Optimistic Success and an Electric Pole.

Following our amazing suspicious day of productivity, we had decided to treat the pole with wood preserver first thing and then go to Lowes to get the supplies we would need to set the pole in the ground, come back and set the pole. Oh and also stop by my aunts to give her some stuff she needed for the Woodsmith, oh and stop by that crazy discount food place with all the dented shit and get some more cheese.

What's that you say, we were being wildly optimistic? It can't be done? Read on, dear reader.

So I get up early and feed the animals and take the dog for a walk and then put in some laundry and then we are ready to began.

First off we roll the electric pole onto some wood blocks to keep it up off the ground, and then we gather our supplies and paint on the wood preserver while trying not to breath in. This is also where Holly learned an important lesson called, 'why you should have bought those knee pads when you had the chance.' Yeah, so maybe we had to wait for the sun to burn off some of the frost on the pole before starting in, but you know what the sun did not do?

If you answered, unthaw the frozen ass hard as marble ground, you'd be right!

My left knee may never forgive me.

So we painted on the wood preserver changed clothes, hopped in the car and set off for phase 1.5. So we get to aunt and uncles house and it turns out they are both home and so we get to talking and then we have some tea and then my aunt reveals she has some homemade pumpkin bread we can eat and then we get to telling stories and then Scott and my Uncle start to look through the Woodsmith manual and then it's like noon thirty.

Of course then we have to say our goodbyes and hop back in the car and drive off to Lowes for part 2. Every trip to Lowes is like a game. More specifically, like a scavenger hunt. Rule number one, sections are kinda sorta labeled, but they will not contain everything you would think would go there. Rule number two is that if you are going with a man, you are never allowed to ask an employee because that would mean admitting defeat. The only exception to this rule is if you split up, then you are allowed to hunt down in employee, but the two of you will arrive just as the man you are with has found the section and then he will have to pretend he does not know you to save his manliness. Rule number three is that you will always be on a time limit when you go, to add excitement/stress. Rule number four is that you will never, no matter how hard you try, understand which lanes are for the flat cart things and which are not. I shun you contractor checkout.

So after playing the Lowes game we went on to part 2.5, and went to the crazy cheap food store and then drove home. It was about oh, three in the afternoon. So I threw a sandwich and tea in my face and then went outside to tackle that pole.

First off, we had to tie it to the backhoe in such a way that we could take it down the road. Our only solution was to tie it to the bucket, and then tie one end to the side, so it looked like the backhoe was about to go jousting with a telephone pole.*

Then I wrapped a chain around the front end to stabilize the whole thing and off we went. If you are wondering that that is like, it was like walking the biggest dog ever. Or possibly a dinosaur.

Well, we got it over there safe and sound and then unhooked it. Then we filled the bottom of the hole, which was already filled with water because it's fucking wet here, with gravel and sand. Then we struggled and cursed and yelled and fought the goddamn pole onto the bucket and after a botched first attempt that made us accuse each other of not doing it right, we got the end in the hole and there was much fucking rejoicing.

Then we chained it to the bucket to keep it from crushing something, and niggled the backhoe around until the pole was upright and level. Mostly level, anyway. Then we set to filling in the hole. Looking up, I could see the sun had slipped behind the trees on the ridge, and that the sky was taking on that pale gray of a winter evening. Oh boy.

We commenced shoveling. I got rocks and threw them in the hole around the pole and then we shoveled in dirt. It got darker. We shoveled in more dirt and rocks. I managed to hit my head on the backhoe bucket. It got really kinda a lot dark. Like, oh hey, there is the moon dark. Then we poured in two bags of Quickcrete next to the pole, and the shoveled some more dirt around it.

By the time we were ready to place in the last bag, the night was coming in. You know that point where if you are standing out in a field it is still light enough to see, but the trees and forests and buildings are just pitch black holes against a deep blue black sky?

Yeah, we were at that point.

So in the almost but not quite dark we shoveled on enough earth to cover the Quickcrete and then cleaned up our tools. And by cleaned up our tools, I mean we threw everything onto the porch of the second mobile home, crawled back inside the livable mobile home and collapsed.

