And Up Some More!

Sorry for not putting up a blog up for a few days, but it turned out to be one of those weeks which seemed to keep galloping along too fast for me to catch up. You know, when you feel as if you are still somewhere on Monday, but land up somehow on Friday!

Been a good week. Apart from a trot off to the vets with Bools, who has developed a lump in his throat. He romped about with great glee in the river on Tuesday, then Wednesday morning started getting a lump. Waited until Thursday, then off to the vets we went. He doesn't seem to have anything dreadfully wrong, but visiting the vets daily so they can keep an eye on him.

The builders have been here all week, bless them, working in temperatures which have been high again. Four months without rain! Crikey, it has been the best of summers for living in caravans and having a house rebuilt. We consider ourselves to be very lucky in regards the weather.

But onwards the roof build proceeds. Photo up top: Interior wall is up to top beam, and now finished.

Interior wall to the right needs finishing off but is mostly done.



And come inside for a quick visit to our hallway, which at the moment doubles up as a parking lot for wheelbarrows and other buildery detritus.

Before you go, here is the half barn with its side walls now clad in plasterboard. We are not in favour of too much of this boarding, but we felt the ceiling needed to be matched up with, hence the side wall. The room looks a bit like a long tunnel at the moment, but every time something is done to the space, then the shape of the space changes. Hubs keeps asking me where I am going to put the furniture, and all I can say is "Wait and see" because the space will tell me where everything is to go. I envisage quite a lot of shunting, pushing and shoving of the furniture before I am satisfied that it looks OK, but then women do like to do this sort of thing when putting together a home. Hubs said to me ages ago, that if a woman is not interested in her home then she is not interested in the relationship.

I have often times repeated this to him when I have purchased an item for the home which he considers useless and I find it a useful turn of phrase for explaining myself on these occasions.

Yippeee! Have finally caught up with the piles of tomatoes that we have been privileged to harvest this year, with the last bowl being turned into Tomato and Sweetcorn soup, but by accident rather than design! I relate my souping experience over on Foody-ing:Tomato and Sweetcorn soup (by accident!): 13th Sept 2009.

Message From Bools which I will have to translate for you: "I've been a bit sick. Got a lump in my throat and couldn't breath properly. I am being fussed over, but not today because my lump has gone down a bit. Do you have nice girl-dog who can come and stay with me for some fun and frolics. This would cheer me up. I would like to be a dad before I get much older....". That's enough of that! He can't be that ill if he can think of having a girfriend!

So signing off for the moment. Thanks for visiting, and see you soon.

Up she goes!

And this is Bools racing over our brand new step into and out of the half barn, so instead of a huge 'step up/ step down' which is good for the thighs but difficult when one is carrying a tray of tea and biscuits for the builders, I can now manage this task with a degree of dignity! Bools would have stopped and said 'hello' to you but he was in a rush. I'll see if he will spare the time for a photo-shoot next time.

And today the builders knocked down the bits of wall which were inconvenient to them and covered the exposed nudity of the top of the wall by a layer of concrete.

And continuing your tour of our house, we are now in the lounge and you are looking up at the bedroom wall with the doorway into the second room whose use is as yet undefined. They built this today. Instead of biscuits this morning, I gave them some homemade cake. Actually I had to use the figs up and made a fig-tart thingy. Perhaps it was the figs that got them moving today. I believe that they are good for the food transit system of our bods, and perhaps added extra zest to the lads endeavours.

And now we are in the food storage room, or 'cave' as in 'carv'. Bedroom door to the left, top roof beam at the top, planks of wood nothing to do with the roof so are only in situ while the builders need them to be, chimney pot in the middle, and hey presto! We are heading up to the sky!

More divi's (quotes) on the way: for tall barn roof, for fosse (for the loo), and tiling the floor of the half barn. We haven't got an endless pot of money, but we seem to have done very well on what we have got.

Things I have learnt today: that no matter how busy one is, one should make time for 'time-out'. Being head down with PC work, and veg-gardening, and domestic duties, while enjoyable and good for keeping the halo bright and shiny, it is ultimately tiring for my soul. This is what I learnt today after half an hour of fun-play with Bools down by the river.

