Relative Something

It comes as no real surprise to us that we have mice in the log home we have purchased. However, the speed at which they have made their presence known has us a little vexed. In less than a week, with much of our stuff being placed for just a day or two, we have found items chewed, and sprinkled with urine and feces.

These guys are wasting no time. Maybe the threat of winter temperatures is chasing them indoors. It’s weird to think that just days ago we were in t-shirts and eating dinner out on the deck.

We need to get after the adding of pets: cats to chase the mice, and dogs to get after the pocket gophers. Then we have to figure out how to manage our time and expenses to support our new pets. Next, we will need to establish a way to manage the pet food to keep out the raccoons that are smart enough to foil many a plot to deter them.

Who’s going to have time to mend fences and work with our invited guests, the horses?

How long do you think it will be until we discover our first intruding bat?

I’ve been telling people that our new place resembles the lake home in Hayward, …right down to the mice.

We have made a moderate amount of progress in establishing order in our new home. We have placed some furniture in the main living area:

However, most of the rooms look more like this right now:

We both survived our first day of commuting to the Twin Cities from Wisconsin, and thoroughly enjoyed the rush of returning to our driveway at the end of our respective days, regardless the lateness of the hour.

Yesterday dawned with us feeling a heightened anxiety, anticipating the accomplishment of finally signing closing documents. We had been in this position twice before. We were told that everything was in place and prepared to proceed. That was good to hear, but that’s also what they said the other times. It failed, now, to offer much in the way of comfort.

Both Cyndie and I had needed to negotiate additional time off work to be available for Tuesday’s signing. If it didn’t happen then, we would be in an extremely difficult situation, having pushed the graciousness of our employers as far as we were comfortable pushing.

Finally, around the ten-o’clock hour, we started receiving messages about the closing on the sale of our home in Eden Prairie. Our interests were being represented by our realtor, in our absence. Once that process was over, we just needed a document to be sent to the title company and lender for our Beldenville home.

We puttered with small chores, and then took our daily walk, under gray, misting skies. When we received word of the required documents being sent, it was beginning to feel as if this essential accomplishment was within reach. We gathered up everything we figured we could possibly need, including Cyndie’s laptop computer, to provide contingency for any issue arising to foil our plan, and headed to the town of Ellsworth with plenty of time to spare.

This was the culmination of a very long process, starting most tangibly with our decision to list our house for sale last winter. That triggered a need to hire some contractors to fix drywall, repaint, and install fresh carpeting. Then came a summer-long period of showing the house to potential buyers. We had a quick flurry of activity for a week of purchase agreements at the beginning of September, leading, ultimately, to an agreed upon closing date of October 18.

An insane last-minute batch of delays had pushed that closing to 5-days later than it was supposed to happen, and led to some major hassles in many people’s lives. Now we were just a few miles away from finally getting it done, once and for all.

Since we had time, I pulled into a gas station to fuel up the vehicle. There was no display on the pump, so I searched and searched for the trick to bring it to life. Then a clerk came out of the store and reported that they couldn’t provide any fuel because the power just went out. A woman at the pump in front of us said she had just come from the grocery store and they were out of power. I looked around and noticed the stoplights were out. Someone hollered that the whole town was without power.

Really. The entire town of Ellsworth has lost power, just minutes before we were to finally close on our new property after a 5-day delay. Really?

Another practical joke from the universe? All we could do was laugh, but we wanted to cry. I had to make an effort not to cry.

Not knowing the extent of the problem, we headed to the title company office down the street. We were prepared to sit there, in the dark, no matter how long it took. Luckily, that small-town pluckiness forged ahead regardless. They moved us to someone’s desk near a window, and sent an employee home, where she would be able to print the one critical document we needed from her email, and then return before we were done signing all the other paperwork.

We have officially bought the farm, and we are calling it, Wintervale Ranch, with a nod to the farm in my family history by the name of Intervale Ranch, and our love for all things winter related, including our dogsled expedition to Wintergreen Lodge.

Believe it or not, we were almost done in by a squirrel. That’s the report that surfaced in a post by the Pierce County Herald [edited to break link to article because the online page expired. A squirrel was killed when it got into some electrical power station equipment, which cause the power outage].