Back in My Little Mountain Home

After spending most of last week in Boulder, days making trips back and forth between the storage unit...

 ...after the first load was removed...

...almost there!


...and the apartment building and nights exhausted on the foam mattress on the floor of the very small bedroom, the only room in the apartment that can be kept cool, I'm back in Eldora in the cabin.  I arrived yesterday afternoon after having made the final trip to the storage, leaving it empty for the proprietors to find this morning.  Even though I was paid through July 14, I just wanted to get the task completed and they were anxious to start double dipping since they give no refunds!  

So now, everything is in the one-bedroom apartment.  I've opened all the boxes and unwrapped everything, made some attempt at sorting the items, taken a few things down to the "free table" in the apartment building and will try this week to take a few of the better items that I don't want around the corner to Clutter Consignment to see if they might be interested in attempting to sell them.  I have been on their e-mail list ever since I got my computer and attended their open house last year celebrating their one-year anniversary,  having no idea I'd be living around the corner a year later.  Some of the residents of the apartment building apparently have had good luck selling things through the store when they were downsizing into the small apartments.


I had found a few things as I unpacked boxes that I thought might go in the cabin and also needed to get on the computer, which I've left in the cabin because my internet service here only costs $30 a month and I haven't had the opportunity to determine what it may cost in Boulder.  If it's as expensive as I've heard, I may just have to leave the computer here...a good excuse to return at least weekly!


The foxes are aware when I return and come to be fed.  Vixen came once yesterday and Valentino has been here twice.  I had no chicken, but came prepared with a dozen eggs to augment their kibble as well as some cheese, and they seem to be accepting what I'm able to provide.  The last time I came to the cabin, a third fox was flirting around in the background.  I think it must have been one of their kits.  He (I don't know why I think it was a male) was so cute.  Almost full grown, so healthy looking with a wonderful coat and full tail.  Maybe all that protein his parents have been taking back to the den!

I, on the other hand, have been eating primarily free fresh produce, which appears in the apartment building common room every Friday morning. We've received berries, cherries...

...spinach, artichokes, asparagus, corn on the cob and melon among other things...

...these turnips were wonderful...so mild...and it had been years since I'd shelled peas...

...this was always something my mother, sister and I did as a team.  I invariably pulled my thumbnail away from the nail bed and ended up with a sore thumb afterward, but there weren't enough of these to cause injury.  

When the produce is delivered...between 8:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. each Friday, the early risers descend on the free food like locust.  If you time it right, you can be one of the locust.  If not, you get the leftovers...five blackberries, three strawberries, a couple of beets...and the only sign of the food delivery a few hours later will be a few wilted leaves in the elevators!  

This past Friday, the produce included some over-ripe pears at which most residents were turning up their noses.  I took several, peeled, cored and cooked them with a little Stevia.  They'll be great.  Already the 2nd.  Only nine more days 'til the second Wednesday and the S.S. check!

I must go back to Boulder today.  I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon south of Denver with my glaucoma specialist and didn't even bring a change of clothes with me, plus I need to drop off my rent check.  We have until the 5th to pay, but three days isn't going to make any difference to me.

Now that I have everything centrally located in the apartment I'm hoping I can turn my attention to the exercises I'm supposed to be doing for my rotator cuff strain.  I did them for two days and then they got lost in the process.  I wrote to Boulder Housing Partners last Tuesday inquiring if they had liability insurance that might help with my medical expenses and haven't had a response, so I'm not signing up for the recommended physical therapy until I know the answer.  My arm is getting stronger daily so I hope I regain full use of it, but there are still extreme positions that still cause pain, so I need to do my part. 


What else?  The last time I was at the cabin I thoroughly cleaned the wood stove and blacked the top...

...as I think I mentioned in my last posting, I did get the glass out of the doors of the hutch...

...someone had kindly left an old single-edge razor blade here at the cabin and by very carefully pushing it between the glass the the wooden insert I was able to get glass out, clean it and paint the wood underneath.  So, all done...

...I had fun "styling" the hutch.  Of course there was only half the amount of space I needed...always the case in my case!

I'd like to be painting the floor, but my current budget will not allow for the purchase of the paint and I haven't quite decided yet what color I want to paint it anyway.


I purchased this rug many weeks ago...

...this captures the colors very well.  I'm tempted to go with ebony, as high gloss as I can get floor paint!  Somehow painting the floor the background color of the rug doesn't appeal to me.  I'll have to pick up a few paint swatches and see where they lead me.


