Sunday

It was a quiet day around here. The painters were up and working by 8:00, but they are quiet and just go about their business. You don't even realize they are here most of the time. They are doing a meticulous job; things are really looking nice.

I decided since I had had a few days in a row of feeling low, that today I would relax and work on some of my fiber projects. And, of course, I have just a few going on right now. I have placemats on the loom. I have a sweater down to the front edging and buttons for Mandy. I have a baby sweater just needing buttons, and another baby gift to think about. Besides those, there are others that have been on the back burner for a while; a needlepoint pillow and a quilting project. I could probably name a few other things in the works, but don't see how that will be productive. I know I have a problem finishing things. Maybe it's because I have a short attention span after the newnesss of the project wears off, or I just get so many ideas into my head, I can't wait to get new ones started.

Stormy and the Chairman went at it again in the kitchen this morning. Stormy was able to get a hold of the kitten a couple of times before Chairman was able to get behind the refrigerator. These encounters only seem to fuel Stormy's obsession. The Chairman stayed behind the refrigerator for a couple of hours before I was able to coax her out. I've kept them separate the rest of the day and finally dug out one of Stormy's squeaky toys for her to play with. At least for the time being, she isn't obsessing on the kitten.

We ran out of water in the kitchen tonight as Celia was preparing dinner for the painters. Sanchez came to tell me about the problem. It seemed really odd because there was water in the bathroom downstairs and in the master bathroom. All of the valves were open, so I couldn't figure out why just the kitchen would be out. Sanchez climbed up the ladder to the water tanks and found they were empty. There was just a tad of water in the cistern. We couldn't get the pump to work though, so we couldn't get water up to the tanks. It turns out there is a device on the pump that sits on the surface of the water. If there is sufficient water in the cistern, then the pump automatically turns on and pumps until the tanks are full. When the water level gets too low in the cistern, then the devise shuts off the pump so it won't be just pumping air. We now have a call in for the water truck who hopefully will deliver water sometime tomorrow afternoon. Meanwhile, I will have to haul some water from town in the morning.

Chemo, the first carpenter on the job here, returned this afternoon with a helper and some more wood. He is going to redo the deck around the pool and in the master bathroom. The deck is beautiful, except the spaces between the boards averages an inch or better. This makes it a bit uncomfortable to walk on, and impossible to keep things from falling down between the cracks. I told him the spaces should be no more than a quarter of an inch. I found a piece of broken tile whose thickness was about 1/4" and gave him that to use as a gauge. He and his helper already have about ten feet of the deck redone and it looks sooooo much better. He did tell me though that he did not bring enough wood. He had figured on reducing the spaces to about 3/8th of an inch.

Earlier this afternoon, I was in the kitchen cleaning construction dust out of the drawers with the vacuum cleaner. Celia was working on lunch for the workers and didn't say anything until I was done. Then she looked at me and said, "That's for cleaning, huh?" I don't think she'd seen a vacuum cleaner before, so I showed he how it worked. One of the things we've always liked about the Peruvian people, is they seem to live a simple life. Sometimes we forget exactly how simple that live really is. They're good people; we've been so fortunate to have Sanchez, his wife, Juana and Celia around.