Insomnia strikes

Sunday afternoon (just about) and once again sat at the laptop tippy-tappying away. The main theme for the second half of this week is me struggling to sleep. The first night I didn't sleep was Wednesday and I had no really good excuse for this; I just woke up at 2am and then couldn't get back to sleep so went onto the sofa to read and that was me until that night. Then again last night I had a disturbed night but this time I had a good reason, which you shall see shortly. I'm going to do this as a chronological update as I'm feeling lazy.

Thursday

As I have said it was a very early start to the day on Thursday. I was awake from about 2am and by 4am gave up trying to sleep. I finished my book sat on the sofa, wrapped in the duvet but feeling comfortable. A got up just as I was getting to the end of the book and so we stayed sat on the sofa with our brews while I finished it. I can't wait for the weather to improve so we can go back to our morning brews sat on the balcony.

The nail finally fell off my damaged little finger

The girls indicating that they smell rats

I shifted all the wood again, but no rats were found

Sunny outside, lunch time cricket on the laptop

With our brews out the way I went to the office to start work while A got herself together to go for the weekly shop. She wasn't gone that long this week but in that time quite a lot happened. First of all went to put a load of washing on and managed to finally remove the nail from my little finger. Then when I was downstairs loading the machine the puppies went mad sniffing over the wood pile in the bottom corridor so once again I sealed it all off and shifted the wood to check but found nothing; I think they were just smelling the scent from the previous visitor that we killed. A got home just as I got upstairs after doing this so I helped her unload and the settled back to work. The weather was glorious and the washing I hung outside dried within a few hours.

Normal scissors cut the plastic fine

The fully assembled roof (from underneath)

At lunchtime, feeling a little burst of energy and also mindful of the weather forecast, I got myself together and pulled the corrugated plastic off the old front door that I had identified as being large enough for the purpose I had in mind; making a shelter for Sassy's toilet. The first step was to make the roof and I cut the plastic to size then fixed it into an overlapping shingle style roof using some wooden battens underneath. This ended up being very light, and a little short, so I put a final wooden lip on what will be the bottom of the sloping roof and then was done for the day. It's amazing what having almost no sleep does to your energy levels.

The rest of the day was working and eating and then sleeping; I got an early night, but not too early, and did sleep through very well in the end. I still don't really know why I couldn't sleep; I was feeling a bit cold-ified and congested so it could be that but also I was thinking a lot about various things around the house so it might just have been active mind. One good thing to come out of it was a discussion about my model railway and A suggested I fix up Sassy's room and, at least temporarily, put it into there. This makes so much sense (and I had actually wandered in there when I made a brew in the early house, while waiting for the kettle to boil, as the thought percolated in my mind) so that now has gone on the list to do.

Friday

After my relatively good nights sleep we were up and about not that late it was another relatively nice day, though the breeze was stronger than Thursday and had quite an edge to it.

Guide holes drilled and screws prepared

The roof has enough of a slope now

The toilet tray fits inside very nicely

Thelma shadowing the Special One along the top bank

I was straight outside with the parts for Sassy's toilet shelter and set about putting it together while I was feeling motivated. It didn't actually end up taking all that long and then A helped me to lift it into the cage and set it up over the top of the tray. The old tray was full of water from the rain the other day which is the reason we're making this. I cleaned it out, put fresh sawdust in, and then was done. It didn't take her long to go and check out her new toilet and she used it fine so the change didn't put her off at all. While I was out there the puppies were on the top bank playing and first the Little Lady walked past then the Special One came back with a load of wood on his back for fencing. The girls went and said hello both times and followed them along the fence as they went.

Eggs in cartons

Last update I did an amusing typo (pointed out to me by my dad) around the quantity of eggs that I had randomly scattered over my desk. A tidied them all up while I was out doing the shelter for Sassy so I got a quick picture to show; we are still getting either three or four every day so this collection is not really going down; I foresee some pickling of eggs in our future.

Looking over the village, with interesting clouds above

Water drains out of the burning drum

Thelma loves her new toy

Running back with it, she's intercepted by Louise

Stripey clouds in the distance

Louise "helping" A to dig out the bed

After lunch we headed into town to get A's card for her residency. When we got to the office there was no queue and the person ahead of us didn't take long to vacate the office. It was a very quick task after that, just sign a bit of paper and show the passport, and A is now officially official. We headed back via the hardware store (for more wood joiners, and a toy for Thelma) and Kaufland (for spices) before going back home. We had a huge pile of burning to be done and again mindful of the weather forecast this had to be burned straight away. The oil drum had water in it, however, so I got round to getting my metal drill bits and putting some drainage holes around the bottom. The water cleared very quickly and then the burn went OK. Thelma absolutely loved her new toy and brought it out with her for me to throw; A was out digging over the next section of the garden which she had started a bit on Thursday so I left her to it with the puppies and went in to rest, still feeling quite jaded from my bad sleep.

Underlit cloud bank

Peach clouds this evening

It wouldn't be a normal blog update if I didn't get out at least once to get photographs as the sun went down and so this time we have the sunset from Friday evening. It was pretty lovely, but very brief. The sun goes down behind the mountain during the winter and so by the time it has reached the correct angle to produce fireworks the actual sun is totally out of sight.

