Productive times, big plans

Yesterday was a bit more productive than Monday had been. I got to work on the coop building very soon after I got up – which was not too early since I took half a muscle relaxer at bedtime the night before. I got the east wall mostly done and was at a point that I needed to place the long back wall into place on the foundation to continue. I was completely out of two by fours but I had the rafters sitting in my small lumber pile.

I had been waiting for Victoria to be off so she could help me get the wall into place but I am working for Lee Davis today – Victoria’s day off – and I did not want to be delayed further. So I loosened the braces that were steadying the wall about six inches off of the foundation and carefully scooted it into place; being careful to lift it onto the linoleum when I got to that point. It took me a bit of time to get it done (it is thirty two feet long) but I got it in lace and anchored it to the center wall and the east wall. I got five of the ten rafters in place before I had to quit.

I took a bit of time to redo the steps so that they are a bit more functional – for Mama’s sake. Now I am at the point that I need the roofing material. I will be calling Rex Cobb at BBI to see if he can spare some of the metal removed from the church roofs which we donated to BBTI. I am fairly certain that it is more than they need but I will not know until I do ask. If not, I will order the metal from a place in Bridgeport and have the roof on sometime next week.

We are forecast to have heavy flooding rains Friday but things clear up for a few days after that. We are in one of those weather patterns that bring rain every weekend. That would be more frustrating if I was working fulltime, but at the moment that is not the case.

Last night I took Mama to a ladies meeting at the church. While she was there I worked on Victoria’s laptop in the hope of getting some revisions made to my resume but that did not work out. She does not have Office on her laptop so I moved to listening to some training videos and eventually started an update to Windows 10. (I hope that was a good move.)

The update to the new operating system took all the time I was there and then some. Mama and I went to Wal-Mart after her meeting was over – about 9 pm – and came back to the church, where I had left the computer, only to wait another ten minutes or so for the update to finalize. As I go forward using the laptop I will know if that was a good move or not.

Grandma and Grandpa, Norman and Seth are due to arrive this evening. They made it to Union City last night. That is about the halfway point for them. They drove in the rain all day yesterday – which frustrated and really wore out Grandpa. Hopefully, they will have better weather for the remainder of the drive today.

They have pretty ambitious plans of getting the roof on Victoria’s little house in one day. We will see how that goes. Things look much easier from the ground when it comes to putting on a roof. I happen to be very aware of how steep her roof is and how slowly they will have to move to get the metal attached. But there will be three of them (at least) in the crew.

If I am available to help it will be from the ground – Mama will see to that.

Slow progress

When I went to Mom and Dad’s (Grandma and Grandpa Kline) in Chappell Hill a week ago I told Mom I would need to take a small portion of the roof to work on because I am pretty slow. I did manage to get a good bit done – especially on the portion of the roof that was leaking – but it took me hours to accomplish. That slow pace I keep has truly manifested itself in the ongoing projects here. On the positive side, I called Grandma Kline to see if the repairs I had made actually made a difference. One roof leak was eliminated but the second, more troubling one, still persists in a much attenuated form.  I will have to work on that next time I am there – which could be soon.

I am making very slow progress on the coop building. Of course I am working by myself and am constantly being called away to help Mama on one thing or another as well as having to make repairs on the tools I am using. Yesterday I had to take the guard off of the compound miter saw because it was too loose to continue to keep using it. After I got it off, tightened and reassembled and put back all the tools I had to get for that chore I had used up nearly an hour. Those things slow me up – but they are all part of life at the moment.

I also had to take time to get the truck and tractor out of the pasture where I had both of them stuck since Saturday. I had bought some more two by fours for the walls I am building on the coop and tried to get them to the coop via the roadway through the middle paddock. That worked only to the point where the ground, softened by five inches of rain, was too soft for me to go further.

When the truck was stuck I got the tractor out of the barn, loaded the lumber onto the forks and put it by the coop in the pile I have there. Since the tractor had done so well I drove it to where the truck was stuck and pulled the truck out of the very soft ground of the roadway but in doing so, I buried the front wheels of the tractor in a soft spot. So there they sat until yesterday evening the ground had dried enough to get them both free.

