Author: peterb51

15th September 2025

I have come to dislike our blackout curtain in the bedroom. We got them to help ensure that Kelli wasn’t woken early due to the sunlight flooding in. Now with the early morning being darker, I am fooled,and end up sleeping later than I wanted.

This has a knock on effect, and shortens the time I have to work on things, which at times I find frustrating.

Today, by the time we had breakfast, and Kelli had selected the clothing she wanted to wear, it was nearly 1.00pm, then we had to go shopping.

We did our thing at Natures Market then went on to Ace Hardware to buy the paint for the kitchen island. As we were getting out of the car, I put on my glasses, Kelli looked at me and burst out laughing. I couldn’t understand what the joke was until I saw the glasses I put on, they were hers, I must have picked them up in error. It was a good thing she noticed otherwise I would be walking round the store looking like Dame Edna Everage.

There was one important thing we had to do. 

Yesterday when we delivered the dresser to the apartment Kelli noticed that she had forgotten to paint the top edge of the drawer fronts.

She messaged the lady to apologise and agreed to return to finish the job. 

The call came later in the afternoon, so it was me that had to go and do it. Along with other chores, I managed to get back in time,  because we had someone coming to collect the cabinet that we got from Goodwill yesterday, it was all go today.

14th September 2025

We had to deliver the white dresser to a new apartment complex on the north side of Holland.

Kelli had added that we offer free delivery over a ten mile radius, which was enough to swing the deal. This has been an advantage since we started doing it, especially if people don’t have a truck or SUV to collect it. 

However first stop we had to visit Goodwill to return things that we bought yesterday. I headed straight for the furniture section noting that there was a cabinet that might be of interest, Kelli saw it and peeled the price sticker off, a way of reserving it. 

As we had the dresser in the truck we arranged to collect it on the way back.

We eventually found the apartment, a collection of identical boxes of little interest, that I’m sure will show its age very quickly.

The lady was there to meet us, fortunately her place was on the ground floor, so no stairs.

The place was littered with boxes, the sign of a new mover. We positioned it in her bedroom, the only room that looked organised, the lady was pleased, we were pleased, and with the cash in our hand we headed back to Goodwill.

Although a modest sized piece it was heavy, made from solid oak, it was a bit of a mystery piece. That was revealed once we had a chance to look it over. At some time it was the top section of an entertainment unit, but the bottom section’s whereabouts was unknown. I made some little blocks to lift it off the ground, took some pictures, and Kelli posted it.

13th September 2025

Kelli wanted a thrift day, that was certainly not high on my level of excitement, but I went along, maybe I could find more CD’s from people I never heard of.

First stop was Goodwill on the north side, it was unexpectedly busy, people of all ethnic groups were there. A group of Mexican children were playing with the toys, I went over to the book section, I don’t know why I bother to look at them, most are fiction, and rarely anything interests me.

Over in the CD and DVD section, the sad area of the store, I found three that I’d heard of. There were the usual subjects in the DVD shelves. Someone certainly raided Grandma’s collection of Christmas movies. 

There was no furniture of note, there was an enormous dresser that would never fit in our truck, it would need a flatbed lorry.

We then went to another thrift place, not one we go to often, so it made a change. 

I spent twenty odd minutes that I’ll never get back, but Kelli found a couple of items to litter the place up with. She saw a Christmas tree, that she wanted, it took all my negotiation skills to convince her that the one we have is suffice.

The next stop was to an upmarket thrift store, their words not mine. This place is huge, plenty of furniture, clothing, homeware stuff, which includes coffee makers, bloody dozens of them. I thought Americans love coffee. But in every store we visited coffee machines were everywhere. A lot of them were the ones that take small tubs that contain the concentrate, possibly getting them as gifts are great until they have to buy new tubs. 

All this fun, left me little time to work on the kitchen island, but I did put another coat of finish on the drawer boxes.

12th September 2025

I was full of energy despite having a restless night. 

Last night I sent the customer of the kitchen island a progress report, including a warning of an increase in the price.

She sent back a reply with a series of questions about the size of the piece. I sent back the dimensions and a breakdown of the overspend mainly caused by the stripping of the lead paint.

I was a little concerned that it might be too large for her kitchen, and she would respond that it would not fit.

With this on my mind I was thinking how it could be modified, basically ruining the original concept she had. 

So with this rolling about in my head I didn’t sleep well.

Morning came and I received an email to tell me that the size was good and the overspend was acceptable, that was a huge relief.

Now I was ready to get on and finish the other door and generally move into the final stages.

Apparently the authorities have the assassin of Charlie Kirk, his picture was all over the media. 

