Mondays can be tough. Monday two weeks ago I accidentally ripped open a bag of flour in our pantry, which is also called the ‘doghouse’ as it’s a completely impractical storage area six feet deep, with a three foot door opening three feet off the floor, inside a closet. Because Heaven forbid my mom would waste any storage area. My family and I were recently talking about this area; as kids we had to climb in there to get things for mom because the adults could never get in there.
Long story longer, a month ago I needed something in a hurry from a tote behind a shelf unit in the doghouse. I had to move a bunch of stuff to get the shelf out to get the tote out. I had junk scattered all over the kitchen. And it all sat for a few days because I wanted Kelly’s help putting stuff back. And then early Monday morning, I was doing something in there that I don’t recall and something shifted and as I tried to shift it back, I ripped open the bag of flour. Then I knocked a 48 pack of AA batteries on the floor. It was a new package and batteries went everywhere. I closed the door and went to an eye appointment.
Later in the day, after my eyes cleared up, I started cleaning up the flour and trying to organize. I bought some pull out shelf slides and cut some boards and then realized if you pull out the shelf unit, you can’t get in the closet. So you’d have to be standing in the closet before you pull out the shelf, meaning you’d have to move the stuff in there first, and at that point Kelly said let’s re-evaluate this idea. Always the practical one that woman.
This last Monday I stopped at the Farm Service Agency (FSA) office to report my crops for the year. It’s called certification and it’s how the government tracks our production for all those farming handouts we get. I worked for this office back in the 1980’s when it was called the ASCS office. Certifications were easier back then. I had emailed this year’s certification maps into the office twice, trying to get the process done correctly, and there were still some questions. An hour and a half later all was well and I am certifiable. I mean certified. The agent helping me did a great job and when I told her this process was easier 30 years ago she gave me a blank look. Well, it was, I said. It just was. Trust me.
I went home and was gonna mount the loader back on the tractor for an upcoming lumber delivery. Usually this is a quick five minute job. But I bumped something and something shifted and bolts popped out and the support stands gave way. I stopped the tractor there so as not to make things worse. And then things got sketchy. I used a bunch of those wood blocks I was just saying I didn’t know why I had so many of. And I used a thing called a ‘Porta Power’ that I bought at an auction, and a jack, and a metal stand I’ve been saving for 15 years just for this purpose. I said some prayers and got it all jacked back up and the bolts replaced and the stands back in place and got the loader mounted. Whew!
I thought I was gonna start mowing weeds this week. I haven’t gotten that done yet. Got some other stuff done though.
Tuesday morning I donated platelets. It was my 80th donation, meaning 10 gallons (which I quibbled about; donating whole blood 80 times might equal 10 gallons, but not donating platelets even at two units / donation. Still, I got a 10 gallon pin and a new hat.
Our basement bathroom remodeling has begun… I don’t think it will take long as nothing major is really happening. The old cement board shower walls have been removed, and a new shower stall will be installed, a new vanity, and new toilet. With bidet!
I got lumber delivered…more work for me and the boys.
More on this when we get to it.
And then I decided to haul in some scrap iron before I take the loader off the tractor again. I loaded up the trailer and when I got out of the tractor there were spots on the front fender, and the inside of the front wheel was wet. That seemed like a problem.
What you’re looking at here is something pretty special. It’s a hydraulic hose under the tractor that controls the steering. There’s one on each side. This one has developed a leak and was spraying oil around. Usually the dealership can just make up a new hydraulic hose, but for some reason, the parts manual didn’t tell them what parts were needed for this. I took the old one off and up to John Deere. Turns out one end is odd.
John Deere says there’s two of these hoses in North America. One is in Texas and one is in Canada. Which doesn’t make sense. Something isn’t right. Hydraulic hoses break; how can there only be two of them?? But I’ll get them, on Tuesday. And this whole thing really discouraged me. I had things to do with that tractor the next few days.
I did have 2700 pounds of scrap iron at $160 / ton. So that will pay for the new hydraulic hoses.
I’ve got corn tassling! It seems early.
And these flowers, which I only post because some of you got grumpy about them last year. : – )
Here’s the neighbors cows hanging out.
The boys helped me do some work at the Rep theater. We hauled out 30 old lighting fixtures that are not used anymore. I’d like to renovate these…create something funky out of them.
ANY ROOMS IN YOUR HOUSE HAVE UNUSUAL NAMES?
WORST ROOM IN A HOUSE YOU’VE HAD?
Trail Baboon 
Offhand, I’d say the worst room was the bathroom in our first house when we first moved in. It was a small bathroom, the only one, and the family who owned the house before us had raised three boys there.
There was shag carpeting on the bathroom floor.
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Sounds lovely – what did you replace the shag carpeting with?
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I ripped it out immediately and replaced it with vinyl flooring.
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Ew, Ew, Ew!
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In the basement there is what I call the Fruit Room – basically a walk-in closet with deep shelves for canning jars and stuff we’ve canned. My grandma had a similar room in her basement, and called it that, but a lot of people draw a blank when I mention the fruit room.
