Scattered Thoughts . . .

As I suspected, I only needed a few short hours to finish up the trash shed project.  I completed the entire project early this morning when I installed some pavers and gravel inside the shed.  I had one small issue yesterday.  After all the torrential rain we had the other day and through the night, all the bare, unstained wood was swollen.  The wood was so swollen that I had difficulty opening the doors...  the wood latches were swollen shut...  the wooden tongue between the doors was swollen and jammed into the mating groove on the opposite door... it was difficult opening that brand new shed!   I disassembled most of those swollen parts, sanded them down and then reinstalled them.  They are now slightly tight (because they are still slightly wet and swollen) but easy to operate.  Since then, I've installed the roof and stained everything so it should not swell up like that again.   Here is a shot of it from behind showing the new roof and looking toward our house...

When I run out of building supplies for the bear-proof trash shed, I turn to some smaller projects like the telescope pier.  This telescope pier project is much less taxing on my health than some of our larger home projects so it is a nice project to fall back on when necessary to keep me feeling at least semi-productive.   The grass is now coming up nicely around the telescope pier.  I wrote previously about digging a hole...  building a wood timber pier...  installing it in concrete...  but now I also installed some of the top of the pier where some adjustments can be made.   Looking at the pier from the side, you can see two lag bolts on each side.  These lags bolts run through elongated holes for leveling the top of the pier.  I can slide each of these sides to the correct height to level it.  The telescope mount must be leveled perfectly to track the stars for long periods of time.  Looking at the pier from the top, you can notice a few things.  First, the lines thr

It has been about 50-50 between my health taking a priority and the trash shed project taking priority.  Sometimes my mast cell disease is the culprit, sometimes it is my head injury.  I can't believe that I am still having issues with my head injury.  It is still a bit painful...  I get some numbness...  I get some tingling...  I get dizziness...  I get pain in my ear and it feels like my ear is twice its normal size...  and I still get some transient cognitive issues.   This afternoon, after working on the shed this morning until the rains arrived again, the partial numbness, tingling, and pressure on the top of my head returned yet again.  It doesn't take much, even today, for my head to remind me that I am still dealing with a mild but lingering TBI.   The other day I even had that earache come back again.  It wasn't as pronounced as it was a couple of weeks ago but it was still a nagging reminder of the head injury. Anyway, between rainy days and health problems, I

What a miserable, lousy day today has been.  Sheila did a fairly quick and, thankfully, very uneventful recovery from her colonoscopy yesterday but my health crashed sometime between yesterday and today.   I spent the morning sleeping on the couch because I had absolutely no energy and I was overwhelmingly fatigued.  Then I awoke around 2pm having great difficulty breathing.  I took some extra medications, used my inhaler but neither seemed to make much of a difference.  My inhaler rarely helps and today was no exception.  Personally, I think it is because the cause of my breathing problems is not related to asthma but related to anaphylaxis.  Then again, I don't really know the specifics of what happens in the lungs with this illness or with asthma.  All I know is it becomes very difficult to breath at times and my inhaler rarely, if ever, helps my breathing.  Anyway, today, my breathing was poor and the inhaler did not help at all.   I'm just feeling lousy.  I'm havin

I am now two weeks into this mild TBI...   two weeks ago I slammed the top of my head into a temporary cross-beam on a trash shed I am building, saw stars, passed out very briefly...  and I am now feeling a bit better than early after the injury.  I really haven't done much of anything over the past two weeks though.   Whenever I attempt to do anything, my headaches grow increasingly worse, sometimes throbbing, and behind my right ear begins to hurt.  I've been good about stopping whatever I'm attempting to do whenever the pain comes back or worsens.  Yesterday, I was feeling pretty good and the weather was dry.  It was hot and humid, but dry.  I knew the lawn needed some attention so I figured I would do that slowly.  Well, one thing led to another and before I knew it, I had my woodworking shop set up in the yard and I was finally doing some work on the trash shed again.  The heat and humidity was really affecting my mast cell disease which is my primary illness and m

It was a beautiful day today so I got up and was ready to jump into getting some things accomplished outdoors.  I have a few different projects in progress around the house so there was plenty of work to choose from this morning.   I started searching for and collecting tools.  Before I even made it outdoors, my spine was screaming at me and I was walking around bent over like an elderly man in pain.  As if that wasn't enough, my recent head injury was throbbing again too.  I decided to call it a day before I even had breakfast. I ended up sleeping away most of the day and doing some sketching and reading on the couch.   I hear the weather is supposed to be lousy again for the next few days so I doubt much will get done for much of the rest of the week.  That should give my spine and head enough time to recover though.

I wasn't feeling all that great today but I managed to get one sidewall installed on the trash shed.   During yesterday's frame assembly, I slammed my head into a temporary crossbar holding the frame together, saw stars, and things got a bit dark briefly.  The rest of the day yesterday, the area of my head in question was throbbing.  Today, it started throbbing again rather quickly.  Overall, I'm not feeling all that well either but my head is hurting the most.  I think I have a little bit of an abrasion there too. Anyway, I managed to get one sidewall assembled.  I also made a couple of jigs for the roof rafters so I am ready to go on that when I get the right length lumber.   We just finished eating dinner...  some restaurant quality eggplant parmesan with linguine...  it was delicious.  I'm ready for bed now...  well before 8pm...   PS...  this blog entry is entitled "One Test Sidewall" because this first wall is a bit of a test to check the appe

We've had a problem with bears in our garbage so I designed a trash shed that is, hopefully, bear-proof.  I dug out the area a week or so ago then we had days upon days of rain that delayed the project.  Then yesterday, we started building.   I hope to get a little more accomplished today but the hard part is done.   The only part of the build that is a bit fuzzy in my head is how to latch the front doors.  It needs to be easy to access for us yet impossible for a bear to open.  I'll figure something out once I get the doors built, I'm sure.

Every evening, Kenzie (usually Lukey too) will call Gee on our Alexa devices.  During last night's conversation, she was a bit more animated than usual so I quickly picked up my camera and shot a few photos of her...   I have to say that these Echo Show Amazon devices were a good idea.  These devices make it easy to stay close even though we may not see each other in person for a week or so.  Of course, we also have all sorts of other uses for this Show...  our calendar, recipes, music, news, timers, alarms, notifications, even asking Alexa to add something to our shopping list.   Uncle Adam has an Echo Show also so we keep in contact with him in California as well.  Actually, we had Nan and Pop over for dinner this past weekend and while we were all at the table, we simply looked over at the Echo Show and said, "Alexa, call Adam" , and we had a little virtual visit with him while Nan and Pop were here.   Anyway, it is nice hearing from Lukey and Kenzie and actua

After I did a little bit of work on the telescope pier the other day, the weather was too good to pass up doing some work on our decks.  They were in desperate need of sanding and staining since I had skipped a couple of years due to spending far too much time at the hospital (Sheila's cancer).  The weather was ideal...  sunny and warm but not too warm...  so I pulled out the belt sander and some sanding belts and jumped right into sanding everything that needed to be stained. Everything that needed to be stained was filthy and needed to be cleaned first.  It turns out that using the belt sander was the easiest way of cleaning.  Plus, this allowed me to smooth out the old decks a little bit too.  I grabbed my largest brush, stirred up the stain, and started staining.  The following morning, I added the second coat of stain... After two days of drying under the sun, we had a day of solid rain and some localized flooding.  The deck now has nice beads of water sitting on top ra