Another notch on the stick of life

I finished another painting. small  12 x 16, inspired by another photo of Guy's the Robin in his photo was a partial albino, but I didn't find him particularly attractive so I made him just an ordinary Robin, the thing I liked the most about the photo was the contrast between the blurred foliage of the background and the starkness of the leafless tree limbs, the red berries and the almost JOY that radiates from the bird himself.   I call this painting, THE ROBINS BOUNTY.

I have been busy mowing the lawn every three days since it rained and gave it a new lease on life. I have also been cutting more hay down and the other day was given quite a shock when I was beetling down the field, my mind in auto pilot when a huge mule deer buck with his velveteen antlers lept up a dozen feet in front of the tractor where he had been laying in the tall hay, and streaked across the field to the nearest trees. Man were his antlers big.  That got the old blood system gushing...I never did get back into auto mode...I kept waiting for something else to appear in my path.

The humidity here this year is awful, we don't normally suffer with too much humidity. Send it back to Ontario is my vote...

Watching the Olympics a bit, I mean what options do we have they are on everything.  I especially enjoy the rowing and diving...and love, love, love equestrian but haven't seen one competition yet...

Today is a lovely coolish day with a nice wind, my kind of day... I hate it when it gets too hot.  I am having trouble keeping up to the hummingbirds, with filling the feeders, wow do we have loads of them this year.

Robt got my pond running again, whoopee.  I have to go start dinner now...first hot meal in a couple of day and I am looking forward to it.

La Dee Da Dee Da Dee Da

Been awhile I know, but that only means I have a lot more to write about.

Had a native lady (and I use the term loosely) drive in the yard chauffeuring her brother around the country. They had come out our way to see the quarter of land he used to own... and they remembered Robt's parents as being kindly to him (basically he took them for stooges and used their equipment for free).

They came just after supper time...and she was the rudest most obnoxious person I have met in ages... maybe ever.  She kept asking me to give her stuff, she wanted one of my benches...her reasoning was, since I had two I could give her one...then she wanted me to make her some chairs for her patio table...then she asked me for cuttings from nearly every plant in the yard...and they both asked if we had vegetables from the garden yet...they would love to have some lettuce....and finally she harassed Robt about giving her his grandfathers stool that he used to sit on in his work shop in Edmonton. It's a hundred years old and partially broken, it sits out under the covered part of the deck with a planter on it.  She wanted it, it's broken she says you can't sit on it...you should give it to me...and Robt kept saying no but she wouldn't drop it. She insulted our dogs...in front of us, saying they were gross and lumpy and  that we should get rid of them and get a new one... we gave them tea and cake on the deck...(thank God Robt never invited them inside)  when they finally left...she sarcastically said in a Soto voice, THANKS FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY.   After they drove out of the yard...I went inside and said to Robt..." does it make me a bad person if I have the over whelming urge to lock the doors and check my pockets...." .  Not so oddly, he had the same feeling.  We kept the gates to our yard locked for over a week. It was a pain in the ass but it made us feel somewhat more in control.  Geesh, the nerve of some people....

Robt had a bad day last week...we had just bought some windshield wipers for our dodge Dakota farm truck and he went to the garage to replace the old ones...lifting the wiper arm away from the windshield, it is suppose to stay in place when it is brought perpendicular to the window....but after removing the old wiper , the arm snapped back into position against the glass and since there was no wiper part, just the metal bracket it snaps into....it broke the windshield...in a surprisingly spectacular way....and it is spidering out in a hundred different directions....Oh Dear.... Robt was in shock at it happening...and when he first came outside to tell me I didn't believe him...but when I saw for myself the damage....Damn....why does this shit always happen to us....hahahahaha   Cost of a new windshield was not as much as we at first imagined it would be but 255.  + install is bad enough...

Robt has had a head cold the past few days... and we had to cancel a dinner invitation because he was so poorly.  I don't know what it is about men when they get sick...they act like little babies... Mine, just goes useless like a limp dish rag...he just sleeps, and heaves big sighs...moans and groans...and won't bother eating unless I make him soup and butter his crackers.

Oddly though when I get sick I still have to do the cooking, and I don't get time to lay in bed all day in peace, he's coming in and out of the house, asking where this or that is or using the phone and getting people on the other end to phone him back with parts numbers or prices and then leaves the house so that I have to answer the damned thing or at the least be woke up by the ringing. 

When he was sick, I either quietly read in another room, or went outside to work and leave him in peace.... 

He was getting up during the night to blow his nose or cough up phlegm...and turns the overhead light on in the bedroom, runs the water in the en suite, opening and closing drawers and slamming the fridge door...and walking in his usual heavy way...waking me up at 3 am , then he falls back to sleep in a Tylenol stupor and I am awake the rest of night...  By the third night the Murphy bed was looking pretty inviting...
So Friday night we had a dinner invitation with our friends who are about to leave on a 5 week road trip to Ontario to visit family, and I was looking forward to getting out and visiting with some one besides Robt after three weeks of near solitude.  But at noon Friday he comes wandering into the house all tuckered out and limp again, says hes not feeling so great again and thinks we should cancel....What can I say....if he's sick he's sick...I was disappointed but shit happens right....
He calls and makes his apologies...for us not coming that evening...we had lunch then and after wards I expected him to go lay down for a rest...but he surprised me by saying he was going to go cutting hay...and he did...until 11 pm...  so apparently he wasn't as sick as I was lead to believe...or he had a miraculous recovery over lunch..  Today it's raining cats and dogs and he wanted to go to his brothers...but I mentioned that he was still contagious and it wouldn't be good to go around spreading his germs... so we stayed home...