Well, I'm heading back down to the heat.  It's going to be 98F degrees in both Boulder and Denver tomorrow and here I am with no a/c in my car for that trip to the eye doctor!  The new clutch is definitely not in the budget.  It will only be 81F degrees in Eldora tomorrow and the high temps are going to be in the 70s with lows in the low 50s for the rest of the week after that.  

My neighbors were busily making homemade "No Fire" signs yesterday to supplement any official signage, concerned about the usual influx of July 4th visitors.  All I can do is keep my fingers crossed.  Every time I depart, leaving my computer behind, I'm anxious.  Here is a photo I took of the smoke from the fire that has been burning up behind the Flatirons in Boulder for the last week...

...no municipalities are having fireworks from what I've been reading.  Hope for a safe and fire-free holiday.  Teddee

Fires to the Right of Us...

No matter where you live, you no doubt are getting some news coverage now of Colorado's numerous wildfires.  So far, we are OK here in Eldora and, in fact, had just a bit of rain late yesterday and last night.  Things don't look or feel quite as crispy as they did yesterday morning.


Although the fire in Colorado Springs seems to be the worst right now, there was a fire in Estes Park on Saturday...that's about 46 miles north of the cabin...and there is one in south Boulder as well.


Because I left my camera power cord at the apartment, I am still unable to post any photos, but just wanted my few (buy loyal) readers apprised of the situation here.


I have had a very productive few days here at the cabin and will just wait until I can post photos to provide any detail.  The high point was that I was able to get the glass out of the hutch doors so was able to rectify my painting error and the secretary is all assembled and fully stocked.  I did many other chores here and, although it appears my sister and her husband are not coming to vacation in the cabin in July, may not come at all or may not come until August, if they walked in today, they would be able to deal with the current situation nicely.  There are still a number of things I'd like to do before they come, but the weather has cooled off just a little...it's only going to be 94F degrees in Boulder today...and I'm going to take another load of things down to the apartment and then try to make myself go to the storage and bring out at least one more load to sort through.  What fun.  At least my erratic energy level seems to be way up so I'm striking while the iron is hot.


I'll leave you with this photo from last June...

Think cool and wet.  More later, Teddee

Home Again

Yes, this little cabin still feels like home.  I spent all of the past week at the apartment in Boulder during some of the hottest weather the city had suffered through so far this summer.  And I thought I'd seen the last of triple digit temps when I happily departed Phoenix!  Unfortunately, the apartments are very hot.  They only have one unit air conditioner in the bedroom and there is absolutely no air circulation out into the living room and kitchen.  I looked for a fan at the thrift stores last week but, of course, in the midst of a heat wave, found none.  The unit a/c does keep the bedroom cool enough for sleeping, but is totally insufficient for cooling the rest of the apartment.  Other residents have told me that until a year ago they had no a/c unless they purchased a window unit and installed it themselves!  I don't know how they managed.

I made one trip to my storage unit on Sunday and two on Monday and I think one on Tuesday.  I've lost track.  I did finally remember to take some photos after taking out the first--and worst--load, but just realized this morning I'd left the power cord for my camera at the apartment so am unable to post any of the photos I've taken since I left here last week.  Just to break the monotony, I'll post a few shots I took here in Eldora last June...

It is quite hot and dry here in the mountains as well, and as I reviewed and edited these photos from a year ago, I'm impressed with how much further along all the blooming flowers are this year as a result.  The wild roses are in full bloom already, something I missed last year when I spent July in Tacoma.  The high in Eldora today is predicted to be 84F degrees.  I'm showing about 82F degrees at 2:30 p.m.  My neighbor said Eldora had received no rain during the days I was in Boulder and the grasses in the meadow are sounding crunchy.  One can only keep one's fingers crossed that no one thoughtlessly drops a cigarette.  It's predicted to be 102F degrees in Boulder today, tapering off to 96F degrees by Wednesday.  The high here in Eldora on Wednesday will be 77F degrees.

I think I have possibly five or six more carloads of stuff to remove from my storage unit.  I have until July 14 and have already alerted management that I'm vacating.  Once I got the first (or last) layer out of the front of the unit, I found I actually did have things stored in pretty good order in behind that.  

Loading the car at the storage unit is easy.  I can park right by the unit.  But at the apartment I have to take things up to the third floor using the grocery carts available and that usually takes three trips.  

I've been pleasantly surprised at how the ample kitchen cupboard space in the apartment...

as well as the small storage room...

