A Path to Freedom

I'm not perfect, but...

2011-08-17T19:18:00.000-07:00

I was reading a "How to make your guy feel special" article, and while some of it was good stuff there was one tip that made me raise my eyebrows, and here it is:

7. Greet him with surprises:
Your daily routine of going to the office and coming back can take a toll on your love life. But unless you take initiative, nothing will sort itself out. Try something new every day. Greet your man with flowers or a nice drink or a surprise movie at your home theater.

Yes, that's right. A long day at work might make your man feel neglected so you should bring him flowers to say you're sorry. With such wonderful tips like this it's no wonder most younger guys are either gay or look it. It's all fun and games for me to tell my husband his fingernails are gross and offer him my nail file. It's quite something else if he actually listens to me! Men are supposed to be barbaric to a point. I would never actually want my husband to keep his nails all neat and proper. I would never want him to shave any part of his body, or style his hair with product. Hypocritical though it may sound, I do think the emo look is hot. And that has got to be because the hair is long and I kinda have a thing for loose strands that fall across the face. But it is possible to be manly and still have long hair, in the days of old all men had long hair. I do not understand the desire for any man to have short hair. Even the ugliest of short-hairs can be transformed into knights in shining armor upon letting their hair grow out.

I might sound anti-feminist for saying so, but women do not help men be manly anymore. We work jobs for them while they stay at home (something I have done but not because my man wanted it so), we wear the suits, we bring in the money, we expect them to make dinner, we expect them to clean, we swear profusely, we drink as much as they do. We go around offering ourselves to anyone, showing off all we've got, and generally being trashy. They have no reason to be men anymore, they don't have to, we the men now. And we have turned the real men into women. But when it all comes down to it we just are not built like men are, mentally and physically. There's no point in walking into a wall repeatedly and expect it to break simply because "That man over there walked through the wall", he did so with strength. As for us, we should get a ladder or jump to grab the ledge to pull ourselves over. We should use what we've got instead of what we wish we had.

Shame. Google's defines the word thus: Noun: A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. I believe it is a word most of us have forgotten about. Us with our low vocabularies. The children of today would not even know where to begin reading real books in their world of texting in as few words as possible with as many abbreviations as possible.

I suppose the point here is that a man should be treated certain ways by women and that is that they should at least not treat men as though they were women, which is an act I myself am guilty of. That's not to say your man can be a slob, because he can be a gentleman as well as a man. It all depends. Do you give him a reason to be a man?

Little update

2011-08-15T16:44:00.000-07:00

Being back home was wonderful. We got up the other two walls of the house and started on the second floor. Me and Victor picked the color of the downstairs, it'll be a light lilac color.

We went huckleberry picking (for those who don't know, they're similar to blueberries) and this year wasn't so good cause me and Victor only got about 3 quarts. Some years you can get gallons and gallons of the stuff. The next day me and my mom canned them in the pressure canner.

We went paintballing on Saturday and that was really fun. Showed me how out of shape I am! But I kept playing and the tired started going away. Afterwards I changed into my swimsuit and stepped into the lake for a little bit to wash off. I didn't go very far out cause it was murky and muddy at the bottom any further out than about armpit height.

Well, I have a pizza to eat! A mini-one, that is, I doubt I could eat a full-sized one by myself.

babbling

2011-08-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

Yay, tooth infection! Started the other night but didn't really pick up till yesterday evening. I was feverish and really out of it today. Unable to really talk much and kinda wavery. I actually can't tell how much of my feverish and amused state has to do with lack of sleep (I was up a lot with my tooth last night) and how much is the tooth. But I'm fairly content, pain and all. I do need to eat at some point but I'm almost scared to cause the other side of my mouth isn't doing too great either and if I don't take it easy it'll get bad again too. A part of the tooth that's currently in pain is wiggly. I know cause last night I pushed at it by accident and whatever that did made it feel better, clicked it back into place or something I dunno. Wouldn't care much if it went away cause it's about the biggest part of that tooth that's left.

Left my hair mostly down (waterfall braid) and apparently the driver with the local beer company has never seen my hair down before cause he came in and went, "Holy crap!! You have a lot of hair!" It amused me greatly.

*sigh* Homesick.

Wanting sleep too, I forgot how draining these work hours are.

Zhaun says it's 6-2 on Monday the 15th and after that I can look at the schedule to find out the rest.

Bonnie has me working on a bunch of 709s she didn't have time to do and on one of the Grocery ones I'm missing, like, 2 dollars. I'll probably leave it for her. I'll go over it again tomorrow to see if I missed something, though.