Really, do I look as stupid as he seems to think I am.

enough said....

I know you are all shocked right, my Robt, he's such a nice, kind, gentle guy...HA  I will quote the old adage  about a mile, and my shoes...

Well Howdy,  I know, I know it's been forever since I wrote something down on here...I have no excuse other than life gets in the way.

Now that Robt has realized I am not going to die tomorrow after all he is back to working me like a slave.  While he was doing the last of his spring seeding last week I was given the task of taking down an old barbed wire fence that has been standing or a better descriptive would be, not standing, since the 1940's.  no kidding. Old twisted tamarack posts and weird old kinds of barbed wire...rusted and repaired again and again. Ant hills galore...red ants to be more specific...nasty angry little red bastards...the first day I was bitten three times, the second day only once....lessons not wasted on me, you can see. Rule # 1 - don't hang on to the post too long....
Rule # 2 - don't stand in one place too long.
Rule # 3 - tuck your pants into your socks.

I had to wear a pair of Robts heavy leather gloves to protect my hands from the barbs on the wire....Robt insisted... and I got a huge blister the first day from the gloves seam rubbing on my thumb...

First I had to remove the staple from the first wire...which entails walking along the fence for a 1/4 mile pulling out staples, some of which, seemed like they had been there since the time of moses...while carrying a pail to put the staples into once I got them out of the tamarack posts...hahahaha   easy enough to begin with but by the time I was on the last wire the pail was getting pretty heavy...once the staple were removed from that first wire I could unwind it from the last post and start rolling it up...the first one I made the circle too small and had to hold the roll up for the whole 1/4 mile...it got fricking heavy, necessity being the mother of invention, but I think laziness was actually the real reason, I started the next wire in a much bigger circle and then after I got it going a few dozen feet I could sit it on the ground and without bending over too much could just roll it along while winding up the strung out wire...I had to do that four different times until the wire was all rolled up...then I could take the tractor and with a chain on the loader, could attach it to each post and pull them out one at a time... 173 posts were pulled out....then I got to load the wire into the truck and take it to the dump for recycling...and the posts we both loaded into our old truck and hauled them home to pile them on a garbage wood pile which we will burn this winter....

This fence has been an eye sore for years and the field looks so much better with it gone...Robt plowed up the spot and seeded it down...even the neighbour said how much better it looked and was impressed that we worked so hard on a shitty chore.....

We had a couple of rainy day a while ago and I managed to finish my painting from January.

 I have to admit I am luke warm about this one...it is based on a sketch I drew during the winter while waiting for Robt in the barn.  The sketch is based on our own Dry Lake just south of the house...that last summer with all the rain, had water in it for the first time in ten years... I had problems with the stormy looking sky...but managed to turn it around and drag it up to respectable, just....

I am going to start another painting soon...and am not building furniture right now...just busy driving tractor and fencing...soon haying will start.

Ayla Graduated last month and looks spectacular in her gown...we are so proud.

No half measures

The first posting for a while that I don't have a new piece of furniture to brag about.  I have taken a break from carpentry, mostly because my hands were getting to crippled and Robt put his foot down...about taking so many ibprofen...It was getting a bit ridiculous. So a break, let my fingers straighten out and work again and we'll see.

I am working my way through a very, very long list of chores around the yard I need to do...I make myself these lists to help me focus and prioritise...anal I know but it works for me...so I go down the list and by the time the snow flies I have about 2/3's done. not bad.  I notice I am slowing down, no more super woman stunts..unless you want to count the perfect 10 point dive I took out of the behemoth tractor yesterday....I climbed into this big boy around 2 pm yesterday and bounced and chattered my way across a 40 acre field in two directions until about 9 pm... the cab of this tractor is about 15 feet off the ground and age has the better of it. the seat is shot and bounces up and down like a one of those Bogey cars the pimps drive around Harlem...my feet barely touch the ground and I have to stretch one leg out to the bar on the door to brace myself and avoid concussion when my head bounces off the sides of the cab...not even kidding.  Going in one direction on the stubble field is okay, smooth...but then you turn and go across that swath to completely break up the soil...it's that direction that just kills me...

The air conditioner does NOT work and it was 26 degrees here yesterday....there is a window that opens but it just sucks dirt inside...I drank water like a lunatic but never once had to climb out and pee...so the heat was good for something....because I don't know if I could have gotten back in after getting down.   Needless to say by around 7 pm I was making deals with the devil, God, you name it....to just let me hang on long enough to finish.... the worst part was I could see Robt, leisurely walking around the barn yard feeding grain etc.....and I wanted to throttle him.... I feel he sometimes takes advantage....and he argues, that I could have quit anytime....

