What to Do on a Windy Day

It did get down to 38F degrees last night and although it's sunny and exactly the 61F degrees that NOAA predicted yesterday (how do they do that?), the winds did pick up and are even higher today.  NOAA says gusts as high as 30 mph.  

Even though I abhor the wind, I spent about an hour outside this morning changing the hinges on this cabinet so it opens from the left instead of the right...

This is something I started last November!  This cabinet was one of the first things I painted when I decided to paint the interior of the cabin.  I had taken the door off, but knew I needed to get it out on the deck where I could put it on its back in order to change the hinges.  

This morning I unloaded all of the dishes and food items it was housing, cleared a path through the cabin, dragged it out onto the deck, along with its door, located the hinges and screws and then started trying to figure out how to switch the hinges.  I measured the locations of the old screw holes and marked the same holes on the opposite side, drilled pilot holes so it would be easier to screw the screws in, then started trying to determine, with my spatial limitations, which way the hinges went.  That took some time, but through trial and error--I always feel like the chimp who was failing the test--I actually got them right the first time.  Because of my arm injury I had to take the screws out three times and re-drill in order to be able to get the screws in, but I eventually prevailed.  

Once I got the cabinet out in daylight I could see that the single coat of paint I'd given it while I was listening to the football game last November needed touching up.  For some reason I'd totally skipped painting the wall behind this cabinet, so that had to be done as well.

Even though I'd wrapped my paint tray, roller and brush in plastic bags the last time I used them, it had been so long ago they had dried out.  I couldn't get the cover off the roller and have been painting with a brush.  My injured arm gets tired quickly, so part of the time I'm painting left-handed.  

I decided while I was at it to see if I wanted to paint this plywood floor the same color as the walls...

Boy, I don't know.  I'm all for cozy, but this is almost claustrophobic.  I think I'll need at a least a slightly different color just to differentiate between the walls and the floor.


I also sanded and filled in where I'd removed this one shelf right inside the cabin door where the secretary is going once I get it painted...

I think I'm going to have to ask my neighbor to help me get the top shelf off since I couldn't even do it when I had two good arms.  I think it will require the thinnest pry bar he owns in order to get under this and put some tension on that screw that's just going round and round.


I'm also making the ugly side table disappear, painting in situ because of the wind...

On the wildlife front, I haven't seen Vixen this morning, but she was here twice yesterday evening.  I'm always a little relieved she doesn't seem to be relying entirely on me for food.  

Poor old Valentino also came later, but got into a foot race with Jimmy who appeared out of nowhere.  It was nip and tuck, with Valentine leading Jimmy on a merry chase in, around and through these aspens next door...

...with me yelling at Jimmy to stop and holding my breath the fox would win.  My own Belmont Stakes.  Valentino won, but I think it was a close enough call he also wasn't saying I'll Have Another. I don't think he ever returned to eat.

I also had a visit from the bear about 11 o'clock last night.  I was just sleeping good when I heard it pulling at the firewood access door on the east side of the woodshed and pulling and pulling and pulling, then moving over to the one hummingbird feeder I still have up on the east side of the cabin and trying, unsuccessfully to pull it down.  It sounds very large when it's moving around outside and walking on the deck.  I still have never been able to see it out the window and wish I had the nerve to go out with my camera, but figure one accident per summer is probably enough and I don't need to add bear wounds to those I already have!  Teddee

What a Difference a Day Makes

By yesterday afternoon, this was all that was left of the previous day's snow...

I took these this morning, but with our overnight low, things hadn't changed that much from late yesterday afternoon.  So, it's all clear for right now.  

In fact, there isn't a cloud in the sky, the sun is shining brightly and temps should be in the low 60F degrees today.  NOAA has revised the high for tomorrow down to 66F degrees from 69F degrees, however, and a 40%-50% chance of rain/snow is being predicted for Friday and Saturday.  With a low of 29F degrees predicted for Saturday night, plain old snow is on the menu again.


I heard my first hummingbird this morning!  I've e-mailed the ecology center in Nederland to find out, based on the above weather forecast, whether I should wait to put my feeders out.  I expect the answer to be "yes," but it's tempting.


