Happy Saturday To All

Merry xmas eve to one and all!  Today Santa brought me a new floor.  The jerk could have installed it for me, but noooooo, he had to be all, "Do it yourself.  Ho-ho-ho."  Bastard.  Oh well. 

As you can tell from the above we laid hardwood today.  We started in the hallway as that is usually the biggest pain in the ass.  We were hoping to get into the small bedroom, but alas, time caught up with us so we stopped just at the door.  I am hoping that we can finish the small bedroom tomorrow, and if we are very lucky, maybe even start on the second one.  But I'm not holding my breath.  Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the work in progress. 

Oh...did I mention that laying hardwood in the hallway is a pain in the ass, the knees, and the back.  Toodles.

Happy Winter Solstice

Yippee!  Today the sun is finally going the other direction.  Which is pretty fine with me even though I am still on sabbatical I don't like the whole concept of the day being so short.  I know one way to help solve it would be for me to go to bed earlier and get up earlier so I have more daylight during the day, but I don't want to.  I spent soooooooo many years having to get up at 4:30am for work that the thought of having to get up early now still gives me the heebie-jeebies. 

It was a pretty warm day today so I took the hound and walked out to the back forty and around and about.  The hound was beyond thrilled.  She did some serious jumping in puddles, ditches, creeks, and the lake.  I decided that I needed to cut down some stumps that my cutter-snipper couldn't get at so I fired up the chain saw and went to town on them.  I had to stop because the chain decided to come off the bar, and wouldn't you know it, once I got it back on and working again it started to rain, so I went back into the shack and baked some chocolate drop cookies.  So I am like a combination of Dora Domestica and Paul Bunyan, you can call me Dora Bunyan. 

Me, and Mr Master Of All Trades, worked on the plumbing for the washer and dryer today.  This means that I might actually be able to dry clothes during the winter and not have them smell like moldy basement and wood smoke.  And...the best thing of all...I will probably be able to wash more than just a pair of pants and a T-shirt at one time as the washing machine and dryer are like regular sized ones!  It makes me warm and tingly all over. 

Kitpu Manor, aka The Eastern Shack, is still very much a work in progress, much more progress is needed to get it to the point where it is presentable, but things are still moving.  *Knock on wood* it looks like I found a person who can actually finish my kitchen for a reasonable cost.  This is a very good thing because it means that we do not have to do the cupboards ourselves, that is one stress I wasn't looking forward to at all.  The guy said he was going to start the cupboards mid-February, which means that we will have to rip out the existing cupboards, rip out a wall or two, take down the ceiling, rip the lino off the floors, change out a window, extend the wall, add R20 insulation, put up drywall, paint, redo the ceiling, paint the ceiling, change out the lights, plumb in a place for a dishwasher, and put down the hardwood all by the end of February.  Groan.  All this while not having a kitchen to cook in.  It looks like we will be barbecuing a lot.  Hopefully there won't be too many nor'easters to make it a lot less fun. 

Lookie Lookie Another House

I spent the majority of today checking up on houses that are not mine, and will not be mine.  You see, my darling child is contemplating making the move from all the way up north, and on the other side of the country, to all the way over here.  So she is in the process of purchasing a house, and because she is all of six, or seven, thousand kilometers away we have been checking things out for her.  So we spent about two hours today following a building inspector around a house that she is planning on purchasing.  Well I should really say that the hubby spent two hours following the inspector around, and I spent two hours chatting up the present owners.  Groan!  In retrospect it probably would have been better had the hubby chatted up the owners and I followed the inspector around, he is by far the more social of the two of us.  Of course that would have meant that I would have had to speak to the inspector guy which I probably wouldn't have much liked either.  I guess either way I would have had to have been social. 

Then we took a drive over to another house and traipsed through it as well.  I've decided that wandering through houses that you have no intention of buying isn't all that fun.  In fact it is down right boring.  If it were a castle, or a haunted house, or an old jail or something it may make it more interesting.  Hopefully that part is all done and the negotiations will be wrapped up quickly, that way I can go back to being my usual antisocial, chainsaw wielding, xmas cookie baking, painter self. 

The other day I posted a picture of the fearsome Hellhoundicus, so today I thought I would attach a picture of the other fearsome creature which lurks in Kitpu Estates.  Karson the Cat (aka Satan).  

