Another Lifetime to go

30th July 2023

It’s funny what you are led to believe, I am trying to re-educate myself after years of believing what I read and what I’m told.

I have come to the conclusion that America is a swirling cess pool of corruption and lies.

This has become clearer to me recently.

A lot of the things I watch and get my news from is biased, and some politicians I despised were actually telling the truth.

Although I’m not a US citizen, and have no interest in becoming one, I cannot vote, so why do I get so frustrated at what I learn? I guess I believed that everyone had a chance to live a good life, after all this is the richest country in the world.

America likes it’s secrets, it has thousands of them. There has been questions of the origin of Covid pandemic which started supposedly in a wet market, which now looks to be more likely to have been accidentally leaked from a research laboratory in China. The Science community have rejected that claim, mainly because if the truth got out they would be embarrassed and it could affect future funding.

So the American government lie, everyday, about everything, they distract and continue to rake in financial contributions from the pharmaceutical, petrochemical and the military industrial complex businesses that sway their decision making.

America has to take the money out of government, and it needs a third party to even out the stalemate it’s in most of the time.

If this is what a capitalist country looks like, get me out of here.

Here endeth the lesson.

29th July 2023

I thought my scrote was going to hit the floor.

Kelli had found another free dresser in Zeeland and we went to collect it.

We pulled up in the driveway, the dresser was in the garage, it looked like a sarcophagus, large and foreboding, fortunately the man of the house helped to carry it out to the truck.

He lifted his end and I tried to lift mine. I asked if it was bolted to the floor, it felt like it.

I struggled to carry it, it was the heaviest piece I’ve experienced, I thought I might die, or strain my delicates.

We slid it in, the Toyota groaned, then we drove back to Holland unloading the monster at our storage facility ( Kelli’s mother garage).

Even removing all the drawers it was still difficult to move.

We then went for our bike ride, we enjoy putting our bodies through the wringer, but it was pleasant, then we started on prepping the bed frames. One had been extended by five inches, so my first job was to remove the extra piece that had been added. It had been stuck using Gorilla glue, awful stuff that foams as it cures. I thought it was going to be a bugger to remove, but a good clout with a hammer and chisel broke the bond, so it wasn’t doing much of a gluing joint at all.

I also managed to glue up the pencil drawer frame for the desk.

There was a refreshing soak in the pool with a bottle of larger in my hand looking up at the clear blue sky, perfect time.

28th July 2023

We had to drive to Byron Center to collect two free bed frames. These are often good money makers and having a pair even better.

My wood top maker works in the same area, so we knew the drive down well, but this was further on into the wild and unknown.

Down a private driveway into a dark forest we came across the large house where a large hairy dog bounded to meet us.

The lady guided us to where the beds were stored. They were good quality pieces with all the slats, which is rare. As I loaded the components into the truck, Kelli was looking at chicken that they had running about. She wants to have her own brood, which we might be able to have if we move the fence like I want to do next year.

Next stop was Kelli’s doctors surgery to pick up some supplements that she was running low on.

We had to get back by two because a guy was bringing a desk fo us to finish.

He turned up at two thirty and unloaded the furniture, it was split into three pieces, two pedestals and the top.

It was branded as Pottery Barn but manufacturers in Vietnam. It was in a pine finish, the top was a pine veneer. Who puts a pine veneer on furniture? it’s the cheapest bloody wood. We agreed the colour and as he will be out of town for a couple of weeks it timing was perfect.

In the evening I had to go and let Mike and Lesley’s dog out. They kindly left me a bottle of red, a packet of Walkers cheese and onion crisps,a curlywurly and a Twirl, I was in heaven.

27th July 2023

I didn’t think that fried pickles would have such a devastating effect on Kelli’s night.

She could not go to sleep, and was up and down until 04.00am before she could snatch a couple of hours. It was a terrible night, and if she has to be so careful about what she can and cannot eat it certainly puts restrictions on where we can go out to eat.

She checked with her doctor and described what she ate and he came to the conclusion that the fried pickles could have affected her gallbladder.

