Back to the Grind

Since it's the weekend, we decided to do what we do best: work in the yard. We tried to get the paperwork on the septic from the Village, but the two people who could help us on are on vacation - they are married. Shocking. Small town, USA. Knowing that we couldn't get that worked on just yet, we decided to do some clean up.

At 9 a.m., we drove about 1/2 an hour to Belen to get hay. We got home at 10:30, unhooked the flatbed, hooked up the horse trailer, moved the horse trailer, hooked back up to the flat bed, backed up to the barn, unloaded the hay, loaded the 20 ft. lengths of horse fence onto the flat bed to move them up to the front area of the yard, drove back out to the front, unloaded the panel, loaded the front 1/2 of the flatbed with junk (we took a break here for lunch and put Lexi down), backed up again to the huge pile of crap by the barn and filled the last 1/2 of the trailer (there is still at least one more load of misc. stuff in the back pile to sort through and load), pulled back up to the front, unhooked the flatbed, hooked up the horse trailer, backed that in to it's new spot, unhooked, hooked back up to the flatbed to move it to its more permanent location, unhooked the flatbed, hooked up the RV, and backed it up to its permanent home next to the chain link fence. Finally, we were done with all of the trailer work.

We went inside to rest for a few minutes because we were leaving in an hour to help some friends do demo work on their new home. The neighbors were out riding and working on some issues, so I stepped outside for a few minutes to help. They remarked on how nice the yard was taking shape. I mentioned that we had received a letter from the city because a group of about 10 weeds had grown while we were gone and were taller than 12 inches. We were told we had 15 days to clean them up or pay the $500 fine. Allen and I were so bummed to get that notice considering how hard we've been working to improve the property. We had forgotten about this because we were so focused on the back yard. While were in CA, it rained every day and everyone's weeds went nuts. Our little patch took off and they caught us in "a drive by assessment". My neighbor couldn't believe that we had gotten a notice with all of the work we had done. We visited a bit and then I came back inside at 2:45. Lexi was still down, so I had some water. Lexi announced herself by yelling, "Daddy!" at just about 3. We got her up, changed, drinks loaded, Otterpops for the crew at the house and took off.

This place of our friend's is going to be really nice, but it is going to need tons of work. They are gutting the entire house. The yard was 4 feet deep in weeds and there were signs of mouse activity everywhere. They've built their own home before and flipped a lot of properties so this is old hat, but still a ton of work. Today, they dug up the septic and we helped pull out a wall and the whole kitchen. I took off at 5 since it was getting a little dangerous for Lexi with flying glass, nails, falling walls and such. When I got home, the neighbor had taken his week whacker to our front yard! It looks so much better. That was so nice of them.

Lexi and I are waiting for a call from Allen to go and grab him when he's done. He has to be up at 3 a.m. to go to work tomorrow. He'll work from 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. and be home just in time to take naps when we get home from church. While we didn't get anything really huge done, but cleaning up sure made us feel better. Next week we rent the compressor again to try and get the well to work. I'm sure we'll get our fill of "productivity" then.