Home again

I got the parcel from UPS, opened it and discovered that the jar of black paint had broken. But I phoned the company in Toronto and they were great about sorting everything out and sent me a replacement bottle--by UPS. We went to the lake on Wednesday and came home Friday afternoon. Pulled in to the driveway, and there was the UPS truck behind us delivering my replacement botle of paint.

The lake was a different story. We got down to discover a real mess. The kitchen was filthy. the very small work counter covered in grease and congealed egg yolk! The floor was covered in popcorn, and other stuff we didn't try to identify. They had taken their wet garbage but left the dry--quite a bit of it. In the house itself, we had to clear a bunch of dirty towels away to even get into the bathroom! The beds are usually left ready for use, but we take our own sheets regardless. When we went to change the beds, the linen had obviously been used.

Now, we share this property with another side of the family, and this hasn't happened before. The place is a bit of a dump, but we try to keep it clean, so as to keep vermin away--always a problem rural areas. My DH, who is quick to anger, called his sister and explained his displeasure. We weren't sure who might have been using the place, as we knew our niece had been out of town, but knew that it would have been someone who had got the keys from them. So I had to start cleaning up. Considering that we only have cold water, and I hadn't taken any cleaning supplies or equipment, it was quite a job. I didn't finish with laundry until Friday morning. We later found out that, while my niece was away, her oldest son had taken his younger sibs down, as expected, but had taken a bunch of buddies as well--young men in their early 20's. Are we surprised at the result?? NOT.

Thursday evening, my DH had a chat with the local Fire Chief. Evidently there has been a problem with campers in the area dumping their garbage in the bin at the local fire hall. ( Garbage disposal in the area is always a problem. We haul ours back to the city and include it in our home garbage) It is enough of a problem that they had actually gone through some of the garbage trying to identify who might have left it. My SIL's name came up, so we were being asked to pay for one bin to be taken away--$120.00. They were asking, and hoping for compliance before sending an officail letter and imposing a fine. Rather than phoning my SIL again and getting into another confrontation, DH gave her phone number to them. We have no idea how that played out, but I'm betting the $$ come out of the small account that is kept for maintenance of the property. That annoys me, because it means that DH and I are paying half the amount.

Now I'm trying to finish all of the work around the house, as well as working on the arrangements for the big meeting weekend later in the month. This means that we are now coming up to the third week of nothing but housework--all day, every day. I'm tired. This afternoon about 2:00, my body said enough! Now I've had a nap, and I'll tackle the work again, but boy!! Do I ever need some studio time.