Sultry Sunday

After a long day yesterday that involved getting up at some obscure hour, driving many hours up north, drumming and then driving home again.. I was tired. Sunday is the one day I can sleep "late" (our definitions of late probably differ) and I was so looking forward to it. I was rudely awoken this morning at 6:30 by my dog howling. The kind of bark that makes you think someone is in the house. Turns out, after a lot of sniffing and whining.. there was a mouse on the ceiling in our basement hall (it's mostly a storage area now.) How that mouse was hanging on sideways I don't know. I do know that it's little leg was bleeding, so I wonder if it had a run in with my cat. And why my cat didn't finish it off.


Project number 2 is a new gate in the front of the house. Our gate was old and rotting, and we decided it needed to be rebuilt. It's kind of practice for rebuilding our front little fence, as it's the same type of picket. The boy hauled out the old gate, mixed up some concrete and set the posts. Tomorrow, after school, I will paint them and he will put some side pieces that hold the gate on (it's a slide up gate, not a hinge) and I'll paint those, and we'll be good to go. He worked very hard today and I'm very impressed with the gate. His project is going faster than my porch, which I took a break from today.

This is the gate, drying in the barn. I painted half the gate with a fabulous Barn/Fence paint by Behr. It's a latex/oil mixture that is self priming. I think I only need that one coat. Tomorrow I will flip it over and paint the other side. Our old gate was a weathered brown/grey.. and I'm excited to see how much better it looks with this white. I'm considering painting the little fence white as well. Who'd have thought I'd have a white picket fence someday? Certainly not I. I feel like all I've done so far this summer has been paint. This, that, and everything else.


This, was the lovely flame that started the prep work for my dinner. It's an Australian Walk About grill. It folds up and has wheels so you can take it with you! We got it for the boy right after Father's Day and he just loves it. There is something so much better about food cooked over coals than propane. We had grilled chicken and corn on the cob. I'd never had grilled corn on the cob before this year. It's so good I think we've had it 6-8 times already. Tomorrow I head back to school for 4 weeks of 5 hour summer school days. Somehow in between all that I need to get the porch finished before July 30th. Wish me luck.