Alaska-Work Until You Drop or The Disaster Will Continue Unabated

TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY...The floggings will continue until morale improves.

Summer and I bought this house and property sight unseen (except for pictures) in June of 2017. We moved onto the property in September of 2017. Since then there has no been a single day that wasn't crammed full of work. I'm 74 years old and I've worked weekdays, weekends, holidays and many nights trying to create a working homestead out of an unmitigated disaster. Much of the time seems to be spent solving problems that arise that have no direct bearing on creating a working homestead. Trucks break, cars break, tractors break, chainsaws break ( I NOW OWN 4 THAT DON'T WORK), pumps break, water lines break, leak or freeze, sewage lines freeze, pipes heaters don't, it rains until everywhere is just a mud hole or it freezes to the point you cannot move dirt and then it snows on top of that. Four cords of firewood left us a cord short and now we're burning fuel oil at $3 a gallon. Fortunately, we're having an early 'MUD' so the temp is rising and we need less heat. It has alternatively snowed and rained for the past three weeks so the dirt street up to the house is just a single car path of muddy slush that we endeavor to keep the dogs from walking through. The good news is that the snow is almost gone, the bad news is that I lost my boot in the mud and had to pull it out whilst standing in my sock foot ankle deep in the mire. This has become a trial by 'Tire' and I'm always tired. Lately, I have been considering running away for a few weeks or forever whichever seems appropriate at the moment. I'm feeling sorry for myself for a few minutes.. So don't interrupt.

Summer sold some of her property in Florida and we're going to use that extra money to move the house over onto a real concrete block foundation that features a full basement. Currently, the house is sitting atop vertical chunks of logs and is very precariously balanced upon them. When anyone walks anywhere inside the house, the entire house shakes. When the strong winds blow he house shakes. When there is an earthquake the house really shakes. In addition, the front of the house is several degrees of down angle from the back of the house. When you climb the stairs you need to lean a little further forward to keep from losing your balance and falling backwards to a situation where you will either be severely maimed or dead. We've always had the money to move the house, but had expected to costs of such an action would exceed our willingness to spend money. Our original intentions were to simply pick the house up slightly and put sturdier pilings under it. BTW. You can't live in Alaska, if you are broke. Well, actually, you can but there are better, warmer places to be penniless or homeless or both. Might I suggest South Florida say West Palm Beach. The house moving, of course, creates even more work as the sewage, plumbing and electrical will all need to be moved after I just got all of that crap working properly.

Whilst writing this epistle of complaint, I am nursing a very small dehydrated chick. I keep giving it a few drops of water every 30 minutes or so. Summer ordered goslings, ducklings and chicks for her latest foray into animal husbandry. They arrived with 3-4 dead and all of them dehydrated. The one I'm nursing seems bound and determined to live so I'm giving it every chance I can muster. If it dies, it dies but the little buggers are expensive to buy and ship so it living would be an excellent outcome.

I'm doing housework today. I have a dishwasher full of clean dishes and a dishwasher full of dirty dishes in the sinks. A refrigerator that badly needs cleaning out, the downstairs floors need to be vacuumed and everything upstairs needs to be vacuumed and mopped. I'm vacuuming and mopping plywood floors as we can't put down the flooring until the house is leveled. If your reaction was YUK! that would be about the same as mine. Summer subscribed to 'Bark Box' and every time it comes in there are 3-4 new small, stuffed toys. The Jack Russell (BetsyBoo) and the Chihuahua (Taco) gut them in a matter of a couple of hours and the guts get scattered all around the house. I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time just picking up toy guts. You have to pick it up because it won't sweep or vacuum off the plywood floors. Oh my! The trials and tribulations of a 'House Dad'. Summer, my lovely daughter, works 3 days a week and tends to her animals most of the rest of the time unless I need help with a project.

Now that the weather is beginning to break, I am about to start hauling gravel in my 1975 International Harvester dump truck. The only way to have a solid surface on this glacier deposited soil and rock is to put down a fiber product call Typar and then cover that in 10-15 inches of gravel/sand mix from the local quarry. My project is to haul 25 ( 5 yard) truck loads onto the property and put it where where I'd like to park vehicles and build a shed for tractor and tools. Bought the truck because having it hauled costs $20 a yard and hauling it myself cost $10 plus gas per yard. No brainer unless I wreck the truck and kill myself. I'm always the optimist.

Now that I have vented, I'm feeling much better. I guess it's time to do the dreaded housework and check to see if the little chick still survives.