Author: peterb51

30th April 2026

We finished the small bookcase, a lot of effort for potentially modest return. That the way it works unfortunately. The supply of suitable furniture is a bit thin on the ground, even Goodwill has little on offer.

Being optimistic, I’m sure it will pick up as the weather improves, and the weekend cottage business takes off.

I have been watching the referb work taking place on Larry’s old place. It is intended to become a rental, but the amount of work being done is extensive. There have been decorators there for a couple of months, that must run at a grand a week, plus the city have dictated that facias and soffits be added. There was a team of four guys doing that work. I expect that to be on the market for sixteen hundred dollars a month very soon.

During all this time we get to view a new moon everyday, the main guy has problems keeping his denim up, if you get my drift.

It has been said that the housing market is slowing down, certainly there a several new builds that haven’t sold, I expect the price is far too high for locals, and the out of state buyers, getting highly paid jobs has certainly slowed due to all the high cost of materials.

It has to be difficult for all businesses, with diesel at high levels.

Once the sun had gone away we took pictures of the small bookcase.

29th April 2026

I made a visit to Randy my upholstery guy because the seat cushions had been delivered.

They had been made in North Carolina by a person that Randy hadn’t worked with before, a risky choice, but they turned out really good.

Now we wait for the fabric to arrive. There was one feature that hasn’t been decided and that was the side cushions. I always envisioned them included because it would make the chair feel more cosy. Kelli’s idea was to let the accent cushions take the place of the side cushions.

The jury is out on that one.

The weather was a bit crap, Kelli managed to paint a small bookcase, but that was about it, hopefully tomorrow will be more productive.

29th April 2026

Another drive down to Byron Centre on a sunny day, the trees now have the green hue that signifies the growing time of year, I love it.

The price of petrol has hit $4 a gallon, and the smugness of the Tesla drivers is huge, it fills both lanes of the highway. You can just tell they are saying, “this trip is costing me nothing”, as they engage hyper drive to overtake everyone, who are not bothered to look as they are all watching their fuel gauges drop.

There is no national outrage, there are no demonstrations about it, every last cent is being wrenched out of their apathetic hands.

They are not like the French who rally together and dump piles of shit outside government buildings. The Americans have plenty of shit, but they elect them to serve in Washington.

I was thinking about all this as I noticed in my rear view mirror two large trucks side by side on the highway effectively block it. The speed limit for them is sixty five and neither of them was conceding, sucks to be behind them.

John was waiting for me, he had a large section of trees that had been chopped down, and cut into chunks, that he wanted transported to the barn.

I rolled it out to the truck, and with groin wrenching effort got it into the back.

He was surprisingly joyful today, but I didn’t understand most of it, but somehow I responded in all the right places.

The barn was in the same state as last week when we left it, the clamped timber sections were still standing in the same place.

I unclamped them and laid them out on the bench.

Today was the gluing up of all the sections to make the table top. I referred to my sketch to make sure I put them in the correct position, that is when I noticed I was one strip short.

How did that happen? I found the strip hidden in the offcuts. I machined it to the correct thickness then placing it in the right place.

This glue up was a bit stressful, but a lot easier than joining ten strips together although using biscuits helped with the alignment.

Halfway through John had a phone call, but couldn’t find his phone. He had left an incoherent voice message to a customer asking what sizes they wished the timber, that thy had left, should be machined to. This was a bit painful to listen to, at one point he asked me what his address was, I couldn’t remember, so I called his wife. Of course she was concerned as to who he was talking to, there I was in the middle of the now four way conversation trying to reassure his wife that John hadn’t had an accident. Once that had been sorted out I insisted that we write down the conversation in his notebook. Unfortunately the one I got him for Christmas he had lost, but he had another pad in his bag. I then got him to write down the name of the person who called, I then wrote out what the call was about, and what was happening next, if he showed that to his wife, at least she who know what was going on.

All this was exhausting, we had another cup of coffee and a chocolate chip cookie.

As I had completed the glue up I suggested that I help John work on some other timber that he had to machine for another customer.

These were ten foot long planks of pine, they had to be cleaned up and all thicknessed the same.

What thickness was acceptable? John gave me various numbers. “ Which thickness does he want?” In the end I managed to get all down to 0.80”. Then he brought out another two planks!

So I had to reset the planer and work my way down to match the others.

“Are there any more you have hiding John?” 

