The best laid plans

I had big plans for a massive surge of productivity in this, the last week before Ron gets home from tour. I was going to start on my shiny new work routine. I even made a spiffy banner to reinforce it (no, that wasn’t pure procrastination; okay, yes, it was). I was going to finish all my half-finished projects so I could look like a TCB badass. But the water had other plans for me.

Instead of whining about losing the whole week to the relentless flow of water into my basement and the battle against moisture, mildew and despair, I’m gonna focus on the bright side:

• I finally cleaned and sorted a bunch of boxes of junk from the boiler room! Now I have buckets of plumbing supplies and buckets of electrical supplies, and the mouldering boxes and all the useless crap collecting dust and spiders is mostly gone!
• Ditto the galley storage area. I’ve ditched a good 6 trash bags altogether, plus  a couple bags for Goodwill  and a fair amount of recycling. Take that, water! Try to disrupt my 40 Bags progress, will you? Ha!
• I finally made a short leader hose for the submersible pump.
• While I was at it, I hooked up a hose extender with a splitter with big, easy-to-turn levers for each tap. One goes to the courtyard and one goes out to the barn.
• The weather, when it’s not storming, has been delightful! 70s and sunshine and puffy clouds, in June! No AC yet, barely any fans. I don’t usually turn on the AC this early, but I usually want to.
• And when it is storming, it’s dramatic! Hours of breathtaking lightning last night, two trees knocked out over the weekend (neither of which I’m crying over–well, except the cleaning them up part).
• The cooler weather has kept the inevitable flies at bay
• I don’t have to fret about the sheep or chickens being too hot. (Although the barnyard is a fucking bog & I feel awful for the poor sheep.  At least I mucked out the barn before all the rain. The barn has Stable-Grid, so it can get muddy from traffic, but it drains, so it doesn’t get spongy and gross. I should just buy a hundred bucks’ worth every year and put it in a little patch at at time. The way time flies, the barn yard would be draining beautifully before I know it. Hm. Seriously, I should do that.)
• I hired someone to cut down the trees felled by the storms and drag them to a burn pile–and learned that one of the trees (a plum) was highly toxic to sheep and cordoned it off with a scrap of fencing off before my two remaining sheep could eat it all up and die a horrible death from cyanosis. Whew! (No, that’s not what did in Mr. Shivers. The plum was out front, far from his little nibbly mouth. And I think cyanosis leaves clearer evidence.)

If you’re curious about the 40 Bags in 40 Days thing, go here. It was for Lent, so the official challenge is probably over, but I’m working on my own timetable.

And if you want to be a big nerd like me and make yourself a sticker chart, I’ve set up a template to print stickers on those ubiquitous return address labels, using the garbage bag graphic and the idea from White House Black Shutters. If you prefer a plain chart, she has one you can download; I like ticking off the numbers.

This pdf includes a numbered sticker chart and a sheet of labels, and a link to the WHBS post about it: 40 bags stickers and charts.