Rain! Rain! Rain!

What a rainy week! It rained twice. Once for three days and once for four days!

That was just a joke, but an almost true joke. Thursday was the only day it didn’t rain and the only day we were able to get on the roof. In that one day we put up seventeen sheets of roofing. One more day and this section of roof will be done.

Something we can do while it rains outside is to work in the exercise studio.

My handsome husband measured and figured out how much insulation we would need to finish the job, then we bought that much plus a little extra. At the end of the job, we were a smidge short. I don’t think Mike calculated wrong; I think he stuffs more in each bay then the makers calculate when they put square footage on the package.

I went looking in the wayback and found a roll of insulation.

“It’s unfaced,” Mike said.

“What difference does that make?” I wanted to know.

“The facing acts as a vapor barrier,” he explained.

We used it anyway and Mike cut his own vapor barrier. He used the plastic wrapping from one of the rolls. I thought that was ingenious. It sure saves us from having to throw it away — and it saves the landfill, too!

Another job we did was to secure the Advantech flooring securely to the uneven concrete underneath. I didn’t mind the springiness, thought it might even be a good thing for jumping around in the exercise studio, but Mike says it can’t be flexing next to the joints or it’ll ruin the carpet.

“Why’s that?” you wanna know. “Doesn’t the padding take care of that kind of stuff?”

I suppose it does but we’ve chosen a more durable and shorter nap commercial grade carpet which has no padding. It gets glued directly to the floor.

Mike got his Hilti and Tapcons and went to work. A Hilti drills through concrete and Tapcons are special made to hold tight to the concrete.

This thing makes a ton of noise! You’d think it would scare a little girl. Not Bondi. She just stood back and watched.

You could almost see the wheels turning in her head as she tried to figure out what was going on.

We’ve used all of the long boards that we took down. We put up the reclaimed metal that was laying in a barn when we bought this place. The room’s all insulated. Now we had to invest a little money and buy some knotty pine.

Mike called around. CC Allis, our out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere lumber company, had the best price.

“We have a hundred and twenty-nine pieces in stock,” the clerk told us (Mike had his phone’s speaker on).

“You need to have them check and make sure they have it,” I suggested. We’ve gone over there after stuff before only to find out the computer wasn’t right.

“Nah. We’ll just ride over.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Let me make a travel coffee and we’ll go.”

Can you say, “Road pictures!”?

We go into the store, order and pay for forty-five pieces of KP#3. (KP stands for knotty pine.) Enough to do two of the three walls left to do. The clerk got on the radio and radioed one of the yard workers that she was sending us out for some KP3.

“I don’t believe we have any of that,” the yard worker told her.

“The computer says we have a hundred and twenty-nine pieces,” she said like computers are never wrong.

“I’m pretty sure there’s none here.”

Nothing like a good ole fashion I told ya so! And I was gonna have mine. I turned to Mike, shook my head, scowled, and said, “I told you to have them check and make sure they had it.” But in truth, I wasn’t all that unhappy. I’d gotten some road pictures for my letter blog.

“If there’s not any there then send them up to Walt,” were her last words over the radio.

We met the yard worker. “It’s in this barn, the whole way on the end…” and under his breath he added, “where the empty bins are.”

We drive to the end of the barn and sure enough! Empty bins!

Mike gets out to talk to the yard worker and look at other options while I waited in the car with Bondi. This is what I see.

“Let’s go see Walt, up on the hill. I’ll wait for you out front,” I heard him say through Mike’s open window.

Mike drove out of the building and went on around. When the yard guy saw us coming, he took off on his little golf cart and led the way.

I waited in the car while Mike and the other guy went into a building. A few minutes later, Mike waves me in. “What do you think about this stuff?” he asks.

“What’s the difference,” I wanted to know.

“This is KP4. It has more knot holes in it.”

“Is it the same price?” I asked.

“I think it’s cheaper.” The yard guy heard my question.

“Fine by me.” When I left the building, the sun had come out from under its blanket of heavy dark clouds.

Mike added more boards to our order, getting 68, enough to finish the job, then we went back to settle the bill. Because KP#4 varies in lengths and has a ton of knot holes and other imperfections, they owed us money.

I took more road pictures on the way home.

I was quick enough on the clicker to catch the ducks taking flight.

And they're off!

We did two walls before we quit for the day.

Our KP#4 isn’t quite long enough to do the final wall. We still had a bunch of short pieces we’d taken down and decided to do a row of those.

I know! I know! It’s not for you. But that’s okay. Once the weight machine, treadmill, stationary bike, and ab machine are in, the walls will no longer be the center of attention.

Someone who always loves to be center of attention is our little Bondi. We tried keeping her on the patio while we were working.

She wasn’t happy.

