When Clay's away

Trooper was due for some serious snuggle
time to make up for his vet visit, so he climbed
right up into bed for it Friday night.

Clay's new job with the brewery took him to a beer festival in Roanoke this weekend. It's a lot of breweries set up in small display tents dispensing beer to festival goers with the goal of promoting their product. He was just gone Friday night but the dogs noticed and took advantage of the empty bed space.

Maya assumed the position on Clay's pillows.

Vince doesn't usually get in bed, but
if there is any petting to be had, he
makes sure to get his share.

That's Gigi's usual position at the foot of the bed, and that's
her blanket, but she had more room than usual to stretch
out with Clay out of town.

The basic frame, about 4' square, the platform
will be 24" off the ground.

Here most of the platform is attached, but I've
turned it upside down to add bracing to the legs.

Even when Clay is in town, he works on weekends now and that has required some adjustments in our social life, such as it is. He's off on Mondays and Tuesdays. I have to work those days but I've been trying to start early so we can go to town to do something in the evenings at least. I pretty much have to entertain myself on the weekends, however. I usually do some hikes, and there's certainly yard work I could do in addition to the mowing, but it's nice to do something out of the ordinary on the weekend. A couple days ago I came up with an idea for a building project. My carpentry skills are very crude and rudimentary, but sometimes that's all that's needed.

I had come home from a hike and was hot and tired. I needed a shower and I realized that the dogs needed to be washed as well, but the even the mere thought of bending over while holding and washing a dog made my back hurt. I needed an elevated dog washing platform. I also needed a way to store my canoe where it would be off the ground. They were two very different, unrelated needs, but they coalesced in my head into one project.

It's not pretty, but it's solid and functional.

xThere are still old fence posts and boards around here and enough odd pieces of lumber that I was able to put this together without buying anything new. It's not beautiful, as I said, my skills are quite primitive, but it's functional and solid. I'll use it to store the canoe mostly, and then remove the canoe when I need to do a dog wash. As soon as we get back to 90+ degree weather, it will be dog washing time.