We’ve Been Busy

We just sat down for the day and were discussing how busy we’ve been and then we started laughing because a few years ago, our normal routine was so much busier. Have we gotten lazy in our old age?

We finally had rain last week and our rain gauge wasn’t working. Vince got the manual out and it said “clean the rain gauge every three months”. It also said to clean the solar panels on the outside unit every three months and change the batteries in the outside unit once a year. We’ve had it almost two years so I’d say we were a bit behind on our maintenance schedule. Vince waited til it had stopped raining and got warmer and got the ladder out today, pulled the outside unit down and did all the maintenance.

The weather station never connected to the new internet and that’s been about three months that we’ve had that so he decided to troubleshoot that and then we remembered that the weather station will not connect to a 5G router. Vince had to call the internet people and they said our router does have a slower service but both the 5G and 2.4G were named the same thing so they had to give them different names so we could access whichever one we needed to access for whatever . . I don’t know what I’m talking about but . . once they re-named everything, we had to reset everything! Google Nest devices — three computers, two phones, air conditioner thermostat, the weather station, at least four tablets, Roku devices . . I’m sure there are things we still haven’t remembered everything. Remember when life used to be easy? I sometimes wonder if trying to make things more convenient, we haven’t made it all more difficult.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, we remembered to call the propane man. He said he wasn’t delivering today but he’d come by tomorrow. He always knows that when we call, we’re only about halfway down so he never has to rush for us. A little later, the lady from the propane office called and said someone out our way was almost out so, since he had to come fill their tank, he’d run by and fill ours. Vince has to go out and keep the chickens from escaping while the big gate is open for the propane guy to drive his truck into the orchard.

Looks like a possum got another rooster last night so Vince had to clean up that aftermath. A trap is set! We told those roosters to sleep inside the coop but they were a little too independent for their own good. Two are gone; one that always went into the coop at night, is still alive, along with his father, who has always gone into the coop at night. Instead of 5 roosters, we’re down to 3 and we really only need 2 but with the only remaining young rooster sleeping in the coop, he’s probably safe.

Then I remembered I had to make Rita’s food today. I had taken chicken livers out of the freezer and put them in the fridge Saturday so I got that done.

Then I remembered I wanted to take the sheets off the bed, take the good mattress cover off the mattress, put the waterproof mattress cover (which is not very fluffy) on the mattress, then put the one foam layer on top of that mattress cover, then put the cooling, fluffy cover on top of the foam, then put the sheets and quilts back on. Seems crazy to do that and not put clean sheets on the bed but I just did that Saturday so I wasn’t going to wash them again.

And somewhere during all that, I fixed dinner.

Actually, I had cooked the roast a couple of days ago. It was some kind of Mexican dish – like you would add the meat to enchiladas or burritos but we just ate it plain. I made caponata with toasted pine nuts on top, and steamed broccoli.

Vince was just fixing to lock the doors for the night and he said “You aren’t planning to go back out, are you?” and I said “No! I may just go to bed. I’m tired!”