Well..crap…woke up this morning with the blotchy rash I had when I was working on the kitchen all over me again…and I’m pretty sure that it is from all of the dust I have been exposed to working on the bedroom and I still have two days more of dust eating to do to get it ready to paint….I am a little reluctant to take the flonase I’ve been using to control the allergies since I wonder if that has something to do with it? This is just what I need with already beating the hell out of my body just trying to get the work done and I don’t want to take any time off for the rash to go away especially when I’m not sure that the dust is the cause…it makes sense but until I have a doctor out here, I won’t be able to know for sure and that isn’t going to happen until I have my work done…and I put in almost 7 hours today with sanding the two door frames, the window, and the rest of the baseboards and then putting two coats of paint on the window and frames…I am so beat up that I am glad I have tomorrow off other than hanging the door…I did attach the shop vac to the sander to try to control the dust but that meant I had to shake out the filter bag a dozen times with it plugging up in about 5 minutes of usage…but better to have that dust outdoors than in for sure…but now, I’m taking the rest of the day off…just beat and sore and I’ve done enough….might be more later if I can find a topic….

Well…this is going to be an ugly morning with not sleeping at all last night and I have about 12 minutes to get on the bike with Man U playing at 7:30 that I want to see…yesterday was a little bit of a disappointing day with only getting the door frames sanded and filled and then waiting for the filler to dry and waiting, and waiting until I was just done working for the day and it was still not dry….so that leaves me with all of the trim to sand today and eating a lot of dust….don’t know why I’m rushing so much to get the sanding done since I’ll have a couple of weeks after I paint the trim to paint the rest of the room….so I guess I’ll finish up the bathroom next week…don’t seem to be as sore today but that will change after I work and I do need to take something for it before I get to working…it looks like it may be warm enough to ride outside tomorrow so it looks like it won’t be a day off like I really need and I do need to hang the door, too, but that should only take a few minutes….not much to do today…just need to get started right now and then power through the day but I sure don’t feel like it right now…don’t even have time to have coffee before the bike and that is going to suck…..more later….

Well..I know most of you come here for my rantings on politics for some reason…and I thank you for that…although I’ve never figured out how to make any cash of the 10,000 of these I’ve done…I guess I don’t have enough “content” for google ads to allow me to have ads on my site so oh,well…but this one is not about politics, I’m just not feeling it today so I’m going to talk about something I’ve been thinking about lately with all of the work on this place…when I was young, we lived in a 100 year old house that was pretty old and worn out with plaster falling off the walls, leaking roof, doors that didn’t work and it didn’t even have indoor plumbing until I was born…and that was in the 50’s….and a basement that was full of junk that no one did anything about….it was full when I was born, and it was full until the house burned down in the early 60’s…and no one did any painting, plaster work or anything else to the house other than a very little cleaning…other than putting a new roof on it when the leaks got so bad we ran out of pans to catch them….so, and this is my question after all the exposition: how the hell did I get to be a person who is compelled to work on his house to the point of damaging his body after being brought up like that? I never learned how to do plaster or paint or anything else about maintaining houses when I was young…I did learn about fixing cars but that was about it….and this house as I bought it was nicer than the one I grew up in so why couldn’t I just move in and live? These are questions I don’t really have any answers for but it has been making me think lately…the questions won’t make me change my attacking this house and busting my butt to improve it…just thinking about how I got to this place at my age…that’s all…

