Happy birthday to my darling daughter. Excuse me, OUR darling daughter. Even though Quentin is "just" the stepdad to both my kids, they have a close relationship with him, especially DD. If you ask her about her father, she'll reply with something like, "I have two fathers. One's my sperm donor, the other's my Daddy." Daddy, of course, being Quentin. I may sound like I'm boasting when I say she's beautiful, talented, intelligent, amazing, incredible, etc., etc., but I'm not. She is all of that and more. (You try finding adjective to describe the most amazing young woman in the world that you know personally at 6 AM when you just got up on a Saturday morning, and see how well YOU do, haha.) She's twenty today, and it's hard for me to believe that she's THAT old. I keep seeing her in diapers, which lends itself to no end of embarassment for her. She doesn't live with us, she stays back home in Michigan with my Mom and goes to college (!!!) there, where she's studying for a degree in music. She wants to be a songwriter and/or singer when she gets done with things, and I can honestly say she's got the 'rent's drive and ambition, because she's lost a lot of so-called friends over her desire for her career and college and such, and she just shrugs it off with "Their loss." The kid's got a lot of smarts from us. Me mostly, as Q and I have only been married 2-1/2 years, but boy, you would swear on your life that if you put them together that she got my looks and brains, and Quentin's attitude and height. It's bad enough when your husband is nearly a foot taller than you are, but when your daughter is five or six inches taller, too, you really feel like a shorty.
I don't say a lot about my son, because he lives with his father and has since he was six. We are close, but not nearly as close as me and my/our daughter. Hard to believe he'll be sixteen at the end of February, though. I love the boy with all my heart, but he's never really been Momma's boy, so we never got nearly as close as me and my baby girl did. Anymore, I hardly know the young man, but I know he's just as smart and special and all the other good things as DD is, in his own way. Bad part is, he did NOT get a writing gene from me, as writing him letters means I MAY get one in return three or four times a year. Me, I write every month to him, and try to keep him up-to-date on what life is like for old Mom. He's got a reasonably good life, considering he's a city boy and never was much of a country kid, he just doesn't like to write. He's busy with living, and that's good.
Anyhow, enough about the kids. Life's been slow since the loss of the internet, and I miss it but I don't at the same time. We're working on getting it restored, but there's so much around here that's more important than internet at the moment. We've had to put another new tire on the truck (one more to go so it'll have a full good set with plenty of tread, yesterday's tire was to replace one that had nearly gone bald), and today we're (hopefully) getting the new battery for the car so it'll be back on the road finally. Quentin will be checking all the fluid levels and such before we start little Victor (my Aveo) back up. I'm lucky the battery lasted as long as it did, it's a 2006 Chevy Aveo, and pretty much everything on him is original parts, including the battery. So getting seven model years out of an original battery is darned good. He was running strong till one of the cells died, then we had to jump him if he sat for five or six hours, then after a few weeks of that, he had to be jumped if he sat more than a couple of hours, so that meant another cell had died and he now had to sit. Thankfully, that was literally the SAME DAY that Quentin had orientation at the plant, so we were lucky in that respect!
How did my car get a name like Victor, and I know I've mentioned the van is named Sheamus before? As far as the van, we both like wrestling. There's a couple of local indie wrestling groups not too far from us, and we also was IMPACT and WWE. Of course, there's The Great White wrester in WWE named Sheamus, and our van (truck!!!) is a Great White truck, so it kind of fit. As for my Aveo .... when I got him, Mom had bought him for me. My credit wasn't that great (still isn't, when you pay cash for everything or use the debit card, and have NO credit cards at all, you don't have a good credit score, not that I care, haha), so we had to do all the paperwork in her name. Mind, she can't drive a standard, only an automatic, so even though I'm legally the second owner, technically I'm the first, because she has never driven him. DD wanted to name him some variation on Victoria, since she'd already named Mom's Cobalt Victoria, and they're both red cars, so she wanted them to have similar names. I said it couldn't be a girl's name, because the car's a stick shift, so she popped off with, "Okay, his name's Victor, then." I was joking, she wasn't, and Victor stuck. He's such a good little car. If you need a compact car for daily driving that thinks it's a truck, get an Aveo. Even as steep as the mountain road is in a couple of spots, I just keep Victor in second gear and 10-15 mph and he climbs the rises like they're nothing. And despite being a compact, he's got a LOT of space in him. I can haul four regular truck tires in him with the back seat down. I know this, because here's a tire shop in Huntsville where we work that gives away all the junk tires for free, and before Victor went down, I brought a few loads home for raised beds for the garden. Waste not, want not, I say.
