Some good news

Song of the day: “Oh happy day” by Edwin Hawkin singers…or something along those lines. I know the song better than I do the folks who sang it.

So, good news first. Remember that letter I helped tenant write several months ago? Well, turns out her daughter did indeed want contact and has been trying to write to her for a long while already. Now, we haven’t figured out what went wrong yet, but clearly several letters got lost somewhere. But anyway, said daughter searched the Net and by some miracle came across my blog, read a bunch of inane posts (I mean, you guys know how I can prattle about useless stuff sometimes, right?) and finally found the posts where I talked about tenant writing the letters. Having ascertained (some serious professional sleuthing going on there, she’s got my compliments for perseverance) that I was the Sam tenant mentioned, she got my mail through the connection on blogger, and voila.

Was a close call there for a minute because the mail ended up in my Spam section which I hardly ever check before throwing everything that’s in there out. *sigh* Luckily it all worked out, and I communicated with her a bit, which I then printed this morning and gave to tenant. Oh man, you should have seen her face. I came in, told I had a grand present for her, and then put the printed papers in front of her.
It took her a moment to figure it out, did in fact ask me what it was. So I pointed down at the name and greetings at the bottom. She was all confused, looked up at me uncomprehendingly as I said that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her and that by some miracle her daughter had tracked me down.

What followed was lots of tears, incoherent speech and more tears, which I waited out just to make sure was okay before I started on the forest fruit cheesecake tenant had asked for for her birthday. Every time I looked in on her she would be reading, so the way I figured she was all good.
With big brother’s help, making the pie was easy as…well, pie. Hah. It took about an hour, at which time I supplied tenant with a blocknote and a pen so she could start on her letter prior to going out with mom for a b-day coffee in town. For a moment I thought she was going to say no to that, but then she decided to go for two good things in a row (taking her blocknote and pen along) and changed into something more suitable for going out.

Well drat. I was interrupted just now. Apparently Ama (Viscla pointer) got her teeth into a toad and is suffering from poisoning. Mom and middle sister are on their way to the vet as we speak. She already had this once, getting into some sort of seizure, so speedy treatment is essential. Dontcha just hate the poisonous ones. Grrr. I just found the dratted beast lying dead on my terrace for crying out loud. 8 inches long four inches wide. Big brother got rid of it.

Where was I?
With tenant settled in the car and off with mom and middle sister for a cuppa, big brother and I were free to head on down to feed the dogs, and then head on down into the yard…which reminds me, I haven’t even described yesterday yet. *sigh*

I wasn’t in the best of moods yesterday, FYI. In fact, I was downright grumpy…so it probably wasn’t a good idea for me to make fondue from scratch. Hah. On the other hand, I got completely giddy (I haven’t had booze in more than a year, so by now I get buzzed from a cherry bonbon) and floated about half a foot over my bad mood, so maybe it wasn’t a bad thing after all. Yep. Making fondue from scratch involves a full bottle of wine, lotsa cheese, some cherry liqueur, garlic and nutmeg, and then you’re all set. You shouldn’t drive afterwards, by the way, I tried, and it just wasn’t smart so I let big brother do the honors. Hah.

As to what kept us busy: The usual, I guess. Yard stuff on the most part. Watering, weeding and harvesting. At the moment we’ve got cauliflowers coming out of our ears, so come tomorrow (if I find the time) I’ll be blanching some of those so we can freeze the majority.

Also lotsa chard to harvest, another load of beets, broccoli of course, and taking out the rapidly growing kale for the dog food. Did some serious chopping for that reason, getting enough veggies to get the doggies through two days of feeding, almost.

There was of course the edit yesterday and reading through the last pages today. Yep. Almost through with the paper edit, and I for one am psyched. We’re going to take a short break and focus on some other stuff the next few days, but then it will be reading V.L. one last time before we start sending it out to the publishers.

Tomorrow our 3000 liter water supply tanks should be arriving. Yay. We went to the construction company today to work out the particulars, and heard that the gate we ordered last week for the job arrived as well, so both will be delivered to us tomorrow in the late morning. Yay. First instance we’ll be storing them up in the old horse paddock, so we can take our time setting up their permanent spots in the yard.

But anyway, in regard to the job, as soon as we got the second gate, I’m going to contact the boss lady and inform her that we’ll be heading out to her place to finish the fence. We’re hoping to manage it in two days, but it could turn out that we’ll need three. Luckily she was generous in paying us, so worst case scenario we’ll lose ten bucks on that one extra trip.

If we can manage it, we’ll also be cutting down one of the big eucalypti down in the yard, rather than risk it later on when it’s even bigger and we’ve got more veggies growing in the yard.

Well, I’ve got to go. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but since, for the life of me, I can’t remember what else it was.