It is so exciting to be finally working on flooring in the living area! Progress is being made.
After putting in the hydroponic system in the garage, we did a major cleaning of Rog’s workshop. He installed the new side door and stored small pieces of wood above the hydro system. I put all boxes of household stuff (including Christmas decorations and dive equipment) in the house. We can now move around the workshop.
Rog started the month with a medical test at Kaiser and removal of some benign polyps. He was all recuperated in time for a major Shotokan event the second weekend of October. His dojo sponsored a weekend training with SKA’s “second in command” and invited the other dojos in the area. Approximately 60 folks attended and we hosted the dojo leader from Redding at our home. A very successful event.
Rog’s focus this month was doors. He removed the sliding door that is almost impossible to open….we sure won’t miss it! In its place he installed a pair of wooden French doors that he made.
Then we moved on to tiling what will be the informal dining area off the kitchen. We even started looking at carpet samples, but we need to do baseboard and get the windows installed before that final step.
Our neighbor has made it really clear that we need to focus on drainage. Apparently her place almost flooded with runoff from our place in the past. So we took a day off from remodeling and rented an electric drain cleaner from Home Depot to clean out the pipe from the backyard out to the front curb. After 3 hours and increasingly larger cutting tools, we finally cleared the drain as a tennis ball was ejected at the other end along with lots of mud. We feel pretty confident that this will solve the drainage problem. Just to make sure, I dammed up the back corner of the lot and dug a trench from there to the new pond.
While Rog was tearing out and installing, the painter was left with lots of free time. I did a lot of work outside, finishing the pond and starting on a waterfall. I spent a few hours every day moving every rock on the property to the waterfall and got about half of them placed…one rock at a time.
Before we get rain, I also dug out a firepit and cleaned the old fire bricks we removed when we knocked out the fireplace. Rog helped me level the pit and place the bricks.
We hired a guy to removed 3 huge eucalyptus trees out back and we invited our neighbor to help himself to the wood. He spent a morning hauling it all away and it took me another week to clean up all of the trimmings. We now have a nice pile of wood to burn in our firepit. I spread straw on most of the back yard and will spend the next 2 months mulching oak leaves and spreading that around. This month, I raked the front yard every week and picked out the acorns. We have quite a batch to play with…almost 50 pounds. I hope to spend some nice rainy days cracking them open and getting them ready for leaching.
Karissa invited us to join her preschool class at Bishop’s Pumpkin Patch in Wheatland. It is amazing to see how much this place has grown. I used to take my preschool class to Bishop’s when it first opened in the late 1970’s when it was just a field of pumpkins. Now it is a real “park” with a train, zipline, slides, hayrides, shows and picnic areas. Quite an event.
As for Monday projects, we celebrated Halloween and made owl pretzels, banana ghosts and mandarin pumpkins. Gams has also given up on healthy sugar free cookies and now fills the cookie jar with tasty treats. Our date this month was with Karissa. She chose Black Bear Diner for lunch and then we spent the afternoon doing a movie marathon, watching Brother Bear 1 and 2 and Emperor’s New Groove.
The month ended with Rog joining the Blooms for trick or treating and I stayed home to pass out treats. This year, Max was a mummy and Karissa was Ariel. I had 2 teenagers come by and that was it for the evening. So now Rog and I have 148 pieces of chocolate to nibble on.
No comments:
Post a Comment