COVID 19 - The Coronavirus: Home Security

Life is a little different when you live further from your neighbors. Emergency responders aren't that far away from us, but you still think differently.

First, there were the coyotes. We prepared to deal with them just in case.

Our first serious discussion about having a camera on property was when Carrie thought someone was trying to steal our hay. We later found out it wasn't a thief, but the wind was strong enough to pick up, throw, and break pallets!

I wasn't opposed to the initial idea of getting cameras, but I wasn't in a rush either. I figured it was fine to let Carrie do her research. It'd let her feel better and gather information.

It was weeks (or months) later one of our neighbors sent Carrie a text. She wanted to talk. Carrie called and the women told her that there had been two attempted break-ins after the recent storms. Her house (across and down the street from us) and our next door neighbor's house (Dinah) had found their locks damaged upon waking. One house was tested each night of the storm and neither family had heard or suspected anything until the storms passed. The woman on the phone had reported their incident to the police and said Dinah was thinking of doing the same. Carrie texted Dinah and confirmed they had a suspected robbery attempt.

There was talk of other arrests, too. I went online to confirm what we'd heard. The police did have the break-in attempt recorded, but the other bit of news were several miles down the road in town. I deemed them irrelevant to us. 

But the camera discussion came back up again.

Carrie was worried. She was able to sleep at night, because she knows I do security sweeps and lock down the house (I learned my lesson when my laptop was stolen).  

The research continued. Some other events happened here and there that further convinced Carrie it would be good to have a way to record when anyone was on property or if something happened in the fields. All the random pictures I take have served that purpose really well, but I'm not taking pictures 24/7.

Carrie eventually found a deal she liked and asked me if the price was fine (I think she asked before she ordered, too!). It's not fully set up around the outside yet, but it works!

We talked about whether or not we should get a chain to run across the driveway at night or to have a gate system. The chain would have been a temporary measure and I didn't want to pay for something just to have it replaced a short time later. All these things are deterrents and ways to keep a record of events. 

And toys.

We definitely treated the cameras like toys when they first turned on. 

"You know these things record, right?" Carrie asked.

We were betting on it! Ha!

....and no, I didn't find a way to transfer the recordings to Youtube....yet.

COVID 19 - The Coronavirus: Construction Days

Last week, we had a run-in constructed. Jason, who seems to be our contractor of choice, and a helper drove their trucks into the dry lot to unload all the materials.

They had it framed out the first (and longest) day. The second day saw everything done save the metal roof. The final day was a quick drive in and finish after the metal Jason ordered came in.

The run-in is Shane tested and approved. Carrie wouldn't have been happy he was climbing on the new construction, but how else do you know if it's solidly constructed? Or at least, how do you have fun and check it out?

There have been a few projects that have been sitting around the house forever and a day. "I'll do them once I have time," I said.

I've been home for almost a month. I've had time, but they haven't gotten done. Or at least, until now.

Shane and I started to assemble the hutch on Thursday.

Tasks always take longer when Shane's involved. The goal is the short term increased effort/time translates to him growing and having some fun in between.

We kept the doors shut to guest bedroom to keep animals out. Loki camped out and looked for any opportunity to join us!

Phineas and Ferb put together roller coasters in minutes. It took us much longer!

Funniest Shane conversation: I gave him an exacto-knife to open the plastic with the screws and dowels.

"I can't do that! I'll cut myself!" Shane said.

"Not if you do it right," I replied.

There was hemming and hawing, but I showed Shane the basic rules: 1) Never put anything you don't want poked on the other side of where the point presses in and 2) cut away from anything you don't want cut (like your body!).

"If I cut myself, it's your fault!" Shane said.

"If you cut yourself it'll be your fault, because you didn't do it right."

He didn't cut himself. We did have a talk about respecting tools as tools and not toys after there was some hammer play.

I let Shane go play Sunset riders while I did the final detail work.

I waited until Carrie was available to help me lift the hutch for the final step.

