The awning on our fifth wheel trailer was looking pretty sad last year. This spring while I was working in Regina we ordered a replacement through Amazon. They would not ship the product to Canada so we had it shipped to a furniture store in Plentywood, Montana and one day Juanita and her friend Stephanie went to Plentywood to pick up mail from Stephanie and Larry’s mailbox there and the awning from the furniture store.
It took Juanita and I a couple of hours to make the changeover. A three-person crew who had done several awnings together could probably do the job in under an hour, but we were pleased with our first-time efforts and the final results.
|
Juanita and I and Debbie and her kids all went to Edmonton for the weekend to help celebrate Ansel’s first birthday.
|
Ernie took a week’s vacation from his job with the plan of installing siding to a certain level all around the house. I planned to help him. The supplier had other plans and failed to deliver the siding as promised. We worked on different things, generally in parallel rather than together with me doing some plumbing and HVAC installation.
Once he was back to work the siding showed up and I started the installation while he was at work. On his days off we worked together and it went more than twice as fast as me working alone. He is much quicker on the ladder and uses a tape measure as he installs the siding to keep the runs parallel. I use chalk lines. Slower, but requiring less dexterity. Eventually I wandered away from the project to start preparing to go south and Ernie kept at it into October when the temperature dropped so low the siding shattered when trying to cut it.
|
When we were in Edmonton for Ansel’s birthday Ezekial gave us a bird feeder he had assembled from a kit and painted. I hung it in a tree near our porch but high enough that it may not attract bears. A few years back we had a problem bear that would bat at the birdfeeder hung on our living room window looking over our deck. I was off north in a construction camp so to me it was an abstract problem, but Juanita found it alarming. A window is not something you want a bear batting at. Especially when you are on the other side of the window.
Part way through the month Ezekial had a bad reaction to some out patient chemo therapy and ended up back in the hospital. His blood counts were low, he had a low grade infection and his abdomen swelled to the point of constricting his lungs such that he required supplemental oxygen. He was in enough pain that he didn’t want to get out his hospital bed. He had little appetite and had trouble keeping food down when he did eat (he lost enough weight that he had trouble keeping his pants up when the swelling went away a few weeks later).
Juanita went to Edmonton to help look after the younger kids and to take her turns spending the night with Ezekial. I stayed home, helped Ernie and Debbie, starting prepping for travel south and was reminded of single life which is not a good reminder.
|
One evening, after we spent the day doing things on Debbie and Ernie’s house, Ernie and Debbie came over after supper and worked to install an additional row of snow stops on our roof. I helped set up the scaffolding and move the scaffolding from one side of the house to the other, but mostly stayed on the ground to pass up stuff and shout encouragement to Ernie as he stood on the first row of snow stop to install the second row. The last screws went in as it got too dark to see.
We disassembled the scaffolding in the dark and I put it away the next day. There was a terrible urge to put off the storage task, but atypically I resisted the urge and was pleased that all the stuff was under cover later in the day when it started to rain.
|
|
