dogs. Rather then risk a flea plague, we decided to do a full pack dip, which took us a solid hour, I’m thinking.

There are some dogs who don’t mind all that much, like Knight II for instance, I led him into the bathtub and then took five minutes pouring the stuff over him because there was no way in heck that I could dunk him in a human sized bathtub.

Chaos, on the other hand, went through it with long suffering dignity. I lifted him in and he sat there, looking at me balefully as I grabbed his paws and pulled him under. It was as if he was saying, “Okay, boss. I can’t stop you, but that doesn’t mean I’ve gotta like it.” The way I figure, he’ll be without fleas for a bit now, so I’ll suffer through his ire.

Jelly refused to come down from the mountain, and was eyeing us from high above. We had to resort to trickery by pretending we were going down the mountain, and snatched him right before we went through the gate. Same goes for Indigo, who big brother literally had to drag up, because our little walrus refused to walk on her own.

Arthur thought to be smart and was hiding somewhere in the upper yard behind the bushes, but grandpa caught him, luckily. Bambi pretended he was being killed and ran off just as soon as he was dunked. As for the shepherds...seriously, they’re such whiners. They went through such acrobatics that big brother was soaked afterwards. *sigh*

There was some gardening afterwards, mostly checking if anything needed water, taking caterpillars off, leaf miners and hunting for pumpkins. Actually found three more, one of which was hiding so effectively that I literally had to dig it out of vines, leaves and branches. That’s why I call it hunting pumpkins, those babies know how to hide. No matter how well you look, there’s always another one hiding somewhere.

Then it was to the outside kitchen to experiment with the four baskets of carob we gathered a couple of weeks ago. What with us never using the stuff there were a lot of unusable pods. But in the end we ended up roasting a full pan of them. First we tried it as black coffee, which was, like, eeewww, but then with milk and a bit of sugar, it actually tasted like some sort of mocha. Not bad. As the remainder of the experiment I made a sweet paste that should function as a chocolate substitute, and Dani, who offered to play guineapig, says it was good. Hah. Considering my stomach is playing up again these past few days, I decided not to test the stuff myself.

Next there was some cooking. Mashed potatoes with carrots, onions and cheese, most of which grandpa was so kind to already prepare. Gawd, I love mashed potatoes like that, didn’t even mind that we could eat more of it today. Hah.

There was a nap. What with the recent illness, I’m still catching up, I guess, and since we did a workout early in the morning yesterday, I was kinda happy for it. It was such a nice nap, too. All warm and cosy, with the sun on my face. I love that.

What followed was reading on the review book I’m doing, followed by a short bout of writing on the Banshee story that’s been going through my head for a while now. Did about half a page and then we really had to get to editing again.

Which brings us to today. For the most part we worked on hauling the old car wreck away from the storage corner. Mostly because the fire reminded us that it was such a humongous mess over there (seriously, I was embarrassed when the fire men came) so we pushed it out, partially helping ourselves out by using the Opel in the hard spots.

Then we took about an hour of lying underneath the wreck taking out excess screws, pieces of metal that are merely there for ballast, and then rolling it into the gate so that at some point we can start working on it, without standing out there in the open where winter winds will literally chill you to the bone. Since we don’t have time for this at the moment, it will have to wait for later in the year for sure.

It was kinda nice getting my hands dirty on grease and such, even if I did open up a lot of skin again. Don’t tell anyone, but I always get strangely giddy when I have to unscrew bolts that are so tightly bolted that it takes a solid minute to get it to move at all. Only one had to be done by big brother, because I couldn’t dislodge it, other than that, I could handle most that grandpa was unable to. Always a pleasure to discover that you can beat an hydraulic drill, eh?

The car wreck settled and tucked in plastic, it was time to head down to the basin (tenant went along) where I checked the cabbage type plants again, removed caterpillars, again, and then started on dinner.

It was left over day, really: the pasta of a few days ago, the mashed potatoes from yesterday, with pancakes as desert. Were nicely stuffed afterwards. We finished up cleaning more of the basin terrace. Soon we’re going to have to thoroughly wash the greenhouse. That rinse I did the other day won’t do the trick much longer, that’s a fact.

What with still being tired, I took another nap...had a strange dream about Jessica Biel of all people, and then woke up just in time to start today’s blog. Since we’re going to have to go out again later tonight, another pick up, thank you very much, I’m going to have to leave it at this and say bye, bye.