Oregon Living 2019 – Blog #48 – Getting ready to Mow & A New Stove!

 

Wednesday, May 22^nd, 2019…...  Rylee got me up early today. She likes to nuzzle on me when I turn over or right before I get up to go to the bathroom. “I want out to pee!”, is what she is telling me. That usually happens about 2:30-3:30am. I can usually go right back to sleep but not last night. So, waking me up at 5:15am was WAY too early! But, if I ignore her she will settle down until 7:00am or so, which is not too bad. I got showered and got her walked and then went and got breakfast/coffee/tea. I have a roll of craft paper for painting and I had to find that for tomorrow. While I was out in the shop, I cleaned up my tractor a bit. I also put the new handle on the shovel so that was fixed and ready to go.  We didn’t have anything planned for dinner so Lydia made spaghetti. We had the other half of the Texas Cheese Bread from last time so it was a quick meal.      

Thursday, May 23^rd, 2019……  Our new stove is being delivered today. Best Buy contracts their installs with a third-party company.  They had originally scheduled it for yesterday but they wanted a full day because “This is a big heavy oven and it takes longer to load, unload, and get it moved into the space”.  Plus, they had to remove our old ‘big heavy oven’ as well.  They made it from Eugene to Best Buy Salem and back to our home by 11:00am, but it was the only thing on their list for today.  The first step was to take out the old stove. I had laid down protection on the floor from the garage to the kitchen. They weren’t exactly happy to see that though! They prefer to use their own mover’s blankets. Oh well, this was starting off wrong! But they managed to get the old one out (with my muscle). It helped that the doors and halls were made extra wide for wheelchair access when they built the house. I had them take the Dacor out to the shop, where I will finish cleaning it up and get it ready to put on Craig’s List. They also had to change out the gas fitting on the Jenn-Air because it wouldn’t allow the stove to go tight against the wall.

But they got everything going and cleaned up and left. Here’s the old stove:

  

And the new one:

I know, they don't look too much different. But trust me, happy wife - happy life! 

Once they left, we decided to wait another day to test it out. I still had the $50 gift card for 1847, a nice restaurant in the Best Western Hotel in town, that Lou had given me for taking care of his dogs the first time. So, with my sister, we left and went to ‘linner’ and enjoyed a good meal. When we got back, I had decided it was time to cut and haul all of the downed branches from the snowfall last year. I ran an extension cord out to the back of the property. It was made easier because I had an external plug added to the back of the rv garage. I took the truck and my chainsaw out and cut up the branches to fit in the bed, just to get them up to the shop to cut into firewood later. It was pretty easy work and once I got them unloaded, I headed off to get some gas for the tractors. I plan on mowing tomorrow. Sis is coming over so we can get it done quickly.

Later, we watched the last two episodes of The Amazing Race and then went off to bed.

               

Friday, May 24^th, 2019…... The best laid plans…  It rained last night. There was a 25% chance and we had hoped it would miss us, but guess not! Anyway, the mowing is on hold for now. Maybe tomorrow, but if so, I might be a one-man-crew because my sister is busy. I may be able to wait until she’s done with her scheduled tasks. But I was able to go out later in the afternoon and get the string trimming done ahead of mowing. Still have those pesky apple tree stumps to cut around. I may try to pull them out with my truck just to see if I can!

But for the most part, I stayed around the house and worked on little projects. All of the wood I brought in needed to be cleaned up for firewood/trash so I worked on that a bit. Of course, Rylee has to be out there with me! She’s happy even though she’s on a long rope. She likes to sneak in and grab the branches and take them away and lay in the grass and chew on them. I also spent some time paying bills and catching up on my spreadsheet. Fun stuff! I also had a call to make to Best Buy. Since we bought the floor model, we were not given the owner’s manual. I called to ask them to see if it was in a drawer or something in the store. No luck. So, I had to go online to print it out. No worries, it looks pretty much the same and will work. Lydia likes to read the manuals through so she knows how everything works. It will work if/when she has any questions.