I feel a sense of urgency about getting the coop finished because Mama has thirty young chickens that need that spaced as soon as I can have it available. They are all getting large and will soon outgrow the cages we have them in. Of course, money is the issue. Sadly, it is required to get the materials I need to get the job done, but the Lord has provided so far. I am buying only a limited amount at a time because it feels better to spend smaller amounts at a time and I am using up what I have before getting more. That too takes time.

While we were at Lowe’s yesterday Mama and I agreed on the siding and the interior wall materials so I am at the point of moving forward to get those. By tomorrow I should have the rafters on and be ready for the roof so sheeting the outside would be the next step. If we can accumulate the materials I could have the project finished in a couple weeks.

Meanwhile I am honing my resume, getting some requisite work done for the employment agency hired on our behalf and searching for available job postings that are more than a manager at McDonald’s, Braum’s or Sonic. Such is the world we live in today.

Grandma called this morning to confirm that they are on their way here. I have mixed emotions about that; mostly positive.

Using time wisely – I hope

It has been less than two weeks since I was laid off but it seems like a lot longer. I have kept myself very busy getting projects completed at the farm and making repairs and improvements to the house. Monday and Tuesday I tore out the gun cabinet stands and put shelving behind those glass doors. The result was pretty impressive. Even more impressive was that Mama had the shelves loaded with canned goods and other items we had kept packed away in totes by the time I had completed the shelving. It really made our butler’s pantry clean and functional.

While weather permitted and I had materials available I worked on the coop building. It is coming along pretty well. I held off Monday and Tuesday working on the building because I needed both Mama and Victoria to help me put the linoleum on the floor of the building before the walls were put in place. (That is why I worked inside early in the week.) I had expected the linoleum to take a couple hours to lay but we were done in less than an hour – and it came out very nice. Victoria is still picking the glue off of her clothing.

I put a pallet in the hog pen for the water trough to sit on because the hogs had been rearranging the dirt to the point that Mama could no longer get the trough in and out of where we normally set it. She cleans it daily so the pigs can fill the clean water with muck as they stand in it to get a drink. For some reason it makes her feel better and I am all for her feeling better.

When we got several inches of rain later last week we were very disappointed to find the little covered area I had build for the hogs to bed down in was completely full of water and there was nowhere for them to lay. So I got four pallets and placed them in the area under the roof (wile it was still raining very hard)and put a piece of wood that was supposed to be a door for the other hog building over those pallets. With a little straw from Mama they made their beds made within a few minutes and probably slept better than I did that night.

Saturday Mama and I worked on pictures – sorting, hanging and repacking them. Mama worked for several hours going through photographs from the past. To her credit she discarded a fair amount of them. I talked her into only keeping those that were relevant or meaningful to someone in our family. So pictures of zoo animals and trees and flowers and settings that we no longer recognized were thrown away. It took a sizable box to contain them all. But it was time well spent.

This morning Mama has me scheduled for a visit to the chiropractor. I resisted the idea a little but eventually gave in – I do not want to spend either the time or the money on the appointment, but thought it not worthy of too much negative conversation. After that I can get back to work on the walls of the coop – until I run out of materials.

This week I hope to divide my time between getting applications posted online and getting things done for Mama. Those of us who lost our jobs were given access to a help group for things like resume writing, job searches and overall guidance in getting further employment. I have about ten hours of work to get done on their website. That will have to be done at the library or the church. It is a bother not having access to the internet at the house, but we can compensate.

Grandma, Grandpa, Norman and Seth are supposed to come down later this week but that is still up in the air. None-the-less, we are ready for them when they do finally arrive.

Mama’s snack, change is coming

Several weeks back Mama bought some pumpkin spice flavored chips to use in a recipe for a dessert for RU. It turned out okay but I was not a huge fan of the pumpkin spice flavor of the chips so the leftover pieces of the dessert sat around for a while before Mama finally threw them away. I think she was a little disappointed that I did not like them more – since I like pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies, etc.

For our FBI class last night Mama made pretzels dipped in those chips. Victoria had come up with the idea so Mama got out the little crock pot and melted the chips and dipped pretzels until she had used as much as she could of the softened chips. The ladies at the FBI class really liked the combination – salty pretzels with the sweet pumpkin spice chips. It was not until very late in the evening that one of the ladies in the class stuck her tongue out at Mama that they all discovered that the snack had turned each of their tongues a pumpkin orange color. Then everybody was sticking their tongues out at each other. It was one of those moments when grown women become little girls for a few minutes.

