Day 239: The Kindergarten Kid

We waved Exile #3 off on the school bus this morning at about 8am. She was so excited to be going to school and doubly so because of riding on the bus. She seems to have had a good day although she was, not surprisingly very tired when she got home some eight and three quarter hours later.

Exile #4 also went to school for a half hour with her teachers in the classroom (but without any classmates as far as I can work out). Tomorrow is a half-morning for her before she starts her regular programme next week.

Meanwhile my Dad and I set to work doing some DIY that I have been putting off. This started with a trip to buy project supplies including a 24 ft ladder and the tie-downs to attach it to the top of the van and a new power-tool, in fact my first US mains-powered tool, a rotary saw (basically a drill that's designed to be pulled sideways while it's drilling. The projects were: removing wet and mouldy boards from around the crawl-space under the kitchen floor and clearing debris (including several large seedling plants) from the gutters at the back of the house.

I spent some time wriggling around on my tummy under the kitchen floor wielding the new saw. As if that wasn't bad enough, I was wearing gloves and a breathing mask and goggles and sharing the space with a very hot 250 W work-light and several previously unknown-to-mankind varieties of arthropod.

My Dad did most of the work up the ladder to clear the gutters although I did contribute by helping to manufacture a specialised long-handled clearing tool out of a decorating extension pole and a piece of a brace to hold a flexible hose in a drain pipe. I also ventured up the ladder with a hose to flush out the last remnants of the rather-nice-looking potting compost that was filling about half the gutter.

The Kindergarten Kid is now fast asleep, and the workmen will not be far behind I should think. Tomorrow she does it all again, but we may take it a bit easier.

Bye!