Salt, salt and more salt!

The weekend, as noted was spent cleaning the cold room. I
finished this morning with a sweep-out and mop-up of the
room.

Robert and I had decided to give up on the water softener.
Because of our water shortage it is not practical to have
something that takes more than 80 gallons to soften the
water for a week or ten days. After lunch we started to
dismantle it. The first step was to get the salt out of the
salt tank. What a mess that turned out to be. It was about
three quarters full. That's a lot of salt. We started
scooping it and dumping the buckets into the wheelbarrow.
It didn't take long to realize this was not practical. We'd
have to scoop it all over again to get it into containers to
get ride of it. I save my bird seed bags and had lots of
them. We started filling them. After about 5 bags, of the
dry stuff we came to the wet stuff. We drained this through
a colander into a bag in a bucket. Finally, we got to the
point where we could tip the tank over at an angle so Robert
could shovel it out. He shoveled and I drained and filled
bags and carried them out to the wagon. It took us all
afternoon! But, the job is done. We have 10 sacks of salt.
I would guess about 200 pounds of the stuff. We have rinsed
the buckets and the wagon and the tank has water in it,
hopefully to dissolve the remaining salt in the tank. Pete
Brady has said he'd take the salt. Right now the bags are
in the barnyard, each with a small hole punched in the
bottom so the water can leak out. I have also cleaned the
living room floor which had salt water dripped on it, mopped
the kitchen floor and the cold room. I note that the
kitchen still looks salty so I guess I'll have to do a
better job of it, but not today.

This morning I received a call from Sam Lopez who is working
for Jared Polis. Jared is running for the US Congress from
the 2nd district of Colorado, our district. I had offered
to do a pan cake breakfast or an ice cream social. In the
meantime the church is being restored and the schoolhouse is
set up like a Church. Giving a party there would not be a
good idea. But, Sam seemed to think that a house party
would be better anyway and that he would be surprised if we
got as many as 15 people. I have agreed to do that. Sounds
much simpler than what I had planned. I'll invite as many
as I think I can handle or more and he'll invite all the
caucus attendees for the mountain precincts. I think it'll
be fun. Jared has really stiff competition because a member of
the Colorado house, a Democrat, is vying for the nomination,
too.

I had good conversations with Connie and Jeanne over the
weekend and with Margo, too.

Jeanne ran the Tri-Cities Marathon on Sunday. It was hot, but
fortunately not as hot as in Chicago where the Chicago
Marathon had to been stopped after two hours and one death.
Anyway, at about mile 22, Jeanne noticed that a young man was
sitting on the grass and shaking as though he had cerebral
palsy. She quickly realized that he was in trouble so stopped
to help. She managed to get him to focus on her and to breath
and to take some salt and carbohydrate gel that she had with
her and gradually he came back and was on the mend when the
ambulance finally arrived 20 minutes after being called.
Jeanne went on to finish the race! And here she is. Photo thanks
to her cousin Ford
Denison,
published
here without
permission.