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Ailish and I are off to the mainland. I don't mind spending all day with my eldest, moody tween, but it does set things a bit on edge. As we glide over the waters on the ferry, there won't be any prosaic descriptions of the coming dawn. All is black beyond the fluorescent reflecting windows. The girl would say because the wools been pulled over my eyes. But I've been around long enough looking between the fibers in my life to be blind like that. . . .
She to the orthodontist for what we can only hope will be a mildly discomforting visit. It so unfair that when I had to have braces put in it was the dark ages of orthodontia and more like torture. Hers is a fair dreamy experience she looks forward too--uck.
I to the accountant to be scrutinized and rebuked for my slack bookkeeping efforts. I try to have little to do with either bookkeeping or accountancy throughout the year, so is it any wonder I awoke in a panic this morning knowing I had missed vital Schedule A medical expenses, and had to go digging through files to find them?
I am perfectly capable of filing my taxes myself--had done for years, no worries. Actually enjoyed it--sick puppy. However, the corporation changed all that into a nightmare. And then I saw the accountant could get me back more than I had ever received. . . .if only enough to pay for himself and a modest return for me.
So here I am dashing in before the end of January to have my taxes prepared. What sort of spotty swot am I? The kind who doesn't like Uncle Sam having any more of my money than necessary. I'll keep my part of the bargan--keep my nose clean, not agitate (too much), keep off of welfare. Let them keep theirs--return my MY money and stop gouging me with taxes so I need food stamps to feed my family.
If all goes well I can use this years return to pay off this years credit card debts before most people have even thought about April 15th. Suits me. But I'd better reserve some of this mythical money to pay for the new Dryer we are also headed to the mainland to pick up today. Not that I want one, or think we need one. Washing hanging about the hovel to dry had never set me off on any rants. . .but the amount of it can be a bit overwhelming. With seven people in a house it takes all week to do the laundry so that on Sunday the whole process must begin again. It doesn't help that 5 year old Beezus is a dress up queen, or that Beansprout will only wear certain combinations of clothes. God forbid they should ever keep their clothes clean and picked up so they aren't under the pile of damp, stale towels which seem to bloom on the floor like strange mushrooms daily.
2006 really needs to be the year of a move to a bigger house, preferably one not built for 3 people. Preferably one close to employment. Preferably before I go insane. Oh look, the darkness lifts, the greyness creeps in and we are there . . . .
For more of the continuing adventures of the Kitchen Garden Polytunnel Project head over here.
I write with the sadness of the loss of a dear friend as I inform you of the passing of our Asko Dryer.
It led a valiant life tumbling nearly dry clothes, day after day. Never sick a day in its life, it worked until the end. In a massive internal motor short, Asko Dryer exhausted its last bit of lint. It is survived by its third spouse--Asko washer. To heap sadness upon sadness Asko Dryer was the last of the original appliances we owned. It was 12 years old. The spare parts will be donated to science.
On a lighter note, Asko Washer is looking forward to pairing with a younger, American model for its new Dryer.
Well it didn't rain Saturday and I had a grand time beetling about the countryside doing my erands--some of which you can read about here. And then yesterday was a clear, sunny spring-like day blogged about here. The lack of rain in the past two days, however, has been made up today, in spades. It has poured non-stop and heavy all blinking day long. All the water the ground absorbed over the weekend has been regurgitated to join the surface water all flowing through my place in a grassy river into the bay.
All around me is grey and gray and more gris with the thin, water sheeted strip of what was grass but is now pond weed, sparkling green through the dusky day. I have been staring at the glowing screen before me, bored with lack of input, all day long like it is some sort of S.A.D light. Sad really. My project awaits me outside, like some overturned whale carcass awaiting a parasite in the salt spray. A box of mid-winter reading and cookbooks is winging its way to me from Amazon, probably in the post which isn't delivered today because it's a postal holiday. And I'm waiting for the phone to ring, returned calls my way. Another island winter Monday.
