More wall stuff

Song of the day: “Hollywood tonight” by Michael Jackson, of course. Not his best song, but the clip is fun, and whenever I watch it, it will stick in my head for a while. So there you have it.

Busy couple of days with heavy physical labor, so on the most part I don’t really mind that we skipped a couple of days’ worth of workouts. Yep, workout consisted of hauling rocks, and let me tell ya, that works splendidly. Hah.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s do this right and start at the beginning of yesterday (whether I remember enough we’ll have to see, but I’ll try anyway) while gradually working the blog to today. Okay, let’s see…

Started the day a little late, but that was semi-planned considering the “no workout” plan. Hah. First there was the usual laundry, of course, quite a bit of it too, followed by scrubbing one of the glass and wood walls in the house. It’s been a while since I did that, and it is visible.

Next I headed down to the greenhouse and raised seedbed to open them up to the sunshine…which was still iffy considering we’ve been having a considerable windstorm raging overhead. And when I say windstorm I mean freaky hard winds that’ll knock you off your feet if you’re not careful.

Had to unload the car after breakfast, which was very interesting to do in that wind. Luckily we have a closed gate now, though, blocking the worst of it and allowing a semblance of peace while we sort through messes and decide where to haul them. It was more than the last few times (donations, you know) and there’s this cute little Moroccan table I’m going to restore to see if the sibs can sell it at the market.

But no matter, we decided to work on the wall in front of the house, meaning that we were out of the wind and in the sun. In one word: Awesome!
But anyway, we added another foot to the length of the wall, including a particularly low piece where I put a two-hundred pound rock, which almost was too much…well, it was too much, since I could only lift it about two inches before I had to resort to pulling and pushing. But anyway, with brought the wall up considerably. Yep. Made excellent progress, and finished most of the rocks we’d hauled in…meaning another hauling session. Yay.

We were pretty much running on fumes by the end of the afternoon, and since tenant had spent the majority of the day nearby, reading in the sunshine and well out of the wind too, we headed on up to heat up the leftovers of the day before with a bag of macaroni for filling.

Had to head into the village afterwards, get some lamp oil and another batch of sand since we’re going through a lot of it while working on the wall. Since we were out anyway, I decided to take Knight II for a short walk too, and he liked it, I think. Took him on a trip around the block and he kept nicely to heel.

There was a short edit, often interrupted by big brother’s problematic computer of the moment. He still hasn’t sorted it all out, and is pretty much consumed by the dratted thing for hours on end. Ah well, luckily we’re not in a hurry or anything. Besides, it was not as if I sat there twiddling my thumbs. I do still need to finished the first edit (so it’ll be legible for big brother at least) and am not sixty pages from the end.

Sleeping didn’t go well for some unfathomable reason last night. I lay awake for at least an hour, itching all over the place. Heck, at some point it drove me so bonkers I stripped down to check if there was anything crawling around in my PJs. There wasn’t so I had no choice but to dress again and try again. Successfully this time, but too short a night after all.

Today’s workout consisted of hauling over twenty wheelbarrows of rocks down to the house. It was a good workout, admittedly. First loading them up, wheeling them down, and then unloading each and every rock onto the ledge under the house (chest height) until my every muscle trembled in complaint. In other words; a perfect workout.

This “workout session” followed another big batch of laundry that had to be folded, while a new one had to be hung. But anyway, the rocks done, it was high time for breakfast, (and making dough for patties) at which time big brother took the Land Rover out and parked it where I could unload it from the 1600 pounds of sand we’d left in it for the night.

Must have pulled something right then, because my shoulder has been friggin’ hurting ever since. I think I’m going to have to hang on the pole for a bit again, might have dislocated it a little like the other time. That really goes way too easy these days. Grrr.

Checked the greenhouse for bugs again (opened her up too) and yes, found the buggers digging through leaves again. Heck, I even captured a couple of massive caterpillars that were trying to fade into the background by imitating branches. I sure showed them. Hah.

Helped tenant down to my terrace, where she could sit out of the wind, and while she sat there, big brother to the opportunity to trim the eucalyptus that robs her of most of the sunshine. Since he was busy with the chainsaw anyway, I asked him to trim the other tree as well, so for the next bit we were busy hauling branches down the mountain where they will have to be stripped of leaves, cut into pieces, and then piled into a dry storage spot.

I worked a little on the little coffee table for a bit, and then remembered that I still had to fix the controls of the main stove in the big house’s kitchen. They sure don’t make them like they used to. Those knobs started giving the spirit a month after we bought the dratted thing. But anyway I made three simple replacements so they are manageable, and with big brother’s help fixed the fifth (biggest) burner by taking out a rusted screw and adding a new one. Works like a charm now.

Worked a bit on one of the broken covers of the old bus, and then had to leave that to big brother because Sally needed a ride to work. Once I got back I went down to give big brother some supplies and then went to the greenhouse to close it all down. Apparently, while I was making patties this morning, big brother shifted all plants around, which took me by surprise for a bit. Hah.

That done, we had to hurry a bit. Twilight was already falling, and we really had to hurry if we still wanted the time to pick out a new batch of rocks. Almost didn’t make it, time-wise and physically for that matter. Boy, there were some rocks there that I almost couldn’t lift due to being low on foodstuffs. I’d only taken the time to nibble on some crackers since breakfast, so the first thing I did once we got home start on dinner.

Used the patty dough to make pan crusts, and made an Italian vegetable mix to top it off. Added some parmesan and voila, instant pizza…sort of anyway. It was tasty regardless.

Which brings us to now. A little worse for wear, a little more tired and totally ready to call it a day…now if only there wasn’t an edit to see to, eh?
Hah.