Busy 10 days at Home

 There is something comforting about the routine of being at home. Every morning the same sounds reach my ears as I sit on the couch and watch the morning news. I need a few minutes to get my head and muscles going in the morning, Barb not so much, she is generally a spaz from the moment she wakes up. 

I am often up before her, by "up" I mean on the couch. I often wake up at 3:30-4:00 and go out to the couch. I don't know why, but that move will often put me back to sleep for a few more hours. At about 6:00-6:30 what happens next never changes..... Zoey will jump on the couch and sit on my lap waiting for some pets. I will then hear Barb turn on the Breville, as she walked to the sliding door and takes the dogs out. 5 minutes later she is back in the house and walks into the laundry room where I hear her fill the dog water dish and pick up their food bowls puts the dry food into each and brings them back into the kitchen where she puts a scoop of canned and a few pieces of shredded chicken on top.

After bringing the bowls back into the laundry room, she returns to the kitchen where I hear the clank of the dishwasher being emptied. By now I have the TV on and am watching the morning news. Once the dishwasher is emptied, I hear her at the Breville grinding her coffee beans and the other noises it makes in the coffee making process. Barb then comes and puts her coffee cup on a coaster on the table next to the couch and asks me if I want my Mountain Dew. 

My heart glows with love as I listen to this morning routine....day after day after day. 20-30 minutes later she will ask what I want for breakfast and go about making it. By now many of you are telling me to get my lazy ass to get off the couch and make my own breakfast, I will tell you, I have tried in the past and this routine is what Barb likes to do, what she wants to do. If I try to do anything I am told to go sit down. 

From that point on, the day is a wildcard, who knows what will happen. As we drink our morning beverage we talk about our plans for the day, which for me usually is, "Work on the garage". 

But that was not the case the first few days we were home as I was out of lumber and they could not deliver it for 3 days. So instead, I said words that we both dread....  "Let's finish the grout". With a groan, she says "Do we have to?"

An hour of so later I am mixing up the mortar and Barb is adding dye. Once the mortar is the right consistency, we each add mortar to our squeeze bags and get to squeezing. 

But guess what? We are done with the grout! I don't know why but this chore was like our kryptonite. We just could not get motivated to do it. But now it is done! Well, almost. Barb still wants to go through and clean off the excess with muriatic acid. 

Of course we had our regular chores that needed to get done as they were delayed while we were gone; changing the water filters in the house, cleaning the filter in the hot tub and weed whacking the tall grass on the driveway island. 

 Oh, and filling the apple tree water tote. The apple trees are looking good so far. No apples, but whatever was eating the leaves seemed to have stopped. 

When I was done with that, I had about 100 gallons of water left over so I put it in the cattle tank. While the cattle have several water tanks available to them between ours and our neighbor's property, ours has been empty for a couple of weeks. The herd happened to be near me as I was filling it, when they heard that water hitting the bottom of that tank, they came a runn'in!

 Our lumber order arrived on Monday and I got to work on the garage. While climbing around on the roof is not my favorite thing to do, I do find it rewarding working on it. We are still working on the roof, we still had 26' of roof on each side to cover, so 52' in total. Normally we could get this done in two days, but Barb blew out her back resulting in a 2-day delay. Once she was better, we got to work getting 6 panels (18') up the first day and only 2 on the second, it was just too hot. The temps were 86 and 94 each of those days so by noon, it was so hot you could not go on the metal up there. 

Did you find the Frenchie in one of these photos?

In the mornings and afternoons, we have been spending time out in the gazebo, which is where we discovered Zoey's latest talent. Eating ants! There are dozens of ants crawling across the concrete and Zoey has taken it upon herself to rid the gazebo of them one by one. The funny part is the ants are trying to fight back as they bite Zoey tongue and she shakes her head trying to get rid of them. 

I did get out to help Kevin at one of his jobs one day where he was putting trusses up on a 40x80 shed. It took a good 8 hours to get them up, but luckily the temps only got up to 76 that day. 

Yet another day, I got over to Dan and Bonnie's to help him with some electrical on an addition he is putting on his garage.

But the week was not all work, we got out once to go to Custer and sit on a roof top bar watching the bikes go by. Last week was Sturgis week and there were bikes everywhere!

We also took a drive out to Buffalo, Wyoming to look at a generator for the camper. We currently have an onboard generator, but it is acting up. Barb called a few places in the area, but no one will work on it. The one place she did find said they would do it, but needed $190/hr just to diagnosis it with a minimum of 3 hours. Then she found the exact same generator with only 100 hours on it for sale in Buffalo for $400. So we drove out and bought it. 3 1/2 hours each way, but I think it was the right move. I will either work on the existing generator myself or just replace it. 

And Sunday we had our niece. Alana and Ryan out for a Frenchie play date. We had not seen them in a while and it was nice to see Zoey, Sophie and Loki playing. Dakota hid in the bedroom and wanted nothing to do with them. Zoey and Sophie would play, then crash, play and crash over and over again. 

Our next post will come from North Dakota as it is time for me to head to the farm! Harvest began about 10 days ago with the peas. They are getting ready to start with wheat which is much busier than peas so it is time for me and Bob S. to head up to help!

I will leave you with these two beauties who stopped by the other day to visit. A doe and buck mule deer. They were only around for about 5 minutes but it is certainly nice to see them!