Baby Its Cold Outside

Today while painting the new closet I was listening to CBC radio and had to laugh out loud, or as I should say, LOL.  After the news they gave a quick rundown of the weather, like they do every half hour or so on CBC, and the guy said, "Tomorrow evening it is going to get very, very, very cold.  The temperatures will drop between -4 and -7."  Lucky I wasn't in the process of drinking something as I'm sure that liquid would have come out my nose.  I really want to know how -4 to -7 rates three verys when someone is describing cold?  I must admit that so far this winter we cannot really say that it has been winter the temperatures have rarely dropped below zero but honestly....very, very, very cold?  To me -40 is very, very, very cold, -20 is very cold, -10 is cold (or freakin cold if it also has a high humidity and wind but that is just me not being used to wet climes). 

Did I mention that I was painting today?  The painting stage is kind of like a double edged sword, on the one hand, when you are at the painting stage you are at the, almost done, stage.  But on the other hand you have to take a brush and paint primer on all the corners and edging, then you take a roller and do the rest of the walls/ceilings.  Then you wait for it to dry.  Then you take a brush and cut-in the edges with your colour, then you take a roller and do the rest of the walls/ceilings.  Then you take a brush and cut-in the edges with your other colour, and then you take a roller and do the rest of the walls.  Then you wait for it to dry.  Then you start all over again with your second coat of colour.  And if you happen to be a bit OCD this process may take awhile.  That is my way of saying that I have been painting for the past week or so.  Its a pain in the butt but I am liking the finished product. 

Unfortunately after all the painting is done we will be laying some hardwood flooring.  I say unfortunately because we happen to have all the flooring, but we happen to be using our cargo trailer for storage, which means that it is not in the house.  So next week sometime we will have the joy of hauling a couple of tons of hardwood flooring into the house.  Oh my aching back! oh my aching arms! Then we will get to lay all that hardwood flooring.  Oh my aching knees!  I'm sure that it will all be worth it but the thought of all that work is already making me tired. 

Speaking of being tired, I have been using my new chainsaw and it has been making the whole, cutting the new road experience, a whole heck of a lot easier.  I think I have about nine new piles of bucked up wood for next year's heating needs, and about two hundred meters of trail widened into a space which may eventually turn into a road. 

Here is a picture of a Hellhoundicus, a rare glimpse of the full grown ravenous creature in its natural state. 

And here is a picture of the painting stage of the back door. 

The Baby Jesus Killed Christmas

I don't know the conversation that took place before I arrived on the scene but what I heard between a mother and her very small child after I arrived in the aisle next to them left me feeling rage. 

Mother: "If your not good we are going to leave this store right away."

Child: "But mommy I want Elmo."

Mother: "I"m not buying you Elmo."

Child: "But mommy Jenny (Jimmy?) has one and Elmo is fun."

Mother: "How many times do I have to tell you that Elmo is not a toy we want in our house."

Child: (Big pouty lips and crossed arms)  "I'm gonna ask Santa for him."

Mother: "You know that the Baby Jesus spoke to Santa and told him that he was not allowed to bring little children Elmo."  (They move away still arguing.)

WTF?  Really?  So is Elmo like an evil toy now?  Is he corrupting all the children with his giggles and tickles?  Now don't get me wrong, personally I think that Elmo is pretty annoying, and his voice just bugs the shit out of me, but I'm not five.  I can see where a five year old might still like him.  And since when does the Baby Jesus have to intervene with Santa in the toy department?  Is it me or are people batshit crazy? 

Obviously some parents these days give no thought as to the stupid assed shit that spews out of their mouths.  I am a big proponent of telling kids "no" if you don't want them to have something.  If they are old enough you can tell them "no and why".  However I am not a big fan of telling kids "no because a fictitious deity has told a thinly disguised fictitious deity that what you want is off limits."  Do people not understand that little children are like sponges?

This kind of unthinking, crazy reasoning just opens the world up to more insanity.  The next thing you know people will be coming up with random rules around "no."

Like "no you can't wear makeup, and have a boyfriend, and if you do I have every right to drown you and your sisters and mother in a canal."  Or.

"No you are not allowed to learn to read and write because you are a woman, and if you do I have every right to beat, blind, maim, or kill you."

"No you cannot quit being an alter boy, no priest would do that to you, you are lying."

Oh just wait...

