The next morning I woke up at about 7am, which I figured was perfectly decent for going to bed however much after 9pm I did (bed still problematic). I managed to sleep fairly well. The previous day I had found out that Eileen wakes up at about 10am, and since I didn't want to disturb the house that early just for myself, I contented myself to wandering around in the morning. It was fairly cold, and I wore a long sleeve shirt, my small black sweater, and then my fleece jacket on top of that. I also wore my boots with socks, both a hat an a bandana, and both my fuzzy and work gloves. At one point in the morning, I was reading a book outside the house, and Eileen asked if she could take a picture of me in all my warm clothes. I don't think she even knew that I was wearing three long-sleeved clothes.
Since my gloves were work gloves, I started collecting scrap metal from the rusty mess of corrugated roofing. This allowed me to fill a second bag. I also worked a bit on removing the small chunks of wood from Eileen's pile of broken wooden pallets.
Eventually Edelweiss woke up, and together we stormed the house, quietly going in and making breakfast. I had a breakfast identical to the previous day's lunch, though instead of eating an orange, I ate two pickled onions. I thought they were delicious, but Edelweiss isn't willing have me breathe next to her. I guess I can't tell how bad my breath is, but apparently it is bad.
After breakfast I read a book on straw-bale house-building, which was very interesting. Eventually Eileen woke up, and I told her that I was going to work on reclaiming the metal (if only I had fancy nanobots like in SupCom). I did this for a bit, then found that the midges were out in the morning. They bit me, and I went to work with Edelweiss, who was cutting down nettles. I helped Edelweiss with this, being useful with my tough and functional gloves, etc. We eventually got them all out, and then we went to weeding.
I have a bad history with weeding, so I went back to reclaiming the metal. The wind had picked up, so the midges were all lying low. Thus work was pretty good, and I filled up a third bag before the wind died and the midges started eating me again (on the face, since everything else was bundled up).
I went back to Edelweiss, and started weeding with her. I think I got a better sense of how to manage it. Eventually Eileen told us that she had made nettle soup from the heads of the nettles we had lopped off. I found nettle soup (which had a few other things in it) to be quite tasty. Edelweiss wouldn't have any of it, though - she made some sort of cheddar sandwich.
After breakfast, Eileen took me to go see the pond (filled with loads of tadpoles), and meet the donkeys. I managed to avoid either of them nipping me, and got to pet their big heads some. After that, Edelweiss and I collected all the nettles we chopped off, and smushed them into a large carton to use as fertilizer. We then took the carton and filled it with water and covered it in plastic (to keep the midges from reproducing in it).
That was our work for the day, more or less, so then I requested some wood, and stuck it underneath the beds to level them. It wasn't quite level, but I put off getting more until later. I took a short name, then picked up this computer and wrote this.
----Written on May 28th----
So some things have been happening. We left off on the 24th, last time - while I was writing the previous entries, Eileen drove off, Edelweiss slept, and eventually Edelweiss woke up and we talked, and we decided that this really wasn't working out for us, and that we should seek other options if possible. She managed to retrieve the number for the Duffys, who had said that she was welcome back, but when we called we found that all of the Duffy children were back in town for the summer. This was a great big disappointment to us both - to Edelweiss because she wanted to go back to the Duffys, and to me, because I had heard so much about them.
They gave us the number of a different WWOOFer who might be interested, but apparently the other family's son had come over to the Duffys while Edelweiss was there, and the two of them did not get along well. We decided to go look online for other options.
During dinner, Eileen ate outside, which was odd, while Edelweiss and I ate inside in the kitchen/dining room. After dinner, we started laundry, then we requested internet access, and Eileen put her computer online. It had a touchpad, but the right click and left click buttons were reversed - even double-tapping on the touchpad was a right click. It was very odd. Edelweiss went through her emails (slowly - everything was slow), responded to a few things, and looked around for WWOOFing hosts who had said they were open during this time. It was all very ineffective, though, and we came up with nothing. I checked my email quickly, and then gave the computer back to Eileen.
Both of us went to bed quite sad about the whole thing, but slept better with the improved beds.
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