2021-12-31
These Final Hours

THESE FINAL HOURS

Wow, what a year.

2021 has been extraordinary in so many ways for us, the least not being establishing Hacienda Dominguez & Chelenzo Farms.

We we’re able to accomplish much because we worked hard and kept our nose to the grindstone.

This final week was no exception.

Despite having a full house, the holidays and all that a living homestead requires of us, we were able to finish the renovations at 48-B and 48 hours later welcome our very first AirBnB guest.

Inspired, I also created some much needed coat racks for 36HTR, built a coffee table for the game room at 48-B out of a freight palate, and began to assemble our newest workhorse - the Trail Warrior x4 double-axel ATV trailer.

Admittedly, I didn’t get very far with the latter, as the instructions were in “European.” In other words, the nuts and bolts require metric sockets and wrenches, and the bag of mixed hardware was not immediately identifiable by its metric length.

Nonetheless and allthemore, I was quite happy with how the table turned out, especially since there were no instructions or plans, simply an idea of what I had to do based on a photograph of a table that I had inferred was likewise made of from a palate.

Moreover, I had the inspiration of the amazing woodwork of my friend Robert Contreras, who designs and builds beautiful furniture out of reclaimed wood.

What I thought was even cooler than making a piece of furniture out of what most would consider garbage, is that I used a can of polyurethane that I had saved from

New York, which was in the basement of our Victorian Peekskill home when we arrived in 2013 and I bet is probably 40 or even 50 years old (yikes, almost as old as me). Being that it’s pure toxic chemicals, I wasn’t surprised that it was good as new, when I opened the rusty can.

I also tried to do some heavy duty reading this week during the late night hours when all others were sleeping.

However, by 11:30 I was barely mustering through the final pages of what I could, despite my body’s desperate plea to let it go. Often, it felt like the 24th mile of a marathon each time, plodding forward to the finish line.

And then there’s tomorrow, New Year’s Eve…

There are grand plans to do a Mesa crawl with our neighbors, with the final stop being here, where we will have an open bar at The Shed and bubbly aboard the Schoolie.

With freezing temperatures forecast, starting tomorrow and lasting throughout the weekend, we will have to see how it goes.

The last couple of years, with young ones at home, we were asleep by 10:00 or so. But as I began this musing, this year has been magnificently different, so it behooves us to acknowledge the occasion with a celebration fueled by fantastic fun, frolicking friends and excessive caffeine and alcohol.

Happy New Everyone!