Is Spring here?

Daytime temperatures in the 70s. Night time temperatures in the 40s and 50s. Clear sunny skies. It sure seems like spring is here. I almost put on shorts last weekend while out working on the barn. Booger has been laying in the sun soaking up the rays, while I labor away on the barn. I finally installed all the roof trim on the back side and just today finished the front roof trim. This makes me feel good as I can now take the platform off the Big Red Beast's bucket and get busy grading the driveway. With all the rains we have been having, the driveway has added some washboard ridges to it. It was raining hard when I came home from work the other morning and I saw the culprit. Since I am at the end of the street and at the bottom of the hill, water was washing right down the street into my driveway and washing all the dirt and even the gravel! I usually have a hump built up at the start of the drive to direct that water into the ditch. But with working every weekend on the barn, the driveway was neglected, along with house cleaning. My three Dogwood trees are blooming. Yesterday, I noticed two more across the gully where I had cleared last December. Now I can see them. So I grabbed my construction pink ribbon and flagged them so I would see them while playing on the Mahindra. This morning I saw three small Dogwood's on the other side of the neighbor's fence line. I flagged those also and told my neighbor, Lori, that I flagged them with pink ribbon. She was glad I did and was wondering what the blooming trees were. So now I have three and she has three blooming Dogwood trees. Lori and Von have been busy putting up their new fences! They had their youngest dog, Kodiak, with them today while building fence. Kodiak is one of Booger's offspring. But Booger just doesn't know how to act around his son. It is so funny to watch them together.

I received a letter the other day from my cousin's son. I haven't talked to him in years. Now he wants to come visit. So where will I get time to clean the house before he comes? Should I just not worry about it and explain to him I either can clean house or work outside, but not both? I guess I could explain I take care of the outside stuff and Luke takes care of the inside stuff. Maybe I could get away with that excuse! With getting the barn finished for horses and trying to get Mom in a nursing home, I just don't have the time to clean house, much less clean Luke's bathroom. That is a major.....don't go there.

I was suppose to go to Austin today so Rebecca and I could go to the Livestock show. Rebecca called Thursday night and mentioned since I was tired from the work week and would come over Saturday, maybe I wanted to stay home and rest. Then she mentioned Drake asked her to go to Six Flags in San Antonio with him. I gave in to her wish of having fun with Drake, while in reality I looked forward to a weekend at home and lots of rest. Which I am totally enjoying after the week at work. It wasn't a bad week, just very hectic with not much down time. Southwest grounded a lot of planes for inspections this week. Since I do sheet metal, I was busy repairing the planes. Us employees were asked not to talk about what was happening, but I can at least write about how I felt working those repairs. For years folks would tell me how great a company Southwest is. I would agree as they said positive things about Southwest. But to see your company on the news (and hearing about it on the radio) all day and night, it gets to you. Especially if your company is under investigation by the U.S. Congress. The last two weeks had me feeling like I had a target on my back. I felt exposed and vulnerable from all the news exposure. It is very sobering to see the airplanes you work on being shown on TV and absolutely nothing positive is being said, unlike the pass praises for Southwest. It is like a bad dream that is out of control. But we took care of what we are paid to do. Make the airplanes safe.

After a week of hectic work, I looked forward to the weekend to relax. I got my 6520 out and loaded up the platform with tools to finish installing the barn's roof trim. This was a real easy job made difficult by the fact the roof is not quite square. This all goes back to saving some money on not buying 6x6 treated timbers, but instead using 6 inch diameter treated poles. The poles are not true all the way up. I plumbed the portion near the ground and adjusted the barn building as I went, as the tops bow or taper different directions! On the roof, that meant cutting the metal near the edge and splicing in another piece so the ridges would mate with the edge trim.

This entailed dragging the skil saw with it's metal cutting blade up on the roof and making a bunch of noise and sparks! I had to do this on three of the four corner edges. My extra roofing metal was stacked under my gooseneck trailer. So I had to get the truck backed up and hitched up to move the trailer. Normally the 6520 would do it, but the receiver hitch was holding the work platform in place. This process was further slowed down by Booger wanting attention every time I came inside the barn to cut some trim or cut a roof metal sheet down to splicing size. Now, the roof trim is finally all installed.

Which gives me time to change the fuel filters on the 6520, along with greasing it and the loader and backhoe and replace the blades on the lawn mower. Then clean up and go visit Mom and Dad. I have talked to an attorney of a nursing home in Conroe and he told me some things I need to take care of while getting Mom on Medicaid. Some of the items could cost thousands of dollars if Dad or I screwed up and did the paperwork or even some basic estate planning wrong. So it looks like we will pay the $2500 to $3500 to retain the attorney to help us do that.

Now to relax and get ready for next week. Stop back again to see if Booger sings!

hugs, Brandi