Short day at work, but not too bad, considering I at least got the minimum hours I need for a day to be "good" to me. I could have gotten more time in another department, but it would have meant staying till 7 or 8 PM, and with my current commute, that's just a tad too long a day. But we're a bit closer to the move after today! One more little step in the big steps. I had loaded a few things to take to the trailer again this morning, to continue the "move out of the apartment what we don't desperately have to have," and dropped that off first thing when I got to the property after work. Then it was grab the mattock and shovel and get busy on digging up some more of the splice.
It wasn't that hard. We had some hard rain yesterday for about an hour, so the ground was a bit softer. Since I've also split wood with an axe before, I just swung the mattock like the axe, and bammo - more stuff dug up. The splice is now dug up enough to repair, or darn close to it.
I'd also taken the wire cutter/crimper/stripper with me, but forgot the little carryall of house tools I'd picked up ages ago from Wal-Mart for about $20. It has just about everything in it that you could need in a household tool set for most minor household repairs. In this case, it held the doggone screwdriver I needed to work on the outlets and switches! Have to remember it tomorrow, or I'm going to be kind of bored with nothing but brush to work on again. *laughs* The goal is to get as many of them done as possible this week, so we have less to do next time Q gets up there. I'd like to think that with the lower temps this week, that maybe I can get all of them done that aren't all hard to get fixed (like the ones where the wires are really short and have black electrical tape around all the ends, ugh). I'll leave him the harder, messier ones. Meanie, I am!!!!
I saw some interesting wildlife, too. On the hinge for the water heater compartment door, I saw a huge, six-inch or so long walking stick! I hope he's back again tomorrow, I am going to try to take remember the camera and take a photo if he is. He was so neat! I also saw a cool-looking dragonfly. It had a white abdomen, black head and thorax, white eyes, and the wings were tri-colored, being red-black in the half closest to the body, then a white stripe, then more red-black on the tips. I've seen this one before, I'd like to get a photo of it, too. And neatest of all, two raptors of some kind. Hawks, I think. They were look-alikes, and the one chased the other off the property, scree-eeeee-eeeeing at him all the way. With the coloration, I'd say both were males and one was intruding. The victor sat in a tall tree by the easement afterwards and screamed his victory. After hunting through various birding sites, I'm pretty convinced it's a red-tailed hawk in the "dark brown phase" and boy were they both gorgeous to see. The victor chased the other one off the property across the driveway and through the lower trees pretty close over my head, less than ten feet. Talk about a close encounter with incredible wildlife. It was pretty neat to see something so proud and beautiful sharing my new home with me (and yes, even that darned rattler is proud and beautiful in it's own way ... long as it's own way is out of mine, lol).
Tuesday
LONG day today, equipment kept breaking down so they had to keep shutting down the line, so work lasted a whole day today instead of part of a day. Good for the paycheck, bad for the feet, lol. They ache today from unaccustomed standing around doing nothing but twiddling my thumbs! I did get some more stuff to the trailer today, by means of taking it to work with me and locking it up all day - our towels and linens. Mind, the complex we're in used to be a motel (and did do some long-term residential motel housing, common in the Ozarks), but they converted the rooms to small efficiencies, which is good. They provide your first set of sheets and towels, and it's up to you to keep them cleaned up. So we'll need sheets when we get the beds, but we already had our own towels, and I moved them today.
Speaking of noisier, when I opened the breaker box, a fat little field mouse went SQUEAK! and ran off down into the wall through the hole in the bottom of the box for the wires. I hope the cats like their new playmate when we get moved. Heh heh heh. I'm not so sure their playmates will like them, though. Also noisy today was a male cardinal, who sat in the bushes across from the front door and scolded me for sitting down on the job. I was pooped after a long day at work and I went to the house and offloaded all those towels, plus I changed out two light switches before I had to head home.
Now, the one switch, I know I did right. The other, I need to research to double-check, as it is the bathroom switch, and the bottom had two wires. One went right in the back, and the other was around the bottom side screw. The ground that top wire for the side screw I figured out easily. The other two wires I temporarily put together on the bottom side screw while I research the thing and find out what it is doing. I think the third wire is the one for the bathroom vent fan, which I understand doesn't work anyhow. I know which of those two wires it is, and if that's the wire for the fan, I'll unhook it tomorrow and put a wirenut on it before putting the thing back together, so it's all safe. And here Quentin thought I was too much a girl to be able to do this kind of thing - it's easy once you know what goes where, and especially if you do one wire at a time!
