Work work work work..

I'm winding up my third week of training.  On Thursday I take my route out all on my own.  The full monte.  I'm more than a bit frightened.  Yesterday I took just under 1/2 the mail out and didn't get back to the post office until after 5:00 pm.  I  can't imagine how long it's going to take to do the whole thing.  Thank goodness the mail vehicle has headlights and I have a GPS on my phone.

One day of training was in Seattle.  I had to get up at 3:00 a.m. to make a 7:00 am class there.  That was bad but what made it worse was that the afternoon portion was spent driving around Seattle traffic in a right hand drive vehicle.  Seattle-ites beware - this goes on almost daily there.  Yikes!

One of the things I'm coming to terms with is the pay.  I worked for two weeks, 6 days a week.  I worked hard learning and training and practicing and doing actual work.  If you take my wage and deduct the unemployment payments I lost because I was working I made about $13.00 a week.  I just can't completely buy into this being a good idea.  Perhaps I'll be more enthusiastic once I get at least a portion of my unemployment back and I'm not working for free.

My routine with this new life has been get up, go to work, come home and collapse, too tired to move.  I fall asleep on the sofa well before bedtime.  Here is were I publicly say THANK YOU DEAR HUSBAND for taking care of me, the alpacas, the house, the dog, the cats.  THANK YOU DEAR HUSBAND for taking care of the opossum under the house.  THANK YOU for making dinner and doing the grocery shopping and making coffee on those early mornings.  THANK YOU for being there for me.

My great plan is that next week I'll have time to bake cookies, make pasta, knit, spin, weave, grocery shop, make dinner, clean the alpaca stall, vacuum, do dishes, do laundry, scrub the tub, clean the toilets, chop wood, rake leaves...  Hmm.. maybe working for $13.00 a week isn't such a bad deal.

(are you happy now Andrew?)

I have finished my second day of training with the USPS.  Today I got up before 6:00 am to make it to the training site by 8:00.  It was raining and it was dark.  It's been more than a year since I've had to do anything so horrific.

Training has gone fairly well so far.  There are 8 of us in the class.  I sit in the front row.  Not that I'm a kiss-up or anything.  I just want to get the most of out the class that I can.  Really.  On the first day I quickly became the teacher's pet when the projector connected to her computer wouldn't work.  She fiddled with it for 15 minutes and it was all I could do to sit there and watch without butting in.  Seriously.  I had a knot in my stomach while I watched her.  The sound would not work and to fix it she turned off the projector.  And still I sat there.  Arrghh.  She finally looked up from the equipment and asked if anyone knew how it worked.  I jumped at the opportunity and had it working in less than a minute.  All I did was press the "pc" button on the projector to tell it to connect.  Nothing technical at all.

Later she gave her computer password to her boss so that he could access her e-mail while she was gone.  The ex-network administrator in me almost exploded.  To make it worse she was making fun of my reaction today and gave ME her password.  This caused me great stress.  Also today I got a finger waggle and she said like me, she used to be loud and controlling - in a good way.  Harumph.

Despite the antics I managed to learn a lot.  That's good because there is a surprisingly lot to learn.  Our instructor says the job is hard and she guarantees that at some point we'll cry.  She even pointed to the one male in our class (an ex-military fellow) and promised that even he would cry.  I wonder.  I understand there is stress and the job is hard but I just don't believe that it can be more stressful or frustrating than it was to sit in the middle of a computer room floor at 5:00 in the morning with the main server in pieces around you, the clock ticking, having not slept in 22 hours, knowing that in a few more hours the first of 300 people are coming into the office expecting to turn on their computers and access their files... I cried then.  I think it's all perspective.

I still have a long way to go before I get to actually begin working.

Tomorrow I attend a 1/2 day of driver training on one of these:

I take a test in Seattle on Thursday.  Saturday I do a "ride-along".  Next week I have 3 days of  "Rural Academy" followed by several days of on the job training.  Somewhere around mid-November I get to actually go out on my own and the crying can commence.

Scramble!

Here in Northern Washington we had well over 3 months without rain.  Every glorious day was followed by an equally delightful glorious day.  The sun shone, the ground was warm and our grapes flourished.