Oh, he doesn't really know me even after 19 years of married life...I never quit half way through anything.  It is why I am so desperate to get off the farm...I know that as long as we stay here I will be working my ass off.  I tried to do very little the first couple years I was supposedly sick and the whole place went to rack and ruin....He admits he can't do it on his own and we don't make enough money to pay someone a wage.   so  there it is....

any way I digress, when I went to finally get out of this chamber of torture...my knees were so weak and sore...my neck was paralyzed and I was in a foul mood.....I stepped out onto the top rung of the ladder, which is perforated ,my shoe caught on the roughness and I lost my balance, leaned against the handle grip of the door and its gargantuan weight swung me out with the door and off the steps completely...I ricocheted off the 7 ft tall dual tires and landed on the ground on my right butt cheek and elbow....I was laughing so hard I couldn't cry...I did that this morning when I went to get out of bed and couldn't move...hahahahah no tractor work for me today...and I managed to put a believable enough pouty face on to con Rbt. into helping me plant my baby spruce trees since it was a cooler cloudy day....

I have to go nurse my pasta sauce and start the spaghetti to boil...whip up a salad and eat....

Floored

I was floored on Friday at the doctors. He gave me the Golden handshake after dropping a bomb shell on me...  The MRI that I traumatized myself for live going to have, showed I have no Cancer (that's awesome news) but I didn't know we had been looking for any....but apparently I glowed...arthritis shows up as light spots on the images...and every joint in my body glowed...hahahaha  that was no news to me, since I was well aware of it on one of my BAD days...  but he said that the MRI  guy that interprets the pictures and writes the report...said and I have a copy right here in front of me...that this patient shows signs of severe osteo-arthritis in nearly all spinal discs but that some of them are deteriorated so badly that there are pieces missing...they are sending me to a spinal surgeon...( that should take a year or two of waiting for that appointment).... anyway, he suggested cortisone shots in the spine to numb the pain and as it progresses they can go in a kill the nerves in the worst areas so there is no sensation in that spot...but that, for me would have to be a last resort... In the mean time, lifestyle change was highly recommended and a modification of work and hobbies to cause the least amount of wear and tear on the joints, especially my back and neck...which were the worst areas affected.

So I finished my armoire for the deck... and before I could get a photo taken R had it half full of his gear, which I what I built it for but it makes for a lousy picture...but here goes...

I am so far behind on this blogging thing, it's debatable whether I should even bother  anymore....

I have been busy putting together an armoire cabinet for out on the deck to store Robts over alls and muddy boots in rather than stare at them in thier usual heap while we dine al fresco.....It has become some what of a challenge to build this thing...5 1/2 ft tall and 5 ft long, shelves on one side, hangers on the other with two doors, completely out of barn wood..with no raw edges showing.

I have a whole new appreciation for those furniture makers and crafty folks who do barn wood creations with no cut edges showing...geesh...it's not as easy as it looks.
Very stressful actually, to get it all right the first time, no wrong cuts because there is only so much of this wood around.

Any way I'm nearly done and will post pictures of course when it is finished... In the mean time, because we all know I can't just sit still and take it easy, I whipped up a couple of more stools, the first one I made (white) was lonely. so now he has companions....these things are so strong...I can sit on the and wiggle around and there is no moaning, groaning or creaking....I am impressed with the design.  I made the seats a wee bit bigger than was in the plan because I wanted both my butt cheeks to have something to rest on....hahahaha   Robt uses one as a side table while sitting in the recliner and the seat is big enough that it's just the right size for a table top....hahahahah what does that say about my ass....hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah   that cracks me up....

The AYLA cabinet

Well I finally finished the little cabinet I was making. Both R and I are more than happy with the way it turned out, we are especially enamoured of the colour I eventually settled on, and it only took the purchase of three seperate litres of paint to find the right colour. Due to my chickening out at the last minute...but I would have been money ahead had I just sticked with my gut and gone with the original colour that caught my eye on the paint card.

Called  STILL WATERS, we are thinking of painting a few walls this colour too, maybe our whole bedroom.

You might notice that there are no fancy legs on this cabinet like I mentions origially, we bought them but were not happy with the flimsy way they attached to the outside rib of the cabinet, and when stood on the legs the weight of the cabinet made it seem very wobbly  and precarious. So for the time being we turned it into a floor model and I like it very much... Inside the double doors are two shelves, where I store my Wii attachments, photo albums and binoculours.  LOVE IT, LOVE it...love it....heee heee heee...  50+ yrs old and still able to surprise myself...not bad for an old brawd....

I am quickly whipping up a pair of stools to turn my single one into a trio... and then I will begin cutting planks for the outdoor armoir I want for storing rain coats and winter boots in on the deck...

Incase I didn't post a completed picture of my awesome X Bench here it is, all polyurethaned and sanded it feels like glass and is great to sit on...