Author: peterb51

3rd October 2022

We had a lady coming to collect the children’s hutch this morning, so I had a quick adjustment to make to one of the doors. So before breakfast I was out there in the fresh autumnal air fiddling with some tiny screws. With the aid of a couple of small washers I was able to get the door to align better. This piece was obviously made by father or grandfather for a small child, and that is why the buyer wanted it. She was starting a small business selling children’s toys , and she wanted this piece as a prop.

I wanted to dedicate my day to finishing off the kitchen cabinet. I managed to do most of it with just the back panel to fit tomorrow.

Kelli was in the garden moving lilies around from one side of the garden to the other.

We managed to get a bike ride in and cycled round to the wonder garden that we found. The couple who lived there were outside so we chatted to them for a while before heading back home.

2nd September 2022

After a busy day in the back garden, I hardly had the strength to touch the screen to write this post.

The back garden is wild, it was intended to be, but there is wild and there is wild.

There was a patch of ground that became overgrown, grass had taken over, and I had to break out the strimmer.

After that, the area had to be dug over and all the roots had to be removed. That was a job and a half. Kelli wanted to move some of the plants around and give them more space the thrive.

We went to collect some round paving stones from Kim, Kelli’s ex- sister in law who had them in her garden, and didn’t want them any more.

I was planning to use them on some secret pathways in the top garden renovation.

I was happy how the reseeded area had become, the new grass is thick and dense, but there were a few thin patches that I had missed. I decided to start to extend the area, and while it’s still the growing time it’s the best time.

It made a change not to work on furniture, and we finally sold the children’s hutch, but we had a person cancel their order, so Kelli had to refund the deposit, not a thing we like to do.

1st October 2022

Today was gardening day, a day well planned in advance to move plants around in the new improved, enlarged bed.

What did I get instead? An hour long Skype call from my friend Martin. Not that I don’t enjoy chatting to him, but it’s always when I have things to do, and want to get on with them.

We had the returning customer from yesterday to collect her dresser, later another lady came to buy another, it was a good day for sales.

Kelli also wanted to finish a small cabinet that had a wood grain effect paint job on it that I lovingly scraped off revealing a beautiful oak carcass. We finally got to the gardening about four in the afternoon.

Oh I did join the league of grass cutters to trim the front lawn, the reseeded area seemed to take well hiding the ugly patch of bare soil with fresh green growth.

There are leaves falling now, soon the trees around will dump on us, and another year will soon come to an end.

30th September 2022

This is the day I remember Michael Elliot, it still saddens me to think that he was so alone that he chose today to end his life. Who carried the responsibility? I don’t know, maybe we all do, in a small way, especially when the signs are all around us but we often don’t know what they mean.

The only thing I can do is spend a little of my time with him in mind.

I had an appointment with the optometrist, I needed new lenses for my glasses as the surface had deteriorated badly and they ceased to function as an eye piece at all.

Kelli dropped me at the premises with the intension of going to Goodwill whilst I was going through all the procedure.

From the blank look of the receptionist I realised I was in the wrong branch. I should have been in the one across town. Luckily Kelli had called them to check how long I would be, so she quickly returned, and soon we were speeding to the other branch.

The place was bright, it was like a heavenly oasis, Kelli had to keep her sunglasses on.

The place was full of Herman Miller chairs and Eames storage units, so a bit of cash was spent on the furniture.

The receptionist asked for my old glasses, which, if she had some forceps she would have used them to take them.

Then it was off to room one to have my eyeballs photographed. All around there were large pictures of eyeballs in various degrees of seriousness, God I hope mine are not in the bottom row.

Gone were the strange frames where the optician would slot in the different lenses to find the correct focal length. In this place technology has overtaken and everything is done electronically, however the choices to be made are are down to the patient.

Finally she brought up the pictures of the back of my eyes, apart from looking weird were perfectly healthy and showed not abnormalities.

The next stage was the frame selection out in the showroom. A girl with strange symbols tattooed on her fingers attended to us. I wanted new lenses in my old frames, but she looked at them closely and said that it was not possible. That was a shock, but she pointed to the wide selection of frames on offer and invited me to choose new ones.

This was not an easy choice, some of my choices earned sniggers from Kelli, but eventually we settled on a couple of frames suitable for my face.

Then it was down to the hard facts, the price.

She tapped furiously on her keyboard announcing that there was a forty percent discount on the second pair the final bill was one thousand and eighty four dollars.

Now it sounded a lot, but actually for two pairs of glasses and the test I thought it was a fair price.

That done we headed home, and took a bike ride down to the park.

Later we had a customer arrive in a car hoping to fit a dresser in it. I think we tried every way to get it in short of cutting the roof off tomorrow avail, so she’s coming back tomorrow with a different vehicle.

29th September 2022

We were awoken by the sound of tree branches being fed into a chipper. It is a horrible noise that signals the death of a tree. It was a sunny morning, I hurriedly got dressed and rushed outside to put the bins out.

The wild turkeys were out in force pecking furiously at seeds in our wild flower garden.

They didn’t seemed bothered by the workers chewing up the poor tree as they gathered in larry’s front yard.

I continued working on my few projects, the kitchen cabinet, and a small oak dresser that I had stripped back to raw wood.

I had another distraction that I wanted to pursue. Dhama has began to dig in the asparagus bed, and since I removed the temporary fence there has been nothing to stop her.

It came to me in a dream, for some reason I was building a low fence out of some scrap timber. To most people it doesn’t sound very exciting or challenging, but I had to pursue it.

