shed demolition
Posted by lommiles on Mar 28, 2009
Today was the day that Reuben planned to demolish the shed. He spent the week before tearing off the siding, saving the good and tossing the rotted, broken and splintered into a brush pile.
More rot. Or rather, insect damage. Carpenter bees. Carpenter ants. Termites?
The see-through shed. All that’s left standing are the doors on the front. Tessa has enjoyed being able to see the orchard from her kitchen window.
So today he assembled a couple of friends with fireman experience and cousin Jeff! First they removed the doors including the squirrel nests and leaned them up against the stonewall on our side of the road.
Then they knocked out all the braces. Next they hitched the truck to one of the posts with the logging chain. They weren’t so sure it would be easy but low and behold, easy it was!
I hadn’t thought to explain the whole process in detail to Bboy. He had a good seat to watch the show.
So, when the shed fell down he screamed in terror and cried! and begged me to pick him up. Which of course I did. But, remember, he NEVER wants me to pick him up. He has this game going pretending to be scared of me all the time and running away from the ‘gramma monster’! Otherwise, he had a good time helping me outside or playing in the dirt, whichever way you want to look at it.
Unfortunately, one corner remained standing. But that shouldn’t take much to pull it down. 
Or maybe it will.
Several pulls and a broken logging chain later, they decided to pull out the corner piece by piece.
OK. So what is holding it up?
Maybe we should try a different angle. Sure, that’ll work.
Riiight!
Finally, the last corner fell.
Now they had to move the east part of the roof away from the walnut tree so as not to damage it with the burning.
Gpa and Agirl hauled scrap to the first burn pile in The Foundation.
And the last pieces are put to the flame. It didn’t take long to burn what with the really dry wood and the tar paper roof.
And this was about as close as anyone wanted to get to the fire, too.
Warning: Do not park in this lovely flat open area. There are a million nails there. Wait until Gpa and Sim get through pulling the magnets through it.
knitting hats
Posted by lommiles on Mar 17, 2009
So my sister sends me pictures of parrots and says, don’t you think this would be a nice knitting colorway?
- knitting colorway
Anyway, I hunted through my yarn boxes and came up with these colors. Pretty close, don’t you think?
The parrot on the hat sort of resembles Gonzo more than a real bird, but I guess that doesn’t matter to Bboy anyway. He has a hat and it has a bird. What more could a 2 yr old want?
new gardens
Posted by lommiles on Mar 14, 2009
I finally realized that my brain cannot hold two thoughts together and collate them. Not with recipes – not with knitting – not with reading. Harumph. And then I realized that I had had general anaesthesia in July as well as in September. So, maybe there is good reason for the ” brain on holiday.”
So, instead I am concentrating on my physical capacities. I haven’t been sick for two weeks! That is a record. Maybe the grandkids are healthier? They haven’t had colds for a couple weeks either. And it has been nice enough outside to sit on the porch and drink tea; read a book and drink tea; visit with T and drink tea; talk to the gkids and drink tea. Mind you, I still need two sweaters.
Thanks to the power company and the partial outages, the flower beds by the doors were dug up enough to need complete revamping.
removing step stones
Last week A&S helped dig up stones and Dave hauled more stones over from a random pile. That way I could lay them out in an approximation and try it out before actually committing to a new pathway.
new paths
Bgirl loves to dig so she got to use my new trowel to dig holes along the front door slate. Then we went over to her house to steal a bunch of plants divide some of my old coral bells that were getting too cramped. Yes, that’s it. And she popped them in the ground and gently – REALLY gently – brushed a few crumbs of dirt back onto the plants. She’s a lot more sensitive to these things than Bboy who simply stomped on the newly transplanted fleurs while going down the walk.
I also wanted to expand the beds along the stone wall. The B’s were happy to help me with that too. Digging dirt and carrying it by the trowel full up the hill to another spot to drop it. Bboy was happy enough to pick up stones again which was fine by me. Of course, he liked dragging the pail with wheels up the hill and down the steps.
- Bs helping stonewall
The nice thing about dirt out in PA is that once you tear the sod off, there’s not a lot of digging to do. It’s all stoney soil, no clay, and incorporating the mushroom soil is the only thing to do. And adding it every year. So once I get the sod off the expanded sections, I just have to wait for my Jung’s order to arrive and hunt my friends’ gardens in the “Landscaping For Less” program.
early spring
Posted by lommiles on Mar 8, 2009
daffodil
moving walks
Bboy n SIL
The local farmer even took Bboy around for rides.
new trucks!
