This and that

My little buddy's growth spurts have gotten kind of selective, and generally slowed down. I still don't know how big he's going to end up, but my fears about needing wider doorways have slacked off a big. Lately he's been working on getting longer rather than higher, and he's finally starting to look like a dog rather than a really funny-looking puppy. He's as tall as Ghost now but about half-again more broad, and has taken to towing W's lady dogs around by their collars. He still has that puppy indestructibility, which is good since he occasionally takes it into his head to test it. Today he decided he didn't want to ride in the back of M's pickup, so he just jumped out - at about 25 mph, which added a quaint level of interest to the trip, fer shur. No damage to the dog, but it's a good thing for him we weren't going faster and are a dozen miles from the nearest pavement. He came up with a neato trick yesterday - that dark thing hanging behind him is the window screen, which used to be neatly stretched across the window until he decided that, rather than patiently wait for me to open a door for him, he could just move that annoying screen aside and jump out through the window - which is about five feet off the ground. The boy is not afraid of heights - or of causing property damage whenever he finds it convenient, which fortunately is seldom.

M had some traveling to do, but since his return we've been concentrating on getting his foundation ready to pour. He got his underground plumbing sorted out and passed by the building inspector, and today we finished all the concrete forms. We still need to level the ground for the main pad and probably pull out a bunch of dirt; that comes tomorrow, which is why neither of us is looking forward to the morning. M and I are exhausted, but we're on a deadline: We learned that the iron for his structure will be ready for pick-up in the city next week, and we don't have the slab in yet. So we've shifted into overdrive, and I'm getting hostile at the thought of shovels and dirt.

The Secret Lair is all sheathed but has been fallow most of last month awaiting a money infusion. I need to buy roofing materials and enough water pipe to bring the water down the ridge from the cistern, and enough primer to keep the plywood from rotting or something before I can afford to finish the walls. I'll be lucky to afford even that much in September - I'm already in debt to M for the sheathing, and I got a terrible shock when I found out how much new insulation will cost. Haven't been able to find any salvaged insulation, and I'm getting a lot less smug - and a little less optimistic - about my chances of being in it by snowfall.


Pictures have been sparse lately because I've gotten paranoid about carrying this sweet little camera a reader donated to the blog. During the framing party the zoom started sticking in a manner horrifyingly reminiscent of the death of my first camera, and it's pretty clearly caused by my habit of carrying the camera everywhere I went in a cargo pocket of my pants - the pockets do sort of fill with dirt over the course of an average day. I got it cleaned out and it's working fine, but now I'm afraid to carry it with me. I have to take a camera tour presently, though, because we've been busy.