Emily showed me the secret to eye makeup: Cream eye liner. Not pencil, not liquid, but cream/powder stuff. And you put it on with a brush. It's soooooooo much nicer than a pencil. And I know you're supposed to wash off makeup when you go to bed but seeing as I only wear makeup a few times a year on a whim or special occasion I doubt it hurts much that I don't wash it off. I really, really like how it looks after you sleep in it. It looks more natural, like it's there, subtle, but smudged, and noticeable. About the only thing you have to do is brush off any excess, like if you primarily slept on one side and the other still has more on it cause it didn't get as rubbed off in the night. I do rub at my eyes after I put the stuff on but not enough to get the "I slept in my makeup" look. I wore purple yesterday with Emily's liner. I got my own liner at Wal-Mart, charcoal colored cause I don't want straight black and I don't want brown. I might get brown at some point, though. But for now charcoal will work fine cause it's not so harsh.

I love the waterfall braid and I hate it. I hate how it tangles my hair and makes it greasier than it should be (something about holding almost all your hair in your mouth...) and getting the braid in the back right. That braid is horrendous. I had nasty tangles trying to do it this morning and wound up tearing out a little tangle that would have otherwise taken forever to get undone.

Well, I'm going to let my ears take a break from the headphones for a bit then play some Fallout. I'm having issues with whether or not to help the slavers. I worked for them for a bit, then rescued some kids from them, and now there's a runaway slave and I think if she had the ability to break loose she deserves to be free, but then she's not doing very good at hiding if she's all "I'm a runaway slave but don't tell anyone" so if it's not me turning her in it'll be someone else. Course everyone in that game seems to have their own thing and ignores everyone and everything else so I doubt anyone else even cares. In-game. Eh, so far I've covered for her.

Kelly Clarkson's "You Found Me", I like that song. I saw a nice Anastasia fanvid of that song. I think if you cut out the silly bits it would make a really nice story. I think the same about Mulan. I like what Disney did for both stories but I wouldn't mind, in fact, I would really like, if there was a line of Disney for Adults books that are the same story with more, ah, details. I read a nice "what disney didn't show you" kinda fanfic for Mulan that I really liked. Anyway, this song reminds me of me and Victor. It just does.

Depending on what's next I'll take a break. Oh, Stepping Out, it's part of the GTA soundtrack. We have it at work too and I always imagine driving down a neon-lit street at night, going onto the sidewalk, bodies flying. One star popping up. Oh, old lady with a shopping bag, time to back up and hit her again! *happy sigh*

I kinda want to just write a bit about each song that pops up but I'm not being very faithful to random play. Even for the last one I skipped a few first.

mmm... I've never really been very interested in Michael Jackson's This Is It, but right now his voice in that song is very... good... teehee... Speaking of which I have a delightful wallpaper of him that is fit to make me break into girly giggles about half the time I see it:

Work

2011-08-02T19:48:00.000-07:00

I yelled at a vendor at work today. The local beer guy didn't show up till 10:15 and I didn't know the guy. I had been planning to joke around with the normal driver but it wasn't him. So instead I told him, "Receiving closed at 10:00. I'll let you in, though." and he said something about waiting across the street for Coke to leave. So I told him, "Coke left an hour ago." He was all like, "...oh..." in an I've been caught lying kinda way. He was tripping over himself after that. I know that doesn't sound like I yelled, but it was my tone of voice. Authoritative and upset. Not really loud. Bonnie would have been very upset, so he's glad he got me and not her.

For the Tuesday conference call they send a follow-along list of what they'll be discussing. Normally I let the grammar errors slide, but this time I grabbed a pen and fixed the ones on the sheet I'd printed out. Grammar really isn't a difficult skill. These are people at the corporate level of, what, the 3rd largest grocery chain in the country. They should at least have basic English skills.

Back to Work

2011-07-29T15:03:00.000-07:00

Good news, Zhaun's taking the 15th-19th off in August and he wants Dustin to cover for him and me to do dairy. I said I'd do it. I'll also let Julie know sometime that I'm willing to work other things too, like checking if it gets busy in November or something.

I got hot dogs and buns today. I can't wait, I haven't had hot dogs in a long time.

Work wasn't bad. In fact it was ok. I did receiving while Bonnie worked on catching up paperwork. I had to watch some training thing on reclamation and take a test. Then I helped Bonnie with paperwork.

I hear the guys are going to be starting on the floor of the house today. Yay!

back in town

2011-07-28T17:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm down at Timmy's house now. I'm going to be eating burritos for dinner in a minute here. I have my old, big computer hooked up. The monitor is huge! I think it's a 19" or something, 1280x1024 and my netbook is 1024x600 and is tiny.

