Friday, September 20, 2013

Sweating and swearing

We took the evening off again last night.  (har, har)  Instead of working inside at House #1, we decided to go home to the Cat Ranch and work outside on a lovely evening.  It was nice.  We know these evenings are fleeting, so this was an opportunity we didn't want to miss.

We also watched the weather that is predicting rain on Saturday.  Sounds like a good day to work inside.

On our evening off, we came home and changed into our "play clothes."  I headed out to the garden to move some more hostas and Walt Kowalski attacked the growing wood pile.  Our wood pile is small in comparison to Chain Saw Johnny's because we're only making recreational fires for the evenings we're in the game room. We like the smaller branches, but they still need split.  That's what Walt Kowalski was working on. Once he's got them split, we can restack and reorganize the pile.

Three hostas came out easily.  There are at least four more that I want to move from the big garden to the wall behind the house.  The digging out is the easy part.  Digging the holes in the new location is the harder part.  It's digging through rocks and roots.  Rocks from the wall and roots from the former shrubs.  There are stumps that need major picking to get them out. 

It took me a 1/2 hour to dig out the hostas and 1 1/2 hours to dig the holes to put them back in.  It is very frustrating.  I just have to remember it will look nice next year.  I also don't want to plant the new perennials we just purchased until I move the hostas. 

So while I'm digging and sweating and digging and swearing and digging and sweating, Walt Kowalski is swinging his maul and splitting the wood.  Throw in the other "night off" to-do items, water flowers, clean litter boxes, take down trash (I did this for Walt Kowalski because he was busy and it was a small trash week), do a load of laundry, sort out a few papers, fold some laundry, kill a few stink bugs, pack gym bags for the morning, and get some dinner cooking.

I've been sorting out paper from Walt Kowalski's old house.  It has really put me in the mood to sort through my own mess of papers and junk.  It is easier to clean out someone else's papers.  I have no personal connection to these items.  Burn pile. Old bank statements from 1989, burn pile. Old electric bills from 1993, burn pile.  Old cancelled checks, burn pile. 

Maybe I should let Walt Kowalski clean out my boxes.

(No, I don't have attachment to old electric bills. I'm not THAT bad.)

I've burned 4 boxes of old paper work and still have a few boxes to go. But I have also saved at least 2 boxes of good paper work, baseball cards, family mementos, and photographs.  Every photo I find I say to Walt Kowalski 'who is this and what was going on?'  Here is today's memory:

Walt Kowalski said 'See, that's when we had real snow.  That's also before child labor laws! Look at that child abuse!'  Isn't he a cutie. 

As I was upstairs cooking dinner, and cutting my finger (hasn't even chef got a finger cut at some point?), Walt Kowalski was downstairs fighting a war on stink bugs.  This war started outside before the wood chopping and continued inside.  His weapons of mass destruction included the shop vac and a fire. Powerful tools.  He said the chimney was polluted with them and as the smoke got to them they would fall.  gag.

As he's sending them to their fiery death, he happened to notice one in between the stones on our fireplace. Tucked in tight, this bug was not going anywhere.  Neither were all of his friends in all of the other gaps.

If you've never seen the fireplace in our game room, here's a photo to give you a better idea:

This is unfinished.  We covered the brick at the bottom with more stone. 

Those darn bugs came down the chimney and crawled in between each stone on our fireplace.  Walt Kowalski swept every single crack to remove those darn bugs.  He also swept up all the spiders, webs, and kitty litter.  Then he stoked the fire to warm the game room for dinner. 

We love our game room, but it neglected in the summer.   He did a great job. 

Our "night off" was just as busy as any other night. 

P.S. My finger will be fine.  The nail will grow back.  In the meantime, it's going thumpa, thumpa, thumpa, as any sore finger does and, inevitably, I have bumped it on everything. 


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