Author: peterb51

26th April 2025

The cedar chest was picked up this morning, alway a good start to the day.

It was sunny but cooler than yesterday, again up and down, never sure where it wants to be.

But it was a good day to start the yard work.

I wanted to start a bonfire to get rid of all the dead stuff, and our bin is full, so burning is our only option, but where do I do it? The fire pit is too small and I don’t want a burnt patch on the grass, so I had to think pragmatically.

Up at the far end of the garden, where the compost bunkers are located, was an old wheelbarrow, it was full of stinky water, old leaves and pebbles.

“That will be ideal” I announced triumphantly, it meant tipping out the smelly stuff, and finding a place to store the pebbles, once that was done the fire could commence.

it didn’t take long for the fire to start burning all the old leaves and long grass stalks.

We worked our way down the flower beds until we were both exhausted, but the garden was starting to look respectable again. 

We have lots of wild flower seeds to sow at the front, and we are going to introduce white clover to area of the front lawn. I have not been happy with the state of the grass for a while, there are thin patches that I have tried to reseed, but it has never worked so this is the plan B. Clover attracts bees, so that should be good for the environment, and keep Kelli happy.

25th April 2025

Another visit to the UPS store so that Kelli could return the latest consignment of glasses, although it looks like she has found frames she likes, so the frequent trips to this place may be a thing of the past.

On the way back there was the stop off at Menards for some materials and some cheap paint, these are paints that have been returned because the colour was wrong, anyway they were shades that we could use or mix. It is a good source at nine bucks a gallon, it’s a damn good price. 

We also picked up some flowers for the pot nearest the front door, it must now be spring!

In a couple of weeks it will be tulip time in Holland, but some have already bloomed, leading to the possibility of it becoming the stalk festival. I’m always amazed by the distance some people travel to look at some flowers.

Once back home I started clearing the front wild flower area, I had special permission from my wife, hang on, well not really, I took the initiative, that later was to bite me in the ass.

We had covered the area with leaves to give a habitat for bugs and other creep crawlies. With a flexible rake I took care to scrape out the just the dead stuff, leaving any plants alone.

Kelli was concerned about what I was doing, my track record of weed pulling is not good. I have been accused of removing flowers, which I strongly denied.

So she rushed out to see what I was doing. I was not a fan of leaving the leaves down over winter because of the hassle of removing them in spring. There was one plant that she was particularly looking for that she couldn’t find, I swore that I didn’t pull it out, but I don’t think she was convinced. In reality there will always be collateral damage in gardening, and I now stick to removing grass, at least I know what that looks like.

24th April 2025

Before breakfast Kelli had me drive with her to find a free dresser. We drove down streets lined with rubbish bins and discarded sofas trying to find this piece of furniture. Sadly it had gone, what was left was a small table and an upholstered chair, so disappointed, we drove back home to start our day.

I was on the phone to Hoover’s customer services hotline, because the rechargeable battery was not charging. It’s quite important that it does, or, it makes a mockery of having a cordless vacuum. The lady at the other end spoke as most customer service people speak, that is unintelligible. I had a job understand her, but undeterred I carried on, giving the model number, serial number and a description of what was happening to the charger. All this seemed to work. She then went on about sending a video of what the charging lights on the battery did along with proof of purchase blah, blah, blah.

She then sent me an email where I should attach the information, and send the reply back to her.

Typically, I couldn’t find the receipt, so I sent a copy of my credit card statement, hoping that would be suffice, now I wait. I never had a problem with a Dyson.

The weather outside was lovely, warm and sunny, yes, I hope the rest of summer is like this.

We had dinner with Lloyd and Nancy, somehow my order got missed off, so I had to wait as the others tucked into their food. Fortunately I had bangers and mash, now you can’t mess that up.

Eventually it turned up, which I devoured like a hungry animal, which I was. Unfortunately in the waiting time, I had to have two beers, I really have to moderate my intake, I think I’m enjoying myself too much.

23rd April 2025

Oh shit I’m dying! These were the words that came out of my mouth.

I had come into the laundry room to use the toilet, the same one that I use in the night.

I don’t flush it because it would disturb the dogs.

So I walked in turned on the light and looked into the bowl. The contents were red, not bright red but looking like blood in the urine red. I came over cold, I had to sit down, I didn’t feel bad, no pains, I felt absolutely fine, but I was worried.

