Just a typical day off

I had a Friday off and was home to see the grandkids off to school - they were both in good moods this morning!  That started the day off right.  Army daughter is in town for a few days.  She has Boy and Girl for the evening and will bring them home after they see a movie.  So what did I do today  other than writing this post?  Odds and ends chores.  What else?  I do like puttering around the property so it seems logical that I would be doing chores. 

After I saw them onto the bus, I met with a window contractor and we headed up to the bug-out place.  While I could replace the broken windows myself, there's still so much that I need to do up there and I don't have unlimited spare time, I figured I'll see what the estimate for someone else doing the work would be.  I may end up doing them myself if he wants to charge more than what I think he should.  The entire bug-out house is cleared out.  The walls all have a first coat of paint.  I still need to remodel both bathrooms and the kitchen but first things first are the doors!  There are only two interior doors left in the house.  Son punched holes in them and removed the rest (and probably sold them).  Both bathrooms still have doors.  Unfortunately the hall bathroom door doesn't close because he "rebuilt" the door frame.  So while I was there I took the measurements of all the door openings.  Maybe this weekend I'll purchase them and bring them up there.  After that I will repair the bathrooms, then put in the new flooring, then the kitchen. 

It takes three trips to the bug-out place to fill up the truck and trailer before I make the dump run.  I still have several more trips to go to get the stove, dishwasher, sink, and heater out of there.  It could all be completed in a week or two of solid working on the place but I don't want to take vacation time to work on it.  This means that we get up there on average about two times per month.  It makes the process go very slow! 

With my schedule this week I left each day before the sun came up and got home after dark.  Today I had a day off so it was a good day to check on everything.  I figured I'd better bring out the bowl of food scraps for the chickens that's been on the kitchen counter all week.  I got out to the chicken coop.  One chicken was dead.  The rest were doing fine and none were pecking on the dead one.  Most of my  chickens are on the old side and they are just dying off one by one.  I have one young hen that is broody all the time.  This spring I will put a bunch of eggs in her nest and we will hopefully have a fresh crop of chicks.  I have incubators to raise the eggs inside but since we have the broody hen I may as well try to get some chicks the natural way! 

We lost a goat last weekend.  The goats were all fine in the morning.  We left for a few hours and when I pulled back into the yard I noticed her sleeping in the goat shed.  That was just odd for the middle of the afternoon so I stopped the car and got out only to find her dead.  I don't know what happened.  She was pregnant but not due for another month. 

I think blind cat may be getting some vision back.  Either that or he's just getting more confident in his ability to get around.  He climbed a few feet up a tree the other day.  He's also jumping up and down on furniture, and although I'm not crazy about him getting on the furniture, I'm pleased that he's getting around.  I'm still heating his dry food in the microwave twice a day.  It's a trick the vet taught me.  When you heat dry dog or cat food for about 15 seconds the fats in the food heat up and liquefy.  It makes the food smell really good (at least if you are an animal).   

I fired Pest Control a few months ago.  We just kept getting bugs and moths in the kitchen and home store.  I figured I couldn't do any worse than them at keeping the house bug free.  I had been keeping track of what they were using both inside and outside.  I was able to buy the same exact products on Amazon and have them shipped to the house.  I bought a sprayer dedicated for the pest control.  The house has been pretty much pest free since I took over the task!  I 've bought moth traps, bug spray, sticky pads for catching mice, etc. It's costing me a lot less than the $35 a month that they were charging as well.  I just have to make sure that I schedule the time to do it.  If I don't schedule it on the calendar I tend to forget!  Now Girl is complaining because she needs to feed her pet newts some bugs and there aren't any in the house.  Poor Girl has to dig some up in the yard!

I also cleaned out two shelves which hold all the medications.  When Mrs. Bug-out renter used to visit she'd clean me out of Tylenol, Excedrin, Advil, as such.  So I kept way more on hand than we'd ever need.  But she doesn't come around as much so now we have lots of stuff that's outdated.  I don't know how long that stuff all lasts so it's probably time to get some more.  How much of that is enough anyway?  We hardly ever get sick but one thing that the doctor did tell me to do was when I come in from a day of  heavy lifting or yard work to take a Tylenol and Advil as preventative measures for aching muscles in the evening.  I do this one or two times per month and it works well.
I got a sweet tooth craving while I was kneading the dough for our weekend loaves of bread.  Instead of the normal loaves we now have a pan of cinnamon raisin sweet rolls and a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread.  Well, we did have a pan of sweet rolls.  There's a few missing!  I put the rest into a plastic container.  No one will be the wiser! 

The weeds are taking over the garden walkways.  I go out each weekend to pull weeds and the next weekend they are all back again!  The chickens enjoy it and it also means they eat less of the store bought grain, so I'll just keep on pulling weeds.  There aren't too many in front and I can usually keep up with them each time I go out front to check on the goats.  There's a good outdoor light in that area so I can pull up a few weeds each day even when it's dark outside. 

It's almost time to trim the fruit trees.  Boy is still too small to do the task.  Girl can do it but she doesn't quite get how to do it right.  I had the older grandsons do it for me a few years ago but they aren't around here anymore.  So I guess it is my turn.  There's about 25 that need to be trimmed while they are dormant.  There are a few citrus that need some trimming but that can be done at any time.  These dormant ones need to be trimmed first.  I just keep waiting for it to get cold and rainy.  It's not doing either. 

I also keep going on-line to check out some property locations in different states.  I'm still not sure if I want to take the leap and move but it's fun to look.  At some point I'm going to have to go see these areas in person as looking at pictures and actually seeing the places aren't the same.