A Review of my 40th Year of Life

I just tuned 41 a few weeks ago, and was thinking about all that has happened in my life in the past year. I had to look back at photos in my phone to remember what happened in the beginning of the year and was kind of surprised at how much I have done. I enjoyed walking down memory lane and reminiscing about fun times with family and friends. Most of my experiences this year were positive, but not all. Though even the hard times teach lessons and can change us for good.

February

In February I got to celebrate my birthday with my family for the first time in over twenty years. I actually got to celebrate twice because my brother’s family had stay home because of COVID-like symptoms. So my actual birthday was celebrated with my parents, and my brother Tim, Jill, and the kids came the next weekend. While they were there, we painted the first room that I redecorated. My parents and I had removed the hideous wallpaper in November and December.

March

In March I had spring break for a week, so I started a new project, removing the wallpaper from my bathroom. I thought removing wallpaper from plaster was a pain, but this room had been drywalled and primed before putting up wallpaper, and that was much worse. When I sprayed the paper with water to loosen it, the water soaked through the primer and into the drywall mud in places making it really easy to make big gauges in the wall. I got the technique down eventually, using a 1 1/2 inch plastic scraper, which did less damage. I did not finish this project during spring break. I got one corner done. I also spent some of my time in Duluth with my niece and nephews, and was finishing clean-up on the room I painted in February.

April

In April I finally got my stove fixed, with my dad’s help, which you can read about in a previous post. I also got tired of long hair and talked my mom into helping me cut it. I don’t have any other pictures this month, so I think I got busy with school and didn’t do much in the way of projects.

May

Work moved outdoors in May, as the weather warmed up. I enjoyed seeing many bulbs and spring flowers pop up, including some new ones that my mom and I planted last fall.

I also had a dump truck of dirt delivered because I had plans to put in a new garden and build up some of the flower beds around my house to slope the ground away from the foundation and decrease the water in my basement. It didn’t work, but it was a nice thought. Here is part of the pile.

I received thirteen cubic yards of dirt. That’s 351 cubic feet of dirt. My dad put a trailer hitch on my riding lawnmower so we could move the dirt with a small trailer rather than a wheelbarrow, which saved a lot of time. After filling the garden and flower beds, I continued to find places for it in low spots in the yard. We moved the last of it in November.

Also in May, or possibly April, I started planning for my fence. I wanted to fence in my backyard so Bandit would have room to run. My parents helped me clear some trees and brush along the property line in preparation and I began measuring, planning, and ordering materials. You don’t want to know how much this cost. I chose the worse year ever to buy large quantities of lumber.

June

When school got out, I really had time to focus on the yard. I planted my garden. Tomatoes, peppers, onions, cucumber, zucchini, basil, lemongrass, carrots, peas, cilantro, lettuce, and tomatillos. And right after I planted, we had a week of 90 degree days, so I had to water like crazy. I also planted flowers in the front yard, in a new flowerbed, which I somehow failed to capture in any photos.

Also in June, my niece and nephew stayed with me for a week and we had lots of fun playing games and checking out all the local parks. One day we drove down to my favorite berry patch, Roehrborn’s (pronounced ray-berns) to pick fresh strawberries. When I go with my mom, or both my parents, we have to decide before we go how many pails we’re going to pick, and then we usually pick one or two more. Then we regret it all day because it takes forever to clean them and freeze them, or make them into jam. This time we didn’t have that problem because the kids got bored before we each had finished a bucket.

July

At the very end of June, I got fenceposts installed. i hired a company to pound nine-foot steel posts 42 inches into the ground. Steel posts last much longer than wood posts, especially in acidic soil near pine trees, which border a large part of my yard. Then came the job of cutting and attaching 2 x 4’s for horizontal supports, and putting up six-foot pickets. About 1000 pickets. Again, you don’t want to know what that cost. But my parents came for a week and we worked every day, and a few other helpers came for a few hours each, and we finished it in just over a week. It was beautiful. Why did I say “was”? Keep reading.

I also continued building up flower beds with the dirt I had delivered. First I had to dig out large areas of thick, overgrown, root-bound day lilies. My mom helped a lot with this, and my dad a little, and some sister missionaries. We had to dig them up with a shovel. If I had kept them and replanted them like they’re supposed to be spaced, I think I could have planted my entire front yard.

I hosted a family party (extended family, that is) for the first time in June. It was great to have the fence to keep the dog and kids in a secure place. I also bought a brand new ceiling fan and spray painted it gold with cream blades because I couldn’t find any brass ones in the quality I wanted for a price I was willing to pay. It turned out cute, but there were complications. But I’ll save that story for another post. There’s a reason those two events are connected.

August

I had started to harvest some vegetables from my garden in July, but August is when I had a lot of work. I made two batches of salsa using my tomatoes, onions, and peppers. I canned a dozen or so quarts of tomatoes. Then my tomato plants mysteriously all died, but my peppers were still going strong into September. By that time the tomatillos were ripe as well, so I made three or four batches of Chili Verde sauce. Some of it I used right away to make Chili Verde pork, and some got frozen to be used later.

In August I did a project all by myself. I was so proud. I removed the rest of the wallpaper from my bathroom (I had been working on it a little at a time all summer). Then I patched all the drywall, sanded it, taped it, primed and painted, all without help. I got it done just before school started. Technically it’s not done because I still need to do the moldings, but it’s pretty close.