Tonight I'm just going to do my online stuff, maybe see if PVZ works alright. It was so weird. I'd had Plants vs Zombies installed on my netbook but Victor got me an achievement I didn't want him to get me (he was fixing it cause it was crashing and thought it'd be cute to put in the mustache code, ugh) and so I uninstalled the game, steam, and deleted the steam folder. Then I reinstalled steam, reinstalled PVZ and... my old-old game from way back before the crash of last year came up!! 0_0 Weird... It says I'm logged in as "recovered 1". huh. Well, I'm just happy of that. Now I have to see what happens on this end. I don't know if I want to jinx it or not. I might just not try it at all on this computer and save PVZ for my netbook only. But I don't really want to do anything big like Fallout or Battlefield 2 or anything. We'll see.

It's weird being in town again. I hear cars and people all over outside.

I would also like to say that I had previously shoved Zack Efron (sp?) off as being part of the Robert Pattinson and Justin Beiber glitter and sparkles crowd. But, you know what? I saw 17 Again and groaned when I saw who was in it, but he's actually really, really good. My respect for him rose. I'm not going to judge him entirely by one movie but I am willing to give him another try.

Day 2

2011-07-21T18:19:00.001-07:00

Pictures from Day 2:

Boards for framing foundation blocks.

A finished one.

Three more.

Two more.

House site.

Again.

Leveling the frames. Originally we were told to dig out the ground but later Steven said to put stakes and level the ground up with rocks.

Different angle.

Cutting stakes.

From my lawn swing.

Deathly Hallows pt2

2011-07-19T19:49:00.000-07:00

Me and Emily saw Deathly Hallows pt 2 on Saturday. It was really good. It followed the book pretty well, and I really liked some of the things they added. I do think it's funny that just about every time they show James and Lily they have different actors. And same for Aberforth Dumbledore, totally different actor from they one they used in OOTP. Neville is awesome, just great. So is McGonegal (sp?).

The trailers. One or two ick-looking movies I don't even remember what they were. Then the new Twilight trailer. Lord knows why I continue watching that horrid series but I do want to see the new one. *sigh* Then was the new Batman one and I really wish they'd just stop. That's not Batman. He may be dressed up as him and people are calling him that but that is so not Batman.

**Spoilers**

So, I really liked how they portrayed Snape. :) The first scene was delightfully angsty. I cried during his death. How retched. In the book Voldemort simply has Nigini bite him once. In the movie Voldemort stabbed Snape and then had Nigini attack and that snake was vicious to him! Over and over, I was cringing. The Prince's Tale had me sniffling too. omg, this is totally a fangirl's dream come true. They pushed the angst in Snape's memories way up. I am going to be one happy fan-vid maker. I mean, it has Snape in the Potter's house holding Lily and crying while rocking her body back and forth! That was not in the book, but, seriously, that has got to be one of the best additions to the movies that they've done. Sure the book shows you that best friend syndrome is why Lily overlooked Snape. Oh, Sevvie, you poor, poor angsty man. mmm... Oh, the videos I'll be able to make later. And Snape being all shook up and leaning on the wall and crying and... mmm... Ooh, Severus Snape...

Let's see... I did not like how they made the actors look in the 19-years-later scene. At most I'd assume they were... 25-27? But they're supposed to be 36. I do like that they showed Draco in that scene but they should have mentioned Neville. Actually, I don't remember if his fate was told in the book or if Rowling said it later.

Bill Weasely. Cute, but not scarred enough. He was viciously attacked by a werewolf and was on the verge of dying, but in the movie he has a little scar on his cheek.

People in the theater cheered when Bellatrix died. bleh. I like her. I do think Molly was awesome then.

They applauded at the end of the movie, though.

I thought it was kinda surreal seeing the courtyard in shambles and remembering the first movie and how things had changed. That was just me, though, I don't know if anyone else felt that way.

"I've always wanted to use that spell!" XD

I was scared they'd take the snake kill away from Neville. It is very important that Neville got that kill. It's a little debatable about who the chosen one actually is.

I thought the Ron/Hermoine kiss was too forced. I do like their reactions afterwards, though. Perfect.

Again! Severus Snape..... *sniffle* Truly he left a Snape-shaped hole in our hearts... I thought that window needed to be more shapely. It was just a blob in the movie but the book clearly states that it is a Snape-shaped hole in the window. Augh, Nigini was brutal with him, bite after bite after bite, poor man! In the book it was one simple lunge but in the movie, ick. Well, I know I was gnawing on my knuckles.