Now this doesn’t feel right. America has always lied to the people, but they are not very good at it.  This is a text book example of diversion, they have someone who fits the bill, it will be all over the news for a couple of weeks then it will fade because there will be another distraction.

It is so bloody obvious, they really think people are that stupid, but admittedly some are.

The guy they arrested bares no resemblance to the person in the surveillance image.

It was reported that a mystery private aircraft took off thirty minutes after the shooting and didn’t file a flight plan, which is against the law, I guess the real killer is back in the Middle East by now.

11th September 2025

America is dealing with the aftermath of yesterday’s tragic news of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, an influencer with millions of followers. There are so many questions and opinions as to who was responsible. There was the person on a high roof that was apparently responsible, so the police were on high alert for that.

He was not someone I followed, but watched him many times, he was charismatic and passionate about his beliefs, recently he changed his opinion about Israel, and became very outspoken about the brutality in Gaza, was it that outspokenness that got him killed?

Of course it was the anniversary of 9/11 but the remembrance of that was overshadowed, and people were coming to the realisation that maybe the same people were responsible for both.

Our day began as they usually do with Kelli announcing that we have to drive to Hudsonville to collect a free four poster bed.

It was a perfect day, not too hot, but sunny.

We found the address, and outside the house was this enormous bed frame. There was no way we would get it inside the truck so on the roof rack it went. I lashed it down with bungees and we headed back to Holland at a steady speed, on the way back we stopped off at Menards for timber for drawer fronts and Doors.

Kelli finished the side tables for our friend Debs, that I delivered later.

Kelli gave the bed frame a good clean, and I took pictures and it was posted that evening.

10th September 2025

I’m sick and tired of being taken for a fool, I’m fed up with being fobbed off with technobabble.

Today I took the plunge and erased the hard drive of my MacBook Pro.

There were a number of faults and things that pissed me off, so finally I wanted to clear it out and start again.

Oh the erasing bit was easy, I opened it again in recovery mode and chose to reinstall the operating system. That is where things started to go bad. The main thing was I couldn’t open up the apps store, crucial in finding the old OS to reinstall. It kept coming up with an error message.  I did it several times with the same result, my only option was to contact Apple support and try to get help from people that know.

The first guy didn’t really have much of an idea, I expect he was just a child when I bought this laptop. As we were floundering about, I checked my Apple account and the status of all my devices. My MacBook was there, but there was a note that this device couldn’t receive any verification codes. I thought that is why I cannot log into the apps store. That was dismissed as not the cause of the problem. 

I think this reached the limit of this chaps ability, so he suggested that I get a call from another expert. I agreed a time for the call, and waited.

At the agreed time the phone rang and I was through to an expert from Texas. 

I went through my issues slowly and the lady at the other end listened patiently. 

She then started to try to help me. I mention this note in my devices list, but that was fobbed of, something about servers being updated.

She mentioned that my machine was old, I reminded her that there are a lot of old cars on the road, and they can be fixed, so why can’t my computer? She then went off on a tangent using words I’d never heard off, my patience was wearing thin. Finally her answer was to go to a third party store and get them to reinstall the software from a disc, the closest one was in Grand Rapids, and that was it, a billion dollar company could work out how to solve my problem. 

The other thing that annoyed me was something I won on an auction on EBay.

It was at a really low price because I was the only bidder. Anyway I paid for it, and the very next day I had a refund. When I messaged the seller he told me his storage room had been broken into and everything was smashed.

Now that was bloody convenient, I then went to his feedback and there was another case where someone won an auction and paid a low price. Then there was a flood and the item got water damaged, I guess there is no honour amongst scoundrels.

9th September 2025?

There are some rude, and ignorant drivers over here.

I was taking a package to the UPS store for Kelli, on the way there was a lane closure ahead, so I indicated that I needed to pull over into the lane that was moving. Car after car drove past me not wanting to let me in, it was slow moving, really easy to do it, but no. 

In the end I had to do an Italian lane change, when you stick your nose into the gap and then complete the change.

It is like everybody is in such a rush that they have no consideration for anyone else.

I’m surprised that no road rage episode occurred.

Did my business and returned home.

I cut up all the timber to make all the drawer boxes, without any mistakes, I was dead chuffed. I had fun getting the thickness right, the hose on my extraction kept blocking up, and blowing back through the thicknesser, making a mess on the floor. After each plank I had to stick my arm down the hose to loosen the blockage, now I know what a vet feels like when he sticks his arm up a cow’s arse.

Kelli finished the two matching headboards in a bold blue, these were posted, and awaiting new owners.