It just wasn’t right, every morning everything is normal, what had changed? Well I had my itchy arms, could that be the start of something really serious? I spent several minutes in a thoughtful coma thinking is this my doom?

As my mind was racing, I remembered there was a bottle of bleach on the toilet seat that I had to remove during the night visit.

I called out to Kelli who was in the other bathroom “Did you pour bleach down the toilet last night?”

“Yes” she replied, “ I did both of them”

I slumped back down in my seat, that was it, I wasn’t going to kick the bucket, well at least not yet. I rushed to tell Kelli my story, I was so relieved, she laughed, there was a funny side to it, although I didn’t join her in that.

The rest of the day was so much better, we planted stuff in the new part of the front garden, the sun shined, and it rained, but I didn’t care I was still alive.

22nd April 2025

We finally got round to delivering the cupboard to the lady up the road. After a struggle getting it into the truck, we drove the five hundred yards to the lady’s driveway. 

I had tools with me to set the doors correctly, most of the time there are irregularities in the floors that knock the alignment of the doors out, but surprise surprise it required very little.

So after doing that deed, we drove back to start our day job.

There was the cedar chest that we are doing for someone, a bit of filling and final sanding then it was ready for priming. We also started work on our latest challenge, the piece of crap we collected last week. I can’t believe we paid money for this, so we were committed. There is not a piece of real wood in the whole thing.

That may change because part of the top rail is broken in two places, and someone drove nails through the top to keep the pieces together.  

I managed to put the first of the lawn treatment down, this will definitely be the last year that I subscribe unless a miracle happens and the grass get lush and thick, I am not holding out much hope.

21st April 2025

It has taken me seventy three years to become a babe magnet, yes me.

There is an interesting story behind this.

A few weeks ago Kelli started getting voice messages and emails, for me, on her phone.

They were from a youngish lady who I had refinished a coffee table for, this was probably sometime last year, or longer. I think Kelli mentioned it to me at some point, but I didn’t think anything of it until last week when another email arrived with a photo attached. That caused a bit of an explosion, she rushed into the garage to show me the picture. I didn’t really remember her, but Kelli did. That lit a fuse that resulted in some back and forth correspondences, needless to say we won’t be getting any other commissions or phone calls from that person again.

All that was then added to another youngish person who had collected a dresser from us a couple of weeks ago. She happened to be the daughter of a lady down the road who often stopped for a chat whilst she took her dog for a walk. Her daughter had stayed with her for several weeks last summer, so they both used to stop and talk. The daughter would talk to me a lot, maybe because I was a “world traveler”, and Kelli would notice this, and frequently commented on the attention I was getting.

Of course it was an innocent conversation about her job and travel, and I thought nothing more about it, in fact it became a bit of a joke between us. So when she decided to move to Holland, and wanted to buy furniture from us she was elevated into a predator.

I find it quite amusing, and hope that I don’t become a victim to a stalker.

It’s incredible that I had to travel three and a half thousand miles to become a sex symbol, if I had known that before, I would have come here years ago.

20th April 2025

Easter Sunday is here, a visit to Kelli’s mum is planned, so a bit of preparation is needed.

Over the past couple of weeks I have suffered itchy arms. I’m not sure when exactly they started, but both arms are red and blotchy. I thought it might be a particular brand of moisturiser that I had been using during the winter because my skin gets very dry, I blame the dry heat system. 

To they to relieve the irritation, I have tried other natural creams, and although they cool the itch, it’s not curing the redness. 

I thought it might be a change of washing powder, I’ve had that before, but we are using the same brand as we always have.

I may have to go to a pharmacy to see what they have for irritating skin conditions.

We did a bit of filming for a potential project that might be happening in the future, who knows?

Kelli had made some roasted sprouts with prosciutto bits on top, and for a dessert, a chocolate chip cookie cake. This would be our contribution to the family Easter dinner.

Matt had roasted a beef joint that was served with mashed potato and gravy.

This was the first time I had had roasted meat since I moved here, and we stopped being vegan, and it was good, sinfully good.

It was a fun get together, with the exception of Matt and Brenda’s dogs, Sammy, the male, has such a high pitched bark, almost a shriek, it was bloody annoying.

My thoughts that if it kept going, that animal might be the next meat that gets roasted.

Recently I have been interested in the recent press conference that Robert Kennedy Jr made regarding autism. He is launching an investigation into what causes the condition.