Posted by lommiles on Feb 24, 2009
I have a vehicle! I drove it home off the lot today! That was the fastest slowest car purchase we’ve ever made. Fastest because we went to the dealer’s lot and drove it home in 2 hrs. Slowest cuz I’ve been without a vehicle since September!
So this is what we got! A burgundy 2003 Suburu Forestor XS (that means top of the line) with moonroof, keyfob lock thingy, leather heated seats, 6 CD changer, and so on and so on. AND it only has 105,000 miles on it so it is practically new.
I would go somewhere, do something if only I didn’t have this draining cold. I got some cold therapy tea so that should get rid of it, right?
blog site changes
Posted by lommiles on Feb 24, 2009
Hey, my most wonderful number uno son was tired of all the headaches and maintenance of managing five separte blogs so he converted them all to one multi-user blog. That means that my website location has changed to http://lommiles.the-miles.org. Please update your Bookmarks and Aggragators accordingly because he won’t guarantee how long the current redirect will last.
Thank you,
pinewood derby
Posted by lommiles on Feb 22, 2009
I've never been to a pinewood derby and I don't recall our boys being involved in it either. I'm sure I would've remembered slicing, cutting, sanding, painting and racing. But the Sim-boy is in Cubbies and made a lovely red and gold racer. Hmm. Did not get a picture of that, so I'll have to put that in later.
It's later.
Naturally if big bro get his picture taken, lil bro has to have a picture too!
One would think that a race featuring hand-made wooden race cars would be low tech. Nothing could be further from the truth. The course was put together by an engineer and an 
airline pilot. 
The visuals were run by someone else, maybe SIL R knows the vocation of that techie. But inspite of the cameras pointed at the finish line and the straight run and their projections on the wall including the a very large projection of all the stats, someone made sure that the nascar/indy flavor had a physical presence. 
How can you have a race without car oil banners?
Can't you just feel the excitement? The roars and cheers of the crowd?
Feline Spring
Posted by lommiles on Feb 22, 2009
It must be spring. In spite of the brand new fluffy snow this a.m. I heard screaming and thumping and rolling and falling and more screaming. Finally I'd had enough and went to look out the window. Here is what I saw: 
Mind you, I don't know either of these toms. T says the yellow one comes around every spring and is the source of our white cats. I suppose they've seen the tuxedo cat, too, in years that I have been elsewhere. Usually we call the neighborhood tom Mr. Rogers but if we have more than one what happens to the name?
electric and water
Posted by lommiles on Feb 20, 2009
This is the little electric dolly that is supplementing our household electric. I asked
the one guy what it is, is it a transformer or something? He said, Ah doan know how it werks, but it does. He was a little dutchy.
As you can see, we've had snow. The electric co. can't work in the snow. At least not when they are digging holes and playing in trenches. Or so it seems. This saga began last Friday and they were here Mon, Tues, and Wed. But not Thurs. The snow was melting.
Today is Friday and they came back and filled in the trench by the house. That one is fixed now I'm told. And a landscaping group will come out and restore the yard to its original condition. What if I don't want it in its original condition? What if I want the stone circles moved to more appropriate places? Like where we actually walk instead of where D's dad thought he would walk? What if I don't want grass sown there? What if I want flowers there now? I hope I'm home when they come so I can supervise. Or just tell them to go away.
Of course, we've had more interesting water episodes. In the middle of the afternoon I heard water running. In the bathroom. But I can't see any water running in the bathroom or anywhere else. Yes, I checked in the basement and there were no gushing springs or waterfalls there either. So, hubby came home and inspected all the water faucets and spigots and tanks and couldn't find anything but could hear it in the basement. Finally, he went outside and found the outdoor water spigot was pouring water. He thinks maybe with all the recent freezing and thawing it must have worked itself open. Kids have not been playing over here recently due to the trench diggers and trenches. And of course it is very cold here, too. And windy. The white cats (my lumina cats) sit on the front porch as close to the front door as possible. That makes me wonder: is the front door leaking heat?
