Visiting and Tinkering

Ah, darn. I had an entire post written on the phone yesterday, went to add a photo to it, and somehow discarded the whole post rather than just a photo I wanted to replace. I declared it a sign that I should just concentrate on doing rather than writing for a little while. So, for the past three days I’ve been doing stuff like crazy! I feel quite accomplished.

A lot of this doing occurred because Chris and Kathleen came up on Friday and stayed until after lunch on Sunday. You see, Chris likes to work with his hands and is a great problem solver, so he did a bunch of things to help us around the office and the Hermits’ Rest house.

And because of that, I was inspired to do my own set of tasks, with Kathleen there to lend some muscle and brain power, too. We’re pretty lucky to have Lee’s clever relatives working with us on our projects!

On Friday, after Mandi and I worked like good employees, Chris assembled Kathleen’s lovely new office furniture, straight from the box. It’s probably the first “new” stuff we have in the Hermits’ Rest building. It’s all white and brass, and cutely modern. She brought lamps, which enabled us to really see the former storeroom, which turns out to be pretty cute (and clean, thanks to Melissa’ cleaning it last week).

Bringing that stuff in started us on a whirlwind of redecorating, which I’ll share more of on the work blog, but the best part was we finally reassembled the big shelving unit that was in the old office. We had looked and looked for the stuff to put it together with, and finally found it in the built-in cabinet in Kathleen’s new office. Literally, the last place we looked, heh.

While Lee and Chris assembled, Kathleen and I moved chairs and tables around to create a new “testing area” in the other storeroom (the future reception area). That will be for us to use while we test potential employees at Hearts, Homes and Hands.

And, since Chris hadn’t seen the Gillis house, where we hope to move the new business eventually, we took him over there to decide what offices will go where, and whether to do the top story as an apartment for Kathleen. We came up with a great idea to make a two bedroom apartment up there. We’ll just have to earn some money to do the work!

In the evening, we found some new bugs, which I know you’ll want to see. There was an embarrassing amount of mating on the part of these eastern Leaf-footed bugs. There were dozens of copulating couples. I think the katydid was eating some of them, or just liked to watch.

Trying to Be a Hostess

I did try to be a good hostess and do some fun stuff. So, on Saturday Kathleen and I went over to the good ole Bling Box to take advantage of our coupons. I got a couple of things to wear the rest of the summer with leggings, but MOST SHOCKING is this: I purchased a pair of shorts. Yes, I did. I will just deal with the fact that I have very white legs with many bug bites, but be a little cooler as the summer heats up. No, I do NOT have a picture of that.

Back to Work

We also bought the stuff for Kathleen to make lasagna, which was really nice of her. Then, we got back, and while the guys worked to try to get my hanging brackets back hanging on the front porch posts, Kathleen and I got quite dirty cleaning the front porch, so it would look as good as the back.

That porch was in better shape, but it had accumulated a lot of random tools and supplies that we were able to put away, which made getting rid of the rest of the dead bugs up there easy. We cleaned out the planters, made a little seating area on the unused side of the porch (where my picnic table will be someday), and re-potted some of our poinsettia plants.

Good news: even though they lost all their leaves, the fig tree cuttings we took over at their farm have rooted and look like that will be little plantable trees at some point! When there are some leaves, I’ll pot them up, then we can plant them next year, surrounded by much chicken wire to protect them.

By the time we were done, we were two red-faced women, so we went inside and cooked. Well, she cooked. I “helped.” We tried to sit on the porches, but it was just too hot. I’m afraid the heat is now here to stay. After all, we are in Texas!

Don’t be surprise if I have another blog in a few minutes. I had to cut this one off! It’s a book. People don’t like long posts, I’m told. Hee hee, it’s a good thing this stuff is mostly for me and three or four friends!