Dishpan hands

The weather since Christmas has had it's ups and downs.  We've been getting up early to drive down and work on The Other House and this was my view at 7:30 am on Boxing Day.  Very dark and dreary.  

Each day we've been going down early and coming home for a short lunch break and to spend some time with the dogs.  On Thursday I found this at the foot of our driveway.  The Creature is back!

We've been in and out of WalMart, Lowes and Home Depot more times than I can count this week.  We also seem to end up returning one or more things from each shopping trip.  Thank goodness they take things back without a fuss and also don't get shirty if we bring the wrong thing into the wrong store.  The house needs so many bits and pieces I've become perpetually confused about where they came from!  :-)  We've also managed to return things we bought for the house three or more years ago and never installed!  Amazing.

Besides all the repairs, cleaning is the big chore (hence the dishpan hands).  Yesterday we ended up stripping aftermarket solar film off the south-facing windows.  It was beyond my power to clean up and make look nice.  It turned out to be relatively easy to peel off.  "Great!", we thought.  Well no it wasn't.  It left a tacky film coating the windows.  After a bit of experimentation it turned out I could soften the film with rubbing alcohol and then scrape the icky sticky residue off with a blade.  Something reminicent soft chewing gum, snot and rubber cement.  Ick.  What an ugly, messy job!

I took this photo mid-job so the sidelight is clean and the windows are still ugly.  After several hours high on alcohol fumes, all was clean.  Whew!  I hate to think what tomorrow might have in store for me.

One of the pleasures of our drive back and forth is getting out of town, out from under the trees and enjoying open spaces and expanses of sky.   Today it was an interesting combination of dark sky on one side of the road and bright sun coming from the other.

The scenery changes rapidly from bucolic.....

to residential.....

and back again.  :-)

Of course with digital cameras you can just keep snapping away at what ever you fancy with no worries.  In this case I was just trying to get a picture of the sky, but I couldn't seem to hit a spot without a power line in the way.

Again and again and again.  I suspect there is a message in that.  Sigh.

After all the physical work of the day it's really nice to lotion up my hands and sit in my cozy corner in the evenings doing a bit of hand stitching.

I had to put this BOM aside during the Christmas rush and I'm enjoying spending time with it again.

And this!......this is a Christmas present from The Tramp.  Woot!!  It's red!  I can't wait to get back into The Sandbox and play with it!