In America twenty years ago there was a one in ten thousand chance of being autistic, today it is one in thirty one.

That is a staggering statistic. I have a sister who is autistic, and my mother was convinced that it was caused by the MMR vaccine she had as a baby. Of course the doctors did not agree, so there was no recourse, so my mum and dad had to deal with a damaged child.

It has to be noted that there not one case in the Amish community, because their babies are not vaccinated.

The world needs to know the answer, whether it’s the mercury in the vaccine mixing with environmental conditions that heighten the likelihood of a child being autistic, I will continue to watch with interest.

19th April 2025

It was an early trip to Zeeland to deliver the on/ off dresser. Finally after two months of storage, and a request for a refund it was gone. When I say early, I mean before noon. We even had a shitty night, that we put down to too much salt in the sausages. 

Whilst we were in Zeeland Kelli wanted to go the the local thrift store. Eventually we found it, and once entering the place I had an overwhelming sense of godliness. Now Zeeland is God’s weekend retreat, and this was the store he would visit. There was zero things that I was interested in, all the books and CD’s we religious, with a little country thrown in. This was a place that would drain the soul of any logically thinking person, and I was feeling a bit lightheaded. Kelli couldn’t find anything also, so we rushed to the door and took a deep breath of clean air.

We had to stop at Goodwill back in Holland, to return things that Kelli had bought yesterday.

I had a quick look to see if there was any any furniture, but there was nothing, it’s definitely a lean time for donations.

Now that all the pantry part had been painted, I started to reassemble everything. It looked a million times better than when we got it, but it took a ton of work and time to get it done. 

We knocked off early today, both of us felt drained.

18th April 2025

Well it’s Good Friday today, what a coincidence that it is always on a Friday? I would like to shake things up and have it on a Wednesday, if we hang on a bit I’m sure Trump might suggest it.

The weather has turned mild mainly because thunderstorms are expected. Oh a good storm is what we need.

There is a lot of action happening with the trees, they are taking on a greenish tinge, which is such a welcome sight.

I had the garage door open whilst I continued to strip the rocking chair, boy, that is a boring job. There is so much surface area, I would rather sand a tree.

The Easter period has crept up on me, I don’t have any reference point to help me, there are no Easter songs that give me a clue.

Kelli went off to do some girl time, in other words a visit to Plato’s and Goodwill, that was fine, I listened to old gits music, this time it was Thin Lizzy, Live and Dangerous, music to sand to.

17th April 2025

STOP THE PRESSES! We did something totally different today, we went of a trip.

Yes, instead of slaving away in the garage like some third world slave, we went to the Frederick Meijer Garden and sculpture park in Grand Rapids.

But first, as my good wife was reversing out of the driveway she hit and knocked over the recycling bin, spilling the contents over the road.

I was so happy to be the one to gather up all the stuff, and tidy everything up.

Kelli was excited to see the live butterfly collection that happens from the beginning of March running till the end of April.

This was part of her birthday treat, and the weather was good to us.

It was a forty minute drive, and as we pulled in the the gateway I was impressed with the size of the place. Obviously popular with schools, the entrance was filled with hordes of the little darlings.

We made our way to the ticket area, I was delighted to find that I qualified for a senior discount, well, any saving is worth while.

Then, whilst Kelli ran off to the ladies bathroom, I ventured into a large hall that had massive three dimensional human faces formed into large tiles.

I stood there thinking how they were made, and how they were fixed. The gaps between each large tile was about 2mm, very impressive.

Once Kelli returned, we walked towards the room where the butterflies we fluttering about.

This area was a vast tropical environment, full of green trees and plants. All around there were thousands of butterflies of all colour and sizes free to dive bomb the many visitors that were wandering through the space. I took many pictures, as you do, probably never to be looked at again, but it was a wonderful experience.

We were curious with what happened to them at the end of April. I kidded Kelli that they were mounted in a small frame and sold in the gift shop, which quite by chance they had on display.

A bit of further research showed that they were collected and shipped off to other exhibitions I different parts of the country. I would like to see the size of net they would need to capture all those little critters.

On the way back we stopped off to collect a large dresser that we bargained for. It was a bit of crap actually, but we will make it beautiful again.

Later the couple that came to look the curved fronted dresser came back to collect it, which was great, and we might have a sale on the cedar chest that we have yet to start on.