Then some theater employee came in and walked in front of everyone at some point and stood to the side looking around. Dunno what's up, maybe they do that occasionally to see if anyone's pirating. *shrug* Dunno who'd try to record a 3d movie when there's also a 2d version available. But that's my best guess anyway. It kinda ruined the moment though. I forget what was happening when she came in.

Surprisingly I didn't have to use the bathroom at all during the movie. Usually within the first hour I'm squirming. But I sat through a 3-hour movie perfectly fine.

Oh, Snape... They did the Prince's Tale wonderfully. They should have showed Lily's friendship with him in more detail, though. Kinda glad they left out the bits about his interest in the dark arts pushing her away.

Again, Petunia is blonde. Blonde! Would that have been so hard? Course they never did anything about Harry's eyes being green in the book and blue in the movie. But Daniel Radcliff can't take contacts or something I guess. Ugly, ugly man, btw. eugh. Rupert Grint is kinda ugly too. Neville should let his hair grow a little, then he'd be cuter. I'm going to have to look up the actor and see what other kinds of movies he does. Alan Rickman, though, for a guy in his mid-60s he plays Snape really well. Snape's, what, 36 in SS ad 43 in DH. He looks really good. I was never so interested in Snape until the SS movie came out. I saw it when I was 15. And ever since then Snape's been my favorite character. Neville is my second favorite.

Wish the "king's cross" section was better done.

They never tied up Hermoine's parent's and I don't actually remember what happened to them in the book. Did she ever go back and fix their memories? Is that possible? I liked her hair in the 19-years-later part.

**End Spoilers**

I should have gotten a picture of me and Emily standing in front of the poster but I'm not that smart. I wore my Slytherin Crest t-shirt and she wore a Hogwarts Crest shirt. It was fun seeing it with her.

Arrival

2011-07-18T14:19:00.001-07:00

We got our home today: Some assembly required! Pictures behind cut.

This was taken from the top of the hill looking down. The 12x16 will be in front of where the lawn swing is. Eventually a 20x20 will be in front of that.

From the top of the hill looking towards the camper.

Lowe's truck.

The delivery guy starts offloading.

Taken from in front of the camper looking back towards the house spot.

Boards.

Cement.

Drywall.

Plywood/waferboard.

Insulation.

This is how the forklift rides on the back of the truck.

My mom and Victor check it all out.

Stuff sitting in the clearing.

Victor prepares an old board for framing the foundation blocks.

I moved the lawn swing back. This is what I see from the middle seat.

You can't really see it much but I have a yellow twine roped around tent stakes to mark out the house spot. I got it squared to within an inch diagonally. I let each side run a little long due to uneven ground.

"Whatcha doin', Mommy?"

Bath time!

Victor with tool belt on.

Getting boards for more foundation framing.

Victor and Steven working on the foundation.

Victor's Birthday

2011-07-18T13:02:00.001-07:00

Wednesday the 13th was Victor's birthday. I made him a cake shaped like an Intellivision out of a red velvet cake mix and marshmallow fondant. This was my second time making fondant and it was so much better this time. Last time I spent forever on it, this time it sorta fell together perfectly. My only issue was that I couldn't quite get the color gold. I tried using lots of yellow food coloring with a drop of red but it just turned orange. And I couldn't get the rest of it black enough. Anyway, here's some pictures:

The cake was a surprise. It was my present to him. btw, my hair is in a waterfall braid. Not a perfect one, because I have no idea how to end it in the go-around-the-head way. I'm more following the style of waterfall braid that Torin does where you turn it into a regular braid at the center back. Also, I have some sparkles on either side at the start.

This is a good picture of me.

Victor playing with the train my mom and Steven gave him. He loves it.

And here's the cake itself. For my second attempt at fancy cake decorating I think it's pretty good.

This is the picture I was going by for the cake. Obviously I made both controllers be in their slots, it was easier that way.

new soap

2011-07-15T19:32:00.000-07:00

Me and my mom went down to the lake and canoed around. It was really fun. Peaceful. Beautiful. We were going to get me some clay but it was too deep. If it ever gets warm we'll jump into the lake and get it that way. We couldn't really get a good angle in the canoe without tipping it so we only got about 1/4 bucket. But that's ok.

I tried that clay on my steps. I used my fingers and smooshed it in around the rocks. I'll go back to give it a second coat tomorrow or sometime. My mom says it dries like cement.

