July 7, 2012

How the heck did half the year pass so fast? It's getting closer and closer to having to move, and I'm nowhere near ready for this, because there's so much yet that really should get done beforehand and likely won't. The way the neighbors with the anxiety-ridden poodle-thing are going, the move may become a necessity with a gennie for a bit before anything is done with the screens, the plumbing or the power. I say do it, as I'm tired of trying to sleep with their dang dog whining and howling. (Sorry, I'm irritable - I'm starting this post Tuesday over breakfast and I had a rough night, so today will be running on adrenaline and caffeine for the most part.)

Monday wasn't too bad, other than Q took the day off work to fix the brakes on the van. It wasn't that difficult a job, other than driving really carefully to get the brakes and get back here, because his were gone. Somebody prior forgot to change the pads anytime in the recent past, so about all he had left was bare metal. Not a lot of pad left. Yikes. I went to work like a good little drone, which it ended up being a bit of payback for last Thursday. Turns out a lot of people skipped work, so I ended up being one of only two people for the most part on my position on the line. Thankfully, they ran the line pretty slow, but ye gods, it was tiring! Then I went to the property to deal with cutting up all the smaller logs I had piled up, so there were woodpile sized, and stacking them and the stuff Q cut up Saturday that we were too tired to stack then. Bad part is toward the end, the red paper wasps decided to start hanging round the woodpile. I'm not allergic to bee stings, but I'd still rather not get stung, either. And paper wasps are aggressive and can sting multiple times. I need to get some wasp spray of some kind or make up an organic wasp repellent so they'll go away. I told Q that shooting a can of soda all over the top of the woodpile wasn't a good idea, but he did it anyhow. Now we get to deal with the aftermath. Ah, me. Homesteading fun at it's crankiest. (He fell asleep with the lights and TV on again last night, which shorted me on sleep ... and if I don't get enough sleep, I'm an absolute BEAR in the morning, more than usual, lol.)

Tuesday was better. Not a lot of hours, but enough to make it worth going in, and with Wednesday off as a paid holiday, that puts me up around 19 hours for the week, which isn't bad. It's almost better than I was getting in a whole week for a while there, when I was considering myself lucky to get 20 hours. I can do with 25, 30 is better, and anything over that is a huge help. We don't have to worry about the paper wasps so much, as they decided to not make a return visit today. Good, I'd've hated to have to bust up their happy little home in my woodpile, but it's MY woodpile, and I don't want to have to fight wasps and things for it! The little blue-black gecko-y lizard is cute as can be, and welcome, but stuff that can hurt me is NOT.

Got some brush cut up and stacked, along with leaving some of the bigger stuff for later again. It's still really too hot on a shortened work day to deal with sawing stuff. With temps in the 90s to low 100s, even with a good breeze, it's too hot to be out in the sun for long. You wouldn't know it to see my farmer's tan, though. I wash up at night and I wonder if I'm trying to wash of the dirt or the dark! I do tan up pretty easily, and for a gal whose genetic background is all Eastern European that I know of, I do tend to tan up fast and dark without burning. My daughter is the same, only moreso, as she is also 5/16 Hawaiian through her biological father. (She calls him "sperm donor." If asked about her father, she will say she has two - one is Dad (Quentin), the other is her sperm donor. At nineteen, she's a heck of a kid.)

I also did some more target shooting at pop cans. Not upright cans. I laid them on their sides on the woodpile, so they were kept stable in the little valleys between logs. And I shot at the ends of the cans. Five cans, five shots, five hits. I quit while I was ahead, but apparently, this has spurred the hubster to coming up with some sort of challenge for me that he refuses to reveal until he gets home from work. Grrr-some.

I'm glad the brakes on the van are done, though. If our combined checks after bills are enough this weekend, we'll finally get the beds moved and be one step closer. We are hoping like crazy, because this is annoying as heck with all the hurry up and wait. We looked this morning at the to-do list of things we need to do to be comfortable the rest of the summer and prior to winter, and while most of them are one-offs, there is a lot to get done. For example, four of the windows at the trailer have no screens in them. They open fine, but we don't want bugs and little reptile friends of the snakey persuasion and birds coming in for visits. So we need screens up in order to open them for cross-ventilation as well. I checked at Lowe's today on they way back here from the property and work, and found 15" wide ones that open to about 36" total for around $6.50 including tax. That isn't too shabby, as it means for less than $35, we could have the other four windows screened, too. And yes, I know $6.50 times four isn't anywhere near $35, but we may have to buy a small board or two and have Q build end frames for them to keep them in the window openings without letting things in (or the cats out). We need to get box fans, at about $20 each. We need the solar shower stuff, a camp stove, a new doody bag for the toity ... Like I said, a lot of one-off stuff, but stuff that needs doing as soon as possible no matter what.

