There's a hole in the ground Dear Liza Dear Liza

Just wanted to show you sneak peak of what I have to deal with around here these days.  Believe me I am not complaining, but man oh man lets just say having the laundry folded and put away, and a clean house are a thing of Christmas past and present.

There's a hole in the ground with no green grass growing round and round.

I am able to report no dead things were found during the "Big Dig."  Sorry, but it is probably for the best.  Lest we have a Poltergeist situation, and have to bring in the big guns up from the Springs to deal with an old Indian or any animal burial ground for that matter.  Still not sure what went through there.  It could have been an old well, leach field etc. ????  I am just glad it is done.  

Let's just say there were times when they came really close to the house.

Really Really Close!

And of course as soon as you disturb said ground, you will summon and awaken the weather Gods and it will snow.

And we all know what snow turns into when it melts...........

Mud mud and more mud.  Only about 1/3 of a big ass pile of dirt.

Any one need dirt?  We got plenty.

The blue hose is our temporary water line.  Water now tastes like a plastic hose and the pressure wasn't what it used to be, but I am told it is still better then most folks have in town.  See that tiny clay colored hole in the center of the back wall?  Yeah, we found snakes in there.  Alive and pissed because Spring just came early for their hibernation spot.  

See that other clay colored tiny spot down next to Dave?  That's Rusty.  He went ripshitzing around the corner today to chase some bikers and lost 1 leg and almost the rest of him down the side of the wall.  This picture was taken before they finished digging and there was still a way out.  Anyone want to take bets who falls in first?  Rusty, India, Me?

Building materials arrived and are everywhere.

And in the midst of building, the daily operations are still transpiring as usual.  Why we didn't start this last August is beyond me.

We have bitchy spoiled chickens who now demand (very loudly I might add,) to eat hand steeped oats and barley.  Or as my good friend who brews the beer, calls them.  Los Pollos Borrachos.  The drunk chickens.  It isn't fermented, but don't tell them that.  We'll just call it the placebo effect.

Yup...... damn bagel still there.

And to close, we have a fine example of a Dipshit Dingo Dog who doesn't have any boundaries.  Whatsoever.  He has come to the realization that if he sits on Dave's desk that he might be able see out the window.  Homeboy is still too short.  So he just sits there and barks anyway.  At the wall......

Rusty - "You talkin' to me?" *Said with best De Niro Guido accent.*

Rusty - "Are ya feelin' lucky, punk?"  "Go ahead, make my day!"  *Said with best Clint Eastwood accent.*

 
Me - "Get off the damn desk and let me get back to work!"

Adios Muchachos.

This ISH just got real!

Came home today from running errands to find this parked next to my house.

Just to give you some perspective, This is my tiny house next to the very large backhoe loader thing a ma bob.  My inner 10 yr. old boy dies laughing inside every time I say the word backhoe.  

And to give you some more perspective of how ginormous this thing is, this is a Dipshit Dingo Dog on top of the thingamajig.  

Sit Ubu sit!  Good dog.  :)  I swear I want to name a dog Ubu one of these days, just to see if anyone gets it.  I decided yesterday after watching some cartoon of India's, I am going to name the next batch of chickens after pastries and breads.  Preferably those made with lots of eggs and butter.  The yellow ones shall be called Challah, and Brioche.  I will get another funky one like Birdie and name it Pan Perdu.  Mmmm Pan Perdu.  Git in ma belly!

Well then.... moving on.  With snow coming in this weekend to the tune of 1 ft. - 1 ft. 1/2, I guess I know I have the ability to dig myself out for Calla's birthday party on Sunday if need be.  Too bad we couldn't talk her into having a Bob the Builder party.  I could have decorated around the track hoe, (no better of a name by the way,) and used it for picture opportunities.  Everyone could have gotten a hard hat, and taken rides in our skid steer.  Damn, that is an unfortunate Pinterest party opportunity missed.  Although we all know it would have turned out more like a Duck Dynasty or Honey Boo Boo episode vs. a pretty party idea found on Pinterest.  Who wouldn't have wanted to play horseshoes with toilet seats?  Besides, I could have finally had an excuse to make the white trash tater tot recipe I have hiding somewhere. 

