I keep telling myself whatever I'm doing at the present time, on this closet project, has got to be the hardest part, and it will get easier. Nope. Not so far. I must have spent 4 hours last night on just the slanted part of the ceiling. Just 2 pieces. Couldn't hold the last piece in place long enough to screw it in, so finally I got mad and cut it in half and made two pieces out of it. The bottom corner of the bottom half got messed up in all this fussing, so I may redo it. There will be lots of practice taping and covering seams up there. Both ends I would say I don't ever want to do drywall again, but the close quarters up there is a definite disadvantage.
I would either rent a drywall jack, or buy a couple "Helping Hands" (fancy dead men) if you cannot recruit a local young person to help you out.
Don, I had to Google fancy dead men. That would do the trick, but for this closet, there is no room up there for 2 men, dead or alive. Anyway the hard part is over. There is another somewhat useless room in the house with solid wood tongue and groove walls. Unfortunately the wood shrunk leaving cracks, and then someone painted it. That room is a candidate for the next drywall project.
The photo is showing a "regular" Dead Man. What I was thinking of was something a little smaller and more easily toted around. My son introduced me to these and they seem to work well. https://www.amazon.com/FastCap-Support-System-144-Inches-3HAND5/dp/B000067S12
Every internet search seems to lead to a tree, eventually. Last night was another dinner, this time at Applebees. The woman across the table from me mentioned her visit to Malabar Farm State Park in Ohio. She said no one she ever met from Ohio had ever heard of it. Me neither. A 595 acre farm owned by author and conservationist, Louis Bromfield, about 40 miles from where I grew up. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were married there in 1945. The tree and the stone wall from the movie Shawshank Redemption were filmed at that farm. The tree broke off in a wind storm in 2015 and was removed.
My new neighbors have not been handling their kudzu. Probably the removal of so many trees, exposing it to the sunlight, has encouraged it. Vines from their kudzu extend onto my back lawn, maybe 20 feet. It doesn't take long for it to travel that far. I actually enjoy fighting kudzu. One has to be creative and sneaky, but it can be eliminated, except when it lives next door. Then it is an ongoing battle. Saturday I carefully moved all the vines off the grass and laid them onto bare ground, mowed the lawn, and then sprayed the vines. Thirty minutes later a hailstorm popped up out of nowhere. The whole thing lasted only about 10 minutes, but such a racket, I thought for sure some windows would break. Will spray again. Since the lawn was covered in sticks and leaves after the storm anyway, I decided to start some hedge trimming yesterday. Now have a truck load of clippings to haul off this afternoon, and another pile in the driveway ready to load. More on that later. Maybe.
I cut and dried many sacks of kudzu by hand one summer, just for fun, to see if our goats would eat it as hay in the winter. They loved it!!! So I looked into buying some, but hardly anyone baled it at that time. There was a man in North Carolina who baled it for his milk cows. I remember reading it was very difficult to work with.
No, this is not a skinny tree growing in the woods behind the garage. It is a dog fennel plant growing out of the gutter. It sneaked up there when I wasn't looking. The root system was so big, when it dropped to the ground it landed perfectly upright---a somewhat defiant position for a plucked plant, imo. Cleaning the gutter was not a hard job because of the low roof, unlike in town, but one I wasn't planning on yesterday. I should check the mobile home gutters too now.
Dear Diary and others: .. I just want this here for the record. Background is discussed in an old journal elsewhere, and I don't want to repeat it, 'cause it's boring even if you haven't already read it. Routine doctor's appointment this morning. He has now started slipping them in every 6 months. But he is a good doctor, from the Philippines, and much younger than me. Hoping he doesn't retire before I check out. This is what he said... Doesn't recommend shingles shots, because you don't usually get shingles unless you have a health problem to begin with, particularly one that might weaken your immune system. Recommends pneumonia shots. Newest regimen is two shots 6 months apart, then never again. Says tinnitus can be caused by hearing loss, not the other way around. Suggested I play music all the time, just not loud. This will be easy for me, but I'm skeptical. He explained why, but I didn't understand it. Maybe I couldn't hear him. lol Always take probiotics with antibiotics. Antibiotics can lead to serious things, in addition to the usual .things, when you are older. This makes sense because antibiotics throws everything out of whack, imo. He said if I had a sinus infection, I'd know it. Waste of time. I agree. Said I might be allergic to the Clavulanic Acid (CA) part of the Augmentin (Amoxicillin plus CA), instead of the Amoxicillin part. That would be good news. Found this later today: Angioedema, swelling of the lower layer of skin and tissue just under the skin, is a side effect of CA in children. Often associated with hives, or swelling in the upper skin layer. Now recommends B-12 by tablets since I'm too lazy to get shots---1000 units/day. Blood level is in the upper 400's. He wants it over 500. Old recommended level was 350, but they've increased it for old folks. Height measured correctly this time: 5'5" Last time I was measured was in a gym class in college at age 18. I might have been 1/2" taller, can't remember. Anyway, I finally got a standard to go by. BP: 108/64 (no meds, always lower in left arm) That's up, but my weight is up too. Got to do something about that. The drywall I bought weighs 52 lbs a sheet. I carried a half sheet (26 lbs) up two flights of stairs last night...barely. If I weighed 156, I might as well retire and become a couch potato, but maybe 26 lbs of fat would be better distributed than drywall.