Barn Renovation Days 1 - 3

(Artwork: Kelsey Garrity-Riley)

- The barn renovation has begun! Tomorrow will be Day 4, and it's supposed to take around 10 days.

Mom and I are super EXCITED!!!!! So far the guy doing the renovation is a perfectionist and is really into the details.

It's just a shame that Thanksgiving will be putting it all behind schedule now. Also, the poor guy's truck broke down right before he was supposed to start the job on the barn and today he heard that his new truck was recalled. So... he has to take care of that now, too.

- We ordered an adorable bunny weather vane, but yet again we had to cancel the order because Amazon was screwing everything up. (We do a lot of our shopping on Amazon, because there just aren't any stores around here when we really need something, but lately the orders just are not getting to us. We can't even bother with UPS because they never can find our house).

The guy renovating the barn is supposed to build us a huge cupola, but now we have no weather vane and if we finally do find one Dad says he's not climbing up there to attach it.

Thankfully, the guy told us that he'll hunt one down for us himself.


- It seems my brother has already moved on from his pending divorce. He told my mother the other day that he's the happiest he's ever been in his life. He's already started some traveling to meet up with friends that live in other states. Last week he was in Orlando.

What does greatly bother me about this divorce is the separation between him and the dogs, and the dogs WITH EACH OTHER! I am so, so, sooo upset over that. His soon to be ex gave her little Chihuahua to her mother, even though for years she and my brother haven't trusted the mother to take care of their dogs. That's why it was always us that pet sit them. They trusted us.

And poor "Beans" - that would be the other dog - I know he's really confused because he loooves my brother and now all of a sudden my brother is gone from his life entirely and so is his sister.

All of this makes me hate my ex-SIL even more!

- The hummers disappeared for weeks, but the other day a straggler came through. I made fresh sugar water, only for the little thing not to return.

Of course, the bees are happy now. lol!

- Mom and I have been worrying over the neighbor's donkeys being hungry. It was FINALLY cool for about 2 days, and I kid you not... on the first cool evening, right before sunset, the very second that we handed the donkeys some hay from our hay bale a large hay delivery truck showed up in their driveway.

Ever since then they have been stuffing their faces like crazy. You can tell they're really content now.



























Maddie just had a birthday on Monday! I believe she turned 15.









We got to light the fireplace twice, and it was so lovely. It rained of course - as it always does when it finally turns cool around here - but I loved it. It was in the 60's.

I only wish those cool temps would return already! I'm tired of it being hot in November.































The last video was taken this evening. It's looking good! My favorite part are the big windows.

We were told today that there are a lot of carpenter ants though. The poor guys working out there today got swarmed by them, so we're going to start taking care of that in the morning.