A day of great amazement and success

It is Tuesday and Monday was exhausting. Yesterday, Monday, in a blare of sunlight, I struggled through the morning with a pile of rotting planks left from the original clearing of this land in 2010. I sorted out a whole bunch of 1" by 6" to dry in the sunbake. Hopefully the fungus won't like the sunlight. I hope it doesn't grow on me. Not yet.

Then the afternoon I was cutting out strips of tar-paper and peeling them off my head as I tried to hang them. How come all these construction activities feel like daycare? Luckily we are a ten-ladder family (I am not joking: I have counted them. I think I have a ladder and electric tool fetish...). I am using 3 ladders to clamber up and down as I staple up stinking asphalt paper.

For a break from the stink of tar, we decide to cut our way along the boundary line with the Husquavarna trimmer, finally emerging triumphant at the road down to the Marina. For 20 minutes I was putting out like I was playing against the All Blacks and then I could barely stay awake in the evening, watching Greenberg, a rather soppy West Coast movie about failed 40-year olds. Of course we fail. Everybody fails somehow. Forty is a good age to fail. Any age is fine for failure.

But not today, Tuesday. One of those glorious days when you feel that you are advancing, things are being resolved. Maybe we will live forever.

To start with, Deborah is up early working in the garden which is the parallel project to my fight with asphalt. Then I finish papering the front wall of the garage. Please see the blog photo for proof. Then it's off to Port Hawkesbury to get the super-non-vibrating-oscillating-Bosch sander, among other things.

Stop by the PO box and there is a package for Deborah -- her Maramekko material has arrived AND an official report on our water from Sydney hospital which informs us that we have zero coliform and e-coli! The water is drinkable! Quick: have a slug before a bird shits in it. It's clean, it's tasteless and it's drinkable. Suddenly the place feels possible. I love U/V light.

Good start. Then pick up fish from the itinerant fishmonger: halibut for when Linda and Paul arrive from Baie d'Urfé this Thursday and salmon for tonight. Jump ahead to this bed where I'm writing up these notes and the salmon was of a texture as fine as I remember for that magnificent fish. I would live here for the fish alone.

On to the Eastern Planning Commission where I pay 40$ for an extension to our building permit, then to Central Supplies where I pick up our new wonder sander to help with the preparation of the ceiling. Manage to get everything on the list. Never happens.

Then on to the beer shop -- oh, did I tell you that I bottled 25 litres of India Pale Ale on Sunday? I have 50 Grolsch bottles full of India Pale Ale. As satisfying as installing the first 6 by 6 screened window in the porch although I was nearly defeated in that act of heroism by a can of foam which threatened to destroy all my careful calculations.

Deborah has done the food shop in SuperStore (we all need super-hero shirts) and it's back to St Peters where our car gets some new oil and a filter and a couple of spot-welds to re-attach the muffler system. George Boudreau, the garage owner, is so simply effective and modest in his pricing.

Then on to the Greenhouse nursery which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. We buy another acer, a magnolia and some white raspberries to plant along the side of the garage... The place seems a bit deflated as it prepares for closing down this weekend. Like Fall is in the wings.

We get back just in time to spend a couple of hours with Barry Bouchard, a neighbour who will install our chimney and certify its safety... He talks like a Cape Bretoner, makes a list of what we need, nurses one Best Bitter beer from Propeller (does he really not like it?) and I feel like we are moving ahead: we'll soon be able to light a stove.

Now that's a day in the sun. Clean water and wood fire.