Another Lifetime to go

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.

5th September 2025

We sold the two wicker headboards, they were picked up early, even before our breakfast.

Kelli was right again.

I wanted to get the structure components primed  which I did. However there is no amount of paint that will make an old door look good. That the only frustrating thing, I could use a ton of Bondo to fill every indent and hole, but I can’t, the lady even wants the hinges and door knob fitted.

It would have taken a lot less time to build it from scratch, and be a more enjoyable build, I just want to get it finished and handed over.

I met up with Lloyd for our rescheduled beer and winge session. There was a lot to talk about, he recently had to put his little dog Oliver, down.

That became a topic that expanded into a spiritual discussion about dog heaven.

4th September 2025

Well if my reader is still with me after yesterday’s rant, today is back with the work stuff.

I had my list of things I wanted to cover before going to my beer session with Lloyd.

I have to get the kitchen island finished this month, there is a chunk of cash that will help this month’s numbers.

I was outside early, it was chilly, too cold for shorts and short sleeves, I needed to cut the plywood for the base of the unit. I decided to use a skill saw instead of the circular one because it was heavy and an awkward. I set up a guide, checking and rechecking the measurements, and then went for the cut.

That went well.

I was on a roll, I managed to build the complete floor frame, a monumental moment, now everything can be primed and then the big build.

I managed all this because Lloyd couldn’t make today’s session, that is put off till tomorrow.

Kelli went off with Elaine for another Goodwill special returning with a pair of cain headboards.

Those went straight on to Marketplace.

I did get a reply to my plea for a Mac expert.

A lady responded saying that she had an older laptop that needs the same clean up done. I’m not sure if that helps me, but if she is successful then maybe I could learn what to do.