MARIETTE'S BACK TO BASICS

Monday, March 4, 2013

With all the raging water through our creek and the big pond where the creek is feeding into, we did notice this beaver on the side of the road.
Husband Pieter did take some photos of it.
Quite impressive in size; over 35" or 89 cm!
We learned that their weight is from 28 to 70 lb or 13 to 32 kg.
Their tail alone measures over 10" or 25 cm.
This one was dead, but I still love to show it; no wounds, nothing.

This one probably weighed around 30 lb or 13.6 kg.
Check out the two links below this post for more info about their amazing consumption of 200 trees annually! They are HARD workers and also can do lots of damage.

Just a couple of days ago I did quickly read dear friend Celia M. High Heeled Life & Resilientista's post from the blog: HighHeeledLife ~ Invitation to a Special Tea...
Due to our water problem I had to wait before using it into a post for helping her out.
Celia did spend some of her childhood years in Portugal and thus knows the language.
Naturally she is very familiar with Portuguese and this is what Celebrate LOVE is all about.

Postmarked as late as April 1, you can send you cards to the above address in Tennessee, USA.
They will forward them to Brazil to young girls that got abandoned and abused.
Sending them some love from far away, make them feel special and cared for.
To help you out with Portuguese sentences to write on your card look below:

Trusting that you will look for cards that you maybe already have, or creating your very own, let us reach out by sending some warm thoughts across the ocean.

THANK YOU!

On Friday we drove to Atlanta, early morning in heavy rain... Luckily on the way home it only was drizzling.
Saturday was my day for cooking a dinner for 8 people, at our home. You did see some pictures from the table setting earlier this week.
While entertaining our guests, husband Pieter went downstairs twice for emptying the full, 6 gallons, wet vac in his work shop. Water was seeping in from the outside wall, where our gutters could not hold all the rain water, neither were the pipes big enough for transporting it away from the house. Maybe some burrow from a chipmunk; who knows why and how; but it found its way inside.
No damage, nothing as we have all tile floors. Great thing was that we have those TRINITY EcoStorage™ NSF 6-Tier Wire Shelving Racks on wheels from Costco, so we could easily wheel them off! Imagine having fixed shelves... But it is quite a challenge that Water Control!
After serving dessert to our guests, I did scoot downstairs to empty the big bucket and to mop up some water.
But we had no idea it would worsen over night. It was nearly impossible to keep up with it and we could not go to sleep.
Pieter did lie on the bed a couple of times to stretch his back and during the in-between time, I sat at my old laptop + Epson scanner (my second) for scanning our slides. In the office upstairs I keep another Epson scanner for non-slide scanning jobs. Archiving everything...

On the left is the opening for pushing strips of negatives inside...

Got a lot of slides done that way, because it did not stay with only one night. In fact, on Thursday night we had everything dry and could sleep in one stretch through the night without any bucket-emptying duty.
But kudos to the inventors of those wet vacs or shop vacs. Ha-ha, shop vac it was, as it worked for us in Pieter's work shop!

This one, our second, came from The Home Depot and holds 6 gallons or 22.7 liter.
It takes some muscle power for lifting them, all night long = divided by two humans!
Also wringing out those floor cloths takes some energy...

Soaking up some water with old raggedy floor cloths... called 'DWEILEN' in Dutch.

This kind of work did ask for some 'Popeye' food so I sautéed some baby spinach with garlic to eat with scrambled egg, made from egg beaters.
That makes for a yummy and healthy heart meal! Read about how to on my FB Page: facebook.com/MariettesBaktoBasics

Pieter got smarter as he opened up the wall, so he could attach the hose right there to suck the water up.
He left his knee pads still on the floor...
The noise of this 6 gallons shop vac changes when it's full, so next door in the Rose Suite's living room, I got up from my slide scanning job and took the lid off in order to empty it out.

My hands sure didn't look that happy after wringing out floor cloths that many times...
I never wear any gloves; just use my bare hands.

Did any of you have to fight some water?
We're lucky with no damage, except that the wool/silk rug in the Rose Suite living room got wet on one side, earlier on February 12 on my Mom's birthday when we also had to fight the water.
I really feel for all those that lost valuables such as photos or whatsoever due to real flooding!

As Pieter's Dad always used to say: 'Water is like Money; there is Enough of Both but it only is Poorly Distributed...'