Fun February Times
Posted by lommiles on Feb 17, 2009
This has been a fun month. (And there are pictures of diggers further down.) First off the washer didn't stop filling and I didn't notice as I was reading a book – I was in 16th century Rome, afterall. Pretty far away. When I got up to see what was happening, I stepped into a 1/2" of water, in the dining room and running down the hall into the bedroom. Fortunately, the linen closet is right there and I had plenty of scatter rugs to throw down to dam the office and living room. I tried to turn off the washer but it was already off. I tried to shut off the circuit but that didn't work either. I tried to turn off the main water and that worked. Hubby figured out later that some electronic relay had gone bad so he ordered the part and repaired it within just a few days.
I called T and had her send the older kids over with towels. I set the 7 & 5yr old boys to squeegy the basement as there were 3 waterfalls pouring down there — but the basement has a drain and we live on a hill. They thought it was a lot of water but they did really well. A, stayed up and helped me throw down and pick up and wring out the towels. But it was heavy work and I was wearing out.
In desperation I called the outlaws and Nick came over with his shopvac to help. He seemed to be duly impressed with the amount of water. He managed to vac up most of the water so that I only needed to wipe the floors up then. Of course, now I had all my towels and rugs sopping wet and nowhere to wash and dry them. So, I hung them outside on the porch. Which worked pretty well except that the bigger ones froze to the floor. On the weekend hubby got the electric paint scraper and melted the floor ice so I could wash and dry them in the now repaired washer.
The next week I went downstairs and found water in the basement again. UhOh. But, it seemed to be from the cellar steps and was just running into the drain. Oh, and then a few days later I found that the cellar door had been left open accidentally since the weekend and it was now the next weekend and hubby was not home. If it hadn't been frozen open – thanks to the thaw during the day, freeze at night cycle we were experiencing — I would have closed it myself but it had to wait til hubby came home.
Ok. That was three overflowing water in the house experiences. We should be done now.
But no. I was doing laundry and discovered that the dryer wasn't heating – laundry was being air-dried. And then the surge protector kept beeping randomly. Then the stove elements didn't work. And some of the outlets didn't work but some of them did. All the lights worked. Later in the afternoon, I realized that the baseboard heaters weren't heating either and it was beginning to get cold in the house. crud. Fortunately we were eating at the Big House that night, so I just moved the crockpot over to the coal stove.
Hubby came home from work and pulled out his handy-dandy electricity measuring device. Hmmm. The 220 was out. And the 110 was feeding thru somehow so we at least had partial electric. So, he called Met Ed to report a partial outage and they said, what do you mean by that? They sent out someone within an hour who also tested it and agreed with hubby and stated that it was MetEd's problem not ours. Whew! By 11 pm 2 big trucks pulled up and started hunting for the breakage/short in the buried cable. By 1 a.m. they hadn't found it, but they put a little dolly with a transformer next to the meter so we could have heat and cooking as well as light.
The next day several trucks pulled up and they used a metal detector? to find the buried cable. Nice to know where it is now since they sprayed orange paint from our house across the road through the truck patch and down to the transformer pole. They didn't find the break. Someone would be out on Monday.
Monday 3 trucks came out. A pickup; A cherry picker; a flatbed with a wee trench-digger. After spending the day standing around and drinking coffee, they took the wee digger down to the meadow and dug a hole at the bottom of the transformer pole. It's half filled with water. But they didn't find the break.
Today they came back with a pickup, a cherry picker, and a large truck with an auger or drill on it. 
They had a little trouble figuring out where to park the vehicles.
And they wandered around the truck patch and up at the house and finally drove the wee digger straight up the hill to the house.
And started digging and digging and digging.
And they dug up the holly bush.
They said they'd put it back, but as long as it is out, I'm wondering if I might just move it somewhere else? The hole is deep enough for me to stand in and maybe or maybe not see over the top. But I wasn't going to try – I'd probably not be able to climb out again.
You can see the really big pile of dirt too!
Meanwhile, they still haven't found the break but they think it is up near the house somewhere. They'll just come back tomorrow and keep digging down further until they find it.
Meanwhile, I can see some daffodils starting to come up. Of course, there will be a bunch of bulbs rearranged by the time they leave. Since it is so beautifully sunny today, I am getting into spring fever big time.
