Preparing for Parkage: Getting it all Clean to get Dirty

I hate laundry.

I really and truly do.

It takes little snippets of time that add up.

It isn’t so much the actual doing of it, though it is a pain to have to set timers and get everything down there (especially if you put off laundry and have more than one basket load to do), but it’s the fact that it needs to be done, and that you have to put everything away afterwards.

It makes me sound like a lazy slob, but it’s the truth, and I’m sure that everyone at least has some days where the thought of doing laundry prompts a groan.

Laundry is a bit of a must at the moment, making sure that my work clothing is all packed and ready to go for on the 26^th.

I must have at least five work shirts and 5 work pants, paired with at least three tank tops and three t-shirts. I must have a couple of sweaters and a few long-sleeved shirts as well, just in case the weather goes Wonky.

The weather network says that it’s supposed to be a warm summer, but Lexy worked at Sleeping Giant Park, and it started snowing partway through a canoe trip.

So that’s adding Long Johns to the list as well.

That’s just work clothing.

Pants from the side... most times they aren't as obvious as this, and just have the same colour as the pants material for patches. I go to TNT for my pants.

To clarify, work shirts are pretty much tan/other coloured button-up shirts that have sleeves. The buttons can be undone, and the sleeves can be rolled up when it’s hot. But it also means that you have the option of protecting your arms from bug bites, or from unexpected coldness. 😀

Work Pants have very simple requirement for me, and it’s something that a couple of the other girls at Rangers found out about after the unfortunate sound.

Work pants must have reinforcement patches on both the knees, and, as uncomfortable as it must sound, the crotch.

The unfortunate sound is the sound of ripped pants.

It’s really not great  when one of your work shirts is borrowed so that your buddy can cover the rip in her pants, and it’s not all that great having your bug spray/bug wipes used up because people spray it down the rips in their knees to attack bugs that have crawled in there.

So Laundry is the next part of Summer Parkage Prep.

Fun…

Why am I doing this again?

Oh, right, money, experience, and muscle buildup, as well as being paid for a camping trip…

Ciao and Zzzzz for now.

~Doodled93~

P.S. Props for this girl for going on a four-day camping trip when life was a bit too much, and for publicly apologizing when she gets back because she didn’t tell anyone and everyone thought she’d gone missing, sans id and wallet.

Preparing for Parkage Part I; Driving Boots

Okay, as I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I have a job this summer at Grundy Park, working maintenance for the Park.

There are a couple of things that I generally have to have for the job to be open to me (as I said before, most of it was obvious like I

I got a surprising amount of help from the driving instructor...

must be a Canadian resident and suchlike), but it was mainly that I needed to have certain forms filled out before I got there (the acceptance to the job for one, and the staff house I-agree-to-the-rules agreement that they sent to me about a week ago), certified steel-toed work boots, and, oh, my G2 license.

The license that I didn’t get until Tuesday (Mark it, Tuesday June 14, 2011, Doodled93 got her G2 License!)…

No, I wouldn't have let this happen. Don't be a dink, don't drive and drink...

Yay I got my License!

So happy! XD *hugs*

It was only 15 minutes or so, and it was pretty easy. They made me do left and right turns, parallel parking, uphill parking, and a 3-point turn on a road that I could have easily done a U-turn on.

The guys talked more than I thought he would (I thought it would be limited to directions, but he told me [among other things] that I should be less cautious about my turns), but was really nice.

And I passed 😀

Don’t worry, despite the picture I don’t drive drunk, I’m underage…. But when I’m 19, ho ho, look out world…

Joking! Don’t arrest me!

Ahem.

Yay for that it of stressfullness being gone.

So I’ve been born and raised in Canada, I have filled out and sent the forms, I got my License, and from last summer I have my certified steel-toed boots!

Yay!

But wait, what does it mean to have Certified Steel-Toed boots?

The Green Triangle of Certified-ness

Besides the fact that you can drop heavy things on your toes when wearing them without worry of injury, your steel-toed boots are certified if they have a little green triangle on the side of them.

