Step by step

11/9/06 Thursday
Typical start for the morning. I went out to check on the bees. Last night I had sealed up the area as best I could. They were trying to find a way inside but hadn’t as of yet. There was a piece of the honey comb I removed the other day in the dirt and they were on that hard. So far so good.

I washed my hair this morning. This is something we don’t do often now because of not having a shower and how hard the water is. It is so hard that shampoo barely lathers up so we use the bottled water. I will gently pour it over Cherie’s head as she rinses to wash it clean. Unfortunately it is not heated so provides a cold morning wake up shock. Like I said we don’t wash our hair as much. For me it’s no big deal because there’s really not much hair to wash and I’ll use the faucet water.

Anyway as I was outside I realized that I forgot to brush my teeth so went back in to do it. Coming in I heard a sizzling sound. OOPS, I had started cooking some eggs for breakfast and forgot all about them. Not good. It is pretty much par for the course for me. I go through my day forgetting what I was or was going to do so wander from one task to another. In Toledo I had developed routines to help compensate for this result of my brain damage such as using timers and scheduling things but here it is different. I will have to develop new routines. That will be hard until we get settled a bit.

As I wrote Cherie came in with her notebook and we scheduled our day as best we could. She called the State Farm Insurance lady and set an appointment to see her about transferring our policy to Texas. When Cherie told me how much it would go up I went ballistic but there may be things we can do to bring it down to a reasonable level. We are going in to see the Farm Bureau and the Farm Service Agency this morning. I had to call Cherie to get the names and what each one did. The Farm Bureau is where the farms insurance was issued and the F.S.A. is the government agency that handles stuff like the CRP program the land is under.

It is our goal to paint and tile the kitchen today. I think I’ll try to get the office area painted at the same time. I’m planning on using the HVLP sprayer that I bought in Toledo. It worked real good on the trailer and should help things go quickly. There is lots of work to do on the walls first, mostly patching holes and scraping off the glue used to stick paneling on the walls. Cherie will use a broom on the walls and ceiling to remove the sand and cobwebs that cover everything. Then we wash the floor and dry it with the help of a fan. With that done the tile can be laid.

In our mind these are temporary fixes to get the house livable but will be replaced when, or as we rebuild the house. Fact is it is important to do this for Cherie’s peace of mind. It will feel much more like home when it’s painted, floored, and we can set up house. Till then it is a mess and most of our stuff remains in the boxes we brought it in.

This is the two mainstays of this region, Oil and Cotton are king here.

It is 10:00 now. Time to get moving.

2:51 – We are at our Wi Fi hotel now. The phone line was activated this morning but we haven’t had time to see how it works with our dial up service. Went to the farm places and got Nester and FSA straight on where the five acres we are pulling out of the CRP program. He had to figure it out and seemed to have some difficulty with it but got it done.

We came to Midland and just finished talking to Laura, the State Farm insurance lady. She explained why insurance in Texas was more expensive, or at least tried to, and gave us a series of quotes with alternatives that might help. Paula, the lady we need to see from the Farm Bureau, called as I was writing this and will come out to the house to inspect it tomorrow. So far so good. Step by step we are getting this transition done.