Sunday, February 2
Feb. 2nd, 2025 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
That my husband is home when the weather is cold like this. It's helpful to have an extra pair of hands, and reassuring to have someone around.
I did normal chores when I got up, but it was SO COLD, mostly because of the wind. The goats seemed pretty comfy in the garage.
Normally I would have gone to the riding barn to see River in the evening, but when it's this cold there isn't much point. I would freeze, River would be tight, and no one has any fun.
R had texted to let me know that he would be brought into the barn for a while to warm up and get his mash and so on, so I didn't have to worry about checking on him during the cold snap.
I know she checks on him all the time anyhow, but it's nice that on days like this she does a little extra.
I didn't get a ton of sleep, but I got ready in time to go to the town nearby to judge 4-H speeches.
I have done that for our local chapter on and off for quite some time now. I was in 4-H as a kid, and did public speaking then, and I've actually learned a lot more from judging it and scoring.
There's something very small town and wonderful about the fact that 4-H is still here, and it is evolving too, to include a wide number of modern interests and skills.
It's great to see them doing public speaking, because it's such an important skill.
The other woman who was a judge was someone I'm sure I have already met, likely through the judging, but I didn't remember her very well. Eerily, she seemed to remember me quite well. She remembered where I live, that we have horses, my name. I literally drew a complete blank on her.
Oh well. We did chat and hopefully I remember something about her, should we meet again.
I got fuel in town, and went home. The roads were fine.
My Sweetie once again was determined to make some real progress in the kitchen, and I'm really glad he's finding the motivation to get after it. He got all the cracks filled, though they will need sanding and likely a second pass of fill, and more sanding, before I can start painting.
I've been doing lots of cleaning up after him, sweeping frequently as he is knocking off a lot of loose paint from around the cracks, and lots of loose old chunks of plaster. When he was finished for the day I had to sweep, and clean up the tops of all the cupboards and the fridge, and other surfaces that weren't covered with a drop sheet.
When I went out to spend some time with the goats and let them stretch their legs, I talked with Sister E again for awhile.
Of course we ended up talking about Trainwreck, and at the end of the day, I really don't know how I'm supposed to feel about her situation. I feel bad that she's sick and likely dying, but angry too that she won't take care of herself (and never did, really).
It's not straightforward, the way I feel about Aunt E dying. At least that was a person who took care of herself, and her death was more or less the inevitable death that is a natural process, after a good life was lived.
Not the death of a person who was irresponsible, miserable, and hurt a lot of other people.
Anyhow. When my Sweetie was done for the night we ate, and chatted before he went to bed.
That my husband is home when the weather is cold like this. It's helpful to have an extra pair of hands, and reassuring to have someone around.
I did normal chores when I got up, but it was SO COLD, mostly because of the wind. The goats seemed pretty comfy in the garage.
Normally I would have gone to the riding barn to see River in the evening, but when it's this cold there isn't much point. I would freeze, River would be tight, and no one has any fun.
R had texted to let me know that he would be brought into the barn for a while to warm up and get his mash and so on, so I didn't have to worry about checking on him during the cold snap.
I know she checks on him all the time anyhow, but it's nice that on days like this she does a little extra.
I didn't get a ton of sleep, but I got ready in time to go to the town nearby to judge 4-H speeches.
I have done that for our local chapter on and off for quite some time now. I was in 4-H as a kid, and did public speaking then, and I've actually learned a lot more from judging it and scoring.
There's something very small town and wonderful about the fact that 4-H is still here, and it is evolving too, to include a wide number of modern interests and skills.
It's great to see them doing public speaking, because it's such an important skill.
The other woman who was a judge was someone I'm sure I have already met, likely through the judging, but I didn't remember her very well. Eerily, she seemed to remember me quite well. She remembered where I live, that we have horses, my name. I literally drew a complete blank on her.
Oh well. We did chat and hopefully I remember something about her, should we meet again.
I got fuel in town, and went home. The roads were fine.
My Sweetie once again was determined to make some real progress in the kitchen, and I'm really glad he's finding the motivation to get after it. He got all the cracks filled, though they will need sanding and likely a second pass of fill, and more sanding, before I can start painting.
I've been doing lots of cleaning up after him, sweeping frequently as he is knocking off a lot of loose paint from around the cracks, and lots of loose old chunks of plaster. When he was finished for the day I had to sweep, and clean up the tops of all the cupboards and the fridge, and other surfaces that weren't covered with a drop sheet.
When I went out to spend some time with the goats and let them stretch their legs, I talked with Sister E again for awhile.
Of course we ended up talking about Trainwreck, and at the end of the day, I really don't know how I'm supposed to feel about her situation. I feel bad that she's sick and likely dying, but angry too that she won't take care of herself (and never did, really).
It's not straightforward, the way I feel about Aunt E dying. At least that was a person who took care of herself, and her death was more or less the inevitable death that is a natural process, after a good life was lived.
Not the death of a person who was irresponsible, miserable, and hurt a lot of other people.
Anyhow. When my Sweetie was done for the night we ate, and chatted before he went to bed.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-03 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-03 09:17 pm (UTC)I hate the mess too. The pile of tools or paint in the corner, the dust, and the bigger the project the bigger the piles of stuff.
Several parts of our house are in this half finished state, and have been for years.
I sometimes daydream about living in a lovely, absolutely finished house. I wonder what that would be like.
Can you imagine? A house where every room is clean and finished, right down to the baseboards. Where things like doors and hardware matched. No cracks in the wall, not one niggling little bit on the cupboards that didn't get the piece of trim to finish it, no exposed wires where one day there might be a light switch, no bits of insulation sticking out around a window that still needs framing. Not one room that you keep the door closed because it's "not done in there". The bathtub isn't chipped, there's a working light in every room, all the siding is actually hung correctly and not a bit here and there that's falling off.
No ducking around a ladder left conveniently for weeks on a staircase to the basement. No walking around a shop vac left right smack in the middle of the living room. No piles of wood off cuts, little bags of screws that you are afraid to throw away because you don't know where they came from. You know where all the keys are for all the doors that lock.
All done. Every surface and detail finished and in working order.
That's what I would like, if I won the lottery. One of the things, anyhow.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-04 05:42 am (UTC)The trouble is that some people think that ladders in the room and torn-up chaos are signs of living and cosiness, or they simply don't see them or care about them. This would not be me, but I know who it would be.
I once had a lovely friend who said, when I moved into my first house, Just focus on finishing one room before you start on another. It didn't seem to happen, though I did follow his strategy to the best of my ability.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-04 07:30 am (UTC)We were supposed to be finishing the bedroom in the addition, and making good progress, and then when my husband complained for about the ten thousandth time in a row (literally every single day, sometimes more than once) how much he hated the shelf above the sink in the kitchen, I told him to just do something about it.
We agreed it was awful, (though I personally wanted to just keep going in the bedroom while we had momentum), we went and bought a cabinet (the easy part), and then the real work started.
Taking down the shelf was a big deal (I figured it would be), and it made a mess (yep) that had to be patched, then repainted.
So, it makes sense to me that we do the whole kitchen, because why would you only patch and repaint (in a different color?) one corner?
So, here we are over a month later. The work on it has at least been pretty steady, but it's still a month, and it's a distraction from the bedroom.
My husband was also supposed to be finishing small details in the basement drywall so we could finally hire someone to mud down there. That's been abandoned too.
We also never did so much as finish the tiny entry way porch completely. It doesn't have baseboards, and we were supposed to be replacing the baseboards.
Nope. We bounce around from one thing to another, whatever job seems "shinier" and more to my husband's current interest rather than trying to finish anything completely.