Alas, Calla is a little girl turning 7 instead of a little boy turning 3.  So crafts and cookie decorating, with a side of sledding it is.  Since I knew we would most likely have snow and a 9ft. deep hole in the ground x 800 sq. ft., we opted for having it at my parents house.  This way we didn't need any liability waivers to be signed before dropping your kid off, so your kid doesn't accidentally fall in my hole.  In the meantime, if you come a knocking, you best bring yourself a hard hat.  Ooohhh, I wonder if they make them in pink???  Maybe Calla and her friends can bedazzle me one with rhinestones this weekend as part of their craft projects.  

And for my Mother who is most likely stuck in an airport somewhere in CA trying to get on a plane home before they shut the airport tomorrow, a promised picture.  

For those of you who have school age kids, there is nothing more precious then watching your kids perform.  For those of you who don't, don't worry I don't like watching other people's kids perform.  Heck, I don't like most other people's kids.  There are a couple these days I adore, and I am slowly becoming more tolerant in my old age.  

Calla is the midget in the center with her jazz hands high in the air wearing a hot pink polka dot dress with sunglasses on her head.  Front row for shorties like us of course.  So stinking cute. 

Afterwards we took her to get frozen yogurt with her cousins for a job well done and ran into her good friend and her sister.  It was a happy coincidence on a cold night, but she was super excited.  India just wanted to be at the big girl table to soak it all in.  

Back next week with birthday pictures if we aren't buried alive in snow.  We might need to get Dave some Red Bull cocktails in order to stay awake at the party after plowing all night.  Too bad we don't live in a resort town where everyone could go skiing and boarding.  Wait, that probably has a liability form to go along with it too.  Never mind.  Bowling it is next year.  

Happy Friday.  Stay safe my friends.  

What the truck?

Well, the poop truck is back.

The effin field is almost completely covered in black gold.  ie. compost.  Everything just stinks.  The dipshit dingo dog is obviously not phased by this anymore.  He has moved on to better things like harassing me while I am working by standing on Dave's desk across from me.

And in general being a lazy overqualified unemployed animal.

The porta potty and the trusses for the addition arrived.  I'll spare you a pic of the porta potty.  CDOT finally let the truck down from Cheyenne, WY.  I guess when it is snowing or the roads are wet, they won't let any oversized vehicles travel on the road and cross the border.  Good to know they don't like any commercial vehicles including me.  Dave was gone, so therefore it was up to me to "receive" the order.   Not sure how much checking over the order I did considering they are custom made and I didn't exactly get out a measuring tape.  Besides remember I am not the brightest bulb on the geometry tree.

It was also up to me to determine where they were going.  Who wants to play how and where can we shove an oversized semi on Cara's property?

Made it through the front gates.  If you notice, all of the chickens are out in their yard wondering what the hell is going on.

Made it through the second set of gates into the corral.  Barely.

Naturally I made him back it in somewhere.  Couldn't just make it simple and drop it in a straight forward manner.  Besides this way they are out of the way of all of my trucks and trailers so no one accidentally drives over them when they are buried under a supposed ft. of snow this weekend.

After backing forward and back 30 times to line up next to the garden fence, they unstrapped the trusses.  The next step was to tilt the long bed, pull forward like a bat out of hell, and just dumped the damn things right there on the ground.

And........within 1 inch from the gas tank on the underside of one of my work trucks.  :)  Well I tried to move it, but the battery was dead.  So the trusses actually hit the inside of the back dually tire sliding off, but then bounced forward.  Good thing I made sure the truck in park because if it had been in neutral it would have shot through the gate down to the lower corral.  I had hoped for them to be a bit closer to the garden on the other side of that fence, but beggars can't be choosers and they are far enough over that they are out of the way until we need them.  I'm not moving them, and everyone is Happy Happy Happy.

