Vacation Weeding & Housework

2021-07-21Us Standard

[Photos taken 21 – 31 July 2021, posted online 31 October 2021. Happy Halloween!]

Bjarki’s summer job ended on 21 July, but Anna’s would go on through the end of July. We therefore signed Emma up for some more horse camp, and just … didn’t do much at all.

Finnur skipped between town and house #2 to oil/stain wood, I weeded as much as my sanity allowed, and managed a few little projects on the side like hemming curtains (sooo exciting!) and planning to upgrade Bjarki’s room. I got wasps killed, and went in for a covid-19 test, just to be sure. (75-ish images total)

Wednesday 21 July 2021

The weather was nice, and the veggies in the what-do-we-do-with-this-area were happy. Well, all except the broccoli, which kept getting heatstroke..
In the shade, no less! (21 C is 70 F, which is amazing in Iceland).
The sugar snap peas were happy!
After all the fun and games, it was time to plunk back down to earth and finally resume weeding.
Much tidier, but next summer I think I’ll put down more of those summer flowers, those looked a bit lonelier than planned. Note the state of the fence, it was starving. Damnit.

Thursday 22 July 2021

Bjarki, finally free of weeding for a living, contemplating life over a bagel.
By late afternoon I was back on the weeding train. On the other side of the walkway is a forest of dandelions, that is never ever cut before blooming.
Our fence, as seen by passerby-s. It should be noted that I only planted anything there last year, before that it was just weeds and annoyance.
I tried getting enthusiastic about weeding the shrubbery-line, but ugh, it just never happened.
Setting out for a jog.
The Buddha stupa was still there.

Friday 23 July 2021

It was ‘show-day’ at horse camp. Since each camp runs for two weeks (half-day), the last Friday is a dedicated show-day. The kids arrive and make the horses pretty, and then demo the drills they’ve been doing for an audience.
Mad skillz!
Onlookers walking to the riding area.
The group went around the circle a few times, and did turns etc.
It was calm enough that I could take a selfie with Sir Finnur, who kindly bent down to my level. Note my old Google-swag fleece, acquired before we left California in 2010. Old fleeces die hard.
Doing a fancy maneuver where the horses did a 360 turn, but alternated right and left turns.
Emma getting her participatory medal.
She made great riding strides that summer, going up a level every two weeks.
Time to take the horses to the pasture.
Undoing the fancy braid.
Every kid gets a laminated certificate with a photo of themselves on horse back. It’s appreciated!
That evening I downloaded a new GPS phone game, and went on a walkabout.
I found bird-cages! This is the far end of an industrial building area.

Saturday 24 July 2021

Finnur and Emma had traveled to house #2 the day before, so it was just me and the big kids in town. I felt inspired to finally hem Emma’s curtains… and tidy up the floor of her room while I was at it.
I’m not on great terms with our sewing machine, so I tend to either hand-sew or iron-glue-ribbon curtains. These have a pattern I wasn’t sure would go well with the glue-ribbon, so hand-sewing it was. It’s always sloooow going.
I managed to finish one side before the day was out.
Bjarki decided he’d use the vacation to learn a speedier way to solve Rubik’s cubes. Here he is practicing while waiting for a burger to arrive At. A. Restaurant!
Yeah, baby! Weirdly, it was just me and him as Anna had dinner plans with friends, and Finnur and Emma were up at house #2.

Sunday 25 July 2021

I think about a month passed between “no covid-19 restrictions” being announced, and a new huge wave of cases. Masks were again made mandatory.
It was a wet day, but we now had sunflowers!
Legit sunflowers! In Iceland! Outside!
More flowers in the back yard. That pink flower plant is slowly getting quite big.
Rainy days are good for hemming. Both sides done, yay! It made a big difference.
Anna made strawberry-rhubarb pie, yum!
Out for a walk at 9 pm.

Monday 26 July 2021

Finnur rejoined civilization and went to work cleaning the fence so it could be oiled.
Ugh, more weeds. I continued ignoring them, to my peril next year.
More washing. Now we just had to wait for dry weather.