Carrie bought some new cabinets for the barn to help the boarders organize their gear.

Hello again, old friend. I didn't realize it was you.

The build process was very familiar, but the pieces had changed slightly. Maybe all cheap, plastic cabinets are made in the same factory?

One of these days, I'm going to tell Shane to build something on his own.

We made the first cabinet Friday. Saturday, we did the second one in half the time. Shane did a good job of recalling a bunch of the steps.

We threw the two el-cheapo cabinets in the corner of the wash stall.

They seemed to be an upgrade of the previous cabinets when I looked at them side by side. The handles were better and the assembly was easier. It was probably cheaper to produce using plastic axles rather than metal hinges, too.

I need to do another oil change on the mower soon and check out the busted garage door, but my motivation didn't go that far.

I did do some minor projects in the barn. The middle mare stall was a morass of filth. I started to strip it Thursday and finished Friday morning.

It was partly Maddie's fault. She's terrible on destroying stalls!

The biggest pain with stripping stalls has been carrying away the nasty bedding. I'd like Shane to hack me a path into the trees, so I don't have to stoop over with 50+ lbs of poop and pissy pine chips. I can't trust him to run off with a blade on his own, so that means if I did send him to do it I'd have to go with him....which is why I haven't made him do it....yet.

There's always something to do.

COVID 19 - The Coronavirus: Pet Paradise?

If Shane and I were able to roam freely and visit friends it would feel like summer with better weather (I'll take cold rain over 100 degrees!).

We can't. That makes it less than perfect, but it's still been good to be home even in the circumstances.

Who really enjoys us being home all day has to be Loki. It's like a dog dream come true! He's always excited about going outside and meeting new people. He likes to scope out the yard and with us home he gets out more.

Any time I leave the house, Loki wants to go with. He stalks the bathroom and bedroom door, too!

He's even been getting braver about the barn. As long as he can stay near his people (and there are no horses in sight or making loud noises), Loki is happy to be near us.

I try to take him out once a day to pace cars. Sometimes Shane and I will take him for a lap around the property (it helps get out some Shane energy, too).

Loki's been a big fan of lacrosse practice. Shane will chase him or Loki will chase whatever we throw.

Funny moment: Shane and I took a ball with us while we took Loki around the property. He liked playing fetch, but I didn't like when he caught a ball, dropped it, and marked it! What a way to kill a game! I wiped it down in the wet grass before we kept walking on.

On the downside, I've been a little worried about Loki swallowing gravel dust the ball picks up from the arena (his slobber makes it stick). Loki had a poop that confirmed my suspicions.

Loki seemed like he was constipated for a day or so and I instituted a poop-watch. He likes cardboard, hay, and paper towels which while fibrous don't count as fiber.

He's lost a lot of interest in his food. I thought it was from constipation, but it could be he's just sick of it. What he really wants is wet food like the cats.

Carrie started using wet cat food to hide dewormer medicine for Happy. Since the can was already open, she started to dish out the rest to Bucket and Max. Shane thought it was funny how the cats all swarmed Carrie in the mornings and he took over!

Happy is the biggest scavenger of the three. She's jumped up on the counter to try and eat right from the can as Shane is dishing out. Loki has to be penned so the cats can eat in peace.

He's happy to lick clean all their bowls when we let him out!

The animals are all getting along fairly well. Bucket still wants nothing to do with Loki, but she doesn't have explosive, stress diarrhea chasing her around the house. Max prefers the dog to give her space, and goes about her business whether he does or not.

Happy, however, seems to have bonded with Loki. She will bunk him as he tries to lick her ears (or her butt. Gross!).

Not that sudden movements won't spook her! Happy was curious about my drink and didn't realize Loki was sleeping on the floor beneath her.

"Friend!?" He popped up and Happy went into an acrobatics mode! She spun in the area and took flight!

She didn't go far before she realized it was her knucklehead friend.

And she came right back. Like I said, she's a scavenger and not easily deterred.

