Posts
I took a half day vacation Friday. Mama had a few errands she needed to run in order to accomplish her goals for the day and I needed to look at a couple things at either Sam’s or Costco. We went to WinCo for the items we knew we could get there – mostly candy for the grandkids in Honduras, then on to Costco. I was looking for printer cartridges but was disappointed by the selection offered. Mama was just looking. In cruising the store, we came across a shelving unit that looked like it would work in the organization project I had planned for the garage. We bought two of the units because the price was far less for the two of them than it would have cost me for materials. I assembled one unit that night and realized I would have to reinforce them once they were in place in the garage, but they would serve nicely. It saved me a lot of effort as well as the time and materials I would have needed to round up for the shelving.
Saturday, after feeding, I moved the Sequoia out of the garage and began emptying the corner of the garage in order to clear it, clean it and evaluate its contents. I kept the garage door shut as much as possible. The temperature never made it above 35°. I was a little surprised by some of the items we had left stored in that corner for the past five or six years. Mama was as well. She has been planning to buy a tall skinny Christmas tree for year-round use and we happened to have exactly what she needed in that corner. Several of the items we had kept stored there eventually ended up in the dump, which greatly reduced the load of totes and boxes that would be placed back on the new shelving.
Anyway, I was a little surprised and very pleased at how the project turned out. Now Mama has the room she needs to gather all her crafting supplies, place them in totes and store them on the shelves we placed in the garage for that purpose. This was my second Saturday focused on organizing a space. Both efforts yielded pleasant results, but in this one, I get a garage that looks like a garage and Mama gets the area she needs for her growing stockpile of craft items. A win-win.
The owner of the quarry property texted Mama Friday evening and asked if we could keep the dogs in the yard for a couple nights while he and others killed hogs on that property. He had baited the roadway right next to the house with cattle cubes – hogs love them too – and was worried that the dog may get injured by either the hogs he expected to attract or by the shooting going on. We did our best, but the dogs are hard to contain. We do have gates that can be closed at the entrance to our driveway and with a lot of effort I managed to close those. I also blocked the access the dogs have to the back of the property through the raceway beside the shop. That worked well enough I suppose, but we still have our lives to live and I had to open the gates to let Victoria in Friday night. Likewise, on Saturday night for Mama.
The gate on the West side was very difficult to open because it drags heavily on the blacktop. I had to get the two-wheeled dolly and use it to lift and drag the gate to the close position. Since I had to repeat this process each night I looked the gate over carefully and discovered that the support for the gate was leaning forward so it was not keeping the gate lifted up enough to allow it to be operated. So, I got the tractor and pushed the support into the correct position, anchoring it on a rod I had driven into the ground with a come along – a ratcheting puller. That really helped. I will eventually fix both gates so they operate properly, that is to say, easily, but that will take several steps to accomplish and there is little need at the moment to have them functional. I am not sure how successful the hunt was for the hogs, but we did our part.
Victoria’s birthday was yesterday. It was not one of her better ones. She stayed home from church, spending the better part of the day in bed. I do not think she felt badly physically. I just don’t think she wanted to be reminded of her birthday. I cannot know for certain. She is not a willing communicator, leaving Mama and I to guess most of the time.
The two inches of snow originally forecast did not make it to us. We got less than a dusting at the farm. In town, there was over an inch of accumulation, but it did not last long, and it did not interrupt travel. We had two great services. Very encouraging. Very needful in theses troubling times. I love our church family. It is nice to have that wealth of support when we need it. It is nice to be able to support them in their times of need. Either way we get to see God work miracle after miracle through us as we pray for each other. Weather-wise, it was a wet dreary day. A good winter day. But Mama and I made the best of it.
All in all, Mama and I had a great weekend…Victoria, not so much.
0 comments:
Post a Comment