In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2) by SIGNYM

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2)

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Monday, April 20, 2026 00:26
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VIEWED: 244416
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Friday, April 17, 2026 9:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
My god, you were an Energizer Bunny!

Yeah... lol. I wouldn't have done that, but until I finally wrapped it up I had so much "stuff" in the middle of the floor, and I really wanted it all put together and looking nice before my dad got here. I can tell that he's been down for a while too, and I wonder if my mood has rubbed off on him. I'm trying to get him back into good spirits before his "bucket list" trip. He's about to go on a cross-country car ride and see a bunch of stuff, including The Wizard of Oz at The Sphere in Vegas.

I told him that I'm not going to call him at all while he's gone, but he's welcome to call me if he wants to (but he really shouldn't). And I told him to tell my brother not to call him too. I don't think my dad has had that kind of alone time since he married my mom in the 70's, and I think it will do him a lot of good to just be alone for the first time in almost 50 years.

He's going to come here and spend the night 2 or 3 nights before he goes. He's never done that before. Now that I have the living room all put together and looking great, I'm going to buy my first flat screen TV. I found out that they do ship them to your house, so I'm going for the 75" Samsung that's on sale for only $345. I've already got a nice soundbar with the BOOM, so we're going to be watching movies in style from now on when he comes by on my nice leather recliners.

Quote:

Yanno, aside from being a handyman, you seem to be a good organizer. There are plenty of ppl who would pay to have their homes uncluttered and organized!

Who knows... Maybe I'll think about that. My plan right now is to get as much done on the house as I can between now and about mid-fall and hopefully get the last of the major preventative stuff done so I don't have to worry about that when I get a job. I need to get a job on the books because if you don't have 5 years worth of quarters in the last 10 that you worked and paid taxes, you can't file for SSID. That's not a thing I need to be worrying about with the diabetes. If I start working this winter I can have that emergency fallback option available to me again by the time I'm 52.

Although, I guess I could just do that type of work sporadically if I'm doing my own taxes. As long as I get even one single gig in a quarter and pay taxes on it, that counts as a quarter you paid into the system.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I've only had one night terror but it was scary as hell.

What an awful night for you!

Did you see anything/anyone? A lot of people don't, but they still have that dread and fear and can't move.

It wasn't really that bad. If I had a job to go to the next morning it might have been because I was up about 3 hours before I finally got back to sleep. It's not as if the feeling of fear stays with you after you're out of the dream. At least it doesn't with me. It's just so weird.

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Friday, April 17, 2026 9:57 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Okay thanks for telling me that it would be too big for my place. No worries. It looks like it would on the page.

I didn't exactly say it was too big for your place. I know from what you've said that you don't have a ton of space and you have that extra dresser outside of the room, but I don't really know what you're looking for or what kind of free room you have for things. But if the measurements really were 14" by 74" and that wasn't a typo, that would be 6 feet 2 inches long. But you said it was a square, so I didn't think it really was those dimensions.

Quote:
I tried looking at the website for what I saw in the store and their website is useless.

Thanks for trying to help. Though if the store still has it maybe I can get the measurements off the ottaman itself. Will see.

How much was the product, do you know? The square Navy ottoman I posted was $59.99. Anything huge there was PRICEY. So how much did you think you'd be paying for it? That might help narrow it down.

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Friday, April 17, 2026 10:11 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Mowed the back yard for the 2nd time, so it's finally short and looks good. But I didn't get to the grocery store in time because I was out there sanding things down on my horses all day in prep for paint. Sanded down a nice 12"x64" shelf from my grandma's which I'm going to paint glossy black to match my current TV stand, and I'm going to put rubber feet underneath it so it can rest on top of my existing TV stand without scratching it and my new TV will actually have a surface for the legs. I didn't cut it to size yet because I want to know exactly how long it needs to be to hold the legs of the TV without sticking out a foot on either side. I believe I only need about 52" for that.

Got all the shelves for the over the toilet cab and medicine cabinet done as well as the 2 doors for the toilet piece. Got a whatever I could get sanded with my power sanders done on the 2 units as well as the shelf with the towel rack underneath. Fully sanded down the bifold door for the small bedroom closet (I'm going to use the one I currently have on my linen closet across from the bathroom for that closet). I also sanded almost the whole bi-fold door with louvers that will go on the linen closet.. I don't even know where I got that thing over the years and forgot I had it. Nice knowing that I don't have to pay $80-$100 for another door when this is all done. Still have to sand down one side of the louvers by hand since I ran out of daylight before getting it finished. That takes SO FREAKIN LONG!!!