If we HAD to, we could save up for a small gennie and use that for the minifridge for food basics (with a cooler with ice for him to have cold sodas at night), a couple of fans and for charging our cellphones and my laptop. We wouldn't have tv service or internet for a bit which would drive us both batty, so we're hoping to get the power fixed ASAP as the next big project on the list. Getting all done soon. We keep saying that, but I need to concentrate on getting him to concentrate on it rather than always wanting to have fun with the chainsaw. He's kind of addicted to the thing, and I've been being nice and trying to baby him, hoping he'd get over it. He hasn't. Time for me to get a big axe and show him that an axe can do just as good a job with a lot less frustration. Heh heh heh. He thinks cuz I'm short on one end that I can't POSSIBLY swing a big ole axe. He ain't seen me in action.  Heh heh heh heh.

Shout outs to Gentle Readers:

Tina, who never fails to visit upon hearing of a new post, nor does she fail to comment. Bless you for all  your inspiration. And folks, if you like a fun homesteading list, Tina's is one of my few favorites (alphatoomegahomesteading on yahoo groups). One of these days when I have a few minutes to spare (HA!), I'll put up a blogroll on here.

Patrick, for the advice on the PVgis. I still can't seem to find a PV calculator that will work for me, as they all seem to just go to a "buy our stuff!!!!" page, but I'll keep looking. We're clearing around the house and thinning the forest for more than just firewood, my friend. We are looking to clear roof from any shading possibilities so that the PV system will work better. (Reminds me, I need to pull together a few bucks and buy LaMar's Off The Grid Book in hardcopy. I have the ebook, but I want the hardcopy, too. The solar stuff in there will be a big help to setting up things, but it's a bit hard to hand it to hubby and show him stuff sometimes on the computer screen - a hardcopy book would be a big help. Plus there's the whole taking it outdoors or into another room and keeping it going without power so that we can follow along with what to do, lol.)

And to Phyllis, thanks for the note on the soil mix. I do know that we have to lime some here in the Ozarks. Despite all our rocks, all the lime seems to be tied up in them, and not free in the soil. I do prefer the gravel to help with drainage a bit as well as because many of the beds will be reclaimed stuff or plastic totes, and I don't want all the soil washing out the bottom through the drainage holes! Your soil mix sounds really good though. I plan on giving it a try and seeing how it does for me!

Okay, nuff for Tuesday. I'm off tomorrow due to the U.S. holiday of the Fourth of July, though sometimes I wonder how many people still celebrate it for the real meaning and not fireworks and grilling.

Wednesday, we did a bit of shopping for basic groceries and discovered that B- now has a Coleman Outlet store. Since the store was having it's grand opening on the Fourth of July, what better fun for us than to visit and see what we could see? We found a bunch of low-priced goodies that we can certainly use at the trailer while starting out, including a bedside lamp/alarm clock that looks like Coleman lantern, and it's battery operated. We also found the campstove we like that Wal-Mart carries, but cheaper as it's the outlet store, a handy "camper's tool" that we can both use when out and about on the property (it's a pliers-thing that opens up into over a dozen different small tools), a small flush toilet we can sit on top of an upturned 5-gallon bucket and have a flush toity fairly quickly without getting a more expensive porcelain one, and my favorite - a propane-fueled on-demand hot water heater.

Q says we need two - one for the bathroom and one for the kitchen. I say get one, because we don't use that much hot water in the kitchen, and I can warm up on the campstove or in a microwave what we need there. It's the bathroom for showers and such that we need hot water. So we can fix incoming water pipes within a few weeks of moving and quit doing the sponge bathing pretty quick. The outflow pipes are a one-day job essentially, it's the incoming that are a problem since we have to replumb the house and bring in the pipes from the cistern/spring downhill to the house. We might not have GREAT water pressure, but we'll have some gravity flow pressure. The on-demand propane water heater will be a big help until we can get all the plumbing properly fixed and get an electrical on-demand heater purchased and installed.

The trailer will give the cats some more room to race around, us some room to stretch out and be noisy if we want, and plenty of land to enjoy working on. It's a long-term project, and we likely won't have everything how we want until we're just about ready for the great dirt nap, but that is half the fun. Just seeing how well you can do things and how quickly you can accomplish things. Other projects have been added to the to-do list due to the trip to Lowe's to "look" at goodies, haha. Now he wants to do blonde paneling throughout the house, which is fine with me. I mentioned that the house I grew up in had dark knotty pine paneling throughout, including all the kitchen cupboards. We are talking drawer fronts, cupboard doors, and frame fronts. He said not to tempt him. I said too late, I was tempting him, because I loved the look as a kid. I grew up liking the rustic look, and we finally realized that's what we're going for as a design throughout the house.

And Q surprised me for the Fourth. He took me to Famous Dave's for dinner, so I wouldn't have to cook in this heat. I was surprised, and pleased, and the food was good. We went for lunch and got lunch combos, and both walked out full. Four hours later, we're still pretty full. The food is really good. He had St. Louis style ribs and short ribs, I had the St. Louis ribs and brisket. I like Rib Crib's sauce better, but the food at Famous Dave's is really good. The ribs literally just fell apart. I was able to peel the meat off with my fingers and not leave anything behind on the bone. Now those are some very tender ribs.

Only it's been a rough week already, and I need to go clobber some things. I'm off here to do a quick email check and play City of Heroes for a while. Q's playing one of his PS2 games, so it's earplugs for me and I go clobber bad guys.  More tomorrow!