Time to don my new, bright green wellington boots--an imported extravagance because I'm sick (to bloody death I might add) of the crappy boots sold in farm supply stores only lasting a week before cracking, or unpeeling and leaking without a hint of warranty. So much for Pride in American Craftsmaship. The Wellies are everything the needle in the vein price suggests--comfortable, flexible, and gawgeous as I wade through the yard to collect firewood and lock in the hens for the night. And who knows, if blogging and podcasting ever pay off for me and I become some sort of new web 2.0 micro-star I can trade up to the top-of-the-line wellies and feel right posh stomping about the muck. Time to dial up J. Crew and order me a spring-time oilskin country coat for all the photo-ops.
For once I awoke and it wasn't raining. There was a full moon forcing its way lustfully through the scudding clouds and the air was sweet and calm. Not even a hint of breeze on the ground. Which is all good because I headed to the mainland today and now that the sun is up I can see blue skies and cumulo nimbus everywhere. No rain. No wind. Happy trails.
I hate driving in the rain around here, not least because our poor station wagon with the woggily front end can't keep up with all the zippy SUV's driven by people who never look at how much it costs at the pump. And also, because I couldn't borrow a pick-up truck today I might have to both put stuff on the roof-rack and stick things out of the window.
Today is the day I pick up supplies for the Great Poly-Tunnel Experiment, and the Corned Beef Challenge (keep and eye out next week for Gastrocast #42).
Speaking of which I better shift me arse. . .I've got to catch a 4.:25pm boat home.
I see blue sky. The Radar confirms it. Can it be? Finally, a break in 23 straight days of rain. No records broken. My Ark need not be finished.
I went down to the lower garden yesterday to pull the remaining cabbages to feed to the chickens, and what did I find? Not only muck up to my knees in the lake where we usually grow veg, but our communal tractor buried above the wheel centers. Ah well, spring will come, summer will harden the ground: I won't need the tractor before then, but the one's who stuck it will . . . .
Almost forgot--for those of you following along in the saga of the garden, I've updated the pages--check them out here.
I've been hammering away on my Company's site to update it--or rather make it more update-able. It is no easy task, but I think switching it to a blogging format has made the change over go quite a bit smoother. The old site hasn't had much attention lately and because it was so hard to update I it has been way out of date. It's hard when you barely have enough business to fill in the gaps--it makes making the effort just a bit hard. However, it is a new year and time for new strategies!
It goes without saying, Happy New Year's!
Things are a bit topsy-turvsy around here at the moment. School is begining again in ernest. I'm finally getting the last of my equipment I took with my on my weeks-away-work, stowed. Paperwork piles still await. . .And the first days of 2006 have brought to us those ponderous questions of "what do we do with the rest of our lives?" How much longer can we stick it out on the island and still be sane? Are we sane, now? And, the re-occuring theme of the last 5 years. . .How can we move from the island (as in--will our house sell for enough to buy somewhere else?) and where will we move to and what sort of work will we do? Deadlines and timeframes have come and gone. We have waited for family to get on board various projects and schemes, we have waited while all or our property sat on the market and became one of the few not to sell. Can we, should we just sell our house and immediate acreage at a loss to move on to greener pastures and implied freedom? Or do we hang on for the unpredictable and try to sell it all for possibly very much more and hang on here for who knows how much longer?
All of these thoughts are prompted by my/our desire to get fresh chickens this Spring, and to build a hoop-house greenhouse so we can have more growing space and better tomatoes and real peppers and a longer growing season. And I want piglets--a bit much to crowd on our one close acre and and our other 7 is out of our control at the moment and so unsuitable. Grrrr.
The phone ringing with a steady job somewhere else would help all of this. But we might as well play the lotto with all the odds of that happening. I seem to be making a career out of going nowhere fast.
So I'm looking forward to big changes this year. But, no resolutions--or rather, a resolution not to make any. Oh, that, and to loose 50 lbs. . . . .
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