I was pretty quiet on the short drive home and Mama knew why. I am thinking about what lies ahead of us this week. My boss was in Dumas and Perryton yesterday and will be in Elk City, OK today conducting layoffs with each of those groups. One of my ladies got let go yesterday and it was not a quiet, respectful dismissal on the part of the employee. But it is what I had told him to expect. Tomorrow he will be back in this office to let go those of us selected for such a dismissal. I am resolved to it but not anxious for it. It will change many things in my life.

For several years now I have kept this blog going by writing it first thing in the morning – when I arrive at the office long before most of the office staff. That is about to change and I am not sure how I will be able to continue in the short run.  I have no access to the internet at the house and will lose my job, my work computer, my daily internet access and the early morning routine that has kept this going for many mornings in the past. It has been a pleasure to write my thoughts daily and I will look for a routine that will allow that to continue but it may be some time before I come up with a solution to enable me to continue.

Today, if nothing has changed, will be my last full day in the office working for ConocoPhillips. Tomorrow it will be my turn to talk with my current supervisor and our HR representative for my exit interview. I will be laid off. It is not all bad. It is not all good. But there is a balance that, in the short term (several months at least) will allow me and Mama to cope with the loss of income while I pray about and look for another job. God really is in control and I can trust Him to take care of us.

I have communicated with all the ladies in my group - which will be reorganized tomorrow – what things to look for going forward; what has not been properly planned, what things have no backup plan at all in place, what processes are going to be so short-circuited that they will cease to function and how to resolve those issues. I have laid as solid a foundation as possible for each of them to continue in their respective roles for many months ahead.

I feel good about what I have done and what I am leaving behind.

The weekend

I took off Thursday and Friday to burn some vacation and those turned out to be very productive days. I asked Bro. Daniel to meet me at Lowe’s Thursday morning to help me load twelve sheets of plywood for the floor of the chicken building I am building for Mama. It was a real help to have him there both to stack the plywood on the cart in the store and to load it into the truck for the trip home.

I did not realize how far from square I was on the foundation until we laid out our first piece of plywood. I was way off so we squared to the floor joists and cut where we needed to in order to get the flooring to fit. It turned our okay and I considered pulling up a couple corners to make the building more square but put that thought away when I really calculated the work involved to avoid cutting one piece of metal roofing when the roofing is attached. We were both worn out be the time we quit.

Friday I debated going to Lowe’s to get the linoleum Mama wants on the floor of the building but used the day to build the back wall of the coop building. I decided to use up the materials I had on hand before I buy anything else – since I am very low on cash and will be laid off this week. As it turned out the back wall, which is thirty two feet long took a majority of the materials I had on hand. I did have enough to make two of the partial front walls that are ten feet each before I ran out of two by fours. So, hopefully later this week I will get the walls in place and be able to determine just how much I need to finish laying out the walls and the roof.

That night we went to RU. Mama had arranged with Erin to get the kids from her so she and Sam could have the night without the kids. Victoria was to meet us at the church to help as soon as she got off work. It was one of those nights when Luke, their autistic son, was in one of those moods where he cannot contain his energy and will not be slowed by direction, by coaching, by threatening or any other normal means.

It would not have been too overwhelming except that we had the twins and another child and Mama decided that putting the icing on her cake took precedent over everything else. I did not realize how uptight I was until instead of telling Luke for the fiftieth time that half hour to leave the classroom door open I hit the door as he was closing it – and punched a large hole in it. That got Mama’s attention. So when Victoria arrived she took the Echavarria children home with her while Mama and I finished out the time with the three we had that evening. I called the pastor to let him know I had punched a hole in the door but that I would replace it. A rather humbling conversation.

Saturday Mama, Victoria and the children went to Trade Days. I told Mama she would have much more fun if I was not along – based on my outburst the night before. I continued my work on the chicken coop and when I ran out of materials I worked on a couple little items on the house and the farm. I got our last bale of hay to Daisy and as I was clearing that up I noticed Chester working on the fence across the road from us. We talked for a few minutes and he mentioned that a grass fire could be headed our way.

