July 16 – August 9
Ya, I’m a slacker and this blog entry is once again long overdue.
That said, I’m not sure that I have all that much in the line of updates but I’m sure once I get my brain working I’ll find plenty to ramble on about.
Health wise, Rachel and I are back to 100% and my ear and hearing are back to normal and Cheryl is still healthy.
The weather is slowly cooling off. The humidity is up quite a bit for this area (currently 37%) as it is monsoon season and we are finally getting rain nearly every evening.
My weight is continuing to slowly creep downward which is a good thing. I’d be much further along if I didn’t like to eat out and eat corn chips and guacamole so much. With Rachel and Cheryl’s recent change in diet, the rate of their weight loss far exceeds mine at this time. Hoping it continues for them as encouragement to stay the course. I expect the rate of their weight loss will decrease yet continue in the coming months as the temperatures cool and their tastes adjust and appetites increase.
There has been a substantial increase in creepy crawlies around. We haven’t noticed as many tarantula’s out and about in the last couple of weeks as compared to the last half of July. Although they are very large (typically around the size of a Clementine orange), tarantula’s are less worrisome than the black widows which from what I’ve seen are closer to the size of a quarter or smaller. Rachel did some research on black widows and found that their venom is worse than that of rattle snakes and as such can be life threatening if medical treatment is not sought after a bite. We have a number of spider webs under the 5th wheel. Rachel noted 3+ black widows in the web by the door one night. Not okay. So, we got some spider spray and killed them one evening. Next step is to knock down the webs and see if they come back. If/when they do we will need to go night time spider hunting again. We’ve killed a couple of other black widows here and there outside as well. Thus far, we haven’t noted any spider webs in the trailer. Definitely thankful for that.
We seem to have an infestation of kissing bugs in the 5th wheel. Kissing bugs are blood sucking bugs and like most blood sucking bugs, their bites itch and they can transmit disease. Like most blood sucking bugs we’ve dealt with over the years, they seem to be more attracted to me than Cheryl. Lucky her. Indoor pesticide is on the shopping list. If worse comes to worse, we will have to bug bomb the trailer. Really hoping it doesn’t come to that. Although I’ve found a number of scorpions in the rocks outside, I’m always wearing gloves when working in the rocks and dirt so it is not a concern. Additionally, scorpion stings are not generally life threatening unless you have an allergic reaction to them. I keep trying to get pictures of them when I see them. Because they don’t like the light, when I uncover one it has usually disappeared by the time I get the phone around to snap a photo. I’m thankful that we haven’t noted any scorpions in the trailers yet. I did learn one thing the other night. If my eyes are not adjusted to the dark, I should have a light on when using the throne. I felt something on my leg one evening and brushed it off. Couldn’t see what it was or where it went when I brushed it off. I then proceeded to head to bed for the night. As I’m laying in bed, I felt something uncomfortable on my butt so I shifted a round a bit to get more comfortable. Then it bit/pinched me in the ass. YIKES! I hopped up, turned on the light and stripped. After searching my garments, I found a beetle. It’s life ended rather abruptly that night. I am thankful it was a beetle and not something worse. There are other aspects of that event that I am thankful for but will leave them unsaid. You can use your imagination.
I did kill a baby rattle snake by the road side gate one evening coming back from Douglas. That was the second time we’ve seen that (a) baby rattle snake by the gate. While I had committed to myself that I would leave and let live rattlers not in our immediate living area, I made an exception for this one. I am always concerned about getting out of the vehicle at night in (too) close proximity to a rattle snake. There are a couple of concerns specific to baby rattle snakes that I have. 1: They are harder to see because they are smaller. 2: They can’t rattle yet to let you know they are there. As this one seemed to be content hanging out where we get in and out of vehicles to open and close the gate, I decided he needed to go to avoid a future unfortunate encounter.
As mice attract snakes, while we don’t have any mice in the trailer, I’ve seen a few scamper away from burrows as I dig out mesquite bushes, so I know they are around. I’ve bought a “walk the plank” mouse trap and plan to set it up this weekend in hopes of clearing out a number of mice with minimal effort.
Sasha came back to the trailer one evening carrying dead jack rabbit which she proceeded to enjoy over that evening and next day. Because she didn’t bury it, by day three what was left of the remains were really starting to stink so I picked it up with the shovel and slung it over the north east corner of the fence. A week or so later, I saw her walking back to the trailer with another (presumed) kill. This one she buried in the trench that I had once again started working on filling with dirt. The next day I returned to work in the trench and she decided she should retrieve it before I found it or otherwise buried it deeper where she wouldn’t be able to get to it. I was surprised when I saw what she uncovered. It was not a rabbit but the head of a baby dear. I seriously doubt she killed it herself. More likely she came across what was left of a coyote or maybe mountain lion kill. As it was already putrid smelling, I relocated that one back outside the fence line as well. When I returned from the task of relocating it poor Sasha was looking around the trench rather lost and confused – where did dinner go?