Fortunately for me there wasn’t.

After a sweep up it was time to go, I’m sure next time I see him there will be more confusion and mayhem, but with the table top ready to cut and sand there will be things for him to do.

27th April 2026

I had a dental appointment, not my favourite event of the day. It was the usual scale and polish, but they did notice a filling was starting to fail. “ That will need a crown” the dentist said.

“ Can’t you just refill it” I responded with a tone of desperation.

“No, I’m surprised that it lasted this long” he said as he scooted out of the room.

With the thought of spending another grand on my mouth, we scheduled the next appointment, we will assess when I need the crown.

We had done our shopping in the morning, nothing dramatic happened, it’s our chance to look at life, the few opportunities we have of mixing with people.

There were a few things missed off the list that I got on my way back from the dental surgery.

Kelli had found a buggy that would fit on our bikes where we could attempt to take the dogs with us, personally I think it will be doomed to fail, but as it was free we can give it a try.

Oh, and we sold the secretary, whoopee!

26th April 2026

I had the day set aside for recording, Chris was due at around noon with an expectation of having a productive time. As usual he arrived half an hour late, it’s just the way he is.

He was excited to use a new Yamaha guitar he had bought recently, and it did sound good.

I had set up a blank screen and created the recording environment, as he tinkered around with a new song he had written.

Once he set the tempo, we started to record the first guitar track.

This is usually scrapped, but it allows the musician to get into a groove.

We recorded several other guitar tracks finally getting a perfect take.

When he started putting a rough vocal down, I had to stop him. I tried to be tactful by saying that the melody line was very similar to a previous song we had recorded. He was a little stunned, he couldn’t remember what the other song was. We both sat there for a few minutes, I hummed a few notes of what song it was, and Chris suddenly realised the title. He sang through it, “Yes! That’s the one”.

How were we going to change it? It had the same tempo, and a similar structure.

More head scratching, I suggested slowing the song down, and changing the chord progression.

This was a typical example of a songwriter stuck in a rut. Although the other song was recorded eight years ago, its DNA is embedded in Chris’s mind. 

This session wasn’t going anywhere, he decided to go away and completely rewrite it.

I spent the rest of the afternoon pulling up grass and weeds from the flower beds with Winnie grabbing them and running around the garden with them in her mouth. I need to train her to only rip out the same stuff, and leave the shrubs and flowers alone.

25th April 2026 

It was a quiet day by comparison, no police vehicles, no unarmed combat or raised voices.

In fact it was peaceful, the weather was perfect, just right for gardening. It was a formidable task, all the leaves that my Kelli had insisted on leaving as winter habitat for bugs and bees.

This could only be disturbed after a week of warm temperatures. A big problem was we had missed the clearing of winter debris by the city.

Although it looks like the amount of leaves are small, but believe me, once the rake grabs the first cluster the true quality is revealed. Suddenly the pile grows, far more than the yard waste bin can hold, that was already filled with the contents on the back garden, that will have to be emptied first.

I just hope we don’t get a windy day, otherwise most of this dead stuff would be redistributed around the neighbourhood, which I’m sure would not be popular.

The other important news was that Kelli’s eye looks much better, she is now less looking like a one eyed vampire.

We now have a fully stocked cupboard of many different eye medications just waiting for the next eye casualty.

We were due to go to Kelli’s mum a day early. This was because Brenda, Matt’s wife had passed an exam to become a care worker.

Kelli had offered to make a cake to celebrate.

This was a coconut flour and pecan nut carrot cake with a white yogurt icing, this was delicious.

24th April 2026

There was drama across the road. The wife of David the guy who helped fix our brakes was having a shouting match. They have a strange relationship, most of the time she lives with another man, but returns to the marital home now and then. Well the shouting match eventually turned into a full blown attack on their daughter who had just turned eighteen.

I saw some of the confrontation, but Kelli was outside talking to the new neighbour when this took off.

“Welcome to central bay” they both laughed as the mayhem continued.

She then took up position in the front bedroom with the window slightly ajar, listening to the activity. When the mother laid the first blow on the daughter that was when she called the police. It took a while for the law to arrive, they knew the address, having visited it several times in the past.

What followed next was the separation and the “talk” by the officers, but the mother continued her verbal abuse, this led to her being handcuffed and placed in the police vehicle.

Finally peace came to the avenue and we could focus on the real issue of the day, Kelli’s eye.

