Don't Worry; I'm Fine

When I don't post to this blog for a few days, I start to get phone calls. "You haven't posted. Are you okay?" Even though it is not beyond the realm of possibility that I could be stuck in a snowbank somewhere, I am not. I am fine. Everything here is fine. Buried under snow, yes. More snow on the way, yes. But fine.

I continue to spend part of every day moving snow around. I was shocked to find this fresh snow when I stepped outside yesterday. By sundown the previous day, the plow guy and I had cleared out all of the snowfall from the prior storm. If more snow had been forecast to fall overnight, I had missed hearing about it.

I have cleared the snow off the roof of the JayBee a few times. With my new, lightweight roof rake, I can stand on the hillside to the north of the JayBee (see the stomped-down path in the foreground below) and clear the entire north side of the JayBee's roof.

I know I have thoroughly documented the tall snowbanks this winter.

When I was up on a ladder the other day, I decided to capture a different perspective. The banks still stand six to seven feet tall, but I have been regularly knocking the tops of each snowbank back over the back side. The result is that these snowbanks are ten to twelve feet thick from front to back. Quite a stunning amount of snow.

I have been thinking a lot about this line from the song Joy Parade: "I will live what this life's about, with or without." I feel like it has become my mantra.

Most of my JayBee-building time has been spent staining siding shingles. No pictures, though. After awhile, a pile of stained shingles looks the same as any other pile of stained shingles.

Since I plan to install trim boards on the outside corners of the JayBee, I began working on them. The tricky part will be cutting the tops of the boards to fit around the roof rafters that support the corners of the eaves--like this one, for example.

I decided to experiment with scraps of trim first. It's a good thing, because these first two pieces I cut...

are not right. At least I didn't ruin two nice 10-foot pieces of trim in the process. Back to the drawing board.

I also decided to begin framing the bed area in the JayBee. Even with moving out and staining eight or more bundles of shingles, the bed area in the JayBee was still crowded with shingles.

Until today, that is. I moved the shingles from the bed area to the kitchen area.

Now I have some maneuvering/constructing room.

Other odds and ends...

Even though it has been exceptionally cold and windy for an extended period of time, the birds have been singing a lot. And the robins are positively fat.

More tracks heading to and from the JayBee, even though I see no sign of critters inside the JayBee.

More Kennebec River winter shots...