I made a new batch of soap, I don't think I said that before. But I made it using a scale and proper solid fats to liquid fats ratio. I used a 50-50 ratio of hard and soft fats and using the Soap Calc I made sure the properties of the soap fell in the middle of the "good" numbers. I poured it into pvc and used wax paper as a liner. I read somewhere that you can use placemats in your pvc and I want to do that cause they're reusable. But for now wax paper will work. Anyway, I don't know where my pipe cap is and I need more than one anyway, so I put the pipe into old lids (lid to a shortening can and a lid to hot chocolate or something) and out of 16oz I got 11 bars of soap. We would have gotten 12 out of it but two of the bars were a little thicker but not enough to be cut in half, if we'd done it over again and cut them better we would have gotten it. Anyway, I used one of those wire wood cutters. I had Steven cut while I held and he sawed. Then my mom tried a knife but it just made it oval. Then my mom tried sawing with the wire. Then she tried pushing. Just pushing worked wonderfully. My soap is so beautiful. :) It's just creamy white, I used shortening, olive oil, coconut oil, peanut oil, and jojoba oil. And then I threw in some Japenese Cherry Blossom fragrance oil. Simply lovely. I'll keep a few of the oops ones for us and sell the rest. But the most important thing is that they did not crumble when I cut them. This makes me so happy. I don't even need to shave them much. The only ones that need shaving are the ones we sawed. The worst of which we'll keep for us. I'll probably only actually keep two of them, one for me and Victor and one for my mom and Steven.

I have a ton of pictures to put up sometime.

Been a While

2011-07-11T20:44:00.000-07:00

Haunted Woods came in 11th place (out of 18 teams) and I got a wooden trophy cause I only got to Rank 3. But playing the same three games (one of the 4 available won't run on this computer) over and over is tiring. Here's my user lookup with my new trophy.

The 20x20 house was too expensive, 3,000 dollars without the drywall and insulation. So we're doing a 12x16 in front of where the 20x20 will one day be. That wound up being 2,100 dollars with all the nails, drywall, insulation, cement, etc. They're delivering all our stuff on Monday. I'm excited.

My path is going ok, I have 5 steps and the dirt's washing out from around them. We're going to get clay from the lake to fill in around them with. That stuff hardens like cement.

We did a lot of tree and limb clearing and mowed the lawn. I restrung my clothes line. The guys are fixing me up an old electric wringer washer to run the wringer by hand crank.

I talked with Bonnie and I'm going down on the 28th and working with her on the 29th and 30th, from the 31st through the 6th I'll cover her vacation. I don't need to work with her at all but it's a good excuse for more money.

Sadly it looks like I'll probably have to wait until then to see Deathly Hallows Part 2. It comes out on Friday but we'd be making a whole trip just for that and I dunno if we should be spending our money like that. We'll see.

Mosquitoes are horrible.

swimming

2011-07-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

We went swimming yesterday and it was a little cold but very fantastic. I'd forgotten how much I love swimming. The double buns worked out well for it.

hair stuff

2011-07-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

I got a 4th step done on my cobblestone stairs. I need to keep filling in the previous steps with more dirt as the rocks settle.

We did some fireworks last night and they were fun. I spent the last 4 years without fireworks.

I tried a new cookie recipe. I halved it. And I only had big packages of pudding so I guessed on where the 3.4 line was. I used chocolate pudding and put in a little bit more vanilla than it called for. And they turned out really good. I don't know if it's going to be the chocolate chip cookie recipe I'll always use, as they are a little cake-y. But they're really, really good. I burnt some of them by accident but they were still yummy.

My mom gave me some hairsticks. Two are silver. Two are brown with black tips. One is a brownish red see-through with symbols on it. and one is a bronzish swirly-stripy.

We're going swimming today so I'm trying to think how to do my hair. I'll probably double-bun it. I call that my indestructible hair-do. Cause that is more or less what it is.

New blog

2011-07-04T09:32:00.001-07:00

I started a new blog, and it's just for stuff about our lives up here, like projects and stuff: This one will still be for everything else. Here it is: http://lifeonmosquitomountain.blogspot.com/

nothing new

2011-06-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

Nothing so very new to report. I haven't dug on the root cellar any since that day when my back hurt. I plan to do so today, though, to keep the new muscle.

I started working on making stairs on the path up the hill to my mom's house but the one step I made failed utterly so I'm going to try again today.

In fact I should get out there soon before it starts warming up. It had started raining yesterday evening off and on but it seems fairly dry this morning. Not very sunny, though.

I have some pictures to post but I'll do that later sometime.

We got the estimate back from WBC and they are expensive! They want 4,600 dollars for our building materials! The siding alone was over 1,000. But they are generally more expensive than Home Depot. When we added it up ourselves we came up with between 2,000 and 3,000. After tomorrow's paycheck we should have about 2,100-something. If it was really going to cost 4,000 we probably wouldn't be building till next spring. And sleeping in that camper all winter would be completely miserable.

my turn

2011-06-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

The neighbors called yesterday evening to say that a bear was coming down the road towards us so we got the cats and goat in. Victor saw it again and shot at it but he missed and it took off. I tried calling Tristan but the phone thing said that calls to cell phones was barred so I sent him an email. He replied saying he'd call his friend.