It was still red and swollen, but something had washed out that probably was the culprit, the eye drops had done their job. 

It was colder than yesterday, still tee shirt weather. We cleaned the secretary, took pictures and posted it on Marketplace hoping for a quick sale on that.

23rd April 2026

No day is the same, that can be a blessing or a curse, this one started off the latter.

Kelli awoke at around 4.00am wanting to use the bathroom, somehow she got something in her eye. She tried everything to get whatever it was out, but to no avail. She was getting more and more agitated, and panicky.

We didn’t have any eyewash in the bathroom, this meant I would get up and drive to the nearest 24 hour pharmacy.

This was way over on the north side,  it is a strange place at 5.30am, completely deserted apart from a young lad. I asked where the eye medication was, he took me to this shelving with a mass of different packet all of which I’d never heard of. I was looking for the US version of Obtrex, but of course there was nothing even similar. It was typical, like the blind leading the blind. I eventually chose some eye drops and something for sore eyes.

Kelli was still in a lot of discomfort, she applied the drops which dilated her pupil which she didn’t like, however the other was a little more soothing. There wasn’t much point in trying to get anymore sleep, so I let Winnie out of her cage to do her business.

Kelli tried to, and failed to go back to sleep, her eye by now was red and angry looking, like a vampire. 

She made a call to the eye doctor and got the name of another item that would aid the dryness.

I set off again, this time with Winnie running shotgun, to another pharmacy.

I had a list of the products recommended, but of course there were many variants. I made my choice and returned home.

This dry eye solution helped a lot, just as well because we had to drive to the upholstery person with a cheque for the fabric for our furniture. She had to go into the bank with dark glasses on, not to avoid being recognised, more about frightening the staff.

At the end of the day, her eye was still sore, although the feeling of having something in it had gone, that was a bit of light relief.

22nd April 2026

We were delivering the large dresser to a lady in Zeeland. The first task is alway getting it into the truck. I remembered that I was helped with the loading when we picked it up, was a big strapping bloke. By removing a few drawers that certainly helped, but when we got there we had to get it up her path, up a step, up another,  through the doorway, a sharp left, left again, and into a bedroom.

However she did give us a long bench that she didn’t have room for.

It was a beautiful day, so warm I didn’t wear my flannel shirt, could this weather be here to stay?.

There was a visit to the UPS store for more Amazon returns, that continues to be a regular stop. A couple more stops to collect free stuff then back home.

The secretary was waiting to be inspected, it was solid maple, finished in a yucky stain that they always seen to use that hides the grain and natural colour. It was generally in good condition, a drawer guide was damaged so that was the only part that needed re making.

It would be good if we can sell it on with very little work needed.

The blue desk pedestals lurked in the background, the repairs I had to make needed sanding, but I didn’t feel like it today.

Chris came round for a chat, he brought round a six pack, so we sat out on the deck chewing the fat.

21st April 2026

It was supposed to be maple. We agreed that the next project should be maple. We went downstairs to John’s wood store, it the rack where he stored the maple lumber. We picked out four lengths of the width we needed and carried them upstairs. Laid them out on the bench where I marked out the various lengths with a piece of chalk. I did think at the time it looked a bit dark for maple, but John knew where his lumber was stacked, so I just carried on.

I cut the pieces to the various lengths and passed them to John who flattened each piece on the jointer.

We did a final thickness and then cut them to width.

Once I laid them out on the bench, and the sunlight lit them up it was evident that it wasn’t maple, it was bloody cherry.

Not that cherry isn’t a beautiful wood, but I thought for this project maple would have been perfect.

So we started to glue up four sections of two planks, trying to do it all in one lay up would have been a bit ambitious. I was rushing about getting clamps and John was struggling to remember how to use them. 

Finally we got everything clamped up and had another cup of coffee and a biscuit.

On the was down to pick up John, there was an example of an empty headed American. I was on the highway, I was overtaking a row of Lorries, there were other vehicles in front of me, when a black truck came up behind flashing his lights as if to say “get outta the way”. He was gesticulating wildly, I smiled when I looked in my mirror, “Where can I go dumb ass?” I mouthed.

He was obviously late for his lunch, so I pulled over as soon as I could, and stared at him as he passed. These big truck drivers think they own the road.

Kelli had me pick up a couple of things, a secretary, from Byron Centre and a quilt from Zeeland, my day was now complete.