Homestead Day 55 Wednesday 11/152017

Didn’t get much sleep last night. Miss Suzy was having some tummy issues and just couldn’t settle down. She grunted, moaned and paced the bed for almost the entire night. I had dozed off at about 5:00 and awoke again about 5:30 to the sound of her wretching on the comforter. Nothing like dog puke on your bed to get you up and running. Got dressed, took the comforter to the laundry room and took Miss Suzy outside. She had a bout of diarrhea on the floor, while I had gone downstairs with the soiled comforter. All three of the dogs had some sort of intestinal issues one after the other. Seems Taco, the Chihuahua, gave it to Gandy, the Schnauzer, who passed it on to Suzy, the 5.5 lb Yorkshire Terrier. It, also, appears that this disease may have been passed by a shared water bowl. It’s a working theory. No humans have been effected by this bowel shredding ailment. Of course, we aren’t drinking from the same water bowl. Anyway, I got back to sleep around 6:30 and slept until 10:00. Another half day wasted.

About noon we got on the road to Kenai. We needed some more remodeling supplies from Home Depot, some laundry baskets and food from Walmart. The roads were a little icy on the way up but our new siped, studded tires didn’t let us go “slip sliding away”. It’s about an hour and a half drive through God’s country. Did not seen any moose on this trip but did see two dead porcupines. Porcupines are the Alaskan equivalent to armadillos in the South. Arrived at Walmart at about 1:45 as Summer had been driving and she drives like a 90 year old lady. After a $236 shopping spree we departed for Home Depot across the parking lot. Yesterday evening Summer killed the washer with a couple of loads of fleece and jeans. Actually. what killed it was that it wasn’t filling completely and the clutch couldn’t handle the fleece or jeans with the low water level. Perfectly good washer reduced to scrap metal due to a failure of a simple pressure switch.

Home Depot is mesmerizing to a guy like me. I love the smell of the lumber, the array of tools, I would likely never need, and the plethora of stuff just to eyeball whether you need it or not. For this reason I make a list and I only look for and buy what is on the list. Even this takes two hours as we continue to rehab this house. We had to pick out a new washer and it had to be a front loader as they use only about 25% of the water of a top loader. Water is precious commodity and expensive. Topping off our water tank every week is a $50-60. Got the washer, some sheetrock for the downstairs bath, countertops for the kitchen, a kitchen faucet and a 100 feet of heat tape and insulation for our frozen waste lines running to the septic tank. By the time the shopping was done, it was almost 5:00. We departed Kenai and arrived home at about 6:30. The drive home was slower than normal as I have a hard time with night vision.

Back home, I built a fire in the stove while Summer walked the dogs. Fire going, I started unloading the Walmart haul into the house. Since there was no rain predicted we decided to leave the washer and the other Home Depot purchases on the truck until tomorrow. In order to unload the six ton washer, we will need to get to the back door. Getting to the back door entails moving a lot of crap. All in all it was a very busy, boring day.

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We had McDonalds for dinner on the way home. Wasn’t great but it filled the void and I needed a cup of coffee.