Road construction

Change may be inevitable, but that doesn't mean I have to like all of it. Some, I have a hard time seeing as good, or necessary, etc. The office/retail complex where I work is being remodeled outside. There are 2 huge planter boxes at the bottom of the stairs I climb every day to get the mail. They were dug up early spring with a backhoe, have been nothing but bare dirt and weeds for months. Don't know why they couldn't have left the plants to bloom, since that's all that was done. Now the Colorado Blue Spruce, all 5 of them, have been cut down. There's a backhoe pulling out the boulders that have formed a water feature on a hillside just outside.

2 weeks ago, several planted dividers in the upstairs parking lot were pulled out, the area was paved. That added some badly needed parking spaces. I'm aware that some of the empty bays in this complex have sat empty for months due to lack of parking. And it's summer now; it's very much worse when college students need parking. But I think this is going to end up a stark, sterile complex with structural issues and/or more ugly pipes, since that water feature was draining the upstairs parking lot. Nobody asked me if this meets my approval. Since all I do is work here, why would I have any vote?

At least our customers are still able to get to us. One of the main streets higher up the hill is blocked for most of the summer. And the highway that's about a block from where we live is being re-paved, but that work's farther up the road by now so we don't have the brighter than daylight lights and compactors all night. But the road to where we're moving has been closed for a week and a half, supposed to open tomorrow. Meantime, we have to go way up in the hills, make a big loop just to get there. I guess I could look on the bright side; we're learning more roads around the area, since there's no such thing as a direct route except through the road construction. I don't much mind that part of the alternate routes are gravel roads. But that doesn't make those roads good alternatives in winter.

Here in North Idaho, there are 4 seasons; mud,winter, mud, and road construction. At least this winter, as heavy as it was, didn't go on until "June-uary". It snowed June 14th, last year.

The best that can be said of our first winter in Idaho is that we survived and learned. That was 6+ years ago, so we're pretty well used to that rhythm by now. k D's kids aren't too crazy about this pattern of summers being spent preparing for next winter, but it's necessary. This summer, our preparations for the coming winter are different than we've done before. We hope to move early fall. We have many more mouths to feed than we have before. We have, in cooperation with "D", 2 dozen Rhode Island Red pullets, 3 breeding rabbits, and currently, 5 goats. We thought one of the goats was going to kid Sunday afternoon, but she didn't. From the looks of it, she should have twins.

Not only do the animals have to be provided for, we have to provide different living spaces for ourselves. Last weekend, Ben and I both got stung out by the 31 ft trailer Steve nad I will be sleeping in this coming winter. It has wasp nests in it, so those had to be sprayed before we can work on it. There's some structural stuff that has to be done on both of our travel trailers.

Ben will get the little one. I have been working most mornings, taking things out of it, putting them in my van, going to work, packing empty boxes with that stuff between customers. My goal is to empty the little trailer enough to have it moved before the 7th of August, to eliminate the small storage fees we've been paying on it. But I've got it stuffed with materials for a business I want to go back to, so it's not quite as easy/fast as I'd like. And it's an oven when it's hot, so even if I had the energy, evenings after work is not the time to be in it. Tried it last night for about 3 minutes. We live in such a wonderful place that it's been broken into several times; there's evidence that there have been cats in it; and 3 of the windows have been broken. One has a piece missing, so I'm sure there's stuff that's been wet, is trash. I'm getting to it, little by little.