Worst room might be in our other Winona house from the early 80s – it was relatively large, built by a lumber guy in the 1880s. It had a gorgeous 1/4 turn open staircase with “gingerbread” above it (I could show you pictures). But the stairs came up in the center of a poorly planned room, where there was hardly enough space for even a single bed – the stairway opening was smack in the middle.
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We’ve got a fruit cellar. It’s a room under the split level entryway, about 5’ tall, and mom put canned goods down there.
As I wrote that, it sparked a memory of mom sending me down to get a jar of whatever she needed. Tomatoes, peaches.
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Worst room would have to be the bathroom on our Colfax house when we first moved to the Twin Cities. The owners before had put up some rough cut wood panels with knotholes, who knows why. Unfortunately, the paint underneath was a nice blue sky color. The blue showed through the knotholes and it really did feel like you were in an outhouse. The first home decorating project we did was get rid of all of that.
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When I was in early junior high, we had an extra bedroom on the second floor and a painting that my folks had acquired somewhere of a Chinese woman hung in that room. This painting was very strangely highlighted with a background of yellows and the woman’s skin was a deep yellow almost with a green tint. I’m not sure when we started calling this room the yellow room, but we did.
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The first house I owned was in Faribault. I lived there from ‘93 to ‘99. A woman in her ‘90s without family had been living there until someone helped her get into long-term care. Anyway, the house was full of furniture and many household items when I bought it. I still have some of them. The house was badly in need of cleaning, painting, and updating. It sounds crazy that I bought that house for $50,000 in 1993. That home would list for over $250,000 today.
Anyway, I fixed it up. I had the entire interior repainted and installed new carpeting (not in the bathroom – ugh). I had new siding and vinyl windows installed. I did some landscaping and gardening outside.
There was a nice room between the original rambler and the garage. It was painted a horrific teal green and had green and yellow linoleum tiles on the floor. It had musty, dusty, heavy old drapes. It was as large as the living room, and had a beautiful Kasota stone fireplace on the garage end. I painted the walls, installed carpeting, and hung new wood-slatted blinds in that room. The windows were on both sides of the room, east and west, so it had great light. It also had doors on both sides of the room, east and west, and another door for the garage on the south end. I had the back door near the kitchen (east) taken out, the opening expanded, and a French door put in, which faced the back yard. When the room was finished, painted, carpeted, with new doors, windows, and window blinds, it looked fantastic. I called it the “Prairie room,” and I used that room all the time. I even slept on the futon in it sometimes.
I kind of wish I’d have kept that house. After I got it all fixed up, it was comfortable. I sold it to move to Waterville, and that was a mistake.
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My worst room was my bedroom when I was a young teen. My bedroom was in a corner of the basement of our home on Cannon Lake where I grew up. It was a dark corner of the basement. There were no windows in my bedroom, and the paneling was dark walnut. My younger brothers shared a larger bedroom with windows. My mom must have felt sorry for me at some point because she ordered all of this special room decor for me. I had a blue and white checked bed covering, kind of a drapey thing on the wall made of the same blue and white checked fabric, and two bolsters for the bed in the same pattern. Even though the new decor was a bit cheerier, it didn’t help the darkness and isolated feeling in that room. Eventually my parents allowed me to move my bedroom into the unused basement family room which was much larger and had lots of windows, even a back door which opened onto a small patio and faced the lake.
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When this house was built, mom and dad had five kids still at home.
There were four bedrooms downstairs, but these days you can’t legally call a couple of them bedrooms anymore due to the lack of windows. My brother and I shared a room for a few months until my sister left for college.
There’s a tiny room under the stairs, we call it the Harry Potter room. Next sister had that room for a year until she left for college.
After that it was easy. That’s when I got my basement bedroom, where I stayed until we got married and I moved upstairs.
Thinking about room names, We also have the Water Softner room.
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We saw a whole field of corn that had tassels on our trip back from La Crosse. I thought it was pretty odd. It looked like field corn, not sweet corn.
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the house we moved to when i went to high school was a split entry. 7 steps up to the living room ding room kitchen and bedrooms down the hall and 7 steps down to family room laundry room sliding glass door leading out to the patio where we put a pool our first summer there and bedrooms 4&5 for me and my brother. there was downstairs the furnace room with the hot water heater in it a couple shelves for things like christmas ornaments and in the back corner was the space under the entryway where the ceiling was about 3 1/2 feet high and the room was 12×12. it stored christmas ornament stuff too until i claimed it. my best friend was a stucco plaster patch drywall guy who taught me about how to do diy stuff. in that room we glued some 2x2s to the cinderblock walls insulated ran wiring for plugs and lights. sheetrocked taped the drywall painted carpeted installed the stereo put in a mattress and a desk and it turned into my study.
my grandpa jb had a coal room in the basement in fargo where the coal used to get delivered by the guy shoveling the coal into the outside access door where it went down a slide into the room where my grandpa would open the door and scoop the coal into his shovel and throw it in the coal burning furnace. a 4×6 room which evidence of coal history still in the corners in 1960 when the coal burning furnace had been replaced.
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hey ben is there nobody selling junk yard tractor and farm equipment parts. lots of folks selling junk yard car snd motorcycle parts. at $160 fo two hydraulic hoses i would think it would be viable. ive thought of those on other occasions when you priced out replacement parts for us
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