A neighbor was burning something on his property and the fire got out of control. Fortunately, it was a very slow burning fire. Through that fire I got to meet the owner of the property beside us, Ricky Taylor. I was impressed by him. I also go to meet Chuck Smith, Chester’s boss. In an attempt to hinder the fire from coming on to our property Ricky got his tractor and twenty foot disk to plow a firebreak. Chester, Chuck and I took down enough fence to get the tractor and implement through but the firebreak never got tested. Someone called the fire department and they showed up to put out what was left of the fire just before 9 pm.

It was an interesting weekend.

Trying to see it, Norman’s plans

Mama pressed me pretty hard yesterday to let her go to West Virginia so she could make the trip over to see Jonas – our herbalist friend in McConnelsville, Ohio – and then come back with Grandma and Grandpa when they drive down the week of the 19^th. I was not the least thrilled with the request, especially in light of the things that are happening on our life right now. She mentioned it to Grandma and was being pressed by Grandma to come and help her pack, visit her uncles, etc.

They had offered to pay for the ticket so the trip would ostensibly be no cost to me. Mama asked me to pray about and see if the Lord would give me peace. I did consider it for several hours but finally I said no – for a myriad reasons. To her credit she did not push further after I said no, but it got me to thinking how to convey to Mama how life changing the loss of this job really is for us.

After I had been home an hour or so she brought the subject up and I asked her to consider how her life would be impacted if she lost me right now. Not how it would be impacted emotionally, but how it would be impacted financially. In a very real sense, when I walk out of my office next week having been laid off from this job I will die - financially speaking. I will have no further employment income, no promise of employment, no budget. The financial world is a cold world that does not recognize promise or potential, only actual.

I know God will somehow supply all our needs but I need to understand just what that really entails; because at this moment I am on the “faith” side of that equation rather than the “seeing” side. For most of our married life the Lord had given me and Mama very good employment and I have been able to make our finances work in hard times because there was the promise of the next payday. When all else failed I could go to the bank and borrow against the potential earnings of my employment. This is a new wrinkle for me – and for Mama, Grandma, Grandpa and Norman – who have always assumed I could find a way to make the finances work. I am struggling to get it right; in God’s eyes and in the financial world’s eyes.

When I was coming in from watering the plants and trees last night Mama was talking to Norman filling him in on my negative response and updating him on several other little issues. I heard them talking about a mobile home and how nice Mama thought it was. I had no idea what that was all about but as it turns out, Norman and Seth have agreed to rent the same property Grandma and Grandpa rented when they first moved to Bowie.

The owner is discounting the rent with the promise from Norman to remodel the mobile home and keep the property neat. Norman sounded excited about the arrangement. The owner is very excited about the promise. They will begin to rent the place next month. I am not sure how soon they will actually move down but Mama thinks it will be by year end.

Changes, they are a comin’.

Planning challenges

Word came trickling through in small bits yesterday as the layoffs were carried out in the office in Houston. A friend of mine spent the better part of the day watching people go offline in our Instant Messaging system. That is a truly sad way to pass eight hours. On the flip side one of my office buddies got some very strong hints that his position will survive the layoffs. He is scheduled for “rebuilding” meetings in Houston the last week of the month. He was encouraged.

Yesterday afternoon the pastor came by my office to give me the rest of the two by fours I had left for him when Mama and I collected the ones we got Saturday evening. He had mentioned that he was also going to build a coop so I did not want to take all the materials, but he told me his plans could wait – and probably would. With that addition of materials I have a very good start on what I need for the walls. I have only to get the materials for the floor in order put up the walls. I am working through that right now.

I talked to Daniel Wycoff last night at FBI to see if he was available to meet me at Lowe’s Thursday morning to help me load some plywood (for the floor of the coop) but I have not gotten peace about spending the cash to buy the plywood. It is the next step but I am not sure how to take it with the abrupt halting of income that I face next week. When there is no money coming in to replace what is being spent I have to choose very carefully. (The lord is bringing up some very old memories of how Mama and I did this many years ago; hard lessons I will have to relearn.)