I've seen tolerant cats before, but Happy takes the cake (Figuratively. She'd run off with cake if you let her.). She lets the dog poke, prod, lick, sniff, paw, and generally annoy her usually without complaint. Same with Shane.

Happy has used her claws a time or two to tell puppers when to back off, but she forgives fairly quick. Honestly, his coat is so thick I think there have been other times she's been pissed and using full claws while he bobs around completely unaware. "Troo, la roo! Buddy! Pal!"

The only time I've heard Happy hiss is when dealing with the other cats. She's forced her way out of Shane's room and more into the common area. There have been a few minor spats, but nothing more than a swipe or two.

Meanwhile, Max has moved in where has Happy moved out. She's taken to lurking in Shane and the guest bedroom during the day to sleep.

She's even taken a shine to Shane's kitty hotel!

Bucket spends most of her day hiding. She's got some usual haunts like behind the curtains (Oh, look! Barf for me to clean up later).

If it's quiet and there are people, though...

Bucket is quick to come out and say hello. She doesn't like noise and she doesn't like high energy, but she likes laps and pets.

She'll happily perch on Shane with a blanket if he's willing to sit still long enough for her to settle in! She'll take a nap till he stirs or the dog strays too close.

While they don't get along all the time, I know all the pets are happy to have their people around. I don't think they see any downside to the quarantine at all!

Good enough? + Work Life Balance

I came home to a gravel dust cloud Monday. Kyle was finally making good on leveling out the arena. 

Carrie declared it, "Good enough." It's not great, but she wants to move on (I will apparently be hand-raking to fix some issues).

Carrie's been after Kyle for weeks and frustrated because couldn't work her horses in the arena as it was (and that's not including her injuries). She didn't feel like she could advertise our property until boarders would have a place to ride, either.

Hopefully, this closes the construction chapter and will reduce some stress levels.

The newest stressor is our internet. It's suddenly been terrible. Carrie even had an atennae installed and we're connected to the service better, but the flow is down to a trickle. That's rough when you work from home.

Carrie sent me this as I was writing:

We used to get close to 20 Mbps. We started around 10 Mbps, bought some paddles to boost the reception and it worked great for a while. Now? There's no explanation. Carrie's spent hours on the phone with the providers.

There's always something.

Even with all that, it feels like my work-life balance is starting to even out more. I have plenty of stuff to do every day. I wake up to chores, get home around 6 PM with Shane for a dinner break, and then go back to work. After Shane gets on electronics and/or goes to bed I may rest for a bit and then do some grading before bed.

I started to work out a new system for recycling since the old one was a bust. Shane and Henry got to crush all of our cans as a chore/game.

But I'm starting to have some free time at the end of they day where I actually have energy. I was thinking about it the other week. "Hey! I have time to think about something that's not school or chore related.......what should I think about? Maybe about having time all of a sudden?" It was a doozy.

I used the spare energy and time to start catching up on other projects.....like the blog you're reading. I'm actually caught up for the first time in months!

Ironically, I feel like things are finally starting to balance and wrestling season is going to start in three weeks! I'm not sure what that's going to look like at the new school with the new job in a new barn.

All part of the adventure, I guess!

Math and Life

I try to make my math class applicable to life....even if it's mainly my life. I took a picture of the fence and required the kids to label which parts should be parallel to the ground and which should be perpendicular.

I did not have them comment on the sad state of the actual fence.

I'm grading and looking through a lot more papers than I used to. I dropped some papers in front of Loki for a picture op.

He tried to eat someone's homework.

I showed the pictures in class. "If you're the lucky winner, there will be bite marks in the upper corner of your paper."

"I don't have more pictures, because I had to drop the phone and get the paper back."

I made sure to write comments on everyone's paper to establish that I do read what they write. I got snarky on some, and if the kids showed a little personality on theirs...

...then I played right along. 

I wanted to write, "You have low standards," but decided against sarcasm. 

