Weekend Work

Friday morning I woke up early–groaning because I didn’t sleep well the night before–to take Danny to the veterinary for his surgery. It took a few tries to get him in the cage at the vet’s.  I stooped down, gave him lovings, told him he would be ok, and gently pushed him into the cage, but before I could draw back and latch the cage, he’d push himself out. At one point, he tried crawling into my lap. Poor dear. He hates the vet’s–and I hate to leave him. However, we thought it was best to remove the small growth near his eye before it could grow and cause complications.

After I left the veterinary, I stopped at the grocery store for a few items, and then drove to our bank to fax a form to the inspection company, giving them permission to do the inspections on the new house.

Later in the afternoon I went to pick up Danny. They said the surgery had gone well. I had been told that he would need a cone so he didn’t scratch the stitches, but they couldn’t find a cone that would fit him. One with an opening big enough to put around his neck would be much too long for him. I decided that if Danny started to scratch I’d just make a cone for him–possibly using poster board. So far Danny hasn’t even seemed to notice that he has stitches. He is such a calm, gentle, easy-going dog.

Later in the evening my guys arrived home from the North country for the weekend. The pets and I all greeted them warmly. Luke missed JJ so much that he cuddled close and trilled songs to him.

Since the pictures of our new house on the real estate site weren’t all that great, EJ drew me a diagram of the layout of the house. Saturday morning we discussed paint colors as we drank our coffee, as well as moving strategies, etc.

After breakfast I went back into the attic. I dragged out bags of JJ’s old toys and asked him to sort through them, deciding which to keep, which to donate, and which to throw away. He had fun re-discovering toys he had forgotten. He actually kept fewer keepsakes than I had expected. While he went through the toys, I dragged out other bags and boxes to sort through. I took bags of “throw aways” to the trash can, and put the boxes of donate stuff in the car. I’ll take them to Goodwill some time in the next week.

After lunch, EJ and JJ worked on getting some more drywall up in the hallway. They didn’t get it all done, but they did make progress. Meanwhile, I did dishes and laundry.

Sunday morning EJ taught me how to do drywall mudding so that I can make progress on the house while I’m here. Mudding sort of uses the same method that I use when I butter toast: spread it on and then scrape it off.

While EJ hung a few more pieces of drywall, I dragged JJ out to the garage to help me try to pull down a dead limb that’s on the roof. He first tied a stick and then a hand rake to the end of a rope and threw it up onto the roof like a grappling hook, hoping it would catch on the limb so he could tug it down. We didn’t have much success, but it did give us plenty of opportunities to laugh. He finally made a loop in the rope and lassoed the end of the branch. We tugged and tugged and couldn’t get the limb down. It must be tangled in the branches of a living tree. We finally gave up. Oh, well.

After the guys left for the North, I took Danny for his walk and then I went upstairs and mudded. I kept thinking of The Karate Kid as I worked: wax on, wax off, spread it on, scrape it off. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I figure I have to start somewhere and EJ can correct my technique when he comes home next weekend.

I did a bit of mudding for a while and then I went out to the garage and dragged out the mower. Our grass is getting a bit tall-ish in places so I thought I’d try to cut it. I didn’t have much hope of getting the mower started after its winter’s rest. Last year I struggled half the summer with mowers that wouldn’t work and was about to declare war on all mowers everywhere. To my amazement, the mower started quite easily today. Yay!

The weather is forecast to get increasingly warm as the week progresses so I’m hopeful that I can get started painting the garage. I anticipate that this week I will be quite productive.