What a weekend! . . .

Obviously, the elephant in the room at the moment down here is Isaac.  We usually get a lot more warning about hurricanes, but they never thought this one was going to come ashore here in Louisiana until this afternoon! 

Poor Mark.  Darned good thing Bryan was here all weekend (and I mean ALL weekend - 10 hours a day!) to help, because it's taken the whole time to get things ready for the storm.  It seemed like a fine idea to me when Mark built the barn to put two doors going into each stall so that the horses couldn't trap each other inside one.  But now that the storm is coming, we need to be able to CLOSE all the doors on the stalls --- and there weren't any doors! 

So I went and bought ten sheets of 3/4" pressure treated plywood ($$$$$) and what Mark and Bryan did was close two of the doors by just screwing plywood over the 4 X 9 stall doors, then they put up a sliding door on two more of the doors, and on the last one (Arthur's second door), they closed off the door from four feet off the ground UP.  We're going to use one of those nylon stall gates in the space below it to keep him in whenthe storms comes.  But as it turns out, having that top board in place is a fine thing!  Up to now, Duke scarfs down his food in no time, and then races over and runs Arthur out of his stall and finishes off  HIS food, as well, if the gates aren't locked.  With that plywood on there that way now, though, Arthur can run in and out at will (he's both short enough and able to lean down some), but Duke cannot!  He still runs over there, but now he just stands outside and stares at the door -- but he doesn't know how to get in there.  He's just too tall.  Arthur LOVES it.  It took him about a minute and a half to figure out that Duke couldn't get in,  so now he casually eats all his food even though he knows Duke is right outside.  The boy is SMART. 

So when we replace those plywood sheets with "real" dutch doors, we will definately make Arthur's doors divide at that same level so that we can keep the top doors fastened shut all the time and he will always have a stall where he will be safe from both of the horses if he feels the need.

Anyway, now when the storm comes in we're going to be able to lock the horses inside their stalls so that if any of the trees come down they won't get hurt. 

Oh - and tomorrow Bryan will be back over after he gets off work at his "real" job and he and Mark are going to cut down that huge tree just behind the paddocks. 

It's the only one tall enough to actually hit the barn if the storm blows it down, and it's the one that dropped that big limb a couple weeks ago so it's obviously NOT strong.  So . . . although it's going to be quite a job (it's probably a good 70 feet tall), they're going to take it down out into the pasture NOW rather than let the storm knock it down and take a chance on it hitting the barn. 

I think I'm going to take Tuesday off - even if the firm isn't closed - which it may well be.  I need to get all the laundry done since I won't have power to the washer if the power goes out.  We do have a generator that runs a lot of things, but not the washer/drier. 

And I need to get the bedrooms upstairs tidied up.  Bruce called, and they may be coming to stay with us if the storm comes in over Mississippi since they live just a block or two from the coast over there.  NOT a good spot.  Their place got heavily damaged from Katrina so I'm sure they'll head out this time if they need to. 

I'm not sure about Deanna.  She was somewhere up in the midwest last week and I'm not sure if she has gone back to New Orleans yet or not.  But if she has I hope she will come up here, as well. 

We will need to clear all the things off the porches, too.  We always have a lot of furniture that has to come in temporarily, but there's also all sorts of things that David has been using during the renovations that he has been storing on the porch between visits. 

Oh - and speaking of HIS work, on Friday he had repaired the holes that Joey ate in my bathroom walls and he planned to paint the whole room on Monday.  Well, it MIGHT take longer than Monday to get that done, as it turns out.  Remember what happened when he repaired those holes in the bedroom walls?  Guess we should have seen this coming . . .  Joey ate the walls AGAIN.

Obviously, I assumed that was Joey's work - and it probably was.  But after I saw that, I put him in his crate whenever he came inside.  But then I found pieces of that piece of green sheetrock there on the floor IN ROCKY'S BED.  Grrrr.  You can't trust either one of them!

So today when I picked up the 10 sheets of plywood, I also got a beadboard panel that David can install as wainscoting there on those walls between the cabinets and the shower, and the shower and the door.  I know that board would also be "edible," but I really think it's only sheetrock they want to eat.  I think they just like the taste of the stuff.  Sigh.

Oh - David DID get that new kitchen faucet I wanted in my bathroom installed for me.  And I LOVE it.  It makes it easy to clean and fill the dog water containers and I love having the spray to tidy up the sink.  I guess if we ever sell the place people may wonder what the heck a kitchen faucet is doing in a bathroom, but hey . . . I guess that'll be Wendy's problem because I'm NOT moving.

So it's time to go have some supper tonight (9:45 PM - yep, it's definitely time to eat) and hit the sack.  I'm hoping that by morning Isaac will have decided to keep moving West instead of coming straight up over Baton Rouge.   But we'll see.