8th September 2025

A drive to Hamilton was on the cards to collect a tall mid century style dresser. It was a pleasant journey into the unknown. The vast corn fields are soon to be harvested, but the scale of the fields are huge. The watering system resembles the skeleton of a dinosaur, a huge metal structure of tubes and jets tower over the crops, and the amount of water it delivers could easily wash the front and back of our house and include our truck.

On the way, we passed, what looked like a pine wardrobe laying on its back. Kelli almost wanted to stop and load it, but we needed to collect the dresser first. We made a note of the road, and drove on to our destination. The dresser was outside waiting for us, it seemed a decent piece, so in the back of the truck it went, now we headed back to inspect the piece by the roadside.

Cautiously we approached the place, there lying on its back  was a wardrobe with a smashed door. What was odd there were two long threaded rods extending through the floor, and a metal box with a slot attached to the inside of a panel. I think it was Kelli that realised that this was a display cabinet that the place set out for its home grown vegetables, that had blown over, quickly we scarpered from the scene.

I have often thought that one day we will take something that we believed was for free, and it’s not.

I managed to buy timber for the drawer boxes that I have to make, and Kelli wanted to paint the headboards that we collected on Saturday, we achieved both as well as our weekly shopping expedition.

7th September 2025

We took a bike ride to the park, passing the lake made me appreciate where I’m living. There was a big ship that regularly brings gravel into the dock starting its journey back to the big lake.

Days like these are great, it’s not boiling hot, it was just right, and I was looking forward to getting to do the assembly of the kitchen island.

It was a deliberately slow build, I wretched over everything. Checking each panel was square in all planes, each piece came together well. Although I was dealing with an old door that was not perfectly flat in places I was still relieved when I stood back to look at the structure in front of me.

Our neighbour Debs, stopped by to show us a small table she had just collected, it had a few white marks on the stained wooden to that she wanted me to remove.  Without going mad with it, I tackled them with a scalpel carefully scraping the offending  marks, then wiping over it with some scratch guard to add a bit of colour back, I’m confident that will be acceptable.

Kelli pulled off a remarkable deal with a lady further down South Shore who bakes sourdough bread, which I love. We picked up a loaf yesterday which is delicious.

The loaves are  stacked on a small brown shelf unit that she places at the side of the road. To illustrate how it blended into the landscape, I never saw it, and it was only when Kelli pointed it out to me, that I saw it.

Well Kelli offered to paint it a more striking colour to draw more attention to it, and we would do it for four loaves of sourdough bread, how brilliant is that?

6th September 2025

It was not worth putting on my work clothes even though I wanted to. My plan was to start building the kitchen island structure, I had been going over it in my mind most of the night. It dominated my dreams, figuring out how to keep everything square, including jigs and fixtures made out of all the scrap timber I’ve accumulated.

But all that evaporated once I got up. We had to go to Kelli’s niece’s baby shower somewhere in the depths of the Hudsonville.

That meant I had to dress appropriately, well Kelli acted as my stylist in choosing my attire.

That was not simple, the weather has changed towards a colder day. My first attempt looked fine but I felt a bit chilly, and if this event was being held outside, I needed something different.

All this was taking time, finally I arrived at a suitable collection of clothes.

We set off, aiming to get there fashionably late, on the way Kelli saw someone in car that had pulled over to the side of the road, frantically waving.

Thinking it was a person in trouble she turned at the next junction and headed back, this was despite me objecting loudly. I said it was more than likely a person trying to get the attention of a slow car that we had overtaken. Oh no, Kelli the Good Samaritan thought she was doing the right thing. As we headed back I could see the car was no longer there, hence we wasted time.

You hear stories of people trying to help someone, only to get robbed or killed, that was not my idea of a Saturday experience.

We eventually found the farm where the event was being held, it wasn’t a picturesque place, most farms here aren’t. It had a collection of cows and a turkey that looked older than god. The fact that thanksgiving was getting closer, it didn’t worry at all, there was not a scrap of meat on the poor thing. It waddled around moaning and complaining like all old people do.

There was a good spread of food laid on. I helped myself to some macaroni and cheese, and later three hot dogs. In all the time I’ve been here I’ve never had a hot dog, so in my mind I was just making up for lost time.

We stayed for a while, we unloaded the dresser that we were gifting, then we had to head back to Zeeland to collect two free headboards, she never misses a trick.

By the time we got home, taken the dogs for a walk around the lagoon it was time for more food .

Kelli had made a chicken pot pie earlier, that was delicious, so a day that started with food ended with food, perfect.