Once I finally get all of those bifolds painted and installed, that will be 2 more rooms in the house finished.

These new Ryobi sanders kind of suck. The bags for the dust collection do not stay on at all, so the sanding really has to be done outside. But I just found out today that the design for the tube going out to the non-working dust collection bag just gets in the way of sanding stuff if you're not sanding a flat surface. Trying to sand those cabinets with this thing was harder than it needed to be. I'll have to do a lot of hand sanding inside on those. I'm glad that the older Ryobi sanders I used for the kitchen cabinets were engineered so much better otherwise that job would have sucked even more than it already did.

I'd rather be painting tomorrow, but I think I'll just finish sanding down everything I can think of that still needs sanding for my upcoming work so I can paint all the stuff all at one time. I've got 4 sets of horses now, so I can set those all up in my 2 rooms in the basement. If I'm painting them inside then it doesn't matter how the weather is outside. Might as well do what needs to be done outside on the nice days and save the painting for the crappy days.

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Friday, April 17, 2026 11:21 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Oh... right. I didn't touch the mirrored oak medicine cabinet door yet. I'm really debating whether or not to unscrew 24 freakin' screws necessary to take the mirror out first. I don't want to use power tools on it with the mirror in place. Obviously not on the inner part of the face of it by the mirror, but anywhere. I noticed a the thinnest of hairline cracks in my huge and heavy mirror I have mounted on my entryway wall in the living room (the one I took my avatar picture with). Just like the kitchen cabinets the high-gloss white has held up perfectly on it over the years, but even though nobody has ever or probably will ever notice that hairline crack, I do. I don't know if I did that myself when I sanded that thing down by hand out on those horses or if it was always there, but once I've seen something I can't unsee it.

See... This is why I write things out. I've just talked myself into taking the mirror out. Of course I'm going to take the mirror out. I would never forgive myself if I broke that mirror because I was being lazy. And unlike the mirror in the living room there are going to be 3 or 4 lights directly above it showing off any hairline crack to anybody who uses the bathroom. Uggghhh...

I think I'll throw on my sweats and and go out and get it from out of the shed now. I could do that right now while I'm watching YouTube.

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Saturday, April 18, 2026 12:49 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Went out and got it at the right time for sure...

I had no idea what we were in for. We just had one hell of a storm blow through here with the air raid sirens going off for about a half hour.

Strangely, it wasn't that bad... The rain was only torrential in spots, and the wind seemed to be higher than us. The really tall trees were swaying, but my house didn't creak or crack at all like it has a few times with high winds this year.

I was kind of preoccupied with that for a while but I finally got to taking the mirror out. But the damn thing is glued on to the inside of the back panel

I'm going to have to be really careful sanding that. I'll just do it by hand and make sure the mirror is protected while I'm doing it. I thought about leaving that as-is for an interesting contrast inside the cabinet, but there is two not-so-minor defects in the stained/varnished finish on it, and it'll just be easier to paint it along with everything else than try to touch that up seamlessly.

I'm done for the day. The tornado warning is over and I'm toast.

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Saturday, April 18, 2026 1:25 PM

BRENDA

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Okay thanks for telling me that it would be too big for my place. No worries. It looks like it would on the page.

I didn't exactly say it was too big for your place. I know from what you've said that you don't have a ton of space and you have that extra dresser outside of the room, but I don't really know what you're looking for or what kind of free room you have for things. But if the measurements really were 14" by 74" and that wasn't a typo, that would be 6 feet 2 inches long. But you said it was a square, so I didn't think it really was those dimensions.

Quote:
I tried looking at the website for what I saw in the store and their website is useless.

Thanks for trying to help. Though if the store still has it maybe I can get the measurements off the ottaman itself. Will see.

How much was the product, do you know? The square Navy ottoman I posted was $59.99. Anything huge there was PRICEY. So how much did you think you'd be paying for it? That might help narrow it down.