I found the timber around the side of the house. Funnily enough it was from a fence I removed a couple of years ago that was in the same area as the new one will go. So one could say “you should have left it there”.

I checked the quantity of wood pieces, and devised the cutting list, and it might be just enough.

So I set about cutting, notching and assembling a sample, and as far as I can remember it was pretty close to the one in my dream, now another three sections to make.

28th September 2022

It was another chilly day, the smell of autumn is strong, I miss the summer with its disregard of thick clothes, now it’s a case of searching frantically for them.

We spend the evening planning where to move the plants now that there is a larger bed area. Although there is still a bit of life left in them it doesn’t hurt to plan ahead.

We had a sale of the latest dresser that will be collected at the week end.

I was looking at the state of my new lawn. Some areas of turf just didn’t knit into the soil and I can’t understand why. It was well watered, but some of the dead patches could still be lifted, and even with all the recent rain the subsoil was dry, that was so depressing. I have started to reseed by cutting through the turf and adding new top soil mixed with the anti dog seed. Some places have grown, and looks healthy and strong, but let’s see what a harsh Michigan winter will do to it.

27th September 2022

After another bad nights sleep, the day was rather sober, it took a lot to get going.

I had received answers to some questions that I had poised to the guy I was building the kitchen cabinet for. I wanted to match his original kitchen units as best I could.

I had to leave a hole in the kick plate to allow the AC to vent into the room, but as it is only three inches high I couldn’t find a small grill in any of the DIY stores.

So I will cut a hole, and let him source one himself.

Kelli finished a dresser that had to be photographed. We decided todo it outside as the light is better. Once that was done she posted it, and almost at once she had a scammer.

These are a pest because all they want is your phone number that they use to scam others. Kelli is very wise to it now, and tries to piss them off as best she can.

We decided to get a takeaway delivered, it wasn’t the day to cook dinner, and Take out Tuesday has become the norm.

26th September 2022

Back to Plato’s with another three bags of unwanted clothes, this time the autumn collection. Kelli dropped me off at Harbour Freight a man’s tool shop where they sell low price tools. It’s the equivalent of IKEA for furniture. Some of it is rubbish and some is good, a lot of the power tools are good and reliable, and with the kind of work I do they are adequate.

I walked over to Plato’s to meet Kelli, that is when I noticed how chilly it was, by the time I got there I was numb with the cold.

There was plenty of things to do back at the garage, Kelli went off to collect a dresser from our storage facility whilst I stripped a top of its bubbled veneer. It was curious piece, apart from a terrible grain paint effect, the veneer had torn across the grain. Once I stripped everything off I could see how the substrate was constructed. There was a frame around the perimeter made from oak and beech, this allowed the oak veneer to be overlaid and blended into the frame. The middle was filled with pieces of beech, all glued together. My theory about the torn veneer must be down to expansion of these middle pieces,and an adhesive that wasn’t elastic enough to cope.

In the good old days it would have been cross banded, now I have to decide what to do with it.

25th September 2022

Autumn is a wonderful time of year, the tree change their colours and so does Kelli.

All through the summer her hair was getting lighter, but now it was due for a change.

At different times she considered letting her grey (what little she has) take over, however now she decided to tint it dark.

What then happens bottles and packets arrive in the post, but today was the day.

She locked herself in the bathroom, as I , and the dogs amused ourselves.

I first realised something was wrong when she rushed out shouting “ it’s too dark, it’s too dark!”

“It’s not that dark” was my

Meagre response.

“ It’s black! I look like a witch” she shrieked.

“Well Halloween is next month” was just something I must not say without succumbing to major injury.

She was now in panic mode, I remembered this happening once before, and the drastic action that had to be taken.

How do you reverse the colour that you have just added? The answer is simple, a colour reversal kit.

An order was placed with the home shopping team, and thirty minutes later it was delivered to our door.

A minute later it was applied, and she had to rinse her hair for twenty minutes. Poor girl she emerged like a wrinkled prune, with her hair, maybe not so dark, but still not right.

Then it was vinegar and lemon, her hair did not know what hit it. Several hours earlier it was growing happily on her head, then it was hit by a combination of organic compounds, it’s a wonder it didn’t fall out.

The rest of the day was a disaster, Kelli was annoyed about her hair, I constantly tried to reassure her that it looked the same as her natural colour, but that was no consolation, now it’s down to time, and a few multiple washes until it fades.

Who’d be a woman eh?

◦

24th September 2022

We drove to the garden centre to buy something to celebrate our wedding anniversary. The idea was to find an appropriate plant or object that would be a reminder of our forth year. It would then become a annual event to get something new for the garden.

As it is close to the end of the season things were sparse, but we stumbled through the foliage looking for something different.

We decided that a tree would be nice, but Kelli wanted an object, so we compromised and got both.

The tree was a weeping Norway spruce which is a bizarre looking object with a curvy trunk and droopy tails.

The other piece looks like a pile of pebbles, about three feet tall. It has a steel bar running though the middle of each pebble, it looks cool, and I’m sure we’ll find a good place for it.

Getting both things into the truck was a task in itself because they were both heavy. The tree was over five foot tall and it was almost at the limit of both of us, but we did managed it.

The worst bit was to come. Once we got back the challenge was to get it out of the truck, into a small barrow and wheel it round to the back gate and through to the new flower bed.

We chose the position, and I dug a hole so deep we should have struck oil, then I filled it in again. Finally it was lowered into the hole and bedded in.

The pebble pile was the next trial, one of them was broken and needed repair. A blob of epoxy solved that problem.

We stuck it in a temporary place, mainly became my bones ached and I had enough of carrying heavy loads for the day.