Barn

Since we had no cross country meet for the first time in six weeks, we had a bit more time at home this week. It took half the week to recover somewhat from the intensity of all we've been doing, before we found energy to jump in and work on neglected projects closer to home. On Saturday (after cross country practice), Rose and Amber cleaned the barn floors and Jay mowed the lawn. Rose and I worked to fix the floor scrubbing machine for a while because at first it wasn't emitting enough water to clean the floors. In that evaluation process, I noticed that our machine didn't even have a debris trap at all (we got it used), so I ordered one online for a ridiculous $40. In the meantime, I cleaned nasty gunk out of the machine as best I could so the water could spray again. A little while later, we realized that the suction hose was torn, so the dirty water was not being sucked back into the machine and instead was just being spread evenly over the floor. Awesome. Back online to order another expensive part, this one for a gouging $170. I think Rose would love someone to pay her $170 to clean the barn floors! Hah!

Sunrise on my cold journey between the house and the barn, post-workout. It's not far, but it feels far when the cold wind hits my sweat!

In the meantime on Saturday, Jeff and I went to the hardware store and got supplies to give the rest of the barn some TLC. In a few short weeks, high school boys' swim season will begin and we will have 30+ boys working out in the barn six days a week, so we hoped to get ahead on some needed projects. Our plan was to quickly fix the barn's sliding door latch and then hang insulating plastic in preparation for winter. After that "quick" project, Jeff was looking forward to installing new speakers in all three rooms of the barn. Electronics are his hobby, and all week he had been looking forward to this free Saturday afternoon to run wires and install the speakers.

Once we had the supplies we needed, we screwed some metal mending plates onto the sliding door over the cracked wood so the door could be latched. While we were doing that, the cool breeze seeping in from all sides of the door made us realize that before we hung insulating plastic, we really needed to put up new weather-stripping along the border of the massive 20'x20' sliding door opening. So Jeff went back to the hardware store for weather-stripping and staple gun staples while I climbed the ladder and cleaned a horrifying amount of spiderwebs and egg sacs from the rafters near the door.

Stapling the weatherstripping around the door took way longer than expected, and Jeff was feeling done with the day by the time he finished. When we slid the barn doors closed and latched them, we were disheartened to find that the wood where we had screwed the mending plate had crumbled enough so that the screws and metal plate were already loose. At this point we were emotionally done with projects, so we decided to wait on installing the insulating plastic and speakers. We never got around to two of the three original projects we had planned for our long Saturday afternoon at home, and the third project (the latches) fell apart within an hour. We are doing our best here, but we are beginners learning from trial and error as we go. Hopefully our barn doesn't fall apart in the meantime!

Other anecdotes:

On Tuesday, Amber brought $80 of her own hard earned mowing and running money to her school book fair and spent it all! She is so cute with her love of book fairs. She even branched out and chose some new books that looked interesting, rather than just junky toys or spinoffs of series she's already familiar with. She said "this is my last book fair, so I want to enjoy it."

Rose tripped and fell during the XC workout at the park on Wednesday. She was running a sharp turn around a tree close beside her teammate, their legs tangled, and Rose went down into the grass. She walked it off and was able to continue the workout after a brief rest. I have fallen so many times in my past while running that it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me, especially in soft grass, but I have to remind myself every time a kid falls or gets slightly hurt at practice that this is all new to them and they tend to be a little more worried and dramatic about the pain of falling. 

Jay was in charge of family scripture on Wednesday night, and he did a good job. He asked everybody a question and read us a few verses from the doctrine and covenants. 

Thursday was a bear. It was a day full of drudgery adulting and boring frustrations. I started the day by cleaning bathrooms, laboriously French braiding Amber's hair for school picture day, driving Amber to school, and going to Walmart to buy 5 baker's dozen donuts for cross country practice. My day brightened a bit when I lifted with two friends in the barn, but the next few hours were full of dull mind numbing tasks: I spent 41 minutes on the phone with the power company resolving a billing mistake. I sent businesslike emails and made another businesslike phone call, all in the name of caring for our property. 