I'd been waiting for the fox and she just came to be fed.  She's starting to look a little better, I think...

Hmm! Hmm!  Kibble and egg...

Gotta clean my face...

Resting...

You can see what a chunk something has taken out of her tail about midway up.  I wonder if the fur will ever grow back?   I think the ear split is old.


I put Dixie in the cabin while the fox is here and I praise Dixie to high heaven when she comes on command to leave the fox alone and come in.  She seems to be getting it.  I tell her she's my best girl to go against her nature.  We haven't seen nearly as much of Apollo.  He came one day last week with a blue harness on and a plastic-encased note attached, "Please don't feed me. Thx."  So, he's not getting any hand-outs and I'm trying to bring the fox's food back in as soon as she's finished so he doesn't get that.  He was really packing on the weight.  Was the original Apollo Creed a heavyweight?


Teddee

Getting Ready for Snow!

If NOAA is correct, we could get as much as eight inches of snow over the next couple of days....that's if we get the maximums predicted.  We set some kind of high temperature record on Friday, I think.  At least they did in Denver...87F degrees...and the aspens are leafed out, the grass is greening up nicely, the dandelions are looking perky in my neighbor's green lawn...and we're getting the snow we should have got back in March.  I think everyone is just hoping we do get some moisture.  Even though it is 50F degrees and the sun was shining at the time, we already had a little snow shower a bit ago.  My neighbor said it looked "almost magical" and I thought it looked like a movie set.  The snow seemed suspended in the air.  I tried to get a photo, but was unable to capture it.

Whatever it does, I'm set.  Dixie and I went to the spring to get water, stopping off at the post office to pick up the mail and at the library to drop off a couple of books on the way.  The library is closed on Sunday so I was pleased to find some magazines in my mail.  Gotta have my reading material.  I filled all my jugs with water...

and also stopped and picked up some pine cones on the way back. 

I had picked up "mountain driftwood" kindling on Friday when I walked, so I'm set for kindling.  

I stopped here...

...the supermarket in Nederland and got minimal groceries, a dozen eggs and some 99-cent-a-pound chicken quarters primarily for the fox.  I thought this morning when she came to eat that I saw, in addition to her tail damage, a wound in her groin area, but couldn't see well enough to be sure.  I think she was just so beat up a couple of weeks ago from this fight she'd obviously had that perhaps she couldn't hunt and that's why she started coming by for food.  I notice she's getting pickier...she really doesn't like canned cat food but had been eating it in the beginning but isn't going for it now...a good sign I think.  She'll eat cat kibble and I've started breaking a raw egg into the kibble because I noted day before yesterday that she took a whole raw egg I'd given her over into the neighbor's yard and hid it and came right back.  I have no way of knowing if she ever goes back and eats the whole eggs and she seems to really like the egg in the kibble.  The chunk cheese was on sale and I got some mild cheddar.  I was out of coffee so popped for a jar of the store brand instant.  That should hold me until the eagle flies on Wednesday.


Here are some other shots of the little shopping center in Nederland.  B&F is also home of the "famous" Mountain Burger..."...as Big as the Rockies."

There are numerous small shops and restaurants. 

I see I didn't capture Dam Liquors, which is on the far left.  Nederland is home of Barker Reservoir so there really is a dam.  Someone opened a toy store in the last several months, right next to the yoga studio...I wasn't sold on the name Voodoo Toys if it is a children's toy store.   So after you order your pizza at Backcountry Pizza, rent a video at Dog House Video, stop off at Greener Mountain for the grow light for your...tomatoes, right?...you can get a tat.  

It was the chef at The Savory Cafe who stopped in the canyon late in the evening last fall, after my car blew up following repairs at the Sears Auto Center in Longmont, and gave me a lift home...

The police station is at far right and even further right and not shown is a laundromat that I don't use because the cheapest washer is $4 a load.


Moving on to the right is a handmade carousel, housed in this building, that seems to get quite a lot of attention...