For some reason today it's my back that hurts. *sigh* I don't even have a good explanation. I didn't work on the root cellar that hard. And that's about the only thing I did yesterday that could have hurt my back. It's just kinda funny cause Victor's back isn't hurting today. Finally. After nearly a week.

So they're re-releasing Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter. And I feel bad cause all the newbies will pick it up thinking, "Wow, cool, a Maul book, he's awesome!" like I did 9 years ago. *sigh* I wish I could warn them not to read it. Yes, buy it, but don't read it. I especially feel bad for the little kids who got suckered in through Clone Wars and don't even know the movies exist. Though maybe that's exactly why they're releasing it; to weed out the Clone Wars kids. They'll read it, go into a depression, and leave SW to the long-time fans who became fans through the movies, not some barely canon cartoon with artwork that they praise as being "new" when it hasn't been new for about 20-25 years. Anyway, Shadow Hunter is depressing and will make any reader want to throw the book into a wall and cry after reading it because it is just that depressing. It is stupid. It is pointless. Now, mind you, I love me some Darth Bane novels, and I see Kreia and Vergere as being good role models. But this book is just awful.

I should know better by now than to post that I will do something cause I never wind up doing it. We did not have baked ziti last night, we had taco casserole. Maybe I can do ziti today.

It's supposed to thunder storm today but so far this morning it's been fairly sunny.

laundry woes

2011-06-27T08:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I did some laundry. First of all I discovered that my wash tub has a bunch of holes. So I put a garbage bag in as a liner and that worked great for a while. Then I put the wringer on top and it wasn't big enough to sit on the tub but I didn't want to waste all that water by doing it over the ground, so I let the wringer sit in the tub which was a bad idea since it poked a hole in the garbage bag and the water started to slowly drip out of various places. So I put a bowl under the largest drip and whenever it got full I dumped it back into the tub. The wringer itself is pretty bad. You hold down a lever to bring the rollers together, and you crank with your other hand. Which means this is either a two-person job or you have to hold a piece of clothing between the rollers, press them together, crank, stop and move the end of the clothing to the cranking hand so you can catch it as it comes out. The wringers won't go far enough together to wring it out properly and after each one I had to stop and wring it out by hand. So it didn't take me long at all until I gave up and started doing it all by hand. Even Victor couldn't get the rollers close enough together. So I loaded up the socks and underwear (which were the first load) and took them up to my mom's set-up to rinse them. Her wringer is much better. Then I took them back down to hang. Shirts were my second load, and I washed them down in my tub since I already had water in there. The line for laundry hung down pretty far when I put stuff on it, even light stuff like socks and underwear were enough to dip the line from just above head-height down to chest-height. But when I was hanging it I got it as tight as I could. Maybe the trees I used were too young cause they do sorta move around when I pull on the lines. Maybe I just have to pick somewhere else to hang laundry. I kinda wish I'd chosen the spot Victor dug the outhouse hole in. Too late now, though.

I dug on my root cellar a little.

Victor did a little yesterday but his back was hurting too much. For how much his back hurts he seems to only be getting two or three days of work in a week.

I'm getting either thinner or more muscley, or both, cause my waist is different. I put my hands on my hips and my waist felt different so I had Victor feel and it is different. Yay! My posture is a little different too, in a good way.

I made us pizza the other night and chicken penne last night. Tonight is going to be baked ziti.

The laundry was still damp last night so I left it and now I have to go take it down.

cold

2011-06-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

It is so cold this morning. It was rainy yesterday and there's predictions of rain today. And it's so cold. I almost want to make a fire. Yes, it is June 26th, and we're still running around in coats up here.

I hung my laundry line and we fixed some holes in my wash tub. Victor did a bit of digging, but he was working through a migraine. Apparently that hot chocolate mix we used in the frosting on Tuesday had sweet whey as it's second ingredient, and sweet whey is very full of terisene or whatever.

So, Tristan came up and hung out a little while.

