July 2024 – Wonderfully moving into the Dog Days

July 2024 brought much the same lovely weather we experienced throughout June albeit a bit warmer in temp. We are STILL getting rain! I can hardly believe it. People have been joking that we’re literally getting all the rain this year that we didn’t get for the last five years lol. All of summer last year we lived in a red flag and smoke warning from poor Canada burning and our own major drought. Hopefully this becomes more of the norm and we never have to experience weather like that again.

I always get so motivated when winter starts winding down but then the weather gets nice and I don’t really want to do much of anything but enjoy it.

Another major factor is how busy we get at my day job and that leaves me pretty weary after work.

Our yard is still all kinds of green and lovely and it is a balm for what we lost over the last months. Losing my old horse and the barn were both awful for me but the view looking better (though still awfully empty) is helping.

I am so excited to tell you guys that I FINALLY started taping and mudding the stairwell!

And it sucks!

I was totally justified in procrastinating!

So we have one of those awesome ladders where you can adjust both sides up and down so it works on stairs. Which is awesome… unfortunately (though it is a very big ladder) even at its tallest setting it is just barely tall enough…

So I literally have to stand at just about the very tippy top of it to reach the patch on the ceiling.

It is AWFUL.

Its sweating bullets and shaking like crazy kind of silly. Its not like there’s really anywhere I could fall! The ladder takes up the majority of the stairwell and I screwed it down so its not going anywhere.

I don’t have any trouble with heights or ladder work usually but having to get that high up with no support and nothing to lean on is just… horrible.

(I can’t put a hand on the wall because the job requires me to use both of them.)

I just finished third coat though as I decided that instead of doing the entire stairwell at once I would do the shitty work first.

This means not burning myself out trying to do it all at once… Which is helping me complete it faster I think as the awful job really doesn’t take much time (though it feels like a lot) and getting it out of the way ASAP will be awesome.

I’m thinking two more coats because (of course) the patch in the ceiling is a big ugly one but that means I’m over halfway there!

This job is making me look forward to the rest of the taping and mudding lol.

There isn’t a ton to report on the home front otherwise but I do have a funny story to share.

So most of you guys know we have two dogs and a doggie door out back to a big, fenced in, dog run. So, hearing the doggy door being used is very common around here – its kind of a bang/slap sound that’s just background noise at this point.

We were watching tv one evening when the doggie door banged… no big deal except both of the dogs were right in front of me.

I grabbed his arm, “Both of the dogs are here!”

We tiptoed (at a run) to the back, a couple of full grown adults just freaking out.

“What just came in the house?”

There wasn’t anything to be found lol.

Our two dogs wondered what the hell we got them up for. We looked under all the furniture etc. but we would have heard something running around on the hardwood floors.

I really don’t think a squirrel would be strong enough to open the doggie door and I can’t imagine a neighbor’s cat (of which I don’t think there are any) would even do something like that.

Maybe something didn’t come in… but instead actually LEFT the house?

I think an Ermin might consider it as we had one come in our doggie door back when I was a kid. A racoon would have no problem using the doggie door, maybe he just stuck his head in to check it out then ducked back out?

I just hope it doesn’t happen again lol.

That situation made our imaginations run wild. I told my dad about it and he joked, “Imagine coming down in the morning to a little black bear on the couch with the dogs.”

I guess I’d make him breakfast too!

July 2024, thanks dad that’s not helping.