I'll go in there one of these days and take some photos of the animals which were hand carved by, I believe, a Viet Nam vet.  I'll get more of the back story when I take the photos.


To the right of this is a restaurant/coffee house/candy shop in a complex of old train cars.  I wish I had my shop in these.

So, when I blog about shopping for groceries, this is where it happens.

When I got home, I carried in wood...

...finally filled the windshield washer in my car with the fluid I'd purchased the last time I was at Walmart and also added some coolant.  I think my car is getting so hot coming up the canyon, despite the fact that I'm turning on the heater to draw off some of the heat, that it's boiling off because I added coolant just a few weeks ago.  Don't know how much longer I can go without really getting to the bottom of that overheating problem.


It's 3 p.m. and has gotten really dark, the temperature is dropping and it is snowing again lightly.  I left Dixie in the car with the door open.  Guess I'd better get out there and see if I can convince her to come in.


Here we go...

Teddee

Getting Ready for Snow!

Our lives here in Eldora really do revolve around the weather even though we don't farm.  NOAA is still predicting snow for tomorrow and Sunday and the front is apparently close enough now that they're willing to go out on a limb and predict a 70% chance of snow tomorrow and a 90% chance of snow tomorrow night with an accumulation of three to five inches possible.  I'm prepared...

I've been whittling away on the woodpile and think it's getting smaller...

...and the wood cord is getting bigger...

When I was a child, my sister and I used pieces of firewood to create sideboards on our red wagon so it would hold more wood.  I don't recall our parents teaching us this.  We were quite innovative.  I've adapted that idea by putting a shallow, flat piece of wood in the front of the wheelbarrow to keep the wood from falling out when I'm underway...

I've been amazed, despite the number of warm days we've had, how much ice remains under this woodpile...

Was it sawdust or straw that was used to insulate ice before refrigeration?

The only project I have planned for today is to try to repair the ding on this picture frame that I had painted ready to take to the resale shop in Rollinsville when Dixie knocked the space heater over and into it...

 

The frame has some very subtle carving on it and I didn't want to get Spackle in that.  I'll give this a light sanding and see how it looks, then if the winds remain calm, try to give the whole thing another coat of spray paint.

The winds were really strong all night and it was supposed to be 29F degrees and felt it.  They added to a night that made me feel as if I'd slept in a boiler factory housing barking dogs.  Dixie spent all afternoon in the backseat of my car with the door open.  I've positioned the overhead light switch so the light doesn't come on and run my battery down.  She got out about 6 p.m. and about half an hour later I saw her owner, who has returned from vacation, stop and pick her up, leaving the car door open, turn the car around and head back east, down the canyon, not west, toward her home.  She had her hair in an up-do and was wearing a black leather maxi coat, not her usual attire.  I walked out and closed the car door. 

At 1 a.m., having just entered sound sleep, I awoke thinking I'd dreamed I'd heard a dog barking.  But it was real.  It went on for at least 20 minutes. Finally I got up, got dressed, took the quilt down off the door and opened it to find both Jimmy and Dixie, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, on my doorstep.  Their owner has told me she never lets them out after dark.  She also has told me they have full-time access to a greenhouse through a pet door, so she must usually lock the pet door at night.  I have no idea what they were doing afield unless she had attended some event, just got home, let them out thinking she'd put them right back in and they decided to come down for a midnight snack.  I fed them some canned pet food outside and told them to go home.  I think Jimmy did, but Dixie stayed out there, barking off and on for a full hour.  I don't think she was barking to be let in as she sounded as if she was out in the yard.  Finally I heard what sounded like something being pursued across the deck and the barking receded off into the east.  During this, the winds were really gusting and a bamboo wind chime I had purchased last year and just put back out during our warm spell, was repeatedly hitting the side of the cabin with a thunk.  I didn't think to take it down when I was feeding the dogs.  