Speaking of tires, Jones Tire is the business, and they mounted the tire for us yesterday. We'll BUY our tires at Wally-World, because they're good, inexpensive tires. We won't have them mount and balance them, because they always screw it up. We take the tire elsewhere to get it set up and on the truck or car. Great fellows, and I asked about them taking the tires off crap rims, because we have several sitting here on the property that I want the tires for the garden and Q wants most if not all of the rims for projects he wants to do. One of them I know is going to become a garden hose reel, and another one or two are going to end up cable/rope/whatsis hangars when we get a toolshed built for him. Spray paint to cover the rust and a few bolts to hold them to the walls will do wonders for clearing them up and putting them to use. Him, he has no use for the tires and would junk them. I'd've scrapped out the rims. One's person's junk around here is truly another person's treasure.
Heck, I've found more things around here that he swears are broken pieces of crap that I can put to use for container gardening than he realizes, including a kiddie pool, some old buckets with cracked bottoms, and an old Coleman cooler. Punch some drainage holes in the bottom of that thing and it's a good container for growing in, heehee. I do have a tendency to reduce, reuse, recycle, repurpose. Frequently.
I've not been bored or un-busy while offline so far, though. There's been so many little things going on, despite work keeping us mostly busy from dawn to dusk, leaving little to no time to do things outside here. We got a maul and wedge last weekend and started splitting some of the bigger logs, and this weekend, we'll get a logging axe for the tougher stuff like the pieces off that oak, so that slots can be put in easier for the wedge. Once we get the wedge in solid, splitting is a piece of cake. But some of that wood, especially the oak and the really dry stuff from the main drag easement, is a pain in the tuckus to get split with a splitting maul! It works, but it takes forever and a day and is awful frustrating. We need the logging axe anyhow, as Quentin's chainsaw gave out. It needs a new primer bulb, and that ain't gonna be an easy fix. Hopefully. over the next couple of weeks, we'll get the weedwhacker and the battery-operated chainsaw, too, and start getting a lot more clearing up done.
We found the wellhead, too. I did, by sheer happenstance. When we were clearing back the brush toward the house, while things were still in full leaf, if we'd cleared another couple of feet, Q would have either bashed it with the chainsaw chain or his knee. We were THAT close. So my project this weekend will be to take the plans from Hydromissions.org's old website version and get things up and running if possible to get a windlass built from one of the old bicycles sitting around here and build a bailer bucket from PVC pipe to go down the well and haul up water the old-fashioned way. I used a 2-1/2 ounch fishing weight, some clothes line and a small log to find the depth of the water. Easy peasy. Split the end of the line, force one bit through the hole on the weight, tie the ends together so the weight doesn't come off. Tie the other end of the line to the log so if I lost my grip on the line, I wouldn't lose it down the well. Drop weight in well and feed in the line. Pulled it out and measured the wet part of the rope, subtracted the guesstimated length from the length of the line, and voila.
Found out we have water 125 feet down and it's at least 75 feet deep of it, because the weight didn't reach bottom. That is a LOT of depth to pull water from when we get a real well pump going, and even now, it's pretty deep to bail up water out of. But it's better than hauling empty water jugs to town twice a week to fill six or eight of them at a time, and a lot better for me having a garden this year. I can haul lots of water to hand-water if need be, but doing it in gallon jugs (which I can handle easily) all the time would get old really fast if we had to go off-property for the water. Cost on the bicycle windlass and bailer bucket? Probably less than $20 and a few hours to put it all together. Hydromissions was something I stumbled on a few years ago, and they're a missionary type company that puts wells in third-world and developing nations and backwater burgs all over the place, with the idea that it gets clean, potable water to people so they don't have to deal with getting sick from goodness-knows-what in the local rivers. And they insist on using pieces and parts that just about any heart-of-darkest-Africa type village could get their hands on fairly easily and cheaply. We may not be a backwater village, but we still need potable water of our own, and since we've already got a well, we just need a cheap and easy way to get it up. I remembered Hydromissions, and off I went.
