now that it’s monday, i’m sitting in the office (in a dreadfully boring meeting), mildly sore, and anxious to get back home and dig more holes.
one thing i think might be beneficial in the future, though: keeping my blood sugar up, because damn if in retrospect I don’t seem to get awfully testy. I feel pretty crappy because i yelled at (or at least got snappy with) rebecca yesterday, for stuff that seems silly now.
it’s kinda hard to show that ya actually enjoy working alongside someone when you’re cranky…
On that note: sorry! actually really love doing this stuff with you! i’m sure it must take a lot of the fun out of it when i’m not pleasant to work with… so i’ll try to keep hydrated, nurished and therefore more relaxed and show that i’m actually appreciating the time we spend together working

since the ground here in portland is crap, we fixed it….. with crap.

took delivery of 4 cubic yards of rotted steer manure (yummy), and 2-ish cubic yards of cedar wood chips on saturday.

41 trips from the street (where the crap was dumped), up the paved driveway, across 64 feet of very bumpy/rutted dirt driveway into the back yard, with a wheelbarrow.  laid about 1 1/2″ of the manure on the entire back yard.   while rebecca raked the manure evenly across the yard, i cursed the damned wheelbarrow because it’s 4″ too short for me to walk comfortably.

to mix the crap into the crappy yard, i had to rent a gas powered tiller. again. have i mentioned i don’t have a truck? tillers aren’t lite. at all. got the 5.5hp, 28″ wide honda tiller into the trunk of my car after pulling the tines off one side, by hefting it in. lift with my legs? yeah, right. can’t lift something like that with your legs.  the only method is to dead lift the awkwardly shaped, handle-less, far heavier on one side hunk of equipment in one quick motion using your lower back.  but… aren’t those the muscles so often and easily injured? yeah. those are the ones.
so after lifting the fucking heavy thing into the trunk, i loaded the lumber i purchased at the same time onto the roof… then went home where i unloaded it all, again hefting the heavy tiller out of the trunk.  this was on Saturday night.

took myself a nice hot-ish bath, after loading/unloading… which was after a good 4-ish hours of shoveling and pushing of the wheelbarrow.  as i slept, spasms would contract one side of my back (or the other, totally random), waking me up much like a calf cramp… ala “sleeping soundly, then BAM! MY LEG! A FUCKING RABID ALLIGATOR MUST  HAVE CRAWLED INTO BED AND TAKEN A CHUNK OUT OF MY LEG! OH DEAR GOD THE PAIN!”  but instead of the calf, it was my lower back, so not nearly as bad.  or it was worse… one or the other.  luckily a bone in my right foot is screwed up and falling apart, so that pain kinda took my mind of the searing back pain from time to time. it’s nice to have options, really. get tired of the back, can focus on the foot… and vice verse.

sunday morning comes (much too quickly), and i’m awakened by a bright eyed, energetic little girl that wants a book read to her.  as i try to focus on the book (tough to do when your eyes aren’t open yet), i realize that today’s work will be much longer and much harder than yesterdays… and with body parts that are already done for.  we dress and stroll (only somewhat painfully) down the street to the local stumptown coffee for a bit of caffeine and a bagel.

un-nourished but at least not starving, i begin hauling manure to the back yard again. this time with added soreness and a sometimes spasming back thrown in for fun!  after a good couple hours, a neighbor showed pity upon me and brought over a much larger wheelbarrow… one that’s only 3″ too short to walk comfortably with.  who the hell do they make these things for? at 5′ 11″, i’m not especially tall.  anyway, this one had a much larger barrel… bucket… whatever the load part is called.  sped things up a bit, despite being twice as heavy.

once the manure was evenly dispersed through the yard, the power equipment could be started up. unfortunately, this is the damned tiller… which does a good job of kicking your ass. the first few passes through the yard were great… pulls hard, stops pulling and digs so you gotta throw some weight on it, pulls hard again, grabs a root and lurches to the side. such fun when you’re feeling like you’ve been hit by a train already.

tilled and mixed in well, the ground being much less clay-like, we could compact it a bit.  a 55 gallon drum was filled 1/4 with water, tipped on it’s side and rolled about.  roll, rake. roll, rake. roll. rake. over and over, until the yard is flat and graded decently well.

yard done, i figured the rutted and horribly bumpy driveway could use tilled and evened out in preparation for gravel (ugh, gravel is heavy too).  the tiller cuts great, then hits a rock and jumps all over the friggin’ place while my limp and sore body holds on.  throwing it around was no longer being done with only mild effort… it just wasn’t being done. the tiller was now throwing me around.  a few passes up and down the 64 feet of drive, cutting back off-camber embankments and ruts, and it was looking a little better.  what’s great when your back is sore? shoveling! shoveled and raked until the drive looked half way level-ish, before deciding the day is done.

