Indian Hill

Look at my baby!! Ain't she pretty? This is my workshop, freshly clad in "Country Lane Red" Hardie siding, nine great big windows in the workroom area - three per side. All of it is mine, all mine - 2650 square feet of prime scrapbooking space! (Filled with Monday Night Class supplies).Unfortunately, this photo was taken from the wrong angle, so you can not see Indian Hill, for which she is named, or the beautiful valley that lies to the west. Come and look inside...

Don't laugh, but this is how I have picked the colors for the walls. I choose all of the Bazzil colors of card stock that I like, antique them a little with paint, make my selection and then take the card stock in to the paint shop and have them duplicate the color on their amazing machinery. In this bedroom, I am trying to achieve the look of the sunflowers. So, I started with Cajun on the top of the wall and now I am choosing a color to paint the wainscoting that will be applied to the bottom of the wall. I lined up all of the card stock and looked at it for about a week, in the different lights of the day before I picked the card stock, on the right, closest to the calendar. I have "Chiffon" walls in the workshop with "Lily Pad" accents. Gotta love Bazzil for their wonderful colors.

Here are my Chiffon walls and my amazing red floor (that damn near killed me) just look at that shine! Notice all of the plug ins and all of the pot lights on the ceiling. It looks pretty bare, right now, but this morning all of the pine cabinets were brought over and set into place. They are not attached to the walls or have their counter tops on yet, but that will happen now that it rained again and the guys can not hay.

This is my Mom getting my green door into position for the card stock room. Dad is behind her putting on the hinges. Now I am on the hunt for an antique glass hardware for the green door. I have been surfing the net looking for one, but I have not found the "perfect" door knob yet. But, believe me, I will! I can't wait to see what is going to happen in the next few days when the moldings, baseboard and the cabinets are finished. Want to come and scrapbook with me???

Mad Cow

I seriously just witnessed the funniest thing!!! On my way home from the Inn to get some kits for some of the ladies, I have to travel highway 6 for most of the trip. About a mile from our turn off is a farm that is literally almost on top of the highway. It is an old, old farmstead, as they would never allow anyone to build that close to a major highway anymore. As I was approaching the farm, I noticed some dark animal-type thing go running across the road ahead, run up over the highway and down into the opposite ditch, with a person in hot pursuit. I thought it looked like a young colt, but as I slowed down and rolled to a stop, I saw that it was the skinniest, sickest looking yearling that I have ever seen. It was obvious that this poor animal had been sick for a while and the farmer (Jamie) and his teenage daughter (Emma) were doing their best to head the escaped yearling back into the farmyard corral for treatment. I could tell by the way that the animal was running, it couldn't see out of one or possibly both eyes.
Sunday afternoon, highway full of 5th wheel trailers, SUV's and motorbikes, slowing down and piling up on both sides of the unfolding scene. It was causing quite the traffic jam! I was the first car in line, heading south and behind me is a big jacked up 4x4 with a spastic white dog in the back, barking his head off. The yearling keeps running back and forth over the pavement, from one side of the highway to another and no progress is being made. I start pulling on my coat(its drizzling) and getting ready to exit the car to help when I see the motorbikes pull out of the line up and start passing cars. Idiots!! I have chased enough cattle to summer pasture along this highway to know that tourists can be the most impatient, ignorant people on the face of the earth. So for a few split seconds, I cursed the bikers, until I saw that they were coming to help.
So imagine this scene: two Ninja type bikes come forward to assist. They are wearing those aerodynamic helmets that make them look like big, menacing grasshoppers. The yearling "sees" (or senses) the grasshoppers coming at him and FREAKS!!!! He runs and staggers into the east ditch, at which point the big 4X4 behind me crosses the opposite lane and veers down into the ditch, at top speed. At which point the stupid dog figures that they are crashing and leaps out of the back of the truck, starts running around and barking. At which point, the yearling runs out of the ditch and right into the front end of my car. My new Buick Enclave - Tiger Woods chocolate brown version, just like in the commercial. At which point, I am pissed off!!
Jamie is trying to apologize at the top of his lungs by yelling "He's Blind!!", "He's Blind!!" to anyone who can hear above the whine of the Ninja bikes, the barking of the dog and the squealing of the engine of the truck that I believe was now firmly stuck in the ditch. I resisted the urge to shout back "No shit, Maynard!" (But that might not be neighbourly) What did he think? We'all thought the steer was deaf?
The Ninja bikers are driving around like buzzing bees, people are getting out of cars, more bikers start pulling out of line and then the staggering yearling takes off due north - behind my car and the chase proceeds behind me. At which point, I decide that I had better take a look at my car and I drive away. (Not very neighbourly of me, eh?) In my rear view mirror, I can see that the Ninjas are winning and they have the yearling turned around and headed back south. Which is never going to work, because while they were gone, the line up of cars advanced forward and are now blocking the entrance to the farm lane. Go figure! Dumb tourists!! As I go over the hill, I just had to chuckle, I wonder what that yearling thought he was seeing when those grasshopper helmets came at him.
All the way home, I kept thinking about how I was going to explain this one. But, luckily my car is fine and a hour later when I came down the hill, headed back to the Inn, the highway was clear, the truck was out of the ditch and I could see Jamie and Emma over at the corrals and in the corral was one skinny, red brockle faced steer. Mission accomplished!