Well…with getting off track this morning and turning the first post into a house one…unintentionally….here is the one that I promised…even with all of the pain, I slept okay last night and feel pretty good this morning….and I really do think there is something to this taking care of myself and being good…I can see doing that for a long time and, when I find a doctor out here, I’m hoping my blood pressure will be better as I know my weight will be…and that’s a funny thing, I have never owned a scale to weigh myself but I can tell when I’m making progress staying in shape…as I said before, I think, that I have run out of holes in the belt I’ve had for more than ten years and I guess that means I’ve lost two inches plus off my waist since the start of the year…and I think that is something to be happy with….I still marvel at how I have a house of my own to live in that has everything I want except it’s not in GR…it’s still pretty cool to get in the car and hit the button and the garage door opens…little things make me happy and I’ve always been like that…like a nice looking lawn or getting flowers to come up in the yard….have never needed much for me to be happy…and I need to stop complaining about working on the house when there are so many people who would love to have this house and do the work for a place to call their own…and to have enough cash to live on and have a cushion that the majority of people in the US just don’t have….so, I need to reset my thinking…again…and even as I work my butt off around here, I need to appreciate what I’ve accomplished in this past year and look forward to taking some time off this summer…and that is going to be weird….but fun….

Well…man, when I got up this morning, I hadn’t felt that lousy in quite a while…probably since I quit drinking the first week of Jan…but I feel better now and can’t figure out why…did everything as I always do every day and just now ate for the first time today…I did take some of the flonase and an ibuprofen since I hurt so badly and my head was stuffed up like nuts and that might be part of it…but I still have the off and on headache that I’ve had for months now and the sinus pressure has given me some eye pain, too, that hit like I’m being stabbed in the eye but only lasts a minute or so and then  subsides….I would really like to know what the heck I did to feel better so I could keep doing it….even filled all of the baseboards in the bedroom and should feel really sore but don’t…weird….I may do a little more in there in a while and remove the hardware from the closet door frame but that will be it….should still have the bedroom done by the second week of May but I do need to start on the yard soon, too….too damn much work to do….

Well…this is bad, had to take some allergy meds already today since I am so miserable and can’t breathe…crap…and even my left hand hurts today after using it to sand the window yesterday and I am running out of body parts to switch to….but I need to get that room done and that won’t happen unless I just keep going and working through the pain…so my friend ibuprofen will be necessary here in a minute….I did get up in the attic yesterday to get an idea of how big the job is going to be to even out the insulation and it may only be a couple of days….and I think I’ll just keep using the ladder that is there instead of putting in a pull down in to use the space…I do need to put hinges on the door so I don’t have to push it aside when I want to get up there…and I discovered that the wall between the kitchen and dining room is open to the cold up there since there is no insulation blocking it off from the attic and I’ll have to cut some to fit in the spaces….just another project to do and the amount of work is getting pretty overwhelming….still need to sand and paint the bathroom, too, and I wonder if taking the summer off is going to happen with all of the work waiting for me…do I ever get to be retired? Oh, and that is a topic for later on today that has been rattling around in my head for a couple of days now….not much to do today….I do need to make a lasagna for lunch so  the work in the bedroom has to be  done by 11 or so…but I think that will be enough with how sore I am…more later….

Well…hmmm…slept okay last night so I wonder why I feel like I didn’t sleep at all? I know I worked pretty hard yesterday but 6 hours of sleep is normally enough for me and that’s about what I had last night….oh, well…I really do think I may have to start alternating hard work days with easy ones since I’m just damn old and I feel beat today after the long day yesterday….I guess we’ll see…I wonder if I’ll lose my capacity to work hard if I start taking it easy even every other day? I feel that way about missing bike rides and time off always seems to set my fitness level back a ways….have to think about that one….I do know my hands and right arm are feeling it from the abuse….okay, I’ll stop bitching about getting old….I did pull 24 tacks out of the window frame in the bedroom yesterday and I wonder if they were there for plastic covering the old windows in the winter? I do know they were painted over instead of removed and I’m still shaking my head about that…I do need to do one of these about working on houses and the fact that I don’t remember painting or doing any other work on the house I grew up in…so I wonder why I’ve worked so hard on every house I’ve owned since then? Not much to do today…well, that’s not true…have 5 places to stop at during the grocery run/errands this morning and then back here to finish the window and get started on the two door frames in the bedroom….and I do need to make lasagna later today to use up the cheese that I bought last week…won’t be able to ride outside today with rain forecast all day but maybe it may break this afternoon….more later….