around the house
Spring Flowers
Washing Off the Pollen
Busy Saturday
Today was one of those days that the camera never really comes out because it’s all chaos and business anyway. K had showings in the morning and in the afternoon; E helped around the house in the morning and then spent the afternoon with friends; L helped enormously with the housework; I was the one at home most of the day, doing laundry, cleaning bathrooms, trying to spray for carpenter bees between sprinkles of rain, disassembling an old computer (i.e., removing all hard drives) so we can finally dispose of it.
The only picture from today was of the computer. I thought that was a useless picture.
Instead, here’s one of the view from my kitchen when I first moved to Lipnica Wielka in 1996. That old primary school got remodeled and became a flashy new primary school that was much bigger, and included apartments on the top floor, where I lived when I returned to Poland in the early 2000s. I found this picture going through old pictures, which I then scanned this week.
Spring Bed
We’ve been trying to get the flower beds in shape for spring. We’ve decided not to plant any vegetables this year, but we’re not totally neglecting everything.
Today, I worked on the big bed at the base of our driveway. There were a lot of leaves to remove, a lot of weeds to pull — and I didn’t even spread any mulch or take a before picture. I guess this is as close as it gets.
First Spring Saturday of 2021
We had to be on the soccer field at 8:15 in order to warm up for the 8:45 game. That meant leaving before eight, which we didn’t accomplish, which is why we were late.
We finished the game (we won 3-1 — glad the opposing team got a goal as it’s always disheartening to be blanked) and headed to his scout den’s morning fishing trip.
After lunch, it was time for chores — trimming the crape myrtles in the front.
Nothing left to do but light the cigar and play some chess.
Flat
I came out this morning, cranked K’s car, walked around to my car ready to head to work when I saw I had a flat. Not just a tire with extremely low pressure — a tire with no air at all. It made for a rushed morning.
When I got home in the afternoon, my first priority was to get the flat off and the spare on. The spare had been in the trunk untouched since we bought the car. It had probably been untouched since the car rolled out of the dealership. And it was predictably flat as well.
One would think it’s a Monday…
Working on the Pinewood Derby Car
We polished the nails/axels, cut and weighted the car so that the center of gravity is in the optimal location, rough-sanded, and talked about goals for the derby next week.
"I'd like to get at least third place," the Boy said.
It's a good goal: realistic, modest. We'll see.
The End of the Season
Part of it was laziness, but we’ll chalk it up to Polishness: we finally took down our Christmas tree today. We’d been meaning to do it for a couple of weeks, but we didn’t adequately work it into our schedule.
Or we can use K’s Polishness as an excuse: Poles always put their Christmas trees up later (sometimes, only a couple of days before Christmas) and take them down later.
The Boy and I chopped it up in the afternoon. “This is so satisfying,” he said. For us all, in different ways…
Pre-Christmas Yardwork