...which is actually about twice as big as this photo reveals...have easily swallowed up a great quantity of dishes, decorative items, craft materials and the few pots and pans I had purchased after I moved into the cabin.

My neighbor here in Eldora had to come to Boulder for a rehearsal on Thursday...he plays clarinet in a small orchestra that, among other things, accompanies silent movies presented all over the country...so he brought the adjustable table that had been sitting out on the deck for the last several weeks and the rest of the baker's rack to the apartment.  I spent the day sorting all of the things I'd brought from storage up to that point, which were all over the living room, and had space cleared for both pieces when he arrived.  I took three lots of items down to the common room and put them on the "free table" and they disappeared quickly.  I had a lot of fun staging the baker's rack that evening and will post some photos of that later.

Well, it's 4:45 p.m. and almost 90F degrees.  A breeze has just come up thankfully.  It was quite still here for much of the afternoon.  Each one of these photos has taken at least 15 minutes to upload.  I have no idea what's causing this, but while I've waited on each one I cleared off the couch, put some clean linens in the trunk we use both as storage and as a coffee table, put all my painting tools and materials in a plastic storage box I brought back up with me from the apartment and got that wall where those two shelves had been removed painted.  

Now I can move the secretary and hutch back against the wall, put the drawers back in the base, put the hardware back on and affix the drop-down desk.  I purchased a bottle of gold enamel paint at Hobby Lobby in Longmont last week with a 40% off coupon on one of two trips to the chiropractor and will attempt to obscure the back of that insert on the hutch doors.  I was going to see if the paint would release with heat so I could get the glass out, but forgot the hair dryer so think I'll just go directly to the paint fix.

Vixen came last night about dark, ate every bit of kibble and egg I put out and took off with two chicken legs back to the den.  I haven't seen her today.  She seemed very subdued and I didn't think she looked well.  I fear she may not make it through next winter.


More later...Teddee

Escape to the City

NOAA is predicting 40 mph wind gusts for Eldora, and it feels as if they are stronger than that already, so I'm taking my very loaded car to the apartment in Boulder and after unloading will plan to stay overnight.  One of the items in my car is this foam mattress...

...which is going to have to suffice for a bed at the new digs for the time being.  The original offer of a double bed from a cabin here in Eldora whose owners were replacing it with a queen evaporated when they decided to put it in their guest bedroom in their Boulder home.  So, I'm taking bed linens, pillow, etc. and will try to turn this baby into a passable bed for the near future.

Much of the rest of this is dirty laundry.  I feel like a college student in reverse.  I'd been putting off doing laundry until the good old S.S. check came through and probably have $20 worth even with the slightly less expensive coin machines at the apartment building.  It will be nice to be able to do other chores upstairs in the apartment simultaneously.

This coming week I'm going to concentrate on removing everything from the storage unit I have in Boulder.  That's going to be a challenge with this bum arm, but I'm taking a little step stool that will give me another ten inches in height, so I won't have to lift things up so high.  We'll see how it goes.  My plan to is to take boxes back to the apartment and sort through them there.  I'm going to see if the apartment management has any objections to my putting any rejects in the common room for other residents to pick over if they want.  The idea is just to get out from under the monthly rent at Boulder Bins so I can give it to Boulder Housing Partners.  The shell game.

I've got everything battened down here so it won't blow away, I've given Vixen her "last breakfast" and I'll be off line for at least a couple of days.  More later.  Teddee

Uh! Oh!

I spent much of the morning outside on the deck finishing painting the secretary and hutch.  I tackled the cubbyholes in the secretary... 

Not easy to get your hand back in these areas and I'm not totally pleased with the job I did, but I decided, once again, it wasn't anything anyone was going to notice but me.  

I'd sanded some places down on the hutch after I'd painted it the other day and wanted to give those areas another coat so did that.  Everything was looking good.  This evening I decided it was time to take the paper and tape off the glass in the doors of the hutch...

...still looking pretty good.  Tape didn't hold perfectly and I'll need to get my craft knife out and do a little scraping and there are some places on the wood that I'll need to touch up with a small paint brush.  No problem.  I was so excited I was already styling the inside of this hutch!

What I hadn't considered was that nice little arched inset...

 ...is not replicated on the inside.  So when I removed the paper and tape from the inside...

Oh, yuck!  I'm now seeing the unpainted back of said inset!  Paint has bled back underneath it and there's even a bit of blue painter's tape in between the glass and the wood!