So needless to say she wasn’t up to doing much, and all I did was some paint stripping on the next dresser.

The pool was nice and refreshing, floating about with a cold can in my hand watching the birds taking a bath in the pond.

26th July 2023

There was rain most of the day, however before the heavens opened we sold the bench.

Now the garage is full of dressers all needing quite a bit of work. On top of that Kelli found another free dresser in Allendale, so we faced the oncoming storm and set off.

Allendale is about half an hour away, but first we needed fuel. Now I have a gripe with petrol prices over here, they make no sense. The price fluctuates virtually every day, so petrol stations, with thousands of gallons in their tanks, can make large profits on the stocks they hold. I don’t know who controls the pricing, but all the stations around have the same pricing, maybe it telepathy.

We had our first dinner out in ages. We invited Mike and Lesley, our English friends to come along. I wasn’t sure how Kelli would cope with a change in routine, she chose a safe salad so I’m hoping she will be okay.

Afterwards they wanted to see the kitchen that is close to complete, they were very complementary about it.

Having an early dinner gave us plenty of time to chill, as the windows misted up due to high humidity.

25th July 2023

I today we were getting our worktop modified.

Due to a number of mistakes both mine and the worktop manufacturers, we will finally get it look like it should and interface with the wood top perfectly.

At 10.00 Matt from Top of the World Granite arrived with his white van and tools.

I explained the history and what I wanted to see, and he explained how he was going to do it. I gave him the corian offcut and left him to it.

There was the sound of worktop being cut, but I tried to tune it out getting on with finishing the seat panels from the bench.

It was really warm making the polyurethane dry in half an hour, so I was able to complete them and reassemble the bench and posted on Marketplace.

This was a good excuse to have a long soak in the pool, I cracked open a can of hard cider as I floated round until I nodded off, what a lightweight.

24th July 2023

It was a better day, the sun was shining, and we sold the dresser.

Kelli was working on the bench body whilst I was staining the seats, but I had to drive to Menards for more poly and other materials.

We had intended to use the paint that I had remixed, but when applied gave exactly the same result. I have no idea what is happening there, there must be something in formulation.

Regardless of that, she ended up painting it in a different colour, but I will have to return that tin once again.

We took a bike ride to see that derelict farmhouse again, there were no “Keep out” or “ No trespassing” of which there are many posted around us in Central Bay. We took the opportunity to ride up the driveway and take a closer look, and we weren’t shot at.

I did a bit more work on the pencil drawer for the Airia desk. I had to elongate a slot on the replacement drawer slide to suit the holes in the frame. I ordered some needle files from Amazon and they arrived half an hour after I found a set in the cupboard, then I remembered that I already had some, anyway you can never have enough needle files.

Early evening a van arrived to collect the dresser. The tall lad emerged and slinked over to me.

“I’ve come for the dresser my girlfriend asked me to collect” the tone of his voice reflected that he didn’t want to be here, although it looked like he didn’t want to be anywhere.

“Do the drawers work?” He asked instead of trying them. I demonstrated them in a typical furniture salesman way, pulling them out and then pushing them in.

Trying to get into his vehicle was tricky. I explained the best way to do it was to turn it on its back and slide it in. He then got on one end and i on the other. Unfortunately how he held it opposite to me meaning he would turn it one way and I the other. I redirected him and in it went.

Soon the dresser and Mr happy set off back to Muskegon, and I was relieved.

23rd July 2023

I just had to get out of the house. After another disturbed night I had to take out my anger and frustration, so what better way than to go for a bike ride. I headed out towards Saugatuck with the assist cranked up to see how fast it was going. I saw a serious cyclist ahead, serious being dressed in Lycra with wraparound visor. I used them as a pacer, gradually gaining speed and drawing closer, but they turned off the road so I saved them the humiliation of being overtaken by a old git on a heavy bike.

My route took me passed rows of pine trees, their scent in the early morning took me back to the German forests of my childhood, picking up cones to fuel the stove in the family cottage that we used to stay in for our holidays.