My Third Week of "Vacation"

Okay, I may be a bit spoiled and sometimes I do whine and snivel, but I really am getting a bit crabby due to the fact that my holidays are all but gone and not even one day has felt like a vacation! This summer sucks!!! Big time!!!!



Monday - Get up early and drive down to the Inn to see if all of the boxes and totes that are destined for Calgary will fit into Colleen MacDonald's car. Parked beside each other, the two cars do not look anything alike, as far as cargo capacity goes. Colleen assures me that she can fit everything in, but I think that she is going to have to leave both girls behind to do it! Holy, Moly, can she ever pack a car. Half an hour later, I convinced that she has a magic wand, everything fits and both girls can go home with their mom. Call Christy and leave message with daughter, for Christy to call me BEFORE she leaves the city to meet me (Christy is at the Doctor's office, so I don't call her directly). Need to head her off, so that she does not start driving to Nanton to meet me to pick up the kits. Get busy visiting with Colleen and do not realize that Christy has never called back. At noon, Christy phones to assure me that she is "almost" in Nanton. SHIT!! I guess her daughter forgot to tell her that I phoned. Christy turns around and heads home (saying a few bad words about me, I'm sure) Colleen leaves with the back end of her car almost dragging on the ground. Feel really bad for Christy, driving all the way to Nanton for nothing. Go home and clean out car, just pile the junk in the porch, will deal with that later. Take our 14 year old dog to the vet - not much fun (I think that she remembers the time that she killed a porcupine and had to be put to sleep to have the 450 quills removed from her throat) Help Mike in the field until 9:00pm, when the hay gets too tough to bale. Hay fever starting to kick in. My lips look swollen, sort of like an Angelina Jolie look (not too bad, I think to myself). Just to be sure, I put on some lipstick to see how it would look if I had plump lips. Maybe I should consider Restilin shots. When I mention that to Mike, he hoots with laughter and tells me that my swollen lips look stupid. What does he know, anyway? He doesn't even feel sorry that I am having an allergy attack! Make supper, help Mike go and pick up our new hay rake. Think about the fact that if I could scrapbook a page about the purchase of the hay rake, it would be more fun than actually doing the paperwork on it.

Tuesday - Edna is coming for a full day of income tax, we hope to have the entire four sets of books ready to take to the chartered accountants by suppertime. Everyone decides that Tuesday should be the day to come to the workshop and construct something. It is like a three ring circus, with Edna in the middle, trying to concentrate on figures. She gives it a valiant effort, but at 5:00pm (when she has to leave) she is still bogged down in capital gains calculations due to the sale of the assets of Easy Eaves - thank the good God that there are people who enjoy doing crap like that!!! I would hang myself from a rafter in the barn if I had to do bookwork for a living! I leave Edna to her boring bookwork and go to the field . Spend most of the day helping fix broken hay machines - baler, hay rake, tractor etc. BAD HAY FEVER DAY!!!!! Katrina comes out to clean the 5th wheel trailer for the reunion and pack it for the first trip of the year. I take her home at noon. Finally, when I go home in the afternoon to make supper, I decide to have a bath first and then start supper. Seriously...as I am in the bathtub I hear the phone ring. Not answering, I need to soak this pollen off. The phone stops ringing and then starts again right away. Okay, this must be important. It is Mike, he is plugged up again and needs some tools from the shop. I am not even dry, and again he needs me to get in the itchy, sticky damn hay. I am really cranky when I arrive in the field!!! He does not even notice. We finish fixing the baler and I am headed home to make supper. At this time, he tells me that he will take me out to supper - if I will come with him to the Parker place and help Mike Mayer and his son put on the copper roof above the bay window - only a couple of hours and then we can go for supper. LIAR!!!!!! We go to the job site, we fiddle around with the copper sheets (lots of bending required on the metal brake) we get the roof done - one hour AFTER all of the restaurant's close!!! I am freezing to death, because I forgot to bring a sweater and I am wearing shorts, I am hungry and I am all itchy and swollen up. Delightful...

