Clearing the Jungle

Although we have only been here for three days, we both admit that we feel like we have been here for a month.  We continue making progress inside the house in putting things in their place, so each day Gladys becomes more like home.

I forgot to mention last time that Chief Running Water made the trip to Dunedin as well.  The first time I did dishes, I also got my feet washed!  As I scrubbed dishes in the sink and dipped them in the other sink to rinse them, water was making its way out of both drains and onto the floor.  Rick came into the kitchen and said, "Where is all of that water coming from?"  Dah... since the sink was the only logical place, it did not take him long to find that both drains were not tight, thus I got my feet washed as well as my dishes!  A little attention with a wrench fixed the sink problem, but our woes were not quite over.  The drains were tight, but water continued to drip on the floor.  The secondary culprit was a new dish draining system I thought would work for Gladys.  Unfortunately, there was a weep hole by the silverware that drained onto the counter and onto the floor. Chief Running Water reigns again! Those in our family know that plumbing, water, and Rick are just not a good combination!

Today when we were out shopping for fun things like door knobs and paint, we drove through a residential neighborhood.  We both did a double-take as a huge male peacock came strutting down the driveway to check out the vegetation by the mailbox. A peacock! Only in Florida...

We had to pick up doorknobs today because Jeff, our contractor, said that he is only waiting for one more door to come in to complete our order.  He hopes to start putting in our new windows and doors on Thursday or Friday of this week.  He said the crew will take 3 - 4 days to put in all of the windows and doors, but when they are finished we should have a much safer and more quiet house.  We had to buy five doorknobs-- one for each of the two back doors, one for the not-yet-built door into the not-yet-built laundry room, and two for the new double doors that will replace the single front door and leaking floor-to-ceiling window in the living room area of the house.  We learned that with double doors, one door will have a working doorknob and deadbolt, but the other door will just have a "dummy" non-working knob. The problem: Schlage does not make a "dummy" knob, so if we want one to match, we have to buy the full $139.00 working doorknob and then just use part of it.

The giant cabinet that hopefully will fit in the bathroom!

Part of our job today was getting the doors on the giant white cabinet that Rick built for our master bathroom.  I have attached a picture to show how it presently looks lying on my bedroom floor. We need to add the handles yet and the "feet" to raise it off the floor.  Then we can pray that when we set it upright, we will have room to clear the ceiling when we do so.  We have to move it somewhere tonight because I do not want to have to walk around a giant white "coffin" in the middle of the room when I want to use the master bathroom in the middle of the night.

Clearing the bushes around the palm tree.

We also trimmed drooping fronds from the palm tree.

Our work after dinner was to "clear the jungle" in the backyard in preparation for the workers to take down the pepper trees tomorrow.  We had a huge growth of cuphea ignea, better known as cigar plant or cigar flower, under the palm that we have in the back yard.  Each year the bush spreads a bit more, so we had to trim it all out for the landscapers to get to the pepper trees. The pictures show that the shrubs were defeated in the end, but we both sweat out our outfits, and we both drank 32 ounces of water in and hour's time.  We had to wear long pants or the bugs would have eaten us alive.  I understand from Lindsay, though, that the bugs everywhere this year are super-sized.

Our gift from Gladys.

While we were clearing the bushes out, Gladys once again gave us a present.  This time it is a lovely little 4" glass bowl that we found buried in the dirt under the bushes that we removed.  I sometimes wonder if some mischievous children lived here and pitched dishes and flowerpots into the brush when they did not get their way.  I found a buried flowerpot last year, and now Gladys presented me with this little bowl.  Perhaps that is her way of saying "thank you" for trying to spruce up the back yard.