Catch up: June 6th

I’m jotting this stuff down offline now, before I forget, or before the sheer load of things to tell becomes overwhelming. So many stories in so short of a time. None the least being the critter under our carport today. We’re still working on getting it out and identifying it. At least we know what it’s not. (not beaver, nor skunk or raccoon)

I have a ton of pictures as well. Even if you just narrow it down to the really good ones.

We moved, the bulk of our stuff coming on one big van, much to the neighbor’s delight. There are two chief pastime here: mowing your lawn (I’ll get to that) and sitting on your front porch watching your neighbours. I’m sure everyone in a ten miles radius knew we moved in that day.

I got an official welcome from our directly-across-neighbours, Earl and Rosella. Those are not monikers or nicknames, those are their actual names. Earl came over to let Ron know he’d keep on mowing the lawn in front of the satellite dishes belonging to the cable company. Rosella came over later, when her housework was done, to officially welcome us to Lakeville. No really, she held out her hand and said, “Welcome to Lakeville!” Then I got a hug. That night, or maybe the next, she sent over two plates of cinnamon rolls which lasted a whole ten minutes.

Our neighbours are great.

The house feels like home already. I’m almost done cleaning it. Not because I’ve been taking it easy (I haven’t and I’m starting to pay for it), it’s because it’s that big and was that dirty. The floors were… oh, I can’t even start on the floors. But now the worst of them are clean. This is a big house. We’re not even using two bedrooms and one of the bathrooms, and we still have ample room to shuffle boxes around and avoid each other.

We got here just in time, too. Some of our finds have been rather interesting to say the least. In conversation with other neighbours and a few locals, they’ve skirted around some issues which I’d like to verify. I was happily clicking away, photographing various handyman mishaps when the neighbour behind us came to warn me about the septic system, which needs a complete overhaul. It was also the day the last owner (other than the cable conglomerate we bought it from) had a small break from reality, which explains why some of the good carpentry suddenly went bad.

So it’s been adventurous, meeting my husband at the door every night. Not only the novelty of having him around for the longest ever in 14 months, but the sheer amusement of listing What Went Wrong Today.

Like, “I love you honey, how was your day? The compression fitting on the washer hot water pipe blew off right in the middle of a load.”

or “Honey, I missed you all day. Especially when the microwave breaker kicked off and nothing else in the kitchen did and I had to go down in the scary basement with the trapdoor and the trouble light and turn it on again.”

or the redundant, “Welcome home, I love you and missed you. We can’t use the back door again because the back end of the house dropped. Again.”

and the classic, “I didn’t see hide nor hair of any guys to set up my Internet, darn it. But I still love you.”

Ron had called them more than three weeks ago. Finally, he learned that a former co-worker worked there and called the guy directly. That was two days ago. Things are moving faster now, and I hope to have Internet soon-ish. That’s about as specific as I can get.

But otherwise, life is grand here. The skies are cartoon-blue, the clouds fluffy, the fields now green and growing. Lawn mowing is an art form, with my neighbours taking signals from each other and all mowing at once. The noise is deafening. At least they don’t start early. And when you’re like the lady behind us with five acres of lawn, you spend a lot of time in the ride-on mower saddle. (I think I have an idea for Ron for father’s day…) Anyway, even when it rained it’s been pretty good, and on an especially warm day – with just the perfect breeze – we had ice cream for dinner. Then the sun set brilliantly over the lake behind us.

What more could I ask for? Aside from a reliable speedy Internet connection, that is.

(I wrote this offline and posted it later.)