Speaking of the darling, he's off today. Not because he doesn't want to work or the plant's closed for the day. He woke up sick as a dog. He tried, I know, to get together for work, but by noonish when I had my second meal break at work, he still wasn't dressed and we both know for either of us, if we ain't dressed in an hour after we get up for work, we ain't going in cuz whoever it is, is sick as all get out and wouldn't last anyhow. We do need the income, but not at the expense of someone's health. I got home and he'd fallen asleep in his recliner watching videos, woke up just enough to say hi and climbed back into bed, covered up and at 730 PM is already dozing again.
Wednesday
What a crazy day. Went to work and we had issues again, to the point that we all got sent home way early, with a warning that we'll be working longer hours tomorrow. I asked my supervisor today about moving to a different area in the department that I like working at better for the ergonomics aspects, and he said talk to the leads involved (mine and where I want to go), and if it's ok with them, it's ok with him, just it might take a bit till they get someone trained for my position. That's fine with me. I like what I do, but being a lefty in a right-handed world can cause some problems. In this case, it's a moving conveyor belt and righties working down the line in front of me all the time, forcing me to work down the line. Since the line goes left to right, that means I often end up working to MY right, twisting and stretching in a way that is not good for my back. Even with an extra stand, often it's not enough to keep from getting crowded out of position. So it's time to move to a place where people tend to stay put, the work is still fun and challenging, so that my employer doesn't end up with a future workmen's comp claim for my back.
But, due to the super short day, and knowing that we're going to get our butts kicked tomorrow, I told Q in a quick call home that I was opting to come home to the apartment and get plenty of rest for tomorrow, rather than doing stuff at the trailer. He agreed it was a bright idea. So home I came, to see him just before he left for work, and then I had lunch and took a nap for four hours. It's now about time to make some dinner, and relax a bit before I hit the sack for tomorrow. As to what shortened the day, and made yesterday so bad? We've got some kind of leaks in the roof right now, which are all being fixed at work, but yesterday and today for some reason, one of our condenser main pipes has started leaking in various spots for no reason we can think of. Now, they do get some moisture on them as a matter of course throughout the day, that's normal. What's not normal is for the mains to be dripping water so bad that they have to run plastic sheeting down from the pipes to the walls so that the water can run down the walls to the floors safely. Hopefully, they'll have it fixed tomorrow! I'd like to get some hours in on a good paycheck again.
But after supper, I'll get a bit of homesteady stuff done here at the apartment anyhow, in that I can pack up some more small stuff to go to the trailer. The more that gets shifted now, the better off we'll be. My only concern about tomorrow is that there's a church group that comes around weekly to check on people and drop off a free meal Thursday nights, and they said they'd have a minifridge and microwave and crockpot for us tomorrow night. Hope I don't miss them. We know the guy and his wife who run the group, and could get ahold of them to figure out a day and time to get stuff, but still ... we'd rather have them underfoot for a couple days and then take them down Saturday (we have an event Saturday night in H-, AR anyhow, and the trailer stop wouldn't be that far out of the way), then to miss them and have to figure out how to get them later.
Also, before I forget again, thanks for the compliment, Annightflyer! I do try to keep it down to earth, as you said, because I think if people want to homestead but are afraid they can't do it on a limited budget or minor physical issues or whatever, and they read blogs like this one, then they find that others have done it and are doing it right now. They get inspired (as you also said, lol) to give it a whirl themselves. After all, they say, how hard can it be if THEY'RE doing it???? It's still hard, and I don't mince words on that, but it's still a ton of fun. You just have to be willing to work hard and have a lot of patience with yourself and your projects, and don't forget your to-do list! Mine grows and shrinks a lot, but it gives me a pure shiver of pleasure to be able to cross something off that list.
Thursday
Crap. The church group stopped by, but the people who came weren't the people who were GOING to come, from last week, so none of the goodies for the trailer we were supposed to get were received. Ah well, I have numbers for the guy who runs the thing, I can call him this weekend or Monday and find out what's going on and how to contact the people involved so we can get the stuff. If they want to clean out storage units, we will be glad to help and take even some furniture off their hands if we can figure out how to pack it in the van to move it. So a long day at work anyhow, and coming straight home to meet them, meant no work done. But I did have an idea I think will fly, just have to remember to pass it by Quentin.
