life at breakneck speed

There was this missionary that used to come over to our house for dinner a lot when we were kids. We had a bicycle that had no chain, and after dinner was eaten, to oblige the children who were clamoring for a show, he would get on it and ride down the steep backyard. I remember him like that, his suit coat flying, legs akimbo, hollering like a madman and flying down the hill.

That’s exactly what life around here has been like lately. I’m on a bike without a chain and I’m on a steep steep hill, and it’s all I can do to hang on and steer. And I think, hey, what is JESS doing, couldn’t he help me get off this thing? And I look over and, behold! There he is on a chainless bike of his own, screaming his way down the same hill. What a fine pair.

But. Here's what's been going on:

Remember those shelves I showed you so long ago? Built. An entire wall of shelves in the schoolroom. The air conditioner repairman asked me in disbelief when I answered the door with a power drill in my hand, "You put them shelves up yourself? Really?" Yes. Really. In all fairness, I do have to credit Jess, my project finishing chairman, for helping me with the four hundred coats of paint.

Sorry about the bright window. Cute plaid Roman shades still to come. But now we have a great place to put the tons and tons of books we collect. The metal-and-chipboard shelves are headed to the garage, where they belong.

And I painted and put up molding around the upper part of the room, and found these cutest alphabet cards:

When we get the built-in desks in and the maps up and baseboards and bla bla bla, I'll get you some nicer pics of the schoolroom.

And here's the brand-new hardwood floor Jess worked me like a BORROWED MULE to get put in this last week:

We have still to put up the baseboards and all. What we had all over the main floor was pine plank flooring with 1/4" grooves between. After us living here for 2+years and having no way to really clean that out, you can imagine how horrible it was to remove the old flooring. Cathartic, true, to be able to finally able to sweep up the stuff we'd been sweeping between the planks for years, but we were covered in filth when we were finished. Now we sweep, and scoot our chairs back and forth, and run around in our socks and slide....yeah.

Here's a picture of the garden in late spring, a few weeks ago:

What you see there on the left is onions, lettuce next to it, and cabbages in the back of that box. In the box behind are potatoes, and tomatoes, and all the way to the right are sugar snap peas. All the way in the back are radishes, turnips, carrots and swiss chard.

I'll write up more about the garden when the season's over, but my initial reaction to this type of gardening is positive. This is like playing garden, and you get to eat more stuff than if you're really working hard. Hm. Note to self, though...the plants are going to get REALLY big, so plan accordingly. I had go out yesterday and rescue the pepper plants from under the gargantuan tomatoes.

Oh, and, this morning I got to go up and teach Forestry to the Cub Scouts at their day camp. What great fun. And although I refrained from jumping up on the table and pontificating about the souls and hearts of trees, I did get a kick out of talking about them with those great little boys. It ended up being a lot more fun than I thought.

So anyway, just thought I'd holler out to y'all on my way down the side of this hill. Hey! We're still here! And if we could just stop for long enough to get a chain on things, maybe we could slow down a bit. Not likely, though. See you at the bottom!