SUMMER TIME IS NOT FOR BLOGGING

THAT’S MY EXCUSE AND I’M STICKING WITH IT.

I am not blogging much this summer.   Summertime for me is maintenance time, and last summer I fell behind when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer – she is doing great.

I have a post and beam house and it is built like a fortress.   

The sills are 8x6 inch beams and they are covered on the outside with a spacing board that allows Styrofoam panels to be placed between the interior and exterior walls. 

 I found some rot in the outer plate covering the sill so had to remove the siding, cut out and remove a section of the outer wall, replace the spacing board and then put it all back together: a two-day job that turned out to be four because of measure twice, cut once, then measure and cut again….   It took me three tries to get the siding right because six-inch cedar siding is five and a half inches wide and I had my head up my ass.

 

It is done now and done properly.    Now I have to repaint the front of the house.   

WINTER IS COMING.  

It is also time to put in my firewood for the coming winter.

 I order firewood cut and split, but about a third of the wood is larger than I like it, so I split the larger pieces before placing them in my wood shed: splitting firewood in the winter snow and cold is not fun.

    

I also have to replace some parts on my eighteen-year-old snow blower and hope it will get me through another year.

  

There are at least a half-dozen other jobs I hope to complete before the first snow – then I can kick back, feed the wood stove, read, blog and take it easy…. between digging out from snow storms.  

All this is not a complaint: I love my life in Maine and I wouldn’t change it.    Summer work and winter chores keep me grounded to the earth.   How boring and superficial it would be to have everything done for me.

the Ol’Buzzard

FILTHY MC NASTY

It has been a while since I posted –lot of summer maintenance projects to complete.   Here in western Maine winter and snow always looms just beyond the horizon – a time to be done with chores… except digging out from snow storms. 

I have jacked and leveled my back shed, put away my firewood (still some to split,) leveled my oil tank, re-plumbed under the sink,  am painting our mudroom, having our driveway resurfaced with stone dust, need to build new steps to the oil tank… and of course never ending mowing the lawn…

I can’t complain as the weather has been great.  Most days in the seventies and nights dropping into the sixties: this past week, however, we have had temps reaching into the eighties.

Anyway, Filthy Mc Nasty:   It has dawned on me after all these years that men’s shoes should be classified as toxic material.   Not that the inside may or may not stink (depending on the foot sweat of the individual,) but where those shoes have been. 

Now that I am older I mark my turf from bathroom to bathroom.  When I go shopping I pee at every spot along the way.  Men’s public bathrooms are sometimes cleaner than women’s – I am told; but there is always a coating of pee under the men’s urinals and you have to stand in it to take a leak.   Either we all think we are longer than we actually are or more likely the last squirt or few drops don’t make it inside the porcelain catch.   Anyway, every time we use a public urinal we are tracking through someone else’s piss – not to mention all the other crap on the sidewalks and grounds. 

Kinda gives you a new perspective on your shoes doesn’t it?

the Ol’Buzzard