Tuesday 27 July 2021

We erected some scaffolding, as the roof on the other side of the house was leaking, and we needed contractors to come and make roof-offers. Finnur used the opportunity to stain/oil the upper level windows.
I found myself on the west side of town, where a kitchen stove needed to change apartments. First rule of any electrical work: Take photos!
Walking down the downtown library stairs, I found this ye-oldie ad asking for a healthy male three-colored cat (but not blue or gray or painted). The buyer was ready to pay 10 kr for it.
As I was readying myself to BBQ hamburgers for dinner I noticed a steady stream of wasp flying just past my right shoulder as I stood by the BBQ, landing on the fence. Upon further inspection, I discovered a somewhat ominous structure lodged inside the fence. Ugh. I retreated inside and cooked the meat on the stove instead. Finnur had again gone to house #2, hoping to oil wood there, so he was of little help!

Wednesday 28 July 2021

Late the evening before I’d begun coming down with ‘something’, so like a good little citizen, I signed up for an official covid-19 test.
Huh, the line’s pretty long… lets go find where it ends.
The line end found. Thankfully it moved really quite fast, it probably only took 5-10 minutes to reach the door.
Back home, the sun was going strong, so I decided a bit of watering was in order.
Whoa! 26 C is 79 F!
Thankfully the exterminator I’d contacted the day before had a next-day opening. Phew! By late afternoon I had my Covid-negative result, and life could go on as before.

Thursday 29 July 2021

The good weather continued, with people sitting outside to dine!
I scored the correct kind of plug for the kitchen stove at the hardware store, and victoriously went to install it.
Mom’s house yet again being fixed for rust and other unhappiness. I don’t understand why houses are built by the sea.
Unloading stuff with brother Nökkvi at the recycling center. The new car proved equally spacious as my old car: the old kitchen stove fit in the trunk!
Back home I found a pretty droplet on the doomed broccoli.
I really don’t like cooking dinner! The cafeteria at Ikea has been closed for most of the year, but thankfully it was open again. An employee was parked in front of it, registering the id and phone-numbers of guests for covid-contact tracing purposes.
My next upcoming house-project was updating Bjarki’s room to fit his emergent teenage-dom. He was about to buy a monitor from his friend, and needed a proper desk…. and a new bed… and clothing storage…
Sanitize, sanitize…
There was a lot of willpower used to NOT buy this book at Costco.
It was Finnur’s birthday! We’d meant to join him at house #2 that day, but that plan fell through. Instead we called to say congratulations, and we would be joining him soon.

Friday 30 July 2021

I drove to an overlook point on my daily coffee-house chill-trip and confirmed our volcano was still going.
It was a another beautiful day, and there would be wood oiling!
The long-neglected strip of wood about to get some love.
Anna came home, celebrating the end of her summer job!
The other little-loved section of wood. I did the fence above it first.
A little more loved.
I decided to weed the corner before staining the rest of the fence. It was in pretty bad shape.
Sure enough, the seedlings I’d left upon weeding it in the spring had sprung into long-broccoli. Oh, birdfeed seeds, so much fun! I ate some of it and then got anxious that I’d misidentified it, but no apparent harm happened.
9 pm selfie.
What I was looking at!
Can you spot where I stopped weeding? 🙈
Meanwhile, the sugar snap peas were going bananas!

Saturday 31 July 2021

A tidy sub-trunk. Since Anna wouldn’t be needing the old car to get to and from school in the winter (it’s so close we can drive her if need be), we decided to lend it to one of my brothers for the winter, as their car had issues that were more expensive to fix than the worth of the car, and they’d just sold it to the scrapheap. First, there had to be a bit of cleaning though…
Sunflowers still going strong.
Pretty flowers are pretty, even though they have a weird shape!
Bjarki with his prized laptop. The tape is holding the headphone hub.
Later that evening we packed up, picked up a friend of Bjarki’s, drove the two of them to his home in Borgarnes, and then joined Finnur and Emma at house #2 for a long weekend. Thus endeth July!