I finally slept and was awakened sometime after sunrise to the sound of my cell phone repeatedly alerting me the battery was weak.  I put up with that for about an hour, hoping it would finally die, then got up, plugged it in, started the fire, put in a really big chunk of wood and turned on the second space heater.  I swear I heard Dixie bark at least once at this point, but I dared not open the door to check.  I guess she spent the entire night out in that horrible wind and low temperature in my yard.  I turned my electric blanket on high and went back to sleep until about 8:30 a.m., awake but not rested.

As a result, all I'm going to do the remainder of the day is go to the post office to mail some checks, return a library book and stop off at Ace, get some of those rubber spacers for my coat rack and take the new hand sander back and see if they can show me why I can't get that plastic dust canister cover to stay on.

Have to rest up for tomorrow and the grand opening of the new Goodwill in Longmont!  What have you got planned for the weekend?  Teddee

Hail, Hail...

We just had a little hail storm here in Eldora.  I had gone to Nederland to the post office to mail my German pen pal's birthday gift (Happy Birthday, Ingrid!--We've written to each other since I was 12 and she was 13!) and had waited until about 3:30 p.m. so I could stop by the grocery store and take advantage of the Cheap Chicken ($4.99 between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Wednesdays) and the Wednesday Senior Discount.  While I was shopping, it started raining, but as I drove home and passed this magical demarcation where the weather always gets more extreme, the pavement was steaming (it had been at least 60F degrees earlier) and then all of a sudden, the road was covered with hail.  I'd missed the whole thing!  I bet it sounded great on the tin roof.

This is what the yard and deck look like...

I'm capturing a little run-off water...

...but it has stopped, so I don't think it's going to amount to much although NOAA is predicting a 30% chance of rain/snow tonight.  The predicted low of 29F degrees is good "snow making" temperature.

I had just been about to write that if I were still living in the Midwest, the hail and rapidly changing temperatures probably would be heralding tornadoes then I heard on KUVO that there has been a tornado spotted northeast of Denver.  Hope everyone out that way is OK and it doesn't do too much damage.

We don't have tornadoes here in the mountains as far as I know.  Do you have them where you live?  Teddee


P.S.  I wish I could do a scratch 'n sniff.  I just stepped outside.  The hail is almost all melted and the smell of pine is so intense I think it would almost transmit!

Painting Almost Completed

I decided yesterday to finish painting the south end of the cabin.  I tried hand sanding the Spackled areas and could see that wasn't going to work so went to Ace and purchased a small Black & Decker hand sander.

After draping the bunk area with drop cloths...

...I started sanding...







It got the job done but there were a couple of issues.  The "clear plastic housing of the [dust] canister" as referred to in the enclosed instructions, would not stay on.  Without it, apparently all of the dust was just going out into the room.  The canister, which was supposed to be emptied every five minutes, was totally empty at the end of the job and although the dust on the furniture was not intolerable, I did have to go over everything with a duster when I was finished.   I'm going to take it back to Ace and see how they'll handle this complaint. 

The other thing was that the sandpaper wore out almost immediately...

...I guess because 1) I'd already "damaged" the sandpaper when I bent it to insert it (why don't they make these sandpaper sheets with flexible edges that don't crack?), and 2) I was using the edge to get down into the cracks of the bead board, so was putting undue pressure on it.  I managed to get the worst of the rough Spackle sanded off with four pieces of sandpaper.

Then I started painting.  Of course I knew what to expect--pinstripes--but it seemed worse in this end of the cabin...

Prep always take longer than the actual project.  I didn't get started painting until 4 p.m.  The ceiling was the worst...

After I rolled the paint on I had to take the brush and try to fill in all the crevices.  I'd think I had them filled then I'd look at them from a different angle and could still see white.  In fact, even after all my repeated efforts, I can still see areas that I'm going to have to go back over perhaps with a very stiff artist's brush...or a cotton swab dipped in paint...or a toothpick!  I'm not sure, but I know I won't be happy until all of these white areas are covered with paint.

I even got the curtains taken down and window taped off and painted...

...and the door sort of painted.  I need to open the panels and the door itself and paint the edges. (My brother-in-law carves walking sticks and these are a couple he's left here that I've put in an umbrella stand I found in one of my thrift store forays).

