April 2026 Island Trip – Day 4

I met my carpet removal goal in Stella (what a weird thing to say🧐). The carpet is out from the front of the coach to the beginning of the kitchen, and the ‘hardwood’ floor, installed in the kitchen, over the carpet is out.

In order to advance my carpet removal project, I ran to the lumber company and found better rug slicers. On my way back I stopped at the Saw Shop to inquire about electric blowers… I came home with is battery operated dragon:

It was well worth the price to be able to blow out the pump room, lower and upper barns. This dragon has a variable speed throttle, which makes it easy to herd the dust and grub you’re trying to wrangle out of the buildings. My alternative was to spend many dozens of hours my foot and shoulder aren’t up to, and then feeling grumpy about the slow progress. This gets the BIG stuff blown out the doors and leaves me wiping down way less. Big win!

The landscapers I met at my neighbor to the east, two days ago, came by today and line-trimmed all the things! I am so grateful for their availability, and that I didn’t have to do this task 💜.

Oddly, I took a broom to the north side of the lower barn and discovered that the algae on the siding pretty much sweeps off! Not that this is a thing I lose sleep over, but nice to know a pressure nozzle on the end of a hose will take care of the discoloration rather than pressure washing.

I also spent some time going through some of the bins of, mostly, my mom’s things. I found, again, pieces of wood she’d saved… two looked like stylized human legs, and two were crosses. One a modern cross, and one with a hole in the middle. I checked in with the tenant and asked if I could place these in the front garden. Of course, she said, ‘Yes.’ Continuing with my sorting, I found another piece of wood that looks like a woman’s torso. This is residing on the top of a shelf in the lower barn. Cool wood pieces collected by your mama need to be displayed, not stored in a plastic tubs for your children to find, and put on the firewood pile 😏 because your kids don’t have context. 💜 The pieces in the garden will decompose within 5-years. The one in the lower barn will be there to remind my children of their grandmother’s artistic eye, even when she was processing firewood 💕.

I won’t go into raking the gravel in order to smooth it out a bit… But I was able to get a pallet back under the lower barn overhang and a place fencing/decking/screening on it…😁

I was gonna go to karaoke this evening with my friend, but they hurt their back at work today and had to bow out. While I would have absolutely showed up on my own, I’m just as happy to have stayed in this evening. It seems to be about where I want to put my available energy (this is the first time in my life, outside of giving birth and losing a gall bladder, that energy has been limited – ankle surgery). I’m giving myself a lot of grace, heaps actually, working on accepting that it’s OK to need to rest at the end of a day.