Going Commando...

No, no, no. Get your head out of the gutter. I mean that literally. As in Arnold Swarzenegger in Commando. Remember that scene with him walking down a mountain with a tree trunk on his shoulder. That was me today…well, minus the bulging muscles, the chainsaw, the checkered shirt, the massive chest, the buzzcut, and…well, I was going uphill, rather than down, and by the time I got up I was wheezing like a chainsaw myself. Hah. So yeah, it wasn’t like Arnie, but you get the idea, right?

Okay, back to the usual stuff.

Song of the day: “Somebody that I used to know” by Gotye and Kimbra. Just recently discovered this jewel of a song, and it has been going through my head ever since. Heck, even when I woke up during the night, it would go through my head. I know. I’m incredibly weird that way, but hey, it could have been worse. I could have been NORMAL. Hah

But anyway, like I said up there, there was tree hauling. Part of it had already been done the past few days, and on the day we cut the big bugger down, but today the big trunks were sawed to pieces so we could haul them to storage. Yep, I walked around with a bunch of tree trunks on my shoulder (one at a time, I assure you…well, I did two at one time, but I almost didn’t make it up the stairs that way. Hah) and it was just like a workout. Good thing too, since I didn’t have time for one this morning, made up for it with a solid 120 heart rate.

I have several spots of bad news from these past two days. Manni, little sister’s 14 year old cocker spaniel is ill. Cancer, probably so yesterday he went through a biopsy, and then today, due to a slight infection, he had to be rushed back because his entire scrotum area was swollen twice the size. Poor darling. The doc stated that the swelling wasn’t disastrous, and that we won’t know the problem until Monday. *sigh*

Second bit of bad news is that the fella who was going to rent us his apartment in the village prevaricated for several days, then today declared he wanted to increase the price we had agreed on with a solid 40 percent. What with this horrible economy lots of folks think they can get some money out of the “wealthy” foreigners. Which just wasn’t doable, of course, so we had to decline that particular place. Luckily we promptly found a new one. A nice little finca literally in the country. Nothing too fancy, but location-wise it’s absolutely gorgeous. The owner seemed like a nice fellow too. Ah well, we’ll see how that goes, eh? Hopefully this doesn’t go completely wrong again. Keeping y fingers crossed.

The tick problem is rapidly increasing again. I know. I complain about this particular problem every single year, but let’s face it. It’s a friggin’ big problem. Soon we’re going to have to give them a tick bath again, and though I hate the chemical part of that, it is better than letting the pack be sucked dry of blood. Friggin’ bugs. Am removing an average of 20 ticks per dog these days, for crying out loud.

Yesterday afternoon was mostly spent working in tenant’s kitchen, where the grouting still had to be done. First it was crawling over the new tiles to clean the grouts, then filling them up and smoothening them. I had some serious annoyances with grandpa yesterday, who has this fixating with having stuff “smooth”. Drives me bonkers sometimes. He doesn’t realize that with these amounts of dogs stuff will be dirty no matter what you do. But no matter. He insists…and I wouldn’t mind all that much if only he would do part of that extra effort himself. But he doesn’t. He has a bit of an attitude of “let Sam do that, she’s good at it”, which is a ridiculous reason, because how will anyone ever be good at anything if they don’t start at some point. Grrr. Gonna have to find a subtle way to help him out of that particular illusion some day. *Sigh*

There was harvesting, watering the plants…quite a bit of that in fact, since big brother was helping grandpa with the kitchen cupboards. Not a bad way to be busy, mind you. There’s nothing quite like standing in the bright sun, looking out over the valley and sea, while a fresh breeze makes the poplar trees whisper. Sorta like a fairytale, that. But anyway, the water will be running, there’s harvests to be gathered, and on the overall, what with the dogs lying around ya, it’s a rather peaceful experience.

Workout was rather good yesterday. Did the double speed thing again, so I was properly lubricated throughout the day, while this morning I really did feel every single muscle. Hah. Funny how that works, eh.

There were dog-feeding sessions, of course, along with some concern for Chaos, who appears to suffering from some sort of malady at the moment. He’s limping a little, looks at me with those big brown eyes as if the world is about to come to an end, for crying out loud.

This afternoon, after the whole “checking out the rental” thing, we had to head for town to do a pickup. Not much that we can sell, but lots of wood, which is never a bad thing. You know how I love wood.
Since we were in town anyway, we did a few groceries, and then it was back up the mountain and arriving home at around nine in the evening…which reminds me, I’m way late at the moment. Gawd, I’m constantly running behind today. I’m sure I’m forgetting something…like working on the table and that sort of thing, but alas. I’ve got a manuscript to prepare for sending. Oh right. That synopsis shortening I had to do? I succeeded. Yay!!! Say “Good Sammy”. Now I only need to find a line of dialogue that can wow the editors, and my favorite scene (check), the query letter (check), the actual manuscript (check, of course) and a little bio, of course.

So… I’m going to call this a blog.