Steam was having a sale on GTA: San Andreas so we both got it. It was really cheap, something like 3 dollars. I've never played San Andreas before, but it's fun so far. Not a lot of good music, though. Vice City has the best music. San Andreas is different in that you have to eat, but if you eat too much you get fat. You also have to sleep and pay attention to stamina. I killed someone and took their knife and have been using that a lot. I used to run around with a baseball bat primarily, but I really like this knife. Also, this is my first time playing a GTA on PC, when I played GTA:III and Vice City it was on X-Box, and then that one that follows Lance from Vice City I played on the PS2 (never finished that one cause I got stuck on the level where you're racing 4-wheelers).

bear issues

2011-06-25T10:17:00.000-07:00

We went into town yesterday. We didn't get going till about 11:00. Someone had bulldozed the road so most the potholes are gone and it's sooo nice. Out on the highway there was road construction, though. So we wound up in town around 1:00 so we went straight to work so I could see Bonnie. I talked with her and Anita, I spoke a little with Virginia, and I got Dee to put in my vacation time for the next three and a half weeks (since I put in personal days too). Bonnie said she didn't know I did so much for her and she really appreciates it. I didn't know I did that much for her, I know I tried to make life easier on her but she helped me out sometimes too. Well, she said Zhaun's falling apart, he's working every day now, and he's already gotten in trouble for reports not being done that I used to do. Dustin is stressed, I saw him, he was all stressed and rushed. Bret and Julie aren't really saying anything but you can tell they miss me. I didn't actually see Bret or Julie, though. Anita said they're realizing just how much I did. And Bonnie says I look so much healthier now. She's envious and I feel bad for her because she looked tired and old and downtrodden.

After work we went to storage, dug around for some things that were in there like Victor's handgun (dunno how that wound up in storage!), my silicone spray, and I don't even remember what else.

We went to this Badger Lumber place but the prices were insane so we left.

Then we went to Western Building Center and they said they'd have an estimate (for building materials for the house) by tomorrow, which would be today. We're supposed to call the branch of the store that's up here.

Then we went to the thrift store and picked out a few shirts for working in.

Then we went to Lowes where the counter apparently closed at 4:00 (?) but some other guy helped us.

Apparently Home Depot wasn't so nice and their contractor desk place had closed early too and no one else was around who could help, so I don't know what to do about that.

Kinda makes me wonder how people with normal 9-5 Monday-Friday jobs get stuff done. What, do they take a day off during the week?

Anyway, after that we went to Wal-Mart and got some things we needed like a decent fly swatter, sandpaper, tuna helper. And some things we didn't need like an ice cream treat.

We then went across the road to Costco and got some soda since 4.99 for a 24pk of Coke is an awesome deal.

Then we went back across the street to Ross and got me a sunhat. What's amazing is a lot of the hats are 100% paper. Those just fall apart. I know, I had one. I finally settled on a polyester one.

Then we stopped at a gas station and got gas and used the bathrooms. While in line for the bathroom I saw some soap that was green tea and cucumber. But I couldn't investigate it further because it was my turn, and then I forgot about it.

After we got in the house and it was almost entirely dark out that bear from the other day came back and started slapping at my car so Victor went out and was going to chase it off but it started charging him so he shot it. He got it in the shoulder and it took off. Tristan's going to come up and help us figure out where it went and he's got a friend on fish and game who he might call in, apparently they had to get a bear last week too. Tristan's kinda awesome that way, he's a firefighter, and he's done search and rescue stuff, and sometime or other he's going to Oregon for some firefighter training stuff. He knows all sorts of people and I believe he's like the captain of this branch or something.

So, I'm going to go sandpaper the rollers of my wringer and get laundry started.

tired

2011-06-23T10:48:00.000-07:00

Victor was unable to do more work yesterday. He went out, picked up the shovel, and just about dropped it. He's still pretty sore today too, so he's going to take today off.

I started on the root cellar by myself, but I didn't get very far.

It is rainy today, with a chance of thunderstorms, so I'm not going to be doing laundry today. And as for digging, I'll go out in a little bit and see how muddy it is.

Yesterday we heard a weird noise and went to investigate. A brown bear was pawing at one of my mom's sheds. By time Victor had a gun ready (in case it started to do damage, or started to come after us or the animals) it had wandered off. Meh.I wasn't overly concerned. This is actually only the second time I've had a bear in the yard, the first time was when I was about 6 and one wandered through the corner of the yard. Everyone's always so concerned about bears, but they're actually not that big a threat. I mean, I wouldn't go wandering off through the woods unprotected, but I'm not really worried about them in the yard.

I don't know why I'm so tired. I could almost fall back to sleep now. I was up till about 10 last night, slept until probably 7:30 and I could go back to sleep again right now.

I got some writing in yesterday, it was really nice. I've got about 10,000 words on my story altogether. It's one I've been writing on on and off for some time now, and every so often I scrap the whole thing and start over but this time I think I like it enough to keep it. I'm sort of doing it weird where I write important scenes, and then eventually I'll go back and create filler for the inbetween parts. Cause Scene #21 has to connect to Scene #18 somehow so there would need to be two more scenes inbetween. I'll get it there eventually. Like I said, I didn't just start it yesterday. This current draft was started probably sometime last year or the year before.

