Bank Holiday for some

The end of another day and time to start tippy tappying away at this keyboard again to bore you all to tears with the extended reportage about my day. What a wonderful time I am having here.

It was bigger than it looks, honest

The blog, however, starts off last night as I was sitting eating my dinner and chilling out after posting. I heard a loud buzzing sound and a few "clonks" and at first I was ignoring it. Then I decided to look round and there was a huge hornet which was trying to get in to the light. It flew at the window, hit it, landed on it and crawled up until it got to the top of the glass pane and then repeated the exercise. I took this picture to show the size with my thumb on the inside of the glass and this monster, thankfully, on the outside.

Fortunately it didn't work out to just go in any of the many open windows in the building and fly through to come in. Big beastie, that one! It didn't stop me sleeping and I really did sleep deeply, only waking once for the toilet before becoming alert and realising that I was really really REALLY thirsty, and it was almost 8am. I got straight out of bed and went inside to make a brew and then I took that brew and went and sat on the balcony and drank it all before even thinking about doing my morning chores. Normally I make it, have a sip, and then head out but today the dehydration was too great.

Poppies around my property

After that brew I felt much better so I filled the watering can from the standpipe (still no water inside) and went to sort Rambo out. On the way around I snapped loads of pictures of the poppies which all seemed to have survived after that hail, and are flourishing everywhere. This was a request as well. I hope they are appreciated. They were taken (from left to right): In Rambo's enclosure, at the end of the green building, next to the doors into the green building and just near the porch. I have more than this but I only took pictures of the ones I saw on my rounds.

While I was watering the trees for the first time T arrived but he was driving his mum's new jeep and not Lucy. I followed him up and round to see if there was a problem with Lucy and he reassured me that he had just been testing out some fixes he'd done to the other car and Lucy was fine, which is good. Rambo was also pleased to see T and I had to shout at him to stop him from being run over as the car was driven inside. He's a very silly doggy sometimes. The rest of the round was completed quickly, with a few more seedlings up by the zinias and the repeated thought that I need to think about sheltering the Magnolias soon (I'm considering a woven wind-break with whippy branches between stakes in the ground but will see) and then I headed inside for my next chore.

First tidying chore completed

The last couple of days, as I have been using my balcony more, I have found myself hurting my feet when I went to and fro bare footed because of all the rubble that had been left from the inner doing being knocked through, and then the windows and balcony door being put in. I set myself the task of clearing all of this today so that the bedroom is ready to be started on in earnest once the internal window is done. First of all I attacked the small amount of rubble and bricks in the living room which didn't take long at all to shovel into the wheelbarrow and dump at the normal place, and stack the bricks along the wall.

Mo (L) and Jesus (R) in a race

My working routine today has been quite effective, setting myself little targets towards the bigger one, and then taking regular rests in between. I spent these breaks chatting to my usual person, playing with Rambo, planning a few things ready for the visit from Lubo tomorrow, and watching Jesus and Mo as they were exploring a little bit together. I like to call this picture "The Tortoise and The Tortoise" as I don't have any hares.

Another task distracted me briefly from the tidying and this was water. The free water had stopped when T came to refill the watering can to make some more cement and the dribble which was coming from the inside tap would probably have taken about two hours to get enough out so I gave him all the bottles I had stashed and then, when they were done, we went in Thomas to find more. At the first stop, just in the centre of the village, we found that the water was running and so all of the receptacles were filled (and I splashed water over myself to rinse the dust) and then we headed back with T sat in the truckbed stopping the bottles from being bounced around too bad. Sadly my picture of this didn't come out so you'll just have to imagine it.

Now THIS is a messy bedroom, mum

The bedroom was a bit of a bigger task than the living room with loads of old windows piled on top of huge mounds of rubble and this took me most of the rest of the day to slowly work my way through. I got T to assist me lifting the really large window frame out onto the patio and my concept is maybe to use it for a frame for Sassy's outdoor run. I then took about ten barrow loads of rubble downstairs (twenty steps, having to carefully lower the wheelbarrow down each one - it was a good workout) and finally I went through all the bricks selecting the whole ones for one stack and the half ones for the other.

Bashed toe

Most of the bricks were clear of mortar but some still had bits attached so I was knocking it off with the shovel. This is when I compounded an earlier bit of stupid (I went to kick a rock which Rambo had left on the patio out of the way and forgot I was wearing sandals - it was heavy and bent the sole back so I kicked it with my toe. Ouch) by missing just the once and giving my big toe (the same one) a glancing blow. There is now a lovely black lump on my toe where I abused it today. Silly me.

Nice and clean and tidy

This injury in no way slowed me down and so by mid afternoon I had finished the job and had a lovely clean and swept out bedroom to enjoy, and I can also walk through to the balcony without standing on sharp things. Success.

The look on my face is pure pleasure.. OK!?

Immediately after finishing this tidy I went outside and found that the free water was running again. I made use of the hot water to wash my hands and feet from dust and then watered the little plants. After this, feeling all grubby and really in need of a good rinse down, I turned the hose on myself and soaked myself completely. It felt great though typically just after I finished the sun went in and it hasn't been seen since.

Solid front of rain

Feeling cleaner I went back inside and then spent nearly an hour on the phone to my best mate which was really nice as I've not spoken to him for a good while (we covered subjects as diverse as politics, work, women and CDs but he won't read this because he thinks my blogs go into too much detail. The call was 54 minutes long, if you must know) and then I was on video to the special person and while that was happening I noticed the rain was finally falling so I finished the call and went down stairs to bring the cement in. All afternoon the thunder has been rumbling around and during my calls I had been marvelling at some of the awesome lightening I could glimpse through the trees however the storms had been keeping away. this turned out to just be the edge of one and it was only ever light drizzle however it was enough to stop T and shortly afterwards he headed off for the day however he snapped this photograph of the rain across the valley which was a sight heavier than we saw.

Awesome insect with huge antennae

I do have a picture to go back to which I took just after finishing the tidying (and is the main reason I was so completely covered in dust). I'm not sure where it emerged from but when I went back to take the picture of "clean room" I spotted an awesome looking insect sat on the floor. I grabbed the camera and took lots of shots from all angles, including getting right down on my belly to photograph it from in front (I was hoping it wouldn't charge me at this point as I was basically immobile). Amazing wildlife again.

Really nommy dinner

And so my day has been, with only one other incident of note which was dinner which took absolutely ages to cook (not helped by me continually forgetting to put the tatty in the oven) but when it was finally done was so amazingly tasty it was worth the wait. I remembered to salt my butter this time and it made a big difference, as did being a little patient and leaving the tatty to soften a bit more than last time. I do eat well, here.

So there it is. Things which didn't happen today which were expected include the Kmet turning up to help me with residency, the window people coming to replace the broken panes and me getting the scythe out to start clearing the grass. What with the rain today I may not even get to start that last one off tomorrow, unless it is warm early. I've also given up on the Kmet helping and talked again to Sylvia who has offered to help so I'll probably just leave that there. Such is Bulgarian Time.