--------------------------------------------------

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

The space where I want a foot stool or an ottaman to go is under a card table where my monitor is. So, it needs to be small and square. Like I said reading dimensions of things really tells me nothing. I have to see the object as it would really look for me to judge.

The tags at the store had been ripped off and so I asked a worker about the price. She looked at the underside of the lid. It has storage and read. $80. But I think that was too high, even for this store.

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Saturday, April 18, 2026 1:25 PM

BRENDA

Out to do laundry then errands.

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Saturday, April 18, 2026 1:33 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Hmmmmmm....

It's half as warm outside today as it was yesterday...

Might have to shift what I'm working on today. Not really interested in being out in the cold when everything is all wet and not evaporating after that storm last night.

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Saturday, April 18, 2026 6:50 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Dumb power company did it again...

I've been telling people that it looks like they finally officially fixed the "old circuit" around here and we haven't had any outages in probalby damn near 6 months despite the brutal spring we've been having...

Once again, the power did not go out at all last night, even though the storm was bad enough to have the air raid sirens going off for a half hour right before midnight.

Power was fine today... I even took a nap around noon, woke up in the middle of that at some point and put on a different youtube vid than the one that was playing and promptly fell right back asleep.

I woke up at around 3:30PM and I thought my main computer took a shit. It's cold outside today, but it's sunny as can be and it took me a full 2 minutes to realize that my computer was probably fine and my power was out again for no good goddamned reason.

I'm going to chaulk it up as a win though...

The water was rising slow enough I couldn't actually "see" it rise, although if I walked away for 5 minutes and came back to the well it was obviously higher. So instead of rushing to get my extension cord all the way out the window to the garage and making a big mess, I figured I'd just snake my tubing into the basement toilet and use my drill pump that I bought 5 or 6 years ago and only ever used once when I was testing it out.

Yup... That POS is broken. What a garbage product. I assume a seal or two inside went bad over the years, without any use at all. There was enough pressure inside to pull water from the well into the pump, and even push a little of that water past the pump, but it was leaking and there was no way it was going to do the job it's supposed to do.

I gave up and got my generator running. And then IMMEDIATELY after I fired it up the power came back on.

They were just waiting for me to make a mess is all.

At least I know my pump doesn't work.

All the more reason to do what needs to be done and get that 2nd well dug out so I can have a pump forcing the water out of the house instead of in the sewer system.

The pump was only there for the extremely rare instance that the city sewer system gets backed up. That's only happened twice in going on 15 years now. When that happens, it doesn't matter that I have a generator if the pump is pumping water into a full storm sewer system, because it just fills my toilet up and spits the water all over the living space. The power goes out far more frequently, but if the sewer system is fine than the generator is all I need.

As much as all that sucked, I'm glad I took the time to use that pump just to figure out it is no longer a solution. I do have a 2nd sump pump, so I'll probably just figure out a way to hook that up to the tubing and I can at least drop it in the existing well with the generator to get water out of the house until I get that 2nd well ready to go.

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Saturday, April 18, 2026 7:01 PM

BRENDA

Back later than I intended because of laundry. Only one washing machine working and someone else was using it. The call from my boss because she forgot to give me something yesterday. She said we could meet and I said the best place would be the senior's centre as I have to do something there. Then she said I will call you when I am almost there. Then for the 33rd and 3rd time I had to REMIND her that I don't have a cellphone. Little laughter then she said, "Oh, yeah. I forgot." Arrrgghh! Anyways met her then got on with other things. Busy places don't help when you are already backed up.

Checked out ottoman/foot stool. Would be great but it is too heavy for me to carry. I took the lid off of it and tried lifting the bottom and yeah. No soap.

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Saturday, April 18, 2026 7:14 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Back later than I intended because of laundry. Only one washing machine working and someone else was using it. The call from my boss because she forgot to give me something yesterday. She said we could meet and I said the best place would be the senior's centre as I have to do something there. Then she said I will call you when I am almost there. Then for the 33rd and 3rd time I had to REMIND her that I don't have a cellphone. Little laughter then she said, "Oh, yeah. I forgot." Arrrgghh! Anyways met her then got on with other things. Busy places don't help when you are already backed up.

Checked out ottoman/foot stool. Would be great but it is too heavy for me to carry. I took the lid off of it and tried lifting the bottom and yeah. No soap.

