Quick daily posts

[SteveM]

And Steve...what was it that fell between your son’s bed and the wall that started your entire adventure?

He has a lamp in his bedroom with a bulb that can be controlled with a remote to turn it on/off and change colors. Somehow he managed to get the remote to the far side of his bed and down the side.

[fccs]

And Steve...what was it that fell between your son’s bed and the wall that started your entire adventure?

He has a lamp in his bedroom with a bulb that can be controlled with a remote to turn it on/off and change colors. Somehow he managed to get the remote to the far side of his bed and down the side.

Well that’s something you don’t want to lose.

[wendywombat]

I'm with Debby there....what you men have to go through!!
All I do is wash the clothes, clean the house, cook the meals and do the shopping! After that there's the lists to write for what D/H Has to do!!
And that's just before lunch!!

only kidding

[Serinde]

Well, it's raining here. I'll finish my coffee in the S&G, then do something useful in the house (can't begin to compete with the chaps, however; no 10l watering cans need to be deployed today!) Then try to get the Weavers moving towards a virtual meeting... then perhaps some stitching? Thing must be improving: I'm feeling that I need to do have a second project on the go. The Cluny one is an evening stitch (it's in the living room and too awkward to move around, really), so I need something to do during the day. Perhaps I'll warp a loom... A revolutionary thought!

[richardandtracy]

Wendy,

There are one or two 'liberated' women around. I will, however only talk about one. I cook every other day (mostly because I like edible food every other day, and to get that I need to do the cooking, but that's another story). Housework is shared on a basis of equality: I do what Tracy says. And the vacuuming, toilet cleaning, sink cleaning, dusting, window washing, polishing, clean the hob, kitchen sides, kitchen door fronts etc. Tracy does the ironing because she won't let me do it, says it's too painful to watch (and I bend the ironing board) and she turns the washing machine on. While they are here, the girls hang the washing out. Washing-up is done by the one who didn't cook the meal. Cats are fed & watered by everyone. I wash the kitchen floor, particularly near where the cats fling their food on the floor & won't eat it because it's been on the floor.
Works out I'm flat out on housework for about as long as Tracy spends doing Church Warden stuff & studying (when she's studying).
We both go shopping together every other week. These days Tracy buys the stuff for her parents, and I get the stuff for the seven of us (3 cats, 2 parents, 2 kids).
That's just normal, it's the abnormal stuff that I've been describing in previous posts. It's not the start & end of what I do, just as making a list for DH is not the limit of what you do.

And my hobbies seem to include nearly killing myself in the garden. Must be a hobby, otherwise I wouldn't do it so often, surely?

Regards,

Richard.

[Mabel Figworthy]

And my hobbies seem to include nearly killing myself in the garden. Must be a hobby, otherwise I wouldn't do it so often, surely?

Every man needs a hobby, they say, but if it's taht one I'm not so sure...

After all these posts I've been trying to work out whether we are an equal-opportunity household, housework-wise, and I've come to the conclusion that whether we are or not, this is what works for us . I do the shopping, the cooking and the baking, and change the bedding and towels, DH does the laundry and sets off the dishwasher (we both load as we go, and the person whose turn it is to make the early morning tea unloads). We both feed the cat. We are lucky enough to have someone come in once every other week for a good clean, so I just need to do "top up cleaning" in between, and I have decided I hate ironing enough to be willing to pay someone else to do it.
Work-wise I take most of the phone calls and the straight-forward orders, maintain and update the website, keep the order list and client database up to date and keep the day-to-day accounts, DH picks, packs and sends the orders, talks to customers who want technical advice, orders in what we've run out of, thinks of new lines to add to our range, does the quarterly VAT and the end-of-year accounts.
Mabel is run in my spare time, as well as any embroidery I want to do; DH has little spare time (he tends to work until at least 7.30pm most days except Sundays) but likes to work on his own cars when he can, and enjoys going to rallies or competitions every now and then (but of course there aren't any at the moment).

I think it's quite a fair division of labour

[SteveM]

Well, it's raining here.

I've yet to hear you say anything that I don't like about your weather. Where we live it rains 9 months of the year then it is like the tap is shut off and it gets dry and "hot" for 3 months from July through September. Some years the temperature never gets above 80F/26C and some years we get 10 days in a row of 100F/38C. Then in the "cold" months we don't often get snow and the most common winter weather is 40F/4C and raining nearly continuously.

My wife and I enjoy the rain so much that it is not unheard of for one of us to wake the other of us in the middle of the night to tell them that it is raining. Few things in life are as pleasant as going to sleep or waking up to the sound of rain and that damp, cool breeze blowing through the window. I don't think we could live in an arid climate and be happy. I wouldn't mind if our winters and summers were just a tad cooler.

[Serinde]

Well, it's raining here.

I've yet to hear you say anything that I don't like about your weather. Few things in life are as pleasant as going to sleep or waking up to the sound of rain and that damp, cool breeze blowing through the window. I don't think we could live in an arid climate and be happy.

Yup. Pretty much. I might like slightly less rain sometimes... but if you live in a maritime climate, it rains. Do like rain on the roof. I noticed the difference the rain made when we reroofed our house with new slate. Took a bit to get used to. Sad, I know.

[richardandtracy]

I will confess I prefer not to hear the rain.

