The Tiny Terrorist went back to day care this week! All parties involved were ready for this to happen, but I’m not going to lie, there was some anxiety on the part of Caitlyn and I.
For the last 2 months we have been taking care of Grant without a lot of outside assistance. Yes, my mom did help out, as did Caitlyn’s mom, but there were no reprieves from him that weren’t logistically necessary. So, he has picked up some of our habits, and not all of them are “daycare friendly”. Yes, he is peeing in the potty more often than not now. He also has become mesmerized by CSI and Eureka… But his tendency to poop his pants and his love of the word “Damnit” were worrisome traits to send him back with. That being said as we were walking away on Monday we heard another child shout “shut up” at the top of his little lungs. So, we may be failures as parents, but at least we aren’t the only ones.
Speaking of not failing, the weather has still been actively working against me making progress on the house. For the last 2 weeks its either been raining, cold, or both. That being said, Dad and I have still made progress on the house.
At this point in time we have replaced the stone half-wall, the old wooden siding, the old school underlayment, and repaired the water and ant damage on 2 sides of the house. We replaced the underlayment with OSB and the wood siding with cement board, so hopefully this doesn’t need to be done until the Tiny Terrorist’s grandkids are old enough to do it. We still need to put the trim on these sides, and put the stone back on, but at this point I think that will be waiting till we have the siding done on the entire house.
With all of the rain, it seemed like the right time to put in a rain catch for my garden. So, I acquired two 275 gallon IBC totes. Pretty lady took the drive to Spencer Indiana with me to pick them up. She took one look at them and then asked if I was sure that the two of us could lift them into the truck. I am happy to say we did fine and in fact, I managed to stack them next to the garage myself. Once they were stacked, I spent 2 days figuring out what combination of adapters it took to get from the threading that they had on them, to a garden house. it also took 3 trips to town to figure out a way to get the water from the gutter into the tanks. If you look closely at the photo, you’ll see a prime example of hybrid redneck engineering and theatre magic. Yes, I am more proud of this thing than I should be.
The garden however is not something I am proud of at this point… for now it is still covered in the plastic I’m using to kill the grass. You see in Indiana the dirt is mostly clay, and there is no way in hell i’m going to even try to cut through the sod and till a new garden with all the rain we’ve had. hopefully it’ll dry out in the next few days and I can get out there.
Until the weather cooperates, my small plants are going to be growing in the part of the house I haven’t started on yet… I currently have assorted peppers, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans and a couple of watermelon plants in what will someday be the main kitchen for the house. They aren’t planted in the garden, but as long as they are still alive, I have not failed yet!
The only other thing I have to report is that I have finished the first few chapters of the book. If you’d like to get a teaser of it, I am going to start randomly sending a page or two to the people on my emailing list. So please sign up for notifications below!
Days Unemployed: 61
Please sign up for notifications.
Would you like to hire me to write for you? Please email me at amanajeepnorealplan@gmail.com