Before I started painting this piece I noticed the little rubber stoppers and realized they were designed to secure the glass, but made the decision to leave the glass in place and tape it off thinking it would be safer than removing it.  Yes, yes, I know.  When I was prepping the inside of these doors I taped right over this, but it didn't register.  I'll blame it on my head injury!


I removed the stoppers on the left door and tried to remove the glass.  No go.  It's painted solidly in.  The one on the right has a little give. 


Here's my plan.  I'm going to go ahead and clean up the front glass using the edge of my craft knife and perhaps this will end up loosening the glass.  If it doesn't, I don't think I'm going to run my blade down between the wood and the glass for fear I'll apply too much pressure on the glass and break it.  Instead, I think I'll get some glass paint and paint around the edge of the glass on the inside of the doors to cover up the dark brown.  I wonder if heat from a hair dryer might make loosen the paint?  All suggestions welcome. 

One good thing...My neighbor was able to get this top shelf off for me today so I filled and sanded the wall behind it...

...and can now finish painting this area so when I do get the secretary finished to my satisfaction, it has a home.  Teddee

Teddee Is Tired

I thought cortisone was supposed to really rev you up.  I went for a follow-up visit yesterday for the injuries I received when I fell several weeks ago and was told, based on some simple strength tests, that I had strained my right rotator cuff.  The physician's assistant in Orthopedics, affiliated with the Urgent Care facility I had gone to the day I fell, seemed fairly certain I had not torn the rotator cuff, which is good news, and says the pain I'm experiencing has nothing to do with the chipped shoulder bone.  She prescribed a muscle relaxant, which Humana refused to cover so I didn't get it, and cortisone.  I've taken the three tablets prescribed so far for the first day and really haven't noticed any difference...and, based on the last cortisone I enjoyed several years ago, I was really hoping to feel "shot from guns."  But that was given by injection, so perhaps that's the difference.  I recall feeling the best that following week that I'd felt since I was in my twenties!  Lots of physical and mental energy.  I was unaware of what I'd been given and asked for more and was, of course, told "No way."  Too bad there isn't something legal, that's not debilitating in the long run, we could take as we age to regain that get up and go.


That said, I haven't had a bad couple of days.  I left the cabin early yesterday and drove to the apartment in Boulder.  I snapped a photo of the newly seeded grass that's coming up in the park just to the west of the building.  They are watering furiously and it's looking great.  What a delightful view of the Flatirons...

I wanted to get to the apartment early because I needed to color my hair and while that was processing I got a few things unpacked and put in the kitchen cupboards.  It was a treat to be able to step into the shower and rinse out that hair color, I'll tell you.  It is so difficult to get the product out when you're rinsing by hand in a wash pan.  Additionally, you use a lot of water...good for at least one trip to the spring!  

I just made it to my medical appointment, perhaps a mile north of the apartment.  I really liked this physician's assistant.  She seems to know her stuff, didn't keep me waiting, didn't seem rushed, and answered all my questions.  She said if the lump remaining in my eyebrow is scar tissue in the muscle it may never go completely away.  The numbness, which I also inquired about, does seem to be less today than it was even yesterday.  She said the bruise remaining under my eye may take quite some time to completely dissipate.  I was given some simple exercises to do for the next four weeks for the rotator cuff, at which time I'm to return.  

After my appointment, I returned to the apartment and applied my makeup, which I hadn't had time to do earlier, then drove to meet my friend Paula for lunch.  Yes, it was finally the second Wednesday of the month when we get our Social Security checks, but Paula agreed to go to Olive Garden again so I could use the $20 gift card I had been given by management after the restaurant charged my checking account twice for my lunch the last time.  The food was good and we had a great visit but, once again, the service was not really up to snuff.  I still have enough for another lunch on my gift card, but I'm not sure I'll ever get Paula to go back, so may have to go solo!

After lunch, I went to Walgreens to pick up my prescription, then headed back to Nederland where I stopped at Ace for the paint for the secretary (whoopee) and at B&F for Cheap Chicken and Wednesday's senior discount on a few groceries including more kibble for the foxes.


This morning I heated lots of water and did dishes out on the patio then decided to drag out the ugly table and try to do a better job of painting it than I'd done the other day inside the cabin when it was so windy...

I'd put the first coat on with a brush, but could see brush marks.  Today I tried a roller and now I can see roller marks!  It was really too hot, I think, and I was right in the sun.  I may have to sand this a little and try again although, based on past experience..."It will never be noticed on a galloping horse at midnight..." and it's pretty much midnight in this cabin with all this charcoal brown paint!   I noted today, according to Ace, this paint is called Prancing Pony.