Then after all of that wearying work, I hung the stubborn autumn leaf garland and lights from the bookshelves by our fireplace. My arms were tired from lifting weights and my patience was shot from all the other businesslike stuff I had just done, so it was extra frustrating. The lights kept sagging and the leaf garland kept falling! 

Thursday's cross country practice was pleasant. We did our annual team affirmation walk through town, (the only day of the season that we don't make anyone run), stopping twice to circle up and say positive things to each other. While we walked, a member of the community called out to me, "No running today?" Back at the high school, Jeff gave his annual donut speech, and I brought out the five baker's dozen donuts that I had purchased at Walmart that morning. We watched 65 donuts disappear in less than 2 minutes. It was epic. On Friday afternoon, I was carrying two shoeboxes to practice and a couple of kids asked if I was bringing donuts again--hah! They saw boxes in my arms and their hopes flew sky high.

Amber's hair was in her usual messy ponytail when she got home from school on Thursday. I was surprised because she had specifically requested French braids that morning for picture day, even though she hates the pulling that happens when I braid her hair. 

"What happened to your braids?" I asked. 

"I took them out right after pictures," Amber said, matter-of-factly. 

It took me nearly 20 minutes of careful work arranging her thick curly tangly hair into two French braids, and she removed them immediately after the picture. That girl! I told her she should've worn her usual messy ponytail for pictures so she looked like her usual 5th grade self. Oh well!

Watching the video montage of everyone's wipeouts in the lake on the tube when we went boating with the cousins this summer in Denver.

Rose, working on biology homework.

Seminary. I felt bad taking a sneaky picture of the tired class, so I blanked out everyone but Jay's and Rose's faces.

I went to the temple on Tuesday.

Amber, reading in the sunshine while waiting at cross country practice.

A fiery sunset in our backyard.

The temperature got below freezing a few nights this week, and Jay is began to learn about the joys of windshield scraping. I got him a windshield cover to help with that arduous task. It will hopefully save battery power for his old electric car, since it uses close to a third of the battery life when he runs the defroster.

The leaf garland: I finally got it balanced, with great frustration and difficulty.

I managed to snag a donut amidst the feeding frenzy at cross country practice.

I made mini pumpkin spice superhero muffins this week and they looked so cute in our cookie jar. I usually only make cookies in December, so it's fun having something to put in this fun cookie jar.

I was amused by my favorite neighbor, the intrepid black faced white goat (the one I've rescued from being caught in the fence twice)--one day he jumped into the apple box to get better access at the tasty treats.

I diligently did my physical therapy at home all week, and rewarded myself with a 3 mile run on Friday. My tendons are sloooowwwlyyyyy getting better. Very slowly.

This darling happy yellow flower popped up out of nowhere in the middle of our dry rocky side flowerbed. It made me happy.

Friday was the hardest workout of cross country season: 8x 600 meters with 200 meter jogging recoveries. It's the only workout where us coaches write down everyone's splits, and I could not keep up writing times for the 19 kids in my group as the crossed the finish line with each rep. After failing to write down more than 4 times during the first interval, I started taking a video of them finishing and reading the time out on the video. After practice, I watched the videos and wrote the times down that way. Whew!

Saturday morning, the team came to the barn and ran a short 20 minute recovery jog, after which Coach White gave the team a 15 minute how-to-lift lesson, after which kids dispersed to eat the potluck breakfast, play frisbee outside, and ping pong and basketball inside the barn, and hang out for another hour and a half or so.

Our next door neighbor hates it when people miss our house and turn around in her driveway, so she painted a big sign on a piece of plywood and put it out by our mailbox during cross country practice on Saturday morning. Aside from my feelings about the sudden appearance of this sign, I had to cringe at the wording: "Whites." 90% of our team is not white. Having a color for a last name is SO awkward, especially when we are white and our last name is white, in a community of mostly brown people. And my maiden name is Brown...which would also be super weird. If I can find the time and materials, I might re-paint this sign.

Sweeping is not Amber's favorite.

Rose, doing battle with the floor scrubbing machine.

Adding a metal plate to the barn sliding door's latch.

White plastic weather-stripping along the edges of the sliding barn doors made a huge difference.