A Mixed Bag of Activities

I never did get around to starting on the workout room. I kind of knew that it wouldn't happen for the simple fact that I had to bring Ariana for her 11:00 AM appointment.

You see, for a major project like that, I needed to start early in the morning so that I could get a good head of steam that would keep me going for the rest of the day ~ like when I cleaned the kitchen yesterday.

However, this was still a productive day.

The day started out with my letting the dogs out and having to break through 1/2 an inch of ice in the water bucket, which was supposed to self-heating in cold weather in order to avoid ice formation. (It's one of the best ever things I bought for the dogs.)

Seeing the ice reminded me that I needed to turn on the heat trace wire that wrapped around the pipes under the kitchen. But the thing was, I didn't know where the switch for the wire was.

So I had to call Neil. Luckily he was still home, just getting ready to leave for work, when I called.

And while talking with Neil, I discovered why I could not find a switch for the heat trace wire. That was because there was none. Instead, there was a plug, coming up from the coal bin, that I had to plug in.

Thank you, Neil.

After reading the paper and cutting out articles to send to Neil, I paid bills (yuck) and wrote out "change of address" notices to send to Neil's professional journals before leaving for Ariana's appointment.

After the appointment, I completed the "change of address" task, made myself a lamb, arugula, and bleu cheese sandwich (very yummy), and read a bit of Shōgun.

When that was all done, it was time to get down to business.

Today's project was to put the hay into the dog houses and to remove the garbage bags from the basement and schlep them over to the growing trash pile in the dog yard.

All this was to be done through the bulkhead, where the doors had rotted so much that they were now irregular-shaped pieces of plywood sheeting resting a wooden framework.

The doors were no longer attached to the hinges. And when I went to open them, they broke even more because the base of the doors had decomposed due to its having been covered with a thick layer of soil and dried vegetation for God knows how long.

(And these weren't the first set of bulkhead doors to rot away. I don't even remember the number of times we had to replace those doors.)

After getting the 2 former doors opened, I noticed that the extension cord that was connected to the heated dog water bucket was severed in two. No wonder why I had to break through all that ice in the bucket this morning.

And here both Neil and I thought that the bucket had finally kicked the bucket. Instead, it was a faulty extension cord issue.

So now I had to find another extension cord.

I had a couple of extension cords in what used to be Neil's room (which is now Ryan's room). But I could not find them because Ryan and Ritchie had moved things around, and they weren't home for me to ask where the extension cords were hiding.

Fortunately, I was able to find one in the garage. (I just hope that it's one that's safe to use outside.)

With the extension cord issue resolved, I went down into the basement to begin my work.

Pixel was there. He had gotten in through a hole in the window that no longer had any glass and was blocked with a bale of hay to keep the cold air from freezing the pipes.

Seeing that a new hole had opened up in the corner of the window space, I plugged it up with more hay ~ hoping this time the cats won't dig out another hole.

Next, I took the hay out of the cellar and placed it in the dog houses. I even placed some hay under the porch, because that's where Emi likes to go for shelter.

After that came the gargantuan task of moving all those garbage bags and all that trash out of the cellar.

I lost count of the number of times I had to go up and down those steps. The top step was the tallest ~ easily one foot or more.

Some of the bags were heavy. Eventually I had to catch my breath after doing all that hauling.

The cellar pile was getting smaller. But it wasn't going down fast enough. How I wish the boys were home so that I could have borrowed their muscle to haul those bags.

But they were nowhere to be seen, and I had to do the whole task by myself.

Once that was done, I repositioned the rotted bulkhead door panels, having the bucket extension cord go through a hole in between the panels.

After doing all that heavy work, I certainly was not going to start on the workout room. I was going to take the rest of the day easy.

But then I looked at my watch and saw that it was not even 2:00 PM. It was still too early in the day to call it quits.

I was going to do some crocheting when I remembered that I had all those limes, lemons, and ginger root in the refrigerator. Better do something with them before they go bad and become no longer useful.

So the next hour or two were spent doing KP.

I zested and juiced all the lemons and limes, and put everything in freezer bags to store in the ~ where else? ~ freezer. (A wonderful suggestion from my friend Ruth in Australia.)

I also juiced the ginger root, putting the juice in one bag and the pulp in another.

While it took a long time to zest the bag of limes (especially since they were tiny key limes and there were a lot of them), it was a much more pleasant task than hauling heavy trash bags from the cellar to the dog yard.

For one thing, the kitchen was filled with the delightful and bracing scent of fresh lime.

Before bagging the juices, I poured a little bit of lime juice and ginger juice into a glass bottle. I was going to make ginger limeade.

However, that plan quickly changed.

I realized that while I still had the juicer assembled and ready for business, that I should juice up those 6 small apples that had been sitting in the kitchen for ages.

Then, just for the hell of it, I threw in a prickly pear. Oooh! What a pretty color that made.

After that, I poured the apple and prickly pear juice into the bottle that held the lime and ginger juice.

And you know what? It tasted pretty good. It was a bit on the tart side. But that was OK. I liked the tart flavor.

Once all the juicing was all done, I disassembled and cleaned the juicer.

Now I could finally relax.

So I whipped out my crochet stuff and went to work on a scrumble that I started last Friday.

However, because the sun had now whipped around to the other side of the kitchen, the room was no longer bright with sun light. I had to put on the light.

I was scrumbling along, and before you knew it, it was getting close to dinner time.

Ritchie offered to make dinner ~ a pasta Alfredo dish along with the left over lamb that I made on Sunday.

All 4 of us ate in the now ~ and STILL ~ clean kitchen.

It was nice eating together at the table. And when we get to Texas, I am going to make sure that the kitchen table always stays clean so that we can all eat together as a family.