Wednesday - Mike and I meet Megan in town for coffee and toast before we all go to work. Back to the hayfield...make a round, break down...make a round, plug up, make a round etc.... By lunch time I am ready to slit my wrists to end the misery. Luckily for me, I have an excuse to get out of town for the afternoon, Megan picks me up at 2:00pm and we go to Lethbridge to buy all of the groceries for Mom and Dad's 50th wedding party and Mike's family reunion and Mary's Memorial. We buy a whole truck load of groceries on the hottest day of the week and then have to load them and then unload them - in three different places, as they are for three separate events. Just about died of heat exhaustion. Then we get a phone call that Robin, Gord and Cooper are going to stop out for a drink on their way back from vacationing in the states. Yahoo!! That means that Mike can visit, he will enjoy the company and I can de-swell and stop itching for a period of time. The Bell's stayed over night, which meant that I had a diversion in the morning. It was a beautiful evening, cold beer, a gorgeous view from the veranda and ruined only a couple of hundred, angry, blood thirsty mosquitoes! This ONE night is the most like what I imagined my summer vacation to be like - even if it only lasted about three hours!



Thursday - Mike gets up and goes to the hayfield at 6:30am, but I don't have to help until after Robin leaves. Maybe I should have bribed them to stay longer???? Everyone gets up around 9:00am and after coffee, we check out the progress on the workshop. I think Robin was impressed by the amount of work that had been done since March when they came skiing! Into town for breakfast (Thanks Robin and Gord!!!) Back to the hayfield. New scenario. Now Mike's leg is too sore to push in the clutch, the stump is swollen and red and so I run the clutch. I have to sit on the little dinky quarter size seat (with no back support), bounce around the hayfield and push in the clutch, twice, for every bale. NOTHING ELSE TO DO TO PASS THE TIME!!! (Except hate moles) The radio is all static, there is no wildlife to see, the seat is poking up my butt, I can't feel my right butt cheek at all. Because I came on the spur of the moment (with tools), during a break down, I neglected to bring any cold drinks. I get thirstier and thirstier. Which is when I dream up my next greatest job for myself. I think that there should be a girl on a beer cart (just like at a gold course) that goes field to field and sells cold beer, sandwiches and snacks to all the farmers!!! When I mention that to Mike, he sarcastically replies that was what "I" (or any good farm wife) was supposed to do. I guess he has a point there.... So I bite my tongue and we continue to bounce around until Daniel phones us and tells us that a thunder storm with hail is coming our way. We kick the tractor up a notch, to beat the rain and I undergo a more severe form of torture with the stupid postage size seat. Then a baler belt breaks!! For those of you who don't know what that means, lucky you!!! For any farm wives who have experienced this, (and then the experienced the process of fixing a broken belt) I bet you feel sorry for me. Two hours later, no supper, no drinks, covered in sticky hay that is pasted to EVERY crevice of your body, I am just about suicidal. I'm bleeding up and down my arms from hitting the pick up rake with my forearms as I was pulling hay, I have sharp, little hay slivers in my fingers, I am all greasy (black variety) and there is DUST between my toes and under my feet, with some stuck hay bits between my flip flops and my feet. Not to mention the hay fever issues! As we BOUNCE around at top speed, the photo of Kim and Avery on the boat (that she posted on her blog - on her vacation) comes to my mind. I am so envious that I can hardly stop from thinking bad thoughts. I resist the urge to do bodily harm to Mike and bale him up in the baler. No one would ever find him, as long as I left that one hay bale in the stack yard every year and did not sell it. Would wild animals start sniffing around it if they smelt a decomposing body? Okay, so maybe I had a few bad thoughts. By 10:00pm, all of the hay that was ready to bale is sitting neatly in rows, all baled up and protected from the rain. Which is good, because it is really starting to rain. We get home and I let Mike have the first bath. I wait until the water is hot again and then soak off all of the blood (seriously), sweat, grease, aphids and alfalfa leaves. I am glad that I am past my child bearing years, because I think I am seriously ruined from that damn tractor seat!!! I sleep through the worst thunderstorm of the season and do not wake up....

Friday - I am leaving for the Bloomin' Inn. I have never been so happy to go to work in my life!!! No matter how late the ladies stay up tonight - I do not care!!!!!!! My vacation is over for this week and I am back to work for the weekend and I have seriously never been so happy. Because it rained last night, Mike can not get into the field and so he will probably just rest his leg and heal up. There is no hay in my future for a couple of days - just scrapbooking and resting!!! If we didn't need the money from the hay to pay bills for the next year, I might go and start a small prairie fire (after parking all of our farm equipment in the fire's path), but that might look suspicious.

