Hard work

I think I'm sick now from all the work I've done the last two days, but work doesn't make one sick so I don't know.

Yesterday my man was at work and then church til 11 pm so I went to work on his fish ponds. I call them his cuz I have a horse.

But his work is piling up and he has no time for anything extra. He spent the entire weekend in church meetings, so I picked up the tools and put on the boots and went down there.

Many callouses later I had most of the grass and water plants ripped out of the three ponds, yes, sadly, all three of our ponds are infested with greenery, giving fish no room to swim, and eventually, turning the ponds into marsh.

My right rubber boot has holes in it and after all that flooding the banks were soppy and the water would rush into my boot every so often, I had a couple centimeters of icy water in there and I just kept working, determined to fix the problem of neglected ponds.

(The next door neighbor fish caretaker, Gay-org (?) said to me at the grocery store, "You're young, I'm old! You should do better by the ponds!" *sigh* Does he have a property/farm to care for, while his spouse works, or does he live in an apartment and come tend to his hobby, fishkeeping, for fun everyday as his only outdoor activity? If only I had been sassy enough to ask him!)

Anyway I only found one dead trout in those reeds and apologized to the rest. We hope to install our new fish pond netting before snow. We simply must, but I cannot do that alone.

Exhausted, I sat in front of Battlestar Galactica, rubbing Nivea into my hands over and over, trying to get them to feel normal again.

Today was our barn day. I had the silly notion we could finish it today, if we worked all day long.

Well, we worked all day long, and Baasha can vouch for that, he watched the entire time. 9:30-5:30.

All the walls are up, and the roof beams are in, but still no roof or doors.

I am satisfied at how much we accomplished. Standing on ladders and using a riveter, or drilling through metal is really rough. My poor husband tried so hard to finish, and tried so hard to stay true to his values to do it right. I was with him the entire time, but I'm not strong enough to do a lot of it.

We even moved the barn, what was much easier than I thought, into its final place. Exciting! He had a method worked out, kind of like how the Romans moved temples.

Fastest day ever, after all these slow ones, I watched with dread as the hours flew by. I knew I had to go buy feed before the feedstore closed, and finally my man heard me breathing hard as I used the drill underneath a ladder and he said, "You should go, you're exhausted."

The horse nodded at me. "Go. My warm dinner is late."

I drove to the feedstore and asked about new rubber boots but they were all so expensive I declined. They were out of beet pulp too, Agh, so I bought Heucobs. Uh, hay pellets.

Baasha was thrilled. They double as horse treats, so I put a bowl of them in our entryway.

It's freezing out. I had to wrap a towel around our hose faucet.

Baasha is as frisky and naughty as a yearling, and it must be the weather. I had to give my man a speech today about how to handle Baasha if he starts to jump straight up in the air and toss his head and nicker on the leadline.

Now we're inside, recovering and waiting on a baked chicken to be done. I gave Mercer the chicken innards but she's freaking out meowing cuz I locked her in the kitchen to eat them. She kept dragging the icky things out of the bowl across the hardwood so I finally locked her in here with me as I blog. She's as mad as I've ever seen her. This is a photo of her sitting next to the pieces of our barn. I am happy to say that all of the plywood wall pieces (dark brown in the upper left corner) are gone, installed, up!!! All that is left in our driveway is the roof and overhang pieces. Those metal things by her feet are up too, woo!

My ears hurt and my nose is stuffed up, annoyingly. My back and legs are sore from pond work. The chicken's done. Just now Mercer's finally slurping her dinner down. Sounds disgusting. I'll stop here.