Was it just a little 14"x14" cube, or is it much longer on one dimension than the other?

This is one that I couldn't just suggest you see if your boss would order for you online. Amazon has fallen quite a bit over the years and they don't police any of their 3rd party sellers. My brother bought a couple of the smaller cube ottomans with storage, and although I think they'd both be light enough for you to carry, they don't hold up well to any abuse. They were a lot less than $60 each, but $1 each would have been a waste of money.

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Saturday, April 18, 2026 11:50 PM

BRENDA

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Back later than I intended because of laundry. Only one washing machine working and someone else was using it. The call from my boss because she forgot to give me something yesterday. She said we could meet and I said the best place would be the senior's centre as I have to do something there. Then she said I will call you when I am almost there. Then for the 33rd and 3rd time I had to REMIND her that I don't have a cellphone. Little laughter then she said, "Oh, yeah. I forgot." Arrrgghh! Anyways met her then got on with other things. Busy places don't help when you are already backed up.

Checked out ottoman/foot stool. Would be great but it is too heavy for me to carry. I took the lid off of it and tried lifting the bottom and yeah. No soap.

Was it just a little 14"x14" cube, or is it much longer on one dimension than the other?

This is one that I couldn't just suggest you see if your boss would order for you online. Amazon has fallen quite a bit over the years and they don't police any of their 3rd party sellers. My brother bought a couple of the smaller cube ottomans with storage, and although I think they'd both be light enough for you to carry, they don't hold up well to any abuse. They were a lot less than $60 each, but $1 each would have been a waste of money.

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Yeah, it is just a cube ottoman, so likely 14 by 14.

I'll keep looking and hope I can find something that I can carry. Maybe I should wait until Summer when the weather should have its head out of its azz.

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Sunday, April 19, 2026 12:37 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Maybe it's time to invest in a wagon?

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Sunday, April 19, 2026 1:53 PM

BRENDA

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Maybe it's time to invest in a wagon?

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Trust me SIX that has crossed my mind especially when I bought this new monitor. If that nice young man hadn't helped me getting it back would have been fun.

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Sunday, April 19, 2026 1:54 PM

BRENDA

Clean up but first a nice hot shower. I can feel I over did it yesterday. Back sore.

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Sunday, April 19, 2026 2:00 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Yeah... You wouldn't even need anything all that big. Just an old Radio Flyer sized wagon should do what you need it to do, since whatever you're carrying home would still have to be carried into your place after you got it there.

Do you have stairs into the building or up to your unit, or is your place on the ground floor? Is there an elevator in your building right to your unit?

If it's all flat once you get home, you could carry heavier stuff into your place with it.

If you don't find them used today, a good one can be quite pricey. But it may be a better option for you.

I ordered a "beach wagon" for my aunt. It's nice, but it's not super sturdy on the sides, so anything larger and truly heavy would not be a good idea.

But the plastic wagon with a metal frame and inflatable tires like the one I have for my yard work would hold up forever and you could carry more in it than you'd ever need to. When I bought mine almost 15 years ago it was only around $80 USD. I'm seeing them at home depot and menards for around $150 USD today, not on sale. With all the massive abuse I've put on that thing including literally throwing over 1,000 bags of river rock into it and dragging them all over the place, there was only one time I thought I'd broke the damn thing. It turned out that I didn't break it, but all that abuse I showed it over the years actually loosened 2 nuts off of bolts. Once I found replacement nuts/bolts in my garage and tightened them up, it worked as if it were brand new.

A pricey endeavor, but I think especially as time goes on you're going to fall in love with that thing, especially if you get yourself a really nice one. It will offer you some independence, and it's hard to put a price on that.

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Sunday, April 19, 2026 2:08 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Oh wow... This one would probably work great for you and it's only $100 USD.

https://www.menards.com/main/outdoors/gardening/garden-landscaping-too
ls/wheelbarrows-carts/yardworks-reg-poly-utility-dump-cart-600-lb/600lbpolytw/p-1642874364084747-c-13262.htm

I doubt it's as good as mine is, but it looks exactly the same as mine except it's a different color. They don't carry mine anymore. I've never owned anything by YardWorx before, but I know they sell that brand at Sam's Club too. My old man bought a YardWorx lawnmower a few years ago and he loves it.