My Second Week Of Summer Vacation

After great hopes of having a second better week than the first, I am now resigned to the fact that finding a little time for myself - not going to happen! This is how week #2 went:

Sunday Evening - after washing the red floor for the painter, I went home to have a bath. As I was soaking in the tub, I realized that Monday morning was the start of shipping. I jumped out of that tub like it was electrified and ran to the phone, dialed up Nicole and asked her if she had completed the invoices for shipping. (Nicole comes out just before we start shipping every month, makes a list of who has placed an order and generates a computer invoice with all of the shipping information on it, not the facts of the order, because that can change right up to the last minute, but at least we don't have to hand write the top of the order form and it saves a little time). Nicole did not have the invoices done ( it is now 10:00pm) but she promises to stay up late and do just the calendar club invoices. Because I was so worried about having the floor ready for the painter, I have neglected to clean up and organize the area in which we actually do the shipping, so over to the workshop in my pjamas I go. Check to see that all the boxes and bags, blank shipping lists, signs on the totes are all ready. Clean a little. Go home at 12:15 and try to sleep. Can't sleep, too wired - possibly the Diet Coke at midnight had something to do with that????

Monday - get up extra early and be at OK Tire at 7:30am to pick up the invoices from Nicole. She promises that she will be out to the workshop after supper to complete the invoices for the regular club. Pick up freight, forgot to pick up case of beer (necessary during shipping), and some ink for the computer - back to the workshop by 9:00am. Dana is already there, coffee is made and the painter has shown up and is setting up scaffolding. Start shipping calendar club, end at 6:00pm. Clean up all of the shipping area, go home and cook supper, get back to the workshop by 7:30pm as Edna is there to work on year end books. Wait for Nicole, try to call her cell, paint wall in the master bedroom ( AGAIN!!) wait for Nicole, call her mom to try and locate her, give up about 9:30 and start doing the invoices myself. Edna leaves at 11:30, I am done invoices by midnight, shut off computer, go home to fall in bed with clothes on. Nicole still missing in action.

Tuesday - arrive back at the workshop by 7:30am, move all of Edna's books out of the way. Check computer for new orders, make coffee for painter, get out Dana's BIG bottle of Bailey's for coffee for Dana and I, alphabetize all of the orders and collate with invoices, Dana arrives at 9:00am. Painter is beginning to question the color that I have chosen for the workshop, so we look through samples and choose another (lighter) color. She starts to repaint the edging that she did the day before. Start shipping regular club. End at 6:30. Still no word from Nicole. Quickly run home and have a bowl of cereal - back to the workshop at 7:30 for the next round of income tax books. HATE BOOKWORK!!! Pretty grouchy! Edna tells me that the reason why Nicole did not come was the fact that her computer crashed at work and she had to stay and do payroll. Work with Edna until 1:00am

Wednesday - Last day of shipping. Mike has to call me three times to get me out of bed. I am really grouchy!!! Dana and I just start shipping and my Mom and Dad show up to put the oak trim around all of the windows and around the floor in the master bathroom and bedroom. I catch them trying to carry in a table saw and I point out that no more cutting is allowed in the house, due to the fact that we have kits in plastic bags spread out all over the house. They keep carrying the table saw. I get a little more frantic and suggest that I will personally run outside and cut each and every board, myself, if they will just leave that thing outside. My Dad persists and soon I have a table saw whining in the background and sawdust flying everywhere. Shut the door to the room they are working in, take a deep breath, go outside and smoke three cigarettes in rapid succession. Go back in and continue shipping - done by supper time. Cereal again for supper and then drive over to my parents house to plan the 50th wedding anniversary party. Home by 9:30, bath, water the almost dead plants on the veranda, when was the last time I fed the dogs??? Notice that the two farm dogs are all clean and are wearing new collars. Where did they get that? Mike informs me that I forgot to take the dogs to their appointment so the groomer came out to the farm and picked them up. Fall into bed around 11:00. Exhausted!!!

Thursday - Go to work extra early to check out the paint job, as today the painter should just be cleaning up and packing away her supplies. Check over all of the walls and LOVE the job that she did! However, every time that her bright yellow scaffolding fell on the ground, it left big yellow streaks on the cement floor. Going to have to wash those all off before the glaze goes on. Spend the day checking over orders, seeing that everyone has the right kits, the orders have been placed in the right bins and that all of the names are on the correct sheets. Load up all of the boxes for Canada Post and go to the post office. Make seven trips into the building, stand in line for one hour while they scan in all of the postal codes and put the stickers on the boxes. Look at the grouchy faces of the other people waiting in line (because of me) and decide that next time I should come at a different time of day to avoid death threats! $340.00 later and a till tape five feet long, all of the parcels are on their way to the scrapbookers. Yahoo!! Run a few errands, drop off the boxes at the courier, pick up something other than cereal for supper and go back to the workshop. Dana is gone, the painter is gone, clean up the mess from the table saw, notice that the wall beneath the bathroom window will have to be repainted because Dad has marked it up putting in the mouldings. How many times am I going to have to paint this thing????? Go home, make supper and start cleaning up the house. Start with the laundry room, only get as far as the top of the basement stairs and I seriously can not put one foot in front another to do any more. See Edna's car coming up the road. Shit, forgot that she was coming back$^$$$&& Spend until midnight doing books. Fall into bed.