When at my parents farm in Devon, the house and barns were in a U shape, with barns on the South and West side of the U and the house on the North side. The prevailing wind was South West, so the house hunkered down behind its own barns. The 4ft (1.2m) tapering to 18" (45cm) thick cob (mud) walls of the barns and house provided a solid and safe structure. The roofs, way back in history from possibly as far back as 1590, had all been thatched, however when we got the place in the mid 1980's the barns were covered in corrugated iron to a size & pitch that became unavailable in the mid 1930's and had been made by (from the printing still visible inside) a company that went bust in the 1920's. The house was covered in slates from the Victorian period. From looking at the colour we could guess at the Welsh quarries, which suggested they were probably pre-1860, as the last of the quarries with the right colour were mined out in the 1860's. Anyway, the slates had obviously approached the end of their lives when someone 'Turnerised' the roof in the 1960's. This is a process where bitumen is loaded with (initially) asbestos or glass fibres and painted over the roof in a 3-5mm layer to hold everything together.

By the mid 1980's we had a choice of re-paint or replace the house roof. On balance, re-painting was more cost effective for the house roof (especially as asbestos contractors would be needed because of the 1960's Turnerised coating while leaving & painting over would safely encapsulate the asbestos), but the corrugated iron on the barns had to be replaced - it was probably 15 years beyond the reasonable end of its life and turning into a sieve. So, we used green plastic coated modern profile steel sheeting. In heavy rain and hail the noise off the barn roofs can be heard as a continuous noise, like the sound from a snare drum with a stiff brush stabbing the drum being used to create the noise. Very peculiar, and nothing like the dull claggy sound that came off the rusty corrugated iron before it.

Anyway, because of this, combined with hearing the sound every waking second from November 1986 to February 1987 when neither it nor the rain seemed ever to stop, I prefer not to hear the rain.

Regards,

Richard.

[Serinde]

I have finally got my hair cut. Whew!

[fccs]

I wash the kitchen floor, particularly near where the cats fling their food on the floor & won't eat it because it's been on the floor.

[Mabel Figworthy]

I have finally got my hair cut. Whew!

How does the new you look?

[Mabel Figworthy]

We had some friends round in the garden for afternoon tea yesterday - it was lovely to see people complete and not just their head and shoulders! The brownies had come out a bit rustic-looking, but they went pretty quickly anyway

[Serinde]

I have finally got my hair cut. Whew!

How does the new you look?

Remarkably like the old me, but tidier. Rather like the garden hedges, also done today.

[richardandtracy]

Don't remind me about the hedges.
They need trimming. Mostly with a chainsaw.
As does our 'jam' plum tree at the front. It's huge and overhanging the road and is getting trimmed by trucks & double-decker buses. Trouble is, it's growing through the 3 power lines and phone line to the village up on telegraph poles. I need to be a little careful when I trim it! Really need a tower or something similar to climb up. Will have to investigate. The trunk of the plum tree is about 15" diameter, it's an old one and I don't want to kill it through shock, but it really needs a severe trim.

Still got to finish off our big oak, the one I had to stop trimming when my hernia operation came through last year. The tuft I left, starting 20ft up in the air, is growing happily and the lower parts of the trunk are sprouting too. It's getting to be a problem for our TV reception again, and it's big enough to reach the house if the whole tree falls over. And there's a conservatory between the tree & house too...

The mowing is next week's job. And it's going to be a task and a half. The whole garden needs scalping to 3" long, even the steepest parts of the slope. I have to walk across the slope, as going up & down is exhausting when pushing a 30kg strimmer/mower up the 30ft (9m) height difference in the garden. At least the weather next week is going to be cool-ish & dry.

Regards,

Richard.

[Serinde]

Trees and power lines, yup. Not good. You might have done that oak a favour, though, only "pollarding" part of it at a time. I'd definitely take the same strategy on the plum: no more than a third at any time. If it were my plum, I'd also consult an expert for a professional POV.

[wendywombat]

A Friend has just let her SIL loose with a chain saw on a tree in their garden!

Result...One large trunk and a knobbly top of cut branches and 4 leaves!!
Apparently this has been pollarded this hard before and grown back, but I did feel sorry for the tree.

Rushed down to the market early this morning, didn't miss the crowds but at least I missed the worst of the heat!
I was so early that I had to wait for the watchmaker to open his van so that I could have a new battery in my watch.

[Mabel Figworthy]

Yesterday was hot here so as I had to do some shopping by bike I did that early after breakfast, then on the way back found a footpath I hadn't tried before and which ideally I shouldn't have tried with a bicycle and large shopping bag but it was a lovely little exploration.
Today is a bit cooler and overcast, so we'll be going for a walk in a nearby spinney after lunch.

[Serinde]

It was warm here (26C) yesterday, but not too hot, just humid. There was a truly feeble attempt at a thunderstorm in the early evening. Back to 18C today.

[SteveM]

Our high temperatures for the past week have been 90-100F (32-38C) which is above average, but not out of line for this time of year. This morning was unusual in that cloud cover has kept us around 65F(18C) for the morning. The clouds are expected to leave around noon then it will zip up to 86F(30C) for the high. This was excellent timing as I was able to get out and mow the grass and get some other yard work done (I was thinking about Richard in his mowing misery and wishing him the same cloud cover). As much as I need to get one with other inside work, I can help but stop and enjoy the cool while it lasts.