A good way to start the day

7/10/06 Monday
I woke up refreshed this morning and sharp. Actually woke up before Cherie. We set the alarm for 6:00 but it didn’t go off. This will be a busy day as the weekend is over so business’s we need to deal with are open. One of the first things is to get the well working. Hard to clean without water. I want to talk with Patrick Duffy, our attorney. Among other things is the insurance Lee had with Civil Service. We will stop at M&M disposal to pay for another emptying of our dumpster.

I asked Peggy Creech yesterday if she knew anyone who would like to work. She said she would ask around and give us a call. Hope she finds someone. The temperatures will be 99 to 100 degrees all week. That will spur us to get up and working early to avoid some of that heat.

We are planning to pull some of the carpet and linoleum up today. Instead of moving the four heavy pieces of furniture out to the garage we will put them in the cubby hole where the closet is in the bedroom. Then we will cover them with plastic when we fumigate the house. Still want to find an access to under the house so we can throw one of the foggers down there, hopefully getting rid of the bees.

We will do some bank shopping today also. That will be significant for our long term plans as we desire to get a loan to finance rebuilding the house and putting in the improvements such as the wind powered electricity generator and water pump.

I just checked my E mail and my heart jumped when I saw one from my youngest son, Adam. I almost cried. This is the first E mail I have gotten from him. I am so grateful that he did this. This is a result of my finally getting him to sit down and have dinner with me. Part of our distance from each other is my fault and it will probably take a while to heal all the hurt caused by my divorce from his mom. It is a good way to start the day.
It was a hot hot day. We went to the Stanton drug store for breakfast. This place has been a gathering place for decades. You ought to see it. It has the original soda fountain with all the equipment dating back to who knows when. After we had our breakfast we went to M&M disposal to request another pick up of the dumpster. M&M is just across the street. In fact just about everything we planned to do was in this block of Stanton. That would be just on the other side of the only traffic light in town. The lady at M&M of course remembers us and gave us a good rate on the extra pick-ups we needed. We talked for a while. She asked if we had children and I told her that I had raised two wonderful kids. She told us about how her oldest had just joined the army and was in an airborn unit. I told her that Bruce had just gotten back from Iraq. She told us how scared she was for her kid and hoped he would not go to Iraq. I didn’t tell her that I think the odds are he will go but said that it looked like things were settling down and because of the politics we could well pull out of there soon.

After we got done there we walked across the street to the bank. There we opened an account with the check Virginia cut for us. We then talked to the Vice President of the bank about getting a loan to refurbish the house with the farm as collateral. He told us that the bank didn’t do home improvement loans though they had been talking about offering that service. When all was said and done he told us what there interest rate was. It was 10 ½ percent. Not at all competitive. He was surprisingly honest with us and told us we could get a better deal in Midland. That is something I have a great respect for. Honesty is so rare that is a great treasure. I told him that. We feel much more comfortable doing business with that bank now. Unless a Midland bank just stomps on this we will probably work with them.

As we were driving to Stanton I got a call. It was a guy named Chuck who Peggy had told we were looking for some help. I let him know when we expected to get to the farm and suggested we pay eight dollars an hour to see how he took it. It was fine with him. After the bank we stopped by the post office to see if we had any mail in the PO box we had just opened last week. There was none so we went to the farm. Chuck pulled up just as I was opening up the garage. He had brought his wife with him. That worked well for me. I had only expected Chuck but we could use all the help we could get.

Chuck is a talker. After a while I had to say “Let’s get to work” to get things going. And we worked. Chuck’s wife’s name is Lillian. She and Cherie hit it off well. They both are into sewing. Chuck and I have some common histories so that helps us relate. We talked about some of that during the day. They got here at noon. We got all the appliances out of the house while Cherie and Lillian moved some of the furniture into the cubby hole. They also began ripping up the carpet. The floors are wood and beautiful. They will only need a little care to bring that beauty out.

Chuck and I also ripped up some of the linoleum. Underneath where the stove in the back room was Chuck found a trap door leading underneath the house. Opening it up carefully, for fear the bees would swarm, I saw some PVC plumbing. There are some pretty tight quarters underneath and I am not sure there is room for my fat ass but at least we finally had access to the crawl space.

I wore out pretty quickly. Chuck has beaten his body up pretty badly like me. I was surprised at how much he could do. Really wasn’t able to keep up with him but that is why we hired them. After three hours we were all dragging ass. Lillian is a diabetic and between the hard work and nearly one hundred degree heat her blood sugar got bad. When she had to sit down we rushed to get her some of the Gaterade as Chuck went out to his truck to get something with sugar in it. I looked at her and said “We’re all tired so how about calling it a day”. No argument there. Though it had only been three hours we were all done in. I asked them to give us a call tomorrow so we can finish up. I paid them more than we had agreed on. They deserved it and we think they need the money so were happy to do so.

Cherie and I came home, showered, and went to a place called Jumboritto. It pretty much sucked so we won’t go back. Then we came to this hotel room where we have stayed, enjoying the air conditioner. She is going to sleep now and I won’t be far after her. It will be a day when I post this entry.