I kenneled her for a few hours.

She wasn’t happy with that either.

Bondi wants to be where we are, unless she’s the one doin’ the leavin’!

It’s been raining all week! Did I tell you that? That means we can’t cut the wood outside the exercise studio door, which is where we were doing it and is inside Bondi’s dog run. We didn’t worry about her going in and out. Instead, we were cutting on the front patio and carrying it through the house.

On one trip, Bondi scooted out the door and ran like a wild child. She found Smudge and chased him, totally ignoring our cries to, “COME HERE!” Then she ran in a big circle around us and in the side yard she found Tiger. Him she chased up over the hill to the upper barn. Eventually she tired out and came home.

We let Bondi follow us when we can but she tends to get underfoot. Either that or she looks for things to steal. Like, say, a roll of paper towels. She grabbed ‘em and ran. I got ‘em from her before she could tear ‘em up.

Bondi came looking for them, checking to see if I’d put them back where they were. She even checked on top to see if I put them on top of the tool box. I did that once and she still got them.

Then she started looking for something else to steal.

A dropped Tapcon was just the ticket!

And the day we were on the roof? Since the sun was shining, I left my little sneak-thief in her run — and she became a little Houdini.

Sometimes, when we were on the roof, I could hear her whine. Sometimes I couldn’t. I walked overtop the roof to the other side and checked on her a couple of times. When we were done, I went looking for her — and found her outside of the run!

“How did you get out?” I asked and coaxed her to try it again.

Bondi had found a spot where my weedeater had grabbed the wire and broken the weld.

She pushed herself through…

And she was out.

I got some wire and tied that section shut.

Bondi was so mad she grabbed mouthfuls of grass and pulled ‘em out.

Rain, rain, go away!

The Susquehanna is full and has left her bed. We went out early for breakfast one morning.

I took pictures coming and going… going and coming home. You get to see both sides of the Rainbow Bridge.

There’s something about me you should know.

“What’s that, Peg?” you ask.

When you tell me you like something, I take more pictures of it. My beautiful friend Jody liked the fog picture a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been taking more fog pictures. But at the risk of being repetitive, I’ll show you this one. It’s a little bit different because it’s a fog line. You can see exactly where the fog starts.

Sunday, today, was another rainy, rainy day. Mike worked on the last wall of the exercise studio as I whiled away my time here, visiting with you.

“Peg, can you help me a second?” my handsome husband calls.

I always try to be there when he needs me. Pushing my chair back from my computer, I say, “Sure. What do you need?”

“Just hold one end of the tape for me. I want to make sure I get a good measurement and I can’t hold both ends.”

Tiger, our orange tabby, was sleeping on my desk when I left.

Bondi, my little shadow, was sleeping in the chair behind me. When I got up, she jumped down and followed me as I went to do Mike’s bidding.

When I came back, Tiger was in my chair. I pushed his feet and tail out of the way as I sat on the front edge of the chair.

“Hummumhum,” whined Bondi. Translation, pick me up.

I picked her up and put her behind me, on top of Tiger. There isn’t room for the two of them and Tiger soon abdicated his spot and leapt from the arm of my chair back to the desk top.

BOOM! CLATTER! CRASH! SLIDE-RATTLE! Came a heart-stopping noise from the room Mike was working in.

I jumped up and ran in to find Mike and his ladder laying on the floor, his nail gun skittered halfway across the room.

“Did you fall?” I asked. Stupid question, I know.

“Nooo.”

“Are you just restin’ on the floor?”

“Yeah!”

I knew he fell. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he groaned.

“What happened?”

Mike propped himself up on an elbow, reached around and put his other hand on his lower back. “Oh, my back — my butt!” he groaned. “I missed the bottom step, just like your sister did.”

Only Mike didn’t break his leg like Patti did!

“I just put up the last board, had my hammer and nail gun in my hand and was getting down off the ladder when I missed the last step. I hurt my butt and my back!”

“You’re gonna be sore tomorrow,” I predict.

Mike got up, picked up his ladder and leaned it against the wall. Retrieved the nail gun and put it out of the way. Turned the compressor off.

“I’m going to sit in my chair.” He turned off the light as he hobbled down the hall.

I went back to my visit with you and I hear Mike on the phone in the other room. “I’m mad at you.” Whoever he was talking to must’ve asked why. “You told me not to fall and I fell off the ladder.”

Later, I heard him say, “Well, I’ll talk to you later, Margaret.”

Margaret, at 95, is a handsome woman and still pretty sharp. She’s been our friend for more than twenty years.

Mike’s butt and back must’ve taken the brunt of the fall. It was only later that he realized he hurt his arm and hit his head, too.

Old people should not fall.

Let’s call this one done!