Saturday

Once again it was a swift start to getting things done on Saturday morning; the pattern of morning energy and making the most use of it being a good one.

I called this "Shades of Grey"

All ready to do some insulating

I hate this job; it's always hard work

It was a really grey start to the day and much chillier than the previous days had been; the forecast was for some pretty horrendous weather to come in before the end of the day. I got myself all kitted out to do the fibreglassing, including the swimming goggles A had got me for Christmas, and got stuck in. It didn't actually take that long, maybe an hour, to do all of the remaining insulating for the corridor so I went downstairs and had what was a very unpleasant very cold shower to wash the fibres out of my hair. I stood by the fire in Room 13 to dry myself off and this worked OK. We'd had a text for an ekont delivery so we popped down to town around lunch time and picked it up then went to the builders merchant where we collected the metal joiners we'd ordered, and I ordered for delivery the wood with which we will line the floor in Sassy's Room. We took the girls with us and the lady was really pleased to see them. She also gave us some bread she had baked in memory of her grandfather, which was lovely.

Taking the picture in the pouring rain

And this is the photograph which I took

The alarm being set for 2pm to remind me about the daily photograph has proven itself over and over again as I don't notice the time or just clean forget to take it until I hear the phone buzzing. It was a bit more of a challenge to get a picture on Saturday as the rain was hammering down but we had picked up an umbrella in town the day before so I juggled everything and managed to prevent the camera getting wet. I got A to take a picture of the shennanigans which she did while staying dry inside Room 13. Wise girl.

A metal straight edge, and sharp stanley knife

Boards cut and marked up

After a very relaxing day from this point as it was getting dark I decided to go downstairs and cut up the plasterboard we needed to finish the corridor in the roof. I measured it all up and then took the tools and cut each board in place with the idea that this would make them lighter to carry upstairs rather than taking whole boards and cutting them in the roof. The risk with this was that I would make a mistake with the measurements but I just cut slightly large  just in case. Again it didn't take long to do this, and the light stayed good in that room longer than I expected. A had the fire going in the Living Room above and the puppies could hear me so were sat on the hatch trying to work out where I was.

Saturday night and Sunday morning

And so we get to last night. The weather had pretty much closed in while I was doing the boards and the wind was whipping and howling around really badly. I decided an early night was in order so I left A watching a film and tried to sleep.

Water through the landing windows

And more on the floor of the top corridor

The puddle I stood in, barefoot

Towels down, as well as the rug soaking up water

The wind howling around, rain lashing on the windows, and other noises kept me from dropping off too quickly but I was asleep by the time A came to bed and remained that way pretty well until 2am. I woke needing the toilet so got out of bed and was woken fully when I stood in a puddle of freezing cold water on the bedroom floor; it was leaking in around the balcony door and was quite deep and spreading fast. I woke A by putting the light on to see what was going on and we got towels and spread them around then A got straight back to sleep. I was not so fortunate and after an hour of listening to irregular thunder, and very regular heavy rain, I got up to check everything and wring out the towels. I found that while water was coming in around the windows in a fair few places, and through the back door as it always does, the actual walls were dry and the drainage was continuing to do an excellent job. I was not, however, able to get back to sleep after this as the noise in the bedroom was intense. I moved to the spare room which is on the other side of the house and therefore was sheltered and did get back to sleep and slept well there, if a little cold as the summer quilt is on there.

A light covering first thing

The toilet shelter is working well

Lots of standing water on the orchard

The Oak Tree shows its snow-load off

I woke once to a heavy fog and then was back to sleep and when I woke again I looked out and saw that the forecast hadn't lied and we had snow which was falling and settling despite the huge quantity of water that had been deposited over the previous 24 hours. I bounced up to see A and tell her and she was already up and about. We made brews, cleaned up some of the damp towels from the bedroom to put into the washing machine, draped the bedroom rug over an airer next to the fire in the living and generally got the place a bit cleaner. We have also put the dehumidifier in the bedroom where it is working well and drying it all out, including the curtains. It's better to do this than light the fire as we're actually removing the water, rather than leaving it there to condense again if we just lit the petchka.

Roof terrace corridor ready for plasterboarding

A cutting the boards while I put them up

All the boards we put up this morning

The main task for the day was to get the plasterboarding done in the corridor to the roof terrace. First of all we carried the cut sheets into the roof which was hard enough so stopped for breakfast and then I changed into my boiler suit and we started to fit them. Unfortunately we found that the construction up there is not square and so the lengths I had presumed on for between the horizontal joists were too long. This caused us to first hack away with a pad saw to get it to fit but then take stock, pause, measure and cut each one down to fit its space. We only ended up doing one side as it took longer than we planned and Sunday is our day of rest. The rest of the boards are still up there waiting for another time, maybe next week.

On Monday we'll (weather permitting) have the boards and beams I have ordered to floor Sassy's room so that will then go to the top of the list, me being selfish and all that. I've decided that I'm going to put the floor down before scraping the walls and doing other work in there as it'll be easier to clean than having to sweep with a hugely dusty floor, and also will be flat and so safer for ladders. We'll see. That's it for now, I'm going to have a doze then eat then it is bed time. Sundays are so relaxing.