Thursday of last week things changed.  Without warning (just because it was October was not warning enough!) the nights cooled and a hard frost hit our vines. 

It was time to pick.  NOW.  A second frost could easily ruin the grapes. Unfortunately the unexpected frost also hit our potatoes.  Although it would have been nice to leave them in the ground for a few more weeks the frost left their tops shriveled and dead.  It was time to pick those too.  Unfortunately we had to go out of town on Friday.  AAARRGGHH!

Peter started picking grapes and I tackled the potatoes.  Once the grapes were collected we started washing and plucking (that's removing the grapes from the stems), then we smashed them and got them in the barrel.  At 2:30 in the morning we still weren't done but exhaustion won and we called it a night.  The following day we rose early and continued washing and smashing until we got 'em done, finally leaving town at 4:30 p.m.   We have about 15 gallons of Pinot in the Pot.  Haha.. Maybe that's what we should name it!  Pinot in the Pot Wine.

My fingers were stained purple and I gleefully danced the happy dance at the idea that we were finally finished. Peter thought I was weird.  Oh well.

Of course, silly me, I had forgotten that we also have other grapes that were not hit by the frost - but WERE in danger from the threatening rain.  This week we scrambled to get the "barn grapes" picked.  The trellis they are on has collapsed from the weight of the grapes.  Peter picked high and I picked low, crawling around on my knees under the trellis.  I mingled with spiders and spider webs and horrid earwigs.  (I hate earwigs more than spiders and snakes and Jaywalkers and litterbugs.  Seriously.  Earwigs will make me crazy.  The other day one got on me and I screamed and jerked.  It fell to the floor where I stomped on it 6 or 7 times.  A bit overkill maybe but you can never be too sure when it comes to earwigs!)

But I digress.  We picked 6 bins full of grapes.

And the rain hit hard.  We had another marathon washing, plucking and smashing session.  We were up until well past midnight last night but managed to get them done!  We have about 30 gallons of this one.   I'm kind of afraid to do the happy dance again - but I'm doing it in my head. 

I was thinking that if you add in the hours spent weeding, and pruning and tending the grapes, plus the hours spent MAKING the wine, we would need to charge about $80.00 a bottle just to break even.  Luckily we aren't planning on selling it.

Paul Bunyan I'm not

It's officially fall and the morning air is crisp and fresh.  Darkness is settling in earlier and earlier.  Thoughts of winter days spent nestled by the fire are already calling to me.

Fires require firewood.  uh-oh.  That's a problem.  Two days ago our firewood was still in big chunks where we dropped three willow trees a few months ago.  After careful consideration I decided to scoff at the idea that moving and chopping firewood was a mans job.  I spent yesterday moving the wood from the south end of the south field to the slab by the barn.  A fairly short, but uphill trek.  Today I moved another stash of wood from the east edge of the property and decided to start chopping.  I am woman, hear me roar!

I picked up the ax that Peter uses.  It's this huge wedge attached to a metal handle and weighs about 45 pounds.  I needed two hands to lift it just to the height of my target wood.  With great effort I hefted the thing up and let it drop with a thud.  It barely dented my log.  Swinging it was out of the question. It became quite obvious that this wasn't going to work so well for me.  I hate to admit it but I needed a lighter weight ax.  I may as well have plastered "I'm just a girl" on my forehead.  Sigh..

Quite sad, but still determined, I searched through the barn and finally came up with a regular ax.  One with a wooden handle that I could at least pick up and swing.  So pick up and swing I did.

A lot.

After a gazillion swings that landed in random places on my log I FINALLY got the thing to crack.  Woot!  Hear me roar!  I can do it. Yes I can.

Another gazillion swings and I had this log split into about 6 pieces.  Perfect for the fireplace.  Perfect for a winter's day for about 2 hours of heat.  I took my victory and ran with it and about 2 hours later I had this little stack of split wood:

As I worked my aim and technique got better, then it got worse.  The ax got progressively heavier and my muscles began to scream at me.  I managed to split enough wood to heat our house for about a week.  Tomorrow I'll add to it - assuming I can move.  Right now the palms of my hands ache as the blisters form, my arms are quietly sobbing at the effort to type.  Tomorrow is not looking so promising - but who knows - I am woman and might just have more roar in me.