This was a calm moment when I could reduce speed and open my eyes. I passed, what seemed to be a derelict farmhouse, it must have been because the roof was missing shingles and the area around was wild and overgrown. “Oh to be twenty years younger and a few hundred thousand bucks richer”, I thought, “I could have done something with that”. On I cycled, crisscrossing the roads until I felt more relaxed and ready to join the real world again.

I wanted to work on the drawer I needed for my new desk, I had bought a replacement pair of slides, but I decided to strip the seats from the bench we collected yesterday instead.

Then we had a visit from Elaine who was back from her winter hibernation in Florida. She said she had a project for me and opened up a folder containing a number of photographs.

“I would like one of these” showing me a beautiful Swiss made piece, apparently they cost many thousand dollars each.

I started to salivate, this was a dream project.

She then showed me a picture of a piece that she had in her Florida home. “I would like to make this look like that” my heart sank a little.

It looked like a cheap piece of box store product. I suggested making a facade to mimic what the expensive piece had, but I would need lots more dimension in order to build it. So I made a sketch with all the areas that would need measurements, she was going to see if someone could do that for her.

I did love the original piece, and I would love to make one, maybe I could scale it and draw it up during the winter, this would be a great excuse to buy a loose tenon cutter.

22nd July 2023

Kelli got four and a half hours of sleep last night and I had a full day to appreciate it.

There was so much tension in the air it could have competed with a thunderstorm. Not the finest time, but we worked through it again.

I took another Turbo ride to buy some eggs, and yes, this time there were some.

A rushed breakfast because we had sold the tall dresser and there a few tweaks that needed doing.

Around midday a trades van turned, that confused me, but the chap was the one that bought the dresser.

Kelli had found another dresser in Zeeland, so we were dispatched to collect it.

It turned out to be a project piece that had been started many years ago and not finished.

It will take a bit of work , but the style is nice and should sell quickly.

There was also news that we, at last sold the two matching side tables. Kelli had repainted the fronts and lo and behold someone wanted them.

Then she found a free wooden bench in the town, again we went to collect, on the way back we stopped off at Menards to return the faulty paint. There was a bit of interrogation as Mr Paint Expert tried to probe as to why the paint had acted as it did. He went through a list of possible reasons, from using the correct primers, to the different surfaces that could have caused the problem.

I explained that we have painted hundreds of pieces of furniture with no paint problems, he then agreed to mix up a new batch, phew, that was nerve-racking.

I also got round to wiring in a dimmer into the bathroom, sometimes in the early hours the light it much too bright for sensitive eyes.

21st July 2023

I was on the bike early hoping to buy some eggs from our nearby source. I set the kettle to boil, hoping it would be done by the time I got back. I set the controls on the bike to Turbo and set off. I was up to twenty miles an hour in no time, dodging the joggers and other bike riders. I reached the house in no time, but there were no eggs outside. My only option was to go to the corner shop which was in the opposite direction. Back on the bike, Turbo engaged and off. I sped round a corner and missed a runner by inches. I got to the shop, and panting heavily I found the organic eggs.

Staggering to the register, I handed over some crumpled notes and placed the carton in my saddle bag, and back home. I got into the door, just as the kettle was boiling, gosh it takes a long time to boil anything over here.

After breakfast on the deck we took a proper bike ride, to collect another Buddha. Kelli found this little green bald man quite close. We found the object wrapped in a plastic bag at an address with a Jesus poster in the garden, so with two religious characters in one house, one had to go, sorry Buddha.

I had to seal and finish eight drawer fronts ready for the new handles that were arriving in the late afternoon.

When they arrived they didn’t fit. The hole centres should have been two and a half inches but the ones that were delivered were two and three quarter inches. The specifications on Amazon stated two and a half, so it looks like some redrilling to do.

In the evening we met up with a couple of neighbours to go to a community get together, set up by a lady on the next street over. It was a chance to meet other people. It was interesting, I was a little left out at first, but as soon as they realised I was English all the differences between Americans and the Brits came out. We didn’t stay too long, Kelli needed time to chill our at home after a busy day.