September

When school starts in the fall, by home improvement projects take a back seat, but there is one project that got done in September because my mom decided it needed to get done. The previous fall, maybe November, I found a Facebook Marketplace ad for a piano that had the insides removed to turn it into a desk. The project never got finished, so they were selling it for $75 so someone else could finish it. When I started looking at piano desk projects on Pinterest, I fell in love with the idea. Of course I was too late to get this piano, but I noticed that there were usually a few free pianos on Facebook Marketplace. I decided I would make a piano desk. One fateful Friday night I had appointments to pick up not one, but two free pianos in my area. I rented a U-Haul trailer with a ramp, and my dad and I set off to pick up the pianos. We returned much later than I expected, unloaded the pianos into the garage, and there they sat. Because I had no idea how to take the insides out of a piano. This became a parent project, like science fair boards or book reports, only messier and involving more power tools. I could write a whole post about this, and I probably will someday, so I’ll just give you the finished product. Here’s piano desk number one. The other piano is still in one piece in the garage.

October

My dad has connections to free apples through a friend he used to work with. He picked several five-gallon pails of apples, and when my mom had made all the apple sauce she wanted, they brought the rest to me. I had purchased a fruit press a couple of years earlier and was excited to try it out. First we peeled, cored, and sliced the apples. Then we put them in a mesh bag and set it in the bottom of the press. Then we added several layers of wooden blocks and started turning the lever back and forth, slowly pressing the apples. We didn’t quite get the results we wanted. Only a small trickle of juice came out, and the apples didn’t crush down much at all. After some research, we decided to use a food processor to break up the apples even more. We pressed them again and got some juice, but not nearly what I was hoping. We used a whole 5 gallon pail of apples and got about 2 quarts of juice. It was delicious, but not worth the effort. The press might work for grapes, or maybe pears, if they’re ripe enough, but it did not work for apples. Lesson learned.

November

This month I got an early Christmas present. I got to see the play Wicked with my niece, sister-in-law, mom, and my sister-in-law’s mom and grandma. It was amazing. I’ve listened to the music before, but there were some real surprises in the story. Elphaba is awesome. If I have time, I want to make dress like hers for Halloween.

After painting my bathroom, I decided the faucet was starting to look shabby and needed to be replaced. Also, it leaked. Fixing up a house can easily turn into “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” My dad helped me with this. Actually, it was more like my dad did most of it, and I helped. Either way, it looks great.

Also in November I started doing some sewing. My cousin asked if I could help remake a flower girl dress for her wedding. They found a dress with a lace bodice, but wanted a sequin bodice that matched the bridesmaids. So I took the dress apart, made a new bodice, and sewed it back together. And added more tulle to the skirt.

December

In December I did a lot of decorating for Christmas. I put up three Christmas trees, one real and two artificial, as well as garlands, wreaths, and other decorations. I also made a dress for myself to wear to my cousin’s wedding.

December brought strange weather this year. About a week before Christmas we had a heat wave which melted most of the ten inches of snow we had just gotten. Then a cold front came in suddenly with severe winds. A tornado actually moved through my town.

I was in my living room deciding whether to go to bed or watch a show when the power went out. I began to wonder if I should go to the basement. Just a couple of minutes after that I heard the wind howl ferociously. It seemed to be blowing through the walls of the house. Bandit started barking at the sound. Then I heard what sounded like a creaking door, but louder. At that point I got scared and ran to the basement door. But then everything calmed down.

It wasn’t until a neighbor stopped by to ask if I was okay that I thought to go outside and check for damage. As I looked toward my back yard between the house and he garage, I could immediately see that something was wrong. I could see all the way to the back of my yard. The view should have been blocked by the two massive spruce trees that were taller than my three-story house. They were laying in the backyard, and my neighbor’s backyard, roots ripped out of the ground. They fell behind my garage and my neighbor’s house, but in front of their garage. These huge trees had somehow managed to avoid hitting any structures in the vicinity. A giant black walnut tree was also laying on the ground, it’s branches a few feet from the house. I think the creak I heard was trunk being broken as the tornado went through it. Another large tree branch was in the side yard a few feet from the large windows in the living room, where I had been sitting when the tornado passed. I was completely freaked out, but felt very fortunate; it could have been so much worse. That night I barely slept. The wind kept howling, and with every sound I braced myself for more damage. But nothing else happened.

In the morning the full extent of the damage was visible. A few other trees had been knocked down, and one side of my fence was almost entirely broken. There were a couple more spots where trees had knocked it down. The power was still out in large portions of town, so there was no school. Bits of insulation and debris were plastered all over houses. Trees were down everywhere. Many houses and a few businesses had been damaged or completely destroyed. Branches littered the yard. I was trying to figure out where to start and how long it would take to clear all the trees, when a miracle happened. I group of people–city workers, utility workers, and volunteers–swarmed the yard and began cutting cutting up the trees with chain saws and piling up the falling branches. A couple of skid steers began grabbing loads of logs and branches and hauling them to the curb, where trucks hauled them away. I put on my coat and started helping. In an hour most of the trees had been cleared, leaving a few large stumps, a million small branches, and deep ruts from the skid steers moving over the soggy ground. It started to snow, covering a lot of the mess. And there it stayed all winter.

January

In January I got COVID. That caused me to miss a week of work and be really tired for several weeks. I have no projects to report, but I did watch a lot of shows on Amazon Prime, did a couple of puzzles, and some counted cross-stitch. That was my year. Of course, There were also family get-togethers, church activities, and lots of time with Bandit. What adventures will the next year bring? I have some plans, but they won’t all happen, and other things will come up that I could never predict. And life goes on.