Sometimes I wonder about us. Do normal people try to cram two and three days into one day? Is this just us? Are we crazy?

The world may never know.

*You know what the Olympics needs? Backhoe telephone pole jousting. Get on that, people who decide what goes into the Olympics. Get on that.

Why Yes, my Dead Father Would Love a Free Trunk Organizer.

An open letter to people and organizations that are still mailing things to my deceased parent.

Why yes, my dead father would love a free trunk organizer. I could put his ashes in it and drive him around in the back seat while I do my shopping. That would be a totally sane thing to do. Oh and I'm sure he would love a pool cleaning robot for the pool that he didn't own too. While were at it, I'm sure he would to resubscribe to your organization in exchange for some free stickers, although I'm not sure about the appropriateness of placing an 'I love the NRA' bumper sticker on his urn.

While we are on the subject I'm sure he would love to support you, politician that won't stop calling and or mailing things. I am sure he would just love to vote for you in the up and coming election, but unfortunately I believe that West Virgina has laws against that sort of thing. Unless the political figure in question is also dead, in which I think that this is okay. I'm not very sure though, you might want to check your local laws on the subject. I just don't keep up with these things seeing as though I am, last time I checked, still living.

Also I think that my father would be very insulted by your offer of a 'free' hover round mobility scooter. Plus, I am fairly sure that he will not be needing to 'talk to his doctor about the increased risk of stroke or heart attack' anytime soon. I am fairly sure that he will, in fact, never need to see a doctor again. Nor will he ever need to get a 'discount MRI'. I am also vaguely appalled by your implied suggestion that he would, if given the chance, use a discount MRI service.

You have yet to mail him anything he could actually use, such as a knitted urn sweater, (for those cold nights) a pedestal, or perhaps some googly urn eyes. So far I am disappointed in your wild presumptions about my beloved father. I can only hope that things will improve from this point out, and we can all get on with our respective lives (or deaths).

Sincerely,

Queen Holly the Magnificent

Harvesting Hay -now with Poor Planning!

Have you ever had one of those times when you can see a problem looming on the horizon, brewing up like a dark and unpleasant thunderstorm? And you just completely ignore it because you wore yourself out and then spent an entire day drinking because the pain in your arms was so bad you felt like the time you broke your finger was a fucking joy ride?

No?

Just me?

So yesterday we harvested the hay. At about 4 pm. Why so late you ask? Because I wanted to give the hay the maximum time to dry out before putting it somewhere. Also, it was super angry hot outside. Of course this meant that we were now in a race against the dew. And of course it was supposed to rain shit barrels the next day because none of my projects would be complete without some sort of weather imposed deadline.

The problem? The bunny barn, also known as the only place to store hay on this entire fucking farm, is not a barn, it's a shed. An ancient narrow shed. With a slim, tiny place to store hay. That I was now trying to cram full of hay from a meadow that was almost over my head when I harvested it.

Needless to say it didn't work.

Also, we had two more meadows to go. I looked at Scott, and he looked at me. “Where the hell are we going to put all this?” I asked. The thought of leaving it in the meadows to rot was unthinkable. Not after what I had gone through to get it. We tried several other ideas, such as putting it on the ground and tarping it, shoving it into the other mobile home, or maybe running it through the chipper shredder.

Then Scott said “I know, how about the roof?”

The roof. The upside down laying in the field roof to the old barn that neither one of us could move or indeed get apart because those people had built this motherfucker out of oak and by god this roof was going to stay together. The wonderful metal roof that was the perfect distance and location from both the bunny barn and the chicken coup.

So that is what we did. We piled hay on it. Except that, even with the roof, we vastly, VASTLY underestimated the mountain of hay that we had. We continued to collect the lower meadow hay, and pile it onto our new hay storage area. Except that we had almost filled up the foot print of the roof, which wasn't really that big to began with (it was a small, small barn.)

So we did what we always do in these situations, ignored the problem and kept on getting hay. We took the truck to the upper meadow and started to fill it. At one point I was standing in the truck bed stomping up and down on the hay trying to smash it down so we could cram some more on, and I realized that we were going to bury that roof under an avalanche of hay.

