Another wall, however small

Song of the day: “Never no more” by Patsy Cline again. Yep, this one’s a keeper apparently. Hah.

Let’s see if I can speed this one up a little, because I had a friggin’ long day and I am seriously contemplating an early night…again. Oh right, I forgot I had one last night as well. Okay, never mind then, I’ll probably be late. Hah. I might not be entirely coherent either. You see there was a sale of Fondue, so that just made up for my supper and it was absolutely delicious. *hiccup* It doesn’t help that I haven’t gotten around to sipping anything more alcoholic than a cherry bonbon, so seriously, the wine went straight to my head.

Good news on the interview/guest blog with C.S. Marks. If all goes well I’ll be on the receiving end around New Years. Yay! With a little luck we’ll either end the year with it, or call in the new one, let’s wait and see.

Okay, on to business as usual.
Yesterday:
It was a windy day, but not cold thankfully. The plus side of all the wind, though, is the laundry that dries incredibly fast. Seriously, by the time I get there in the morning, everything is dry as can be, which not usual for winter at all. But anyway, the green soap experiment is still going well. I kinda like the lemony scent to the clean stuff, and the fact that we could reuse the water for the yard is definitely weighing heavily in the equation.

Finished the first one of Jack Vance’s “Demon Princes” and was pleasantly entertained. Personally I truly enjoy the way he plays with words, and the way I hear some old English teacher in my head when I read it (like there’s a narrator) but I also fear that in this day and age, the way books are written now, he would not have been published. There is an old fashioned courtesy to it, an unpretentiousness and a patience that you rarely come across with new writer.
I think I will have to do a review once I’m done with the whole series.

Oh, oh, before I forget: Grandpa’s moped arrived. Yay! Big brother and I went to town to fetch it tonight, and it looks so cute…though grandpa obviously needs to get used to it. He doesn’t like change all that much. Hah. Good thing about the moped is that it’s small enough to fit in the back of the Land Rover…which was a total pain in the behind with the old one. Not this one, though. It weighs barely a 140 pounds and we got it in without any trouble.
Of course grandpa is not going to use it yet, first he’s going to ride the old Katana to death, and then start on the new one.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, darn it. Where was I? Right, yesterday:
The sun was out so I had to open the greenhouse and raised seedbed up to prevent funguses from going rampant. Did a half-hearted search for bugs, but then headed up because grandpa had already made me a batch of cement to start with the wall…after helping out tenant who needed to change and head on down to my terrace where she could enjoy the sunshine and a book. :-)

Which reminds me, she finished mine “Trust Me” said the Spy, her first English book ever, and she said she really, really enjoyed, despite the fact that she had to check every fifth word or so in her trusty dictionary. I for one, gotta commend her for making it through the book at all. If I had to check so many words, I’d have given up already. Hah.

But anyway, grandpa had made cement, so it was time to start on the wall for the moped parking spot. The trick about building a straight wall of natural rock, is not to think about it too much. Usually the first instinct of where and how to place a rock is the right one, and if you start thinking it won’t work. So I didn’t think, I just started putting up whichever rock I came across and ended up with a rather peculiar selection of jagged peaks. Now, if I had started thinking at that point (I will post pictures in the near futures, just not now, I’m too tipsy and too sleepy) I might have worried about which to fit on top of those, but for the first four or five layers there wasn’t a single problem. It was then that I decided to go for a cake shaped dist with tilted sides which really put me to the test in finding (without thinking) one to match the tilt. But I managed, and by the end of the day three fourths of the wall was standing.

Of course that meant that today I had to work on it again, but this time there was only half a foot or so to go, and I need only two wheelbarrows of cement, rather than yesterday’s five. We sure are going through our supply or rocks fast. It will be nice to see the old gate wall again after all this time, while it was hidden behind the piles. Hah.

Where was I? Oh, right. After the masonry, big brother and I went out for another batch of sand, taking Knight II along so we could take him on a short walk afterwards. Good thing too, because the big lug spent most of the day in the back of the car, which is his favorite spot because it gives him such a good vantage point of the carport.

Once I got home it was time to cook a quick supper, and then off to the edit. Didn’t get a lot done, but enough at least. Three pages at least, and let’s face it, the first edit is always a massive pain in the behind. The story’s still new then, more a road of discovery than anything else, it’s edit number two, plus the paper edit when stuff really starts to get together. I did discover that during the next edit we’re going to have to remove more than a thousand words, which is going to be massively interesting.

Like I said before I had an early night, so that basically brings us to today, doesn’t it?
Let’s see…laundry, of course, followed by tackling the mirrors in the house, taking the small grill oven up to the carport so we could clean and fix it (the on off switch broke down). Also middle sister’s sewing machine was acting up, so we worked on that during the day as well, and since he was busy in the carport anyway, big brother decided to work on the house computer as well to see if he could speed it up a little with some extra memory gadgets that I don’t know the name of.

The greenhouse and raised seedbed had to be opened again (yes I remembered to close them last night, yay) and then it was up to have breakfast and help tenant again because caregiver was at her other job. She was in a cheery mood today (tenant) and I let her walk most of the way while I took the car out to the old paddock and started to unload since Grandpa and big brother were down by the carport to catch her. So nice that she can do simple stuff like that on her own now.
The car unloaded and having spent the majority of the afternoon finishing the wall for the moped, (no wind today, it was actually a worm day with temps in the high sixties) the end of the day was spent cleaning the grill oven and carrying it back into the house. Next there was the greenhouse, which had to be checked for bugs and such. We’re going to have to transplant cabbage kinds again tomorrow. They’re getting to be too big for the multipots.

Then there was the trip to town to pick up the moped (got the call this morning) followed by some groceries, and picking up the biodegradable oil for the chainsaw, along with the new blade for the circle saw. And finally around nine in the evening we were back home where we could eat fondue, write this friggin’ blog and then go to bed early, because, let’s face it, the edit is NOT going to work tonight.

No mater, though. Another early night will allow for a workout tomorrow morning (weather permitting) Yay!
Heading out and signing off…gawd, this fondue is potent.

Oh darn it. I still gotta go fetch Amri from up on the mountain. Bye.