Speaking of Sasha. That dog is something else, I tell ya. The week after Rachel and I were fully recover from our summer colds, we all went over to Tom and Alicia’s to visit leaving Sasha behind to guard the property. As their property is directly to the south of ours and they have a drive with gate that exits at the south west corner of our property, we usually use that back drive to go to their place as it is only about a mile that route as opposed to 5 miles by going 2 miles back down to the state highway to get to their street a mile down the road, then 2 miles back to their property. Tom’s property is fenced as he too has cattle and unlike the other ranchers around here, he keeps his cattle fenced within his property. Anyway, when we got there Tom and Alicia had just started their horse feeding chores so Rachel and I jumped in and helped Tom while Alicia took Cheryl around on their quad ATV telling Cheryl about the various horses they have. As we were finishing up, Tom looked up and said: Hey, there’s Sasha. I thought he was joking. Then, I spotted her. She must have followed the road or the scent of the diesel exhaust from the truck all the way to Tom and Alicia’s. She was on the far side of the horse pen where she was trying to figure out how to get through to get to us. He shimmied her way through the horizontal bars on the back gate to the horse pen to get into the horse pen then was trying to figure out if the mini horses which are only slightly larger than her were a threat or not. Luckily they were mostly focused on eating so they generally didn’t care about her being in their pen. Tom and I then walked over to the inside gate to let her through into the interior yard of Tom and Alicia’s. As we still wanted to go inside and visit, we decided to put Sasha in the outdoor dog kennel for the B&B’s guest’s dogs making sure she had water in there with her. We then went inside for a visit. What seemed like a mere 15 minutes later, I happen to look out the window and saw Sasha walk by the window. Typical Sasha – Mrs Houdini. As they have great danes that don’t take kindly to other dogs in their space and can jump their fenced dog yard should they choose to do so, we decided we should bring her inside with us as it was clear we weren’t going to keep her in that kennel. Sasha then shared with Tom and Alicia the joys of a dog that slobbers, a lot, especially after getting a nice drink of water. More than once Sasha thought it would be nice to spray the living room with slobber by shaking her head vigorously as each of us reached for our drinks to cover them with one hand as we shielded our faces with the other hand. Very thankfully, Tom and Alicia are animal lovers and were very forgiving of Sasha being Sasha. I think I was more tense about Sasha’s activities in their home than they were. To top the evening off, when it came time to leave, Sasha decided she liked the air conditioning of Tom and Alicia’s more than going home with us. After I made room in the back of the truck bed for her, I took her by the collar to lead her to the truck but she planted her butt on the ground to tell me, “No, I don’t want to go. I like it here”. My response: “too bad, you coming with us.” As I was leading/pulling her into the bed of the truck by her collar (she was standing on a tote I happen to still have in the truck using it as a step), Tom picked up her hind end to help her in the rest of the way. Needless to say, the next time we went to visit Tom and Alicia in the evening, we locked Sasha in the trailer with the windows open, the ceiling fan on, and a full bowl of food and a full bowl of water. Thankfully, when we are home, she generally stays around the property. A couple of evenings ago, I noted that I hadn’t seen her around since late morning which was very unusual. I woke up around 2AM local and started worrying as I hadn’t heard her yet (she barks a lot at night to let all the wild life around know that she there). About and hour later I woke up to her barking so I got up and let her in to eat. As chance would have it, about 15 minutes later coyotes started howling in the area so she started barking again – inside the trailer. Not ok. So I got up and let her back outside to do her job. I went back to sleep easily knowing she was back home safe. One of these days I will get around to Sasha proofing the fence line. Or at least attempting too….
We had problems with the refrigerator in the 5th wheel keeping things cold when the temps were in the hundreds. We fired up the fridge in Rachel’s trailer which is keeping things much colder. We moved all the food to her trailer. I haven’t decided yet what we are going to do about the fridge in the 5th wheel. There is no one around here that does house calls for RV frig service and I’m not inclined to hook up our home and drop it off for service for who knows how many days any time soon. I may have to figure out how to pull it out and haul the fridge itself in for service. I may also evaluate replacing it altogether with a standard refrigerator. For now, we have a working albeit very inconvenient solution.
As far as projects go, I’ve been a bit ADD (aka indecisive) over the last few weeks. Once I recovered from my cold, I chose to defer filling in the remaining trench/hole and having the phone line connected to the 5th wheel in it’s current location. Instead, I started focusing on clearing the land behind Rachel’s trailer as we will be moving her trailer back about 30′ and eventually putting the 5th wheel in the area her trailer currently occupies. I got the land cleared and started relocating gravel from the area by Rachel’s trailer I plan to trench to bury water line and electrical and communications line conduits.