Which is exactly what ended up happening.

It was late in the evening, when the last rays of the sun were gone, and it could just be seen hovering over the end of the valley while the sky turned into those watercolor shades of pink and blue. I shoved the last pitchfork full on hay onto the stack and stopped to admire our handy work. Then I turned to Scott and said those fateful words. “Wait, do we even have a tarp?”

Motherfucker.

We looked everywhere. We had two choices, we could forgo dinner since it was about nine at night and drive to Walmart, or we could do it in the morning. We chose morning, although it didn't fucking help that I hadn't eating anything since about two in the after noon and the neighbors were grilling steak out and I could fucking smell that shit.

Assholes.

So this morning we got up and checked the weather. We had a two hour window. So Scott threw breakfast in his face and jumped in the car and drove to town to buy a humongous tarp. But of course this is the country and you can't go to town just for a tarp because we also needed things like chicken feed and bread and shit.

So I was just milling around the house mobile home waiting for him to return. It was getting late. I sat down to write this entry and looked up. It was starting to rain. That light almost not raining but it is kinda mist raining. It was too late. The tarp had not arrived in time.

It was then I heard the crunch of gravel. He was back! With a tarp! I shoved my feet into my shoes and ran outside, where I promptly learned that trying to open a tarp while running with it means you will drop the tarp.

So we unfolded that bitch and shoved it onto the pile and weighted it down with whatever the hell we could fucking find at the time and then retreated back into the house knowing our hay was safe from the weather that keeps trying to fuck up our plans. Bitch ass weather.

We won this round sky.

We won this round like champions.

Why are we terrible at going to the store?

I am a firm believer in combining trips. However I am also terrible at anticipating what we are going to need. I can easily put on the list the things we are out of completely, but I can never realize that if have half a brick of cheese that we are going to need more before next week. Or we do fine on food, but don't check anything but the fridge and end up using paper towels instead of toilet paper for two days. 

And it's not just me. Scott does this too. I can't figure out why two intelligent people have such a problem with this concept. 

Now I would like to keep a well stocked pantry so that we have extra of everything, but I can't do that in a mobile home because I live in a shoe box. I like to buy when it's on sale, and then live off my stash of pasta and canned tomatoes for all time. Unfortunately when you travel a lot you tend not to buy perishable things. This leads to getting home and opening the fridge to revel that you only own moldy cheese and condiments. And frozen peas. And sadness.

We also got a magnetic white board for the fridge so we could make a list of foods that we needed as we went though them. This, in retrospect, was a terrible idea. The problem develops because that system eliminates actually looking around the kitchen to see what were out of. In addition to the above organizational issues, I firmly believe I enter some sort of weird trance when I enter the grocery store. This trance makes me unable to remember any item that is not on my list. I call this problem 'store amnesia.' It's like I get terribly distracted by my desire to get the foods as fast as possible. 

I dislike shopping for foodstuffs, unless the store is really empty. It's like a circus where I have to dodge screaming children, fat isle blockers, the elderly, and the group of like five women that have to take up the whole alley and have to stop every three feet because those cake toppers are just to goddamn darling. I hate all of you. I also tend not to buy a lot without the husband there because I never want to get a cart. They slow me down and I get stuck in shitty cart traffic jams. Plus I have to take them out to the car and hunt down the cart return area while people barrel past me while looking for the best parking spot ever. I just want to get my fucking noodles and get the hell out. 

I think what we need is an app where if I mount a web cam with a flash in the fridge, It will take pictures of what I have and then send them to my phone while I'm in the store trying to decide if I need more soy sauce. Or maybe leave one spouse at home so that the shopping half can call home and start rattling off items. “Do we need more mayo? What about butter? Do you still eat this brand?”

I really don't have a good idea of how to fix the problem, which is why none of my sandwiches had mayo on them for the past week and haven't had any tissues in my office now for about three months. 

But it's okay, because not buying enough food is one hell of a weight loss plan, because hunger is the breakfast of champions.