Anyway, it looks pretty good...

I finished about 8 p.m. and then had to drag everything that I'd moved out to the deck back into the cabin in case the wind came up in the night or it finally decided to rain...

This photo should be labeled "In Search of the Perfect Shelf."  With the goal of displaying more porcelain, I've bought three shelves, each with the groove for plate display.  Does that have a name?  I'm almost at a point now where I can decide where, if anywhere, these might go and then I can paint them. 

I had painted the mirror in the foreground preparatory to taking it to Wild Bill's in Rollinsville.  It had been in perfect condition, but I thought the black paint would be better than the original dark green for resale.  I had just got it painted and Dixie knocked over the space heater and gouged out a little place so now I've got to fill that, sand it and repaint it. 

By the way, guess who returned today?

The Boyfriend cruised by earlier, cop shades firmly in place, when I was eating brunch out on the deck, Dixie at my feet.  I ignored him. 

I felt as if I'd been run over by a truck earlier today, but I think I might have enough umph now to trek some more of this wood over to the privacy fence and cord it up before our weather changes.  NOAA is still showing 20%-30% chance of rain and or snow right through Saturday starting tonight.

What projects are you checking off your list?  Oh, and to my few and reticent followers, you are allowed to comment!  Teddee

Don't Blink

The weather is changing so quickly these days that you don't want to blink or you'll feel it's the day before.  The snow we had day before yesterday is almost gone.  Here's the picnic table Monday...

...it was hard to believe I had been sitting here Sunday, reading, eating lunch and talking on the phone and getting too hot...

Now, here it is this morning, once again totally free of snow....

There's just a little snow left in the meadow...

 The corded wood...

...and the woodpile...

are free of snow and, in fact, I brought wood in from this pile yesterday and it burned readily.

I see no more snow in the NOAA forecast.  Our highs are heading into the low 50F degrees with lows in the 30s.

I took Dixie and drove to Boulder to do some errands yesterday.  Got the settlement check from Sears into the bank and dropped off a letter from the company that handles my Medicare drug coverage at my doctor's office.  It appears they might be willing to consider covering my non-Big-Pharma thyroid medication.  At least they are giving me a chance to have her write them a letter indicating not only do I feel better when using Armour bovine thyroid which, I believe, is cheaper than Synthroid, but I also don't have to take a second drug to effect the proper conversion of T4 to T3.  I noticed yesterday in the news that the internal medicine practitioners themselves are finally taking some steps to eliminate unnecessary tests and drugs.  Do you suppose someone somewhere is finally starting to look at these issues sensibly?

I didn't blog yesterday evening because I had waited until 9 p.m. for either Dixie's owner or her owner's boyfriend to come pick her up.  When I phoned her owner, the boyfriend answered and indicated Dixie's owner was not there.  I inquired whether I should drive Dixie home and he indicated in the affirmative.  When I got there...it's just up the street...he was outside and started raking me over the coals for allowing Dixie to come into my house.  I knew he'd been harboring resentment since last fall about picking her up he was always so petulant when he came.  So we got into a bit of a shouting match, with my indicating that if they'd keep their dogs inside not only would Dixie coming to my cabin not be an issue, but she'd still have four legs.  I think the thing that really got under my skin was that I realized after I got back home that Dixie's owner is actually out of the country on vacation...she had told me about her planned trip...and her boyfriend only found the fortitude to confront me about his resentment because she was gone. 

Anyway, no dogs today.  So I don't have to worry about going off and leaving Dixie sitting forlornly in the yard when I leave to go to Boulder to do laundry and, hopefully, I'll be able to start walking regularly again which I don't feel I can do with her trying to cripple along.  I woke up this morning realizing that I can always call the Sheriff and have both Dixie and Jimmy taken to the pound when they "trespass" and cause a barking nuisance on my deck if I continue being put in the wrong because these people are allowing their dogs to run free.  If we go back to our routine when Dixie's owner returns and I continue to get the attitude from the boyfriend I may be forced to point out this option.

Does your compassion for animals have unpleasant side effects?  Teddee