Our Olde House: June 2026
Miss Sherry and I are still thinking about building a larger carport and replacing the driveway in front of the tool shop. We had a contractor look at the project to see what he thought and to get a rough idea about the cost; the cost estimate was higher than I thought it would be. The contractor’s estimate was based upon the cost of materials and labor, while my guess was based upon an irrational belief that everything should cost the same as it did twenty years ago. 
Our carport idea expanded from the usual ‘project creep’, which is a shorter and more eloquent way of saying, “Since you are going to do this, you may as well fix that at the same time.” In our case, the larger carport was the ‘this’ that we wanted to do, and the ‘that’ was removing and replacing the entire driveway. The driveway, such as it is now, is breaking up in some places due to simple age and use; it definitely needs to be replaced and should be a little wider than it is now.
Our Olde House is now at a point where nothing is actually broken and needs immediate attention, but there is still a list of things that should be done, sooner rather than later. Since all of these ‘should’ things require some amount of funding and the inevitable chaos of any project, we are putting off thinking about them for now.
It has been a few weeks since I threw the last ant bomb under the house, and we have not seen hide nor hair of any ants or unkles in my bathroom or the kitchen since. I also left some ant bait under the house just for good measure and I apparently got the situation covered for now. I did find a very small flea on my ankle in the living room, but since I was just outside I figured I picked it up walking through the yard. Wrong.
After I found another flea the next day (I am sure it was not the same one) I sprayed flea spray where I was sitting. Two days later another flea in the dining room and the day after that another flea in my bathroom and one under my desk. At this point I figured these fleas were being hatched in the house so I sprayed every room, in sequence so I could shut doors to keep us and the cats out until the spray settled. I claimed success after a week without finding a flea.
I set aside some time on each of these summer days to look out the kitchen windows into the backyard and am thankful that I am inside in the air conditioning, instead of outside in the heat and humidity. I did notice one day that the side of the little barn was getting some mold or mildew on it. I went out in the morning and sprayed the little barn with the mildew remover that works well on the front porch. The side of the little barn did not come instantly completely clean, but it was much improved quickly and seems to be losing more mildew over time.
I noticed during our last torrential drizzle that lasted five minutes, that the downspout in the corner of the deck was overflowing. Apparently some debris from the roof was pushed down the gutter and did not quite fit inside the downspout. Another job for the gutter snoot, but not without some more preparation since I did not already have a snoot pointing straight down for a downspout. I found the blower and the snoot along with some more parts in the tool shop. I found a way to point the snoot straight down while I was standing on the deck, but I needed to install another screw in the parts to keep them from coming apart. I found my drill, drill battery and drill bits and put the snoot pieces together in their new configuration.
I aimed the snoot directly down into the downspout and turned it up to Cat5. Leaves, twigs, debris and one large roach flew out and landed on the deck. I let it run for a bit to clean out whatever I could. I also ran the snoot down the gutter which blew out a little debris. I flew my drone over the roof to check my work after I found a drone battery that was charged. The gutter and downspout opening looked good, so I aimed the hose onto the roof for a water test. Miss Sherry told me that water was coming out of the bottom of the downspout, so I stopped and declared victory.
Fuzzy is still playing fetch with Miss Sherry, and maybe taught Hooch the game because we saw him moving his toys around. We still have no idea what the rules or point of the game are, or who is winning. I know that I am losing when I occasionally step on the toy mouse that squeaks in the middle of the night which checks my reflexes and heart health. Some people’s children.
