Week 30

It was one of those days that lingers.  On and on.  It's hot.  Really hot, even hot in the shade.  It seems like we don't get much done.

We oversleep and then laze around in the hot tub reading blogs and news. Mark is off from his "off the ranch" job so he goes to cut firewood and I work in the garden. 

Friends come by with their grandkids and Mark leads a quad tour of the place.  I pull weeds and annual flowers long past their prime.  I wonder if the flowers thought they were done too, all dried up in the sun with most of their seeds already fallen into the soil.  I think the quad riders must be hot and dusty and probably ready to be done as well.   They've been gone a long time.  I hear the roar of engines and soon we are all in the house choosing from iced tea, Gatorade or ice water.  The 11 year old and myself choose the  Gatorade.  Seems fitting.  We chat.  It is cool in our house.  The walls are thick and with the new windows in place it stays comfortable.  It was 105 yesterday and it never got over 80 in the house. Cool.  The friends leave after it is decided that the 11 year old will come back and ride horses tomorrow.   I sit in my granny's old rocker and read while sipping another Gatorade.  Love the kool aid style sweetness.  My granny always made me kool aid in the summer.  I still have the pitcher she made it in. 

I call the TSC store where we have some livestock panels on order.  They tell me they have lots now, so we decide to drive the hour to  pick them up so we can finish the corrals.  The truck won't start.  The battery is dead.  We hook up the jumper cables to the land cruiser and I pull out my book and read from the passenger seat.  Darn truck still won't start.  Eventually it turns over, must have just been really dead.  We head down the road and it's hot in the truck as the fan is broken.  Windows down and hot breeze stirs the dust.  Mark keeps looking at his gages. We are a few miles from home and he says that the batteries aren't charging.  We pull into a driveway and turn the trailer and truck around and head back up the hill to home.  We don't want to be stranded in Fortuna town.  I go back in the house with my book and Mark goes online to try and troubleshoot the truck's  problem.  Eventually he calls around looking for an alternator.  Finds one.  Then he thinks to call the local diesel mechanic who has helped him over the phone before.  He does again.  Turns out it is the regulator that is inside the computer.  After a hard shut down of the truck's computer (disconnect the batteries and put the wires together or something like that)everything is working fine and we are off to town again.  We just have time to get to the store before it closes.

They don't have the panels.  Well, they have one.  Mark is a little upset. Only a little.  Apparently there was some miscommunication on the phone.  Oh well.  Then a man who works there comes up to us and has an attitude to Mark and without thinking I say loudly, "Hey, watch your attitude!"  I shock myself.   I've done this a few times with Mark .  He always just smiles at me and says that I have his back.  The man, who is the assistant manager quickly changes his attitude and we load up the one panel and are told they will call us soon when the others come in.  Alrighty then.  Other friends from town text and invite us to dinner.  Tuna.  Yum.  We load up their kayak for them to take to another friend's private campground.  We notice a sweet sewer smell as we get out of our truck.  Weird.  We hang out around a campfire and talk story. 

Later, under a cover of stars, we stop by our post office  to pick up our mail.  Mark notices that the alternator isn't charging again, so he keeps the truck running while I go in.  Wow.  Sewer smell is really strong.  It  must be from Miranda town.  Yuck.  It kind of burns my eyes as I walk in front of the truck.  Quickly I get the mail and we head up the hill to home.  The neighbor's have locked the black gate so I have to  get out of the truck to unlock it.  Whew!!! The sewer smell has followed us.  Of course it isn't the sewer at all, it is our battery boiling over.  Yikes.  Mark decides we will just book it up the hill to our ranch.  So away we go.  It is actually much smoother when you only hit the tops of the holes.  We park next to the hose at our house and Mark quickly waters the batteries down as I go to close up the hen house.  Mark discovers that we also had a connection problem on battery number two, and were only charging battery number one.

We open the house windows and a cool breeze comes in.  It's almost 11 pm.  We go to bed.   

It may not have been a 'perfect' day, but it was still good. 

Our back yard