Friday - Get up to the sound of the tractor starting right below the bedroom window. Haying season has begun. I guess Mike was too scared to wake me up. Go downstairs and survey the damage in my house. There are unwashed dishes from last weekend when Phillip and Haida left, the floors are sticky with the puppy pee, garbage is overflowing, decide that I can not meet Christy today to give her the kits because I would be unsafe on the highway. Way too tired to drive to Nanton - have to clean this house!! Spend the day cleaning, thank God for good tunes!!!! Finish up around 7:00pm, take Mike supper in the field, go home, lay down on the sofa for a few minutes. Remember that the floor in the workshop needs to be washed before we can put glaze on it, go over and start mopping. Paint won't come off, so get out a putty knife and start chipping away at it. Wash the whole 1100 square feet on my hands and knees, scraping as I go. Mike comes to pick me up at 10:00pm just as it is ready to glaze. Fall asleep on the sofa.

Saturday - Wake up at 6:30 am, need to get the glaze down before it gets too hot - it looks like it is going to be a cooker today. Go over to the workshop, vacuum the floor and start painting the edges with the sealer while Mike rolls the glaze on the middle of the floor. The fumes start out not too bad, but the further we go, the more toxic the fumes become. Flies start dropping dead from the ceiling. (Maybe we should have worn masks????) Finish the first coat, go over to Mom and Dad's and dewinterrize their 5th wheel trailer, go to town for lunch, come back and put a second coat on the floor. Go back to town and get groceries, invite Colleen MacDonald and her girls over for supper. Cook, eat, enjoy supper out on the veranda, take Colleen back to the Inn and crash into bed.

Sunday - Sleep in until 8:30, bath and do hair properly for the first time in a week (starting to look like a homeless person), wave at my husband as he goes round and round the field. Stop in town and get snacks and go out to the Inn. Poor Mike, some farm wives would probably stay home in haying season to take him drinks and food during the day, but not me. Today, I am going SCRAPBOOKING!!!! Colleen and I are going to sit and enjoy the day, catch up on our visiting and do a little scrapbooking. At least that was the plan. But, by 5:00pm, he is already broke down and needs me to come home and run a part into Pincher Farm Equipment for repairs. Well, so much for my day vacation. Finish up the laundry, pack all of the totes into my car to get ready for tomorrow.

Week #2 is over, only one more to go. This vacation thing is a myth!!

My "Feel Good" Moment For the Week

I love a good storm!! Seriously, I have never been afraid of thunder, lightning, wind or hail - having owned a roofing company for many years, I know that a good storm brings us a lot of business and everything can be fixed. (Unless, of course, you are dead). I am the kind of person who would make a good storm chaser, the louder the thunder and the bigger the cracks of lightning, the better I like the storm! Even four years ago, when we had hail the size of golf balls and all of my koi were floating dead in the pond, I thought that storm was the best I had ever seen! Two nights ago, we had a killer storm in early morning and I woke up and went outside on the veranda to watch the display. I have to say, it topped all! This one had a down side, however.
The storm only lasted about a half and hour and it was hardly worth going back to bed, so I got dressed, went over to the workshop and started some last minute printing of the title bars for the October calendar club page (which I had forgotten to do after handing in my layout). Everything was working just fine until I went to the Internet to check my emails. I thought that over a nice cup of coffee, before everyone arrived to paint and work, that I would get caught up. No Internet. Computer seemed to be working fine, but I couldn't get on. I called the host and asked if someone could stop by RIGHT AWAY!! You can not be without an Internet connection on shipping week! The dude walked me through all of the normal system checks that he could do over the phone, and he determined that the receiver was not sending out a signal. So today they sent someone by in person to check it out. I was a little frantic by then. Isn't it weird that a day or two without Internet can cause such a surge of anxiety??
Turns out, the receiver was fried by the lightning and the problems only began there. My computer was damaged too - the part that accepts the signal. The guy that came out to fix it is Japanese and was brought right from Japan (didn't speak a word of English when he got here) to do this job with the high speed Internet guys. Taku and I are no strangers. I seem to have a problem keeping my receiver in one location for more than a couple months. He has moved it three times during this renovation alone!! He does even act surprised when I phone to have him come and move it out of the way of some type of construction crew. He is a friendly little fellow, but you have to concentrate hard to understand what he is trying to tell you. (It doesn't help that I am almost computer illiterate, maybe I just don't understand the terms and I am blaming his accent in error). Anyway, after spending most of the afternoon patching up my system so that we could continue shipping, I asked him what I owed him.
Imagine my surprise when he told me that he would like to have a cup of coffee with me - with sugar, please! He went on to tell me that no one "talks" to him. He can be on a job site for hours and hours hooking up a high speed system and no one takes the time to have a conversation with him. He was happy to come out and rehang my receiver every week or so, because I talked to him. He wouldn't take anything for pay, except the cup of coffee, so we sat there and chatted for almost an hour. Turns out that in the four years he has been here, I am only the second person to have a receiver damaged by lightning. And the only person who took the time to stop and talk.
I guess the storm blowing up my receiver was actually a good thing, because after he left, I had this amazing feeling, like I had gotten to know someone - totally by accident. It reminded me of the time that I gave a drywall crew, working on our garage, some cold beer and they left me a drawing and a thank you note on the drywall. It was so cute that I didn't want to paint over it! It was my smiley face for the day!
Thanks Taku! You made my week!!!