Yeah, it’s that simple.

My boots do not look like my sample picture though. Well, they have the little green patch, but they aren’t brown, and they’re entirely leather. And dirty.

We (my sisters and I) wore our boots to this huge dog walk thing out in the woods, and it was rainy and wet (MUD) when we went out.

My boots were kind of scuffed up as well…

So Dad brought out his dad’s old shoe-polishing kit, gave me some saddle soap, and told me to wash the boots (including Lexy and Emma’s).

Well…

Of course I hadn’t even thought about taking pictures of the before they were cleaned, and only of the next stage, but whatever.

The bottom one is what you use to put and rub in the polish, you just dab it into the polish and rub like a fiend. the top brush is what you use to make it shiny and cool looking. You rub it over the polish after t's dried to take off the excess.

Hot water and a cloth took off the worst of the dirt, and then using that cloth on the saddle soap took off a

This is a slightly blurry picture of the polish (not people from Poland!)

great deal more, and quickly dunking the boots into the bucket of slightly+ murky water took off the saddle soap.

And then we waited for them to dry.

…

A couple of hours later Dad gave me two long brushes, and this odd-looking jar of what liked to me like someone had scraped off all the dark sticky stuff from a grill and stuck it into a jar. It wasn’t, in case that wasn’t obvious. It was a jar of Polish. (not people)

He showed me how to do my own boots by demonstrating on the grayish looking scuff on the toe, and mumbo presto the scuff was gone!

This is the after picture, of my pretty unscuffed (looking) boots!

Hah, Microsoft Word hasn’t underlined mumbo presto in red. (wp did though)

Yes… because I am right! It’s gone!

Bwahaha!

 Yes, yes, First Mine and Lexy’s boots, Next THE WORLD!

EVERYTHING SHALL BE POLISHED!

 Not really, that would use up all fo Dads polish…

Moving on.

I did the little that was to do on my own boots (they had one summers wear on them) and moved onto the colossal task that was Lexy’s boots (which had TWO summers + Construction site use + More regular use).

Had to unlace the boots to get at every part of it....

Sadly we couldn’t find Emma’s boots in order for my newfound ability to polish to be abused more, and the boots that she used on that walk weren’t the right kind of leather and weren’t steel-toed. We really need to find them… You don’t realise it untill you have to find it, but Size 5 Steel-toed boots are hard to come by.

I didn’t have to do it for mine, but her boots tongue had to be done as well, so I had to take out her old, taped-at-the-end laces too.

 Her boots took a significantly longer time to polish up…

And she wasn’t around when I was polishing Boots, so I was worried that she’d get home and tell me that she REALLY DIDN”T WANT TO HAVE HER BOOTS POLISHED, and that Dad was wrong in saying that it’s be a NICE surprise for her.

Was honestly worried about that, yeah.

Thought that her boots were almost like this from the beginning, and that she would be upset at me for changing their look… untill she came home, seemed pleasantly surprised, and I remembered that no, she didn’t buy the boots looking like this, they were just well used and haven’t been polished for 5-6 years.

This is the difference before and after I finished using the polish on Lexy's boots... Left= Done, Right= Not Done

There was definitely a bit of stress for those few minutes of I-haven’t-finished-polishing-these-and-she-isn’t-home-yet…

So I scrubbed and polished untill I was done, noticing that this was much easier on my back than scrubbing the dirt off of them was, and had a nice time outside talking with Dad while I worked.

Still scuffed, but now pretty 🙂

It’s interesting to see that, though I’m polishing them and making them look all (kinda) new and shiny, you can still see that they’re scuffed. Well, that seems kind of obvious, but from far away they just look mildly used, rather than constantly used like Lexy’s boots have been.

And then they were done.

My boots (left) and Lexy's boots (right), looking all prim and polished...

Now I just have to finish spraying the boots with this suff that’ll make the leather a bit more water proof, and i’ll be done prepping my boots for the summer! I still ended up taking my laces out to spray them down, and after another coat of the stuff I’ll put them back in.

Yay for Part 1 done!