I planned an easy day but I had to fill the fresh water tanks in the Motley. I had to modify the plumbing on the rain water tank to make that easy. While the tanks were filling, I checked the back paddock for catheads and destroyed several more. I don't suppose I have defeated the catheads but I can only go on trying.
I got the weed cutter out to deal with some of the clover in the back lawn. I managed to clear a path to the house before my body said to take a break.
In the afternoon, I watched the motor racing from Bathurst, moved some more stuff from the Motley to the house, and revised the plan for the kitchen renovation. The new layout will give us more cupboards and more bench space which will make it a lot better.
I arranged the delivery of the new front doors tomorrow and the lawn mowing on Thursday.
In the afternoon, I started work on levelling the tank stand. I had to do a lot of digging and had to stop before the job was complete.
After lunch I finished levelling the gravel in the tank stand. This required the shifting of a lot of gravel, most of it back onto the pile. I had to adopt a 20 minutes work and 20 minutes rest cycle to keep my temperature and my blood pressure in control. Tomorrow, if the weather is appropriate, I will do the sand layer which should be a good deal easier. Then all that remains is to put a black plastic layer on and it will be ready for the tank which is due to be delivered on Thursday week.
The doors were delivered by a very nice young fellow from Tamworth who admired the house. He has a similar house in Tamworth which is still being renovated after seven years. I hope to take a lot less than that but who knows. He did put me onto the technique called tuck pointing which he says is taught at the TAFE in Tamworth. Perhaps I should enrol.
His final comment was very telling. He said "How many modern houses will have people standing around in a hundred years time admiring them and discussing the installation of new doors?"
I moved about half of the sand before I had to give up. It will get it done eventually.
In the afternoon I took refuge in the house and cooked a great pot full of bolognese sauce which we had with noodles for dinner. It needs work but it tasted OK and was nourishing. I have not been able to cook as well in the kitchen as I do in the confines of the Motley. Since the only difference is that there is more space in the kitchen, I guess it's due to all the other work I've been doing and perhaps the problem will go away when the renovations are finished.
I managed to move the last of the sand. All that remains is to get it level. This won't be as easy as I had hoped as there is not any excess sand so I will have to adjust the level to suit the amount of sand rather than set the level and fill it up.
For dinner, we had shepherds pie made from the bolognese sauce. It was much better having rested a day.
I finished the levelling of the sand bed. It looks pretty good. At lunchtime, a storm blew through depositing 23 mm of rain on us in less than an hour. The tank stand held up perfectly well so my worries about run off scouring the sand away seem to be unfounded. I might still put the black plastic down just to be doubly sure.
The rain drove the lawnmower man to the comfort of his home so we still have ankle-deep clover in the back garden.
We went to the doctor to get the results of last weeks blood tests. We both showed significant improvements in Hba1c so the doctor was pretty happy. She does want to see more improvement but that's always the way.
I asked the pharmacist if we could get two months supply of pills as we are going away. Because we are on the safety net and get our drugs free, they aren't allowed to supply more than one box at a time so we will have to get regulation 24 scrips from the doctor which authorises the pharmacist to supply for an extended period.
In the afternoon I did some work on the distribution of public, big rig accessible, dump points around the country and established a list of 44 towns which we should target for subsidised installations.
I had a holiday from cooking dinner because we went to the RSL.
The weather wasn't conducive to outside work so I did some small inside jobs that needed to be done.
We read the weekend papers and watched the cricket a bit.