Archives for June 2013

I had to actually go and look on my blog to see how long it had been since I did a real post.

As you probably have noticed I am now trying to record a new podcast every other week. So far I like it, and the podcasts get to be slightly shorter which is easier to manage. I would not have thought that there wouldn’t be any regular blog posts in between, though – my apologies.

It seems that I am coming out of a mild depression. I wasn’t aware how inert I had been until I started to see a new doctor who helps me with my hormonal up and down. Now I’m taking supplements and such, and all of a sudden it is much easier to get things done again. And I can’t tell you how great it is to have a sheet of paper proving what I have been telling my doctors for years now. Of course all those blood tests and supplements are not covered by health insurance, oops. Definitely worth it, though.

So I’ve been going places.

First our son and I went to stay with my parents for a week during Pentecost break. It rained, and rained, and rained, and so we spent a lot of time sitting on the couch in my parents living room. I did get a lot of knitting done but otherwise it was a little boring perhaps. But we did go to the indoor pool, and we took the train, and went to a museum, and looked at whale bones, and another day we went to an artist’s market at the castle.

This is an orca skeleton (if I remember right):

This is beautiful Münster, a town I last visited in 1985 or so:

Before we went on the trip my husband and I had ordered a greenhouse. It arrived in two flat boxes, and we needed to assemble it ourselves. It turned out that the contents of the boxes weren’t enough, we had to make a foundation from concrete as well. On the day before we were to get on the train my husband and I dug deep holes for the foundation. We decided to make four small concrete things to hold the ground anchors of the greenhouse. While I was away my husband braved the hardware store, and got nine sacks of cement. None of us had ever poured or mixed concrete before.

It rained all the time, so on the first dry day after I was back home we started working on the foundation. First I researched concrete-making on the internet. I asked my husband where he had put the sand. “Which sand?” he asked. It turned out that the guy at the hardware store had told him to mix just the cement with water. Well, that would have been a bad idea. So off we went buying sacks of sand.

We thought we could mix the cement using out electric drill but it turned out that was too weak for the task. So we had to mix all of the cement by hand (or rather by shovel). We worked, and worked, and worked. We were afraid the concrete in the first hole would set before we had finished the last.

In the end we managed to put the metal frame with the ground anchors in the still wet concrete, and we even managed to get the whole thing mostly level and at right angles.

Then it poured again, and rained, and rained for almost two weeks.

On the first day where the sun was shining again our son and I got to go on a school excursion thing. His teacher had thought it would be a good idea for all the students in his class, and one parent for each to go to a youth hostel nearby and spend some time together from Friday afternoon until Saturday lunchtime. Great!

I have to say I have always disliked these things, even when I was still in school. And I had to shift seven student’s lessons in order to go there, and so had a rather stressful week because I had to teach all the students on the days before.

This is a picture of the youth hostel, and yes, it’s another castle.

The weekend was not as horrible as I had feared but that much contact with that many people meant that I was totally unable to do anything for the rest of the weekend.

Last weekend now was thew first weekend a) without travel plans, and b) without rain for ages, and so we (or rather I) started to put the greenhouse together in earnest. I spent Friday morning identifying all the parts, counting them, and figuring out what went where. On Saturday I spent the whole day putting the aluminum structure together, and at the end of the day there was a loosely screwed together thing on our lawn that resembled a greenhouse. On Sunday I had to get out in the blazing heat again, and because you have to put a greenhouse in a spot that gets lots of sun I had to work for hours and hours in intolerable heat. (Well, I have to say I really don’t do well with heat, not at all.)

So I put the structure on the foundation and screwed the two together, I tightened all the screws, I put meters and meters of rubber profile on the aluminum thingies until I thought I’d either keel over, or have my fingers start bleeding. And then it was time for dinner, and I had to choose: spend another day on the greenhouse, or work on even though I felt like I couldn’t lift an arm anymore, and be done?

I worked on. I had thought putting the rubber profile on had been hard on my fingers but then I had to fix the glass (well, not really glass but you know what I mean) with cramps. That was real fun. Either the cramp would torture your finger, and almost slice it off, or it would get loose and spring in your face again. Often both. After a while my husband asked me to tone the swearing down a bit, please, because of the neighbors.

But. I actually finished the greenhouse on Sunday evening. After having worked non-stop in the relentless heat for seven hours or so.

Today we drilled the last few holes and put the last few screws in, and now we have this. (And yes, you get to look at three pictures of the same small greenhouse. Be glad you didn’t have to help me put it together.):

And you know what I’ll be doing next weekend? I’ll go to a spinning meeting at the Austrian border. I’ll take my wheel and everything and even stay overnight.

No more travel in July, though. I think I’ve been away from home enough for the moment.