And here it is Friday. I have a hooray! The nasty-attitude neighbors with the anxiety-ridden poodle-thing have left next door! I don't see their cars anywhere in the parking lot for the complex, so I assume they moved. That is so nice, though I daresay any new neighbors won't be as pleased with their doggie, due to training it to be a pill, just to try to annoy us worse than it already did. And on the upside, fixing the splice should be easier than we thought. Stopped back at Lowe's and did some Q&A with people there, and get some firm answers - Q asked me to stop on my way home to see if they had any ideas.

The plan is to cut out the splice and take it to Lowe's so we can get about a foot of NEW wiring and enough wiring clamps to hold all the ends together. So it will now be a double splice of a piece of wire patching the missing bit together. Wish I had a picture I could use to show you what I mean! When it's been cut apart, we're going to put a piece of PVC pipe with an end cap on one of the old wire ends, and a second end cap on the other old wire end, then splice in the patch, and slide the PVC pipe together and glue the caps on. This should keep out most, if not all, of the dirt and moisture. As it's only a temporary repair until we start putting in a solar- and wind-powered system, so we have the electricity we NEED, the folks at Lowe's said that not burying it super deep wouldn't be a major issue. Plus if something happened to it, it would sure make it a lot easier to get it dug up and fixed again. We hope to never have to fix this thing again, but instead to start putting together a solar system pretty quickly, even if it's only a few watts worth.

Friday ... good grief, but it is HOT out. Triple digits. This is ridiculous. I didn't even bother to stop at the trailer because it's so hot. Only four hours or so in my department at work, but eviz needed a few extra people, so me and a few buddies popped over after our second break, signed in and got a couple extra hours for the day. Every little bit helps, as it means next week's paycheck will be about the same as this week's was. Whew. It's a start toward a bigger check again, though it'd be nicer if they'd give us more hours in debone, period. Four hours or so is almost not worth going in, other than to keep my job.

It's so hot that I'm exhausted, and I didn't do anything but drive home from work. Six P.M. and I'm whipped. Nuts. I sure hope this heat wave and drought break soon, for everyone's sakes that's dealing with it. Not like my friend Chris in southern Chicago area though, as she got hit hard by a big storm and lost power for a few days. She and her hubby have a two-year-old boy, so it was really hard on them to keep him cool. I feel for them, really, I do!

We do have nearly all the non-necessities moved up to the trailer now, so that's a big step in the right direction. It looks a tiny bit bare in here with all the excess stuff moved out. We kept it because we knew we'd need it when we got a real house, but there isn't really anywhere to store it here. The trailer has loads of storage space. I do need to sweep floors again and get some water up there and clean the cupboards and sinks out though. Also to try to wash out the tub/shower a bit so they're not quite so filthy-looking. I might even be able to bring them to a decent amount of clean from washing them up. It is amazing what a little elbow grease will accomplish - just look at the house when I started and when I finished!

And with temps continuing into the high 90s and low 100s all weekend, I think it likely that we won't be doing anything this weekend except vegetating in here at the apartment. We need to get things done so we can move, yes, but not at the expense of our lives from heatstroke. Q's said many a time in this project, he doesn't care about his commute, it's me with mine that bothers and worries him, and that's a big part of why he wants and is so willing to move. After a day like today, I am almost ready to move, electric, gennie or no!

Saturday was another wash. Temps were just too high to do much, and I had a mondo headache. You can't accomplish a lot when you feel like your head's about to explode. Painkillers out the wazoo didn't help, but thankfully, but this morning (Sunday), I'm feeling a lot better. I'm loading that bed frame into the car this afternoon and taking it to the trailer tomorrow so it can finally get up there, since Q doesn't seem inclined to make a run past on his way to work to drop it off. It's just one of those weeks, and Q is getting really frustrated by the seeming lack of progress. I'm pleased with how far we've gotten so far, and I know that once a couple things are taken care of, like the splice, then things will just explode into action. It's a matter of hurry up and wait. He wants to hurry up and hurry up. I hate to explain this one to him, but once the splice is fixed, there's still the electric deposit to pull together, so that power can get turned on to keep us going till the off-grid power system is bought and installed. You kind of can't live without power these days of some kind, so it's on-grid for the nonce, while purchasing all the pieces and parts and putting them together (barring actually hooking up to the breaker box).

I'm a little tired of entering contests lately. Yeah, contests. There's been a bunch of giveaways from various companies for stuff we can certainly use on the homestead if I win. Sure would be nice, because there's food, animals, fencing supplies, and a whole host of other goodies I know would be awful useful. Now I just have to wait. I will say one of the things I do all the time is look at all our receipts. Many companies have contests of a sort for a gift card once per quarter. Lowe's and Wal-Mart are big on that, at least here in the States. So I tend to check every receipt. Never know, I might just get lucky and win free gas for a year, and considering how much we go through, that would be great!

Anyhow, it's time for me to actually get some food in my carcass and get some stuff done around here that I've been neglecting out of sheer procrastination. I'll write more next week, and I think I'll keep up with the daily notes, because it's a lot easier to keep up with what happened that way!