You thought you were getting a photo entry of a serene rural December morning!?
You came here for pictures of cats and me lounging all lounging-like around a roaring woodstove? I betcha you thought I spent the weekend baking shortbread and making chili in my farmhouse-woodstove-heated-kitchen. Hahaha, yeah, I. did. not.
I left my office on Friday at 11 o’clock so that I could sit in my new home and wait for contractors to come over and do contracting things. But really, Marc and I sat around staring at each other and occasionally yelling. Really, this does help pass the time.
If you had been in my house, you would have heard this:
MARC: they said they were coming between 1 and 5pm, right?
ME: yeah, what time is it now?
MARC: 3:15
ME: shit
ME, again: What time is it now?
But actually, I used the waiting time well. I painted the guestroom in the basement.
I try. Really. I do. I am by no means a professional painter but I know how to use a roller and a paint brush and I know that you are SUPPOSED to tape the trim and ceiling and blah blah blah and remove the face plates, which I did! But, I always seem to build myself up in my mind, because, the painting, it is not so good. I had some time on Saturday to go back over the rough spots and touch of the baseboards again with white paint, so it actually looks okay now.
Woo Hoo! I finished a room. ALL BY MYSELF.
The list of vendors and contractors for the day included carpet guys, a locksmith and Verizon. The room got painted. The locks got changed. New carpet even got selected and purchased and Verizon still had not shown. After many calls and me telling Marc exactly how to threaten them because I did not leave work early for this THIS goddamnit.
They finally showed up and we have Fios Internet and that is the coolest thing evah!
I dragged my tired paint-fume-nauseas ass home at10:45 that night to take care of horses.
On Friday afternoon we had a little thing called A COLD FRONT come through and it caused some very weird STORMING and WIND and DROPPING TEMPERATURES. I was almost home (back to the country home for sleeping) when I was coming around a curve, in the dark, and another car was coming in the opposite direction, so I had to be totally in my lane.
Mmmm’k
It seems that a tree had fallen from the wind it and was about half in the road.
Can you see what’s coming?
It was too late. I was going about 40, or maybe 45, or probably 50 miles per hour and there was anther car coming towards me, so without seeing it until it was too late, because it blended with the road, I hit a tree.
It caused the loudest most horrible scraping noise I’ve ever heard. It scratched the back of my side view mirror very badly and the side of the car. It also took off my radio antenna. Good news bad news is that I have a 12 year old car, so I am not worried about a few scratches, but, lo, these are bad ones. However, the radio antenna is one of those that goes up and down when you turn the radio on and off and it is all metal, not one of those rubbery things like on new cars. It was pointing in a very unfortunate direction and I was hopping mad. So mad, in fact, that I hit the car so hard I put a dent in it!
Saturday morning came too early, too soon and way too damn cold.
ME: What did you do between 7 and 8 o’clock in the morning? I bet I was doing more.
WORLD: * drool … *
I was standing outside in the cold, hauling fence boards from one side of the property to the other. Then, then! I yelled at Marc to help me hold the fence boards while I screwed them into the posts. Jesuz. Poor Marc got yelled out a lot this weekend, but so did I. After he broke the towel bar in my parents bathroom and got water all over the floor, I got yelled at about “this fucking place.”
Saturday ended in a very similar way to Friday, minus the whole hitting a tree thing.
Sunday I did more hauling of shit from one home to the other. I woke up early (before the alarm). I stumbled to the bathroom to pee but not before I begged Marc to let me sleep for another half hour. But while I was peeing, the cat scared the dog and she barked herself awake and then I needed to take her out to pee, so I stumbled downstairs and took her out, then I noticed that the cats had knocked over a plant and there was dirt ALL OVER THE FLOOR, and by then, going back to sleep just wasn’t something on the horizon.
I got home from the third day in a row of schlepping crap from one apartment to another house. I was exhausted. I dodged large deer on the way home, and managed to NOT hit any trees.
The order of business, well, it went something like this:
Enter house and take dog out to pee immediately.
Dog peed.
Dog ate.
Decided fire needed to be built for heat.
Sat down to start fire with balled up newspaper and small pieces of wood.
Saw flames and decided it was time to feed horses.
Put on coat and headed out to barn.
Saw what unfortunately, was NOT a figment of my overtired imagination.
If I haven’t mentioned it before, I am tired. I am dizzyingly, blurry-eyed tired. I could have seen an oasis in the middle of the living room at this point. So, when I say that I walked outside and saw Pokey the Horse half in and half out of the pasture, I was mostly unalarmed due to my fatigue level.
On a closer look, my eyes were NOT playing a trick on me. Pokey was half inside the pasture and half outside. He had broken the top board of a three board fence and was straddling the two bottom rails.
If you had been there, you might have heard me whisper under my breath, so as to NOT alarm the already panicking horse: HOLYMOTHEROFGODSHIT.SHIT.GODDAMMIT.
I went to him and talked to him and made sure he was calm. I have heard through family lore that this scenario has played out before, and he was all panicked and sweaty. Well, it is thirty degrees out so I don’t think sweat is a possibility right now, but there was no sweat. He was just playing around and looked at me all oops! Guess I misjudged that one! I ran back to the house and yelled (once again!) at Marc to get my cell phone and come NOW. I had no idea how to get him to step BACKWARDS into the pasture. Can horses even pick up their legs in a backwards stepping motion? I was just about to get my neighbor to help me with him, since, no offence (I love you sweetie) … but Marc? Is totally useless in a situation like this. And, I have had horses most of my life, so a horse crisis is just that. I must have gone back to the house for something because all I recall now is that I came back to find Pokey HAD stepped back into the pasture on his own.
Me, however? I had to sit down and breathe. The panic! The not-able-to-breathe.
Aaaaeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiii!
I sound like my mother, but really, it took a few years off my life, I swear.
Then, I had to fix then fence! Again! Only now, in the dark!
Now that I am a totally professional I knew exactly which drill would be the better drill and I have found a drill bit that doesn’t break easily, I just gathered the tools that I had left out on the workbench and collected about ten screws and went to build more fence. I only lost the drill bit once in the dirt and grass and horse shit mixture, and I did, get down on my hands and knees and dig for it, because, that drill bit… it fixes fences for me. At least this time, the fence break was right where the pile of new boards is kept – so no dragging fence boards all over at nine o’clock on a Sunday night. I fixed the fence. Again. I fed the horses and gave Pokey a VERY disapproving look and I walked the entire fence line to make sure there were no other attempted break-outs. (Mom, read that last line especially well please, and then readjust your will.)
My parents went to Holland, I burned my hand twice, rebuilt fences, broke tools, moved half of my apartment, painted a room, met with a trigillion and one contractors and managed to show up at work on Monday only about an hour and a half late.
Casualties:
1. the antenna on my car
2. my right side view mirror
3. three fence boards
4. two drill bits – broken
5. one drill bit – lost in the grass
6. my sanity, dignity, and serenity
7. 8 pounds
8. my human decency – I’m eating ramen noodles for breakfast and can’t remember my last meal that was not Burger King or Dominos.
9. Sensation in my right heel because I attempted to examine my fence-repair work on my way to the barn to feed Pokey, and he was not happy with the diversion from food and attempted to redirect me by leaning his 2100 pounds of mass into my body and stepping on me just a little
10. Um, sleep?
Pros:
1. 8 pounds!
2. There are 2 Burger Kings within two miles of my new house