My First Week Of Summer Vacation

Okay, I want to go back to work!! Being on vacation is just too much hard labor and after week one, I can see that I am not going to get any R&R and I might as well just give up!! See why?

Evening #1 - go home from the Inn, dead tired and ready to crash, so that I can sleep in the next morning. Discover that Phillip ( our nephew, who is coming to put the new siding on the workshop) is almost in Pincher Creek and he has driven all day without stopping or eating. Turn off bubble bath and get out frying pan. Finally get to bed around midnight, after visiting and catching up on all his news.
Day #1 - Day starts early, no time to sleep in. The rest of the crew arrives around 8:00am and stops for a quick coffee at the house before going over to the workshop. Make breakfast, clean up , start on lunch, clean up, bake dessert for supper, run to town to get freight (siding company forgot to send touch up paint) pick up Slurpies for crew, rain starts, downpour ensues, all crew come to our house to out wait the storm, doesn't happen, feed everybody supper, go over to workshop and clean drywall dust until 11:00pm
Day #2 - Day starts early again. No rain today - got a full day of work in - didn't know that I was part of the work crew now, picked up garbage and plastic to keep it from blowing away, feed crew twice, paint master bathroom for the LAST time, help put in two windows, plant two flower beds and water grass, answer emails until late at night.
Day #3 - Work at Inn with Shelley's group for the day, work crew has to go to town for lunch. Country Lane red siding is looking pretty good - they are half way around the house by now. BIG MESS!! Start cleaning it up, realize that it is time to start supper, feed crew and then go back and clean up the job site. Drywaller has come and sprayed the ceilings, left the plastic on the floor for the painter. It is looking like a workshop around here, the room has a terrible echo.
Day #4 - Last day for the siding crew. Feed them three square meals, clean the house, get ready for the rest of Phillip's family to arrive, as they are meeting him here to start their summer vacation. The siders work very late into the night, with the aid of floodlights. Take them coffee and dessert around 9:00pm - get stuck cleaning up the mess (again) Painter drops by around 9:30 to do a walk through and look at the job. She does NOT want the plastic on the floor, she wants all of the plastic up, the drywall dust washed off the floor and everything clean when she gets here on Monday. GOOD GRIEF!!
Day # 5 - Siding crew comes EXTRA early to beat the rain and pack up all of the tools, Mike and I visit with Haida and the kids while Phillip puts the finishing touches on the house. Megan drops off her untrained puppy, for us to puppy sit while she goes off to have fun in the Okanagan with her boyfriend. She has two dogs, so that makes a grand total of five dogs for the weekend. Phillip's twins begin to torment dogs. They refuse to leave the little puppy alone. Puppy is peeing and pooping all over my house. %^%^$$^& Lock up dogs, send kids to bed early, get a stiff drink, start washing floors. Visit with Phillip and Haida until wee hours of the AM
Day#6 - Company leaves, as soon as they are down the road, Mike and I take over the HUGE task of washing 1100 square feet of red cement floor. After 15 minutes we realize that we are in over our head. Luckily, Caren comes to the rescue and borrows me a 100 year old floor cleaner with spinning heads. THANK GOD!!!!! We pour water on the floor, run the machine back and forth until it lifts off the drywall mud globs and the dust and then I wash the floor with a mop until I get it clean enough to move on. We wash the floor three times and it still is covered with drywall dust. Back hurts so bad that I think I am going to die!!! Little puppy has made a big mess in my porch and the house is upside down from the company. I am not doing so well, starting to hyperventilate.
Day#7 - Today. Come back to workshop, wash the floor one more time - say "piss on that"...Get tractor and clean up all of the big rubble (old windows and doors) and put them in the dump truck, get stung by a bee, wash drywall dust off the floors in the house, paint the master bathroom (again) because I still don't like the way that it looks, go home and help Mike back fill around the new cement koi pond (only get two sides done and I am so hot and sunburned that I get crabby), Edna arrives to do year end books and so I get a reprieve from more back filling. THANK GOD!!! I am aching all over by now. Notice that puppy is no where to be found, spend half an hour looking for him, find him chewing on a dried up leather-like gopher. Lock the little bastard up. Work on year end books until 10:30. Wash paint brushes and roller. I'm going home!