I also decided to use Prancing Pony on this old cutting board that had been an atrocious 60s or 70s yellow with some equally atrocious Pennsylvania Dutch designs on the back...

Maybe eventually I'll stencil some subtle design on this so people can actually find it when it's hanging against an equally Painted Pony wall!


Then, on to what I expected to be the fun project...the secretary!  I started out with the three drawer fronts...

This paint is Chestertown Buff, one of Benjamin Moore's Historic Colors.  It's more intense than it appears in this shot.  The one below is truer.

I had moved my painting around to the shade on the west side of the cabin, but the sun soon passed over the yard arm and I had to put up the umbrella.  I had given the primer on these a light sanding, followed by a rub down with tack cloth, and the paint went on, by roller, quite smoothly.  At one point, however, the very light breeze gave a little gust and I found myself picking out dandelion fuzz, and later gnats, from the wet paint, so this was not without challenges.  I'm thinking of adding to my bucket list more creative expletives just to keep the neighbors entertained.

I went on from there to the secretary base.  This is the piece I had attempted to prime with the spray Kilz, which went on so rough.  I really had to sand it down, inside and out and clean it thoroughly with the tack cloth before I could even start to paint.  I decided to paint the inside first...

...so put it on its back.  This went quite well using a brush for the edges and corners then filling in with the roller.  It is time consuming and brought back memories of painting the shelf unit back in the 80s that's now in storage, but has been such a useful piece of furniture in every place I've made a home since my first studio apartment in Chicago in about 1968! 

It started to cloud up and I decided to call it a day, bring everything inside, clean up and drive back to Nederland and get ice--I'm starting to think this old cooler is not doing its job.  The ice doesn't last long at all--and sugar so I could make syrup for the hummingbirds which have been without any at my feeder since the bear was last here.  

One morning soon after that last night the bear managed to empty the sugar water out of the feeder, I was sitting at the picnic table having my morning coffee and a hummingbird flew close over my head...

Photo courtesy of Wild Bear Mountain Ecology Center, Nederland, Colorado

...descended toward the deck on the opposite side of the table and commenced this bizarre routine just a few inches off the deck, popping up and down very rapidly and turning figure eights in a very circumscribed area and just generally causing a stir!  Then it rose to about table height, repeated the performance and flew off.  I wasn't wearing anything colorful, so unless it was responding to the new tablecloth, I think it may have been trying to communicate that the feeder was empty!  I love animals.  Teddee 

Wildfire

The third largest wildfire in Colorado history, according to a denverpost.com article by Kieran Nicholson today, was started by a lightning strike early last Saturday.  As of yesterday evening, the fire was zero percent contained, moving at 20 to 40 feet per minute and had grown to 41,140 acres.  It is about 80 miles from the cabin, but still brings home the threat of forest fires to the Rocky Mountains. 



Yesterday, after running a load of things down to the apartment and having a shower, I returned to Nederland, dropped off a library book, went to the spring for water, picked up pine cones for kindling, stopped off at Ace and had that last gallon of interior paint put back on the shaker and stopped at B&F and got some chicken quarters to boil up for the foxes.  The smoke from the fire was obvious from Nederland so I decided to drive part way up the ski area road to see if I could get a better perspective on the fire.  This is all I could see...

That's smoke not clouds, but for something so destructive, this appears fairly benign from this distance.  One 62-year-old woman, who lived alone in what must have been a rather secluded cabin, has been killed.  The denverpost.com article, quoting the sheriff, reported she received two evacuation notifications on Saturday, but both calls went to voice mail.  If she uses a cell phone and gets the kind of reception I do here in my cabin that seems totally understandable.


There was a lot of haze in the air yesterday...

The road visible in the photo above leads west to Eldora and the cabin.

Below, the ski slopes in summer..

High winds have been a major factor in the fire's spreading.  They aren't bad now...NOAA is predicting winds between 7 and 11 mph, gusting up to 18 mph for Eldora, but they could pick up tomorrow to 24 mph.  I hope the firefighters..."ground crews aided by five heavy tankers, five single-engine air tankers and at least five helicopters, with more choppers on order"...according to the denverpost.com article, are able to get this under control soon.

Strange, even with the death of a human being, my thoughts go to the animals, especially the newborns and young.  How terrified they must be.  I think if we had a fire here, I'd be more worried about Vixen and any kits than the cabin.  Teddee