And wishing my Mum well in her recovery from her hip operation, and my daughter well in her move from her old life into her new one. Blessings to them both, and to you too.

What are we doing today?

Kept on making out adjustments from our old UK lifestyle, that's what we are doing.

At this moment I am having a go at preserving tomatoes, which seems a lot of effort what with it involving kilner jars and steaming and oh, grumbly, grumbly, more mess. I am sitting outside the awning, the sun is shining, and you know what? I have the smidgeon of a one-ness with what I am doing, which means me and my head are engaged in the same task. Most often, when I am doing a task, my head is off doing its own thing, thoughts rolling round my head hither and thither while I carry on doing what I am doing. Today, we seem to be all together as I sit with legs akimbo prepping the tomatoes on the grass (? well there would be grass if it were to rain: just now the grass is hay. And dust.) in between my feet.

Hubs is tinkering about behind me in the tall barn. His Project Of The Day is to put a blade sharpener onto an old cutting bench. My idea. Last time he used the sharpener it was on the floor of the awning. He wouldn't let me post those photos, but now he has put the sharpener into a safer position, I'm going to slip this one in:

I have just had a sip of tomato pulp, the recipe as given to be my friend, Val. Not much of a recipe really, just 1Kg tomatoes, 1 spoonful of sugar, 1 spoonful of salt. And so why does it taste so much better that the tinned tomatoes bought from the supermarket. Hence: another small step in our desensitization from supermarket food to home-grown. Really, really, food really, really tastes so much better when it is grown and harvested from fresh, that is what I am discovering.

"That's bad luck. I've broken my drill." Hubs yells out. "I've got the bit stuck in it."
"Try some oil" I say.
"Can't. Haven't got any."
"Try some Olive Oil".
"Where is it?"
"In the kitchen caravan".
Where in the 'van?"
"In the cupboard".
"Where in the cupboard?"
So I have just gone and got it for him, which seemed the best thing to do. And now Hubs must be a happy chappy because I can hear the drill working. Must go and rescue my bottle of olive oil otherwise that will be lost forever. He has a tendency to put things away in odd places. Bless.
"I've mounted my gear!" Hubs yells out. Imagination does a quick flash, but sensibility returns. Project Sharpener has been a succeess. Now I can hear him sharpening up something. Hang on a minute while I go and do a photo shoot for you.

"Vera, I did a big boys job" he said, pride oozing from the top of his head down to his toes: better than spending all day playing games on the PC which is what the usual Sunday acivity consisted of back in the UK. Living life, that is what Hubs is doing now.

Now it is later on in the day, and I have a confession to make: my Preserving Tomatoes didn't get very far, just down into our tums. The tomatoes were just too tasty to boil up in a kilner jar, so I added a few bits of this and we had them for lunch! Methinks that the Preserving Tomatoes Project might fetch up as a 2010 project. I am a little nervous about handling hot kilner jars, especially in the close confines of the caravan. I can manage jam jars, but kilner jars seem beyond my handling skills at the moment. But there is always next year. And I should be in the kitchen in the house. Whooppeeee! More space. Less cluttered. More tidy? Probably not!

Family pow-wow sitting on the floor of the half barn this afternoon: we have decided to save money by filling in the holes in the wall of the half barn ourselves, and also tiling the floor. The money saved can go to the fosse. Now the veg growing season is slowing up we needed a project to carry us through to the end of the year, so this will be it. A bit of dissent amongst the pow-wow members over the colour of the tiles, but that was soon fixed by a cup of tea and a biscuit. There was a plate of biscuits but the pow-wow member with four legs decided to grab a couple before they were shared out. Said member was sent away in disgrace, leaving the other pow-wow members with less to nibble with their tea, but bonhommie restored. Third member made a return soon afterwards, so all in all it became a productive pow-wow meet although the colour of the tiles is still up for discussion.

Now we have come to the end of the day. Soon time for bed. It has been a grand day, with lots of activities which are good for the soul. And here is my desk:



....which is awash with pots of chutney and jam waiting to be found a home. Plus the desk itself is sticky, and the computer keyboard and the mouse, and everything else! The kitchen caravan is just as sticky. Which means that I, of course, am sticky as well!

Hope your Sunday was a good and productive day as well, and that you laughed as much as we did.