All in a Day's Work.

For me, if I had to use one word to describe my daily life at the moment, it would be

LUGGING.

It seems like I do a lot of it. 

Lug stuff from the trailer.
Lug stuff to the trailer.
Lug items into the house. 
Lug items outta the house.
Lug things upstairs.
Lug things downstairs. 
Lug that to an outbuilding.
Lug this from the barn.

Lug heavy boxes.
Lug bundles of cardboard.
Lug bags of garbage.
Lug pails of clean water.
Lug buckets of dirty water.

                  (This water cleaned only ONE closet!!) 

Lug armfuls of wood from one spot to the next getting ever closer to the stove.
Lug loads of laundry to the laundry-mat.
Lug it home again.
Lug countless tools here until they are need over there, and then whatta I do?
I lug 'em.

Where do I start? I'll start with breakfast this morning.
So, the fire had died down over night. To be expected. Geoff starts working at getting it going and being it will be awhile before it's hot enough to boil the kettle and since most of the breakfast stuff is in the trailer anyways, I decide to "lug" the kettle, a jug of water and a couple of mugs, from last night's "tea in the house", out to the trailer. (we've only had six mugs all this time, one each and two extra for guests, so everyone is responsible to know where their mug is) 
I open the trailer door and what's that I smell?  A wee whiff of propane that's what. 
Meaning the tank is empty. 
I turn off the oven's pilot light, say a prayer of thanks that an empty laundry basket is there in the trailer and start to fill it up so that I can....? LUG it all to the house. Cause now I am taking the kettle and two mugs back plus all the stuff I need for breakfast. Small plates, spoons, knives, bread, bagels, jam, peanut butter, yogurts, camping toaster and with an "Am I forgetting anything?" I squish, squish, squish back to the house. The jug of water gets left behind, there are more in the house.  (In cause you are wondering, No, I did not forget the butter, it was in the house) 
Geoff has the fire going. The kettle starts to pop and wiggle as it responds to the heat.
But the bread and bagel aren't doing anything on the camping toaster, except..... dry out.
Plan B - use a cookie cooling rack. Where are those? 
In the trailer. 
(which is obviously better then being in a box! and they worked like a charm too.)

And that is how it goes.
For breakfast.
Lunch.
Supper.
And two "coffee" breaks a day.

Then there is the work of fixing up an old house.
Some days the only person who could see that you got anywhere is.....yourself.
No one else knows what you had to do to get that corner looking like it does now. 
Often "now" isn't even pretty or nice looking yet.

Take scraping wall paper for example. 
Some comes off easy and some with immense struggle.
Water is needed for the job. Where is the water? In the trailer.
Need to add vinegar as well. Where's the last place I saw that?
Spray bottles need filling. Over and over again. 
Step stools need bringing up or down, cause they are always being used elsewhere at some point. Tools for scraping.... gotta find those. 
Then you step off the stool and slip on the wet peeled paper. Gonna break my neck if I don't clean that up! Gotta go get a bag for garbage. 
And where is the broom now?
So you finally get all you need, figure out a system and get into a good rhythm. 
Spray, soak, scrape, shift stool, pick up garbage, repeat. 
And you think, "Now we're cooking!" 
Then you come to a random screw sticking out of the wall. Not a nail that you can just pull out like the dozen you have encountered before, but a held-in-tight screw.
There goes your GROOVE right out the window. 
Downstairs you go, hoping that a medium-size-plus-shaped screw driver is still on the tool table. It is!! Yay!
Screw comes out. Rhythm begins again. It's just going good when you see a head appear on the stairs and hear a voice say,.....

"You got the plus screwdriver up here?"

Sometimes, it's phone cord stapled along the floor board.  You follow it to see where it leads. It takes you to a frayed end. A dud. So that's gotta come out. You try to pull it out with your bare hands, it doesn't budge. You'll need a straight screwdriver and hammer to pop up each staple and pliers to pull it all the way out. You know that cause this isn't your first phone-cord rodeo! Where are those tools? Not on the same level as you are to be sure!! And so you struggle along that line of "endless" staples that have been painted over and are happy-where-they-are and you feel sorta proud and accomplished as you stand up with your "prize"of several feet of old phone cord. You wrap it up to stick in the garbage and look around for the broom, hoping it's still in your vicinity, cause now you have staples to get off the floor, and you aren't interested in picking them up one-by-one. By now the garbage bag is full to bursting and you wonder if you'll get all those wee bits of metal in without them spilling over, but you're thankful at least that it isn't a new bag with a hole in the bottom, cause you have had one of those before too.

You turn to look back at your morning's accomplishment, thinking how much better it looks. To anyone else they see old plaster with cracks, scrapes, many colours, imprints from old wall paper, crumbling plaster in spots, floor boards that are chipped and showing two or three colours of paint.

But to you, it's only several buckets of warm, soapy water away from being primed.
Cause after you scrape, you gotta scrub off residual glues.
Oh, wait, primer isn't next?!
No, mudding is.
Oh, I almost forgot. Then I can prime?
Nope, then we gotta sand it.
Of course!
.......And then we'll probably have to mud a second time.

"Where IS the pail of mud now? you wonder and you kinda doubt that the step stool will still be here when it's mudding time....but whatever....better start looking for the tools and supplies you'll need for the next job...once you prioritize what that job will be, that is!!