This is as far as I got before I reluctantly switched gears out of necessity. Not sure if I mentioned it but I dropped my phone on the way home from Michigan. The screen broke (more like shattered) in addition to the glass screen protector that I had on it. I used it like that for a while not realizing the screen itself was broken. It was only when I went to replace the glass screen protector that I realized the screen itself was also shattered so I just pushed the glass screen protector back down. It was too late though. It didn’t stick right and the screen was more problematic using. So, I called work to request a replacement phone. I’m not due for a refresh until next year so I settled for a downgrade to a iphone 6S from a iPhone 7. Sadly, after using the iPhone 6S for a few days, it was clear that WiFi calling did not work as well in my environment as did the iPhone 7 and I was frequently dropping work calls. Completely unacceptable. There was one afternoon I had to exercise great restraint to resist throwing the replacement phone across the trailer. Clearly time to restart the stress management technique which served me so well last year – finding things to be thankful for when things go wrong. While I could have called work back and asked for an iPhone 7 or better, I felt this was not works problem to solve, it was mine. So new (old) high priority project: Get a land phone line installed in the 5th wheel ASAP. In the trench that hadn’t fully been filled yet, I hand dug a narrow trench from the outside phone line box previously installed by the phone company which is by the solar panels to the shed. I then laid conduit and pulled a data cable through it and connected it in the telco’s phone line box. Once I was done with that it was time to finish filling the trench. I first filled in the hand dug trench so it didn’t fill with rain water. I then continued adding dirt/rock mix that was readily available in piles around the property. Once the dirt was to the desired level, I transitioned to finish filling the hole with rock and gravel (2-6″ rock on bottom with gravel on top for easy walking on). Sadly, I ran out of readily screened rocks before the hole was filled. As the space under the solar panels was observed to be collecting water and needed to be filled in with dirt and rock, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I started screening dirt under the panels, letting the dirt fall onto the ground and scraping the rocks from the screen into the wheel barrel. I did that for much of the day this past Saturday and a few hours on Sunday. Rachel jumped in and helped on Sunday. Between the heat, being out of shape, and having screened dirt for hours on Saturday, I was exhausted after screening for around 4 hours on Sunday. By that time, we had made substantial progress at filling the space under the panels with dirt and the trench with gravel. I still wanted to get the conduit run from the shed to the 5th wheel over the top of the ground for the data cable. I knew if we continued to screen dirt until the hole was completely filled with gravel to my satisfaction, it would be the end of the work day and I would be too exhausted to get the conduit and cable installed. I decided it was close enough to done and switched to running the conduit. After about 15-30 minutes of running conduit between the shed and 5th wheel I realized that I had planned to buy conduit for the project but had not as I had previously decided that the land line could wait until we moved the 5th wheel to it’s long term location. I was about 50′ short of having enough conduit. Oops. Given the phone company was scheduled to come Tuesday morning, I’m glad I didn’t wait until Monday night to install the conduit. I put together a shopping list for Cheryl and Rachel and they made a Douglas run Monday during the day while I worked. I finished installing the conduit and pulling the data cable through it Monday evening. I also unpackaged the set of cordless phones I had bought in June and got batteries installed and on their chargers charging. Tuesday the Shawn from the phone company came to connect the line for me. There was a bit of troubleshooting as the exterior phone jack appeared to have problems, he had to bypass it. Then for what ever reason, the line had been cut and not respliced inside the trailer. Shawn had some handy phone line splices so he easily reconnected the wires and wa-la. Phone service.
While Shawn was working on the phone line we were chatting a bit. He asked if I was aware of the 20 hour power outage throughout the valley last week. Nope. That was the first I heard of it. I am so glad I opted to pay for the solar system rather than for the phone company to extend power lines 2 miles down the road to get me power. That is not the first power outage that I was completely oblivious of. There was a multi-day outage this spring that I heard about from Tom.
Today was the most cloudy to-date since the solar panels have gone live. I was monitoring the battery status pretty closely throughout the day to make sure they got enough charge to get us through the night. We got to around 46.5V before the sun set. That is about .5 a volt short of the normal full charge for this summer. We normally have about 41- 42V left in the batteries after running fans all evening and all night. Low battery cut off is set at 40V. We haven’t been running fans this evening and won’t tonight is it is rather cool thanks to the nearly day long cloud cover. All these factors combined, I think we will have enough juice in the batteries until sun up tomorrow and have opted to not run the generator to top them off that last little bit. Will find out tomorrow if that was a good decision or not. I might have to wait a while to make coffee in the morning.
That is it for me tonight.
Good night everyone!
Seeking Simplicity 