Comments on: Busy

By: coozledad

coozledad — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:55:21 +0000

Sue: I was working upstairs in that house until the temperatures hit the eighties here. Right now you could use that space to dry fruit. I’ll get back to that one late this fall. I’ve already replaced a couple of load-bearing walls, refloored the entryway and started remortaring the fireplace (most of the chimney needs to be rebuilt above the flue opening).
For a week or two, I hired some help, but they couldn’t figure out why I’d want to salvage the structure anyway, and proceeded to do a crummy, hamfisted job. I had to do more work unfucking what they messed up than if I’d done the entire thing myself.
I’ve still got to try and waddle through the crawlspace and put new sleepers under a section of floor where the termites have removed them with an eery kind of surgical precision, but aside from that, I’m already using half of the building as a workshop.
The people who lived in this thing had minimal expectations from life. It had to be unremittingly grim by our standards.

By: Sue

Sue — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:28:53 +0000

No TV, no air conditioning. I’m assuming both will be installed in that outbuilding/guesthouse thing you’ve been working on?
Fred would not have sulked if you had kissed him on the nose when you told him he couldn’t come in. That always works on my cats.

By: Rose C'est La Vie

Rose C'est La Vie — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:13:18 +0000

Thank you for that. I’m not even a country girl but I’m amused by it all. Poor Fred, he only wanted to check his emails I suspect.

By: coozledad

coozledad — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:49:21 +0000

The mules are sort of milling around the place, grazing off the broomsedge and whatever else is surviving the current drought. They’re pretty stocky, so we haven’t resorted to haying them yet. They found an old fire pit yesterday, where we’d burned a huge old tree that succumbed to Dutch elm about three years ago. After they were rolling around in that for a few minutes, Fred noticed us walking in the front door of the house, and decided to follow us in. We told him the porch wasn’t built to hold a 1900 lb. animal with sharp toes, and there is no way in hell he’s coming indoors. He sulked off.
An acquaintance of ours who has draft horses says they stand on the porch in the evening and watch television through the living room window.
We don’t have a television, so I might be spared having to reinforce the porch with I beams.

By: Rose C'est La Vie

Rose C'est La Vie — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:13:33 +0000

I want to know what those badass mules are up to now.

By: thesubtlerudder

thesubtlerudder — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:40:54 +0000

Stay cool. Avoid toxins. Miss donkeys. Back soon?