Sat. Eve, July 12th… finished hurricane clips on barn and saw a movie…..

This morning I worked on my new book titled “An Uncommon Journey” which is the story of how Vicki and I met and ultimately got together, moved to New York and started the “Cluckin’ “A” Critter Farm. I hadn’t written in it for quite sometime and I thought, today is the day to start writing again. I have written poems and the blog regularly but not the biography….not since way before Vicki hurt her back…..actually since before we started building the barn. Anyway, I was caught up in the moment and forgot to blog this morning. Vick said about not blogging when we returned from the movie, and I said “oh yeah….I blogged this morning, but to my dismay when I looked…..I hadn’t. She was right.

Anyway, when Vick got up this morning, I saved and closed the biography and went to the barn where we put the remainder of the hurricane clips on the upper roof. That took us into the afternoon and then I got my neighbor Charlie’s ladder and set it up against the mainframe beam for the lower roof and wanted to climb up and measure for the gusset supports we will cut next, but I was engulfed by a swarm of angry wasps and then stung. I have a habit of exiting briskly when there are bees involved and usually elude getting stung, but it was not to happen today. They had built several nests inside the rungs on Charlie’s ladder in the last week and they were really pissed at me for moving the ladder. That session caused me to rethink the importance of being out there in the heat anyway when Vicki was ready to go to lunch, so I just left the area with Mud on the sting sight…..mixed by my wonderful and caring wife! After cleaning the mud off of my arm, we headed for something to eat. as it worked out, the time had dragged on to the point where it was beneficial to just have a meal and call it lunch and dinner both, so we went a little further and ate at Ichiban in Albany, near where Vicki gets the spinal decompression therapy. It was excellent as usual. Upon returning to the house, I vowed to annihilate every bee I may see the rest of my life, uttering the truthful statement that “The only good bee is a dead bee!” and with that, I rounded up a can of wasp and hornet killer and placed it where I could get to it after dark. I thought about that for a moment and then decided the hell with it and I went out and snuffed those bastards right then and there. I DID NOT FEEL GUILTY FOR KILLING THEM EITHER! All of them!!!! Now, tomorrow I will do what I had in mind today before the little buggers declared war on me and I will carry on. Once the gussets are in place, which will support the snow weight this winter, I will start to nail the perlins on for the roofing…..which will be next.

We put all the critters away at dusk and headed for the drive in at Coxsackie to watch “Hancock” It was what I consider an excellent movie and when Vicki commented on it being good, I knew it was a winner. Rooster Cogburn went back to  his residence in the barn, which necessitated leaving MR and Stewie outside in the run for the night. They have been voluntarily staying out there anyway and it will be nice to get Cogburn off of the front porch again, since he is back to normal. When we came in from putting all the birds away, Vicki found Casey Mae on the pool deck level laying. She had gone into the pool for a swim, because she was soaking wet. She had found the spring loaded door!!! We will have to place a hook and eye latch on that door now, because she could drown in the pool if something went wrong or she missed the steps and we weren’t around to watch her. What a little turd!

We might quit working on the barn long enough tomorrow to go to lunch and then stop at the Library…..Stanley Maltzman said there is an exhibit of art there tomorrow and he will call us in the morning before noon. He wants us to stop by. We will!!