Mama and Victoria were complaining about being cold while we were listening to the DVD for FBI so during the second break – about 8:30 – they started to play a little volleyball. We only have eight minute breaks but for the next hour they we trying to get cooled down. It was pretty humorous to watch. We are all thoroughly enjoying the Biblical exposition we are getting through the coursework.

Lately we have been dipping into the 50’s during the nights. Mama is still a little worried about her little chickens that we were forced to put outside in the tiny chicken house, but so far they have done well. The dogs love the evening and nighttime temperatures. Every evening around dark they are ready to play and every morning they run circles in the yard just for the fun of it. It will soon be colder and wetter so we are enjoying this while we can.

The days at work are very long. There is very little to do so I busy myself with homework for FBI,  getting ahead on the music schedule for church and using the internet. I am wrestling with the issue of losing all connectivity to the internet when I return my company furnished Hot Spot, but I know we will work something out. It is a major drag to have to retool so many areas of our daily life in response to the loss of my job –and all the company has provided for us. But it is unavoidable at this point.

I will be taking off Thursday and Friday again this week; just to burn through some more vacation - but there is little joy in it. I was talking with Mama yesterday about how to continue this blog without home access to the internet and I have not come up with a solution for that yet.

That, like many of the changes coming to our lives, is a work in progress.

An interesting weekend

I took off Thursday and Friday just to burn through some vacation days. We still had full evenings with FBI on Thursday and RU on Friday but I was able to use the daylight hours to get some more work done on the foundation of the coop building. I got it completed by late Friday evening and was still able to get ready in plenty of time for our RU meeting.

Thursday as I was working on the coop foundation I looked over toward the pig pen because I heard some very happy pig noises. You can get a pretty good feel for the disposition of pigs when you are around them for a while – and they sounded a little too happy. As I stared for a moment I realized I was seeing too much of two of them. Somehow they had gotten out.

I wasn’t terribly worried because they generally do not venture far from the food but I knew I needed to first, discover how they had gotten out and second, get them back in. I hollered for Mama but finally had to go to the house to get her. I knew the pigs would respond better to her than to me - she is the one that feeds them. I did find pretty quickly how they had gotten out; Mama had left the gate latch open and even though the gate opens into the pen – standard construction for pigs – they had nosed it open and found their way out.

We got them back into the enclosure pretty quickly and were moving on when I decided to make sure the chicks we had put in the little chicken house were all getting up and down the ramp from the bottom level to the nesting level on the top. As I shooed them down the ramp one of them got out on me and took off a t a dead run. It did not go very far and eventually Mama was able to trap it and put it back in the coop.

But just after we got that done Sasha, who we had penned in the back yard in order to keep her and Sam from trying to herd the pigs for us, started to exert her dominance over Kobe. Kobe tolerated her standing over her for a brief moment and then fought back with a vengeance. If she had been a little older, Sasha would have been taken down very quickly.

 Anyway, Mama took off running as fast as she could to get to the fracas. (That in itself was slightly comical but is did not spend too much time thinking about it.)  I was pretty sure it would be over pretty quickly – and that if and when I got there I would handle it differently than Mama; in a way that would not make her happy.

All that happened in the space of a few minutes. Mama went into the house totally worn out. I went back to work on the coop building. Life on the farm!

Friday went by without much ado. Saturday I went bus calling with the pastor and later Mama and I went to get Mr. Plumley so he could spend a few hours at the house with us. He helped me unload a few boards, move some dirt in the garden and tend to a few trees in the back yard. He swept the back patio and sat with us and watched the chicks Victoria had put out in a makeshift enclosure in the yard.

After we took him home Mama and I went to the church and picked up a few long two by fours from some crates that the metal roofing insurance was replacing on both buildings had been shipped in. I will use them on the coop building sometime this week.

Sunday morning we left for church and found the road blocked by a tree that had fallen across the road. I had to go back to the house, change and get the tractor so I could push the tree to the side of the road. As I got back to the tree with the tractor the man who tends to the property past us was trying to move the tree by hand. The tractor made pretty quick work of it and he was thankful I had come. He told me that when he had pulled onto the road his first thought was that we were probably going to be late for church. It’s nice to have a good witness among neighbors.

Once done I had to put the tractor away and redress for church. We were a little late for Sunday School.

It was a fun weekend.