Ooo Dah Lolly

Golly what a ....week!

Oh, my lands, this has been rough this week. I'm what you call, knackered.  That's British slang for tuckered.  Whatever you want to call it, it's what I am. 

Man, I need a nap.  Or a vacation.  J'ai besoin de vacances.  Ou un papa de sucre.  L'un ou l'autre...

Like my French?  I've been trying to learn it by using Duolingo, and also watching videos in French on YouTube.  A few days ago, I bought some books that are short stories in French, with the English version side by side.  Surprisingly, I'm understanding enough of the French to get the gist of the story, even if I don't understand all the words.  

But I digress...back to my rough week at work...

What's been so rough about it?  Eh, the usual...bad parts, being shorthanded, poor management, no parts ready for us to braze when we got there in the morning...  In other words, normal.  Heh, Wednesday when the storms came through, one of my coworkers asked me if the plant was going to blow away.  I said, "We can hope."  Alas, the plant didn't blow away, and life goes on as before. 

Then came yesterday.  Everything came to a head yesterday.  From the moment minute we got there until the minute we went home, the lines were on us all day long.  We brazed as fast as we could, but we just weren't able to get ahead.  At one point, a couple of supervisors came up to brazing looking for parts, and I had to tell them there wasn't anything ready for that line.  But you know, throughout all of that not one supervisor, not one production manager, no one stopped and thought, "Hmmm, the brazers are really struggling because they have four people out.  Maybe we should get them some help."   

You would have thought someone would have figured it out that we can't keep up when half the department isn't there, but noooooo....

Their idea of "help" was letting us come in and work today, while the lines stayed home.  But we did get a little bit ahead, and they let us go at lunch, so it wasn't too bad.  In fact, I got home in time to put together my new potting table! 

First thing I had to do was to clean out this corner where I want to put it.  Oh, but let me back up for a minute, the first thing I had to do was to figure out where I wanted to put it.  I got to looking at the spot I'd originally picked, and the roof doesn't look too sporty right there.  I worried that it would eventually cave in.  I'm still concerned about that, and I hope I can save up enough money now that my car is paid off to get someone to come fix it.  Well, really to pull the whole thing down and make me an open lean-to type of thing to store my gardening and yard work supplies.  

But for now, this is where it's going to go.   Right here in this corner.  

Lookit!  Lookit what I found when I opened the pack with the hardware!

It's labeled!  I know that doesn't seem like such a big deal, but you'd be surprised at how times you have to guess which screw is which, because they don't label them.  But this one had every envelope of hardware and every piece of the table clearly labeled, and that made things so much easier.  The only thing I wish they'd done is to add starter hole where the screws are supposed to go. 

I mean, the top piece had them, but whichever part you're supposed to attach it to didn't.  Even just a small one to show you where to line the parts up would have made a world of difference.  That one downer aside, the bench went together pretty easily.   I was this far into my task when my back and knees reminded me I'm not as young as I once was.  They insisted I take a break, and I was happy to oblige them. 

A short time later, I got out and finished the job. Honestly, a second pair of hands would have helped, but it wasn't too terribly difficult to do it by myself.  The drawer was a kind of a pain to put together, but the rest of it was not much trouble at all.  Behold, here is my new potting bench.

Yay!  I'm so excited!  I think it's made out of cedar, but I'm not sure.  It smells like cedar, which is good, because it won't rot when I spill water and mud on it.  It isn't real fancy, but is good quality for what I paid for it. 

I had the bright idea to get some plastic storage boxes to store my different types of soil and stuff; I kind of thought it would keep the bugs out of it, but after thinking about it some more, I realized these kinds of boxes won't even slow a bug down.  

Oh, well... Maybe at least it'll all stay fairly neat.  And of course, the first thing I re-potted was Marty Mac.

I managed to trigger several of his traps when I did so, but now that it's done, it's done.  I won't have to re-pot him few years at least, so he'll have lots of time to recover.  Maybe tomorrow, I'll go out and start some seeds in that last tray I bought.  Or maybe I'll just wait until after the next cold snap, which is supposed to be next weekend.  Right now, they're predicting it'll get down to almost freezing.  

Maybe I'll just wait until the latter half of the month, when it's less likely we'll get a cold spell.  That's when I'm going to finally plant these babies into my front flower bed.  . 

And look!  My baby bluebonnet survived the storm!

Even better, this one is starting to bloom!

I have no idea what this plant is, but it has a bud on it, so I'm just going to leave it alone. 

It might be one I planted last year.  It might be a weed.  Who knows?  

I guess we'll see when it blooms.