hose off the tiller, lift it back into the trunk (this time with assistance!), and off to dinner with the kids.

as i write this, my back is utterly destroyed feeling. it’ll be sore for a couple days. it seems entirely pathetic that i’m so sore and so falling apart.  mid 30s, and some parts of my body feel 30 years older.

so as to not have a post with the majority being a complaint:

• coffee/bagel with the wee one was cool.
• dinner with the kids was cool.
• the weather was absolutely amazing! mid 80s on saturday, high 70s today, no rain!
• the yard is level and ready for the ground cover to be planted.
• the driveway is ~3/4 ready for gravel.
• only one tree left to plant.

ok, it wasn’t too bad…  during the week, while i was at work! stuck in an office with a window that’s directly beside a steam outlet… so i didn’t even get to see the sun people were talking about.  oh, then once the weekend got here: so did the rain.

the chicken coop is taking way, way too long to complete… long enough that i should be ashamed.  i’m not, but i should be.  in any case it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s at least coming out pretty cool.

this weekend marks the first time the weather in portland has seriously pissed me off. sun and spotty clouds most of the week… then saturday comes and it: rains, hails, sleets, snows, hails… sun comes out for 3 minutes… repeat. this had the oh-so-convenient effect of turning our clay-like soil into… well… clay. sticky, slippery, mucky clay. you could actually watch the backhoe sinking as the ground turned to quicksand, err, quickclay.

on the plus side…

more pictures to come once i get a chance to get the camera outside while it’s still light out. after the usual work day in the office, i came home and we went to home depot not once… no… but twice. by the time we got home, the sun had set, it was time for dinner, and the chance to get anything productive underway had gone. maybe tomorrow…

the wee one calls chickens “chi-chens.” we have some of the feathered things living in a cardboard box. as they can’t stay in there forever (well, not alive anyway), we’re giving them a proper home. actually, i doubt they care much about what their home looks like… but as it’ll be sitting in our back yard, i care.

on that note, i’m building something quite along these lines:

yup… the chickens will have a nicer house than us. coop is 5′ wide by 3′ deep, overall run is 9′.  changing the style a bit to match that of the house, and it’ll have proper un-painted cedar shingles (like the house will, one day).

last sunday we spent the day tilling the yard and doing some mild grading.  early monday morning my heart sunk when i heard my grandmother had passed away.   i spent some time in so-cal with my family for the funeral, then returned home yesterday.  at this moment, it’s been exactly one week since her passing.

i thought for sure that the closure of the funeral would return things to “normal” once i got home, but alas that’s far from true.  i can’t seem to get my mind around anything… loosing concentration every few moments.  the wee one and i went to home depot today, just to grab some primer/sealer for the breakfast room, so we can avoid lead poisoning.  that simple task took every bit of my strength to accomplish.

i’m sitting here now, trying to keep occupied with something that really does interest me:  heavy equipment.  well, not true heavy equipment… but medium duty backhoes for the landscaping project, driveway and drainage trenching.  planning on renting an allmand tlb 220 for a weekend… probably needing to get a lowboy 10 yard dumpster, too.  these simple tasks (which will lead to fun, as i love tractors) are taxing my feeble mind… but i’m looking forward to the kid’s first time in a tractor.  sure, it’s probably not in the rental agreement to let an 11 year old (let alone a 2 year old) operate the equipment… but hell, i learned when i was 6 or so.  i see nothing wrong with it… further, it seems cruel to not allow them at least some time in a tractor.

i don’t see the workday at the office going well, tomorrow.  hopefully after another night’s sleep, i’ll be able to focus a bit more.

ok, now that the weekend is upon us… and we’ve cleared sunday’s schedule… the yard is in trouble.  assulting the ground with a 200lb, gas powered, blade spinning, earth thrashing machine will be fun.  burn fossil fuels to till the yard? yes. could it be done by hand? yes, but damned sure not mine.  i’ll side with a good old gasoline powered machine.  get it done much faster, with less of an impact on the carbon footprint.
how would it be less of an impact on the carbon footprint by using a gas burning machine, rather than by hand?  have any idea just how much fuel a helicopter burns?  the impact on my body, if done by hand, would surely give me a heart attack, requiring a medi-vac helicopter to tote my sorry ass to the hospital.  it’s all in the justification, really.

plus, compare swinging a pic and shovel for hour after hour, to something with an engine that makes noise… the engine is gonna win with the “fun” factor.