Beat The Outage

The wind she is a-blowin here today, I've already been out to the back deck three times to try and fix the barbeque cover and finally said, "Pffttt.  It can stay like that until it stops hurricaning."  Actually it is blowing so much that it blew the barbeque around in a 360 degree turn.  The chance of having a power outage soon is huge as I do happen to live in the land of power outages, so I have been doing a few things to try to prepare for darkness and coldness.  Although one good thing about today is that it is still relatively warm and I don't have to worry about the house freezing up.  Actually it's been almost four days since either of us felt the need to have heat on in the house. That is four more days extra of firewood we didn't have to burn.  So when the temperatures plummet and I feel the need for a burn I will have four more days before they find my frozen body wrapped in a duvet while wearing a winter parka.  That statement actually deserves an LOL as anyone who knows me knows that I am probably responsible for a large part of the "Global Warming" problem.  I think my body temperature can easily reach Fahrenheit 451 just through the sheer act of breathing.  If I go for a walk, well lets just say that the snow starts to melt, new growth appears on the trees, and you can actually hear the sounds of thermometers rising. 

We are heading into town today to have our final (I hope) discussion with our financial institution so we can put "the plan" into action.  Then I am going to go and pick up a few baking items because I have decided to do some xmas baking.  I haven't done xmas baking in almost 20 years, so it should be interesting.  (And when I say interesting I really mean it will be fun to start, then quickly I will become bored with the whole process, then frustrated, and then miffed.  {Can I still use the word miffed?  Or does that make me look like a dated dweeb?}) 

The wind is blowing so much that it is actually freaking the cat right out.  She has been screaming around the house in terror and trying to hide in places where she can't hear it moan.  Except she's a cat and she can hear flies walk across the ceiling, so good luck with that.  I had better post this before I crash. 

The Blues

For some reason, which makes no sense whatsoever, I feel kinda down today.  It makes no sense because, a) it was a bright sunshiney day today, b) there is no snow on the ground, c) when I took the hell hound for a walk in the back forty there was no snow there either, d) my new bed is arriving tomorrow, and being carried into the house by someone other than me, e) I actually managed to get a couple of gallons of paint in town without caving to the overwhelming craving for junk food.  So why do I feel down?  Is it because I didn't cave to my junk food craving?  Perhaps. 

Speaking of my junk food craving as of tomorrow morning I am officially modifying my present "no carb" diet.  Tomorrow is Saturday and is officially my cheat day anyway (I may actually try to use the word officially so much in this post that people will want to hit me with a two by four with nails sticking out of it.  Which is officially the board used by people, for people, who over use the word officially too many times in one paragraph.)  Anywho, as I was saying, tomorrow is officially my cheat day anyway so I can carb it up as much as I want, but I am finding that no carbs makes for a pukey feeling blogger.  Lately I've just been on the edge of ralfing every time I eat, even when its good for you type things.  This phenomena has finally reached the cognisant part of my brain where information is normally processed and actually absorbed.  My brain has decided that feeling pukey all the time is not good so I am going to reintroduce carbs into my life.  Yippee! 

Although I have lost a tad bit of weight, around six or seven pounds, I figure I could easily lose another hundred or so without endangering my health too much.  Well maybe a hundred is a bit of an exaggeration, maybe I could lose another ten and I would feel a bit better about things.  Although perhaps I should stop now as my clothes are starting to get a bit big on me and, dog forbid, I might actually have to go out and do some clothes shopping.  I hate shopping for clothes.  If I had someone to pull clothes off the rack and say that this would probably be the right size, right fit, and be in my price range, I may not hate it as much.  To me the sizes are just random numbers that someone picked by spinning a wheel and letting it stop on its own.  So I have no idea if I'm a size 10 or 110.  Plus to make is worse I am tall, taller than the average bear, so finding pants that have any kind of actual length to them is hell.  I used to be able to pick stuff up in those Big N Tall Girl shops but now every time I go into one I look around and everything looks like it is either designed for nerds or ninety year old ladies.  Plus....a pair of jeans may start at $200.00!  There is no way in hell I will pay even a quarter of that for a pair of jeans, most especially because I will probably be cutting trail in them, or painting walls, or ripping out floors, or baking something (when I can start baking again), or anything else which is not good for jeans that you pay $200 for.  As well the dress style I typically prefer is somewhere between ripped sweat pants and running Tshirts a commodity I'm afraid is pretty hard to find in most malls. 

Here is a haiku on today's subject.

Shopping is not fun
When clothes are the goal for me.
Holes are priced too high.