This is just the first week of my summer vacation. By next week I should be just about dead.

Call 911!

A tragic thing happened at work a couple of days ago, utterly horrible, unimaginable...my vacuum cleaner broke. Surely you jest? - you're thinking. Nope. I just stood there in shocked horror as the little plug in thingy popped off as the cord retracted into the bowels of the vacuum cleaner and spun crazily around inside for a few seconds. "NOOOOOOO! " was all I could shriek. I have a personal relationship with my vacuum cleaners, I have even scrapbooked a layout on my Beam vacuum in my house. The breakdown of my good, old faithful,workshop vacuum almost pushed me over the renovation edge! I just stood there, making frantic hand signals for a few minutes before I calmed myself down. I picked up the little dismembered body part and tried to breathe deeply... is there 911 for vacuum cleaners?

If you don't know it by now, I am a cleanaholic. My name is Cindy. It has only been one hour since I last cleaned something. Okay, maybe not even that long, because when I sat down to blog, I dusted the screen on my monitor. Okay, less than five minutes. I have tried to get sober several times without success. I am a repeat offender and I drive everyone around me to drink.

Here are my 10 random, craziest things that I have ever done:

1) Mike and I had weekend guests one time. They arrived Friday evening, after supper. By the time I went to bed, I was already "anxious". Saturday, I planned an excursion that would take everyone out of my house. While we were gone, I arranged to have my house cleaner come in and "clean" before we arrived back home. I lied when we got back and said that the spotless house was a result of it being my day to have the cleaners in. The people never came back.

2) When my new Beam vacuum broke down after only ten months of service, I took it in only to find that the motor was gone. Stupid me!! When they asked me how many times I vacuum on average, I told the truth. They meant per week. When I told them that I vacuum three to five times per day, the look on their faces told me instantly that I had made a tactical error. When I went to pick up the vacuum, they had prepared a waiver, saying that I could not get another free motor, because I was using it excessively. I refused to sign, the conversation got pretty heated. I figure that if the warranty states that the motor is covered for seven years then it should be covered for seven years, regardless of how many times it gets turned off and on in a day! I killed it in ten months! This spring, the company closed up shop and the owners retired. I am sure that they did that because I am about due for another motor!

3) My best friend told me that my children became sickly as young adults, because they had left the germ free environment that we live in and they had entered the real world. (She was dead serious)

4) I wash my bathroom floor every night. Except for nights that I am at the Inn. I have tried to recover from this one, as for some reason it is particularly irritating to Mike. Possibly because crutches and a wet tile floor are not a good idea? So now I have to dry my floor after washing it every night so that he does not slip when he goes in to brush his teeth. See, I am good at compromise.

5) I used to clean after my family went to bed. That came to a very sudden stop, late one night. My old, old vacuum broke down and I had borrowed my mother's. (Do you see a pattern here?)How was I to know that it was louder than mine? When it stopped, I turned the switch off and on an couple of times to see if I had accidentally shut it off. Nope. Maybe it unplugged in the hallway? I poked my head out of the office to look down the hallway and see if it was unplugged. Mike was standing at the outlet, the cord in his hand and he didn't have to say a word. I got the message loud and clear, just by the look on his face! I had to alter my plans and only dust and wash after midnight. Later, he told me that he was not surprised that I didn't roll him onto my side of the bed after he had fallen asleep, change the sheets and then roll him back so that I could finish making the bed. I hadn't thought of that one!

6) When Daniel's girlfriend, Vanessa got a Swiffer dust mop on Christmas Eve and she was so excited that she wanted to go right home to their house and try it out, I knew that she was the right girl for my son. While I was sitting there, smiling my approval, the rest of the family was stunned to silence and were contemplating the repurcussions and the expense of sending both of us to EdgeWood Treatment Center in Nanaimo. B.C.

