Since, we last spoke...
I started gardening like it was my full time job and my second job on top of that! At this point of early summer I had already reached maximum, "whoa!!!" of how big my tomato plants were growing. I was constantly coming up with a crazy web of wire, rope, and poles to build a taller and taller cage/trellis to try and keep up with their growth. By the end of the season, They had reached epic proportions. If I had the time to keep daily pruning on them before I got a real job, I'm sure I wouldn't have let them get so crazy. They doubled in size from this picture. They reached the 2nd floor porch!
Then I got a job working here. At a vineyard!
First I was just working helping get caught up on pruning. I loved it. Even the days I thought I was going to puke from the heat. It fed my need for sun, hard work, and being with plants.
Then, I started to learn what to do with the grapes to make them into wine. I had amazingly, accidentally, fallen into practically my dream job. Or, so I had thought. I had been onboarded to learn how to do everything from vine to you buying a bottle of our wine. HOLY AMAZING! No college degree to do this, but my own smarts learning as fast as I could with help from a wine consultant from Santa Rosa.
Then, I got to learn a few semesters of wine chemistry in a few weeks. This was SO COOL! I had all kinds of gnarly science glassware and equipment to test so many different things in the wine. I had no clue how much went into making wine. One of the best things I took away from this job was discovering how much I loved chemistry. I'm set on getting a chemistry degree for my undergrad now. As far as after that I'm still not to sure if I want to go down the road of research or engineering.
But, the longer I worked at this winery, the more and more I started to realize this was not a good place for me. The winery was in the process of changing from a hobby to a real, sell to the public winery. So everyday I watched workers doing all kinds of things on the MASSIVE new building being built just for the winery. This massive building was going to be mine! I had an office as big if not bigger than our dinning room, and that's huge! I was blinding with excitement. Days went on, more and more problems continued to arrise with building the building, and more and more grapes were being harvested and expected to be turned into wine every day. Work days turned into all day, days. I had worked 2 months working an average of just a little over 60 hours a week trying to keep up. I even scored an assistant. Without her, I would have probably crawled into a ball and cried and brought a cot to live at work. The whole time, I worked out of a big garage meant to store a tractor. I knew it would never be like this next year, but I began to see and learn more and more there, that I just didn't want to be a part of.
We had so much to do all of the time. Harvest is the worst part of the year. I understand that. But, our winery had over 60 different grape varieties. Most wineries have about 4. I had batches of wine that would make 100's of gallons to some that would only make one bottle. The garage would get so packed and we had no where to go but up. If the buckets were just grapes, they would weigh about 50-90 pounds. If the buckets were pressed grapes, they would weight close to, if not more than 200 pounds. I'm a tough little Polock, but all of that took it's toll on me. Rick would come help me, just so he could see me more than me coming home and going straight to bed. Then he started coming because my back began to hurt, it hurt to even breath.
A lot of everything was paying it's toll on me and my drive to work through all of the hiccups. Finally my integrity came storming out of me and yelled at me that I was being fucked over, and hard. So, I put in my two weeks and walked away from an enormous dream and possible amazing future career. I won't even begin to list the wrongs. I won't even name the winery, because I truly hope it learns from all their wrongs and learn to turn them around and become a great small business. I just hope no one gets hurt physically, mentally or financially from it. It's been two months now, and it still sort of hurts to think about that job. I really loved what I was doing. But, I had to listen to my integrity. I have a way better future ahead of me once I go through school. Without a doubt, I want a doctorite, I have the brains and drive, that's where my future want to lead me.
Oh! I also got stung by my first bee while working at the winery. I had no clue if I was allergic, and my fear for them was nearly paralyzing. Then, times that fear by THOUSANDS of bees a day. They LOVE grapes. I survived and even let the now, butt-less bee enjoy some grape before he died.
A week later, a wasp went down my boot. I think everyone in a square mile heard me screaming. Holy crap do those things hurt! This was a few days after the sting, it eventually turned into a big bruise and went away. gah. (oh, yeah. I had permanent blackish hands from the wine, for a very long time! ha)
What helped encourage me to leave the winery was the fact that I could make money doing my own thing and stay at home and work on the house. So my best friend Michelle and I bought a big lot of Fiestaware to help fuel our addictions. More about this to come!
Durring all of this, we found our rental house on the Kansas side had been totally trashed and infested with mice. We could not afford to not have this place without renters. The house kicked our butts so bad trying to get everything fixed in a month. Luckily we have renters in there that are clean and understanding of us needing to work on it still. I can't wait till the summer, when their lease is almost over and we can put it on the market. Having three houses sounds awesome. But, it's a nightmare when one gets trashed, one will need some major, but easy over haul to sell, and then the beast we live in which needs help everywhere. ha.
The 200+ Canna's I planted in the spring, got dug up for the winter, the day before the first frost.... Looks like I'll be giving away some Canna bulbs for Christmas this year!
Halloween came and went. Another year of easily over 1000 kids visiting the house. I'm going to start collecting books I find for super cheap at garage sales and thrift stores to give out next year. These kids come to our neighborhood because they think we're rich folks living in these huge houses. A few folks are, but most are like us, living in a huge money pit. These kids don't have costumes because they can't afford them. So, why not hook them up with a book to read and some candy?
We have two furnaces, one for the first floor and one for the second. When we turned on the first floor furnace this year, it wouldn't work. I learned how to replace the igniter and heat sensor as that seemed to be what was wrong by all we had read. I put it together, made Rick come watch me turn it on and watch it come to life.... and nothing! Then Rick realized the one fan wasn't spinning. So I took apart the furnace assuming I just needed to get a new motor. I did need a new motor, because a bird had gotten jammed in the exhaust fan. I was not expecting that as I laid the fan in my lap to try and take it apart. sick. This bird took one hell of a journey! The top of our chimney that the furnaces are vented through is about 5 stories in the air, then another 20 or so feet through pipes in the basement he crawled through to get his beak shoved in the fan.
So I saved Rick and I a few hundred dollars and fixed our furnace!
You read that, right?
I CAN FIX A FURNACE.
I don't know why, but this accomplishment in house things seems to be my favorite.
I turned 27.
I've dreaded turning 27 for many years.
If Lindsey Lohan can survive her 27th year of life, I'm sure I can too.
Dad took Rick and I to my first Hockey game back in Omaha. It was pretty great way to start off my 27th year of life.
It's finally starting to look like christmas around here. It's been really hard to decorate this year because the entire first floor looks like a tzamanian devil had a house party. The kitchen is only appliances, with the exception of a card table for the microwave, toaster and coffee maker. The dinning room is now our pantry, tool room, and kitchen everything storage room. I can not imagine the dinning room as a nice dinning room. I've tried and can not. I am so used to it being a holding place for things. The library is now our own personal Ikea with stacks of boxes of our kitchen.
The kitchen! It's finally happening. January 5th will mark the one year mark, of when we sold our kitchen to a church and began living like we do now. For now, I make you wait. The kitchen catch up blog is worthy of it's own post. Check back tomorrow or Friday to spy on the horrors of how we currently live. ha!
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