speaking of fun… we might look into renting a skid steer loader for a weekend.  the driveway is 2/3 mud, broken concrete and ankle breaking holes.  removing the whole deal would allow us to lay paver stones in place.  pavers from the street to the carriage house would look awesome.  extra nice along side a dry-stack locking ’stone’ retaining wall bordering the front yard.
now just to make more $$$ so we can actually do it all…

i know nothing about the stuff.

what i do know is grass.  everything from basic commercial mixes like marathon, to self selected mixes of perennial ryes and blues.  i also know grass’ thirst.  sure, there are rye mixes that are hearty through the summer and can withstand some drought… but the brown cycle looks like absolute ass.  then there’s the mowing.

so… throwing away what i know, and looking at groundcovers.   i’ve had dicondria but it didn’t seem to care for foot traffic, animals, bouts of cold, direct sunlight or really much anything other than a nice 2 week period in the spring.   thyme looks good and smells incredible… but is a very slow growing (so by the time we had a yard, summer would be over).  isotoma blue star creeper looks like a pretty good choice with it’s ability to withstand heavy foot traffic, looks pretty with the summer flowering, and grows fast… but all i know of it is what i’ve read briefly, online.

all this talk comes from the nearing approach of summer… and the whole “our yard looks like ass” thing.  with high hopes, tentative plans are to remove the poured walkway, then rent a tiller on sunday.  turn the entire back yard (ok, so it’s not exactly a field). level it. then hopefully recover.  luckily since i work for a brewery, recovery beer is free.  “recovery beer” is the stuff you drink after dragging a gas powered tiller around a dense packed yard all day and getting your ass handed to you in the process.

once the yard is clear of walkway (much of which is in the way of our almost finished deck) and tilled… we’ll be able to plant some fruit trees (of which are yet to be decided upon)… and groundcover.  oh… gotta build a chicken coop and run for our new pets/egg layers, also.

then there’s the front yard…
and driveway…
side yard…
kinda falling over carriage house…
lead paint that’s falling off the house…
i could go on and on like this all night, but instead i’m gonna go take a bath (hey, the bath tub is in excellent working order!)

i’m writing this post via email, from a blackberry, whilst sitting in an impromptu meeting about god knows what (but undoubtedly something work related, as that’s where i’m at).  email, allowing me to post on this site- which i update far too seldomly, due to the whole “nothing done to the house to update about” thing. 
email is also taunting me: ads from home depot and lowes, spouting off great deals on must have materials, items and tools… lumber suppliers sending their current deals… numerous emails stating my member is insufficient to please women… sales for things i either don’t want, or can’t afford…
it’s a shame i can’t work on the house via email.

as far as actual work to the house- rebecca raked the dead leaves compost out of the front yard to make the house a bit more presentable.  we’ve got a bunch of chicken chicks we’re raising (not entirely sure how that’s home improvement related, but i don’t have much to write so don’t burst my bubble). 

i sense i’ll be called upon to speak in this meeting shortly, apparently to convince someone why we need something, explain what that something is, and justify the cost of that something.  now just to figure out what that something is…

having a “real” job… meaning being in the office from 8am ’till at least 5:30 plus a couple hours after getting home, with nary a respectable amount of time taken for lunch (respectable = 3hrs… this 45 minute thing is ass)… is putting a crimp in the plans of working on the house daily.  or even weekendly (it’s a word), because everything that can’t be done during the week has to be squeezed into weekends.  in short, nothing has been done to the house since the last post.  at least nothing outside of my imagination.

now… within the imagination… the house is looking stellar.  nicely painted, all the trim actually attached to the house, landscaping other than mud, a completed upstairs, a real master bedroom, home office, play room, craft room, nice kitchen, a blue llama bouncing on the trampoline (hey, i said imagination) and even a bit of new furniture here and there.  the camera doesn’t seem to capture any of that stuff… so no pics to post.

there are a couple hours of awake, non-working time once getting home from the office… but as i’d like to make sure my family actually knows me (unlike my coworkers and their families), i spend a bit of time with them, rather than working on the house.  weekends go by very, very fast… last weekend was the wee one’s 2nd birthday; we spent the whole time playing with her, and hoping that guests didn’t bail down our funky front steps, trip on the half torn-up kitchen or bathroom floors, or comment on the blue tarp in the front yard or piles of stuff in the driveway.  don’t quite know where this weekend went… but know the house looks just like it did before the weekend.

at least the heater is working, the mechanicals on the house are functional, and the place is mostly clean and livable.  (plastic-covered, heat leaking gaping hole where there used to be windows? don’t know what you’re talking about)