And in the dark hours of the evening, when we've gotten home from work and had some supper, and have the boob tube on for his entertainment more than mine (he's absolutely HOOKED on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, lol - better than having to suffer a zillion hours of his old addiction of House Hunters, though not by much) ... I sit here and have been organizing my computerized needlework patterns. I make a lot of doll clothes, for Barbie, American Girl, Dora, CPK, Monchichi (the little monkey baby doll) and reborns/preemies. I do a lot of socks for me, too, but the doll clothes I make and the patterns for them make me a little money now and then. I need to get a website going one of these days once we're back online, as I plan to put them up on there, connect the blog to it, add in a products page or three for stuff we use around here (so folks can know where to buy it themselves, and hopefully make me a commission off the stuff), as well as pages on the webstore for extra seeds and things I make around here, like lotions, and salves, and seasoning/soup/baking mixes, and sachets, and soaps, and all the good things I do that are all homesteady. Hopefully, this summer, I can have things going enough and have enough stock of things that I can do the Saturday morning farmer's market nearby in Berryville, and make some farm income that way. It's in the plans, it's just a matter of making things work for it.
I've gotten a seed catalog from Pinetree Garden Seeds (superseeds.com), because I've gotten a lot from them over the years, and always gotten good service. I've never been disappointed with their stuff, and while they're primarily a northern-seeds company, our property is on the north slope of the mountain, so we get a lot of sunny days, but not super-long ones, compared to our neighbors on the south slope or even up at the top (Eric and Bobbi and her family). So for me, it's a good idea to do short-season crops that don't require a zillion hours of daylight every day, because I just don't get it here. That means I can grow heirloom crops (and Pinetree notes in their catalog which ones are heirloom), in a short time, and have food for us and some extra to sell. I'm going to be concentrating mostly on things we'd eat ourselves if it doesn't sell at the farmer's market, because we don't want to end up with a bunch of stuff we hate sitting here going to the compost heap until we manage to get chickens and rabbits and such and can use at least some of the leftovers to feed livestock. (Though once we get some hoofstock, I'm planning on an acre or so going to mangels every year so I can turn the hoofstock out on it over the winter for them to dig up, keeping them warm, and let them eat it.) I'm also waiting on a couple of nursery catalogs, as we want to put in some fruit trees and such this year if possible to afford them. When a fruit tree comes to US$10-30 each tree, an orchard gets expensive fast.
And I'm knitting a little here and there as I can on an afghan. Quentin joked the other day, "Again?" I said, "Nope, a 'ghan!" It's all scraps, and I'm knitting it pretty simply. For those that knit, it's got a wide garter stitch border with a stockinette center. For those that don't knit, that means the border is wide and all the stitches are knitting on both front and back rows, making a bunch of ridges; and the center is knitted on the front rows and purled on the back ones so that it looks like the outside of say a sock or a sweater. No design in the middle, just plain knitting, so it goes a bit faster and I can do it while occasionally watching something I like on the telly without having to think about it. And yes, I manage to do it without messing up the border - knitting markers work wonders for that.
Oh yes, and on the upside, I got my USB ports working again! I have no idea how I did it, but suddenly they are working again, so I no longer have to use that annoying touchpad for the mouse, and can use my USB mouse again. Thank goodness, cuz I really don't LIKE mousepads! I know they're useful, and a lot of people have no problems with them, but I grew up with mice, not micepads, and I'm a bit of an old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud in that respect.
And here it is, 640 AM now, I have hubby still dozing next to me, trying to sleep off a cold he's picked up, and one of the boys is sleeping at my knees, half on one leg. Checking, it's Bouncer, and for a small tom, he weighs a ton. Racing around here with all the room the boys have to play, plus eating more with all that racing around and play fighting with Smudge, has packed some muscle on the boy. He's actually gained about four pounds since moving, so having him lay on my leg even partway means a numb foot in a few minutes. So now it's time for me to get some more stuff done on organizing my patterns I hadn't had a chance to print off yet, and try to get that done today so I can get busy re-writing them (the shorthand I use for typing them up doesn't lend itself well to a pattern for sale) and have them ready to put up for sale on Ravelry when I get back online. Till next time!!!
wow Heather u been busy and keeping it going.Glad you and Quentin are doing good.
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