7) Two cleaning companies have left my employment. One just packed up and left and never came back, I had to fire the other. Now Megan cleans for me, partly because I trained her and partly because she knows that she'll make good money off of me. I clean before and after they clean. I just keep relapsing.

8) With regards to the cleaners that I fired...after I complained several times about cutting corners, they started leaving me check lists of what "should" be cleaned in each room and how often it should be done. When they left me a list one day, they had circled in red, in big bold letters "DOES NOT HAVE TO BE DONE EVERY WEEK''. (I am so dead serious! ) That really ticked me off, am I not the paying customer???? They didn't even bill me for the last two times that they cleaned. Do you think that I am on someone's list somewhere with the words "When hell freezes over" written behind my name?

9) My daughter opened her own cleaning company last year and does about four commercial properties and about six or seven houses. There are so many cleaning products on my grocery bill that she steals my grocery receipts and deducts them for income tax. (I am not kidding).

10) I came home from work one day (Mike was recuperating from his first amputation) and he excitedly told me that there was a lady "just like me" on Doctor Phil that day. When I asked what he specifically meant by that, he said that she had a cleaning compulsion as well. Then he earnestly exclaimed "And you can be fixed!" So if I open up a card someday and there is a gift certificate for Edgewood, I guess I should know that I had it coming! Is there a 12 step program for cleaners???

Until the day that my family commits me, I will happily continue to dust, clean and vacuum everything in sight. I am Cindy and I am a cleanaholic.

If Tomorrow Ever Comes...

I admit I am a serious procrastinator...I have always worked better under pressure and if the pressure is off, well, then I am turned off too. Consequently, I am always running around in a state of panic. Yesterday was a good example:

- Christy drove down from Calgary to get my October calendar page from me, because I had not mailed it to her. I was so busy procrastinating that I was literally finishing it as she was driving into the driveway. I looked all casual when I handed it over, like it had been done for ages, when you could still smell the fumes of Mono Multi wafting off of it. It wasn't even dry! I guess the boss should not be admitting this on a site where all the designers have access, it doesn't look good when "I" miss the deadlines, does it? And, no, Christy will not make house calls to pick up your kits!!!

- The last of the guests left the retreat in the early afternoon, yet at 4:00pm I was just starting cash out, because I really didn't want to look at it - I already knew that I was not going to balance. So I spent the afternoon in the empty workshop, googling a new recipe site that I already knew that I will never cook anything from. But it was fun to kill a couple/three hours in the peace and quiet. Then I realized how late it was and panicked, so I rang off the till, stapled the till tape on the invoices and added a cute little note that said "Sorry Edna, I Can Not Make This Balance" and put it in the box for Edna to deal with. But, I did find a really good sounding recipe for a grilled scrimp and yellow pepper Greek salad! (That I will never make, but I will admire the great photo of the dish)

- As my accountant, Edna, left on Sunday, she made me PROMISE to add up the inventory sheets and balance the insurance account. I did promise (like I had many times before). But how did I know that a lady at the retreat was going to introduce me to the world of digital scrapbooking??? The next three days of the retreat was spent creating a digital 8x8 album for my sister-in-law's memorial service. I was slightly guilty every time that I passed the pile of undone bookwork, but only "slightly". Edna comes again on Sunday to balance everything so I can tell that Saturday night will be an "all- nighter" for me! (At least I know myself)

- In the evening I was too tired to go and weed the garden, which I have been putting off for a couple of weeks now. I had already devised an answer for when one of our farm neighbors asked about the three foot high weeds on the east side of my house. I was going to tell them that it was a test plot for a new type of Round Up and that we had been selected as a test station, but the instructions said that the weeds had to be four feet high. (I thought that would buy me another week!) So I put off weeding the garden, it would be cooler in the morning to do that much weeding, anyway. But this morning I didn't feel like it either, so I slept in a little and then went to town for coffee with Mike. This afternoon, that damn patch of weeds was clearly staring me in the face and it looked like a jungle. Okay, Cindy, you are going to have to deal with it. I did take two, half hearted swipes with the hoe. Then I decided that it would work up much better with softer ground, turned on the sprinkler for a couple hours and then decided that it was too wet. Maybe I should just leave it until tomorrow...

-So here I am, blogging. I could be trying to figure out the cash out problem/problems, so that Edna does not have to try to make sense of it. (Not really interested) I could be adding up the inventory sheets or balance the insurance account. (Boring) I could finish the last few pages of the tribute album and send in the order so that the books will arrive before the memorial service (but I still have a week or so) I could go out in the nice cool calm of the evening and weed that test plot (but I have already had my bath). I should be writing my portion of the MNC newsletter (not inspired) Nope, there is nothing that I want to do tonight.

What would I do tomorrow???