Those two big trash piles (and there will likely be a third when we tear down the Merlot) can be bulldozed with a small rented dozer into low piles of junk. There's nothing there to rot into methane gas, as anything rottable has long since rotted apart. There's nothing toxic, either, just a lot of junky furniture and plastic bins that are broken and old (OLD OLD OLD) rusty cans of food. I think we can likely bulldoze them into piles, get a few tons of clean fill dirt delivered and dumped on top of the piles of trash to bury the unsightly stuff, and then seed it with something hardy like wildflowers and alfalfa. I figure if we bury the trash at least three feet deep in clean fill dirt, it should keep it from poking it's ugly head up again. It also saves us shoveling it into a trailer to haul to the local dump site and paying god knows what in dump fees, as well as the time to do all that. The place is already a semi-landfill, so I figure why not do it properly and turn the dump into a treasure?
Friday
Got a bit done at the trailer today after a good day at work. I like my job a lot, and I think once the homestead is on its feet enough to where I can work from home and make as much or more than I can from my take-home paycheck, I'll miss it when I'm so busy at the homestead that I have to quit. It'll be a few years yet, I know, but I do like some of the people I work with. My supervisor is fun; he's one of those guys whose face just naturally falls into a scowl even when he's not upset. One Friday I took advantage of that, and told him to smile, it was Friday! "It's not over yet," says he. "So what?" says I. "You wander around here with the scowly face, you're gonna scare people, looking like that!" He laughed, and kept grinning every time he saw me the rest of the day. It's like that with a bunch of folks I work with, in that they're just generally pretty happy people. Oddly, there's one or two who are real party-poopers, but you find those in every crowd.
We are getting so NEAR to the move, I can taste it. I can hardly wait. It's going to be a miserable life for a while to most people, I know. No A/C, just a few box fans. No water other than what we haul till we fix the plumbing. No big fridge or fancy stove, just minifridges and a handful of small electric kitchen appliances to cook on/with. Our only company, the cats. And a whole heck of a lot of work to be done to make it all work the way it should for a solid, self-reliant homestead. It's gonna be a blast.
On the upside, being home so much the last couple of days, I've gotten a lot of that cotton I've had sitting around for awhile spun up on the drop spindle. This is a good thing. I'm not that good a spinner yet, still learning, but I'm getting better. Cotton's cheapish, and I figure by the time I get it all spun up, I'll be good enough to have not only learned how to do it well on the drop spindle (I use a top whorl version), but also may have saved up to get the electric spinning wheel I want. I want electric because my ankles aren't that good, and I have some arthritis in my knees and hips. I don't want to sit and treadle for hours on end if I don't have to!
Saturday
It was a good day. It rained some Friday night into Saturday morning, so the day was overcast and cool. We went to the trailer and got some work done. Q did some shooting and a lot of chainsawing. I took up some water, the dishsoap, a scrubbing sponge, and one of my dishpans so I could work on the cupboards and sinks and the tub. Found an old, ratty towel in our stuff that I'd already packed up there to dry things off with, and you wouldn't BELIEVE how nice and clean things look now. A lot of it was just caked on dirt instead of awful stains. We just saved a bunch of money, because we were pretty sure we'd have to replace countertops and the tub, and get a solar shower stall to hang in the tub for showering in for a while to keep our feet off the nasty tub bottom. The tub doesn't drain super fast, but it does drain and that's good. The place just took a 1000% jump towards livability again, and you can bet I'm happy with that.
It being date night, and the wrestling show going on in H-, we went to that. Had a great time, as it was their Legends of Wrestling show for the year. The indie company in question works really hard at getting good talent, and for the Legends shows, brings in old starts from the WWE. Last year, it was Jerry "The King" Lawler. This year, it was "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan. We also had "Hacksaw Butch Reed and ECW's Angel, and everybody got behind Duggan with HO and the USA chants. The crowd raised the roof. Wrestling is a big country sport, and to have it organized like this makes it all the more fun. One of Q's buddies from work fights with the company and is more of a dork than Q is, but he's a lot of fun to watch.
Now all we have to do is get through the week till Wednesday night when Q gets paid again. It's going to be a bit tight, as it almost always is because of the van payments right now, but we'll manage. I'll be so glad when we do get moved, because between the rent here and the gas we use to go back and forth to our jobs, it's EXPENSIVE. Living so much closer to work will be a lot nicer for us both, even though the place does need all that work. A three-bedroom house to sprawl out in vs. a one-room efficiency, and lower rent, and closer to work, all combine to make the inconveniences we'll have to put up with at first a lot easier to deal with than not.
And here it is 930 on a Sunday morning and all I want to do is go back to bed. But I have socks to knit, yarn to spin and wind, and some stuff to pack up that I can yet take with me to the trailer and get moved prior to the Big Moving Day to save room and gas, so it's off for me to get things done. More later, and pictures of the clean counters and tub soon (because silly me was still tired yesterday when we left and took the camera but forgot the batteries ... ooops).
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