Another day

6/9/09 Tuesday
Just a quick note. I’ve got to get out and beat the heat so don’t want to waste the cool of the morning. The routine now is to get out early and work till it is too hot. Then I come in and lay down, usually to reduce the back pain but also to recuperate from the heat. That is often around three or four o’clock but sometimes I go back out as soon as I am rested. Cherie comes home at 5:30 or so. I sometimes watch the news but lately haven’t even done that. After dinner, around 6:30, it’s starting to cool off so I get back to work. Lately this is when Cherie goes out to help with weeding. It’s not much easier on her back than it is on mine.

Yesterday morning Cherie said “Oh!!! By the way, Happy Birthday” I hadn’t thought about it at all, it is just another day for me. When she came home from work she asked “Do you want to go out and eat or stay home”. “Did you find some money somewhere?” I asked, a little puzzled. “I’ve got a little stashed away” she replied. I told her that I would rather stay home. This was when I was laying down to rest up before I went back out. Then Cherie reminded me that it was my birthday. I’d forgotten again. It’s not that I forgot I had a birthday, that just wasn’t important to me so was far from my thoughts.

I gave the tractor a good workout yesterday. I leveled out some areas where the sand had piled up high so I could use them for whatever I have planned. Part of what’s going on is I am literally carving out this farm and determining what goes where. There’s an area I will put all the composting and worm raising areas, along with other related garden stuff. Then I plan on moving and organizing all the lumber we have acquired. I’ve learned that out here everything must be raised off the ground, otherwise it gets buried in the wind blown sand. I’d noticed that the old man has done this. So I must build several stands where I can stack things at least two feet off the ground. This will allow sand to mostly blow through under them and not pile up like it does wherever there is something to impede it.

Sand is a big enemy here and the cause of many problems. It used to be that if something was sticking I would spray it with WD-40 or put some oil on it. That is the worst thing you can do here. All it does is make a place that the sand sticks on and it will build up into a thick crust. I even have to clean the car windows because sand builds up where the glass goes into the door. Just had to clean Cherie’s truck this morning because of that. It gets so bad that the electric window can’t roll up or down, it just sticks. On my truck I have a good old fashioned hand crank. It got so hard to roll the window up and down that the metal housing of the crank is cracked. Now I carefully roll it up and down, hoping that it doesn’t give up the ghost.

Got to go. It’s going to be in the 100’s all week. By the way, Cherie’s truck is running just fine. It’s nice to actually do something without messing it up.