I'm thinking the inflatable tires would be nicer for you too because they're larger and they have a lot of GRIP on them. I could see you getting yourself stuck and having to go to the back and push the wheels over minor imperfections in the ground on your way home if you've got something heavy in there with a Radio Flyer style wagon, but with inflatable tires you probably wouldn't ever have any problems like that.

You'd just need to get yourself an air-pump too. They've got lots of options for that too. You'd probably only need a cheap plug-in-the-wall pump instead of investing in something portable. I doubt very much you'd ever get a flat tire while you were out and about. You'd just want to make sure every few months or at least once per year that the tires were pumped up and ready to go.

Even cooler is that this model is just like mine and it's also a sort of "dump truck". If you have something in there that is too heavy for you to remove from the wagon once you got it back home, It's got a handle/latch at the base in the front right above where the handle stem emerges from. (Look hard at the picture above where the handle comes out from and you can see this handle/latch in the above image). If you pull that and lift up just on the one side, the entire top plastic part lifts up and you can dump it out on your floor in your apartment.

In the case of the ottoman, you could have somebody put it in your wagon upside-down and when you got it home you could just dump it and it would probably roll over right onto its feet for you.

NOTE: If you got something like this, there is some assembly required. Perhaps the place you bought it for would assemble it for you so you could walk it straight home. Otherwise, it comes in a big heavy box and you'd need to buy another wagon to take your new wagon home.

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Sunday, April 19, 2026 11:08 PM

BRENDA

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yeah... You wouldn't even need anything all that big. Just an old Radio Flyer sized wagon should do what you need it to do, since whatever you're carrying home would still have to be carried into your place after you got it there.

Do you have stairs into the building or up to your unit, or is your place on the ground floor? Is there an elevator in your building right to your unit?

If it's all flat once you get home, you could carry heavier stuff into your place with it.

If you don't find them used today, a good one can be quite pricey. But it may be a better option for you.

I ordered a "beach wagon" for my aunt. It's nice, but it's not super sturdy on the sides, so anything larger and truly heavy would not be a good idea.

But the plastic wagon with a metal frame and inflatable tires like the one I have for my yard work would hold up forever and you could carry more in it than you'd ever need to. When I bought mine almost 15 years ago it was only around $80 USD. I'm seeing them at home depot and menards for around $150 USD today, not on sale. With all the massive abuse I've put on that thing including literally throwing over 1,000 bags of river rock into it and dragging them all over the place, there was only one time I thought I'd broke the damn thing. It turned out that I didn't break it, but all that abuse I showed it over the years actually loosened 2 nuts off of bolts. Once I found replacement nuts/bolts in my garage and tightened them up, it worked as if it were brand new.

A pricey endeavor, but I think especially as time goes on you're going to fall in love with that thing, especially if you get yourself a really nice one. It will offer you some independence, and it's hard to put a price on that.

--------------------------------------------------

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There are elevators which I use to get up and down to my apartment. I only walk 9 flights of stairs when I have to.

I will take a look in the local Walmart and a couple of other stores around my area tomorrow.

Ugh! I guess I am at that age that I have to think about things like this. >>shudder<<

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Sunday, April 19, 2026 11:10 PM

BRENDA

I see you point about inflatable tires and such.

But I like simple. Something I can do on my own without breaking the bank.

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Monday, April 20, 2026 12:26 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
There are elevators which I use to get up and down to my apartment. I only walk 9 flights of stairs when I have to.

I will take a look in the local Walmart and a couple of other stores around my area tomorrow.

Ugh! I guess I am at that age that I have to think about things like this. >>shudder<<

Meh... don't think about it as an age thing. It's an independence thing.

I don't know how far you have to go with one of these things, but even just a small cube that's well built is going to be fairly heavy.

I know you don't like asking people for help. I don't blame you. That shifts the power balance for sure. It's easy for me to say "hey, you should ask your boss for help", but I know why you don't. Unless my back is up against the wall, I don't like asking anyone for help with anything either.

If you're pretty sure that the pathway home is flat, you should be fine with a smaller wagon. Just keep in mind that if you don't have inflatable tires, you may have to get yourself "unstuck" on occasion if you're lugging some heavy stuff back home with you. I'm sure you'll figure it out.

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USER	POST DATE
6ixStringJack	04.20 00:26