Hole is done

2011-06-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

I made a cake last night and since I couldn't find my chocolate frosting I used vanilla and put mint truffle hot chocolate mix in it. It's alright. I wouldn't do it again.

We worked this morning, spent about three or four hours at it. Victor started to hit clay on the toilet hole so we reckon it's done. I cleaned up my laundry area more, there's a lot of seemingly dead bushes that are really ugly and they all seem to be interconnected at the roots, and the roots pull right out of the ground. I say seemingly dead cause some have new bushes or something coming off of the base. I raked some and we'll get over there to mow. I'll probably do laundry tomorrow. I found a stump to set the wash tub on.

Once it got really sunny and hot we stopped for food and rest. In another little bit we'll go back out there and see what we can do, by then the sun should have moved enough that it'll be easier on us.

dehydration

2011-06-21T16:49:00.000-07:00

We got the wire for our solar panel so we got that hooked up and going. It's nice.

So far we haven't really done a lot else. I got the camper organized better. And now that the batteries are outside I have more room for something. Not sure what yet.

I've been kinda dehydrated today. Need to drink more water.

The other night we made a building materials list and if we go into town we're supposed to price check. It would be a good idea to do so, probably.

The rain stopped and now it's sunny and bright.

I picked a general area and I'm going to clear it up and figure out just where I want to do laundry at. I got the wash tub all cleaned up and ready, there's just a spot Victor needs to put solder on to fix a small hole, and we need to plug the drain. I need to fix up the wringer, which is mainly just sand papering the rollers. And I still need to hang the line itself.

I found my crate of hair toys. Unfortunately there are no needles in there. My ribbon is there, but not the needles. So it's still going to be a while before I can do my hair taping unless I want to try some other method besides needles. I might even know where they are, I just need to look in the box.

I've been out of work for a week. Weird. But nice. I have had 10 day vacations before, though. But this has been so nice. I need to do stuff to keep from getting fat, though I think I've actually lost weight since I've been up here.

Working on the Land

2011-06-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we did a lot. We picked a spot for the root cellar and there were two little trees in the way so me and my mom dug them up and put them in a bucket of water. I let them soak for an hour or two and then put them in spots I made for them. The one was in the middle of some dead trees or bushes or something so I had to cut out some stuff. Victor started on a hole to dump our, ah, toilet into. I used the pick to break up the dirt for where the root cellar will be. I took some pictures but Victor lost my camera cord so I need to borrow Steven's again sometime. My mom gave me a wringer and wash basin. I cleaned up the wash basin but now I need to work on the wringer.

This morning me and Victor went for a short walk and Bonecrusher tagged along. It was so cute, he would flop and then notice we were walking on and bound up ahead of us. I wound up carrying him a little because we think he got tired. It would be awesome to train him to take walks with us.

Today we'll work more on that hole and the root cellar and I picked an area for doing laundry in so I'm going to clear it up and get it ready.

btw, this isn't called Mosquito Mountain for no reason. *scratch scratch* At least the bites only last an about an hour.

slow mornings

2011-06-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

I really need to start getting moving earlier instead of laying in bed for a while first. The biggest problem is the rain, but that should be going away soon.

We need to caulk and paint our shed. There's a stump in the house lot area. I am very slowly organizing the camper. Very slowly. After we get the batteries outside I can move the kitty beds over to the in-between the seats area and that will clear up some of the table. We've been eating out on the lawn swing because of the table being cluttered. I prefer being outside to in the camper anyway. I almost think I would prefer to sleep outside as well. lol

We went into town yesterday and stopped by work. It was late so Bonnie and Anita were both gone. Dee was gone too, and I had needed to get her to put in my vacation time last week. I did talk to Deana a bit who said Dustin would be doing better if they had a night person. Apparently Justin applied, which is good cause he's really good in dairy. He's been working at Super 1, not sure why he'd want to switch. But anyway, we walked past dairy. He was out of the pineapple, fat free, and large curd cottage cheeses and I couldn't see any backstock for it. In backstock I did see a few cases of small curd but no low fat. Either Fridays load was waiting to be broke down or he's going to be out till Monday. ee. lol Yogurt looked pretty bad too. Looks like the drive through pharmacy thing is done. And they put in "don't drive into the front of our store" guard posts. Which I think is a little unnecessary, we've never had issues with that before and all it's going to do is irritate the baggers.

I need to think of a tag title for when I talk about stuff up here, like working on the shed and stuff. Home, maybe? HomeStuff? hmm...