Tonight we are headed to a musical performance at Calla's school.  They are supposed to dress for an underwater / beach theme.  Not sure who's idea this was in March, but as you can see that there is still snow on the ground.  The options in her closet are an aerial mermaid costume, or a tank top sundress with a large flip flop on it.  We are going with the sundress, but even I drew the line against flip flops.

Don't worry I'll take pictures.

 

 

Goats and Girls

Take 6" of snow earlier this week and add in 60 degree temps this weekend, and you have a recipe for a muddy sunshine filled mess.

We started the day Saturday by playing outside and soaking in the sunshine on the play set before ballet.  After ballet we helped some dear friends and neighbors do some spring cleaning.

To sweeten the pot, their goats had just had babies.  Like 2 days ago old.  Since I put the picture on FB people have asked if those are my goats.  As much as I love goats, I believe I have struck a happy medium with myself.  I get to cuddle them for as long as I want, but then at the end of the day I get to give them back and let someone else raise them and deal with the poop.  Brilliant.  It works fabulous with livestock and other people's new born babies too.  Cause I don't know nutin' bout birthin' goat babies.  Not to mention watching them nurse really hard on their mothers quickly snaps you right back to reality and makes my boobs tingle just thinking about it.  

But damn those babies are cute.  The goats too.  ;)

Peek a boo!  I see you.  You can't hide from me little brown goat.

Come back!  I just want to play.  Ok, I really want to hug you and kiss you and love you forever.

Maybe if I jump they will jump?

Enough about the goats.  On Sunday we celebrated our annual America Girl shopping and lunch out for Calla's birthday.  Baby girl will be 7 and yes, I am crying inside.  Pretty sure the damn doll now has a better wardrobe then me and a much more exciting life as well.  We survived the masses at the mall, and everyone came away with something fun.  The weather was so pretty at 65 and sunny.  Almost forgot it was March.

And as I sit here and type this, the weather is back to 38 degrees with 30 mile an hour wind gusts, and about 1/2 " of snow on the ground.  So basically anything that dried out over the weekend in the glorious balmy spring weather will be right back to its muddy mess in a day or two.  Dave celebrated the weather by heading to Vail at 5 am to jump off a snow covered cliff on skis, and I am supposed to be typing up maintenance contracts.  But seriously, I am pretty sure no one around here wants to even think about mowing grass right now.  We'll just work on those later.  After all, tomorrow is another day Scarlett.  

Pole Dancing

HAHA! Gotcha.  You wish.  If you think I am the one pole dancing you are sadly mistaken.  I will probably get some hits from Russia for that title.  Seriously, no one wants to see that.  That would be ummm.....awkward to say the least.  Not that coordinated, and besides the only pole I want to dance with these days is a cinnamon churro stick from Taco Johns.  Yum!

Compost happens

This is a semi load full of some sort of animal compost across the street from my house.  Aka a poop truck full of stinky "fertilizer." 

This is a dipshit dingo dog (emphasis on the word shit!) who showed up at my back door covered in said "compost" 5 min. after I let his punk ass out.  

Any questions???

Hope your day is less messy and stinky than mine.  :)

Bye Bye Birdie

Bye Bye Birdie
Im gonna miss you so
Bye Bye Birdie
Why'd you have to go?

Crap!  So I totally jinxed myself and shouldn't have mentioned chicken taxidermy in my last post.  Birdie kicked the proverbial KFC bucket last night.  Not sure exactly what happened, it doesn't appear that a Chupacabra came and got her, but Dave found her perfectly stiff and asleep.  So I am sad and a little pissed today.  She was so pretty.  Prissy as all get up, but pretty none the less.  I totally passed on ordering any new chickens from the feed store earlier this week, because there is no way I can keep baby chickens alive during this renovation.  Someone is going to have to go buy food for a bit, because if I head in there I am going to come home with 15 or so new Birdie chickens with no intentions of eating any of them.

Anyway, moving on.  Hi there!  Long time no speak.  My brain is a bit fried so I am just going to numerically list off all of the craziness that has happened since oh....the middle of January.

