Well it is the first day of September, the kids are back in school, we deal with school buses coming home from work and the WILDFIRES continue to burn my home state.  As of tonight, 23 different fires are burning and we are seeing no relief for the next weeks.   Mind you these firefighters and their support have been fighting wildfires here since the first part of July if not earlier with no end in site.   I have friends that work for the Forest Service and to put a more personal spin on it, they have missed their young kids whole summer, first day of school, eclipse watching you name it....as have all of those people working the fires.    The winds are horrid right now and a fire in Eastern Montana that started yesterday, burned 80,000 acres in 2 days!

Luckily here at my house the worst of it is just dry hot weather and the ongoing smoke which in turn has also limited our summer activities and will this fall as well.   You cannot be out in this with lung issues which I have and honestly, I am even seeing my dogs suffer with weeping eyes and sneezing.  This is the view from my place on a GOOD day.   The other part of the heat (mid 90s have been ongoing) and smoke is no chance to open up the house in the night to cool it off.  I keep saying though that we blessedly right now are not threatened by fire as friends are and the smoke here is nothing compared to those closer to the flames.

Not to depress everyone though.  We still have been busy at my house.  My lovely baby brother stayed here for 5-6 weeks and helped me with a boatload of projects I was struggling to get done.  He's a logical thinker and has some physical power I do not.   We worked until he had to leave and my credit card cried "wolf".   Some of our projects included those below and trimming trees, fixing window screens and building 3 new ones and many things I cannot recall now.

New power hitch jack and I LOVE IT!   

I had issues with the faucet that came with my trailer, it had handles on it that continually got bumped which made it leak water and the neck wasn't long enough to get water reliably into the sink instead of on the counter.  Replaced!  Not as "pretty" but much more functional!

A new sewer hose holder so I could get the stinky slinky out of the front area of the hitch.  Apparently trailer manufacturers feel that a short little itty bitty sewer hose of 15' will be long enough - NOT so this allows me to carry my longer one now.

Best project of the summer.  I had a dog door cut into the back storm door which we used for years.  Without gutters on the house, the storm door warped and the dog door flap fell off.   My goal - get rid of the storm door (so the back door didn't have to stay open all the time and also could be replaced eventually) and put in a wall mounted dog door.  I spent the money on a good one, brother and I cut a hole in my wall and taaadaaaa new door, double flap.  Took a while for the dogs to get used to it but now - no problem and I love it more than words!  Because of electrical wires in the wall we had to mount it a bit higher so that is why the stepper is on the outside - to help the little dogs.

The other replacement was by way of a new standup desk for my home office.  The cart I had was "okay" but I didn't have room for paper and pencil when I need to take notes and the keyboard wasn't really at the right height.  That cart is now recycled to replace the falling apart BBQ cart outside and this is my new desk.  

Meanwhile we also have a war on mice happening.   The smoke and dry, hot conditions have driven them into the house long before winter.  Now I HATE mice and declared war when they started keeping me up at night.   I also HATE killing things but these buggars have to be stopped so I went to the hardware store, got the dreaded snap traps and figured out a way that I could use them and not need to see the deceased AND not touch them to remove the body and keeps the trap away from prying dog noses and paws.  Oh and did I mention the one that snapped a trap under the bird cage (so the dogs couldn't get to it) and when I went to dispose of it, mouse AND TRAP were missing. Don't laugh but a simple flip top shoe box (my new shoes removed) with a hole cut in it and the trap set inside works really well.  (I just recently found the missing trap from under bird cage 1/2 way across the house and through a dog gate in a bedroom - no mouse.)

Grossed out yet?  haha

These guys meanwhile keep me going (things are awful again at work and I am again working frantically and universally to make a change in that area)....We are working on indoor obedience stuff with Epic (cuz of the smoke) and Tinker will try her first ever dog class next week.

That is the long and short of it really but I don't want to continue to fall so behind in my blog posts, even if they are just a bunch of miscellaneous things!