I showed Carrie the picture I took, and she was insistent I needed to find the paper and add a comma.

I replied that I was math teacher, not an English teacher.

The Lead-in and Then Today's Continuation

"Dad, how do you spell 'kid' backwards?" Shane asked.

We were on the way home from soccer.

"D - I - K."

I could see where this was going.

"Say it out loud," Shane said.

"Nice try, kid." I grinned.

Shane stopped and it as quiet for a moment.

"So....who tricked you with that one?" I asked.

"Aiden! I said it out loud around a bunch of people! They all laughed and laughed!"

"Uh huh. It's always good to think before speaking. You won't fall for that one again, will you?"

"Nope!"

A good lesson and a good joke.....for the elementary level.

Still, there was more that could be learned.

"Who did you try to trick after you got tricked yourself?" I continued.

Of course, Shane tried the joke out himself. That's classic kid. Shane regaled me with a long story, I nodded to and laughed about. At the end, I continued my train of thought.

"So what do you think the kid you tricked did next? Do you think they tried to trick someone else?"

Shane did. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Shane was holding back that he tried the joke ten more times!

I said something about how that kind of joke could create a cycle. Someone got tricked and then they'd trick someone else and it could be funny, but it wasn't always nice. It could get ugly if people kept going back and forth. I said that as Christians, Jesus wanted us to be the kind of people who could break a cycle by not getting back at someone. People who could accept they got tricked, learn from it, and know that they were okay as is because they were loved.

I also told him that he would get in trouble at school and at home if he kept using that word. Shane's not quiet type. I made it very clear I would be upset if I heard he was being rude and using bad words at school. "They're called your privates, because you keep them private."

I felt like a good parent and that a lesson was learned. I hoped that I'd headed off a future note from Shane's teacher, as well. He's gotten in trouble for potty humor before, but it seemed like he was really understanding what we talked about.

Fast forward to Thursday - Carrie and I picked up Shane from school together. Carrie wanted to drive down to visit our future home as a family and Shane revealed a note his teacher had made him write.

I can't find the letter now, but the gist of it was this. Shane's teacher stepped out of the room to put the lunch leftovers away. A kid in the class named Anthony (not the soccer one), was joking around and slapping himself between the legs and Shane yelled, "Stop slapping your dick!" in a full-Shane voice that echoed beyond the classroom as she returned.

There was a post-it note from Mrs. B attached that read, "This is not the first time."

I was annoyed, but Carrie was mortified.

It made for an uncomfortable drive. I thought she was too mad, but maybe her sitting and fuming is what will communicate to Shane what I thought he'd already understood.

We did arrive at the home site and got to take a look around. Progress has been made.

The foundation is going in. We're projected for an August completion date. Carrie's got more pictures and I'll eventually post a "Stages of Development" post. It's starting to feel more real to me.

Carrie went out earlier in the week and got sunburned marking out future fence posts, the arena, and the barn.

We stumbled across a skeleton while we were walking the grounds.

Shane was fascinated and Carrie let him unearth it a little. She used to work as a vet tech, so she was able to answer some of his questions.

As we walked around, the neighbors rode by on a tractor. Shelby, a 4th grader, was getting a driving lesson from her grandpa. We stopped to talk for a moment. Maybe the kids will get to go fishing together sometime in the future!

Carrie requested we stop by a local restaurant for dinner. It turned out it was "Kids eat free" night! Shane desperately wanted to play some video games (and even tried to worm his way in), but he wasn't allowed (See: "Kid backwards").

Carrie and I enjoyed our meals. Scottsville is a small enough place, I wouldn't mind getting established as a 'regular' at a place or two.

Carrie wandered off on a work phone call and Shane and I caught up with her at a creek behind the pavillion. Carrie spotted a large snapping turtle that had embedded itself in the mud and refused to move. She was tickled pink!

It was a happier ride back. Shane didn't get any electronics and we've had a talk since. It'll be a funny story when he's older......though, I think it's pretty funny right now!