1. Went to ProGreen.  ProGreen is a large landscaping convention in Denver that we attend and take classes at to better ourselves and our business each year.  This year Dave took and passed the 1st half of a hardscaping certification.  He has a hands on test later this summer to complete, but unless he forgets to put on safety goggles or something stupid first he should do fine seeing as that is the stuff he does everyday.  My mind was on the marketing and internet search engine optimization track.  Good God, I had no idea all of the junk I should be doing and what it can do to make the phone ring.  I mean I did, but to hear about what everyone else around me was doing, and my lack there of, made me feel like I was hanging with Fred Flintstone when I should be BFFs with Judy Jetson instead.  I guess having babies and weathering a recession were not excuses.  But in all fairness, Fred Flintstone does work with rocks and hardscaping too.  Needless to say our entire website is getting re- done.  This leads me to # 2.

2. Redoing the website on top of all the other crazy spring startup tasks.  I am so glad I am doing this, however I had no idea what it would take workload wise.  Thank goodness we are working with an amazing company, Rocket Jones, to help us build a content management system.  This platform will allow me to make additions and changes to the site with new pictures, and content on a regular basis without having to pay a designer to do it for us.  I will also have a blog though it that will allow me to post fun job construction pictures and articles.  It will also have a link to all of my Pinterest board ideas for clients.  Now I just need to start a new account and get them off all of my boards named "crap."  Rocket Jones has also hooked us up with a really neat designer, Launie Parry at Red Letter Creative, to help me get the overall design changed using our existing circle mountain logo.  Yes, I showed up with an entire Pinterest board aptly named "website crap" full of ideas to try and help get our design ideas across.  www.pinterest.com/callabee  Feel free to log on and see if you can figure my brain out.  We have such a neat property out here with our home and shop, and office in the barn, that we have decided to focus on relaying that feeling to our clients and giving it a bit more of a "local" homegrown feel vs. a stuffy I am trying to be the best most expensive landscaper in town.  Make sense?  I promise I will share things when they get developed.

3.  Plans and permit went to the County for the house.  Yipee!!  The next day we decided to change things.  Of course we did.  :)  But for now we are sticking with them.  Some are internal like swapping the location of a toilet and closet and don't really make a difference to the County, but we decided to wrap the deck.  Technically if we change the deck we need to resubmit a new engineered plan, and entire permit with all new drawings.  F' that.  We'll just deal with it later Scarlett, because tomorrow is another day, and if we mess with it right now the dan thing will never be built.

4. Chances are good the girls and I will be living with my parents throughout this whole shebang.  Dave will live at home because he can deal with a jug of water and a port a pottie.  Not to mention it is easier to mobilize work stuff from our house esp. if it snows.  He'll have a bed, Direct TV, and electricity, so he won't be exactly suffering.  The idea of taking Calla out to the port a pottie at 3 am in 2 degree weather is not that appealing to me.  Call me a princess, but I really don't feel like channeling my inner Laura Ingalls at our Little House on the Prairie to do this.  If I had no kids then sure, I would rough it with the jug and basin, but with Cinderella and Tiana over here, it ain't happening.  I will still be coming out to work on a daily basis, and will just refill a laundry basket each day with stuff I need.  Technically it is closer to take both girls to school from my parents house anyway, so it won't be bad at all.

5. India started ballet for the first time.  Oh my stinkin heck she is so little and cute in her tiny shoes and ponytail.  Sadly, I don't have a picture but I will get one.  I am having a hard time remembering Calla to be that little.  I cried internally for a day or so about how big she was getting until she called me a "honkey" on the way to ballet this Tues..  Well.... that was enough to shock me back into reality.  Later that day I caught her repeating the words, "Is that your grandpa's coat..... honkey?"  over and over again.  We had a little talk about how that is not a nice thing to call people,  and Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" went onto another playlist.  I guess that is what I get for having attentive children.

I am sure there is more to discuss, but I am tapped.  I am spending the weekend cleaning out the basement so everyone has space to work on mechanicals down there.  It looks like Mr. D will be plowing snow Sunday am.  Saturday into Sunday snow work is about as ideal as one can get in this business.  Not as many people out and about, and the stores open late.

Have a good weekend and stay warm if you are expecting snow this weekend too.  :)